AI The first thing Aurora noticed about Dymas was the smell.
Not rot. Not sulphur. Not the burnt-metal stink she had expected from every half-remembered sermon and cheap horror film that had ever used the word Hel like it came pre-packaged with screaming.
It smelled of bread torn open while still hot. Of honey thickening in the sun. Of bruised peaches, wine-soaked cherries, peppered meat, butter browning in a pan, citrus peel snapped beneath a fingernail. The air rolled over her tongue before she took a proper breath, sweet and salted and rich enough to make her stomach clench.
She gripped the strap of her delivery bag with one hand and the Fae blade with the other.
“Right,” Eva muttered from behind her . “So Hell’s got a Michelin district.”
Nyx stepped through the tear in the Veil last. Their outline shuddered as if some wind had blown through their body instead of around it. The violet glow of their eyes narrowed on the rift, now hanging in the air like heat above tarmac: a vertical shimmer tucked between two black-barked trees, its edges puckered and trembling.
“This is not Hell,” Nyx breathed. Their voice scraped the leaves without moving them. “This is one mouth of it.”
Aurora looked down.
The ground under her boots was not soil. It had the give of damp moss, but it gleamed gold-brown, threaded with pale veins like the flesh of a fig. When she shifted her weight , the surface dimpled, then sprang back without leaving a footprint.
Behind her, Isolde crossed the threshold with her silver hair spilling over one shoulder. No mark appeared beneath her bare feet . The ancient oak standing stones of the Richmond grove stood on the Earth side, half hidden through the rippling portal, grey and wet beneath London drizzle. On this side, the sky burned warm amber with no sun in it at all.
Aurora’s Heartstone pendant rested beneath her jumper, hot against her sternum.
“It’s pulsing.” She pulled it free . The deep crimson gem glowed from within, not bright, but alive . “Like a heartbeat.”
Eva stared at it. “That’s comforting . A rock with organs.”
Isolde turned her pale lavender eyes towards the slope ahead. “A heart seeks a table. A table seeks a guest. A guest seeks the bill.”
“Can we get one prophecy that sounds less like a restaurant review?” Eva asked.
A smile touched Isolde’s mouth and vanished. “No.”
Aurora tucked the pendant back beneath her jumper, though it burned through the fabric. “Stay close. No eating anything. No drinking anything. No touching anything that looks like it wants touching.”
Nyx drifted past her, their feet dissolving into vapour where they met the golden ground. “In Dymas, everything wants to be consumed. Some things hunger to be admired first.”
“Grand.” Aurora took the first step down the slope. “That’s grand.”
They moved between trees that were not trees.
Their trunks rose in smooth spirals of dark red wood, glossy as lacquer, each one twisted around a core of dim orange light. Branches bowed under fruit the size of lanterns. Some fruit had translucent skin, revealing seeds that swam inside like tiny black fish. Others opened and closed along seam-like mouths, releasing puffs of spice into the air. Leaves as wide as dinner plates turned towards Aurora as she passed, their undersides patterned with pale veins that formed shapes too close to writing.
Eva walked shoulder to shoulder with her, arms folded tight despite the warm air. Her boots sank with soft wet sounds.
“That leaf just looked at me.”
“Leaves don’t have eyes.”
“That leaf had opinions.”
Aurora glanced back. One broad leaf curled away, coy as a cat hiding its face.
“Don’t insult the foliage,” she murmured.
“Too late. It heard me.”
A low sound drifted across the grove. Not music. Not quite. A note stretched over a thousand throats, humming and clinking and sighing, cut with bursts of laughter that cracked like sugar. Far ahead, beyond the line of red trees, something glittered.
Nyx lifted one shadow-hand. “Wait.”
Aurora froze.
The ground ahead puckered.
A vine slid up through the gold-brown surface with the care of a hand emerging from bathwater. Its skin was pale green, almost white, and studded with thorns shaped like tiny forks. At the tip hung a cluster of grapes. Each grape shone deep purple, and inside each one, something moved.
