AI Aurora kept her delivery bag slung across her shoulder out of habit, even though she stood in a clearing that didn’t belong to any map she’d ever used. Richmond Park air carried damp earth and pine sap, but under it ran another scent—sweet, metallic, like crushed berries and old coins mixed in a spill.
Nyx dropped into the space beside her, not with footsteps so much as with a change in the light. Their silhouette pooled from a shadow at Aurora’s left boot, stretched upright, and their faint violet eyes tracked the standing stones.
“They look like they were carved out of weather,” Nyx whispered. The voice slid across the grass in a ribbon-thin line. “Oak that learned how to grow sideways.”
Isolde walked ahead of them without footprints. Silver hair moved like it had its own current. She didn’t look back when she spoke.
“The boundary always speaks first,” Isolde said. Her words came in riddle-shapes, clean and bright, with no room for argument. “Step with your whole weight and leave your fear behind you.”
Aurora’s fingers tightened around the silver chain at her throat. The Heartstone Pendant warmed against her collarbone, not hot—just awake. It pulsed once, slow as a heartbeat she hadn’t owned before, and the air around it shimmered .
“I don’t think fear gets left behind,” Aurora said. She kept her gaze on the standing stones. Ancient oaks, pale bark, their roots exposed like ribs. The middle of the circle held nothing but wildflowers, yet the emptiness looked thick, layered.
Nyx leaned forward, their form turning slightly incorporeal. “It does if the place eats it.”
Isolde finally turned her head. Her lavender eyes caught Aurora like a hook catching fabric. She didn’t smile, but her expression softened at the edges.
“Riddle for a knife in your pocket,” Isolde murmured. “When you enter, you carry a door. When you leave, you carry a scar.”
Aurora didn’t ask what that meant. She listened instead to the park’s usual soundtrack—distant traffic, birds, leaves under foot. Then she walked forward and watched those sounds drift away as if someone had pulled a plug.
Grass gave under her sole, but the weight sat wrong. The clearing didn’t feel like it lay on Earth. It felt like it hovered over Earth and wore it as a disguise.
She took another step. The wildflowers around the stones brightened, petals unfurling with a speed that didn’t match the breeze. Their colours looked rinsed and impossible: pinks too clean, yellows too hot, blues that bordered on bruised violet.
Nyx moved beside her, and their shadow didn’t match the light source. The light came from nowhere Aurora could name—yet the shadows stayed obedient to Nyx’s shape.
Isolde gestured toward the circle’s centre. The air over it distorted in a faint shimmer, like a heat mirage that didn’t belong to summer.
Aurora lifted the pendant. The deep crimson gem glowed from within, and the pulse matched a second rhythm under her skin, like her body had remembered a tune it didn’t know she could hear.
“Feel that?” Aurora asked.
Nyx’s glowing eyes fixed on the pendant. “A tear that learned to sing.”
Isolde didn’t answer. She turned her wrist and pointed at the oak nearest Aurora. The bark had grain patterns like veins, and between the ridges tiny threads of pale light moved—too fine to be roots, too deliberate to be cracks.
Aurora reached out. Her fingertips touched bark that should have been rough and dry. It turned cool beneath her skin, then warmer, then cold again, cycling like skin responding to touch.
“You touch the tree,” Nyx said, “and the tree touches back.”
Aurora pulled her hand away before the sensation could sink into her bones. The pendant throbbed again, sharper, as if annoyed by the interruption.
Isolde stepped closer to Aurora and angled her face so Aurora had to meet her eyes. No footprints followed Isolde, but a faint dusting of pollen rose around her ankles as though the air refused to admit she was walking .
“Time in the Grove eats like a cat,” Isolde said. “You don’t hear it chew until you notice your hands shaking.”
“We’re here,” Aurora said. “What happens if we go deeper?”
Isolde’s gaze held Aurora’s. “Deeper is where doors learn to pretend they are walls.”
Nyx circled once, their outline flickering between solid and smoke-like edges. “We don’t have to pretend. I can feel the Veil like a bruise.”
Aurora swallowed. The word Veil carried weight in her mind—something she’d only seen described in fragments from people who spoke too carefully . She’d felt it once, months ago, after she’d delivered a meal to a back room in Camden where the air smelled wrong. The kitchen manager had paid her extra and then wouldn’t look at her again.
Now the shimmer between the standing stones looked like that wrong air made visible .
Aurora took a breath and forced her feet to keep moving. She crossed the line where the stones’ shadows fell, and the moment she did, the park’s sounds snapped—birds cut off mid-song, distant traffic muted to a thin hiss like someone whispering through cloth.
In place of ordinary silence came a chorus of small noises: petals clicking as they opened; the faint drip of water from somewhere Aurora couldn’t see; a dry rustle like parchment being turned by invisible fingers.
Her delivery bag suddenly felt too heavy. The weight tugged at her shoulder as if the Grove wanted to count her possessions.
Nyx drifted higher, their feet barely touching grass. “It doesn’t like you carrying pockets of the mortal plane,” they said.
Aurora shifted the bag’s strap on her shoulder. “Then it can deal with it.”
