AI Aurora Carter adjusted the Heartstone Pendant tucked beneath her collar, its crimson gemstone pulsing faintly as they neared the edge of Richmond Park. The path twisted through a thicket of frosted hawthorn, their berry-laden limbs creaking like whispered protest. "Are we certain this is the right spot?" she asked, the wind tugging at her black hair as she cast a glance at Isolde, whose silver tresses seemed untouched by the breeze . The Half-Fae clutched a willow switch like a staff, her pale lavender eyes unfocused in the direction of the park’s heart. Beside her, Nyx hovered a half-step ahead, their dark silhouette flickering between solid and translucent as if adjusting to the balance of realms .
"This place remembers you," Isolde murmured, voice curling like mist. "It bends to welcome you, or perhaps it kills the unfit. I see no blood on the earth, so let's hope for the best." Her grin didn't reach her face, more a fading echo of teeth.
Aurora's fingers brushed the small scar on her left wrist—a nervous habit. The air had thickened, oppressive yet sweet, as if saturated with the aftertaste of too many desserts. Beyond the trees, she caught a glint of oak, too tall, too still, their bark etched with spirals resembling runes. "Standing stones," she said, slowing her pace . "The codex mentioned—"
"Hush. The Grove isn’t fond of labels," Isolde interrupted, though her own feet never touched the soil, leaving it unbroken and amber-lit.
Nyx’s form unspooled slightly, tendrils of shadow seeping into the grass. "The Veil is thin here," they said, the words brushing Aurora’s ears like moth wings. "I can taste the gaps between things ."
Their comment warranted a sideways look from Aurora. Nyx made a habit of detailing the unseeable, their presence itself a constant reminder of how fragile the boundaries between worlds truly were. Yet this place… it felt different from the shadows Nyx usually slipped through toward Hel. The light didn’t just bend but swayed, like golden port wine slowly fermenting.
They passed through the arch formed of two intertwined oaks, and the world shifted. The sky above swayed from overcast to a deep, endless indigo, constellations that might be stars, might be eyes. The trees melted into a dense wall of emerald and silver, their roots arched like cathedral archways. Wildflowers—Aurora recognized none of their species—bloomed from moss-deep crevices, some opening as the trio neared, revealing nectar that glowed like liquid opal.
"The time inside," Aurora began, pulling her wrist from her coat to check her watch . The hands had reversed, creeping backward by inches. "Is it possible we went *backwards * an hour already?"
"Ask the river," said Isolde, tapping her chin as she turned aimlessly, mist form rippling when her own foot would have brushed the ground. "It tells lies to mortals, truths to those with ears." She glided forward, feet hovering like a moth skimming over water.
Aurora followed, boots thudding against damp earth, the pendant now hot against her sternum. Nyx moved like thought, their form dissolving when shadows passed underfoot, only to reappear through the next gloam. Somewhere, a wind chime sang the wrong songs, and the scent of bitter orange and burnt sugar clung to the air. Tiny lights like fireflies glided through the vegetation, but when she squinted, Aurora swore they were vibrissa-haired *things *, their diaphanous wings beating in syncopated time. **Small demons **, her mind twitched. Or perhaps just shade and light.
Up ahead, a buttery moss carpeted the base of a stone arch, caked with lichen that pulsed in a rhythm mimicking Aurora's thudding heart. Isolde paused there, her ageless face crinkling in what might have been sorrow. "This was once a gate. Now it opens only in riddles." She flung the willow switch toward the moss, which recoiled like a struck drumhead. **We don’t need to cross it **, Aurora wanted to say. But the words died in her mouth. The pendant was already scorching through her shirtsleeve.
Nyx crouched beside the arch’s base, fingers brushing at nothing, and suddenly the space *rippled *. "The Veil isn’t just here," they said, voice sharp with wonder. "It's *alive *. Like a skin pulled tight over a wound." Their silhouette dimmed, edges fraying into the shadows of the arch itself. "Someone’s meat hooks are hanging just beyond this thorn."
Aurora exhaled, gripping the hilt of the Fae-forged Blade at her hip. Its moonsilver surface glowed dully in the low light, the cold seeping through her glove no matter how many layers she wore. "So, you’re telling me… we progress by slicing it open? Like a curtain?"
"Not a solution for the impatient," said Isolde, now inspecting a fern that had grown to her knees. "Though I won’t stop you from playing with your pretty knife, of course." Her gaze was unreadable, but her shoulders slumped slightly . "Leave the blade for the two-legged enemies, yes? This space is a poem. Read it carefully ."
Whatever made the air shudder like heated metal now slithered toward the trio. A breeze, thick with the perfume of something sickly and overripe, stirred the trees. The firefly things spiraled into welcomed raggedness, their song turning to a hum that vibrated in Aurora’s molars. "This is a good place to stop and breathe," she said, raising a palm before the arch. Her mind sifted through the feedback of the pendant and blade. "Something’s deciding whether to meet us at the door."
Through the arch, the path opened into a glade. A tree stood there as if on a dais of obsidian, its branches split and weighty with fruits no wider than fists but agape like mouths, each revealing a churning silver pit. The sight sent a thrill through Aurora’s chest, not horror, but a sharp clarity . **Hunger, not indulgence.** The codex described Dymas as a realm of excess, but this?