Eva made a strangled noise. “Nope.”
The vine leaned towards Aurora’s face. The grapes trembled , plump and wet, perfuming the air with wine and summer rain and the dark corner of a cellar where bottles slept for years.
Her mouth flooded.
She swallowed and felt foolish rage spark through the hunger. She had eaten before they left. A proper meal at the Golden Empress, Yu-Fei pushing extra dumplings on her with a scowl and a plastic tub of rice “in case supernatural nonsense took too long.” The craving in her now had nothing to do with hunger. It climbed straight into memory.
Cardiff kitchen. Mam making bara brith. Dad pretending not to steal the first slice. Rain needling the windows. No bruises yet. No London. No portals. No shadows breathing beside her.
Aurora’s fingers tightened around the cold moonsilver hilt.
“Rory?” Eva’s voice came low. “Your eyes went weird.”
Aurora lifted the Fae blade and placed its edge against the vine.
The plant recoiled before she cut.
A thin scream piped from the grapes. Not loud. Worse than loud. Tiny, wounded, indignant.
Nyx’s shape unfurled, spreading dark across the golden ground. The vine plunged back beneath the surface and left a ring of dampness behind.
Aurora dragged air through her teeth.
“Everyone all right?”
Eva stared at the place where the vine had vanished. “The fruit screamed.”
“It offered remembrance,” Isolde murmured. “Dymas serves the appetite that wears each face best.”
Aurora looked at her. “You knew that would happen.”
“I knew the vine would offer what the hand had lost.”
“You could’ve led with that.”
“I did. You disliked the bill.”
Eva jabbed a finger between them. “Later. Argue with the cryptic barefoot nightmare later.”
Isolde inclined her head as though Eva had paid her a formal compliment.
They walked on.
The grove thinned, and the world opened.
Aurora stopped at the edge of a terrace carved into the hillside. Below them stretched Dymas.
Vineyards rolled across valleys in geometric waves, each row stitched with silver irrigation channels that carried something thicker than water. Orchards floated in tiers, their roots hanging loose in the amber air like ropes, dripping luminous sap into collecting bowls tended by figures in white masks. Farther beyond, gardens spread beneath glass domes veined with gold, and within them moved shapes too tall, too many-limbed, bending over flowerbeds that exhaled coloured steam.
At the centre of the valley stood a city of kitchens.
No walls. No streets in any sense Aurora understood. Instead, halls and courtyards linked by bridges of black stone and copper, with chimneys rising like organ pipes. Flames burned blue, green, rose-pink. Vast tables wound through plazas in spirals and loops, set with platters that refilled themselves between one blink and the next. Fountains poured wine, cream, dark broth, clear syrup full of suspended petals. Above everything drifted chandeliers made from bones and crystal , each hung with candles whose flames bent towards passing bodies.
A roar rose from the city. Applause. Knives striking plates. Voices calling bids. Bells. Laughter. Something like sobbing wrapped in song .
Eva whispered, “That is obscene.”
Aurora nodded once. She could not look away.
The amber sky had no sun, yet every surface gleamed as though lit from within. Colours looked too ripe. Reds deepened until they seemed wet . Greens glowed along their edges. Gold crawled over the roofs and vines and fruit skins, thick as egg yolk.
Nyx stood beside her, their shadow-form drawn thin. “Belphegor’s realm always dressed greed as generosity. Refusal offends it.”
“Then we’ll be rude,” Aurora said.
A path descended from the terrace, paved with flat white stones. Each stone held a pressed image under its surface: a hand, a mouth, an eye, a key, a bowl. The path curled towards the nearest vineyard.
Isolde moved first.
Eva caught Aurora’s sleeve. “Do we trust her?”
Aurora watched the seer pass over the white stones without sound. “No.”
“Good.”
“We follow her anyway.”
