Run: 2026-03-15-01KKS2ZRZVHZJ12F9KSHMNDZW6

Rory had been to the Grove three times before, and each time it had felt like stepping through a curtain into a held breath. The wildflowers had nodded in breezes that carried no temperature. The air had tasted of something older than soil. But it had never felt like this. She stood at the boundary stones, the ancient oaks rising black against a sky that had no business being that shade of violet. Richmond Park lay somewhere behind her — she could still hear the M4 in the distance if she strained, a thin artery of noise keeping her tethered to the world of petrol stations and late-night Tesco runs. But the sound came muffled now, as if someone had draped wool over it. The pendant hung warm against her sternum. That was wrong. It had no reason to be warm. The Heartstone only pulsed near Hel portals, and this was Fae-touched ground, not Hel. She pressed her fingers against the crimson gemstone and felt it beat against her skin like a second heart that had just started running. She'd come because Yu-Fei had been worried. Eva had been worried. Hell, even Silas, who treated worry like a personal insult, had gone quiet when she'd mentioned the dreams. The ones where the wildflowers grew teeth. So here she was, eleven forty-seven on a Tuesday night, crouching to pass between the standing stones because the last time she'd walked through upright, she'd lost forty minutes and gained a bruise on her hip that she couldn't explain. The grass inside the clearing was silver in the violet light. The wildflowers bloomed in clusters — white and pale blue and a sickly yellow that she didn't remember from before. Their petals looked too wide. Too many of them, row upon row, concentric circles that spiraled inward toward centers that were black. Rory stopped walking. She counted her breaths. One. Two. Three. The technique Eva had taught her, back when Evan was still a name that made her flinch instead of a wound that had mostly scarred over. In through the nose, out through the mouth. The Grove didn't smell right. It smelled of honeysuckle, which was fine, but underneath that, something meaty and mineral, like copper left in a warm room. A sound came from the left. A dry rustle, like something shifting its weight among the flowers. She turned her head slowly. Nothing there. Just the pale blooms tossing gently, though she couldn't feel any wind on her face. The pendant flared hotter. She hissed through her teeth and pulled it away from her skin, the silver chain biting into the back of her neck. The gemstone's inner glow had brightened, casting faint red shadows across her collarbone. This wasn't right. This wasn't how the Grove worked. Fae ground didn't trigger the stone. Whatever was happening here, it wasn't Fae. She should leave. Every survival instinct she'd honed in the eight months since she'd fled Cardiff was telling her to turn around, duck back through the standing stones, and not stop walking until she reached the river. But when she glanced over her shoulder, the stones looked further away than they should have. The boundary had shifted, or she had, and now the oaks stood like sentries at the far end of a clearing that had doubled in size while she wasn't watching. The wildflowers between her and the exit were taller now. She was certain of it. Another rustle. Closer this time. To her right, where a cluster of the yellow blooms grew thickest. The petals trembled and she saw — or thought she saw — something pale move among them. Not white like the flowers. A different pale. The color of a thing that had never seen sunlight. Rory didn't run. Running was for prey, and prey was for things that hunted by motion. She stood very still and watched the spot where the shape had been, and slowly, so slowly, the yellow flowers parted. There was nothing there. But the ground where the shape had been was pressed flat, as if something heavy had been resting there. And the flowers around the depression were closing over it, petals folding inward with a deliberateness that made her stomach clench. The copper smell was stronger now. She took a step backward, and the grove exhaled. A long, slow breath that ruffled every flower at once and carried with it a sound that was almost a voice, almost a word, almost her name. Aurora. Laila. The aliases she'd collected like scars, spoken in a tone that had no gender, no age, no origin. Just the shape of sound, familiar and wrong. The pendant burned. She grabbed the chain with both hands and yanked. The clasp held. The gemstone pulsed so hot she half-expected it to blister her palm, and in its red light she saw the shadows move. Not one shadow now. Several. They pooled at the edges of the clearing where the violet light couldn't quite reach, and they had depth to them, dimension, the suggestion of shapes that were crouching or standing or waiting. Rory thought of her father's courtroom voice, the one he used to dismantle liars. She thought of her mother's steadiness during bad news. She thought of Eva's hand on hers the night she'd shown up at her door with a split lip and a bag she'd packed in five minutes. She spoke aloud because silence felt like surrender. "I see you." The shadows stopped moving. Every flower in the grove went still. Even the distant hum of the motorway cut out, leaving a silence so total it pressed against her eardrums like deep water. Then, from directly behind her, so close she felt the displacement of air against her neck, something whispered. Not a word this time. Just breath. Warm and wet and smelling of copper and honeysuckle. Rory didn't turn. She walked forward, toward the standing stones, and the shadows parted for her like a curtain. The flowers bent away from her feet. The pendant cooled so suddenly it felt like ice against her chest. She didn't run, but she didn't stop, and when she ducked between the oaks and emerged on the other side, the night air hit her like a slap — cold, ordinary, smelling of wet grass and car exhaust and London. She checked her phone. 11:49. Two minutes. She'd been in the Grove for two minutes. The pendant lay dormant against her sternum, no warmer than her own skin. But when she raised her hand to unclasp it, she saw her fingers trembling, and in the orange glow of a distant streetlight, she noticed something on the heel of her left hand that hadn't been there before. A small mark, crescent-shaped, like a fingernail pressed too hard into flesh. It mirrored the scar on her wrist, but fresh, and when she touched it, it stung like a cut. Behind her, in the Grove she couldn't see anymore, the wildflowers were blooming.