AI The air changed first.
Rory felt it catch in her throat as she stepped through the last ragged seam of shadow and found herself standing on warm earth that smelled of ripe fruit, smoke, and something rich enough to make her stomach clench. The black behind her snapped shut with a sound like a wet hand clapping over a mouth.
She turned at once, but the tear she’d come through had already gone, leaving only a slope of bronze light and vines thick as rope. Above it all, the sky spread in a warm amber wash that made every leaf and stone look as if they’d been dipped in honey.
“Tell me that was the weird part,” she muttered.
Nyx drifted past her shoulder, their body only half-held together, shadow folding and reforming with each movement. Violet light glimmered in the faintest suggestion of eyes.
“The threshold was polite,” they whispered. “The rest would not bother.”
Rory snorted and adjusted the strap of her bag. The Heartstone pendant under her shirt had gone warm the moment they crossed over, a hot little pulse against her chest. She pressed two fingers to it through the fabric.
“Cheers,” she whispered to it, though she had no idea who had given it to her, or why.
Ahead, Isolde stood barefoot on the path, silver hair spilling down her back like moonlit water. She had no footprints behind her, only the crushed bend of grass where she had passed. She raised one pale hand and let it fall, as if listening to the land itself .
“You stand inside Dymas,” she murmured. “The table is laid, and the knives are hung. Mind your hunger.”
Rory folded her arms. “That’s comforting .”
“A lie would comfort you less.”
Nyx made a sound like wind sliding through cracks in old stone. “She has a talent for mercy.”
Isolde’s pale lavender eyes moved over the valley below them. “Come. The feast does not wait, but the hungry do.”
Rory followed.
The path descended through rows of trees she could not name. Their branches bowed under fruit the size of lanterns, skins in colours she had no language for: green with gold veins, purple so deep it nearly blacked out the light, orange shot through with silver flecks that winked when the breeze moved them. The scent hit her in waves. Pears, honey, spice, salt, smoke, something floral and sharp like cut grass after rain. Each breath felt like a mouthful.
She reached out before she could stop herself and brushed her knuckles against a hanging fruit. The skin felt cool and smooth, then gave a tiny shiver beneath her touch, as if it had recognised her.
Rory jerked her hand back. “That was rude.”
Nyx hovered closer to the branch, their shape thinning into a smear of dusk. “It liked you.”
“I don’t care if it liked me. Fruit shouldn’t move.”
“Most fruit lacks imagination.”
Rory glanced sideways at them. “You always this much help?”
“When the world deserves it.”
The trees opened into orchards that stretched farther than her eye could make sense of . Vines ran in disciplined lines over trellises of black stone. Between them stood low terraces crowded with herbs, pale flowers, and vegetables that looked grown for a palace instead of a kitchen. She saw scarlet pods split open to reveal blue seeds, root bulbs the colour of wet bone, and stalks of something that shimmered like glass when the wind passed through them.
The ground beneath her boots felt springy, almost breathing. A narrow stream wound through the orchard, but it didn’t carry water. It ran thick and golden, catching the sky’s amber tint and sending it back in rippling bands. When she crouched beside it, she saw tiny flecks of light moving inside the current, each one blinking out and back like trapped fireflies.
“What is that?” she asked.
Isolde had already knelt at the edge and dipped two fingers into the stream. She lifted them, watched the liquid thread off her skin in shining strands.
“Sweetness,” she answered.
Rory stared at her. “Sweetness isn’t a liquid.”
“In your world, perhaps.”
Nyx’s voice came from behind Rory’s ear. “In this one, it is.”
Rory rose and kept walking, because the place made stopping feel like the wrong choice. The orchard gave way to broad gardens laid out with impossible care. Flowerbeds rose in rings around shallow pools. Marble benches sat beneath trellised roofs of woven branch. Every surface gleamed. Every leaf looked washed clean. Even the wind carried a sheen, like light had learned how to touch.
