AI The rift hung between two oak stones like a sheet of beaten copper.
Aurora could see it only because the Heartstone had begun to burn against her sternum. The crimson gem pulsed beneath her shirt, each throb answering the distortion in the air. Beyond the standing stones, Richmond Park lay drowned in winter darkness. Frost silvered the grass. Bare branches clawed at a sky without stars.
Between the stones, the world shivered.
Aurora lifted one hand, stopping herself a breath from touching it. Heat rolled off the rift, carrying scents that did not belong in the park: crushed grapes, hot sugar, wet earth, and something rich and meaty that made her stomach twist.
“An open door,” Isolde said behind her .
Aurora glanced back. “That’s not reassuring.”
The seer stood among the wildflowers, silver hair spilling to her waist though there was no wind to move it. The flowers bloomed around her feet in impossible colors—blue-black petals, red blossoms shaped like little mouths, pale gold trumpets that chimed whenever they opened. She left no impression in the frost.
“Doors are mouths that have learned manners,” Isolde replied. “They swallow politely when invited.”
Nyx leaned against one of the standing stones. In the darkness, their silhouette seemed to drink the moonlight. Only their faintly glowing violet eyes marked the shape of a face.
“And if we don’t invite it?” Aurora asked.
“It will still swallow us,” Nyx whispered. Their voice sounded like wind moving through a cracked window. “It has been hungry for a long time.”
Aurora touched the dagger at her hip. The Fae-forged blade was cold even through its sheath, a narrow certainty against her thigh. She had not wanted to bring it. Isolde had insisted. The seer’s pale eyes had fixed on the weapon as though it had already tasted blood.
“You said this rift was stable.”
“I said it was open.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“No,” Isolde said. “It is the difference between a bridge and a mouth.”
Aurora exhaled through her nose. She had been in London less than a year, and already her life included a shadow-being, a three-hundred-year-old oracle, and a doorway into Hell. Her mother would have called it a sign that she needed to come home. Her father would have asked whether the doorway had a legal owner.
Behind her, Nyx straightened. Their outline thickened, becoming almost solid: shoulders, long arms, hands with fingers too dark and sharp-edged to be human. “The wound is widening.”
The rift trembled . Beyond its copper skin, something moved—vast, slow, and indistinct.
Aurora drew the dagger.
Moonlight caught on the moonsilver. The blade gave off a faint, pearly glow, cold enough to numb her fingers when she gripped it. She stepped toward the standing stones.
“Stay close,” she said.
“To whom?” Nyx asked.
“All of us.”
“That is not always possible.”
“Then make it possible.”
A whisper of amusement slipped through their words. “There she is.”
Aurora pressed her palm to the rift.
The world turned inside out.
For one impossible instant, she felt herself falling upward through a tunnel made of voices. Heat struck her face. The ground vanished. She smelled smoke, rain, old stone, and the sugary tang of rotting fruit. Something brushed her wrist, right over the crescent scar left by a childhood accident, and fingers closed around hers.
Nyx.
Their grip was colder than the blade.
Then Aurora stumbled forward onto soft black soil.
She caught herself on one knee. The pendant thudded against her chest, hot as a coal. Behind her, Isolde stepped through the rift without touching the ground. Nyx emerged last, spilling across the threshold in a long smear of shadow before gathering into their humanoid form.
The doorway snapped shut.
Silence followed.
Aurora rose slowly .
The sky was amber.
Not the thin yellow of dawn or the bruised gold of a city’s light pollution. This was a deep, warm amber stretching from horizon to horizon, glowing as if the heavens had been filled with wine and set above them. Clouds drifted in broad, dark ribbons. Far off, lightning flashed without thunder.
Vines covered the hills on every side. Their leaves were broad and glossy, striped in violet and green, and their fruit hung in heavy clusters that glittered like polished jewels. Beyond them lay orchards where trees bore silver-skinned apples, blue pears, and red fruit shaped like clenched fists . Garden walls rose between the fields, built from pale bones or something that resembled bone: long, curved, porous pieces mortared together with black resin.