“Less good.”
They descended.
The air changed with every dozen steps. At the top, it had carried orchard sweetness; halfway down, it thickened with roasting fat and cinnamon bark, then sharpened into vinegar, then bloomed with mint that made Aurora’s eyes water. Her pendant gave faint pulses against her chest, faster when the path curved near black arches half buried in the hillsides. She counted six before she stopped counting. Hel portals, if Nyx’s warning face meant anything.
A bell rang somewhere below.
The vineyards answered.
Leaves shivered in rows across the valley. Grapes swelled, tightened, and dropped from their stems into waiting baskets with soft plunks. No hands collected them. The baskets waddled along on little root-legs, forming lines towards a copper press where two masked attendants turned a wheel taller than a bus.
One attendant paused as the group approached.
The mask was porcelain -white and lipless, painted with a single red line from brow to chin. Beneath its robe, the figure’s arms were human enough, though too long at the wrist. A brass tag hung around its neck.
Aurora read the engraved name before she could stop herself.
MARTIN ELLIS. SOMMELIER. CONTRACT: NINETY-NINE YEARS.
Her throat tightened.
Ellis.
Not rare. Not proof of anything. Her mother’s maiden name had sat on school forms and old Christmas cards and one cracked mug in the Cardiff kitchen. Ellis belonged to half of Wales if you squinted.
The attendant turned the wheel again.
Eva saw her staring. “Rory.”
“I’m fine.”
“That’s your ‘I’ve found a body in a cupboard’ voice.”
Aurora stepped closer to the press. The masked attendant did not look up this time. Purple juice ran down copper grooves into glass jars, but when it caught the light it flashed red.
“Martin.” She kept her voice level. “Can you hear me?”
The wheel creaked.
Nyx slid between the vine rows, violet eyes fixed on the attendant. “Mortal soul. Bound by appetite, sealed by signature.”
The attendant’s fingers twitched on the wheel.
Aurora caught the movement. “Martin. I’m from Cardiff.”
The wheel stopped.
Eva swore under her breath.
The porcelain mask tilted. Behind the eye holes, darkness gathered. A faint wet sound came from inside, like someone licking cracked lips.
“Cardiff,” came a voice from beneath the mask. Rusted. Thin. “Rain on Queen Street. Chips after closing. My mother hated the gulls.”
Aurora’s grip loosened on the blade.
The attendant lunged.
Nyx hit him before his long fingers reached Aurora’s face. Shadow wrapped around white cloth and brass tag, dragging him back, but Martin twisted with starving strength. His mask split down the painted red line, and the mouth beneath opened far too wide.
“Say it again. Give it here. Give me the place. Give me the rain.”
Aurora staggered back into Eva, who shoved her behind one shoulder.
“Back off, mate.”
Martin clawed at the air. “Just a taste. Just one street. One name.”
Isolde raised her hand. Silver hair lifted around her as if underwater. “The signed tongue cannot swallow what was not served.”
Martin collapsed.
Not to the ground. Inward. His limbs folded into the robe, and the robe folded into itself, until only the brass tag remained on the white stones, spinning with a light metallic rattle.
Aurora stared at it.
Eva’s face had lost colour. “Where did he go?”
Isolde lowered her hand. “Back to his station. The contract dislikes interruption.”
Aurora bent, but Nyx caught her wrist. Their touch felt like cold smoke .
“Do not take his name.”
Her crescent scar showed pale against their shadowed fingers. She looked at the brass tag until it stopped spinning.
“He was human.”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
Nyx turned towards the city. “Count the masks.”
Below them, thousands of white specks moved through courtyards, along bridges, under awnings, beside ovens big enough to roast elephants.
Eva pressed the heel of her hand against her mouth. “Jesus.”
“No saviours by that name took root here,” Isolde said.
Aurora looked at her. “Not now.”
For once, the seer fell silent.
