Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQK1RQWQXS8Q75RJNW81RF

Rory's scar itched. It always did when something unnatural was about to happen. She stood before the standing stones—three oaks so ancient their trunks had fused into archways that bore no relation to natural growth. The air between them shimmered, not with heat, but with a distortion that made her stomach tilt, like recognizing a lie in a contract. She reached up to touch the silver chain at her throat. The Heartstone Pendant hung there, dormant, its crimson heart dark and cold against her sternum. Not a Hel portal, then. Something else. "They don't welcome the hesitant," Isolde said. Rory turned. The Half-Fae stood beside a holly bush, her silver hair cascading to her waist and catching the afternoon light in a way that seemed to store it, then release it in slow pulses. Her lavender eyes fixed on Rory with the unsettling focus of someone who had watched centuries pass. Isolde stepped forward onto the frost-kissed grass of Richmond Park, and Rory tracked her movement specifically to confirm what the stories claimed: no footprints. The Fae left no trace. "I'm not hesitant," Rory said. "I'm assessing." Beside her, Nyx shifted. The Shade had drawn themselves into solid form for the journey through London—six feet two of compressed darkness, features vaguely humanoid, violet eyes glowing like embers beneath ash. Now, at the boundary of the stones, they flickered, their edges blurring into the late afternoon shadows. "It burns," Nyx whispered, their voice carrying the texture of wind through dry reeds. "Not fire. Expectation." "Everything in the Grove exists in the conditional," Isolde said, moving toward the central arch. She raised a hand, and Rory noticed the Fae-Forged Blade sheathed at Isolde's hip—not hers, but Rory's. The weapon had been a gift three days prior, after Rory had delivered more than just kung pao chicken to the hidden address in the park. Now it felt strange not to have the cold weight of moonsilver against her ribs, but Isolde had insisted: the blade must walk in first, carried by one who knows the path. Rory's hand fell to her left wrist, tracing the crescent scar through her jacket sleeve. Cool-headed, Eva had always said. Analytical. But her heart hammered against her ribs with a rhythm that had nothing to do with logic. They passed beneath the stones. The transition was not a step but a subtraction. Sound ceased—not muffled, but erased. The traffic drone from the nearby road, the distant bark of dogs, the rustle of Rory's own courier's satchel against her hip—all vanished. In their place rose a hum that seemed to originate behind her eyes, a resonance that made her teeth ache. Then color assaulted her. The clearing beyond the stones defied the December barrenness of the park they had left. Wildflowers carpeted the ground in impossible hues—violets deeper than midnight, poppies the color of arterial blood, daisies with petals of translucent gold that chimed softly when they brushed against each other. The trees here were not oaks but something older, their bark silver-white and their leaves... Rory blinked. The leaves moved against the wind. "Don't track the sun," Isolde advised, her voice suddenly too loud. "It moves on memory, not meridian." Rory looked up. The sky above the clearing was not the gray London afternoon they had departed, but a twilight bruise of purple and indigo, stars pricking through in constellations she didn't recognize. Three moons hung in various phases of decay. "Time," Nyx breathed. They had gone incorporeal, their form stretching into a ribbon of shadow that wove between the flower stems. "It pools here. Stagnates." Isolde walked ahead, her bare feet—when had she removed her shoes?—pressing against the grass without bending a single blade. "Time is a river on Earth. Here, it is a lake. You may drink deep or shallow, but you cannot ford it." Rory reached out to touch the trunk of the nearest tree. The bark was warm, humming against her palm like a cat's purr. She jerked her hand back. "How long have we been here?" "Three minutes," Isolde said. "Or three weeks. The Grove hasn't decided." The unease crept in then, not as fear but as disorientation. Rory's internal clock, usually as reliable as a metronome, stuttered. She felt simultaneously rushed and suspended, as if she were falling while standing perfectly still. She checked her wrist—no watch, just the pale crescent of scar tissue. But she knew, with the certainty of someone who had survived Evan's meticulous scheduling and the subsequent escape, that her sense of duration was being unraveled like yarn. Nyx reformed beside her, solidifying with a sound like wet silk dragged across glass. "There are paths," they said, pointing with a hand that ended in too many fingers. "Under the roots. They whisper in Aldric's tongue." Aldric. The name from before—the human sorcerer trapped in 1643. Rory looked at Nyx, but the Shade's face, such as it was, revealed nothing. Isolde led them deeper. The flora grew denser, the flowers taller, until they walked through corridors of bloom that rose above Rory's head. The air tasted of honey and ozone, thick enough to chew. With each step, Rory expected her shoes to crush petals, but the