Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQPYS3JAZT7Y92WQEZ0RPZ

The air inside the Fae Grove tasted wrong. It was too sweet, cloying like overripe fruit left to rot in the sun, yet the sky above was a bruised purple, devoid of stars or moon. Aurora Carter stood just beyond the boundary of the ancient oak standing stones, her boots sinking into grass that felt unnervingly soft, as if the earth beneath her had been stuffed with cotton rather than soil. She had come here because the pendant around her neck had begun to burn. Now, the Heartstone rested against her collarbone, a deep crimson eye that pulsed with a faint, rhythmic warmth. It wasn't the feverish heat of danger, but a steady, hypnotic thrum that seemed to sync with the beating of her own heart. Roughly the size of her thumbnail, the gemstone cast a weak inner glow that did little to push back the encroaching shadows of the grove. Rory adjusted the strap of her delivery bag, though she wasn't carrying food tonight. The habit was a comfort, a tether to the mundane world of Yu-Fei Cheung's Golden Empress and the clatter of kitchen pans. Here, there was no clatter. There was only a silence so profound it felt heavy, pressing against her eardrums like deep water. She took a step forward, her straight black hair brushing against her jawline. The wildflowers blooming around her ankles were vibrant, unnatural bursts of color—violets, poppies, and marigolds all tangled together in a chaotic riot that defied the season. They didn't sway in the wind because there was no wind. Not a single leaf on the towering oaks trembled. "Isolde?" Rory called out. Her voice sounded flat, instantly swallowed by the thick air. "Eva said you'd be here." No answer came. Only the stillness. She moved deeper into the clearing, her bright blue eyes scanning the perimeter. The time behavior of the grove was legendary; an hour inside could be minutes or days outside. She checked her watch, a reflex born of a life spent racing against delivery timers, but the hands were spinning lazily, counter-clockwise. She stopped looking. Panic was a luxury she couldn't afford. She was cool-headed; that was who she was. She solved problems. She found exits. She didn't freeze. But the feeling of being watched prickled at the base of her neck. It started with the flowers. As she walked past a cluster of white lilies, she heard a wet, tearing sound. She froze, turning slowly. The lilies hadn't moved, yet the sound had come from right beside her ear. Then, out of the corner of her vision, a patch of bluebells seemed to shift their orientation, turning their faces toward her as she passed. When she whipped her head to look directly at them, they were static, innocent blooms. "You're tired, Rory," she whispered to herself, her hand instinctively going to the small crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist. The old accident, a reminder of flesh and bone and real pain. "Just exhaustion. London traffic, the late shift, the stress." The pendant grew warmer. The silver chain bit slightly into her skin. She continued toward the center of the grove, where the standing stones formed a rough circle. The shadows between the trees seemed to stretch longer than the geometry of the light allowed. They pooled in the depressions of the ground, thick and viscous. A snap of a twig broke the silence. Rory spun around, her breath hitching. Nothing. Just the endless, blooming meadow and the silent oaks. But the air had changed. The sweetness was gone, replaced by the metallic tang of ozone and something older, like damp earth in a sealed tomb. She wasn't alone. The certainty settled in her gut, cold and hard. It wasn't a sound she heard, but a absence of sound where there should have been one. The crickets, the night birds, the rustle of small mammals—all of it had ceased. The world had been muted, leaving only her own heartbeat and the soft, rhythmic pulse of the Heartstone. Something moved at the edge of the tree line. A shape, tall and impossibly thin, detaching itself from the darkness of an oak trunk. It didn't walk; it flowed, like smoke caught in a draft. Rory squinted, trying to bring it into focus, but every time she looked directly at it, it seemed to dissolve into the foliage, only to reform a few feet closer when her gaze flickered away. "Show yourself," she commanded, injecting a strength into her voice she didn't feel. "I know this place. I know the rules." The rules were a lie. The grove didn't follow rules; it followed whims. The shape stopped moving. For a moment, the clearing was utterly still again. Then, a sound drifted toward her. It was a whisper, layered and discordant, sounding like a hundred people speaking in unison but just out of sync. It wasn't speaking words she could understand, but