Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTYR0QA1ERT1CPWAFTT1BWR

The moon was a shard of bone in the black sky. It offered no warmth, only a sterile, silver light that leached the colour from the world. Aurora pushed through a final curtain of ferns, their fronds cold and wet against her hands, and stepped into the clearing. The Fae Grove. Richmond Park fell away behind her, its familiar nighttime rustlings and the distant, constant hum of London swallowed by an impenetrable wall of silence. Here, inside the circle of ancient, listing oaks, the air was still. Not peaceful. Still like a held breath. The standing stones, hulks of black against the star-dusted sky, seemed to lean inward, their immense weight pressing down on the small patch of earth. Wildflowers, a riot of impossible colour even in this monochrome light, blanketed the ground. Their vibrancy felt like a fever dream. She moved towards the centre, her boots sinking into the unnaturally soft turf. The tread of her soles made no sound. Her own quiet footsteps, the whisper of denim as her legs moved—they were absent. The grove absorbed all noise, leaving a vacuum in its wake. She fumbled inside her jacket, her fingers closing around the small lump of the Heartstone Pendant. It lay against her skin, a dead weight. No pulse. No warmth. Just a chip of cold stone. A knot of unease tightened in her stomach. It had never been like this before. *Crack*. The sound was a whip strike in the profound quiet. Close. Directly behind her. Aurora froze, her body rigid. Every muscle screamed to turn, to run, but she forced herself to pivot slowly, deliberately. The ring of oaks stood silent and unchanged. The deep pools of shadow at their bases were empty. It was a fox. A deer. An animal, startled by her arrival. She repeated the rationalisation in her head, but the words were hollow. The silence that flooded back in was heavier, denser. It felt like it had been violated, and it was angry. She forced her feet to move again, her path now skirting the edge of the open space, keeping the stones between her and the darker woods. Her gaze swept the perimeter, a constant, flickering patrol. A shadow at the base of the largest oak, a gnarled giant that looked like a clenched fist, seemed to liquidise. It flowed, stretching a tendril of blackness away from the trunk for a split second before snapping back into place. "Just the moonlight," she whispered, her voice a thin, reedy thing that the air immediately devoured. She blinked hard, rubbing her eyes with the heel of her hand. Her heart hammered a frantic rhythm against her ribs. It was a trick of the light, a figment of a mind already on edge. Then the sound came. It wasn't a rustle or a snap. It was a low thrum that started without a beginning, as if it had always been there and she had only just noticed it. It resonated in her teeth, a dissonant hum that crawled up her spine and settled at the base of her skull. It was everywhere at once. It came from the stones, from the earth, from the air itself. The pendant at her neck turned sharp and icy against her skin. A vicious, biting cold, nothing like its customary warmth. The chill was a needlepoint that sank into her chest, spreading a spiderweb of frost through her veins. She snatched the silver chain, pulling the thumbnail-sized stone out from under her shirt. The deep crimson gem was dull, its familiar inner glow extinguished. It looked like a clot of dried blood in the pale moonlight. Her head snapped up. Another movement, this time undeniable. A form peeled itself from the trunk of an oak on the far side of the clearing. It was not a shadow. It was a shape, tall and impossibly thin, that unfolded with a languid, unnatural grace. It was a stick figure drawn in charcoal against the night, its limbs too long, its joints in all the wrong places. It stood motionless, a sliver of deeper black against the bark. The low humming sharpened, condensing into something that scraped at the edges of hearing. A voice. It spoke, but the words were broken, inverted, a meaningless and terrifying babble that felt like it was trying to pry her thoughts apart. Aurora stumbled back, her hand flying to her mouth to stifle a cry. A root, thick and gnarled like a dead man's finger, snagged her ankle. The world spun, the star-flecked sky and the dark earth swapping places. As she hit the ground, the impact jarring through her bones, she saw them. They were everywhere. All around the perimeter of the grove, they detached from the trees. Not one, but a dozen silent watchers. Tall, graceless things made of angles and night, their forms shimmering like a heat haze on a blistering summer road. They didn’t advance. They simply stood at the edge of the clearing, their stillness an act of profound menace. The sound stopped. The silence that crashed down was a physical blow, a pressure that squeezed the air from her lungs. She lay on the damp ground, the cold of the earth seeping into her clothes, every muscle locked. She did not breathe. She did not move. The figures watched her from the shadows. The cold moon watched her from the sky. And the grove held her in its silent, patient embrace.