Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTXJQE0SPF5QPW7EDTGJJ99

The iron gates of Richmond Park groaned shut behind Aurora, the sound swallowed by fog that had rolled in from nowhere. She checked her phone—11:47 PM—and the screen's blue glow painted her face in harsh light before she pocketed it. The text from the unknown number had been specific: the Grove, midnight, come alone. She should have told someone. Eva would have insisted on coming, or at least demanded she carry something more useful than the pocket knife tucked into her jacket. But the message had promised answers about the pendant, about the dreams that had plagued her for weeks now, and Aurora was tired of waking up screaming with no memory of why. The Heartstone hung warm against her chest, warmer than it should be through two layers of clothing. She pressed her palm against it and felt it pulse—once, twice—like a second heartbeat trying to sync with her own. The path to Isolde's grove was a route she'd memorized months ago, back when the fae woman had first appeared in her life with cryptic warnings and maddeningly incomplete explanations. Turn left at the fallen oak. Follow the deer track until the ground slopes upward. Look for the standing stones. Aurora found the oak easily enough, its massive trunk split and blackened from some long-ago lightning strike. But the deer track had vanished beneath a carpet of wildflowers that shouldn't be blooming in October, their petals pale as bone in the moonlight. She pushed through them anyway, and they brushed against her jeans with a dry, papery whisper. Halfway up the slope, she stopped. The flowers behind her were standing upright again, as if she'd never walked through them at all. "Just the wind," she murmured, and hated how thin her voice sounded in the silence. Because it was silent—utterly, completely silent. No owl calls, no rustling of nocturnal creatures through the undergrowth. Not even the distant hum of traffic from the roads that bordered the park. She climbed faster. The standing stones emerged from the fog like crooked teeth, their surfaces slick with moisture that hadn't been there a moment ago. Aurora counted them as she approached—seven, there should be seven—and her steps faltered when she reached five and the fog swallowed everything beyond. The pendant burned against her skin. Actually burned, not the gentle warmth of proximity to something otherworldly, but a searing heat that made her gasp and yank at the chain. Her fingers came away unmarked, but the sensation remained, throbbing in time with— With what? She stood motionless, straining to hear. There. A sound like breathing, but too slow, too deep, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. In. Out. In. Out. Each exhale stirred the fog, sent it curling around her ankles like something alive. "Hello?" Aurora called. Her voice disappeared into the mist without echo, without carrying. As if something had eaten it. "I got your message. I'm here." The breathing stopped. The silence that followed was worse. It pressed against her eardrums, made her aware of her own pulse hammering in her throat. She turned in a slow circle, peering into the impenetrable white, and caught movement at the edge of her vision. A shape, tall and thin, standing between two stones. When she looked directly at it, nothing was there. "This isn't funny." She hated the tremor in her voice. Hated more that she couldn't make it stop. "If this is some kind of test—" The sixth standing stone emerged from the fog. It was three feet to her left, and she would have sworn on her mother's life that it hadn't been there seconds ago. Aurora backed away slowly, her hand finding the pocket knife and gripping it through the fabric. The Heartstone's heat had faded to something bearable, but it pulsed faster now, urgent, like a warning she couldn't decode. The flowers at her feet had changed. They were no longer pale—they were red, deep crimson, the exact color of the pendant's gemstone. And they were growing, unfurling their petals even as she watched, reaching toward her like hands. She ran. The slope that had seemed gentle on the way up had turned treacherous, the ground soft and unstable beneath her boots. Aurora stumbled, caught herself on a tree trunk that was too smooth, too warm, and jerked her hand away with a sound that might have been a scream if she'd had enough air to voice it. The bark was covered in something slick. In the darkness, it looked black. It probably wasn't black. Behind her—close behind her, too close—footsteps. Heavy and deliberate, each one landing a half-second after her own, as if something was matching her pace precisely. She didn't look back. Looking back would make it real, and if it was real, she didn't know what she would do. The deer track reappeared, and she followed it blindly, branches whipping at her face and arms. Her lungs burned. Her