Run: 2026-05-27-01KSMEQ23N5EJX488BF14GXNTM

Aurora Carter tiptoed past the ancient oak standing stones that marked the boundary of the Fae Grove. The iron chain she had stretched across the path three weeks ago was broken and hanging slack, leaves caught in its twisted links. She knelt, the damp ground seeping through her jeans, and ran her fingers along the severed chain. The edges were ragged, torn not cut—something had broken through with considerable force. Her breath clouded in the unnaturally cold night air. It was the beginning of October, yet the Grove clung to autumn like a lover, refusing to surrender to winter. The ever-present chill wasn’t just from the cooling weather; it seemed baked into the very soil of this place between worlds. Aurora glanced at her watch. 8:47 PM. She had been standing at the entrance to the Grove for exactly three minutes. Three minutes that had stretched into decades in her mind. She straightened and pulled the Heartstone Pendant from beneath her sweater. The deep crimson gem—the one that had been given to her by an unknown benefactor just before her world had unraveled—pulsed faintly against her palm. There it was again, that unmistakable warmth when near a Hel portal, the same warmth she’d felt every night for the past seven days since first noticing the disturbances in London. Her eyes drifted to the crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist—a constant reminder of the childhood accident that had left her with a strange second sight she’d kept hidden from everyone save her childhood friend Eva. That second sight told her the Grove wasn’t empty tonight, despite every logical piece of evidence suggesting otherwise. Years of legal studies had taught her to doubt everything, to examine every angle, to question every assumption. Yet here she stood, alone in a listed park in Richmond—a park where a normal person would find simply deer, foxes, and the occasional escaped pheasant—behind standing stones that should only be a historical curiosity. And she knew, with a certainty that defied rational explanation, that she was being watched. “Okay,” she whispered to herself, more to hear a normal human sound than to actually form a plan. She tucked the pendant back under her sweater, feeling the slight pulse of its silver chain against her neck. “Everything has an explanation. Everything.” As if in response to her statement, the breeze died completely. The last few moments held a faint rustling of leaves—a normal forest sound. Now, silence. Aurora took another step forward. The Grove materialized around her rather than revealed itself. Wildflowers bloomed in impossible colors— midnight violets and blood oranges—even in darkness, their bioluminescence creating an eerie half-light that made her think of fireflies caught in amber. The first thing she noticed was the wrong sound. At home in her flat above Silas’ bar in London, she’d hear the continuous hum of the city—cars, people, appliances. In normal parks, she’d hear night creatures and rustling leaves. Here, there was only the humming. It began as a high-pitched oscillation, nearly imperceptible, beneath the threshold of normal hearing. As she walked deeper into the clearing, the hum grew slightly in volume. She focused on it, ignoring the hamstrung chain left behind by the mysterious trespasser who had been leaving offerings to a blasphemous god she could feel but not see. The wrongness expanded. The ambient light from the impossible flowers seemed to warp slightly around the edges of her vision, like viewing through a shattered mirror. She blinked, and it resolved, but the feeling remained—a slight pretrained distortion to reality that made her stomach tighten. The second abnormal sound appeared. It started as a whisper—a faint skittering across dead leaves. From the left, then the right, then ahead of her, then behind her. Too many points of origin for a single animal. Aurora stopped dead, her heartbeat suddenly loud in her ears. Not an animal. Too many origins. Her hand instinctively went to the small dagger sheathed at her belt—a self-defense measure Eva had insisted she carry after the incident with Evan. The metal felt cold, impossibly so. She resisted the urge to draw it, telling herself she was being paranoid. Just the wind, Rory. Just the wind. But there was no wind. The third abnormality struck her senses. The temperature took a nosedive. It wasn’t a chilling breeze but rather as if someone had cracked the door to a meat locker directly into the clearing. Aurora shivered, her breath now coming in visible clouds despite the balmy October night outside the Grove’s boundary. That's when she saw it. It was at the far edge of her peripheral vision, and when she tried to focus, it was only the distorted perception of light. Yet when she didn’t look directly, an impossible figure crouched behind a thicket of wildflowers. Its outline seemed too elongated, limbs too thin, shoulders too broad. Impossible shadows attached to it like oil on water. Aurora took a slow, deliberate step backward. Her training taught her that in danger, one must assess, appreciate, and avoid rather than confront blindly. Yet the Heartstone chose that moment to warm significantly against her neck, throbbing in cadence with her frantic pulse. The humming grew louder. The figure shifted behind the flowers. And then the penultimate realization struck her with the force of physical impact. The lack of moon. The impossible flowers were darker now, their light receding as if swallowed by something. The ambient glow from the Fae-touched soil extinguished completely. The Grove plunged into a darkness so absolute, so complete, that she couldn’t tell if her eyes were open or closed. Yet in that profound darkness, Aurora sensed it—all of them. Not just the one figure, but many. Thirty, perhaps forty separate presences surrounding her, encircling her. They emanated no sound, no heat, no warmth of any kind. Only menace. Her fingers trembled as they