AI The mist clinging to Richmond Park’s ancient oaks tasted of copper and iron. It tasted like a world trying to heal itself after a deep cut.
Rory adjusted the strap of her delivery satchel, the leather worn smooth by weeks of carrying takeout boxes and stacks of leather-bound law journals. At her hip, the Fae-Forged Blade rubbed against her thigh, a heavy, frigid weight that had nothing to do with the damp chill seeping through her coat. She didn’t draw it, but the grip of her left hand relaxed, just an inch, allowing the scar just below her wrist to itch.
Nyx drifted ahead, her violet eyes glimmering like bioluminescent stains in the gloom . The Shade hadn’t taken a solid form in over an hour, preferring to flow between the trunks of the great trees like spilled ink.
"Isolde," Rory called out, her voice cutting through the thick, stagnant air of the pine grove. "Are you sure the Veil is thin enough?"
The woman with the waist-length silver hair stepped out from behind a moss-covered boulder. Her pale lavender eyes held that hollow, timeless quality that always made Rory’s stomach do a slow flip.
"Thin as paper over a papercut, dear Aurora," Isolde replied. Her voice was a mix of a sigh and a chime, unhurried. "But paper burns. You must watch your feet."
Rory nodded, checking the compass on her phone. It spun wildly, the needle dancing like a drunkard. She shoved it back into her pocket. The supernatural energy here pressed against her skin, pricking at the hairs on her arms.
"Footsteps," Nyx observed, the shadow figure detaching from the tree bark and reforming into a towering humanoid silhouette. "In this place, they do not echo ."
"We walk light," Isolde said. She turned toward a cluster of massive oak trees, their bark peeling in unnatural, spiraling patterns.
Rory followed, the air suddenly changing. The scent of pine was gone, replaced by something sweeter—like crushed roses and ozone. The temperature dropped. It wasn't the bite of winter; it was the kind of cold that you felt in your teeth, the kind that made your breath plume visible even though the fog had vanished.
They reached the boundary.
Before them stood two standing stones, ancient and grey, older than the British monarchy. They were connected by a lintel of green ivy that pulsed faintly. For a moment, the space between the trees shimmered , a distortion in the air like heat rising from asphalt on a highway.
Rory stepped forward. The ground felt spongy, yielding like a mattress filled with water.
She passed through the shimmer.
The transition wasn't a moment, it was a gasp. The heavy, grey sky of London vanished, replaced by a dome of indigo and violet so deep it hurt to look at it. The walls of the grove were vertical walls of interlocking vines and ferns that bloomed with flowers the size of dinner plates—orchids the color of bruised plums.
"God," Rory whispered, the word lodging in her throat.
"Welcome to the garden," Isolde said, her voice sounding suddenly distant . "Or the waiting room."
Rory blinked, turning in a circle. The alien nature of the place hit her not as a visual shock, but as a pressure on her skull . The birdsong outside had been chirping and melodic; here, the air hummed. It was a low, vibrating frequency that seemed to vibrate in her teeth .
She lifted her hand. In the real world, her skin looked pale and tired. Here, under the alien sun, she was glowing , faint blue veins standing out against her dark skin.
"We shouldn't have come," Rory said, pulling her coat tighter. It felt flimsy now. "Nyx, check the perimeter."
The shadow figure blurred, moving to the perimeter of the grove in a flash of motion. For a second, Nyx was solid, sharp edges defined by the play of light. Then, she was just a smear on the wall of ferns.
"There are no bugs here," Nyx said, re-forming with a sigh. "No wolves. No cars. Just... things that shouldn't exist."
"Things that want to eat you if you stop looking at them," Rory added, patting the pocket containing the Heartstone Pendant. It remained cool against her leg, indifferent to the magical storm raging around them.
Isolde wandered toward a pool of water that rippled without wind. "Time flows crookedly here, Rory. The second hand on your watch maybe ticks, or maybe it screams."