the intent behind it was clear: curiosity. Hunger. Rory took a step back, her heel catching on a root that hadn't been there a moment ago. She stumbled, catching herself on the rough bark of a standing stone. The wood felt warm, pulsing slightly, mirroring the rhythm of the pendant. The boundary markers weren't just stone and wood; they were alive, or at least aware. The whispering grew louder, coalescing into a single voice that sounded disturbingly like her own. "Rory... stay..." She clamped her mouth shut, refusing to answer. Talking to things in the Fae Grove was a mistake her mother's stories had warned against. Welsh teachers knew these things. Jennifer Ellis had told tales of children led away by pretty voices, never to return. The flowers around her began to change. The vibrant petals darkened, turning a sickly shade of grey. The stems elongated, twisting and writhing like serpents waking from hibernation. They weren't reaching for the light; they were reaching for her ankles. Rory yanked her foot back just as a tendril of ivy snapped where her boot had been. The plant hissed, a dry, rasping sound. She began to back away, moving carefully toward the gap in the standing stones that marked the exit. The exit that had seemed so clear upon arrival now looked distorted, the distance stretching as she moved, like a hallway in a nightmare that grew longer with every step. The trees seemed to lean inward, their branches knitting together to form a canopy that blocked out the purple sky entirely. Darkness descended, absolute and suffocating, broken only by the crimson glow of the Heartstone. The pendant was hot now, almost burning her skin. It pulsed faster, erratic and frantic. It was reacting to something else, something worse than the grove itself. A Hel portal? The codex of her mind, the fragmented knowledge she'd gathered since fleeing Cardiff, suggested the stone warned of gateways to the underworld. But there was no portal visible. Unless the grove itself had become the gate. The whispering stopped. The silence returned, heavier than before. In the sudden quiet, a new sound emerged. Footsteps. Not the fluid, sliding movement of the shadow creature, but solid, heavy boots on grass. They were coming from behind her, from the center of the circle where no one had been. Rory didn't turn around. Instinct screamed at her to run, to bolt for the stones, to scramble back to Richmond Park and the safety of the mundane world. But her legs felt leaden, rooted to the spot by an invisible weight. She felt a breath on the back of her neck. It was cold, smelling of stale air and forgotten graves. "You ran far, Laila," the voice said. It wasn't her voice this time. It was Evan's. Her blood ran cold. Evan was in London. Evan was human, flawed, abusive, but undeniably human. He couldn't be here. He didn't know about the grove. The hand that landed on her shoulder was heavy, the grip tightening with crushing force. Rory gasped, the air knocked out of her lungs. She looked down at the hand on her shoulder. It was pale, the fingers too long, the nails black and sharpened to points. The Heartstone flared with a brilliant, blinding red light. For a split second, the illumination revealed the clearing. The flowers were gone, replaced by bones half-buried in the mud. The standing stones were not oak, but petrified figures, their faces frozen in screams. And the thing holding her was not Evan, but a mockery of him, its face a smooth, featureless blank save for a vertical slit where a mouth should be. The slit opened, revealing rows of needle-like teeth. Rory did the only thing she could. She drove her elbow back, aiming for the creature's midsection, relying on the muscle memory of self-defense classes she'd taken after leaving Evan. Her strike connected with something that felt like striking a bag of wet sand. The creature didn't flinch, but the grip loosened just enough. She broke free, stumbling forward. The world tilted. The ground beneath her seemed to liquefy. She was sinking. The wildflowers, now restored to their vibrant colors, wrapped around her legs, pulling her down into the earth. The pendant burned like a coal against her chest. The light from it flickered, dying down as the darkness rushed in to fill the void. The last thing Aurora saw before the earth closed over her head was the featureless face leaning down, the vertical slit widening into a grin that split the thing's head in two. The silence of the Fae Grove returned, absolute and unbroken. The wildflowers bloomed on, year-round, hiding the fresh disturbance in the soil beneath their pretty, poisonous petals. Time outside continued its steady march, uncaring that an hour inside had just claimed a life, or perhaps, stretched a single moment of terror into an eternity.