Aurora’s breath caught.
The place was beautiful.
That was the first danger.
A road of red stone wound downhill beneath an archway carved into the likeness of an open mouth. Its teeth were pillars, each one taller than a house. Along the road, lanterns burned with green flame. No smoke rose from them. No insects circled their light.
Somewhere beyond the hills, bells began to ring.
One.
Two.
Three.
Each note went through Aurora’s bones.
“Where are we?” she asked, though she already knew.
Isolde looked toward the amber horizon. “Where the feast never ends, and every guest is asked to bring a hunger.”
Nyx tilted their head. “Dymas.”
The name seemed to wake the land.
Leaves rustled in the vineyards. The soil shifted beneath Aurora’s boots, not from movement but from a slow, deep settling, as if the ground had heard itself named and was considering what to do about it.
Aurora tightened her grip on the dagger. “You’ve been here before?”
“No.”
The answer came quickly enough to surprise her.
Nyx’s violet eyes tracked across the landscape. Their shadowed face revealed nothing, but their hand flexed at their side. “I have seen places near it. This is not one of them.”
“Wonderful,” Aurora muttered.
They followed the road.
The red stone was warm through the soles of her boots. With every step, the air grew thicker. It clung to her skin, damp and perfumed. Her hair stuck against the back of her neck. The smells changed as they descended: wine and figs, then cinnamon, then the unmistakable scent of bread fresh from an oven. Underneath it all lay a mineral stink, like blood on iron.
The vineyards watched them.
Aurora knew that was absurd, but the vines turned as they passed. Tendrils uncurled from their trellises, leaves angling toward her. One bunch of black grapes split open. The individual grapes blinked once, wet and lidless, before closing again.
She stopped.
“Don’t touch the fruit,” Isolde said.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You were thinking about it.”
“I was thinking about whether it was fruit.”
“A question can be a hand reaching.”
Aurora looked at her. “Do you ever answer anything normally?”
“When the answer is not dangerous.”
Nyx drifted ahead, their feet barely brushing the road. At the edge of the vineyard, they halted beside a low wall. Beyond it stood a man in a white apron.
He had his back to them. His shoulders were broad, his head bent over a wooden table. A cleaver rose and fell with patient rhythm.
Chop.
Chop.
Chop.
Aurora saw the table first: laden with bowls, copper pans, coils of sausage, baskets of mushrooms that twitched like sea creatures. Then she saw what the man was cutting.
A hand.
Not a human hand, exactly. It had six fingers and skin the gray color of candle wax. The man sliced it into neat pieces and dropped them into a steaming pot.
Aurora’s stomach lurched .
The cook turned.
His face was smooth except for a mouth that stretched from ear to ear. He smiled at them. His eyes were small and black, set close together above a nose like a knot in wood.
“Hungry?” he called.
His voice carried too far. It seemed to come from every vineyard at once.
Aurora stepped backward.
The cook lifted one of the chopped fingers between two claws. “Fresh from the mortal world.”
Nyx’s shadow expanded, spreading across the road.
The cook’s smile faltered.
Isolde touched Aurora’s elbow. Her fingers were cool and dry. “Do not accept a dish.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“He will offer twice.”
The cook leaned over the wall. “You’ve come a long way. A bite costs nothing.”
“Nothing is never free,” Aurora said.
His black eyes fixed on her. “Then pay later.”
The ground beneath the road gave a soft, wet pulse .
Aurora drew the Fae blade fully. Its pale glow sharpened, and the air around it tightened. A line of darkness appeared along the wall where the light touched it, as if the weapon had found a seam in reality.
The cook recoiled.
“Fae metal,” he hissed.
“Apparently,” Aurora said.
“Not yours.”
“No,” Isolde said. “But hers now.”
The cook stared at the dagger, then at the pendant beneath Aurora’s shirt. His expression changed. Hunger replaced amusement.
“There,” he whispered. “There you are.”
The vines began to move.
Tendrils slid over the wall. Leaves scraped against stone. From farther down the road came a chorus of rustling, a thousand living things shifting toward them.
