AI The chill morning air did little to cut through Aurora’s apprehension as she stepped out of her battered Fiat 500. The car’s headlights cut through the thick fog clinging to the grounds of Richmond Park, illuminating a path that seemed to lead nowhere . It was well past midnight, the kind of hour when shadows stretched and warped, turning familiar shapes into monstrous silhouettes. She gripped the steering wheel, her knuckles white beneath the thin fabric of her gloves. The Heartstone Pendant, tucked beneath her jumper, offered no comfort. It remained stubbornly cool against her skin, a dead weight where usually a gentle pulse could be felt. She had been certain it would guide her, that its warmth would bloom like a beacon , but here, enveloped in an oppressive stillness, it did nothing.
She’d driven for hours, following the vaguest of directions scribbled on a napkin – a crude map of London’s winding arteries, then a hurried exit onto deserted country lanes, the streetlights thinning until they vanished altogether. The Fae Grove. Isolde’s grove. Richmond grove. The names echoed in her mind, each more ethereal than the last. Eva had mentioned it once, in hushed tones, a place of ancient power, a sanctuary of sorts. Now, with Evan’s shadow still long and cold over her life, Rory had latched onto the idea of a sanctuary , a place where she could simply *be *, away from the suffocating familiarity of her life above Silas’s bar. But the closer she got, the less sanctuary and more trap the idea felt.
The Fiat’s engine sputtered and died, plunging the immediate vicinity into absolute silence . The fog seemed to press in on the car, a damp, clammy shroud. Rory’s breath hitched. She fumbled with the keys, her fingers clumsy, trying to restart the engine. Nothing. It coughed once, a hollow, defeated gasp, and fell silent again. A shiver, entirely independent of the cold, traced a path up her spine.
“Great,” she muttered, the sound swallowed by the mist. She pushed the car door open, its reluctant groan unnervingly loud. The ground beneath her feet was soft, yielding, a thick carpet of unseen leaves and damp earth. In the dim glow of her headlights, she could make out the hulking shapes of trees, their branches skeletal fingers reaching into the swirling grey. This was it, then. The grove. It smelled of wet soil and decay, an earthy perfume that was far from pleasant.
She remembered Eva’s description: wildflowers blooming year-round, a pocket between worlds. Rory scanned the impenetrable gloom beyond the car’s dying lights. No wildflowers, no welcoming clearing. Just… trees. And the fog. It moved with a life of its own, swirling and coiling, obscuring and revealing glimpses of the dense woodland.
She took a step away from the car, the crunch of her boots unnervingly final. Each sound seemed amplified, distorted. A twig snapped somewhere to her left, sharp and sudden. Rory froze, her heart leaping into her throat. “Hello?” she called out, her voice thin and reedy. Only the relentless whisper of the fog answered. She strained her ears, listening. Silence. That suffocating, watchful silence that was worse than any noise.
She walked slowly now, her eyes darting from shadow to shadow. The Pendant, a small cool weight against her sternum, offered no guidance. She reached inside her jumper, her fingers tracing its smooth, cool surface. It was supposed to react, to pulse . But nothing. A wave of disappointment, sharp and bitter, washed over her. Eva had trusted her with this, had insisted Rory take it. “It will keep you safe,” she’d said, her eyes wide and earnest. Safe from Evan, safe from the creeping dread that had settled over Rory’s life like a suffocating blanket.
A flicker of movement caught her eye. To her right, just at the edge of her vision, something shifted. A deeper shadow detaching itself from the tapestry of darkness. Rory stopped, holding her breath. She squinted, trying to focus. It vanished. Just her eyes playing tricks, she told herself, the fog and the late hour conjuring phantoms. She forced herself to take another step.
Then, a sound. Not a snap of a twig, but something else . A low, guttural hum, like a distant, discordant choir. It seemed to emanate from the very ground beneath her feet, a vibration rather than an audible noise. Rory’s skin prickled. This was it. The wrongness she had felt descending the moment she turned off the main road. It wasn't just the isolation, or the broken-down car. It was a palpable sense of being observed, of a vast, unseen hunger lurking just beyond the veil of fog.
She thought about turning back, about forcing the Fiat to start, about driving blind through the encroaching darkness. But there was nowhere *to * go. The road behind had dissolved into the mist, and her car was dead. She was here. And whatever "here" was, it felt profoundly unwelcoming.
The humming intensified, a low thrum that vibrated through the soles of her boots, up her legs, into her teeth. It was a sound that burrowed into your bones, a primal thrum that spoke of ancient rituals and things that slept deep beneath the earth. Rory’s breath came in shallow gasps. She wanted to run, to scream, but her legs felt leaden, rooted to the spot.
She could feel it now, a subtle pressure against her temples, like a hand pressing gently into her skull. Her vision began to blur at the edges, the fog taking on a pearlescent sheen. And then she saw them. Shapes. Not solid figures, but impressions, outlines against the swirling grey . They moved with an unnatural grace, gliding through the trees, never quite resolving into anything distinct. They were there, and then they weren't. Like smoke, or the memory of something glimpsed in passing.
Rory stumbled back, her hand instinctively flying to her mouth to stifle a cry. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic drumbeat against the oppressive hum. The Crescent scar on her left wrist, a pale sliver against her skin, felt suddenly hot, a phantom burn.
“Isolde?” she whispered, the name a fragile plea. “Is this your grove?”
The humming seemed to pause, a fleeting moment of absolute stillness, before it surged again, louder this time, laced with a chilling , inhuman resonance . The shapes at the edge of her vision coalesced, becoming clearer, more defined. Tall, impossibly slender figures, their limbs too long, their movements jerky and unnatural. They were cloaked in shadows, their forms shifting and indistinct, yet Rory felt their gaze, a focused, chilling awareness on her.
She fumbled for the Pendant. Her fingers closed around it, and for the first time all night, a faint warmth bloomed against her palm. It was barely perceptible, a spark of heat against the encroaching cold, but it was there. And with that faint warmth , a surge of desperate resolve . She wasn't going to stand here and be consumed. She turned, her eyes fixed on the barely visible outline of her car, the only anchor to the world she knew. She had to get back. She had to escape this… wrongness.