Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTYGHXTA38HE57KD8NFHN54

The bicycle leaned against the oak boundary stone, its front wheel still spinning weakly as Rory turned away from it. Her lungs burned from the ride across Richmond Park, legs trembling from the effort of pedaling through darkness lit only by her phone's dying flashlight. She had come here because the pendant had grown warm against her chest, warmer than it had ever been, pulling her forward like a hook behind her sternum. The clearing opened before her, though calling it a clearing felt wrong. The space existed differently here—not quite a gap in the trees but a pause in reality itself. The standing stones rose in a rough circle, ancient oaks that had been shaped by centuries of wind and something else, something patient. Between them, wildflowers bloomed in colors that didn't belong to any season she knew. Pale blue petals caught moonlight that shouldn't have been able to reach the grove's floor. She checked her phone. No signal, of course. The battery icon showed four percent, its fading glow the only artificial light in a world gone old and strange. The pendant pulsed. Rory pressed her palm against it, feeling the warmth bloom beneath her fingers. Whoever had left it on her doorstep three months ago, wrapped in brown paper and twine with no note, had known something. She'd assumed it was junk, a weird gift from some customer at the restaurant. But the first time she'd walked past The Fae Grove's boundary during a delivery, the thing had practically scorched her skin. Now she understood. Whatever had been waiting for her here had finally called her home. The silence was the first wrong thing. Richmond Park never went quiet. Even at night, there were sounds—foxes calling, cars on the distant perimeter road, the rumble of planes descending toward Heathrow. But the grove held its breath around her, a bubble of stillness that pressed against her ears like deep water. She walked toward the standing stones, her trainers crushing wildflowers that left no trace beneath her feet. The air tasted sweet, thick with pollen that coated her tongue. Too sweet. The kind of sweetness that belonged to things growing in places where the rules had been forgotten. "Hello?" Her voice fell flat, absorbed by the trees before it could travel far. "I know someone's there. The pendant—它让我来的." The Chinese came out rusty. She'd learned it from Yu-Fei, picking up phrases during quiet shifts at the restaurant, but it felt wrong in her mouth now. The words belonged to a world that suddenly seemed very far away. Something moved at the edge of her vision. Rory spun around, heart lurching into her throat. Nothing. The trees stood silent, their branches reaching toward a sky that had gone the color of a bruise. She counted to five, forcing her breathing to slow. Cool-headed. That was what people said about her. Aurora Carter didn't panic, didn't jump at shadows. She turned back toward the center of the grove. The standing stones had changed. No—not changed. Moved. One of them, the largest, had shifted position while her back was turned. It no longer faced the way she'd entered. Instead, its gnarled surface seemed to lean toward her, oak bark folding into patterns that almost resembled a face. Rory's hand went to her pendant again, finding it hot now, almost uncomfortably so. The warmth spread up her arm, settling behind her eyes like the beginning of a migraine. "Okay," she said, and this time her voice came out steadier. "Okay. I get it. You want me to come farther in." She started walking. The ground beneath her feet grew softer with each step, as if the earth itself were becoming something other than earth. The wildflowers reached up around her ankles, their petals cool and damp against her skin. She kept her eyes forward, fixed on the center of the circle where the trees opened into a space that shouldn't have existed. The second wrong thing was the sound. It came from everywhere and nowhere, a low hum that started just below the threshold of hearing. Not quite music. Not quite voice. Something in between that made her teeth ache and her vision swim. She couldn't tell if it was getting louder or if she was simply becoming more aware of it, the way you suddenly notice your own heartbeat in a quiet room. The pendant burned now, a brand against her chest. She pulled it out from under her shirt, watching the crimson glow pulse in a rhythm that didn't match her pulse. Faster. Faster. The gem inner light flickered, casting red shadows across the clearing that moved independently of the source. Something was here. Not someone—something. The awareness crept up her spine like cold fingers tracing the vertebrae. She was being watched by more than eyes. "Show yourself." The command came out stronger than she felt. "I'm not here to fight. I'm here because your—because this called me." The hum stopped. The silence that followed was worse, heavier, a void filled with the expectation of sound. Rory stood frozen, her breath shallow, her hand still clutching the pendant. The red glow had stabilized now, steady as a heartbeat, showing her the edges of the clearing and nothing beyond them. She couldn't see the trees anymore. The boundary stones had disappeared. She was standing in a circle of red light with no walls, no exit, no proof that the world she'd known still existed outside this space. Then came the third wrong thing. The footsteps. Soft, padding, multiple—circling her. Moving just outside the reach of the pendant's light, keeping to the shadows it couldn't pierce. She tracked them by sound alone, turning slowly, trying to keep them in front of her. But there were too many, or they were too fast, or they weren't moving the way things were supposed to move. "This is pointless." She heard her own voice, distant, as if someone else were speaking. "If you wanted to hurt me, you'd have done it already." The footsteps stopped. In the silence, she heard breathing. Not her own. Something larger, lower, coming from everywhere at once. The air had gone cold, her breath misting in front of her face, but the ground beneath her feet remained soft and warm, holding a heat that seemed to be draining up through her soles. The pendant jerked in her hand, pulling toward a point to her left. She looked. At the edge of the red glow, standing where nothing had been a moment before, a figure waited. Tall and thin, shaped wrong—the proportions off in ways that made her eyes water when she tried to focus on them. Its features were blurred, as if it existed slightly out of phase with the light that revealed it. But she could see its eyes. Two points of darkness that reflected her own red-lit face, watching her with an intelligence that made her stomach clench. It didn't move. Didn't speak. Simply waited, patient as stone, while the pendant burned in her grip and the cold pressed in from all sides. Rory understood then, with the cold clarity of true fear, that she'd made a mistake. Whatever had called her here, whatever had led her to this place with its impossible flowers and its circling sounds and its figures at the edge of vision—it wasn't offering her answers. It was offering her a door. And doors, she knew from experience, went both ways.