AI The portal opened in the belly of an oak.
Not on the trunk. Not between roots. Inside it.
Aurora had seen the tree split without sound, bark peeling back in long black curls to reveal a hollow lined with amber light. The Heartstone pendant warmed against her chest, a slow pulse through her jumper, each beat answering the glow beyond. Around the oak, Richmond Park held its breath. Frost silvered the grass outside Isolde’s grove, yet inside the ring of ancient oak standing stones, wildflowers nodded under a sky too blue for winter.
Nyx stood half in the shadow of a standing stone, their outline wavering at the edges. Violet pinpricks watched the opening.
“The tree has a mouth,” Aurora muttered.
“And a stomach ,” Isolde answered.
The Seer stepped closer. Her silver hair hung straight to her waist, untouched by the small wind that bent the flowers around her ankles. She left no print in the soft earth. Pale lavender eyes fixed on the amber hollow.
“Do all your doors sound like they’re about to digest us?”
Isolde’s mouth curved.
“Only the polite ones.”
Aurora looked down at the Fae-forged blade strapped against her thigh. The moonsilver hilt had chilled through leather and denim since dawn. She touched the pommel, and the cold bit clean into her palm.
“Lovely. Polite digestion. Big fan.”
Nyx drifted to her shoulder, solid enough now that the grass leaned beneath their weight and the shadow of their shape fell in the wrong direction.
“The passage leads down.”
Aurora peered into the tree. Amber light swirled beyond the hollow, thick as honey, and within it floated shapes that refused to settle: arches, leaves, teeth, a corridor, a banquet table long enough to vanish into glare. Warm air rolled out, rich with roasted fruit, yeast, spices, and something metallic underneath, like coins held too long in a fist.
Her stomach tightened.
“I ate breakfast.”
“The realm will not care.”
“Cheers, Nyx.”
Isolde lifted one hand. The portal’s inner glow brightened and showed a path made of interlocking roots, descending through the oak into a place that could not fit under any park in London.
“Dymas waits with full hands.”
Aurora glanced at her.
“Does Dymas also wait with knives?”
“Hands hold many things.”
“Right. Riddle. Helpful.”
Isolde’s eyes slid to the Heartstone pendant. Its crimson centre glowed through the fabric of Aurora’s jumper, tiny and stubborn.
“The stone has remembered the way.”
Aurora swallowed. Her throat tasted of frost and ginger from the tea she had abandoned back at the flat. She thought of Golden Empress delivery bags, damp London streets, and Yu-Fei barking at drivers in the kitchen. Sensible things. Things with receipts and traffic.
Then the pendant tugged.
Not hard. Not enough to pull her off balance. Just a neat little nudge under her ribs, as if someone had hooked a finger through the chain.
Aurora took one step into the oak.
The world tilted.
Wood closed around her, though she still saw Isolde and Nyx behind her, warped through the amber skin of the passage. The roots underfoot were warm and damp, ribbed like muscle. They carried her down in a slow spiral, each step sinking a fraction before firming beneath her boots. The air grew thick. Sweet. Too sweet. Sugar, wine, butter, smoke, ripe pears bursting open in the sun.
Behind her, Isolde entered without disturbing the passage. Nyx came last, and the shadows in the walls reached for them like relatives.
“Do not taste anything,” Isolde murmured.
Aurora kept one hand on the blade.
“Wasn’t planning to lick the evil tree tunnel.”
“The realm hears hunger in more than the mouth.”
The roots shuddered under Aurora’s boots.
“Fantastic.”
They descended until the last trace of the grove vanished. No birdsong. No London traffic beyond the park. Only a slow wet creak, the pulse of the pendant, and a distant sound like cutlery laid out for thousands.
Then the passage spat them into daylight.
Aurora stumbled onto soft ground and stopped so sharply that Nyx passed through her shoulder as a wash of cold.
Before them stretched a valley under an amber sky.
