Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTXR7NZ0SG7H9TRQ6ASNN80

Rory squeezed the handlebars of her bicycle until the rubber grips groaned. The tires hissed over a carpet of damp oak leaves, the only sound in the suffocating stillness of Richmond Park. Behind her, the orange glow of London’s light pollution bled out against the horizon. Ahead, the trees knit together into a wall of impenetrable velvet. The Heartstone Pendant against her sternum burned. It wasn’t the comforting heat of a hand-warmer, but a frantic, rhythmic throbbing that mimicked a panicked heart. She reached beneath her windbreaker, pressing her palm against the crimson gem. It pulsed through her shirt, a warning written in heat. Why did I agree to this? Yu-Fei had been specific. The delivery address wasn't a house number or a street name, just a set of coordinates scrawled on a grease-stained napkin and a heavy velvet pouch filled with gold coins. *Deliver the box to the grove beyond the standing stones,* Yu-Fei had said, her eyes never lifting from the wok. *Do not look at the customer. Do not accept a tip. Do not linger.* Rory dismounted, the kickstand clicking like a skeletal finger. The air changed. The city’s distant hum—the sirens, the rhythmic pulse of tires on asphalt—vanished. A heavy, floral scent overthrew the smell of wet earth and exhaust. Bluebells crushed beneath her boots, though they had no business blooming in the biting chill of October. She marched toward the oak standing stones. They loomed ten feet tall, jagged pillars of wood petrified into something harder than granite. Bark spiraled up their lengths in patterns that suggested screaming faces caught in mid-unraveling. "Hello?" The word fell flat, swallowed by the moss. No echo returned. She crossed the threshold. The temperature plummeted. A mist crawled out from the roots of the trees, swirling around her ankles like white, grasping fingers. Every step felt heavier, as if the air itself had thickened into a viscous soup. A snap echoed from the treeline to her left. Rory spun. Her flashlight beam cut a jagged yellow hole in the dark. Empty trunks. Gnarled branches reached out, frozen in gestures of supplication. Nothing moved. Yet, the sensation of needles prickling the back of her neck intensified. I’m being measured. She tightened her grip on the delivery thermal bag. The weight inside shifted—not the slosh of soup or the slide of rice containers, but something dense and wet. "Is anyone here? I have the order from the Golden Empress." A rustle started in the canopy. It didn't sound like wind. It sounded like silk dragging over dry bone. Rory stepped deeper into the clearing. The wildflowers here glowed with a faint, bioluminescent pallor, casting the grove in an undersea light. Time felt elastic. Had she been walking for minutes? Her watch showed the second hand ticking, every movement sluggish, as if the cogs struggled against invisible sand. Something pale flickered behind a tree to her right. She swung the light. A flash of white—too long to be a rabbit, too fluid to be a person—disappeared behind an ancient oak. "I'm just leaving the bag on the stone. I'm leaving now." The Heartstone Pendant flared, a sudden white-hot spike of temperature that forced a gasp from her lungs. She stumbled, her boots catching on a root that felt remarkably like a human tibia. The silence broke. It started as a wet, rhythmic clicking from above. Rory looked up. The branches were thick with shadows that didn't align with the moonlight. High up, nestled in the crooks of the timber, things crouched. They were pale, spindly shapes with too many joints, their skin the color of a drowned man’s belly. They didn't have eyes—only deep, weeping pits that leaked dark fluid down the bark. They weren't looking at her. They were smelling her. The clicking intensified, a dozen throats mimicking the sound of a ticking clock. Rory backed away, her heart hammering against the pendant. "The food is here." She dropped the thermal bag onto a flat, mossy altar in the center of the grove. The bag hit the stone with a dull thud. From the shadows of the furthest trees, a figure detached itself. It walked with a hitched, unnatural gait, its limbs swinging a fraction of a second out of sync with its torso. It wore a tattered gown of moth wings, the fabric shimmering with a thousand iridescent eyes that blinked in unison. The customer didn't have a face. Where features should have been, there was only a smooth expanse of porcelain-white flesh, save for a vertical slit that ran from the hairline to the chin. Rory’s breath hitched. Her hand flew to the scar on her left wrist, her fingers tracing the crescent shape as she retreated. The creature reached the bag. It didn't open the zipper. It pressed its palm against the fabric, and the bag began to wither, the plastic melting away as if dipped in acid. Inside were not containers, but a pile of raw, pulsing hearts, still slick with heat. The vertical slit on the creature's face peeled open. It didn't reveal