AI The air in the Richmond grove did not just sit; it shimmered , thick with the scent of crushed ozone and blooming nightshade. My boots sank into moss that felt unnervingly like warm velvet , leaving no mark behind. Beside me, Nyx drifted, a jagged tear in the fabric of the twilight, their violet eyes flickering like dying embers.
"Keep your heartbeat low, Aurora," the shadow-voice rasped, vibrating against my ribs rather than my ears. "The stillness here is predatory."
I gripped the hilt of the moonsilver dagger, the metal biting into my skin with a cold that defied the humid heat of the grove. Ahead, the ancient oak standing stones loomed , their surfaces scarred with jagged, glowing runes that seemed to writhe whenever I blinked. Between them, the space rippled—a distortion in the air that looked like oil on water, but tasted of static and old iron.
"Isolde said the boundary would be porous today," I muttered, my voice sounding flat and alien in the heavy silence .
"Isolde says many things," Nyx replied, drifting through a thicket of white lilies that bowed in the phantom wind as they passed. "Most of them are traps wrapped in honey."
I stepped through the shimmering veil.
The transition felt like being pulled through a needle's eye. The world folded, twisted, and spat us out. The amber sky of Dymas hit me first—heavy, syrup-thick, and suffocatingly golden. It wasn't the sky of an afternoon, but the perpetual, stagnant glow of a fruit left to rot in the sun. The horizon stretched into impossible vistas of sprawling vineyards where the vines weren't wood, but pulsating, fleshy cords, heavy with fruit that bled juice the colour of bruised plums.
"Gluttony," Nyx whispered, solidifying into a tall, ink-black silhouette. They stood perfectly still, their posture radiating a predatory readiness. "Nature here has been twisted into a feast that never ends."
We stood on a balcony carved from obsidian, overlooking a valley of terraces that tumbled down toward a central, smoking pit. The smells overwhelmed me: roasted game, spiced wine, and that underlying, metallic tang of raw hunger. Hundreds of figures moved through the orchards, their skin slick with sweat, their eyes wide and glassy, forever plucking, chewing, and swallowing fruits that regrew before the pulp hit their stomachs.
"The Heartstone—it's burning," I said, gasping as the pendant against my chest flared. The crimson gem pulsated against my sternum, a rhythmic , frantic thrum that mirrored the heat radiating from the ground.
"Keep it hidden." Nyx caught my wrist, their touch freezing, a stark contrast to the stifling warmth of the Dymasian air. "If a local sees a beacon of Hel-aligned power in their kingdom, they will carve it out of you without waiting for an invitation."
We moved down a staircase fashioned from polished bone, the steps echoing like muffled heartbeats under our feet. I watched a group of Dymasians near a fountain of churning honey. One, a man with teeth sharpened to needles, tore into a glowing, translucent pear, his jaw unhinging with a sickening crack. As he swallowed, his skin bloomed with vibrant, sickly flowers—violets, lilies, roses—only for them to wither and fall into ash the moment he reached for the next branch.
"They never find satisfaction," I remarked, keeping my eyes locked on the path ahead.
"Satisfaction is a mortal concept," Nyx corrected. "Here, there is only the requirement to continue. It is the purest form of decay."
The path narrowed, winding behind a waterfall that cascaded with a thick, viscous red wine. Behind the curtain of liquid, a hidden grotto opened up, lined with crystals that hummed in a low, dissonant chord. The Heartstone flared again, brighter this time, a beacon in the gloom of the cave. I slowed my pace, the air growing thick with a familiar , crackling pressure.
"Someone is waiting," Nyx hissed, shifting back into a half-formed, flickering wisp.
I drew the Fae-forged blade. The luminescent edge carved a pale, ghost-like light into the shadows of the grotto, revealing a figure huddled near a cluster of jagged, pulsing stones. It was a woman, her gown woven from dead leaves and spidersilk, her face obscured by a veil of woven brambles. She held a silver cup, the contents glowing with an inner, stagnant light.
"The delivery girl arrives," the figure croaked, the voice sounding like dry stone grinding against dry stone . "You are late, human. The harvest in Cardiff is not the harvest of Hel."
"I was not invited to this banquet," I said, keeping my posture rigid. I watched her hands—gnarled, earth-stained fingers tracing the rim of the silver cup.
"Invitations are for the living. You carry the Heartstone. It sings of portals, of tears in the Veil, of breaches that shouldn't be." She stood, the leaves of her dress rustling like a thousand dying moths. She was taller than she had seemed, her shadow stretching long and distorted across the cave wall until it merged with Nyx’s own darkness. "Are you here to stop the feast, or to become the main course?"
"I’m here for answers," I moved to the side, scanning the grotto. The stones behind her weren't just decorative; they were anchoring something. A low, rhythmic thudding came from beneath the floor, steady and industrial. "And I don't intend to stay long enough to taste anything."
"Answers are costly," she said, stepping into the light. Her eyes were milky, sightless, yet they tracked my movement with impossible precision. "The Prince does not like unannounced visitors. And his appetite for surprises is... legendary."
The ground beneath us hummed, a vibration so intense that the teeth in my head ached. Dust fell from the grotto ceiling. Outside the cave, the ambient sound of the Dymasian feast stopped. The sudden, absolute silence was sharp, like a blade pressed against the throat.
"Nyx," I breathed, never breaking eye contact with the crone .
"The shadow has drifted far, old one," Nyx’s voice echoed from every corner of the grotto at once.
"It has," the woman rasped. She tossed the silver cup aside. It struck the ground and shattered , but instead of wine, a swarm of black, iridescent beetles poured out, scuttling across the stone in a frantic, clicking wave. "But the Prince is already here. He hates to be kept waiting for his wine."
Behind her, the stone floor of the grotto cracked, widening into a jagged, glowing maw of amber light. A hand—pale, massive, and wrapped in bands of rusted iron—gripped the edge of the fracture, pulling the heavy, suffocating heat of the inner circle of Gluttony directly into our space. The air screamed as the pressure changed, and the walls began to weep, not water or wine, but a thick, black ichor that hissed as it touched the floor.
"Run?" I asked, my grip tightening on the moonsilver blade .
"Through the rift," Nyx commanded, their form surging into a cyclone of shadow that tore into the encroaching darkness. "Do not look back, Aurora. Do not let the scent of the fruit touch your tongue."
The iron-clad entity heaved itself upward, filling the breach, its body a mass of bloated, mismatched muscle and stitched-together finery. It opened a mouth too wide for its face, revealing a throat that spiralled down into an endless, burning pit.
I lunged forward, not toward the exit, but toward the crackling, unstable energy beneath the creature's feet, the Heartstone pulsing so violently it burned my skin through my jacket. The ground beneath the monster began to crumble, the entire structure of the grotto groaning in protest as the weight of the portal threatened to collapse the section of the terrace. I braced my boots against the shaking foundation, the cold of the blade the only thing keeping the heat from melting my resolve .
"Down!" I screamed, slamming the blade into the pulsing, amber light of the rift. The reality of the world shivered and split, a blinding, crystalline crack of white noise tearing through the golden rot of the realm. The monster let out a sound not of pain, but of starving, unquenchable hunger , and the ceiling began to collapse.
I dived into the instability, the world dissolving into a chaotic , spinning vortex of light and shadow, my hand still gripping the cold hilt of the blade, the scream of the falling world ringing in my ears as the floor beneath me simply ceased to exist.