Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTY3141DXV8N525Y0JGXV30

The oak stones loomed against the London night, their silhouettes jagged and impossible. Aurora had memorised their shape from daylight visits, but darkness remade them into something unfamiliar. Each trunk seemed wider than she remembered, their bark rougher and more ancient. She pushed through the standing stones and into the clearing. The moment her feet crossed the boundary, the temperature dropped. Not the crisp October cold she'd felt outside Richmond Park, but something deeper—a cold that reached past her jacket and settled against her ribs. The wildflowers glowed faintly in the darkness, their petals luminescent with a pale violet light that cast everything in soft, distorting shadows. Aurora pulled the Heartstone pendant from beneath her shirt. It hung heavy against her collarbone, the crimson gem warm to the touch. She'd come here because it pulsed near the Hel portal—a signal stronger than any compass. Whatever was moving in the in-between spaces needed stopping, and the pendant had shown her the threshold. She wasn't supposed to be here at night. The thought arrived without context, a certainty that planted itself in her chest. Nothing had told her this. No warning sign, no voice. But the Grove felt different after dark, the way a familiar room became a maze when the lights went out. The wildflowers seemed closer together, their glow creating pockets of deep shadow between the blooms. A sound drifted across the clearing. Soft. Almost musical. Aurora's jaw tightened. She'd heard nothing like that on her previous visits. The Grove had been quiet then—the kind of quiet that suggested held breath, but peaceful nonetheless. This was different. The sound had texture to it, something almost like wind chimes but without the clarity. The notes arrived distorted, as though filtered through water. She moved deeper into the clearing, her trainers silent on the soft ground. The earth felt wrong beneath her feet—too springy, almost yielding, like stepping on skin rather than soil. She pulled her jacket closer and forced her breathing steady. The chime-sound came again, closer this time. Aurora spun toward it, but the clearing offered nothing. The wildflowers shifted in the darkness, their glow pulsing in rhythm with her heartbeat. That wasn't normal. She'd watched them bloom and fade before, but never in synchronisation with anything external. She stood motionless, testing whether they'd sync with her breath instead. They didn't. The pendant warmed against her chest, but it didn't pulse the way it did near the portal. Instead it radiated a steady heat, almost feverish. She placed her hand over it, feeling her own pulse beneath her palm. Steady. Controlled. Good. Something moved at the edge of her vision. Aurora whipped her head toward it, but the wildflowers only swayed. No shape resolved itself. No figure emerged from the shadows. The movement had been subtle—the kind of thing peripheral vision caught but direct sight missed. She waited, shoulders tense, watching for it to happen again. The chime-sound echoed from the opposite direction. She didn't turn this time. Instead, she narrowed her focus and let the movement come into the corner of her vision again. Something large. Something that moved with too many joints, angles that bent in ways that suggested flexibility beyond what shoulders and hips could manage. It circled at the far edge of the clearing, keeping pace with the boundary stones. Aurora counted her breaths. Ten. Twenty. The thing continued its circuit. The wildflowers began to dim. She noticed it in increments—the luminescence fading degree by degree, like someone slowly closing the aperture of a camera. The violet glow weakened until the clearing existed in near-total darkness, lit only by the faint inner glow of her pendant and whatever moonlight filtered through the trees above. But the trees. She looked up and found only blackness. The canopy had either grown denser or moved closer, and she couldn't determine which possibility troubled her more. The chime-sound stopped. In its absence, Aurora heard something worse. Breathing. Not her own—she held that carefully in check, measured and quiet. This came from the shadows near the boundary stones, wet and laboured, like lungs pulling at air through liquid. It moved from right to left along the perimeter, and she tracked it by sound alone, following the wet rasp with her eyes. She'd come here for this. To find the portal. To understand what moved through the spaces between worlds and pulled hungry things into London. But standing in the dark, listening to something breathe against the oak stones, the purpose felt hollow. Aurora drew the silver chain over her head and held the pendant before her like a lantern. The crimson stone caught what little light remained and threw it back in fractured patterns across the clearing. For a moment—just an instant—the light caught something. A shape at the boundary. Tall. Impossibly tall. With too many limbs arranged at angles that made her stomach twist. Then it was gone, folded back into shadow. The breathing continued, but slower now. Deliberate. As though whatever made that sound had just realised she could see fragments of it. The presence felt vast, pressing down from the darkness above. Not attacking. Observing. Studying. The Heartstone pulsed. Warmth radiated from the gem, sudden and intense. It didn't pulse once and fade—it continued in a rapid sequence, each throb stronger than the last. The crimson light intensified, casting the entire clearing in blood-red illumination. And in that light, something became clear. The wildflowers hadn't grown sparse. They were pressed against her, thousands of blooms surrounding her in a tight circle, their petals touching her jacket, her neck, her hair. She hadn't noticed them close in—couldn't remember the exact moment they'd shifted from scattered around the clearing to pressed against her skin. The petals felt wrong beneath her fingers, too soft, almost like touching the inside of something wet. The breathing stopped. The silence that followed was worse than any sound. Aurora's own breath seemed thunderously loud as she lifted the pendant higher, illuminating the wall of flowers surrounding her. They weren't flowers anymore, or at least not entirely. The petals showed internal structure when examined closely—something geometric beneath the organic curve, patterns that hurt to look at directly. A new sound emerged from beyond the flower-wall. Not chimes. Not breathing. Words. They came in fragments, multiple voices speaking over one another, each utterance in a language that predated any vocal human throat. The sounds bypassed her ears and resonated directly in her bones, in the space between her thoughts. She understood them anyway, not through translation but through direct knowledge that bloomed in her mind. Welcome. Return. Begin again. The Heartstone burned against her palm. Not painful—worse. It felt like coming home to a place she'd never been.