Run: 2026-03-15-01KKS2X3Y60V5E77S40FK54JTE

The standing stones rose from the darkness like broken teeth, their surfaces slick with something that might have been rain or might have been something else entirely. Aurora paused at the boundary, her hand drifting to the pendant beneath her jacket. The deep crimson stone lay cool and still against her sternum. No pulse. No warmth. Whatever she was walking into, it had nothing to do with Hel portals. Good. That was good. She stepped between the ancient oaks and felt the change immediately—a pressure against her eardrums, the way altitude affected you on a plane. The air here tasted different. Sweeter, like flowers left too long in a vase. The wildflowers that carpeted the clearing bloomed in defiant patches of white and pale purple, oblivious to the November chill that should have killed them months ago. Rory checked her phone. No signal. She hadn't expected one, but the confirmation still tightened her chest. She tucked it away and moved deeper into the Grove. Eva had been the one to tell her about this place. Weeks ago, over wine at Silas's bar, Eva had mentioned the hidden clearing in Richmond Park with that particular light in her eyes—the one that meant she knew more than she was saying. A place between places, she'd called it. Somewhere the Fae touched the world so closely you could feel them breathing. Rory hadn't thought much of it at the time. Then the dreams had started. The same dream, three nights running. Herself standing in a clearing of eternal spring, surrounded by flowers that bloomed wrong. And something watching from just beyond the tree line. Something that knew her name. She'd come to prove it was nothing. Just stress, just the aftereffects of everything with Evan, just her brain misfiring in the quiet hours. The rational explanation. The pre-law student's explanation, even if she'd abandoned that path years ago. The Grove had other plans. The first wrong thing was the silence. Richmond Park at night should have been full of sound—foxes barking, owls calling, the distant murmur of traffic from the A3. Here, inside the standing stones, the world held its breath. Rory could hear her own heartbeat, the soft crush of her boots against the undergrowth, the whisper of her jacket as she moved. Nothing else. The second wrong thing was the flowers. She crouched beside a cluster of white blooms, her brow furrowing. In her dream, the flowers had been wrong somehow, but she'd never been able to pinpoint why. Now, looking at them up close, she understood. They had no scent. Not even the faint green smell of living things. These flowers smelled like nothing at all, as if they were merely the idea of flowers rather than the thing itself. Rory straightened and turned in a slow circle. The clearing looked smaller than it had a moment ago. The standing stones seemed closer together, their shapes more angular against the starless sky. She could have sworn she'd walked at least twenty meters from the boundary, but when she looked back, the largest oak was barely ten paces behind her. The time dilation. Eva had warned her about that. An hour inside could be minutes outside. Or days. The Grove didn't follow human rules. Rory pulled her jacket tighter and kept walking, angling toward what she thought was the center of the clearing. The pendant swung gently against her chest, still cool, still dark. Whatever power lived in this stone, it remained dormant. A sound. Rory froze, her breath catching. It had come from her left—a soft rustle, like fabric dragging across grass. Not the movement of an animal. Animals moved with purpose. This sound had the lazy, deliberate quality of something that knew it had all the time in the world. "Hello?" Her voice came out steadier than she felt. Pre-law training. Project confidence even when you're drowning. The Grove absorbed her words. No echo. No response. Just that cloying sweetness in the air and the silence pressing in from all sides. She kept walking. The third wrong thing was the shadows. There was no moon tonight, and the clouds had swallowed what starlight might have filtered through the trees. Yet the Grove wasn't dark. A faint luminescence seemed to emanate from the flowers themselves, painting everything in shades of pale blue and silver. It should have been beautiful. Instead, it made the spaces between the stones look like gaps in the world, holes that went down and down into nothing. And in those gaps, things moved. Rory caught it in her peripheral vision—a shape that wasn't there when she looked directly at it. Taller than a person. Thin. It stood at the edge of one of those shadows and watched her with something that might have been eyes or might have been simply two points of deeper darkness in an already dark place. She turned her head slowly. The shape vanished. Her pulse kicked up a notch, but she forced herself to breathe. Panic was a luxury she couldn't afford. Evan had taught her that, if nothing else—the way fear could paralyze you, make you small and compliant. She'd promised herself she'd never be small again. "I can see you," she said to the empty air. A lie, but lies could be weapons too. The Grove did not respond. But the shadows seemed to deepen, to stretch toward her like fingers reaching for something precious. Rory reached up and closed her fingers around the Heartstone pendant. The crimson gem was warm now. Not pulsing—not the way Eva had described near Hel portals—but warm, like it had been sitting in sunlight. She let the heat ground her, a focal point in the growing wrongness. The fourth wrong thing was the path. She'd been walking in what she thought was a straight line, but now she found herself standing at the edge of the clearing again, facing the boundary stones. The largest oak loomed above her, its bark patterned with what looked disturbingly like a face. She could have sworn the face hadn't been there before. Could have sworn the expression had changed. It looked amused. Rory's hand tightened on the pendant until the chain bit into the back of her neck. The crescent scar on her left wrist began to itch, that old childhood injury flaring up the way it sometimes did when she was stressed. She resisted the urge to scratch. "Think," she muttered. "You're a Cardiff girl. You've handled worse than this." But she hadn't, had she? Evan was human, predictable in his cruelty. Whatever lived in this Grove was neither. The rustling sound came again, closer this time. Behind her. She spun, but there was nothing there—just flowers blooming in their scentless clusters, just shadows pooling between the stones. But the air had changed. The sweetness was stronger now, cloying, almost thick enough to taste. And beneath it, something else. Something that reminded her of the aftermath of a thunderstorm, ozone and electricity and the promise of violence. The pendant flared warm against her palm. Rory looked down. The deep crimson stone was glowing, a faint inner light that pulsed once, twice, like a heartbeat finding its rhythm. Not a Hel portal. But something the pendant recognized. Something it was trying to warn her about. She should leave. Every instinct screamed at her to turn around, to push through the boundary stones, to run until Richmond Park was just a memory behind her. But when she looked at the gap between the oaks, the path back seemed longer than before. The shadows between the stones had deepened into something like tunnels, and in those tunnels, shapes moved with terrible patience. The Grove wasn't going to let her go that easily. Rory set her jaw and stopped running through options. There was only one that made sense. She'd come here to prove the dreams were nothing. The Grove had apparently decided to prove the opposite. Fine. She could work with that. She turned away from the boundary and walked deeper into the clearing, toward the place where the shadows were thickest and the flowers bloomed brightest and the silence pressed against her eardrums like something physical. The pendant burned warm against her palm. The shapes in her peripheral vision kept pace, just at the edge of seeing, just at the edge of knowing. Something was waiting for her at the center of the Grove. Something that had been calling her name in her dreams for three nights running. Rory Carter had never been the kind of woman who disappointed a summons. She kept walking, and the shadows closed behind her like a curtain, and the wildflowers bloomed on in their eternal, scentless spring, and somewhere in the darkness ahead, something that was not quite human began to smile.