Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTY1KAP32K0BWJNJEZNZ5D5

Aurora's breath misted in the October air as she slipped through the gap in Richmond Park's fence. The metal scraped against her jacket, louder than it should have been in the pre-dawn silence. She'd done this before—plenty of times—but tonight the familiar path felt different. Wrong. The Heartstone pendant hung cold against her chest. It had been pulsing erratically for the past three days, growing stronger each night. She'd tried ignoring it, tried convincing herself it meant nothing, but the pull had become impossible to resist. Now here she was, creeping through Richmond Park at four in the morning like some kind of criminal. Her trainers squelched in the damp grass. The usual sounds of the park—distant traffic, the occasional fox cry—seemed muffled, as if she were walking through cotton wool. Even her own footsteps sounded strange, each step echoing a fraction of a second too late. She knew the way to the Grove by heart. Past the old oak with the lightning scar, around the cluster of hawthorn bushes, through the narrow deer track that most walkers missed entirely. But tonight, the landmarks looked unfamiliar in the darkness. The oak loomed larger than she remembered, its branches reaching down like grasping fingers. The hawthorns rustled without any wind to move them. Aurora paused, straining her ears. Nothing. Just her own breathing and the too-loud thump of her heartbeat. She touched the pendant through her shirt, hoping for some sign, some indication she was going the right way. The stone remained cold and still. The deer track appeared where it should, barely visible between two ancient yews. She hesitated at its entrance. In daylight, with the sun filtering through the canopy and birds singing overhead, this path felt magical. Now it gaped like a throat waiting to swallow her whole. "Get a grip, Rory," she muttered, her voice cracking the silence like a whip. She plunged into the darkness between the trees. The path wound deeper into the park than seemed possible. Richmond wasn't that big, she knew the dimensions, had walked every inch of it over the years. But the track kept going, twisting and turning until she lost all sense of direction. The trees pressed closer, their bark rough and unfamiliar when she reached out to steady herself. A branch snapped somewhere behind her. Aurora froze, one hand against a tree trunk that felt too warm, too much like skin. She held her breath, listening. Another crack, closer this time. Then silence again, but a different kind of silence—expectant, watching. She forced herself to move forward. Whatever had drawn her here, whatever the pendant wanted her to find, had to be in the Grove. She'd deal with everything else after. The standing stones appeared without warning. One moment she was pushing through undergrowth that caught at her clothes with thorny fingers, the next she stumbled into the clearing. The ancient oaks that formed the Grove's boundary stood in their eternal circle, but they looked wrong in the darkness. Taller. Older. Their trunks twisted in patterns that hurt to follow with her eyes. The pendant flared hot against her skin. Aurora yanked it out from under her shirt, hissing as the chain burned her fingers. The crimson stone blazed with inner light, casting strange shadows that danced and writhed across the standing stones. The light revealed things she wished it hadn't—symbols carved deep into the oak bark, symbols that seemed to move and reshape themselves as she watched. The wildflowers that always bloomed here were still present, but their petals looked black in the pendant's red glow. They swayed without any breeze, all bending toward her as if drawn by invisible strings. Something rustled in the undergrowth beyond the stones. Aurora spun toward the sound, the pendant's light swinging wild arcs through the darkness. Nothing there. But the rustling came again from her left. Then behind her. Then from all directions at once, a dry whisper of movement that raised every hair on her arms. The flowers were moving. Not swaying now but crawling, their roots pulling free from the earth with wet, sucking sounds. They crept toward her on pale tendrils that looked too much like fingers, too much like— A hand clamped down on her shoulder. Aurora bit back a scream, whirling around with her fist raised. Nobody there. But the pressure remained, five distinct points digging into her flesh through her jacket. She twisted away, stumbling toward the center of the Grove. The pendant's light flickered. In the moments of darkness between each pulse, she caught glimpses of things that shouldn't exist. Shapes between the trees, tall and wrong and watching. Eyes that reflected the red light in ways human eyes never could. A figure standing just outside the stone circle, patient as death, familiar in a way that made her stomach clench with dread. Time felt thick here, syrupy. She tried to run but her legs moved as if through water. The clearing seemed to stretch, the standing stones receding even as she struggled toward them. The flowers had given up all pretense now, slithering across the ground in a tide of black petals and pale roots. The pendant burned hotter. Its light pulsed faster, like a frightened heartbeat. Each flash revealed more—the symbols on the stones writhing with purpose, the spaces between the trees filled with watchers, the very air rippling with something vast and hungry pressing against the boundaries of the world. Aurora reached the edge of the stone circle. Her hand touched the nearest oak, and pain lanced up her arm. The bark was ice-cold and burning hot at once, and beneath it she felt something pulse in rhythm with the pendant. Behind her, footsteps. Slow. Deliberate. Getting closer. She didn't turn around. Couldn't turn around. The pendant's light was failing now, each pulse weaker than the last. In the growing darkness, the Grove transformed. The wildflowers rose like a wave, the watching figures stepped forward from between the trees, and whatever walked behind her drew close enough that she could feel its breath—cold and damp and smelling of earth—on the back of her neck. The heartstone gave one final, brilliant flash. In that moment of perfect clarity, Aurora saw the Grove for what it truly was. Saw what waited just beyond the veil. Saw why the pendant had brought her here, to this place between worlds where the boundaries grew thin. The light died. Darkness rushed in like water through a broken dam. And in that darkness, something smiled.