Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQE6PBTRFP623796VD501A

The air inside the Grove tasted too sweet, like honey left out in the sun until it fermented, cloying and thick against the back of Aurora's throat. She stepped over the boundary where the ancient oak standing stones rose from the earth, their bark gnarled into faces that seemed to shift when she wasn't looking directly at them. In Richmond Park, the night should have been cold, damp with the usual London mist, and smelled of wet dog and exhaust fumes drifting from the distant road. Here, the air was still and warm, humming with a vibration that rattled her teeth. Rory checked her watch, a reflex born of a life spent delivering noodles on tight schedules, but the hands spun lazily, unmoored from any rhythm she recognized. Time moved differently here; an hour inside could be minutes or days outside. The thought tightened a knot in her stomach. She had come because the pendant around her neck had begun to burn. She reached up, her fingers brushing the silver chain until they found the Heartstone. The deep crimson gem, no larger than her thumbnail, pulsed with a feverish warmth against her collarbone. It wasn't just hot; it throbbed, a slow, rhythmic beat that matched the erratic pounding of her own heart. The unknown benefactor who had given it to her hadn't explained much, only that it reacted to Hel portals. If the stone was this active, the barrier between worlds here in Isolde's grove was thin, perhaps tearing. "Okay," she whispered, her voice sounding flat and dead in the heavy air. "Just check the perimeter and leave." Her bright blue eyes scanned the clearing. Wildflowers bloomed in violent swathes of color that didn't exist in nature—neon purples, bleeding reds, and whites so bright they seemed to emit their own light. They shouldn't be blooming in November. They shouldn't be blooming at night without moonlight, yet the glade was illuminated by a sourceless, grey luminescence that cast no shadows. That was the first wrongness. The second was the silence. There were no crickets. No rustle of rats in the underbrush. No distant hum of traffic from the M25. The silence wasn't an absence of sound; it was a presence, a held breath waiting to be exhaled. Rory took a step forward, her boots sinking into moss that felt spongy, almost fleshy beneath her soles. She kept her hand near her pocket, where her phone lay useless, the screen black despite a full charge earlier that evening. She needed to find the source of the distortion, confirm the portal's location, and get back to the flat above Silas' bar before Eva noticed she was gone. Eva would worry. Eva always worried. A snap echoed through the trees. Rory froze. It came from her left, behind a cluster of ferns that unfurled in spirals too perfect to be real. She turned slowly, her muscles coiled. "Hello?" Nothing answered. The flowers didn't sway. The air didn't ripple. But the feeling of being watched intensified, a physical weight pressing between her shoulder blades. It was the sensation of eyes tracking her movement from the dark spaces between the oaks. She told herself it was paranoia, a leftover twitch from her time with Evan, when every creak of a floorboard had signaled danger. But Evan was human. His violence was predictable, grounded in anger and alcohol. This felt ancient and hungry. She forced her feet to move again, walking toward the center of the grove where the Heartstone's heat was most intense. The gem grew hotter, searing her skin through her shirt. She gritted her teeth, refusing to take it off. It was her only guide. As she walked, the edge of her vision caught movement. A flicker of white, darting behind a trunk. When she snapped her head around, there was nothing but the smooth, pale bark of an oak. She blinked, rubbing her eyes with the heel of her hand. When she looked again, the tree seemed closer than it had been a moment before. Had the grove shifted? Or had she moved without realizing it? Another sound, quieter this time. A wet, dragging noise, like something heavy being pulled over wet leaves. It came from everywhere and nowhere, surrounding her. Rory stopped breathing, listening hard. The drag-stop, drag-stop rhythm synchronized with the pulse of the stone against her chest. She realized with a jolt of ice in her veins that the wildflowers were turning their heads. Not swaying in a breeze, but rotating on their stems, their vibrant faces tilting to follow her as she stood still. The neon petals trembled. "Right," Rory said, her voice trembling slightly despite her effort to keep it steady. "That's new." She began to walk faster, her mind racing through options. If time was distorted, running might age her decades in seconds, or it might do nothing at all. But standing still felt like an invitation. She headed for the gap between two standing stones, the exit she had come through. The path seemed longer now. The distance between her and the oaks stretched, the ground elongating like taffy. She walked briskly, then broke into a jog, but the stones remained the same distance away. The grey light dimmed, plunging the edges of the grove into a darkness that felt solid, like oil. From that darkness, shapes began to detach themselves. They weren't fully formed, just suggestions of limbs and torsos made of shadow and twisted branch. They didn't attack; they just watched, converging slowly from the periphery. The air grew colder, the sweet rot smell intensifying until it made her gag. The Heartstone flared, glowing with a faint inner light that cast long, dancing shadows. In the brief illumination, Rory saw them clearly for a second. Tall, impossibly thin figures with faces that were smooth blanks, save for mouths that hung open in silent screams. They wore rags that looked suspiciously like old delivery uniforms, like the ones from the Golden Empress, but tattered and stained with things she didn't want to identify. One of the figures stepped forward, its movement jerky, unnatural. It tilted its head, mimicking the way she had tilted hers earlier. Rory's breath hitched. She remembered the stories her mother told her, Welsh tales of the Tylwyth Teg, of places where time slipped and people vanished. She had always thought they were just stories to keep a child from wandering too far into the hills of Cardiff. Now, standing in a pocket between Earth and the Fae realm, the folklore felt terrifyingly literal. She reached the standing stones, or what she thought were the stones. As she reached out to touch the rough bark, the wood felt warm and pulsed, like a vein. It wasn't an exit. The grove had rearranged itself. The boundary was gone. The dragging sound was right behind her now. She could feel the cold radiating from the thing, chilling the sweat on her neck. She didn't turn around. Turning around felt like the final mistake, the thing that would let it know she saw it, that she was afraid. "Think, Rory," she muttered, clutching the pendant so hard the edges dug into her palm. "Out of the box. Think." The rules of Earth didn't apply here. Running didn't work. Hiding wouldn't work; they could smell her fear, taste the adrenaline in the air. The Heartstone was reacting to a Hel portal, a doorway to somewhere worse than this. If the portal was here, maybe the way out wasn't through the stones. Maybe it was through the source. She looked down at the glowing crimson stone. It was pulling her, not toward the edge, but deeper into the center of the glade, toward the darkest cluster of trees where the shadows were thickest. The figures paused, as if waiting for her decision. The wrongness in the air spiked, a pressure building behind her eyes. The silence broke, replaced by a low, chittering whisper that sounded like her own name spoken in a dozen different voices. *Rory. Laila. Aurora.* She took a breath, the sweet, rotten air filling her lungs, and stepped away from the false exit. She turned her back on the safety of the known world and walked toward the pulsing light of the stone, toward the heart of the horror, because staying still was the only way to disappear completely. The shadows parted before her, and the things in the dark waited, hungry and patient, as the hour stretched into an eternity.