Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTR5HQQRGK708BQYDMK9GWC

Aurora Carter stood just beyond the last line of ancient oaks that marked the edge of the Grove. She adjusted the silver chain of the Heartstone Pendant at her neck, the deep crimson gem pulsing faintly in her palm as though it breathed with a life of its own. Outside Richmond Park, the world felt draped in cold mist, the night thick with muffled city hums. Inside the Grove, time shifted, folding and stretching, but also something else—an ebb of unease that made her skin scrape with static. She stepped forward, the crunch of dead leaves sharp in the stillness. Wildflowers whispered in the darkness, their colours bleeding silver under moonlight that didn’t belong here. Aurora’s bright blue eyes flicked between the gnarled trunks. She’d come for answers, following a thread her intuition had tangled with something ancient—her fingertips had tingled the moment she felt the pendant warm in her palm. The Grove’s peace felt like a mask, folded tight, hiding something restless beneath. She told herself she was imagining it—her nerves fraying after the long day waiting tables, the anxiety of running from past mistakes—but the moment she set foot inside, the air compressed, cold and dense. A breeze stirred, but the branches hung still, unmoving like statues carved from oubliette shadows. The silence stretched, unbroken except for her own breath. Aurora’s boots pressed into soil that seemed too soft, almost spongy beneath. Then came the small sounds. A twig snapped somewhere behind her. Crisp and dry, too close, and yet when she whipped around, nothing stirred except the wildflowers bowing like agreeing heads. "Hello?" Her voice cracked, swallowed by the dark. No answer. Only the heartbeat thrum from the pendant, growing stronger, a faint glow igniting beneath her palm. She tightened her grip. The standing stones appeared ahead, dark like sentinels knotted with moss. They exhaled cold and the sharp scent of ancient earth. Aurora slowed, stepping cautiously into the circle, where the moonlight pooled silver-white and distorting shadows danced just beyond sight. The air shifted again—breath caught, chills rising from the ground to brush the nape of her neck. A soft murmur brushed her ear, like wind threading through dead leaves, or something else. "Rory...” The voice was a sigh, close and distant at once, curling her name with silk and menace. She spun but there was no one. Only the Grove, alive with secrets. Her heart hammered, quick and uneven. "Who’s there?” she called, trying to sound steady. The pendant pulsed hotter, a pulse like a slow heartbeat echoing deeper from the unseen. The standing stones grew taller—towering—as if they stretched toward some dark sky beyond the black ceiling of oaks. Shapes shifted where the moon failed to touch, silhouettes bending in the boundary where earth touched the Fae. Aurora’s breath hitched. Time felt like water slipping too quickly through a narrow channel. She took a step back. A flicker at the corner of her eye. Gone. Another soft snap, brittle and quick. "Come out," she said, voice firmer now, eyes darting. “I’m not afraid." A laugh, thin and brittle, like cracking ice, rippled around her. One moment it was behind, then ahead. Somewhere close but never quite. The pendant flared suddenly. Aurora jerked her hand away, squeezing it tight. She distracted herself by running cold fingers over the crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist, grounding herself. "Why did you bring me here?” she whispered. “What do you want?” Only the Grove answered—stretching, twisting, alive with a dark intent. Movement caught again in the shadow—brief, like a branch bending to a whisper. Her heart rate surged. She forced herself to step forward, the pendant’s warmth a steady pulse against her palm. The ground here seemed to throb with unspoken rhythms. A shape took shape—a figure crouched low beside one of the stones, eyes glimmering faintly in the half-light, just out of clear view. “Show yourself.” The figure froze, then melted into the dark as if swallowed whole by the earth. The laughter came again, softer now, closer. “Rory...” Her breath hitched, skin prickling cold. The pendant glowed sharply, warmth blooming and spreading like wildfire across her chest. She swallowed the knot of fear rising in her throat. "You're not welcome here," she said, voice steady despite the tightening grip on her resolve. The Grove pulsed—a heartbeat out of sync with her own. Another whisper slithered behind her ear, colder this time. “You don’t belong.” Aurora spun, heart in her throat, eyes flaring. No one. Just shadows that breathed and flickered, too quick for the eye to hold. She moved, slow and deliberate, arms ready. The cold wrapped tighter around her, as if the Grove itself were exhaling a slow, hungry breath. The pendant’s glow softened, pulsing like a distant star. Something brushed the edge of her cloak, a rustle of silk or leaves? Her pulse slammed in her ears. Then a figure stepped from the darkness. Tall, wrapped in shadows that seemed to writhe, the faint outline of something not quite human. Its eyes glinted—deep pools of shifting black. “Why do you follow?” it said, voice like dry leaves skittering on stone. Aurora held her ground, chest tight, eyes narrowing. “My name’s Aurora. I’m not here to play your games,” she said, jaw tight. Something in the figure’s silence stretched, waiting. The pendant warmed fiercely, and with it a certainty she hadn’t expected. This wasn’t chance. Whatever this was—the Grove, its shadows—it had called her here for a reason. The figure smiled—not with lips, but with a crack in the dark that sent prickle waves down her spine. “You don’t belong here,” it repeated, voice like a promise and a threat wrapped tight. Aurora’s fingers brushed the pendant as the night cooled further, the sense of being pulled into a depth darker and older than the earth itself folding around her. “I’m leaving,” she said, breath steady but cold. The figure stepped closer, shadows twisting like smoke. The world outside had slipped far away, replaced by a chill that gathered and sharpened. And the Grove waited.