Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQFH4R4E9ZXMCC9DD35V0B

The London damp had seeped into her bones, a familiar misery that clung to the hem of her jeans. Rory followed Isolde through the winding paths of Richmond Park, the last vestiges of twilight painting the skeletal branches of the oaks in bruised shades of purple and grey. Beside her, Nyx was a patch of deeper darkness in the gloaming, their form solid enough to cast a faint, distorted shadow of its own. They moved with an unnerving silence, their feet making no sound on the leaf litter. “Not much further,” Isolde said, her voice like the chime of small, distant bells. She didn't look back. Her silver hair, unbound and flowing to her waist, seemed to capture the dying light and weave it into a soft, ethereal glow. Rory pulled her jacket tighter, her fingers brushing against the Heartstone pendant nestled at her throat. It was its usual, placid self, a faint, internal warmth a quiet reassurance against the encroaching chill. The Fae-forged blade, tucked into the inner pocket of her coat, was a sliver of profound cold, a stark contrast. She was a walking paradox of temperatures, a mortal girl carrying pieces of realms she was still struggling to understand. They stopped before a circle of ancient standing stones. They weren't the neat, arranged monoliths of a tourist site. These were massive, rough-hewn oaks, petrified into gnarled, grey stone and sunk deep into the earth. Moss, the color of jade, clung to their crevices. The air grew still. The distant hum of traffic on the A3, the chatter of late-night dog walkers, the cry of a fox—it all vanished, snuffed out like a candle. “Here,” Isolde whispered, raising a hand. Her pale lavender eyes seemed to see something Rory couldn’t. “The boundary.” Rory’s heart began to beat a little faster, a drum against her ribs. She watched as Isolde stepped between two of the tallest stones. There was no shimmer, no tear in the fabric of reality. The Half-Fae simply… vanished. One moment she was there, the next she was gone. Nyx flowed forward, their edges blurring. “The Veil is thin here,” they whispered, their voice like the rustle of dry leaves skittering across pavement. “A fold, not a wound.” They followed Isolde, dissolving into the space between the stones. Rory took a breath that tasted of cold earth and ozone. She clenched her jaw, pushing down the surge of adrenaline, the instinct to turn back to the mundane safety of the park. Cool-headed, she reminded herself. Think. She stepped through. The change was instantaneous and absolute. It wasn’t like walking through a doorway into a different room; it was like being plunged into an entirely different ocean. The air itself felt new, thick and sweet with the scent of night-blooming jasmine and something else, something metallic and clean, like rain on hot stone. The profound, hollow cold that replaced the Heartstone’s warmth was her first clue. The pendant, which had pulsed with life near the rift in the warehouse, now lay against her skin like a sliver of ice, inert and dead. This place was the antithesis of Hel. She stood on a carpet of moss so deep and green it seemed to emit its own soft light. Above her, the sky was not the black of a London night, but a deep, velvety indigo, pricked with stars that burned with a fierce, diamond-like intensity. There was no moon, yet the entire grove was bathed in a gentle, luminescent glow. The trees were unlike anything she had ever seen. Their bark was the color of polished silver, and their branches twisted in elegant, impossible spirals towards the sky, bearing leaves of shimmering, translucent gold. Wildflowers bloomed in impossible profusion around their roots—snowdrops nestled against crimson roses, vibrant bluebells grew tangled with autumn asters. Their colors were too vivid, too pure for the world she knew. “It’s beautiful,” Rory breathed, the words escaping before she could stop them. Isolde, standing a few feet away, smiled faintly. “Beauty is a truth the Fae never lie about.” She gestured with a graceful hand. “Welcome to what remains of my home.” Nyx solidified beside a silver-barked tree, their violet eyes glowing softly in the ambient light. “The air… tastes of starlight and old secrets,” they murmured, their form seeming to drink the light from the air around them. Rory reached into her jacket and her fingers closed around the hilt of the Fae-forged blade. The moment she touched it, a low, resonant hum vibrated up her arm, a note of pure, clear cold. The blade felt… awake. A faint, silvery light began to emanate from the moonsilver, casting leaf-shaped patterns on the moss at her feet. It was a key, and this was its lock. “How is this possible?” Rory asked, her voice hushed. She looked up, trying to find the source of the light, but the indigo sky was a perfect, sourceless dome. “We’re still in Richmond Park, aren’t we?” “Here and there,” Isolde said, her cryptic nature surfacing. She began to walk deeper into the grove, her silver hair swaying. “Time here is a river, not a road. It flows where it will. An hour inside can be a breath outside, or a season.” Rory pulled out her phone. No signal, of course. The screen showed the time: 9:17 PM. She slipped it back into her pocket, a useless relic from another world. She followed Isolde and Nyx, her boots sinking silently into the yielding moss. She noticed Isolde’s footprints—or rather, the lack of them. The Half-Fae glided over the ground, leaving no trace of her passing, as if she weighed nothing at all. Unease began to prickle at the edges of her wonder. This place was too perfect, too serene. It felt ancient and powerful in a way that made her feel mortal and fragile. The silence was the most unnerving part. Not the absence of noise, but the presence of a quiet so deep it felt like it was listening. They came to the center of the grove, where a small, perfectly circular pool of water lay. It was as still as polished glass, yet it reflected not the indigo sky above, but a swirling nebula of stars and galaxies. The water was dark, but light seemed to emanate from within its depths. “This is the heart of the Grove,” Isolde said, her voice losing its riddling tone, replaced by a deep, resonant sadness. “A shard of the true Feylands, left behind when the Courts closed their doors to me.” Rory stared into the pool, mesmerized. She could see constellations being born and dying in its depths, clouds of stellar dust coalescing into novas. It was the universe, captured in a basin of water. Nyx moved to the pool’s edge, their shadow-form wavering. “It is a reflection of the space between,” they whispered. “Where I was lost.” Rory knelt, the Fae blade humming in her hand. She reached out, her fingers hovering just above the water’s surface. It didn’t feel wet. It felt cold, like the blade, and thrummed with a faint, almost imperceptible energy. She felt a pull, a dizzying sense of vertigo, as if the pool was trying to draw her not in, but *out*—out of her own body and into the cosmos. She snatched her hand back, her breath catching in her throat. The wonder was still there, a dizzying, breathtaking thing, but it was now laced with a sharp, clear understanding. This wasn’t just a hidden garden. It was a place of power, a fragile bubble of another reality pressed against her own. And she, a human girl with a Fae blade and a Helstone, was standing at its very heart.