Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQPN084PDJ5PH360NACWT4

Aurora Carter stood at the edge of the clearing, where the ancient oaks—impossibly broad and knotted, their trunks hunched like old giants—rose in a crescent, their shadows snagging the night. The trees formed a ring, mute guardians across Richmond Park, but here, in the shivering dark, the city’s lights felt as distant as a childhood memory. Her boots whispered on crushed bracken. She paused, hands plunged deep in her coat pockets, and listened. The Grove waited. It always did—its silence layered, thick as wool, meaningful in a way that made her scalp itch. The first thing she noticed was the cold. Not London cold; not the familiar bite that crept through scarf and sleeve on a December night. This was a colder thing that backed itself into her bones, pressed into her palms, wrapped itself around her lungs until each breath tasted faintly of iron. She shifted her weight, gravel grinding beneath one heel. In her pocket, the chain of the Heartstone Pendant slipped between her fingers. She’d been sent for this—Isolde’s instructions had sounded simple enough, whispered through Eva at the bar. Go to the Grove. Midnight, no later, no earlier. Bring the pendant. There’ll be a sign. But she’d arrived early, as always, hating the rush. Now, under the patient stare of the standing stones, she wished she’d been late. A breeze moved, threading through the woven branches overhead, unsettling a whisper from the leaves that didn’t match the wind. No cars, no distant party shrieks, no mechanical thrum from the city. Nothing but breath—the park’s, her own—and then, a wet crack in the undergrowth far behind her. Rory turned sharply, heart leaping into her throat, and scanned the tangle of blackberry and nettle where the clearing met the wild. Nothing moved there but a pale scatter of bluebells, almost phosphorescent in the moonlight, and the bristling black hedge beyond. “Just a fox,” she muttered. Her voice felt muffled, caught between her teeth. She tried to focus. She had a reason to be here—a message to retrieve, a promise to keep. Still, as she pressed farther among the cracked roots, every rational thought wavered under a pressure she couldn’t name. The Heartstone’s silver chain coiled tight around her fingers now. She remembered, suddenly, the last time she’d been in these woods as a girl: her father lifting her over a fallen log, his jacket flapping, her mother whistling as they kicked fallen leaves. That had been daylight. This was not. She circled inside the grove’s boundary, boots brushing wildflowers that shouldn’t have been blooming in December—cornflowers, violets, cow parsley even. Each petal glistened with dew, scent sharp enough to sting. Her breath clouded in the air, visible only inside the ring of trees. Beyond them, everything was black glass. Something slid behind a tree to her left—a movement so fast, she almost doubted it. She froze, chest tight, skin prickling along her jaw. Her eyes strained, fighting the darkness, but there was nothing there. Only silence, and the agitation of her own pulse. The pendant shifted, warm against her palm. A faint glow bled through the gaps in her fingers, red as a cut. There’ll be a sign. She walked faster, shoulders pinched high, scanning for any trace of difference—something to explain the unease burrowing under her skin. The stones—seven of them, each twisted as if grown rather than carved—stood at uneven intervals, the tallest as high as her chin. She traced one with her knuckles. Bark rough, bone-cold. Something hung from one branch above her—a ragged shank of cloth? No, just a knot of leaves. A sharp snap behind her. She spun again, knuckles white on the Heartstone. Just wind. Fox, maybe. Or a drunk who’d wandered too far from the main path. But no footsteps followed. No animal smell stained the air. A trickle of time passed—minutes, or longer, it was impossible to tell inside the Grove, where the clocks stopped. The April wildflowers made no sense. Her phone, deep in her satchel, might as well have belonged to another world. The feeling grew. It thickened the air, so every sound that did emerge—water dripping from a leaf, a crow’s wing far away—felt heightened, false. The hush before a word. And now, distinct, another sound: a faint, rhythmic scuff, as if something were dragging itself around the inside of the stones. Aurora’s heart ratcheted into her ribs. She pressed herself to the stone, breath shallow, peering around the fractioned edge. Something—a figure? An animal?—lurched between two trees at the far side of the ring, too distant to identify. It moved wrong: jerked, reared suddenly upright, then shrank to a hunched silhouette. If it was a person, they moved with the stuttering grace of a marionette on tangled string. She released a shaky breath and ducked to her right, working through her options as she moved. If she left the clearing, would she return to London or wander for hours until dawn? Eva would call her stubborn. Silas would call her mad. Her sense of direction, usually so sharp, dissolved here. The warmth of the Heartstone flared hotter. She pulled it from her pocket, held it up: the deep crimson gem glowed with a strained, feverish light, pulsing faintly in her palm. Not bright enough to illuminate much, but enough to etch the standing stones with red marks. Across the clearing, the figure paused. Aurora couldn’t see its face, but she felt its attention pivot—the weight of it, dreadful and searching, pressed against her chest. Her mind supplied faces, shapes, images—her ex, Evan, at the door with angry eyes; a stranger in the rain under neon; her father’s warning look—but the silhouette slouched too low, arms too elongated, body blurred at the edges. “Isolde?” she called, hating how feeble her voice sounded. “I’ve got the pendant. You said—” The thing—creature, spirit, whatever passed for threat in fae-touched clearings—moved again. Straight for her this time, in a loping, uneven gait. She stepped backward, bringing the Heartstone up defensively. The silver chain flashed in the bloody glow, and the air pressed in colder and colder, thighs trembling, toes curling inside her boots. Another sound—murmur, or trick of the wind—threaded between the trees, a thin voice, just on the border of hearing. Her name. Not Laila, not Rory. Aurora. She bit her lip. “Who’s there?” The name came again, stretched and distorted, spat through splintered bark. Aurora. Aurora. Aurora. Her knees wanted to bolt, but she forced herself to root in place. If this was some kind of test, trap, or invitation—she didn’t know the rules, but she refused to run. The figure hesitated at the edge of the standing stones, as if barred. Its hand—too many joints, too thin—reached for her. It flexed, then withdrew. The pendant bloomed brighter, red light smearing across the wrinkled trunk. It can’t come in, she realized. Not while I have this. Her chest ached with dread and a dark thrill—proof, however thin, that she held some agency. That the Grove, however odd, recognized her right to stand here. The voice fractured, multiplied, a chorus of ruptured whispers inside her head: “Return.” “Bring it—” “Here—” The Heartstone pulsed, heat stinging her fingers now. The figure stumbled left, colliding against the stone with an awful, scraping shriek, and where it touched, bark smoked. The air reeked of iron and old, crusted blood. Aurora retreated deeper into the ring, the world shrinking to stone and faint red light. She squeezed the pendant tighter, its warmth an anchor. It was just a clearing, just a job, just another message from the twilight places, but something in the silent hush told her this was different. She stood her ground as the thing pressed as close as it dared, shapeless in the dark. It beckoned, hollow-eyed, mouth jellied open, and from that wound came her name again and again, each syllable wrong, a snagged thread through teeth and darkness. Aurora Carter did not run. She waited, heart slamming, as moonlight angled cold across the grass and the wildflowers glistened. The Grove watched, silent and old, as the barrier held and the thing paced, caged by the ancient trees. She had come for a reason. She would not break.