Run: 2026-02-20-01KHYB36YC8YRGEPTR7Y0WEYB2

Rain clung to the ancient oak stones, slick and dark. It smelled of wet earth and something else, something subtly floral and unsettling. Rory pulled her threadbare jacket tighter, the damp already seeping into the cotton. She’d stepped through the boundary – a shimmer in the twilight of Richmond Park, a sudden rush of cold – and now found herself in The Fae Grove. It wasn't the picturesque clearing the old maps suggested. This place felt… bruised. She’d come seeking answers about the pendant. A man, nondescript and smelling of old paper and pipe tobacco, had delivered it to her flat above Silas’ bar a week ago. Wrapped in oiled linen, it had pulsed against her palm, a faint warmth that hadn’t dissipated. He’d simply said, “It calls to you.” “Calls to you,” her ex, Evan, would have scoffed. “Probably some tourist trinket.” He’d been good at reducing everything to a cynical dismissal. The air here thrummed with a low, persistent vibration. It wasn’t audible, not exactly, but it resonated in her bones. It made her teeth ache. She adjusted the Heartstone Pendant, a small crimson stone nestled against her chest, where it pulsed with a subtle, insistent warmth. The silver chain felt strangely heavy. “Right,” she muttered to the rain, “Let’s just find out what this thing wants.” The wildflowers, a riot of impossible colours – indigo, crimson, chartreuse – seemed to watch her. They weren't unnaturally bright, just… different. More saturated, almost painfully so. A robin, perched on one of the standing stones, tilted its head and regarded her with unnervingly intelligent eyes before taking flight with a single, sharp chirp. She moved deeper into the Grove, the rain intensifying, transforming the already oppressive atmosphere into a thick, clinging blanket. The light was fading fast, the grey deepening into an impenetrable gloom. Every shadow seemed to lengthen, to writhe. She’d been walking for what felt like an hour, though she knew time behaved differently here. A glance at her watch confirmed it – only twenty minutes had passed outside. The pulse of the Heartstone grew stronger, a quickening in her chest. A sound. A twig snapping. Rory froze. It wasn’t a deer, not a rabbit. Too deliberate. She strained her ears, listening. Silence. Just the rain and the unsettling vibration. She moved forward cautiously, scanning the periphery of her vision. Nothing. “Hello?” Her voice sounded thin and reedy in the vast, silent space. Only the rain answered. Another sound. This one closer, a rustling in the undergrowth. It was accompanied by a scent – not of vegetation, but of something metallic, faintly coppery. She pulled her jacket tighter, her hand instinctively reaching for the small, folding knife she carried. It wasn’t much, but it was something. She noticed then – a track in the mud, almost invisible beneath the rain. A single, deeply impressed footprint, larger than a human’s, elongated and subtly clawed. The Heartstone pulsed violently against her chest, a burning warmth spreading through her veins. “Okay,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “This is not good.” The air grew colder. The rain stopped abruptly, as if someone had pulled a plug. The forest became utterly silent. The wildflowers held their heads still, their colors deepening, becoming almost black. A shape began to coalesce in the shadows at the edge of the clearing. It wasn't distinct at first, just a distortion of the gloom, a shifting of the darkness. Then it solidified – tall and vaguely humanoid, but impossibly slender. It seemed woven from the shadows themselves, its form flickering and unstable. It didn’t move towards her, didn’t make a sound. It simply *watched*. Rory held her breath, her hand tightening around the knife. She felt a pressure behind her eyes, a growing sense of dread that threatened to overwhelm her. It wasn’t a visual thing, not exactly. It was a comprehension, cold and absolute. *You shouldn’t have come.* A voice, without lips, without vocal cords, echoed in her mind. It wasn't spoken, but *felt*. Ancient and desolate. “Who… who are you?” she managed to ask, the words catching in her throat. The figure tilted its head, a movement that seemed to warp the very air around it. *A reminder.* The Heartstone pulsed with a furious heat, pulling at her, urging her onward. She took a hesitant step forward, drawn by an irresistible force. “What do you want?” *The balance.* The voice whispered. *It has shifted.* She glanced down at the pendant. The crimson stone glowed with an increasingly intense, almost blinding light. She realized then, with sickening clarity, that the pendant wasn't calling *to* her. It was calling *from* her. More shapes began to emerge from the shadows, indistinct and unsettling, all of them tall, slender, and radiating an aura of profound sadness. They surrounded her, a silent, watchful circle. “This isn’t right,” she said, her voice shaking. “This isn't… natural.” *Natural?* The voice echoed again, tinged with amusement. *There is nothing natural here.* She tried to back away, but her feet felt rooted to the ground. She risked a glance at the standing stones. The intricate carvings across their surfaces, previously hidden by the rain, seemed to writhe and shift, forming grotesque faces, whispering silent warnings. The figure closest to her – the one that had first appeared – took a single, deliberate step forward. It extended a hand, long and skeletal, tipped with claws that shimmered like obsidian. “Stop,” she choked out, raising the knife. It felt pathetic, utterly inadequate. The figure didn’t flinch. It didn’t even seem to register her movement. It simply continued to advance, its eyes – two pools of absolute darkness – fixed on her. *You carry the echo.* Rory didn't understand. “What echo?” *The pain. The loss. The thing you tried to bury.* The memories slammed into her: Evan’s rage, his cruel words, the suffocating fear. Her childhood accident, the searing pain, the unending shame. Things she’d buried deep, believing she’d escaped them. But here, in this place, they were resurrected, amplified, projected onto the shadows around her. The Heartstone throbbed with a blinding light, and she understood. The pendant wasn’t a gift. It was a receptor. It was drawing her back to the source of the disturbance, to the place where her pain had begun. She looked down at her wrist, at the small crescent-shaped scar shaped like a lost tear. The scar pulsed with the same crimson light as the pendant. The figure reached for her, its touch like ice. *Join us.* Rory screamed, a primal, desperate sound that was immediately swallowed by the silence of the Grove. As the figure’s hand closed around her wrist, she felt a dizzying sensation of falling, of being pulled apart and reassembled. The forest around her dissolved into a swirling vortex of shadows and wildflowers, and she realized, with chilling finality, that she wasn't running *from* something. She was running *toward* it. Toward the source of the pain, toward the heart of the Fae Grove, towards a darkness far older and far more terrible than she could have ever imagined. And the pendant, warm against her skin, was guiding her home.