Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQYFGDHPRM7ZE3H2BWWTRM

The path through Richmond Park had long since stopped pretending to be welcoming. The lamps were spaced too far apart; every pool of light felt like an accident that would be corrected any second. Between them, the dark lay thick as velvet, swallowing the gravel crunch of Aurora Carter’s shoes as if it could. She kept her pace steady anyway. She’d learned, with Evan, that fear rewarded itself. That if you ran, you gave something permission to chase. She kept her shoulders loose, her breath measured, her phone in her pocket with the torch off. Light made you visible. Light made you a target. The park at night wasn’t empty—London never truly was—but it might as well have been. No joggers, no cyclists with blinking red tail lights. No distant laughter, no dog tags jangling. Even the city’s usual hum seemed muffled, as if someone had pressed a hand over the mouth of the world. Rory glanced down at her left wrist as she walked. The small crescent scar caught a bit of lamplight, pale against her skin. A childhood accident, a slip with a kitchen knife and a panicked rush to the sink—old, harmless history. She used it like a marker. Reality check. I have a body, I have a past, I am here. The Heartstone pendant bumped softly against her sternum with each step. Deep crimson, no bigger than her thumbnail, on a silver chain that felt too cold when she’d first put it on. It had been a weight she couldn’t explain and couldn’t bring herself to take off. Tonight it had changed. It had begun with a warmth while she was wiping down a counter at Golden Empress, Yu-Fei yelling something in Cantonese at a delivery driver who’d turned up late. A low, steady pulse against her skin, like a second heartbeat that didn’t belong to her. She’d told herself it was the restaurant’s heat, the steam tables, her own anxiety. Then she’d stepped outside for air and the warmth had sharpened. A tug. A direction. The pendant wanted her somewhere. She hated the fact that part of her, the part that had fled Cardiff for London and kept going even when she didn’t know where she’d land, answered without asking why. At the edge of Richmond Park, she’d checked her map. The place didn’t exist on it. No pin, no label. Just a blank smear of green and footpaths. Yet the warmth in the Heartstone rose when she faced northwest, like a dog straining at a lead. She followed. Now, the path narrowed into something less maintained, a ribbon of dirt between bracken and bare-limbed trees. Her straight, shoulder-length black hair kept sliding into her eyes; she shoved it back, irritated by the way the night made every small touch feel like an intrusion. Her bright blue eyes stung from staring too hard into darkness, trying to make the world reveal itself. A sound drifted across the trees. Not a fox bark. Not an owl. Not the distant grind of cars. It was… singing, maybe. A thin, wordless thread, the kind of melody a person might hum under their breath while washing dishes, only stretched and held too long, notes that should have resolved but didn’t. It made her skin pebble, not because it was loud, but because it sounded close in a way that ignored distance. Rory stopped and listened. The song did not waver. It didn’t react to her stillness. It just existed, steady as an electrical current. “Okay,” she said, to herself, because her own voice felt like a stake in the ground. “You’re not—” She cut the sentence off. Not what? Not crazy? Not scared? Not alone? The pendant warmed again, a patient insistence. She took a step, then another. The singing thinned and disappeared as quickly as if it had been pinched between fingers. The trees opened onto a clearing that didn’t belong to the park. Wildflowers spread across the ground in a dense, soft riot—bluebells and buttercups and things she couldn’t name blooming in the dead of night like they were fed by some secret sun. Their colors were wrong in the dark, too vivid, as if her eyes had shifted to a different kind of seeing. The air smelled of crushed green stems and something sweet beneath it, like honey gone slightly fermented. At the edge of the clearing stood stones. Not the neat, informational-plaque sort of stones Richmond Park might have fenced off for tourists. These were ancient oak standing stones, rough and tall, their surfaces dark as old bark, their edges softened by time. They formed a boundary like a broken circle, a suggestion of a ring rather than a complete one. Rory had the unsettling sense that if she stepped through, she wouldn’t just be entering a place. She’d be agreeing to something. The Heartstone pulsed with warmth so strong it was almost painful. A faint inner glow stirred in the crimson gem, lighting her fingertips when she lifted it off her chest. The glow wasn’t bright. It didn’t illuminate the clearing. It simply made the pendant look awake. A Hel portal, her mind supplied, not as a thought but as a fact delivered into her skull. She didn’t know where she’d learned the phrase. She didn’t remember anyone saying it to her. Yet it sat in her like a memory, snug and unquestioned. Rory swallowed. Her throat felt dry despite the dampness in the air. “Right,” she murmured. “So this is… the Grove.” Isolde’s grove. Richmond grove. The Fae Grove. Names she’d heard only in fragments, in half-jokes from Silas’s bar patrons when the night got