Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTX55YJJ9SX57YG0SMNDVBM

The air changed before they saw the boundary. A hush, thick and sudden, like stepping into a cathedral after hours in the wind. The trees ended not in roots or underbrush but in a sharp, perfect line—trunks severed mid-curve, leaves caught mid-fall, frozen in time. Beyond it, wildflowers bloomed riotous in impossible colors: cerulean daisies, tulips the deep violet of a bruise, roses that pulsed like slow hearts. Rory stopped walking. Her breath fogged, though the air wasn’t cold. “You feel it?” Nyx’s voice came from behind her, soft as ash on stone. Not quite from one place—shifted, as if whispered through the gaps between things. She didn’t turn. “Like I’m being tasted.” “Not taste. Recognition.” Rory glanced at the pendant beneath her jacket. Crimson stone warm against her collarbone. Pulsing once, twice. They’d followed the Heartstone since it began glowing two nights ago—faint at first, like a dying ember. Now it throbbed beneath her skin, a second pulse. The Fae-Forged Blade sat cold at her hip, wrapped in cloth, but she could feel its weight like a counterbalance to the heat at her chest. Ahead, Isolde stepped across the threshold without pause. She didn’t cross so much as *appear* on the other side. One moment she stood before the dead treeline. The next, she was ten paces in, silver hair drifting as if underwater. No footprints in the moss. “You linger,” Isolde said, voice echoing slightly, though her mouth didn’t seem to move. “The Grove does not like hesitation.” Rory exhaled sharply. “You could’ve mentioned the whole ‘vanishing’ thing.” The corner of Isolde’s mouth twitched. “You did not ask.” Nyx passed Rory like smoke slipping under a door. Solid for only a second—tall, shadow-hewn, glowing violet eyes like distant stars—before dissolving into the air, reforming ten feet ahead, watching. Rory stepped forward. The moment her boot touched the moss, sound returned—but wrong. Not louder, just layered. Birdsong came in three octaves. Wind chimes, though there were no chimes, no wind. Beneath it all, a slow, deep hum, like the earth breathing. The flowers turned toward her. Not a trick of the light. Petals unfurled, stamens tilting like eyes. “What the hell?” “They know your name,” Nyx murmured. “They tasted it when you stepped over.” Isolde was already moving deeper, bare feet silent on the moss. “Names have weight here. Yours has been spoken before. By roots. By stone.” Rory tightened her grip on the pendant. “By who?” “You will know when the Grove allows it.” The standing stones came into view—a circle of ancient oaks, gnarled and thick as houses, bark etched with spirals and glyphs that shifted when not stared at directly. Between them, the air shimmered, faint as heat haze. The Veil. Rory stopped. “That’s a rift.” “The Veil breathes,” Isolde said. “This is one of its lungs.” Nyx drifted to the nearest stone, pressed a shadow-hand against it. The bark darkened where they touched, like ink soaking into paper. “Old magic. Fae, yes—but older than your Courts.” Isolde’s lavender eyes narrowed. “It is not *mine*. It is *before* mine.” Rory stepped forward, wary. The pendant flared—hot, insistent. She reached out, stopped short of the shimmer. Do not touch. The thought wasn’t hers. She jerked back. Nyx’s form flickered. “It sees you.” “That wasn’t a voice,” Rory whispered. “That was… inside.” “The Grove speaks in impressions,” Isolde said. “Truths that arrive before words.” “Charming.” A low chime resonated—single, pure. Then silence. The flowers folded in. Trees stilled. Even the hum faded. Then, ahead, a bloom opened—a lily, black as oil, petals edged in gold. At its center, a drop of light formed, rose, floated toward Rory. She didn’t move. The light brushed her wrist—her scar—and vanished. “Interesting,” Isolde murmured. “What was that?” “You were marked,” Nyx said, voice lower now. “Something in the Grove remembers your injury. Your beginning.” Rory rubbed the scar. “I fell off a bike when I was eight. Hardly apocalyptic.” “No,” Isolde said. “But the fall opened a door. Too small for most to see. But not for shadows.” Nyx turned fully to her. “You’ve always been half in two worlds, Rory. You just didn’t know it.” A rustle—like silk through reeds. A fox stepped into the clearing. Not red, but silver-white, with eyes like crushed pearls. It sat, regarded them with knowing stillness. Then it opened its mouth. And the Grove *sang*. Not from the fox. From the trees, the flowers, the stones. A harmony so vast and layered it made Rory’s bones vibrate. A language without words, full of memory and loss and hunger. She fell to one knee. Images flooded her: —*A hand placing the pendant around the neck of a child with black hair and bright blue eyes. A voice: “Keep it secret. Keep it safe.”* —*A boy with eyes like smoke, laughing as he taught her how to steal apples from Mr. Pengelly’s orchard. Then, years later, the same boy’s face, twisted with fury, a broken bottle in hand.* —*A city of spires and vine-choked towers, sky glowing amber. A woman in white robes, back turned, holding a knife over a stone altar. The same pendant in her hand.* —*A door opening. Darkness pouring out. A voice: “You called. I answered.”* Then silence. The fox blinked. The song stopped. Rory gasped, clutching her head. Her scar burned. Nyx was beside her, solid now, one cool hand on her shoulder. “You saw it, didn’t you? Not a memory. A *promise*.” Isolde stood before the central stone, where the shimmer had thickened. “The Heartstone was forged in Dymas. It is a key. And you, Aurora Carter, were always meant to carry it.” Rory swallowed. “By who?” The half-Fae turned. “The one who gave it to you. The one who died so you wouldn’t.” Nyx’s form flickered. “You’re not just fleeing an ex, Rory. You’re running toward something. Toward *him*.” “Who?” Isolde stepped aside. The rift in the Veil pulsed—and for a single second, it cleared. Through it, Rory saw a feast. Endless tables under an amber sky, laden with fruits that bled when cut, meats that pulsed like living things. Figures in ornate robes laughed, drank from goblets that refilled themselves. At the head of the hall, a man—tall, crowned with thorns of gold—lifted a glass toward the rift. His eyes locked with hers. Cold spread through her chest. She knew that face. Not from dreams. From the boy in the orchard. From her ex. From the bottle. But older. Crowned. Smiling like a man who’d just won a game no one else knew they were playing. Evan. And then the rift snapped shut.