teeth. It revealed rows of tiny, vibrating needles. "Wait." The voice didn't come from the creature's mouth. It echoed inside Rory’s skull, cold and sharp as a winter gale. "You smell of the barrister's blood. And the teacher's ink." Rory’s boots skidded on the bluebells. She felt the boundary of the standing stones behind her, but the air there felt solid, a wall of cold glass preventing her exit. "I just deliver the food. That's all." The clicking in the trees stopped. Every one of the pale, multi-jointed things leaned down, their long shadows stretching across the grove until they touched her toes. "The Heartstone burns for you, little Malphora. Do you know why?" The creature took a step. Its movement was a blur, a glitch in reality that placed it three feet closer in the blink of an eye. The smell of rot and honey filled Rory’s nose. "The portal is hungry. It has been fed flesh, but it prefers a soul that knows its name." The Pendant was no longer just warm; it was searing a mark into her chest. Rory reached for her pocket, her fingers fumbling for the small iron key Silas had given her for the bar. Iron. Fae hated iron. "Get back." She held the key out like a talisman. The creature paused, its moth-wing gown shivering. The needles in its face vibrated higher, producing a sound that made Rory's ears bleed—a thin, crimson trickle down her lobes. "Iron is such a heavy burden for a creature of light." The creature tilted its head. Behind it, the pale things began to descend from the trees, sliding down the trunks like grease. They moved toward her in a tightening circle, their elongated fingers scratching grooves into the dirt. A branch snapped behind Rory. She didn't turn. She couldn't. The creature in the gown held her gaze with its featureless face, pinning her in place with the sheer weight of its malice. The fog thickened, swallowing the standing stones. The path back to the park, back to the bicycle and the city and the safety of Silas’ bar, vanished. "You aren't leaving, Aurora. The grove keeps what the city discards." The things from the trees were inches away now. She could hear their breath—a series of wet, whistling gasps. One reached out, a grey finger brushing the hem of her windbreaker. The fabric disintegrated instantly. Rory squeezed the iron key until the metal bit into her palm. She didn't scream. She forced her mind to work, to find the gap in the logic of this nightmare. The grove was a pocket. A pocket had a seam. The Heartstone flared one last time, a blinding crimson light that turned the fog into a cloud of blood. In that flash, she saw it. The shadows cast by the trees weren't falling away from the moon. They were all pointing toward her. "The light doesn't come from the sky," she whispered. She didn't look at the creature. She looked at the pendant. The crimson gem wasn't reflecting the moon; it was generating the world around her. The creature shrieked—a sound of tearing metal. It lunged, its needle-filled mouth stretching wide enough to swallow her head. Rory didn't run. She dropped the key and grabbed the pendant with both hands, ripping the silver chain from her neck. The moment the silver snapped, the grove groaned. The trees bent inward, their wood cracking with the sound of a thousand breaking bones. The pale things vanished into puffs of grey soot. The creature in the moth-wing gown froze, its fingers inches from her throat. Its form began to pixelate, its edges fraying into darkness. "You don't know what you've unlatched," the voice hissed in her head, fading into a dry rasp. The red light of the Heartstone died. Total darkness. Rory stood in the pitch black, her lungs burning, the silence of the park returning with the force of a physical blow. The smell of bluebells was gone, replaced by the scent of damp earth and distant car exhaust. She fumbled for her flashlight on the ground and flicked it on. The standing stones were gone. The altar was gone. She was standing in a regular clearing, surrounded by ordinary oaks. Her bicycle leaned against a tree twenty yards away. She looked down at her hand. The Heartstone Pendant was gone. In its place, burned into the palm of her hand, was a perfect, crimson circle, still glowing with a faint, dying ember. A twig snapped behind her. She turned the light toward the sound. A pair of glowing eyes reflected the beam from the thicket—wide, unblinking, and positioned much too high off the ground for any animal. "Rory?" The voice sounded like Eva’s. But Eva was back at the flat. And the voice was coming from the center of a dense thorn bush where no human could stand. "Rory, come here. I found something." The voice drifted closer, but the eyes stayed perfectly still. Rory backed toward her bike, her boots heavy. She didn't look away from the eyes. She reached for the handlebars, her fingers trembling so hard she could barely grip the metal. The thing in the bushes stepped forward. It wasn't Eva. It was a silhouette made of shadows, wearing Eva’s voice like a stolen coat. "Don't you want your tip, Rory?"