Run: 2026-05-27-01KSMF402J08WEMMMAPZJHSBYE

The ancient oaks of Richmond Park loomed like silent sentinels as Aurora Carter—Rory to her few friends—pulled the hood of her dark jacket further over her shoulder-length black hair. At 25, she was old enough to know better than to be walking alone in a park at night, especially one as sprawling and secluded as this. But the need had been urgent, gnawing at her with a persistence that refused to be ignored. The Heartstone pendant around her neck throbbed with a faint, requesting warmth—her only guide in this seemingly abandoned section of the park that locals whispered about, that she had only discovered earlier that day. According to her research, this was a place of power, a nexus where the veil between worlds grew thin. She'd scoffed at supernatural nonsense most of her life, but after witnessing unexpected events in the last few months, she'd learned the hard way that some legends had truth in them. Especially the ones involving strange red glows and ancient stones. The path deteriorated from gravel to soft earth, and Rory found herself in a small clearing she hadn't seen on the map. Moonlight filtered through the canopy above, illuminating wildflowers that, strangely, seemed to bloom with an internal light despite the hour. Her breath came out in small clouds in the crisp night air, and for the first time, the cold seeped through her jacket. "This is it," she whispered to herself, reaching for the pendant that now felt almost warm against her skin. "The Fae Grove." According to the notes Eva had given her before disappearing—again—this was a between-place, somewhere time didn't quite follow the normal rules. Rory had hoped to find a clue about her friend's whereabouts, but as she looked around at the impossible foliage and strange sense of disorientation that washed over her, she began to suspect her friend might have gotten into something far beyond simple evasion. Something crunched in the undergrowth to her right. Rory froze, her bright blue eyes scanning the shadows. A fox, perhaps? Years in London had desensitized her to urban wildlife, but here, the sounds were different. Sharper. More deliberate. "Hello?" she called out, her voice sounding too loud in the sudden silence. The cricket chorus that had provided background noise for the last fifteen minutes ceased abruptly. Another crunch. Closer. Rory adjusted her grip on the small utility knife inside her coat pocket, feeling stupidly prepared yet utterly inadequate. The trees seemed to lean in more tightly now, their branches casting long, László-like shadows that appeared to move independently of the breeze. "You're far from your territory," she said softly to whatever might be stalking her. Humans romanticized nature, but Rory had spent enough time in darker corners of the city to know that hostility was a universal language among predators. The silence pulsed with a wrongness that made her skin crawl. The air pressed against her skin, thick and heavy. The wildflowers began to glow more brightly, casting an eerie crimson light on the clearing as the Heartstone pendant pulsed in time with her accelerated heartbeat. Something was watching her. She backed toward the standing stones marking the grove's boundary, the ancient oaks that served as grim guards to this in-between place. Time seemed to stretch, the moments between heartbeats elongating unbearably. Her training kicked in—assess, plan, escape. But what was there to plan for? What to escape from? "Show yourself," she whispered, not meaning to but feeling compelled by some internal force. Two unnaturally bright eyes opened in the darkness between the trees. They weren't animal eyes. Too intelligent, too analysing. Rory had seen drugged, wild, and caged eyes in her work at the animal shelter, but these defied categorization. The being emerged from the shadows slowly, deliberately. It walked on two legs but with a fluid grace that seemed almost inhuman. Its form was indistinct—a shifting silhouette of shadow and silver moonlight that defied focus. As it stepped into the grove's eerie light, Rory could make out subtle features—too long limbs, fingers that ended in something like claws, and a head tilted at a wrong angle. Its skin appeared smoother than human skin, reflecting the crimson light like polished obsidian. "Are you lost, traveler?" it asked, its voice a whisper and a rumble simultaneously, seemly coming from everywhere and nowhere. The sound wasn't language exactly, not in the way humans used it. Rory understood it more as a direct translation to her mind, a thought-organized into a recognizable pattern. "I'm looking for someone," Rory said, proud of how steady her voice remained despite the cold shudder running down her spine. The creature cocked its head further, a gesture that seemed both curious and predatory. "Little wanderers always become found," it said, stepping closer. The clearing air chilled noticeably as it approached. "But users of the stones bear a price." Rory's fingers found the edge of her utility knife, clutching the cool metal as if it were a lifeline. The creature's wide, candid eyes followed her movement with what could have been amusement. The wrongness in the air intensified, pressing down on her chest like a physical weight. Time seemed to slow, the creature's movements slick and the grove's background noise slowing to nearly nothing. "You've been using the stones," Rory realized suddenly, the puzzle pieces sliding into place in her mind with horrifying clarity. "That's why Eva disappeared. You've