AI The air above the Richmond Park path shimmered like heat over tarmac, except the heat didn’t come from anywhere Aurora Carter could point at. It crawled along the edge of the standing stones in thin, faint distortions—like the world had been stitched poorly and somebody had tugged the seam.
She kept her bright blue eyes fixed on the boundary. The silver chain at her throat felt heavier than it should, as if the Heartstone Pendant refused to be only jewellery. The deep crimson gem sat under her collarbone with a pulse she could feel in her teeth.
Nyx moved beside her, a humanoid smear of shadow that still managed to look tall. Their violet eyes glimmered where light should’ve refused to land.
Isolde Varga walked ahead of them as if the ground had no weight . Her silver hair trailed through the air without stirring the grass. No footprints marked her path, and when Aurora shifted her stance to follow, the hem of her delivery jacket didn’t snag on brambles or roots. It simply slid through them.
Aurora lifted her left wrist, the crescent-shaped scar catching the dim daylight. It tingled in time with the pendant’s warmth .
“Tell me it’s meant to look like that,” Aurora said.
Isolde didn’t turn. Her voice arrived in pieces, like riddles dropped into water.
“The Barrier hates the impatient. It opens when hunger meets hunger.”
Aurora glanced at Nyx. “You’ve dragged me through stranger stuff than a metaphor.”
Nyx’s whisper threaded through the gap between words, carried on a wind that didn’t touch Aurora’s skin. “Not a metaphor.”
The shimmering distortion thickened as they approached. For a moment, Aurora saw the distortion as a thin sheet pulled tight—then it folded. The world inside it looked amber, thick as honey, and the sound came a second later: low, distant laughter layered under a chime that rang like cutlery on glass.
Aurora’s stomach tightened. Not fear. Anticipation with teeth.
Nyx slipped a hand into the shadow at the edge of the standing stones. Their fingers emerged gripping nothing, yet the shimmer responded, widening like a throat.
“Doorway’s thin,” Nyx murmured. “Watch where you step. It likes to take pieces.”
Isolde finally looked back, pale lavender eyes bright enough to cut through fog. “It takes what you offer.”
Aurora swallowed. The pendant pulsed again, warm against her skin, then cooled as if it had decided to stop asking and start doing.
She stepped forward.
The Veil gave like cloth. Aurora’s vision blurred, then snapped into focus on a sky that looked wrong for any sky she’d seen. Warm amber spilled everywhere, lit from within clouds that hung like bruised fruit. The air smelled of roasted spices and wet stone, sweet and sharp at the same time.
She stood on ground that felt packed and springy, like soil that remembered feet made of something other than bone.
Behind her, the standing stones had disappeared. There wasn’t an archway, no frame. Only a faint distortion in the air, now too delicate to reach without pressing her palm into it.
Nyx exhaled—if shadow could exhale. Their silhouette wavered, and the amber light clung to the edges of them like soot.
Isolde didn’t take in the landscape with awe. She tilted her head, listening to the place as if it spoke directly to her bones.
Aurora looked around.
Vineyards sprawled across gentle slopes, lines of grapevines stretching toward the horizon like scripted prayers. Orchards followed—apple trees heavy with fruit that looked too glossy, citrus hanging beside peaches in impossible harmony. Between them, gardens cut in geometric patterns: herb beds shaped into spirals and crescents, each plant somehow vivid enough to seem painted.
And everywhere—tables. Tables and benches. Not set for meals like any sane person would set them. These places looked staged for a feast that had already started somewhere else and never finished.
A distant burst of music rolled across the amber sky. Not a band. Something mechanical and rhythmic , like a clockwork choir. Under it, conversation surged and fell, laughter chewing itself into smaller laughs.
Aurora’s fingers tightened on the silver chain. “So this is Hel.”
Isolde’s smile came slow, sharp at the edges. “Dymas.”
