AI The roots grabbed at Rory’s ankles as she stumbled through the curtain of hanging moss. One moment, the damp chill of a Richmond Park November evening had seeped into her bones; the next, she was somewhere else. Her trainer caught on a gnarled root and she pitched forward, her palms slapping against earth that felt unnaturally soft, like damp velvet .
“Steady, lass.” A voice like rustling leaves came from behind her.
Rory pushed herself up, her fingers coming away not with dirt, but with a fine, golden dust that clung to her skin and then faded, sinking in as if absorbed. She blinked, her eyes adjusting not to darkness, but to a light that didn’t seem to have a source. The air here smelled of night-blooming jasmine and old stone, with an underlying metallic tang, like the air after a lightning strike.
“Breathe, Rory.” Isolde’s voice was a silken thread in the strange quiet. The half-fae stood at the edge of the clearing, her silver hair catching the ambient glow, her feet planted on a patch of bare earth where the grass refused to grow. She hadn’t followed them through the veil. She had simply… appeared.
Nyx materialized from Rory’s own shadow, the darkness detaching from her feet and coalescing into a tall, shifting silhouette beside her. The faint violet light of their eyes scanned the grove, their form rippling at the edges as if unsure of its solidity.
“You said this was a pocket between realms,” Rory said, her voice hushed . She brushed the golden dust from her hands. “Not a different planet.”
The grove unfolded before them. Ancient oaks, their bark etched with spiraling patterns that seemed to writhe if stared at too long, formed a loose circle . Between them, the air shimmered like heat haze. Flowers bloomed in impossible profusion, their petals colours that didn't exist in the mortal world, pulsing with a soft, internal bioluminescence. Some glowed a steady, cool blue; others flickered like embers. The grass underfoot was a deep, rich emerald, but it moved in a slow, wave-like dance , though Rory felt no wind.
“The boundary breathes,” Isolde said, stepping into the circle. She left no footprints. “You feel it, I think.”
Rory did. A low, sub-audible hum vibrated through the soles of her shoes, up her legs, settling in her chest. It felt like the resonance of a cathedral bell, felt rather than heard. The Heartstone pendant beneath her jumper warmed against her sternum, a faint, pulsing counter-rhythm to the grove’s hum. She’d never felt it do that before.
“This place remembers,” Nyx whispered, their voice a sibilant echo carried on that non-existent breeze. They drifted forward, a smear of deeper night against the twilight. “It is not old in years. It is old in moments.”
Isolde moved deeper into the grove, gesturing for them to follow. Rory’s eyes traced the standing stones that marked the boundary, hidden amongst the oaks. They weren’t carved, but looked as if they’d grown, shaped from the same dark, veined stone as the trees. The air grew cooler the further in they went, not the biting chill of winter, but a deep, cellar coolness that carried scents of damp moss and something sweeter, like rotting fruit and honey.
“Stay within the pulse of the flowers,” Isolde instructed, her gaze fixed on a particularly large, central oak. “The other things that sleep here… they are sensitive to dissonance.”
Rory glanced at Nyx, whose form was now subtly altering, becoming less solid, as if trying to blend with the shadows that pooled beneath the oaks . “What other things?”
Isolde didn’t answer directly. She stopped before the central oak, its trunk wider than a car, its branches weaving a canopy that blocked out the amber sky above. This wasn’t a sky at all, Rory realised. It was a solid, warm amber dome, like the inside of a polished stone, motionless and eternal. No sun, no clouds. Just light.
“The grove is a scar,” Isolde said, placing her palm flat against the bark. The patterns there glowed briefly in response, a soft silver. “A place where the Veil was torn long ago and never fully healed. The Fae Courts abandoned it. Time moves strangely here. An hour could be a minute outside. A day could be a century. It is a sanctuary for things that have nowhere else to go.”
“And you?” Rory asked, watching the Seer’s ethereal face. “Is this your sanctuary ?”
Isolde’s pale lavender eyes met hers, holding an ancient sadness. “I am one of the things that had nowhere else to go.”
A sound, like a single, plucked string on a giant instrument, reverberated through the clearing. The bioluminescent flowers flared brighter for a moment, then dimmed. Rory’s hand instinctively went to the small of her back, where the Fae-forged blade Isolde had given her was sheathed, its moonsilver always cold against her skin. The metal felt even colder now.
“What was that?” Rory’s whisper was sharp.
“A sigh,” Nyx said, their head tilting . “From below.”
Isolde nodded, a slow, solemn motion. “The grove feeds on memory. It draws on the ambient energy of the Veil’s weakness, and on the lingering emotional echoes of those who pass through . It is why I chose to dwell here. My visions are… amplified. But one must be careful what one remembers within its bounds.”
Rory’s mind flashed to Evan. The sound of a breaking plate. The cold weight of his hand on her shoulder. She clenched her jaw, forcing the memory down, away. The pendant pulsed , warm and steady. She focused on that instead.
“And you brought us here to show us… what? A pretty garden with emotional baggage?” Rory’s tone was sharper than she intended. The unease was a physical thing, a prickle on the back of her neck.
Isolde turned from the tree, her expression unreadable . “I brought you here to find something. Or, rather, to let something find you. The answers you seek regarding the portals, the tears, the weakening Veil… they are not written in books or spoken in courts. They are felt. The grove has felt them all.”
She gestured to the ground near the base of the great oak. The waving grass had parted, revealing a circle of polished stone set into the earth. Upon its surface, concentric rings were inlaid with the same dark, veined material as the standing stones. In the very centre lay a shallow depression, filled with a liquid that looked like quicksilver, reflecting the amber light above in rippling patterns.
“The scrying pool,” Isolde said. “But it does not show what is, or what will be. It shows what has been felt. Memories of the Veil itself. You must look into it together. Your combined perception, Rory’s mortal grounding, Nyx’s existence between realms, and my sight, may interpret what it shows.”
