Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTZ3SW6MJAJXN9T0HE8W3QQ

The gate to Richmond Park was locked, of course. It was long after dark. Rory scaled the wrought-iron fence, the cold metal biting into her palms, and dropped silently onto the grass on the other side. The pendant hung warm against her skin, a steady, reassuring pulse that had guided her here. For the last week, it had been a low-grade thrum, a background hum she’d almost gotten used to. Tonight, it was a frantic heartbeat against her sternum. She moved through the trees, her feet finding the path easily from memory. The Fae Grove wasn't on any map. You couldn't find it if you were looking. You had to be led, or you had to stumble. The pendant was leading. The air grew still as she approached the clearing, the usual night sounds of the park—rustling badgers, the distant hoot of an owl, the sigh of wind through leaves—fading into a profound and unnerving silence. It was an absolute quiet, the kind that pressed in on the eardrums. She stepped between the two ancient oaks that served as gateposts, and the world shifted. The grove opened up before her, a perfect circle of impossible life. Wildflowers, a riot of colour that shouldn't exist in the dying of the year, carpeted the ground. Blues so deep they were almost black, reds that shimmered like wet blood, whites that seemed to drink the meagre moonlight. But there was no scent. None at all. The air was dead, sterile. The flowers were beautiful, silent, and utterly wrong. The standing stones, twelve of them, formed a ring around the clearing. They were old, older than anything in London, their surfaces worn smooth by a thousand rains and a thousand hands. In the centre of the grove, the air thickened, shimmering like a heat haze on a summer road. The pendant against her chest was hot now, almost burning. This was why she was here. The pendant didn’t just get warm; it did this when it was near a… a tear. A portal. Eva had used a word for it, a word that sounded old and Germanic. *Helgate*. A door to somewhere else. Rory hadn’t believed her, not really. Not until the pendant had started pulling her, a physical tug in her gut that always led her to places like this. Places where the world was thin. She took a step into the circle of flowers. They didn't bend under her boots. They might as well have been painted on the ground. A chill that had nothing to do with the night air skittered up her spine. She rubbed the small, crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist, a nervous habit she’d never broken. The silence remained. It was the wrongness that got to her first. The absolute lack of movement. Not a single petal stirred. Not a leaf on the surrounding oaks trembled. The moon hung in the sky, a perfect, unblinking eye, and its light fell on the scene without the gentle shimmer she was used to. It was flat, like a photograph. Then came the sound. A soft click. It came from her left. Rory’s head snapped around, her eyes scanning the line of standing stones. Nothing. Just grey rock and the deeper black of the woods beyond. Click. Again. From the right this time. She turned, her heart starting a heavy, deliberate rhythm against her ribs. It sounded like a stone tapping another. A single, clear, deliberate noise. It wasn't random. It had purpose. Click. Click. Click. It was a pattern now, a slow, steady rhythm moving around the perimeter of the grove. It circled her, keeping its distance, always just behind one of the monoliths. She stood frozen in the centre, the pendant a furnace against her skin, its faint crimson glow now visible through the thin fabric of her shirt. It wasn’t just a guide anymore. It was a beacon. The tapping stopped. The silence that rushed back in was worse, heavier than before. It was a listening silence. The air grew thick, cold, and she could see her breath plume in front of her face. The grove was holding its breath. A movement. At the very edge of her vision, a shadow detached itself from the base of one of the stones. It wasn't a shadow cast by anything; it was a patch of darkness that had gained substance and volition. It flowed along the ground, a liquid spill of night, and merged with the base of the next stone. It was gone. Or maybe it was just hiding again. Rory’s logical mind, the part of her that had aced Pre-Law, screamed for an explanation. A trick of the light. An animal. The strain of the night. But the cool-headed part of her, the part that had survived Evan and learned to trust her gut, knew better. This was not of her world. She took a slow step back, her boot heel sinking into the unnaturally soft earth. The movement felt like a provocation. The air in the centre of the grove, the shimmering heat-haze of the portal, began to swirl. It wasn't a violent vortex. It was a slow, graceful spiral, like milk being stirred into tea. Colours she had no name for bled into the air for a moment before vanishing. The pendant was searing now, a brand. She had to leave. Now. She turned, her muscles coiled to run, and froze. A figure stood between the two gatepost oaks, blocking the only way out. It was tall and slender, built from the same stark lines as the trees. It had the shape of a person, but the proportions were all wrong. Its limbs were too long, its neck too thin. In the place of a face, there was only a smooth, pale oval of skin that seemed to absorb the moonlight. It took a step. The movement was silent, fluid, utterly unnatural. It didn’t walk so much as glide, its long legs bending in ways a human spine shouldn't. Rory couldn't scream. Her throat was locked, her lungs full of ice. She stumbled back, away from it, deeper into the grove. The wrong direction. The only direction. Another figure emerged from behind a standing stone to her left. Identical. Faceless. Then another, and another, until they stood silent and still behind every monolith, a silent audience of impossible things. They were all watching her. She could feel their attention like a physical weight. The pendant’s glow flared, casting a bloody red light across the flowers, making their vibrant colours look bruised and diseased. The light illuminated the figures, and for the first time, she saw that their long, twig-like fingers ended not in nails, but in sharp, thorny points. One of them tilted its head, a gesture of such chilling, mimicry humanity that a strangled gasp finally escaped Rory’s lips. The sound seemed to break the spell of stillness. They all began to move, converging on the centre. Slowly. Methodically. Tapping their long, thorny fingers against the standing stones as they came. Click. Click. Click. The rhythmic sound returned, but now it was the sound of their approach, the beat to which they hunted her. Rory spun around, trapped, her mind a white wall of panic. The shimmer in the centre of the grove widened, the colours within it growing brighter, more violent. It was opening. A cold hand, smooth as polished stone and impossibly strong, closed around her arm.