Not sunset. The whole sky glowed warm gold, layered with bands of saffron and burnt orange that moved like oil across water. No sun sat overhead, yet every surface gleamed. Vineyards rolled down hills in perfect terraces, leaves dark green with veins of red. Orchards crowded the slopes beyond, trees bowed under fruit she had no names for: blue pears with glassy skins, black pomegranates split to show seeds shining like rubies, pale melons hanging from branches by cords of gold fibre. Farther away rose gardens in geometric spirals, each bed overflowing with herbs, flowers, and vines that curled through the air rather than along the soil.
And beyond all of it, half veiled by heat shimmer, stood a city of kitchens.
Aurora had no better word. Towers like stacked clay ovens rose from white stone plazas. Copper domes flashed. Chimneys twisted into the sky and exhaled coloured smoke: green, purple, deep red. Bridges joined buildings shaped like covered dishes, lidded urns, ribbed shells, and the open mouths of beasts. Waterfalls poured from terraces into canals, though the liquid in them shone too dark for water and moved with the thickness of syrup.
The air hummed.
Not with insects. With voices. With chopping, sizzling, laughter, weeping, bells, the roar of ovens, the sigh of bellows, and the rhythmic thump of dough beaten against stone.
Aurora stood with her mouth open.
Nyx formed beside her, tall and narrow, violet eyes reflecting the strange sky.
“Dymas.”
Isolde stepped onto the grass. White wildflowers sprang up around her bare ankles, bloomed, and shrivelled in the same breath.
“The table that never clears.”
Aurora pressed her palm to the pendant. Heat seeped through her fingers.
“It’s beautiful.”
A bird crossed the valley overhead. At least, Aurora thought it was a bird until it turned and revealed wings made of parchment menus, each feather inked with tiny moving script. It dipped towards the orchards, snapped a blue pear in a beak of polished bone, and vanished into a ribbon of smoke.
Aurora shut her mouth.
“It’s also taking the piss.”
The ground beneath them looked like grass at first . Then she crouched and pinched a blade between finger and thumb. It flexed, translucent and green, with tiny bubbles trapped inside.
“Is this… sugar?”
“Candied meadow,” Isolde answered.
Aurora released it. The blade sprang upright and gave a tiny chime.
Nyx crouched near a patch of red moss growing around a stone. Their long fingers passed over it without touching.
“Blood yeast.”
Aurora straightened.
“Of course it is.”
A path cut through the meadow, paved with round white stones. No, not stones. Plates. Thousands of plates, buried rim to rim, glazed in patterns that shifted underfoot: vines, knives, hands, mouths, little crowned figures with swollen bellies. Aurora stepped onto the first one. It gave a porcelain click.
The sound travelled down the path.
Far off, somewhere among the vineyards, something clicked back.
Aurora froze.
Nyx’s head angled towards the hills.
“We were noticed when the portal opened.”
“Then the dramatic plate path seems a bit unnecessary.”
Isolde passed them, her dress brushing the candied grass without catching. She moved as if the realm had failed to decide whether she belonged there.
“In Dymas, arrival has courses.”
Aurora followed, boots clinking plate by plate. The warm air wrapped around her skin. Sweat gathered under her jacket, yet a draught kept slipping through the valley, cold and greasy, raising hairs along her arms. She breathed through her mouth and tasted plum wine.
The path led into the vineyard. Vines rose higher than any grapevine had a right to, their trunks twisted and old, bark scaled like dragon hide. Clusters of fruit hung low. Some were grapes the size of fists, purple-black and pearled with dew. Others looked like tiny lanterns filled with golden liquid. One cluster pulsed , the skins stretching and shrinking in time with Aurora’s pendant.
She stopped before it.
The Heartstone warmed until it almost stung.
“These are doing the same thing.”
Isolde turned back.
“Kin remembers kin.”
Aurora reached towards the pulsing fruit.
Nyx caught her wrist. Their fingers had gone solid, cold as cellar stone. The crescent scar on Aurora’s left wrist pressed under their grip.
“No tasting. No touching. No accepting.”
“I wasn’t going to eat it.”
“The realm does not require teeth.”
