AI The smell of wet earth and honeysuckle hit Aurora like a physical shove the moment she crossed the standing stones. She pressed her hand against the cool, rune-etched oak at her back, willing her breathing to slow. Cardiff Uni’s law library felt a million miles away. In her pocket, the Heartstone pendant pulsed against her thigh, a steady, warm thrum like a second, slower heartbeat.
“Right,” she muttered to the silent grove. “Just fetch the thing and get out.”
Silas, the bar owner from upstairs, had given her a name. *Isolde *. And a description. *A metal box, small, locked, buried where the foxgloves never wilt *. His payment was three weeks’ rent free. The gamble was supposed to be simple: navigate the tricky time-bubble of the Fae Grove, avoid the locals, and retrieve a debt. Not a legal contract, but close enough for her barter-loving landlord .
But the Grove was listening .
Her boots sank into moss that didn’t crunch but sighed, releasing a puff of silver pollen that hung in the moonless dark. Wildflowers, impossibly vibrant, glowed with their own soft light—foxgloves in purple and white, night-blooming jasmine coiling up the stone pillars. The air tasted of iron and old rain. An hour here could be a minute outside, or a day. Her watch had spun itself into a frenzy ten steps in.
She found the spot. A ring of white foxgloves, their bells perfectly still in a breeze that stirred nothing else. The earth at their centre looked freshly turned. She knelt, the damp immediately seeping through her jeans, and started to dig with her hands. The soil was cool, granular, like sugar. Her fingers brushed metal.
The box was there, just as described. Tarnished silver, the size of her palm, etched with spirals. She pulled it free, wiping the dirt from its surface. The lock was a simple clasp. She slid her thumb under it.
A twig snapped.
Not behind her. Not to the side. It came from the ring of standing stones, thirty feet away. A clean, deliberate break. Aurora froze, her hand closing around the box. She didn’t turn her head. She let her gaze drift to the periphery, using the lessons Evan had taught her in all the wrong ways: *Don’t look directly. They sense attention.*
Nothing moved between the great oaks.
She stood slowly, pocketing the box. The Heartstone’s warmth intensified, a sharp prickle against her skin. It wasn’t a warning of a portal. It was a warning of… something else. She edged back towards the path she’d made, her eyes scanning the flower-lit clearing. The shadows between the stones seemed deeper now, pools of liquid ink .
A whisper brushed past her ear. No words. Just a sibilant rush of air, like fabric dragged over stone. She spun.
Empty space. Just the foxgloves, nodding gently now as if in a breeze she couldn’t feel.
“Isolde ?” Her voice sounded too loud, too human in the suffocating quiet. “Silas sent me. For the box.”
The only answer was the soft, almost musical drip of moisture from a high branch. *Plink. Plink. Plink.* It had a rhythm. Three fast, one slow.
She took another step back. Her heel landed on something soft. Not moss. She looked down.
A single, perfect white mushroom had sprouted where her foot had been a second before. Its cap was already unfurling, gills pale in the bioluminescent glow. She shuffled sideways. Another mushroom popped from the ground with a faint, wet *pop *. Then another, a few feet ahead. They were marking her path, a fungal breadcrumb trail leading away from the stones, deeper into the grove.
“Clever,” she whispered, a cold slick of fear tightening her throat. This wasn’t a guardian. This was a herding.
The Heartstone burned. She fished it out, letting it dangle from its silver chain. The deep crimson gem pulsed with a faint inner light, casting bloody shadows across her palm. It wasn’t glowing towards the standing stones—her exit. It was pulling , insistently, towards the dark heart of the grove.
Another sound. A dry rustle, high up. She tilted her head back.
The canopy wasn’t right. The branches of the ancient oaks, which had been bare a moment ago, were now thick with what looked like leaves . But as her eyes adjusted, she saw they weren’t leaves at all. They were hundreds of small, folded shapes. Origami figures. Birds, foxes, little human forms, all made from parchment so old it was the colour of bone. They hung motionless from threads of spider-silk .
One of them, a paper bird near her head, slowly turned its head to look at her.
Aurora stopped breathing.
The paper crinkled. The bird’s wing unfolded an inch, then refolded. A soft, dry susurration filled the air as a dozen other figures began to stir. Not with intent, but as if a wind she couldn’t feel was playing through them .
Time. The Grove was playing with time. Showing her things that were, or would be, or had never been at all.
The mushroom trail at her feet was now a perfect semicircle, corralling her towards a narrow gap between two particularly close stones. Through the gap, she could see a different quality of darkness—a deeper black, starless and complete. The Heartstone tugged so hard the chain bit into her neck.
