Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTQQSNGK8DMWTSNJNM01NSE

Midnight never laid soft hands on the Fae Grove. Darkness there moved in restless waters: thick, impenetrable, and bristling with invisible ripples. Aurora stood on the ragged arc of wild grass, heart hammering in her throat as the shadows between the ancient oaks pressed closer. She reached for the Heartstone Pendant at her neck and curled her fingers tight around its almost-forgotten shape, feeling its silent, steady heat. Always that heat. Not quite comforting. The Grove had drawn her, whispering through the cracked screen of her phone: Meet me, the text had said, in Richmond Park. Alone. No name attached, but she’d known the writing. Not the loops of Eva’s anxious handwriting. Someone colder. She’d told herself it was only curiosity that brought her out here, with no torch but her phone, its battery blinking red. The murals of city light fell away behind her as she walked through the park’s narrow deer-trampled tracks. By the time she reached the stones, even the noises of London had fled. Aurora’s boot squished on soft moss. The standing stones ringed her with their twisted oaken heft, more grown than carved, each one haloed by stray daffodils gleaming under a bone-pale sliver of moon. She’d expected sound—wind sifting grass, maybe a fox’s bark. Instead, the silence drew tight as a wire, broken only by the faint scrape of her own breath. She spoke aloud, low so it would not echo, “Not funny, you know,” and laughter fled the very thought halfway through. The pendant against her skin turned warm like a secret fever. A branch snapped just beyond the farthest stone. She jerked around, knuckles whitening, phone held high like a shield. Nothing. Only knotted shadow and a lace of wildflowers trembling. Her scalp tightened, a memory surfacing: stories from her grandmother of fair folk dancing at moon’s edge, spiriting away mortals who heard music no one else did. “You’re not even clever about it,” she tried again, pushing her voice flat. “You could at least—” Another sound cut her off, almost beneath hearing. Whispering, but not words; more like the shush and snick of leaves dragged across bark. Aurora pulled her coat tighter. The Grove no longer sat still. The shifting of the flora pressed against the edges of her senses, wrong in a way she couldn’t put her finger on. Flowers that hadn’t been there before—violets, white as teeth, crowding her boots. The wide expanse of the clearing shrank, the stones seeming to lean in, conspirators in their rooting silence. The phone suddenly flickered. She tapped it, and the screen stuttered back to life. 2:12 am. Except—no, she’d left the flat just before midnight, the walk half an hour at most. Had she... lost time? The air prickled along her wrist, catching on the scar there—a nervous tick from childhood suddenly flaring, as if the Grove remembered the way she’d learned to hide blood and mistakes. She rocked on her heels, drew a breath laced through with honeysuckle and something coppery, sharp and unfamiliar. “Alright,” she called, the false bravado cutting sharper than before, “I’m here. If you want something, show your face.” Petals rustled at the edge of the stones, and then Aurora realised she wasn’t hearing through her ears anymore. The sound pressed behind her eyes. A flicker, a shape—not animal, not human—from the far side of the Grove. The grass moved and stilled, blades bent the wrong way, crushed and then upright again. No footfalls. Aurora fumbled for the Heartstone, trying to will it brighter. Warmth climbed her veins, dizzying. She lost her footing and staggered, palm scraping bark that felt slick as old wax. In the periphery, something grew: a figure tall and hunched, arms long enough to brush the ground. It watched her with eyes moon-bright and unblinking. “Enough,” her voice cracked. “I’m not playing your games. I’m not—” A cold, sweet breath swept Lapland-winter over her face. The thing at the stones blinked, and in that shifting, Aurora sensed hunger and old, glancing laughter. The veil of the Grove pressed close, sprouting new shadows with each pulse of the Heartstone. Oak leaves twisted, curling like fingers. Her skin prickled. She stepped back. Wildflowers crowded taller, almost knee-high now, so white they seemed carved from bone. The stones warped, their bark scattering in flakes as if aged a thousand years in minutes. Aurora’s phone dropped to the moss, the little red light vanishing as if swallowed. Her reflection in the black glass wore her mother’s frown and her father’s stubborn jaw, but her eyes belonged to the Grove now; pupils wide, blue swimming with trapped moon. She heard her name. Not from a mouth, but carried in the wind with the thrum of the Heartstone. Aurora. She stopped moving. The figure unfolded itself, the way nightmares do in the first gasp after waking. Its face never sharpened, rimmed instead with swirling bloom and rot—roses knotting into fungus, eyes a pair of river-smoothed stones. “They sent you,” she said, voice shredded raw. A laugh, broken and twiglike. Aurora’s neck prickled down to her collarbone. She pulled the chain until the Heartstone dug into her palm. It pulsed, not helpfully, not bravely, but the way a startled bird’s heart flutters before flight. One step back. The flowers tangled her ankles, velvety and unyielding. The figure cocked its head, considering, mouth opening to show nothing but black space, as if inviting her to speak into it, or step inside. A low whine, high and tinny, skittered through the clearing. Aurora jerked; her phone, forgotten, its last will made sound. Through the crackling speaker a voice—David Attenborough, from a documentary she’d half-watched before coming here: “Many creatures use darkness for shelter, but some call the night home.” Static drowned the rest. She blinked and the oak stones wept sap that trickled red in the thin wash of moon. The figure slid closer. Aurora pressed her backs of her hands into her thighs, nails tearing skin as she crouched, searching instinctively for a way out—no exit, only tall grass catching, wildflower mouths opening at her calves. She squeezed her eyes shut, listening for breathing that did not belong to her. No comfort in silence. The Grove moved, and the thing moved with it—a ripple under the moment, like a bad dream refusing daylight. The pendant scalded her through shirt and flesh, and she let herself fall inward to its heat, choking the fear before it could rise to her tongue. A finger, bark-thin, brushed her shoulder. Aurora snapped her eyes open, glare sharp enough to split bark if it landed true. “Don’t,” she hissed, unable to push another word through cold lips. The Grove, in answer, pulled taut: new flowers erupted from the ground, dazzling, spiraling white, as if the Grove exhaled frost into blossom. Aurora, kneeling, braced herself, and did not scream.