Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTXNCD9G0DKZZSZ5D59VNM4

The oak trees loomed against the night sky like ancient sentinels, their gnarled branches twisted into shapes that seemed almost deliberate in the moonlight. Aurora pulled her jacket tighter as she stepped between the standing stones that marked the boundary of the grove, the Heartstone pendant warm against her throat—warmer than it should have been. She'd come here because the pendant had been pulling her toward Richmond Park all evening, its crimson surface pulsing with that familiar heat that meant a portal was near. But now, standing in Isolde's grove with wildflowers blooming impossibly bright beneath her feet, the wrongness settled over her like a shroud. The flowers shouldn't be blooming. Not in November. Not with frost warnings across London. Her mobile showed 11:47 PM, but the light filtering through the canopy held the quality of late afternoon sun. Time moved differently here—she knew that much from her previous visits with Isolde. An hour inside could stretch into days outside, or compress into mere minutes. Tonight, something about the temporal distortion felt malevolent. A twig snapped somewhere behind her. Aurora turned, scanning the treeline. Nothing moved among the ancient oaks, yet the sound had been distinct. Deliberate. She waited, counting her heartbeats while the pendant's warmth spread across her chest. "Isolde?" Her voice carried strangely in the grove, as if the words were being absorbed by the very air. "Are you there?" Silence answered her. Even the usual night sounds—owls, rustling leaves, the distant hum of London traffic—had died away completely. The grove felt suspended, caught between breaths. She moved deeper into the clearing, her footsteps muffled by the carpet of unnaturally vibrant flowers. Purple foxgloves towered beside her path, their bell-shaped blooms swaying without wind. Roses climbed the oak trunks in spirals of white and red, thorns gleaming like small teeth in the strange light. Another sound. This time from her left—a whisper of movement through undergrowth. Aurora's hand found the pendant instinctively, her fingers closing around the warm stone. The crimson glow intensified at her touch, and for a moment she could have sworn she saw something shift in her peripheral vision. When she turned toward it, only shadows waited between the trees. The grove stretched further than it should have. She'd been here three times before, always with Isolde as her guide, and each visit had shown her the same intimate clearing—perhaps fifty feet across, ringed by the standing stone oaks. Tonight, the boundaries seemed to have expanded, the treeline receding into darkness that her eyes couldn't penetrate. A low sound drifted from somewhere ahead. Almost like singing, but with notes that hurt to hear—too high, too low, frequencies that made her teeth ache. The melody, if it could be called that, wove between the trees with purpose, circling closer. Aurora backed toward the entrance, but when she turned, the path she'd followed had vanished. Walls of thorned roses blocked her retreat, their white blooms luminous in the half-light. The standing stones that marked the boundary were nowhere to be seen. The singing grew louder. She pressed deeper into the grove, searching for another way out, but each step seemed to take her further from escape. The flowers beneath her feet began to change—their colors bleeding from vibrant purples and reds into sickly yellows and greens that reminded her uncomfortably of old bruises. Movement flickered at the corner of her eye again. This time she caught it—a pale shape darting between the oak trunks, too quick to focus on, too large to be natural. It moved with liquid grace, as if gravity held no sway over it. The pendant burned against her skin now, its heat almost painful. She pulled it from beneath her shirt and watched its crimson depths pulse in rhythm with her racing heart. The stone's glow cast dancing shadows on the surrounding trees, and in those shadows, shapes writhed and twisted. The singing stopped. In the sudden silence, Aurora heard her own breathing, quick and shallow. Then another sound rose to replace the melody—a rustling, as if hundreds of things were moving through the undergrowth around her. Circling. Getting closer. She backed against one of the ancient oaks, its bark rough against her shoulders. The tree felt solid, real, an anchor point in a grove that seemed increasingly unmoored from reality. But even the oak felt wrong—too warm, as if something living pulsed beneath its bark. A branch creaked overhead. Aurora looked up to see pale shapes moving through the canopy, flowing from tree to tree like liquid moonlight. They kept to the shadows between the leaves, never quite solid enough to make out clearly, but their presence pressed against her consciousness like fingers probing at the edges of her mind. The rustling grew louder. Closer. She fumbled for her mobile, desperate for its mundane blue glow, but the screen showed only static. The time display flickered between impossible readings—3:17 AM, 6:45 PM, 13:82 XM—before going dark entirely. One of the pale shapes dropped from the canopy, landing in the clearing with no sound at all. It stood perhaps twenty feet away, tall and elongated, its form wavering like heat shimmer. Where its face should have been, Aurora saw only shadows within shadows. It tilted its head, studying her with attention that felt hungry. More shapes emerged from the treeline, their movements synchronized, predatory. They formed a loose circle around her, and Aurora realized with crystalline clarity that whatever these things were, they'd been hunting her from the moment she entered the grove. The pendant flared brighter, its heat now bordering on agony. The crimson light seemed to pain the creatures—they hissed and recoiled, their forms becoming even less substantial. But they didn't retreat. Instead, they began to close in, moving with the patience of things that had waited centuries and could wait centuries more. Aurora pressed tighter against the oak, her mind racing through possibilities. The pendant was clearly her protection, but its light was finite. Already she could feel its warmth beginning to ebb, the glow fading by degrees. In the dying crimson light, the creatures' true forms began to resolve. What she'd taken for elongated limbs were actually clusters of reaching tendrils. What she'd mistaken for shadows were mouths—too many mouths, opening and closing in silent hunger. They were almost close enough to touch her now.