Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMR44YF5P390K428RT8EW9A

The air on the other side of the ancient oaks tasted different. It was clean, sharp, and carried the scent of a thousand blossoms Rory couldn’t name, all blooming at once. She stepped forward, her boots sinking slightly into a carpet of moss that was a deeper, more vibrant green than any she had ever seen. It gave softly under her weight, like a living thing. The ordinary sounds of Richmond Park—the distant traffic, the shouts of children, the barking of dogs—had vanished, replaced by a profound and humming silence. Rory’s hand went to the Heartstone pendant at her throat. Back in the mundane world, it had been a familiar, faint warmth against her skin, a low-grade thrum that promised proximity to power. Here, in this impossible clearing, it was utterly cold. A chill, deep and sterile, radiated from the crimson gem, a stark contrast to the living warmth of the grove. It felt like a piece of Dymas, a fragment of Hel’s gluttonous heat, protesting the Fae-touched air. Isolde moved ahead of them, her silver hair a river of moonlight against the impossible green. She left no footprints on the moss. Her pale lavender eyes were wide, not with surprise, but with a kind of serene homecoming. “The Veil is thin here,” she said, her voice like the chiming of tiny, glass bells. “A fold in the tapestry.” Nyx was less solid. They weren’t walking so much as flowing, a humanoid silhouette of deeper shadow that rippled at the edges of the grove’s dappled light. Their voice, when it came, was a whisper that seemed to come from the rustle of the leaves all around them. *“The barrier is not a wall. It is a membrane. And we have slipped through its pores.”* Rory drew a slow breath, trying to ground herself. She was a delivery driver from Cardiff, a woman who’d fled a broken relationship for a cramped flat above a London bar. Logic and routine were the anchors of her life. This place was the antithesis of both. Her gaze swept the clearing. Wildflowers, in colours that had no names, bloomed in tangled profusion. Petals shimmered with an iridescent sheen, like oil on water. Some glowed with a soft, internal luminescence. A vine with sapphire-blue blossoms curled around the trunk of an ancient birch tree, its bark the colour of polished bone. She reached out and touched the moss. It was cool and damp, but beneath her fingers, she felt a faint, slow pulse, like the heartbeat of a sleeping giant. She snatched her hand back, a prickle of unease crawling up her spine. “Do not be frightened of the life here,” Isolde said, turning back to her. The Seer’s feet were bare, yet she seemed untouched by the damp or the chill. “It is older and slower than yours. It does not mean you harm.” Rory nodded, feeling foolish. She forced herself to focus, to be the cool-headed person her friends relied on. She checked her watch. The second hand was frozen at twelve. She frowned, tapping the crystal. Nothing. She held it to her ear. No tick. A knot of anxiety tightened in her stomach. “My watch stopped.” Nyx’s shadow-form coalesced beside her, their faintly glowing violet eyes regarding the timepiece with detached curiosity. *“Time is a mortal construct. A river you have built banks for. Here… the river has no banks.”* As if to prove the point, the light in the grove began to shift. It wasn’t the setting of the sun; the sky above the canopy of trees remained a soft, perpetual twilight. The light itself was changing, deepening from a pearlescent grey to a soft, golden hue, as if the grove had its own personal dawn. It happened without a source, without a sun. The light simply *was*. And as it changed, the colours of the flowers shifted with it, the blue blossons deepening to violet, the glowing ones flaring brighter. They moved deeper into the grove, Isolde leading them toward its centre. The air grew warmer, filled with the sweet, heavy perfume of the blossoms. Rory felt the Fae-forged blade at her hip stir. The moonsilver dagger, a gift from Isolde, was always cold to the touch, a sliver of captured winter. Now, it felt different. A faint, thrumming energy vibrated through the sheath, a low hum that resonated in her bones. In this golden light, the leaf-shaped blade began to emit a faint, silvery luminescence of its own, a soft counterpoint to the glowing flora. They came to the heart of the grove. A pool of water, so still and clear it looked like a pane of glass, occupied the centre. It reflected the sky and the impossible trees with perfect clarity, yet there was no bottom visible. The water seemed to go on forever, into another place. Willows with weeping boughs of pure white surrounded it, their long, slender leaves chiming softly in a breeze Rory could not feel on her skin. Rory knelt at the edge of the pool, her reflection staring back at her. Her bright blue eyes seemed wider, more luminous in this light. The small crescent scar on her left wrist stood out, pale against her skin. She dipped her fingers into the water. It was neither warm nor cold, but it felt thick, substantial, like liquid silk. As she pulled her hand out, the water clung to her skin for a moment before beading and rolling off, leaving her perfectly dry. “What is this place?” she whispered, the words barely disturbing the silence. Isolde stood beside her, her gaze fixed on the pool’s impossible depths. “A sanctuary. A memory. A promise,” she said, her voice full of a melancholy beauty. “It is a place where what was, what is, and what could be all drink from the same spring.” *“It is a place outside the story,”* Nyx added, their form wavering at the edge of the pool. *“A footnote between pages. A useful place to hide. Or to find what was lost.”* Rory looked from the Seer to the Shade, then back to the shimmering water. The cold pendant against her throat and the humming blade at her hip felt like two opposing forces, two anchors pulling her in different directions. One was a reminder of the Hell she was tied to, the other a gift from the Fae she now courted. Here, in this timeless, wondrous place, she felt the immense, terrifying space between them. She was standing on the edge of a world far larger and more dangerous than she had ever imagined, and for the first time, she truly understood how small she was. And yet, looking at the impossible beauty of the grove, she didn’t feel afraid. She felt a spark of something else. Awe. And a terrifying, exhilarating sense of possibility.