Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTY1WP788R3D85C8XNEP7N3

The air in the Fae Grove clung thick and sweet, like honey left too long in the sun. Rory tightened her grip on the Heartstone pendant, its faint pulse against her palm the only thing anchoring her to reality. The standing oaks loomed around her, their gnarled roots twisting up from the earth like fingers reaching to drag her under. She shouldn’t have come alone. Eva had warned her. Silas had practically begged her to wait until morning. But the pendant had burned hotter tonight than ever before, and Rory needed answers. Moonlight filtered through the canopy in fractured beams, casting shifting patterns on the wildflowers that shouldn’t have been blooming in October. The scent of them—cloying, almost rotting—made her throat tighten. She stepped carefully over a root, the crunch of leaves beneath her boots too loud in the unnatural silence. No birds. No insects. Just the whisper of wind through branches that didn’t quite sound like wind. Then, behind her, a snap. Rory froze. Her breath fogged in the air, though the night wasn’t that cold. Slowly, she turned. Nothing. Just shadows and the flicker of petals in a breeze she couldn’t feel. She exhaled, forcing her shoulders to relax. Another snap. Closer. Her pulse hammered against her ribs. The pendant throbbed in response, its crimson glow casting eerie streaks across her fingers. She didn’t run. Running in the Grove was a good way to get lost forever. “Who’s there?” Her voice didn’t echo. It sank into the trees like a stone into deep water. A shape flickered at the edge of her vision—too tall, too thin. Gone before she could focus. The flowers rustled where nothing had touched them. Rory swallowed. “I’m not here to cause trouble.” Silence. Then, from somewhere above, a wet, clicking sound. Like tongues dragging over teeth. She didn’t look up. The pendant seared against her skin, its heat sudden and sharp. A warning. Rory clenched her jaw and took a step back—only for her heel to catch on something soft. She stumbled, barely catching herself before she fell. The thing beneath her foot wasn’t a root. It was a hand. Pale fingers curled into the dirt, the nails blackened and split. Rory jerked away, bile rising in her throat. The rest of the body lay half-buried in the flowers, its face turned toward her, mouth slack. Empty eye sockets stared past her, as if watching something just over her shoulder. She knew that face. Evan. Her breath came in ragged bursts. No. He couldn’t be here. She’d left him in Cardiff, screaming promises through a locked door. The corpse’s lips twitched. Rory bolted. Branches lashed at her arms as she crashed through the undergrowth, the pendant’s chain biting into her neck. The trees seemed to lean in, their limbs knitting together to block her path. She skidded to a halt, chest heaving. Behind her, the clicking resumed. Closer now. Rhythmic. Deliberate. Something laughed—a sound like breaking glass. Rory spun, pressing her back against the nearest oak. The bark shifted beneath her, wet and yielding. She recoiled, her fingers coming away sticky with something dark. The flowers trembled. All of them. At once. Then, from the shadows between the trees, a voice—smooth as silk, wrong as the Grove itself. “Little rabbit,” it crooned. “You shouldn’t have come hopping into my woods.” The pendant flared crimson, its light painting the grinning thing that stepped into the clearing. Rory’s blood turned to ice. It wore Evan’s face. But its eyes— Its eyes were black from edge to edge.