AI “Say the words,” Nyx murmured, the whisper slipping between the stones like breath through a keyhole.
Aurora Carter kept walking anyway. Her delivery satchel bounced against her hip, absurdly ordinary against the impossibility ahead. The Heartstone Pendant burned under her collarbone, faint warmth pulsing in time with a pressure she couldn’t place, as if the air itself held a heartbeat.
The grove’s standing stones rose in a broken ring before them, ancient oaks petrified into sentry-things. Beyond, the world looked… close, but wrong. Colour sat too thick on the edges. Sound did not travel like it should.
Nyx flowed along the ground, half-formed, a tall smear of moving dark that refused to commit to any single shape. They drifted around Aurora’s shoulders as if to check her breathing.
Isolde Varga walked ahead without footprints, her long silver hair unspooling as though gravity had decided to be polite. She did not look back when she spoke, only turned her face enough that Aurora caught the pale lavender glint of her eyes.
“Two steps. One lie,” Isolde said, her voice threaded with riddle-cold calm. “Then the gate remembers you.”
Aurora’s throat tightened. “I didn’t bring a lie.”
Isolde’s smile cut small and sharp. “You brought a question.”
The air shivered. Aurora felt it in her teeth.
Behind her, a man cleared his throat, one of the Wardens’ contracted helbound scouts who had crept into their orbit with the kind of caution that meant he’d lived long enough to see people die without warning. He wore a soot-dark coat with warding sigils stitched into the seams. His name was Jonah. She couldn’t help noticing he kept one hand hovering near the blade at his belt, as if expecting a fight to bloom out of the soil .
“We should move faster,” Jonah said. “The Veil—”
Nyx’s whisper cut across him. “It watches. It always watches.”
Aurora lifted her hand. The Heartstone’s crimson light throbbed , and for a fraction of a second she saw distortion in the air, a faint shimmer like heat above asphalt, except it did not belong to any surface. It belonged to the space between things. The Veil. The Barrier. The Boundary. All the names in the codex crowded her mind, but she didn’t need them. Her skin understood.
“We’re already through,” Aurora said, though she hadn’t decided it. She felt the wrongness settle onto her shoulders like a cloak.
Nyx slipped closer, and Aurora caught the faint scent of wet earth and old smoke where shadows touched stone. “Through,” they agreed, as if arguing with her. “Not wholly.”
They took the first two steps, boots crossing invisible lines of boundary, and the grove accepted them with a sound like a page turning in an unseen book.
Isolde raised her palm. The silver blade of moonsilver flashed at her side—Aurora’s mind supplied the memory automatically, because she carried the Fae-Forged Blade now, cold to the touch inside her coat. Isolde hadn’t gifted it back when Aurora met her in Richmond Park’s hidden clearing, but the blade’s absence had been a lie, too. It had waited in her possession like a promise.
Isolde spoke again, her words riddle-shaped and unapologetic. “A door does not open. It decides.”
The standing stones shuddered, not moving so much as reinterpreting themselves. Their bark-surface rippled, and the grooves between roots filled with light that looked like sap but shone with violet undertones. Wildflowers bloomed in a hurry, petals unfurling midair as though time in here had a different appetite. Aurora heard a soft crack, the sound of something ancient choosing to break.
Jonah swore under his breath. “That isn’t—”
“It’s yes,” Nyx whispered. “It’s all yes. The grove only lies with its mouth shut.”
Aurora didn’t like the way the words fitted too neatly over her fear. She kept moving, because stopping gave the unease space to breed.
The clearing opened around them. An amber sky hung too low and too warm, colours layered like varnish. But Aurora refused to say that the sky looked wrong; she watched the way shadows stretched. Her own shadow did not match her step. It lagged, then snapped into place a breath later, as if the ground had to remember her shape.
The oak standing stones marked a boundary, and beyond them the grove became a corridor of living things. Wildflowers grew in clusters, year-round blooms of unfamiliar species—some with petals like curled ribbons, others with translucent leaves that caught the faint glow of the Veil-distortion in the air. Vines braided between trees, and Aurora felt the pull of them, a gentle tug toward deeper places.
The pull wasn’t physical. It lived in her sense of attention, nudging her thoughts like fingers guiding a blade.
Isolde walked like she owned the pocket between worlds. When she paused, Aurora realised she listened to the grove. Isolde’s head tilted, her silver hair sliding across her shoulder without weight .
“What do you hear?” Aurora asked, keeping her voice low. She didn’t trust the air not to carry sound to something that wanted it.
Isolde’s gaze flicked to Aurora’s wrist, to the small crescent scar there. For a heartbeat, the pale lavender of her eyes deepened, and Aurora felt a pressure behind her eyes like the start of a headache.
