Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQEYKP63Q31K2G23TDDC3F

Aurora Carter left the last smear of London behind her at the gates of Richmond Park. The city’s noise dulled as if someone had shut a door, and even the sodium glow from the roadlamps seemed reluctant to follow her under the trees. The path ahead was a ribbon of pale gravel threading between dark grass. She could still taste ginger and hot oil from the Golden Empress on her tongue, could still feel the strap of her delivery bag biting her shoulder as she’d dumped it in her flat and come straight back out. It had started on the walk home—just a faint warmth against her sternum, a heartbeat that wasn’t hers. The Heartstone pendant lay under her shirt, thumb-sized and heavy as a secret. She touched it through the fabric. The silver chain felt cold; the stone, not. It pulsed, faintly but insistently, as if answering something ahead. She’d told herself it was body heat, nerves, anything ordinary. But it had done this before, once, near a door in an alley that shouldn’t have been there. She’d learned then that it meant one thing: a Hel portal close by. And if there was a portal in Richmond Park, then the Grove was real. Isolde’s grove. The clearing that existed in a pocket between Earth and somewhere else. Rory kept moving because standing still made her think about how ridiculous it was—about how thin the line was between “clever” and “stupid.” She’d lived long enough with Evan’s hands on her wrists, Evan’s voice in her ear, to know fear could be practical. But she’d also learned that ignoring fear didn’t make it go away; it just made it patient. The night air had a wet bite to it. The park smelled of soil and leaf rot and something sweeter underneath, like crushed apples left too long. Her breath showed in brief ghosts. The only sounds were her own footfalls and, far off, the hard metallic clack of a train crossing a bridge. No owls. There should’ve been owls. The path narrowed where the trees thickened. Branches interlaced above her head, obscuring the thin moon. Her phone screen was a weak rectangle in her palm, the map useless in a place that refused to be fully caught by coordinates. The pin sat on “Richmond Park,” smugly ordinary. She clicked the torch on anyway, though the beam only made the dark beyond it look denser. The pendant warmed again, a little surge that made her fingers twitch against her collarbone. “All right,” she murmured, because the sound of her own voice was a rope to hold. “I’m here.” No one answered, of course. She hadn’t expected one. Still, the hush that followed felt like something listening. She’d read enough in the last week—enough scraps from old forums and half-burned pages Eva had dug up from some occult shop in Soho—to know the boundary was marked. Ancient oak standing stones, planted like teeth. You didn’t wander into the Grove by accident. It wanted consent, or at least attention. Rory walked off the path and into the grass. It was too soft underfoot, springy in a way that didn’t match the season. Wildflowers spotted the ground in pale clusters—white, violet, a startling blue that looked painted on. In February, they should’ve been dead. Here they bloomed as if time had forgotten them. Her torch caught the first stone and made it jump out of the darkness. It wasn’t tall—only up to her shoulder—but it was thick, rough oak turned to something like petrified wood. The surface held old tool marks, grooves that formed spirals and knotwork. Lichen grew in silver maps across it. She found another, and another, set in a rough ring. The pendant throbbed warmly, each pulse a quiet insistence that ran up into her throat. It made swallowing hard. Rory moved along the ring, counting. Seven stones, like the days of a week, like a pattern that wanted completion. Between two of them, the air looked wrong. Not a shimmer exactly—more like the dark had depth, like a curtain you could push your hand through if you stopped believing in walls. She slowed. Her skin prickled beneath her jacket. This was the point where she should turn around. She knew it the way she’d known, years ago, not to answer Evan when he called her name in that fake-soft voice. Curiosity was one thing. Walking into a hole in the world alone at night was another. She put her hand on the nearest stone. It felt dry and warm, like it had been in the sun all day. That was impossible. Rory’s torchlight slid over the carvings, and for a moment the lines seemed to shift, like something beneath the surface was re-aligning to look back at her. She pulled her hand away. Her left wrist flashed in the