Run: 2026-02-17-01KHNFB8DWGD9FX6YQ87NKGNZM

The night air in Richmond Park carried the damp chill of impending rain as Aurora Carter pushed through the dense thicket. Brambles caught at her jeans, and she hissed as one scraped across the crescent scar on her left wrist. The faint pulse of warmth against her collarbone reminded her of the Heartstone's presence—its deep crimson glow barely visible beneath her shirt. She shouldn't have come. The thought whispered through her mind as insistently as the rustling leaves overhead. The restaurant shift had ended late, and Eva had texted twice asking where she was. But that dream, the one that had rattled her awake at three in the morning, the one with the voice that wasn't a voice—*come to the stones*—had left her with a quiet, gnawing certainty that she needed to be here. The first oak came into view, its gnarled roots knotting through the earth like fingers grasping at the soil. Beyond it stood the others, arranged in a rough circle, their bark silvered by the weak moonlight. The Fae Grove. Aurora exhaled, watching her breath mist in the air. She checked her phone—no signal, not that she’d expected one here. The display flickered; the time jumped from 11:37 to 11:42 in the span of a blink. She swallowed. Time moved wrong in this place. Stepping inside the ring of stones was like crossing a threshold into another world. The air thickened, tasting of loam and something faintly metallic—blood or iron, she couldn’t tell. The wildflowers Eva had once gushed about, the ones that bloomed all year, swayed gently despite the absence of wind. Aurora tightened her grip on the flashlight, its beam cutting through the darkness ahead. There was nothing here. Just the stones, the unnatural flowers, the oppressive weight of being watched. Then a sound. Not behind her. Not quite beside her. Somewhere *between*. A whisper of fabric, the lightest crunch of a footstep in grass that shouldn't have been able to hide anything taller than a buttercup. Her spine prickled. She spun, flashlight jerking wildly across the clearing. Nothing. "You're being stupid," she muttered, forcing her shoulders to relax. It was just the woods. Just the night playing tricks. The pendant pulsed suddenly, hot enough to sting. Aurora gasped, yanking the chain away from her skin. The Heartstone glowed faintly, its crimson light seeping through her fingers. The warning was clear: something was here. Then—laughter. Soft, airy, like wind through chimes. A child's laughter. Her stomach turned to ice. There were no children in Richmond Park past sundown. The sound came again, closer this time. Not from the stones, not from the trees—from *inside* them. As if the laughter were woven into the bark itself. Aurora’s breath hitched. Every instinct screamed at her to run, but her legs refused to move, locked in place like roots had wound around her ankles. A shadow flickered at the edge of her vision. Not a shadow. A shape. Tall, too tall, with limbs that bent at angles just slightly *wrong*. Aurora's throat tightened. She had seen things in the Grove before—glimpses of movement, flickers of light—but nothing like this. The thing tilted its head. Even in the dark, she could feel its considering stare, the weight of its attention pressing against her skin. *Not real. Not real.* Her fingers trembled around the pendant. Real. The shape took a step forward—no, not a step. It *shifted*, blurring from one point to the next without passing through the space in between. Heart hammering, Aurora finally twisted and bolted. Branches tore at her arms as she crashed through the underbrush, breath ragged in her chest. The laughter followed, threading between the trees, light and mocking. Her foot caught on a root, and she barely caught herself before pitching forward. The flashlight tumbled from her grip, vanishing into the dark. Silence. Then—a breath against the back of her neck. Cold. Scentless. Aurora whirled, fists raised, ready to strike at— Nothing. The Grove was empty. The standing stones loomed in the distance, their forms indistinct in the gloom. The Heartstone had gone dormant again, cool against her skin. Her pulse still thundered in her ears. A twig snapped behind her. Aurora didn't turn this time. She didn't run. She whispered the only question that mattered. “What do you want?” The silence stretched. Then, from everywhere and nowhere at once, a voice that wasn’t a voice, the same one from her dream, sighed against her ear. *You.*