Run: 2026-02-24-01KJ8WXXHMCSJN45V06FRHB4BW

The Heartstone pulsed against Rory's collarbone like a second heartbeat, and then the world tore open. She'd expected violence — the rending of reality, some cosmic scream as the Veil parted. Instead, it was quiet. A breath of warm air against her face, sweet and heavy with the scent of overripe fruit, and then the grey November drizzle of Richmond Park was gone and she was standing on red earth beneath an amber sky. Rory blinked. Blinked again. The sky had no sun. The light came from everywhere and nowhere, a diffuse golden warmth that soaked into the landscape like honey through gauze. It was the color of late afternoon in a place that had never known a morning. "Keep moving," Nyx whispered from behind her — or beside her, or inside the folds of her jacket. Their voice slid through the air like smoke through a keyhole. "The threshold doesn't stay open." She stumbled forward two steps, her trainers crunching on soil that was the color of dried blood. Isolde passed through behind her without a sound, and Rory turned just in time to see the rift — a shimmering vertical tear, like heat haze given edges — seal itself shut with a faint pop of pressure against her eardrums. Gone. Richmond Park, the standing stones, the wildflowers that had no business blooming in November — all of it, sealed behind a barrier she couldn't see. The pendant cooled against her skin. Its work was done, at least for now. "Well," Rory said, and her voice came out steadier than she felt. "That's that, then." Isolde stood perfectly still, her silver hair catching the amber light and throwing it back in shades of copper and rose gold. Her pale lavender eyes were wide, but not with fear. Something older moved behind them. Something like recognition. "The wind here remembers a name I once carried," Isolde said softly. "Walk carefully. This place knows the shape of wanting." "That's not ominous at all." Rory turned back to the landscape and tried to make sense of it. They stood on a low ridge overlooking a valley that shouldn't have been possible. Vineyards stretched in every direction, their vines heavy with fruit that was too large, too dark, too lustrous — grapes the size of plums, their skins so purple they were nearly black, catching the amber light and holding it like tiny lanterns. Between the vineyards, orchards rose in irregular clusters, their branches bent under the weight of fruit Rory had no names for. Some were spherical and golden-skinned, others elongated and striped in shades of coral and cream. One tree near the base of the ridge bore what looked like pomegranates, except they were translucent, and through their glassy rinds she could see seeds that glowed a faint arterial red. The air was thick. Not humid, exactly — thick the way a rich broth is thick, layered with flavor. She could taste it on her tongue: dark sugar, wood smoke, something floral and dangerous that made the back of her throat tingle. "Don't eat anything," Nyx said, coalescing at her left side, their form rippling into something approximately humanoid. In this light, they were less shadow and more substance — Rory could make out the suggestion of a jaw, the faint violet glow of their eyes burning steadier than she'd ever seen them on the other side. "Not a grape. Not a seed. Not a drop of water. Nothing." "I've read the myths, thanks." "This isn't a myth. This is Dymas." Nyx's form flickered, their edges blurring as if tasted by an unseen wind. "The food here doesn't trap you in the underworld. It rewrites what you are. One bite and you'll spend the rest of your life — however long that turns out to be — chasing the memory of how it tasted." Rory's hand drifted to the Fae blade at her hip. Isolde had given it to her at the grove, pressing it into her palm with fingers that were cool and dry as paper. The moonsilver hilt was cold even now, even in this impossible warmth, and the chill of it anchored her. She let her fingers rest on it and breathed. They descended the ridge along a path that looked worn but not by feet. The ruts were too smooth, too regular — more like channels carved by water or time or something patient and deliberate. On either side, the vines reached toward them with slow, vegetable hunger. One tendril brushed Rory's bare forearm and she flinched. It was warm. Body-warm. She pulled away and the vine retracted, curling back on itself like a finger beckoning. "Lovely," she muttered. Isolde walked ahead, leaving no prints in the red earth. She never did, of course, but here the absence felt more conspicuous. Rory glanced back and saw her own footprints clearly — and Nyx's, which weren't footprints at all but faint scorch marks, as if the ground recoiled from whatever they were made of. "You're burning the dirt," Rory said. Nyx glanced down. "Shade and Hel soil don't agree. I exist in the spaces between realms. This place—" They paused, their silhouette sharpening for a moment into something almost painfully detailed: the ghost of a man with high cheekbones and deep-set eyes, a collar from another century. Then it dissolved. "This place is very firmly a realm. It doesn't appreciate ambiguity." The valley floor opened up before them, and with it came sound. Rory had been so overwhelmed by the visual that she hadn't registered the silence of the ridge. But