Run: 2026-03-11-01KKFH95RN5YP7A4KRHZRVN47H

The first oak’s bark bit into Rory’s palm as she hauled herself over the boundary stone, mud from Richmond Park’s slush-caked paths crumbing off her work boots. She’d spent twelve hours that day hauling egg fried rice and chow mein across London for Golden Empress, her jeans still stiff with soy sauce she’d spilled outside Paddington, and the only thing that had kept her running through the park after dark was the deep crimson stone at her throat, pulsing so hard it had woken her from a dead sleep three hours prior. Nyx stuck to the shadow of the tree behind her, their 6’2” frame half-sunk into the bark, only their faintly glowing violet eyes cutting through the dark. When Rory nodded for them to follow, they shifted, solidifying enough to step across the stone beside her. The cold vanished mid-breath. Rory’s lungs, stung raw by London’s November frost, filled with air warm as a spring afternoon, thick with the scent of jasmine and wild clover. She blinked, and the gray, rain-laden sky above her bled into soft, honeyed gold, the bare oak branches of the park outside blooming into full, lush leaf, wildflowers carpeting the ground under her boots—bluebells, poppies, daisies, all blooming at once, impossible in any English winter. She pulled her hand from the tree trunk, and the mud that had caked her palm was gone, leaving only the faint crescent scar on her left wrist, the one she’d got falling off her dad’s bike when she was seven. What the fuck just happened? The Veil stretches thin here. Nyx’s voice carried like a whisper caught in a wind, the sound curling through the trees. This grove doesn’t belong to London, not really. It’s a pocket, stitched between your world and the Fae realms. I haven’t crossed its threshold since 1643. The oaks still remember my name. Barely. Rory pushed her straight shoulder-length black hair out of her bright blue eyes, fumbling for her phone in her pocket. The screen stayed black, dead. She yanked her watch up, the cheap plastic Casio stuck on 2:17 AM, the exact time they’d crossed the stones. They’d walked forty minutes to reach the standing stones, her watch ticking every second of that trek. Now it didn’t move. My watch is broken. It hasn’t shifted in the ten minutes we’ve been walking. Nyx knelt, ran a shadow-finger over a poppy that pushed through a crack in the packed earth path. Their form rippled at the edges, like smoke caught in a draft. Time bends here. I spent three days chasing a dryad that stole my grimoire, back when I was still human enough to need one. Stepped back across those stones, and only three hours had passed for the rest of the world. Stay lost in here long enough, and you’ll never find your way out. An hour inside can be a decade outside, or a minute. No way to tell which, unless you’re Fae. Ten yards off, a deer stepped from the underbrush. Its pelt was cream, its antlers woven with threads of glowing silver that twisted like captured starlight. Rory froze, her hand drifting to the pepper spray clipped to her jeans. The deer lifted its head, its eyes black as pitch, and turned to vanish back into the trees. The branches didn’t sway. No leaf rustled to mark its passage. Did you see that? Nyx nodded. The Grove’s creatures don’t belong to your world. Most won’t bother you, if you stay on the path. Step off, and they might lead you astray. Curiosity gnawed at Rory, and she leaned down to pluck the same poppy Nyx had touched. The second her fingers closed around the stem, it bled. Thick, warm red seeped over her knuckles, and she dropped it like it had burned, wiping her hand hard on her jeans, the stain spreading across the dark denim. What the hell was that? Don’t take anything from here. Nyx’s voice carried a sharp warning, the wind that carried their words picking up enough to rustle the treetops. Fae magic binds anything you steal. I saw a man in the 1700s pocket an apple from a Fae orchard, same as you almost did. Spent a hundred years wandering this grove, never aging, never full, never able to leave. The Grove claims what’s its. Rory nodded, wiping the last of the blood off on her jeans, her heart hammering. She’d heard Eva’s campfire stories about Fae that stole people, but she’d written them off as nonsense to scare her into staying in on Halloween. The crescent scar on her wrist tingled, and she reached up to grab the Heartstone at her throat, the silver chain digging into her palm. The stone burned now, hot enough to seer through her thin t-shirt, a faint crimson glow seeping between her fingers. It’s getting worse. The stone, it’s never been