late and the whiskey loosened tongues. She’d always assumed it was London mythology, a way to make a city with too much history feel like it still had secrets. Standing at its edge, she knew better. The wrongness she’d felt on the path thickened here. It wasn’t one thing. It was the way the clearing held the sound of her breath as if it belonged to someone else. The way the wildflowers didn’t tremble in any breeze. The way the dark beyond the stones looked flat, like stage scenery, while the air within the boundary seemed deeper, layered. Time moves differently, she thought. An hour inside can be minutes or days outside. That was the reason she’d come. Not because she wanted to walk into a pocket between worlds at night like an idiot in a horror film, but because the pendant had been getting warmer over the last week. Because she’d woken up twice to find dew on her windowsill despite the window being shut. Because she’d caught herself hearing that thin singing in the gaps between traffic noises. Because if she didn’t go to the thing that was calling her, it would come to her. Rory took a long breath and stepped toward the stones. The moment she crossed the boundary, the air changed texture. Not colder or warmer—different. Dense, as if she’d pushed through a curtain of fine threads. Her ears popped softly. The night sounds of the park fell away, replaced by a silence that wasn’t empty but attentive, like a room full of people holding their breath. She stopped and turned. Behind her, through the stones, she could still see the path, the darkness of the trees. But it looked further away than it had a second ago. The gap between two standing stones felt too narrow, like a doorway shrinking. Her pulse ticked faster. She forced herself not to back away. She forced herself to move forward, to claim space, to act as though she had any right to be here. The wildflowers brushed her ankles. Their petals were cool against her skin, like damp paper. She walked slowly, letting her eyes adjust. The pendant’s faint glow made a small pool of red light on her hands. The clearing’s center held a depression in the ground, barely noticeable until she was close. The grass there was shorter, pressed down as if something heavy had lain there recently. The earth looked darker, moist. A circle without stones, without markings. Rory crouched. She didn’t touch the ground. She hovered her hand above it, feeling foolish and strangely reverent. The warmth from the Heartstone surged, and with it came a subtle vibration, like a distant engine. She listened. Under the silence, something else moved. Not footsteps. Not wind. A low, almost subsonic thrum that seemed to come from beneath the soil. Her teeth ached faintly, as if the sound was inside her bones. “Hel portal,” she whispered, and the words felt like they didn’t belong to her mouth. The thrum deepened in response. Rory straightened quickly, heart kicking. She looked around the clearing. The standing stones loomed at the perimeter, their dark faces unreadable. The wildflowers remained perfectly still. Then, from somewhere beyond her line of sight, she heard the softest snap. A twig breaking. Delicate, careful. The sound of weight being placed on something brittle. Her skin tightened. She turned toward the noise. Nothing. She took a step, angling her body so she could keep the stones in her peripheral vision. Her eyes strained, bright blue trying to pull detail out of shadow. In the corner of her sight, something shifted—just a smear of darker darkness near one of the stones. She snapped her gaze to it. It was only a stone. Only the curve of its surface. Only shadow. Her breathing went shallow. She forced it deeper, counted her exhale. One, two, three. Panic was a luxury. She couldn’t afford it. Another sound, closer: a soft rustle, like fabric sliding over leaves. Rory pivoted. The wildflowers near her left foot trembled, not from wind but from something moving through them. The motion traveled in a narrow line, as if an invisible body were parting them. It circled her, slow and curious. She stood very still. She wanted to run. The gap between the stones behind her looked smaller, meaner. She imagined pushing through and finding solid bark, not air. She imagined the boundary sealing like a mouth closing. “Who’s there?” Her voice came out steadier than she felt. Cool-headed, she reminded herself with a grim, internal laugh. That was what people called her. Cool-headed until she was alone in a Fae-touched clearing at night being stalked by a moving absence. The rustle stopped. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the singing returned, not distant now but right beside her, as if someone leaned close to her ear and hummed. The melody was the same unresolved thread, but now she could hear the shape of breath behind it—inhale, exhale—too slow for a human lung. Rory’s scalp prickled. She turned her head fractionally. There was no one. Her stomach clenched. The pendant burned warm against her palm, its faint glow brightening as if it was eager. “Is this why you brought me here?” she whispered to the Heartstone, absurdly, because talking to an object was better than talking to the empty air. “To—what—open something?” The thrum under the ground answered, a subtle increase that made the wildflowers quiver in a wide ring. She had a sudden, vivid mental image: a door beneath the earth, not