Run: 2026-09-03-01M1KAKEE0A7TP9AC65282BRXX

The air tore open with a sound like wet silk ripping. Rory stumbled through the rift and landed on ground that gave beneath her boots—not soil, but something spongy and warm, like walking on a sun-baked loaf of bread. She caught her balance and looked up. The sky was the color of honey poured over a flame. Amber light bled across a horizon that curved too sharply, as if the world were a bowl turned upside down. No sun, no moon—just that endless, glowing ceiling, pulsing with a slow heartbeat rhythm that Rory felt in her teeth. Nyx materialized beside her, their form a smear of living shadow against the amber glow. Violet eyes flickered, scanning. "The Veil closed behind us." Rory turned. Where the rift had been, only a faint shimmer remained, like heat rising off a summer road. She touched the Heartstone pendant at her throat. It throbbed, warm as a swallowed ember, and the crimson gem cast a red stain across her collarbone. "Guess that means we're committed," she said. The ground stretched before them in terraced waves. Vineyards sprawled to the left, their vines heavy with grapes the size of plums, each one a different impossible color—midnight blue, bone white, a green that seemed to glow from within. To the right, orchards of trees with bark like polished obsidian bore fruit shaped like teardrops, their skins translucent enough to see the seeds pulsing inside. The air smelled of roasted meat and honey and something floral that made Rory's head swim. Nyx drifted forward, their feet not quite touching the ground. "Dymas. The realm of Gluttony. I had heard stories, but—" They stopped, head tilting. "The shadows here are wrong." Rory followed their gaze. The light came from everywhere and nowhere, casting shadows that moved independently of any object. A shadow shaped like a crouching figure slid across the path ahead, then dissolved into a puddle of darkness that seeped into the ground. "Wrong how?" Rory asked. "They do not answer to me." Nyx's voice, always a whisper, now carried an edge of something Rory had never heard from them before. Fear. "I am a Shade. Shadows are my domain. But these—these are not shadows. They are memories of darkness, left behind by things that should not exist." Rory drew the Fae-Forged Blade from her belt. The moonsilver dagger was cold in her palm, colder than the air, and its faint luminescence brightened as if in response to the realm's wrongness. She held it low, ready. They moved deeper. The path wound between the vineyards, and Rory noticed the grapes were not the only things growing. Flowers with petals like shards of stained glass bloomed along the edges, their centers filled with a liquid that bubbled and steamed. She leaned closer to one, and the flower turned its head—turned, like an animal—and spat a drop of that liquid onto her boot. The leather sizzled. "Don't touch anything," she said, stepping back. Nyx made a sound that might have been a laugh. "Sound advice in a realm built on consumption." The path opened into a clearing. In the center stood a table—no, a banquet, but abandoned. Plates of gold and silver held food that still steamed, goblets overflowed with wine that dripped onto the ground and sizzled where it touched. Chairs were overturned, some broken. A single shoe lay on its side, the leather still warm, as if the wearer had vanished mid-step. Rory circled the table. The food looked real enough—roasted birds with skin crisp and glistening, pies with crusts that flaked at the edges, fruits she had no names for. Her stomach growled, and she hated herself for it. The smell was intoxicating, a symphony of fat and sugar and spice that made her mouth water. "Don't," Nyx said. "This is a trap. Or a test. Or both." "I wasn't going to." But her hand had already drifted toward a goblet. She snatched it back. "What happened here?" Nyx knelt—or the shadow equivalent of kneeling—and passed a hand over the ground. "A feast interrupted. The diners did not leave willingly. See the scratches on the chair legs? The way the plates are scattered toward the edge of the clearing? They were dragged." Rory's grip tightened on the dagger. "Dragged by what?" The answer came not from Nyx but from the trees. A sound like a thousand mouths chewing at once, wet and rhythmic, echoed from the orchard. The obsidian-barked trees swayed, though there was no wind. Their teardrop fruits began to fall, not to the ground, but upward—rising into the amber sky like bubbles in reverse. Rory watched one fruit float past her face. Inside its translucent skin, the seed pulsed faster, and she saw it was not a seed at all. It was an eye. A human eye, blue and bloodshot, staring at her. She stumbled back. The eye blinked. "Run," Nyx said. They ran. The path twisted, and the vineyards closed in, the vines reaching out like arms. Grapes burst underfoot, releasing clouds of sweet-smelling mist that made Rory's vision blur. She held her breath, but the mist clung to her skin, seeping through her clothes. Her thoughts grew syrupy, slow. Somewhere behind her, Nyx called her name, but the sound came from very far away. A hand caught her wrist. Cold, solid, real. Nyx pulled her off the path and into a hollow between two gnarled vines. The mist swirled past, unable to enter the shadowed space. "Breathe," Nyx said. "Slowly. The grapes release a narcotic. It will pass." Rory gasped, her lungs burning. The world tilted, then righted. She looked at Nyx, whose violet eyes were the only steady thing in the shifting amber light. "Thanks," she managed. Nyx released her wrist. "Do not thank me yet. Look." They were at the edge of the vineyard, where the terraced ground dropped away into a valley. Below, a city sprawled—not a city of stone and wood, but of flesh and bone. Buildings rose like ribs from the ground, their walls made of stretched skin that glistened with moisture. Streets wound between them, paved with what looked like teeth, each one the size of a dinner plate. And moving through those streets were figures—humanoid, but wrong. Some had too many arms, others no faces, their heads smooth as eggs. They carried platters and goblets, and they moved with the jerky, mechanical gait of puppets. Rory's stomach turned. "What is that place?" "The capital of Dymas," Nyx said. "The seat of Prince Belphegor. I had hoped we would not need to go there." The Heartstone pendant flared, its warmth spreading through Rory's chest like a fever. She looked down. The gem was no longer just glowing—it was pulsing in time with the heartbeat of the sky, and the light it cast was not red but a deep, arterial crimson. "It's reacting to something," she said. "Something down there." Nyx was silent for a long moment. Then: "The pendant was given to you by an unknown benefactor. It pulses near Hel portals. But here, in the heart of Dymas, it pulses toward something else. A source. A power." Rory looked at the city of flesh and bone, at the puppet-people carrying their endless platters, at the amber sky that beat like a heart. She thought of Isolde's words, spoken in the Fae Grove before they left: *The path to what you seek runs through the place where hunger never sleeps.* "I don't like this," she said. "Nor I." Nyx's form flickered, their edges blurring. "But we did not come this far to turn back." Rory sheathed the dagger—it resisted, the blade humming with cold—and squared her shoulders. The city waited below, and the pendant pulled her toward it like a fish on a line. They descended.