AI Aurora passed the ancient oak standing stones, stepping out of the dreary overcast of Richmond Park and into a pocket of impossible, vibrant spring. The damp, biting chill of the London winter simply vanished. Beneath her heavy boots, wildly out-of-season bluebells and vivid foxgloves carpeted the earth in thick, fragrant clusters. This was the Grove, a fracture in reality tucked securely away from mortal eyes, where time folded back on itself in strange and unpredictable ways. An hour spent wandering these trees could amount to a single minute on the street outside, or it could cost her a month.
She rubbed her left wrist, her thumb automatically tracing the raised edge of a small, crescent-shaped scar left over from a childhood accident. Her analytical mind, trained by years of law textbooks and the harsh realities of fleeing her old life in Cardiff, rebelled against the sight of the blooming flowers. She forced herself to take a deep, grounding breath, leaning heavily on the street-smart pragmatism that kept her alive when she was just running deliveries for the Golden Empress. Adapt to the environment, and survive the route.
Ahead of her, Isolde Varga glided through the flowers. The Half-Fae seer possessed an ethereal, unbothered grace that made her seem entirely detached from the physical world. Her silver hair fell in a perfectly straight, luminous line to her waist, catching the dappled light of the canopy overhead. Aurora watched the grass directly beneath Isolde's feet. The green blades did not bend or crush. There were no footprints left behind in the soft loam to mark her passing.
"Are we close?" Aurora asked, her voice sounding abnormally loud and flat in the hushed, sacred clearing.
Isolde turned gracefully. Her pale lavender eyes seemed to look both directly at Aurora and through her all at once. "The door is where the lock resides, and the key turns only when the house is truly ready to be entered."
Aurora pressed her lips together into a thin line. The seer could not lie, bound by some ancient Fae compulsion woven into her blood, but she rarely chose to be straightforward.
A localized chill rushed past Aurora's right shoulder, bringing with it the scent of cold stone and static electricity. Nyx materialized from the dense shade of a weeping willow tree. The Shade expanded upward, stretching out of a two-dimensional cast into a solid, imposing humanoid figure at least six feet, two inches tall. Formed entirely of living, shifting darkness, Nyx had no true features save for a pair of faintly glowing violet eyes that peered out from the deep void of a face.
"The boundary thins," Nyx said. Their voice lacked vocal cords entirely; the sound resembled a harsh whisper carried on a distant, restless wind. "I feel the friction of two worlds bleeding into one another."
Against Aurora's collarbone, a sudden, localized heat flared. She reached under the collar of her worn jacket and drew out the Heartstone pendant. Suspended on a delicate silver chain, the thumbnail-sized gemstone pulsed with a deep crimson inner glow. The warmth seeped into her fingers, a steady, rhythmic beat warning her of the proximity. The artifact was reacting to the immediate environment.
"A rift point," Aurora muttered, her bright blue eyes scanning the tree line.
There it was. Between two massive, twisted oaks, the air warped into a localized heat haze. It was a shimmering, rippling distortion, an oil-slick tear floating in midair that only she and her companions could see. This was the Veil. The metaphysical barrier separating Earth from the realms beyond.
Aurora reached to her belt and drew her weapon. The Fae-Forged blade she unsheathed was slender and leaf-shaped, forged entirely of absolute moonsilver. The metal remained perpetually cold to the touch, providing a stark , grounding contrast to the burning heat of the pendant against her chest. Even in the shadowy Grove, the blade emitted a faint luminescence beneath the canopy.
She approached the shimmering distortion. It hummed in the air, vibrating the teeth in her skull. The Veil usually weakened naturally during the extreme winter solstices, but the sheer concentration of ambient magic in the Grove forced an artificial tear in the fabric of the boundary.
Gripping the cold hilt, Aurora raised the dagger and sliced downward through the center of the distortion. The blade, designed specifically to cut through magical wards and localized barriers, parted the rippling air like a heavy silk curtain. A rush of warm, heavy wind spilled out from the incision, smelling instantly of crushed sugar, roasting fat, and dark, fermented fruit.
"Through," Nyx whispered, breaking their solid silhouette and shifting back into an incorporeal, shadowy mist to flow effortlessly through the gap. Isolde stepped through without hesitation, her long silver hair vanishing into the tear.
Aurora took one last breath of crisp Earth air, adjusted her grip on the moonsilver dagger, and stepped forward into the rift.
The transition felt like forcing her body through a wall of warm water. The pressure spiked in her ears, then popped. When her vision adjusted to the intense new light, the dense oak woods of the Fae Grove were entirely gone.
She stood on a high earthen ridge overlooking a staggering, impossible landscape. The sky above held no sun, no clouds, and no horizon. It was a suffocating ceiling of warm, heavy amber, casting a permanent, syrupy golden-hour glow over the entire world.