They left the vineyard path and cut through an orchard where the floating trees hung low enough for Aurora to duck beneath their roots. The roots twitched as she passed, brushing her hair, her shoulders, the back of her neck. One root coiled around the strap of her delivery bag and tugged.
Eva slapped it with the flat of her hand. “Oi.”
The root recoiled, leaking golden sap.
Aurora almost laughed, but the sound caught in her chest. “You just squared up to a tree.”
“It started it.”
Nyx moved along the shadows cast by the dangling roots, fading in and out of solid form. Their shape blurred at the edges more than it had in Richmond.
Aurora noticed. “This place hurting you?”
“Feeding on me.” Nyx’s eyes flicked towards a row of blossoms shaped like open ears. “Shadows pool beneath every feast. Dymas wastes nothing.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It was the answer I had.”
Isolde walked ahead, silver hair untouched by sap or root. A cluster of small lantern-insects gathered near her face, their bodies shaped like curled spoons, their wings chiming with each beat. They circled her lavender eyes, then scattered as she spoke without turning.
“The city listens. Ask quieter questions.”
Eva lowered her voice at once. “Can the city hear thoughts?”
The blossoms nearby swivelled towards her.
Aurora grabbed Eva’s hand and kept walking.
The orchard ended at a canal.
It ran not with water, but with a clear liquid that held moving images beneath its surface. Aurora crouched at the edge before she knew she had decided to. The canal reflected no sky. Instead, she saw a banquet hall lined with green velvet chairs. A young woman in chef whites plated tiny slices of sugared fruit with shaking hands while horned judges watched from a dais. The woman had a burn scar across her jaw. Her eyes darted towards a door behind the judges.
The image rippled.
Now a boy no older than seventeen scrubbed an endless stack of silver pans. Each pan reflected him older, thinner, toothless, then young again. He did not stop scrubbing even when his fingers bled into soap foam.
Another ripple.
A demon with the body of a man and the head of a golden boar raised a goblet while masked servants poured wine into his mouth. Wine overflowed down his chest. He laughed and laughed, and the servants kept pouring.
Aurora stood.
Eva peered into the canal and stepped back. “That’s not water.”
“No,” Nyx breathed. “Memory stock. They reduce longing to broth, fear to glaze, grief to salt. Every realm has craft. Dymas perfected extraction.”
Aurora’s stomach rolled. “We need to get what we came for and leave.”
The words landed heavier than she intended. Across the canal, something answered.
A door opened where no wall stood.
It rose from the bank in a frame of black iron, tall and narrow, its panels carved with pears, tongues, knives, and sleeping faces. Warm light spilled from the gap beneath it. The Heartstone pendant flared against Aurora’s chest, hot enough to make her flinch.
Eva pointed at the door. “Please tell me that was already there.”
Nyx’s eyes burned brighter. “It was not.”
Isolde looked from the door to Aurora. “A table has noticed its guest.”
Aurora drew the Fae blade. Moonlight did not exist in the amber sky, yet the moonsilver edge gave off a cold gleam.
“I said no restaurant reviews.”
The door swung inward.
A gust rolled out, carrying roasted garlic, plum wine, charred rosemary, and underneath it all the coppery reek of old blood. Beyond the threshold lay a corridor tiled in black and white, the tiles shifting places with soft clicks. At the far end, voices chanted numbers over the crash of pans.
Eva took one step back. “Rory.”
Aurora looked at the canal, the orchard, the vineyard where Martin Ellis’s tag had spun on stone. Then she looked at the door.
“We don’t eat. We don’t sign. We don’t give names if anyone asks.”
Nyx gathered themselves into a taller, denser shape beside her. “Names have teeth here.”
“Then we keep our mouths shut.”
Eva huffed once, sharp and humourless. “That’ll be a first for me.”
Isolde passed through the doorway.
Aurora swore and followed.
The corridor swallowed sound.
