AI “A shard of the Veil’s down there, and you’re walking like it can’t see you.”
Aurora didn’t stop. She just adjusted her grip on the Fae-forged Blade as the alley behind her shuddered, not with sound but with pressure, like the air remembered it used to be water .
Beside her, Nyx moved in a way that made Aurora’s eyes itch. They didn’t step so much as trade places with the darkness between lamp-posts. Every few heartbeats their violet gaze flickered across Aurora’s shoulder, as if checking whether she’d forgotten them .
“Don’t flatter me,” Aurora said. Her voice scraped through the back of her throat, cool and controlled. “It can see us. It’s the being of boundaries. It’s our job to pretend we’re not prey.”
Nyx’s whisper slid along the stones. “Pretence is a feast for hungry doors.”
Isolde followed them in silence , silver hair catching what little light survived in that narrow throat of the city. She looked carved from moonmilk, and when she walked there were no footprints in the grime. Only the scuff of Aurora’s boots marked change.
Then the stones ahead tore open.
Not with tearing sound. The world simply gave up its shape for a heartbeat and reassembled wrong. A seam appeared where there had been nothing, shimmering with a faint distortion that only Aurora’s supernatural sight seemed to notice. The air kinked, and the city-smell of concrete and exhaust died under something older and sweeter, like bruised fruit and cold metal.
Aurora’s Heartstone Pendant pulsed against her collarbone, warm as a held breath. She touched it through her jacket. Crimson light bled into her palm.
“Careful,” Isolde said, and her voice arrived like a riddle landing on a table. “When boundaries loosen, the things that live between reach for names.”
Nyx leaned close enough that Aurora felt the chill of absence. “They’ll take it,” Nyx murmured. “If you give it away.”
Aurora exhaled once and stepped forward.
The seam swallowed her.
Cold slammed her ribs, not like winter, but like diving into a deep cellar and surfacing somewhere else entirely. Her stomach lurched . For a blink, her thoughts scattered, each one floating away like leaves caught in wind.
Then her boots met ground that wasn’t stone.
Vine leaves brushed her ankles, slick and dark, as though the world had grown them overnight. She smelled wine-spice and earth-salt. Somewhere above, a sky glowed in warm amber, not bright, just insistently lit from within.
Dymas, Nyx had called it once, in passing, like naming a person who owed them money.
Prince Belphegor’s realm of Gluttony spread out like a banquet held forever. Rows of vineyards unfurled across slopes that didn’t obey perspective. Orchards bloomed in unnatural abundance, fruit heavy enough to drag branches down with deliberate greed. The air held laughter that didn’t originate from any mouth Aurora could find.
The group stood at the edge of a path made of pale stones. As Aurora looked closer, the stones weren’t carved. They were grown, each one veined with crimson lines that looked disturbingly like sugared arteries.
Nyx stepped forward and the shadows around them stretched, as if the ground wanted to drink their outline. “Taste it,” Nyx whispered, voice tasting the air too . “Even without eating.”
Aurora didn’t like the way the realm asked her to participate. She slid the Fae-forged Blade from her belt. Moonsilver caught the amber glow and threw it back cold. She didn’t hold it up. She kept it low, ready, like a promise.
Isolde approached the edge of the vineyards and stopped dead.
“What?” Aurora asked. The question came out sharper than she meant.
Isolde tilted her head. Her lavender eyes, pale as dawn through fog, studied the nearest vine. “No footprints,” Isolde said, but her tone made it a threat . “Not here. Not even in the places between.”
Nyx drifted to Isolde’s side. Their violet gaze flared. “Because the ground eats proof. It wants a clean story.”
Aurora looked down at her boots.
The leaves on the path hadn’t shifted from where they were. No scuff. No smear. Not even the faint trail of pressed foliage.
She felt suddenly exposed, like walking in a room where every mirror had been removed .
“Where are we supposed to go?” Aurora asked. Her mind began sorting risks the way it always did, listing what she could control.
