AI The shimmer in the air looked thin enough to tear with a thumb.
Aurora stood at the edge of the standing stones in Richmond Park and watched the distortion breathe. It bent the moonlight into a soft, amber stain, as if someone had held a lantern behind wet silk . The Heartstone Pendant lay against her throat, hot enough to sting. When she pressed it through her shirt, the crimson gem answered with a slow pulse , like a second heartbeat that did not belong to her.
Nyx stood half in the shadow of an oak, tall and spare, the edges of their body drifting in the cold. Their violet eyes fixed on the tear in the Veil. The grass around them looked darker, as though night had pooled at their feet.
Isolde moved between the stones without sound. Wildflowers brushed her bare ankles and sprang upright after she passed, untouched. Her silver hair caught the moon and gave it back in shards.
“The door has opened its mouth,” she murmured. “Best not leave it hungry.”
Aurora glanced at her.
“You always make it sound worse.”
“I make it sound true.”
Beyond the stones, the park had gone quiet. No hiss of tyres from the road. No bark of a dog. Even the wind seemed to stop at the boundary, unwilling to cross.
Aurora rubbed the crescent scar on her left wrist with her thumb and stared at the rift again.
“So that’s Dymas.”
“That’s a wound,” Nyx whispered. Their voice moved through the air like silk pulled over bone. “Dymas waits on the other side.”
The amber glow deepened. Inside the distortion, shapes formed and dissolved. A curved stair. A hanging orchard. A long table laid with silver dishes. None of it held still long enough to trust.
Aurora let out a breath through her nose.
“Right. Fine. We go in, we have a look, and if anything with too many teeth invites us to dinner, we leave.”
Nyx turned their head.
“A sensible rule.”
Isolde looked at Aurora’s pendant.
“The red stone likes this place.”
“It likes burning a hole through my chest.”
“Then it recognises its cradle.”
Aurora gave a short laugh that died fast. She reached inside her coat and checked the Fae-Forged Blade. The moonsilver dagger sat against her palm, cold as river ice. That clean, metallic chill steadied her more than the pendant did.
“Stay close,” she said. “If something splits us up, shout.”
Nyx’s outline thinned, then drew solid again.
“I do not shout.”
“Then loom urgently.”
“I excel at that.”
Aurora stepped first.
The Veil resisted for half a second. It pressed against her skin, cool and slick, then broke around her in a rush that pulled the breath from her lungs. Light spilled over her face. Heat rose from the ground. Her boots struck stone, not earth.
She staggered, caught herself, and looked up.
The sky burned amber from horizon to horizon.
Not sunset. Not dawn. The whole firmament glowed with the rich, honeyed colour of whisky held to a flame. Clouds drifted overhead in broad, slow swells, bruised gold underneath. The air smelled of crushed figs, rosemary, sugar caramelising in a pan, and something darker beneath it all, a fat-rich savour that sat heavy at the back of the tongue. Every breath tasted of a kitchen large enough to swallow a city.
Nyx slipped through after her without disturbing the air. Isolde emerged last, the rift behind them shrinking into a wavering oval caught between two pillars of black stone veined with copper.
Aurora turned in a slow circle.
They stood on a broad terrace carved from pale rock streaked with red. It overlooked a valley so lush it looked painted by a hand with no sense of restraint. Vineyards rolled over the hills in impossible geometries. The vines bore grapes of smoky blue, green gold, and a black so glossy it mirrored the amber sky. Orchards spread between them: trees hung with silver pears, blood-red citrus, melons suspended from branches by braided cords of living vine. Water ran in channels through the terraces, but the streams glimmered like liquid glass tinged with wine.
Far below, towers rose from the valley floor. Their walls curled like layers of pastry, fluted and pale, trimmed in bronze. Bridges linked them in loops and ribbons. Smoke drifted from hundreds of chimneys, not grey but fragrant, white steam carrying spice and roasted sweetness. Bells rang somewhere in the distance, soft at first, then joined by the scrape of strings and the thump of drums.
Aurora forgot to breathe for a moment.
“Christ.”
Nyx looked over the valley.
“Gluttony,” they whispered. “It dressed itself well.”
Isolde smiled without warmth .
“Vice often does.”
A flock of birds crossed above them. Aurora flinched before she realised the birds had too many wings. Six each, feathered in copper and cream, their tails streaming ribbons of iridescent plumage. They cried out in notes that chimed like glasses touched with a wet finger.
Aurora watched them disappear over the nearest hill.
“Those aren’t real.”
Nyx’s violet eyes slid to her.
“You stepped through a hole in reality.”
“You know what I mean.”
A path led down from the terrace, paved in a mosaic of tiny tiles the colour of pomegranate seeds and old ivory. The pattern shifted when she looked too long at it. Not moved. Shifted. A bowl became an eye. Grapevines became grasping hands. Hands became roots.
Aurora looked away.
“Tell me we’re not walking on something alive.”
Isolde lowered her gaze to the mosaic .
“It remembers feet. That is close enough.”
“Brilliant.”
They started down.
The heat felt wrong. It did not press against Aurora’s skin like summer. It wrapped around her like the open breath of an oven, rising from the stones in waves that smelled of bread crust and hot fruit. Yet sweat never formed. The warmth sank in, settled behind her ribs, and left the surface of her skin cool. Her stomach tightened. She had eaten an hour ago, but the air itself made hunger bloom again, sharp and immediate.
Nyx noticed.
“It feeds appetite before it feeds flesh.”
Aurora swallowed.
“I’d gathered.”
