AI The last dog-walker’s torch bobbed between the trees and vanished behind a rise. Richmond Park fell back into its own night noises—distant hooves on hard ground, a fox’s cough, wind worrying the grass. Aurora Carter stood with her hands shoved in her jacket pockets, breath smoking, and stared at the line of oaks where the map on her phone swore there was nothing.
The Heartstone Pendant rested under her jumper, a thumb-sized weight on its silver chain. It had sat quiet all day. Now it pressed heat into her skin, a pulse like a second heart.
Nyx hovered near the nearest trunk, more absence than body. Their violet eyes floated in a face the dark failed to hold.
“You’re sure this is it,” Rory muttered, and felt daft asking it out loud. The pendant answered for her with another warm thud.
Nyx’s outline thickened, shoulders and arms shaping from night.
“The Veil frayed here,” their voice slid across her ear like a draught through a keyhole. “You can smell it. Iron. Honey. Old rain.”
Rory sniffed. The air held the usual winter bite, but under it lay something sweet and sharp, like crushed green stems and pennies rubbed on skin.
She stepped closer to the oaks. Between them, the shadows looked wrong. Not deeper—sideways. Like a smear where someone had dragged a brush across wet paint.
Her boot scuffed a stone.
Not just a stone. A squared block, lichen-furred, set upright. Another stood a few feet away, and another, a crooked ring half sunk into the earth as if the ground had been swallowing them for centuries and got bored halfway.
“Standing stones,” Rory breathed.
Nyx’s gaze tracked along them.
“Boundary markers.”
Rory pulled the pendant out from under her jumper. The gemstone’s deep crimson glow didn’t light her hands so much as stain them, like she’d dipped her fingers in wine. The warmth built. The pulse tightened.
“So if that thing reacts to Hel portals—”
Nyx’s fingers, when they formed, looked like smoke held in place .
“This isn’t Hel. Not cleanly.”
“That’s comforting .”
She moved between two stones. The gap looked ordinary until she lined herself up with it. Then it turned into a thin sheet of shimmer, like heat haze above tarmac. She lifted a hand. The hairs on her knuckles rose.
Nyx leaned in without touching.
“You’ll feel it in your teeth.”
Rory’s jaw clenched on instinct. She pressed her palm forward.
Cold snapped over her skin, quick and mean. Not winter cold. Something deeper, like the memory of metal left outside. Her molars ached. The shimmer gave, not like cloth but like the surface of a pond that refused to admit it was water.
Rory stepped through.
For half a breath she stood nowhere. The park vanished. Sound dropped out. Even her heartbeat seemed to pause, surprised to find itself alone.
Then the world caught.
Grass brushed her boots, but it didn’t bend like grass. Each blade held its shape until it chose to move, swaying a beat late with a thought-out grace. The air smelled of wildflowers even though it held a winter chill . Above her, the sky didn’t match the London night. It glowed with a soft, bruised indigo, scattered with unfamiliar stars arranged in tight spirals, as if someone had stirred them with a spoon.
Behind her, the stones remained, but the gap between them looked like an ordinary space of air . No shimmer. No hint of the park.
Nyx stepped in after her. Their shadow-body thickened as though the place offered more to grip. The violet in their eyes sharpened.
Rory took one step, then another, expecting mud, expecting frost. The ground felt springy, warm under the sole, like sun-baked turf. Her breath came out clean, no smoke.
“Time’s doing that thing,” she said, because her phone still glowed in her hand, but the screen clock flickered through minutes like it couldn’t settle.
Nyx’s head tilted.
“It doesn’t like being measured .”
Rory slid her phone back into her pocket and let her senses do the work. The grove hummed. Not loud. Not even clear. A vibration under the skin, like standing too close to a power substation. Each time the pendant pulsed , the hum answered.
They walked. The standing stones fell behind, swallowed by trees that looked like oaks from a distance but held silver-veined bark up close, the patterns twisting into shapes that made her eyes want to refocus. Branches arched overhead in a slow cathedral curve. Leaves, though it was meant to be winter, hung thick and dark, each one edged with a faint pale line as if traced with moonlight.
Rory reached out. A leaf brushed her knuckle. It felt like cool leather. The leaf curled, not away from her, but towards her touch .
“Creepy,” she murmured.
Nyx’s hand passed near the trunk. The bark didn’t cast their shadow. It swallowed it.
“Old place,” Nyx whispered. “It remembers different rules.”
