AI The edge of the Fae Grove met Richmond Park’s sprawl like a seam ripped in reality. Rory stepped through a curtain of weeping willow branches, the leaves brushing her face like cold, wet fingers. The usual drone of city traffic, a constant hum even miles out, vanished. It didn't fade; it was gone, as if a giant hand had cupped its palm over the world outside. The air changed instantly, growing thick, heavy, carrying a scent that was both damp earth and something else – a sickly sweet perfume, like overripe fruit left too long in the sun.
She paused, drawing a breath. Her lungs felt it immediately, a drag against the usual ease. The silence pressed in, immense, a physical weight against her eardrums. Not the quiet of a sleeping park, but a void, an absence of sound that felt deliberately manufactured. She wore her favourite black hoodie, zipped high to her chin, and her worn jeans. The Heartstone Pendant, usually nestled against her collarbone, offered a faint, consistent warmth beneath the fabric of her base layer. It was the only familiar thing in this sudden, unnatural stillness.
She came because of the note tucked into her last delivery order from the Golden Empress. A single, stark sentence written on stiff, cream-coloured paper: "Richmond Grove. Midnight. The whispers know." It wasn't signed. Nothing like it had ever appeared in her orders before. Yu-Fei Cheung, her boss, never wrote notes. This felt… different. And the pendant, the one an anonymous stranger had pressed into her hand weeks ago outside Silas’s bar, had begun its slow, steady thrumming about an hour after she’d found the note. A subtle warmth, then a growing heat, a silent alarm only she could feel .
Her boots crunched on something that wasn't leaves nor earth. A scatter of white, like bone fragments. She nudged them with her toe. No, not bone. Petals. Dried, brittle petals littering the path, though the wildflowers in the Fae Grove, legend had it, bloomed perpetually, vibrant and alive. These were desiccated , ancient.
She edged further in. The trees here were different. Ancient oaks, their bark twisted like arthritic knuckles, stood sentinel . Not just one or two, but a ring of them, forming a rough circle . Standing stones, the whispers had called them, though she saw only these gnarled trees. Moonlight, pale and weak, filtered through the dense canopy, casting shifting, indistinct shadows that played tricks on the eye. Was that a flicker of movement to her left, near the base of a particularly thick oak? She stopped, straining her ears. Nothing. Only the blood thrumming in her own temples.
The warmth from the Heartstone intensified. A distinct pulse , like a slow heartbeat against her skin. It wasn't the gentle warmth it usually offered when she was simply curious. This was insistent, pressing. Hel portal. The thought, unbidden, surfaced from somewhere deep. But how? This was Richmond Park, not some shadowed crossroads in a forgotten fairy tale.
She raised a hand, tracing the line of her jaw with a trembling thumb. She resisted the urge to speak, to call out, to break the profound quiet even if it meant shattering the fragile illusion of safety. Any sound felt like an invitation, a concession that she acknowledged the unseen audience. Her job was dealing with the tangible , the solid, the delivered. This… this was something else entirely. The warmth of the pendant spread, a tight knot beneath her sternum, driving the cold from her skin but doing little to soothe the ice in her gut.
The very bark of the nearest oak seemed to breathe, expanding and contracting with a slow, agonizing rhythm that didn't match any natural process. She remembered the weight of the pendant in the palm of her hand the day it was given to her, by a man whose face she hadn't seen clearly in the dim light of the London street. He’d spoken no word, simply pressed it into her hand, a cool, smooth weight that had vanished when she’d looked at it again, only to reappear as the deep crimson Heartstone she now wore. It throbbed . Not just warm now, but hot . A fierce, urgent pounding against her skin. Her breath hitched. This wasn't just the Fae Grove. This was a nexus. A gateway. And whatever the pendant was warning her about had found her.
There was a scent again, stronger this time. Not the cloying perfume anymore, but something akin to damp velvet and decaying pearls. It clung to the air, insinuating itself into her nostrils, heavy and ancient. She tilted her head, trying to pinpoint its source, but it emanated from everywhere, coating the clearing like a fine, invisible dust. The wildflowers pulsed with their internal light, their petals curled inwards, as if basking in the presence of whatever watched her . A single, perfect crimson blossom, no larger than her thumbnail, seemed to strain towards her, its stem bending impossibly.
The whispers intensified. They were no longer vague susurrations, but distinct, sibilant sounds just on the edge of comprehension, like a language sung backwards. They coiled around her, a silken, venomous embrace. She could feel the vibrations of the sounds against her eardrums, a phantom caress. Her eyes darted from shadow to shadow, seeking a source, an anchor, a form. There was nothing solid. Only the shifting, the amorphous, the deeply unnerving certainty that something was moving with fluid intent just beyond the reach of her sight. The standing stones, the ancient oaks, felt like witnesses, their silent forms exuding an ancient, terrible knowledge.
A movement, distinct this time. Closer. A shadow peeled away from the trunk of the largest oak, not a mere deepening of gloom, but a smear of absolute blackness, impossibly deep , that flowed across the forest floor. It moved with astonishing speed, not gliding, but unfurling, like ink dropped into water . She saw no limbs, no head, no discernible shape, yet it possessed a terrifying, deliberate trajectory. It stopped several yards away, a patch of void that seemed to absorb the moonlight, to deepen the surrounding darkness . Rory froze, every instinct screaming at her to run, but her feet felt rooted to the strange, petal-strewn ground. The air crackled with unspoken threat. The whispers swirled around the patch of darkness, a chorus of unseen entities celebrating a discovery.
The pendant flared. A burst of intense heat against her chest. For a fleeting second, the crimson gemstone seemed to ignite, its inner glow flaring with an almost blinding intensity . The deep crimson of its surface swirled, looking less like polished stone and more like a trapped vortex of blood. It pulsed , not just with warmth, but with a raw, potent energy that made her teeth ache. Through the dense trees, past the unnerving glow of the wildflowers, she saw something stir within the patch of absolute blackness. A subtle shifting, a coalescing of the nothingness. A profound , ancient hunger radiated from it, a palpable force that pressed against her mind.