Run: 2026-02-25-01KJ95DJ3M7FE27B8R02HT13AV

The damp autumn air of Richmond Park usually carried the scent of wet bracken and the distant, metallic tang of London’s exhaust. But as Aurora Carter pushed through a dense thicket of hawthorn, the world went abruptly, unnervingly sweet. The transition was so sharp it made her teeth ache. One step she was navigating the familiar, muddy outskirts near the Isabella Plantation; the next, she was stumbling into a clearing where the air tasted of crushed jasmine and overripe peaches. Rory stopped, her boots sinking into grass that felt far too lush for a London October. She adjusted the strap of the insulated delivery bag slung over her shoulder. Yu-Fei would have a fit if the Golden Empress’s signature Peking duck went cold, but the delivery instructions had been specific to the point of obsession: *The clearing marked by the ancient oaks. Do not leave the bag at the gate. Bring it to the center. Do not look back.* In the pale, sickly light of a moon she couldn't quite see through the canopy, the Fae Grove stretched out before her. It shouldn't have been there. She knew the geography of this park better than her own flat above Silas' bar, yet this pocket of space defied the maps. Surrounding the clearing were the standing stones—halfway between petrified wood and weathered granite. They were enormous, gnarled trunks of oak that had seemingly turned to stone while twisting in silent agony. They didn't just mark the boundary; they felt like sentinels guarding a door that had been left ajar. Rory reached up, her fingers grazing the Heartstone Pendant tucked beneath her collar. The thumbnail-sized crimson gem was usually cold against her skin, a quiet weight she’d grown used to since it arrived in that anonymous parcel. Tonight, it was different. It didn't just sit; it thrummed. A faint, rhythmic heat radiated from the silver chain, pulsing against her collarbone like a secondary heart. It grew warmer as she moved deeper into the clearing. "Hello?" she called out. Her voice, usually steady and sharp, sounded muffled, as if the air around her were made of heavy velvet. No one answered. There were no owls, no rustle of deer in the underbrush, no hum of the city she knew was only a mile away. The silence was absolute, a physical pressure against her eardrums. She looked down at the wildflowers carpeted beneath her feet. They were vivid, terrifyingly bright colors—electric blues, bruised purples, and amaranth reds—blooming with a vitality that felt predatory. They shouldn't have been in season. As she walked, they didn't crush under her boots; they bent away, then sprang back up, untouched. Rory’s thumb traced the small, crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist, a nervous habit she’d never quite managed to kill. Her mind, trained by the cold logic of the pre-law studies she’d fled in Cardiff, tried to catalog the wrongness. The temperature had risen at least ten degrees. The light was coming from the flora itself, a faint phosphoric glow that cast long, distorted shadows away from her, as if she were being lit by a fire that gave off no heat. The Heartstone gave a sudden, sharp spike of heat. It wasn't just warm now; it was nearly scalding. She stopped in the exact center of the Grove. The standing stones seemed taller from this vantage point, leaning inward as if eavesdropping on her thoughts. She knelt to place the Golden Empress bag on a flat, mossy rock that looked suspiciously like an altar. "I'm leaving the order here," she said, her blue eyes scanning the perimeter. "It's paid for. I'm going now." She turned to leave, but the path she’d taken was gone. Where there had been a gap between two of the oak stones, there was now a solid wall of brambles, thick with thorns the size of needles. Rory felt a prickle of sweat at the nape of her neck. She was a delivery driver, a girl who had survived an abusive ex and the cutthroat streets of London; she didn't believe in fairy tales. But she did believe in her own instincts, and right now, they were screaming that the geometry of the Grove had shifted. Something moved at the edge of her vision. A flicker of white, light as a moth. When she turned her head, it was gone. Then it appeared on the other side—a tall, spindly shape that didn't so much walk as unfold itself from behind a standing stone. Rory forced herself to breathe. *Cool-headed,* her father used to say. *Think your way out, Aurora.