Run: 2026-05-27-01KSMF5X7NVMYNJFF1E4F74RD5

Heart thumping, Rory picked her way through the thick tangle of trees, the oaks' gestation seeming to close in around her. It was well past midnight but the full moon above filtered through the canopy, painting the earthy path in a ghostly wash of silver light. She had been here before, but never under cloak of darkness, amidst such eerie quiet. The usual birdsong was absent, replaced by an unsettling stillness that prickled at her skin and sent her blue eyes darting this way and that. There, at the edge of vision—a flicker of movement. Rory whirled, heart in throat, but saw nothing in the moonlight shadows. Just the same ancient oaks as before, their root-clasped earth and mottled bark reminiscent of hands in prayer. She closed her eyes, willing herself to calm. Rory had fled to the Fae Grove for reasons she could not yet articulate, drawn by memories and instinct. It was the scene of a childhood accident - that much she knew. But crouching in the dark, the truth seemed to gather on the peripheries of her mind, close enough to sense but still out of reach. She opened her eyes. In the dim light, she could make out the five oak standing stones, their bases dug deep in the earth and criss-crossed by roots. They marked the very heart of the Grove - and the spot where that terrible event had occurred. Rory pressed her thumb to the small crescent scar on her left wrist. So many years ago, a컨teenage gambol and tumble into these very stones had left her wrist gored and their secret imprinted on her soul. She pulled the pendant from her pocket. The chain was silver, the stone a deep crimson flecked with gold. When it caught the moonlight, the gemstone seemed to glow from within. It had come to her by mysterious means, along with instructions. The portal to Helen would be open. She was destined to pass through, the voice in her head had insisted. Exactly as it was fated. On shaky legs, Rory stepped across the line of matter-of-fact oaks into the center of the clearing. The air seemed to turn viscous here, as if she'd walked into something dense and quivering. Distantly, she sensed it slowing her movements, each step forward deliberate and ponderous. Stranger still was the absence of sound. No owls, fox foxes. Simply the blood rushing in her ears and the thud of her own heart. As if sound itself was stifled, ever more so as she marched deeper into the clearing. And then her foot landed on something that was definitely not soil. Stone, smooth and carved. She froze, the sense of time turning sluggish falling away. It's like the diagram, her mind whispered. Behind each standing oak, she knew, was a circle of smaller rocks. Five smaller circles surrounding the larger central stone she'd only just set foot upon. And now in the center, glinting in the spectral moonlight, was a chiming bell, its handle inlaid with shimmering milky abalone and green jade. It lay directly before Rory, as if laid out in invitation. The axons fired in her brain, the context falling into place like a physical gear, each piece nlowedge finally clicking. Her parents, her heritage, the magic that animated her veins. She stepped forward and grasped the handle with both callused hands. The metal was cool beneath her touch. The bell was small, the size of a soup ladle, but swung from a thick wedge of green slate on a polished rod. Rory brought it to her lips. The single crisp note hung on the air, reverberating, a collective gasp from a choir unseen. Silence. Then the sound of roots pushing through soil, slicing upward. Systematically, precisely, the earth heaved and tore, the stones marching inward, relentless, surrounding her. The Severnleads fired like gunshots in her head. Pentacles and circles, philippus angels, 54 names and seals, Five Circles of Dymas. She could see the Iyar Bann, the pattern of air rippling over the earth. Rocks skittered. Two rough edged monoliths, six feet tall, crept near the line of standing stones. Large enough to entomb her. And suddenly the return of sound, a whooshing, like wind in the tops of trees. Hundreds of eyes opened all at once in the earth behind each smaller circle, each one glowing a piercing lemon color, their light pulseing faint and fainter. A deep male voice boomed, the images tumbling forth, coming alive. "Foul is he that thou lovest thy soul to his call..." The words were a warning, blurred syllables she could not quite hear. And yet her next breath was snagged in her chest, a frightened bitch gasping. The monolithic standing stones turned red in color, molten blood flaring up their rough faces and pooling in the earth between. The male voice continued, rushing to a climax, the cadence accelerating. And Rory finally heard. "You must defeat the one to then defeat the One..." And then silence. And a shimmering curtain at the edge of the circle, rippling the air. A tear in the fabric of time itself, opening for her.