Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTXCRQY7E3A6VQVWA3MAE55

The Fae Grove revealed itself in fragments. First came the scent—wild honeysuckle threaded with something sharper, like crushed mint left too long in summer rain. Then the light shifted. Aurora blinked against the sudden amber-gold that filtered through leaves she hadn't seen a moment before. "Did we just—" She turned back, but the path they'd followed through Richmond Park had vanished. Ancient oaks ringed them now, their trunks twisted into shapes that suggested faces, reaching hands, creatures caught mid-transformation. "Welcome to places that shouldn't exist." Nyx's form rippled at the edges, their usual solidity wavering. The shadows here didn't behave. They pooled beneath the trees like spilled ink, defying the direction of light. "The boundary stones are behind us. We're between now." Aurora's fingers found the Heartstone Pendant beneath her jacket. No warmth. They weren't near a Hel portal, but the pulse of magic saturated everything. The air itself tasted different—cleaner, older, as if they'd stepped into the first breath of creation. "Watch your step." Isolde moved ahead with that uncanny grace, her silver hair catching light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. True to the stories Aurora had heard, the half-Fae woman left no trace in the moss. "Time dances to its own music here. Minutes may be hours. Hours may be heartbeats." The Grove opened before them in defiance of natural law. Wildflowers carpeted the ground in a riot of colours that Aurora had no names for—blues that hurt to look at, reds that sang, yellows that tasted of lemon on the back of her tongue. She stopped, head tilted. "Do you hear that?" "The flowers." Nyx crouched, their shadowy fingers hovering above a cluster of silver blooms that chimed like glass bells. "They're singing. Christ, I'd forgotten how mad this place is." Aurora knelt beside them. The flowers did sing—not metaphorically, but in actual crystalline notes that formed harmonies too complex for human music. When Nyx reached closer, the blooms leaned away, petals folding shut. "They remember you're dead." Isolde glanced back. "The living and the in-between. Nature knows the difference." "Comforting." Nyx stood, brushing shadow-hands against their coat. The gesture was so human, so habitual, that Aurora felt a pang. Four centuries of being neither alive nor gone, and still they clung to mannerisms from breathing days. They moved deeper. The path—if it could be called that—shifted beneath their feet. Moss one moment, smooth stone the next, then something that felt like walking on water that had forgotten how to be wet. Aurora's boots made no sound. Neither did Nyx's, but then they rarely did. Only Isolde's footsteps rang out, clear and deliberate, like a countdown in reverse. The trees grew stranger. One had branches that grew downward into the earth while roots reached toward the sky, leaves sprouting from subterranean wood. Another bled golden sap that pooled at its base before evaporating into mist. The mist formed shapes—deer that weren't deer, children that were never children, dancers performing steps from forgotten rituals. "Don't stare too long." Isolde's warning came soft. "The memories here are hungry. They'll pull you in if you let them." Aurora dragged her gaze away from a particularly mesmerizing spiral of light and shadow. Her eyes ached. "What is this place, really? You said it's between Earth and the Fae realm, but it feels like—" "A wound? A scar? A seam?" Isolde laughed, the sound like wind chimes in a storm. "All of those. None of those. The Grove exists because two worlds couldn't quite agree on where one ended and the other began. So this formed. A compromise written in wild magic and older rules." They emerged into a clearing that stole Aurora's breath. A pool of water—if it was water—stretched before them, its surface mirror-smooth and reflecting a sky that didn't match the one above. The real sky, what she could see through the canopy, remained that warm amber-gold. The reflection showed twilight stars, constellations she'd never seen, and three moons in different phases. "Bloody hell," Aurora breathed. Nyx moved to the water's edge. Their reflection didn't appear. Where they should have been, the pool showed only the alien sky, as if they were a window rather than a presence. "I hate Fae places." "And yet you came." Isolde knelt by the pool, her lavender eyes distant. "Touch the water, Aurora Carter. Not you, Nightwhisper. Your essence would poison it." "Brilliant. Stand aside, then, the dead thing might contaminate the magic pond." Nyx retreated, but Aurora caught the hurt beneath the sarcasm. She approached slowly. The water called to something in her chest, a resonance that made the Heartstone Pendant thrum against her skin. Not the warmth of Hel portals, but a different frequency entirely. Her fingers broke the surface. Cold shot up her arm, but not painful—clarifying. The water clung to her hand like mercury, forming patterns across her skin. Symbols. Words in a language that predated English, Welsh, Irish, predated human tongues entirely. They glowed pale silver against her flesh before sinking in, vanishing beneath. "What the—" Aurora yanked her hand back. The symbols remained visible for three more heartbeats before fading completely. "What did it just do?" "Marked you." Isolde's face remained serene, unreadable. "The Grove recognizes potential. You've been seen, Aurora Carter. The Fae Courts will know a mortal walked here and the land itself deemed her worthy of marking." "Worthy of what?" Aurora's voice pitched higher than she intended. She rubbed at her hand, but the skin showed nothing now. Only the ghost of cold remained. "That's the question, isn't it?" Isolde rose, turning toward a path Aurora could have sworn wasn't there before. "The land doesn't mark many. Myself, centuries ago. A handful of others throughout history. Each marking different. Each meaning unique." Nyx moved closer to Aurora, their presence a familiar shadow. "What did the symbols say?" "I don't know. I couldn't read them. They felt like—" Aurora struggled for words. "Like remembering something I never learned. Like déjà vu made solid." The deeper path called. Aurora felt it pulling at her sternum, a fishhook certainty that they hadn't reached the Grove's heart yet. The standing stones Isolde had mentioned—the boundary markers—must be behind them now, but distance here meant nothing. They could walk for minutes or days. They could be gone from London for a breath or a lifetime. Overhead, something that might have been a bird sang three notes in descending fifths. The trees answered in harmonics. The wind carried whispers in dead languages and ones not yet born. Isolde paused at the path's mouth. Wildflowers grew thicker here, pressing against an archway formed by two oaks grown together, their trunks fused in an embrace that had taken centuries or seconds. "Beyond this point, the Grove shows you what you need to see. Not what you want. Not what you expect. What you need." Those pale lavender eyes fixed on Aurora. "You asked to come here. You sought the Seer's counsel. The land will counsel you in its own way." Aurora's hand drifted to the Fae-Forged Blade at her hip. The moonsilver dagger felt warmer here, almost alive. "And if I don't like what I see?" "Then you'll learn anyway." Isolde stepped through the archway and disappeared, not into darkness but into light—pure, blinding, impossible light that shouldn't exist in a grove of trees. Nyx looked at Aurora. Their violet eyes, usually so steady, showed something like concern. "You don't have to go further." "Yes, I do." Aurora straightened her shoulders, felt the weight of her delivery bag's strap though she'd left it back in London. Some habits ran deeper than presence. "Stay close?" "Always." Together, they stepped through the archway into light that tasted of starlight and smelled of rain that had never touched earth. The Grove's true heart awaited, and Aurora walked forward into wonder and terror intertwined.