Run: 2026-02-25-01KJ94M556HSHYBPS8FYJS2EBC

The Honda Vision scooter sat at the edge of the gravel path, its cooling engine ticking like a slow, metallic heart. Aurora Carter adjusted the straps of her delivery bag, though it was empty now, the scent of ginger and soy sauce from the Golden Empress still clinging to the fabric. She shouldn't have come here after her shift. Richmond Park was a void at this hour, a three-square-mile expanse of shadow that swallowed the orange sodium glow of London’s perimeter. She reached beneath the collar of her jacket, her fingers finding the Heartstone Pendant. The silver chain was cold, but the thumbnail-sized crimson gem was not. It thrummed with a low, rhythmic heat, a vibration that skipped against her collarbone. It had been acting up for three days, ever since the package had arrived at her flat above Silas’ bar with no return address. The warmth was an itch she couldn't scratch, a compass needle pulling her toward the dark heart of the park. Rory stepped off the path and into the long grass. Her boots crunched through the dry stalks of late autumn, the sound unnervingly loud in the sudden vacuum of the night. Ahead, the silhouette of the trees rose like jagged teeth against a bruised purple sky. She knew this part of the park—or she thought she did. Somewhere near the center lay a clearing the locals whispered about, a place where the barrier between the mundane and the "other" wore thin. As she walked, the distant hum of the A3 slowed, then vanished entirely. It wasn't the natural silence of a park at midnight; it was a deliberate erasure of sound. Rory stopped, her breath hitching. She reached up instinctively, her thumb tracing the small, crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist. It was an old habit, a tactile anchor she used when her mind started to race. "Cool head, Rory," she whispered. Her voice didn't echo. It dropped to the ground, dead. She pushed forward through a dense thicket of ferns that felt far too lush for November. The temperature shifted. The biting London chill smoothed out into a soft, humid warmth that smelled of crushed lavender and damp earth. Then, she saw them: the standing stones. They weren't stone, not exactly. They were ancient oaks, silvered by age and petrified into pillars of iron-hard wood, marking a perfect circle. Rory stepped between two of the sentinels and felt a sudden, sickening lurch in her stomach, the sensation of an elevator dropping ten floors too fast. She was in the Grove. The clearing was a riot of impossible color. Despite the darkness, wildflowers bloomed in the grass—feral blues, screaming yellows, and lilies as white as bone. They shouldn't have been there, not in this season, not without sunlight. The air felt thick, heavy with the weight of unseen eyes. The Heartstone Pendant flared. The deep crimson gem began to pulse with a rhythmic, inner light, casting long, bloody shadows across the petals at her feet. It was hot now, uncomfortably so, reacting to something beneath the soil. A portal. Rory took a cautious step toward the center of the clearing. *Snap.* The sound came from behind a curtain of weeping willow branches to her left. It was the distinct crack of a heavy branch breaking under significant weight. She froze, her blue eyes scanning the darkness. "Hello?" she called out. She felt the stupidity of the word as soon as it left her lips. In London, you didn't call out to the dark. You ran from it. There was no reply, but the grass on the far side of the Grove began to ripple. There was no wind. The air was as stagnant as a tomb, yet the wildflowers bent and swayed in a linear path, as if something invisible were wading through them. It moved slowly, circling the perimeter of the standing stones, keeping to the shadows. Rory turned, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm that matched the pulsing of her pendant. She was intelligent enough to know when out-of-the-box thinking required an exit strategy. She backed toward the gap between the oak-stones where she had entered, but when she turned her head, the gap was gone. Where there had been two stones, there was now a solid wall of petrified timber. The wrongness of the space began to press in. She looked up at the moon. A moment ago, it had been a silver sliver near the horizon. Now, it sat bloated and yellow directly overhead. Her watch, a cheap digital thing she used for timed deliveries, began to freak out—the numbers spinning through hours and minutes in a blur of liquid crystal. Something laughed. It wasn't a human laugh. It was the sound of dry leaves skittering over pavement, layered with a high-pitched metallic vibrato. It came from the periphery of her vision. Rory whipped her head around, catching a glimpse of something tall—far too tall—and thin as a needle, retreating behind a tree trunk. It moved with a jerky, stop-motion fluidness that made her head ache. "I’m just passing through," Rory said, her voice tight but steady. She reached into her pocket, her hand closing around a heavy brass lighter. It wasn't a weapon, but it was something. "I don't want any trouble." The rustling stopped. The silence returned, deeper and more predatory than before. She felt a prickle of ice on the back of her neck. Slowly, she turned her eyes without moving her head. Something was standing just behind her shoulder. She couldn't see it fully, only the edge of a long, grey hand with fingers that possessed too many knuckles. The skin looked like wet parchment stretched over driftwood. The Heartstone burned against her skin, a warning she couldn't ignore. The Hel portal wasn't just nearby; it was opening. The ground in the center of the Grove began to darken, the wildflowers wilting and blackening in a growing circle of rot. A low, subterranean drone vibrated through the soles of her boots. Rory didn't wait for the thing behind her to touch her. She lunged forward, diving toward the center of the clearing, away from the petrified stones and the long-fingered shadow. She rolled through the blackened grass, the heat of the pendant now searing through her shirt. As she scrambled to her feet, she saw her own shadow cast against the trees by the pendant’s crimson glow. But there were other shadows, too—dozens of them, detached from any physical form, dancing at the edges of the Grove. They were closing in, a tightening noose of silhouettes that flickered like candlelight in a draft. The "wrongness" peaked. The smell of lavender was replaced by the ozone tang of a coming storm and the metallic scent of old blood. The tall, needle-thin creature stepped out into the crimson light. It had no face, only a smooth expanse of pale, fungal flesh, save for a vertical slit that ran from its forehead to where a chin should be. It tilted its head, mimicking the way Rory was standing. "Not today," Rory hissed. She remembered a detail from a book her father had kept in his study back in Cardiff—something about the way Fae spaces folded. They weren't maps; they were moods. She closed her eyes, forcing her breathing to slow despite the terror clawing at her throat. She thought of the Golden Empress, the smell of rainy London asphalt, the sound of Silas’ laugh as he polished a glass. She focused on the mundane, the solid, the ugly, beautiful reality of her life above the bar. The heat of the pendant spiked, a blinding flash of red light that she felt even through her eyelids. The drone reached a deafening crescendo, a sound like a thousand angry bees, and then— Silence. The air was cold again. Bitterly, wonderfully cold. Rory opened her eyes and gasped, her lungs burning with the sudden intake of chilly, smog-tainted air. She was standing on the gravel path in Richmond Park. Her Honda Vision was ten feet away, its engine still ticking, though a thick layer of frost had settled over the seat. She reached for her phone in her pocket. The screen flickered to life. The date was the same, but the time... her delivery shift had ended at 10:00 PM. The clock now read 4:14 AM. She looked down at the Heartstone Pendant. It was dark now, the crimson gem dull and cold as a common pebble. She touched her left wrist, her fingers finding the crescent scar, making sure she was real, making sure she was back. In the distance, the first low rumble of a morning delivery truck on the A3 broke the stillness. Rory didn't look back at the trees. She jumped on the scooter, the engine roaring to life on the third kick, and sped toward the park gates, the memory of that faceless, tilting head burned into the back of her retinas. She had found the Grove, but as she gripped the handlebars with trembling hands, she realized the pendant hadn't led her there to find something. It had led her there so something could find her.