AI The shadow swallowed Rory whole.
One moment she stood in the dim glow of Isolde’s grove, the next the world twisted like a cloth wrung dry. The air smelled of burnt sugar and something older, something that made her teeth ache. She stumbled, her boots sinking into warm, spongy earth. The pendant at her throat flared, its crimson glow pulsing against her collarbone like a second heartbeat.
“Bloody hell,” she muttered, steadying herself against a tree—or what she thought was a tree. The bark was smooth as polished mahogany but the colour of dried blood, and when she touched it, the surface rippled like water.
Nyx materialised beside her, their form shifting from smoke to solid. “Welcome to Dymas.”
Rory shot them a look. “You could’ve warned me it’d feel like being swallowed by a bloody whale.”
Isolde stepped through the rift behind them, her silver hair catching the amber light like a strand of moonlight. “Warnings are for those who hesitate.” She inhaled deeply, her lavender eyes half-lidded. “Ah. The scent of excess.”
The sky was a vast, warm amber, like the inside of a honeycomb backlit by the sun. No clouds, no birds—just that endless, golden glow. The air hummed, thick with the scent of roasting meats, caramelised fruits, and something darker beneath it all, like the metallic tang of old coins.
A path of black stone wound ahead, slick underfoot as if oiled. On either side, vines heavy with fruits Rory had never seen before twisted around trellises shaped like screaming faces. The fruits themselves were the size of her fist, their skins shimmering in iridescent hues. One split open as she watched, revealing a pulp that writhed like a nest of maggots before dissolving into a fine, sweet mist.
“Don’t eat anything,” Nyx said, their voice a whisper that seemed to come from inside her skull. “Not unless you fancy being digested from the inside out.”
Rory swallowed. “Noted.”
They moved deeper. The path widened into a grand avenue lined with tables groaning under feasts that never seemed to diminish. Platters of steaming meats, towers of pastries, goblets brimming with liquids that shifted colour like oil on water. No one sat at the tables. No one served the food. Yet the scent was intoxicating, pulling at something primal in her gut.
Isolde plucked a grape from a passing vine. It burst between her fingers, its juice black as ink. “The first sin is always the most… *inviting *.”
Rory’s stomach growled. She clenched her fists . “Right. So, what, we just walk through this like it’s a bloody Sunday market?”
Nyx chuckled, the sound like dry leaves skittering across stone. “Oh, it’s far worse than a market.”
A sound cut through the stillness—a wet, slapping noise, like a butcher’s knife hitting a chopping block. Rory turned. At the end of the avenue, a figure stood behind a table laden with a single dish: a massive, glistening haunch of something that might have once been a boar. The figure was tall, draped in robes the colour of clotted cream, their face obscured by a mask of gilded bone.
“Prince Belphegor’s personal chef,” Isolde murmured. “Or one of them.”
The chef looked up. The mask’s empty eye sockets fixed on Rory. Then, with deliberate slowness, they lifted a cleaver the size of her torso and brought it down. The sound echoed , and the meat on the block *twitched *.
Rory’s breath hitched. “That’s… not meat.”
Nyx’s form flickered . “Not anymore.”
The chef’s head tilted. A low, guttural laugh rumbled from behind the mask. Then, without warning, they hurled the cleaver. It spun end over end, its blade catching the light like a sliver of the sun.
Rory barely had time to duck. The cleaver embedded itself in the tree beside her, quivering. The bark hissed where the blade touched, blackening like flesh under a brand.
“Run,” Nyx said.
They ran.
The avenue twisted, the feasting tables blurring past as Rory’s lungs burned. The air grew thicker, sweeter, cloying like syrup in her throat. The path beneath her feet sloped downward, the black stone giving way to something softer, something that yielded like flesh under her boots.