Nyx drifted closer, their form darkening. “A dangerous tool. Memory is not always truth. The Veil’s memory would be… vast. Chaotic.”
“Which is why we must be careful,” Isolde agreed. She knelt beside the pool, her silver hair pooling around her. “Do you see the symbol carved beneath the liquid?” She pointed. Faintly visible through the mercury-like surface was a sigil, three interlocking spirals. “Place your hands upon it. Rory, you first. It needs a heartbeat.”
Rory hesitated. Every instinct told her this was wrong, that you didn’t go poking around the memories of a metaphysical barrier. But the urgency of their search—the increasing demonic incursions, the whispers Nyx had been hearing about a “Prince of the Glutt” probing the Veil—overrode caution. She knelt opposite Isolde, the cool seeping into her jeans.
She took a breath and pressed her palms flat against the cold stone. The sigil flared with a dim, blue light beneath her touch. The mercury shivered.
“Nyx, your shadow,” Isolde instructed. “Fall upon the water.”
The Shade obliged. A tendril of their living darkness extended, brushing the surface of the pool. The liquid didn’t ripple; it *swelled *, rising up around the darkness like hungry lips. The light from the sigil brightened.
“Now, Isolde,” Rory said, her voice tight . “Do your thing.”
The Seer’s pale eyes closed. Her hands, resting on her knees, went still. “Look.”
Rory stared into the swirling, silvery surface. At first, she saw nothing but her own distorted reflection, her bright blue eyes wide. Then the reflection blurred, stretched, and became something else.
She saw a sky of the same amber as above, but it was *tearing *. Jagged lines of black, absolute nothingness ripped across it. From one of these tears, a form was emerging. It was vast, not in body but in *presence *. A suggestion of gorged, glutted flesh, of endless consumption, of a hunger so profound it warped the space around it. She couldn’t see it clearly, only its silhouette against the dying amber, and the way reality curdled in its wake. The smell of rotting feasts and cloying sweetness flooded the grove, overpowering the jasmine.
Beneath the horror, she felt a pulse . A heartbeat, slow and heavy, drumming up from the depths of the pool. It matched the warmth of the pendant at her throat, which was now almost hot.
“It sees us,” Nyx hissed, their form shrinking, pulling back from the pool . “No. It remembers being seen.”
The image in the pool shifted violently. It was no longer a memory of the sky. It was the grove itself. The same oaks, but younger, their bark smooth. And standing where Rory knelt, a figure in a long, archaic coat, holding a glowing staff. The figure looked up, not at Rory, but *through* her, as if sensing an observer across time . The face was shadowed , but the eyes burned with a desperate light.
Then the memory shattered . The pool’s surface exploded upwards in a silent geyser of silvery droplets. Rory jerked her hands back with a cry, not from pain, but from a psychic jolt that left her teeth ringing.
The grove fell utterly silent. The bioluminescent flowers had gone dark. The wave-like motion of the grass stilled. Only the amber light remained, now feeling oppressive , like the inside of a sealed jar.
Isolde was breathing heavily, her eyes open but unfocused, tracking something only she could see. “He was here,” she whispered, her voice ragged . “The first rift. It was opened, not torn.”
“Who?” Rory demanded, clutching the now cooled pendant. “Who was he?”
Before Isolde could answer, Nyx let out a sound that was almost a hiss. They were a tight knot of shadow now, pressed against Rory’s leg. “Something is wrong. The memory was not for us.”
“The grove gave it freely,” Isolde said, but her certainty wavered .
“It did not,” Nyx insisted. “It was *taken *.”
From the great oak’s canopy, a single, dry leaf detached. It spiralled down, not with the grace of a falling leaf, but in a rigid, deliberate pattern . It landed in the centre of the scrying pool, which was already beginning to refill with the silvery liquid. The moment the leaf touched the surface, it caught fire with a cold, blue flame, and then turned to fine, black ash that sank without a trace.
A new scent joined the air. Not rot and honey. Ozone and chilled iron. A scent that Rory recognised. The scent of the portals she’d witnessed, the smell of Hell leaking through .
Isolde rose to her feet, her ethereal calm gone, replaced by a sharp, focused alarm. “We must go. Now. The grove is compromised.”
“Compromised by what?” Rory asked, scrambling up, her hand going to the Fae blade’s hilt.
The amber light above them began to flicker , not like a faulty bulb, but like a heart fluttering . In the flickers, Rory saw shadows. Not Nyx’s shadows. These were dense, hungry shapes pressed against the inside of the amber dome, like things trying to claw their way through .
Nyx grabbed Rory’s arm, their touch a chilling void. “The Veil’s memory… it is a door. And we just turned the handle.”
A low, grinding groan echoed through the clearing, seeming to come from the earth itself. The concentric rings on the scrying stone began to glow, a pulsing, angry red, spreading outwards like cracks in ice.
“Move!” Isolde commanded, her voice no longer silken, but a sharp crack . She pointed not back the way they came, but towards a part of the grove where the oaks grew so close together their branches formed an impenetrable wall. “There is another way. A thinner spot. But we must run.”
Rory didn’t need telling twice. She sprinted, following Isolde’s flowing silver hair as it vanished into the suddenly dense gloom beneath the trees. Behind them, the grinding groan became a deafening creak, the sound of something immense beginning to open. The scent of ozone was suffocating now. Nyx ran as a ribbon of shadow at her feet, and Rory could feel their terror, a cold, silent scream that resonated with her own pounding heart.
The Heartstone pendant burned against her skin, not with warmth, but with a frantic, warning heat . The memory of the man with the staff flashed in her mind. He had been trying to close a door.
And they had just kicked it wide open.