Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMR09YPSMHMYXJZ80CZBAAF

The mist in Richmond Park was supposed to be natural, a product of the Thames and the cooling autumn air, but this clung to the ground with a tenacity that felt deliberate. Aurora Carter adjusted the strap of her bag, her breath hitching slightly as she stepped over a gnarled root. The silence here was heavy, a physical weight that pressed against her eardrums. It wasn’t the quiet of an empty library or a sleeping house; it was the silence of a held breath. She checked her watch for the third time in as many minutes. The hands were frozen, stuttering between eleven and twelve as if the mechanism itself was unsure of the hour. Time in the Grove was never linear—it was a suggestion rather than a rule—but tonight the distortion felt aggressive. She had walked for what felt like twenty minutes, yet the moon hadn’t budged from its perch high above the canopy. The shadows remained static, stretched out like black fingers across the grass. Rory reached up, her fingers brushing against the silver chain at her throat. The Heartstone Pendant was usually dormant against her skin, a cool, smooth weight of inert stone. Tonight, however, it was awake. It radiated a faint, rhythmic heat, like a second, frantic heartbeat. The deep crimson gem caught the scant moonlight, glowing with an inner luminescence that illuminated the underside of her chin. "Just a delivery run," she whispered to herself, the sound of her voice painfully small in the vast clearing. "Just a shortcut. In and out." It was a lie. She hadn’t come here to deliver dumplings for the Golden Empress. She had come because the pendant had pulled her here, vibrating with a low hum that only she could feel, a magnetic draw that had made her skin itch until she boarded the train to Richmond. The air smelled wrong. Usually, the Grove smelled of ancient loam and wild jasmine, a cloying sweetness that made her dizzy. Tonight, the floral scent was gone, replaced by the metallic tang of ozone and something faintly rotting, like wet leaves left to decay in the dark. Rory took a cautious step forward, her boots crunching on gravel that sounded disturbingly like breaking bones. She stopped immediately, wincing. The standing stones marked the boundary of the clearing, ancient oaks turned to petrified wood that stood sentinel in a perfect circle. They were taller than she remembered, their bark twisted into faces that seemed to grimace in the peripheral vision. Every time she looked directly at them, they were just wood. When she looked away, she felt the shift, the sensation of grain moving like muscle under skin. She moved toward the center of the grove, where the wildflowers bloomed year-round. Even in the dead of winter, this patch was a riot of color. But as she drew closer, she slowed, her cool-headed analytical mind struggling to process the visual data. The flowers were blooming, yes, but they were wrong. The petals were too sharp, shaped like jagged shards of glass rather than soft tissue. The colors were inverted—violets that glowed with a sickly yellow-green, roses that were a pale, bruised blue. And they were moving. Not swaying in the breeze—there was no wind—but trembling, vibrating with a feverish energy. The pendant against her chest suddenly seared hot, a spike of temperature that made her gasp and clutch at the silver chain. The deep crimson light flared brighter, casting long, dancing shadows across the aberrant flora. A sound broke the silence. It came from behind her, distinct and terrifyingly close. A wet, heavy inhalation, followed by the slow, deliberate scrape of something dragging through the undergrowth. Rory spun around, her heart hammering against her ribs, her bright blue eyes scanning the darkness between the oaks. Nothing. Just the standing stones, looming like silent judges. "You're alone," she muttered, forcing the words out through a dry throat. She rubbed the crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist, a nervous habit she hadn’t been able to break since childhood. "It's just the acoustics. It's just the… Fae-touched nonsense." Another sound. This time, to her left. A dry snap, like a twig breaking, but amplified, as loud as a pistol crack. She wasn't alone. The certainty of it settled in her stomach like ice. She was being hunted. Rory backed away from the flowers, moving toward the edge of the clearing where the ancient oaks thinned out into the "normal" parkland. She kept her breathing steady, in through the nose, out through the mouth, forcing her mind to catalogue her surroundings even as panic threatened to claw its way up her throat. *Exit vector is twelve o'clock. Terrain is uneven. Visibility is poor.