The moment her boots touched the tiles, the outside world thinned behind her. The canal’s shimmer, the orchard’s chiming insects, the distant city roar—all of it pressed flat, as if someone had shut a glass lid over Dymas. In its place came the rhythm of the corridor: knives chopping in perfect time, liquid pouring, a wet slap of dough against stone, breath drawn through many noses at once.
The walls sweated.
Not water. Butter. It beaded along the black tiles and slid in yellow trails to the floor. The white tiles held embedded flecks of something dark. Pepper, Aurora told herself, then saw one fleck curl like a burnt eyelash.
Eva kept close enough that their shoulders brushed. “If the walls start chewing, I’m blaming you.”
“If the walls start chewing, run.”
“Great plan.”
“It’s got legs.”
“Unlike the baskets.”
Aurora almost smiled.
A shape moved behind the wall to their left. Long. Slow. It pressed outward through the tile without breaking it, outlining a hand with too many fingers. The fingers dragged alongside them, matching their pace.
Eva stopped breathing.
Nyx turned their head. The shadow of their body stretched across the wall, swallowing the hand’s outline. A hiss seeped through the tiles, and the hand withdrew.
“Old kitchen spirits,” Nyx whispered. “Grease-born. Knife-fed. They lick at fear.”
Eva nodded, jaw clenched . “No fear, then.”
Her knuckles had gone white around the torch she carried.
The corridor bent without curving. One moment it ran straight; the next, it had always turned right. Aurora’s inner ear lurched . She put a hand to the wall and snatched it back from the warm slickness.
The pendant pulsed again.
Ahead, they reached an archway.
Beyond it stretched a hall so vast Aurora could not see the ceiling. Copper pipes crossed the darkness overhead, dripping steam into the air. Rows of ovens lined both sides, their mouths open and glowing. Between them moved masked workers in white, red, and black, each wearing brass tags. Some kneaded dough on slabs of marble . Some carved meat from carcasses that regrew as fast as blades stripped them. Some stirred cauldrons with paddles taller than themselves, their shoulders rolling in dead rhythm.
No one spoke.
At the centre of the hall stood a table.
It ran from the archway into the dark distance, set for hundreds. Plates waited. Goblets gleamed. Candles burned with blue flames. At each place lay a folded napkin and a blank card.
Aurora stopped at the nearest setting.
The card filled itself.
AURORA CARTER.
Ink spread across the card in elegant black strokes, each letter formed like a hook.
Eva’s card filled beside it.
EVA MARSH.
Nyx’s card remained blank for three heartbeats, then smoked at the edges and wrote: ALDRIC.
Nyx went still.
Aurora looked at them. “That’s—”
“Do not speak it.”
The whisper cut so hard the candle flames bent away.
Isolde’s card did not change. It stayed blank, then cracked down the middle.
A laugh rolled from the dark end of the table.
Not loud. Not theatrical. A warm, pleased sound, like a host seeing guests arrive on time.
Every masked worker in the hall stopped moving.
Aurora raised the Fae blade.
The blank plates before them filled.
On Aurora’s plate sat a slice of bara brith, dark with tea and fruit, butter melting into its cut face.
On Eva’s, chips drowned in vinegar, wrapped in paper printed with a street map of London.
Before Nyx, a pewter cup held black liquid that reflected stars where no stars shone.
Before Isolde lay a single pomegranate seed on a silver spoon.
Eva stared at her plate as if it had spat at her. “That’s from the chippy near my nan’s.”
Aurora’s throat tightened around the scent rising from the bread. Mam’s kitchen again. Dad’s laugh again. Warm rain on glass.
Her hand shook once.
She drove the Fae blade through the name card.
The moonsilver sank into the table with a crack.
Blue flames snapped sideways. Plates rattled. Somewhere in the hall, a masked worker dropped a knife, and the sound rang out clean and bright.
Aurora leaned over the split card and bared her teeth at the dark end of the table.
“We brought our own appetite.”