Run: 2026-02-25-01KJ95SY03E9ADXT3X1QN138M9

The delivery instructions had been precise, written in a cramped, elegant hand on the back of a Golden Empress receipt: Richmond Park, three hundred yards past the Royal Ballet School, where the treeline breaks for the hollow. No name was attached, only the promise of a twenty-pound tip and the implicit threat of a negative review if Yu-Fei’s famous Peking duck arrived cold. Aurora hooked her bike to a fence post near the edge of the designated path. The fog was thick tonight, a grey, clinging shroud that turned the distant streetlamps into blurry, jaundiced eyes. Usually, she didn't mind the dark. London at night was her element—the hum of traffic, the distant sirens, the rhythmic clack of her own footsteps. But Richmond Park at two in the morning felt less like a public space and more like a vast, breathing entity that resented her presence. She checked the thermal bag strapped to her shoulder and adjusted the silver chain around her neck. Beneath her sweater, she felt the thumbnail-sized Heartstone Pendant resting against her skin. It was cold tonight, a lump of dead weight, but as she stepped off the gravel and onto the damp grass, she felt a pinprick of heat bloom in its deep crimson center. She walked for ten minutes, her boots sinking into the peat. The geography felt wrong. According to the map she’d studied back at the restaurant, the hollow should have been right here. Instead, the trees seemed to crowd closer, their gnarled limbs interlocking like the fingers of a giant’s hands. She passed a set of ancient oak standing stones, their bark so deeply rutted they looked more like petrified skin than timber. The moment she crossed the threshold of those stones, the atmosphere changed. The distant roar of the A3 vanished. The city’s light pollution, that orange haze that usually defined the London sky, was blinked out as if by a closing eyelid. Above her, the stars were too bright, too numerous, and arranged in configurations she didn't recognize. The air grew impossibly sweet, heavy with the scent of honeysuckle and wildflowers. Rory slowed her pace, her thumb tracing the small crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist—a nervous habit she’d never quite broken. She looked down at her feet. Despite the biting November cold she’d felt just moments ago, the ground here was carpeted in vibrant bluebells and primroses, blooming out of season and out of time. “Hello?” she called out. Her voice didn't echo; it was swallowed instantly by the lush greenery. “Delivery for... the hollow?” Silence responded. Not the absence of noise, but a thick, pressurized quiet that made her ears pop. She checked her watch. The second hand was twitching back and forth, unable to commit to a forward motion. Rory took a steadying breath, her cool-headed nature fighting the urge to turn and bolt. *Intelligent people don’t get lost in city parks,* she told herself. *They analyze the data.* The data told her she was in the Fae Grove—the place Silas had warned her about over drinks at the bar. He’d talked about the pocket between Earth and the realm of the Gentry, a place where time was a suggestion and the geography was a predator. The Heartstone Pendant against her chest suddenly surged with heat. It wasn't the gentle warmth of a hearth; it was a sharp, biting throb. It was warning her. She turned in a slow circle. The oak stones she had passed were gone. In their place stood a wall of thorns, their spikes glistening with a dark, oily sheen. Something shifted in the periphery of her vision—a flash of white, like a pale hand retracting into the brush. "I'm leaving the food here," Rory said, her voice tighter now. She unslung the Golden Empress bag and set it on a flat mossy rock. "I'm heading back." She began to walk in the direction she thought was the exit, but the Grove seemed to expand with every step. The trees stretched upward, their canopies blotting out the alien stars. The silence began to fray. There was a sound now—a low, rhythmic scraping, like bone dragging over stone. It was coming from the shadows to her left. She stopped. The scraping stopped. She took three quick steps. The scraping followed, perfectly out of sync, a mockery of her own gait. "I can see you," she lied, her eyes darting between the silver-barked trunks. A soft, melodic chuckle drifted from the canopy above. It wasn't human. It sounded like the chime of glass breaking in a well. Rory reached for her phone, but the screen was a mess of static and weeping colors. The heat from the pendant was becoming unbearable, a localized fever that made her skin itch. The crimson gem began to pulse with a faint, rhythmic inner light, casting long, rhythmic shadows that bled into the wildflowers. The pendant only reacted like this near a Hel portal. Terror, cold and sharp, finally pierced through her analytical veneer. If there was a portal here, the things watching her weren't just mischievous Fae. They were something far older and hungrier. A movement caught her eye—not a shadow this time, but a distortion in the air, a ripple like heat rising from asphalt. A figure stood twenty feet away, partially obscured by a weeping willow. It was tall, too tall, with limbs that seemed to have too many joints. It didn't have a face, only a smooth, pale surface where features should be, draped in tatters of what looked like gossamer and dried moss. It didn't move toward her. It simply stood there, watching with an intensity that Rory felt in her marrow. She backed away, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. "Stay back." The thing tilted its head. The scraping sound returned, but this time it came from behind her. Then from the right. Then from the roots beneath her feet. The Grove was closing in. The wildflowers were beginning to change, their petals curling into sharp, jagged teeth. The sweet scent of honeysuckle was being replaced by the metallic tang of old blood and the ozone smell of an approaching storm. Rory's foot caught on a protruding root, and she stumbled, catching herself just before she hit the ground. As she straightened, she saw them—dozens of them. They were silhouettes in the fog, lean and elongated, perched in the branches and crouching in the high grass. They were patient. They were waiting for her to break. She clutched the pendant through her sweater, the heat searing her palm. "Focus," she whispered to herself. "Silas said the stones are the key. The boundary is the anchor." She ignored the figures and looked for the oak stones. They weren't where she had left them, but she saw a flicker of the park’s orange streetlights through a gap in the thorns. It was a pinprick of normalcy in this nightmare. She ran. She didn't care about the branches that whipped at her face or the way the ground seemed to liquefy under her boots. Behind her, the melodic laughter rose in volume, joining with the bone-scraping sounds to create a cacophony of wrongness. The air grew cold again, the summer warmth of the Grove stripped away by a sudden, unnatural frost. The figure with the smooth face appeared directly in her path. It reached out a long, spindly arm, its fingers tapering into points as fine as needles. Rory didn't stop. She reached into her pocket, pulled out the heavy brass keys to her flat, and swung them like a flail. As the keys passed through the air near the creature, it recoiled with a hiss of steam, as if the cold iron in the alloy was a brand. She lunged through the gap where the creature had stood. The pendant flared one last time, a blinding burst of crimson light that seemed to sear the shadows back. She hit a wall of resistance—a membrane of cold, stagnant air that felt like pushing through a heavy curtain. Then, she was falling. Rory slammed into the hard, gravel path. The smell of exhaust and damp earth rushed back into her lungs, sweet and beautiful. She scrambled to her feet, her chest heaving, and looked back. The oak standing stones were right behind her, silent and motionless in the London fog. Beyond them, there was nothing but the dark, empty expanse of Richmond Park. No wildflowers. No silver-limbed monsters. No alien stars. She looked at her watch. The second hand was moving again. It told her it was 2:14 AM. Rory checked her wrist. Her sleeve was torn, and five thin, red lines were etched into her skin—marks that looked suspiciously like the sweep of a pale, needle-fingered hand. She didn't wait to see if anything was following. She jumped on her bike and pedaled, her legs burning, the crimson glow of the Heartstone fading back into a dull, dormant red against her skin. She didn't look back until she was under the golden arches of a McDonald's three miles away, surrounded by the glorious, mundane chaos of the living world. The Peking duck was gone, left on a mossy rock in a place that didn't exist, and Rory knew, with a certainty that chilled her more than the fog, that someone—or something—was currently enjoying the tip.