AI The biting December wind of Richmond Park whipped Aurora’s straight, black hair across her face, but she barely felt the chill . Her bright blue eyes were fixed on the rough-hewn oak standing stones jutting from the frost-bitten bracken. To a casual dog-walker or a jogger, they were just ancient timber monuments, rotting quietly on the edge of the woods. But to anyone who knew how to look, the air between the massive oaks hummed.
It was a rift in the Veil. Rory could see it now—a faint, shimmering distortion in the atmosphere, like heat haze rising over summer tarmac, entirely out of place in the London winter. The winter solstice was mere days away, wearing the metaphysical barrier down to a frayed thread.
Rory rubbed her left wrist, her thumb tracing the small, crescent-shaped scar there. It was a nervous habit left over from childhood, a grounding mechanism when her pragmatic, Pre-Law brain failed to categorize the impossible. Beside her, Nyx didn’t disturb the frost at all. The Shade stood a looming six-foot-two, a solid humanoid silhouette woven entirely of living, plunging darkness. The faint, glowing violet of Nyx’s eyes was the only anchor point in the shifting mass of their shadow.
"Do we just walk in?" Rory asked, her breath pluming in the icy air. "Or is there a passcode? A toll?"
*"The Grove asks only for curiosity, Aurora,"* Nyx replied. Their voice had no origin point; it simply drifted into Rory’s ears, sounding exactly like a harsh whisper carried on a distant wind. *"But do not mistake its hospitality for safety. Step through."*
Rory took a steadying breath. She felt the heavy silver chain around her neck, anchoring the thumbnail-sized crimson Heartstone against her sternum. It remained stubbornly cold. It only pulsed with warmth near a portal to Hel. Wherever they were going, Prince Belphegor and the gluttonous amber skies of Dymas had no hold over it. Taking a step forward, the delivery girl left London behind.
Passing between the oak stones felt like pushing through a membrane of electrified water. A sudden pressure seized her lungs, popping her ears, and the biting wind abruptly vanished.
Rory stumbled forward, her boots sinking not into frosted dead grass, but into thick, loamy earth practically vibrating with life . The shock of the transition nearly knocked her off balance. Above her, the gray, overcast sky of London had been replaced by an endless, impossible expanse of twilight—a seamless canopy of deep violet and indigo, speckled with stationary, brilliant stars that cast a silvery twilight over the clearing.
"Whoa," she breathed, the word hanging in the profoundly still air.
The Fae Grove was a chaotic , fragrant explosion of flora. It was winter outside, but here in this pocket dimension, wildflowers bloomed in a staggering, year-round mosaic . Bluebells clustered wildly at the roots of massive, ancient trees, competing for space with towering spires of foxgloves and patches of brilliant yellow winter aconite. The air was suffocatingly sweet, thick with the scent of blooming jasmine, crushed mint, and ozone.
Rory instinctively reached for her watch . The second hand was sweeping entirely backward in a smooth, rapid circle. She tapped the glass, but the mechanism just kept whirring. *An hour inside can be minutes outside,* Eva had once warned her. *Or days.* Her pulse ticked up in a brief spike of unease.
*"Fascinating,"* Nyx murmured. The Shade drifted past her, their incorporeal edges curling like smoke. In the perpetual twilight of the Fae pocket, Nyx’s shadow-form seemed to anchor itself more solidly, drinking in the ambient dimness. They reached out a pitch-black hand to brush a cluster of foxgloves. As their shadowy fingers passed through the petals, Nyx shifted rapidly between solid and incorporeal, a reflex born of existing between realms. *"I have not drawn breath in a Fae-touched place since I bore the name Aldric. It tastes... heavier. Older."*
"Keep your guard up," Rory warned, forcing her analytical mind to take over. She cataloged the angles of the trees, the dense underbrush, looking for a path. "There’s no trail. How are we supposed to find her?"
*"The Oracle will find us if she wishes to be found,"* Nyx said, their violet eyes scanning the thicket . *"Walk."*
They ventured deeper into the Grove. Every step felt like pushing through static electricity. The silence was absolute, save for the crunch of Rory's boots on the damp earth and the unnatural, whispering sigh of Nyx's movement. Rory felt a creeping paranoia. The trees seemed to lean inward, their massive boughs curving like the ribs of a leviathan. Glowing moss crawled up their trunks, casting faint bioluminescent green shadows across the forest floor. It was beautiful, but terrifying in its utter alienness. It didn't belong to the mortal world.