Nyx’s outline rippled. “Downstream. Towards the indulgence that calls itself a road.”
Isolde lifted a hand, fingers long and delicate. She pointed toward a distance where grand tables stood without people. They waited under trellises of flowering vines, laden with plates of food that steamed without heat.
“Don’t touch,” Isolde said. “There are contracts in the steam.”
Aurora’s pendant warmed again, more insistently. The Heartstone pulsed like a warning heart. She’d been given it by someone she couldn’t place. Now it felt as if it wanted to answer a question she hadn’t yet learned how to ask.
They moved deeper.
Each step felt swallowed. Not by invisibility, but by a thick, plush silence between sounds . Aurora’s ears strained for birds, for insects. Instead, she heard distant clinking, the rhythm of utensils meeting porcelain , and a low, continuous murmur that might have been a crowd or might have been the realm chewing.
The path narrowed. Vines arched over them, forming a tunnel. Blossoms opened and closed without wind, petals rotating in a slow, deliberate dance .
Aurora reached for the blade and kept her fingers from the leaves. The Fae-forged Blade remained cold against her palm, steady in a world that wanted to convince her everything moved with consent.
Nyx glided ahead. When Nyx passed under one arch, the shadow behind them thickened, then thinned, like an eye blinking too slowly .
Aurora watched, and her thoughts snagged on a detail she couldn’t quite name . The way Nyx’s edges blurred when they moved through the tunnel, as though the realm preferred their absence.
“You don’t belong here,” Aurora said quietly.
Nyx turned their head. Their whisper brushed her skin like a fingertip. “No. I belong everywhere I’m ignored.”
Isolde stepped beside Aurora, close enough that her cloak brushed Aurora’s sleeve. The Half-Fae’s presence made the air seem less liquid. Aurora couldn’t explain it. It just felt like Isolde brought rules with her .
“This place swallows without chewing,” Isolde said. “So the soul learns to cooperate.”
Aurora didn’t answer. She looked ahead.
At the end of the vine tunnel, the path opened into a courtyard.
Tables crowded the space like a theatre set, silver legs rooted in lush grass. A banquet lay arranged as if waiting for a feast to begin . Roasted meats glistened. Breads rose with breathless steam. Jars of preserves caught amber light and looked too colourful to be real.
And yet there were no people.
Only the food, steaming, shimmering, and somehow moving in small ways, as if each dish shifted in its own hunger.
Aurora’s pendant pulsed .
The Heartstone’s crimson glow brightened, warm enough to sting. It wasn’t near a portal she could see, not yet, but it reacted like a dog hearing a command through walls .
Nyx drifted over the grass, their voice low. “He’s near.”
Aurora scanned the courtyard for threats. Heavier eyes than hers had to be at work here. If Prince Belphegor held court, he would have more than guards. He’d have appetites. And appetites always came with claws.
A figure emerged at the far end.
Not a person. A column of darkness, taller than any tree, with a surface like tar and velvet . It bore a crown of golden fruit carved into shapes that looked like teeth .
The column didn’t walk. It spread.
When it widened, Aurora smelled dark chocolate and smoke, the scent of dessert burned at the edges. Her tongue tingled as if it wanted sugar. Her stomach tightened, offended by the idea of wanting.
The darkness column spoke without sound, and the words landed in Aurora’s mind like acid dropped into water.
*Bring. Feed. Name.*
Aurora jerked her head at the ground, and her blade hand tightened until her knuckles hurt.
Nyx flared violet. The shade’s shadow thickened and surged toward the column, as if drawn by a scent. “No.”
Isolde’s face had gone still. Her riddle-voice hardened. “Gluttony speaks in bargains.”
Aurora forced her breathing to slow. If she let the realm bait her senses, she’d take a bite without realising.
She stepped forward, careful, blade angled down. “We’re not here to feast.”
The column’s crown rotated, the golden fruit-teeth clicking softly . Aurora’s pendant pulsed again, and she felt a tug behind her ribs, like an invisible string attached to her name.
