Run: 2026-05-31-01KSYXP0SEDRTG8SS16D3GHTYH

The standing stones rose from the dark like teeth, and Aurora counted them twice before she stepped between them. Five oaks, ancient and gnarled, their bark silvered by a moon that hadn't been this full an hour ago. She remembered overcast skies on the walk through Richmond Park, her torch cutting a thin line through fog, her trainers soaked through with dew. Now the fog had pulled back from the clearing like a curtain, and the grove lay open beneath a sky too bright, too clear. She pulled her jacket tighter. "Right," she muttered. "In and out." The pendant lay cold against her sternum. That bothered her more than the moon. The Heartstone always carried a faint warmth, a heartbeat she'd grown used to in the weeks since the stranger had pressed it into her palm. Now it sat against her like a chip of ice, its crimson light dimmed to almost nothing. Wildflowers blanketed the grove floor, poppies and foxglove and things she had no names for, all blooming in defiance of the season. They didn't sway. There was no wind. And yet, somewhere past the tree line, she heard the sound of leaves moving — a long, dry rustle that swelled and faded, swelled and faded, like breathing. Aurora stood still and listened. "Hello?" The word fell flat. No echo. Sound didn't carry the way it should here, swallowed by the open space as though the grove had a throat and her voice had gone down it. She'd come for the answers Eva couldn't give her. The grove remembered things, Eva had said. Stand in the centre, ask your question, and the place would answer in its own time. Aurora had laughed at her then, sitting in the warm yellow light of Silas' bar with a glass of wine sweating on the table between them. She wasn't laughing now. She picked her way to the centre, careful of where she set her feet, though she couldn't have said why. The flowers brushed her ankles. They felt wrong through the fabric of her jeans — too soft, too warm, like they'd been holding heat that didn't belong to them. The rustling stopped. The silence that replaced it was worse. It had weight. It pressed against her ears until she heard the rush of her own blood, the wet click of her throat as she swallowed. "I'm here to ask a question," she said, and hated how small she sounded. "About the portals. About who gave me this." She lifted the pendant on its chain. The stone stayed dark. Something moved at the edge of her vision. She turned her head — slow, controlled, the way she'd learned to move around Evan when his temper had been climbing — and saw only the standing stones and the black space between them. Nothing there. But the certainty crawled up her spine anyway, the animal knowledge older than thought: she was being watched. "Eva," she breathed, "you absolute cow. You knew about this." The wildflowers nearest the stones began to close. Not wilting — closing, petals folding inward in sequence, a wave of darkness rolling across the meadow toward her. It moved deliberately. Where the flowers shut, the moonlight seemed to thin, the colour bleeding out until the grove went grey and flat as an old photograph. Aurora took a step back and her heel came down on something that gave with a soft crunch. She didn't look. She refused to look. A voice came from the tree line. It said her name. "Aurora." Not a whisper. Conversational, warm, pitched exactly like her mother's — and that was the thing that froze her in place, because her mother was in Cardiff, two hundred miles away, and her mother had never once called her by her full name. It had always been Rory. Always. "That's not how she says it," Aurora said. Her hands had curled into fists. "Whatever you are. That's wrong." The voice tried again. This time it was Eva's. "Rory, come here, come closer, I can show you—" "Eva's not here." She backed toward the stones, watching the dark line of trees. "She doesn't sound like that either." Whatever stood in the trees fell quiet, as though considering. The rustling resumed, but it had changed — no longer leaves but something heavier dragging through undergrowth, a slow and patient sound, circling the perimeter of the grove. Left to right. She tracked it by ear because she could see nothing, only shadows that thickened and shifted when she stared too long. The pendant flickered. A single pulse of crimson light, faint as a dying ember, and with it a thread of warmth against her skin. Aurora grabbed it without thinking, closed her fist around the stone. It pulsed again, stronger, and she understood the warmth for what it was — a warning. A Hel portal. Close. Closing. Or opening. The grove had gone fully grey now, every flower shut tight, the moon overhead dimming like a lamp turned low. The dragging sound stopped directly behind her, just past the standing stones, just past the edge of the world she could see. She did not turn around. Her breath fogged in front of her face. The temperature had dropped between one heartbeat and the next, and the cold of the pendant and the cold of the air met somewhere in her chest and made her shake. "I know you're there," she said, and her voice held steadier than she felt. "I'm not going to look at you." The thing behind her exhaled. She felt it stir the hair at the back of her neck, felt the damp heat of it, rank and sweet like meat left out too long. Up close it no longer breathed in rhythm. It panted, quick and shallow, eager. Her mother's voice came again, right at her ear, so close the lips might have brushed her skin. "Aurora. Turn around." The Heartstone burned white-hot in her fist, and the meadow held its breath, and Aurora stared at the black gap between two oak stones three feet ahead of her and did not move.