Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTXKZPN0YE28REZP3GQNPY3

The standing stones rose from the earth like the ribs of some enormous beast, ancient oak transformed into something that was no longer quite wood. Aurora's breath caught as she stepped between two of them, the air on the other side carrying a sweetness that bordered on intoxication. Beside her, Nyx's shadowy form flickered—a pulse of violet light in their eyes, there and gone. "Interesting." The whisper came from everywhere and nowhere, the way Nyx always spoke. "The boundary thins here." "You think?" Aurora touched the Heartstone at her throat. The crimson gem pulsed warm against her collarbone, a steady heartbeat matching her own. Since they'd entered Richmond Park an hour ago—had it only been an hour?—the pendant had grown warmer with each step toward this hidden clearing. Wildflowers carpeted the grove in colours Aurora had no names for. Blues that shifted toward violet when she looked directly at them. Yellows that held the warmth of fresh honey. A carpet of white blooms with centres that glowed faintly, like captured starlight scattered across the ground. She knelt, reaching toward one, and the flower turned its face toward her hand. "Don't." Nyx's form solidified, a hand of concentrated shadow closing around her wrist. "The grove remembers intention. Touch nothing until we understand what it remembers." Aurora pulled back, cradling her hand against her chest. The flower had already returned to its original position, swaying despite the absence of wind. "You could have just said that without grabbing me." "I could have." She shot them a look, but Nyx had already drifted toward the centre of the clearing, their body alternating between solid and translucent as they moved. The effect was like watching smoke try to remember how to be human. The grove itself defied easy comprehension. Oak trees ringed the perimeter, their branches intertwined overhead in a canopy that filtered the daylight into something softer, more golden. Time moved strangely here—that much Aurora had read in the few texts she'd managed to find about Fae-touched places—but reading about it and experiencing it were vastly different things. Her watch had stopped the moment she crossed the threshold, the second hand frozen between ticks. "Do you feel that?" She turned in a slow circle, arms spread at her sides. "The pull of something old?" Nyx paused at the centre of the clearing, near a pool of water so still it might have been glass. "Yes. It feels like the between-places where I exist. Like home, if home had ever been anything but a memory." Aurora joined them at the pool's edge. The water reflected nothing—not the sky above, not the trees, not their faces. Instead, shapes moved beneath the surface, suggestions of places and people that flickered past too quickly to identify. "That's unnerving." "Most truths are, at first glance." She looked up, searching for the source of the new voice. A woman stood at the far edge of the clearing, her silver hair catching light that seemed to exist only for her. Aurora hadn't seen her approach. Hadn't heard footsteps on the soft earth. One moment the space had been empty, and the next— "You must be Isolde." The Half-Fae smiled, and it transformed her ethereal features into something almost approachable. Almost. "Aurora Carter. The one who carries a heart from Dymas and a blade from my people." She moved closer, and Aurora noticed with a start that the wildflowers didn't bend beneath her feet. She left no impression in the soil, no trace of her passage. "You've come seeking answers." "I've come because you sent me that blade without explanation. Because this pendant appeared in my flat three days ago with a note that had your signature." Aurora's hand moved to the Fae-Forged Blade at her hip, the moonsilver hilt cold even through the fabric of her jacket. "I don't appreciate being manipulated." "Lies." Isolde's pale lavender eyes gleamed with amusement rather than accusation. "You do appreciate it, on some level. You appreciate the mystery. The puzzle. It's why you left Cardiff, why you ran to London instead of somewhere quieter, somewhere you could disappear." She tilted her head, studying Aurora like a particularly interesting specimen. "You don't want to disappear. You want to matter." Nyx shifted beside Aurora, their form elongating slightly. "We didn't come here to be psychoanalysed." "No. You came because the Veil grows thin, and Aurora's connection to Dymas through that pendant makes her a beacon for things that should remain on the other side." Isolde's gaze moved to the Heartstone, and for a moment, her playful demeanour shifted into something older, more serious. "You've noticed the warmth. The way it pulses when you near places where the barrier is weakest." Aurora's hand went to the pendant without conscious thought. "How did you—" "I see what is, what was, and what might yet come to pass. The gift is as much curse as blessing." Isolde gestured to the pool, and the water began to shift, images forming on its surface. A city skyline Aurora recognised as London, but wrong—darker, the buildings twisted into shapes that hurt to look at directly. Hel-bound creatures crawling through tears in reality. The amber sky of Dymas visible through gaps in the clouds. "The winter solstice approaches. The Veil will weaken, as it always does." Isolde's voice had lost its riddling quality, settling into something more direct. "But this year, the thinning has already begun. Premature. Unnatural. Someone is pulling at the threads from the other side." The images in the water shifted. A figure in shadow, performing a ritual Aurora didn't recognise. The Heartstone, glowing with that deep crimson light, sitting on an altar surrounded by candles. Then nothing—just the blank, reflective surface of the pool. "That's where the pendant came from," Aurora said slowly. "Someone in Dymas sent it to me. Someone who wanted me to find you." "Or someone who wanted you marked." Isolde moved to a flat stone near the pool's edge, settling onto it with a grace that made Aurora intensely aware of her own human clumsiness. "The Heartstone is exactly what its name suggests—a piece of crystallised essence from Dymas itself. It carries a piece of that realm within it. And it carries a piece of you now, as well." The warmth at Aurora's throat suddenly felt heavier. More significant. She thought about removing the chain, setting the pendant aside, but something in Isolde's words suggested it was far too late for that. "You said I was a beacon." "For the things hunting you? Yes." Isolde smiled again, and this time the expression held no warmth. "Welcome to the grove, Aurora Carter. You've stepped into a war that has been brewing for three hundred years. I suggest you learn to fight quickly."