Ahead, the landscape opened into a vast, sunken garden. Rows of vegetables stretched into the distance, their leaves shimmering in hues of violet and gold. But the plants weren’t rooted in soil. They grew from the bodies of prone figures, their limbs splayed out like the branches of the trees they’d become. Faces frozen in ecstasy or agony, it was hard to tell which. The vegetables pulsed , ripe and glistening , as if the bodies beneath them still lived.
Rory skidded to a halt. “What in the name of all that’s holy—”
Isolde didn’t break stride. “The gardens of Dymas. The sin of gluttony is not just in the eating, but in the *becoming *.”
A groan echoed from the nearest figure—a man, his mouth stretched wide in a silent scream, a gourd the size of a melon splitting open from his chest. The gourd’s flesh was the same sickly sweet shade as the man’s skin.
Nyx’s hand—if it could be called a hand—closed around Rory’s wrist. “Keep moving.”
She tore her gaze away, her stomach heaving. The path led them deeper into the garden, the bodies beneath the plants growing more numerous, their expressions more twisted. Some were fused together, their limbs tangled, their mouths sewn shut with vines. Others were half-consumed, their ribs splayed open like the pages of a book, the roots of the plants burrowing deep into their cavities.
The air here was heavier, the scent of decay beneath the sweetness. Rory’s pendant burned against her skin. She risked a glance at it. The crimson glow had intensified, casting a ruby light over her fingers.
“Is it always like this?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper .
Isolde’s lips curled. “Dymas is what you make of it. For some, it’s a paradise. For others…” She gestured to the writhing garden. “A feast of consequences.”
A sound cut through the grotesque symphony of the garden—a high, keening wail. Rory spun. One of the figures, a woman with hollow cheeks and eyes like polished obsidian, had torn free of the vines. She staggered toward them, her arms outstretched, her fingers ending in blackened, root-like talons.
“Please,” the woman rasped. “I’m so *hungry *.”
Nyx’s form solidified, their violet eyes narrowing. “Don’t let her touch you.”
Rory didn’t need to be told twice. She backed away, her hand going to the Fae-forged blade at her belt. The cold metal was a comfort against her palm.
The woman lunged. Isolde moved faster than Rory could track, her silver hair a blur as she stepped between them. The woman’s talons raked the air where Isolde’s throat had been a heartbeat before. Isolde’s hand shot out, pressing against the woman’s chest. A pulse of light, pale as moonlight, flared from her palm.
The woman screamed. Her body convulsed, her skin splitting as vines erupted from her mouth, her nose, her eyes. In seconds, she was still, her form collapsing back into the earth, the plants drinking her in like water into sand.
Isolde turned, her expression unreadable . “She was already lost.”
Rory’s grip on the blade didn’t loosen. “And us?”
Nyx’s whisper curled around her. “That depends. Do you still feel hungry ?”
Rory’s stomach twisted. The scent of the garden, the sight of the feasts, the groaning of the half-digested—it all pressed in on her. But beneath it, something else gnawed. A hollow, aching need. Her mouth was dry. Her throat burned.
She swallowed. “No.”
Isolde’s eyes gleamed. “Liar.”
The ground trembled . The vines around them shivered, their leaves rustling like the whisper of a thousand voices. The amber sky darkened, the warm glow bleeding into a deep, bruised purple. The feasting tables in the distance began to shake, the platters sliding, the goblets toppling. The meat on the spits *moved *, twisting, writhing, as if the very air had become a living thing.
Nyx’s form rippled. “We’ve overstayed our welcome.”
A shadow fell over them. Rory looked up. The chef from the avenue stood at the top of the path, the gilded bone mask now cracked down the middle, revealing a mouth stretched too wide, too many teeth glinting in the dimming light. In their hands, the cleaver gleamed, its edge dripping with something dark and thick.
Behind them, the garden groaned. The bodies beneath the plants twitched . The vines coiled, tightening, as if the entire realm was drawing a breath.
The chef raised the cleaver.
Isolde’s voice cut through the tension , sharp as a blade. “Now would be a good time to run.”