She walked toward the wildflowers thickening near the inner edge. The air smelled stronger now—sweet, floral, and under it something darker, like fruit left too long in heat. Her stomach tightened.
“Ain’t that the taste of a hunger that doesn’t have a body?” Nyx asked.
Aurora’s eyes tracked a path through the flowers. It didn’t exist a second ago. The grass parted in a thin line as if guided by an invisible hand, revealing stones beneath. Not cobbles—flat slabs, etched with symbols that didn’t hold still when she tried to read them.
The pendant warmed until Aurora felt it against her collarbone like a live ember. It pulsed and sent a ripple through her chest, a pressure that made her ears ring.
Isolde walked behind them, still unhurried, still without footprints. “You carry the Heartstone. That means your footsteps open questions.”
Aurora crouched and pressed her palm flat against one etched slab. The stone held a cold that moved like liquid. Symbols under her hand shifted, aligning with the lines of her palm veins as if the slab recognized her biology.
Then the cold surged upward. Aurora jerked her hand back and stared at her fingers.
The crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist—old, pale—itched. Not the skin itself, but the memory of the injury . A childhood accident rose in her mind: glass under a sink, her father’s voice rushing, her mother’s hands steadying her wrist. The scar pulsed in time with the pendant.
Nyx leaned close, their face a blur of shadow and light. “It wants to align you to a wound in the world.”
Aurora stood. Her head spun for a second and then steadied, like the Grove had tested her balance and decided she could keep standing.
Isolde’s voice came from behind her, closer than Aurora expected. “In the Grove, you will find what you used to lose.”
“That sounds like prophecy,” Aurora said, “and you told me you can’t lie.”
Isolde’s reply came swift, like a blade drawn. “I can’t lie. I can mislead. People think they know the direction of a riddle. The riddle enjoys correcting them.”
Nyx let out a sound that might have been a laugh if laughter had teeth. “She’s fun when she’s not being careful.”
Aurora followed the path that had formed beneath the flowers. The slabs underfoot didn’t feel like stone now. They felt like old wood beneath polished varnish—springy, resilient. Each step created a soft resonance that traveled up her legs.
Soon the path narrowed into an archway made of interwoven roots. It wasn’t an actual door. No hinges. No frame. The roots simply wrapped around empty air, and the air shimmered through them in threads.
When Aurora stepped under the arch, the shimmer thickened into something she could look through. Beyond it, the world changed.
The Grove’s colours drained like paint pulled into water. A warm amber glow flooded the space beyond, rich and thick. A sky rose that didn’t belong to any latitude Aurora had ever stood under. Clouds sat low, like overripe fruit heavy with sweetness. Underfoot, orchards spread out in orderly rows, vines trained along trellises that glittered faintly as dew formed without falling.
Aurora’s breath caught. Wonder hit first, hard enough to make her shoulders loosen.
Then unease followed, slower and sharper. She could smell wine and baked sugar even though she didn’t see a kitchen. The air carried the faint roar of a crowd, but she couldn’t locate a source.
Nyx stepped under the roots and immediately turned more solid, their violet eyes brighter. “That’s not Earth-honey,” they said. “That’s Hel-candy.”
Aurora stared at a line of statues half-hidden in orchard trees. The statues weren’t stone. They looked like dark wax, glossy, each one shaped like a person with their mouth open.
The mouths weren’t frozen in horror. They looked… hungry. Like someone had pressed a desire into clay and left it to dry.
Isolde approached the arch’s edge and stopped, as if the Grove itself held her back. “You didn’t ask for this part,” she said. Her voice stayed calm, but the air around her seemed cooler, more distant.
Aurora turned toward her. “We asked for answers.”
Isolde’s eyes flicked to the Heartstone pendant at Aurora’s throat. “Answers always arrive wearing someone else’s face.”
Aurora took a step into the amber world. The grass beneath her shoes transformed into something softer. Not moss. Not earth. It felt like velvet spread over roots .
As she moved deeper, the warm amber sky seemed to lower. The light warmed her skin, but it didn’t feel kind. It felt like a hand holding a hot drink too long.
Nyx walked beside her, their shadow stretching across orchard rows. Their whisper threaded through the sounds of feasting Aurora hadn’t yet seen.
“You hear that?” Nyx asked.
The roar grew clearer with each pace. It wasn’t loud in volume. It hit with rhythm—cheers and laughter chopped into pulses. Bells clinked somewhere distant, and the bells came with the faint smell of smoke.
Aurora kept her eyes forward and forced her legs to keep moving. She didn’t want to turn back. The archway behind them looked too small now, like a doorway to a memory.
They walked between vineyards where grape clusters hung like dark jewels. Leaves shimmered with an oily sheen. Every vine held fruit at different ripeness stages, as if time and taste had disagreed and negotiated into abundance.
A carriage road curved through the orchard. Aurora spotted its tracks carved into the velvet earth. The ruts glimmered with liquid that didn’t drip.
Nyx crouched and ran a finger through it. Their hand didn’t smear like liquid should. Instead, the liquid clung in thin lines, then sank away, leaving a faint violet stain on their fingertip.
“It likes me,” Nyx said, and their voice tightened around the last word.
