Run: 2026-03-03-01KJTZW91JCETS1Y24FWRQ5J9F

The frost stuck to Rory’s black jeans cuffs as she hiked the final mile of dirt path through Richmond Park. It was nearly midnight, and the only light came from a half-moon that sliced through the bare oak branches, painting the frost in sharp silver streaks. She pushed a strand of her shoulder-length black hair out of her face, her bright blue eyes scanning the dark for any sign of the clearing she’d mapped on old forum posts. “Stupid,” she muttered, her voice thin in the cold air. “This is so stupid.” She’d left the flat above Silas’ bar three hours earlier, after the Heartstone Pendant thrumming under her flannel shirt had refused to quiet down for the first time since the strange pulses started three weeks prior. Eva had called twice, left a voice mail warning her not to chase ghosts, but Rory had hit ignore. She’d never believed in fae realms or portal rifts, not after Evan’s snide comments about her “stupid fantasy books,” but the pulses were real. They’d started as a faint hum when she was near the abandoned hospital on Wandsworth Road, then the library by her flat, then last night, nonstop, so loud she’d had to press a hand to the gem to keep from waking the neighbors above Silas’ bar. The pendant, the anonymous gift someone had slipped under her door last month, had started pulsing right after the first Hel portal reports popped up on the rare forums she visited, the ones that didn’t get shut down by mods within hours. She’d saved every post, mapped every location where the pulses were strongest, and tonight, the gem had pulled her all the way to Richmond Park. She spotted the hawthorn thicket where she’d left her scooter, its metal body glinting silver in the moonlight, and tucked her keys into her palm. Then she turned toward the gap in the trees, the one the forum post had described, and pushed through the brambles. The cold vanished. One second she was breathing in the sharp, frosty air, the next she was standing in a space that smelled like elderflower and damp, turned soil. The frost under her boots was gone, replaced by thick, spongy moss that gave under her weight. She glanced up, and her breath caught. The oak canopy didn’t let in the silver moonlight. Instead, the sky was a soft, washed-out lavender, like the twilight of a spring evening even though her phone said it was 11:47 PM. All around her, bluebells carpeted the ground. “Bluebells don’t bloom in November,” she said out loud, her voice firm, like saying it would make it true. She knelt down, picked one up between her fingers, and its petals were soft, dewy, like they’d been picked that morning, not growing in the dead of winter. She stepped on a cluster of them, expecting to hear the soft crunch of crushed petals, but instead they bounced under her boot, springing back into place like nothing had touched them. She reached up, tugged the pendant out from under her flannel shirt, and held it in her palm. The deep crimson gem glowed brighter now, pulsing in time with her rapid heartbeat, warm enough to seep through her skin and into her bones. She’d never felt it this alive. The first sound came a moment later: a thin, trilling note, high enough that it tickled the edge of her hearing. Not a bird call—she’d spent enough nights working late deliveries to recognize the chirp of a sparrow, the hoot of an owl. This was something else. A human voice, but stretched too thin, too pure, like it hadn’t been used to speak in centuries. She stood still, listening. The note faded, then another, followed by a second, then a dozen, weaving into a melody that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. She couldn’t understand the words, but she could feel them digging into the back of her skull, like someone scraping a spoon against a ceramic mug. Rory’s left wrist tingled. She rubbed the crescent scar there, the one from the time she’d fallen through a frozen creek as a kid, a small, familiar anchor. The habit had stuck around after Evan would grab her there, when he was angry, a quiet way to ground herself when his shouts got too loud. She took a step forward, her boot sinking into the moss, and spotted movement at the edge of the ancient oak standing stones that ringed the clearing. The trees stood in a tight circle, their trunks thick with lichen, their branches twisting overhead like gnarled fingers. That was the boundary, she’d read in the forum posts—faerie groves marked by oak circles, hidden in plain sight. A flash of pale white darted behind the thickest oak trunk. She squinted, leaned in, and for a split second she saw it: a hand, too small, fingers bent at angles that shouldn’t be possible, pressed flat against the rough bark. Then it was gone. “Who’s there?” Her voice came out quieter than she meant it to, cracking at the end. The words bounced off the oak trunks, echoing back to her, and the