Nyx turned their face toward the vines and let the whisper of their voice ride the air. “Gluttony. Not just eating. Taking. Swapping pleasure for consequence.”
Aurora walked forward because standing still made the pulsing in the pendant feel too loud. The ground under her boots gave way with a soft resistance, then held again. She looked down and saw a thin layer of something like dried sugar crusted over the soil.
She scraped it with her boot toe. The crust flaked away, and beneath it, damp earth smelled like yeast and citrus .
“I don’t like the way it feels,” Aurora said.
Isolde’s voice threaded back. “It will taste you back.”
Before Aurora could ask what that meant, a figure appeared between the grape rows, as if it had stepped out of the space her eyes hadn’t claimed.
A man—or what her mind insisted was a man—staggered forward on limbs that looked too long and too clean. His skin carried a faint sheen, like oil rubbed into parchment. His mouth was smeared with something dark that might have been sauce or blood.
He wore a chef’s coat stitched from black velvet . A badge pinned to his lapel gleamed with a crest Aurora couldn’t read. He held a ladle in one hand and a silver platter in the other.
His eyes didn’t glow like Nyx’s. They reflected amber, and that made them look like lamps.
He smiled wide, and the smile didn’t match the tremor in his fingers. The platter tipped, and fruit rolled off it in slow motion—each slice shining as if it held its own light.
“Visitors,” he called. His voice carried like theatre. “You’ve come hungry.”
Aurora leaned back slightly . The pendant warmed again, then cooled as if it didn’t care for the man’s attention.
“We came to get answers,” Aurora said.
The chef’s smile tightened. “Answers are a seasoning. You’ll need it.”
Nyx drifted forward a half step, their shadow stretching longer across the ground. “We don’t barter with strangers in velvet .”
The chef’s gaze flicked to Nyx. The amber reflection in his eyes pulsed .
“You’re not flesh,” he said, and the way he said it made it a compliment and a threat.
Isolde approached the chef with calm precision. No footsteps . No visible disturbance in the air. Her presence tightened the moment around her.
“The portal brought them,” Isolde said. “The one who warned them gave them warmth .”
Aurora’s pendant answered by pulsing again, a deep crimson beat that matched her heartbeat. The warmth climbed up her throat like a hand.
The chef’s attention snapped to her. His ladle lifted as if he meant to point but forgot how arms worked.
“Heartstone,” he breathed, and the name came out like a curse . “So it found you.”
Aurora kept her stance firm. “You know it.”
The chef’s smile frayed. “Everyone who’s hungry knows the heart. Everyone who’s greedy knows the stone.”
Nyx’s whisper slipped through Aurora’s hearing, quiet but sharp. “He wants it.”
Aurora stared at the chef. She didn’t reach for her pendant. Instead, she watched his coat sleeve. It shimmered at the edge, as if the fabric had been made from steam and hunger.
“Where’s Prince Belphegor?” Aurora asked.
At the sound of the word Prince, the chef blinked too slowly . He turned his head toward the far distance, toward a cluster of structures that rose between the vines. Towers arched like carved sugar. Bridges crossed gaps like ribbons.
His smile returned, wider than before.
“Past the Orchard of Compliments,” he said. “Through the Hall of Second Helpings. Then you’ll smell the truth.”
Isolde’s voice cut in, still riddled. “Second helpings mean twice the cost.”
The chef’s brows rose. “Seer. You always spoil the appetite.”
Isolde didn’t flinch. “Appetite spoils itself.”
The chef licked his lips. “Go on, then. Enjoy the invitation.”
He turned, and his body moved too smoothly for someone who’d looked unstable. As he walked between vines, the ground under him softened, and he left a trail that looked like pressed sugar patterns . The patterns stayed behind, crisp-edged, until Aurora looked away. Then they crumbled into faint dust.
Nyx started walking as soon as the chef disappeared from sight. Aurora fell in beside Isolde and followed.
