Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQR93PVNXC5JVGWEQ0ZE6D

The air shifted the moment they crossed the boundary. Aurora felt it first—a subtle pressure change, like ascending in an airplane, except there'd been no climb. One step beyond the ancient oak standing stones that ringed the grove, and the world breathed differently. The London haze that had clung to Richmond Park all morning simply... ceased to exist. The sky above was clearer than she'd ever seen it, a crystalline blue unmarred by cloud or smog, and the light fell at an angle that didn't match the sun's actual position in the real world. She stopped, her eyes adjusting. Behind her, Nyx flickered into sharper focus, their violet eyes brightening in the strange luminescence. The Shade preferred incorporeal form, but Isolde had insisted they become solid for this—trust was best demonstrated in flesh, even if that flesh was living shadow. "It's real," Aurora whispered. "Of course it's real," Isolde said, already three steps ahead of them. The Half-Fae moved without walking, as though she was less moving through space and more manifesting in new locations. Her silver hair caught the alien light and threw it back in fractals. "Did you doubt?" "I doubted," Nyx said, their voice like wind through dead leaves. They looked down at their solid form with something approximating wonder. "Four centuries since I felt ground beneath me. Truly felt it." The grove opened before them like a secret. The clearing was perhaps two acres, ringed entirely by wildflowers in impossible bloom—lavender, moonflowers, and roses of a silver-white that Aurora had never seen in any garden center. The ground beneath their feet was soft, moss-like, but springy enough to cushion each step. It smelled like rain and green things and something else, something almost like cinnamon or cardamom, warm and spiced. Aurora moved deeper, drawn toward the center of the clearing where a ring of boulders sat arranged like a gathering place. Or an altar. "How long has this been here?" "Longer than your civilization has names for time," Isolde said. She settled onto one of the stones with fluid grace, her pale lavender eyes catching the light. "The Fae Courts anchored it when the Veil was young. Before the wars. Before the binding." That was Isolde's way of speaking—fragments of knowledge offered like riddles, truths nested inside truths. Aurora was learning to parse her, though it was like trying to read a book written in a language adjacent to English. Possible, but requiring constant reassessment. Nyx had stopped at the edge of the wildflower ring, their shadowed form contrasting sharply against the vivid blooms. They raised one hand, and Aurora could see it trembling slightly—whether from emotion or from the strain of maintaining solid form, she couldn't tell. "There's iron in the soil here," Nyx said. "Old iron. From weapons, I think. Many weapons." Aurora's hand moved instinctively to the Fae-forged blade at her hip. The moonsilver dagger felt colder than usual, responsive to proximity with this place. "A battlefield?" "A threshold," Isolde corrected. "Where choices were made. Where sides were chosen." The Seer rose without any visible effort and glided toward a cluster of stones near the northern edge of the grove. She gestured, and Aurora followed, Nyx trailing behind like a living shadow cast in the wrong direction by the wrong sun. As they approached, Aurora began to see what Isolde had wanted them to find. The stones weren't natural formations—they were worked, carved with symbols that predated any alphabet she recognized. The first symbol was a circle, bisected by a vertical line. The next, a crown of thorns. The third, something that looked almost like wings, or perhaps a door opening. "A language," Aurora breathed. "The old language," Isolde said. She touched one of the stones, her fingertips passing over the carved symbols with reverence. "Before Fae, before Hel, before the Sundering. When the worlds were still one, and angels walked beside mortals." Aurora's throat tightened. The implications were staggering. She pulled out her phone—its screen flickered and died within two steps of the stones—and instead began sketching the symbols on the small notebook she always carried. Her hand moved quickly, capturing angles and curves, trying to imprint the images into muscle memory the way the blade had taught her. Nyx had moved to stand before one particular stone, the tallest of them all. Their shadowed form seemed to vibrate against its surface, and when they spoke, their voice carried a strange harmonic quality. "I remember this," Nyx said quietly. "Not from my human life. From after. From the long years between, when I was nothing but smoke and hunger." They turned to face Aurora, their violet eyes brighter than she'd ever seen them. "This stone marked a gate. A gate that opened when the Veil was thin. When summoning rituals could work." Aurora's fingers stilled. "The summoning that trapped you." "Not trapped. Transformed." Nyx extended their hand toward the stone, and shadows rippled across their arm like ink in water. "I came seeking something. Some answer that I thought existed beyond the Veil. Instead, I became a bridge between worlds. A living rupture." The casual way they spoke of their own tragedy made Aurora ache. Four hundred years trapped between existence and non-existence, and still they could describe it with such calm. She was beginning to understand that Nyx's serenity wasn't acceptance—it was survival. The alternative would have been dissolution. "The Veil weakens during the winter solstice," Isolde said, moving deeper into the grove. "It weakens at the places where it was first woven, where the fabric is oldest and most delicate. This grove is one such place. The stone Nyx recognizes was erected during the last Sundering, when the realms were being separated. It remembers the time before division." They emerged into a section of the grove where the wildflowers gave way to a small pool of water so clear that Aurora could see every pebble on its bottom. The surface was utterly still, a perfect mirror of the impossible sky above. She knelt at its edge and saw her own face reflected back at her—but for just a moment, she also saw something else. A glimpse of another sky, amber-colored and vast, with a sun that didn't quite look like Earth's sun. She jerked back, gasping. "The Veil is thinnest at still waters," Isolde said. Her voice was gentle now, almost sympathetic. "The boundary between worlds becomes transparent. You can see through to Dymas from here, if you know how to look." Dymas. The realm of Gluttony. Where the Heartstone pendant in Aurora's pocket came from, given to her by some unknown benefactor who seemed to know an awful lot about her future. The pendant pulsed faintly, responding to proximity with the Hel realm visible in the water's reflection. "How long do we have?" Aurora asked, standing. "Before the solstice ends?" "Time moves strangely here," Isolde said. "An hour in the grove might be minutes in your world, or days. The more attention you pay to duration, the more unreliable it becomes. It is better not to think of time at all." Nyx had come to stand beside the pool, their shadowed form bending to examine their own reflection. For a moment, Aurora saw it—the shape of what they must have been before the summoning. A man's silhouette, broad-shouldered and tall. Then the image shifted, fractured, and Nyx was shadow again. "The blade responds to this place," Nyx observed, pointing to the Fae-forged dagger at Aurora's hip. The moonsilver was luminescent now, glowing faintly despite the daylight. "It knows its home is near." Aurora drew the dagger and held it up to the strange light. The blade seemed to absorb the clarity around them and glow brighter in response, as though awakening. "What have you brought us to, Isolde?" Aurora asked. "What does this place want from us?" The Seer smiled, and there was something knowing in it, something that suggested she'd been waiting for exactly this question. "Not want," Isolde said softly. "Offer. The grove offers knowledge, if you're brave enough to take it. But knowledge, in such places, always has a price."