Run: 2026-02-19-01KHT0HKBYDZ4JT1386G1N8V1H

The ancient oaks towered above them, their twisted branches forming archways that seemed too deliberate to be natural. Aurora's breath misted in the December air as she followed Isolde deeper into Richmond Park, the Heartstone pendant warm against her chest beneath her jacket. "Almost there." Isolde's silver hair caught moonlight that shouldn't have penetrated the canopy this deeply. Her bare feet made no sound on the frost-brittle leaves. Behind Aurora, Nyx flowed between the shadows cast by tree trunks. Their form solidified momentarily beside her. "The Veil grows thin here. Can you feel it?" Aurora could. The air had a charged quality, like the moments before lightning struck. Her skin prickled with each step forward. "There." Isolde gestured ahead. A circle of standing stones rose from the earth, each one a massive oak that had somehow been transformed into solid rock while retaining every groove of bark, every knot and whorl. They gleamed with an inner light that hurt to look at directly. "Oak to stone?" Aurora touched the nearest pillar. Despite the December chill, warmth radiated from its surface. "How?" "The Fae courts have their ways." Isolde stepped between two of the standing stones. The air shimmered like heat waves off summer pavement. "Come. The grove awaits." Aurora hesitated. The space between the stones looked identical to the forest beyond—more twisted oaks, more shadows. But the Heartstone's pulse had quickened against her chest, its warmth spreading through her ribs. Nyx's form rippled with uncertainty. "Time moves strangely in Fae-touched places. We might emerge to find days have passed. Or minutes." "Or we might not emerge at all?" Aurora kept her tone light, but her hand found the hilt of the moonsilver blade at her hip. The Fae-forged metal was ice against her palm, a sharp contrast to the pendant's heat. "Such little faith in one who cannot lie." Isolde's laugh was wind chimes in a breeze that touched nothing else. "Though I suppose I never promised safety, did I? Only answers." The half-Fae woman vanished through the shimmer without waiting for a response. Aurora exchanged glances with Nyx—or what passed for glances when one party had no definable features beyond faintly glowing violet points where eyes should be. Then she stepped forward. The world twisted. For a moment that lasted forever and no time at all, Aurora existed in two places at once. Her left foot stood on frozen December earth while her right sank into grass so vibrantly green it seemed to glow. The scent of summer flowers mixed with winter frost in her nostrils. Her vision fractured, showing her both the stark winter forest and an impossible meadow occupying the same space. Then she stumbled through, and the dislocation ended. Warmth hit her like a physical thing. Not the gentle heat of the standing stones, but the thick, honeyed warmth of a summer afternoon. She shed her jacket immediately, draping it over her arm as she stared. The grove stretched before them in defiance of every natural law. Wildflowers carpeted the ground in a riot of colours that shouldn't bloom together—spring bluebells beside autumn asters, summer roses tangling with winter hellebores. The trees here weren't the gnarled oaks of Richmond Park but something altogether different. Their trunks were silver-smooth as Isolde's hair, their leaves shifting through a spectrum of metallic hues with each breath of wind. "Bloody hell." The words escaped before Aurora could stop them. Nyx flowed through the barrier behind her, their shadowy form seeming more solid here, more defined. "The Fae Grove. I had heard tales, but..." "Tales rarely capture truth." Isolde stood beneath one of the silver trees, her pale lavender eyes reflecting its shifting leaves. Here in this place, she seemed more real and less human simultaneously. Her edges blurred slightly, as if she might dissolve into moonlight at any moment. "Welcome to my home, such as it is." Aurora bent to touch a flower—something with petals like spun glass that chimed softly when her fingers brushed it. The sound rippled outward, taken up by other flowers until the entire meadow rang with crystalline music. "Don't wander far." Isolde's warning cut through the wonder. "The grove exists between worlds. Stray too far from the center, and you might find yourself in the Fae realm proper. Or somewhere worse." The flowers' song faded, leaving behind an expectant silence. Aurora straightened, suddenly aware of how the air itself felt different here. Thicker. Each breath carried tastes she couldn't identify—honey and metal, storm clouds and starlight. Nyx had moved to examine the trees, their incorporeal fingers passing through the silver bark. "The wood hums with power. Old magic. Older than humanity." "Older than your current form, certainly." Isolde glided past them, deeper into the grove. "This