Something scurried through the undergrowth. Rory’s body tightened. She slid her hand inside her jacket and found the familiar shape at her waistband.
Moonsilver met her fingers with a bite of cold. The Fae-Forged Blade never warmed. Even through its sheath, it carried a winter edge, a warning pressed into skin.
Nyx noticed.
“You brought their metal in.”
“Your point?” Rory’s thumb rested on the hilt. “If something in here wants to eat me, I’d rather not argue my way out.”
A sound like chimes drifted between the trees. Rory froze, listening. It came again: a bright clatter, then a low, laughing note that didn’t fit into any scale she’d heard in a pub or a church.
Nyx angled their body towards it.
“Not a bell. Living.”
Rory kept moving, but slower. The grass parted without noise. Wildflowers crowded the path—bluebells in winter, foxgloves with petals too dark, clusters of pale blooms that looked like tiny paper lanterns . They gave off their own light, a dim glow that pooled around their stems.
She crouched and touched one lantern-flower. It warmed her fingertip like a held breath. The flower turned, following her, as if it had an eye.
Rory pulled her hand back.
“Everything’s watching.”
Nyx’s eyes narrowed .
“Not everything. Just enough.”
The chime-sound grew louder near a small rise. Rory climbed it, boots sinking a fraction into soil that felt like sifted peat . At the top, the trees opened into a clearing.
It took her a moment to accept it.
A circle of stones stood in the centre, taller than the boundary markers, each slab carved with grooves that glimmered faintly. Between them, a pool of water lay perfectly still. It didn’t reflect the sky above. It held a different sky—warm amber, like late afternoon poured into glass.
Rory’s pendant surged hot against her chest. The crimson glow brightened until it shone through the knit of her jumper.
Nyx’s form wavered .
“That water isn’t water.”
Rory stared at the amber sky trapped in the pool and saw movement in it. Something like drifting smoke. Or distant heat haze above sand. It moved with slow appetite.
She swallowed, throat tight.
“Hel,” she breathed.
Nyx drifted closer, staying at the edge of the clearing where shadows thickened.
“A seam,” they murmured. “Not open. Not closed.”
Rory crouched by the pool, careful not to let her reflection—if it even existed—touch it. The air above the surface felt warm on her face, like an oven door cracked open. The smell changed too. Not flowers. Rich, heavy scents—roast meat, wine, spiced fruit. It hit her with a hunger that didn’t belong to her stomach .
Her fingers dug into her knee.
“Dymas,” she said, the name tasting wrong in her mouth, like food swallowed too fast.
A step sounded behind her.
Not a crunch of leaves. Not a footfall . More like the whisper of fabric brushing air.
Rory sprang up and pulled the dagger free. The moonsilver blade caught light that hadn’t existed a second before and gave it back as a pale, clean glow.
A woman stood at the far edge of the clearing, half inside the trees. Silver hair fell to her waist, loose as water. Her eyes shone pale lavender, steady and sharp. Her dress looked like it had been cut from mist and stitched with something that refused to stay still.
Isolde Varga’s feet rested on the grass without pressing it down.
Rory’s gaze dropped, caught on that detail . No flattened blades. No muddy prints. Just grass, untouched.
Nyx’s shadow leaned towards Isolde, like the night itself had recognised her.
Isolde looked at Rory’s blade first.
“Metal that remembers moonlight,” her voice carried a lilting cadence, each word placed like a stone across a stream. “It cut what hands could not touch.”
Rory kept the dagger up.
“Nice to meet you too. You Isolde?”
Isolde’s lips curved, not quite a smile .
“Names stuck to me when I stood still long enough.”
Rory gestured with the blade towards the pool.
“What’s that doing here?”
Isolde walked into the clearing. The wildflowers leaned away from her path, not from fear, more like deference. She stopped short of the pool and looked down at the amber sky trapped in it.
“A mouth pressed to glass,” she replied. “It tasted this place and wanted more.”
Nyx’s violet eyes narrowed .
“You let it taste.”
Isolde lifted her gaze, and her lavender irises caught the dagger’s pale sheen.
“Do you blame the cup for the thirsty hand?”
Rory snorted.
“I blame whoever left a Hel-flavoured puddle in a park.”
Isolde’s attention shifted to Rory’s chest where the Heartstone glowed through fabric.
“A red seed from Gluttony,” Isolde murmured. “Warm when hunger sits close. Who gave you that?”
Rory’s grip tightened on the dagger.
“Unknown benefactor. That answer won’t make you happy because it doesn’t make me happy.”
