Run: 2026-05-10-01KR8XA8TSY87RYY4NZYXJ58CT

The air inside Richmond Park did not behave like the air in London. Outside the perimeter, the city breathed in a rhythmic, smog-heavy exhale of traffic and sirens, but here, the silence was absolute. It was a suffocating, pressurized quiet that pressed against Rory’s eardrums until they hummed. She walked with her hands jammed deep into the pockets of her jacket, her shoulder-length black hair whipped across her face by a wind that felt less like weather and more like a draft from an opening door. Ahead of her, the ancient oak standing stones loomed, gnarly and grey against the velvet dark of the night sky. They looked like fingers rising from the grave of the earth, marking the boundary of the Fae Grove. Rory stopped ten paces out. She touched her left wrist, her fingers tracing the small, crescent-shaped scar she’d carried since childhood. It felt cold tonight. Everything felt cold, except for the weight resting against her sternum. Beneath the fabric of her shirt, the Heartstone pendant pulsed. It was a rhythmic, sluggish heartbeat of warmth, a deep crimson flicker hidden against her skin. It was the only thing grounding her to reality. The Grove was supposed to be a sanctuary, a pocket between worlds where she could find the answers regarding the benefactor who had mailed her the pendant. But as she took a tentative step across the threshold of the stones, the ground beneath her boots didn't crunch. It made no sound at all, as if she were stepping onto heavy velvet. The wildflowers were blooming, just as the lore suggested. Even in the dead of winter, they sat in the moonlight like jewels—petals of indigo and bruised violet, shimmering with an iridescent sheen that didn’t belong in this hemisphere. She looked down at them and felt a sudden, sharp spike of vertigo. The flowers weren’t just blooming; they were tracking her movement. Every tilt of her head sent a ripple through the stalks, a wave of motion that followed her displacement in the air. Rory pulled the pendant out from under her collar. The crimson stone was glowing with a fierce, unstable light, casting long, jittery shadows that danced across the trunks of the trees. The warmth of it was no longer comforting; it was feverish, bordering on a burn. Who is there? she called out. Her voice sounded flat, swallowed instantly by the mossy floor of the clearing. No response. Only the rustle of leaves that weren't moving. She turned in a slow circle, her bright blue eyes scanning the periphery. Her training in Cardiff—the analytical approach to logic and arguments—usually served her well. She broke problems down. She looked for evidence. But the evidence here was contradictory. She could see the moon, yet the shadows on the ground fell in the wrong direction, pointing toward the light source rather than away from it. A sound drifted from the periphery of the trees—a wet, clicking rhythm, like teeth chattering in rapid succession. It was followed by the soft, rhythmic thrum of something heavy dragging itself through the underbrush. Rory froze, her breath hitching. She thought of Evan, the way he had once stalked the hallways of her old flat, his presence a static charge in the air before he even spoke. But this was different. This wasn't the malice of a man; this was the indifference of a predator watching a rabbit wander into a trap. She took a step toward the exit, but the standing stones were no longer where they had been. They stood further away now, the gap between them stretched by a distortion of space she couldn't comprehend. She spun around, her heart hammering against her ribs. The Grove had expanded. Or she had been pulled deeper. A shadow detached itself from the base of a gnarled oak. It wasn't a creature of flesh and bone, but a tear in the fabric of the night, a silhouette carved from a darker void. It stood taller than any human, its limbs elongated and angular, ending in points that seemed to pierce the air. It didn't walk; it drifted, a flicker of motion at the very edge of her peripheral vision. Every time she swung her gaze toward it, the shadow vanished, leaving only the swaying wildflowers. Rory didn’t run. Panic was a luxury, a pre-law failing that would only tighten the noose. Instead, she leaned into the coolness of her mind, clutching the Heartstone until the silver chain dug into her palm. The pendant was pulsing faster now, a frantic, red strobe that painted the nearby tree bark in blood-colored light. It’s near, she whispered to herself. The portal was here. She saw it then—a shimmer in the air, a crack in the stillness about six feet to her left. It looked like heat haze rising from a highway, a distortion that blurred the trees behind it. The Heartstone erupted with a sudden, searing heat, turning the silver chain white-hot against her skin. She gasped, dropping the pendant, but it didn't hit the ground. It hung suspended in the air, tethered to the shimmering tear by an invisible thread. The clicking sound intensified, rising to a dissonant screech that grated against her teeth. The shadow was closer now, pressing into the edges of her field of vision. She could feel the chill of it—a frost that began to crystallize on her eyelashes. She didn't look back at the shadow. She stared into the tear, into the swirling, abyssal grey that waited beyond it. She realized then that this was not a place of passage. It was a feeding ground. The Grove didn't just exist between worlds; it drew things into that space, stripping them of their trajectory until they were nothing more than floating echoes. The shadow moved. She saw it in her reflection in the Heartstone—a pale, elongated face hovering inches behind her shoulder, eyes like hollowed-out sockets reflecting the crimson pulse of the stone. It had no mouth, no features, only the suggestion of a presence that smelled of wet earth and ancient, forgotten dust. Rory forced her feet to move. Every muscle in her body screamed for flight, but she compelled herself to walk toward the shimmer, toward the heat. She reached out, her fingers trembling, aiming for the spot where the pendant hovered. The creature’s hand—if it could be called that—brushed her hair. It was a sensation of absolute zero, a touch that stripped the heat from her skin and left her nerves screaming in sensory overload. Her wrist throbbed where the scar lay, a sympathetic ache to the cold that was now sinking into her bones. She didn't scream. She lunged. Rory shoved her hand through the shimmer. The world turned inside out. The smell of perfume and stale beer from Silas’s bar, the hum of London traffic, the gritty reality of the street—it all slammed into her with the force of a physical blow. She tumbled forward, hitting the pavement of the park path with a bone-jarring thud. Behind her, the air snapped. She scrambled to her feet, turning around. The standing stones were just rocks. Weathered, moss-covered, unremarkable remnants of a landscape that had nothing to do with the night sky. The Grove was gone. Rory stood in the dark, shivering violently. Her shirt was singed where the pendant had touched it. She reached up to her neck, but the chain was gone. The Heartstone had stayed behind. As she turned back toward the glow of the distant streetlamps, she heard it one last time—the faint, rhythmic click of teeth, echoing from somewhere deep within the stone circle. She didn't look back. She walked until her lungs burned, the memory of that cold touch clinging to her skin like oil, a silent promise that the Grove had not finished with her yet.