AI Rory parked the battered delivery van discreetly at the edge of the treeline, engines humming low before she killed them. The silence that rushed in was absolute, drinking the faint thrum of the idle engine. Not the peaceful quiet of birdsong and rustling leaves, but a heavy, muffling void . It pressed against her eardrums. She’d told herself this was a good idea. The parchment Eva had slipped her, smelling faintly of dried lavender and something sharp like ozone, spoke of places where the veil between worlds frayed, where one might find… passage. Or at least, answers. Her Heartstone Pendant, nestled against her skin beneath the thin fabric of her uniform shirt, had been growing uncomfortably warm for days, its soft inner glow intensifying, pulsing with a faint, rhythmic heat that had nothing to do with her body temperature. The parchment mentioned specific ley lines, old places. This, one of the locals called Isolde’s Grove, was marked with a crude Fae glyph. Richmond. Miles from her usual London haunts, deeper into the sprawling green than she usually ventured for anything other than a customer’s address.
She killed the headlights. The pre-dawn chill prickled her arms. Moonlight, thin and watery, bled through the thick canopy of ancient oaks, casting long, distorted shadows that writhed like living things across the overgrown track. The air tasted damp, rich with the smell of decaying leaves and something else, something floral and intoxicatingly sweet, yet with an acrid undercurrent that caught the back of her throat. Wildflowers. The parchment had mentioned them, blooming year-round, impossibly vibrant even in the encroaching dark.
Rory pulled the collar of her jacket tighter, her fingers brushing the tiny crescent scar on her left wrist. A childhood tumble, a sharp edge of a garden gnome. It felt like a relic from another life, a life before London, before Evan, before… this. She stepped out of the van. The ground beneath her boots was soft, yielding. Each step seemed to swallow sound.
She walked toward the denser woods, the track narrowing. Her breath plumed white. The trees here were immense, their bark gnarled and ancient, their branches reaching skyward like skeletal fingers. No other cars. No distant sirens. Nothing but the vast, unnerving quiet. The pendant against her chest pulsed , a warm throb against her sternum that felt almost like a heartbeat. Not hers.
The standing stones appeared as she broke through a final thicket of ferns. They weren't imposing, not like monoliths in pictures, but more like the weathered teeth of some forgotten giant, jutting from the earth at odd angles, draped in moss and ivy. Ancient oaks surrounded the clearing, their roots snaking over the uneven ground, forming a natural, if slightly menacing, fence. The space at their centre was unnaturally flat, an almost perfect circle of dark earth. And the flowers. They carpeted the ground between the stones, a riot of impossible colours – deep violets, burning oranges, iridescent blues – their petals catching the moonlight like fallen jewels. It was beautiful, yes, but a beauty that felt wrong, brittle, too intense for the hushed hour.
She moved deeper into the clearing, her boots crunching faintly on fallen leaves. The air here was colder, the floral scent stronger, almost sickly sweet now. It clung to her, a perfumed shroud. The pendant’s pulse quickened . A faint warmth seeped through her shirt, spreading. When she reached the centre, the chill intensified. It wasn’t the cold of night; it felt like the cold of deep underground , or of a place utterly devoid of life. She held up her hand, palm out. The Heartstone Pendant lay on her skin, a dim crimson glow emanating from within, barely visible in the gloom but distinct. It was warmer now, radiating a steady, comforting heat that seemed to push back against the unnatural cold . She closed her eyes, trying to concentrate, to feel whatever it was the pendant was responding to. A ‘Hel portal’. Whatever that meant. A gateway, perhaps.
A subtle shift. The rustling of leaves. She opened her eyes. Nothing. Just the deep shadows pooling around the base of the stones. She cocked her head, listening. The silence seemed to have deepened, the heavy blanket of muffling quiet now a presence itself. It felt like something was holding its breath. Every instinct screamed at her that this place was wrong. The trees, too tall, too still. The flowers, too bright, their colours almost vibrating. The stones, ancient and brooding, seemed to watch her.
She took a step back, and another crunch of leaves sounded behind her. Not her own footsteps . She spun around. The treeline was a wall of darkness. No movement. No sound but the frantic thumping of her own heart, loud in her ears.
"Just the wind," she whispered into the oppressive air. Her voice sounded thin, alien.
The floral scent shifted again. It took on a metallic tang, like old blood. The vivid colours of the wildflowers seemed to blur at the edges, bleeding into the shadows. She felt a prickling sensation at the back of her neck, the undeniable sense of observation. Not the curious glance of a deer or the distant gaze of an owl, but something deliberate, intense , and ancient.