closed around the hilt of the dagger. She drew it slowly, the sound seeming impossibly loud in the void. The figure stumbled forward, emerging from the complete darkness just feet in front of her. It stood nearly seven feet tall, limbs twisted at impossible angles, its skin—if skin it could be called—was like polished obsidian with cracks of Sapphire blue light pulsing beneath. Its head was elongated, eyes like voids broader than any human’s, yet with ancestral intelligence glimmering in their absolute emptiness. She had read dim rumors of such beings, dismissed them as urban legends until now. Hollow Men. The harbingers. The exiters. Such names were whispered among theorists of Fae-touched phenomenon, copies of suspicion and fear. It lifted a clawed hand, not threatening but enticing, like one might offer a carrot to a mouse to breed. A silent invitation, a call to something beyond. And that was when Aurora noticed the last abnormality, the one she had deliberately refused to see until this moment. Another of them, smaller, stood among the impossible flowers a few yards away. Its form was more human, yet wrong—too thin, eyes too bright, movements too smooth. It beckoned to her with a flicker of pale fingers. With impossible purpose, she realized this entity held something she had lost years ago. In the darkness, the impossible glow gave it away—a silver music box she hadn’t seen since Evan had destroyed it. “Not possible,” she whispered, her voice cracking. The figure smiled, jagged teeth glimmering faintly, and gestured again to the music box. The choice was suddenly overwhelmingly clear. The Heartstone burned against her throat as if trying to warn her away while simultaneously drawing her forward. Everything she had studied whispered that this could not be real, yet everything her second sight had developed screamed that it was. The legend held that stepping through to join the Hollow Man entities meant losing your old self, becoming one with the endless hum that made up the realm between worlds. To embrace oblivion voluntarily. The Heartstone pulsed with warning energy, its warmth spreading through her chest despite the increasing cold of the Grove. Aurora held the dagger between her and the entities, not as a threat, but as one last tether to the world she knew. Tears froze on her cheeks as she looked from the music box back to the elongated Hollow Man, whose ancient eyes promised a release from all pain, all memory, all fear. She took half a step forward, tempted. Half a step toward another entity that appeared in the darkness, holding an impossible key—one that looked exactly like the front door key to her childhood home in Wales. With each new apparition showing a beloved memory in tangible form, the Grove’s call grew stronger. The humming wrapped around her mind like swaddling clothes, promising rest from a conscious life fraught with loss and danger. The Heartstone pulsed furiously, nearing pain. Aurora closed her eyes, the only refuge from the seductive promises that kept appearing. She pictured Eva in her mind, the steady stream of customer complaints at Golden Empress restaurant, the actual empty space above Silas’ bar where her things waited. The normalcy of her previous life. With effort, she reached for the last anchor she had left to this reality. Her decisions shouldn’t be made from betraying loss but from honoring life. It had taken her fleeing Evan and rebuilding in London to understand that truth. Aurora spun toward the standing stones marking the entrance to the Grove. She didn’t run. Pace was deliberate, measured. She needed disbelief every passing second or she might do something unforgivable. The humming intensified, borders of her vision warping sickeningly. Shadow entities materialized in her path, reaching for her with non-existent claws, but never quite touching as she passed. Hollow promises of the Grove now proven illusions. When she finally broke the tree line and crossed beneath the ancient oaks marking the Grove’s boundary, the muffled sounds of London night rushed back into her senses—the unfamiliar friend, a car horn, distant sirens. She stumbled once, then again, and found herself on her knees in the damp grass outside the Grove. Aurora looked back, forcing herself to see past the false illusion of normalcy. The standing stones still marked an entrance, but for the first time since she’d arrived, she saw the truth of what lay beyond. The Heartstone cooled against her skin. The Grove wasn’t just a clearing but a prison. A cage not of stones and earth, but of forgotten potential and what-ifs. The Hollow Men weren’t entities emerging from it, but pieces of humanity they had trapped in a state of yearning for everything they had lost. In the safety of the outside world, Aurora realized the Guardian at Grooted a pure Fascination with the Harvest that Lured one toward the center of the maze, never to return. The humming wasn't coming from the Grove itself but was an internal calling only the vulnerable could hear—a seductive whisper of all one had ever loved and lost. Her music box. Her childhood home. These weren't from the Hollow Men, but from the fragments of herself she had left behind since moving to London. A trap for the repentantly lonely and vulnerable—not with force, but with utmost gentleness and forgiveness. Aurora pushed to her feet, her breath ragged. She had nearly lost herself to the promise of reunion with parts of her past she had intentionally buried. The night air outside the standing stones was clean and fresh, free from the psychic pollen the Grove emitted to lure people back. She pictured Eva waiting for her call, worrying as always since Rory had started these nighttime expeditions, determined to unravel the mysteries behind increasing portal activity in London. Aurora Carter, the delivery girl pretending to be something else, was back. She was Rory again. And she knew now what she was truly running from—and why she couldn’t let herself run too far.