Run: 2026-02-19-01KHVP8XA5PG93EX23AQC55V7F

Rory adjusted the heavy paper bag in her right hand, the scent of Golden Empress scallion pancakes and garlic shrimp sharply out of place in the damp, bitter air of Richmond Park. Yu-Fei had been specific. Unnervingly specific. Leave the order exactly at the base of the ancient oak standing stones deep in the western copse. Do not linger. Do not look past the trees. Rory would have refused, had the tip not been half her monthly rent over Silas's bar. She pushed her straight, shoulder-length black hair out of her face, her bright blue eyes scanning the dense treeline. The glow of the London skyline usually offered an orange haze against the night, but here, the shadows pooled thick and suffocating like ink. At five foot six, Rory was practical enough to carry pepper spray and a heavy Maglite, but shining the beam forward only illuminated an impenetrable wall of twisted brambled branches. Then she felt the heat. Beneath her heavy coat, resting against her collarbone, the pendant stirred. The silver chain bit into her chilled skin as the deep crimson gemstone, roughly the size of a thumbnail, began to pulse. It was a rhythmic, rising warmth. A heartbeat. She had worn the artifact since an unknown benefactor had it delivered to her doorstep. Mostly she wore it because it brought a strange comfort, but she knew its warning. The Heartstone possessed a faint inner glow that flared and burned when a Hel portal was bleeding into the world. Rory swallowed hard, her throat clicking in the quiet. She stepped into the clearing. The boundary was impossible to miss. Four massive, petrified oak trunks jutted from the earth like rotting teeth, encircling a sunken hollow. The moment Rory stepped between the nearest two stones, the distant drone of the distant motorway abruptly vanished. The sudden vacuum of sound made her ears ring. The air inside the standing stones was heavy, thick with the cloying, fermented sweetness of blooming flora. Rory looked down. A carpet of wildflowers coated the forest floor, their petals luminous under a moon she could no longer see. Bluebells, foxgloves, and wild orchids aggressively tangled together, thriving unbothered in the cold. They glowed with an unhealthy, bioluminescent pallor. Rory set the brown paper bag at the base of the nearest oak. Delivery complete. It was time to leave. She checked her phone to confirm the time for Yu-Fei. The screen woke, glaring in the dark. Beside the dead signal bar, the clock read 8:14 PM. She blinked. When she entered the park, it had been past midnight. She watched as the digital numbers flickered, jumping to 3:00 AM, then dropping to 11:22 AM, before the screen went entirely gray and died. Time moves differently here. Eva had warned her about the Fae pockets in the city, places where an hour could turn into days. The realization washed over her, a cold counterweight to the searing pendant against her chest. Rory turned to face the gap between the oaks. She had only taken three steps inside the Grove. She just needed to step out. A wet snap echoed to her left. Rory froze. Her heart hammered against her ribs, but her mind instinctively snapped into analyzing the threat. It was a survival trait she had honed living with Evan back in Cardiff. Back then, a specific floorboard creak meant he was angry. A heavy footfall meant she needed to hide. The sound in the dark flowers did not belong to an animal. The snap was slow. Deliberate. The sound of heavy weight shifting with calculated intent. She lowered her right hand, her thumb absentmindedly finding the small crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist. Pressing into the old childhood injury grounded her. It reminded her that she was cool-headed. She thought her way out of problems. She had survived worse things than the dark. A faint crimson hue bled through the fabric of her coat. The Heartstone was glowing fiercely now, its light casting a bruised, purple cast through the clearing and reflecting violently in her eyes. The warmth was escalating into a feverish heat. A portal was close. Very close. Something shifted at the periphery of her vision. A tall, thin streak of absolute void decoupled itself from the trunk of a great oak. Rory kept her head facing forward but tracked the movement with her eyes. She controlled her breathing. Inhale for four seconds. Hold for four. Exhale for four. Panic was a luxury she could not afford. She took a step toward the standing stones. The shadow mirrored her. It stepped when she stepped, stopping the precise fraction of a second she did. There was no sound of disturbed earth when it moved, only the rustling of the unseasonal wildflowers parting. The sense of isolation became