Run: 2026-02-19-01KHT0YKDHZSGN3A8CTC9D1FNM

The oak standing stones emerged from the mist like giants' teeth. Aurora pushed through the final tangle of bracken and stopped, her breath catching. The world beyond the boundary looked wrong in a way she couldn't quite name. The air shimmered, warped, as if viewed through heat-haze in the depths of winter. "This is it?" Nyx drifted beside her, their form more solid than she'd ever seen it in daylight. Shadow clung to their edges regardless of the pale afternoon sun filtering through the canopy. "Isolde said to pass between the stones at dusk." Aurora pulled her jacket tighter. The temperature dropped sharply at the threshold. "She said we'd know the grove when we saw it." Behind them, Silas stepped carefully over a moss-covered log, his weathered face creased with skepticism. The bar owner had insisted on coming, claimed he'd walked these woods for forty years and owed Isolde more favors than he could count. He looked at the stones now, at the way reality seemed to fold against them, and let out a low whistle. "You're certain about this?" Aurora wasn't certain about anything anymore. Three weeks ago she'd delivered pad thai to a quiet woman in a Kensington townhouse. Now she carried a Fae blade and a heartstone that pulsed like a second heartbeat against her ribs. Now she walked with a shade and a barkeep into invisible realms. "No," she said. "But we've come this far." She stepped between the stones. The shift wasn't violent. It was worse than that—it was gentle, like slipping from one dream into another without waking. The ground beneath her boots changed from hard earth to something softer, springier. Moss. Luminescent moss that faintly glowed where her feet disturbed it. She stopped and looked down. Nyx passed through the threshold as if the stones didn't exist. Their form became more defined on this side of the boundary, the edges sharper, the faintly glowing violet of their eyes brighter. They made a sound like satisfaction, like coming home. "The Veil is thinner here," they whispered. "Can you feel it?" She could. A pressure in her chest, a humming at the base of her skull like her brain was tuning into a frequency just beyond hearing. Silas came through last, and Aurora watched his shoulders drop slightly, some tension releasing. He closed his eyes for a moment. "God, I'd forgotten how it smells." Aurora hadn't expected smells. But now that he mentioned it, the air was thick with them—honeyed wildflowers, rich soil after rain, something spiced and indefinable. It made her dizzy, made her want to breathe deeper. The clearing revealed itself gradually as they moved forward. Ancient oaks formed a cathedral around them, their trunks thick as houses, their roots writhing across the earth like captured serpents. Between them, wildflowers bloomed in impossible profusion. Roses the colour of old wine grew beside flowers Aurora had no name for—star-shaped things in shades of silver and gold, bell-flowers that chimed faintly when the breeze moved through them. "The time here," Silas said quietly. "It shifts. Don't lose track of it or you'll step back out to find the world's aged years." The sky above was still afternoon-bright, but it had taken on a quality that made it hard to judge. Aurora couldn't tell if they'd been walking for minutes or hours. The moss beneath her feet glowed brighter the deeper they went, leaving a trail of faint light in their wake. Nyx drifted ahead, sometimes solid, sometimes half-faded into the deeper shadows beneath the trees. They moved like they belonged here, like every element of this place welcomed them. Their voice carried back through the clearing: "There. The standing circle." Aurora saw it then—stones arranged in a perfect ring in a small hollow, older than the oaks, worn smooth by time or magic or both. The centre was a pool of absolutely still water that reflected no light. "The heart of the grove," Silas confirmed. He stopped at the edge of the circle, respecting some boundary. "This is where she meets those who seek her counsel." As if summoned by the words, the wildflowers shifted. Not blown by wind—there was no wind—but as if they were moving aside, creating a path. Isolde emerged from beneath an arch of flowering vines, her silver hair catching what little light penetrated this deep into the grove. She wore robes the colour of starlight and left no mark upon the moss as she walked. "You came," she said. No question in it. Aurora stepped forward, the Fae blade cold against her hip, the heartstone warm against her chest. "You knew we would." "I knew many things. Knowing and telling are different dances." Isolde's lavender eyes fixed on her with an intensity that made Aurora's skin prickle. "The question becomes: do you know why you came?" The pool at the centre of the stones reflected nothing—not their faces, not the sky, not even the glow of the moss. It was like looking into an absence. "We came for answers," Aurora said. Isolde moved to the edge of the pool and knelt, her movements fluid, graceful. When she looked up, her expression had shifted into something more severe. "A stone beats in your chest that doesn't belong there. A blade of our people rests in your hands. And your companion is a ghost trying to remember how to live. The answers you carry are heavy ones." Nyx drifted closer to Aurora, their form flickering. The grove seemed to react to their presence—flowers curled slightly, as if uncertain. Isolde watched them with the expression of someone observing something beautiful and dangerous in equal measure. "The Veil tears," Isolde continued, still addressing Aurora. "Not here. Not yet. But the weakness spreads like infection through water. Your heartstone knows this. It feels every failure in the barrier." "Then why does it warm?" Aurora's fingers found the pendant without conscious thought. "Why give it to me?" "That stone was given to someone else, in another age, for another purpose. It came to you through paths I cannot tell, though I feel their shape." Isolde's fingers trailed through the water without disturbing it. "But here is what I can speak: the bearer of a heartstone sees truth in Hel's domain. You could walk where others would be lost to shadow and hunger." The implications crashed over Aurora like a wave. Hel. The realms between. The dying places where the barrier had worn too thin. Silas shifted his weight, leather creaking. "That's not a gift, that's a death sentence." "Perhaps." Isolde smiled, and it was the most unsettling expression Aurora had seen from her. "Or perhaps it's an invitation. The question of which one remains to be answered."