AI Rory pulled the collar of her jacket tighter against the damp chill that seemed to seep right through the fabric. Her breath plumed in the air, a fleeting ghost in the oppressive silence . Richmond Park at night was one thing ; the isolated pocket of the Fae Grove was another entirely. She’d parked her scooter a good twenty minutes back, opting for the deceptive comfort of the familiar path before veering off into the untamed wildness that marked Isolde's grove. The ancient oaks, gnarled and thick as fortress walls, stood like forgotten sentinels , silent and imposing . It was the only way to tell she was truly there, for the air shimmered with an almost invisible distortion, a subtle wavering that gave the world a dreamlike quality.
Her bright blue eyes, usually sharp and quick, struggled to pierce the gloom . The moonlight, usually so generous, seemed to be swallowed whole by the Grove’s canopy. Only slivers of silver-white light managed to filter through, dappling the ground in a shifting mosaic that played tricks on her vision.
"Stupid," she muttered, the sound swallowed immediately by the encompassing quiet. "Stupid, stupid, stupid."
She wasn't stupid, not usually. Her mind, quick and out-of-the-box, had always been her greatest asset. But coming here, alone, in the dead of night, felt like an act of profound idiocy . Yet, the whisper she’d heard, a fleeting suggestion overheard at Silas’s bar, had lodged itself in her brain like a splinter. A feeling that something important, something *dangerous *, had found its way into the Grove. The old stories, the warnings, they tugged at the edges of her memory. Time moved differently here. An hour could be minutes, or days. It was a good way to get lost , to truly disappear. The thought sent a fresh tremor down her spine , colder than the night air.
The wildflowers, true to their nature, bloomed impossibly. Their scent, usually a sweet, earthy perfume, was cloying tonight, almost suffocating. It hung heavy in the air, masking any other potential odors. Rory stepped carefully , her worn trainers crunching softly on unseen twigs and leaves, each sound magnified in the unnatural quiet. Her fingers traced the small, crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist, an old habit from childhood, a nervous tic she hadn't realized she still possessed. It was a comfort, a reminder of solid, tangible reality, unlike the current surroundings.
A faint warmth bloomed against her sternum. The Heartstone Pendant. It pulsed once, soft and deep, like a slow, deliberate heartbeat, then faded. Rory's breath caught. She pulled the silver chain out from beneath her jacket, the deep crimson gem, roughly the size of her thumbnail, glowed with a faint inner light. It wasn't near a Hel portal – or at least, she hoped not – but it had never stirred like that unless something… *else * was present. Something powerful.
The silence pressed in around her, thick and weighted. It wasn't the natural quiet of a sleeping forest; it was an expectant silence , a pregnant pause before an unheard crescendo. Rory stopped, straining her ears. Nothing. Not a rustle of leaves that wasn't her own doing, not the chirp of a solitary night bird, not even the distant hum of city traffic that usually permeated even the deepest parts of Richmond Park. It was as if the Grove had ingested sound, chewed it up, and swallowed it whole .
Her eyes scanned the periphery. The gnarled branches, dark against the marginally lighter sky, looked like skeletal fingers reaching, twisting. Every shadow seemed to deepen, to take on mass, to shift at the very edge of her vision. She blinked, hard, trying to clear her sight, but the distortions persisted. Was it just her mind, playing tricks in the isolated darkness? Or was the Grove *itself * distorting her perception?
"Just imagining things," she whispered again, louder this time. Her voice, usually steady, sounded brittle, thin. It wavered in the air, refusing to be absorbed, hanging there like an accusation.
She forced herself to move, one careful step after another, her eyes darting from side to side. Her mind raced , sifting through possibilities. An animal? Unlikely to cause this level of oppressive stillness. Another person? If so, they were far better at stealth than she was.
A soft, almost imperceptible sound carried on what felt like a sudden, shallow breath of wind. *Rustle.* Not from the trees above, but from the low undergrowth to her left . Rory froze. It was too deliberate, too distinct, for just a rodent or an invisible gust. Her 5'6" frame felt unnervingly small tonight.
She stared into the darkness, holding her breath, listening. The smell of wildflowers intensified, almost sickly sweet now, making her stomach churn . Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic drum in the silent Grove. One minute passed. Then another. Only the thrumming of her own blood in her ears and the distant, maddening buzz inside her head.
Then, a faint flash of something pale, almost luminous, appeared between two of the ancient oaks, deep within the shadows. It was gone almost as soon as she registered it, a trick of the light, an optical illusion. She told herself that. It *had * to be. But the logical part of her brain, the part that always found the quickest route, the best solution, screamed a silent warning. This wasn't right.
