Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQPRB2YBH9ZK5WGFD9DEXV

The iron gates of Richmond Park had been locked for hours, but the gap in the perimeter fence near Sheen Gate was a secret traded in whispers among the locals. Aurora Carter slipped through the rusted opening, the snag of metal against her denim jacket the only sound in the oppressive silence of the London night. She didn't like being here this late—no one with any sense of self-preservation did—but the need for answers had become an itch beneath her skin that she couldn’t scratch. She adjusted the strap of her bag, her fingers brushing the silver chain at her throat. The Heartstone pendant tucked beneath her shirt felt heavy tonight, a dead weight resting against her sternum. Rory kept her breathing steady, her boots sinking into the sodden mulit-layered carpet of decaying leaves. The air was colder here than in the city proper, stripped of the exhaust fumes and residual heat of the concrete jungle. It smelled of wet earth, deer musk, and something sharper—ozone, like the charge before a lightning strike. She wasn't just wandering. She was looking for the ancient oak standing stones, the markers that designated the boundary of the Fae Grove. She had been there before during the day, when the sun dappled through the canopy and the impossible wildflowers bloomed in defiance of the seasons. But at night, the park was a different beast entirely. It was a vast, sprawling void of negative space, where the ancient trees twisted into shapes that suggested grasping limbs and stooped old men. Rory paused, orienting herself by the treeline. Her bright blue eyes, usually sharp and observational, struggled to parse the depths of the shadows ahead. Logic, the tool she had sharpened during those miserable years of Pre-Law in Cardiff, told her this was just a park. It was geography and biology, photosynthesis and decomposition. But the instinct that had driven her to flee London, to run from Evan and the bruising grip of his possessiveness, told her something else entirely. The topography felt wrong. She took a step forward, and a twig snapped. The sound was like a gunshot in a library. Rory froze, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. She waited for the scuttle of a badger or the huff of a restless stag. Nothing. The silence that followed wasn't empty; it was heavy. It pressed against her ears, a physical weight that seemed to dampen the distant, low-frequency hum of the city that usually permeated everything. Here, the city didn't exist. She rubbed the small, crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist, a nervous tic she hadn't managed to shake since childhood. Ground yourself, she thought. You’re Aurora Carter. You deal with arrogant chefs and drunken patrons at the Golden Empress. You are not afraid of the dark. She pushed forward, the bracken catching at her jeans. The oaks appeared ahead, two massive sentinels of gnarled wood rising from the mist that clung to the knees of the forest. They were the threshold to the Grove. As she stepped between them, she expected the familiar shift in pressure, the subtle popping of her ears that signaled the transition into the pocket realm where time turned liquid. She expected the sudden, vibrant scent of conflicting seasons—lavender and snowdrops blooming in unison. Instead, the air went stagnant. Rory stopped dead. She was inside the boundary, or where the boundary should be, but the magic felt curdled. The wildflowers were there, yes. She could see the shapes of foxgloves and poppies in the moonlight, but they were drained of color, rendered in shades of ash and bone. They didn't sway, even though a cold breeze was clearly rattling the dead leaves in the canopy above. A sharp, sudden heat flared against her chest. Rory gasped, her hand flying to her sternum. She fished the Heartstone pendant out from under her shirt. The deep crimson gemstone, usually the size of a thumbnail and cool to the touch, was pulsing. It wasn't the gentle, rhythmic thrum she associated with the Fae magic of the Grove. This was an erratic, feverish beat, like a heart in panic. The faint inner glow was sputtering, casting a sickly red light that barely reached her chin. "Okay," she whispered, her voice barely audible. "Okay, that’s new." She let the pendant drop, the silver chain clinking softly against her zipper. She turned in a slow circle. The darkness between the trees seemed to have thickened. It wasn't just an absence of light anymore; it was a presence. It felt viscous, like ink poured into water. Rory took a step back toward the standing stones, intending to leave. The smart move was to retreat to the flat above Silas’s bar, pour a drink, and wait for daylight. But when she looked back, the standing stones were gone. Panic, cold and sharp, spiked in her stomach. She spun around. The path she had walked was obscured by a wall of brambles that hadn't been there ten seconds ago. The thorns looked like rusted iron hooks, knitting together with a wet, organic sound. "Don't be stupid," she hissed to herself, her Welsh mother’s pragmatism warring with her Irish father’s superstition. "Trees don't move." But they did. Or at least, the space between them did. Rory began to walk, faster now, abandoning stealth. She needed to find the center of the clearing or find a way out, but the geometry of the Grove had betrayed her. She walked straight for what felt like fifty yards, checking her watch. The second hand was frozen, twitching back and forth on the twelve. A sound drifted through the trees. It wasn't the wind. It was a soft, wet slap, like bare feet on wet pavement. Rory stopped. The sound stopped. She held her breath, her lungs burning with the effort. *Slap.