AI The chill of the autumn night bit through Rory’s denim jacket, but it was nothing compared to the growing prickle on her neck. She navigated the gravel path of Richmond Park, her worn boots crunching a steady rhythm against the silent backdrop of sleeping trees. Here, under a sky bruised purple and grey, London’s sprawling light felt like a distant, irrelevant hum . The air grew heavier with each step, denser, like wading through forgotten history.
Her reason for being here was a desperate thread of a whisper , a clue pulled from the frayed remnants of a case Silas had mentioned. A young woman, gone missing near the park, her last known contact reporting a ‘strange clearing’. Eva had warned her away from such things, from following the threads that pulled at the fabric of the everyday, but Rory’s curiosity, or perhaps her innate stubbornness, outweighed caution. She wasn’t looking for trouble, not exactly. Just answers.
The path dwindled to a deer trail, then nothing. Rory pulled her phone from her pocket, the flashlight beam cutting a stark white tunnel through the gloom . It bobbed over gnarled roots, over patches of bracken that gleamed wet with dew. Her bright blue eyes scanned the periphery, searching for any sign of the ancient oak standing stones that marked the boundary. She knew the stories of this place, tales whispered in hushed tones over pints at Silas’s bar, stories of a grove where time itself unspooled, where wildflowers bloomed in defiance of seasons. She’d always dismissed them as charming local lore. Now, with the wind picking up, whipping her shoulder-length black hair across her face, the charm felt thin, stretched taut.
Then, there they were. Three colossal oaks, their trunks wider than any she had ever seen, stood sentinel in a loose semicircle. Their branches, skeletal against the sky, seemed to intertwine, forming a natural archway. As she approached, the air changed again, no longer just cold, but sharp with the scent of damp earth and an unnervingly sweet, cloying perfume. It was the smell of summer in the heart of autumn, of life gone riot where it shouldn’t be.
Rory passed beneath the boughs, her crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist a faint white line against her skin. The moment she stepped into the clearing, the world shifted. The crunch of gravel underfoot vanished, replaced by the soft give of moss. The whispering wind died, leaving a silence so profound it pressed against her eardrums. She turned, looking back, but the park beyond the archway was shrouded in an impenetrable mist, far thicker than the patchy tendrils she’d left behind.
She was in The Fae Grove.
A sea of wildflowers, vibrant reds, purples, and golds, unfurled across the clearing, glowing eerily in the scarce moonlight. They didn’t merely bloom; they thrived, bursting with impossible colour and reckless abandon. Each petal seemed to drink the moonlight, reflecting it back in a silent, luminous chorus. Rory flicked her phone’s light across them. They didn’t quite cast shadows the way they should; instead, the light seemed to be absorbed, swallowed up by their unnatural vibrancy.
Her heartstone pendant, a deep crimson roughly the size of her thumbnail, hung heavy on its silver chain against her chest. She traced its smooth surface with a thumb. It lay cold, inert. No Hel portal here, then, just… whatever this was.
"Hello?" she called out, her voice a thin, reedy sound swallowed immediately by the silence . It felt wrong to speak, like defiling a sacred space, or worse, calling attention to herself.
She moved deeper, her gaze sweeping the perimeter. The oaks here were even older, their crowns so thick they blotted out most of the sky, creating pockets of liquid shadow. The ground was dotted with fairy rings of mushrooms, some glowing with a soft, phosphorescent light. It was beautiful, sickeningly so, like a trap baited with dreams.
A sound, faint as a moth's wing, rustled in the foliage to her right. Rory froze, her hand instinctively going to the small, weighted canister of pepper spray in her pocket. Logic told her it was a bird, perhaps a deer. She’d certainly startled something. But the silence that followed felt too deliberate, too knowing.
She edged forward, her boots making no sound on the moss, her eyes straining. The wildflowers near the sound seemed to lean towards her, their petals like hundreds of tiny, curious faces. She shook her head, an intelligent mind refusing to surrender to an imagination running wild. Yet, the sensation of being observed persisted, a cold crawl along her spine, like phantom fingers.
A low, melodic hum started then, somewhere in the distance, a wisp of a tune that seemed to wind its way through the very air . It was beautiful, haunting, and utterly alien. It was a lullaby sung in a language she’d never heard, yet somehow understood: *You are alone. You are not safe.*
Rory pressed on, forcing her focus back to her objective. The missing woman’s last cryptic message had spoken of a ‘glowing symbol’ etched into the base of the largest oak. She needed to find it.
The humming grew clearer, now laced with a faint, breathy laughter. It wasn't the laughter of joy, but something detached, ancient, like wind chimes made of glass and bone. Her flashlight beam, once a comfort, now felt like a spotlight, announcing her presence to unseen eyes. The shadows between the trees seemed to deepen, to coalesce, becoming not just the absence of light, but active, watchful entities .