here, at the base, the world hummed. A low, constant vibration that lived somewhere beneath the soles of her feet, as if the earth itself was digesting. Layered over it: the buzz and chirr of insects she couldn't see, the distant clatter of what might have been pots or pans or bones against stone. And music. Faint, carried on a breeze that tasted of caramelized onions and saffron, a melody played on strings that sounded almost like a lute but tuned to intervals that sat wrong in her ear. Not unpleasant — just off, the way a familiar word sounds wrong when you say it too many times. "There's a settlement ahead," Isolde said, stopping. She tilted her head, and her hair slid over one shoulder like a curtain of mercury. "Many souls. Bound, but not unhappy. The chains wear the shape of contentment here." "Helbound?" Rory asked. "Contracted," Nyx corrected. "There's a difference, legally speaking. The souls in Dymas made deals. They came here willingly — well, willingly enough. Belphegor doesn't need to drag his subjects screaming through portals. He just sets a table and waits." The path widened into a road paved with flat stones the color of dark chocolate. Between the stones, tiny flowers grew — white, bell-shaped, releasing a perfume that hit Rory in waves. Each wave carried a different memory: her mother's Sunday roast, the first coffee she'd had after arriving in London, the salt-and-vinegar chips Eva would smuggle into their dorm after midnight. She stopped walking. "Don't breathe through your nose," Nyx said sharply. She switched to mouth-breathing and the memories released their grip, fading like warmth from a vacated chair. Her pulse was up. She pressed her thumb against the crescent scar on her left wrist — an old grounding habit, learned the hard way — and counted to five. "Right," she said. "Mouth-breathing in the gluttony realm of Hel. Add that to the list of things I never expected to do with my law degree." "You don't have a law degree," Nyx observed. "That's the joke." They pressed on. The road curved through an orchard of the translucent pomegranate trees, and up close, Rory could see that the glowing seeds inside each fruit pulsed in rhythm — not with each other, but with the humming that rose through the ground. Each tree tuned to a different frequency. She reached out not to pick one but simply to touch the bark, and Isolde caught her hand. The Seer's grip was surprisingly firm. Her lavender eyes held Rory's with an intensity that burned through the riddle-speak. "The tree will know you tasted wanting," Isolde said. "And wanting, once known, sends roots." Rory pulled her hand back. "Noted." Beyond the orchard, the road crested a small rise and the settlement revealed itself. She stopped, and even Nyx solidified enough that she heard them draw what might have been a breath. It was a town — or a feast pretending to be a town. Long timber-framed buildings lined a central square, their walls hung with garlands of dried herbs and peppers and flowers that were still somehow blooming, and every surface was covered in food. Tables ran the length of the square, heavy oak things that looked like they'd grown out of the paving stones. They were laden with dishes that steamed and glistened: roasted birds with skin lacquered gold, tureens of soup that shimmered with oil slicks of color, towers of bread so perfectly risen they seemed to defy physics. Wheels of cheese sweated on marble slabs. Fruits were piled in pyramids. Glass pitchers held liquids in colors Rory didn't think liquids could be — one was the precise violet of Nyx's eyes. People moved between the tables. Dozens of them. Hundreds, maybe — it was hard to tell, because they moved with a fluid, dream-like quality, circling the feast in slow orbits. They wore aprons and chef's whites, or flowing robes stained with berry juice and turmeric, and their faces held expressions of perfect, terrible focus. They tasted, and they cooked, and they served, and they tasted again, and their eyes were glazed with what Rory could only describe as devotion. None of them looked up at the newcomers. "Contracted souls," Nyx murmured. "Master chefs, most of them. Belphegor recruits the best. Promises them ingredients that don't exist on Earth, techniques that would take a mortal lifetime to master. They come for a season. They stay forever." Rory watched a woman with flour-dusted hands slice into a roast with surgical precision, lift a sliver of meat to her lips, close her eyes, and shudder with an ecstasy that bordered on grief. When her eyes opened, she immediately turned back to the carving, adjusting her angle by a fraction of a degree. "They're happy," Rory said, and hated how uncertain it sounded. "The vine was happy to touch you," Isolde replied. "Happiness that cages still cages." The pendant at Rory's throat stayed cool and still. Whatever they'd come here to find, it wasn't in this square, with these lost and blissful souls and their endless feast. But the road continued beyond the settlement, narrowing into red earth again, climbing toward a structure on a distant hill — something with spires and smoke, with the warm amber sky pressing close around it like cupped hands. Rory touched the Fae blade. Cold as always, sharp and sure against her fingertips. "Onward, then," she said, and walked into Dymas without looking back.