Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQZPTZZCN5NNDZW7YME1VR

The last bus had dropped Rory at the Richmond Park gate just after eleven, and she'd had to climb the fence where the iron bars curved low near the Isabella Plantation entrance. The metal was slick with evening dew, cold enough to make her fingers ache, and she'd torn the knee of her jeans on the descent. A small price. She'd been putting this off for three weeks now, ever since the pendant had started pulsing in her sleep, warm against her sternum like a second heartbeat. She followed the path she'd memorized from Isolde's hand-drawn map, past the skeletal shapes of winter oaks that somehow still bore their leaves here, deep into the park where the lampposts didn't reach. The moon hung fat and orange above the treeline, casting everything in shades of rust and shadow. Her phone's torch cut a pale wedge through the darkness ahead, but she kept it low, pointed at her feet. No sense advertising her presence to any late-night dog walkers or, worse, park security. The standing stones appeared exactly where Isolde had promised they would—seven ancient oaks arranged in a rough circle, their bark so deeply grooved it looked carved. Rory had asked once if they were actual stones that had been transformed, or trees that had always grown in that pattern. Isolde had smiled that maddening fae smile and said, "Yes." Rory stepped between two of the oaks, and the world shifted. It wasn't dramatic. No flash of light, no sensation of falling. Just a subtle wrongness in her inner ear, a pressure change like descending in an airplane, and then she was through. The Fae Grove spread before her in impossible moonlight, wildflowers nodding their heads despite the December cold she'd left behind. Primroses, foxgloves, flowers she couldn't name—all of them blooming in defiance of every season, their petals silver-touched and faintly luminescent. The pendant pulsed once against her chest, warmer than it had any right to be. Rory pulled it out from beneath her jumper and cupped it in her palm. The crimson gemstone caught the moonlight, deep as old blood, and for a moment she could swear she saw something moving in its depths. A flicker. A shadow. Then nothing. "Right," she muttered to herself. "You wanted to be here. You came here on purpose. Stop being dramatic." She'd come to test a theory. The pendant had been reacting to something for weeks now—not just the warmth that Isolde said meant a Hel portal was near, but something else. A pull. A direction. And every time she tried to follow it in the waking world, it led her here. To the boundary of the Grove. To the place between places. Tonight, she'd finally decided to stop ignoring it. The clearing was silent in a way that London never was. No distant traffic, no airplane drone, no bass thump from a neighbor's flat three floors down. Just the whisper of grass against her ankles and the soft rush of her own breathing. Rory turned in a slow circle, pendant extended, waiting for it to react. It did. A pulse of heat, strong enough to make her gasp, pointed her toward the northern edge of the clearing where the wildflowers grew tallest. Where the shadows between the boundary stones seemed thicker somehow, like ink pooling in water. She took three steps in that direction before she heard it. A twig snapping. Behind her. Not the natural settling of forest debris, but the sharp, deliberate crack of something bearing weight. Rory froze. Every muscle in her body locked, her heart suddenly loud in her ears. She didn't turn around. She couldn't turn around. Some animal part of her brain, older than language, older than thought, was screaming at her to stay absolutely still. Ten seconds passed. Twenty. The silence stretched like a held breath. Nothing. Rory let out a shaky exhale and forced herself to turn. The clearing behind her was empty. Just the wildflowers, nodding gently in a breeze she couldn't feel. Just the standing stones, their bark silver-touched and ancient. Just moonlight and shadow and the faint sweet scent of growing things. She was alone. She was absolutely, certainly alone. The pendant pulsed again, more insistently now, and she made herself walk toward the northern boundary. One step. Two. The tall flowers brushed against her jeans, leaving trails of moisture on the denim. She could see where the moonlight seemed to curdle at the edge of the grove, where the shadows pooled deeper than they had any right to. A shape moved at the corner of her vision. Rory spun, heart hammering, but there was nothing there. Just a stand of foxgloves, their bell-shaped flowers nodding as if something had just brushed past them. "Hello?" Her voice came out steadier than she felt. "Isolde, if this is your idea of a joke—" The words died in her throat. Across the clearing, perhaps thirty feet away, something stood between two of the boundary oaks. It was too dark to make out clearly, just a suggestion of height and mass, a shape that