AI The ancient oak standing stones loomed like broken teeth against a sky that possessed no stars. Aurora Carter stepped across the boundary, her boots sinking into soil that felt too soft, too yielding, as if the ground breathed beneath her weight . She had come to the Fae Grove because the Heartstone Pendant around her neck had begun to burn. Not the gentle warmth it offered near a Hel portal, but a searing heat that smelled of ozone and old blood.
Silence hit her first. Not the quiet of a late-night park in Richmond, where distant traffic hummed or owls called to one another. This was a vacuum. The air stood still, heavy and thick, pressing against her eardrums until they popped. She adjusted the strap of her delivery bag, though she carried no food tonight. The Golden Empress restaurant felt a lifetime away, separated by more than just miles.
Aurora moved toward the center of the clearing where wildflowers bloomed in unnatural profusion. Petals of electric blue and violent violet opened wide, facing a moon that hung too low and too large. The colors hurt her eyes. They seemed to vibrate, buzzing with a frequency that made her teeth ache.
She checked her watch . The second hand ticked backward. Then it stopped. Then it spun wildly clockwise before freezing again.
"Right," she whispered, her voice sounding thin, stripped of resonance . "Time behaves itself here."
The pendant throbbed against her collarbone, a rhythmic pulse that matched the sudden, erratic beating of her own heart. The deep crimson gemstone cast a faint inner glow, illuminating the small crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist. The light didn't spread; it pooled, refusing to touch the darkness beyond a foot from her body.
Something rustled in the tall grass to her left.
Aurora froze. She turned her head slowly , keeping her shoulders square. The wildflowers swayed, though no wind touched her face. The movement rippled outward from a single point, a circle of flattening stems expanding like a stone dropped in water. But nothing stood there.
"Who's there?" she called out .
The question hung in the air , unanswered. The silence rushed back in, heavier than before.
She took a step forward, her sensible shoes crunching on twigs that sounded like snapping bone . The noise seemed too loud, amplified to an uncomfortable degree. Every footfall echoed , not once, but twice, with the second echo arriving a fraction of a second too late and from the wrong direction.
A twig snapped behind her.
Aurora spun around. The space behind her remained empty, save for the towering oaks that marked the grove's edge. Their bark looked wet, glistening with a sap that resembled black tar. Branches twisted in shapes that suggested grasping fingers, contorted in eternal agony. She blinked, and for a heartbeat, the branches seemed closer than they had been moments ago .
She rubbed her left wrist, the skin tingling where the scar lay. The pendant grew hotter. The silver chain bit into her neck.
"You're not alone," a voice whispered.
It came from directly inside her right ear.
Aurora slapped a hand to her head, stumbling back. Her breath hitched in her throat. She scanned the perimeter, her bright blue eyes darting between the shadows. The darkness between the trees had deepened, becoming a solid wall of obsidian that swallowed the moonlight.
"I know you're there," she said, her voice steadier this time. "Show yourself."
The wildflowers turned their heads. Every single bloom rotated on its stem to face her. The petals curled inward, hiding their vibrant centers, forming tight, fist-like buds. A low hum began to rise from the ground, vibrating up through the soles of her shoes and into her shins. It sounded like chanting, but the words were garbled , spoken backwards by a hundred mouths at once.
Shadows detached themselves from the base of the oak trees. They did not stretch toward the light; they crawled away from it, slithering across the grass like oil spills. They moved with a fluid intelligence, pooling together in the periphery of her vision. Whenever she looked directly at them, they froze, mimicking the shape of ordinary shrubbery or rocks. But the moment her gaze shifted, they lengthened, stretching tall and thin, reaching for her ankles.
Aurora backed away from the encroaching dark, her heel catching on a root. She fell hard, the impact knocking the wind from her lungs. The earth felt cold now, leaching the warmth from her body. The pendant burned so intensely she could smell her own skin singeing.
She scrambled to her feet, ignoring the pain in her knee. The humming grew louder, resolving into a distinct rhythm. *Thump-thump. Thump-thump.* It matched the pulse of the stone, but it also matched the sound of footsteps approaching from all sides.
She heard breathing. Not her own. Shallow, wet inhalations came from the darkness to her left, synchronized with dry, rasping exhales from her right. The sounds circled her, tightening the noose.
"Come out," she demanded, though her voice trembled . "I'm not afraid of parlor tricks."
