Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMR0JGRR0WHVNHWSAGHCW0Q

Aurora's first breath of the Fae Grove's air tasted like honeysuckle and something older—something that predated language itself. She stepped through the boundary of ancient oak stones, and the afternoon light fractured into something neither fully day nor night. The temperature dropped ten degrees in the span of a heartbeat. "Christ," she whispered. Behind her, Nyx slipped through the standing stones like smoke dissolving into water. For a being of shadow, they seemed almost solid here, their form more defined. The faintly glowing violet of their eyes caught the strange amber-filtered light as they surveyed the clearing. Beside them, Isolde moved without walking, simply existing in a new location, her silver hair catching luminescence that shouldn't have existed. "Welcome," the Seer said, her voice like wind through distant forests, "to the place between breaths." The grove opened before them—not gradually, but all at once, as if reality had simply decided to expand. Wildflowers covered the ground in impossible profusion: night-blooming jasmine alongside spring daisies, autumn crocuses tangled with summer roses. None of them should have existed in the same season. None of them should have coexisted on the same plane of existence. Yet here they swayed in a breeze that felt warm and cold simultaneously, carrying scents that shifted with each inhale—peony, rain, cinnamon, sea salt, burnt sage. Aurora knelt and touched a bloom between her fingers. The petals were soft as skin, warm despite the grove's temperature. When she pulled her hand back, her fingertips glowed faintly—not with light, but with a kind of absence, as if they'd touched something that existed more fully in another world. "The Veil is thinner here," Isolde said, stepping barefoot across the flowering meadow. Her feet made no impression in the soft earth. "She remembers what it was to be one realm." Aurora stood, her delivery-driver's trainers sinking slightly into moss that hadn't been there a moment ago. Or perhaps it had always been there. Time felt negotiable in the Fae Grove. The clearing stretched further than the physical space of Richmond Park should have allowed. At its center stood a pool of still water, its surface perfectly reflective, yet she could see nothing in it—no sky, no trees, only a depthless black like looking into an abyss. Around it, the wildflowers grew more densely, as if drawn to the water's edge. Nyx moved toward it with the fluid grace of smoke, their humanoid form seeming to flow across the ground rather than walk it. "How many memories does this place hold?" they asked, their whisper-voice carrying an edge of something like longing. "All of them," Isolde replied. "The ones you had. The ones you'll have. The ones you might have forgotten." She turned her lavender eyes toward Aurora. "The Seer who walks this place sees not forward, but sideways through all possible nows." Aurora felt the Heartstone Pendant warm against her chest. It didn't pulse—not yet—but it thrummed with a gentle heat, as if waking from sleep. She pulled the chain from beneath her shirt. The deep crimson stone caught the impossible light and held it, creating small rainbows that danced across the clearing. Isolde's expression didn't change, but something shifted in her presence. The air grew heavier. The flowers leaned toward the pendant rather than toward the light. "Your benefactor chose this gift with care," the Seer said. "The Heartstone remembers its origin. It remembers Dymas." Aurora had expected that name to feel dangerous, to carry the weight of all she'd learned about Hel's realms. Instead, it merely felt like a door opening onto something she didn't yet understand. "Why would someone from Gluttony's realm give this to me?" "Why indeed?" Isolde moved to the pool's edge and looked into its impenetrable depths. "Some gifts are made with hope. Others with debt. Still others with warning dressed as generosity." She tilted her head, as if listening to something inaudible. "The question that follows matters more than the answer." Nyx had reached the water now, their form casting no reflection. They crouched at the pool's rim, their violet eyes scanning its surface with an intensity that suggested they saw far more than Aurora could. "There's something under it," they said quietly. "Something that was, something that is, something that hasn't chosen to be yet." The grove seemed to hold its breath. Aurora walked toward them, her heart moving with deliberate steadiness despite the way her skin prickled with awareness. The Fae-Forged Blade hung at her hip, cold against her thigh even through the leather sheath. She'd begun to trust that coldness—it marked something true in a world that increasingly blurred between real and impossible. The closer she got to the pool, the more the flowers responded. They turned their petals toward her approach, not toward light now, but toward her specifically. Toward the pendant. Some of them bloomed in reverse, their petals folding inward until they became seed pods. Others opened wider, releasing pollen that glowed faintly in the amber-filtered air. "Time moves differently here," Isolde continued, her voice taking on the cadence of something rehearsed yet never quite memorized. "An hour can be a minute. A minute can hollow out a year. The Veil is not only thin—it is worn. Like cloth rubbed too many times in the same place. Something is pressing from the other side." Aurora stopped beside Nyx. She stared into the pool's depths, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. There was something there, beneath the black—a shape, perhaps, or the suggestion of movement. Shadows moving within shadow. "The winter solstice is coming," Isolde said. It wasn't quite a warning. "When the Veil weakens most. Already, those bound to Hel grow restless. Already, the Wardens count their resources and wonder if it will be enough. Already, your benefactor's gift begins to burn with purpose rather than dormancy." The pendant pulsed once, sharp and sudden. Not warmth this time, but something like hunger. Aurora's hand moved to the Fae-Forged Blade without conscious decision. The moonsilver was ice beneath her palm, and when she drew it, the blade caught light that shouldn't exist, creating its own luminescence. The dagger seemed to quiet the grove's nervous energy, drawing it back from the edge of something that felt dangerously close to revelation. "What do you need me to do?" Aurora asked. The Seer smiled then, and it was not entirely a kind expression. "Oh, bright one," Isolde said, "you've already begun. The only question now is whether you'll survive completion." Behind them, something in the pool began to rise.