The further they went, the more the landscape changed without admitting it. The vines grew thicker, and their leaves glittered. The air carried more than spice—an underlying scent of warm dough and fruit fermenting into something darker.
Aurora’s ears caught sounds that weren’t all human. A laugh too high. A sigh too low. The soft wet smack of bites happening somewhere behind a wall she couldn’t see. She turned her head once and saw a stone archway standing in the middle of an orchard, though it hadn’t been there earlier.
The archway looked like it had been carved from crystallised honey.
Inside it, a corridor ran deeper into amber light. Its floor wasn’t stone. It was something like tiled caramel, glossy and sticky.
Isolde paused. Her gaze slid along the arch as if she read lines in the air. “The hungry part of the Veil loosens here.”
Nyx’s silhouette warped at the edge and then hardened again. “It’s closer to the rules of Hel.”
Aurora stepped under the arch anyway. Warmth rolled over her skin like breath. Her boots stuck for a second and then released, leaving dark smears like she’d walked through syrup. The pendant warmed hard enough to ache.
She looked down at her feet. The smears weren’t syrup.
They were tiny letters, faint and tight, pressed into the caramel tiles. Each mark resembled a bite-sized version of the same script: a looping curl that looked like the shape of her scar’s curve .
Aurora lifted her left wrist again. The scar tingled. The letters under her boots shifted as if they watched her move.
“That’s not normal,” Aurora said.
Isolde drifted closer, her eyes fixed on the script. “Dymas binds consumption to memory.”
Nyx moved their hand toward the floor but stopped short, shadow trembling. “It reads you.”
Aurora tried to step carefully , placing each foot where the caramel tile looked least disturbed. The pendant pulsed in response to her caution, as if it disagreed with her strategy.
Halfway down the corridor, the amber light flickered . Something brushed her mind, not a voice exactly—more like a sensation of being offered a plate before she realised she was starving.
Her throat tightened. She forced her focus to the corridor walls. They weren’t smooth; they held shallow relief carvings of food. Loaves with faces. Grapes arranged like teeth. A roasted pig shaped like an open hand.
Each carving seemed to steam at the edges. The steam didn’t rise. It sat in place, hovering at the wall like it waited for someone to take it.
Music grew louder. The clockwork choir turned into a clatter of plates and the rhythmic thump of heavy doors swinging open.
Aurora reached the end of the corridor and stopped.
A hall spread out ahead, vast and intimate at once, like the inside of a giant stomach . Columns rose like twisted pillars of sugar glass. Between them hung lanterns made from fruit. Their skins glowed amber, and droplets of light slid down their sides in slow, liquid trails.
Tables filled the space in layered terraces. People—or helbound souls, Aurora realised with a sharp coldness—sat and stood and leaned over feasts. Their movements didn’t follow normal hunger. They consumed in frantic cycles: take, devour, recoil, then return for a second round without waiting for food to disappear.
Some looked Earthborn, with familiar clothing styles and faces that held too much recognition. Others wore robes like stage costumes stitched with edible patterns. Every soul left stains on the floor, and those stains rose into faint steam that curled toward the ceiling.
Aurora’s pendant pulsed like a heart trying to break free.
Nyx drifted toward a nearby side table where carved bread sat in the shape of lilies. They hovered a hand over it. The bread’s surface rippled, as if it already knew Nyx’s hunger.
Nyx didn’t touch. “This place does tricks.”
Aurora forced herself to breathe. The air tasted of cinnamon and metal. Her tongue felt too awake.
Isolde stepped onto a terrace and looked around like she planned to memorise every crack. “Watch their eyes. They look through their mouths.”
Aurora scanned the nearest crowd. A woman in an apron tore at a roasted chicken, grinning with her jaw stretched too wide. Her eyes rolled back toward nothing. A man beside her chewed with slow reverence, yet his gaze fixed on the gap between his hands as if he watched something float there.
