Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQR0HWC54P33FSQN96WM14

The condensation on the inside of Rory’s helmet visor blurred the world into a smear of urban neon and streetlamp orange. She flipped it up, letting the damp, biting air of Richmond Park sting her cheeks. It was well past midnight. The Golden Empress had long since stopped taking orders, but Yu-Fei had asked for one last favor—a delivery to a location that didn't exist on any GPS. Rory climbed off her moped, the kickstand crunching into the gravel of a darkened turnout. Ahead, the trees of Richmond Park loomed like jagged teeth against a bruised purple sky. She reached into her jacket pocket, her fingers brushing the Heartstone Pendant. The deep crimson gem felt feverish through the fabric, pulsing with a rhythmic, low heat that matched the thrum of her own heartbeat. It was the only reason she was here. The pendant had been tugging at her for days, a phantom weight dragging her toward the park's ancient, unmapped interior. She stepped off the path and into the brush. According to the scrap of paper tucked into her glove, she was looking for the Fae Grove. She’d laughed when she’d first heard the name, but as the sounds of London faded—the distant hum of the A3, the sirens of Kingston, the white noise of a city that never slept—the laughter felt like a brittle, distant memory. Here, the silence was heavy. It possessed a physical weight, pressing against her eardrums like deep water. Rory pushed through a dense thicket of ferns and stopped dead. Before her stood the oak standing stones, gnarled and blackened by centuries of moss and rot. They formed a jagged circle, marking a boundary that felt less like a physical fence and more like a tear in the fabric of the world. She stepped through them, and the temperature dropped ten degrees. Inside the Grove, the world changed. The grass was lush and vibrant, peppered with wildflowers that bloomed in defiant, impossible colors despite the midnight frost. Primroses and bluebells shimmered with an iridescent sheen, their petals flared wide as if drinking in the moonlight. "Hello?" Rory’s voice was a dry croak. It didn't echo. The sound was swallowed instantly by the moss-choked trees. She adjusted the strap of her delivery bag, though she knew there was no food inside—only the heavy, cold certainty that she had been lured here. She checked her watch. 12:42 AM. The second hand ticked forward, then jerked backward, then spun in a frantic, blurred circle before snapping off its pin. Rory stared at the glass face, chilled. Time was slipping its gears. A sound drifted through the trees—a soft, rhythmic scraping. It sounded like a whetstone on iron, or perhaps a long fingernail dragging across dry bark. Rory spun around, her black hair whipping against her neck. "Who's there?" The shadows between the oaks were deep enough to drown in. She caught a flicker of movement—a pale, spindly shape that vanished behind a trunk the moment she looked directly at it. Her pulse hammered. She reached for her left wrist, her thumb tracing the small crescent-shaped scar there, a nervous habit that usually grounded her. Tonight, it did nothing. The air in the Grove began to smell of ozone and rotting peaches. The scraping sound returned, louder now, coming from two directions at once. Rory backed away, her boots treading over wildflowers that bled a thick, silvery sap where she crushed them. She felt the Heartstone against her chest, now uncomfortably hot. It wasn't just warm; it was thrumming, a frantic warning. A Hel portal. This place wasn't just a bridge to the Fae; it was a wound. She turned to leave, but the standing stones were gone. Where the entrance had been, there was only an endless, repetitive colonnade of oaks, their branches interlocking like skeletal fingers. A soft, melodic laugh rippled through the air. It wasn't human. It held too many notes at once, a discordant harmony that made Rory’s teeth ache. "Evan?" she whispered, the name a reflex of old terrors. But no, her ex was in Cardiff, and Evan was a mundane monster of bruises and shouts. This was something older. Something that had never known a name. She saw it clearly then, perched on a low-hanging branch twenty feet away. It was crouched like a gargoyle, its limbs too long, its skin the color of a drowned man's hand. It had no eyes, only deep, shadowed pits, but it watched her with a terrible, focused intensity. It shifted, its joints clicking like a bag of marbles, and the scraping sound returned. It was whetting its long, translucent teeth against its own claws. Rory forced herself to breathe. *Out-of-the-box,* she reminded herself. *Think.* The creature didn't charge. It drifted down from the branch with an unnatural, floating grace, landing silently on the carpet of bluebells. It was mimicking her posture—shoulders hunched, head tilted. "What do you want?" Rory asked, her voice gaining a sharp, defensive edge. The creature opened its mouth. It didn't speak. Instead, it played back the sound of her own voice: *"What do you want?"* The mimicry was perfect, down to the slight tremor of her Cardiff accent. Rory reached for the silver chain around her neck and pulled the Heartstone Pendant out from under her shirt. The crimson gem was glowing with a fierce, angry light now, casting long, distorted shadows across the clearing. The creature flinched, its head snapping back as if struck. It hissed—a sound like steam escaping a pipe—and retreated into the darkness. But the darkness was no longer empty. From behind every tree, pale faces began to blossom. Dozens of them, some with eyes, some with tangled manes of white hair, others that were little more than teeth and hunger. They didn't move like animals; they moved like flickering frames of a film, appearing several feet closer every time Rory blinked. The Grove was tightening. The trees seemed to be leaning inward, the canopy weaving shut until the stars were blotted out completely. The only light in the world was the dying, frantic red pulse of the Heartstone. She realized then that the Grove wasn't a place. It was a stomach. And she was a slow-moving morsel that had walked through the teeth and sat down on the tongue. Rory looked at the pendant. The heat was blistering now, searing the skin of her palm. She remembered something Silas had muttered once back at the bar, something about portals and the price of passage. If the Heartstone reacted to a portal, it didn't just warn of one—it was the key to it. She didn't run for the trees. She ran for the center of the clearing, where the wildflowers grew thickest, where the ozone smell was so strong she could taste copper on her tongue. The pale things shivered, a chorus of sighs rising from the woods. They began to close in, their elongated limbs sweeping through the grass. One of them reached out, a cold, clammy finger brushing the sleeve of her jacket. Rory didn't look back. She knelt in the center of the flowers and pressed the glowing Heartstone directly into the earth. For a heartbeat, the world went silent. The creatures froze. The wind stopped. Then, the ground beneath her didn't just shake—it dissolved. A violent, searing crimson light erupted from the pendant, tearing through the lush grass and the iridescent petals. The groan of the earth was deafening, the sound of stone being ground into powder. Rory felt herself falling. She wasn't falling down into a hole, but falling *outward*, as if the Grove were a dream she was finally waking from. The pale things screamed—a sound of glass shattering—and vanished into the red glare. She hit the ground hard, the impact jarring her teeth. The air was different. Cold, certainly, but it tasted of exhaust fumes and toasted cigarettes. It tasted of London. Rory lay on the grass, gasping for breath. She looked up and saw the silhouettes of the oak standing stones against the sky. She was outside the circle. She fumbled for her phone in her pocket. The screen flickered to life. 12:44 AM. Only two minutes had passed since she’d walked in. But as she looked down at her hand, she saw the Heartstone Pendant, now cold and dim once more. Beside it, caught in the silver chain, was a single, shriveled bluebell. It wasn't blue anymore. In the world of men and iron, the flower had turned to ash, crumbling away into the wind until there was nothing left but the smell of rotting peaches and the memory of a laugh that had too many notes. Rory stood up, her knees shaking, and didn't look back at the stones as she sprinted for her moped. The silence of the park was no longer heavy, but as she kicked the engine to life, she could still feel the phantom sensation of a cold, clammy finger trailing down her arm, reminding her that she hadn't escaped. She had only been let go. For now.