AI The air tore with a sound like ripping silk .
One moment they were crammed in the back of Silas’s van, parked in a lay-by off the Petersham Road, the cold London drizzle misting the windscreen. The next, a sudden pressure drop made Rory’s ears pop , and Isolde’s hand was on her arm, guiding her through a gap in the ancient oaks that looked no wider than a bicycle. They stepped through, and the world fell silent.
“Bloody hell,” Eva breathed, her voice small in the sudden hush.
The transition wasn’t a journey. It was a substitution. The dripping trees and the distant hum of the A316 were gone . In their place stood a ring of towering, gnarled oaks, their bark silvered like old coins under a sky that was simultaneously the deep indigo of twilight and lit by a soft, sourceless glow. No moon, no stars, just a luminous ceiling that made everything look sharp-edged and dreamlike. The air tasted different, too, clean and cold and faintly sweet, like crushed mint and black earth.
Rory’s left wrist prickled. The crescent scar felt taut. She looked down, expecting to see it glowing. It wasn’t. But the pendant against her sternum was a sudden, pulsing warmth beneath her jumper.
“You feel it,” Isolde said, her voice a quiet bell in the stillness. She stood a few paces ahead, her silver hair blending with the spectral light. She left no prints in the thick carpet of moss. “The boundary. It hums for those who listen.”
“It smells like my gran’s garden after a storm,” Eva said, her usual bravado softened by awe. She crouched, running her fingers through the moss. Tiny, phosphorescent blue flowers sparked at her touch. “Glowy plants. New one.”
Nyx flowed from the shadow of the nearest oak, their form solidifying from a column of ink into their humanoid silhouette. The faint violet glow of their eyes scanned the grove. “The stillness is… layered. Not empty. Waiting.”
Rory took a step forward. The moss sank under her trainers, silent as a memory. “Time moves differently here, you said.”
“An hour can be a minute. A day can be an hour.” Isolde began to walk, her movements so fluid she seemed to drift. “Do not think of clocks. Think of breath. Your own. The world’s.”
They followed her deeper into the grove. The oaks gave way to a wilder, denser wood. Trees twisted in impossible spirals, their bark patterned like reptile skin. Vines hung heavy with blossoms that chimed softly in a non-existent breeze. The sound was crystalline , like distant wind chimes made of glass.
“This is…” Eva started, then just shook her head.
“It’s not London,” Rory finished, her own voice hushed. Every instinct, honed by years of studying tort law and navigating late-night deliveries through Shepherd’s Bush, screamed that this was wrong. The angles were off. The light had no origin. Yet, a deeper, quieter part of her, the part that had first felt the pendant’s warmth , whispered that it was simply *other *. Not wrong. Different.
A path of pale, smooth stones appeared underfoot, winding between two massive, weeping willows whose leaves shimmered with opalescent dew. As they passed, the dew-drops detached, floating upward to join the glowing canopy.
“Tribute,” Isolde said, not looking back . “Or memory. The trees remember the sky.”
They emerged into a clearing. A small, perfectly circular pool of black water lay at its centre, so still it looked like a disc of polished obsidian set into the earth. Around its rim, flowers bloomed in violent, impossible profusion: roses the colour of arterial blood, lilies with petals of beaten gold, strange trumpet-shaped blooms that pulsed with a slow, inner light. The air here was warmer, thick with perfume.
“Don’t touch the water,” Isolde said, her tone losing its dreamy quality for a sharp, clear warning. “It doesn’t forget what it holds.”
Rory approached the edge, careful to keep her feet on the moss. Her reflection stared back, wide-eyed and pale. Then the image shivered. For a heartbeat, she saw not herself, but a woman with fiery hair and a crown of twisted brambles, screaming silently. The vision vanished.
She stumbled back, her heart hammering against the warm pendant. “What was that?”
“An echo .” Isolde’s lavender eyes held hers. “The pool shows what has been. Sometimes what will be. Often, it simply shows what is most true. A dangerous gift.”
Nyx had drifted to the far side of the clearing. They stood before a low, moss-covered archway formed from the interlocked roots of two vast, ancient trees. Beyond it, the grove seemed to deepen into a thicker, darker wood where the luminous air frayed into shadows. “There is a pull here,” Nyx whispered, their voice the brush of dry leaves . “A… thinness.”
Isolde joined them. “A place where the Veil is tissue. A scar. My kind find them… uncomfortable.” She looked at Rory . “Your token. Does it speak?”
Rory pulled the pendant from under her jumper. The deep crimson gemstone wasn’t just warm now; it was hot. A faint, rhythmic glow emanated from its core, casting a bloody light on her fingers. It pulsed in time with the sudden, frantic beat of her heart. “It’s like a heartbeat.”
“It senses a door,” Nyx said. “A rift point. Weak. But present.”
Eva, who had been examining a gold lily with the caution of a bomb disposal expert, looked over. “A door to where? More of this?”
“To Dymas,” Rory said, the name feeling heavy and greasy on her tongue . “The gluttony realm.”
A heavy silence fell, broken only by the chiming of the distant glass-flowers. The wonder of the place curdled, the beauty turning watchful, predatory.
Isolde’s gaze was distant, fixed on the archway of roots. “The Veil is not a wall. It is a membrane. It breathes. It sickens. Places like this… they are where the sickness festers. Where things slip through.”
“What kind of things?” Eva asked, her hand drifting to the iron poker she’d insisted on bringing, hidden in her long coat.
Before Isolde could answer, a new sound cut through the grove’s music.
A wet, rhythmic *tearing *.
It came from beyond the root-arch, in the deeper dark. It was the sound of something rending fabric, or flesh, followed by a low, guttural swallowing.
Rory’s pendant flared, a single, searing pulse of heat that made her gasp.
From the darkness under the arch, a shape detached itself. It was low to the ground, moving with a slithering, undulant gait. It was the colour of a week-old bruise, its skin glistening under the grove’s light. It had no clear head, just a bulbous front end that split open vertically into a maw lined with rows of hook-like, translucent teeth. As it moved, it dragged a distended, sack-like belly across the moss.
It stopped at the edge of the shadow, just beyond the arch. The maw opened and closed with a soft, sucking *pop *. It had no eyes, but the entire front of its body seemed to orient towards them, towards the pulsing light of Rory’s pendant.
“A leech,” Nyx murmured, their shadow-form flickering at the edges . “A minor thing. A scavenger that feeds on spilled magic, on emotions left to rot. It should not be here.”
“The thin place,” Isolde said, her voice tight . “It must have oozed through. Drawn by the residue of passage.”
The creature’s maw opened wider, and it emitted a high, thin whistle that set Rory’s teeth on edge. In answer, a second wet tearing sound came from the darkness behind it. Then a third.
“It’s not alone,” Eva said, hefting the poker. The iron looked pitifully small.
Rory’s mind, that cool-headed, problem-solving part, kicked into gear even as her pulse thundered in her ears. *Alien environment. Unknown threats. No clear exit.* She fumbled under her jacket, her fingers closing on the cold, always-cold hilt of the slender dagger Isolde had given her. The Fae-forged blade. As she drew it, the moonsilver caught the grove’s light and glowed with a faint, blue-white radiance.
The first leech lunged.
It moved faster than its bloated form suggested, a sudden blur of mottled flesh surging across the moss. Its target wasn’t Eva with her iron, or Nyx with their shadow, or Isolde with her otherness. It surged straight for Rory, for the warm, pulsing beacon of the Heartstone against her chest.