Run: 2026-02-17-01KHNF1ZDQ4ZVBXVWHT15SNKT9

The standing stones loomed before them like ancient sentinels, their oak surfaces carved with symbols that seemed to shift when Aurora wasn't looking directly at them. She pressed her palm against the nearest stone, feeling the rough bark pulse with something that wasn't quite warmth, wasn't quite electricity. The Heartstone pendant beneath her shirt thrummed in response, a gentle heartbeat against her chest. "The boundary is thin here," Isolde murmured, her silver hair catching light that didn't exist in the overcast Richmond afternoon. Her lavender eyes tracked something Aurora couldn't see. "Step carefully. The Grove remembers intentions." Nyx flowed between the stones like smoke given purpose, their form rippling at the edges. "I can feel it pulling," they whispered, their voice carrying on a breeze that touched nothing else. "Like gravity, but sideways." Aurora took a breath and stepped through. The world tilted. Not dramatically—more like the subtle shift when an elevator begins to move. The gray October sky above Richmond Park bled into something else entirely: a twilight that belonged to no earthly hour, painted in shades of violet and gold that her eyes couldn't quite process. She blinked hard, but the colors remained impossible, beautiful, wrong. "Bloody hell," she breathed. The Grove unfolded before them like a secret whispered in dreams. Ancient oaks formed a perfect circle, their trunks wider than anything that should exist in an English park. Their leaves shimmered between green and silver, rustling with words almost understood. Wildflowers carpeted the ground in defiant bloom—bluebells and foxgloves, primroses and flowers Aurora had no names for, all flowering together in cheerful disregard for season or sense. She knelt and touched a cluster of what might have been roses, if roses grew in spirals and hummed when disturbed. The petals felt like silk and starlight against her fingertips. "Don't pick them," Isolde said, gliding past without disturbing a single bloom. Her feet left no impression in the thick grass. "The Grove is generous with its beauty but protective of its children." Nyx drifted beside Aurora, their violet eyes scanning the tree line. In this place, their shadow-form seemed more solid, more real. "The air tastes different," they said. "Older. Like breathing history." Aurora stood, brushing her hands on her jeans. The simple gesture felt strange here, too mundane for this pocket of otherness. She could feel the wrongness of her presence—not unwelcome, exactly, but noticed. The Grove knew she didn't belong. They moved deeper, following Isolde along a path that hadn't existed until her feet found it. The trees leaned in, curious. Aurora caught glimpses of movement in their branches—not birds, but something that giggled like water over stones. "Are those—" "Best not to look directly," Isolde interrupted, her tone gentle but firm. "The lesser fae are curious about mortals, but their curiosity can be... overwhelming." A sound like wind chimes made of moth wings tinkled overhead. Aurora kept her eyes fixed ahead. The path wound through the trees, sometimes wide enough for them to walk abreast, sometimes so narrow that even Nyx's incorporeal form had to compress. Time felt syrupy here. Aurora checked her watch and found the hands moving backward, then forward, then spinning freely before giving up entirely. "How long have we been walking?" she asked. "A heartbeat," Isolde replied. "A century. The Grove doesn't measure time as you do." They emerged into a smaller clearing where a spring bubbled up from mossy rocks. The water ran uphill, collecting in a pool that reflected not the strange sky above but something else—a ceiling of stars arranged in no constellation Aurora recognized. Isolde knelt beside the pool, her movements liquid grace. "The Spring of Futures-Maybe," she said. "It shows what could be, might be, won't be. Useful, if you know how to read the distinctions." Aurora peered into the water and immediately wished she hadn't. Images flickered across the surface—her face but older, marked by scars she didn't have. Her face but younger, eyes bright with innocence already lost. Her face but not her face, features shifted just enough to be someone else entirely. She jerked back, stomach churning. "Yeah, that's... unsettling." Nyx studied their own reflection—or lack thereof. The pool showed only a deeper darkness where they stood, an absence that somehow had its own presence. "I am nothing here," they said, but they sounded pleased rather than disturbed. "How refreshing." Something rustled in the underbrush. Not the playful movement of before, but purposeful, hunting. The Grove's atmosphere shifted, the twilight deepening. Even Isolde straightened, her ageless features sharpening with attention. "We have lingered too long," she said. "The Grove grows hungry near the turning of hours." "Hungry for what?" Aurora's hand moved instinctively to where the Fae blade rested at her hip. The weapon hummed against her palm, eager or warning, she couldn't tell. "Best not to find out." Isolde turned back toward the path, but it had changed. Where before the trees had formed a corridor, now they pressed close, branches interlocking like fingers. "Ah. The Grove wishes us to stay." The rustling grew closer. Multiple sources now, surrounding them. Aurora drew the blade, its moonsilver length glowing softly in the not-light. The creatures in the trees fell silent. "That won't help," Isolde said, but she was smiling. "The Grove respects the blade, yes, but it respects cleverness more." She faced the encroaching forest and spoke in a language that sounded like leaves falling, like roots growing, like seasons turning. The trees shivered. The path didn't reappear, but a new way opened—not through the forest but up, into the canopy where twisted branches formed steps and bridges. "We climb," Isolde said simply, already ascending with impossible lightness. Aurora tested the first branch. It held firm beneath her weight, though logic said it should snap. She climbed, trying not to think about the drop, about how the ground below seemed farther with each step than it should be. Nyx flowed upward beside them, sometimes solid enough to use the branches, sometimes dispersing through the gaps. "This place has layers," they observed. "Like sediment, but made of stories." The higher they climbed, the more the Grove revealed. Aurora glimpsed other clearings through the leaves—some filled with dancing lights, others dark and still. In one, she saw figures that might have been human once, crowned with flowers and thorns, their faces beautiful and terrible. They turned toward her, smiling, and she quickly looked away. "Nearly there," Isolde called from above. The canopy opened onto a platform woven from living wood. Aurora hauled herself up, legs trembling from the climb and from something else—the weight of being observed by inhuman eyes. The platform overlooked the entire Grove, and from this height, she could see its true shape. Not a circle but a spiral, turning in on itself like a shell, like a galaxy, like a thought. "Beautiful," she whispered. "And deadly," Isolde added. "Beauty often is, in the old places." The way down was clearer—a spiral staircase of branches that hadn't existed on the way up. They descended in silence, each lost in what they'd seen. The Grove released them gently, the standing stones appearing as suddenly as they'd vanished. Aurora stumbled back into Richmond Park, where the October sun was exactly where they'd left it. Her watch resumed its normal function, showing that only twenty minutes had passed. Her clothes smelled of flowers that didn't exist. "Your first time in a between-place," Isolde said. It wasn't a question. "You did well. Many mortals lose themselves in the wonder or the fear." "I can see why," Aurora said, still feeling the phantom sensation of branches beneath her feet, of air that tasted like stories. The mundane park around them seemed flat now, colorless, like a photograph of a painting. Nyx solidified partially, testing the boundary of normal reality. "It calls," they said softly. "Even now. The pull to go back, to go deeper." Isolde's expression grew serious. "That call never fades. The between-places mark you, leave you always slightly out of step with the world you were born to." Her lavender eyes found Aurora's. "Consider that, before you seek out more such places. Some doors, once opened, can never fully close." Aurora touched the pendant through her shirt, feeling its warmth—stronger now, as if the Grove had awakened something in it. Or in her. She thought of the images in the pool, the faces that were and weren't hers, the paths that led up when they should lead forward. "I'll remember," she said, but she was already wondering what other impossible places existed, hidden in the corners of the world. The Grove had been terrifying, yes. Dangerous, absolutely. But also extraordinary. And Aurora had never been good at leaving extraordinary alone.