singing cut off abruptly. Silence fell, so thick she could taste it. The only sound was the soft rustle of her own breath, and the thrum of the Heartstone Pendant in her hand. She waited, counting to ten, twenty, thirty, but there was no other sound. No wind, no crickets, no distant traffic from the nearby road. Nothing. Then, a soft touch landed on her shoulder. She froze. The touch was light, like a butterfly’s wing, but it was there, pressing gently against the bare skin of her shoulder where her flannel shirt had unzipped. She could feel the pressure, faint but unmistakeable, like someone was leaning in close, their breath warm against her neck. “Stop it,” she whispered, the word barely audible. She turned her head. Nothing. Just the oak trunk, its bark rough and gray, stretched out in front of her. No hand, no figure, no sign of anyone else in the clearing. The touch was gone. She stepped back, her boot slipping on the moss, and caught herself on the standing stone next to her. Her palm pressed against the lichen-covered bark, and she jerked her hand back— the stone was cold, normal, but for a split second she could have sworn she felt something else, a faint, honey-sweet warmth, like the pendant. She looked down at her hands. The Heartstone was still in her palm, glowing bright crimson, but now there was a thin, silver line winding around her wrist, matching the faint cracks in the stone’s bark. She rubbed her wrist, trying to brush it off, but it stayed, faint and silvery, like a temporary tattoo. Then, she heard it. A soft, clicking sound, coming from behind her. Not fast, not loud, just a steady tap-tap-tap, like someone tapping their fingernails against a wooden table. She spun around, her heart thudding, loud enough to drown out the hum of the pendant. The bramble thicket she’d pushed through earlier was gone. In its place was a wall of dense, dark green ferns, so tall they reached her shoulders, their fronds closed tight like they’d never been disturbed. A cold prickle crawled up her spine, starting at her shoulders and spreading down to her toes. She’d walked through that bramble thicket minutes ago—she could still feel the thorns catching on her jacket sleeve. She rubbed her arm, and there were no scratches, no sign that she’d pushed through sharp brambles at all. The clicking sound got louder, closer, and she spotted the crack in the fern wall. A split had opened, just wide enough for a pair of empty black eyes to peek through. She stumbled back, her back hitting the standing stone, and the pendant slipped from her hand, clattering onto the moss. The gem glowed brighter than ever, flooding the clearing with a soft red light, and the clicking sound stopped. For a second, she could see the figure behind the ferns: tall, thin, its skin pale as bone, its hair a mass of dark, tangled threads that dripped with something glistening. It held a bundle of small, pale hands, their fingers bent at wrong angles, and its mouth was split into a grin that stretched too wide, too sharp, like a animal’s jaw. Then the fern wall crashed closed, and the figure was gone. She scrambled to grab the pendant, pressing it back against her chest, tucking it under her flannel shirt. The pulsing had slowed, but it was still there, a steady hum now, like it was warning her. She turned around, searching for the fern wall, for any sign of the way out, but the wall of ferns was gone. In its place was the dirt path, the hawthorn, her scooter waiting in the shadows, just as she’d left it. She ran toward the scooter, her boots slipping on the frost-covered dirt, and fumbled with her keys, dropping them twice before she managed to stick them in the ignition. She turned the key, and the scooter sputtered to life, and she peeled away from the hawthorn, driving as fast as she could down the dirt path, away from the clearing. When she pulled into the alley behind Silas’ bar, an hour later (or so she thought), she wiped the sweat from her forehead and climbed off the scooter. She fished her phone out of her jacket pocket, pressed the power button, and the screen lit up. The lock screen showed the time: 12:07 AM. Only ten minutes had passed since she’d parked her scooter at Richmond Park. She opened her camera roll, and there, at the bottom, was a new photo, taken at 11:48 PM, the exact time she’d stepped into the grove. The photo was blurry, taken from behind an oak tree, showing the circle of standing oaks, and a pale, thin figure peeking through a gap in the ferns, its empty black eyes staring directly at the camera. She dropped the phone on the sidewalk, her hands shaking. The pendant under her shirt was still humming, faint now, but it wasn’t gone. She’d felt the wrongness in that grove, the things that shouldn’t be there, the sounds and the touches and the time that didn’t make sense. And now, she had proof that it wasn’t just her imagination.