Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQGPAY48P87P9SB1G4HTPX

The trees of Richmond Park were too quiet. Rory stood at the edge of the footpath, breath curling in pale wisps before her. The autumn air was crisp, sharp enough to bite, but it carried something else beneath the scent of damp leaves and distant woodsmoke — a faint metallic tang, like old coins left out in the rain. She tugged the collar of her jacket higher and glanced down at the map on her phone. No signal. The screen flickered once, then died, plunging the night into deeper silence. She hadn't wanted to come here. Not tonight. Not alone. But the note had been slipped under the door of the flat above Silas’ bar—no address, no signature, just two lines written in an elegant, looping script: > *They are closing the way. Go to the grove before the moon clears the oaks. Bring the stone.* And beneath it, a sketch — not of the pendant, but of the silver chain, the crimson gem at its center unmistakable even in ink. Now, standing at the edge of a park that should have been empty, Rory felt the familiar prickle along her spine — the one that had saved her more than once, back when Evan still thought love meant control. She tucked the dead phone into her pocket and reached for the Heartstone pendant beneath her shirt. The chain was cool against her fingers, but the stone — the stone pulsed. Once. Slow, like a sleeping heartbeat. She looked up. The path ahead veered off into shadow. Park rules said the gates closed at dusk. No one was supposed to be here. But she wasn’t here for the park. She stepped off the gravel and onto the soft earth, boots sinking slightly in the damp ground. The air changed as she moved deeper — heavier, thicker, as though the night itself was resisting her passage. Her breaths came shorter. Above, the moon hung low, a tarnished silver disc half-obscured by clouds. The trees thinned, then opened. There it was. The Fae Grove. She had only seen it once before, by daylight, guided reluctantly by Eva after the pendant first began to glow. Then, the clearing had been serene — sunlight dappling through leaves, wildflowers in impossible bloom, their colors too vivid, too alive. The standing stones — ancient, bark-like, impossibly grown from the earth — had stood in a loose ring, their gnarled wood shimmering with something just beneath the surface, like veins of trapped light. Now, the grove was wrong. The flowers still bloomed — white stars and purple bells, glowing faintly in the dark — but their hues were muted, their petals curled inward like sleeping hands. The standing stones loomed, but their presence felt... tilted. As if the space between them had warped. And the air — it didn’t move. No wind. No rustle of leaves. Just stillness. Heavy, listening stillness. Rory took one step inside. Time cracked. It wasn’t pain, not exactly — more like a sudden vertigo, a lurch in her chest as though her body had forgotten how to be solid. The world blinked. For a heartbeat, she was somewhere else — a place of towering, translucent trees, their roots hanging in the air like suspended veins, and eyes — countless, unblinking — watching from the dark between branches. Then she was back. Gasping. Kneeling. Her palms pressed into cold earth. Her heart slammed against her ribs. She looked down. The pendant glowed now — a soft, crimson ember beneath her shirt. She lifted it. The gem pulsed steadily, like a beacon. But it wasn’t warmth she felt this time. It was hunger. She stood, trembling, and forced herself forward. The center of the grove. The air grew denser with every step, pressing at her ears, making her temples ache. The silence was breaking now — not into sound, but into fragments of sound. A whisper, too low to understand, from behind the nearest oak-stone. A rustle — but the grass didn’t move. Then, a footstep. Not hers. She froze. Again. Another step. Off to her left, near the edge of the ring. She turned slowly. Nothing. Only the flowers, their petals now fully shut, like eyes squeezed tight. She exhaled. Then — a flicker. At the edge of her vision. Something pale. Long-limbed. Gone before she could turn her head. Her breath caught. "Hello?" Her voice sounded too loud, too fragile. It didn’t echo. It just... died. No answer. She stepped back, but her heel struck something — not a root, not a stone. Something smooth. Cold. She looked down. Half-buried in the grass was a hand. Small. Delicate. Human. But wrong. The fingers were too long, the skin too white, almost translucent. The nails were black as obsidian. And the wrist — she leaned closer — bore a scar. A crescent. Just like hers. Rory staggered back, bile rising in her throat. She gripped the pendant tighter. It burned now — not painful, but insistent, pulling her forward. "No," she whispered. But the grove pulled back. The standing stones groaned — a sound like wood strained under impossible weight. The ground trembled. The flowers began to open, but their centers weren’t yellow or gold. They were eyes. Tiny, lidless, blinking in unison. Rory backed toward the edge of the clearing, but the path was gone. The trees had shifted. The space between the stones had narrowed. And then came the breath. Not her own. Behind her. Slow. Measured. Smelling of moss and old blood. She didn’t turn. She couldn’t. Something brushed her hair — a touch so light it might have been a spider’s thread. Then a voice. Close. A whisper against her ear. "Rory." Her name. But not in English. In something older. Something that curled around her bones and squeezed. Her wrist burned. She looked down. The scar — her childhood scar, from the kitchen knife slip when she was eight — was glowing faintly, the same deep crimson as the pendant. And then she understood. The note hadn’t been a warning. It had been a lure. The grove wasn’t a gateway. It was a mouth. And the Heartstone wasn’t a key. It was bait. The breathing came again. Closer. She felt breath on her neck. Saw movement in the corner of her eye — not one figure, but many, rising from the earth like smoke, their shapes just on the other side of sight, their limbs too long, their heads tilted at angles no human neck could sustain. They weren’t moving toward her. They were waiting. For her to step forward. For her to touch the stones. For her to open the way. The pendant flared. The clearing held its breath. And Rory, her fingers curled around the stone, her scar burning like a brand, realized the most terrible thing of all: She wasn’t afraid of what was in the grove. She was afraid of how much it felt like home.