On either side of the path, low walls enclosed herb gardens dense with plants she could not name. Their leaves glowed with a waxy sheen. Some furled when they passed. Others opened wider, releasing scents in little bursts—citrus, fennel, smoke, rain on slate, charred sugar. One flower the size of a dinner plate turned its face to Aurora. Its petals looked like translucent slices of peach. At its centre, instead of stamens, a small tongue of blue flame burned without consuming it.
She stopped.
“Do you see that?”
Nyx leaned closer. The flower snapped shut with a sound like teeth meeting.
“Yes.”
“Did it just—”
“Yes.”
Aurora took her hand off the dagger hilt and moved on.
The bells grew louder as they descended, mingling with human noise—or near enough. Laughter rose from the valley in waves. Metal clattered. Someone shouted over a crowd. Somewhere a choir sang a note so full and deep the stone beneath Aurora’s boots hummed in answer.
Halfway down the path, she noticed the statues.
They stood in alcoves cut into the hillside, each carved from a different material: alabaster, dark green marble , black glass shot through with ruby veins. Every statue held a platter, a goblet, a knife, or a sheaf of wheat. Their faces had been polished smooth, blank as peeled eggs. One had a crack through its chest, and from that split a vine had grown, laden with pale grapes that looked almost luminous.
Aurora slowed beside it.
“Who are they?”
Isolde ran her fingertips over the blank cheek of the nearest figure.
“Those who served. Those who won. Those who were swallowed whole. Titles survive better than names here.”
“That cleared everything up.”
“Questions are greedy creatures,” Isolde replied. “You may feed them, yet they keep their mouths open.”
A sound reached them from behind the wall to the left. Wet chewing. Then a snort.
Aurora froze.
Nyx’s body thinned into a narrower, darker shape.
The chewing came again, followed by the rustle of leaves. Aurora stepped to the wall and looked over.
At first she thought the creature was a pig. Then it lifted its head.
Its body had the broad, pink bulk of a sow, but its hide shimmered under the amber light as if brushed with pearl. Antlers rose from its skull in a branching crown heavy with figs, each fruit hanging ripe from the tines. Six black eyes blinked at her from above a blunt snout dusted in silver pollen. It stood knee-deep in a patch of glossy herbs and tore up mouthfuls with flat human teeth.
Aurora stared.
The beast stared back, a fig dangling from one antler. Then it sneezed. Pollen burst over the bed in a glittering cloud.
Aurora stepped away.
“No one tell me that tastes amazing.”
Nyx’s shoulders shifted with silent amusement.
“It almost certainly does.”
The creature lowered itself onto its haunches with a satisfied grunt and continued eating, unconcerned.
They went on.
The path widened near the valley floor and emptied into a market square paved with slabs of red stone worn glossy by centuries of feet. Arcades curved around the square, their columns twisted like braided dough. Lamps hung from chains between them, though the amber sky needed no help. The lamps burned with steady violet flames that gave off the smell of cloves.
Aurora stopped under the shadow of the first arcade.
The square swarmed with figures.
Some looked human until the eye lingered too long. A woman in a gown of layered green silk bought a cluster of glassy plums from a vendor with gilded horns and hands like bird claws. A boy ran past carrying a loaf longer than his arm, steam pouring from cracks in the crust; when he laughed, his teeth flashed needle-fine. Two men argued over a basket of shellfish that clicked and snapped at each other, though they had no visible mouths. At the centre of the square, around a fountain where dark red liquid spilled from the mouths of carved lions, a crowd gathered to watch three chefs in white coats carve a beast the size of a pony. The carcass shimmered with scales instead of skin. Every slice released sparks.
Nobody looked surprised to see the newcomers.
That unsettled Aurora more than open hostility would have.
“They know we’re not from here,” she murmured.
“They know,” Isolde agreed.
“Then why is no one staring?”
A passing server balanced a tray of tiny gold cups on one hand and smiled at Aurora with professional ease. His irises glowed a warm metallic bronze.
“Because, little mortal, you have not ordered yet.”
He moved on before she could answer.
Aurora watched him disappear into the crowd.
“Right. That’s worse.”
Music spilled from somewhere deeper in the city, bright and quick. Not violins. Something sharper, plucked and chiming. The notes skipped through the square and set the fountain rippling in patterns that matched the rhythm.
Nyx tilted their head.
“This place is old.”
Aurora glanced up at the buildings again. Their ornate facades looked almost young from a distance, but close up she saw the truth in the details: steps hollowed by generations, bronze handrails worn soft, murals layered over older murals, door lintels carved with scripts she did not know under scripts she almost recognised. Nothing here had been built in a single age. The city had fed on its own past and grown over it.
She reached for the Heartstone. The pendant beat against her skin, warmer now, pulling her gaze towards a street that arched away from the square beneath a trellis heavy with black grapes.
“Pendant’s doing something.”
Isolde looked where Aurora looked.
“It smells home.”
“That street?”
“Perhaps what waits beyond it.”
Nyx’s shadow stretched along the paving stones, drawn in the same direction.
“I feel a current there.”
Aurora studied the arched street. Beyond the trellis, the light dimmed to a richer bronze. She could hear water somewhere inside it, and the low murmur of voices. Above the entryway hung a sign worked in copper: a pomegranate split open, seeds spilling in a perfect pattern.
She drew the Fae-Forged Blade just enough to bare an inch of moonsilver. The metal caught no amber from the sky, only its own cold light.
“Fine,” she said. “We keep moving.”
A gust passed through the square and carried with it the smell of fresh bread, wine, hot stone, and something faintly ferrous.
Aurora tucked the blade back beneath her coat and stepped under the trellis, Nyx sliding beside her and Isolde drifting ahead without sound, while the city of Dymas opened another layer of itself before them.