light, the small crescent-shaped scar there pale and smooth. She rubbed it with her thumb, an old reflex from childhood, grounding herself in pain remembered. The grass beyond the stones rippled. Rory froze, torch locked on the spot. The flowers trembled, stems bending as if something passed through them. The motion was too deliberate for wind. In fact, the air was dead still. No shiver in the tree branches. No rustle of leaves. Only that slow, careful disturbance in the field of blooms. A fox, she told herself. Or a deer. Then the rippling stopped and the flowers lifted again, uncrushed. Whatever had moved through them hadn’t touched them. Rory’s mouth went dry. She lowered the torch a fraction, as if by not pointing directly at the disturbance she could pretend it wasn’t there. A sound drifted in—soft, almost musical. Not a birdcall. Not wind. It was a voice, muffled by distance, humming a tune with too few notes. It tugged at something in her memory. Cardiff, maybe. A teacher at the front of a classroom. Her mother singing absentmindedly while making tea. The pendant’s warmth spread, a feverish comfort. Rory took one step toward the gap between the stones. Her foot sank slightly, as if the ground gave way a fraction too much. She pulled back. The sensation lingered in her ankle—like cold water, like the moment before your body realizes it’s falling. “All right,” she said again, because she needed rules. “I’m not stupid. I’m just… verifying.” She angled the torch into the gap. The beam hit darkness and didn’t reflect back properly. It was swallowed. The humming stopped. The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was held, like breath. Rory waited, muscles tight. The pendant throbbed in time with her pulse now, or maybe her pulse had matched it. She couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. Something moved at the edge of the torchlight. Not a body. Not even a shadow. The darkness itself shifted, as if it had turned its head. Rory’s stomach tightened. She forced her gaze to stay on the space between the stones, to not dart into the trees where her peripheral vision insisted there were shapes. She knew that trick. She’d walked home at night enough times to know how fear populated alleys with men who weren’t there. But this wasn’t an alley. This was a ring of old stones in a park that smelled like apples and rot and springtime in winter. A click sounded behind her. Not a branch snapping. A click, precise. Like a tongue against teeth. Like a lock. Rory turned slowly, torch sweeping. The trees stood in a loose wall around the ring. Their trunks were too straight, too evenly spaced, as if planted by a careful hand. Her torchlight slid along bark, caught on glossy leaves that looked almost black, then moved on. Another click, closer. Rory held her breath. The beam of her torch trembled slightly. She tightened her grip until her fingers hurt. “Hello?” she called, and hated the thinness in her voice. “If this is some kind of… I don’t know. If someone’s there, say something.” The words fell into the air and didn’t travel. They seemed to die a few feet away, swallowed by the hush. No owls. No foxes. No distant traffic now. Even the train noise was gone. It occurred to her, with an abrupt icy clarity, that she couldn’t hear her own breathing anymore. She exhaled sharply on purpose and watched for mist. Nothing. Her breath didn’t show. Rory lifted her free hand in front of her face, palm out, to feel the air. It was cold against her skin. Real. But the small absence—her missing breath, her missing sound—made her feel like she’d stepped into a photograph. The pendant pulsed hard, a deep crimson heat that seeped through her shirt. She almost yanked it out, almost demanded it behave, but her hand hovered uselessly at her collar. Touching it felt like admitting it was in control. Another movement in the flowers, just outside the ring. This time, Rory saw it clearly: the blooms leaned away as if something passed close, not through them. They avoided it. Her torch snapped toward it. For a heartbeat, she caught a sliver of pale surface—something smooth and curved, like porcelain or bone, then it slid away behind a tree. Too fast to be an animal. Too silent. Rory’s heart hammered. She backed toward the nearest stone without taking her eyes off the trees. Her shoulder brushed the oak surface. Warm. Too warm. Comforting in the way a radiator is comforting until you realize it’s been on all night in an empty room. The click came again, right beside her ear. Rory flinched so hard her torchlight jumped. The beam skated over the stone carvings, and the