Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMR5K3FRMJ73XRNZGSKWKW1

Aurora Carter stood at the boundary where wild grass surrendered to stone, the Heartstone pendant heavy against her chest. The ancient oaks loomed up in impossible symmetry, pillars in a cathedral shaped by centuries of wind and Fae cunning. Their trunks were wide as old tombs. Silver bark caught glimmers of midday sun and broke them into dancing specters among the roots. The air shimmered, not with heat, but with something older—power, maybe—rising from where the ground had been folded into secrets. She swallowed. At her side, Nyx drifted in a silhouette just barely human when they remembered to hold shape: all angles and motion, the sense of a shadow trying to be a person. Beyond, Isolde stepped forward, barefoot and impossibly light. Her silver hair did not so much as ripple in the faint breeze, yet the wildflowers all bowed toward her in respect or fear—it was impossible to tell which. “Our hour begins,” Isolde said with a smile that might have been carved from moonlight. Her eyes held the calm of old water and none of its warmth. “Tread, if you dare.” Aurora did. It felt like crossing into a story: she passed beneath the arch of two leaning oaks and time thinned around her, the hum of the city fading to something distant and unimportant. Her pulse slowed. She caught the sound of wind running through distant branches, but it carried odd harmonics—a bell-like chime, an echo of words she did not speak. Inside the grove, colors bled into something richer, truer. Green spilled everywhere: moss caressing the ancient standing stones, grass sprouting taller and soft beneath her boots, leaves trembling with more shades than she’d ever seen in any forest. Dappled sunlight fell sharp and clean, broken into falling coins by the canopy. The air tasted of wild mint and cold earth. Now that she stood inside, the circle of oak stones revealed itself—twelve great trunks twisted and somehow fused, forming a near-perfect ring at the heart of the grove. Their bark was scroll-worked with lines of something not quite writing, not quite vine; it moved when she stared too long, pulsing with liquid silver. Nyx stepped lightly, violet eyes aglow, barely disturbing a patch of forget-me-nots at their feet. “It sings,” they said, voice rippling, as if eavesdropping on a tune outside Aurora’s hearing. “Old songs. Hungry ones.” Isolde’s feet left not so much as a bruise in the soft loam. She glided ahead, pressing her palm to the nearest standing stone. The stone warmed under her touch, veins of living gold swirling slow beneath the bark and disappearing as soon as she let go. Aurora forced herself to breathe. The air was thick here, alive, and every step forward sent shivers through her bones—part anticipation, part the cold logic that she’d wandered far from anything like safety. The pendant at her throat pulsed once, the faintest breath of heat. She closed her hand over it, the chain biting into her palm. She took a slow assessment, not just out of habit: paths wound away in three directions, split by curtains of ferns and low branches. Birdsong rose and faded with quicksilver unpredictability. Every so often she caught a ripple in the grass or a dart of color—bluebells swaying with no breeze, copper-petaled lilies opening wide in her shadow, a fox that watched with knowing yellow eyes before sinking back into impossible undergrowth. “This is… not what I expected,” Aurora murmured. “Expectation is the first lie a place like this will unwrap,” Isolde said, now circling the pattern of stones. “There are rules here. They are not yours.” “Reassuring,” Aurora said, and her own voice sounded too harsh, too real. She walked on anyway, drawn deeper. A hush layered itself over the world, thick as velvet. Here and there, the moss underfoot glowed faintly, as though lit from beneath; the wildflowers were absurd: blossoms tangled with iridescence, lines too defined for earthly petals. Tiny motes of light flitted between stalks, flickering like sentient fireflies. They passed a shallow pool hemmed in by tangled roots. The water was clear beyond reason, reflecting not the sky above but a night sky dusted thick with stars even though noon sunlight filtered down between the leaves. On its surface, a scattering of petals swirled in gentle spirals, never sinking, never still. Aurora knelt, curiosity overcoming caution. She touched her finger to the water—it felt cold, weightless, tinged with something that made her breath rattle in her chest, as if all her smallest lies and fears had been stirred up from the bottom. For a heartbeat, her