Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQEY62BSVMJJHYSHFB1XAB

The standing stones rose from the earth like broken teeth, their surfaces worn smooth by centuries of wind and rain. Rory counted seven of them, ancient oaks petrified into something harder than wood, arranged in a rough circle at the edge of a clearing that shouldn't exist. She'd walked through Richmond Park dozens of times since moving to London, had traced these paths on lazy Sunday afternoons when the flat above Silas's bar felt too small and her thoughts too loud. She'd never seen this place before. "It wasn't here yesterday," she said, though that wasn't quite right. The moss climbing the stones looked decades old, and the grass beneath her feet had grown thick and undisturbed. This clearing had been here for a very long time. She simply hadn't been allowed to see it until now. Nyx drifted past her, their form rippling at the edges like smoke caught in a draft. In the dappled light filtering through the canopy, they looked less substantial than usual, their violet eyes the only solid thing about them. "The Grove shows itself to those it chooses to receive. Or those it wishes to consume." Their voice carried on a breeze Rory couldn't feel. "I confess I've never determined which applies to first-time visitors." "That's comforting." Rory touched the Heartstone pendant beneath her collar, a habit she'd developed over the past week. The crimson gem lay cool against her skin—no warmth, no pulse. Whatever this place was, it wasn't a portal to Hel. Small mercies. She stepped between two of the standing stones, and the world shifted. The change wasn't violent. No flash of light, no thunderclap of displaced air. One moment she stood at the edge of Richmond Park on a grey October morning, and the next she walked through a meadow that had never known autumn. Wildflowers carpeted the ground in impossible profusion—bluebells and foxglove, primrose and wild orchid, all blooming together in defiance of season and sense. The sky above had softened from London's perpetual overcast to something warmer, gentler, the color of honey held up to candlelight. Rory's breath caught in her throat. She'd grown up on stories of places like this—her mother's Welsh fairy tales, whispered at bedtime in their Cardiff townhouse. Annwn, the otherworld. The land beneath the hills. She'd stopped believing in such things around the same time she'd stopped believing that her father's silences were anything other than disapproval. But here, now, with impossible flowers brushing against her jeans and air that tasted faintly of rain and roses, belief seemed like a small thing to surrender. "Don't eat anything." Nyx materialized beside her, more solid now, their shadowed form drinking in the ambient light. "Don't drink from any stream. Don't accept any gift you haven't negotiated for." They paused. "And whatever you do, don't thank anyone." "I've read the stories." "Stories are shadows of truth. They get the shape right but miss the substance." Nyx tilted their head, and for a moment Rory caught something almost like nostalgia in their expression—remarkable, given they had no face to speak of. "I came here once, long ago. When I still cast a shadow rather than being one." Before she could ask what they meant, movement flickered at the edge of her vision. Rory turned, her hand dropping instinctively to the Fae-forged blade at her hip. Isolde's gift was cold even through the leather of its sheath, a constant chill that had taken some getting used to. A doe stood at the far end of the meadow, watching them with eyes that held too much intelligence. Its coat shimmered between white and silver, and when it turned to walk deeper into the grove, Rory understood they were meant to follow. The meadow gave way to forest, but not the managed woodland of Richmond Park with its trimmed paths and informational signage. These trees grew wild and ancient, their branches interweaving overhead to form a living cathedral. Light filtered through in shafts and streams, painting everything in shades of green and gold. The air grew thicker, sweeter, heavy with the scent of growing things. Rory's sense of direction had abandoned her within the first dozen steps. The path wound and doubled back on itself, following a logic that had nothing to do with geography. Time felt different here too—elastic, unreliable. She couldn't have said whether they'd been walking for minutes or hours. "Do you feel that?" She kept her voice low, though she couldn't have explained why. "Like someone's watching?" "Something is always watching in the Fae-touched places." Nyx moved beside her, their passage utterly silent. "The land itself has eyes here. Ears. Appetite." The doe paused ahead of them, looking back with those uncanny eyes. Then it stepped through a curtain of hanging vines and vanished. Rory pushed through after it. The clearing that waited on the other side stole the breath from her lungs. A pool of water dominated the center, so clear she could count the stones on its bed, each one smooth and pale as bone. Around it, the wildflowers grew even more profuse, climbing the trunks of the surrounding trees and hanging in cascades from the branches above. And there, seated on a fallen log at