Run: 2026-03-25-01KMJ84QMGY6ZMWE56T31B111R

The air in the Fae Grove was colder than it had any right to be. Aurora Carter pulled her coat tighter, the fabric doing little against the damp that seeped into her bones. The pendant at her throat—slim silver chain, crimson gemstone—thrummed against her skin, warm as a heartbeat. She’d followed its pulse for hours, through the labyrinth of Richmond Park’s winding paths, until the trees had thinned into a ring of ancient oaks, their gnarled trunks carved with runes she couldn’t begin to decipher. This was it. The place where the pendant had led her. A place that shouldn’t exist. She stepped over a tangle of roots, the glow of her phone casting weak light on wildflowers the wrong shade of blue, blooming fat and ripe beneath a moon that looked too full, too bright. The Fae Grove. Her childhood friend Eva had mentioned it once, in passing, as the kind of legend you tell to scare children. *Isolde’s grove,* she’d called it, voice low. *If you find it, it finds you first.* Aurora had laughed then. Now, the name hovered in her mind like smoke, the pendant’s rhythm quickening as if it knew something she didn’t. A branch cracked behind her. She froze. The sound hadn’t come from her boots. The grove was silent now, but the pause felt deliberate, as though the world itself had leaned in to listen. Aurora’s breath came shallow. She’d fled London’s noise for this hollow stillness, seeking answers in the dark—answers about the man who’d been following her since Tuesday, about the door in her flat that hadn’t been there the day before. The pendant had heated to near-scalding when she’d found the door, its glow flaring like a warning. And now, here, in this place that time forgot, it pulsed in her palm, steady and insistent. *Follow it,* Eva had said when Aurora called, panicked, the night the door appeared. *Whatever it leads you to, it’s better than staying stuck in the dark.* Aurora shifted her weight, the movement brushing against her left wrist. Her scar prickled. The crescent moon there had always been a faint silver line, but lately it throbbed in tandem with the pendant, as if both were instruments tuned to some distant, invisible frequency. She ignored it. She had to. The grove’s center was marked by a pool, its surface black as void, reflecting nothing. She knelt, fingers hovering above the water. The pendant’s heat flared, and for a moment, her reflection stared back—eyes too wide, skin pinched with gooseflesh. Then the water trembled, and her image shattered into something else: a street she knew, her flat above Silas’s bar, lit from within. A shadow moved past the window. Her hand shook. A whisper, then, so soft it might have been the wind. *Rory.* Her name. Not Aurora. Not Carter. She stood abruptly, spine stiff. The trees had closed in, their branches weaving a canopy that smothered the stars. The pendant dimmed, its glow guttering like a candle in a draft. Cold pressed against her neck, not from the air but from something *behind her*. She turned. Nothing. Only the oaks, their trunks leering with the cracked faces of long-dead things. Aurora forced herself to breathe. *Stay calm. Think.* She’d been here ten minutes, maybe more. The grove’s time was a lie, she remembered that now—Eva had said an hour here might be hours back in the world she knew, or minutes. How long had it been since she left her flat? Since she’d seen the stranger in her hallway, his eyes gleaming with too much light? A flicker to her left. A shape, no larger than a cat, darting between roots. She squinted. The thing was *waving* at her, small and jerky, its limbs too long, too spindly. A fox? A sparrow? Her pulse kicked up. The creature vanished. The pendant went cold. She took a step back, then another, the ground suddenly uneven beneath her soles. The trees seemed taller, their branches knitting tighter. The pool’s surface smoothed, and when she looked down, her reflection was gone. The grove wasn’t reflecting the world anymore. It was *closing its eyes*. A shrug of movement in her periphery. Aurora whirled. Nothing. Only the trees. But the air had a weight now, thick as breath on glass. She reached for the pendant, her fingers brushing the stone. It was ice. Then, without warning, searing heat. A jolt, sharp as a needle, at her scar. She gasped, stumbling. The grove *tilted*. The trees warped, their bark peeling like burnt parchment. The flowers bled, their petals crumpling to dust that swirled in tight, dry cyclones. The pool yawned open, its blackness deepening, and in its depths something *pulsed*—a slow, ravenous glow. Aurora’s breath hitched. *Run.* She spun, but her path was gone. The oaks had become a wall. The pendant dangled loose, the gemstone now a pale, sickly color. A sound rose, low and resonant, like a bone pipe played in another realm. It vibrated in her teeth. She pressed a hand to her skull, but the noise was inside her now, a hum that turned her blood to syrup. And then she felt it. A presence. Not a thing you *felt* with your eyes or ears but with the marrow of your bones. It was everywhere and nowhere, a weight without shape, a voice without a mouth. It *knew* her. Had always known her. Aurora’s knees buckled. The pendant clattered to the earth. It lay still. Dead. The grove had taken its offering. Or maybe it was just beginning.