Run: 2026-02-19-01KHT0JAJ99KQPBY8R8C5WTADA

The ancient oaks of Richmond Park stood like sentinels in the pre-dawn darkness, their branches reaching toward a sky that hadn't yet decided whether to remain night or surrender to morning. Aurora pulled her jacket tighter against the October chill, her breath misting in the air as she followed the narrow deer path deeper into the woods. Behind her, Nyx moved without sound, their form flickering between substance and shadow with each shift of moonlight through the canopy. "You certain about this?" Aurora's voice cut through the stillness. The Heartstone pendant beneath her shirt pulsed with unusual warmth against her skin. "Certainty is a luxury we cannot afford." Nyx's whispered reply seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. "The winter solstice approaches. If Isolde has answers about your connection to Dymas, we need them before—" "Before the Veil weakens. I know." Aurora ducked beneath a low-hanging branch, her fingers brushing against bark that felt too smooth, too warm for the season. "Doesn't mean I have to like walking into Fae territory in the middle of the night." The trees grew denser as they pressed forward, their trunks twisting into impossible spirals that made Aurora's eyes water if she stared too long. The familiar sounds of the park—distant traffic, the occasional fox cry—faded to nothing. Even the wind had stilled, leaving only their footsteps and the thundering of her own heartbeat. "There." Nyx's form solidified beside her, one shadowy arm extending toward a cluster of oaks that formed a rough circle. Between the trees, the air shimmered like heat waves rising from summer pavement, despite the cold. Aurora approached the boundary slowly. The pendant's warmth intensified, spreading across her chest in waves. As she drew closer, she could make out shapes within the shimmer—standing stones that hadn't been there moments before, each carved from wood so ancient it had turned to something between bark and stone. "The threshold." She reached toward the barrier, then hesitated. "Any advice for dealing with half-Fae seers who speak in riddles?" "Listen to what she doesn't say." Nyx's violet eyes flickered with something that might have been amusement. "And whatever you do, don't accept any food or drink." "Brilliant. Cryptic advice for dealing with cryptic beings." Aurora took a breath and stepped through. The world tilted. Colors bled and shifted, too vivid and wrong. The grey pre-dawn light transformed into something golden and green, as if she'd stepped from October into the heart of spring. The air tasted of honey and copper, sweet and metallic on her tongue. Wildflowers carpeted the ground in impossible profusion—bluebells growing beside summer roses, autumn crocuses tangled with spring violets. Nyx materialized beside her, their shadowy form more solid here, edges more defined. "The Grove exists between. Neither fully Earth nor Fae." Aurora's boot sank into moss that felt like silk beneath her feet. Each step forward took effort, as if the very ground was deciding whether to accept her presence. The standing stones formed a spiral path leading deeper into the Grove, their surfaces covered in symbols that shifted and writhed when she wasn't looking directly at them. "Why can I read these?" The words tumbled out before she could stop them. The symbols resolved into meaning as she watched—warnings, welcomes, and prophecies all tangled together in a script she'd never seen but somehow understood. "Perhaps because you were meant to." The voice drifted from ahead, melodious and strange. "Or perhaps because the Grove recognizes what you carry." Isolde stood at the spiral's center, and Aurora's breath caught. The half-Fae woman seemed to exist in multiple moments at once—young and ancient, solid and translucent, beautiful and terrible. Her silver hair moved in a breeze Aurora couldn't feel, and her lavender eyes held depths that threatened to drown anyone foolish enough to stare too long. "The Shadow brings the Marked One at last." Isolde's bare feet left no impression on the flower-strewn ground as she approached. "Tell me, child of two bloods, do you know what you are?" "Human last I checked." Aurora's hand moved instinctively to where the pendant lay hidden. "Though given recent events, I'm starting to have doubts." "Doubt is wisdom's beginning." Isolde circled them slowly, her movements liquid and strange. "You wear Dymas' heartstone, yet you breathe. You walk the mortal realm, yet Hel's princes know your name. What does that make you, Rory Carter?" The use of her nickname sent ice down Aurora's spine. "Someone in the wrong place at the wrong time?" "There are no wrong places." Isolde's laugh sounded like wind chimes and breaking glass. "Only unexpected doors. The blood speaks, even when the mind denies. Your mother's mother's mother knew the taste of pomegranate wine and dancing beneath foreign stars." "You're saying I have Fae blood?" The Grove spun around her, flowers blooming and dying in accelerated cycles. "That's impossible. My family's Welsh and Irish, boring as toast." "The Fae touch leaves no records in your world's books." Isolde gestured to the standing stones, and they pulsed with pale light. "But the Grove remembers. Feel how it welcomes you home." Aurora did feel it—a pull in her chest, separate from the pendant's warmth. The flowers turned their faces toward her like she was the sun. The very air seemed to sing against her skin. It terrified her. "I don't want this." The words came out raw. "Whatever this is, whatever you think I am—" "Want and need rarely walk the same path." Isolde produced something from the folds of her gown—a blade that caught light that didn't exist, its surface rippling like mercury. "Dymas calls to you because gluttony recognizes hunger. But hunger for what, child? Power? Knowledge? Love?" "Answers." Aurora met those impossible eyes. "Starting with why demons from Hel's realm of gluttony keep finding me." "They don't find you." Isolde pressed the blade into Aurora's hands. The metal burned cold against her palm, and she nearly dropped it. "You call to them, as honey calls to bees. The heartstone merely amplifies what already exists within your blood." The Grove shuddered. The flowers wilted at the edges of the clearing, and the golden light flickered. Nyx's form grew more solid, edges sharpening into focus. "Time grows short." Isolde's form began to fade at the edges. "The Veil weakens with each passing day. When the solstice arrives, choices made in ignorance will bind tighter than chains forged in knowledge." "Wait." Aurora stepped forward, the Fae blade humming in her grip. "What am I supposed to do? How do I stop—" "Stop?" Isolde's laughter echoed from everywhere at once as her form dispersed like mist. "Dear child, you don't stop the tide. You learn to swim."