Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTYB9PJS670R43KHJHEV2YG

Aurora pushed through the oak trees at the boundary of Richmond Park, her torch beam cutting through the November darkness. The beam caught the ancient standing stones first—gnarled trunks twisted into shapes that resembled hunched shoulders, their bark weathered to near-black. She'd come to the Grove a dozen times before, but never alone. Never at night. The Heartstone Pendant hung warm against her chest beneath her jumper, its familiar weight suddenly more noticeable. She'd felt it pulse this afternoon, that faint throb of heat that meant a Hel portal lurked somewhere nearby. Rory needed to know where. Her trainers crunched on frosted grass as she stepped into the clearing. The wildflowers shouldn't have been blooming—not in November—but they carpeted the ground in impossible colours. Purples and golds caught her torchlight, their petals pristine despite the season. The air hung thick and warm, wrong for the time of year, and she breathed it in slowly. Nothing felt off yet. Not really. Rory switched off her torch to let her eyes adjust. The Grove didn't need artificial light once you'd spent time here. A faint luminescence emanated from the flowers themselves, painting everything in shades of silver and violet. She moved deeper into the clearing, boots leaving dark impressions in the grass. That's when she heard it. A sound like branches being moved, but careful—deliberate. Not wind. Wind didn't move with intention. She stopped walking. The sound stopped too. Rory turned slowly, her eyes narrowing as they swept across the tree line. The oaks loomed like sentries, their bare branches creating a lattice against the darker sky beyond. Nothing visible. Nothing moving. The pendant warmed slightly beneath her shirt, a reminder that something lay dormant here, something that shouldn't exist on Earth proper. The sound came again. Closer this time. A rustling that suggested something large moving through the underbrush, but when she pointed her torch and flicked it on, the beam illuminated only flowers and grass. No disturbed vegetation. No trail. She kept the torch on and continued forward, toward the centre of the clearing where the wildflowers grew thickest. The pendant pulsed again—distinct now, unmistakable heat that made her fingers flex. A laugh reached her ears. Not human. The sound had too many layers to it, as if multiple voices were speaking in perfect unison. It came from everywhere and nowhere, echoing off the standing stones and dissolving into the darkness above. Rory's jaw tightened. She'd encountered things in the Grove before, things that didn't operate under the same rules as the world outside. But she'd never been here at night, and she'd never been alone. "Show yourself," she called out, her voice steady despite the way her pulse had quickened. Silence answered her. The kind of silence that felt deliberate—a held breath before something terrible. Then, movement. To her left and right simultaneously. Multiple things, shifting at the periphery of her vision. When she turned to look directly, they stilled. The moment she looked away, she felt them move again. The sensation prickled at the back of her neck, that animal awareness of being watched from multiple angles. Rory turned in a slow circle, torch held high. The beam caught nothing. The grove remained empty of anything but flowers and stone. "I'm not leaving," she said, as much to convince herself as whoever—whatever—was listening. "I need to know where it is." The pendant burned now, hot enough that she yanked her jumper up to look at it. The crimson gemstone glowed brighter than she'd ever seen it, pulsing in steady rhythm with her heartbeat. Its light spread across her skin in ruby patterns, a beacon in the darkness. The temperature dropped so suddenly that her breath frosted. Rory spun, torch wheeling through the grove. The flowers had begun to wilt, their vibrant colours leaching away into greys and browns. The warmth that had been so comforting moments before evaporated, replaced by a cold that cut straight through her clothes and settled into her bones. Something stood at the edge of her torchlight. Just barely within the beam's reach. She caught only an impression—a shape that was too tall, too angular—before it moved away. Not fleeing. Simply stepping back into the darkness, leaving no trace of its passage. The flowers continued to die. Spreading outward from where that shape had been, the withering advanced like a stain, leaving the Grove increasingly barren. The luminescence from the blooms was fading, taking what little light existed with it. Rory switched on her phone's flashlight as a backup, creating a second beam of illumination. The brightness seemed to make things worse. Now she could see movement more clearly—shifts in shadow that suggested forms, suggestions of limbs or wings or antlers or things she couldn't quite name because her brain rejected their shapes. They circled her. Multiple entities, pacing the clearing in a pattern that felt less like hunting and more like ritual. One of them made that sound again, that multi-layered laugh that caused something primal in her chest to recoil. The pendant had grown so hot now that she had to pull her jumper away from her skin. The gemstone blazed with inner light, and for a moment, the circling shadows seemed to contract, pulling back as if repelled. A voice spoke. This one singular, though it carried that strange harmonic undertone. Words that were almost English, almost comprehensible. "Not yet," it said. "The seal holds. But it thins. It thins and thins and—" Rory's phone buzzed suddenly. A text message. The light of the notification screen was blindingly bright in the darkness. She glanced down for just an instant—a message from Eva asking if she'd made it safe. In that moment of distraction, all the shadows rushed inward. She whirled, torch and phone both raised, but found nothing there. The shadows had already retreated back to the tree line. The withheld breath released. The deliberate silence dissolved into the normal sounds of night—wind through branches, the distant hum of London beyond the park. The Grove had settled back into its familiar state. The flowers had stopped dying, though they remained drained of colour. The warmth was returning, degree by degree. The pendant cooled against her skin, though it still glowed faintly. Rory's hands were shaking. She turned toward the edge of the clearing, toward the standing stones that marked the boundary, but something made her pause. The shadows hadn't vanished. They'd simply moved. They pressed against the perimeter of the Grove, thick and intent, as if something on the other side of that oak-lined boundary was trying very hard to remain unnoticed. Trying and failing.