* She took a step toward what she thought was the north, toward the sound of a distant, low vibration she hoped was the road. But the vibration wasn't rhythmic; it was melodic. It was a hum, a three-note drone that seemed to vibrate in her marrow. "Is someone there?" she asked. The humming stopped. A few yards away, a wildflower—a deep, veined orchid—suddenly wilted, its petals turning to grey ash in seconds. Another followed, then another, a line of decay tracing a path toward her. It was as if something invisible were walking across the grass, and its very footprint was poison. The Heartstone was now a coal against her chest. Rory reached for it, pulling the pendant out from under her shirt. The deep crimson gem was glowing fiercely, a frantic, red strobe light that illuminated the clearing in flashes. In the brief pulses of red, she saw them. They weren't people. They didn't have faces, not really—just smooth, pale surfaces where features should be, like wet clay that hadn't been finished. There were dozens of them, standing perfectly still between the oak stones. They were tall, their limbs long and too many-jointed, dressed in rags that looked like woven cobwebs. Each time the pendant flashed, they were a foot closer. They weren't moving when she looked at them. They only moved in the darkness between the pulses of the stone. Rory didn't scream. Screaming was for people who had hope of being heard. Instead, she backed away, her mind racing. The pendant reacted to Hel portals. If the stone was this hot, the Grove wasn't just a clearing; it was a thinning of the skin between worlds. The "delivery" hadn't been an order; it had been bait. She glanced at her wrist. The crescent scar was throbbing, a dull ache that mirrored the pendant’s pulse. A sound finally broke the silence—a wet, tearing noise, like someone pulling a heavy boot out of thick mud. It came from behind the altar stone. Rory spun around. The delivery bag had been opened. Not unzipped, but shredded. The Peking duck was gone, replaced by a pile of something that looked like polished teeth. "You're late," a voice whispered. It didn't come from any of the pale figures. It came from the wind, from the stones, from the very grass beneath her. It was a voice that sounded like grinding glass. Rory’s hand went to the Heartstone, clutching it. The heat was blistering now, but she didn't let go. She felt the power of the artifact—a strange, ancient weight that felt like an anchor in a storm. If this was a portal, she needed a way to close the distance back to the world that made sense. "I don't have anything else for you," Rory said, her voice iron-flat despite the trembling in her knees. The pale figures moved again in the blink of an eye. They were only ten feet away now. One of them raised a hand—a long, spindly thing with too many fingers—and pointed at her chest. At the pendant. The heat of the Heartstone suddenly changed. It went from a burn to a pull. It was tugging her, not toward the brambles, but toward one of the standing stones. This stone didn't look like the others. It was darker, its surface etched with runes that seemed to bleed a slow, silver sap. Rory didn't hesitate. Intelligence tucked away the fear and replaced it with a desperate, calculated gamble. She ran. The grass beneath her feet began to hiss. The jasmine scent turned to the stench of stagnant water and old copper. The pale things didn't run; they simply *were* further along their path each time she blinked. They were shimmering in and out of existence, closing the circle. She reached the dark stone just as the first cold, porcelain-like finger brushed the back of her jacket. The touch didn't feel like skin; it felt like a winter frost that bit through the fabric and into her spine. She slammed her hand, Heartstone and all, against the silver-sap runes of the oak stone. The world didn't explode. It imploded. The sweetness, the light, the pale figures—all of it was sucked into a single, silent point of crimson light. Rory felt a sensation of falling upward, the wind ripped from her lungs by a vacuum. The scent of jasmine was replaced by the cold, biting smell of wet mud and diesel. She hit the ground hard, the air leaving her chest in a painful grunt. For a long time, she lay there, her face pressed into the dirt. Slowly, the world began to fill with noise. The distant roar of an airplane overhead. The hum of a distant siren. The rustle of actual, mundane leaves in a standard London breeze. Rory sat up, coughing. She was back in Richmond Park, just outside the Isabella Plantation. The hawthorn thicket was behind her, looking entirely ordinary. The moon was visible now, a pale, natural white behind the clouds. She looked at her hand. The Heartstone Pendant was dark again, its crimson depths dull and quiet. But her palm was red, blistered in the shape of the silver runes she had touched. She checked her watch. She had left the Golden Empress at 7:00 PM. The walk to the Grove should have taken twenty minutes. The watch face stared back at her. The digital numbers were flickering wildly, but they finally settled. It was 3:14 AM. Rory stood up, her legs shaking, and brushed the dirt from her jeans. She looked back at the thicket. No Jasmin. No glowing flowers. Only the dark, silent woods of a city park at night. She reached into her pocket and found her phone. Twenty-four missed calls from Yu-Fei. Three from Silas. She didn't call them back. Not yet. She just stood there in the cold, her fingers trailing over the crescent scar on her wrist, wondering if the things in the Grove were still eating the teeth she’d left behind, or if they were still standing there, waiting for the red light to flash again. Rory Carter turned and began the long walk out of the park, her pace quick, her head down, and for the first time in her life, she didn't look back.