Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMPGBRE466GDD030A0PG642

Richmond Park lay cloaked in the deep indigo of a moonless night, the usual hum of London swallowed by the park’s sprawling, ancient silence. Aurora Carter — Rory to those who knew her well — eased the otherworldly weight of the Heartstone Pendant beneath her coat. The pendant's warmth seared through the crisp chill of the November air, its subtle thrum an insistent heartbeat syncing with her own. She pushed back her unease. She knew why she was here, but the grove was a veil of secrecy she had yet to fully understand or trust. Guided by memory and a few whisper-thin beams of a reluctant flashlight, Rory navigated the narrow trail weaving forward to the fabled grove's entrance. The oak standing stones loomed ahead, twisted sentinels etched by time, the air around them carrying a metallic tang. Here, time moved idiosyncratically, her previous visits confirming the unpredictable elasticity of each moment spent within the Fae Grove’s mystical bounds. The moment she stepped past the oaks, reality softened. The path behind her vanished, dissolving like a mirage into the sea of darkness. A heady floral scent enveloped her, wildflowers that thrived under the guardianship of the otherworldly realm. She exhaled, solace found amidst the improbability of perpetual blooms. But tonight, something was different. Dread crept along the fringes of her senses. The night held its breath, expectant. A soft rustle emanated from the underbrush, too swift and deliberate for the wind, but she dismissed it — a rabbit perhaps, mongoose, or stray fox. Rory pressed onward, her footsteps muffled by the earth’s grasping moss, moving as quietly as the secrets she carried. This place, a nape in the world's fabric, demanded silence, and she had found its language unnervingly palpable. About twenty paces into the grove, the ambient noise of rustling stop-start laughter ceased abruptly. Her ears strained against the quiet that followed — total, suffocating stillness, as if nature itself held its breath. She adjusted the flashlight, its beam quivering between shadows that danced at the periphery of her vision, elusive and intangible. Was it her? Or were the trees actually leaning closer? She wrapped her fingers around the Heartstone, its crimson core pulsing with deliberate warmth. It offered some comfort, but their trespass into Isolde’s grove had awakened something ancient and perturbed, a presence rooted deep within the soil. Though unseen, its awareness scraped softly against her senses like a phantom limb. As she moved deeper into the grove, the ambient temperature dipped noticeably, her breath emerging in short frosty puffs. Her fingers brushed past a low-hanging branch, rough bark tracing her skin like an unfamiliar whisper. She shuddered. “Eva?” The name fell from her lips — soft, desperate, hopeful. Rory had come for her friend, summoned by a cryptic message written on leaf-strewn paper: Meet me at the Grove — E. But Eva had not appeared. Only the grove’s predatory quiet rose to meet Rory's call, an oppressive stillness weighing down her breathing. She halted beneath the high cathedral canopy of interlocking boughs, negotiating the delicate line between bravery and folly. A ripple of something unseen shifted overhead — a murmur of leaves where none should have been moved. Rory flicked the flashlight upward reflexively, its beam catching on nothing but errant branches clawing at the sky. “Eva, are you here?” She tried again, the words brittle on her tongue. Every shadow was a potential adversary, every branch a talon poised to part the veil between the worlds. The sound of running water reached her then — not the calming trickle that would have settled her heart but a robust, unsettling rush, like a hidden brook bursting its banks. It originated from nowhere visible, the sound milling through its surroundings with mocking certainty. Her fear fractured as a laugh — sardonic and chilling — reverberated through the grove, each note a nail skittering along her arm. It changed abruptly, becoming her old English professor’s voice murmuring from deep within memory. “Aurora, you are clever, but are you wise?” A chill swept the nape of her neck. This wasn’t right. None of it. The grove’s time-feinted enchantments were capricious, insidious. The pendant radiated a searing pulse, drawing her attention to where the earth rose into a small mound at her feet. A sound — a low hum, just within the audible range, wormed into her consciousness. Her heart banged complaints against her ribcage. The hum modulated into a drone, then to spoken words, incoherent at first but slowly settling into familiarity. Distorted lines wove through the air — fragments of remembered nursery rhymes seeping from the soil like curdled echoes. Mary, Mary, quite contrary... The rhyme twisted in a rush of icy air, freezing her in place. The trees strained beneath the weight of the supernatural discord, their boughs groaning. Rory resisted the urge to backtrack. Her own voice trembled from within, urgently insistent. Move, Rory. Leave. Whatever had called her here, whatever had mimicked Eva's reach, intended for her to linger—and to suffer. But Rory was not merely clever; she was persistent. Heartstone clutched close, she picked her path back, retracing through the darkness that pushed and pulled, mind feeling for the warmth of ground anew as she stepped. Suddenly, the world pirouetted around her. The trees swayed and danced, leaning confessional near enough that she could feel their recrimination, their hunger for the unwelcome. But the Heartstone was guiding now — its urgency a lighthouse pulse aligning her strides. Her vision honed, barred by fear’s reigning clarity. The grove’s malevolence oscillated, swarming as its gravity twisted like a corkscrew to eject the intruder. She moved faster, steps nearly tripping in the dark. Then light shifted — a break, an opening as the borders unraveled into reality. The stones loomed anew, her passage met with the cacophony of night noises that rushed back with the suddenness of a held breath expelled. Aurora Carter emerged, her breath tearing ragged cascades through her lungs. Behind her, the Fae Grove simmered in unreal silence once more, its secrets withheld. The auxiliary world held a dark accord, and she had passed within inches of the great unknown grasping at its core. But there, outside its boundaries, Rory found herself reclaimed by the mundane presence of looming city lights and the tick of a trusted watch. But as she caught her breath, the Heartstone’s warming rhythm subsided, though its memory echoed long after in every tilt of shadow and stab of moonlight. The grove’s thread remained tugged deep within her chest, weaving anew always, with Eva’s absence a question destined to spiral unanswered, at least for tonight. Rory turned toward the city, swallowing the lingering taste of earth and unwelcome laughter, now held close as cryptic memory forged in the spectral refuge of her own determination.