Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMRB9Q0TRFTWE19MCRM4DHB

The moment Rory stepped between the standing oaks, the air changed—became thick, honeyed, clinging to her skin like morning dew that refused to evaporate. She paused, one hand instinctively reaching for the Heartstone pendant beneath her jacket. The crimson gem pulsed once against her sternum, then went still. Not a portal, then. Something else entirely. "The Grove welcomes few," came Isolde's whisper from somewhere ahead, though the Half-Fae had been walking beside her only seconds ago. The silver-haired woman materialized from between wildflowers that hadn't existed a breath before, her pale lavender eyes reflecting light that came from no visible source. "Fewer still return unchanged." Behind Rory, Nyx rippled into solidity, their violet-eyed silhouette solidifying enough to almost pass for human in the strange amber-tinged light. The Shade's form flickered at the edges like a candle flame in a draft. "This place..." Nyx's voice carried on wind that didn't move the grass. "It remembers." The Grove stretched before them, impossibly vast for a clearing that shouldn't exist within Richmond Park's borders. Wildflowers bloomed in defiance of December's grip on the world outside—lupines and foxglove, nightshade and moonflower, species that should never share the same soil or season. The petals glowed faintly, as if each contained a fragment of captured starlight. Rory knelt, reaching toward a cluster of forget-me-nots. The moment her fingers brushed the petals, images flooded her mind—lovers meeting in secret, a child's laughter, blood on stone, a woman weeping. She jerked her hand back, breathing hard. "Everything here holds memory," Isolde said, not quite answering the question Rory hadn't asked. "What was, what is, what might have been. The Grove stands where three paths meet, and all paths remember their travelers." "Comforting," Rory muttered, wiping her palm on her jeans as if she could scrub away the phantom sensations. She straightened, forcing her analytical mind to catalog details instead of drowning in the otherworldly atmosphere. The sky overhead was wrong—not quite the grey overcast of London in winter, but a warm amber that reminded her uncomfortably of the descriptions she'd heard of Dymas. The comparison made her stomach tighten. They moved deeper, and Rory noticed that Isolde left no impression in the grass behind her. The Fae woman glided rather than walked, her silver hair floating slightly as if submerged in invisible water. Nyx, by contrast, left shadows in their wake—dark impressions that lingered several seconds before fading. Rory's own footsteps made no sound. "Is it always this quiet?" she asked, then immediately regretted speaking. Her voice fell flat, absorbed by the air itself. "The Grove decides what it will share." Isolde paused before a massive oak at the clearing's heart. The tree's trunk was easily twenty feet across, its bark silver-white like birch but striated with what looked like veins of quartz. Symbols had been carved into the wood—ancient, twisting marks that hurt to look at directly. "First tongue. Before mortal speech, before even the Fae learned to name themselves." Nyx drifted closer to the tree, extending one shadowy hand toward the markings. The moment they made contact, the symbols flared with cold white light. The Shade recoiled, their form destabilizing into wisps of shadow before reforming several feet away. "It rejects me," they whispered, something like hurt threading through their voice. "I am neither what I was nor what I might have been. The between-space knows its own." "All are known here," Isolde corrected, though her riddle-speech offered little comfort. "What rejects and what accepts—two faces of the same truth." Rory moved past both of them, approaching the tree from a different angle. Her fingers found the Fae-forged blade at her hip, the moonsilver dagger cold even through the leather sheath. Isolde had given it to her three days ago with a warning she still didn't fully understand: "When the boundary frays, cold iron will preserve what warmth would consume." Around the oak's base, roots erupted from the earth in a chaotic tangle, forming natural archways and hollows. In one such hollow, something glinted. Rory crouched, peering into the darkness. Small objects nestled among the roots—a tarnished copper ring, a child's wooden toy, a key so old its teeth had worn smooth, a photograph bleached white by time or magic. "Offerings," she said, understanding dawning. "People leave pieces of themselves here." "What is given freely may be found again." Isolde appeared at her shoulder, silent as thought. "What is taken by force is lost forever. The Grove keeps its own counsel on which is which." A sound rippled through the clearing—not quite music, not quite wind. It raised the hair on Rory's arms and made the Heartstone pendant warm against her skin. She stood quickly, scanning the tree line. The flowers seemed brighter now, their glow intensifying. "Something's changing," Nyx said, their form coalescing more solidly, as if preparing for threat or flight. The amber light overhead deepened, took on weight. Rory felt pressure building in her chest, behind her eyes. The air tasted of copper and honey and something older than either—something that had no name in any language she knew. The symbols on the oak began to move, rearranging themselves in slow spirals. "The Grove wakes," Isolde said simply. Her voice carried no fear, but Rory caught the subtle shift in her posture, the way her fingers traced a warding gesture in the air. "It has sensed what we carry. What we seek. What we fear to find." The ground beneath Rory's feet trembled. Not an earthquake—something more deliberate, more conscious. A greeting or a warning, she couldn't tell. Between the standing oaks that marked the boundary, the air shimmered like heat haze. Through that distortion, she caught glimpses of other places—a rain-soaked London street, a hall of feasting tables piled with impossible foods, a vast library where books wrote themselves, a frozen wasteland where stars fell upward into an inverted sky. "What is this place?" Rory breathed, unable to look away from the shifting visions. "The crossroads," Isolde answered, and for once her words came clear and direct. "Where all paths meet. Where the Veil grows thin enough to see through, but not—quite—thin enough to pass." She turned those pale lavender eyes on Rory, and in them reflected all the strange light of the Grove. "You asked to understand what lies beyond the boundary. The Grove obliges. But understanding and crossing are different things entirely." The pressure intensified. Rory's ears popped. The Heartstone pendant pulsed in rhythm with her heartbeat, growing warmer with each beat. Beside her, Nyx's form rippled violently, as if the Shade fought to maintain cohesion against forces pulling them apart. "How long?" Rory managed to ask. "How long have we been here?" Isolde's smile was sad and knowing. "Time is the first thing the Grove takes. Minutes or days—the boundary cares nothing for mortal measures." The symbols on the oak blazed bright enough to leave afterimages. The flowers' glow became almost unbearable. And in that moment of overwhelming light, Rory finally understood why so few who entered the Grove returned unchanged. It wasn't that the place transformed them. It was that the Grove showed them what they already were, stripped of all the comfortable lies they told themselves. And some truths, once seen, could never be forgotten.