She scanned the clearing again, her gaze catching on subtle distortions at the periphery of her vision. A patch of shadow that seemed to detach itself from a tree trunk, melting back before she could focus . A flicker of movement, a darkening of the air near the largest standing stone, gone when she looked directly at it. Her hand instinctively went to the pendant, its warmth now a constant, insistent thrum. It pulsed not just with heat, but with a kind of urgency .
"Hello?" she called out, her voice barely a croak . Silence. The oppressive quiet returned, heavier than before.
She took a careful step towards the centre again, her eyes fixed on the ground, then slowly , deliberately , lifted her gaze. One of the smaller standing stones, closer to the edge of the clearing, seemed to lean. It wasn't a visual trick of the moonlight or the shadows. The stone, ancient and moss-covered, physically shifted, a slow, grinding movement that mimicked the sound of bone scraping on rock, a noise that didn’t escape into the air but seemed to vibrate in her teeth. It settled back, seemingly still. But the impression remained. The stones were not merely markers; they were guardians, or worse, teeth.
The air grew colder, a biting, bone-deep chill that seeped through her jacket and into her very marrow. The wildflowers, once vibrant, seemed to retract, their colours dimming, as if suddenly aware of a greater darkness encroaching. The moonlight that filtered through the canopy now seemed sickly, yellowed. A faint, almost imperceptible whispering began, like dry leaves skittering across stone, or a multitude of hushed, sibilant voices just beyond the range of hearing. It wasn't a sound that came from any direction, but rather seemed to emanate from the very air, from the earth, from the shadows themselves.
Rory hugged herself, her eyes darting from the shifting stones to the dense wall of trees. The pendant flared, a sudden intense warmth that made her gasp. It wasn’t a pleasant warmth anymore; it felt like a brand . It pulsed faster, erratic now, not a heartbeat but a terrified skipping . *Hel portal.* The parchment’s words echoed in her mind, no longer promising escape, but hinting at a door that perhaps should remain shut.
A twig snapped behind her, sharp and loud, much closer than any previous sound. She didn't spin this time. She couldn't. Her feet felt rooted to the spot. Every nerve ending screamed danger. The whispering intensified, coalescing into a low, guttural hum that vibrated in her chest. It felt like the earth itself was groaning , waking from a slumber. A shape detached itself from the deep shadow between two ancient oaks, not with the fluidity of a creature, but with the sudden, jarring appearance of something that *wasn't there * a moment ago. It was tall, impossibly slender, a silhouette against the deeper blackness of the woods, its form indistinct, shifting, like smoke made solid. It didn't move towards her, not yet. It simply observed. And Rory knew, with a certainty that chilled her more than any cold, that she was not alone. The wrongness hadn't just settled; it had arrived.
Her breath hitched. The pendant burned against her skin. The air hummed with a palpable dread. The figure at the edge of the Grove remained motionless, a void in the encroaching night. She could feel it. The shift. The moment where the Grove wasn't just a peculiar patch of woods, but a hungry mouth. Her mind, usually so quick to dissect and rationalize, felt sluggish, overwhelmed by a primal terror that clamped down on her throat. The wildflowers seemed to shrink back further, their vibrancy leached away, leaving behind only the oppressive darkness and the skeletal, ancient trees. The standing stones, silent witnesses, seemed to lean in closer, their weathered surfaces slick with unseen damp. A faint, metallic tang filled the air, sharp and coppery, overwhelming the cloying sweetness of the fading flowers.
From the periphery, a sound began to coalesce. Not a snap of twig or rustle of leaf, but something far more insidious . A skittering, a dry, whispery scrape, like countless insect legs moving in unison across stone. It didn't have a source; it was everywhere, weaving itself into the oppressive silence . Rory’s eyes darted towards the sound, but saw only shifting shadows, tricks of the moonlight and her own fraying nerves. Yet the sound persisted, growing, a subtle dissonant chorus that scraped at the edges of her hearing.
Her hand trembled as she reached for the Heartstone Pendant. It pulsed , not with a steady rhythm, but a frantic, erratic beat . The warmth was now a searing heat, so pronounced she snatched her hand away as if burned. It continued to glow, a deep crimson light that seemed to fight against the engulfing darkness, a tiny beacon in the encroaching dread . She focused on the warmth , on the faint glow, trying to anchor herself. The parchment had said it pulsed near Hel portals. This place felt like the gateway to somewhere ancient, somewhere hungry.