The Heartstone pulsed again, a warmer, more insistent throb this time. The faint inner glow brightened, casting a tiny, almost insignificant crimson beacon in the overwhelming darkness. It no longer felt like a mere warning; it felt like an alarm.
Rory took a cautious step back, then another. She needed to reassess, to get out and rethink. Her usual cool-headedness was fraying at the edges, stretched thin by the unnatural quiet and the things that refused to be there, yet stubbornly were.
A soft, melodic hum, like a forgotten lullaby, barely audible at first, reached her ears. It was high, sweet, intoxicating. It didn’t sound human. It sounded… *ancient *. The sound seemed to drift from nowhere and everywhere at once, chilling her to the bone even as it lulled her with its strange beauty. It was beautiful in the way a predator is beautiful, poised and deadly.
Her vision blurred for a moment, the trees seeming to swim. She shook her head, trying to clear it. Her body tensed, every muscle coiled. This wasn't merely 'off' anymore. This was a trap.
"Show yourself," she demanded, her voice a reedy whisper, barely breaking through the hum . It sounded foolish, a child’s plea in the face of something ancient and unknowable.
The humming stopped abruptly. The silence that followed was even more profound , more absolute, than before. It felt like a physical weight , pressing down on her, stealing the air from her lungs.
Then, from the deep shadows directly ahead, where the luminous flash had been, a pair of eyes opened. They were points of light, not reflecting what little moonlight there was, but *generating* their own faint, ethereal glow . They were too far apart to be human, too unnervingly still. They watched her, unblinking.
Rory’s mind, despite the encroaching terror, worked furiously. Her hand went to her jacket pocket, fumbling for the small, incredibly bright tactical flashlight she always carried on her delivery routes. She flicked it on.
The powerful beam cut through the oppressive darkness, dispelling the shadows in an instant. It illuminated… nothing. Just the trunk of an ancient oak, rough bark, and twisting roots. The eyes were gone . The humming was gone . Only the overwhelming scent of wildflowers and the frantic pounding of her own heart remained.
She swept the beam left, then right, then up into the canopy, her gaze scrutinizing every branch, every patch of darkness. Her hands were shaking now, a fine tremor she couldn't control.
*Blink *.
The luminous eyes opened again, this time to her right, much closer. Framed by a tangle of dark, hair-like tendrils that seemed to writhe of their own accord . And just behind them, a suggestion of a form, elongated and impossibly slender, shifting like smoke against the deeper gloom . It was tall, taller than any human, and imbued with an alien grace that froze Rory in place.
The Heartstone pulsed frantically now, a steady, rhythmic thrumming against her skin. The crimson glow intensified, almost painful in its vibrancy. It screamed danger, not just Fae, but something deeper, something *other *.
No sounds of footsteps . No rustling of cloth. Nothing. Just the silent, watching eyes, and the ephemeral shape that seemed to drink the light . The fear was a cold, sharp blade, pressing against her throat. Her mind scrambled for a known threat, anything to anchor herself. Evan, her ex, had used fear against her, but it was a clumsy, human fear. This was different. This was primal. This was the dark forest come alive.
Her quick out-of-the-box thinking kicked in, a desperate spark in the gloom . What did this *thing * want? If it wanted to hurt her, it could have done so already. It was… *toying * with her. Or simply observing. She remembered the warnings about the Fae, their cruel games, their fascination with mortals.
She had to break the connection, disrupt its rhythm, whatever it was doing . She knew, with a certainty that chilled her more than the lingering cold, that if she let it hold her gaze, if she let its silent presence consume her, she would be lost. Lost to the time-warped Grove, lost to something far worse than Evan’s control.
With a sudden, violent surge of adrenaline, Rory screamed. A raw, guttural sound ripped from her throat, tearing through the pristine vacuum of the Grove. It was an act of pure defiance, a refusal to be silenced, to be hunted in this insidious ballet of fear.
The eyes widened , just barely, as if surprised. The ethereal form rippled, withdrawing deeper into the shadows, a faint, metallic tang now mingled with the cloying sweetness of the wildflowers. It was still there, she knew, lurking, watching. But Rory had bought herself a moment.
She spun, flashlight beam sweeping wildly, no longer caring about stealth. She just needed to move, to run, to get to the oak sentinels , to the boundary, to the place where Earth truly began. The Fae Grove might twist time, might drain sound, might conjure horrors from the edges of perception, but it still had a boundary. And she would find it. She would run as if the hounds of Hel themselves were at her heels. Because for all she knew, they might well be.