AI Aurora stepped through the gap between the oak standing stones and lost London at her back.
The air changed first.
Richmond Park had smelt of wet grass, dog muck, distant traffic, and the metallic bite of coming rain. Beyond the stones, the air pressed warm and cool at once against her face, sweet with crushed bluebells, woodsmoke, and something sharp as cut apple skin. Her trainers sank into moss that did not flatten beneath her weight . The green sprang back around her soles, bright and defiant.
Behind her, Eva swore under her breath.
“Rory.”
Aurora looked back. The standing stones had closed behind them in a bent row of black oak trunks, their bark carved with rings, eyes, and symbols that hurt if she stared too long. The park beyond had become a smear of grey and green, like a watercolour left out in rain.
Eva stood with one hand still lifted, fingers hovering where the gap had been. Her copper curls had caught tiny white petals that had not fallen from any visible tree. She turned her head, slow and sharp, taking in the clearing.
“This wasn’t on Google Maps.”
Silas ducked beneath a branch that had leaned down across the path, though Aurora could have sworn the branch had not been there a breath before.
“Google stopped returning my calls after I asked it where to bury a cursed keg.”
“Not the time.”
“It’s always the time if I die in a shrubbery.”
Nyx flowed through last, not stepping so much as gathering from the shade cast by the oak stones. Their shape held for a moment in a tall humanoid silhouette, edges frayed like ink dropped into water. Violet eyes opened in the dark of their face, pale and steady.
“This place remembered being older than maps.”
Aurora’s hand went to the Heartstone Pendant beneath her jacket. The deep crimson gem rested against her sternum, no larger than a thumbnail, but it had grown warm the moment they crossed the threshold. Not the warning heat it gave near Hel rifts. This warmth felt stranger, like a small living thing had woken and pressed its face against her skin.
She drew it out on its silver chain.
The pendant glowed faintly, a coal beneath glass.
Eva leaned closer. “That’s new.”
“It’s been doing that since the stones.”
Silas rubbed his hands together and glanced at the tree line. “Excellent. The necklace likes the murder garden.”
“It doesn’t like anything.” Aurora held it still. The glow pulsed once, then dimmed. “It reacts.”
“To portals,” Eva muttered.
Nyx tilted their head. “To hunger as well.”
Silas stopped rubbing his hands. “Sorry, what?”
The shade’s voice brushed over them like wind through a keyhole. “Dymas made that stone. Gluttony did not carve tools that merely opened doors. It crafted appetites.”
Aurora closed her fingers around the pendant until the silver chain bit her knuckles.
“Could’ve led with that before I wore it every day.”
“You did not ask what it wanted.”
“It’s a pendant, Nyx.”
“So was a crown, once, before men knelt to it.”
Eva pointed between them. “Can we not have the philosophical necklace argument inside the haunted fairy IKEA?”
A sound drifted through the grove.
Not birdsong. Not wind.
It rang like glass touched by wet fingers, three notes rising from somewhere deeper in the trees. The wildflowers nearest Aurora bowed towards it. Tiny yellow blossoms turned their faces as if toward sunlight, though the sky above the grove had no sun. It stretched overhead in shifting bands of pearl, violet, and leaf-green, an impossible dawn folded into itself. Thin shapes moved behind it—branches, perhaps, or antlers, or roots suspended high above the world.
Aurora took one step forward.
The moss lit beneath her shoe.
A soft blue glow spread out in a circle, then faded.
Eva stared at the ground. “Nope.”
Silas crouched and poked the moss with one finger. It blinked gold.
“It’s touch-sensitive.”
“It’s rude.”
Aurora moved again. Blue. Green. Silver. The path answered every footfall , not with sound, but with colour . Eva followed after a moment, placing each boot like she expected teeth. Her steps bloomed red-pink, then amber. Silas’ went bright orange, and he straightened with a grin.
“I’ve always had stage presence.”
Nyx crossed the moss without touching it, their body a dark slip above the ground. The path did not glow beneath them. Instead, nearby shadows turned toward them, stretching thin, curious hands from the bases of trees and stones.