She scanned the treeline again. The figure remained, a sentinel of impossible proportions. It hadn't moved, but its presence felt like a physical weight pressing down on the clearing. The air around it seemed to shimmer, as if the very space he occupied was warped. Rory’s bright blue eyes, usually sharp and analytical, widened, reflecting the faint moonlight, pools of fear in her pale face. She could feel the scar on her wrist, a faint itch beneath her skin, a reminder of a past self, a self not yet acquainted with the things that waited in places where the veil was thin.
The skittering sound grew louder, closer, seeming to emanate from the very ground beneath her feet. She glanced down, afraid of what she might see. The dark earth, carpeted with the dying flowers, looked undisturbed. Yet the sound was undeniable, a dry, chitinous whisper that seemed to promise a slow, deliberate approach.
A new sound joined the skittering. A low, wet clicking, like pebbles being tumbled in a throat. It came from the direction of the standing stones. Rory’s gaze snapped to the largest of the stones. Its moss-covered surface seemed to ripple, not as a trick of the light, but as if something was moving just beneath the skin of it . A faint, phosphorescent glow, sickly green, bloomed from within the stone’s depths , illuminating the ancient carvings that had seemed inert moments before . The carvings twisted, shifted, elongating into grotesque, insectoid shapes.
Her heart hammered a wild rhythm against her ribs. Her breathing grew shallow, ragged. The pendant pulsed harder, hotter, a desperate signal in the growing chaos. She could feel the air growing thicker, harder to draw into her lungs, heavy with the metallic tang and the sickeningly sweet fragrance of the wilting flowers. The standing stones seemed to loom, their dark surfaces slick as if weeping . The whispering from the trees now carried distinct, sibilant syllables, too low to decipher, but laced with a malice that prickled her skin. She felt a profound sense of wrongness, a gnawing certainty that she had trespassed into a place that was not meant for mortal eyes, a place that was now actively, perversely, acknowledging her presence. The *thump-thump-thump * grew louder, closer, a primal drumbeat against the cacophony of the Grove.
A dry, rasping breath, smelling of damp earth and something acrid, ghosted across the back of her neck. She froze, her muscles locked tight. The sound was too close, too distinct to be the wind. It carried a ragged quality, like dry reeds scraping wood. She dared not turn, dared not even shift her weight . The feeling of being watched intensified, a thousand unseen eyes boring into her back. The distant *thump-thump-thump * had ceased, replaced by an unnerving, expectant silence . The skittering returned, closer now, a frantic, agitated scurrying that seemed to surround her, confined the small circle of the clearing. The pendulum's glow flickered , then flared, a sudden, blinding burst of deep crimson light that momentarily illuminated the clearing in stark relief. In that blinding flash, Rory saw it. At the edge of her vision, where the slender figure had stood, the shadows seemed to writhe and coalesce, not into a single shape, but into a multitude of smaller, dark forms that detached themselves from the trees. They moved with unnerving speed, a wave of pure darkness spilling into the clearing. They were low to the ground, multifaceted, their forms indistinct but suggestive of countless, spindly limbs. The pendant’s light died down as quickly as it had flared, plunging the clearing back into a deeper gloom , but the sight was seared into her retinas. The air grew impossibly cold, so cold her teeth chattered involuntarily. Her breath hitched, a strangled gasp escaping her lips. She was caught . The Fae Grove had not just acknowledged her; it had ensnared her.
The pendant pulsed , then pulsed again, each thrum a spark of searing heat against her skin, a desperate Morse code of alarm. Rory stumbled back, her boots catching on a gnarled root hidden beneath the wilting wildflowers. She regained her balance, her eyes wide, pupils dilated, trying to pierce the velvet darkness that now pressed in from all sides. The multitude of dark forms had stopped their mad dash. They milled about the perimeter of the clearing, a living, shifting wall of shadow, their forms indistinct, yet betraying a terrifying, angular grace. A soft chittering sound, like shards of glass being ground together, began to ripple through them, a chorus of whispers that promised unspeakable things. The air grew thick, heavy with an atmosphere that felt both suffocating and suffocatingly alive. A single, elongated shadow detached itself from the mass at the edge of her vision and flowed towards her with impossible speed. It was slender, impossibly so, with a suggestion of too many joints, too many limbs. Rory’s mind, usually miles ahead, now scrabbled for purchase, grasping at fragments of knowledge. These were not the playful sprites of folklore. This whispered malice, this hungry stillness, spoke of something far older, far more predatory. Her hand flew to the pendant, no longer seeking warmth , but a desperate anchor. It pulsed with a frantic rhythm, the crimson glow flickering like a dying ember, pushing back feebly against the encroaching dark as the first of the multitude moved in.