way. What you seek lies at the heart." They followed a path that hadn't existed moments before, or perhaps had always been there, waiting. The flowers parted before Isolde's bare feet, creating a walkway of soft moss that glowed faintly phosphorescent. Above them, the sky defied logic—simultaneously noon-bright and midnight-dark, with stars visible through sunshine. Aurora's equilibrium rebelled. She focused on the Heartstone's steady pulse, using its rhythm to anchor herself. The Fae blade at her hip had grown colder, frost forming on its sheath despite the warmth. "How long have you lived here?" She addressed Isolde's back, needing conversation to ground herself. "Time has little meaning in the grove. I arrived yesterday. I arrived three centuries ago. Both statements hold equal truth." Isolde paused beside a pool of water that reflected not the impossible sky above but something else entirely—storm clouds gathering over a city Aurora didn't recognize. "The Fae courts exiled me for sharing visions with mortals. They didn't specify where my exile should be served." Nyx drifted closer to the pool. "Clever. A place between worlds, technically fulfilling the letter of their judgment while—" They stopped, violet eyes flaring brighter. "Something approaches." The grove's perpetual summer breeze stilled. The chiming flowers fell silent. Even the silver leaves ceased their colour-shifting dance. Aurora's hand found the Fae blade's hilt. The weapon sang eagerly against her palm, recognizing this place, these energies. "Isolde?" But the half-Fae woman had gone motionless, her head tilted as if listening to something beyond normal hearing. When she spoke, her voice carried harmonics that raised goosebumps on Aurora's arms. "The grove has accepted you. It offers a gift." She turned, and her eyes had gone solid silver, pupilless and ancient. "Or a curse. With the Fae, the distinction often blurs." The air split apart. Not violently, but with deliberate precision, as if reality were fabric and someone had taken very sharp scissors to it. Through the tear stepped a figure that made Aurora's eyes water to perceive. It stood roughly human height but wrong—too many angles, or perhaps not enough. Its skin appeared to be made of condensed starlight, and when it moved, it left brief afterimages in colours that didn't exist. "Mortal." Its voice was the sound of wind through leaves, of water over stone, of time itself aging. "You carry Dymas-touched silver. You walk with shadow-kind. You bear steel forged in the moon courts. What curious contradictions." The Heartstone burned against Aurora's chest. Not painfully, but with urgent warmth. A warning? A recognition? "I seek answers." Aurora fought to keep her voice steady. The figure's presence pressed against her mind like deep water, threatening to drown rational thought. "All seekers speak thus. Few understand the weight of what they seek." The being circled them, and Aurora realized with a start that it moved without disturbing a single flower. "The Seer brings you here at the year's dying, when the Veil wears thin. She knows the old patterns. But do you?" Isolde had recovered her composure, though silver still leaked from the corners of her eyes like tears. "They need to understand what comes. The convergence—" "Silence." The word had physical weight, cutting off Isolde mid-sentence. The being focused on Aurora with an intensity that made her bones ache. "You wear the Heartstone of Dymas. Do you know what you carry, mortal? Do you understand what beats against your fragile human chest?" Aurora's hand moved instinctively to the pendant. Through her shirt, she could feel it pulsing in rhythm with her own heartbeat. "A gift. That's all I was told." The being laughed, and the sound was breaking glass and ringing bells and nothing human at all. "A gift. Yes. The Prince of Gluttony's gifts always carry such weight. Such terrible, beautiful weight." Nyx shifted, placing themselves partially between Aurora and the Fae being. "You speak in riddles. If you have knowledge to share, speak plainly." "Shadow-kind demands clarity? How your form has changed you, Aldric who was." The being's attention shifted to Nyx, and even the living shadow seemed to flinch. "You know better than most how gifts reshape their bearers. How power transforms. How hunger grows." The grove around them began to shift. The flowers' colours deepened, became more vivid, almost painful in their beauty. The silver trees' leaves rang like chimes despite the still air. Reality grew thick, syrup-slow, each moment stretching like taffy. "The Heartstone." Aurora forced the words past lips that felt numb. "What is it really?" The being smiled—or performed something that Aurora's human mind interpreted as a smile. The expression revealed too many teeth in too many rows. "A heart, of course. But whose heart, little mortal? And why does it beat in time with yours?"