Run: 2026-04-24-01KQ05MYTBT97ADCF5SAHQ9VBV

The standing stones loomed against the London skyline like broken teeth. Rory stepped through the gap between two ancient oaks, her sneakers sinking into soil that felt too soft, too rich for October. The Heartstone pendant hung cold against her collarbone, its silver chain catching neither moonlight nor the distant amber glow of the city beyond the trees. She pressed her palm against the crimson gemstone out of habit. Still cold. Whatever had drawn her here—three nights of dreams that tasted like iron and honey, of a voice calling her name from somewhere beneath Richmond Park—had gone quiet the moment she'd crossed the threshold. The Grove waited. Wildflowers carpeted the clearing in colours that had no business existing in autumn. Violet and gold and a shade of blue so deep it hurt to look at, all blooming in defiance of the frost that had killed everything beyond the stones. The air hung thick and sweet, carrying the ghost of summer beneath something else—something old, something patient. "You came." Rory spun. The voice had come from everywhere and nowhere, a whisper that bypassed her ears entirely and settled directly behind her eyes. Nothing. Only flowers swaying in a breeze she couldn't feel. She touched the pendant again. Still cold. Whatever Hel portal the Heartstone was meant to detect, it wasn't here. Not yet. So why had the dreams led her to this place? "Right." Her voice sounded wrong in the clearing—too flat, too human. "Someone's got a sick sense of humour." The words died in the heavy air before they could echo. That was wrong too. The clearing should have carried sound. Instead, the silence swallowed her voice like water soaking into sand. Rory walked deeper into the Grove. The standing stones circled the perimeter, their surfaces carved with symbols she couldn't read in the darkness. Moss clung to the grooves, thick and black, pulsing faintly in rhythms that didn't match her heartbeat. She told herself it was a trick of the light. There was no light. She told herself it was a trick of the darkness, then. The wildflowers brushed against her ankles as she moved, their petals too smooth, too insistent. Like fingers. Like the touch of something testing whether she was real. She stopped walking. The silence pressed against her eardrums. London never went silent. Even at three in the morning, the city hummed with distant traffic and drunken shouts and the endless restless breath of eight million people. But here, inside the circle of stones, the world had been surgically removed. No sirens. No aircraft. No wind through leaves. Just her breathing. Just her heartbeat. Just— A sound. Soft. Rhythmic. Rory held her breath. The sound continued. A wet, organic clicking, like joints popping in sequence. Like something with too many joints settling into a new position. Behind her. She turned. The clearing stood empty, wildflowers trembling now in that breeze she still couldn't feel. The standing stones watched her with their carved symbols, and the moss seemed thicker than before, creeping higher on the ancient wood. "Okay." She backed toward the gap between the oaks, her hand finding the Heartstone again. "Message received. Bad idea. Leaving now." The gap was gone. Rory's fingers scraped against bark where the opening had been. She moved left, then right, tracing the boundary of the clearing. Oak after oak after oak, each one pressed tight against its neighbour, their branches interlocking overhead in a canopy that swallowed the sky. She was inside. The way out had sealed behind her, and she hadn't heard it happen. The clicking resumed. Closer now. Rory's hand closed around the Heartstone, and the gemstone burned against her palm. Not warmth—fire. She gasped and released it, staring down at the crimson surface. Light pulsed beneath the stone's skin, a heartbeat of its own, faster than hers had ever been. A portal. Opening. Here, in the Grove. But where? The wildflowers parted at the clearing's centre, parting like a wound. Darkness welled up from the soil—not shadow, but absence. A hole in reality that drank the dim light and thirsted for more. Rory backed away. Something moved at the edge of her vision. She turned her head, slow, careful, and caught only a smear of motion where the standing stones met the flowers. A shape that reassembled itself the moment she looked away. A presence that existed only in the spaces she wasn't observing. "I know you're there." The clicking stopped. The silence that replaced it was worse. It had weight. It had attention. Something was listening to her, something was considering her words, something was deciding what to do about this small human who had wandered into its grove at the hour of its waking. The Heartstone flared. The crimson light painted the wildflowers in blood, turned the standing stones into rows of teeth, transformed the Grove into a mouth that had finally finished opening. Rory's crescent scar began to itch. She scratched at her wrist without thinking, her nails digging into the old wound, and the pain grounded her. Pain was real. Pain was human. Whatever this place was, whatever had called her here, it couldn't take that from her. The voice returned, and this time it came from a direction—below. "Little thief. Little wanderer. You carry Dymas's heart, but you are not of the Fae." The darkness at the clearing's centre swelled. A shape emerged from the absence: a hand, pale and elongated, fingers jointed in places fingers shouldn't joint. It reached for the surface, found purchase on the wildflowers, and pulled. A second hand followed. A head. A face. The face had too many eyes. Rory stood frozen as the creature hauled itself from the portal. Its body was wrong in ways her mind refused to catalogue—limbs folded at angles that suggested additional joints, skin that shifted colours as she watched, a mouth that split its face horizontally and vertically both. It saw her. All of its eyes saw her. "Dymas's heart," it said again, and its voice was honey and iron, just like the dreams. "We called it home. We did not expect it to come wearing skin." The Heartstone blazed against Rory's chest. The heat should have burned her, should have seared through her shirt and branded itself into her flesh, but instead the warmth spread through her body like a second pulse. The creature tilted its head. Four additional eyes blinked in sequence along its temples. "You have been touched before." Its horizontal mouth curled at the corners. "Scarred. Marked. The heart chose wisely." Rory's hand found the pendant again. This time she didn't let go, even as the gemstone seared her palm. "I didn't come here for this. I came because you called me." "We called the heart." "Then take it." The creature laughed—a sound like cracking ice—and the wildflowers shuddered in response. "Oh, little thief. The heart cannot be taken. It must be given." It took another step toward her, its limbs unfolding from the portal's edge. "And you have not yet learned what it would cost." The standing stones began to hum. The symbols carved into their surfaces glowed faintly, amber and gold, and the moss retreated from the light. The wildflowers at Rory's feet turned their faces upward, watching her with something like anticipation. The Grove was listening. The Grove was waiting. The creature extended one elongated hand toward her. "Will you learn, little wanderer? Will you discover what Dymas's heart requires?" Rory looked at the hand. At the fingers that bent wrong. At the eyes that watched her from places eyes shouldn't grow. She thought of Evan's hands. How they had looked before they became fists. She thought of the scar on her wrist. How she had earned it running from one monster into the arms of another. She thought of the dreams, and the voice, and the pull that had brought her here to this place between worlds at three in the morning with a pendant she had never asked for burning against her skin. The Heartstone pulsed. The creature waited. The Grove held its breath.