AI The silver chain of the Heartstone pendant felt like a thin wire of ice against Rory’s collarbone, though the crimson gem itself, resting just beneath her collar, was warm. Incredibly warm. It pulsed against her collarbone with a steady, sluggish rhythm, like the heartbeat of a dying bird.
She pushed past the final barrier of gorse and bramble, her boots sinking into damp, yielding moss. Right on cue, the distant rumble of the London evening—the hum of the A3, the far-off drone of Heathrow-bound flights—died instantly. The silence that replaced it was not the clean, quiet peace of the countryside. It was heavy and absolute, like a weight pressing against the drums of her ears.
She had reached Richmond Park late, slipping through the pedestrian gates just as the twilight faded into a bruised purple. Now, standing at the edge of the hidden clearing, Rory let her breath out in a long, pale plume.
The Fae Grove didn't look like Richmond anymore. The ancient, twisted oaks that marked the boundary stood like petrified giants, their gnarled trunks curving inward as if to cage the clearing from the sky. Beneath them, carpeted across the forest floor, wildflowers bloomed in impossible, vivid colors—violent indigos, pale whites, and bruising yellows that had no business thriving in the dead of autumn.
Rory reached up with her right hand, her fingers tracing the small, crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist. It was a nervous, childhood habit, a physical anchor she returned to whenever her mind began to spiral.
"Just a quick check," she whispered. The sound of her own voice was flat, swallowed up by the damp air as soon as it left her lips.
She had come because of the pendant. For three days, the thumbnail-sized stone had been heating up in her pocket, growing hot enough to scorch the fabric of her coat. Her unknown benefactor hadn't left instructions, but Rory was intelligent enough to recognize a warning when she felt one. The warmth meant a Hel portal was close, or opening, and the ley lines of the Grove were the most volatile junction in Greater London.
She took three steps forward, crossing the threshold of the oak standing stones.
A sudden, sharp tingle ran down her spine . The air inside the Grove was different. It tasted of copper and ozone, cold enough to sting her sinuses, yet the ground felt strangely soft and warm beneath her soles. She took a pocket torch from her leather jacket, flicking the switch.
The beam of light cut through the gloom , illuminating the thick, gray mist that clung to the wildflower stalks. She swept the light in a slow arc.
Nothing. Just the ancient trees, the unnatural blossoms, and the heavy mist.
She walked toward the center of the clearing, where the air felt thickest. The deeper she went, the more the sensation of wrongness grew. It wasn't a sudden, jarring shock, but a slow, creeping realization, like water rising around her ankles.
First, it was the smell. Beneath the sweet, cloying scent of the unseasonal flowers was a faint, sour odor—the smell of wet copper and stagnant water.
Then, it was the light. When she held her torch steady, she noticed the shadows cast by the ancient oaks weren't pointing away from the beam. They were angled slightly sideways, warping at the edges as if they were trying to lean away from the illumination.
Rory stopped. She held her breath, listening.
In the silence , she heard a sound. It was incredibly faint, a soft, wet *slither *, like a heavy rope being dragged through wet mud. It came from somewhere near the eastern boundary, behind a massive, split-trunk oak.
Slowly, Rory turned her torch toward the sound. The beam pierced the mist, splashing against the rough bark of the oak.
Nothing was there.
She lowered the torch slightly , her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. The Heartstone pendant was getting hotter now, stinging her skin. She reached into her collar and pulled it out, letting it dangle. The deep crimson gem was glowing , a faint, rhythmic pulse of light that matched the speed of her racing pulse .
"Who's there?" she called out .
The silence that followed was thick, almost suffocating.
Then, a rustle. Not from the ground, but from above .
Rory didn't tilt her light up immediately. Her gut, honed by years of surviving things she’d rather forget, screamed at her to keep her eyes level. Instead, she took a slow step backward, her boot squelching in the moss.
At the very edge of her peripheral vision, something moved.
It was a pale, fluid motion, high up in the branches of the boundary oaks. It didn't jump or swing; it seemed to glide, a pale smear against the dark wood, moving with a terrifying, liquid grace.
She whipped her torch toward the movement. The light caught only the empty, moss-draped branches of a dying birch. But as the light passed over the tree, she saw the moss dangling from the bark. It wasn't hanging down. It was drifting horizontally, as if caught in a strong breeze.