* One step. Somewhere to her left. She whipped her head around, her black hair lashing against her cheek. There was nothing there but the pale, motionless flowers and the looming trunks of the oaks. But the feeling of being watched was so intense it made her skin crawl. It reminded her of the nights before she left Evan, the feeling of eyes on the back of her neck while she pretended to sleep, the certainty that a predator was sharing her space, waiting for a sign of weakness. She backed away, her boots sliding on the damp grass. *Slap. Slap.* Two steps. Closer. "Who's there?" she called out. She tried to project authority, usually so easy for her to summon, but her voice cracked, thin and brittle in the dead air. The response was a rustle in the ferns, not ten feet away. It wasn't the erratic movement of an animal. It was deliberate. Something was crouching. Rory turned and ran. She bolted through the clearing, abandoning dignity. The impossible wildflowers crushed beneath her boots, releasing no scent, only a dry puff of dust. The pendant burned against her chest, a branding iron warning her of proximity to something localized and wrong. The codex of her life—delivery routes, case studies, rental agreements—had no reference point for this. She sprinted toward a gap in the trees, lungs heaving. The ground seemed to tilt beneath her, the roots rising up to snag her ankles. She stumbled, catching herself on a tree trunk. The bark felt wrong under her hand—warm, soft, and slightly pulsing. Like flesh. She recoiled, wiping her hand on her jeans with a shudder of revulsion. She was running in circles. She recognized a cluster of white hell-borers she had passed minutes ago. The Grove was looping her, keeping her contained. Rory forced herself to stop. Running triggered the chase response. If this was a predator, she was playing by its rules. She put her back against a different tree—one that felt decidedly like wood—and forced her breathing to slow. She closed her eyes for a second, listening. The footsteps had stopped. The silence returned, but it had changed quality. It was anticipatory now. Rory opened her eyes. Across the clearing, near where the standing stones should have been, the darkness was coalescing. It wasn't a shadow cast by the moon. It was a shadow that absorbed the moonlight. It stood roughly the height of a man, but the proportions were skewed—limbs too long, joints articulating at unseen angles. It didn't have a face, or at least, not one she could see. But she felt its attention. It was a cold, piercing pressure that centered directly on the Heartstone pendant. The creature didn't move. It didn't rush her. It simply stood there, occupying the space where her exit should be. Rory looked down at the pendant. The crimson light was pulsing in sync with the throbbing pain in her head. The warmth was now searing hot. *Hel portal*, the lore whispered in the back of her mind. The pendant reacted to Hel portals. She looked back at the shadow. The air around it shimmered, like heat rising from tarmac, but the temperature was dropping rapidly. Frost began to creep across the dead wildflowers, snapping the stems with sharp, brittle clicks. The shadow took one step forward. *Slap.* Rory didn't run this time. She couldn't. Her legs felt heavy, anchored by the sheer wrongness of the entity before her. This wasn't just a monster in the dark; it was a violation of the natural order, a tear in the fabric of the world she understood. The thing tilted its head—if it was a head. A sound emerged from it, a low, grinding mimicry of human speech. "Au... ror... a." It was her name, but stripped of all humanity. It sounded like stones grinding together at the bottom of a well. It didn't sound like it came from a throat; it sounded like it came from the crushing depth of the earth. Rory’s hand went to her pocket, gripping her keys, threading the metal stems between her knuckles—a pathetic, mundane weapon against a nightmare. Her intellect, usually her shield, offered her nothing but the terrifying calculation of her own survival odds. The frost reached her boots. The cold bit through the leather, numbing her toes. The shadow raised a limb, pointing a long, unarticulated finger toward her. "Mine," it rasped. The darkness surged forward, not like a runner, but like a tide coming in all at once. Rory braced herself, the crimson light of the pendant the only star in a sky that had suddenly gone black.