Run: 2026-02-19-01KHT01XF754Z88ZV9BYDBWNXP

Rory's fingers found the pommel of the dagger at her hip. The moonsilver burned cold even through her glove, a persistent chill that had nothing to do with London's grey autumn. "We're close." Isolde walked ahead, her feet disturbing nothing, not even the frost-kissed bracken of Richmond Park. Rory followed, her boots crunching loud in comparison. Beside her, Nyx rippled, their violet eyes the only solid feature in a form that resembled smoke poured into human shape. The stones appeared between one blink and the next. Ancient oaks carved into monoliths, their surfaces gleaming with sap that looked like liquid moonlight. Rory's pendant throbbed against her sternum—once, twice—a heartbeat of crimson warmth that had no business existing this close to her skin. Isolde paused at the threshold. "Step carefully. The Grove remembers." "Remembers what?" Rory's hand tightened on the dagger. "Everything." Isolde crossed. Her silhouette fragmented, refracting like light through water, and then she stood on the other side, waiting. Rory took a breath. The air tasted of copper and overripe pears. She stepped forward. The transition seized her spine. One moment, London's grey dawn pressed against her cheeks; the next, warmth flooded her soles and climbed upward, a slow tide of sensation that made her teeth ache. The standing stones hadn't moved, but now they surrounded her, a circle rather than a gateway, and the sky above burned amber. No. Not amber like Dymas. This was twilight trapped in resin—golden-purple, thrumming with a light source that cast no shadows. "Time moves differently here." Nyx's voice carried the weight of wind through catacombs. "I taste the thickness." Rory turned. The park had vanished. Instead, grass spread in every direction, each blade crystalline and chiming softly when the breeze touched them. The sound resembled ice shattering in reverse—thousands of tiny collisions forming music. "Don't touch the flowers." Isolde moved deeper into the circle, her silver hair blending with the luminescent mist that coiled around her ankles. Rory hadn't noticed the blooms. They carpeted the clearing in defiance of season, petals opening and closing with mechanical precision. Each was the size of her hand, coloured in shades that made her eyes water—colours that existed between blue and green, between red and the memory of heat. "I thought you lived here." The crystalline grass chimed beneath Rory's boots, high and tinkling. "I live at the edge." Isolde walked toward a slope where the mist thickened. "This is the heart. Few have walked here since the last equinox." Nyx drifted ahead, their form solidifying into something more defined—shoulders, the suggestion of a jawline, fingers that trailed through the grass without making contact. "The shadows here are hungry." They pulled back, violet eyes narrowing. "They want to keep whatever falls into them." Rory's grip shifted on the dagger. The Fae blade glowed now, faint and sickly-pale, reacting to the pocket of twisted reality. She followed Isolde, stepping over roots that pulsed like veins beneath the soil. The grove opened. Not a clearing—an expansion. The trees here grew upside down, their canopies digging into earth while roots swayed in the purple air like sea anemones. Water flowed upward in lazy spirals, defying gravity, collecting in floating spheres that reflected impossible geometries. "Christ." The word escaped on a breath. "Don't use that name here." Isolde didn't turn. "It leaves a scar." A floating sphere drifted near Rory's face. Inside, she saw a miniature version of the grove, but in that reflection, she stood alone. No Isolde. No Nyx. Just her, holding the dagger, while something with too many joints stood behind her shoulder. She jerked back. The sphere popped, drenching her sleeve in water that smelled of jasmine and old books. "Memories." Isolde watched the droplets rise, defying physics, rejoining the nearest spiral. "The Grove shows you what you left behind." "I don't remember leaving anything behind." "That is why it shows you." They walked deeper. The ground sloped downward, not steeply, but with the inevitable pull of a tide returning to sea. Rory's boots sank into moss that giggled—a high, tinkling sound that made her want to laugh and vomit simultaneously. The Heartstone pendant pulsed harder, insistent, though they were nowhere near a Hel portal. Unless... "Isolde." Rory grabbed the woman's sleeve. The fabric felt like spider silk, strong and wrong. "Where exactly are we?" "Between." "Between isn't an answer." "Between is the only answer." Nyx had stopped walking. They stood before a structure that had not been there moments ago—an archway of woven bone and obsidian, tall as a cathedral door. Through it, Rory saw not more of the grove, but a banquet hall stretching into infinity, tables laden with fruits that squirmed and meats that sang. "Gluttony." Nyx's form flattened, pressed thin against the air. "I know that sky." Rory looked up. The amber had deepened, turned the colour of burnt honey. Her pendant burned. "This is a rift." The words tasted of metal. "A thin spot in the Veil." "The Veil wears thin in many places." Isolde tilted her head. Her lavender eyes reflected the archway, but in them, Rory saw flames. "This one bleeds into Dymas. Prince Belphegor's influence seeps through, tempting the flowers to bear fruit of a different flavor." Rory touched the archway. The bone was warm, polished smooth by centuries of hands. She heard the feast beyond—silverware on porcelain, laughter like breaking glass, the wet sound of voracious eating. "We should close it." "Can you close a wound without knowing what caused it?" "I can try." "You always try. That is your nature." Nyx ran their hand along the obsidian. "I feel my other self here. Aldric stood in this spot once, in 1643, before the binding." The air grew heavy, honey-thick. Rory's lungs worked harder to draw breath. She drew the Fae-forged blade. The moonsilver blazed, cold light cutting through the amber gloom. The blade hummed against her palm, eager, ancient, offended by the proximity to Hel. The flowers nearest the archway rotted. Blackness spread from their stems, turning the crystalline grass to sludge. A smell rose—copper and sugar, overwhelming. "It knows we're here." Nyx's shadow darkened, spreading across the bone. "What does?" "The hunger." From the archway, something reached. Not a hand—hands had symmetry, structure. This was a collection of grasping, a concept made manifest, fingers that existed in dimensions Rory could not name. It groped toward the rotting flowers, toward the moisture in the air, toward the warmth of living things. Isolde didn't move. "You carry the blade. You carry the stone. Choose which door you open, Aurora Carter." Rory stepped forward. The pendant screamed heat against her chest. The dagger froze her grip. Between them, balanced on the threshold of two worlds, she raised the moonsilver and struck. The blade bit into the archway's bone. Sound stopped. Then the grove screamed. The crystalline grass shattered into a million chiming fragments. The floating waters dropped, crashing upward into the sky, raining upward. The flowers snapped shut, screaming in ultrasonic frequencies that made Rory's nose bleed. But the grasping thing retreated. The amber light flickered, retreated, became purple once more. Nyx dissolved into shadow, wrapping around the archway, sealing the crack with darkness that had substance, memory, will. "Not closed." They reformed, gasping. "Just... bandaged." "Enough for now." Rory pulled the blade free. It steamed, though the temperature had plummeted. Her breath clouded the air. The pendant had gone cold, dead weight against her sternum. They stood in silence. The grove had changed—the trees righted themselves, roots burying back into earth, the floating waters gone. But the flowers remained, muted now, their colours faded to ordinary whites and yellows. "Time to leave." Isolde turned toward the standing stones, now visible as mere oaks once more. "Before the Grove decides we belong to it." Rory didn't argue. The blade still hummed in her hand, protesting the retreat. Behind her, something chimed in the crystalline fragments, laughing like breaking ice.