Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTXNNG33K6BAF6MQ1Z4EDZP

The iron gate of Richmond Park groaned shut behind Aurora, the sound unnaturally loud in the thick silence. She'd scaled the fence after hours countless times before—usually to meet Isolde for training—but tonight felt different. The familiar path stretched before her, yet the darkness pressed closer than it should, swallowing the beam of her torch after only a few metres. She touched the Heartstone pendant through her shirt. Still cold. No Hel portal nearby, at least. Small comfort when every instinct screamed at her to turn back. "Just find the standing stones," she muttered, forcing her feet forward. "Check if Isolde left the message, then get out." The Fae woman had been missing for three days. No word, no warning. Just gone. Then this afternoon, a single oak leaf had appeared on Aurora's pillow—Isolde's calling card. If she'd left instructions at the Grove, Aurora needed to find them. Twenty minutes in, the path should have curved left toward the ancient oaks. Instead, it stretched straight as an arrow into the gloom. Aurora stopped, sweeping her torch in a slow arc. The trees looked wrong—too uniform, their trunks perfectly spaced like soldiers at attention. A branch snapped somewhere behind her. She spun, light piercing the darkness. Nothing. Just the endless rows of identical trees. "Hello?" The word came out as a whisper. She cleared her throat, tried again. "Isolde?" The silence that answered felt hungry. Aurora quickened her pace, trainers crunching on dead leaves that hadn't been there moments before. The path had to curve eventually. Richmond Park wasn't that big. She'd walked these trails a hundred times in daylight, knew every twist and turn. But the darkness had eaten those memories, leaving only this endless corridor of trees. Another sound—soft footsteps matching hers, just out of sync. She stopped. They continued for two more steps before cutting off. "Right. Definitely not imagining that." Aurora's hand found the pendant again, fingers closing around it through the fabric. Still no warmth, no pulse of warning. Whatever stalked her wasn't from Hel. She broke into a jog. The footsteps followed, no longer bothering to match her rhythm. They came from the left now. Then the right. Then somehow from above, as if something massive walked along the canopy. The trees began to thin. Thank God. Aurora burst into a clearing—not the Grove, but at least a break from those suffocating trunks. She bent double, catching her breath, torch beam dancing across grass that looked silver in the moonlight. No. Not silver. Frost. In July. She straightened slowly, breath misting in air that had dropped twenty degrees. The clearing stretched wider than it should, edges lost in shadow. And in the centre... "That's not possible." The standing stones rose from the frostbitten earth, but wrong. Where Isolde's Grove held seven ancient oaks grown into living monuments, these were actual stone—black granite that seemed to drink in her torchlight. They formed the same pattern, though. The same sacred geometry Isolde had shown her. Which meant this was the Grove. Transformed. Corrupted. Aurora approached the central stone, ice crunching beneath her feet. The carvings that usually showed Celtic knots and woodland scenes had changed. New symbols writhed across the surface—angular, sharp-edged things that hurt to look at directly. "Isolde?" She reached out, fingers stopping inches from the stone. "What did you do?" The footsteps circled the clearing now. Measured. Patient. Aurora tracked them with her torch, but the beam found only empty air and shifting shadows. Whatever stalked her stayed just beyond the light's reach. A whisper drifted from the darkness. Not words—at least, not in any language she recognised. The sound slithered around the stones, growing louder, multiplying. Soon a dozen voices spoke in unison, their syllables scraping against her ears like broken glass. The Heartstone flared hot against her chest. Aurora yanked it free, the silver chain tangling in her hair. The pendant blazed crimson, casting bloody shadows across the stones. Not a Hel portal, then. Something else. Something the Heartstone recognised as equally dangerous. The whispers stopped. In the silence, she heard breathing. Slow. Deliberate. Coming from everywhere and nowhere. "Right. Message received." Aurora backed toward the edge of the clearing. "No note from Isolde. Time to leave." She made it three steps before the darkness moved. Not shadows—the actual darkness, peeling away from the trees like fabric. It flowed across the frost, reaching for her with tendrils that defied physics. Where it touched the ground, the ice blackened and cracked. Aurora ran. Behind her, something laughed. Not a human sound—too many throats, too many mouths. The standing stones pulsed with sickly light, their carvings writhing, alive, hungry. She crashed through the tree line, branches tearing at her jacket. The path had vanished. Only the wild tangle of Richmond Park's interior remained, and even that felt wrong. Trees grew too close together. Roots erupted from the earth at sharp angles, trying to snare her ankles. The darkness flowed between the trunks, herding her deeper into the park. Her torch flickered. Once. Twice. "Don't you dare—" It died. Aurora stumbled to a halt, hand clutched around the useless torch. The Heartstone's glow barely penetrated the black, showing her only glimpses—a twisted root here, a low branch there. The breathing sound had multiplied, surrounding her. Closing in. She pressed her back against a tree, trying to control her own ragged breathing. Think. Isolde had taught her about places where reality wore thin. Places where other things could bleed through. If the Grove had become one of those places... The tree behind her moved. Not the whole tree. Just the bark against her shoulders, rippling like skin. She jerked away, stumbling into the clearing she'd just fled. The standing stones loomed before her, their carvings now glowing with that diseased light. Something stepped out from behind the central stone. It wore Isolde's shape but wrong. Too tall. Limbs too long. And where its eyes should have been, only smooth skin remained. It tilted its head at an impossible angle, neck extending like taffy. "Aurora." Its voice came from the stones themselves, from the earth, from the sky. "She said you would come." The thing that wasn't Isolde smiled, its mouth opening wider and wider, revealing row after row of needle-sharp teeth. The Heartstone blazed brighter, searing her palm. Aurora raised it like a shield, its crimson light driving back the encroaching shadows. The not-Isolde thing recoiled, hissing through its impossible mouth. "Where is she?" Aurora's voice shook, but she held the pendant steady. "Where's the real Isolde?" The creature laughed again, that multi-throated sound that made her teeth ache. "Real?" It circled her, staying just beyond the Heartstone's light. "Nothing here is real, little magpie. Not anymore. She opened the door, and we poured through. Wearing faces. Wearing memories. Wearing the world like an ill-fitting coat."