AI The oaks grew in a perfect circle, their ancient trunks fused at the roots but not the canopy, creating a arching cathedral of knotted wood and dark, silver-veined leaves. Each bore carvings that looked less like human symbols and more like natural growths—whorls of bark that resolved into sleeping faces, limbs that twisted into cruel or delighted expressions.
“Standing stones,” Rory breathed, her voice small in the sudden hush. The air inside the circle was different, thicker, tasting of damp earth and something floral that cloyed at the back of the throat. The usual London noise—traffic, the distant roar from Richmond Park’s Isabella Plantation—vanished. Here, silence had a pressure, a weight .
Nyx, a taller shape of deeper darkness than the oaks’ shadow, flowed past her. Their form rippled, solid enough to cast its own faint violet shadow on the moss. “Not stones. They remember.”
A melody, high and thin, like a glass harmonica played by a breeze, drifted from somewhere beyond the central oaks. No, not a melody. A whisper .
“I remember you , Shadow,” Isolde Varga’s voice came, clear as water over pebbles, though she hadn’t appeared. “The circle welcomes you back. It has been three of your heartbeats.”
Rory’s hand went to the crescent scar on her left wrist, a nervous habit. Three heartbeats? Nyx had said their last visit to this place was two centuries ago. The pendant against her collarbone, under her jacket, pulsed a slow, steady warmth , a muted red glow bleeding through the fabric. It had done that since they’d stepped off the main park path.
“Time is a river here,” Isolde continued, and then she was there, standing just inside the circle as if she’d coalesced from the dappled light. She wore no shoes, and the wildflowers—violet, blue, and a startling gold—bent away from her feet but left no imprint. Her silver hair hung loose, a mantle against the shifting greens. “It pools and eddies. You stepped into an eddy. Welcome, Rory Carter.”
Her pale lavender eyes were fixed on Rory, and Rory felt the unnerving sensation of being *seen *, not just looked at. Every secret, every scar, internal and external. She met the gaze. “You know why we’re here.”
“A question is not a key, though it may open doors.” Isolde’s smile was slight, not unkind. “Come. The grove wishes to show you its heart.”
She turned, and the path she took was no path at all, but a winding track between two of the massive oaks where the undergrowth—ferns with fronds of silver, mushrooms glowing with a soft, blue bioluminescence—simply parted. It felt deliberate, a gesture.
Rory moved forward, boots sinking into the moss that was springy as a mattress. The air grew warmer, humid. The scent of flowers intensified, joined by the smell of rich, living soil and something else—metallic, like old blood. Above, the canopy knit together, filtering the light into a green-gold twilight. Strange insects with wings like stained glass flitted between the leaves, their buzzing a low counterpoint to the ever-present whisper .
Nyx drifted beside her, their presence a cool counterbalance to the humid air. “This place… it’s a wound. In the Veil.” Their whisper -voice was barely audible, yet it carried clearly. “The boundaries are thin here. Can you feel it?”
She could. It was a subtle vibration in the bones, a pressure behind the eyes. The Heartstone’s warmth pulsed a little faster, a little hotter. “Is that why Isolde’s here? To guard it?”
“Not guard,” Nyx said. “Hold. Stitch. She was exiled for telling mortals truths. Now she tends the borderlands where those truths leak through.”
They emerged into a larger clearing. The center was dominated by a single, colossal oak, its trunk easily twenty feet in diameter. Its bark was silver, not just veined with it, and it seemed to emit a faint, constant light, illuminating the clearing in a permanent, soft twilight. Nestled in a vast cavity in its trunk, where a root system like a frozen waterfall met the ground, was a shallow pool of water so still it looked like polished obsidian . The air here shimmered , and the whispering sound was louder, coming from the water, from the tree, from the vibrating air itself.
At the tree’s base, amidst a nest of roots, sat a throne. It wasn’t carved; it *grew * from the tree, a fusion of silver wood and living moss, its back shaped like giant, folded wings.
Isolde stood beside the pool. “The Heartstone warms. It knows its sister realm. Dymas. Gluttony. A place of endless appetite.” Her gaze shifted to the pendant glowing beneath Rory’s shirt. “Does it hunger, Aurora Carter?”
Rory swallowed, her mouth dry. “It reacts. To portals. To Hel.”
“Does it?” Isolde tilted her head, a birdlike motion. “Or does it react to *you *? To what you carry inside?” She gestured to the pool . “Look. Not with your eyes.”
Reluctantly, Rory knelt at the pool’s edge. The water was utterly black, reflecting nothing—not the silver tree, not her own face. She leaned closer, the scent of metal and pollen making her dizzy. The Heartstone pulsed , a warm, insistent throb against her skin. She stared into the blackness.
And the water moved.
Not ripples. Something swam in the deep, formless black. A suggestion of color—deep crimson, the exact shade of the pendant’s gemstone—coiling like smoke. A shape began to form, indistinct but vast: sprawling fields, a sky of warm amber, towers built not of stone but of hardened, sculpted food, beautiful and grotesque. The scent of the pool changed, becoming rich, cloying, a thousand different meals—roast meats, spiced wine, ripe fruits—so potent it was nauseating .
She gasped and jerked back, landing on the moss. “That was…”
“Dymas,” Isolde said. “A glimpse through a keyhole. The pendant is a key. It was made there.”
Rory’s hand closed over it, the metal hot now. “Who gave it to me?”
“A question with a thousand answers, each more tangled than the last.” Isolde’s expression was unreadable . “The one who placed it in your path desired you to see. To *feel *. Gluttony is not just food, Rory Carter. It is consumption. Of information, of power, of life. It is a hunger that devours itself.”
A chill , entirely unrelated to the grove’s temperature, traced down Rory’s spine. She thought of Evan, his possessive need to control, to swallow her whole. The comparison was uncomfortably apt.
Nyx’s form condensed, becoming more solid, the violet glow in their eyes brightening as they stared at the pool. The water was still again, black and calm. “The weak points… the tears… they are here, aren’t they? Not just the standing stones. The grove itself is a thin place.”
“You learn, Shadow,” Isolde murmured. “The stones are anchors. The pool is a lens. The tree…” She placed a silver-nailed hand on the bark. “The tree is a scar. Where the realms were wounded, and the growth over the wound was… unusual.”
The whispering sound crescendoed, shaping itself into syllables that almost formed words. Rory’s ears strained. *…hungry…so hungry…more…always more…* It was a chorus of sighs, of insatiable longing.
“It speaks,” Rory whispered, horrified and fascinated.
“It remembers,” Isolde corrected. “Every soul that has passed through the thinness here. Every wish for excess. Every scream of denial. They soak into the ground, into the water, into the wood.”
Rory stood, her legs unsteady. The wonder was still there—the impossible silver tree, the glowing flora, the sheer alienness of it all. But underneath, a deep unease had taken root. This wasn’t just a pretty, secret place. It was a repository of longing, a record of avarice. The Heartstone, hot in her fist, felt like a brand .
She looked at Nyx, a being who was themselves a scar, a soul trapped by a hunger for forbidden knowledge. She looked at Isolde, an exile who tended these wounds. Then she looked back at the pool, that still, black mirror to a realm of endless consumption.
“What does it want?” Rory asked, the question directed at the grove itself . The whispering stopped.
Isolde smiled, a real smile this time, laced with ancient, weary sadness. “To be seen . To be remembered. And to remind those who carry keys to be very , very careful what doors they open.”