Isolde’s head tipped, hair sliding over one shoulder. She studied Rory’s face like she read it, like the lines of her jaw and the set of her mouth formed words.
“The gift chose its road,” Isolde replied. “The hand mattered less than the need.”
Nyx moved nearer, their edges sharpening.
“You brought her here to feed your riddles.”
Isolde’s gaze flicked to Nyx. No fear. No surprise. Like they had stood there the whole time.
“A shadow that once held a name,” Isolde said. “Still caught between doorways. Does it hurt when you listen?”
Nyx’s outline trembled , as if the question had struck bone.
Rory took a step between them, dagger angled low but ready.
“We came for answers, not a personality read.”
Isolde’s eyes stayed on Rory.
“Then look,” she murmured, and lifted her hand.
The carvings on the standing stones brightened. The grooves filled with pale light, not a glow but a presence, like moonlight turned solid . The hum under Rory’s skin rose. The wildflowers’ lantern-blooms tilted towards the circle. Even the grass seemed to lean in.
The pool’s amber surface rippled once.
A scent burst up—rich wine, baked sugar, meat fat sizzling—and Rory’s stomach clenched with sudden craving. Not for food. For more of the smell. For whatever sat on the other side of the glass.
She bared her teeth and forced air into her lungs.
“Stop,” she snapped, and the word came out rough .
Isolde’s hand hung in the air .
“Do you want the door left shut,” Isolde asked, “or do you want to see who pressed their face to it?”
Nyx’s fingers curled, shadow thickening around their forearms.
“It opened, it will pull,” they whispered. “This place won’t hold if it starts drinking.”
Rory’s pendant pulsed hard against her sternum, heat building until it bordered on pain. She shifted, the silver chain biting her neck.
She kept her eyes on the pool, but she spoke to Isolde without looking away.
“You live here. You keep this grove from getting trampled by tourists and dog walkers. So you knew.”
Isolde’s feet glided a fraction closer to the stones. Still no imprint.
“I watched it seep in,” she replied. “I watched the Veil shiver like a curtain in a draught. I watched time forget itself at the boundary.”
Rory’s voice dropped.
“And you waited for me.”
Isolde’s gaze held hers.
“I waited for the red seed to burn,” Isolde answered. “I waited for a blade that could cut a lie.”
Nyx leaned towards Rory.
“She spoke plain for a moment. That cost her something.”
Isolde’s fingers flexed, and the air around her hand shimmered , as if the grove had held its breath with her.
Rory stepped closer to the nearest carved stone. The light in its grooves threw sharp lines across her knuckles. The dagger’s cold bit deeper through her grip. She held it out, not at Isolde, but at the space above the pool .
“If this is a mouth to glass,” Rory muttered, “then we don’t tap it. We don’t feed it. We work out who put it here and why.”
Isolde’s expression stayed smooth, but her eyes narrowed , a flicker of something like approval, or hunger of a different kind.
“A clever girl with a scar on her wrist,” Isolde murmured, gaze dropping to Rory’s left hand . “Clever enough to know the difference between appetite and need.”
Rory’s pulse thudded in her ears. The crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist prickled under Isolde’s attention like it remembered the childhood accident that made it.
“Keep your eyes off my hands,” Rory snapped.
Nyx shifted closer behind Rory, a shadow that felt like a shield .
Isolde lifted her other hand and pointed, not at the pool, but at the far side of the clearing where the trees knotted together, branches woven into an arch that hadn’t been there a moment ago. Pale blossoms clung to it like dropped stars.
“The grove had more than one door,” Isolde murmured. “You walked through the first.”
Rory followed the line of Isolde’s finger. The archway between the trees looked too neat, too deliberate, like the forest had arranged itself into a passage while she blinked.
The pendant’s warmth eased a fraction when she faced away from the pool, as if it approved of distance.
Rory slid the dagger down but kept it ready at her side.
“What’s through there?”
Isolde’s voice softened, but it didn’t warm.
“Further in.”
Nyx’s violet eyes fixed on the arch, and their form thinned at the edges, as if the shadows beyond called to them.
Rory took one step towards the woven branches. The lantern-flowers pivoted to track her, their glow painting her boots and the hem of her jeans. Behind her, the pool rippled again, once, a patient stir of amber.
She didn’t turn back. She moved towards the archway, the moonsilver blade cold in her hand, the Heartstone beating heat against her chest, while Nyx’s shadow slid across the grass beside her and Isolde glided after them without bending a single blade.