Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMR3W06WWH22YJ7H4W50HJB

The delivery bag from the Golden Empress felt heavier than usual, the smell of ginger and toasted sesame oil cloying in the damp night air. Aurora checked her watch. It hadn't moved in twenty minutes. The second hand twitched, shuddered, and then swept backward three seconds before freezing entirely. She stood at the edge of Richmond Park, where the manicured grass gave way to the ancient, gnarled silhouettes of the oaks. Somewhere deep in the thicket lay the Fae Grove. She’d been told to meet her contact there—at least, that was what the note tucked into the last delivery order had commanded. The handwriting had been a frantic scrawl she didn’t recognize, but the signature was a name that made her blood run cold: Evan. He shouldn't have known she was in London. He certainly shouldn't have known about the Grove. Rory adjusted the strap of her bag and stepped past the first line of trees. The transition was instantaneous. The distant hum of London’s late-night traffic—the sirens and the low rumble of the Underground—died away, replaced by an absolute, crushing silence. The air here tasted different. It was too sweet, saturated with the scent of wildflowers that had no business blooming in the dark of a British autumn. She navigated by the pale, silver light of a moon that looked too large for the sky. Her boots crunched on the earth, but the sound didn't echo; the trees seemed to swallow the noise before it could travel a yard. She reached the boundary of the Grove, marked by the ancient oak standing stones. They weren't pillars of rock, but petrified wood, smoothed by centuries of unseen hands. As she passed between them, a sudden prickle of heat erupted against her chest. She reached under her shirt and pulled out the Heartstone Pendant. The deep crimson gemstone, normally a dull ember, was pulsing with a rhythmic, sickening warmth. It cast a faint, bloody glow onto her palms. The pendant reacted to Hel portals, and while the Grove was a pocket of the Fae realm, it wasn't supposed to feel like this. The warmth was aggressive. It felt like a warning. "Evan?" she called out. Her voice sounded thin, stripped of its resonance. There was no answer, but something shifted in the periphery of her vision. A pale shape flickered behind a thicket of rowan trees. When she turned to look, there was only the stillness of the wildflowers, their petals unnaturally vibrant in the moonlight. She kept moving toward the center of the clearing, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. She was a Cardiff girl, a barrister’s daughter who had been taught to trust in logic and the weight of evidence. But logic didn't account for the way the shadows behind her seemed to be lengthening in a direction away from the moon. She stopped. A sound reached her. It wasn't a footstep, but a wet, sliding noise, like something heavy being dragged over moss. It came from the shadows of a massive, hollowed-out oak to her left. "I have the food," she said, her voice firmer this time, an attempt to anchor herself in the mundane reality of her job. "Leave the money by the stone and I’m gone." Still silence. Then, a low, melodic whistle. It was a tune she knew. A Welsh folk song her mother used to hum while grading papers in their kitchen back home. But the pitch was wrong. It drifted in and out of tune, sliding into dissonant notes that set her teeth on edge. Rory’s hand went to her left wrist, her fingers instinctively tracing the small crescent-shaped scar there. It was a nervous habit, a tactile reminder of a fall when she was six, a reminder that she was physical, she was real, and she was here. The scar felt cold. The whistling stopped abruptly. "Rory." The voice didn't come from the trees. It sounded like it was whispered directly into her ear, though the clearing was empty for twenty yards in every direction. It was Evan’s voice—the same wheedling, manipulative tone he used right before the shouting started—but it was layered with something else. A rasping, crystalline quality that didn't belong to a human throat. "I’m not playing, Evan," she said, turning in a slow circle. "Show yourself." She looked down at the Heartstone. The crimson light was no longer pulsing; it was a steady, angry glare. The silver chain was becoming uncomfortably hot against her neck. Movement caught her eye again. High up in the branches of the standing oaks, something was crouching. It was too large to be an owl and too thin to be a man. It looked like a collection of sticks and pale parchment, folded into a shape that defied anatomy. Its eyes weren't