Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQSA550SHGMF5HPGYDDMZ6

The air in Richmond Park tasted of petrichor and damp earth, a familiar London scent that did little to calm the frantic hummingbird beat of Aurora’s heart. She stood with Nyx and Isolde before a circle of seven ancient oaks, their trunks gnarled like arthritic hands. These were the standing stones, though they were wood, not rock. Lichen splotched their bark in shades of sage and ash, and the city’s distant drone seemed to die against their silent presence. Isolde moved with an unhurried grace, her silver hair a static river down her back. She stopped at the gap between two of the largest trees and turned, her pale lavender eyes holding an unnerving depth. “The threshold is thin here,” she said, her voice a melody that seemed to pluck at the air itself. “Step only where I step.” Aurora nodded, her hand unconsciously finding the Heartstone pendant at her throat. The deep crimson gem was cool and still against her skin. No faint pulse, no tell-tale warmth. It was as inert as any ordinary stone, a fact that was both reassuring and deeply unsettling. If this place wasn’t connected to Hel, what in God’s name was it? Beside her, Nyx was a patch of deeper shadow in the dappled light of the late afternoon. They had no feet to step with, but their form tensed, a subtle compression of darkness that Aurora had learned meant they were wary. Isolde lifted a hand, not to touch the trees, but to pass between them. The air there shimmered, like heat haze rising from asphalt, but it carried no warmth. It was a cold distortion, a glitch in the world. The Seer glided through it without hesitation. For a moment, she was gone, her form dissolving into the wavering veil. Aurora’s breath hitched. She took a step forward, the Fae-forged blade at her hip a solid, reassuring weight. The moonsilver dagger was always cold, a persistent, biting chill against her skin, but as she approached the shimmering barrier, that coldness… changed. It didn’t warm, but it felt less like an intrusion and more like an arrival, a welcome resonance. She clenched her jaw and followed Isolde. The sensation was like walking through a waterfall of static electricity. The world blinked out of existence for a single, disorienting second—no sound, no sight, just the feeling of being everywhere and nowhere at once. Then she stumbled through to the other side. And the world was remade. The first thing that struck her was the light. It had no source. There was no sun, no sky visible through the dense canopy of interwoven branches, yet the clearing was bathed in a soft, luminescent glow, as if the very air was alive with light. The colours were impossibly vivid. Mosses glowed emerald, lichens shone with the iridescent sheen of opals, and flowers—flowers that had no business blooming in an English autumn—spilled across the forest floor in a riot of colour. She saw crimson roses, velvet bluebells, and orchids the colour of liquid gold, all growing together in a tangled, beautiful carpet. The air was thick with the scent of honeysuckle, night-blooming jasmine, and something else, something clean and sharp like ozone after a lightning strike. She knelt, her fingers hovering over a perfect white lily. The petals felt real, cool and silky. This was no illusion. A flicker of movement drew her gaze. Isolde was walking deeper into the grove, and with every step she took on the lush ground, she left no footprint. Not an impression, not a displaced blade of grass. It was as if she weighed nothing, as if she were a ghost haunting a place that was already a dream. “It is beautiful, is it not?” Nyx’s whisper was right beside her ear, though the Shade had made no sound. “And dangerous.” Aurora straightened up, her hand resting on the hilt of her dagger. The cold of the blade was a familiar anchor now. “What is this place?” “A memory,” Isolde called back, her voice echoing slightly. “A promise.” They walked deeper, and the sense of wonder began to curdle with a slow-dawning unease. Aurora looked up, trying to gauge the time. The light hadn’t changed, still holding that steady, sourceless quality. But it felt like they had been walking for an hour, maybe more. Her stomach, which had been tight with nerves, now rumbled with a genuine hunger. “How long have we been in here?” she asked, her voice sounding small in the profound stillness. There were no birds, no insects. The only sound was the soft crunch of her own boots on the loamy soil and the whisper of Nyx’s presence. Isolde paused, a faint smile on her lips. “Time here is a river, not a road. It flows where it wishes.” As if to prove her point, a vine on a nearby oak tree trembled. A tight bud unfurled with impossible speed, its green sheath peeling back to reveal a trumpet-shaped bloom of the purest violet. The flower held its brilliance for a moment, its colour so deep it seemed to drink the light, and then, just as quickly, its petals curled, browned, and drifted to the ground as dust. All in the space of a few heartbeats. A shiver traced its way down Aurora’s spine. This place wasn’t just otherworldly; it was fundamentally wrong, operating on laws she couldn’t comprehend. Finally, the woods opened into a larger clearing. In its centre stood a single, magnificent weeping willow, its branches trailing into a pool of water so still it looked like a sheet of polished obsidian. The water was black, yet it did not reflect the glowing canopy above. Instead, it held a swirling tapestry of stars, nebulae, and distant galaxies. A piece of the night sky had fallen and pooled on the forest floor. Aurora approached the edge of the pool, mesmerized. The water lapped silently at the mossy stones, the cosmic light within it pulsing with a slow, ancient rhythm. She knelt again, drawn by an irresistible curiosity. The air here was even sweeter, colder. She reached out a trembling hand and dipped her fingers into the water. It was cold. Shockingly, bitingly cold, like the Fae blade, but it was wet. It was real water. But as she pulled her hand back, the ripples she created didn’t disturb the reflection of the stars. They passed through the celestial image as if it were an illusion, leaving the cosmos untouched. She stared at her dripping fingers, then back at the impossible pool. She was a girl from Cardiff who’d fled a bad relationship and now delivered Chinese food for a living. She knew about deadlines and rent and the bitter taste of cheap coffee. She did not know about places where time bloomed and died, or water that held the universe captive. A profound sense of her own smallness washed over her, so vast and sudden it almost brought her to her knees. She was standing on the edge of a world so far beyond her own that she couldn’t even see the shore from here.