reflection rippled. The face that stared back was her own, but the eyes—were they brighter blue? Or not her at all, but someone unknown? She pulled back, wiping her hand hastily on her jeans. “Right. Not unsettling at all.” “The pool remembers all who kneel,” Isolde offered, ambiguous as ever, her voice carrying the clink of wind in glass. “Some memories are not yours to recall.” Aurora glanced over at Nyx, who remained at the edge of the pool and seemed caught by their own shadow. It stretched backward, head cocked and long-fingered, gesturing in a silent beckoning as if separate from them entirely. “Do you mind not haunting your own reflection?” Aurora said, the familiar edge of wit a lifeline against mounting unreality. Nyx’s smile barely coalesced, the hint of sharpness in it. “Here, all shadows walk. Even those you forget.” They pressed on. Past the pool, the air thickened again—humid and sweet, heavy with the longing hum of hidden bees. The path bent so subtly Aurora almost missed it, curving around a stand of foxgloves taller than she was. Their purple bells held lines of silver ink, shifting with meaning she could almost almost read. Beyond them was a stone as tall as a man, carved to resemble a stag rearing back, crowned with a wreath of wild roses. “Mark of the old court,” Isolde said, reverent for once. “The grove remembers its lineage.” Aurora ran her fingertips along the mossy flank of the stone. The surface was smooth as polished marble and cold, the roses at its head so vividly red she expected her hands to come away stained. As she watched, one blossom dew-brightened and let fall a single, perfect petal. A sensation crawled through her nerves, slow as snowfall—a connection or warning, she couldn’t say. The pendant on her chest heated again, so sudden she gasped. Isolde’s eyes sharpened, pale as the first edge of dawn. “The heart remembers hunger. Guard your steps, or be swallowed whole.” Aurora nodded, forcing herself to move away from the marker. Her gaze rose to the canopy—the leaves overhead arranged themselves into strange geometries, shifting even as she looked, paths revealing and closing with each blink. She tried to pin a direction, but the sky was only a fragmented jigsaw of gold and green, the sun both left and right and nowhere at all. A wind picked up, swirling with the scent of bruised herbs and dark water. It carried distant laughter, neither warm nor cruel, only curious. “We’re being watched,” Aurora said, voice barely above a whisper. “We are always watched. Here, to see is also to be seen,” Isolde returned, cryptic as always. Something flickered low among the roots—a quick, avian shape, talons glinting, eyes like drops of mercury. Then it was gone. Aurora tensed, fingers drifting to the sheath at her belt where the Fae-forged blade lay hidden beneath her coat. The chill of its moonsilver hilt seeped into her palm, grounding her. A breath later, the air softened. The path opened into the very heart of the grove, a clearing ringed with the twelve oak stones. The ground was thick with wild violets and blue flowers Aurora couldn’t name. At the center stood a stone altar mossed with time, cupped by tree roots as if offered up to whatever gods or spirits still haunted this place. Isolde faced the altar and bowed her head. “This is the root,” she whispered. “Here, you may seek answers—but you must ask the right questions.” Nyx stood back, violet-lit eyes fixed on the standing stones as if measuring the distance between realms. Their shadow stretched now into the ring, elongated, drawn toward the altar by some invisible tide. The pendant around Aurora’s neck pulsed again, panic and purpose tangled in her throat. She stepped forward, boots silent on the carpeting moss, eyes wide to every flicker of color and motion in her periphery. Every sense prickled: the world here was hyperreal, edged with beauty and dread. She felt naked, all her secrets hovering just beneath her skin. For a fleeting instant, as she neared the altar, she heard a whisper—not Nyx’s voice but her own, distant and desperate, calling out for something lost. The flowers bowed away from her feet, the moss brightened, and every leaf on the twelve oaks turned inwards, listening. Aurora placed her hand on the altar’s cold stone, the pulse of the Heartstone shivering through her bones. The world waited, coiled and watchful, every shadow edged with promise and peril. All it would take, she knew, was a question spoken aloud. She drew breath and hesitated, caught between awe and vertigo, standing at the root of a world that would change her—and everything she thought she wanted—forever.