Aurora’s skin prickled. She didn’t know how to describe it without sounding mad. The hall felt like it listened .
A set of doors at the far end—taller than any hall entrance in London—opened with a sigh.
Amber light poured out, but not from lamps. It rose from the floor as if the building exhaled.
A figure stepped forward. He moved like a banquet deciding to stand up. His body carried the shape of a prince and the silhouette of a chef and the posture of an indulgence. Thick robes draped from his shoulders in layers that looked like stacked napkins . A belt cinched his waist with dangling chains that held utensils instead of keys.
Prince Belphegor’s face glistened as if he’d been carved from honey and left in the sun. His eyes weren’t glowing violet or pale lavender. They looked dark and deep, reflecting the same amber as the sky.
He didn’t address Aurora first.
His gaze slid over Nyx, lingered, then shifted to Isolde, and lastly landed on Aurora like a verdict.
When he smiled, the hall’s clatter seemed to pause mid-beat. Even the steam held for a moment.
Belphegor’s voice rolled across the terraces with velvet weight . “Heartstone. You brought it in your chest.”
Aurora felt the pendant warm until the gem felt like it sat against a bruise . Her fingers curled around nothing, empty air acting like a grip.
“Is that what you call it?” Aurora asked. She hated how steady her voice sounded. It made her feel like she’d stepped onto a stage.
Belphegor chuckled. “People come to Dymas for many reasons. Greed. Curiosity. Grief with a sweet tooth.”
Nyx tilted their head, violet eyes catching the prince’s amber reflection. “We came for less dessert and more truth.”
Belphegor’s grin widened, and Aurora watched the crowd lean without noticing they’d leaned. The room pulled toward him.
“Truth sits where appetite lives,” Belphegor said. He extended a hand, and the air around his fingers shimmered like syrup poured too fast. “Give me your heartstone and I’ll give you what you think you want.”
Isolde moved a step forward. Her voice came out in riddles sharp enough to cut cloth.
“Don’t bargain with the one who counts bites as currency.”
Belphegor’s head tilted toward her, amused. “Seer. You still think people owe you answers.”
Aurora looked at the tables. A whole roasted side of meat sat on a platter, sliced and resealed every few breaths like it couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be food or display.
She didn’t like the way her pendant pulsed in agreement with the prince’s attention. It felt like the stone wanted to comply .
Aurora lifted her chin. “You don’t get it.”
Belphegor’s smile didn’t drop, but his eyes sharpened. “Then it will get you.”
The amber lanterns above flickered . Steam curled harder from the stains on the floor. Aurora’s stomach clenched so fast it made her vision swim. The smell of roast cinnamon intensified until it felt like her nose sat too close to a bakery oven.
Aurora’s mouth watered without permission.
Nyx snapped their head toward her, shadow flaring at the edges. “Don’t swallow.”
Aurora clamped her jaw shut. The need to taste didn’t fade; it crashed against her teeth like waves.
Isolde lifted her hand, and the air around her wrist looked faintly layered, as if two worlds overlapped for a heartbeat. “The Veil weakens under consent. Don’t trade yours.”
Belphegor’s voice deepened, a smooth pressure. “So stubborn. You’ll chew through the pain.”
Aurora backed half a step, pendant pulsing wildly now, and the floor beneath her boot shifted. The caramel tiles rippled, and a line of the faint script traced itself toward her scar like a vine.
She felt it press into her mind—an image of a plate arriving, warm and heavy, an invitation so sweet it made refusal feel childish. Her heart beat against her ribs, trying to match the stone’s pulse .
She stared at Prince Belphegor and forced the space around her to stay real. “You won’t get her,” she said, not because she felt confident, but because saying it turned the pressure in her skull into something she could push back against.
Nyx moved closer to her, not touching, only aligning their shadow with her feet. The darkness under Aurora’s boots deepened, and the caramel floor lost some of its grip. Her jaw loosened by degrees.