“Footsteps that do not belong,” Isolde said, and her tone made the sentence feel like a verdict.
Jonah tensed. His hand dropped to his blade. “We’re not alone.”
Nyx drifted above the ground, shadow-solid now, their violet eyes dimming to a soft glow as they focused. “Not alone,” they agreed. “Never alone.”
The grove answered with sound.
A clicking rose through the leaves, sharp as insect legs, quick as teeth. Aurora turned, expecting some small creature scampering between branches. Instead she saw nothing. The clicking came from everywhere, and the absence of sight made it worse, because her mind tried to fill the blanks and chose the worst possible shapes.
“Focus,” Aurora said, and it wasn’t courage, not the usual kind. It was control. The cool-headed part of her that had taken her through law lectures and abuse and deliveries where hands grabbed and didn’t let go. The part that measured danger by patterns.
She reached into her coat and wrapped her fingers around the Fae-Forged Blade. It was cold enough to bite her skin through fabric. When she pulled it free, moonsilver caught the grove’s strange light and threw it back in leaf-shaped flashes. The blade’s edge looked too clean. Too awake.
Jonah took one step closer, his face pale. “You brought that for—”
“For wards,” Aurora said. “Against things that hide behind cleverness.”
Nyx made a soft sound that might have been laughter. “The blade doesn’t like cleverness. It likes honesty, blood, and broken rules.”
Isolde did not respond. She moved again, gliding between two trees that looked like twins until Aurora noticed the difference: one trunk wore an old scar of bark peeled back like a grin, the other had healed over, smooth and unbothered. The choice of path in here felt like being offered a lie .
Aurora followed Isolde’s lead, because the Half-Fae seer spoke in riddles, but her body knew the answers. They walked deeper, and the grove tightened.
Sounds muffled. The air grew denser with scent. Sweetness slipped through it, but it wasn’t a pleasant perfume. It smelled like bruised fruit and rich soil, like something decaying slowly beneath fresh earth. Aurora’s tongue tasted copper without any blood present.
Then came the first discovery that felt like wonder .
A stream cut through the clearing ahead, but it didn’t reflect the world. Instead, the water held moving images, shallow and bright. Aurora leaned closer, blade angled down, watching.
In the stream, she saw scenes that were almost hers. A flat with a door chain. A bar stairwell. Her delivery satchel falling from her hand as she ran. A face she didn’t recognise watching from the wrong angle. The images flickered as if the water struggled to choose the truth.
Nyx’s violet eyes sharpened. “A mirror-pool,” they whispered. “Not for you. For what you carry.”
Aurora swallowed. Her Heartstone Pendant pulsed , warm against her skin. The crimson glow reflected in the water, and for a blink the stream showed a different world entirely. Vineyards under warm amber skies. A feast table stacked with glistening dishes. A crown-like silhouette at the head of it, half-shadowed, half-lit.
Gluttony. Hel. Dymas.
Aurora jerked back. The copper taste surged. She gripped the blade harder. “This isn’t—”
“Not yet,” Isolde said, and that made Aurora’s stomach drop, because the seer sounded pleased, as if forecasting a storm thrilled her more than it frightened her . “But you have a tether.”
Jonah stared at the water. “A portal… here?”
Isolde’s smile thinned. “A pulse . Not a door.”
Nyx drifted in a slow circle, their shadow shifting, becoming more solid at the edges. “The Heartstone warms when it nears a Hel portal,” they murmured. “So something else warms with it.”
Aurora touched the pendant through her shirt, felt the faint inner glow. The warmth had begun when they stepped between the stones. Now it intensified, blooming like a bruise under skin.
The grove shifted around them, subtle at first. The trees leaned, not physically, but in Aurora’s perception, as though the air carried the weight of their attention and bent around it. The wildflowers seemed to close their petals, not dying, just withdrawing.
The clicking returned, closer now. It threaded through their breathing. Aurora heard it in Jonah’s pulse and Nyx’s whispering silence .
Then, without warning, the stream’s reflection snapped into a single image and stayed.
A Helbound face stared up at Aurora from the water. Not quite human. Too smooth, too hungry in the eyes. It wore the suggestion of a smile, the kind that never reached anything kind. Its mouth opened, and the sound it made came without sound, like a word pressing into her skull.
Aurora lifted the moonsilver blade. Cold metal bit her palm as she aimed down at the water.
The image rippled, tried to distort. Isolde sucked in a breath, sharp enough to taste. “No,” she said, and the word landed like a slap . “Not the pool.”
Jonah’s hand moved to stop her, but Aurora stepped in before he touched her. The water’s surface didn’t ripple around her boots. It held her reflection and replaced it with another.
