Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQE6PB7XVNHW5G0H1551W4

The chill of Richmond Park bit at Rory’s exposed skin, even through her thick hoodie. Moonlight, thin and watery, offered little comfort as she navigated the winding path. She hugged her arms across her chest, the leather delivery bag slung across her back bumping with each hurried step. Getting lost was not an option. Silas had given her precise instructions: *“Past the old oak with the lightning scar, then veer off the main path. Look for the glade. It’s… different.”* Different, indeed. The air grew heavy as she walked, thick with the damp scent of ancient earth and something vaguely metallic. Her breath plumed in front of her, a ghostly exhalation in the dark. Rory couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched, a prickle on the back of her neck that had nothing to do with the cold. She tried to rationalize it. It was late. She was alone in a massive park. Her imagination was simply running wild. She found the lightning-scarred oak, a monstrous, gnarled sentinel that looked as if it had been struck by the heavens themselves. Its bark was a tapestry of deep furrows and pale, almost silver scars. Following Silas’s directions, she veered off the paved path, her boots sinking slightly into the soft, unkempt grass. The trees here were thicker, their branches interlaced like skeletal fingers against the bruised sky. After a few minutes, the faint glow of the city lights vanished behind the dense foliage. Total darkness swallowed her, broken only by slivers of moonlight filtering through the canopy. The woods pressed in, a silent, watchful presence. Rory pulled out her phone, its flashlight beam a weak defense against the encroaching shadows. That’s when she saw them — the standing stones. Not the rough, natural boulders she’d expected, but ancient oaks, their trunks incredibly thick, their branches reaching skyward like petrified arms. They formed a rough circle, enclosing a clearing where wildflowers bloomed in a riot of impossible color. *Year-round wildflowers,* she remembered Silas saying. The Fae Grove. Isolde’s grove. Richmond grove. Whatever it was, it felt wrong. Dangerously wrong. The air inside the grove was strangely warm, despite the biting chill outside its perimeter. The wildflowers, their petals an array of blues, purples, and reds she'd never seen before, released a cloying, sweet scent that made her head ache. There was no wind here. The leaves on the ancient oak-stones were perfectly still. No rustle, no whisper. Just an eerie, profound silence that swallowed every sound, even her own breathing. Rory stepped further into the clearing, her gaze sweeping the impossible flora. She pulled the Heartstone Pendant from beneath her hoodie. The deep crimson gem, the size of her thumbnail, pulsed faintly, a soft warmth against her palm. It glowed, just barely. A Hel portal. Here. A distant sound cut through the silence – a high, thin note, like a string being drawn taut and then snapping. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. Rory froze, her heart thudding a frantic rhythm against her ribs. She was alone. She *had* to be. Yet the sound was too distinct, too intentional. She craned her neck, trying to pinpoint its origin, but the oppressive stillness held. Her eyes darted from the wildflowers to the ancient oak-stones, their dark forms looming like silent sentinels. A flash of movement at the edge of her vision, a flicker of something too fast and too pale, made her gasp. She spun, but there was nothing. Just the flowers, impossibly still. *It’s just the light,* she told herself, her voice a reedy whisper in the vast quiet. *It’s just shadows playing tricks.* But the feeling of being watched intensified, a chill that crept beyond the skin and into her bones. She clutched the pendant tighter, its faint warmth the only tangible comfort in a place that felt utterly untethered from reality. Another sound. A rustling, this time, from behind the largest of the oak-stones. Not the rustle of leaves, but something heavier, slower. Something dragging. Rory’s breath hitched. She tightened her grip on the pendant, her knuckles white. She tried to move, to run, but her feet felt rooted to the strange soil. She slowly, painstakingly turned towards the sound. The shadows cast by the oak-stone were absolute, a void that seemed to suck in the weak light from her phone. Her eyes strained, trying to pierce the gloom. Nothing. But the dragging continued, a soft, sickening scrape on the earth. Then, a low moan. Not human, not animal. Something else entirely. It was a sound of profound sorrow, of ancient pain, long suppressed and now unleashed. It vibrated through her, making her teeth ache. Her blood ran cold. Rory’s finger hovered over her phone, her thumb shaking too much to dial. She felt a growing, desperate need to be loud, to break the oppressive silence that was slowly suffocating her. But the air itself seemed to weigh down her tongue, to hold her captive. She forced herself to take a step, then another, towards the oak-stone. The scraping and moaning stopped abruptly. The silence clamped down once more, even heavier than before. Her flashlight beam, already weak, seemed to flicker, threatening to die. “Hello?” Her voice was barely a whisper, a pathetic attempt to challenge the encroaching horror. Silence. Then, a soft thud, a hollow sound that seemed to come from directly behind the oak-stone. Too close. Rory’s heart hammered a frantic drumbeat. She was no longer just feeling watched. She was *hunted.* Without conscious thought, she plunged into the deep shadows behind the oak-stone. She pointed her phone’s flashlight, her hand shaking so badly the beam danced erratically. Her light landed on something. A shape. It was vast, slumped against the gnarled bark of the oak. Dark. Unmoving. It took her a full, horrifying second to process what she was seeing. Not an animal. Not a person. It was a figure, vaguely humanoid, but twisted, elongated. Its skin, if it was skin, was a sickly pale, almost translucent, stretched tight over an impossibly thin frame. What should have been eyes were deep, empty sockets that seemed to drink in the light, reflecting nothing. Its limbs were too long, jointed at unnatural angles, and it was curled in on itself, like a thing broken. A sound escaped her, a choked sob. The air in her lungs felt like ice. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't look away. One of its impossibly long fingers twitched. Rory stumbled back, backward, away from the abomination, her heart a frantic bird trapped in her ribs. She didn’t stop until she was out of the deep shadows, back in the relative (though still terrifying) openness of the clearing. But as she emerged, she realized something new, something that made her scream without making a sound. The wildflowers. They were no longer impossibly still. Their petals, in their vibrant, unreal colors, were slowly, subtly, turning. Each bloom, facing the center of the grove, now swiveled, minutely, towards her. Each delicate head, by imperceptible degrees, tracked her presence. The cloying, sweet scent intensified, becoming putrid, suffocating. The air grew thicker, heavier still, like trying to breathe underwater. And the oak-stones, impassive moments before, seemed to lean in, their ancient forms pressing inward, trapping her. She looked back at the shadows behind the oak-stone. Nothing. The abomination was gone. But she wasn’t alone. She was certain of it. The wrongness wasn't just a feeling anymore. It was everywhere. In the still air, in the silent flowers, in the ancient, watchful trees. And in the gnawing certainty that whatever she had seen—whatever was here—was now circling. Waiting.