Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTYTD79SP1HWDPNQRSGXCS6

The standing stones loomed from the Richmond Park mist, ancient oaks warped by centuries into sentinels that watched without eyes. Aurora Carter hung back, her hand clamped around the silver chain of her pendant. The gemstone pressed hot against her sternum, a warning heartbeat that matched the pulse in her throat. Through the gap between two moss-slicked monoliths, the air shimmered like heat off summer asphalt. "You breathe too loud," Nyx whispered. Their form flickered at the threshold, caught between solid and suggestion, violet eyes dimming against the strange light beyond. "The Grove remembers those who enter. It remembers those who hesitate, too." Isolde Varga stepped through the gap. No grass bent beneath her boots. No dew disturbed the line of her path. Her silver hair flowed waist-deep and caught light that wasn't there, each strand refracting pale lavender from her eyes. "To cross is to become unstitched," she said, the words falling like stones into still water. "The question is not whether you enter, but whether you will be rethreaded whole." Rory's palm sweated against the cold metal of the Fae-Forged Blade. Isolde had pressed the moonsilver dagger into her hands three dawns prior, saying nothing except that leaf-shaped steel drank shadows better than blood. Now it hung heavy at Rory's hip, pulling her toward the gap like a magnet finding north. She crossed. The temperature dropped. Not the clean cold of December London, but a thick warmth that filled the lungs with honey and pollen. Rory gasped. colors assaulted her—violets too deep for the season, golds that hummed audibly, greens that shifted when viewed peripherally. The amber sky of the parchment she'd read about in her research had no place here; instead, the canopy above blazed with a perpetual sunset that cast no shadows. "I can't see my shadow," Rory said. Nyx had gone rigid beside her. Their silhouette, usually a fluid smoke-dark outline, now held edges too sharp, angles that hurt to follow. "I cannot slip between here. The shadows are... occupied." They walked deeper. The wildflowers underfoot bloomed in spirals that reversed when stepped upon. Rory noted the details with the precision that had earned her scholarship to Cardiff—observation as defense against panic. Her wrist itched where the crescent scar sat, phantom memory of childhood clumsiness made fresh. Isolde drifted ahead, her ethereal form cutting through briars that parted without touch. "Time wears different coats in different rooms," she called back, her voice carrying the doubled quality of wind through hollow reeds. "Do not count the minutes. They bite." "I've got a shift at six," Rory said, though her phone screen showed only static when she checked. The Heartstone pendant pulsed against her collarbone, crimson warmth bleeding through her shirt. Not the searing heat it used near Hel portals, but something gentler, as if the stone recognized kin. Nyx reached out to touch a blossom the size of Rory's head. Their fingers—dark as the space between stars—passed through the petals. The flower chimed. "Aldric knew places like this," Nyx murmured, the name ancient and unworn on their whisper-voice. "Before the binding. Before the shadow-form." Rory turned to mark their entry point. The standing stones had relocated. They now formed a circle thirty meters wide, the gap sealed. Her stomach twisted, but she kept her stride even, refusing to let the Grove see her stumble. The trees here grew in impossible geometries. Branches forked into fractals that repeated until they vanished into the bruised sky. Roots writhed aboveground, forming arches and grottos that whispered when the wind passed. Rory caught movement in her peripheral vision—figures watching from behind bark-folds, eyes like fireflies that extinguished when faced directly. "You promised answers," Rory said to Isolde's back. The Half-Fae turned. Her lavender eyes reflected no sunset, pupilless pools that saw through to the bone. "I promised truth. Truth is a serpent. It coils, it strikes unexpected." "Riddles. You promised riddles instead." "Do mortals ever hear plain speech?" Isolde's laugh chimed like breaking glass. "Very well. The Veil frays. Your pendant knows. Ask it." Rory touched the gemstone. It throbbed in triplets, a Morse code she couldn't read but somehow understood. Danger. Door. Hunger. The silver chain burned cold where it touched skin. They reached the grove's heart. A clearing spread before them, the grass there silver as Isolde's hair, undulating in waves despite the stillness of the air. At the center stood a stone table carved from a single obsidian block, its surface swimming with oil-slick rainbows. Upon it lay a map drawn in light—shifting lines that redrawn themselves as Rory watched, showing streets she recognized from London overlaid with paths that walked through walls and under rivers. "This is the between," Nyx said, their voice hushed with something Rory hadn't heard before—awe, perhaps, or hunger. "The space where Aldric tried to walk. Where he failed." Isolde approached the table. Her fingertips traced the light-lines, and where she touched, the map stilled. "Your abusive shadow," she said without looking at Rory, "the one named Evan—he walks paths he should not. He has found a door to Dymas. To Gluttony." Rory's hand found the blade's hilt. The moonsilver froze her palm, grounding her. "Evan's in London. I saw him Tuesday." "Tuesday here," Isolde said. "Yesterday there. Tomorrow elsewhere. The Feast Prince welcomes those who hunger for too much." The air pressure dropped. Rory's ears popped. Around them, the standing stones rang like struck bells, though none had moved. The wildflowers folded inward, petals closing like fists. "We need to leave," Rory said. Nyx had begun to fade, their form stretching toward the obsidian table as if gravity pulled stronger there. "I cannot hold myself together here much longer. The shadows want to add me to their number." Isolde walked toward the treeline, her feet still untouched by earth. "Exit finds those who deserve it. Or those who don't. The Grove decides, not the guest." Rory gripped Nyx's shoulder—solid for now, cold as the blade at her hip—and pulled. Together they stumbled after the Half-Fae, the Heartstone pendant blazing now, a crimson lighthouse in the pastel storm of the realm. The standing stones parted before them, revealing not Richmond Park but a different angle of the same clearing, rotated ninety degrees. Rory stepped through, her breath returning in a rush, her shadow reappearing at her feet like a loyal hound. The blade stopped humming. Nyx collapsed into their usual fluid form, gasping shadows that tasted of oak and old magic. Behind them, the stones stood silent. The mist rolled in. Isolde waited in the real grass now, leaving faint impressions where she stood, her riddles temporarily spent, her lavender eyes fixed on the amber sky of a sunset that belonged properly to the closing day.