“Do not take offence,” Nyx whispered to the leaning dark. “I belonged nowhere before I belonged to myself.”
The shadows withdrew.
Eva swallowed. “Did the ground just flirt with you?”
“Everything old wants to know what steps upon it.”
“Still no.”
They walked.
The grove widened, though the trees thickened. Trunks rose in impossible shapes: one oak spiralled upward like a horn; another split into seven smaller trees and rejoined thirty feet above them in a knot that pulsed beneath the bark. Silver leaves grew from black branches. Red leaves grew from pale trunks. Mushrooms the size of dinner plates layered the roots, their undersides glowing with slow waves of green light. Somewhere to the left, water ran uphill over stones and fell into a pool suspended between two branches, where tiny fish with lantern bellies flicked through the air as if the water had simply decided to ignore gravity.
Silas stopped beneath it.
“Right. That’s taking the piss.”
One fish slid through the surface of the floating pool and drifted toward him. Its fins fluttered like scraps of silk . A bead of water clung around it, round and trembling, holding the creature inside. It came level with Silas’ face and opened a mouth no wider than a pinhead.
Silas leaned back. “If you spit on me, I’m charging rent.”
The fish flashed silver. Its lantern belly flared, and in that glow Aurora saw a room she had never stood in: a banquet table stretching into amber haze, golden plates stacked with fruit split open and bleeding honey, hands reaching, mouths open, laughter without joy.
Her stomach cramped.
Then the fish darted back into its pool.
Aurora bent, one hand against a twisting root.
Eva caught her elbow. “Rory?”
“Did you see that?”
“See what?”
Silas’ grin had vanished. “I saw an old pub toilet from 1998. Absolute nightmare.”
Nyx drifted closer to the pool. Their edges sharpened.
“The Grove did not show the same thing to each of you.”
Eva’s grip tightened. “I saw my mum’s kitchen. Empty. Clock ticking.” She let go of Aurora and wiped her palm on her jacket. “That fish can get stuffed.”
Aurora straightened. The pendant had warmed again.
“Dymas,” she breathed.
Nyx’s violet gaze shifted to the gem. “The Heartstone remembered its birthplace.”
A laugh came from ahead.
Soft. Female. Close enough to lift the hairs on Aurora’s arms.
The group froze.
Between two trees, a woman in a white dress crossed the path. Long silver hair trailed to her waist. Her bare feet touched moss without bending it, without leaving any mark at all. Pale lavender eyes met Aurora’s for half a heartbeat, then the woman vanished behind a curtain of hanging ivy.
Eva’s voice dropped. “Please tell me that was Isolde.”
Silas had already slipped a hand under his coat, where Aurora knew he kept a blade that had once been a broken church candlestick and now carried three different charms carved by a drunk witch in Soho.
“Could be a local. Very committed to the aesthetic.”
Aurora stepped toward the ivy.
“Isolde?”
The hanging leaves trembled , though no breeze moved. They were not leaves, she realised when she drew near, but narrow green wings. Hundreds of them overlapped, sleeping or pretending to sleep, each attached to a tiny body shaped like a twig.
One opened a black bead eye.
Aurora stopped.
The whole curtain shivered awake.
Eva made a strangled noise. “Rory. Back up.”
“I am.”
“You’re leaning forward.”
“I’m looking.”
“Look with distance.”
The twig-creatures peeled themselves from one another. Wings unfolded in a dry rustle, and the air filled with them. They circled Aurora’s head, no larger than her thumb, faces long and solemn, mouths stitched shut with strands of spider silk . One landed on her left wrist, cold feet on the crescent scar there.
Aurora held still.
The creature touched the scar with a twig-finger.
A memory cracked through her: six years old, broken cup on kitchen tiles, blood bright against her skin, her mother wrapping a tea towel around her wrist, her father shouting from the hall that she had to be more careful, always more careful, evidence mattered, mess mattered.