this hot. We’re close to the rift. Nyx gestured ahead, where the path opened into a wide clearing. The Veil tears here, leads to Hel, to the realm of Dymas. Your stone sings to Hel’s portals, remember? It was forged there, for someone who needed to find their way back. Whoever left it for you knew you’d need it. They walked on, the wildflowers growing thicker, the air swelling with the scent of ripening fruit. A stream curved off the path to their left, its water not clear, but glowing with the same silver light as the deer’s antlers. Rory leaned over the bank to see her reflection, and stumbled back. The girl in the water had her same black hair, same blue eyes, but horns curled from her temples, her skin ashen gray, fangs peeking out over her lip. She tripped over a root, and Nyx caught her, their shadow-form solid enough to hold her weight. What did you see? Myself. But wrong. Rory gasped, catching her breath as Nyx helped her stand. Like I was a demon, or something. The water shows you what you could become. Nyx brushed dirt off her jeans. If you cross into Dymas and Belphegor claims you, that’s what you’ll turn into. A soul bound to his kitchens, cooking forever, feeding his feasts until the end of the world. They reached the edge of the clearing, and Rory saw it. A shimmering hole torn in the air, the Veil’s faint distortion wide enough to drive a truck through. On the other side, a warm amber sky stretched over rolling vineyards, grapes black as obsidian glinting on the vines, orchards full of fruit that glowed like tiny suns. Distant clangs of metal carried through the rift, cheers from a crowd that sounded too sharp, too hungry, to be human. The smell of roasted meat and spiced wine drifted through, thick enough to make her mouth water even as her pulse hammered. The Heartstone pulsed in time with the roar of the feast, the heat so intense it ached. The stone that burns leads to the feast that eats souls. The blade that waits carves the path home. Rory spun, her hand closing around the pepper spray on her hip. A woman stood at the far edge of the clearing, silver hair down to her waist, pale lavender eyes, her frame small even in the wide open space. She was barefoot, and the wildflowers under her feet didn’t bend, didn’t crush under her weight. No footprint marked the soft earth, not even a broken blade of grass. Isolde stepped forward, and not a single leaf stirred in her wake, like she drifted through the world rather than walked in it. Who are you? I am the one who called your stone. I knew you’d come, when the Veil began to thin. The winter solstice is three days away. The rift will widen enough for Belphegor to walk through, if you don’t seal it. He’s taken five mortals from London in the last three months. The girl you call Eva, she’s one of them. He’s set her to work in his pastry kitchens, baking for his feasts. She’ll waste away in a year, if you don’t get her back. Rory’s blood turned to ice. Eva had dragged her out of Cardiff, packed her bruised body into a beat-up Ford, driven her to London, got her the job at Golden Empress, rented the flat above Silas’ bar with her. She was the only family Rory had left. She stepped forward, her boots thudding against the earth. Tell me how to get her back. Isolde lifted her hand, and a slender, leaf-shaped dagger materialized in her palm, moonsilver metal glowing faint blue, the chill rolling off it strong enough that Rory felt it ten feet away. She tossed it, and Rory caught it, the cold seeping up her arm to settle in her chest, the Heartstone’s heat fading just enough to bear. This blade cuts through magical wards. It kills demons. Belphegor’s guards won’t stand against it. Nyx can slip through the shadows of Dymas, get you to the rift’s core, where you can seal it. You’ll have three hours inside Dymas. If you’re not back before the sun sets on this grove, the rift will close behind you, and you’ll be trapped there forever. Nyx stepped forward, their shadow-form rippling, violet eyes burning brighter. I haven’t crossed into Hel since I became what I am. But I can move through any shadow, anywhere. We’ll get Eva back. We’ll seal the rift. Rory looked down at the dagger in her hand, the moonsilver glowing in the grove’s golden light, the Heartstone at her throat pulsing in time with the blade’s glow. She looked through the rift, at Dymas’s amber sky, the distant roar of the endless feast, and thought of Eva laughing as she burned pancakes in their flat’s tiny kitchen, of the way she’d held Rory while she cried after leaving Evan. She tightened her grip on the dagger, lifted her head. Let’s go.