AI The ancient oaks of Richmond Park stood like skeletal sentries in the fading London light. Aurora adjusted the strap of her bag, her palm brushing the Heartstone pendant beneath her shirt. The crimson gem throbbed, a rhythmic , oily heat that pulsed against her skin whenever they neared the standing stones.
Isolde Varga led the way. The Half-Fae moved with a disturbing, fluid grace, her silver hair trailing behind her like a comet’s tail in the gloaming. She left no trace of her passage; the long grass didn't even bend under her weight .
"The skin of the world grows thin here."
Isolde gestured toward a patch of air between two gnarled trees. To Aurora’s eyes, it looked like nothing more than a trick of the evening mist, a slight shimmer that made her vision swim if she stared too long.
Nyx drifted alongside them, a humanoid smudge of indigo and charcoal shadow. Faintly glowing violet eyes flickered within the void of their face. When they spoke, the sound didn't come from a throat, but echoed in the inner ear like a dying breeze.
"The Gateway of Gluttony. It smells of rot and honey."
Aurora pulled the Fae-forged blade from its sheath. The moonsilver metal caught what little light remained, casting a cold, blue luminescence across her knuckles. The dagger stayed icy to the touch, a sharp contrast to the mounting fever of the Heartstone. She stepped forward, her boots crunching on dry leaves that seemed to belong to a different season .
"Stay close. I don't want to find out what happens if we get separated in the transition."
Aurora reached out. Her fingers met a resistance like cold syrup. The air rippled, turning from the damp chill of a London autumn to a suffocating, heavy warmth . She pushed through.
The world didn't just change; it exploded into a sensory assault.
Aurora stumbled onto ground that felt like packed velvet . She blinked against a sky the color of a bruised apricot—a deep, permanent amber that held no sun but glowed with its own internal radiance. The horizon didn't end; it melted into a haze of golden dust.
"Dymas."
Isolde stood perfectly still, her lavender eyes wide as they drank in the landscape.
A sprawling vineyard stretched out before them, but the vines weren't wood and leaf. They were thick, undulating ropes of deep violet, thick as a man’s thigh, winding around trellises crafted from polished white bone. Huge, translucent fruits hung from the boughs, glowing with a soft, internal light like lanterns. They looked like oversized grapes, but their skins pulsed with the slow cadence of a heartbeat.
The air tasted of fermented peaches, woodsmoke, and something metallic—the sharp, copper tang of blood. Every breath felt like a meal, heavy and cloying .
"Look at the ground."
Aurora pointed the tip of her moonsilver blade toward the soil. It wasn't dirt. The earth consisted of crushed spices and dark, crystalline grains that looked like black sugar . Small, iridescent beetles scurried between the mounds, their shells sounding like clinking coins as they collided.
Nyx’s form wavered , their shadow stretching unnaturally long across the sugar-sand. They reached out a hand, or the suggestion of one, toward a hanging fruit.
"The nectar here sustains the Prince's court. To taste is to never hunger again, and to never leave."
A low, melodic humming drifted on the warm wind. It wasn't a song, but the collective vibration of a million insects or perhaps the ground itself. Aurora wiped sweat from her forehead, her black hair sticking to her temples. The heat in Dymas felt intimate, like being wrapped in a heavy, fur-lined cloak in the middle of a desert.
"We need to move. The Heartstone is dragging me toward the center."
Aurora gripped the pendant through her shirt. It didn't just pulse now; it tugged, a magnetic force pulling her deeper into the orchards.
They walked along a path lined with trees that bore silver-skinned pears. Each time a fruit fell, it didn't thud; it shattered like glass, spilling a thick, golden syrup that the sugar-sand drank greedily. The scent of overripe sweetness intensified until it became a physical pressure behind Aurora’s eyes.
Farther in, the architecture of the realm began to emerge from the amber haze. Spires of twisted obsidian rose in the distance, carved into shapes that looked like roasting spits or giant, curved cutlery. There were no straight lines in Dymas, only the curves of a belly or the arch of a glutton's throat.
"Hear that?"
Aurora froze. She lowered her center of gravity, the blade held low.
Beyond the next row of bone-white trellises, a sound like heavy fabric tearing echoed through the golden air. It was followed by a wet, rhythmic thumping.
Isolde tilted her head, her silver hair swaying.
"The harvesters. They do not appreciate guests who do not come to dine."
The Half-Fae gestured for them to duck behind a thick cluster of violet vines. Aurora pressed her back against the cool moonsilver of her dagger, her heart hammering. Through the gaps in the leaves, she saw them.
They were tall, spindly things, draped in robes of stained silk that might have once been white. Their faces were hidden behind masks of hammered gold, each one frozen in a wide, joyous laugh. They moved with a jerky, stop-motion gait, carrying baskets woven from human hair.
