Run: 2026-02-17-01KHNF1XPW28528AZ26PGEDSN1

The gate wasn't what Aurora expected. She'd imagined something grand — a sweeping archway, perhaps, or an ancient stone portal wreathed in mist like something from a storybook. Instead, there was only a break in the ring of oaks, a thinning of the woods where the bark twisted in patterns that hurt to look at directly. The air there tasted different. Sweet and sharp, like honey over copper. "Through here," Isolde said, already stepping toward the gap. Her silver hair caught the fading light of the winter afternoon, glowing faintly as if lit from within. Aurora hesitated. The Heartstone Pendant pulsed against her chest — a steady, warm rhythm she'd grown accustomed to over the past weeks. But here, so close to whatever lay beyond, it beat faster. Stronger. Like a second heart trying to sync with something vast. "Rory." Nyx's voice came from just behind her, that wind-whisper quality softer than usual. They had assumed solid form for the journey — a tall, shadow-dark silhouette that somehow still seemed to shift at the edges, as if the light couldn't quite decide what to do with them. "You don't have to go." "I know." Aurora took a breath. "But I need to." She stepped through. The change was immediate and total. One moment she was standing in the grey December woods of Richmond Park, the bare branches scratching at a pale sky. The next, she was somewhere else entirely. Aurora staggered, her balance reeling as her senses recalibrated. The light was wrong. It wasn't darker or brighter — it was *different*, as if the sun here burned at a slightly different temperature, casting colors she'd never seen before. The sky above was still blue, but it was a blue that seemed to breathe, to shift between hues like oil on water. "Nyx—" She turned, and stopped. They weren't there. Neither was the gap in the oaks. Aurora spun, her heart clenching, but there was only the grove now. Only this place. Behind her, the ancient standing stones rose in a rough circle — twelve oaks, gnarled and massive, their roots crawling across the mossy ground like frozen rivers. They marked a clearing perhaps fifty feet across, and the clearing was carpeted with flowers. Wildflowers, dozens of varieties, blooming in defiance of the season. Petals in deep violet and pale gold, crimson and white, all swaying gently though there was no wind. "Welcome, child of Earth." Aurora's hand flew to her belt where the Fae blade hung — Isolde's gift, cold as ice even now, its moonsilver surface dimly luminescent. She drew it without thinking, the motion smooth and instinctive. Isolde stood in the center of the clearing. She wore a gown of some fabric that seemed woven from moonlight, her silver hair unbound and reaching past her waist. Her pale lavender eyes watched Aurora with an expression that might have been amusement, or might have been something else entirely. "You're not afraid," Isolde observed. Her voice was like music played underwater — beautiful and strange and slightly wrong. "Most mortals weep. Some scream." "I'm not most mortals." Aurora kept the blade raised, though her arm trembled slightly. The cold radiating from the weapon was grounding, real. "And you're not exactly what I expected either." "No." Isolde smiled, and it was a strange thing — too wide, too many teeth, but somehow still beautiful. "I am exactly what you expected, Aurora Carter. You simply expected many things, and I am only one." "That's not confusing at all." The seer laughed — a sound like wind chimes in a storm. "You have your father's tongue. Sharp. Quick." Her smile faded slightly. "Your mother would have hated this place." Aurora's grip tightened on the blade. "You know my parents?" "I know what was written. What will be written. What might have been written, in all the paths not taken." Isolde began to walk among the flowers, her bare feet leaving no impressions in the moss. "The gift of sight is not always a blessing, child. I have seen your mother teach in a classroom full of bright young minds. I have seen her read to you at bedtime, your small hand curled in hers. I have also seen the version where she never met your father, where she lived and died in a small village in Wales, unknown and unwed, and never knew what she missed." "Stop." Aurora's voice came out harder than she intended. "I cannot lie," Isolde said simply. "I can only show you which truths to look at. Come. Walk with me. There is much to see, and less time than you think." The pendant pulsed again, and Aurora became aware of something