Run: 2026-02-17-01KHNF0HR1N2M1T5T8C32NK0WS

The standing stones emerged from the twilight like the fingers of a buried giant, oak bark dark and ancient, rising shoulder-high in a rough circle at the edge of the park. Aurora stopped at the threshold, the Fae-forged blade pressing against her hip where it hung in its sheath. Beside her, Nyx flickered—their shadow-form thinning at the edges where the moonlight caught them, solid and not-solid, uncertain. "You feel that?" Aurora asked, though she already knew the answer. The air here tasted different. Cleaner. Older. "Pressure," Nyx said. Their voice was the usual whisper-on-the-wind, but even that seemed muted, as if the grove swallowed sound. "Like the atmosphere is holding its breath." Aurora touched the Heartstone at her throat. The gem was warm—not the faint pulse she'd learned to recognize near Hel rifts, but a steady, waiting heat, as though it recognized something in this place. She thought of Isolde's cryptic directions, the way the seer had smiled that ethereal smile and said only: *You will know when you arrive. The grove remembers those it calls.* She stepped between the stones. The transition was not a crossing but a slipping. One moment she stood in Richmond Park, autumn grass damp beneath her boots, the London skyline a distant smear of orange light beyond the trees. The next— Light. Not the pale silver of the moon she'd walked under, but something softer, golden-green, filtering through a canopy that shouldn't exist. The oaks here were massive, their trunks wider than a car, their branches weaving overhead into a ceiling of leaves that glowed with their own faint luminescence. The ground beneath her feet was carpeted in wildflowers—impossible colors, blues so deep they approached purple, reds so bright they seemed to pulse, whites that shone like scattered stars. Aurora exhaled slowly. Beside her, Nyx solidified fully for the first time since they'd left her flat, their shadow-form stabilizing into something almost human in its solidity, though the darkness that comprised them still shifted and rippled at the periphery. "Welcome," Nyx murmured, and there was something in their voice she'd rarely heard before. Wonder. "I have walked many realms, touched the spaces between worlds. But this..." They raised a hand, watching the light play across their shadow-flesh. "This is different." They began walking, and Aurora followed, her boots crunching softly on the flower-strewn ground. The air was warm but not stifling, carrying a scent she couldn't name—honey and ozone and something faintly metallic, like the aftermath of a lightning strike. No. Not lightning. Something older. Something Fae. The grove revealed itself in layers. They passed a stream that ran uphill, water cascading in reverse against gravity in a glittering curtain that sang—not a melody, but a vibration, a resonance that made Aurora's teeth ache pleasantly. She reached out instinctively, and the water parted around her fingers, cool and impossibly soft. "It knows you," Nyx said, watching. "The water, the light—all of it. It tests, but does not repel." "Is that good?" "That depends on what you intend." She didn't answer. They walked deeper. The trees grew taller, older, their bark etched with patterns that might have been natural growth or might have been writing in a language lost before humanity learned to write. Aurora traced one glyph with her fingertip, and for a moment she heard something—a whisper, not of words but of emotion. Longing. A deep, ancient longing, like a memory of home. She pulled her hand back. "Stay close," she said, though she wasn't sure who she was warning—herself or Nyx. The grove was beautiful, but beauty could be a trap. Isolde had given her the blade for a reason, and the seer's riddles had prepared her for nothing so much as the unexpected. They rounded a curve in the path—had there been a path? She wasn't sure—and found themselves in a clearing. The canopy opened here, revealing a sky that was not London's grey-blue but a deeper shade, purple and gold, with three moons where there should be one. Aurora stared, her breath catching. "Three," Nyx said quietly. "Three moons. We're not on Earth anymore. Not entirely." "We never left," Aurora replied, her voice steady even as her heart hammered. "Isolde said the grove exists between. A pocket." "A pocket that shows its own sky." Nyx drifted toward the center of the clearing, where a stone fountain stood dry and ancient, its basin carved with figures she couldn't look at directly—something about their shapes made her eyes water, made her mind slide away like water off glass. "This place has its own rules, Aurora. Its own physics. Be careful." She was careful. She was always careful—had learned to be, in the years since Evan, in the nights walking London's streets alone, in the careful calculations of survival. But careful didn't mean still. Careful meant moving forward with your eyes open. She approached the fountain. Touched its edge. The stone was warm, almost body-temperature, and beneath her palm she felt a vibration—slow, rhythmic, like a heartbeat. "It's alive," she breathed. "Everything here is alive," a voice said, and Aurora spun, hand flying to her blade, the moonsilver sliding free with a whisper of cold light. But the clearing was empty. Except—no. Not empty. At its edge, where the trees resumed their watch, a figure stood. Silver hair falling to her waist. Pale lavender eyes that seemed to hold their own light. Feet that left no imprint on the flower-strewn ground. Isolde. The seer smiled, and it was not a kind smile or a cruel one—it was simply a smile, ancient and knowing, the smile of someone who has seen the shape of things to come and found them interesting. "Isolde." Aurora sheathed her blade, though her pulse hadn't slowed. "You knew we were coming." "I knew you would come." Isolde stepped forward, her movements impossibly smooth, as if she glided rather than walked. "The grove knew. It has been waiting." "Waiting for what?" The seer tilted her head, and for a moment her eyes flickered—not lavender now but silver, silver without end, reflecting those three alien moons. "For the one who carries Fae steel. For the one who bears a piece of Hel in her chest. For the shadow that walks between." She looked at Nyx, and her gaze seemed to pierce through their shadow-flesh to something beneath. "Hello, Aldric. It's been a long time." Nyx went still. Completely still, not even their darkness rippling. "You know that name," they said, and their voice was no longer a whisper—it was something deeper, older, the voice of a man who had died in 1643 and never truly stopped dying. "I know many names." Isolde circled them slowly, appraising. "I know what you were. What you lost. What you search for, even now, in the spaces between worlds." "That's—" Aurora started, but Nyx raised a hand. "Let her speak." The seer stopped, turning to face them both. The golden-green light of the grove seemed to brighten, the flowers turning their heads as if listening. "You came seeking answers," Isolde said. "You came because the Veil grows thin, because Hel stirs in its realm, because something is coming that has not come in a thousand years. You came because you felt the pull." Aurora thought of the pendant warming at her throat. Thought of the dreams she'd been having—flames and falling, a city burning in a fire that wasn't fire, a voice calling her name in a language she didn't speak. "Yes," she said. "We came for answers." Isolde's smile returned, and this time there was something in it—something that might have been pity, or might have been hope. "Then you have come to the right place. But know this, daughter of Cardiff, walker of shadows: the grove gives answers, but never simply. You will see what you seek, but you will also see what you do not wish to see. You will find what you need, but you may not recognize it." "What does that mean?" Aurora asked, but Isolde was already turning, already walking toward the trees, her silver hair floating as if in a wind that didn't exist. "It means," the seer called back, "that the true exploration begins now. Follow me, if you dare." Aurora looked at Nyx. Nyx looked at her. In their violet eyes, she saw the same fear she felt—and the same determination. "Together," Nyx said. "Together," Aurora agreed. They followed Isolde into the depths of the grove, where the trees grew ever taller and the light grew ever stranger, and the heartbeat of the ancient place quickened beneath their feet like the drumbeat of a war no one remembered but everyone felt coming.