been bringing things through." The Headstone pendant blazed with crimson light that matched the glow of the flowers, pulsing erratically in Rory's perception. The stone glowed hot against her skin now, almost uncomfortably so. "Through and through," the creature agreed, its mouth forming a smile that widespread impossibly wide. "We always take a part to give something new." Rory knew then that Eva hadn't just been avoiding her problems. She had stumbled upon something she hadn't understood, something that could be summoned through ancient stones and lays—something that took pieces of people, of lives, to exist. Something that could be watching her now, high the boundary of visiting—and likely hunting. With a sudden, fluid motion that seemed impossible for a being its size, the creature lunged. Rory twisted aside, her years of self-defense training kicking in instinctively. The blade in her hand felt inadequate against this thing that wasn't entirely flesh and blood. "Wait!" she called, not to reason with it—she knew from experience that predators wanted prey to talk, to clarify its mortality—but because she had no other plan than to buy time. "I don't mean to trespass." The creature halted its advance, head tilting curiously once more. The thing not-blinking eyes fixed on her, a sensation piercing and violating even the surface of her skin. "The stones do not care your intentions," it whispered directly into her mind. "Only the effect." Time seemed to compress and expand around her in dizzying waves. The grove spun, the wildflowers' crimson light blurring into streaks. For a moment, Rory saw not one creature before her, but dozens—reflections in the water that shouldn't exist, shadows where none should fall. "When everything is spinning," she remembered her instructor saying during her first self-defense class, "look at one thing only. Focus." The Heartstone pendant wasn't just pulsing now—it was vibrating, warm but not burning against her neck like a third, frantically beating heart. In the center of her vision, its red glow anchored her to the moment. The wrongness of the grove, of the creature—it all existed on the periphery while the pendant centered her, gave her a reference point to the world that made sense. "You're bound to the stones," she realized aloud, understanding flowing through her as suddenly as the creature's comprehension had come. "You can't be far from them." The creature laughed then—a sound that was more skittering insects than human mirth and made the very trees seem to recoil. "You learned this now? The little wanderer sees too late." In that moment of realization, Rory understood both her situation and her tiny advantage. She couldn't fight this thing directly, but she might be able to use its own nature against it, how low mercenary she's become to you through sheer habit. The Heartstone pulse now felt like a countdown, as if the artifact knew something she didn't—that the rightness of this place, of her presence, was running short. Her childhood friend had spoken of places where perceptions could be warped, where reality blurred at the edges. This grove was one of those places, magnifying every fear, every uncertainty. "You're not a guardian," Rory said, backing slowly toward the ancient oaks forming the grove's boundary. "You're a tether. You belong to these stones or you can't exist properly here." The creature's form wavered, the edges of its silhouette becoming indistinct as if its connection to her reality was tenuous. It took a step forward, then another, still seemingly unwilling to let go of its prize. Evil knew more about natural desire than it did about malevolence. Eva had once told her that in magic, the key was to understand that there were rules to breaking rules. "Wouldn't you rather be home?" Rory asked, feinting left and then darting right as she made her move toward the standing stones. The creature reached for her, its claws missing her by inches, but Rory didn't stop running. She had crossed an invisible threshold in her mind, focusing solely on the edge of the grove, on the normal oaktree, on the world beyond this crimson-lit pocket between realms. As she passed between the standing stones, the reality warped bending visa vis normal reality, and Rory had a lightning-fast impression of seeing multiple groves at once—the impossible wildflowers, a different moon hanging sideways in the sky, and the creature reaching for her from multiple angles simultaneously. The Heartstone pulsed blinding silver light, and in that moment of disorientation, she stumbled through the boundary and into the familiar forest. Time snapped back into place—the crickets resumed their chorus, the night air returned to its normal temperature, and the world looked just as she remembered it. Heart pounding, she whirled around. The standing stones stood silent and unremarkable under the moonlight, no trace of the impossible grove visible from this side. No wildflowers, no crimson glow, no ancient oaks that seemed to reach into other dimensions. But the Heartstone pendant against her neck continued to pulse faintly, a warmth against her skin that spoke of secrets yet uncovered and dangers not yet averted. Exhausted, Rory pressed one hand to the small crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist—a memento from a childhood accident—and wished she were anywhere else but in the middle of Richmond Park at night, knowing more than she wanted about the spaces between worlds and the things that might wait in them to take pieces of those who wandered too far.