a physical weight pressing down on her lungs. No one knew she was in the Grove except Yu-Fei. If time was warping, maybe hours had already passed in London. Maybe days. The rational, Pre-Law student part of her brain tried to calculate coordinates, vectors, distances. The survivor in her commanded her to run. She took another slow, measured step. A distinct, damp exhalation sounded directly behind her right shoulder. Rory stopped, dangerously off-balance. The smell of copper and ozone hit her nose, overpowering the sweet rot of the flowers. It was so close she could feel the unnatural chill radiating against the back of her neck, raising the fine hairs along her spine. She did not turn around. If she looked at it, she would make it real. If she acknowledged the hunter, she became the prey. From the corner of her eye, she saw the silhouette stretching across the glowing flowers. It had the vague shape of a man, tall and broad-shouldered. For a terrifying, suffocating second, she saw Evan. She saw the familiar slump of his posture when he blocked the doorway of their flat. Her crescent scar gave a phantom throb. But as the shadow deepened, the proportions warped. The limbs stretched too long. The neck jutted at a broken, horrifying angle. This was not a human ghost. This was something that had crawled out of whatever Hel portal the pendant was screaming about. The silver chain felt like a wire pulled straight from a furnace. Rory bit her lip hard enough to taste iron, using the sharp physical pain to tether her mind to reality. Out-think it. She was Aurora Carter. She did not freeze. She did not cower. The boundary of the oak standing stones seemed to recede, the distance stretching, the gap narrowing like a closing eyelid. It was playing with the space, warping the geometry of the Grove to keep her inside. If she sprinted, the distortion would stretch forever, trapping her in an endless corridor of trees. A voice slid through the dark. It did not come from the air, but reverberated inside the hollow space of her own skull. It sounded like the grinding of ancient stones beneath the earth, shaped clumsily into an approximation of human speech. Rory. The sound of her nickname in that dead, flat resonance stripped away her defenses. Only her friends called her that. Only Eva, Silas, and Yu-Fei. The thing behind her was pulling pieces directly from her mind, sifting through her memories to find the bait. Rory locked her eyes on the oak standing stones. Three yards. Two long strides if she anchored herself to the static plane of the real world. She unclasped her heavy flashlight, not to strike, but to throw. With an abrupt, explosive movement, Rory hurled the heavy Maglite deep into the woods to her right and threw her body to the left. The shadow flinched toward the projectile for a half-second. It was all the opening she needed. Rory lunged. The dense wildflowers grabbed at her boots like desperate hands, their thick stems tearing loudly. The temperature of the clearing plummeted. The towering shadow snapped back, towering over her, extinguishing the faint ambient moonlight. A wave of paralyzing dread crashed across her vision, a biological imperative demanding she lie down and submit to whatever stood above her. She shoved the feeling down. She vaulted forward, throwing her entire weight squarely between the petrified oak trunks. The spatial transition was violent. One moment the air was thick, floral, and suspended in silence. The next, she crashed onto freezing mud, the sudden roar of a jet engine passing high above hitting her ears with the force of a physical blow. The damp, normal scent of wet grass and car exhaust flooded her senses. Rory scrambled backward on her hands and heels, kicking away from the stones until her back slammed hard against a normal, ordinary park bench. She sat there in the mud, her chest heaving, the icy London wind biting furiously at her tear-streaked face. In the distance, the yellow headlights of a late-night street sweeper swept along a park avenue. Traffic. Sirens. Reality. Trembling, she reached beneath her coat. The Heartstone was already cooling against her skin, the deep crimson gemstone settling back into a dull, dormant state, its faint inner glow extinguishing completely. Rory did not take her eyes off the four oak standing stones. From this side of the boundary, they looked like nothing more than a ruined circle of dead wood blending into the deep shadows of the copse. But as her breathing steadied, she watched a single, agonizingly long shadow spill out from the gap between the trunks. It stretched across the frosted grass toward her, lingering testing the edge of the moonlight, before slowly, silently sliding back into the dark.