Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMR34V17VDVFC8DW81BA175

The air shifted, growing thick and heavy as Rory pushed past the invisible veil between worlds. One moment she was in Richmond Park, the London night smelling of damp earth and distant traffic; the next, she was in the Grove. Here, the air was different—cloying and sweet with the scent of wildflowers that bloomed unnaturally out of season, under a moon that seemed too large, too close. A silver disc leaking cold light onto the clearing. Usually, a quiet hum of life filled this place. A thrum of energy that vibrated just beneath the surface of hearing, the whisper of Fae magic coiled in the ancient oaks. Tonight, there was only silence. A profound, listening silence that pressed in on her, muffling the sound of her own breathing. The crickets were quiet. The wind held its breath. Rory’s hand went to the Heartstone Pendant nestled beneath her jacket, its silver chain cool against her skin. The stone itself was inert, its faint crimson glow dormant. No Hel portals nearby. Good. That wasn't the kind of trouble she was looking for. She scanned the ring of monolithic standing stones that marked the Grove’s boundary, their surfaces etched with whorls and lines that seemed to shift in the pale light. Nothing seemed out of place, yet the wrongness of the silence raised the hairs on her arms. "Don't be a coward, Carter," she muttered, the words sounding flat and intrusive in the dead air. She was here for a reason. Eva needed moondew for a poultice, and it only grew in Fae-touched soil under the light of a full moon. In and out. Simple. She pulled a small canvas pouch from her pocket and moved deeper into the clearing, her boots sinking slightly into the soft, springy turf. Her gaze swept the ground, searching for the tell-tale silver-blue leaves of the herb. The flowers here glowed with a faint luminescence of their own—violets and primrose and foxglove in impossible cobalt and phantasmal white. Their familiar beauty felt alien tonight, their colors too sharp, their smell tinged with something cloying, like meat left too long in the sun. A twig snapped behind her. Rory froze, body tensing into a low crouch. She listened, straining her ears against the oppressive quiet. Nothing. The sound had been sharp, decisive. A heavy footfall, not the scurrying of a fox or a badger. She slowly straightened, turning in a full circle, her eyes probing the deep shadows pooled at the base of the oak stones. The clearing remained empty. Probably just time settling, she told herself, the strangeness of the Grove playing tricks. Time moved differently here; maybe it made odd noises as it bent. The thought wasn't comforting. She traced the crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist with the thumb of her other hand, a nervous habit from childhood. Get the moondew and go. She found a patch near the center of the grove, the delicate leaves shimmering like captured moonlight. Kneeling, she began to carefully pluck them, placing them one by one into the pouch. That’s when she heard the second sound. It was a faint, dragging scrape. Rhythmic. *Scrape. Pause. Scrape.* Like a heavy branch being pulled across stone. It came from the edge of the clearing, somewhere in the ring of monolithic oaks. Her fingers stilled over a leaf. She stayed perfectly still, listening. It wasn't the wind. There was no wind. *Scrape. Pause. Scrape.* The sound was methodical, patient. An unnerving deliberateness echoed in its rhythm. Rory’s cool-headed logic scrambled for an explanation—an animal sharpening its claws, rocks settling. But the sound was too loud, too grating. It set her teeth on edge. Abandoning the moondew, she closed the pouch and slipped it back into her pocket. Eva would have to make do with something else. The feeling of being watched prickled at the back of her neck, a physical pressure. She rose slowly, her movements measured, trying not to betray the sudden spike of fear that shot through her. At the edge of her vision, a shadow detached itself from one of the standing stones. It wasn't a trick of the light. It moved, a deeper black against the lesser black of the night, flowing like spilled ink across the grass to melt into the shadow of the next stone. It was impossibly fast, unnaturally fluid. Her head whipped around, but there was nothing there. Just the ancient, unmoving oak. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic bird trapped in a cage. Her out-of-the-box thinking supplied a dozen horrifying possibilities, each worse than the last. The pendant against her chest suddenly turned cold. Not just cool, but a deep, biting ice that seeped through her shirt, a stark contrast to its usual faint warmth. She fumbled it out from under her collar. The crimson heartstone had gone dark, its inner light extinguished. In its place, a sickly, pale luminescence flickered weakly, like a dying ember. It wasn't pulsing for a Hel portal. It was recoiling. *Scrape. Click. Scrape. Click.* The sound was closer now. The scraping was louder, and it was now accompanied by a wet, clicking noise, like knuckles cracking or chitinous plates rubbing together. It was coming from the direction the shadow had gone. Every nerve screamed at her to run, but she knew blind panic was a death sentence in a place like this. She needed to get back to the boundary, to the invisible door back to Richmond Park. She took a slow, deliberate step backward, then another, keeping her eyes fixed on the space between the two oak stones. Her boots made no sound on the soft earth. The air grew colder, and her breath plumed in front of her face, a white ghost in the moonlight. The sweet scent of the flowers was gone, replaced by the smell of stagnant water and old, wet stones. She was halfway across the clearing when it emerged. It stepped from the shadow of an oak, unfolding itself into the moonlight. It was tall. Impossibly, unnaturally tall and thin, a skein of darkness given form. Its limbs were long and jointed at odd angles, like a spider’s. It moved without grace, a lurching, dragging motion that produced the scraping sound as one of its limbs trailed along the ground. Moonlight slid off its form, refusing to grant it detail, defining only its jagged silhouette. Where its head should have been, there was only a smooth, pale oval, eyeless and devoid of any feature. It paused, tilting that blank expanse in her direction as if it could see her, as if it could smell the frantic terror pouring off her. A series of wet clicks echoed from it, sharp and distinct in the dead silence of the Grove. It saw her. It knew she was there. Rory backed away, one step, then another, her hand clenched so tightly around the icy pendant that the chain dug into her skin. Her mind raced, sifting through options and finding none. She could not outrun it. She could not fight it. The boundary was just behind her, a few more yards. Freedom. The familiar, mundane world. The creature took a step toward her. It moved slowly, a predator with all the time in the world. Its long, trailing limb scraped a groove in the soft turf. The blank oval of its face remained fixed on her, a void of horrifying intent. Then, from that featureless head, a voice slithered into her mind, not through her ears but directly into her skull. It was a dry, rasping whisper, the sound of autumn leaves skittering across a tombstone. *Aurora.* It knew her name. Rory broke, spinning around and lunging for the space between the standing stones, for the feel of London air on her skin. But the path was no longer empty. Another one stood there, identical to the first, a silent, faceless silhouette blocking her escape. It had appeared without a sound. She was trapped between them. The one behind her scraped closer, its wet clicking a steady, unhurried death knell. The one in front of her began to unfold a limb, reaching for her with fingers that were too long, too thin, like the bare branches of a dying tree. The frigid pendant felt like a block of ice against her heart, its pale light sputtering out into final darkness.