flowers parted before her, not bending but displacing, as if reality itself made room for her passage. "You're thinking of the contract," Isolde said. It wasn't a question. Rory started. She had been thinking of the contract—the one she'd signed in a Soho basement, the one that had led her here, the one that meant she couldn't return to Cardiff, couldn't see her mother, until she delivered what was owed. "I'm thinking that this violates at least four laws of physics." "Only four?" Isolde's laugh was like breaking ice. "You see small, Aurora Carter. Expand." They emerged into a circular space where seven stones rose—not oaks now, but true megaliths, gray and carved with spirals that seemed to spin when viewed peripherally. In the center stood a mirror—or what appeared to be a mirror—standing vertically without support, its surface not reflective but depthless black. "The Veil," Nyx said, their voice dropping to a frequency that vibrated in Rory's scarred wrist. "Thin here. Ripe." Rory's pendant suddenly flared against her chest. Warmth spread through the silver chain, and the crimson stone pulsed with a heartbeat rhythm. She yanked it out from under her shirt. The glow was faint but distinct, casting red shadows across her hands. "Not Hel," Isolde said, her lavender eyes narrowing. "But adjacent. The realms press close in the Grove. Like pages in a book." Rory approached the standing stone—or mirror, or portal. The surface rippled as she neared, and suddenly she saw not her own reflection, but Dymas: amber skies, vineyards stretching to a horizon that curved upward, and figures moving between the rows with too many joints in their limbs. Her mouth went dry. The warmth of the pendant became uncomfortable, then painful. "Don't touch," Isolde said, catching Rory's wrist. Her fingers were cold, inhumanly smooth. "You carry a key from that realm. To touch the glass would be to turn the lock." Rory stepped back, her breath coming short. "The pendant. It's from there." "It was given," Isolde said. "Not taken. There is a difference the Fae recognize, if not the demons." Nyx had gone to the edge of the circle, their shadow-form pooling against one of the megaliths. "Something comes," they whispered. "Through the roots. The Grove is... curious." The ground trembled. Not an earthquake, but a shift, like a dog settling into a new position. The wildflowers turned toward them, their faces now revealing not petals but eyes—dozens of them, blinking with golden lids. Rory's hand went to where the Fae blade should be, finding only empty air. "Isolde—" "The blade," Isolde said, unsheathing the moonsilver weapon. It caught the triple moonlight and threw it back in arcs of cold blue. "It sings here. Listen." Rory listened. Above the hum, beneath the floral chiming, she heard it—a high, clear note like a wine glass rim being circled by a wet finger. The blade was cold, she knew, always cold, but here it seemed to generate frost that crawled up Isolde's arm. The eyes in the flowers watched, unblinking now. "We seek the Oracle," Rory said, her voice steady despite the tremor in her knees. She fell back on her training, her barrister's diction cutting through the unreality. "We seek truth, not trespass." The trembling ceased. The flowers slowly turned away, resuming their aimless swaying. Isolde smiled, and it was terrible in its beauty. "You learn quickly, little lawyer. But truth in the Grove is not a statement. It is a path." She gestured with the blade toward a new opening in the tree line that had not been there moments before. "Walk carefully. The path changes with the walker." As they moved toward the new passage, Rory felt the weight of the pendant settle back into dormancy, but the warmth lingered on her skin. She checked her wrist—three hours should have passed since they entered, or perhaps three seconds. Her phone, when she dared to glance at it, displayed a jumble of symbols that hurt to read. Nyx walked beside her now, solid enough to cast a shadow that moved in the wrong direction. "Aldric knew this place," they said quietly. "Before the binding. He dreamed of it." "What happened to him?" Rory asked. Nyx turned their violet eyes toward her, and for a moment, Rory saw through them—saw a library burning, saw a circle of salt, saw a man screaming as his form unraveled into smoke and regret. "He reached too far," Nyx said. "As you are about to." The path opened into a glade where a single tree grew—not silver, not oak, but something that appeared to be made of woven light. Its fruit glowed with the same color as Rory's pendant. Isolde stopped. "Choose," she said, holding out the Fae-Forged Blade, handle first. "The fruit, or the blade. You cannot carry both from this place." Rory looked at the tree, at the fruit that pulsed like a second heart. She looked at the blade, moonsilver and cold, effective against demons, a gift bound by rules she didn't fully understand. The scar on her wrist throbbed. "I'll keep the blade," she said. Isolde nodded, as if she had seen this moment a thousand years ago. "Then the Grove knows you. And the price is set." The fruit dimmed. The path ahead cleared. And somewhere in the distance, a clock began to tick—backward, Rory realized, but ticking nonetheless. They walked on.