Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTRAF7TBCKT7MSQN7DHSJGT

The standing stones were colder than the night air. Rory traced her fingers over the rough bark of the ancient oak. A small crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist throbbed faintly, the way it sometimes did when a storm was coming. But there was no storm tonight, just a clear October sky choked with stars above Richmond Park. She’d slipped through a gap in the fence after the park closed, guided by the Heartstone pendant warming against her chest. She had to come. The message in her locker at the Golden Empress had been scrawled on a scrap of greasy kitchen paper in a hand she didn’t recognize: *Our grove. Midnight. Bring the stone.* No signature. It could have been a trap. Probably was. But three nights ago, the pendant had pulsed three times in quick succession, bright enough to shine crimson through her shirt while she was stacking containers for delivery. It had done the same tonight as the clock ticked toward eleven. So here she was, standing between two mossy oak monoliths that marked the boundary of The Fae Grove. She took a breath and stepped through. The air changed. It grew thicker, warmer, carrying the scent of damp earth and night-blooming flowers. Richmond Park’s chill autumn vanished. Here, wildflowers she couldn’t name glowed pale under the starlight, carpeting a clearing that couldn’t have existed in the geography she’d just left. The standing stones formed a loose circle around her, guardians of a secret. She waited, her breath the only sound in the heavy silence. The Heartstone cooled against her skin. That was wrong. It always warmed near a portal. She reached under her collar, fingers closing around the silver chain. The deep crimson gem was inert, a cold little pebble. A twig snapped somewhere to her left. She froze, head turning slowly. The edge of the grove was a wall of darkness beyond the standing stones. The flowers didn’t grow there. Nothing did. She saw nothing. Just shadow. The sound hadn’t been loud. A small thing. A deer. There were deer in Richmond Park. Deer didn’t sound like that. Her brain registered it a second later. The snap had been too clean, too deliberate. Not the random crack of a hoof on deadwood. This had been the sound of something brittle being broken with purpose. *Our grove.* She had assumed “our” meant her and whoever sent the note. Now the word felt possessive. Cloying. Another sound. Not a snap. A shuffle. Dry leaves scraping over stone. It came from her right this time, directly opposite where the first noise had been. Something was moving around her in the dark, circling just outside the ring of light. She took a careful step toward the center of the clearing. No sudden movements. She was cool-headed, practical. That’s what Eva always said. *You see the box, Rory, and then you think right out of it.* Right now the box was this circle of stones, and she was the prize inside. The Heartstone stayed cold. “Hello?” Her voice sounded small, swallowed by the grove. No answer. The night flowers seemed to lean toward her. The shuffle came again, closer. Still in the dark beyond the stone to her right. She stared hard at the black space between two oaks. Her eyes strained. Was that a shape? Taller than a man, thinner, all angles? It was gone before she could be sure. A trick of the shadows. She became aware of the silence again. No insect hum. No rustle of leaves in a breeze. There was no breeze. The air was perfectly still, waiting. Then, a whisper. It wasn’t a word. It was the *idea* of a whisper, a breathy hiss that came from everywhere at once, from the ground, from the flowers, from the stones themselves. Goosebumps prickled up her arms. She spun slowly, surveying the entire circle. Nothing moved inside with her. The flowers were still. The stones were still. From behind her, a soft, wet sound. A footstep on damp earth. She didn’t turn. She held her breath, every muscle locked. She could feel it. A presence. A pressure in the air behind her, close enough to touch. It didn’t breathe. It just watched. The whisper came again, louder. This time it formed a word, but one that made no sense, a collection of guttural, sighing syllables that slipped into her ear and coiled cold in her stomach. Her fingers tightened around the pendant. Still cold. Useless. Just as the tension threatened to snap her nerves, the presence shifted. It moved away from her back. She heard the shuffle of leaves receding, moving toward the eastern edge of the grove. Her legs trembled with the urge to run. Run where? Through the stones