Nyx moved. They didn’t attack so much as slip sideways through the air, becoming briefly incorporeal. Their outline stretched toward the column’s base, threading into the darkness as though into a crack in reality.
Isolde raised her hand and drew a thin line through the air.
Nothing visible happened.
Then the amber light in the courtyard shivered, as though the Veil itself took a breath. Aurora saw a faint shimmering distortion, like the seam she’d stepped through, but here it didn’t open. It resisted. It held.
The darkness column paused, and Aurora felt its hunger falter for a heartbeat.
Isolde spoke, every word shaped like a lock turning. “The Boundary remembers. The Veil watches.”
The column leaned toward her as if curious.
Aurora realised with a jolt that Isolde’s seer gift worked differently here. She couldn’t lie, but she could mislead, and riddle-phrases carried multiple meanings, like knives that sliced from angles.
Belphegor’s realm didn’t accept truth. It accepted taste. So she’d offered it something else.
“Prince Belphegor,” Isolde said, voice sweet enough to poison . “You want names.”
Aurora kept her eyes on the column, but she listened to Isolde’s cadence. The Half-Fae rarely spoke without intent, and now the intent felt sharpened.
“Names rot,” Isolde continued. “You prefer that which doesn’t last.”
The column’s golden fruit-teeth clicked again. A faint sound, and Aurora’s teeth ached.
Nyx had returned to solid form, their violet eyes brighter, their whisper ragged. “She’s baiting him.”
Aurora didn’t like that Nyx sounded impressed and afraid at once. “How long?”
Isolde smiled as if it hurt. “Until he chooses the wrong bite.”
The banquet dishes began to move.
One platter of sugared pears slid a handspan across the table without anyone touching it. Another dish shuddered, and the steam thickened into shapes that looked like mouths . They opened and closed around nothing, as though chewing air tasted good.
Aurora felt heat on her skin, sweet heat, the kind that made you think of candy. Her tongue moistened. Her body wanted to cooperate with hunger.
Nyx hissed, the whisper suddenly sharp. “It’s feeding on readiness. Don’t let it make you want.”
Aurora gritted her teeth. She forced her focus onto the blade’s cold edge, onto the texture of the handle under her palm. She counted heartbeats, not because counting calmed her, but because numbers refused to taste.
Isolde stepped back, closer to Aurora. Her feet didn’t leave marks in the grass either, but this time Aurora noticed something: the grass refused to spring back under Isolde. It held the shape of her presence for a moment longer, as if the realm hesitated to absorb the Half-Fae.
“Now,” Isolde said.
Nyx lunged.
Not at the column itself. Nyx moved toward the shimmering distortion Aurora had seen Isolde form, aimed at the seam of resistance the Half-Fae had coaxed back into existence.
A sound like tearing silk ripped through the courtyard.
The Veil’s barrier flickered . Aurora saw it then, not as a seam but as a membrane under strain, shimmering distortion warping the amber light. Tiny rift points dotted the surface like pricked stars. Wardens monitored them, Nyx had said once. Here, the monitoring had failed.
Aurora’s Heartstone Pendant pulsed so hard it hurt. The crimson glow burst outward in a small halo, and she saw a Hel portal’s direction not with sight, but with certainty .
The column of darkness snapped toward the seam.
Belphegor’s hunger surged outward, and the banquet responded like a trained dog. Dishes rose from the tables, plates spinning, silverware clattering in a hungry storm. Aurora caught glimpses of dishes she couldn’t name, food that seemed grown from spices rather than cooked from ingredients .
A mouth of steam opened above the nearest table, and a thread of sweetness lanced toward Aurora’s face.
Her nostrils flared. Sugar and rot. Her stomach twisted.
Aurora swung the Fae-forged Blade.
The moonglass edge cut through the thread of steam like slicing cloth. Cold ran up her arm. For a breath, the world held its shape again, as if she’d stabbed the realm’s throat.
