Run: 2026-09-03-01M1KZSJRA7BQS3RPSDAAQJ2RA

The standing stones of the grove drank the last of the daylight. Their ancient oak surfaces had gone black with age, and between two of them the air folded in on itself, a scar of shimmering oil. Rory saw nothing at first. Then the pendant at her throat gave a hot pulse, and the fold brightened to a thin vertical slit. She stopped. Her boots stayed on the frost-rimed grass. "That's the way in?" Isolde glided past without breaking stride. Her silver hair hung to her waist, and where her bare feet touched the ground the dew remained whole and unbruised. "The way in is always a mouth. You must decide whether to be eaten or to walk through chewing." Rory exhaled. The breath fogged, though the grove held no real cold. She touched the hilt of the Fae blade at her hip. The moonsilver stayed freezing, a thin line of winter against her palm. "Comforting. Remind me why I let you talk me into this." Nyx unfolded from the shadow beneath a yew. The shade's solid form stood a hand's breadth over six feet, a silhouette cut from night, violet eyes glowing like foxfire. Their voice arrived a half-second later, a whisper carried on wind. "Because the Prince has something that belongs to the mortal plane, and the mortal plane has a habit of asking for it back." Rory rolled her shoulders. The crescent scar on her left wrist pulled tight. She stepped toward the slit. The world turned inside out. Sound died. Then it returned wrong: a thousand jaws working in wet unison, the glug of wine, the crack of a bone split for marrow. Warmth wrapped around her, thick as syrup. Rory stumbled onto soil the colour of bruised plums. Amber light poured from a sky that had no sun, only a vast glowing haze. Rows of vines marched away in every direction, their trunks gnarled like the knuckles of old men, their branches heavy with clusters that shimmered. Nyx reformed at her side, shadows stitching into a chest, shoulders, that faint violet gaze. "Dymas. The Prince's vineyard. Mind the hospitality. It is the only thing here that never starves." Rory's mouth watered. The air tasted of roasted figs and spiced wine and something meaty turning at the edge of fresh. Her stomach cramped. "Smells like Sunday lunch at my nana's, if my nana roasted the whole bloody street." Isolde drifted between the vines. Her hair brushed a cluster and the cluster sighed. "The first garden was planted with a sin and watered with want. Everything here grows because it is desired. Nothing here ripens because it is needed." Rory frowned. The pendant's heat had faded to a dull ember. She let go of it. "Did you just say that to sound clever, or does it mean don't eat the fruit?" A laugh ran through the rows, though no one stood there. The vines shivered. Rory caught sight of the nearest bunch and froze. They weren't grapes. The fruit hung in pale, taut-skinned shapes, each one the size of a clenched heart. Thin seams pulsed along their sides. One split open with a wet sound and a sigh escaped, warm and wanting: "Eat." Rory backed up. Her heel caught a root. Nyx's hand, solid for an instant, caught her elbow. The touch was cool, like stone in shade. "The orchard hears hunger, Carter. Speak less, want less." Rory's fingers twitched toward the fruit before she caught herself. She curled them into a fist. The crescent scar stood white against her skin. "I'm not hungry." Her belly chose that moment to growl. Nyx's violet eyes narrowed. "Liar." They moved deeper. The path narrowed between hedges woven from living wood. Blossoms opened at their passing, releasing perfumes that shifted: cinnamon, then charred pork, then bergamot. Rory's head swam. She unsheathed the Fae blade a hand's width. The moonsilver dagger held a pale glow, winter-cold, and the scent of rot beneath the sweetness thinned. Nyx's shadow stretched along the path, thickening at the sight of the blade. "Keep that out. It remembers the Courts. The lesser growths remember too, and they do not like the reminder." They entered a clearing where a long table had been laid beneath a pergola of gold-veined leaves. The table stretched farther than the eye could follow, groaning under platters. Whole boars glazed in honey. Towers of fruit carved into swans. Goblets filled to the brim with a wine that moved on its own, swirling though no breath stirred it. No one sat at the table. Rory approached one platter. A peach sat among the pastries, perfect, downy, blushing. As she watched, the skin puckered. Grey fur