Nyx reached for Aurora’s shoulder. Their fingers passed halfway through her coat before becoming solid.
“Back,” they said.
Aurora retreated with them, blade raised. The cook vaulted the wall.
He landed on all fours, apron flapping, joints bending in the wrong directions. His mouth opened wider than any mouth should. Inside, rows of tiny teeth gleamed like grains of rice.
Aurora slashed.
The moonsilver cut through the air with a sound like a bell struck underwater. A pale line opened across the cook’s chest. No blood spilled. Instead, amber light poured from the wound, and the creature screamed.
The scream broke the sky.
Clouds twisted overhead. Every lantern along the road flared green. In the distant orchards, fruit dropped by the hundreds, striking the ground with wet thumps.
Nyx surged forward.
They did not attack so much as become absence. Their body flattened into a wave of darkness that swallowed the cook’s legs. The creature clawed at the road, shrieking, while shadows climbed its torso.
“Move,” Nyx whispered.
Aurora did not need telling. She ran.
Isolde glided beside her, silver hair streaming behind her. The seer never seemed to hurry, yet she kept pace effortlessly. The road curved between towering hedges, their branches knitted into walls. Flowers opened as Aurora passed. Some sang. Others whispered her name.
Rory.
Laila.
Aurora.
The voices followed her deeper.
They reached a rise overlooking a valley, and Aurora stopped despite herself.
A city sprawled below.
Its towers were carved from red and gold stone, stacked atop one another like extravagant cakes. Bridges arched between buildings. Rivers of dark wine flowed through channels cut into the streets, crossed by boats shaped like serving platters. Great kitchens smoked beneath domes of glass. Their chimneys exhaled clouds smelling of roasted garlic, honey, and spice.
In the center of it all rose a palace with walls the color of cooked meat and windows blazing white. Banners hung from its battlements, each marked with a golden mouth.
Crowds moved along the avenues below. Some were monstrous: horned figures with hands stained red, bloated things carried on litters, creatures with antlers and scaled faces. Others looked human until Aurora saw the chains around their wrists, or the gray emptiness behind their eyes.
At the palace gates, an enormous table had been set beneath a canopy.
It stretched farther than she could see.
Platters steamed. Fountains poured wine. Musicians played instruments made from polished bone. The guests ate and laughed while servants hurried between them, carrying dishes too heavy for one person to lift.
One servant stumbled.
A demon in a jeweled crown struck them across the face with a silver ladle.
The sound reached the hill.
Aurora’s hands went cold.
“Who rules this place?” she asked.
Isolde’s gaze remained on the palace. “The prince who teaches the stomach to become a chain.”
“Name.”
“Belphegor.”
The pendant pulsed again.
This time, something answered from the valley.
A deep thump rolled beneath the earth. Then another. The palace windows brightened, one after another, until the whole structure glowed like a furnace.
Nyx reformed beside them. A dark smear cut across their chest where the cook’s claws had caught them, though no wound bled. “It knows the Heartstone is here.”
Aurora looked down. The crimson gem shone through her shirt now, its inner glow visible beneath the fabric.
“How?”
“Everything here knows hunger.”
Below, the bells began to ring again.
The road behind them filled with movement. Vines spilled over the crest. The cook had survived. His chest hung open in a jagged, glowing seam, and dozens of pale hands pushed through the wound, grasping at the air.
Isolde turned toward a narrow path descending behind the hedge. “The door home is not where we left it.”
Aurora stared at the city, at the palace and its endless feast, at the amber sky that made the whole damned realm look like a treasure chest.
For one breath, wonder overwhelmed fear.
Then something enormous shifted beneath the valley. The wine rivers surged backward. The palace gates opened.
A figure stood within them, too far away to see clearly, crowned in gold and shadow.
Aurora felt its attention settle on her.
Not on Nyx. Not on Isolde.
On the pendant.
She closed her fingers around the dagger and stepped after the seer.
“Find the door,” she said.
Nyx moved with her, darkness stretching long across the red road.
Behind them, the cook laughed.
Ahead, Dymas opened its mouth wider.