Run: 2026-05-20-01KS260MSY0CVTRDX8R09GQ39G

The silver chain of the pendant felt like a trickle of ice water against the back of Rory’s neck, but the stone itself—the rough, thumbnail-sized crimson gem resting against her collarbone—was pulsing with a heavy, rhythmic heat. It felt like a small, trapped heart trying to beat its way through her chest. According to the scrap of parchment she’d tucked into her wool coat, this was the place. Richmond Park at midnight was supposed to be empty, a vast expanse of dark grass and sleeping deer under a bruised London sky. But Rory had deviated from the paved paths, guided only by the persistent, throbbing warmth of the Heartstone. She had squeezed through a gap in the ancient oak trees, expecting the familiar damp chill of a November night. Instead, she stepped into the fragrance of damp earth and blooming bluebells. Rory stopped, her boots sinking into grass that was far too lush, far too green for the season. She pulled her collar up, her bright blue eyes straining against the peculiar, violet-tinted gloom. The air in the grove was thick and warm, smelling of crushed stems and something sweet and faintly rotting, like overripe peaches left too long in the sun. The silence here was different. Outside the boundary of the towering oaks, the distant, low hum of London’s night traffic was a constant, comforting reminder of the physical world. Here, that hum was gone. In its place was a silence so absolute it pressed against her eardrums like deep water. "Just get the reading and go," she whispered to herself. Her Welsh accent sounded flat, swallowed instantly by the heavy air. She reached down, her fingers brushing the small, crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist—a nervous tic she’d never quite broken. She needed to map the boundary. The pendant’s heat suggested a Hel portal was close, closer than anyone in the city realized, but the wrongness of this clearing was already plucked at her nerves. She took three steps forward. The grass didn’t rustle under her feet. It parted, silent as silk. To her left, a massive oak trunk twisted upward, its bark gnarled into shapes that looked uncomfortably like gasping faces. Marked around the perimeter of the clearing were five more of these colossal trees, standing like sentinels. Standing stones of wood. A soft *tick* sounded behind her. Rory spun around, her black hair whipping across her cheeks. The clearing was empty. The wildflowers nodded in a breeze she couldn’t feel. She held her breath, listening. Nothing. She turned back toward the center of the grove, but as she did, her eyes caught a movement at the very edge of her vision. It was a pale, fluid twitch, low to the ground near the roots of the third oak. When she looked directly at the spot, there was only the gray-brown expanse of bark and the shadow of a ferns. Her heart hammered a frantic rhythm that matched the pulsing of the crimson stone. "Hello?" she called out. No answer. But the air grew perceptibly warmer. A bead of sweat slid down her temple. She took another step, intending to reach the center, take a directional reading with her compass, and retreat through the gap in the trees. But when she looked back over her shoulder to gauge her exit, the gap wasn’t there. The oaks had shifted. Or perhaps the darkness had simply pooled thicker between them, knitting the trunks into an unbroken wall of black wood. Panic, cold and sharp, flared in her stomach. Rory was cool-headed by nature—she’d survived Cardiff, she’d survived Evan, she’d learned how to navigate the cutthroat streets of London on a moped with nothing but a map and sheer nerve. She did not panic. She breathed in through her nose, out through her mouth, forcing her mind to analyze. *Time moves differently here,* she recalled from her research. *An hour inside could be days outside.* She couldn’t afford to lose days. Yu-Fei would fire her if she missed her shift at the Golden Empress tomorrow, and more importantly, Eva would realize she was missing. Slowly, Rory reached into her pocket and pulled out her brass compass. The needle didn't point north. It was spinning, lazy and erratic, drawing clockwise circles over and over. The *tick* came again. Closer this time. It sounded like a fingernail tapping against dry bone. She didn't turn around immediately. Instead, she kept her gaze fixed on the shadow of the oak tree ahead of her. In the reflection of the glass face of her compass, she watched the space behind her shoulder. The shadows between the trees were stretching. It wasn’t a trick of the light; the darkness was physically reaching inward, crawling across the violet wildflowers like spilled ink. And within that creeping dark, things were shifting. They were slender, elongated shapes, pale as birch bark, moving with a jarring, jointed awkwardness. They didn't walk; they repositioned, appearing two feet closer every time she blinked. The Heartstone grew searing hot, burning against her skin through her cotton shirt. Rory took a cautious step backward, her eyes locked on the space before her. "I'm leaving," she said, her voice steady despite the tremor in her hands. "I have no business with the court." The response was a rustle, not of leaves, but of dry, papery skin sliding over grass. From the shadow of the central oak, a figure began to peel itself away from the bark. At first, Rory thought it was a branch, but then it unfolded. It was immensely tall, its limbs thin as saplings, draped in a tattered cowl of dead moss and gray leaves. It had no face—only a smooth, pale expanse of skin where eyes and a nose should be, split horizontally by a thin, lipless seam that stretched too wide to be a mouth. It didn't breathe. It didn't make a sound. But it tilted its head, as if listening to the frantic double-time of Rory’s heart. At the edges of the clearing, the other pale shapes were crawling out from the roots, their long, many-jointed fingers digging into the soft earth. They were circling, closing the gap, moving with a sickening, silent speed the moment she tried to focus on any single one of them. Rory didn't run. Running invited a chase, and in this pocket of folded space, she didn't know which way led out and which way led deeper into the dark. Instead, she locked her eyes on the faceless thing in the center. She reached down, took the Heartstone in her bare hand, and squeezed. The heat of it blistered her palm, but she welcomed the pain. It anchored her. It reminded her of the hard, cold reality of the world she belonged to. "You don't own the gate," she said, her voice dropping an octave, ringing with a fierce, stubborn authority she didn't know she possessed. "And you don't own me." The seam on the creature's face parted. Inside was a row of tiny, pine-needle teeth, wet and black. It didn't scream; it let out a low, vibrating hiss that shook the pollen from the bluebells, filling the air with a choking, sweet dust. The pale things at the periphery lunged. Rory spun, ignoring the compass, ignoring the path she thought she knew. She drove herself straight toward the darkest space between the two largest oaks. She ran, her boots finally tearing through the silent grass, the smell of rot growing so thick she tasted copper on her tongue. Cold, spindly fingers brushed the wool of her coat. A breath like winter wind kissed the back of her neck. She threw her weight forward, holding the burning pendant out like a shield. The Crimson glow flared, a sudden, blinding flash of red light that shattered the violet gloom. With a sickening lurch, the air pressure dropped. Rory fell forward, tumbling head over heels. She hit hard, cold, mud-slicked earth. The smell of rotten peaches vanished, replaced instantly by the damp, metallic scent of wet asphalt and dead autumn leaves. The distant, beautiful roar of London traffic rushed back into her ears like a flood. Rory lay on her back in the damp grass of Richmond Park, staring up at a gray, overcast night sky. Her breath came in ragged, sobbing gasps. She looked down at her hand; her palm was red and blistered, but the pendant had gone completely cold, resting quietly against her chest once more. She scrambled to her feet, shivering in the genuine November chill, and didn't look back at the trees as she ran for the park gates.