Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMWWTA12X1YX28FH5TKZJYV

The ancient oaks parted like curtains, their gnarled branches creating a natural archway that seemed to pulse with otherworldly energy. Rory stepped through first, the Heartstone pendant warming against her chest as she crossed the threshold. The sensation was immediate and disorienting—like stepping from a stuffy room into crisp mountain air, except the change went deeper than temperature. The very quality of existence shifted around them. "We're not in Richmond anymore," Rory murmured, her hand instinctively moving to the Fae-forged blade at her hip. The moonsilver weapon hummed with a barely perceptible vibration, responding to the concentrated magic saturating this pocket realm. Nyx flowed through the boundary as liquid shadow, their form rippling like smoke before solidifying into their humanoid silhouette. They turned their head—a gesture more felt than seen—toward the grove's heart. "The barriers between realms grow thin here," they whispered, their voice carrying notes that seemed to echo from places that had no names. "This space exists in the spaces between." Behind them, Isolde's silver hair caught light that came from no visible source, creating a luminous cascade that reached nearly to the forest floor. She moved with that peculiar Fae grace, her feet making no sound on the carpet of impossible wildflowers that bloomed in defiant disregard of December's grip on the world beyond. The grove stretched before them in impossible geometries. Pathways curved and twisted, leading the eye in directions that shouldn't exist. Ancient oaks stood in perfect circles, their trunks carved with symbols that seemed to shift when observed directly. Between their roots, flowers bloomed in colors that had no earthly names—petals that shimmered between blue and silver, stems that pulsed with golden veins like captured lightning. "Time moves as a river here," Isolde said, her pale lavender eyes fixed on something beyond their sight. "Sometimes swift, sometimes still, always deeper than it appears." She paused beside a standing stone that hummed with contained power. "What was lost may be found, though the finding changes the finder." Rory approached one of the massive oaks, its bark deeply grooved with spiraling patterns that made her eyes water if she looked too long. She reached out tentatively, her fingertips brushing the ancient wood. The contact sent a jolt through her—not painful, but overwhelming in its intensity. For a moment, she saw/felt/knew the tree's impossible age, the centuries of growth in a place where seasons held no meaning, where the very concept of time bent like heated metal. "Careful," Nyx materialized beside her, their violet eyes flickering with concern. "The old growth remembers things that mortal minds weren't meant to hold." A sound drifted through the grove—not quite music, not quite singing, but something that made their bones resonate in harmony. It seemed to come from the flowers themselves, or perhaps from the spaces between the petals where dewdrops hung like captured stars. Rory pulled her hand back, flexing her fingers as sensation slowly returned to normal. The crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist tingled strangely, as if recognizing something kindred in this place of ancient wounds and older healing. They moved deeper into the grove, following a path that seemed to reshape itself with each step. The air grew thicker, more substantial, carrying scents that had no earthly equivalent—something like cinnamon and starlight, with undertones of rain that had never touched the ground. Isolde led them to a clearing where seven oaks formed a perfect heptagon, their canopies intertwining overhead to create a living cathedral. In the center stood a pool of water so still it might have been polished obsidian. The surface reflected not their faces, but glimpses of other times, other possibilities—fragments of what was, what might be, what could never be but somehow still existed in the spaces between certainty. "Here," Isolde said simply, settling cross-legged beside the pool with fluid grace. "Here the threads converge." Nyx circled the perimeter, their form occasionally flickering between solid and shadow. "I can feel the other realms pressing close," they murmured. "The Fae Courts whisper just beyond hearing. And deeper still..." They paused, violet eyes narrowing. "Something stirs in the lower realms. The barriers grow thin in all directions." Rory knelt beside the pool, careful not to disturb its surface. The Heartstone pendant pulsed more insistently now, its crimson glow reflecting in the impossible water. As she watched, images swirled in the depths—glimpses of places she'd never seen but somehow recognized. A realm of amber skies and endless feasts. Courts of crystal and starlight where time was currency and truth a blade's edge. "What are we seeing?" she asked, though part of her already knew the answer would come wrapped in Isolde's characteristic riddles. The half-Fae seer smiled, an expression both beautiful and terrible in its knowing sadness. "The price of sight is the burden of seeing. What you glimpse here exists, has existed, will exist—but existence is not so simple a thing as mortals believe." She gestured to the pool with one elegant hand. "The Veil weakens. The solstice approaches. And in that weakening, all possibilities bleed through." The temperature around them fluctuated without warning—one moment comfortably mild, the next sharp with winter's bite, then warm as a summer afternoon. Reality itself seemed to be breathing, expanding and contracting like living lungs. A flower near Rory's knee suddenly bloomed—not the slow unfurling of natural growth, but an explosion of petals in colors that hurt to perceive directly. She jerked back as its perfume hit her, carrying with it the scent of places that existed only in dreams and nightmares. "The grove responds to our presence," Nyx observed, their shadowy form rippling with what might have been unease. "We are disturbing something that has slumbered long." Indeed, the very air around them had begun to shimmer with that same faint distortion Rory had learned to associate with tears in the Veil. But here, in this space between realms, the effect was magnified hundredfold. She could see layers of reality peeling away like old paint, revealing glimpses of the fundamental forces that held the worlds apart—or drew them together. Isolde rose suddenly, her silver hair lifting in a wind that touched nothing else. Her pale eyes had gone wide, pupils dilating as if trying to capture more of whatever she was seeing. "They come," she whispered, her usual riddling speech replaced by stark urgency. "The watchers wake. The sleepers stir. The price of passage grows dear." The grove around them pulsed once, like a great heart beating, and suddenly they were no longer alone in this pocket between worlds.