Run: 2026-02-24-01KJ8WER3RCFF7EJX1HGVAVMXY

The pendant burned against Rory's chest the moment the air split open. Not heat, exactly. More like a heartbeat that wasn't hers — a deep, rhythmic pulse that throbbed through the silver chain and settled somewhere behind her sternum. She pressed her palm flat against the crimson stone through her jacket. "It knows," Isolde said from behind her. The half-Fae stood at the edge of the rift, silver hair caught in a wind that came from nowhere on the mortal side. Her lavender eyes reflected the light bleeding through the tear in the Veil — not white, not gold, but the color of honey held up to a flame. "The stone remembers where it was born." Nyx drifted past them both. Their shadow-form thinned at the edges near the rift, wisps of dark curling away from their silhouette like smoke finding a draft. When they spoke, the whisper-voice carried an edge Rory hadn't heard before. "I haven't stood at a threshold like this in three hundred years." "Does it hurt?" Rory asked. The violet glow of Nyx's eyes dimmed, then brightened. "Everything between places hurts. You simply learn which pain is the useful kind." Rory swallowed. The rift hung in the air before them like a wound — a vertical seam of shimmering distortion roughly seven feet tall, pulsing at its edges with that amber glow. Behind it, Richmond Park continued its grey English afternoon, fog threading between the oaks. Ahead, through that impossible gap, she could see colors that didn't belong to any London sky. "The blade," Isolde said. Rory reached for the dagger at her belt. The moonsilver handle bit cold against her fingers, colder than usual. She'd carried it for three weeks now and still hadn't grown accustomed to the way it drained warmth from her grip. "If the rift begins to close while we're inside—" "It will not close." Isolde's voice held the absolute certainty of someone who couldn't lie. Then her mouth curved. "Not quickly." "That's reassuring." "I did not intend it to be." Nyx had already half-dissolved into the threshold, their form stretching and distorting as they pressed through. Rory watched the shadow-figure warp, flatten, then vanish entirely — pulled through like ink through a drain. She gripped the Fae blade tighter and stepped forward. The crossing lasted one second or one hour. Impossible to tell. The world folded around her like wet cloth, pressure on every inch of skin, a sound like the ocean heard through a wall, and then — Light. Warmth. The smell of ripe fruit and wood smoke and something underneath both, sweet and cloying, like jasmine left too long in standing water. Rory stumbled onto ground that gave slightly under her boots. Not soil. Something softer. She looked down. Dark earth, almost black, rich and loamy, threaded through with filaments of gold that glowed faintly beneath the surface. As if the ground itself was veined. She looked up and forgot to breathe. The sky was amber. Not sunset-amber, not filtered-through-clouds amber. The entire vault of the heavens burned with a warm, steady, honeyed gold that had no visible source — no sun, no horizon glow, just an omnipresent radiance that cast soft-edged shadows in every direction. Rory turned in a full circle. No sun anywhere. The light simply was. "Dymas," Nyx breathed. They had reconstituted beside her, their shadow-form sharper here, more defined, as if the ambient warmth gave their edges something to push against. The violet of their eyes burned almost white. "The Glutton's Garden." The landscape unfolded before them in impossible abundance. Vineyards covered the nearest hillside, row after row of thick-trunked vines heavy with fruit that ranged from deep purple to a luminous, almost radioactive green. Beyond the vineyards, orchards climbed a gentle slope — trees Rory couldn't name bearing fruit she couldn't identify, their branches so laden they bent in wide arcs toward the golden-veined earth. The leaves weren't green. They shifted between rust and copper and a dark, oily red that reminded her of drying blood. Isolde materialized through the rift behind them without sound. She left no footprints in the dark soil, and Rory noticed the golden filaments in the ground shied away from where the half-Fae stood, dimming in a circle around her feet. "Don't eat anything." Isolde's voice had lost its playful lilt. Flat. Serious. "Not a berry. Not a seed. Not a drop of water. Not if it falls into your open mouth." "Wasn't planning on it." "Your plans are irrelevant here. Dymas will make you hungry. Dymas will make you desperate for a taste of whatever it puts in your path. That is not a metaphor. It is what this place does." As if summoned by the warning, Rory's stomach clenched. Not a polite rumble — a sharp, sudden, hollowing ache, as though she hadn't eaten in days. She'd had a sandwich an hour ago. She pressed her fist against her abdomen and the pain receded, but the awareness lingered. A background hum of want. "Noted," she said through her teeth. They moved downhill through the vineyard. The vines were thick as Rory's forearm, gnarled and ancient-looking, their bark scored with patterns that might have been natural growth and might have been something carved. She paused beside one and leaned closer. The pattern resolved into faces. Dozens of them. Tiny, thumb-sized faces pressed into the bark, mouths open, eyes shut. Sleeping or screaming — she couldn't tell which. She stepped back. "Don't look too long at anything that has a face," Nyx said softly. "You could've mentioned that before I looked." "I was enjoying the discovery." A breeze rolled through the vineyard carrying the scent of roasting meat and warm bread, and Rory's mouth flooded with saliva so fast it bordered on pain. She spat and wiped her lips. "This is foul." "This is Gluttony." Isolde moved ahead of them, weaving between vine rows. Her silver hair caught the