didn't belong. As Rory watched, frozen, it shifted slightly. Turned, maybe. Or tilted. Some small movement that shouldn't have been visible at that distance but somehow was, somehow registered in her hindbrain as wrong wrong wrong. The pendant flared hot against her palm, hot enough to hurt. "Who's there?" Rory's voice cracked on the second word. She clutched the pendant tighter, felt the silver chain bite into her knuckles. "I can see you. I know you're there." The shape didn't move. Didn't respond. It simply stood there, a darker darkness against the night, and watched her with an attention she could feel like pressure against her skin. Slowly, carefully, Rory began to back away. She didn't take her eyes off the figure. She didn't dare. One step backward, then another, the wildflowers parting around her ankles like water. The boundary stones were somewhere behind her—she just had to find them, had to get back through, had to— Her heel caught on a root, and she stumbled. When she looked up again, the shape was gone. The relief was so immediate, so overwhelming, that she nearly laughed. It had been nothing. A trick of the light. A shadow cast by the moon through the branches, or a fae glamour designed to test visitors, or— Movement. To her left this time. Closer. Rory's head snapped around, and she caught the barest glimpse of something pale disappearing behind one of the standing stones. Not a shadow. Not a trick of the light. Something solid. Something real. Something that was circling her. The temperature in the grove seemed to drop ten degrees. Rory could see her breath now, a pale cloud in front of her face, though the air hadn't felt cold a moment ago. The wildflowers at her feet had stopped nodding. Everything had gone absolutely, perfectly still. Except for the pendant. It was pulsing rapidly now, frantic, the heat building against her palm until she had to shift it to her other hand. The crimson stone glowed from within, casting a faint red light across the frozen flowers, and in that light Rory could see something she hadn't noticed before. Footprints. All around her. Pressed into the grass in a perfect circle, as if something had been pacing around her while she stood oblivious, tracing a ring closer and closer and closer— A sound cut through the silence. Low. Wet. Like breath being drawn through damaged lungs, or like laughter that had forgotten how to form itself properly. It came from everywhere and nowhere, from the stones and the flowers and the dark spaces between. Rory ran. She didn't choose a direction. She simply moved, crashing through the wildflowers toward where she thought the southern boundary must be, where she'd entered, where the world was still real and solid and safe. Branches whipped at her face. Her feet caught in roots and tangles of undergrowth that hadn't been there before, that couldn't have been there before. The clearing seemed to stretch around her, the boundary stones retreating as fast as she approached. The wet breathing sound followed her. Always just behind. Always just out of sight. Her hand found rough bark—one of the standing stones—and she pressed herself against it, pendant clutched to her chest, gasping for air. The grove had gone silent again. The moon had disappeared behind clouds that hadn't existed moments ago, plunging everything into a darkness so complete she couldn't see her own hands. But she could feel it. Something was standing directly in front of her. Close enough to touch. Close enough to smell—a scent like old flowers and turned earth, like something sweet that had been left too long to rot. She could hear it breathing now, slow and deliberate, could feel the air stir against her face with each exhale. The pendant burned cold against her chest. Rory squeezed her eyes shut and stepped backward, through the boundary, out of the grove— And fell onto frozen ground, gasping, the December air burning in her lungs like ice water. Richmond Park stretched dark and ordinary around her, the mundane sounds of distant traffic and rustling leaves filling the silence. Her jeans were soaked through with dew. Her hands were shaking so badly she could barely grip the pendant. But she was out. She was safe. She lay there on the cold ground for a long moment, staring up at the orange-tinged London sky, waiting for her heart to slow. The pendant had gone dormant against her chest, just a small weight on its silver chain, no warmer than her own body heat. Behind her, between the standing stone oaks, something shifted in the darkness. Rory didn't look back. She got to her feet, and she walked toward the park gates, and she didn't run, and she didn't look back, not even when she heard that wet sound again, distant now but unmistakable— Not quite laughter. Not quite breathing. Just the sound of something that had learned her scent, that had tasted the edge of her fear, that would remember. The pendant pulsed once, soft and warm, against her racing heart. A warning. Or a promise.