One of the harvesters reached up and squeezed a glowing fruit. The fruit let out a soft, pathetic whimper before it burst, filling the harvester’s basket with a fountain of violet juice.
"They aren't demons."
Nyx’s whisper was a chilling breath against Aurora’s ear.
"They are the contracts. Souls who traded their eternity for a single, perfect feast. Now they serve the kitchen."
Aurora watched as a harvester turned its head. The golden mask had no eye holes, yet it seemed to stare directly at their hiding spot. It tilted its head, the metal jaw of the mask creaking open to reveal a cavity filled with nothing but shifting amber smoke.
She tightened her grip on the Fae-forged blade. The silver light of the weapon seemed to aggravate the amber glow of the realm, creating a shimmering halo of conflict around her hand.
"They're moving closer."
The harvesters began to hum, a discordant harmony that vibrated in Aurora’s teeth. They didn't walk; they drifted, their silk robes hissing against the sugar-sand like snakes.
Isolde stepped out from the shadows of the vines, her lavender eyes glowing with a sudden, fierce intensity . She didn't draw a weapon. Instead, she raised her hands, her fingers weaving a pattern in the heavy air.
"The feast is not yet laid. The guests are not yet called."
Her voice didn't sound like a riddle now; it carried the weight of her Fae heritage, cold and commanding. The harvesters stopped mid-stride. Their golden masks twitched, the metal groaning as they fought the compulsion of her words.
One of them dropped its basket. The shattered fruit spilled across the sugar-sand, the scent of fermented honey becoming so thick Aurora had to cover her mouth to keep from gagging.
"Move now. While the vision holds them."
Isolde didn't look back. She glided deeper into the vineyard, toward the silhouette of the obsidian spires.
Aurora signaled to Nyx and followed, her boots slipping slightly on the slick, sweet earth. As they moved, the landscape began to distort. The vineyards gave way to gardens where the flowers were made of spun sugar and the fountains ran with thick, dark wine.
The sound of laughter started—distanced, echoing , and layered with the clink of silverware against porcelain . It came from the great hall ahead, a structure that looked like a ribcage of a leviathan, vaulted and vast, glowing with the heat of a thousand hearths.
The Heartstone burned against Aurora’s chest, the silver chain digging into her neck. She could feel the portal’s anchor somewhere inside that hall, buried beneath the excess of Prince Belphegor’s table.
"The air is getting hotter."
Aurora pointed toward the hall’s entrance. The doors were made of solid gold, carved with scenes of hunts and banquets that seemed to move if she caught them in her peripheral vision .
"And the smell... it's changing."
It wasn't just sweet anymore. It was the smell of a roasting carcass, seasoned with cloves and cinnamon, so potent it made her stomach cramp with a sudden, ravenous hunger. Her mouth watered involuntarily. She bit her tongue, the sharp tang of her own blood cutting through the magical allure of the scent.
"Do not breathe deeply."
Nyx’s shadow form flared, a dark umbrella shielding Aurora from the worst of the golden haze.
"The atmosphere here is designed to consume from the inside out."
They reached the base of the golden doors. The sheer scale of the entrance made Aurora feel like an ant at the foot of a god's pantry. She looked at the Fae-forged blade, its moonsilver surface now clouded by the amber steam of the realm.
Aurora placed her hand on the cold metal of the door. The gold was soft, almost like skin, and it yielded slightly under her touch.
"On three."
Isolde stood to her left, her expression unreadable , her lavender eyes fixed on the carvings. To the right, Nyx was a gathering storm of violet shadow.
Aurora pushed.
The doors didn't creak; they sighed open.
A wave of heat and sound hit them. A hall the size of a cathedral stretched out, filled with long tables that groaned under the weight of impossible delicacies. Thousands of candles floated in the air, their wax dripping like slow rain onto the diners below.
But it wasn't the food that stopped Aurora's breath. It was the ceiling.
Above them, thousands of souls hung suspended in webs of spun silver, their mouths open in a silent, eternal yawn, catching the rising steam from the feasts below. Each breath they took fed the realm, their exhaustion turning into the amber light that powered Dymas.
"We have to find the anchor."
Aurora stepped into the hall, her blue eyes scanning the chaos of the banquet.
At the far end of the room, seated on a throne made of fused silver platters, a figure sat shrouded in the steam of a hundred roasting boars. The Heartstone screamed against Aurora’s skin, the red glow now bright enough to shine through her shirt like a beacon .
The diners—creatures of all shapes, some human-looking, some with too many limbs and eyes like polished olives—turned as one. The clatter of forks stopped. The laughter died into a wet, expectant silence .
Aurora raised the Fae blade, the cold moonsilver reflecting the heat of the Prince’s hearth.
"Keep moving. Don't look at the plates."