Run: 2026-02-20-01KHYAHWEFFEGBT4BWDX24ZDDW

The air in Richmond Park smelled wrong—like damp earth and something older, something that had festered beneath the roots of the trees for centuries. Aurora Carter adjusted the strap of her delivery bag, her fingers brushing the cold metal of the Heartstone pendant beneath her shirt. The pendant pulsed faintly, a warmth she hadn’t noticed before, like a heartbeat against her skin. She’d come here because the address on the delivery slip had led her to a dead end—no restaurant, no apartment, just a narrow path winding into the thick of the park. The GPS had failed at the standing stones, the ones marked on old maps but never on modern ones. She’d parked the bike at the edge of the clearing, the engine still humming, and stepped into the Grove. The moment she crossed the threshold, the world tilted. The wildflowers along the path glowed faintly, their petals catching the moonlight like scattered embers. The air hummed, not with insects but with something deeper, a vibration in the bones. Aurora’s breath came faster. She told herself it was the cold, the way the wind carried the scent of pine and something metallic, like old blood. She’d been here before, in her head. The Grove was a place from stories—whispers in the back of her mind, things Eva had mentioned once, drunk and laughing, about the way time bends in places like this. But stories weren’t real. Stories didn’t make your skin prickle when you walked under the gnarled branches of the oaks. A twig snapped. Aurora froze. The sound had come from the left, just beyond the dappled light of the trees. She turned slowly, her pulse hammering in her throat. Nothing. Just the dark, just the way the shadows seemed to shift when she wasn’t looking. She exhaled, sharp and uneven. *Paranoia. Exhaustion. The bike ride.* But then the pendant burned against her ribs, a sudden, searing heat. She jerked her hand up, fingers curling around the silver chain. The glow inside the gemstone flared, bright enough to cast her own shadow on the bark of the nearest tree. And then she saw it. A figure stood between the standing stones, too still, too tall. Its limbs were wrong—too long, too jointed, like a child’s drawing of a man. The moonlight caught the hollows of its cheeks, the way its mouth stretched too wide, too many teeth glinting in the dark. Aurora stumbled back, her heel catching on a root. The figure didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Just watched. The pendant’s heat turned to ice in her grip. “Who the hell are you?” Her voice came out thin, high. She swallowed. “What do you want?” The figure tilted its head. The sound it made wasn’t a word. It was a wet, clicking noise, like bones shifting inside flesh. Aurora’s fingers tightened around the pendant. She’d read about these places—about the things that lived in the cracks between worlds. About the way they fed on fear. She didn’t have much of that left. Not after Evan. Not after everything. But she had the pendant. She had the warmth of it, the way it pulsed like a second heart. The figure took a step forward. Aurora didn’t run. She didn’t scream. She lifted the pendant, held it out like an offering. “Fine,” she said, voice steady now. “Take it. But leave me alone.” The thing lunged. The last thing she saw before the dark swallowed her was the way its teeth parted—too many, too sharp—and the way the pendant’s glow turned crimson, like blood in the dark.