Run: 2026-07-25-01KYD7V17398GQ42DRADMDSD8F

The gravel crunched under Aurora’s boots with a sound too loud in the stillness. She paused at the tree line, flashlight beam cutting through the darkness, searching for the ancient oaks that marked the boundary. They should have been here. The map Eva had drawn—more of a sketch, really—showed two twisted oaks standing like sentinels at the grove's edge. But the trees around her were ordinary, their branches bare and scratchy against the star-flecked sky. She stepped forward, her breath forming small clouds in the cold air. The woods swallowed her light quickly, the beam barely reaching beyond the first few feet. Something rustled to her left. A fox, probably. Or a stray cat. She kept walking. The path was barely visible, just a depression in the earth flanked by brambles that caught at her jacket. She’d been walking for twenty minutes since leaving the main trail, following coordinates she’d punched into her phone before the battery died. The screen had gone black just as she reached the treeline, leaving her with nothing but instinct and the memory of Eva’s urgent voice on the phone. “You need to see this, Rory. It’s important. There’s something in the Grove, something that’s been waiting.” She’d laughed then, but now, standing alone in Richmond Park at midnight with only her delivery bag for company, the laugh felt foolish. A twig snapped behind her. She spun around, light sweeping across the darkness. Nothing moved. Just shadows between the trees, shifting and pooling like spilled ink. She walked faster, her boots striking stone. The ground sloped downward, and the air grew colder. Her breath came in visible puffs now, and she could hear it—her own heartbeat, steady and insistent in her ears. Then she heard it. Music. Faint, like someone playing a piano in a distant room. But there were no houses here, no buildings for miles. Just trees and darkness and the occasional flash of an owl’s wings. She stopped. The music faded, then returned, clearer this time. A child’s lullaby, something her mother used to sing. Her mother, who’d died five years ago. Who’d never sung to her at all. “Hello?” Her voice sounded small, swallowed by the trees. Silence. Then the music again, closer now, coming from all directions at once. She backed up, her heel catching on something low to the ground. She stumbled forward, arms windmilling, and landed hard on her hands. The impact sent a jolt up her arms, and she noticed the small crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist—the one from childhood, from falling off her bike in Cardiff—throbbing with sudden, sharp pain. The pendant beneath her shirt—given to her by that mysterious benefactor who’d slipped it into her delivery bag three days ago—burned hot against her skin. She pushed herself up, brushing dirt from her knees. The music had stopped. In the sudden quiet, she could hear other things: the rustle of leaves, the creak of branches, the distant hoot of an owl. Normal sounds. Nothing to worry about. But her skin crawled anyway. She pulled out her phone, pressed the power button. The screen flickered to life with a low battery warning—12% remaining. She opened the map app, but the GPS icon spun uselessly. No signal. “Of course,” she muttered, shoving it back into her pocket. The trees seemed to lean inward as she moved deeper into the woods. Her flashlight beam danced erratically, catching glimpses of movement in the periphery. She turned her head sharply each time, but there was never anything there. Just the play of light and shadow, the way darkness pooled in hollows and stretched across the forest floor. She’d been walking for what felt like hours, though it couldn’t have been more than thirty minutes. Time moved differently here, didn’t it? That was part of the lore, wasn’t it? The Fae-touched places where minutes could stretch into days. A shape materialized ahead, tall and humanoid, standing between two ancient oaks. Aurora’s breath caught in her throat. She raised her flashlight, but the beam flickered and died. Darkness rushed in. She fumbled for her phone, clicking it on. The screen cast a pale glow across her face, revealing the figure more clearly. Or rather, not clearly. It stood maybe twenty feet away, featureless except for the suggestion of height and posture. It didn’t move, but she felt its attention like a physical weight pressing against her chest. “Hello?” she whispered. The figure tilted its head, just slightly. A bird called somewhere overhead, and the sound echoed strangely, as if bouncing off invisible walls. Aurora took a step back. Her boots crunched on something hard beneath the leaf litter. Stone. Standing stones, maybe. The map had mentioned them—ancient oaks marking the boundary. But these weren’t oaks. They were slabs of black rock, arranged in a circle around her. She was inside the Grove. The figure began to move, gliding rather than walking, its form blurring at the edges like a reflection in disturbed water. Aurora backed away, her phone clutched tight, but her feet found nothing solid to push against. The ground sloped away, and she stumbled, falling hard onto her side. Pain exploded in her shoulder, and the pendant beneath her shirt flared with heat. She looked down at it through the fabric of her jacket, watching the deep crimson gemstone pulse with an inner light. The figure was closer now. Close enough that she could see it wasn’t human—not really. Its proportions were wrong, limbs too long, joints bending in directions that made her stomach clench. But it moved with a grace that was almost beautiful, like a dancer caught in moonlight. “You came,” it said. The voice was familiar, somehow. Like Eva’s, but not. Like her own voice, echoing back from a cave wall. “I—I didn’t know this was real,” Aurora whispered. “It’s always real for those who look.” The figure reached out, and Aurora flinched away, but her shoulder throbbed too fiercely to move. The pendant grew warmer, pressing against her skin like a brand. “What do you want from me?” “The same thing you want from yourself.” She stared at it, searching its faceless features for meaning. The trees behind her creaked, and she could swear she heard children laughing, distant and muffled as if underwater. “My friends,” she said. “Eva. She said—” “Eva is not your friend.” The words struck like a slap. Aurora’s vision blurred, and she blinked rapidly, trying to clear it. “She lied to me, didn’t she? About what’s really in the Grove.” The figure didn’t answer. Instead, it stepped closer, and Aurora felt the temperature drop by several degrees. Her breath misted in the air between them, and the pendant burned so hot she thought it might melt through her skin. “Why did you give it to me?” she whispered, touching the chain beneath her shirt. “Because you’re ready.” “Ready for what?” “To remember.” The laughter started then—not the children’s, but something else entirely. A sound like wind through broken glass, like nails scraping against bone. It echoed through the Grove, and the standing stones began to hum with a low, resonant frequency. Aurora pressed her hands to her ears, but the sound wasn’t external. It was inside her head, inside her bones, inside the marrow of her teeth. “Remember what?” she screamed over the noise. The figure’s hand was on her shoulder now, cold as winter stone. She looked up at it, really looked, and saw her own face staring back—pale, terrified, beautiful in a way that made her want to cry. “Remember that you were never human,” it said, and the world dissolved into crimson light.