* As she moved, the shadows seemed to detach themselves from the trees. At the edge of her vision, tall, spindly shapes were uncoiling, standing upright with a fluidity that no human possessed. They had too many joints, their limbs elongated, their silhouettes jagged and wrong. She didn't look directly at them. She knew that rule. To look was to acknowledge. To acknowledge was to invite. The pendant burned again, pulsing in time with a low thrumming sound that began to vibrate through the soles of her boots. The ground beneath her felt soft, spongy, as if the earth was decaying rapidly. The heat in the stone was warning her, but of what? A Hel portal? If a gate to the underworld was opening in the middle of a Fae grove, she was in trouble far beyond her pay grade. She reached the tree line, her hand outstretched to brush against the rough bark of a boundary oak. Her hand met nothing but empty air. Rory stumbled forward, catching herself before she fell. She spun around. The clearing was there, the twisted flowers glowing in their sickly hues. The standing stones were there. But the path she had taken to get here, the narrow gap in the trees that led back to the park, was gone. In its place was a wall of dense, impenetrable thorns, woven so tightly together that not even a rat could squeeze through. The grove had shifted. The exit had moved. The dragging sound came again, louder this time, echoing from all sides. It was a chorus of wet, slithering noises. Rory pressed her back against the barrier of thorns, ignoring the sharp prickles that snagged her jacket. She scanned the perimeter, looking for a weakness, a gap, anything. "Okay," she said, her voice trembling despite her best efforts. "Think, Rory. You're the clever one. You're the lawyer who didn't want to be a lawyer. Solve the puzzle." The stones in the center of the grove began to hum. The sound was low and dissonant, a chord that made her teeth ache. The light from the pendant grew frantic now, flashing like a distress beacon. Then, silence fell again. Absolute, suffocating silence. The dragging stopped. The trembling of the flowers ceased. The stillness was worse than the noise. It was the moment before the predator pounced. Slowly, Rory turned her head toward the center of the clearing. The space between the standing stones was distorting, the air rippling like heat haze over asphalt. Something was pushing through. It wasn't a physical shape, but a hole in the reality of the grove, a void of absolute blackness that seemed to suck the light out of the pendant. The cold that emanated from it was unnatural. It wasn't the chill of a winter night; it was the absence of heat, the absolute zero of a vacuum. It smelled of old dust and sealed tombs. A hand reached out of the void. It was pale, greyish-blue, and the fingers were too long. The nails were black, chipped, and looked like iron. It gripped the edge of the rift, pulling a body that looked half-formed, half-smoke into the material world. Rory couldn't move. Her legs were leaden, her muscles locked by a primal terror that bypassed her conscious thought entirely. She watched, helpless, as the figure fully emerged. It was tall, draped in tatters of darkness that moved like liquid. It had no face, just a smooth, pale surface where eyes and a mouth should be. It turned its head, scanning the clearing. It didn't look with eyes. It sensed. The pendant seared her skin, so hot she cried out, a sharp yelp that shattered the silence. The figure froze. The faceless head snapped toward her. It knew she was there. Rory pushed off the thorns, adrenaline finally overriding the fear paralysis. She ran along the perimeter, her boots slipping on the slick, unnatural grass. She didn't care about the logic anymore; she didn't care about the time slip. She just needed a gap. "Come on," she gritted out, dodging a low-hanging branch that seemed to swipe at her face. "Come on!" Behind her, the air split with a screech, a sound like metal tearing against metal. The sound of pursuit followed—rapid, thudding footsteps that didn't match the gait of any living creature. They were erratic, skipping, closing the distance with terrifying speed. The Heartstone pulsed violently, the crimson light turning a shade of bright, angry orange. The heat spread through her chest, into her arms. It wasn't just warning her anymore; it was energizing her, lending her a frantic, buzzing strength. She saw a break in the trees ahead—a sliver of darker darkness where the thorns hadn't closed completely. It was small, maybe too small, but it was the only chance. She dove for it, throwing herself through the gap just as a cold, clammy hand swiped through the air where her jacket had been a second before. She felt the wind of the movement, the brush of icy fingers against the nape of her neck. She hit the ground on the other side, tumbling down an embankment of wet leaves and mud. She rolled, bruising her shoulder, scraping her palms, until she came to a halt at the bottom of a shallow ravine. Rory lay there for a moment, gasping for air, her chest heaving. The air here was different. It smelled of London traffic and wet dog. It smelled real. She scrambled to her knees and looked back up the slope. There was no grove. There was no wall of thorns. There was just the dense, gloomy woodland of Richmond Park, the familiar path winding away into the mist. She looked down at her chest. The pendant had stopped glowing. The crimson stone was dull and cooling rapidly against her skin. The heat was gone, leaving only a lingering ache in her bones. Rory pulled herself to her feet, brushing the mud from her jeans. She was shaking, her hands trembling so badly she had to clench them into fists to stop them. She checked her watch. The second hand was moving smoothly, ticking away the seconds. It was 11:15 PM. She had been in the grove for nearly an hour, but outside, only minutes had passed. She looked back at the woods one last time. The trees stood silent and still, looking like nothing more than trees. But as she turned to walk back toward the main road, she saw it—a single, perfect flower growing at the base of an oak tree. It was a rose. It was a pale, bruised blue. Rory didn't stop to pick it. She pulled her collar up high, tucked the pendant inside her shirt, and walked into the mist, refusing to look back again.