Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTR9QJ5WPMRVWAKC8TBC5KB

Rory ducked under a tangled dogwood branch, the brittle twigs scraping her jacket sleeves. The old torchlight on her phone wavered, eating a ragged circle in the mist that coiled thick over leaf and root. Richmond Park stretched out behind her—civilised, lamplit, threaded with joggers and dogwalkers and the faint stink of London diesel. Here, deep inside the Fae Grove, every step pressed into untamed quiet. The air wore that chill, breathless hush of just past midnight, when the last late cabs gave up and even foxes watched their backs. The path behind her had vanished thirty paces in, swallowed by brambles and wildflowers that sparkled with dew like some too-sweet artificial world. She gripped the pendant at her throat, thumb running its edge. The Heartstone pulsed under her skin: warmth, then a cold more felt than real. Not comforting. Not tonight. She slid between two ancient oaks, their bark twisted with veins of lichen, the trunks hunched like old men keeping secrets. "Just get to the stones," she muttered—the words tripped out too sharp, bounced off wood and vapor and vanished. The Grove breathed. Or maybe she hallucinated it. Her trainers squelched into sodden moss. Feral bluebells curled around her ankles. She tried not to patch her imagination onto every sound. The pendant hummed with each step, tugging her toward some fixed point deeper in the tangle. Far off, a nightjar trilled, cracked laughter made with no mouth and no joy in it. Stick to the plan. Get through, plant the token, leave. She inched forward, torch flickering, her other hand balled in a fist so tight her nails bit deep. The air tasted like mint and copper. Not right. Rory spat, her voice fierce: "Not here for games. If you're watching, just—" She paused. Something blinked, high and quick, in the corner of her vision—a shape slinking between trunks, graceful, not quite human. Her heart stuttered. No sounds followed. Just the click of the Heartstone against her collarbone. She moved on, step after step. The Grove sprawled wider than she remembered—more space inside than out. A trick of the border, Eva always said. The standing stones barely showed under the low cloud, just silhouettes, pale as bone, circled and hunched. Her fingers itched for her phone. She glanced down anyway: screen blank, dead, the time blinking 00:12 in a pixelated green she didn’t recognise. Hadn’t it been twenty past midnight when she entered? A hush. The kind that pressed into ears and bones, thick as honey. Rory crouched, knelt in a patch of bluebells, searching for the edge of the nearest stone. Her breath skittered thin. Leaves above rattled against each other, just enough for her to notice. She kept her body low. "Don’t," whispered a voice, neither close nor far, a thistle on the wind—her voice, fractured. She whipped round, torch beam leaking sideways, painting trees with sickly gold. Nobody. The light stuttered, dying in her grip. A sick panic crawled across her skin. She lunged up, tripped, one hand catching the stone for balance. The bark wriggled, soft and warm, not wood at all—a thing breathing under her palm. She pulled away, knuckles scraped raw where lichen flaked off. Years ago, she’d lived with shadows. Her father in the lounge, her ex at the door, her own voice swallowed by other people’s rules. The Grove wasn’t the same. The Grove watched without wanting anything. She reached up, rubbed the scar on her wrist, silent proof she still lived here and now. The pendant pulsed harder—veins of warmth and dread, radiating down her chest. Rory kept her focus tight. One stone. Mark it. She crouched again, hand trembling as she reached for the pocket where the poppet token sat. A footstep behind her—all weight and intent. Different from her own shuffle, less the fall of a wild creature and more of someone who remembered how to own feet. "Lost already? That’s new." The voice took a tone she half-knew, borrowed from bad dreams, carrying her own accent wrong in the mouth. Almost sing-song. "That’s enough. You’re not clever." Rory kept her eyes on the stone, pulled the token out. In the glassy moonlight, it looked ragged, an ugly little figure bundled in string and dried hawthorn. Her pulse thundered. The trees shifted—a sweep of nothing solid, a refusal of light behind trunks, a sideways movement that didn’t need legs. The wind soured, sharp with salt and grief. She fumbled. The figure tumbled from her grasp, landed on a tuft of grass. The Grove went dead silent. Too late to regret. "Does it hurt?" asked the voice—her father’s timbre now, low and cautious, threaded with disappointment. "You never learnt when to quit, Laila. Or when to run home." Rory pulled herself upright, choking out the words: "I’m not here for you. I’m not here for anything except—" A prick on her ankle. She jerked back; a patch of nettles glistened, thick and black as oil. Too real. Too immediate. The tree behind her creaked, groaned, leaned fractionally closer. She tasted bile. The warmth at her throat spiked—heat and pressure, as if someone clutched her there. Above, the clouds shredded to reveal the moon, casting a showroom-bright gleam across the clearing. Every bloom glared, petals too vivid, colours clashing wrong as bruises. Shadows tangled, curling like fingers. Something circled. Slow. Intentional. "Are you afraid?" Voices overlapped—now her own, now a child’s, now hollow and blown apart. She crushed the poppet into the moss. "I’m not afraid of you. You’re a parlour trick. You can’t keep me here." Her throat felt raw, but she widened her stance. A root shifted beside her left boot, worming higher as if stretching after sleep. Light blurred at the clearing’s edges, a slow ripple that dissolved flowers and rebuilt them as unfamiliar, bloated things. Her vision buzzed. Rory closed her eyes, drew breath shallow and sharp. The Heartstone’s heat became a steady, pounding throb—the only real sensation. She dug her fingernails hard into her palm, found the poppet, and pressed it against the base of the ancient oak stone. No movement. No drama. Just a tiny, final thing. A long, rattling exhale from behind her shoulder—the stink of peat and rotting flowers. Sweat prickled across her scalp. She stayed rigid, held in place by that pressing certainty: watched, catalogued, counted. She opened her eyes. The torch gave a single, fitful blink and died. The Grove pulsed, shrinking in, every shadow stretching closer. "Time to go," she whispered, meaning it for herself alone. The Grove rustled in response. Or not. Her feet found the path between the stones. With every step, the pendant simmered against her skin, the glow hidden behind her shirt but dangerously close to burning through. Footsteps echoed, both hers and others, impossible to say which walked in front and which followed. She walked, faster, then almost running, every sense peeled raw, her movements guided by pure animal memory. In the corners of her sight, shapes lapped at the edges—never showing, just promising. No voice called after her. That silence lingered long after she stumbled back to the fringe of the Grove, hands cut, knees damp, her breath ragged. London lights winked through the branches, pale and faint as ghost-lanterns. The pendant finally cooled. She pushed through the last screen of wildflowers, head bowed, heart battering at her ribs, certain only of this: summer’s safe night had ended long before she entered.