Rory looked at her wrist. The watch face was cracked, but the second hand was frozen.
"Move," she said, her voice sharp .
They began to trek deeper into the grove. The ground was covered in a carpet of moss so thick it felt like walking on a wet blanket . The silence here wasn't empty; it was heavy. It smelled of ancient pollen and dry earth.
Every thirty paces or so, Rory would stumble. The ground felt uneven, but the ground was perfectly level.
"It's the time dilation," Nyx said, appearing above Rory’s head for a split second before sinking back into the shadows of a massive fig tree. "One step in here takes ten outside. We are moving through sludge."
"This place is a drug," Rory muttered. She raised the Fae blade, testing the weight in her hand. The metal gleamed with a pale, ghostly light. "Isolde, stop touching things. Nothing is real here."
Isolde smiled, revealing teeth that were a little too sharp. "Nothing in London is real, either. We just have forgotten the rules."
The oracle walked ahead, her silver hair floating as if she were submerged in water. She stepped carefully, her boots sinking slightly into the loam, yet she never wobbled.
"Look at the flowers," Isolde instructed.
Rory looked. A patch of bluebells was blooming , then instantly turning brown and shriveling, their petals turning to ash. Before the ash hit the ground, the stem snapped, and a new bloom erupted, vibrant and wet with sap.
"It's eating itself," Rory said, disgust warring with awe.
"Growth is violent," Isolde said, her eyes fixed on a white spider weaving a web that spanned three inches in the air. The spider was the size of a coin. "You seek a way to Hel? Or do you seek a way out of your own mistakes?"
Rory stopped. She looked at the Fae blade, then at the shadowy shape of Nyx, and finally at the exiled Seer walking serenely through the madness.
"This is a bad idea," Rory said, her voice trembling slightly . "I can feel it in my bones."
"You feel the Boundary," Nyx said, materializing beside her. The Shade leaned in, her faint violet eyes boring into Rory’s. "It’s a wall. And we are standing right next to the dynamite."
"We need to go back," Rory said, turning around. She stepped forward, eager to leave the vertigo-inducing paradise. She felt a hand on her shoulder. It wasn't warm, but it wasn't cold either. It felt like a ghostly pressure .
She spun around.
Isolde stood a few feet away, smiling that cryptic smile. She hadn't moved, yet the space between them had shifted.
"I told you," Isolde said. "Time waits for no one, and it also waits for everyone."
She pointed to the standing stones they had just passed.
At the stones, the mist was swirling violently. The gap between the trees was closing , the vines reaching out to embrace them, the flowers blooming fast enough to create a wall of color that blurred into solid light.
"We can't go back the way we came," Rory said, panic rising in her chest. She grabbed Isolde by the arm. The oracle was insubstantial, a ghost sliding through her grip. "Isolde!"
"The way back is not through the stones," Isolde whispered, her voice echoing from everywhere at once . "It is through the sun, or beneath the root. Or perhaps... through the dream."
The ground lurched beneath Rory’s boots. The trees, previously static pillars of wood and leaf, leaned in, their branches swaying as if awakened from a long nap.
"Run!" Rory screamed.
Nyx dissolved into a black puddle and reformed a few yards ahead, shifting solid just long enough to reach out a hand. "Here. Now. Before it remembers we are here."
Rory turned and sprinted. The greenery blurred past her eyes. The air pressure pushed against her back, as if the very atmosphere wanted to crush them into the earth.
She skidded to a halt, breathless, chest heaving. They had stopped at the edge of a small clearing dominated by a massive, gnarled tree that had a hollow in its trunk large enough to fit a car.
Nyx was materializing , looking dazed. Isolde was nowhere to be seen, though the silver of her hair hung from the tree branches, fluttering in the windless air.
Rory looked down. She could see her feet.
Then, above her, the silver hair coalesced into a figure.
"We have stopped," Isolde said, dropping gracefully from the branches. She landed with no sound, her footsteps vanishing into the grass. "For now."