Aurora stepped past them, heart hammering. The Heartstone pendant burned now. Warmth licked Aurora’s collarbone like fire pressed through fabric.
She found the first sign of a portal at the edge of a small clearing. A pool sat on the velvet ground, no bigger than a dinner table. Its surface didn’t reflect her face. It reflected something else—an interior space lit by harsh, white light.
Aurora leaned closer. The pool’s surface rippled, and the ripples formed shapes: a doorway, a hallway, a ceiling with pipes. Then the shapes changed again, swallowing themselves, becoming darker.
A gust of cold rushed across Aurora’s cheeks. Hel and Earth fought in the same breath.
Nyx stood up slowly . “You’re holding a key,” they said, “and it wants to be used.”
Isolde stepped up to the pool’s edge. The roots arch behind her stretched taut, as if the Grove protested her crossing. Still she didn’t enter the clearing. She stood just outside, hands at her sides.
“What is this place?” Aurora asked.
Isolde’s eyes stayed on the pool. “A stomach with a throne.”
Aurora tried to breathe. The smell of sweetness fought the cold, and her stomach rolled.
“Dymas,” Nyx supplied, voice low .
Aurora knew the name from half-remembered lore scribbled in the margins of book spines she’d borrowed and never returned. Gluttony. A realm of excess. A place with grand feasts and contracts with helbound souls.
She stared at the pool’s surface again. The interior light behind it flickered . She saw a table in that reflection—long and crowded with plates. She didn’t see hands reaching, but she heard laughter like it didn’t need bodies.
A new sound joined the roar. Hooves, then wheels. Something approached on the curved road.
Aurora’s muscles tightened. She wanted to turn, to check the archway, to confirm Isolde hadn’t already slid them into the wrong kind of danger.
Nyx moved closer to her shoulder, more shadow than person. “Don’t bolt,” they whispered. “It’ll chase you with appetite.”
Aurora held the pendant against her chest. The gem pulsed once, bright crimson flashing like an eye opening. A faint shimmer formed above the pool, matching the Veil distortion she’d seen in other places.
The shimmer stretched into an oval. Warm amber light spilled through, but the oval’s edges carried a faint crackle, as if lightning tried to turn itself into lace.
The approaching sound grew louder—wheels grinding, voices cheering as though someone had announced a winner in a competition.
Vine-covered trellises trembled . Grapes shook on their stems like maracas. Aurora tasted something on her tongue: salt and caramel. Hunger made physical.
Isolde’s voice slid through the air without stepping closer. “Do you feel it now?” she asked. “The Veil holds. But something on the other side wants to pull.”
Aurora watched the shimmering oval widen. A shadow crossed within it, tall and indistinct. The shadow didn’t move like a person. It moved like a thought deciding to become a body.
Nyx’s faint violet eyes flared. “Prince Belphegor’s court,” they murmured. “They entertain before they feast.”
Aurora swallowed down the taste of sweetness turning sour in her throat. She forced her gaze to the oval, not the orchard behind her, not the arch back into safer air.
The wheels drew near enough that Aurora could hear the clatter of utensils. Plates tapped. A knife scraped stone with a sound like laughter strangled into metal.
A cart emerged around the bend, lanterns swinging in warm light. On the cart sat a huge domed dish covered with a cloth. Servants stood around it, their forms half-lost in amber glow. Aurora couldn’t tell if they were human, helbound, or something that wore human outlines like costumes.
And yet Aurora felt the eyes on her from a distance. Not focused on her face—focused on her pendant.
The Heartstone pulsed harder. It didn’t ask permission. It warmed, brightened, and dragged Aurora’s attention like a tide.
Aurora raised her chin, refusing to flinch away. “If this place wants me,” she said, voice steady, “it can learn my name.”
The roaring crowd sound sharpened, and the cart attendants paused mid-roll. The amber lantern light brightened on their faces—then dulled, as if something had swallowed the light between one heartbeat and the next.
Isolde’s voice cut in, quiet but urgent enough to make the air snap. “Rory Carter,” she said, and Aurora felt the use of her full name like a chain being clipped onto her wrist.
Aurora’s fingers tightened around the pendant chain. “Don’t.”
Isolde didn’t move closer. Her expression stayed unreadable , but her eyes held urgency now, a pattern of worry she tried to dress in riddles.
“Move when you see the cloth lift,” Isolde said. “Don’t move when you hear the cheer.”
Nyx shifted beside Aurora, their silhouette rippling, shadow sliding across Aurora’s boots. “That rule won’t protect you,” they whispered. “But it might buy you a second.”
The servants on the cart lifted their hands. The cloth over the domed dish loosened, edges pulling upward as if tugged by a current Aurora couldn’t feel yet.
The roar from beyond the orchard swelled into a grin of sound. Aurora’s pendant blazed at her throat, red light reflecting on the grapes, on the trellis leaves, on the waxy statues with mouths open like hunger carved into art.
Aurora stared at the cloth’s rising edge and waited for what would be revealed—warm amber light spilling through the gap, thick and sweet, while the Veil shimmer above the pool tightened like a throat preparing to swallow.