"Dymas," Aurora breathed, blinking against the saturated colors.
They had entered Gluttony. The personal domain of Prince Belphegor.
The realm unfolded beneath them in an orchestrated display of overwhelming, terrifying excess. Sprawling vineyards stretched out for miles across the rolling hills, but the vines themselves were as thick as ancient tree trunks, coiling around massive, rusted iron trellises that scraped the amber sky. Below the ridge lay an orchard of utterly alien flora. Trees with dark, bruised-purple bark wept constant streams of heavy golden sap, their branches bowing under the weight of fruits that resembled swollen, faceted gemstones rather than apples or pears. Pomegranates the size of human skulls hung low to the ground, bursting open from their own ripeness to reveal dense seed clusters that glistened like wet rubies.
The sensory input was nearly paralyzing. The atmosphere here was practically a dense meal in itself. A heavy warmth coated Aurora's skin, carrying the intoxicating aroma of a thousand grand feasts blending together. She could distinguish the smell of whole hogs turning on massive spits, heavily spiced meats crackling in fat, butter melted over exotic underground mushrooms, and the sharp, acidic tang of masterfully crafted, ancient wine. Distant sounds drifted on the breeze—the clinking of heavy crystal goblets, the roar of massive hearth fires, and a low, persistent hum of desperate feasting.
Isolde stood perfectly still on a garden path paved with crushed, iridescent mother-of-pearl. "Do not let the hunger find a home in your marrow," the seer cautioned, her ethereal voice cutting sharply through the sluggish, intoxicating atmosphere . "A bite taken here is a chain forged forever. To consume the master's table is to bind your soul to the kitchen."
"I am not exactly hungry," Aurora said, though she noticed with a spike of alarm that her mouth was actively watering.
She carefully advanced down the ridge, keeping the cold, Fae-Forged dagger drawn and held out at an angle. The crushed pearl path brought them to the absolute edge of the great vineyard. The dark leaves of the looming grapevines were larger than dining tables, woven through with intricate , bioluminescent veins of spun gold that pulsed in rhythm with the soil. Dense clusters of grapes, each individual sphere the size of a plum and glowing with a faint, hypnotic violet light, hung just inches from her face.
Nyx slid along the mother-of-pearl path beside her. Their immense shadow form drank in the warm amber light, physically dimming the immediate area around them and providing a blessed pocket of visual relief. A featureless, shadowy arm emerged from their core, pointing toward a grand, sprawling estate nestled miles deep in the valley center. Vast stone chimneys rose from marble kitchens, spewing fragrant, thick white smoke into the amber sky.
"The souls of the Helbound chefs toil over those fires," the Shade whispered to Aurora, the sound like dry autumn leaves skittering across pavement. "Contracts signed on Earth, paid in eternal, desperate service to the Prince of Excess. They hunt these gardens for new flavors to feed the ever-starving mouth of their lord."
Aurora studied the massive, decadent estate in the distance. Her boots crunched loudly on the pearls beneath her—a stark , clumsy contrast to Isolde's silent gliding and Nyx's wind-like rustling. It struck her suddenly how utterly vulnerable and out of place she was. A law school dropout wearing a bruised leather jacket, a woman who practically lived on a delivery scooter, standing in the middle of a demonic dimension designed exclusively to devour souls through indulgence.
She reached out with her left hand and lightly tapped one of the massive, golden-veined grape leaves with the flat side of her cold blade. The enormous leaf shuddered away from the metal, not from the wind, but with a fleshy, muscular twitch .
Aurora jumped back, her heart hammering violently against her ribs. "It is alive."
"Everything in Dymas consumes," Isolde said softly , tilting her head to watch a thick drop of golden sap fall from a nearby branch. The syrup sizzled as it hit the earth, instantly sprouting a frantic, fast-growing stalk of bright pink sugar-cane that flowered, withered, and rotted back into the earth in the space of three short seconds. "Life here is a continuous loop of devouring and being devoured."
"Good to know," Aurora said, forcing her racing pulse to slow. Her bright blue eyes darted across the oversized, pulsing foliage, looking for movement, searching for a safe path through the predatory garden. "So if we are going to find a way forward, we move fast. We do not touch the plants. We do not eat the food. And we definitely do not stop to admire the view."
Nyx let out a sound that might have been a laugh, dry and rasping in the heavy air. The violent, glowing eyes narrowed in the empty shade of their face. "Agreed, human. Let us walk lightly through the belly of the beast."
Aurora gave a single nod. She slipped the pulsing, hot crimson Heartstone back beneath the fabric of her shirt. The heat of the gem felt like a brand demanding her constant attention, but she focused her analytical mind firmly ahead, stepping off the ridge and plunging into the dark, fragrant labyrinth of the living vines.