Run: 2026-03-25-01KMJ88VKFWJ1992XS31H8WRDZ

The ancient oak standing stones loomed like skeletal fingers as Aurora stepped onto the muddy trail, her boots sinking with each uneven stride. She’d left the city two hours ago by her watch, but the landscape had stretched and blurred as she neared Richmond Park. That wasn’t right. The path should have taken forty-five minutes, max. Her phone flickered with a weak signal, the time stubbornly stuck at 10:32 p.m., even though she’d crossed into the grove at midnight. The Fae had never liked watches in this part of the world. Aurora tightened her grip on the Heartstone pendant at her throat. It throbbed warm against her skin, its crimson glow seeping through the silver chain. She’d never been this deep into the Grove alone, but the pendant’s insistence had grown feverish all week. Its heat now pulsed in rhythm with her own heartbeat. Wildflowers the color of rusted iron bloomed in clumps along her path, petals drooping as she passed. Their scent—sweet as decay—clogged the air. She’d read somewhere that the Fae measured worth in secrets, not coins, but today her throat tasted like ash and her mind kept circling the same truth: Evan hadn’t died in the crash he’d staged. No body had ever been found, just his abandoned car at the edge of the M4. "You didn’t fall asleep that night, did you?" Aurora muttered. The words dissolved into the murmur of the trees. Somewhere behind the oaks, a voice might have answered, but she couldn’t turn. The shadows along the bark had sharpened into jagged teeth. The pendant’s warmth spiked. She pushed through a thicket of brambles, her black hair snagging on thorns. The grove widened into a clearing ringed by the standing stones. At its center, a circle of mushrooms glowed faint blue. Aurora had expected something more… monumental. A well? A stone altar? Instead, the ground here was soft and pocked with small, empty husks of shells. "Of course it wouldn’t be simple," she said, kneeling. Her fingers brushed a patch of moss. It shivered away from her touch. The pendant’s glow brightened, the gemstone shifting from crimson to something whiter, a shade that felt wrong in the moonlight. Aurora froze. The temperature had plummeted. Her breath came in visible shivers now, curling above her head like smoke. The mushrooms dimmed to black. Footsteps. Not hers. She spun. The trail back through the trees had vanished. The stones now formed a perfect, unbroken circle around her—higher than before, their tops lost in a fog that hadn’t been there moments ago. Aurora’s pulse thumped in her ears. She turned again, hands brushing the pendant’s edges. “Hello?” The word cracked midair. Her reflection stared back from the Heartstone’s surface. But her eyes in the glass were silver. A flicker of movement—something large crossing the fog beyond the stones. Not crossing. Crawling. Aurora backed toward a stone, pressing her spine to its rough surface. The pendant flared. The fog parted. Between the oaks, a shape waited. Tall. Too tall. Its body rippled like liquid, a form constantly dissolving. “You shouldn’t be here,” it said, each syllable a vibration in her bones. The voice had no gender, no shape. It simply *was*. Aurora fumbled for the knife in her boot. The blade felt smaller now, dull beside the figure’s shifting outline. It didn’t move closer, but the air thickened as if the world itself were holding its breath. “I’m looking for someone,” she said. Her voice was steady until the final word, which frayed into a whisper. The figure tilted its head. The pendant burned, searing her throat. Aurora yelped, yanking it over her head. The stones on its body now gleamed like fractures in glass, and for the first time, she saw its hands—thin fingers ending in crescent-shaped nails. “She left you a key.” The figure’s head tilted. Its mouth hadn’t moved. “Do you wish to see her?” The question hung in the cold. In her pocket, her phone buzzed once—10:32 a.m., a message from Yu-Fei: *Rory, the tofu is spoiling again. Come straight here after whatever you’re doing.* The words felt distant, as if she’d read them in someone else’s skin. The pendant still throbbed in her palm. She looked down. The ground beneath the mushrooms had shifted, forming a pattern now—parallel lines, straight as scratches. A name surfaced from memory: *helix* carving. Burial sites. The Fae didn’t *keep* bodies here. They folded them into the earth. Aurora’s throat tightened. The figure’s body began to ripple again, its edges dissolving into the fog. If it had spoken again, she didn’t hear it. She stepped back toward the circle’s edge, boots crunching over shells. The pendant’s glow dipped, then flared as she reached the standing stone. The world *pinched*, a pressure behind her eyes— —and suddenly her knees were digging into gravel. The air smelled of salt, not rot. Sunrise glinted on the Thames. Her phone read 10:33 a.m. The pendant in her palm was dark. But on the curb, an empty shell clattered where a trashcan had hit it. And the scar on her wrist—the one from the childhood fall, not Evan—itched as if someone had drawn a line of fire across her skin.