she'd missed at first — the quality of the silence. It wasn't truly silent; there were sounds, distant and ethereal, music that wasn't music, voices that spoke in languages she didn't recognize. But there was a pressure to it, a weight, as if the air itself was listening. "How long?" she asked. "You said time moves differently here." "Minutes or days. It depends." Isolde gestured for her to follow. "On the sun. On the moon. On what you bring with you and what you leave behind." Her pale eyes flickered to the blade in Aurora's hand. "You brought steel from the Courts. That is wise. The grove is not always kind to those who come unprepared." Aurora hesitated, then sheathed the blade. The cold lingered against her hip, a reminder. She looked back once more at the ring of oaks, searching for any sign of Nyx, of the world she'd left behind. The trees stood silent, their bark gleaming with an odd luminescence now, their branches swaying in that wind she couldn't feel. "They cannot follow," Isolde said. "Not through the front. Your shadow-friend is bound to the mortal plane. They would need an invitation, and I have not given one." "They're not my friend." The words came out before Aurora could stop them. "They're... I don't know what they are." "Neither do they," Isolde said, and there was something in her voice — not pity, exactly, but something close. "That is the tragedy of the Shade, child. To exist between, belonging to neither world. Aldric wanted power. He sought to summon forces beyond the Veil, to bend them to his will. The Veil had other ideas." They walked in silence for a time, deeper into the grove. Aurora's eyes darted from detail to detail, cataloging everything. The flowers seemed to shift as they passed — not moving, exactly, but changing color, cycling through hues like a slow-motion rainbow. The air grew sweeter, thicker, almost intoxicating. She could feel it now, a hum beneath her skin, a vibration in her blood. "What is this place?" she asked finally. "You know what it is." Isolde stopped beside a pool of water so still it looked like solid silver. "You have seen the Veil. You have walked through Hel's门. You know what lies beyond." "This is the Fae Realm." "It is a *breach*. A pocket. The Fae Courts are vast beyond measure, stretching in directions your mind cannot conceive. This..." Isolde waved her hand at the clearing, the flowers, the standing stones. "This is a wound. Small. Hidden. A place where the barriers grew thin enough for someone like me to take root." "Someone like you. A half-Fae." "Exiled. Cast out. Sent to wander the mortal world until I learned the error of my ways." Isolde's smile was bitter now. "It has been three hundred years. I have not learned. I suspect I never will." The pool before them rippled, though nothing had touched it. Aurora leaned closer, curious despite herself, and saw her reflection looking back — but wrong. The girl in the silver water had bright blue eyes, yes, but there were shadows beneath them that she didn't recognize. Her features were slightly too sharp, her skin too pale. She looked like someone else. Someone older. Someone who had seen too much. "Don't look too long," Isolde warned. "The pool shows what might be. Not what will be. There is a difference." "What's the difference?" "The future can be changed. The might-be is more stubborn." The seer turned away from the pool. "Come. I have a gift for you, child of Carter. Something to help with what is coming." Aurora tore her gaze from the reflection with an effort. Her heart was beating faster now, the pendant warm against her chest, and she had the sudden, overwhelming sense that she was standing at the edge of something vast. Something that had been waiting for her a very long time. "What came you mean, what's coming?" Isolde didn't answer. She simply walked, her silver hair streaming behind her like a banner, and after a moment Aurora followed. The grove stretched on ahead, impossibly deep, impossibly wide, the ancient oaks rising like pillars in a cathedral made of living wood and patient stone. The flowers bloomed. The air hummed. And somewhere, far away, Aurora could have sworn she heard music — soft and sweet and terrible, the kind of music that made you want to dance until you forgot who you were. She thought of Nyx, waiting beyond the gap in the trees. Of her flat above Silas' bar, of the deliveries she still had to make, of the life she'd left behind. Then she thought of Evan. Of the bruises that had healed. Of the fear that never quite had. She kept walking.