Belphegor’s gaze flicked to Nyx’s shadow. “Shade. Always stealing from the light.”
Nyx whispered, and their voice sounded like wind caught in the crack of a door. “Always surviving.”
Belphegor lifted his utensil-chain belt slightly , and the utensils jingled like bells. The clatter of the crowd returned. People resumed their bites, but Aurora watched their faces; their expressions slid into a shared hunger that wasn’t theirs.
Prince Belphegor leaned forward just enough for Aurora to smell him—honey and spice and something metallic underneath, like a blade left in blood.
He didn’t reach for her pendant.
He reached for the space around it.
Aurora clenched her fist and heard her own pulse in her ears. The Heartstone flared warm, then cooled again, as if the gem braced. It pulsed harder, faint inner glow bright enough to catch Belphegor’s attention.
The prince’s smile held.
Isolde turned her face toward Aurora at last. Her pale lavender eyes didn’t soften. “Blade,” she said, simple and flat.
Aurora’s hand went to the pocket where she carried the Fae-Forged Blade wrapped in cloth. Cold metal waited there like a held breath. She drew it halfway, and the air around the corridor of her mind shifted—sharp, clean, like moonlight on steel.
Belphegor’s eyes narrowed at the blade.
Nyx leaned in close enough that their whisper warmed Aurora’s ear. “He’s feeding on the offer. Don’t offer.”
Aurora opened her palm. The blade slid fully free. Moonsilver caught amber light and turned it into something colder. The edge looked leaf-shaped, slender enough to seem fragile until Aurora saw how it resisted bending in the air.
Belphegor’s gaze dropped to Aurora’s wrist, to the scar’s crescent curve. His smile returned, slow. “The heart answers the call.”
Aurora tightened her grip. “It answers my call.”
Isolde spoke again, riddles threaded with steel. “In Dymas, you don’t win by eating. You win by refusing the rules they chew into you.”
Belphegor spread his hands, and the whole hall seemed to lean toward his palms. The lantern-fruit glowed brighter. Steam rose higher. The smell surged like a wave.
Aurora felt hunger claw behind her ribs. She didn’t give it her mouth. She didn’t give it her consent.
She stepped sideways, keeping her blade between her body and the prince’s raised hands. Her pendant pulsed once, hard enough to make her blink, then settled into a steadier warmth .
The floor’s script stuttered, as if the language had been cut off mid-sentence.
Belphegor’s expression changed. Not fear. Recognition that annoyed him.
He straightened. “Then cut the gate.”
Aurora heard it before she understood it—behind the prince, behind the feasting terraces, a shimmering distortion appeared in the air like a tear in amber cloth. It wasn’t the Veil on Earth. It sat inside Hel, wrong and thin, showing the faint outline of another place beneath the hall’s surface.
Nyx’s violet eyes flared. “Portal.”
Isolde’s gaze stayed on Aurora, and her riddle landed like a thrown knife. “Follow the warmth that doesn’t belong to him.”
Aurora didn’t wait for instructions. She moved toward the shimmering tear at the far end of the hall, blade held forward, pendant beating against her chest like a drum she chose to follow.
As she walked, the crowd’s eyes tracked her. Some mouths kept chewing, but their attention snagged on her like hooks in fabric. Steam swirled toward her blade instead of her face.
Belphegor called after her, voice thick with promise and threat. “Heartstone always finds its way back.”
Aurora didn’t look at him. She watched the tear in the air tighten and widen with her steps, as if it responded to the pendant’s pulse .
Nyx slid beside her, shadow darkening the edges of the light. Isolde drifted behind with that quiet, weightless certainty.
Aurora reached the shimmer and placed her free hand near the distortion.
Heat kissed her skin.
She felt the Veil’s teeth—something metaphysical biting at the space between worlds—and she held her breath so hard it hurt.
Then the amber light folded inward, and the tear opened wider, inviting her into whatever waited beyond it.