spirals seemed to tighten, the grooves deepening, lines becoming mouths. She spun, but there was nothing there except empty air and the gap between stones waiting like an open throat. The humming started again, behind her now. Not one voice—several, layered. Low, gentle, coaxing. The tune wasn’t her mother’s anymore. It had shifted, notes slipping sideways like something trying on a familiar song and failing. Rory backed again, and her heel met that strange giving ground. The air at the boundary pressed against her like cold velvet. It raised gooseflesh along her arms. The pendant flared with heat, and for a second she smelled iron, sharp and clean, like the inside of a newly opened can. Her mind raced through facts like they were talismans. Time moves differently inside. An hour can be minutes. Or days. Wildflowers year-round. Pocket between realms. Ancient stones mark the boundary. Consent. She could leave. She could step away now and the park would resume its indifference, and she’d go home to her flat above Silas’ bar, lock the door, laugh shakily at herself, and pretend this was just another bad patch in a life that had too many. But the humming wrapped around her ribs like hands. The shape behind the trees clicked its tongue—patient, amused. And the pendant wanted forward. Wanted the gap. Wanted the dark. Rory forced her feet to move away from the boundary, one careful step, then another. She kept the torchlight level, sweeping, not letting the dark settle too long in any one place. Her back prickled with the certainty of eyes on her. The grass whispered under her boots, soft as fur. The stones loomed as she tried to retrace her path along the ring. She counted again, needing order. One stone. Two. Three— She stopped. The third stone was not the one she’d passed before. The carvings were different. The knotwork was tighter, more intricate, and there was a fresh gouge in the wood, pale and raw, as if something had recently clawed it. Rory’s throat tightened. She swung the torch toward the next expected stone. There was no next stone. The ring had shifted, subtly but undeniably. The gap between stones now sat directly opposite her, no matter where she stood, like a compass needle always pointing north. She turned in a slow circle, torchlight dragging across bark and flower and stone. Each time she faced away from the gap, the humming softened. Each time she faced it, the humming grew clearer, closer, as if rewarded. Her pulse thudded against the pendant. The Heartstone’s warmth turned almost tender, a hand on her chest. Rory’s mind did what it always did when panic threatened: it searched for leverage. Out-of-the-box thinking, her friends called it. Survival, she called it. “All right,” she said, louder now, and the sound came back a little, as if the air had decided to humor her. “You want me to go in.” The humming paused. The click sounded once, sharp as approval. Rory drew in a breath—she saw it this time, a faint white plume—and kept her gaze steady on the gap. “I’m not doing anything for free.” Her own voice steadied her. She lifted her chin, feeling ridiculous and angry and terrified all at once. “If there’s a portal, if there’s… something on the other side, you can stop playing games and show me how to leave when I want to leave.” Silence. Then, from the darkness between the stones, something like a sigh. The air in the gap brightened—barely. Not light, exactly. More like the suggestion of depth changing, like water catching moonlight. The smell of apples strengthened, sweet enough to make her teeth ache. Rory’s torch flickered. Once. Twice. Then it steadied, but the beam looked wrong—duller, as if it had lost conviction. Behind her, the flowers leaned in, turning their faces toward her like an audience. Rory felt the moment stretch. The park, the city, her flat, her life above Silas’ bar—all of it seemed suddenly far away, like she’d already taken a step she couldn’t untake. She slid her hand under her shirt and closed her fingers around the Heartstone. The gem was hot now, almost painful, its faint inner glow pressing against her palm. She held on anyway. “Fine,” she whispered, not to the humming, not to the clicking thing in the trees, but to herself. “One look. That’s all.” She stepped toward the gap. The cold velvet air kissed her skin. The pendant burned. The darkness between the stones opened like an eye, and as Rory crossed the threshold, the world behind her went utterly, impossibly quiet—so quiet she could hear, at last, the sound that had been missing since she arrived. Something breathing, close enough to fog the back of her neck.