Run: 2026-07-25-01KYCTK6P1RZCGDT2HD5BQ7AFF

Rory pulled her coat tighter and stepped past the boundary stones. Ancient oaks loomed like rotten teeth, moss choking their bark. The path she’d followed from Richmond Park dead-ended in a clearing that smelled of wet earth and old blood. She’d come for the portal. Eva had scribbled coordinates on a napkin, swore the Grove held answers about Evan. About why he’d tracked her all the way from Cardiff. The trees formed a perfect circle. No wind touched them, yet wildflowers swayed—bluebells in October, daisies black with rot. Her pendant hung heavy. The Heartstone pulsed, crimson catching starlight, warm against her sternum. Wrong. Rory’s boots crunched dead grass that should have been silent. Behind her, twigs snapped—once, twice—then stopped. She spun. Nothing. Just oaks bending inward, branches knitting a ceiling that blotted out the moon. “Hello?” Her voice came flat, swallowed. The snap came closer. Rory walked faster, heart hammering her ribs. The clearing stretched. She should have reached the center by now—three old stones arranged like a broken crown—but they never appeared. Instead, the path looped back to the same mossy oak with the lightning scar. Time had curdled here. She knew the Grove’s reputation—an hour inside could be minutes outside, or days. Her watch read 11:04. Then 11:04 again, the second hand twitching backward. The pendant burned now, a steady throb that matched her pulse. She stopped. Listened. A child laughed—high, bubbling—somewhere to her left. Then her right. Then directly behind her ear, breath hot and smelling of copper. Rory whirled, fists clenched. Empty air. The wildflowers had turned. Every bloom faced her now, blue and white and dead yellow, tracking her movement like eyes. She ran. Her lungs burned with cold that tasted of iron. The trees refused to part, roots rising like fingers to snag her boots. She stumbled, caught herself, and the pendant flared—crimson light spilling through her fingers. That was when she saw it. At the edge of her vision, where the oaks blurred into shadow, something tall walked parallel to her. Too thin for a person—limbs like broken branches, head a tangle of antlers and black hair that might have been her own hair, mirrored back wrong. Rory didn’t look directly. She knew, bone-deep, that direct sight would be a contract. The thing matched her pace. When she slowed, it slowed. Its feet made no sound, but she heard its breathing—wet, rattling, too close. She reached the center of the clearing without knowing how. The three stones waited, covered in symbols that hurt her eyes. The portal should be here. A shimmer in the air, according to Eva. Instead, the ground between the stones was bare dirt. And on that dirt, footprints—hers, fresh—circled endlessly, going in and never coming out. The pendant went cold. Dead. Rory turned to run, and the thing was there. Not fully seen—just a slice of elongated jaw, teeth like graveyard iron, eyes that reflected nothing but held her name. It stood between her and the boundary, and its mouth opened in a smile she recognized from dreams she’d never admitted to having. “You came back, Aurora,” it said, in her mother’s voice, in Evan’s voice, layered like rot. She ran for the eastern trees, the direction she’d entered. The roots grabbed her ankle, not hard—just holding, testing. The child laughed again, closer, and now she heard others—dozens of small voices chanting in Welsh she barely understood, a nursery rhyme about doors that open inward. Rory yanked free, skin scraping bark, and broke into a sprint. The trees suddenly parted, and she was at the boundary stones, moonlight blinding beyond them. She crossed. The cold vanished. The wildflowers were gone—just normal Richmond Park grass, damp with October dew. Her watch ticked forward: 11:17. Rory ran until she hit the road, then collapsed against a park bench, gasping. The pendant in her fist was cool now, gray, dead as stone. But in her pocket, her phone buzzed—Eva, asking if she’d found the portal. Rory looked back. The oaks stood silent, normal, distant. Then, in the gap between two trees, she saw a flash of black hair, shoulder-length, turning away. Her own hair, on something that was not her. She closed her eyes. When she opened them, the grove was empty. But the footprints in her shoes—mud that smelled of wildflowers—would not wash out. And that night, in her flat above Silas’ bar, she heard the child laughing in her radiator pipes, and the pendant, locked in her drawer, began to glow faint crimson in the dark.