Yet, there was no wind. The air in the Grove was dead, stagnant, and freezing.
A cold sweat broke out across Rory’s forehead. Her quick, analytical mind tried to map the anomalies, to find a rational explanation. A trick of the light. The strange atmospheric pressure of a pocket realm. Hallucinations brought on by the strange spores of the wildflowers.
But then she saw the footprint.
Just at the edge of her torchlight, right where she had been standing moments before, the vibrant, thick wildflowers were crushed. Not crushed as if by a boot, but dissolved . A dark, smoking patch of black rot lay in the shape of a long, narrow foot, the stems of the lilies and violets liquefied into a foul, black tar.
And right next to it, another dark patch appeared.
There was no sound. No rustle of grass. Just the silent, instantaneous rot of the flora, forming another footprint, two feet closer to her than the last.
Rory stared, paralyzed. Her breath came in short, shallow gasps. The pendant was burning now, a searing heat that made her want to rip the silver chain from her neck, but she didn’t dare move her hands.
Another patch of rot bloomed in the moss. Closer.
The thing that was walking was invisible to her light, but the space it occupied was warped. As she stared at the empty air directly above the newest footprint, she saw the trees behind it bend. The light from her torch didn't bounce off the entity; it bent around it, refracting the dark trunks and gray mist into a grotesque, hall-of-mirrors distortion.
It was tall. Unnaturally tall. And it was standing less than ten feet away.
A sound broke the stillness. It wasn't a growl or a hiss. It was a voice.
It sounded like a woman’s voice, but warped, as if played through a broken, waterlogged speaker. It spoke in a language Rory didn't know, a series of harsh, clicking consonants and low, guttural vowels that vibrated in her teeth. But beneath the foreign words, there was a secondary layer to the sound—the faint, dual-toned echo of a man’s voice, mimicry so perfect it made her skin crawl.
*“...Rory...”*
Her heart stopped. The voice wasn't just a random sound. It had shaped her name. It sounded like Eva’s voice, but stretched out, the vowels elongated into a mocking, agonizing groan.
*“...Rory... come... back...”*
The distortion in the air shifted. It leaned forward.
Rory’s survival instinct, cold and sharp, cut through her paralysis. She didn't scream. She didn't throw her torch.
She turned and ran.
She bolted toward the standing stones, her boots tearing up the moss and the beautiful, cursed flowers. Behind her, the quiet of the Grove erupted into a frenzy of motion. The wet, heavy slithering sound returned, but this time it was fast, a rapid, thrashing progress through the underbrush that sounded like a massive serpent whipping through the dead leaves.
The air grew freezing cold, so cold that her eyebrows began to frost. The smell of copper turned into the overwhelming stench of rot and old iron.
She reached the boundary. The ancient oak standing stones were just ahead, their dark silhouettes marking the threshold to the real world, to Richmond Park, to safety.
But as she leaped between the two central oaks, she felt a heavy, freezing pressure brush against the back of her leather jacket. It wasn't a hand. It felt like dozens of thin, wet threads, like a heavy spider's web, wrapping around her shoulders, dragging at her momentum.
The Heartstone pendant flared with a sudden, blinding crimson light, casting long, bloody shadows across the trees. The heat against her chest was white-hot, a agonizing burn that made her gasp.
With a final, desperate surge, Rory threw her weight forward, tearing herself free from the icy threads.
She tumbled out of the Grove, rolling hard across the dry, dead grass of Richmond Park. The damp moss was gone . The cloying flowers were gone .
She lay on her back, panting, staring up at the night sky. High above, the orange glow of London’s light pollution painted the clouds. In the distance, the faint, comforting rumble of a jet engine cut through the air.
Rory scrambled to her knees and spun around, her torch shaking violently in her grip.
The beam illuminated the ordinary boundary of Richmond Park. Just a line of old, dead oaks and dry brambles. There was no mist. No glowing wildflowers. No warped shadows.
But as she lowered her torch, the light caught the collar of her black leather jacket.
Clinging to the leather shoulder pads were three long, thin strands of pale, translucent slime. They weren't melting. They lay there, glittering in the torchlight, frozen hard as steel.