Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTXEBMQJD9QQ5EB3B0BNH81

They stepped through the ring of oaks until the air narrowed and bent. Isolde pressed her palm to a moss-black stone, thumb finding a seam no one else could see. The standing stones hummed under her touch and the wind around them folded, slow as silk, then parted. Aurora’s pendant grew warm against her sternum. She curled her fingers around the silver chain as if anchoring herself and let the warmth steady her. "This is different," she said. Isolde lowered her hand. Her silver hair hung like a spill of moonlight. She tilted her head and smiled without moving her mouth. You walked the wrong way round the world, she said as if reciting a recipe. The doors preferred soft knocks. Nyx moved ahead like a shadow testing its edges, shoulders and head flowing into a darker silhouette. They listened with a whisper that sounded like a current in a dark room. A smell hit them first—rich, ripe, and wrong. Fruit that glowed faintly from within broke the air into sugar and iron, perfume and smoke. The sky above them smelled of caramel and copper, and light fell through it a shade of warm amber. The grove’s grasses gave way to tilled rows that did not belong in Richmond: vines thick as ropes, leaves like polished metal, fruits the size of heads with skins that shimmered. Aurora’s blade was cold in its sheath. She slid the Fae-Forged Blade free; moonsilver kissed her palm and sent a clean, hollow cool through her bones. Every small hair along her wrist raised. The knife made no sound, and yet the air around it seemed to tighten. Isolde traced a finger over Aurora’s pendant. The heartstone pulsed under her touch, sending a little throb through the breeze as if the world inhaled. The ground underfoot felt wrong—soft as pastry and springy like a belly. Each step sank a little, leaving no prints where Isolde walked. Where Aurora walked her boot left a shallow dent that smelled suddenly of cloves and old wine. "Your pendant is loud here," Isolde said. Nyx leaned into a shadow that birthed from a vine and watched the land with violet eyes. They pointed with a grin that was only a suggestion of teeth. Taste the sky, they said. Aurora stared at them. "Not a metaphor." A grape the size of a fist loosened from a nearby cluster and rolled toward them, leaving a trail of sticky light. A bird—if it had been a bird—made of folded sugar and burnt citrus dropped from a branch and shattered into a hundred tiny wings that sang as they fell. Isolde chuckled and the sound carried like bells. A row of long tables loomed ahead, bending around a basin the size of a lake. Plates as large as shields lay empty and gleamed. Flames guttered beneath huge kettles that steamed perfume and ash. Servants moved behind the tables, but their movements were wrong—too eager, too smooth. Their hands bore marks like contracts burned into skin. Aurora’s stomach tightened though she had eaten only breakfast. The air tugged at her appetite, not for food but for more, pulling on some internal seam that made her want to take and take until the edges of the world blurred. "Keep your hands to yourselves," Nyx warned. Their whisper slid across Aurora’s ear like cold breath. Shadow clung to them like clothing, and when they stepped, the darkness under their feet seemed to follow. A voice rolled across the banquet, oily and swollen, like broth boiling slowly at the edge of hearing. It spoke in a language that shifted into English long enough for the edges to cut. Welcome, it said, voice riffling through leaves like paper folded wrong. Welcome to Dymas. Aurora’s fingers tightened on the blade. A vine unlatched from a trellis and flicked at the air nearby, testing them like a hound would test the scent of a rider. Isolde moved closer to the river of wine that slipped between tables. She cupped the surface with a fingertip and did not get wet. The liquid steamed and remembered other places—old kitchens, cellars that had eaten men, parties that never stopped. "This place eats promises," Isolde said, eyes going far away. She did not blink, as if keeping a window open. Nyx drifted to the edge of the feast. They shrank into a smear that slid between plates and came back with a silver spoon held in a shadowy hand. They balanced it on a fingertip and watched as the spoon reflected not their face but a memory—someone laughing at a cake and not noticing the teeth falling from their mouth. Aurora let the blade hang. She had come for answers and she hated that the land already seemed to answer her in hunger. She walked the tables, fingers grazing platters so that the cool metal felt like a promise of safety. The food on those platters was perfect—gloss like lacquer, steam that sang. Yet beneath the gloss things writhed: a cluster of grapes opened like a mouth, showing rows of tiny, perfect teeth. A fig split and spilled a clockwork insect that scuttled into a crack and vanished. "People make bargains here," Isolde said. They moved away from the river, leaving its surface to shrink like a puddle of obedience. "They trade not for coin but for small keepsakes—voices, years, names. The ledger is written in the skin." A chorus started at the far end of the tables, soft and continuous, the sound of forks striking metal and hands applauding. With no conductor the rhythm matched a heartbeat no one had. The sound burrowed into the ribs and wanted to be answered. Aurora swallowed. "Why would the Hel be full of kitchens?" she asked. Isolde traced the scar on her palm as if reading its lines. The standing stones behind them hummed, pulling like lodestones. Because the sin here takes form, Isolde said, and her voice folded into a riddle. Gluttony wants to try everything, to taste the world like a spice. It sets out many tables and invites all to sample until the bone remembers the knife. Nyx’s shadow stretched and leaned against a braised boar carcass to listen. They came away with crumbs in their hair, which faded as if eaten. "It smells of memory," they observed. "And of things chewed too long." A cluster of lanterns swung on a breeze that did not exist and cast no steady light. Instead each lantern showed a scene: a laughing child at a feast now grown to a hollow-eyed elder; a city street lined with people who kept sinking into the cobbles; a kitchen where someone stirred a pot and the spoon kept returning with a different face. Aurora caught sight of a platter where meat curled into the shape of a human face. The face opened and closed its mouth in a pleading that made her blanch. She stepped back so fast her shoulder met a trellis and a grapevine dropped a grape into her