Run: 2026-02-19-01KHT0CZSNVQ81EX3EZQTSQP37

The standing stones rose from the earth like broken teeth, their surfaces worn smooth by centuries of wind and rain. Aurora paused at the edge of the clearing, her hand instinctively moving to the Heartstone pendant beneath her jacket. The crimson gem pulsed against her chest, warm and steady as a second heartbeat. "This is it?" She glanced back at Nyx, who had materialized beside her, their form a rippling silhouette against the grey afternoon light. "The boundary." Nyx's voice drifted past her ear like smoke. "Isolde's grove lies beyond. Step between the stones, and you leave London behind." Aurora studied the gap between two of the largest oaks — ancient things, gnarled and massive, their bark split with age. Nothing about the space looked different from the rest of Richmond Park. The same damp grass, the same pale winter sky visible through bare branches. And yet something tugged at her, a pressure behind her eyes, a frequency just below hearing. "Time moves differently inside." Nyx circled her, their edges blurring where shadow met dying light. "An hour. A minute. A week. There's no predicting it." "You mentioned that. Twice." "Because you weren't listening the first time." Aurora pulled her jacket tighter and stepped forward. The moment she crossed the threshold between the stones, the world shifted. It wasn't dramatic — no flash of light, no thunderclap. Instead, the change crept over her like cold water rising. The grey sky above bled into soft amber, the colour of honey held up to candlelight. The air warmed against her skin, carrying scents she couldn't name — something floral, something green, something that made her think of summer evenings she'd never actually lived. She turned back. The standing stones remained visible, but Richmond Park beyond them had become a watercolour smear, indistinct and unreachable. "Bloody hell," she breathed. The grove spread before her in impossible directions. Wildflowers carpeted the ground — bluebells and foxglove and roses, all blooming together despite the season, despite any logic she understood. Trees she didn't recognise stretched toward that amber sky, their leaves silver-green and rustling in a breeze she couldn't feel. Light filtered down through the canopy in golden shafts, thick as poured syrup. Nyx drifted past her, their form more solid now, more defined. Their violet eyes glowed brighter in this half-light. "The Fae-touched places remember what they once were." They moved without footsteps, without sound. "Before the Veil hardened. Before the realms separated." Aurora knelt and touched one of the flowers — a rose the colour of twilight, petals soft as breath. It was warm. Alive. She could almost feel a pulse beneath its surface. "It's real," she said. "All of it." "As real as anything." Nyx paused beside a tree whose trunk twisted in spirals. "More real, perhaps. The mortal world is pale by comparison." They walked deeper. The grove seemed to shift around them, paths appearing where none had existed moments before, the trees rearranging themselves like pieces on a board. Aurora kept her hand on the Fae blade at her hip — Isolde's gift, cold even through the leather of its sheath. The moonsilver dagger was meant for this place. She wondered if it would protect her here, or if carrying Fae-forged steel into Fae-touched territory was some kind of insult she didn't understand. A sound reached her. Distant. Musical. Like wind chimes made of crystal, or voices singing in a language that predated words. "Do you hear that?" Nyx tilted their head. "The grove speaks to those who enter. It's tasting you. Learning your shape." "That's not comforting." "It wasn't meant to be." The path opened into a wider clearing, and Aurora stopped short. A pool lay at its center, perfectly circular, its surface so still it might have been glass. The water — if it was water — reflected nothing. Not the amber sky, not the silver trees, not her own face when she crept closer to peer down. Instead, the depths showed darkness. Movement. Shapes that might have been clouds or might have been something else entirely, drifting through an endless void. "Don't touch it." Nyx's whisper carried genuine warning. "The seeing pools show truth, but truth has teeth. Ask the wrong question and it will answer in ways you cannot survive." Aurora stepped back. The pendant at her chest pulsed harder, and she pressed her palm against it through her jacket. "Why is this reacting? There's no Hel portal here." "The Heartstone responds to liminal spaces. Places where the Veil thins." Nyx circled the pool, their reflection absent from its surface. "The grove exists between. Neither fully Earth nor fully Fae. The pendant recognises the instability." "Instability. Wonderful." She moved past the pool, following a path marked by stones that glowed with faint phosphorescence. The air grew thicker as they walked, heavier with that sweet impossible scent. Aurora's skin prickled with awareness. She felt watched. Not threatened, exactly, but observed — catalogued by something vast and patient and very, very old. The trees parted. A figure waited at the center of the next clearing, seated on a throne of living wood. Vines and flowers grew from the chair's arms, climbing and twisting, and the figure herself seemed to have grown from the same earth — silver hair cascading to her waist, pale lavender eyes that held no whites, no pupils, only that soft violet light. Isolde. The Seer smiled, and it was the smile of something that had seen centuries pass like seasons. "The pendant-bearer." Her voice rang like struck crystal. "The shadow-bound. You've come seeking answers to questions you haven't learned to ask." Aurora's mouth went dry. She'd prepared for this meeting — rehearsed what she'd say, what she'd demand. But standing before the half-Fae oracle, words scattered like startled birds. "I need to know about the Veil. The rifts. Why they're opening." Isolde rose. She moved without sound, without weight, leaving no impression in the flower-covered ground. When she circled Aurora, the air shimmered in her wake. "Three questions you've asked already." The Seer's fingers brushed the air near Aurora's face, not quite touching. "One about hearing. One about reaction. One about the rifts themselves. The grove counts what it's owed." "I didn't mean—" "Intent matters nothing here." Isolde's smile sharpened. "Only words. Only truth. The Fae cannot lie, pendant-bearer, but we count what we're given with perfect precision." Nyx moved closer to Aurora's side, their form solidifying into something almost protective. "She didn't know the rules, Seer. Release her from the debt." "The shadow speaks." Isolde's attention shifted, those lavender eyes focusing on Nyx with sudden intensity. "Aldric of the failed summoning. Aldric of the space between. Do you still remember your mortal name? Or has the darkness eaten it at last?" Something flickered across Nyx's expression — pain, maybe, or anger, or something too old for either. "I remember enough." "Do you?" Isolde drifted closer to them, her silver hair floating as if underwater. "Three hundred years I've watched your shadow stretch across London. Three hundred years you've bound yourself to mortals, trying to feel again what you lost. Does this one know what you are? What you were?" "Enough." Aurora stepped between them. Her hand found the Fae blade's hilt, and the cold of it steadied her. "We came for information. About the Veil. About why it's weakening." Isolde's attention snapped back to her. The Seer's smile returned, soft and terrible. "The blade I gave you. You've drawn it." Aurora looked down. She hadn't realised she'd unsheathed it — the moonsilver dagger gleamed in her grip, faintly luminescent, casting pale light across her fingers. "I didn't—" "The blade knows its own purpose." Isolde reached out and touched the flat of the blade with one finger. Where her skin met the metal, frost crystallised and spread. "It was forged in the old courts. Before the exile. Before the silence. It remembers what it was made to cut." "And what's that?" Isolde withdrew her hand. The frost remained, glittering. "Demons," the Seer said. "The things that crawl through tears in the Veil. The hungry ones. The hollow ones." Her eyes found Aurora's, and for a moment, the ageless mask cracked, revealing something almost like concern beneath. "They're coming, pendant-bearer. The winter solstice approaches, and the Veil will thin as it always does. But this year..." She trailed off. Turned away. Walked toward her living throne with steps that left no trace. "This year, something on the other side is pushing back."