eyes—they were two shimmering pools of reflection, like oily water. Rory backed away, her boots tangling in the long grass. The grass felt wrong. It wasn't soft; it was wiry and hooked, snagging at her trousers as if trying to hold her in place. The thing in the tree didn't jump down. It simply... moved. It flowed from one branch to another without the sound of a single leaf rustling. It was closing the circle. The temperature in the Grove plummeted. Her breath began to mist in the air, but the mist didn't dissipate. It hung around her face, thickening into a grey shroud that tasted of copper and old earth. "You left me in the dark, Rory," the voice whispered, now coming from the roots of the tree she had just passed. "Do you know how long it’s been? The hours don't work the same here. I’ve been waiting for years. I’ve been waiting for seconds." She realized then that the trees were moving. Not swaying in a breeze—there was no wind—but subtly shifting their positions. The gap between the standing stones where she had entered was gone. The oaks had drawn closer together, weaving their branches into a wall of thorns and petrified bark. She was trapped in the pocket. The dragging sound intensified, closer now. Something emerged from the hollow oak. It bore the face of the man she had fled in Cardiff—the same sharp jawline, the same cruel set to the mouth—but the skin was the color of a bruised plum, and his limbs were far too long, ending in fingers that had an extra joint. He didn't walk; he skittered on all fours, his spine arching in a way that made her stomach churn. "The Golden Empress doesn't deliver this far, Laila," he hissed, using the name he had tried to force on her during their first month together. Rory dropped the delivery bag. The plastic containers cracked on the ground, spilling rice and sauce onto the wildflowers. The flowers didn't just sit there; they began to hum, the petals vibrating as they drank in the liquid. "You're not Evan," Rory said, her mind racing. She needed a gap. She needed a flaw in the logic of this space. "Evan is in a flat in Roath. He’s probably passed out over a bottle of cheap gin. You’re just a memory the Grove is chewing on." The creature stopped, its head tilting at a ninety-degree angle. "A memory can still bleed you." It lunged. Rory didn't run away; she ran toward it, diving low. She remembered Silas telling her once at the bar that the Fae realm took its cues from expectation. If she acted like prey, she was prey. She grabbed the Heartstone Pendant, ripping the silver chain from her neck. The heat scorched her palm, but she didn’t let go. As the creature’s clawed hand swiped the air where her head had been a second before, she thrust the glowing crimson gem toward its chest. The moment the stone made contact with the creature’s shadow-flesh, a sound like a hot iron hitting ice erupted. The creature shrieked—a sound that wasn't a voice at all, but the screech of a dying bird. The Heartstone flared with a blinding, ultraviolet light. The Hel energy inside it, condensed and volatile, reacted violently to the Fae-touched creature. For a heartbeat, the Grove was illuminated in high-contrast white. Rory saw the true scale of the horror—thousands of the stick-thin figures perched in the branches above, all watching, all waiting for the light to fail. The force of the reaction threw her backward. She hit the ground hard, her head snapping back against the turf. The world tilted. The smell of the wildflowers vanished, replaced by the sharp, ozone scent of a London storm. Rory blinked, her vision swimming with purple spots. She was lying on the damp grass of Richmond Park. The towering oaks were back to being just trees, their leaves rustling in a natural, cool breeze. The distant sound of a plane descending toward Heathrow was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard. She sat up, gasping for air. Her hand was empty. The Heartstone was gone, and the silver chain was nowhere to be found. She looked down at her left wrist. The crescent-shaped scar was glowing a faint, sickly crimson. It lasted only a second before fading back to its usual pale white. In the grass beside her lay a single, crushed delivery bag from the Golden Empress. It was empty. There was no rice, no sauce, and no sign that anything had ever been inside it but the wind. Rory stood up, her legs shaking so violently she had to lean against a tree—a real tree, rough and indifferent. She didn't look back. She walked toward the distant orange glow of the streetlights, her footsteps loud and heavy on the gravel path, marking every second of the time that was finally moving again.