Aurora saw herself in blackened light, eyes glowing violet. She saw shadow pouring from her mouth like smoke. She saw a feast table and a crown and her hands covered in crimson sauce.
Her Heartstone pulsed harder, warm enough to ache.
Aurora forced herself to blink away the image. She pulled back, breath ragged. “It’s bait.”
Nyx’s voice slid closer to her ear. “Of course it is. Dymas feeds on appetite. Fear is a kind of appetite.”
Isolde knelt by the stream. When her hands hovered above the water, Aurora expected ripples. Instead, the images in the pool slowed, as if the water listened.
The seer spoke in riddles, each word clean and cruel. “A glutton chews the future, a seer chews the present. Choose which you feed.”
Jonah stared at Isolde’s silver hair, at the way it draped around her face without moving. “What are we supposed to do?”
Isolde’s eyes shifted to Aurora, pale lavender bright. “Keep walking,” she said. “Don’t look for the feast. Follow the hunger’s direction.”
Aurora wanted to ask what hunger’s direction meant, but the grove answered before she could.
A gap opened between two trees a dozen paces ahead. Not a door. A tear in the air, faint shimmering distortion visible only to supernatural sight. The Veil—weakening and strengthening here in ways that felt personal. It shimmered with a warm amber tint, like bruised light.
The Heartstone Pendant pulsed until Aurora’s chest tightened. The pendant’s glow intensified, crimson deepening to something almost red enough to hurt.
Nyx drifted into place beside her, solid silhouette sharpening. “There,” they whispered. “A Hel pulse . Not Belphegor’s court itself. A point where it breathes.”
The clicking stopped.
Silence rushed in like a held knife.
Aurora’s blade felt heavier now, as if it sensed the weight of wards beyond the air-tear. The moonsilver edge shimmered under the false light, and the cold made her fingers numb enough to feel numbness.
Jonah’s voice came out tight. “If we step through—”
Isolde stood so smoothly Aurora barely saw her rise. “Then you meet what wants you,” she said. “And you will not like what wants you, because what wants you does not know moderation.”
Aurora took one step toward the shimmering distortion and watched the way it bent around her. The air tear didn’t behave like glass. It behaved like water held in a frame. It wavered , eager.
Nyx shifted, their shadow sliding over Aurora’s boots and climbing up her legs like ink looking for a mouth to fill. Their violet eyes flared. “We came to see,” Nyx whispered, “not to bargain.”
Aurora drew in a breath that tasted of copper and bruised fruit. She imagined the Heartstone Pendant against an abyss and wondered how many deals the world had already made with her without her consent.
She lifted the pendant.
The pulse aligned with the Veil’s shimmer. Crimson warmth spread through her hand, and for a heartbeat she saw the Hel site again, vineyards and orchards arranged like a theatre set, feast tables gleaming in anticipation . Prince Belphegor’s domain waited behind a boundary that could be breathed through.
Then the gap opened wider.
A tendril of warm amber light reached out, curling toward her throat like a lover’s hand that had learned love from knives. Jonah grabbed her shoulder, his grip bruising through fabric. “Don’t,” he barked, his eyes wide . “That’s Hel’s invitation. It will take more than you give.”
Aurora’s muscles locked. The tendril brushed her pendant, and the Heartstone’s glow flared so hard her vision stung. The grove’s wildflowers rustled, suddenly loud, petals clacking like teeth.
Isolde’s voice cut through the flare, quiet but absolute. “Now you run, not forward.”
Aurora moved because Isolde’s command carried a different weight . She pivoted hard, blade out, and Nyx snapped into motion like a dark ribbon pulled taut. But the Hel tendril didn’t withdraw.
It followed.
Amber light spilled across the air-tear and across the space between stones, crawling through the grove’s pocket as if the Veil had become a throat and the hunger had decided to swallow.
Jonah stumbled, his warding sigils flaring a sickly green. “It’s coming through!”
Aurora didn’t answer. She only drove her blade downward into the nearest standing-stone seam, where bark met root, aiming for the place where the boundary felt thinnest.
Moonsilver kissed old wood and sang without sound.
For a breath, the stone flared violet, and the tear in the air shuddered like a skittish animal. Aurora felt the grove resist, as if it had grown angry at being invaded .
Then the clicking started again, fast and frenzied, and something else moved inside the amber shimmer, hidden until now.
A shape pressed forward from the Hel side, too large to fit its own frame. It left a smear of shadow on the air-tear’s edge, like fingers testing a lock.
Isolde backed away, her hands lifting as though she could catch a prophecy before it fell. Nyx whispered one word that sounded like a curse and a prayer at once .
“Belphegor.”