The creature tilted its head.
Aurora pulled her arm back.
“Don’t.”
The tiny thing sprang off her wrist and rejoined the swarm. They parted in the middle, opening a passage through the ivy.
Silas exhaled through his teeth. “Anyone else feel judged by the shrubbery?”
“All the time,” Eva muttered. “Usually in Waitrose.”
Nyx moved beside Aurora. “They tasted old hurt. The Grove collects what visitors carry unburied.”
Aurora rubbed her thumb over the scar once, then lowered her hand.
“It can keep its teeth to itself.”
They passed through the living curtain.
Beyond it, the world deepened.
The path sloped down into a hollow filled with flowers blooming out of season and out of reason. Snowdrops grew beside black roses. Foxgloves chimed when brushed. Vines climbed nothing, winding up through empty air into spirals that held droplets of light. The scent thickened until Aurora could taste sugar, loam, and stormwater at the back of her throat.
At the hollow’s centre stood seven stones arranged in a ring, not like the oak boundary behind them. These were pale, smooth, and taller than houses, each carved with a face whose expression shifted when Aurora glanced away. Between them hung a veil of shimmering distortion. It rippled in colours she lacked names for, thin as breath, strong as a locked door.
The Veil.
She knew without being told .
It was not a wall. It was a wound held closed by will.
The sight of it struck her still. Every sound thinned—the chime-flowers, the insects, Silas’ breathing, Eva whispering something foul under her breath. The distortion curved through the air in layered sheets. Behind one fold, Aurora saw a sky of warm amber and vineyards heavy with black fruit. Behind another, a hall of mirrors under winter stars. Behind a third, darkness packed so tight it seemed solid .
The Heartstone burned hot against her palm.
Aurora hissed and released it. The pendant swung free, crimson light spilling over her shirt.
Eva grabbed the chain before it could swing farther. “It’s glowing like a brake light.”
Silas stared at the amber glimpse within the Veil. His face had gone tight around the mouth.
“That’s Hel?”
Nyx did not answer at once. Their outline trembled , stretched toward the darker fold, then snapped back.
“One of its tables. Dymas.”
The amber scene sharpened.
They saw terraces carved into golden hills, orchards sagging beneath fruit too large for their branches, rivers like melted butter, kitchens open to the air where figures in white coats moved among blue flames. A bell rang in that distant place, low and hungry. Something enormous shifted beyond the vineyards, unseen except for its shadow crossing the hills.
Eva whispered, “It’s beautiful.”
Silas looked at her. “That’s not the word I’d pick.”
“It can be beautiful and awful.”
Aurora could not look away. The warmth from the pendant sank beneath her skin and unfurled in her chest, coaxing, patient. She remembered the fish’s vision—the banquet, the hands, the mouths. Her stomach tightened again, not with hunger but with the memory of hunger .
A leaf-shaped flash cut through the crimson glow at her hip.
The Fae-Forged Blade.
She had tucked Isolde’s gift into the inside pocket of her jacket before they left the flat. Now the moonsilver dagger pressed cold through the fabric, colder than ice, colder than the last look Evan had given her when she walked out and did not turn back. Aurora reached inside and closed her hand around the hilt.
The cold steadied her.
The blade slid free with no sound.
Moonlight did not fall in the hollow, yet the dagger glowed with its own pale sheen, slender and sharp as a leaf plucked from winter. The Veil recoiled where she raised it, the shimmering fold tightening.
Nyx’s violet eyes fixed on the weapon.
“The Courts parted with that?”
“Isolde gave it to me.”
“Gifts from the Fae had roots.”
“Then I’ll dig later.”
Eva glanced between the dagger and the Veil. “Can we not wave the magic can-opener at the barrier between Earth and demon brunch?”
Silas nodded. “For once, I support panic.”
Aurora lowered the blade an inch. The Veil eased.
From within the stone ring came another laugh.
This time it carried through the hollow like a thread drawn across skin.
