AI “Stop pulling, it’s not a hedge, it’s a door.”
Aurora wrenched her sleeve from the blackthorn and glared over her shoulder. The branch had hooked her coat as neatly as a hand. Behind her, Nyx thinned out of the shade under an oak, their tall silhouette rippling as if the darkness itself had taken offence at being laughed at.
“Doors usually prefer hinges,” Aurora said.
“They also prefer keys.”
Nyx drifted past her and laid one long, ink-dark hand on the nearest standing stone. The old oak pillar looked half grown, half carved, roots and grain twisted around grooves that no mason from Cardiff or London would ever have claimed. Pale lines shimmered across its surface, then bled into the air in front of them, sketching a wavering seam where there had been only bramble and trunk.
Isolde Varga waited on the other side of the ring of stones, silver hair loose down her back, pale lavender eyes fixed on a space no one else could see.
“The path opens for the marked, the hungry, and the lost,” she said.
“That’s cheerful.”
“Cheer was never the bargain.”
Aurora touched the Heartstone pendant through her shirt. The deep crimson gem pulsed once, a small warm thud against her sternum. Not hot, not yet, but alive enough to make her hand still . That happened more and more around places like this, thin places, bent places, spots where the city wore glamour like cheap scent over something old and raw underneath.
She looked at the seam in the air. It shivered like heat above tarmac, except the colours inside it had no business being there. Green too sharp. Gold too soft. A blue that stung her eyes.
“So this is it,” she said. “Your grove.”
Isolde gave a slight tilt of the head.
“A grove is a simple word. Simplicity flatters mortal tongues.”
“Right. And what does it do to people?”
“It shows.”
Nyx let out a whisper of a laugh.
“A dangerous habit.”
Aurora drew in a breath that smelled of crushed leaves and something sweeter underneath, cold water over stone, wildflowers, a faint spice she could not place. London traffic had vanished behind them. No tyres. No distant siren. No mutter of people. The silence pressed close, full rather than empty.
She slipped one hand into her coat and closed it around the Fae-Forged Blade. The moonsilver dagger felt cold through the lining, a clean, hard reassurance.
“Fine,” she said. “After you.”
“You were invited,” Isolde said.
“Convenient.”
Aurora stepped through.
The world folded.
For one sick lurching second her feet touched nothing. Light ran over her skin in thin threads. Her ears filled with the rush of a hundred voices talking at once in a language built from birdsong, broken glass, laughter, and grief. Then the ground rose under her boots and held.
She staggered, caught herself, and stared.
The clearing in Richmond Park had become a valley too wide to fit inside any map of London. A sweep of luminous grass rolled away beneath a ceiling of living branches that arched so high they looked like the ribs of a green cathedral . Trees grew in shapes that defied sense, trunks braided together, roots lifting into the air before diving back into the earth, leaves silver on one side and black on the other. Wildflowers bloomed in drifts across the ground, not in clumps but in patterns, spirals and rings and long flowing bands like someone had woven colour through the grass by hand.
Pools lay among the roots, bright as polished glass. Fish with translucent fins drifted through them, though some of the pools stood vertical between two stones, hanging upright like mirrors full of water. From somewhere deeper in the grove came the chiming drip of unseen streams and the low hum of insects that sounded almost like strings on a violin.
Nyx emerged beside her as a tall figure of smoke-dark substance. For once, even they looked held.
“How rude,” they murmured. “No one told me beauty still had teeth.”
Aurora turned slowly . The standing stones behind them had vanished. In their place stood a wall of foxgloves taller than a man, each bell the size of her fist, their throats glowing faintly from within.
“Please tell me the way out stays put.”
“The way out remains,” Isolde said as she crossed the grass without bending a single stem. True to rumour, she left no footprints. “Whether it waits where you expect is another matter.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It is the only one worth giving.”
Aurora muttered something rude under her breath and moved after her.
Every step felt strange. The ground yielded like moss, then steadied like packed earth. Warm here. Cool there. Once, her boot came down on a patch of violet clover and a soft note rang out, clear as a plucked harp string. Three more notes answered in the distance. She froze.
Nyx tilted their head.
“It heard you.”
“What heard me?”
The grass ahead dipped. Something small darted beneath it, leaving a wake like a fish through water. A second shape followed, then a third. They circled her boots once and were gone .
Aurora kept walking.
The path, if it was a path, revealed itself by suggestion alone. Clusters of white blossoms leaned away from one another as they approached, opening space. Branches lowered or lifted. Once, a curtain of hanging ivy drew back before Isolde and fell shut behind Nyx with a hiss of leaves.
They passed a tree whose bark had split to reveal not wood but a smooth amber surface with tiny shapes trapped inside, wings, petals, fragments of gold. Aurora leaned in and saw a human eye blink deep in the resin. She recoiled, hand flying to the dagger.
“Move,” Isolde said, calm as ever. “It enjoys being noticed.”
They moved.
