Run: 2026-02-19-01KHVP4Q4ZVEQ9479P5PE1Q79D

Rory killed the moped’s engine. The sudden absence of the sputtering motor left a vacuum of sound in the deepest, most isolated stretch of Richmond Park. Midnight pressed firmly against the sprawling greens. Mist clung to the knobby roots of ancient trees, pooling in the dips of the wet earth. London felt entirely detached from this place. The relentless hum of the city, the sirens, the grinding gears of double-decker buses—none of it penetrated the dense thicket. Yu-Fei Cheung’s handwritten directions weighed heavily in her jacket pocket. A special, prepaid midnight order for the Golden Empress. She grabbed the crinkling foil bag from the delivery box. The rich, sharp smells of garlic, ginger, and fried pork offered a bizarre, comforting contrast to the damp bite of the autumn night. She stepped off the paved trail. Her boots crushed fallen leaves and rotting twigs. Darkness swallowed her within ten paces. She navigated by the faint beam of her phone flashlight until the path terminated at a steep incline. At the crest, two colossal ancient oak trees jutted from the damp loam. The standing stones. Their massive, gnarled trunks twisted together near the canopy, forming a jagged, natural archway that looked far too deliberate to be a random act of nature. Boundary markers. Rory stepped through the arch. The atmospheric pressure spiked. Her ears popped with a sharp, pain-filled seal. The flashlight beam flickered, dimmed, and died. The bone-deep chill of the autumn night vanished. A cloying, stagnant humidity replaced it. The Fae Grove. Isolde’s pocket dimension. Down by the soil, violent violet, sickly cerulean, and pearlescent white petals unfurled. Wildflowers carpeted every square inch of the clearing, blooming fiercely out of season, defying the frost she had just walked through. A rhythmic pulse hammered against her collarbone. Rory dropped her chin. The Heartstone pendant rested flat against her sternum, the silver chain tight around her neck. The deep crimson gemstone, usually a dead, glassy rock, emitted a steady luminescence. A faint inner glow swirled beneath the facets, throwing a bloody cast across her pale skin. Heat seeped from the stone directly into her blood. The pendant only acted up for one reason. A Hel portal. She rubbed her thumb over the small crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist. A grounding mechanism. Reconnecting with her body when the world tipped sideways. The heat from the Heartstone increased, radiating through her thin cotton shirt. "Order for Isolde." She tossed the words into the oppressive air. The sound fell entirely flat. The heavy, perfumed oxygen swallowed her voice before it crossed the nearest bed of white asters. No echo. No reverberation. Just dead acoustics. She took another step into the clearing. The wildflowers beneath her boots did not snap. They flattened with a sickening, fleshy crunch, weeping a thick sap that smelled of pure sugar and rot. The overwhelming sweetness made her stomach turn. Time felt entirely unmoored in the Grove. The span between inhaling the rotting-flower scent and exhaling it stretched into an unbearable eternity. Rory glanced at her watch. The second hand jittered in place. It ticked backward three times, stopped for a long minute, then sprang forward. The rules of Earth ended at the oak boundary. An hour in this pocket could trap her for days in the real world. The crimson light flared brighter. The glow painted the trunks of the perimeter trees in dark, wet hues. A shadow detached from a massive oak to her left. Rory froze. Her bright blue eyes darted to the periphery. The straight black hair framing her face shifted as she pivoted her head. Nothing stood there. Just bark and interlaced branches forming a cage around the clearing. She shifted her grip on the foil bag. The paper rustled loudly. A sound answered. A wet, tearing drag over the earth. "I'm leaving the food right here." She set the Golden Empress bag onto a flat, moss-covered slab of rock jutting from the floral sea. "Enjoy." The pendant burned. The heat escalated from a warning warmth to a localized fever stamped directly against her skin. A portal wasn't just near. Something had just crawled out of it. A thick branch snapped above her. The crack split the silence like a gunshot. Rory whipped around. She swept her shoulder-length hair back, clearing her vision. She scanned the towering wall of oaks. To her right, a patch of violent violet blooms parted. A deep, wide groove formed in the floral carpet, pressing down in the shape of a massive, distorted footprint. The crushed flowers did not spring back. They withered instantly beneath the unseen weight, curling into a fine, black ash. Another wet drag. Another patch of flowers turned to ash ten feet closer. No wind stirred the stagnant air, but a copper taste flooded Rory’s mouth. Ozone and dried blood. "Step out." She widened her stance, plunging her hands into her jacket pockets. Her fingers curled around her keyring. She slipped the longest brass house key tightly between her knuckles. "I deliver food, not patience." A guttural, vibrating chitter pulsed from the canopy. She jerked her chin up. The Heartstone’s crimson glow failed to pierce the dense leaves overhead. A massive silhouette blotted out the meager starlight filtering through the interlaced branches. It shifted. Joint by joint. *Pop. Crack. Squelch.* The noise resembled cracking knuckles amplified through a hollow pipe. The creature reoriented its limbs. Long, spindly appendages wrapped around the thick oak branches. Large chunks of bark peeled away and rained down onto the wildflowers around Rory’s boots. The Heartstone seared her chest. Actual pain lanced through her ribs. This wasn't a minor breach. The silhouette descended. It did not climb down the trunk. It slithered out of the canopy, a mass of fluid, twitching geometry. The angles of its movement possessed a wrongness that brought immediate tears to Rory’s eyes. Limbs bent at impossible, jagged inversions. A low, subsonic vibration rattled her teeth. The creature inhaled. The overpowering stench of ancient, rotting meat obliterated the aggressive perfume of the asters. Rory backed away slowly. Her heel found no solid ground, catching on a thick root hidden beneath the petals. She stumbled. Her hand slapped hard against the flat rock next to the crushed delivery bag to keep from falling backward. The creature hit the ground. The impact sent a violent tremor through the loam. The ash-trail of dead flowers smoked around it. Thick, black plumes rose heavily into the humid air, refusing to dissipate. It stood directly between her and the standing stones. Her only exit. The Heartstone flashed rapidly, a frantic strobe light of blood-red warnings against her shirt. The silver chain scorched the back of her neck. The black smoke parted just enough to reveal a pale, elongated limb pressing into the earth. Fingers with far too many knuckles dug deep into the soil. Claws longer than skinning knives gouged the dirt, anchoring the massive shape. The wet popping sound escalated into a rapid-fire drumbeat. The entity uncoiled. The mass of shadow and impossibly angled limbs stretched upward, rising over eight feet tall and eclipsing the boundary oaks. Rory inhaled deeply, forcing the copper taste down her throat. "You have a problem with pork?" She gripped the rock edge, her muscles coiled entirely tight. A horrible noise slithered from the towering shadow. A flawed mimicry of human speech ground through a throat comprised of wet meat and broken glass. "Rrrrrr...ooo...rrrr...yyyy." The syllables stretched and distorted, repeating her name in a sickening loop. The mass of shadow took a huge, shuddering step forward. The ground heaved. The wildflowers dissolved to ash in a sweeping arc around its ungodly feet. Rory stood entirely still among the dying flowers, watching the darkness reach for her.