Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQXYBCEEKD8F52X7360JA5

The oak standing stones appeared without warning, gray sentinels materializing from the London fog as if they'd been hiding just behind a curtain. Rory stopped so abruptly that Nyx's incorporeal form rippled through her shoulder before solidifying beside her. "Are you certain about this?" The Shade's voice carried the texture of wind through dead leaves. Rory touched the Heartstone Pendant beneath her jacket. The crimson gem had been warm since they'd entered Richmond Park, but now it pulsed against her sternum with an insistence that felt almost like heartbeat. "Isolde doesn't extend invitations lightly. And if she knows something about the rift patterns—" "Then we walk into a place where time forgets itself." Nyx's violet eyes flickered. "I have existed for centuries, Aurora Carter. Even I find the Fae realm... unsettling." She studied the stones. They formed a rough circle, maybe twenty feet across, and the air between them held a quality of stillness that didn't match the wind tugging at her hair. Beyond the threshold, wildflowers bloomed in impossible profusion—lupines and foxgloves, primroses and columbines, flowers that had no business growing together, let alone in November. "Then it's a good thing we're only visiting the edge of it." Rory stepped forward. The moment she crossed between the stones, the world reshuffled itself. The ambient noise of London—that constant urban hum she'd stopped consciously hearing years ago—simply ceased. In its place came a silence so profound it rang in her ears like the aftermath of a bell. She drew a sharp breath, and the air tasted of honey and rain and something green and growing that had no name in any language she spoke. Nyx flowed through the boundary behind her, and even their usually fluid form stuttered, solidifying more completely than Rory had ever seen. They looked down at their own hands with something approaching alarm. "The Grove doesn't like in-between things," Rory observed, though her voice came out quieter than intended. Speaking felt like an intrusion here. The path ahead was barely visible, more suggestion than trail, winding between silver birches whose bark gleamed as if lit from within. Wildflowers grew in such density they formed a living carpet, and Rory stepped carefully, trying not to crush the delicate blooms. Behind her, Nyx left no trace at all—the flowers sprang back up as if untouched, though the Shade's boots should have left clear impressions in the soft earth. She glanced back and immediately regretted it. The standing stones were gone. Not hidden by trees or fog, but simply absent, as if they'd never existed. In their place, more forest stretched endlessly in all directions. "Don't." Nyx's whisper-voice held an edge. "Don't look back. Don't try to map this place in your mind. The Grove is circular and spiraled and perfectly straight all at once. Your mortal geometry will break against it." Rory forced her gaze forward and kept walking. The light filtering through the canopy held a quality she couldn't quite define—too golden for morning, too silver for afternoon, shifting between the two with each step. Time moves differently here, Isolde had warned when Rory had sought her out three days ago. Or had it been three weeks? The memory felt both recent and ancient. The Fae-Forged Blade at her hip had grown cold enough to notice through her jeans, a point of ice against her thigh. She resisted the urge to touch it. The moonsilver dagger had been Isolde's gift after their first meeting, pressed into her hands with words that had sounded like prophecy or warning or both: "You will need this when the hungry dark comes calling." A stream appeared to their left, though Rory hadn't heard any water until she saw it. The sound came after the sight, as if the Grove had to remember to add it. The water ran clear and quick over smooth stones, each one perfectly round and sitting in arrangements that looked deliberate but random, like words in a language she almost recognized. "Do you feel that?" Nyx had stopped, their shadow-form rippling at the edges despite the Grove's insistence on solidity. Rory paused. At first she felt nothing unusual—then it hit her. A presence, vast and watchful, pressing against her awareness from all directions at once. Not hostile. Not friendly either. Simply aware, the way a forest might be aware of a deer passing through, or an ocean aware of a fish swimming in its depths. The Grove itself was conscious, or something in it was, and they were very small and very noticed. The Heartstone Pendant pulsed once, hard, and a different sensation washed through her. The warmth it usually exuded near Hel portals had vanished, replaced by something cooler but no less powerful. The pendant was reacting to the Fae-touched nature of this place, attuning itself to a different frequency of magic entirely. "Keep moving," she said, surprised by the steadiness in her voice. "Standing still feels worse." They pressed on, and the path began to descend. The birches gave way to older trees—oaks with trunks wider than Rory could wrap her arms around, their bark scored with symbols that hurt to look at directly. Mushrooms grew in fairy rings at their bases, purple and luminescent, releasing spores that drifted upward like inverted rain. The air grew thicker, sweeter, laden with scents that made Rory's head swim. She'd eaten before coming here—Nyx had insisted on that, warned her never to enter the Grove hungry—but her mouth watered anyway. Somewhere ahead, she could smell bread baking and meat roasting and fruit ripening on the vine, all layered over each other in impossible combination. "The boundary between realms is thin here," Nyx murmured. "I can taste Dymas on the air. Gluttony's realm. The Grove touches more places than just Earth and Fae." Rory's hand found the pendant again. If the Veil was weak here, if this place connected to multiple realms at once, then Isolde's grove was more dangerous and more valuable than she'd realized. A crossroads. A hub. A place where information—and things—could flow between worlds that should never touch. The trees opened abruptly into a clearing, and there, in its center, stood a cottage that seemed to have grown rather than been built. Its walls were woven from living vines, its roof thatched with grass that still grew green and lush. Smoke rose from a chimney, and through the windows, Rory could see firelight flickering. Isolde waited in the doorway, her silver hair unbound and flowing past her waist, her pale lavender eyes reflecting the strange light of the Grove. She smiled, and it was both welcoming and unsettling, the expression of something that wore a human face but had forgotten some crucial detail of how humans actually smiled. "You came." Her voice held layers like music. "The girl who runs from her past and the shadow who cannot escape theirs. Step inside, Aurora Carter. Step inside, Nightwhisper. The tea is ready, and we have much to discuss before the Veil tears completely." Rory's hand tightened on the pendant, feeling its pulse synchronize with her own heartbeat. She thought of the rift patterns, of the weakening Veil, of all the questions that had driven her to seek out a Fae oracle in the first place. Then she stepped forward, over Isolde's threshold, and left the last piece of the mortal world behind.