"Feasting on corruption," Nyx said, their voice carrying a note nearly musical in the still air. The shadows beneath the tree had clustered unnaturally, a pool of void with teeth-like ripples along its surface. "The fruits collect the murmurs of doorways. If this is as Hel-blessed as you suspect, we might not hear what's feeding through it, but it may yet hear *us *."
Aurora inhaled at the revelation. The pendant had not just led them to the tree but *warned* them of the gluttony nested in it . Her fingers went to the blade, its edge humming faintly against the Veil’s pull. When she sliced the point into the nearest fruit, it froze mid-crum, its silver pit draining into a small slit in the bark. A whisper issued forth—*not Evan, not Evan, not Evan *—a phrase that crashed against the senses like a bell’s death toll until it faded.
Isolde had paled, her expression hidden but her scent thick with alarm. "Clever," they said, hollow . "You’ve cut credit from a beggar of the in-between. Let’s see if others are as pleased."
Two more trees, similar but with prickly black fruits and leaves that shimmered like polished coal rings the clearing. Aurora’s mind raced . Every instinct said to keep moving, to avoid becoming the next spectral snack. But her foot touched the ground where the tree’s roots cradled the earth, and she paused. The stones beneath it were warm, impossibly warm for the late afternoon chill .
She glanced at Nyx, who was already peering into a shadow extending from one of the black trees. "These are deeper shadows," they murmured, a soft, greenish sheen tightening their collar. "Unruly. As if the world is holding its breath and the darkness is taking over."
Isolde stepped back then forward, her form barely perturbing the air enough to suggest movement. "The Balance is delicate," she said, lifting a hand to touch the obsidian dais where it melted into the soil. "Recognize that the more you learn, the less you understand. The further you walk, the easier it is to forget the path."
Aurora could feel the weight of the words , the half-truth pressed hard against her ribs. She wasn’t here for riddles alone. Her benefactor had sent her toward *Dymas *, and here it was already whispering to her. Yet she hesitated, fingers tightening around the pendant. "If Evan is boxed in this world, why is the Grove offering up his voice to us ?"
Nyx’s head tilted, their shadows dimming again as if the act of speaking would give away more of themselves. "Maybe it isn’t *offering * it at all. Maybe it’s warning us ."
From the other side of the clearing, a ripple in the undergrowth. Aurora’s muscles coiled, blade raised, but the form emerging was neither demon nor shade. A stag, massive and mist-furred, its antlers knit with the same silver threads as the fireflies. It regarded them with a head that seemed to float above its body, a purr rumbling low in its throat . **Not real **, the sound said, **not real, not real, not real **.
"Do you bow to the tokens?" Isolde asked, her own voice low as if afraid to fracture the illusion. "Or do you toss the coin on your tongue?"
The stag blinked, and vanished.
Aurora snorted despite the tension . "Riddles, yes. Again."
"Language is the first gate," Isolde said, stepping through the glade as though by right. "The others follow."
"Are you even here?" Aurora muttered, but followed as the pendant grew colder. The runes on the trees ahead had reversed, and the grove now felt sharper, brighter. A fog had begun to collect, not silver or green but gray —dull, ordinary fog, a normal shade.
Nyx, who once existed in such fog, lagged back. "Hel is peeping," they said, voice flickering with disapproval . "The Veil doesn’t weaken precisely , but the clashing realms create pressure. It’s breathing in and out."
Aurora pushed her blade into her boot, its cold a shock against her thigh. Heartstone pendant now nearly the same cold as the moonsilver. "Where does it breathe most?"
"Where the ground *leaks *," Isolde said, pointing to a patch in the earth where the grass bent unnaturally toward a faint crimson haze. "That’s a threadsafe. A tear in the outerspace, stitched roughly by the independent, perhaps by the Wardens. Beauty isn’t the only reason we walk this trail. The breadth of what漏s beyond is close behind."
Aurora, heart now pounding like a skipped beat, knelt to touch the haze. Her fingers passed through and retrieved only the scent of roasting chestnuts and brimstone. "It’s like dampness, but… other," she said, standing quickly . "And it’s *moving.*" As is the gathering storm, the noted hum of the fireflies sharpened into a whistle, soon joined by a chorus of whimpers and wails—tools or trapped souls, she couldn’t tell.
Nyx had dissolved into their true form, a wraith of human shape with edges like cut smoke. "The demons aren’t alone in their appetites," they said, the wind in their voice intensifying. "Someone’s *also * got a hunger for *knowing *."
The hush of footsteps —some from the tree tops, others from the darkening lowlands—ranged around them. The truisms hung in the air like halos of spice. Aurora tightened her coat, the dark warmth against her neck that came with being near Prince Belphegor’s domain already jealous of her.
"We比e to stay," Isolde said, her grin returning now that the proper shadows danced closer . "Or we forever return to the moment we arrived."
Wonder bloomed in Aurora’s throat and her unease hardened, a dual taste of honey and poison. In front of her stood a mirror of ancient Fae and Hel realms, breathing against each other in the mirror. No, not a mirror: a portal, a teardrop of crimson light, waiting for them to choose.