Suddenly, Nyx stopped, their shadow elongating sharply . Rory froze, her hands clenching into fists.
A woman was standing in the center of a small, perfectly circular clearing just ahead of them. She hadn't walked there; the stillness of the air hadn't broken to allow her entry. She was simply present.
Rory felt her breath catch. The woman was barely five-foot-five, but her presence commanded the vastness of the ancient grove. She was undeniably, painfully beautiful—ethereal and ageless, possessing a strange, crystalline perfection that made Rory’s eyes ache to look at directly. Silver hair cascaded like a waterfall of liquid moonlight down to her waist. When the woman turned her head, pale lavender eyes locked instantly onto Rory’s.
"Isolde," Rory said softly , recognizing the Half-Fae seer from the rumors whispered in Silas’ bar.
Isolde took a step forward. Rory’s sharp eyes darted down, immediately noticing the impossibility of her movement. The lush green grass did not bend beneath the seer's bare feet. She left absolutely no footprints in the soft loam.
"The shadow that remembers mortality walks alongside the mortal who courts shadows," Isolde spoke. Her voice was pure and melodic, like chiming glass, yet steeped in profound melancholy. It commanded instant attention. Her lavender gaze flicked to Nyx, then settled heavily on Rory. "You seek answers, Aurora Carter, but you are not yet asking the right questions."
Rory squared her shoulders, suppressing a shiver. "I didn't come to play word games. I need to know about the rift points."
A faint, sad smile graced the Half-Fae’s lips. Exiled from the Fae Courts, forced to dwell in this in-between space for the crime of sharing her visions, Isolde was bound by the compulsions of her bloodline: she could never speak a direct lie, but her truths were rarely straightforward.
"The Veil frays at the edges of winter," Isolde said, taking another floating step closer. She raised a delicate hand, pointing toward Rory’s chest. "The crimson sleeps today, for there is no gluttony in my garden. But the amber sky of Dymas is bleeding into the edges of the world. Belphegor’s chefs sharpen their knives."
Rory instinctively touched her sternum, right where the Heartstone lay hidden beneath her shirt. A cold knot formed in her stomach . Dymas. If the gluttony demons were looking for a way onto Earth, she needed more than her quick wits.
"If the Veil is tearing," Rory said, keeping her voice level, steady. "How do I cut the threads?"
Isolde’s lavender eyes flashed with startling approval. She slowly turned her hand over. A sudden swirl of cold air gathered in her palm, rapidly solidifying into an object of sleek, deadly beauty.
It was a slender, leaf-shaped dagger. The metal was moonsilver, so bright it seemed to draw in the very starlight of the Grove.
"To sever what is unseen, one must wield what was never forged in fire," Isolde told her, offering the hilt.
Rory reached out. The moment her fingers closed around the grip, a shock of biting cold shot up her arm, settling deep into her bones. The Fae-Forged blade was practically freezing to the touch, yet it hummed with a strange, magnetic energy. In the eternal twilight of the Grove, the edges of the blade glowed with a faint, ghostly luminescence.
"It will bite through magical wards as easily as it bites through flesh," Isolde warned, her voice dropping to an intimate whisper . "And it drinks the life of demons. A necessary edge for the delivery girl from Cardiff, when she finally knocks on the doors of Hel."
Rory stared down at the blade. It was perfectly balanced, feather-light despite the biting cold radiating from it. She slid her thumb carefully along the flat of the moonsilver leaf, feeling the ancient, hostile magic woven into the metal. The sheer weight of the impending danger pressed down on her, heavier than the unnatural gravity of the Fae pocket.
*"A royal gift,"* Nyx whispered softly from the shadows to her right. *"The Courts wage wars over such steel."*
"Why give it to me?" Rory asked, looking back up, but the words died in her throat.
The clearing was empty. There was no rustle of leaves, no fading mist, and certainly no footprints leading away from where the oracle had stood seconds before. Isolde Varga was simply gone, leaving Rory alone with the Shade and a glowing dagger that hummed with a terrifying, beautiful promise.
Rory took a slow breath, letting the icy sting of the Fae blade sharpen her focus to a razor edge. She looked at Nyx, her blue eyes reflecting the faint, silvery light of the weapon.
"Come on," Rory said, turning back toward the invisible tear in the woods. "We have a lot of work to do before the solstice."