amber light and turned to molten copper. "The sin does not need to look ugly. That is precisely what makes it a sin." They emerged from the vineyard into a wide, bowl-shaped valley. Rory stopped at its rim and stared. Below them, a vast orchard sprawled in concentric rings around a structure she could only describe as a palace grown from living wood. Tree-trunks the width of houses rose in spiraling columns, their branches interlocking overhead to form vaulted canopies draped with flowering vines. Between the trees, long tables stretched in rows — hundreds of them, thousands maybe — laden with food. Golden platters held towers of glistening fruit. Roasted animals of species Rory didn't recognize sat on beds of herbs that steamed gently in the amber light. Crystal decanters caught the sourceless glow and scattered it in prismatic arcs across tablecloths of deep burgundy. And the tables were occupied. Figures sat at every place. Some human-shaped. Some not. They ate. Mechanically, ceaselessly, hand to mouth, hand to plate, hand to mouth. No conversation carried up from the valley floor. Just the wet, rhythmic sounds of consumption — chewing and tearing and swallowing — rising like the drone of insects. Rory's stomach cramped again. Harder this time. She gripped the Fae blade and the freezing moonsilver grounded her, the cold eating through the hunger like a slap. "Are those—" "Helbound." Nyx's form flickered. The shadow at their edges churned. "Souls under contract. Some are the chefs. Some are the diners. Hard to tell the difference after a few centuries." "Can they see us?" "Not yet." Isolde crouched at the valley's edge, peering down. One hand rested on the dark earth. The golden filaments pulsed beneath her fingers — a quickening, like a startled heartbeat — then went dim again. "This realm is aware of us. The soil knows foreign weight. We have minutes before something with authority takes notice." "Minutes." Rory scanned the valley for anything resembling a path. The pendant pulsed again at her chest, quicker now, the rhythm syncing with the golden veins in the ground. She pulled the chain out from under her jacket and held the crimson stone in her palm. It pointed, as much as a stone could point — the warmth concentrated on one side, tugging faintly to the left, toward the far edge of the orchard where the trees grew denser and darker. "It's pulling that way." Nyx leaned close. The shadow of their face — featureless except for those burning violet points — hovered inches from the stone. Something in their whisper-voice shifted. Recognition, maybe. Or fear. "That direction leads deeper into the palace grounds. Toward the kitchens." "The kitchens." "Where Belphegor's master chefs work. Where the contracts are sealed and the feasts are prepared. It is not a place that welcomes visitors." Rory closed her fist around the stone. The warmth pushed against her palm, insistent, almost alive. "Good thing we're not visitors." "What are we, then?" Nyx asked. She didn't answer. She started walking. The descent into the valley happened in silence. The dark soil gave beneath her boots with each step, soft and yielding, and the golden veins brightened wherever she placed her weight, then faded behind her in a trail of dimming light. She was marking a path whether she wanted to or not. Every footstep a signal. Every step a declaration: something foreign walks here. Isolde flanked her left, drifting above the ground in that unsettling way — present but untouched, her bare feet half an inch above the soil. No trail behind her. No signal. If Dymas sensed the half-Fae, it couldn't trace her. Nyx took the right, dissolving into the long, amber-lit shadows between the orchard trees and reforming with each gap, a stuttering progression of darkness. They moved in silence, but Rory caught flickers of their form stretching back toward the rift — glancing behind, checking the exit, measuring the distance. The orchard closed around them. The trees here bore fruit she could almost name — apples, maybe, but too large, too symmetric, their skins a polished red so deep it bordered on black. Pears the color of bruises. Figs that wept clear syrup from splits in their flesh. The smell was overpowering. Ripe, sweet, cloying, with that undertone of rot that Rory had caught at the threshold. Here it was stronger. Closer. The smell of something perfect on the edge of ruin. Her stomach screamed. She bit the inside of her cheek until blood came and the copper taste cut through the hunger. A sound reached her that wasn't eating. Music. Faint, drifting from the palace at the valley's center — strings, low and modal, not quite a melody. More like a pulse. A breathing rhythm that matched the golden veins in the soil and the heartbeat of the pendant and the ache in her gut. Everything in Dymas synchronized. Everything here moved to the same tempo. She tightened her grip on the blade and kept walking. The first chef appeared between two fig trees. He wore stained whites — kitchen attire, recognizable, almost absurdly mundane in this place. A tall toque sat crooked on his head. His face was gaunt, cheeks hollow, eyes sunken. But his hands moved with extraordinary speed, separating the flesh of a fruit Rory couldn't identify, slicing it into translucent sheets with a knife that appeared to be made from bone. He didn't look up. His lips moved — counting, maybe, or reciting a recipe — and his fingers never stopped. Rory gave him a wide berth. As she passed, his lips went still. His hands paused. The bone knife hovered over the cutting board — a flat stone balanced between two roots. He sniffed the air. "Keep moving," Isolde murmured. They moved. Behind them, the chef resumed his work. But Rory heard him sniffing again, longer this time, drawing in a deep pull of air like a hound catching a distant scent. The pendant burned hotter. She pressed on.