Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTYV35M5Z08W7WR9AGKGVFX

The standing stones loomed against the moonless sky, their ancient oak forms twisted into shapes that hurt to look at directly. Aurora pulled her jacket tighter, the October wind cutting through the thin fabric as she stepped past the boundary into the Fae Grove. The pendant against her chest pulsed warm—too warm for comfort. She'd come alone. Eva would have tried to stop her, and Silas... well, Silas would have insisted on coming along, and that would have defeated the purpose. The message had been specific: midnight, the grove, come alone if you want answers about the pendant. The moment her foot crossed between the stones, the temperature dropped ten degrees. The wind died. Even the distant hum of London traffic vanished, replaced by a silence so complete it pressed against her eardrums. "Hello?" Her voice came out smaller than intended. She cleared her throat, tried again. "I'm here. Like you asked." Nothing. Just her own breathing, too loud in the stillness. Aurora moved deeper into the grove, following the dirt path that wound between trees she didn't recognize. The wildflowers that supposedly bloomed year-round were there, but wrong—their petals too pale, their stems bending away from her as she passed. The sweet scent they gave off made her stomach turn. A branch snapped somewhere to her left. She froze, scanning the darkness between the trees. The shadows seemed to shift, rearranging themselves when she wasn't looking directly at them. "I know someone's there." She kept her voice steady despite the hammering in her chest. "You asked me to come. Here I am." The pendant grew warmer. She touched it through her shirt, felt it pulse in a rhythm that didn't match her heartbeat. One-two-three. Pause. One-two-three. Like a waltz played too slow. The path forked ahead. Both directions looked identical—narrow trails disappearing into darkness thick as tar. She chose left on instinct, each step taking her further from the standing stones, further from any chance of running back to the real world. Time felt wrong here. Had she been walking for minutes? Hours? The watch on her wrist had stopped at 12:01, the second hand twitching between one moment and the next but never moving forward. "This is taking the piss," she muttered, more to hear a human voice than anything else. "Cryptic messages, midnight meetings—" The words died in her throat. Every tree ahead of her had the same scar—a vertical gash in the bark, weeping something dark that glistened in light that came from nowhere. She'd passed this spot before. She was sure of it. But the path behind her stretched back differently than she remembered, curving right where it should have gone straight. The pendant burned now, hot enough to hurt. She pulled it out from under her shirt, the chain catching on her collar. The crimson stone glowed brighter than she'd ever seen it, casting shadows that moved independent of its light. A sound drifted through the trees—not quite music, not quite voices. It reminded her of wine glasses singing when you ran a wet finger around the rim, but layered, harmonizing in ways that human voices couldn't achieve. The melody pulled at something behind her ribs, made her feet want to leave the path. She dug her nails into her palms. "No. Not happening." The singing stopped. The silence rushed back like water filling a vacuum, and with it came the certainty that whatever had been singing was now listening. Watching. Aurora turned in a slow circle, trying to see into the spaces between the trees. The darkness there wasn't empty—it had texture, weight. It breathed. "I'm not here to play games." Her voice cracked on the last word. "Someone sent me a note. Said you had information about this." She held up the pendant. Its glow painted her hand red. "About where it came from. What it means." The trees rustled despite the absence of wind. No—not rustled. They groaned, wood straining like ship masts in a storm. One by one, starting from somewhere far ahead and rolling toward her like a wave, they began to lean. Not falling, just... tilting. Bowing. The path at her feet started to shift. Soil ran like water, reforming into a new direction. She stumbled, caught herself against a tree trunk that felt too warm, too soft. Like skin. She jerked her hand back. Where her palm had touched, the bark showed an imprint that slowly filled itself in, healing over like flesh. The pendant's rhythm changed. Faster now. One-two-three-four-five. Pause. One-two-three-four-five. Her own heartbeat tried to match it, sending spikes of adrenaline through her system. Movement in her peripheral vision. She spun toward it, saw nothing but trees that hadn't been there before. Or had they? The grove rearranged itself with each blink, familiar becoming foreign, paths multiplying and disappearing. "Enough!" The shout tore from her throat. "I came here in good faith. If you have something to tell me, then—" Every sound stopped. Even her breathing. The world held its breath, and in that perfect silence, she heard it. Footsteps. Not on the path. Not between the trees. Underneath. Like someone walking in a room below, if below could exist in a forest floor made of dirt and root. The footfalls matched the pendant's rhythm, getting closer with each beat. Aurora backed away, but the path behind her had vanished. Trees pressed in from all sides, their trunks so close she could barely turn around. The pendant seared her chest now, its glow bright enough to throw her shadow in multiple directions at once. The footsteps stopped directly beneath her. The ground under her feet felt thin as paper, ready to tear and drop her through to whatever waited below. She held perfectly still, afraid that any movement would break the surface tension keeping her above that underneath place. A whisper rose from the earth, words in a language that predated human speech. But somehow, impossibly, she understood. "You wear the heart of a dead god." The pendant cracked. A hairline fracture split across its surface, and through that tiny break, something leaked out. Not light. Not exactly shadow. Something between the two that made her eyes water to perceive. "Who are you?" Her whisper barely disturbed the air. The ground shuddered. Whatever stood beneath her had moved, shifted its impossible weight. When it spoke again, the voice came from everywhere—the trees, the earth, the air itself. "The question, little thief, is who are you?"