boot. It pulsed like a heart against her ankle and rolled out across the soil, leaving a trail that smelled like old promises. She kicked it away with the edge of her heel. The fruit split and leaked a fine crystalline dust that tasted of regret. "It's bait," Nyx said. "It keeps the appetite turning." When Aurora pulled the pendant from inside her shirt again, the Heartstone flared like a trapped ember. The chain sang against her collarbone. The warmth burned clean and honest, different from the saccharine heat of Dymas. It felt like a needle pointing north in an earthquake. Isolde watched her closely. "The stone remembers its birthplace," she said. She reached out and let her fingers hover over the pendant without touching. The Heartstone stilled its glow but did not go cold. "It knows the way to where it was born. It also knows the way home, given time and a willing hand." A shadow moved along the base of a distant tree—the size of a man but made of nothing a man could be. Nyx melted into that shadow and came back with a fork bent into the shape of a question mark. "Someone left a sign," Nyx said, setting the fork on a plate where it could gather no food. "And someone else has been baking with the bones of the Veil." Aurora had never thought about the Veil as anything but a neat, boring line. Now she saw it as a seam that could be sewn and unstitched by appetite. The amber sky rippled like scalded sugar and in the distance, beyond a line of orchards where apples smiled with too many teeth, towers rose that did not belong to any human architect. They curled like stacked pastries, each window a bowl that gaped. "This realm is old," Isolde whispered. "Older than the laws that marked sin. It keeps its rulers fat and secret. Belphegor likes things to arrive with great sound." She smiled again, but it was less bright. "He likes applause." The applause arrived, low and insistent, as if a crowd had gathered beyond a hill. Plates began to rise by themselves, rims clinking. A figure stepped out of the nearest shadow—a being robed in velvet that sucked in the light around it, its face hidden beneath a mask shaped like an upturned spoon. Aurora's hand went to the blade and felt a hum that matched the beat of a drum far off. The Fae-Forged Blade thrummed in reply, picking up the rhythm like a second heart. "State your business," said a voice that rolled like a spoon across enamel. Nyx smiled. "We came for a walk." Isolde answered in her riddle-speech, soft as pressed leaves. The road smelled of home and then of ash. We came because the stone asked and the stone answered. We came because the dark asked its question. The masked figure inclined its head once. A servant in a coat stitched of lard and lace laid out a chair as if for a guest and it folded itself with a sigh. The chair was too large. Aurora stepped forward until she and the figure stood a breath away. "We are not guests," she said. She kept her voice level. "We want to know what this place takes and why." The mask did not move. Behind it, a laugh like kettles came. Offers began to stack themselves on the bench—cakes that breathed, pies that hummed. The scent of them pushed at Aurora again, less hunger than memory of being wanted. Her fingers tightened on the blade until the metal bit into her palm. Isolde watched the mask. "All things here were made from choices," she said. "It is only polite to remember the recipe." The mask lifted a hand and tapped the edge of the bench. A spider the size of a teacup scuttled from beneath and laid a thin, translucent purse at Aurora's feet. The purse was stitched from a language she did not understand. When she opened it, a note slid out. The writing was careful and old. Eat and you may learn to hold the world. Refuse and you will learn what hunger can carve. Nyx’s shadow shivered. "There are scales here," they said. "Weights and measures carved into the trees like tally marks. This place likes exactness." Aurora closed the purse without reading further. She felt the pendant pulse like an answering drum. The Heartstone hummed with a pull that wanted motion. She glanced at Isolde. "Can stone lead me back?" she asked. Isolde touched the pendant again briefly. "Stones whisper truth to those who listen," she said. "They do not promise salvation." Something in the distance banged like a lid being slammed. A choir of glasses clinked to attention. The masked figure folded its hands and let the long velvet sleeves fall. "Decisions," it said. The mask's tone was almost gentle. "Taste or keep. Bind or break. The table will feed and the table will bind." Nyx stepped into the shadow behind Aurora. Their voice dropped, a rustle. "If you take something, it takes you back. If you do not take, it keeps offering, until even refusal becomes a thing you carry." Aurora's eyes found the river of wine, its surface smooth as lacquer. It crossed her mind that if she dipped the blade into it something would happen. She imagined cutting a surface that remembered other surfaces and watching the memory spool out. A hand found her shoulder then—not rough but insistence itself. Isolde’s fingers were cool and quick. "Do not make bargains with an empty stomach," she said. Aurora looked down at the Fae-Forged Blade. She could feel its pull toward the deeper shadows where the tallest pastries rose. The blade wanted to cut through wards. She imagined slitting the throat of a promise and letting a secret pour out. The masked figure chuckled. "Choices have flavors," it said. "What will you taste?" Aurora let the pendant's warmth spread under her ribs and stepped back from the table, the blade resting across her palm like a promise she had not yet broken. The banquet hummed, breathy and expectant, as if waiting on the edge of a mouth. They had come into Dymas to look for an answer. Instead they found appetites, tables laid through the ages, a sky brewed like tea, and a Room that asked for names like pieces of fruit. The ground rose and fell with the sound of spoons. Isolde walked behind Aurora with no footprints. She looked at the masked guest and said, simply and plainly, You asked for company when you set your table. The masked figure paused, as if tasting the words. A laugh like kettles rose again. Plates clattered and the long tables bent toward them, patient and hungry. The Heartstone pulsed into a quick, bright beat against Aurora’s sternum. Her fingers tightened on the chain as if on the thread of a story. "Then we will be company," Nyx said. A chorus answered from the orchards, a sound like hands rubbing together, and from somewhere beyond the pastries a bell tolled once as if to mark the beginning of a course.