into that darkness? Into whatever was circling her? A flicker of movement in her peripheral vision. Not outside the circle. Inside. Her head snapped left. A flower had changed. It had been a white, star-shaped bloom moments ago. Now its petals were edged in black, curling inward like dead fingers. As she watched, the black crept further up the petals, consuming the white. The process was silent. Horribly silent. Another flower, a few feet away, began to rot. From the center outward, its vibrant blue faded to a sickly grey and crumbled to dust. The dust settled on surrounding blooms, and they too began to wither. A patch of death was spreading from a central point near the eastern stone, moving toward her. That’s what had been moving around her. It wasn’t just circling. It was sowing something. Poison. The whispers started again, not from the air, but from the dying patch itself. A faint, collective sigh of decay. The sound of a hundred small lives ending at once. Then she saw the eyes. Two pinpricks of sickly green light in the heart of the withering flowers. They weren't reflected starlight. They glowed from within the rot. They focused on her. Her breath hitched. She took a step back, toward the western stones. Her heel squelched into soft ground. She looked down. The earth there was puckered, bubbling faintly like thick soup coming to a simmer. Dark, wet patches seeped to the surface. The smell hit her—sweet and foul, like rotting fruit and wet soil. The grove was rejecting her. Or welcoming something else through her. She was trapped between the spreading rot and the softening earth. The circle wasn’t a sanctuary. It was a ring drawn around prey. Her mind raced, discarding panic, looking for the edge of the box. The Heartstone was cold. The portal wasn’t here. This wasn’t about leaving. Something wanted *in*. The note. *Bring the stone.* They hadn’t wanted her to use it. They’d wanted her to bring it *here*. To this corrupted version of the grove. Bait. She yanked the pendant from her neck, the silver chain catching in her hair. She held the inert crimson gem in her fist. It was just a rock. The green eyes in the rot shifted closer. The whispering rose to a murmur, a droning chant that vibrated in her teeth. She did the only thing her out-of-the-box thinking could conjure. She wasn’t a fighter. She was a delivery girl. She threw things. With all her strength, she hurled the Heartstone pendant not at the eyes, but at the large standing stone to her left. The stone hit the ancient oak bark with a dull *tock* and bounced back, falling into the heart of the spreading, whispering rot. For a second, nothing. Then the sickly green eyes flared, blazing bright. The whispering became a shriek. The crimson Heartstone, lying amidst the blackened flowers, suddenly ignited. A pulse of deep, true red light exploded from it, washing over the clearing. It didn’t burn. It *cleansed*. The blackening petals reversed, the rot receding like a tide pulling back from poisoned shore. The green eyes winked out with a final, furious hiss. The ground solidified under her feet. The bubbling earth stilled. The pendant glowed once, warmly, properly, and then went dark. The grove was silent again. Just flowers, stones, and starlight. Rory stood shaking in the center, sweat cooling on her skin. She approached the spot where the pendant had fallen. It lay on clean, healthy grass, silver chain coiled beside it. The gem was dark and cold once more. She picked it up. It felt no different. But the grove did. The air was lighter. The wrongness had gone. She slipped the chain back over her head, tucking the pendant under her shirt. It lay against her skin, inert. She looked at the eastern stone. No eyes. No rot. Whatever had lured her here, whatever had started to bleed through, was gone. Pushed back. The Heartstone had done its job, but only when separated from her. Like it needed to be activated by the wrongness itself. Or like she had been interfering with it somehow. She heard a distant siren from the world beyond the stones. Real London time was passing again. She moved toward the western stones, the exit she’d come through. She paused, looking back once at the clearing that was just a clearing again. The message was a trap, but not for her body. For the stone. They wanted it *here*, in this corrupted place. They couldn’t take it from her. They needed her to bring it. Now they knew she would. And they knew, she realized with a cold drip of certainty as she stepped back through the stones into the chill of Richmond Park, that she wouldn’t stop looking for who “they” were.