The moon above shifted. It didn't cloud over; it changed shape. The cratered surface rearranged itself, forming a crude approximation of a human face. The eyes of the moon opened, wide and unblinking, staring down at her with an expression of hungry curiosity. The light it cast turned sickly green, bathing the grove in a pallor that made the wildflowers look like rotting flesh.
The shadows lunged.
Aurora ducked, swinging her arm blindly. Her hand passed through the darkness, meeting no resistance, yet the air where the shadow had been felt icy cold, numbing her fingers instantly. The numbness spread up her arm, creeping toward her shoulder.
She ran.
There was no direction, no path. She simply fled the center of the clearing, aiming for the gap between two standing stones. The distance seemed to stretch with every stride. The oaks rushed toward her, their branches lowering like portcullises. She had to duck under a limb that felt like dried leather, rough and hot to the touch.
Behind her, the grass parted. Something large moved through the flowers, crushing them flat without a sound. The sheer size of the disturbance suggested a beast, yet the silence of its approach suggested a ghost.
Aurora's lungs burned. The air tasted metallic, like copper pennies held under the tongue. She glanced back.
Nothing stood there. Just the green moonlight and the swaying grass. But the sense of presence intensified, a physical pressure against her spine, pushing her forward. She could feel eyes on the back of her neck, dozens of them, blinking in unison.
She reached the boundary stones. The ancient oak bark felt real under her palms, rough and solid. She pushed against it, trying to force her way through the gap. The space between the stones had narrowed. What had been a wide archway now stood barely wide enough for a child to squeeze through.
The pendant screamed against her chest, a high-pitched whine that drilled into her skull. The crimson light flared, blinding her for a second. When her vision cleared, the gap had vanished. The two stones stood fused together, a seamless wall of wood and stone.
The breathing stopped. The humming ceased.
Absolute silence returned, more terrifying than the noise.
Aurora pressed her ear against the fused stones. On the other side, she heard the faint, distant sound of London traffic. A car horn honked. A dog barked. The normalcy of it taunted her.
Something tapped on her shoulder.
Light, delicate, like a finger made of air.
She spun around, fists raised. The clearing stood empty. The wildflowers had bloomed again, their petals wide open, vibrating with that same sickening hum. The moon watched, its face unchanged.
Then she saw them. Footprints.
They appeared in the soft soil around her, materializing one by one. Small, bare feet. They circled her, growing closer with each new impression. The mud in the prints bubbled, dark and oily. The circle tightened until the toes of the invisible walker brushed against her own boots.
Aurora held her breath. The air grew frigid. Frost spiderwebbed across the grass, creeping up her legs. The pendant went cold, dead weight against her skin.
From the corner of her eye, a figure formed. It lacked definition, a blur of darker shadow against the night. It stood inches from her face. She could smell it now—damp earth, decaying leaves, and something sweet, like rotting fruit.
The blur tilted its head.
Aurora refused to look directly at it. She kept her eyes fixed on the moon, on the grotesque face staring down. Her hand drifted to her pocket, searching for anything sharp, anything solid. Her fingers closed around a set of keys, the metal cold and reassuring.
The whisper came again, this time from everywhere at once, vibrating in her bones.
*"Found you."*
The wildflowers erupted. Not in growth, but in motion . They tore themselves from the earth, roots dangling like entrails, and floated into the air, surrounding her in a swirling vortex of color and decay. The petals fell away, revealing writhing centers that looked suspiciously like tiny, screaming mouths.
Aurora backed up until her spine hit the fused stones. There was nowhere left to go. The circle of floating flowers closed in, blocking out the green moonlight, plunging her into a twilight of their own making. The shadows in the corners of the grove began to detach fully, rising up to take form, tall and spindly, with limbs that bent at too many joints.
She gripped her keys tighter, the metal digging into her palm. The lead figure, the blur of shadow, stepped forward. It gained definition with every second. Long hair, matted and wet. Eyes that reflected no light. A mouth that stretched too wide across a face that seemed to slide off the skull .
It raised a hand. The fingers were long, too long, ending in points that gleamed like obsidian.
Aurora opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out. The silence of the Fae Grove had finally claimed her voice. The creature leaned in, its breath washing over her face, smelling of graves and forgotten things.
The pendant gave one final, weak pulse , then went dark.