Run: 2026-03-25-01KMJ8BTDE18V9BYYPW7FTBNFN

Aurora Carter stepped over the gnarled root curling like a serpent across her path, the toe of her boot sinking slightly into the moss-thick earth. The air in the Fae Grove smelled of damp stone and something sweeter, cloying—rotten fruit, maybe, or blood. She tugged her jacket tighter against the chill, though the London night had been unseasonably warm. Her breath still misted in the air. The Heartstone Pendant grew warm against her throat, its crimson gemstone pulsing in time with her own pulse. *It’s here*, she told herself. Somewhere in this clearing, the portal to Hel hovered just out of sight, waiting. She had followed the pendant’s lead for three days now, tracing its flickers of warmth through Richmond Park until she’d stumbled upon these oaks—ancient, impossibly straight, their bark etched with symbols that shouldn’t exist. Now, the grove’s wildflowers swayed in a breeze she couldn’t feel, their white petals trembling like the edges of a held breath. She moved forward, boots sinking into the ground with each step. The standing stones framed the space like sentinels, their shadows stretching toward her as she reached the grove’s center. The pendant flared, sharp heat searing her skin. Aurora hissed, clutching it. A low hum filled the air, the kind that rattled her teeth and made her ears ring. Then the silence. No birds. No rustle of leaves. Even the distant hoot of owls had vanished. Aurora froze, every muscle taut. Her fingers brushed the small crescent scar on her left wrist—a habit when she was unsettled. The scar didn’t hurt, but tonight it prickled, as though the skin there had become a second, tinier version of the pendant, humming with some quiet alarm. A sound came then, soft and wet. Like footsteps, but wrong. Not on the earth—*under* it. Aurora spun, scanning the grove’s periphery. The trees stood still, their branches frozen mid-tremble. She reached for her phone, the cracked screen lighting up with 10:03 a.m. She’d entered the grove just after midnight. Time here bent, she remembered from Eva’s warnings, but this… this was impossible. Her phone blinked again, the numbers shifting to 10:04, then to 10:10, then— A laugh, high and brittle, sliced through the stillness. Aurora dropped to the ground, her back pressing into the moss. The laugh came again, closer, and this time she heard something behind it—a voice, calling her name. *Rory.* Not her real name, but the one she used now, the one she’d carved from the pieces of herself Evan hadn’t shattered. But there was no one there. No one but the trees. She forced herself to her feet, fists clenched. Eva had said the Fae didn’t like to be bargained with, but didn’t say they’d mimic your own voice. The pendant’s glow dimmed, as if whatever it had been tracking was playing with it now. Aurora stepped toward the nearest oak, pressing her hand to its cold bark. The symbols carved into it gleamed faintly—one looked like a snake eating its own tail. “Show yourself,” she said, her voice steadier than she felt. The grove shivered. Leaves crunched behind her. She didn’t turn. “I know you’re here. I’m not afraid of you.” A rustle, just out of her peripheral vision. A flicker of movement—too fast to track, but definitely not a branch. The air thickened, sticky as syrup, and her throat tightened. She took a step back, then another, until the pendant’s heat seared her again, anchoring her. *Focus on the stone. The portal. The reason you came here.* Her fingers fumbled with the clasp. The chain snapped open, and the Heartstone fell into her palm, its glow intensifying. A shape coalesced in the air ahead, faint as heat lightning—a spiral of black smoke, thin and sinuous, curling toward the ground. The portal. It was real. It was here. But then the smoke *twisted*, and a face bloomed in its center. Not human. Eyes too large, pupils vertical and slit like a cat’s. Jaw unhinged, stretching in a grin that didn’t touch the blackness where teeth should have been. Aurora stumbled back, her breath ragged. The thing in the portal didn’t move, didn’t speak. It only watched her. “You’re not real,” she whispered. “This isn’t real. This is the Grove. This is just—*impossible*.” The face vanished. The portal collapsed inward, a sucking sound as it vanished. But the temperature in the grove plummeted. Aurora’s breath came in fast, visible puffs. The wildflowers had stopped trembling, their petals now curled inward, brown and withered. She turned to run, but the standing stones were gone. No—not gone. *Moved.* The trees had formed a tighter circle, their trunks closer, the space between them narrower than before. Aurora’s fingers scraped against bark as she tried to find the path she’d entered through. There was no path. Only roots, thick and serpentine, slithering across the ground like they were alive. A low, wet noise again, closer this time. Her head snapped left. Between two trees, something gleamed. A pair of eyes—bright blue, too familiar. Her own reflection stared back from a patch of still water puddled in the roots. But when she blinked, the reflection didn’t blink. It smiled, slow and languid, and traced a finger around its own throat. Aurora’s hand flew to the scar there, but the water-image had already turned its back, gliding into the trees. The pendant went ice-cold in her palm. She ran. Branches snagged her jacket, tore at her hair. The grove screamed then—wind that wasn’t there, the creak of trees too old to bend, the wet-laugh that followed her steps. The standing stones loomed ahead, but they were the same ones as before, weren’t they? The same bark, same carved symbols— A hand grabbed her shoulder. Aurora twisted, flailing, but it was only the tree. Her fingers brushed the carved spiral again, and the world *shifted*. The Grove was gone. She toppled onto damp grass, the London skyline cutting through the trees ahead. Dawn bled pink across the horizon. Her phone was in her hand, screen lit with 10:47 a.m. But in her palm, the Heartstone Pendant no longer glowed.