Run: 2026-02-17-01KHNF4D22XGDYZD1VE4NKEX37

The ancient oaks of Richmond Park loomed like sentinels in the darkness, their gnarled branches reaching toward a moonless sky. Aurora's breath misted in the October air as she picked her way through the underbrush, following the crude map Eva had sketched on a napkin three hours earlier. The pendant against her chest pulsed with unusual warmth, its crimson glow barely visible through the thin fabric of her shirt. She shouldn't have come alone. Eva had warned her to wait until morning, to bring someone with her, but the message had been clear: midnight at the grove, come alone, or never learn the truth about the Heartstone. After weeks of dead ends and cryptic warnings, Aurora couldn't let this opportunity slip away. Her phone's flashlight carved a narrow tunnel through the darkness. According to Eva's map, the standing stones should be just ahead, marking the entrance to what locals called the Fae Grove. Most dismissed it as superstition, a bit of folklore to entertain tourists, but Aurora had learned to take such stories seriously since arriving in London. A branch snapped somewhere behind her. She froze, sweeping the light in a wide arc. Nothing but trees and shadows that seemed to shift and writhe at the edge of the beam. Just a deer, she told herself, though she'd seen no deer on her trek through the park. The usual nighttime sounds—owls, rustling leaves, distant traffic—had fallen away, leaving only the crunch of frost beneath her boots and the thunder of her own heartbeat. The pendant grew warmer. Through a gap in the trees, she spotted them: three oak standing stones arranged in a rough triangle, their surfaces carved with symbols that seemed to move in the flashlight's glare. The air here felt different, thicker, as if she were pushing through invisible curtains. The crescent scar on her left wrist began to ache, a phantom pain she hadn't felt since childhood. Aurora stepped between the stones. The world tilted. Her stomach lurched as if she'd missed a step going downstairs, and when she steadied herself, the darkness had changed. It was still night, but the quality of it felt wrong—too deep, too absolute, as if the sky had been painted over with pitch. The flashlight's beam seemed weaker here, barely penetrating more than a few feet ahead. Wildflowers carpeted the ground, their petals luminescent in the dark—blues and purples and colors that had no names. Their perfume was cloying, almost metallic, nothing like the sweet fragrance she'd expected. The pendant was burning now, not quite painful but impossible to ignore. "Hello?" Her voice came out as a whisper, swallowed immediately by the oppressive silence. She cleared her throat and tried again. "I received your message. I'm here." Nothing. No wind, no insects, no response. Just her own breathing, too loud in the stillness. She moved deeper into the grove, following a path that hadn't been there moments before—or perhaps it had always been there, waiting. The wildflowers seemed to lean away from her steps, and she could have sworn she heard them whispering, a susurrus of sound just below the threshold of understanding. Time felt strange here. Had she been walking for minutes or hours? Her phone had no signal, and the clock face showed nothing but blinking dashes. The path curved ahead, and she followed it, drawn by something she couldn't name. The pendant's heat had spread across her chest, a warning or invitation she couldn't decipher. A figure stood in the clearing ahead. Aurora's hand went to the pepper spray in her jacket pocket, though she suspected it would be useless here. The figure didn't move, didn't breathe, stood perfectly still in a way that made her skin crawl. As she approached, her light revealed more details: a woman in a dress that might have been white once but was now the color of old bone, her back turned, her hair hanging in dark sheets to her waist. "Are you the one who sent the message?" The figure's head began to turn, slowly, impossibly slowly, and Aurora realized with mounting horror that it was turning too far, the neck rotating past any human limit. She stumbled backward as the face came into view—her own face, but wrong, the features slightly off as if reflected in disturbed water. The eyes were black holes, depthless and hungry. The thing that wore her face smiled, and its mouth opened wider than any mouth should, revealing row after row of needle-sharp teeth spiraling down into darkness. No sound emerged, but Aurora felt the scream in her bones, a vibration that threatened to shake her apart. She ran. The path that had been so clear moments before twisted and branched, splitting into a dozen directions. Behind her, she could hear footsteps—not running but walking with terrible patience, knowing there was nowhere for her to go. The wildflowers caught at her ankles, their stems stronger than they should be, trying to hold her in place. Left, right, straight—every choice looked the same. The pendant burned against her skin, and she grabbed it, ready to tear it off, when its light suddenly flared. The crimson glow cut through the darkness like a blade, and for a moment, she saw the grove as it truly was. The trees were wrong. They weren't trees at all but towering figures draped in bark and shadow, their branch-arms reaching down toward her. The wildflowers were eyes, thousands of unblinking eyes carpeting the ground, watching her stumble and flee. And there were other things moving in the darkness, shapes that her mind refused to process, geometries that hurt to perceive. The light faded, and darkness crashed back. But now she knew which way to run—toward the pain. The pendant's heat was agony, but it was real, anchoring her to herself, to the world she knew. She followed that pain like a lifeline, crashing through undergrowth that grabbed and tore, past whispers that promised terrible truths if she would only stop and listen. The standing stones appeared ahead, solid and real and beautiful in their mundane existence. She dove between them, felt that sickening lurch again, and collapsed onto the frost-covered grass of Richmond Park. Real grass. Real trees. Real darkness lit by distant streetlamps and stars. Behind her, something howled—a sound like wind through broken glass, like children laughing underwater, like her own voice screaming her name. She scrambled to her feet and ran, not stopping until she reached the park gates, not looking back until she stood under the harsh fluorescent lights of a 24-hour Tesco. Her phone showed 12:07 AM. Seven minutes. She'd been in the grove for seven minutes. The pendant had gone cold and dark against her chest. When she pulled it out to examine it, she saw that the crimson stone had cracked down the middle, a hairline fracture that hadn't been there before. Through the crack, something moved—a darkness deeper than the stone itself, watching her with patient malevolence. Aurora's hands shook as she tucked the pendant back under her shirt. Whatever truth she'd sought in the grove, she'd found something else instead. Something that knew her name, wore her face, and waited in the spaces between worlds. The automatic doors of the Tesco slid open, welcoming her into the bright, banal safety of fluorescent lights and security cameras. She stepped inside, but couldn't shake the feeling that she'd brought something back with her, a shadow that would follow her home, patient and hungry and wearing her own smile. The crescent scar on her wrist had begun to bleed.