AI The scent of ozone and overripe peaches hit Aurora the moment they stepped through the shimmering distortion in the air. Her stomach lurched , a sudden, violent rejection of the unnatural transition. She stumbled forward, her trainers sinking into something soft and yielding. Nyx flowed through the breach behind her, their shadowy form coalescing into a solid shape with an unsettling whisper of displaced air.
"Disorientation is common," their voice murmured, a chill breeze against her ear. "Breathe. The feeling will pass."
Rory focused on the ground beneath her feet. It wasn't soil, but a spongy, moss-like carpet that glowed with a faint, pulsating green light. She straightened up, her hand instinctively going to the Heartstone pendant at her throat. It was warm, a steady, comforting pulse against her skin.
"Where are we?" she asked, her voice sounding small in the immense silence .
"The borderlands," Isolde replied. The Half-Fae seer stood a few feet away, her silver hair seeming to absorb the strange ambient light. "A place that is neither here nor there. A pocket woven into the Veil itself." She gestured with a slender hand. "The Grove is just ahead."
Ahead was an archway formed by two colossal, intertwined oak trees, their bark shimmering as if dusted with starlight. Beyond it, the air hummed with a low, resonant frequency that Rory felt in her teeth. They moved forward, the glowing moss muffling their footsteps into nothingness.
Passing through the archway was like stepping through a curtain of cool silk . The world shifted. The humming intensified, resolving into a chorus of whispers that seemed to come from the very leaves on the trees . The Fae Grove stretched out before them, a breathtaking contradiction. Wildflowers in impossible hues—sapphire blue, fiery orange, deep violet—bloomed in chaotic profusion, their petals seeming to shift and change pattern as Rory watched. The light didn't come from a sun, but from everywhere and nowhere, casting no distinct shadows. Nyx, usually a stark silhouette, seemed to soften at the edges, their form blending with the perpetual twilight.
"It's beautiful," Rory breathed, her lawyer's mind struggling to catalogue the sensory overload.
"Beauty is a trap for the unwary," Isolde said, not unkindly . She glided ahead, her feet leaving no impression on the flower-strewn path. "Do not touch the silver-thorned blossoms. Do not drink from the streams that flow uphill. And do not, under any circumstances, answer if you hear your name called from the weeping willows."
Rory’s fingers brushed the cool hilt of the Fae-forged blade tucked into her belt. Isolde had given it to her only an hour before, with those same cryptic warnings. The dagger felt alien and alive against her hip.
They followed Isolde along a winding path paved with smooth, milky stones. The Grove felt ancient, a place where time had stopped making sense. Rory glanced at her watch ; the hands were spinning lazily in both directions.
"Time behaves as a river does here," Nyx observed, noticing her confusion. "Sometimes it flows fast, sometimes slow. Sometimes it eddies and pools. An hour inside could be a minute in London. Or a week."
"Helpful," Rory muttered, a spike of anxiety piercing her wonder . Eva would worry if she was gone too long. The thought of her London life—of Yu-Fei’s kitchen and Silas’s bar—felt like a distant dream .
Ahead, a structure emerged from the lush foliage. It wasn't built, but grown. A living house formed from the trunks of several vast trees, their branches woven together to create walls and a roof from which hung curtains of glowing lichen. As they approached, Rory saw that the patterns in the wood grain weren't random. They shifted, telling silent, swirling stories of battles and betrayals, of love and loss. She saw a knight with a crown of stars, a serpent with a woman's face, a city burning under an amber sky.
"Incredible," she whispered, reaching out a hand but stopping herself just short of touching the story-filled wood.
"The history of my people," Isolde said, her lavender eyes lingering on the image of the burning city. A flicker of ancient pain crossed her ageless features. "It is not always a happy tale."
She led them inside. The interior was a single, circular room, open to the canopy above where bioluminescent fungi clung to the branches, providing a soft, shifting light. The air was thick with the scent of damp earth and something sweet, like honeysuckle. In the centre of the room, a pool of perfectly still, black water reflected the glowing fungi upside down.