legs burned. Everything burned except the pendant, which had gone ice-cold against her chest, and that terrified her more than anything else. She burst through a wall of undergrowth and found herself back at the standing stones. All seven of them. Aurora spun around, and the path she'd just run down was gone. Nothing but fog and flowers and those crooked stone teeth, surrounding her now, a complete circle with no gaps. "Let me out." Her voice cracked. "Whatever you want, whatever this is, just let me out." The breathing started again. Closer this time. So close she could feel it on the back of her neck, a cold exhalation that smelled of turned earth and rotting flowers. She made herself turn around. The center of the grove was no longer empty. Something stood there, something she couldn't quite focus on, as if her eyes refused to process what they were seeing. It was tall—impossibly tall—and thin, and its limbs bent in directions that made her stomach lurch. Where its face should have been, there was only darkness, a void that seemed to drink in the meager moonlight. It didn't move. It didn't need to. Aurora understood, with a certainty that bypassed thought entirely, that running was pointless. That it had always been here, waiting, and she had walked into its arms willingly. The pendant flared to life, its crimson glow pushing back the darkness just enough for her to see— Faces. Dozens of them, pressed against the inside of the fog like hands against glass, mouths open in silent screams. Some of them looked fresh. Others were nothing but skulls with tattered flesh, eye sockets dark and hollow. One of them was wearing Eva's jacket. "No." The word came out as a whisper. "No, she's at home, she's safe, I checked, I—" The figure in the center tilted its head. The movement was wrong, mechanical, like a puppet operated by someone who had only read about how bodies moved. And then it spoke, and its voice was inside her head, not her ears, a sound like grinding stone and snapping bone: AURORA CARTER. Her name, but twisted. Corrupted. The syllables stretched and distorted until they barely sounded like language at all. WE HAVE BEEN WAITING. The Heartstone blazed against her chest, and Aurora screamed as its heat seared through her shirt, through her skin, burning a brand she would carry forever if she survived this. The thing moved toward her—no, not moved, it simply was closer, as if the space between them had ceased to exist—and its void-face filled her vision. WE KNOW WHAT YOU ARE. The crescent scar on her wrist began to bleed. Aurora fell to her knees, clutching her arm, watching her own blood drip onto the crimson flowers. Where each drop landed, the petals curled inward, shriveling and turning black. The fog recoiled. The faces in its depths flickered, guttering like candles in a strong wind. The thing stopped. For the first time, something other than patient hunger radiated from its form. Something that might have been surprise, or recognition, or fear. The pendant's glow turned from crimson to white, blinding, and Aurora felt power surge through her veins—foreign, ancient, wrong—but it was hers, somehow, it had always been hers, and she grabbed onto it with both hands and screamed a word she didn't know in a language she'd never learned. The standing stones cracked. All seven of them, simultaneously, fissures racing up their surfaces as the white light poured through her and out of her and into the ground beneath her feet. The thing in the center of the grove made a sound. Not words this time, but a shriek that rattled her bones and made her teeth ache. It was retreating, folding in on itself, its impossible limbs crumpling like paper in a fire. But the faces in the fog—they weren't retreating. They were pushing forward, pressing against whatever barrier separated them from the grove, and Aurora recognized more of them now. The old woman from her building. The delivery driver who'd trained her at the Golden Empress. A boy she'd gone to school with, fifteen years ago, who'd vanished during a field trip and never been found. The pendant went dark. The power drained out of her like water through a sieve, and Aurora collapsed onto the grass, her body shaking so violently she couldn't have stood if her life depended on it. The fog rushed back in, thick and choking, and somewhere in its depths, she heard footsteps again. Many footsteps this time, surrounding her, closing in. Something brushed her shoulder. Cold fingers, impossibly cold, curling around her arm where the scar still bled. She heard a voice—Eva's voice—whispering her name. "Rory. Rory, look at me." She didn't look. She kept her eyes squeezed shut and her hand pressed against the ice-cold pendant and waited for whatever came next. The fingers tightened, squeezed, and she felt nails—no, not nails, something sharper—pressing into her skin. "You shouldn't have come here alone."