The grape nearest her hand split down the middle.
Inside was an eye.
Blue. Human blue. It rolled towards Aurora and blinked.
She jerked back so fast her shoulder struck a vine. Leaves rustled overhead, though no wind passed through. All along the row, fruit turned in their skins.
Eyes opened.
Dozens. Hundreds. Blue, brown, green, black, gold. Some bloodshot. Some cloudy. Some with pupils like slits. They stared from the hanging clusters, wet and patient.
Aurora’s breath jammed in her chest.
A whisper slid through the vineyard. Not Nyx’s voice. Not Isolde’s.
Hungry?
The word came from the fruit, from the leaves, from under the plates beneath her boots.
Aurora drew the Fae blade.
Moonsilver flashed in amber light. Cold shot through her hand and cleared the sweetness from her head. The nearest vines recoiled, leaves folding tight like frightened fingers.
“Back off.”
The eyes blinked, one after another. Then the skins sealed over them. The fruit became fruit again, plump and glossy.
Isolde watched the blade with a look that held no surprise.
“A clean tooth in a dirty mouth.”
Aurora kept it out.
“We’re using fewer food metaphors from now on.”
Nyx released her wrist.
“Agreed.”
They moved deeper between the rows. The vines whispered as they passed, but the blade kept them curled away. Now and then Aurora saw things tucked beneath the leaves: silver forks grown into the bark, a child’s shoe filled with roots, a wineglass holding a trapped moth with a human face. None of it sat still long enough for comfort.
At the end of the vineyard, the path opened onto an orchard.
Here the wonder hit her harder.
Trees arched over pools of mirrored custard. Their trunks shone white, not bark but bone-smooth wood , and their branches carried fruit that sang. One tree hummed in low notes from a thousand small copper apples. Another chimed through glass cherries that knocked together in the warm breeze. A third bore long, spiralled pods that opened as the group passed, releasing scents one by one: fresh bread, sea salt, burnt sugar, rain on Cardiff pavements.
Aurora stopped dead at the last one.
Rain. Slate roofs. Her mother’s kitchen window fogged from soup on the hob. Her father laughing with a newspaper folded under his arm. A school blazer damp at the cuffs. The smell wrapped around her so tightly that for a breath she stood in two places at once.
Her grip loosened on the blade.
A branch dipped towards her, offering a pale pod split open like a smile.
“Rory.” Nyx’s whisper cut through the scent. “Name the place under your feet.”
Aurora blinked. The amber sky returned. The orchard’s music grated at the edge of her hearing.
“Dymas.”
“Name the weapon in your hand.”
“Fae blade.”
“Name the debt you do not owe.”
Aurora’s jaw clenched .
“Any of it.”
The branch withdrew. The Cardiff-rain scent soured into vinegar.
Isolde watched from beside a pool, lavender eyes reflecting no amber at all.
“Memory ripens sweet here. Grief ferments faster.”
Aurora slid the blade back into a ready angle.
“You could’ve led with that.”
“A warning eaten too soon leaves no room for the lesson.”
Aurora stared at her.
“I swear to God, if we survive this, I’m buying you a dictionary and crossing out half of it.”
Something laughed in the branches. Not unkindly. Not kindly either.
They crossed the orchard along a narrow bridge made from braided pastry. It held under Aurora’s boots, springy and warm, with flakes breaking off into the custard pools below. Shapes moved beneath the glossy surface. Long backs. Open mouths. Silver tongues.
A flake hit the pool.
The custard erupted.
A creature like an eel made of cream and knives snapped at the pastry, missed Aurora’s ankle by inches, and fell back with a wet slap. More bodies coiled below, drawn by the crumbs.
Aurora hurried.
“No one mention pudding ever again.”
Nyx glided over the bridge without touching it.
“Pudding.”
Aurora shot them a look.
“You’re enjoying this.”
Their violet eyes narrowed into something like amusement .
“I have not had a body capable of indigestion in centuries. This realm wastes its threats on me.”
“Must be nice.”
“It has disadvantages.”