Then she heard the music.
It came from somewhere ahead, thin at first, then layered beneath with strings and low drums and a high clear note that seemed to bend around the others rather than above them . She stopped without meaning to.
“Do you hear that?” she asked.
Nyx tilted their head. “The place sings.”
“The place?”
“The food is not the only thing alive.”
Rory’s skin prickled. She glanced toward Isolde, but the seer only kept moving, her long silver hair lifting in the breeze. Not a single leaf clung to her steps.
They reached a rise, and the orchard dropped away into a wide vale filled with terraces and open courtyards. At the centre stood a palace—or something that had the shape of one. It rose in layers of pale stone, arcades and domes and open galleries threaded with climbing vines heavy with pale blossoms. Sunlight, though there was no sun visible, spilled over the structure in warm sheets. It made the edges blur, as if the building could not decide whether it belonged to stone or dream.
Rory let out a slow breath.
“That’s… not normal.”
“No,” Isolde said. “That is Dymas.”
Below them, figures moved among the gardens. Some were human enough at first glance, until she saw the extra joint in an arm, the too-smooth face, the horns tucked beneath a veil, the eyes that gleamed too brightly in the amber light. Others looked wholly mortal and utterly out of place in the middle of the wonder, bent over baskets or carrying trays piled high with fruit and bread and cuts of meat glistening with oil.
“Who are they?” Rory asked.
“Some were invited,” Isolde said. “Some were contracted. Some have forgotten why they came.”
Rory’s mouth tightened. “That’s cheerful.”
One of the workers below raised a tray overhead and called something Rory didn’t know. Another answered from a terrace, and the sound of laughter followed, sharp and sudden. It should have felt warm. Instead it rang in her chest like a spoon hitting a glass.
She rubbed at her wrist, over the crescent scar there, and kept looking.
Farther down, the gardens turned to vineyards. The vines climbed over long trellises and low stone walls, heavy with grapes that glowed faintly from within. The colour shifted as she watched—ruby, then smoke-grey, then a translucent green that looked as if it had swallowed a piece of the sky. Large vats and presses stood between the rows, worked by people with hands stained dark red. The air there carried a sharper tang, part fruit, part ferment, part earth broken open.
Rory could almost taste it.
Nyx drifted close to one of the vineyard posts and laid a shadow hand against it. The wood didn’t hold their touch; their fingers sank through, and for a moment a cold ripple passed through the post itself.
“This realm remembers every hand that shaped it,” they whispered.
Rory looked at them. “You know that from experience, or are you just making yourself sound creepy?”
“Both can be true.”
She was about to answer when a sound rolled across the valley. Not thunder. Not quite. A deep bell note, struck once, made the fruit in the nearest trees tremble on their stems. The whole place seemed to inhale.
Isolde lifted her chin. “The kitchens have begun.”
Rory followed her gaze to a colonnade beyond the palace. Heat shimmered from open arches there, and for one heartbeat she saw flashes inside: knives flashing silver, flames blooming blue over wide pans, a figure crossing a room with a tray balanced on one shoulder, and behind it all, shelves stacked with spices in colours so bright they looked painted on. The smell reached her even from the distance—roasted meat, toasted seeds, charred citrus, fresh bread split open and steaming.
Her stomach gave a sharp, traitorous twist.
“Don’t,” she murmured to it.
Nyx’s tone brushed her ear like cold silk . “Too late.”
Rory shot them a look . “You’ve got no body. You don’t get to judge me for being hungry.”
Their faint eyes flickered . “I did not judge. I observed.”
She would have argued, but the path ahead changed beneath her feet. The packed earth gave way to pale stone inlaid with bands of metal that caught the amber sky and reflected it in red streaks. The air cooled a little, enough to raise gooseflesh along her arms. That warm, baked smell of the orchards faded behind them, replaced by the clean bite of herbs and the metallic scent of rain on rock.
