Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTYYZZS7VAHW5HR87JRXQXP

Aurora's trainers crunched against frost-brittle leaves as she pushed past the final oak standing stone. Richmond Park sprawled behind her now, swallowed by darkness, and ahead lay the Fae Grove—that pocket of impossible green that existed in the spaces between proper places. She'd come because the Heartstone Pendant had started its rhythmic pulse three hours ago. Not the gentle thrumming she'd learned to expect near a Hel portal, but something frantic. Something desperate. The pendant hung beneath her shirt now, warm enough to make her skin ache. The Grove itself looked wrong in the dark. During daylight, it was beautiful—wildflowers blooming in defiance of February, moss-covered stones arranged in patterns that hurt to look at directly, oak trees that seemed older than the concept of oak. At night, the same elements arranged themselves into something else entirely. The flowers gave off a faint phosphorescence that created shadows where shadows had no business being. The standing stones looked less like markers and more like teeth. Aurora stopped at the clearing's edge and let her eyes adjust. The pendant's pulse quickened against her ribs. She'd told no one where she was going. Not Eva. Not Yu-Fei. Especially not Silas, who already treated her like a particularly fragile ornament since he'd found her bleeding outside his bar six months ago. She'd learned quickly that questions about the Fae touching Earth, about portals and artifacts and things that didn't fit neatly into the boxes people used to sort the world—those questions only generated concern and distance. The air in the Grove felt thicker than it should. Not warm exactly, but dense, like breathing through fabric. Aurora stepped forward. Her breath came out in white clouds even though frost rarely reached this deep into the park. The wildflowers hung their heads tonight, their phosphorescence casting everything in watery green light. She could see maybe twenty feet in any direction before the darkness folded back in. The wrongness started small. A sound like wind chimes, except there was no wind. The pendant pressed harder against her sternum, its pulse matching something—a rhythm in the air itself. Aurora's fingers found the chain and pulled it free of her shirt. The crimson stone glowed brighter in her hand, casting fresh shadows across her pale knuckles. The chime sound came again from her left. She turned toward it and saw nothing but trees and undergrowth. The phosphorescent flowers seemed to lean away from her movement, their light dimming fractionally. Aurora stood still, listening. The chimes didn't return, but something else did—a sensation like weight, like the Grove itself had suddenly noticed her presence and was leaning in to look. A branch cracked somewhere near the clearing's center. Aurora's head snapped toward the sound, but she saw only darkness deepening into deeper darkness. Her jaw tightened. She knew the Grove's rules already—time moved differently here, minutes outside could be hours within, or vice versa. She'd experienced it once before, that nauseating moment of stepping out of the Grove's boundary and realizing that what felt like thirty minutes had taken only five. But she'd never come here at night. She'd never come here alone. The pendant had never called to her alone before either. "Hello?" Her voice came out thin, wrong-shaped for the space. The Grove swallowed it without echo. Movement at the edge of vision. Aurora's eyes darted left, but nothing was there. When she looked forward again, one of the standing stones seemed closer than it had been. She knew, absolutely, that she hadn't moved her feet. Her trainers remained exactly where she'd planted them. The stone must have moved. Aurora's heart kicked harder. She raised the pendant higher, its red light casting the immediate area in shades of blood. The flowers nearby writhed—not touched by wind, not responding to any force she could identify. They simply... writhed, their stems bending in configurations that made her stomach turn. A wet sound. Something between a breath and a footstep, coming from the darkness ahead. She backed up a step. Her heel caught on an exposed root, and her arms windmilled. The pendant swung wild, its light wheeling across the Grove in frantic arcs. In one of those sweeping passes, she caught something—a flash of movement at human height, perhaps fifteen feet away. A silhouette. Just for a moment, just enough to register as wrong, and then the light passed and it was gone. Aurora's mouth had gone completely dry. She moved deeper into the Grove instead of backing out. Some part of her recognized this as irrational. The sensible part, the part that had gotten her through Cardiff law school and out of an abusive relationship through sheer stubborn thinking, screamed at her to find the boundary stones and leave. But the pendant had called her here for a reason. It wouldn't call without reason. The artifact had saved her life more than once in ways she still didn't fully understand. The Grove was trying to tell her something. The sounds multiplied—chimes from multiple directions, that wet breathing sound coming closer, branches cracking in a pattern that almost seemed coordinated. Aurora forced her breathing into rhythm: in through the nose, out through the mouth. Her hand had stopped shaking. Fear crystallized into something sharper, more useful. She'd learned to do that too, in those months with Evan. You could either panic or you could think. Sometimes thinking kept you breathing. She noticed the temperature had dropped another five degrees at least. Her breath came thicker now, each cloud of it obscuring more of her vision. The pendant had stopped pulsing and now glowed with steady intensity, casting everything in that sick red light. The flowers beneath her feet had stopped moving, had actually started to wilt and curl as she watched. The color leeched from them, phosphorescence fading, until they lay like drained husks against the frost. A figure stood fifteen feet away. Aurora hadn't watched it arrive—it simply was, suddenly, as if the Grove had decided to stop hiding whatever it was. Human-shaped but not quite human, tall and too-thin, head tilted at an angle that shouldn't have been sustainable. It wore something like clothes, but the fabric moved independently of its body, undulating slightly despite the absence of wind. The pendant burned hot enough to hurt. Aurora didn't run. That would have been panic, and she'd chosen thinking instead. She raised her chin and met what might have been the creature's gaze. It had no discernible eyes, but she felt observed regardless, as if her entire self had been read in a single moment. When it moved, it didn't walk. It glided across the space between them, its movement leaving no impression on the frost-brittle ground. The chime sounds rose to a crescendo, and Aurora realized they were coming from the creature itself—a sound like wind chimes, yes, but also like breaking glass, like something crystalline being shattered from the inside. It stopped three feet away. The air between them shimmered. Aurora's blue eyes were wide and fixed, watching as the creature tilted its too-long head further, impossibly further, until it achieved an angle that made her vision blur. When it spoke, the Grove itself seemed to vibrate.