“List them later.”
The bridge ended at a terrace overlooking the city of kitchens.
From this height, Aurora saw the scale of Dymas’ excess. Roads wound through the valley like strips of ribbon, crowded with carts pulled by beasts with boar heads and peacock tails. Processions carried covered platters the size of cars. Demons in embroidered coats argued beside fountains that spouted wine. Human figures in aprons moved among them with lowered heads, some stirring cauldrons in open courtyards, others turning spits over blue flame. A bell rang from a copper tower, and every chimney changed colour at once.
The sound struck Aurora in the sternum.
Bong.
The pendant pulsed .
Bong.
The path of buried plates ahead lit one by one, leading towards a grand avenue lined with statues.
Bong.
Each statue depicted a diner in the middle of a bite. Men, women, demons, things with too many jaws. Stone lips stretched around stone food. Stone eyes bulged. Some looked ecstatic. Others looked trapped.
Aurora stepped closer to the nearest statue, a woman carved in black marble . Her hands clutched a peach. Juice had been captured running down her wrist, every droplet perfect . Her face should have looked greedy. It didn’t. It looked afraid .
At the statue’s base, words had been etched in a language Aurora couldn’t read. The letters crawled when she looked at them, rearranging into English.
I ASKED FOR ONE MORE DAY.
Aurora’s stomach went cold.
She moved to the next statue. A broad-shouldered man with a fork halfway to his mouth, eyes fixed on something beyond the artist’s frame.
I COOKED FOR THE PRINCE AND PRAISED THE SALT.
Another.
I SIGNED BEFORE I LEARNED THE PRICE.
Aurora backed away.
“These were people.”
Nyx’s shape darkened, edges flaring.
“Contracts.”
Isolde’s gaze travelled along the avenue. Her bare feet hovered above the glowing plate path.
“Some hunger outlives the eater.”
Aurora scanned the city again. The human figures in aprons no longer blended into the spectacle. She saw the bend in their backs, the iron collars polished to look ornamental, the way they flinched when demons raised their hands. One woman carried a tray of steaming cups, her face blank, lips moving around silent counting. A man no older than Aurora dragged a sack of flour that twitched and moaned.
The wonder did not vanish. That made it worse. The amber sky still glowed. The orchards still sang. The city still glittered with copper and sugar and impossible craft.
It was beautiful with teeth sunk deep.
Aurora sheathed the blade only halfway, enough to hide the flash but not enough to trap it.
“We’re not sightseeing anymore.”
Nyx turned from the statues.
“The Heartstone pulls towards the avenue.”
Aurora looked down. The pendant had shifted beneath her jumper, tugging towards the city gates. Each pulse matched the far rhythm of knives chopping in a thousand kitchens.
Isolde lifted a hand, and a curl of purple smoke drifted from the city to coil around her fingers. It formed a tiny laughing mouth before she closed her fist around it.
“The first course approaches.”
Aurora followed her gaze.
At the end of the statue-lined avenue, three figures emerged through an archway made of stacked silver trays. They wore masks shaped like smiling pigs, polished pink and gold. Their coats were crimson velvet , their gloves spotless white. Behind them rolled a cart bearing a domed platter large enough to hide a person beneath it.
The middle figure spread both arms.
“Guests from the thin world! Unseasoned, unseated, and unannounced.”
His voice carried across the avenue like a toast at a wedding where everyone had knives under the table.
Aurora let her thumb rest on the blade’s cold hilt.
“Tell him we’re not hungry.”
Isolde’s pale eyes stayed on the cart.
“In Dymas, that can be taken as an insult.”
The masked figure bowed until his snout pointed at the glowing plates.
“Prince Belphegor’s kitchens extend welcome. You will take refreshment before business.”
Nyx leaned close to Aurora, voice a wind through a keyhole.
“Refuse the food. Refuse the seat. Refuse the cup.”
Aurora stepped onto the first lit plate. It clicked under her boot, loud in the warm air.
She raised her chin towards the pig-masked host.
“Fine. We’ll stand.”