made of wood but of pressure and cold, waiting for a key. The pendant in her hand felt like that key, shaped by someone else’s intention. Unknown benefactor. The phrase slid into her mind with a bitter edge. Someone had given her this. Someone had placed it around her neck like a leash. Rory curled her fingers around the pendant until the silver chain bit into her skin. Pain grounded her. She thought of her flat above Silas’ bar, the familiar creak of the stairs, the smell of stale beer and mop water. She thought of Eva’s blunt voice telling her to get out, to come to London, to survive. Ordinary life. Human life. Here, in the Grove, she felt her humanity like a thin coat in rain. The humming shifted pitch, pleased, almost. Something brushed her hair. Not a breeze. Not a leaf falling. A careful, deliberate touch, as light as fingertips, sliding through the straight black strands at the back of her neck. Rory jerked forward, spinning, her free hand raised as if she could swat whatever it was. Nothing. But the air in front of her had a smell now—sweet, cloying, the honey-ferment scent sharpened into something like rotting fruit left in sun. Her eyes watered. “Don’t,” she said, voice low. “Just—don’t.” Her own words sounded wrong in this place, too loud, too angular. The Grove held them and did not give them back as echoes. It simply absorbed them as if tasting. She backed toward the standing stones, careful, not taking her eyes off the empty space where the smell lingered. The wildflowers under her heels made no sound. The silence was total. Even her clothes seemed muted, fabric refusing to rustle. She glanced over her shoulder. The gap between the stones was still there. But beyond it, the path through the park looked… unfamiliar. Not in shape, but in feel. The darkness beyond the boundary had depth now, as if it contained a different night. The nearest lamp post was missing. The trees were arranged differently, their trunks too close together. Time, she thought again, and this time it was not a fact but a warning. An hour inside can be minutes or days outside. Or a different outside altogether. The pendant pulsed, hard. The warmth surged up her arm in a wave, like a hand closing around her wrist. Reflexively, she looked down. The small crescent scar on her left wrist stood out starkly. Under the pendant’s red glow, it looked fresher, like a half-moon cut into skin. The humming stopped. The absence that had been circling her seemed to settle behind her, close enough that she felt pressure on the back of her shoulders, as if someone leaned in to read over her. She couldn’t see it. That was the point. It didn’t want to be seen. It wanted to be felt. Rory’s mind raced, not in spirals but in sharp lines. Out-of-the-box thinking, people said. Fine. Think. The Heartstone reacted to the portal. It wanted proximity. It wanted activation. If she held it over the depression in the center— No. She cut that thought off. She didn’t know what would come through. She didn’t know what would take her place. But the pressure behind her grew, patient and inevitable. A decision was being forced. Stand at the boundary and be pressed through it into whatever had replaced the park. Or go deeper, toward the thing that was calling. Her throat tightened. A sob threatened, humiliating and useless. She swallowed it down until it became anger. “I’m not yours,” she said into the silence, not sure who she spoke to—benefactor, Grove, whatever hid behind her. “I’m not a bloody—key you can carry around.” The pendant’s glow flared, bright enough that the crimson lit the wildflower petals like stained glass. The thrum beneath the ground rose in answer, and the depression in the center of the clearing darkened further, as if shadow pooled there. The air over it shimmered, faintly, like heat over tarmac. Behind Rory, the pressure eased. Not gone. Just… waiting. An invitation. Her pulse hammered. Her hand shook around the pendant. She stared at the shimmering air, at the subtle warping of the world above that patch of earth. Somewhere deep in her, a terrified part of her wanted to step forward because standing still was worse. Standing still meant being watched without action, meant being toyed with. She took one slow step toward the center. The wildflowers bowed away from her foot as if making room. The humming returned, not beside her now but under her, inside the ground itself, threaded through the thrum. It sounded almost like words if she didn’t listen too closely. Rory stopped at the edge of the depression. She held the pendant out over it. The warmth climbed, fierce, licking up her palm. The silver chain slid against her skin like something alive. In the crimson gem, the faint inner glow sharpened, and for an instant she saw a reflection that wasn’t hers: a pale face too long, eyes like wet stones, smiling without lips. Rory’s breath caught. Her hand jerked back. The reflection vanished. The pendant looked like a simple gem again, beautiful and inert, lying by omission. The air above the depression rippled once, like a surface disturbed, and then stilled. Silence pressed in, heavy and expectant. Rory stood in the middle of the Fae Grove at night, alone, her heart rattling against her ribs, the pendant hot in her hand. And she understood with a clarity that made her stomach drop that she hadn’t come here to find answers. She’d come here to be found.