Isolde Varga stood between the nearest stones, though none of them had seen her enter. Silver hair framed her ageless face. Her white dress shifted at the hem as if underwater. Wildflowers leaned away from her feet without being crushed.
“Knife of moon,” she murmured. “Stone of hunger. Shadow without grave . Three steps taken where one was offered.”
Aurora tightened her grip on the dagger. “We came because you sent the moth.”
Eva shot her a look. “You didn’t mention a moth.”
“It wrote my name in ash on the window.”
“I would’ve opened with that, actually.”
Isolde’s lavender gaze moved to Eva, and a small smile touched her mouth without softening it.
“The friend who measures terror in jokes and kettle time.”
Eva stiffened. “And you’re the woman who sends insects instead of texts.”
“Words on glass reached where phones could not.”
Silas lifted a finger. “Since we’re doing introductions, I’m the man who dislikes this entire venue.”
“The keeper of bottles and borrowed names.” Isolde looked at him, and the air around Silas seemed to dim. “Your bar has heard more confessions than any church within a mile.”
Silas’ jaw flexed. “Leave my bar out of this.”
Nyx drifted half a step forward. Shadows crawled from the bases of the stones to meet them.
“And what am I, Seer?”
Isolde’s eyes shifted to the shade. For the first time, her expression lost its painted calm. Something old passed behind her gaze.
“The man who became a door and forgot the room.”
Nyx went still.
Aurora glanced at them, but their face held no features beyond the violet glow of their eyes.
A bell rang again beyond the Veil.
Dymas brightened in the fold. The amber sky deepened to honey-gold. The orchards swayed though no wind touched them. On one far terrace, figures turned in unison, pale faces lifting toward the barrier.
Toward Aurora.
The Heartstone swung from Eva’s fingers and pulled.
Eva gasped and braced her boots in the moss. “It’s moving.”
Aurora grabbed the chain with her free hand. The pendant strained toward the Veil, hot enough to sting. Silver links dug into her palm. The crimson gem pulsed hard, once, twice, each beat answered by the distant bell.
Silas lunged and caught Eva by the waist before the chain dragged her forward.
“Drop it!”
“If I drop it, it goes through!”
“Then let the greedy pebble emigrate!”
Aurora wrapped the chain around her fist. Pain flared where the silver pressed into skin. The Fae blade in her other hand burned cold, and between heat and frost her arms shook.
“Isolde!”
The Seer did not move to help. Her bare feet hovered above the moss, no footprints, no bent blades, no sign she belonged to weight or consequence.
“The red heart heard the dinner bell.”
“Make it stop.”
“I cannot command what was fed before it was forged.”
“Then tell me what to do.”
Isolde lifted one pale hand and pointed not at the Heartstone, not at the Veil, but at the ground inside the ring of stones .
Aurora followed the gesture.
At first she saw only moss.
Then the colours beneath it shifted.
A pattern emerged under the green, faint lines of gold running between the seven stones. They formed a spiral, and at its centre lay a shallow bowl carved from black root, filled with clear water. The water had no reflection. Not the sky. Not the stones. Not Isolde. Nothing.
Eva grunted as the pendant yanked again. “Helpful cryptic pointing, cheers.”
Isolde’s voice slid through the strain. “What hungers must be shown a deeper mouth.”
Silas barked a laugh with no humour in it. “Brilliant. Feed the necklace to the creepy puddle.”
Aurora dragged in a breath. Sweet air clogged her lungs. Dymas shone in front of her: amber sky, golden hills, tables set and waiting. The pendant pulled like a hooked thing lodged behind her ribs.
She looked at Nyx.
They had not moved since Isolde named them a door, but their eyes burned brighter now.
“Can you hold the shadows?” Aurora asked.
Nyx’s head turned a fraction.
“The shadows here hold themselves.”
“Then ask nicely.”
For a beat, silence .
Then the shade’s edges spread across the moss, thin black tendrils sliding between flowers, stones, roots. The shadows beneath the seven standing stones lengthened and rose like listening hounds.
