Run: 2026-07-25-01KYD6RHRH8F13AE5Z49NN8P9H

The path ended where it shouldn’t. Aurora paused, hand hovering over the wrought-iron gate that marked Richmond Park’s boundary, but the trees here didn’t lead to the city’s edge. They led inward, deeper into a space that felt carved from night itself. Wildflowers—impossible blooms of blue and silver—tossed in a wind that carried no chill. Their petals brushed her cheeks like fingertips, and when she blinked, they were gone. She should have turned back. The gate was locked, the last time she’d passed through it, and her phone showed 11:47 p.m., but the Grove’s air tasted of dawn. Of something else, too—ozone and old blood. The Heartstone Pendant at her throat pulsed once, a faint warmth against her collarbone. *Hel portal*, she thought, *but the Grove isn’t a portal.* Unless it was. The pendant hadn’t reacted to portals this close before. It had only ever hummed when she’d been near the sealed ones, the ones the Fae kept hidden. She stepped past the gate. The path narrowed, flanked by gnarled oaks whose bark gleamed like wet stone. Standing stones—rough-hewn, moss-slicked—rose at the grove’s edge, their surfaces carved with symbols that seemed to shift when she wasn’t looking directly at them. She’d seen these marks before, in the margins of old books Eva had scribbled notes in after their late-night talks about the supernatural. *Fae boundaries,* Eva had called them. *Don’t cross unless you’re invited.* But she wasn’t here on invitation. She’d followed the pendant. It had led her here, through the park’s overgrown maintenance trails, past the deer that froze mid-step as she passed. Now, the stones pressed closer, their shadows pooling thick and liquid. The wind died. The flowers stopped moving. A sound threaded through the silence—something scratching at earth, rapid and deliberate. Aurora’s breath fogged in the air despite the warmth. She pressed herself against the trunk of the largest oak, its bark rough against her palm. The scratches came again, closer now, too rhythmic for wind. *Rabbit.* *Fox.* But the Grove’s creatures didn’t make that noise. She’d read about Fae fauna once, in a journal Eva had found in her late grandfather’s study. Things that walked on too many joints, that ate things that shouldn’t be eaten. Her pulse thrummed in her ears. The pendant flared, crimson light bleeding into the silver chain. She fumbled for her phone, but the screen reflected the Grove back at her, distorted. The time stamp hadn’t changed. 11:47. The stones began to whisper. Not words. A language of grinding stone and humming, like the Grove itself was remembering something. Aurora stumbled back, her scar burning on her wrist. She’d forgotten she’d torn her sleeve earlier, exposing the mark. Now it itched, as if the Grove was tasting her. The scratching stopped. In the sudden silence, she heard it first as a sigh—then a voice, low and wrong, calling her name. “Rory.” She whirled. Nothing stood there. Just the twisted flowers and the stones, their carvings now blurred, indecipherable. But the pendant was aglow, its warmth a steady drumbeat against her skin. She should run. Should retrace her steps. Instead, she followed the sound. It led her deeper, past a circle of standing stones where the grass grew in perfect, square patches, like someone had rolled out a rug. The pendant pulled harder here, tugging at her sternum. She knelt, pressing her palm to the earth. Beneath her hand, the soil pulsed, slow and wet. A face opened in the ground. Not human. Not Fae. Something that had been buried upright, its hollow eyes staring up at the canopy. The pendant flared crimson, and the face smiled. “You feel it too,” it said, voice like roots splitting stone. Aurora pulled her hand away. The hole sealed itself, dirt settling into nothingness. The Grove shifted. The paths rearranged. The flowers turned to blood-red, their petals sharp as knives. The stones weren’t stones anymore—they were spears, planted to guard something sacred or terrible. She ran, but the trees leaned inward, their branches weaving a cage of shadow and thorns. The pendant’s light flickered. Then she saw them. At the grove’s heart, where the old maps had marked a fountain, a circle of figures stood. Not standing figures. *Waiting.* Their eyes were too wide, their mouths stitched shut with black thread. They didn’t move as she approached, but their heads turned in unison, all at once, to face her. One stepped forward. The thread snapped. The creature’s face was a patchwork of others’ features—Evan’s jaw, her father’s nose, Eva’s eyes, all stretched over a skull too large. Its fingers ended in roots. “You came back,” it said, voice a chorus of all the people she’d loved and lost. The pendant blazed. She didn’t know if it was warning or summons. Didn’t know if running would help. Didn’t know if she was even in the same world anymore. Only that the Grove was no longer empty. And it had been waiting.