They passed through a gate carved with curling vines and strange faces half-hidden in the stone. Rory leaned closer to one and saw that the eyes had been chiselled out long ago. Not worn away. Removed.
“Who put those there?” she asked.
Isolde’s silver hair slid over one shoulder as she glanced back. “Those who liked to watch.”
Rory frowned at the gate, then at the terraces beyond it. The garden there looked older. The plants grew thick and untamed, their roots pushing through stone. Wild herbs spilled over the edges of cracked urns. White flowers bloomed among patches of moss, their petals luminous in the shade. Every now and then, a breeze shook loose a shower of tiny golden seeds that drifted upward instead of down.
Her breath caught. “That’s not right.”
Nyx’s whisper skimmed the air. “Nothing here is wrong. It simply ignores your rules.”
Rory didn’t like how true that sounded.
They stepped into the shade of a long arcade lined with columns carved from something that looked like marble until she touched one and found it warm, almost alive , beneath her fingertips. Low channels ran along the base of the columns, carrying a thin trickle of perfumed smoke that curled around her ankles and vanished. She bent to look and caught a flicker of images in the smoke’s surface—hands lifting cups, mouths laughing, a face turning toward her with eyes bright as embers—then it was gone .
Rory straightened fast.
“Did you see that?”
Isolde did not pause. “What does the smoke wish you to remember?”
Rory looked after her, then back to the channel. “That’s not an answer.”
“It was the only one offered.”
They crossed into a courtyard open to the sky, though the amber light dimmed there as if filtered through a veil of polished amber glass. A fountain rose in the centre, not of water but of something thicker and brighter, like liquid glass touched with fire. It climbed from the basin in narrow ribbons, arched once, then shattered into a spray of tiny lights that drifted back down without ever seeming to fall.
Rory stood still, caught.
The lights brushed her skin. They felt warm. Not hot. Warm like a hand over hers on a cold day.
One of the lights landed on the Heartstone pendant beneath her shirt. The pendant throbbed once, hard enough for her to feel it against her sternum.
She sucked in a breath and pressed her palm flat over it.
Nyx noticed at once. Their shape sharpened, shadows pulling taut. “It reacts.”
Rory swallowed. “Yeah. Bit obvious, that.”
Isolde turned then, and for the first time since they entered Dymas, she looked directly at the pendant’s hidden shape beneath Rory’s shirt. Her expression didn’t change, but something in the air around her seemed to narrow.
“Crimson calls crimson,” she said.
Rory’s hand stayed over the pendant. “You know what it is.”
“I know what it answers.”
That did not help at all.
Beyond the fountain, a set of doors stood open into a hall bright with moving firelight. The sound of voices floated out—dozens of them, layered over one another, rising and falling in bursts of argument, praise, laughter, and the clatter of cutlery against glass. The smell from inside hit her harder now. Butter. Wine. Charred meat. Fresh herbs crushed under a heel. Sweet pastry. Something gamey and rich that made her mouth water despite herself.
Rory stared into the hall. The ceiling vanished into shadow far above, but the walls glowed with mosaics that shifted when she looked at them too long. One showed fields of fruit. Another, a banquet where no two faces stayed the same from one blink to the next. Another, a figure with a crown of vines holding out a plate that overflowed with fire.
Her chest tightened. Not fear. Not exactly. Too much of everything at once. The place wanted attention the way a blade wanted a hand.
“Stay close,” she said, more to herself than the others .
Nyx slid beside her, their voice barely more than a thread. “We entered together.”
Isolde had already stepped over the threshold of the hall, the hem of her pale dress whispering over the stone. She paused there and glanced back, one hand resting on the doorframe.
“The first mouth is often the hardest,” she murmured. “Come, Rory. Dymas has seen you. It would be rude not to answer.”
Rory gave the pendant one last press through her shirt, then lifted her chin and walked after her into the light and heat and music, with Nyx gliding at her shoulder and the alien feast opening wider before them.