“No,” she said, the word solid in the misty air. “I’m leaving.”
She turned on her heel, ignoring the path, and strode straight for the nearest gap in the standing stones that wasn’t the one being offered . The one she’d entered through was gone . The geography had shifted. The stones formed a perfect , unbroken circle around her now.
*Plink. Plink. Plink.*
The dripping sped up. Two fast, one slow.
Something moved at the edge of her vision—a swift, low darting between two foxglove stalks. Too quick for a rabbit. Too silent for a fox. She caught a glimpse of grey fur, a flash of something that might have been a pale, twitching nose.
The whispering returned, this time from multiple points around the circle. It formed a word, stretched thin and breathy.
“Stay.”
Aurora’s mind, the cool, logical engine that had gotten her out of Cardiff and away from Evan, began to race . Trapped circle. Changing environment. Psychological pressure. Herding behaviour. This was an interrogation room, just one made of magic and bad dreams. The key was to break the pattern. Don’t give them what they expected.
She stopped trying to find an exit. Instead, she walked straight to the centre of the clearing, to the disturbed patch where she’d dug up the box. She knelt again.
“You want a trade?” she said, her voice clear and steady, belying the hammering in her chest. She placed the silver box on the ground in front of her. “A debt for a debt? Fine. Let’s talk terms.”
Silence. The rustling in the branches ceased. The mushrooms stopped popping.
Then, from the impenetrable blackness beyond the gap the mushrooms had pointed to, a shape resolved . It didn’t walk out. It *unfolded * into the space, like a shadow gaining depth and dimension.
It was tall, slender, draped in what looked like tattered grey moss and layered shadows. Its face was long and narrow, features sharp and alien, eyes the colour of tarnished moonlight fixed on her. It didn’t blink. It held out a hand, fingers too long and jointed in too many places.
The voice that spoke was the sound of roots cracking stone.
“The box is mine. The debt is paid.”
“I have it,” Aurora said, not touching it . “But I didn’t agree to your escort service. Let me leave, and you get your property. Try to keep me, and I drop this down the first London sewer I find. Silas can explain to you what a storm drain does to magic.”
The creature’s head tilted, a slow, predatory motion. It seemed… amused.
“The stone you wear. It does not belong to you.”
Aurora’s hand flew to the pendant. It was burning hot now, almost painful. “It was a gift.”
“A marker.” The thing took a step forward, and the grove sighed around it. The flowers leaned towards it. “You carry a beacon in the dark. And you walk into the oldest dark of all. Curious.”
It knew about the pendant. It knew about Dymas. This changed everything.
“I’m leaving now,” Aurora said, her cool-headed façade finally cracking at the edges. She snatched up the box and stood. “The deal was the box for passage. I’m holding up my end.”
She turned, choosing a direction at random, and marched towards the wall of oak stones. As she moved, the stones themselves seemed to waver, the spaces between them narrowing like closing jaws.
The whispering erupted all around her, a chorus now.
“*Stay. See. Belong.*”
From every shadowed thicket, pairs of those same moon-coloured eyes opened. Dozens of them. Small, low to the ground. The grey-furred things. They began to slink into the clearing, their movements a syncopated, unsettling creep.
The tall figure raised its long-fingered hand. The grove held its breath.
“The mortal may pass,” it intoned, its voice final . The slinking creatures froze. “She carries more than she knows. Her path is… watched.”
The standing stones before Aurora shivered and parted, revealing the familiar , misty path back to Richmond Park. The normal world, with its boring, linear time, lay just beyond.
She didn’t run. She walked, every muscle screaming to bolt, her back a naked target. She could feel those countless eyes on her, the weight of the Grove’s attention like a physical pressure.
She stepped between the stones.
The transition was instant. The heavy perfume of magic vanished, replaced by the damp, muddy smell of the park at night. The silence broke into the distant hum of London traffic. Her watch ticked once, normally.
Aurora stumbled a few paces onto the ordinary grass before daring to look back.
The standing stones were just stones again, ancient and moss-covered, arranged in a forgettable pattern most tourists would walk right past. No glowing flowers. No paper birds.
But in her hand, the silver box was real. And against her chest, the Heartstone pendant had cooled to a mere whisper of warmth . A beacon , it had said. A marker.
She opened her palm. Lying across the silver box, pristine and white, was a single, perfectly folded origami fox. It hadn’t been there a second ago.
From the depths of the Grove, now invisible behind the veil, a final whisper chased her out into the London night, so faint she almost thought she’d imagined it.
“We will watch .”