"Sit," Isolde commanded, gesturing to cushions of moss arranged around the pool.
Rory sat, Nyx settling beside her as a patch of concentrated shadow. Isolde knelt by the water's edge, her reflection a perfect , ghostly duplicate.
"You seek the rift," the seer stated, her gaze fixed on the dark water. "The tear in the Veil that the Prince of Gluttony seeks to widen."
"It's why we came to you," Rory said. "You said you could show us."
"I can show you more than the location," Isolde replied. Her voice had dropped to a chant-like rhythm. "I can show you the consequence."
She passed a hand over the pool. The still surface rippled, not from her touch, but from within . The reflection of the fungi shattered , and a new image formed. Rory leaned forward, her breath catching.
She saw London, but a London twisted into a nightmare version of itself. The sky was the warm, sickly amber of Dymas. The Shard was draped in flowering vines that pulsed with a malevolent light. Figures—human and otherwise—staggered through the streets in a frenzied, endless feast, their faces masks of ecstatic agony. And standing atop Tower Bridge, a colossal, indistinct shape presided over the chaos, a crown of antlers etched against the hellish sky.
"Nihil ex nihilo," Isolde whispered, the words hanging in the air . "Nothing comes from nothing. For a Prince of Hel to step fully into your world, your world must first be made ready to receive him. He does not break the door down. He persuades the house to invite him in."
"The gluttony..." Rory realised, her mind making the connection . "The excess. The feasts. It's not just what he does. It's what he *is *. He's reshaping the city in his image."
"A key must fit its lock," Nyx said, their violet gaze fixed on the horrifying vision. "He is forging the key from the weakness of mortals."
The image in the pool shifted again, zooming in on a familiar location. A nondescript brick building in Southwark, the one Rory delivered to last Tuesday. Golden Empress takeaway containers were piled high outside its door. As they watched, the bricks seemed to shimmer, a faint amber glow pulsing from within the mortar.
"There," Isolde said. "The infection has taken root. The rift is thin there. A wound that will not heal."
The vision vanished, the pool returning to a sheet of black glass. The three of them sat in silence , the weight of what they had seen pressing down. The wonder of the Grove had curdled into a deep, chilling unease.
"We have to go there," Rory said, her voice firm . The analytical part of her mind was already running through possibilities, discarding the useless, homing in on a course of action. "We have to stop it before it widens."
"You have the blade," Isolde said, rising. "It can cut the bonds that hold the nascent rift open. But you will not be alone. The Prince’s chefs, his tasters, his loyal guests... they will be there. They feast on the energy it emits."
Nyx flowed to their feet, their form seeming to draw the faint light from the room. "Then we shall ensure their feast is interrupted."
Rory stood, her hand closing around the Fae-forged dagger. The cold metal was a jolt of reality. They had a target. They had a weapon. The time for wondering was over.
Isolde led them back to the edge of the Grove, to the archway of starlit oaks. The transition back to the borderlands was just as jarring. The vibrant colours of the Grove faded, replaced by the monochrome glow of the moss. The whispering leaves fell silent.
"Remember the warnings," Isolde said, her lavender eyes grave . "The Prince of Gluttony deals in temptation. He offers a feast for every hunger. Do not partake."
Rory nodded, her jaw set. She turned towards the shimmering distortion that was their way back to London, to the normal world that was anything but. Nyx moved to her side, a protective darkness.
They stepped through the Veil.
The smell of diesel fumes and rain-washed pavement assaulted Rory’s senses. They stood in a dank alley behind Richmond Park, the roar of the A205 a familiar soundtrack. She checked her watch . Only ten minutes had passed.
But something was wrong. The amber glow from the vision lingered behind her eyes. And from the direction of the city centre, carried on the wind, she caught a faint, discordant sound weaving through the traffic noise. It wasn't sirens or shouts. It was laughter. Wild, unchecked, hysterical laughter rolling out across the night sky, getting closer.