AI The air tasted of forgotten honey and static. Aurora Carter pressed her palm against the ancient oak standing stone, its surface smoother than any wood had a right to be. It hummed, a low vibration that travelled up her arm and settled in her teeth.
"Time's... slippery here," she murmured, pulling her hand back. A faint, iridescent smear clung to her skin before dissolving.
"Slippery's one word for it." Nyx's voice was a rustle of leaves in a gale, emanating from the deep shadow pooling at the base of the stone. Their form coalesced, a taller, darker silhouette against the grove's impossible twilight. "Another is 'unraveled'. Careful where you step. The roots remember paths that haven't been walked yet."
Isolde Varga glided ahead, her silver hair trailing like captured moonlight. She left no depression in the thick, mossy carpet that seemed woven from spun gemstone—amethyst and emerald threads glowing with their own inner light . "The roots remember, but the flowers foretell. Hush now. Listen to the telling."
Aurora listened. Beyond the gentle, ever-present hum of the place, there was a chittering, clicking sound, like crystal chimes played by a frantic, unseen hand. It came from the flora. The wildflowers here didn't bloom in seasons; they bloomed in moments. A bud would swell, rupture in a silent explosion of colour—a sapphire blue so deep it hurt the eyes, a crimson that pulsed with a faint, warm light—and then, as quickly , the petals would shrivel into dust that smelled of ozone and cinnamon, only for the cycle to begin again inches away. The air was thick with pollen that didn't trigger allergies, but made her thoughts skip and stutter like a scratched record.
"The place is allergic to stasis," Nyx observed, their whisper wrapping around Aurora's left ear.
She flinched, not from fear, but from the intimacy of the sound . "Could you not?"
"You're thinking in straight lines again. A fatal flaw in a place with none."
Isolde had stopped before a cluster of fungi growing on a fallen log. The fungi were translucent, filled with swirling galaxies of bioluminescent spores. She didn't touch them. Her pale lavender eyes, fixed on a middle distance only she could see, were wide. "The threads fray here. See? They snag on the thorns of what is yet to come."
"Isolde," Aurora said, keeping her voice level, the way she used to when calming a spooked horse at her uncle's farm in Cardiff. "What did you see that made you bring us here?"
The seer’s head tilted, a slow, bird-like motion. "A door. Not wood. Not stone. A door of appetite. It grows teeth of pearl and a tongue of shadow. It dreams of swallowing a city."
"Nyx, any of that ring a bell?" Aurora glanced back at the shadow-being.
"Many doors in the realms between. Few dream. Fewer still hunger." The violet eyes in the darkness flickered . "But a door of appetite... that sounds like a threshold to Dymas. Gluttony's domain. The stories say its portals don't just invite you in; they flavour you first."
The Heartstone pendant, resting cool against Aurora's collarbone, gave a single, emphatic throb of warmth . She pressed her fingers to it through her shirt. "It's reacting."
"To the prophecy, or to the place?" Nyx asked.
Before she could answer, Isolde moved again, drifting towards a part of the grove where the trees grew in a tight, spiralling pattern. The light there was different, a syrupy gold that clung to the bark and dripped like slow honey. The air grew thick, cloying. The scent of honey intensified, but underneath it was something else—fermented fruit, and the sweet, sickly decay of overripe blossoms.
The ground here was soft, spongy. With each step, a fine, shimmering powder puffed up around their ankles. Aurora’s boot sank, and she felt something squish. Not mud. It felt organic, pulpy. She looked down. The soil wasn’t soil. It was a fine, damp grit of crushed seeds and pollen, inches deep.
"Don't breathe it deep," Nyx warned, their form tightening, becoming less diffuse, more solid and wary . "Ambrosia dust. Induces visions. Or vomiting. Sometimes both."
"I need no dust for visions," Isolde said, but she pulled the sleeve of her gossamer dress over her nose and mouth. Her voice came muffled. "The door is near. The fraying is a knot here."
They pushed into the spiral grove. The trees here were not oak or ash, but something pale and smooth, like bone. Their branches intertwined overhead to form a living cathedral ceiling, blocking out the grove's weird twilight. The only light came from the pulsing, golden pollen motes hanging suspended in the air, and from the flora on the forest floor. Mushrooms the size of dinner plates glowed with a soft, blue-white light. Vines thick as Aurora's arm crawled up the bone-white trunks, covered in thorns that dripped a clear, viscous fluid. Where the droplets hit the ground, they sizzled faintly.
Aurora's hand went to her waist, to the slender, leaf-shaped dagger sheathed there. The Fae-forged blade was a sliver of captured moonlight, always cold. Even through the leather of her jacket, she felt its chill . A comfort, in this place of warm decay.
They reached the heart of the spiral. It was a clearing, but not empty. In the centre stood a structure . It was not a door in any conventional sense. It was a growth, a cancerous outcropping of the same pale, bone-like material as the trees, but shot through with veins of pulsing, deep red. It arched into a rough, organic archway. Its surface was not smooth; it was textured , pitted, and within the pits, small, pearlescent orbs gleamed—like a thousand unblinking eyes. As Aurora watched, the archway *rippled *, the way flesh ripples when a muscle twitches beneath the skin. From its core, a low sound emanated, a sub-vocal thrum that was less heard than felt in the marrow of one's bones. It was a sound of yearning , of hollow, endless need.
The air here was thick enough to drink, saturated with the scent of honey, spice, and that underlying rot. It coated the back of Aurora's throat.
"By the lost courts," Isolde breathed, her muffled voice trembling . "It is awake."
Nyx solidified fully beside Aurora, a tall, androgynous figure of absolute blackness, their form so dense it seemed to drink the light. "That's no natural portal. That's been grown. Cultivated. Someone or something is *farming * a way into Dymas."
The Heartstone against Aurora's chest was no longer pulsing. It burned, a steady, insistent heat. The crimson gemstone at its centre glowed through the fabric of her shirt, a tiny, defiant star.
The archway shuddered again. The pearlescent eyes blinked, not in unison, but in a rolling, wave-like sequence from one side to the other . A low, wet sucking sound came from its core, like a great lung inhaling.
"It's tasting the air," Aurora said, the realization cold in her gut. "Tasting us."
"We need to leave," Nyx stated, their whisper sharp as broken glass . "Now. That thing isn't just a door. It's a mouth."
Isolde didn't move. Her eyes, wide and unseeing of the present, were fixed on the nightmare arch. "The thread... it's not fraying. It's being *eaten *."
As if in response, one of the thorny vines on the nearest tree uncoiled with a sudden, whip-like speed. It didn't aim for them. It slithered through the air and touched the surface of the archway. The moment contact was made , the vine withered, turning grey and brittle, crumbling to dust that was instantly inhaled by the pulsing opening. The archway's colour deepened from red to a bruised purple, and the thrumming sound pitched higher, into a keen of anticipation .
Aurora drew the Fae blade. It made no sound as it left the sheath, but in the oppressive , humming silence of the clearing, the movement felt deafening. The moonsilver metal caught the glow of the arch and the fungi, throwing cold, white light onto the grasping thorns and the watching eyes.
The archway stilled. Every pearlescent orb swivelled, fixing on the slender dagger. The hungry keen cut off, replaced by a silence so absolute it roared in Aurora's ears.
Then, from the very centre of the structure , a single, thick droplet of that clear, viscous fluid welled up and dropped to the seed-dusted floor. It didn't sizzle this time. Where it landed, a tiny, perfect flower sprouted, bloomed a passionate, bloody red, and died in the space of a heartbeat.
It was looking at the blade. It was *interested *.