bloomed. The fruit sagged, collapsed into a reeking mush, and then, in the space of a heartbeat, plumped back to ripe. Again. And again. Rory's throat tightened. "The food's stuck. It rots and comes back. Over and over." Isolde laid a hand on the table. Her fingers left no print in the spilled wine. "Gluttony is a circle with a mouth. The first bite is a promise; the last is a debt. Those who sit here pay in appetite, and the table never forgets a single swallow." From the far end of the table came a wet, rhythmic sound. A figure shuffled between the legs of a roast, spatting grease. It wore a chef's apron stained beyond cleaning, but its body was translucent, its edges flickering like a bad projection. Its hands were raw and bleeding, and it arranged a stack of pastries that never diminished. Rory's breath caught. "That's a person." Nyx's form went incorporeal, drifting through the table's shadow before reknitting on the other side. "A helbound soul. Contracted on Earth for a debt they could not pay. The Prince buys talent the way men buy horses. They cook until the Courts decide they have cooked enough." The soul looked up. Its mouth opened in a scream that made no sound. Its apron read Golden Empress in faded letters. Rory went still. The crescent scar on her wrist burned as though the old accident had happened yesterday. "Yu-Fei's place. That's the Golden Empress apron. I do deliveries for her." Nyx's shadow snaked around her boot. "Don't. You free one, you insult the contract. The Prince keeps his ledgers in flesh." Rory's jaw tightened. She looked at Isolde. "You brought me here. You said the blade could cut wards. Cut that one." Isolde's pale lavender eyes caught the amber light. She did not blink. "I said it can cut wards. I did not say it can cut a debt. The chain is not iron, Carter. It is a promise, and promises are the only bars that hold in every realm." Rory shoved the blade back into its sheath. The movement was sharp, decisive. "Then we find whoever wrote the contract. Everything has a signature." Nyx's whisper carried a note of approval. "Now you speak Hel's language. Ledgers, not locks." They left the table behind. The path broadened into a hillside of tiered gardens. Water ran in channels beside the walkway, but the liquid wasn't water. It was a broth, steaming, flecked with herbs and something that looked like sliced truffle. The smell made Rory's eyes sting. Isolde drifted ahead, her hair trailing over the steam without wetting. She stopped dead, and Rory bumped into her. The seer tilted her head. "Listen." Below them, a vast amphitheatre of carved stone stepped down into a bowl. Rows of empty seats circled a central arena where cauldrons bubbled over blue flames. Banners hung from poles, each one stitched with a crest Rory didn't recognise: a fork crossed with a knife beneath a dripping crown. The warm amber sky pressed close, and the air thrummed with the anticipation of a crowd that hadn't arrived yet. From the arena, a voice boomed, slurred and immense, as though the speaker's mouth were full. "Let the next course present itself!" Rory crouched at the edge of the channel. Her reflection wavered in the broth, then changed. For a heartbeat, her face was rounder, her eyes heavy-lidded, her mouth working around a mouthful she couldn't swallow. Then the image snapped back to her own taut, wary stare. She sat back on her heels. "This place doesn't just feed you. It practises on you." Isolde's bare feet made no sound on the stone. "Practice makes the banquet. The competition begins at the turning of the haze. The Prince will judge, and the judged will beg for second helpings." Rory's fingers found the pendant again. The crimson gem had gone still, its heat spent. But the Fae blade at her hip stayed cold, and the cold steadied her. Nyx drifted closer to the edge, their solid form blurring at the edges. "Down there is where the missing thing is kept. The mortal relic the Prince stole. I can feel the wards from here. They hum like a full belly." Rory followed the shade's gaze. At the arena's far side, behind a curtain of steam, stood a pedestal of black glass. Atop it sat a cage of woven gold, and inside the cage, something small and dark pulsed with a light that matched the Heartstone's glow. She didn't recognise it. Not yet. But the pendant at her throat gave one last, faint pulse, as if it recognised its kin. Rory's scar tingled. She rose, slow and quiet, and started down the steps. "Then let's go say hello to the help."