Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTXA79RG0QSTXB8F2FWSEFA

The air in Richmond Park after midnight held a damp chill that seeped through Rory’s jacket. The city’s orange glow was a distant smudge beyond the treeline. She stood before the boundary of the Fae Grove, the ancient oak standing stones like silent sentinels in the moonlight. The Heartstone pendant against her chest was a cold, inert weight. It hadn’t pulsed once since she’d entered the park. That was the problem. She’d come because the silence was wrong. For three nights, the pendant had slept. No gentle warmth, no faint crimson pulse. It was just a piece of jewelry. In her world, a quiet artifact was a comfort. In this one, it was a alarm bell with a dead battery. She needed to know if the gate was closed, or if something was… blocking the signal. Rory stepped between the stones. The shift was instantaneous. The city sounds vanished, replaced by a dense, velvet quiet. The temperature rose a few degrees, carrying the cloying scent of night-blooming jasmine and damp earth. Moonlight, brighter here, dappled the clearing. Wildflowers—foxgloves and wolfsbane, things that shouldn’t bloom in October—glowed with a soft, internal light. It was beautiful. It was utterly still. She took a few cautious steps inward, her trainers whispering through the dewy grass. The Grove was never truly silent. There was always the hum of insects, the rustle of something small in the underbrush, the sigh of the wind through leaves that didn’t exist in Richmond Park. Tonight, there was nothing. The air felt thick, resistant. A soft crunch came from her left. Rory froze, her head snapping toward the sound. Just shadows between the broad trunks of the oaks. A shape, maybe. The afterimage of a branch shifting in a nonexistent breeze. She held her breath, counting heartbeats. Ten. Twenty. Nothing moved. “Getting jumpy,” she muttered to herself, the sound swallowed by the oppressive quiet. She forced her shoulders to relax. *Cool-headed, Carter. Think.* She walked toward the center of the clearing, where the veil was thinnest. The grass here was trampled flat in a perfect circle. She knelt, placing a palm on the ground. The earth was warm, almost feverish. But the pendant remained cold. That’s when she heard the breathing. It wasn’t hers. It was a low, wet sound, like air being pulled through a waterlogged pipe. It came from behind her, somewhere near the standing stones she’d just passed through. Rory didn’t turn. Every instinct screamed to bolt, but movement would trigger a chase. She stayed on her knees, hand still pressed to the warm earth, and slowly, so slowly, turned her head just enough to see from the corner of her eye. The stones stood as they were. No figure. But the space between the two central oaks seemed… darker. A pool of absolute black that drank the moonlight. The wet breathing stopped. Silence rushed back in, heavier than before. She stood up, her joints protesting with a stiffness that felt imposed. The wrongness wasn’t just a feeling now; it was a physical pressure, a cork being pushed into the neck of the world. The Grove’s eternal springtime felt fake, a painted backdrop. The glowing flowers looked like watchful eyes. A twig snapped, directly ahead this time. Her gaze locked on the treeline opposite. The shadows there were wrong. They didn’t match the shape of the trees. One shadow was too tall, too thin, a vertical streak of darkness that tapered to a point near the ground. As she watched, it slid sideways, merging with the trunk of an oak. Not an animal. Nothing that solid moved like that. The Heartstone gave a single, convulsive throb against her sternum. Icy cold, not warm. A spike of pain, then nothing. “Okay,” Rory whispered. “Not alone.” The thing in the trees mirrored her voice. A dry, rasping parody of her words leaked from the darkness. *“O… kay.”* Blood turned to ice in her veins. She took a step back, toward the stone circle exit. The tall, thin shadow detached itself from the oak and took a step forward. It didn’t walk. It unfolded, gaining height, its form a blur of stretched darkness. It had no face, but she felt its attention like a physical touch, a cold spot on her skin. Another wet breath echoed from behind her—from the original spot near the entrance. They weren’t just in here with her. They were between her and the way out. *Think. Out-of-the-box. Now.* The Grove’s time dilation was a trap. An hour here could be minutes outside. Or days. She had no frame of reference. Running blind was a gamble with her own lifespan. The tall shadow unfolded another step, closing the distance. The air around it grew colder. The glowing flowers near its base withered, petals curling to black ash in seconds. Rory’s hand closed around the pendant. The silver chain bit into her fingers. It was just a stone. A conduit. The power, the connection, came from the realm it was tied to. Dymas. Or Hel. The pendant was a key, a sensor. What if the silence wasn’t an absence, but a suppression? Something was jamming the signal, something that fed on silence and stillness and fear. She didn’t have magic. She didn’t have a weapon. She had a theory. She dropped the pendant. It landed on the warm, trodden earth of the ritual circle with a soft *clink*. For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then the tall shadow froze. The wet breathing behind her hitched. The deep crimson gem of the Heartstone began to glow. Not the friendly pulse of a portal nearby. This was a fierce, angry light, a coal fanned to life. It threw sharp, dancing shadows across the clearing, banishing the unnatural darkness around the thin figure. The creature recoiled, a soundless shriek twisting its form. The ground under the pendant trembled. The warm earth cracked, thin lines radiating from the stone like a web. From the cracks seeped not darkness, but a faint, opposite light—the gold-and-silver haze of the true Fae realm. It wasn’t a portal. It was a breach. A pinprick. The Grove reacted violently. The false stillness shattered. The air filled with a sound like tearing silk and a thousand discordant wind chimes. The wildflowers blazed with light, their glow now defensive, aggressive. The tall shadow fractured, pulling back into the deeper woods. The wet breathing retreated, fading into a gurgle and then silence. Rory didn’t wait. She snatched the pendant from the ground—it was searing hot now, almost too painful to hold—and sprinted for the standing stones. The world around her was a riot of sensation, the Grove purging the infection she’d provoked. Light and shadow warred. The scent of jasmine was overwhelmed by ozone and burnt hair. She burst between the stones, stumbling back into the ordinary chill of Richmond Park. The city sounds rushed back—distant traffic, a siren, the wind in normal trees. She collapsed to her knees on the damp grass, gulping the clean, cold air. Her hand shook as she opened her fist. The Heartstone pendant lay in her palm, its crimson glow fading back to a dormant, dark red. It was warm again. Not the welcoming warmth of a nearby portal, but the residual heat of a fired gun. She looked back at the standing stones. They were just stones. The Grove beyond was invisible, silent. Sealed. But it hadn’t been empty. Something had been waiting in the quiet. Something that knew how to mimic, to hide, to swallow light and sound. And she had just pissed it off.