the water's edge, was a woman who could not possibly be human. Isolde Varga looked up at their approach. Her silver hair fell to her waist in a waterfall of moonlight, and her pale lavender eyes held depths that no mortal gaze could match. She was beautiful in the way that dangerous things were beautiful—a blade's edge, a lightning strike, a flame dancing too close to bare skin. "The stone-carrier comes at last." Isolde's voice was music and wind chimes, the creak of old wood and the whisper of running water. "Three nights the Grove has called. Three nights you did not hear. But tonight—tonight, the shadows brought you to my door." Rory stopped a careful distance from the water's edge. "You're Isolde. The Seer." "I am what I am, which is what I've always been. Names are such fragile things." Isolde rose from her seat with a grace that seemed to bend the laws of physics. She left no footprints as she moved, Rory noticed—the grass simply declined to acknowledge her passage. "You carry questions like stones in your pocket. They weigh you down. They make you slow." "I was told you could help me understand—" Rory touched the pendant again. "This. Where it came from. What it means." "Understanding is a river that flows in one direction. You cannot step into it twice the same way." Isolde circled them slowly, and Rory had to resist the urge to turn with her. Showing fear in the presence of the Fae was never wise. "But I see your thread, little stone-carrier. I see where it tangles and where it frays." She stopped in front of Nyx, and something flickered across her ageless features—recognition, perhaps, or old sorrow. "Aldric. Still wearing the shadows like a shroud." Nyx went still in a way that living shadow should not be capable of. "That name died a long time ago." "Nothing truly dies. It only changes form." Isolde reached out as if to touch them, then let her hand fall. "You sought to pierce the Veil and instead became part of it. Such is the price of reaching for things beyond mortal grasp." "I didn't come here for a lecture on my failures." "No. You came because the stone-carrier asked, and you have been waiting four hundred years to be asked for anything other than death." Isolde turned back to Rory, and the weight of her attention was like standing in a spotlight. "The pendant you wear was forged in Dymas, where excess is virtue and hunger is a form of worship. It was made to find doorways—to feel them, to hunger for them, as its makers hunger for all things." Rory's hand closed around the stone. Through her shirt, she could feel its edges, the cool smoothness of the crimson gem. "Someone gave this to me. Left it outside my door." "Gifts are never free, least of all in matters of Hel and Hearth." Isolde began to move again, drifting toward the pool. The water's surface remained utterly still, refusing to show her reflection. "The one who gave you this gift wishes you to find a door. The question you should ask—the question that will keep you alive—is which door, and why." "Can you tell me who sent it?" "I can tell you only what I see, and what I see are threads, not hands." Isolde knelt at the water's edge, her silver hair pooling around her like liquid mercury. "Your thread crosses many others, stone-carrier. Some bright, some dark, some that have not yet been spun. But there is one thread that binds them all together—a thread the color of amber light, of warm kitchens and whispered secrets, of a prince who has grown bored with plenty." Rory felt a chill despite the grove's warmth. "A prince?" "Dymas has a ruler, as all realms do. And rulers, when they tire of their crowns, find sport in mortal games." Isolde looked up, and for just a moment, something like pity crossed her features. "The Veil thins, Aurora Carter. It thins and tears and bleeds. And when it falls entirely—when winter comes in truth—you will stand at the door you were always meant to find." The clearing seemed to darken, though the honey-gold light hadn't changed. Rory became acutely aware of the blade at her hip, its perpetual cold suddenly reassuring. "Is that a prophecy?" Isolde smiled, and there was nothing human in it at all. "It is what it is, which is what it has always been. Make of it what you will. The Grove asks only that you remember—nothing given here is freely given, and nothing taken here is ever truly owned." She stood in one fluid motion and held out her hand. In her palm rested a single flower—a white rose, its petals edged with silver frost. "A gift," Isolde said. "And a debt. When the door opens, this will show you whether it leads to salvation or to ruin." Rory hesitated. Nyx's warning echoed in her mind: don't accept any gift you haven't negotiated for. But something in Isolde's lavender eyes made her reach out anyway. The rose was cold in her fingers, colder even than the blade at her hip. And as her skin made contact with the frost-touched petals, the clearing rippled around her like a reflection disturbed by a thrown stone. When the world settled again, she was standing at the edge of Richmond Park. The standing stones were gone. The October morning was grey and ordinary. In her hand, the rose was already beginning to wilt—but its cold remained, burning against her palm like a promise. Or a warning.