Run: 2026-02-17-01KHNFWDSNRVJJ4KY1CZ0V1KZE

The air in Richmond Park tasted different after dark. It wasn’t just the chill of an autumn night; it was a metallic tang, like licking a battery, that settled on the back of Rory’s tongue. She pulled her leather jacket tighter, the worn material doing little to ward off the peculiar cold that seemed to seep up from the ground itself. She’d come for a reason. Eva, in one of her frantic, cryptic texts, had insisted. *The grove. The standing stones. Midnight. It’s the only place he can’t listen.* The ‘he’ was unspoken, but Rory knew. Evan’s shadow still stretched long, even from Cardiff. The grove, a place Eva had babbled about after too much wine, a place that supposedly existed off maps and outside of time, felt like the only option left. A desperate move for a desperate situation. Finding it had been disturbingly easy. One moment she was trudging through the familiar, manicured paths of the park, the next she’d stepped between two gnarled oaks and the world had simply… shifted. The city’s distant hum vanished, replaced by a silence so profound it felt like pressure against her eardrums. The air grew heavier, thicker, smelling of damp earth and a perfume of night-blooming flowers she couldn’t name. This was it. The Fae Grove. Moonlight, filtered through a canopy of ancient, twisting branches, dappled the clearing in silver and obsidian. In the center stood the stones Eva had described—tall, dark monoliths of petrified oak, their surfaces whorled and knotted like frozen muscle. They formed a rough circle, a broken crown in the heart of the hidden glade. And everywhere, flowers bloomed. Lush, velvety petals in impossible shades of indigo and blood-red, open to a sky they shouldn’t be able to see, defying the season with a silent, arrogant vigor. Rory’s hand went to her throat, her fingers finding the familiar shape of the pendant. The Heartstone. It was warm. Not the warmth of her own skin, but a deep, internal heat, like a coal buried in ash. It had been a gift, left in a plain box at Silas’s bar with no note. She’d never taken it off, a strange comfort. Now, its heat was a low, persistent thrum against her collarbone, a silent alarm. She took a cautious step into the circle of stones. The wrongness was immediate. It wasn't a sound, but the *lack* of them. The park should have been alive with the rustle of nocturnal creatures—foxes, owls, the scuttling of beetles in the leaf litter. Here, there was nothing. The silence was a living thing, watching her. Then came the first flicker. It was at the very edge of her vision, a sliver of movement between two far-off trees. Too quick, too fluid to be a deer. It was just a shiver of deeper darkness against the night, there and then gone. Rory froze, her breath catching in her throat. She stared into the gloom, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. Nothing. Just the unsettling flowers and the silent stones. *You’re jumpy,* she told herself, the voice in her head sounding thin and reedy. *It’s the place. Eva’s stories got to you. It’s just a weird bit of park.* She forced herself to breathe, to unclench her fists. The pendant pulsed against her skin, a soft, rhythmic beat that seemed to sync with her own quickening pulse. Warm. Too warm. A soft sound trickled into the silence. A whisper of fabric, a sigh so faint it could have been the wind moving through the flowers. But there was no wind. The air was perfectly, unnaturally still. The sound seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, weaving between the stones. Rory spun slowly, her bright blue eyes scanning the shadows. Every shape seemed to promise a lurking form—a gnarled root became a crouching limb, a cluster of dark blooms became a hunched shoulder. “Eva?” she called out, her voice swallowed by the grove, producing no echo. It was just a flat, dead word hanging in the air. No answer. Of course there was no answer. Eva was never on time. Another movement. This time to her left. She snapped her head around, and for a fraction of a second, she saw it. A figure, tall and impossibly slender, standing between two stones. It was there in the periphery, a man-shaped cut-out of the night, featureless and still. Her eyes tried to focus, to define it, but the moment she looked directly, it was gone. Vanished. Only the standing stone remained. A cold sweat prickled on the back of her neck. This was no trick of the light. Something was here with her. The whispers began again, slightly louder now. Not one voice, but several, overlapping, a susurrus of nonsense syllables that sounded like dry leaves skittering across stone. They seemed to coil around her, words she almost understood, promises and threats spoken just below the level of comprehension. They came from behind, and she whirled, only for them to start again in front of her. She backed away, toward the center of the stone circle, her boots making no sound on the soft, mossy earth. The pendant was burning now, a distinct, uncomfortable heat that felt like a brand against her skin. Its faint crimson glow, usually invisible, now cast a tiny, bloody light on the hollow of her throat. *Get out.* The thought was pure, animal instinct. *Get out now.* She turned to run, to break from the circle and find the path back to the real world, but the path was gone. The space between the stones where she’d entered was no longer an exit; it was a wall of impenetrable shadow, a darkness so deep it looked solid. Panic, sharp and acidic, rose in her throat. A dry rustle, much closer this time, right behind her ear. She felt a faint displacement of air, the ghost of a touch on her shoulder. She screamed, a short, choked sound, and stumbled forward, crashing to her knees in the center of the circle. The world tilted. The whispering stopped. The oppressive silence rushed back in, louder than before. The flowers around her seemed to lean in, their vibrant heads turning toward her as if curious. From her position on the ground, she looked up at the standing stones. They were no longer just stones. In the moonglow, the knots and whorls resolved into faces—elongated, agonized, mouths open in silent screams, eyes hollow pits. They were watching her. Terror locked her muscles. She couldn’t breathe. The pendant was a searing point of pain against her chest, its pulse a frantic, terrified drumbeat. Then, a new sound cut through the silence. A soft, rhythmic *clicking*. Like long, polished fingernails tapping against stone. It came from directly behind her. Rory squeezed her eyes shut, her mind screaming. She couldn’t look. She couldn’t move. The clicking grew closer, measured, unhurried. It circled her slowly. She could feel a presence, a cold that had nothing to do with the night air, a void of warmth that moved around her kneeling form. It stopped in front of her. The clicking ceased. The only sound was her own ragged, terrified breathing and the feverish pulse of the stone at her throat. A voice, when it came, was not a whisper. It was clear, cultured, and utterly alien. It held no emotion, yet it promised infinite cruelty. It spoke directly into her mind, bypassing her ears. “You are early,” it said. Rory’s eyes flew open. Standing before her was the figure she’d seen in glimpses. It was tall, too tall, its limbs jointed all wrong. It was dressed in shadows that clung to its form like a second skin. Its face was a pale, smooth mask, devoid of features except for two points of cold, star-like light where its eyes should be. It looked down at her, a predator considering curious, unexpected prey. It tilted its head. The movement was fluid, insectile. “The stone is not for you,” the voice stated, a simple, horrifying fact. One long, slender hand, fingers ending in points like black needles, reached toward the glowing pendant on her chest. Rory finally found her voice. It was a raw, broken thing. “Who are you?” she gasped. The needle-like fingers paused an inch from the Heartstone. The featureless face regarded her. The star-point eyes seemed to drink in her terror. “We are the reason you should not have come here,” it said. The words were final, a verdict. “We are the price of the silence you sought.” The fingers began to move again, descending toward the source of the light, toward her heart.