She stopped at the foot of an oak, its trunk wider than three cars side-by-side. The bark was a testament to millennia, gnarled and ridged like petrified waves. She ran her hand over it, searching. Nothing. Just rough, cold wood. The laughter seemed to echo from the very heart of the tree, or was it just the uncanny silence playing tricks on her ears?
A sudden movement, quick as a blink, flickered at the edge of her vision. A tall, slender shadow detached itself from another, darting behind the tree. Rory spun, her heart hammering against her ribs. Nothing. Only the immovable bulk of the oak. She peered around it, her breath held. The wildflowers here were denser, a riot of colour that pulsed with an almost internal light. They seemed to strain towards her, their stems swaying as if in an unfelt breeze.
"Show yourself," she demanded, her voice steadier this time, a conscious effort to assert control. The words felt foolish as soon as they left her lips. This wasn't a mugger in an alley.
A new sound joined the laughter: the skittering of impossibly light footsteps on the moss, circling her, just out of sight. They were too quick, too erratic, too… numerous. It wasn't one thing, she realized with a growing dread, it was many. The air grew heavy, thick with the cloying wildflower scent and something else, something sharp and feral, like ozone and wet iron.
A giggle, high and bell-like, sounded directly behind her ear, so close she felt a cold puff of air against her neck. Rory yelped, leaping forward, whipping around. Her phone fell from her grasp, tumbling into the deep purple petals, its light dying.
Darkness. Absolute and suffocating.
Panic, cold and visceral, threatened to bloom. She fought it down, forcing herself to breathe, one slow, deliberate breath after another. She was Rory Carter, not some screaming victim. She was cool-headed, intelligent. She would think her way out.
The giggling continued, now from multiple directions, encircling her, weaving through the darkness. It was playful, but with an edge of something ancient and cruel. The skittering footsteps resumed, light as dry leaves blown by a ghost wind, closing in. She could feel presences, more than she could count, flitting around her, their movements so swift she couldn't pinpoint them in the gloom .
She bent down, fumbling in the thick carpet of flowers, her fingers brushing against cold, smooth petals, then something hard and angular. Her phone. She snatched it up, her thumb searching for the power button. It flickered on, a blessed beacon in the encroaching blackness, its light weak, wavering . The screen was cracked , a spiderweb of lines across the glass.
The faint beam illuminated a small, moss-covered stone at the base of the oak. Etched into it, barely visible beneath the moss, was a symbol: a spiral like a coil of smoke, surrounding a single, stylized eye. The missing woman’s last clue.
As her eyes processed the symbol, a whisper slithered into her mind, clear as if spoken directly into her consciousness: *You found it. Such a clever little thing.* It was multifaceted, a chorus of voices, some sweet and childlike, others deep and guttural, all overlayed with the endless, musical laughter.
Rory scrambled backwards, her footroots tangling in the impossibly vibrant stems. The giggling intensified, growing shrill, mockingly delighted. Her flashlight beam, already weak, began to flicker erratically, turning the grove into a strobe-lit nightmare. Each flash revealed glimpses of twisted branches, impossibly tall wildflowers, and – were those eyes? – reflecting light from the shadows.
She spun, desperate to find the path she’d entered, the archway of the sentinel oaks. She caught a fleeting glimpse of motion, a thin form, too tall, too ethereal, standing amongst the wildflowers just beyond her reach, its head tilted, watching her with dark, unblinking eyes. For a split second, it was absolutely clear, not a trick of light or shadow, but a distinct, tangible presence . Then it blurred, dissolved into the riot of colours, leaving only the impression of a smile that stretched too wide.
The cold, feral scent was overpowering now, prickling at her nose, making her gag. The footsteps were everywhere, on the moss, behind the trees, even above her, rustling in the invisible branches. The Grove felt alive, an entity that had woken and found her trespassing. Its beauty had turned predatory.
Rory didn't think; she ran. She crashed through the thickets of wildflowers, their petals brushing against her skin with a soft, unnerving caress. The laughter followed, rising and falling like a wicked song. She didn't look back. Her breath tore in her throat, her legs pumping , driven by a primal need to escape the closing, suffocating embrace of the Grove.
She saw the towering sentinels through the flickering light, their ancient forms a dark promise of escape. She burst through the invisible threshold, her body shuddering as she hit the familiar , unforgiving gravel of Richmond Park. The mist was gone . The cold autumn wind whipped around her, an honest, familiar chill . The silence of the park felt like a balm after the cacophony of the Grove.
She didn’t stop running until her lungs burned and her legs threatened to give out. She ran until the distant hum of London was no longer distant, but a roaring comfort in her ears. She ran, leaving behind the impossible flowers, the mocking laughter, and the terrible knowledge that some stories weren't just stories at all. They were invitations.