Run: 2026-02-25-01KJBE03HM540PD44ZK2315M7B

The air inside the boundary stones tasted of copper and wet oak. Aurora kept her hands buried deep in the pockets of her coat, thumbs brushing the cold silver chain against her ribs where the Heartstone Pendant hung. It was heavier than it should have been for a stone the size of a thumbnail, the deep crimson gem pulsing with a rhythm that matched the erratic thud of her own heart. Outside, Richmond Park was choked by midwinter fog. Inside, the wildflowers bloomed year-round, a carpet of impossible violets and white lilies that seemed to drink the light from the standing stones surrounding the clearing. She’d come alone. Eva had warned her about the Grove, about how the line between Earth and the Fae realm grew thin here, but the delivery notes from Yu-Fei had been specific. A Hel portal had opened in the park, a tear in the fabric of the city, and the pendant, given to her by that unknown benefactor months ago, had been singing with heat ever since. Rory took another step. Her boots crunched on gravel that didn’t sound like gravel. It sounded like bone. Her watch, a cheap digital thing her father had given her for her birthday, read 11:43 PM. She checked it again ten seconds later and read 11:44 PM. The logic of time held for a moment, but the shadows stretching long from the ancient oaks didn’t behave like they should under the moonlight. They were too heavy, pooling on the ground without regard for the angle of the sun. A rustle tore through the silence. Not the wind. The trees in the park didn’t move like their leaves were dry skin on knuckles, and this noise was too wet. She froze, her bright blue eyes scanning the perimeter. Nothing. Just the stones. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. It had happened once before with Evan; that suffocating feeling that a room was too full even when you were alone. But this was different. This wasn’t a person. Evan’s abuse had been loud, physical, and familiar. This was a silence that pressed against her eardrums until they ached. She reached into her pocket to pull out a lighter, but her fingers bumped against the small crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist from a childhood accident. The skin there had never fully healed, just a jagged line in the moonlight. Grounding herself, she pressed her thumb down on it. A sharp sting. Real. Something moved at the edge of her vision. She spun around, sweeping her free hand through the air, but there was nothing. Just the wildflowers, their petals trembling although there was no breeze. The smell of them was cloying, sweet enough to make her teeth ache. Why were they blooming in January? It was illogical. Biologically impossible. The pendant flared against her chest, the glow intensifying, turning the dark fabric of her coat a translucent red. It hummed, a vibration that traveled up her sternum and settled in her teeth. Time was the first thing to slip. She glanced at her watch again. 11:47 PM. Only two minutes had passed in her reality, maybe more. She had walked the perimeter of the ring of stones three times in what felt like an hour. Her breath hitched. The cold biting her cheeks didn’t match the length of her hair or the dampness of her shoes. She hadn’t changed, but the world around her had tightened like a vice. A twig snapped. Behind her. Rory didn’t jump. She turned her head slowly, a controlled, efficient motion she used in courtrooms and delivery disputes. The clearing was empty. The stones stood in a silent, unblinking circle. She was being paranoid. That was the thing about the mind in isolation, it cooked logic into madness, finding shapes in smoke and threats in the dark. But the smell of copper deepened. It tasted like old blood. She took a step toward the center of the clearing, the only place the glow of the pendant seemed to pull her. The wildflower carpet shifted under her weight. It wasn't grass or dirt. It was soft, yielding, and slightly warm. She looked down. For a fraction of a second, the flowers looked like eyes. Hundreds of them, dark and wet, opening in her direct path. She stifled a gasp and stopped. The ground solidified back into dirt. From the shadows of the tallest stone, a sound echoed. A whisper, but it didn't come from the air. It came from the inside of her throat. *Go.* She looked at her own neck, then at the stones. The wind picked up, rustling the branches of the oaks, bringing the smell of rain, ozone, and decay. *Stay.* The voice changed. It was layered, multiple voices speaking at once, overlapping into a chord of static. Rory backed away until her spine hit the rough bark of an oak. Her right hand fumbled for the pendant, gripping the silver chain until her knuckles turned white. The stone was burning hot now. It pulsed in a frantic staccato, warning of a Hel portal, warning of something on the other side reaching through. It wasn't the portal that scared her. It was the waiting. She felt the weight of the space shifting around her, the physics of the grove warping. An hour inside could be minutes or days outside. Her phone, dead in her pocket for an hour, now vibrated against her thigh. She pulled it out. No signal. The clock on the screen read 2:15 AM. Time had jumped forward three hours. Or maybe it had looped. She hadn't moved. The pendant said no, it said yes, it pulled her toward the heart of the clearing where the shadows pooled thickest. A figure stepped out of the fog behind the standing stone on her left. Tall. Too tall. Not quite human in its proportions, legs too long, arms hanging too low. Aurora didn't scream. Her brain kicked over into survival mode, cataloging threats, calculating angles, but the logic was crumbling. The figure didn't walk so much as slide, its feet not touching the ground. The figure raised a hand. The fingers were too many, too long. She turned the pendant on the table. It glowed like a wound. Rory realized then she couldn't leave. The entrance had shifted, sealed by her own arrival. The wrongness wasn't an intrusion; it was a welcome. The grove wanted her to be late. It wanted her to miss the morning shift, the time she had set aside for Eva, the time she had told her father she was working. The figure tilted its head, a predator considering prey that belonged to it already. Rory forced herself to stand tall, her breath fogging in the sudden freeze of the air. The scar on her wrist burned. She looked at her watch again. The time had stopped. The second hand hung suspended at twelve, trembling in the air like a broken thing. She looked back at the figure. It smiled. The corners of its face didn't stretch skin, they stretched fabric. It stepped forward, and the distance between them remained exactly the same, no matter how much space she closed with her legs. She was alone. She was not alone. And the door behind her had locked itself the moment her foot had crossed the line. The pendant went dark. The world went silent. Rory closed her eyes. In her mind, she was back in Cardiff. She was in class. She was twenty-four. She could go back. She just had to wait for the clock to move again. But the watch was broken. The flowers didn't wilt. The stones stood still. And the whispering started again, this time from the ground beneath her feet. *You stay with us now.* She knew, as the cold settled into her bones, that when the light finally returned, she wouldn't be the same person who had walked into the clearing. And she wouldn't be leaving Richmond Park. Not ever.