Farther in, the air thickened with scent. Not rot, not sweetness gone bad, but ripeness so lush it verged on decay . Figs split on branches overhead, showing jewel-red flesh. Pear-shaped fruit hung from black vines, their skins patterned like moth wings. When one dropped and burst at Aurora’s feet, the smell hit hard, honey, wine, and iron. Tiny pale insects swarmed out, then folded themselves into petals and became flowers.
Nyx crouched beside the ruined fruit.
“This place cannot decide whether to feed us or bury us.”
“Same thing in some realms,” Aurora said.
That drew a quick violet gleam from their eyes.
“Ah. You’ve been listening.”
She touched the pendant again. Warmth pulsed stronger now, not enough to burn, enough to warn. The sensation tugged her attention left, toward a grove of low trees laden with glossy crimson pods. Each pod throbbed with its own faint inner light.
Isolde saw where she looked.
“Do not eat those.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“They are not for hunger of the mouth.”
Aurora left her hand at her chest. The Heartstone gave another beat. Dymas. She had never seen the realm of Gluttony, never walked its amber vineyards or feast halls, but she had heard enough scraps, enough muttered lore and half-threats, to know the flavour of its magic felt like invitation with a hook inside it.
“You’ve got Hel fruit growing in your enchanted garden?”
“Seeds travel in stranger pockets than soil.”
“Comforting.”
They entered a stand of pale birches. Their trunks shone like bone. Wind should have stirred the leaves. No wind touched them. Instead the branches moved in rhythm with a slow breathing sound that came from all around. Aurora craned her neck. Faces pressed faintly beneath the bark, not trapped, not dead, only dreaming. Mouths. Closed lids. A child’s small brow. An old man’s hooked nose. Their features shifted as she stared, one face sliding into another.
The hairs rose on her arms.
“Tell me those are not people.”
“Everything here was something else once,” Isolde said.
“That is still not an answer.”
“Must every truth wear a label?”
Aurora stopped. “If it might grab me, yes.”
Nyx glided between two birches and ran shadow-fingers over the bark. The sleeping faces turned towards them at once. Dozens of closed eyes moved under white skin-wood.
“They remember darkness,” Nyx whispered. “Older than mine.”
The breathing grew louder.
Ahead, the birches opened onto a lake so still it looked solid. No shore lapped at its edge. The water ended in a crisp dark line against silver sand. Above it hung lanterns, hundreds of them, drifting without cords. Some were little more than glowing seed-pods. Others were glass spheres full of blue fire. One looked like a human heart made of crystal , lit from within by a slow pulse .
Aurora stepped onto the sand and felt grains shift underfoot like ground shell. The lake reflected not the trees above it but a different sky entirely, bands of amber and violet crossed by three pale moons.
“Now that,” she said, before she could stop herself, “is showing off.”
“It watches other places,” Isolde said.
“The lake?”
“The wound beneath it.”
Aurora turned to her. “What wound?”
Isolde only raised one pale hand.
The lake stirred.
Ripples spread from the centre. The reflected moons shattered into rings. Something large moved below the surface, vast enough to darken half the water. Not a fish. Not a serpent. It had too many angles for flesh, too many sudden planes, like a palace had learned to swim. A low tone rolled across the sand and hit Aurora square in the ribs. Her teeth ached. The Heartstone flared hot against her chest.
She hissed and yanked the pendant out from under her shirt. The crimson gem glowed through her fingers, bright and feverish.
Nyx rose to their full height. Their edges frayed, smoke leaking from them.
“Hel,” they said. “Not a brush of it, a seam.”
The air over the middle of the lake split with a thin red line.
Aurora took one involuntary step back. The line widened by a finger’s breadth, no more, but what lay beyond it was enough. Amber light. A sound like goblets clinking in a hall too vast to roof. Laughter. Then another sound beneath it, wet chewing, heavy and communal, as if a banquet had been laid for creatures with no table manners and too many teeth.
Dymas looked through.
The hanging lanterns dimmed in unison. The flowers along the shore curled shut. Even the strange humming insects fell silent.
“Tell me this is normal,” Aurora said.
“Normal is a mortal lullaby,” Isolde replied.
The red seam widened again.
Something pressed at it from the far side. A hand first, human in shape, except each finger bent at one joint too many. Then a second hand, ringed in gold. The skin shone lacquer-red, as if dipped in syrup or blood. It clawed into the opening and gripped the edge of the world.
Aurora’s dagger flashed into her hand.
“Back away from the lake.”
Nyx did not move.
“Poor advice,” they murmured. “It already smells her.”
The hand tightened. Another shape loomed behind it, broad shoulders, the glint of jewels, a mouth opening far too wide around a laugh that rippled the water. The pendant burned now, heat biting into Aurora’s palm.
Isolde stepped onto the silver sand beside her. Her bare feet left no mark. At last, some edge entered her voice.
“The blade.”
Aurora did not ask. She lunged as the seam split wide enough for an arm to reach through. The moonsilver dagger sang when it cut the air, a thin bright note, and the thing from Dymas answered with a shriek that turned the lantern flames green.