The cut steam tried to rejoin itself, curling back with offended hunger.
Nyx shoved their shadow-body into the seam and shoved hard enough that the distortion screamed without sound. Their violet eyes flared. “Get ready.”
Isolde raised her arms, as if conducting an orchestra that played only knives . “Not towards the feast. Towards the fold.”
Aurora moved. She didn’t run. Running made you look like you wanted to escape. Instead, she cut through the spinning dishes, stepping between clattering plates that missed her by inches, as if the realm struggled to calculate her appetite.
Her blade remained cold. Its moonsilver glow picked out details: veins in the ground that pulsed like hidden throats; fruit in the column’s crown that dripped syrup too slowly ; the air thick with invisible glitter, as though hunger left residue.
She reached the seam as it widened under Nyx’s pressure.
The veil membrane was thin enough that Aurora could feel it through the air, like heat haze with teeth.
Belphegor’s column surged forward, stretching. Its darkness spread across the courtyard, trying to cover the seam and smother Nyx’s opening. The smell of burnt dessert thickened until Aurora’s eyes watered.
Isolde’s voice snapped like a command wrapped in a riddle. “If it offers you a bite, give it a blade.”
Aurora stepped through.
The seam wasn’t a doorway. It was a decision. One moment her feet stood in amber grass, the next she floated in a pocket of space that belonged to no realm yet.
Sound dimmed. Taste dimmed too, like someone had rinsed her mouth.
In that fold between, she saw—briefly—something like a river made of shadow running under glass. Rifts dotted the surface. The Heartstone Pendant pulsed in time with those rifts, as if counting them .
Nyx yanked free from the membrane with a violence Aurora felt in her bones. Their shadow outline snapped back into form, violet eyes flaring bright enough to stain the fold.
Belphegor followed.
The darkness column broke through after them, tearing the fold’s skin. Amber light smeared across the seam in chaotic streaks. The courtyard’s hunger poured into the space between, thickening it into something Aurora couldn’t breathe.
Isolde grabbed Aurora’s wrist.
Her touch made Aurora’s scar flare, the crescent on her left wrist warming with pain. Isolde’s gaze flicked there, almost sharp enough to count as a warning.
Aurora wrenched free and drove her blade into the membrane.
Moonsilver bit.
The blade cut through a ward Aurora hadn’t seen, and cold light erupted around the seam. The darkness column recoiled with a sound like a feast suddenly deprived of flavour. Plates from the courtyard clattered in the fold, silver ringing like bells in a tomb.
Nyx hissed, whisper snapping into something like language . “Now!”
Aurora shoved the Heartstone Pendant against the seam.
Crimson warmth met shimmer. The rift points flared, tiny stars brightening into a pattern. A Hel portal’s direction clarified, not as a place but as a hungry path .
For an instant, Aurora saw Prince Belphegor’s court reflected in the membrane, not as a scene but as a sensation . Excess. Silence. A mouth waiting.
Then the membrane decided.
It split.
Hel’s air rushed in, thick and metallic, and the seam yawned wider than Aurora could brace for.
Isolde’s hand shot out, her fingers closing around Nyx’s sleeve as if she could anchor them through choice. “Don’t linger,” she said, her riddle cracking into plain urgency .
Aurora felt the pull hit like gravity shifted.
The courtyard behind them roared with clattering dishes and hungry breath. The darkness column lunged again, stretching fingers of shadow toward Aurora’s pendant as if the Heartstone belonged to it by right.
Aurora kicked forward into the split.
The blade in her hand felt suddenly heavier, as though it weighed more than metal now, as though it weighed consequences.
She cleared the threshold, and the seam behind them slammed shut with a snap that felt like a judge’s gavel .
The fold vanished.
Only the Hel portal’s pull remained, dragging them deeper into Dymas, into Prince Belphegor’s warm amber feast.
And somewhere ahead, the first door of the court opened, not for them to enter, but for something else to chase .