Nyx’s whisper deepened. “Close your mouths around the pull. Not around the girl.”
The shadows struck.
They wrapped the silver chain, coiled over Aurora’s fist, and clamped down between the pendant and the Veil. The drag faltered. Eva stumbled back into Silas, and both nearly went down in a burst of glowing moss.
Aurora moved.
Three steps to the ring.
The Fae blade hummed in her right hand. The Heartstone fought in her left. Heat crawled up her wrist toward the crescent scar, and the old mark prickled as if reopened.
The Veil flexed beside her.
A smell rolled through from Dymas—roast meat, caramelised sugar, wine, ripe peaches splitting in sunlight, butter foaming in pans. Beneath it lay rot. Fruit gone brown at the core. Grease left cold. Teeth.
Aurora reached the black-root bowl.
The water inside waited without ripple.
Behind her, Eva shouted, “Rory, whatever you’re doing, do it faster!”
Silas added, “And if you lose a hand, I’m not carrying it!”
The pendant surged. The shadows tore in smoking threads. Nyx made a sound like a breath cut in half.
Aurora dropped to one knee beside the bowl. Moss flared blue beneath her. She brought the Heartstone over the water.
The crimson gem stopped pulling.
For one suspended second, it hung from her fist, warm and still.
The water in the bowl turned black.
Then it opened. Not down. In.
Aurora saw a depth that had no bottom, a throat made of night and roots and silver seeds, turning beneath the grove. The Heartstone’s glow shrank to a tight red point.
Isolde spoke close beside her ear though she still stood across the ring.
“Do not give it. Let it look.”
Aurora clenched her teeth. “Clear as mud.”
She held the pendant above the black water and did not let go.
The surface rose.
A single tendril, smooth as ink, touched the crimson gem.
The pendant screamed.
No sound came from it, not to the ears, but Aurora felt the cry in her bones . The Veil snapped bright. Dymas flared beyond the barrier, and every pale face on the distant terrace opened its mouth.
The Fae blade flashed in Aurora’s hand.
She drove its point into the moss beside the bowl.
Cold light spread through the golden spiral beneath the ground. One by one, the seven stones answered, their carved faces opening stone eyes. The hollow filled with a low chord, vast and green and ancient, and the flowers bowed flat as if before a storm.
The pull broke.
Aurora fell back onto the moss, the Heartstone clutched against her chest, the Fae blade quivering upright beside the black-root bowl. Eva reached her first, knees skidding over glowing flowers.
“Give me your hand. Rory. Hand.”
Aurora lifted her left hand. Angry red lines crossed her palm where the chain had bitten deep. The crescent scar on her wrist shone faintly silver, then faded.
Eva’s face drained. “That is not normal.”
Aurora closed her fingers before the others could see the tremor there.
“Nothing here is.”
Silas stood near the edge of the ring, breathing hard, his coat torn where some thorn or shadow had caught it. “Next time a magic moth writes your name, we move house.”
Nyx gathered themself from the stone-shadows, thinner now, their outline frayed. Violet eyes found Aurora’s pendant.
“It saw something deeper than appetite.”
Aurora pushed herself upright and looked into the bowl.
The water had gone clear again.
Still no reflection.
Isolde crossed the moss toward them. Flowers bent away from her soundless feet. She reached the Fae blade and drew it from the ground with two fingers. The moonsilver did not dim in her grasp.
Aurora held out her hand.
“That’s mine.”
“For now.” Isolde laid the cold hilt across Aurora’s palm. “Moon cuts. Hunger calls. Doors remember hands.”
Eva rose beside Aurora, mud on one knee and fury in her eyes. “Enough riddles. Why bring us here?”
The Seer turned her lavender gaze toward the Veil.
The amber fold of Dymas had dulled, but it had not vanished. Far beyond it, the pale figures still stood among the vineyards, watching the grove through the shimmer between worlds.
Isolde’s voice dropped until even the flowers seemed to listen.
“Because something in Gluttony learnt your name.”