Run: 2026-10-13-01M4V239EHCVGCNBA6Y6N8JBRC

Rory stepped between the ancient oak pillars, leaving the damp October chill of Richmond Park behind. Warmth hit her face first. It wasn't the comforting heat of a radiator or a summer afternoon, but the thick, stagnant warmth of a sealed greenhouse. Or an open mouth. She stopped, the thermal delivery bag from the Golden Empress bumping against her hip. The receipt stapled to the front of the brown paper sack had been specific: *Isolde. Center of the Grove. Midnight. Leave by the roots.* Yu-Fei never questioned an address if the customer paid upfront with crisp fifty-pound notes, and Rory didn't have the luxury of turning down a twenty-pound tip. "Hello?" Rory’s voice dropped dead a foot from her lips. The air swallowed the sound whole, offering zero echo. Beneath her boots, a carpet of bluebells and buttercups crunched. They were in full, violent bloom, defying the autumn frost just yards away on the other side of the wooden monoliths. In the moonlight, their petals looked waxy and artificial. No crickets chirped. No wind stirred the canopy. Even the distant, ever-present hum of London traffic had vanished, sliced away the second she crossed the boundary. She pulled her phone from her jacket pocket to check the time. The screen flickered. *00:01*. Then the digits scrambled, flashing *03:44*, then *19:12*, before the display went entirely black. Rory pressed the power button. Nothing. She tucked the dead brick back into her pocket, her thumb brushing the small crescent scar on her left wrist. A slow, rhythmic throb started up against her collarbone. She reached into the collar of her shirt and drew out the silver chain. The thumbnail-sized crimson stone at its end pulsed with a sudden, feverish warmth, casting a dull red smear across her knuckles. *A Hel portal.* Her breath hitched. This was Fae territory—Isolde’s pocket realm. A tear leading to Hel had no business existing inside a Fae-touched clearing. "Just drop the food, Rory," she muttered, her bright blue eyes scanning the perimeter of the clearing. "Drop the sweet and sour pork and walk out." She took three brisk steps toward the massive, gnarled oak dominating the center of the glade. *Snap.* The sound came from her left. A dry branch breaking under weight. Rory froze. She turned her head, straight black hair brushing her shoulders. Between the boundary pillars, the darkness of the regular park looked solid, like painted tar. Nothing moved among the ferns. Yet the wildflowers ten feet away were flattened, pressed into the dirt in a wide, dragging furrow that hadn't been there thirty seconds ago. While she watched, a single crushed buttercup slowly unbent itself, springing back upright. "Isolde?" Rory adjusted her grip on the delivery bag. The paper crinkled, loud as a gunshot in the vacuum of the clearing. "I have your order. Leaving it by the tree." A wet, rasping sound answered her from the canopy directly overhead. It sounded like heavy canvas dragging across rough bark. Rory tipped her head back. The oak branches twisted together in a dense net, blotting out the stars. Up in the V-shaped crook of two massive boughs, a patch of shadow detached itself from the trunk. It shifted left, long and multi-jointed, then melted into the foliage before her eyes could focus on its geometry. A shower of dead, black leaves drifted down, landing on the vibrant spring flowers around her boots. The Heartstone Pendant flared against her skin, shifting from warm to scorching. Rory hissed, yanking the silver chain away from her throat so the gem hung suspended from her fingers. Its inner glow pulsed faster, matching the sudden rabbiting of her pulse. She backed away from the central tree. "Keep the tip," she whispered. She set the thermal bag directly onto the bluebells, not bothering to take out the white plastic containers inside. Keep moving. Turn around. Walk between the oak pillars. Rory pivoted toward the entrance. She stopped cold. There were four ancient oak standing stones marking the boundary now. When she had entered, there had been two. They stood in a neat semicircle, identical in their rotting, moss-choked grooves. Which gap had she walked through? The left pair, or the right? In the corner of her right eye, the far pillar twitched, shifting three inches to the east with the low, grinding groan of tectonic plates. When she whipped her head to look directly at it, the wood was still. *Click. Click. Click.* The noise came from behind her, near the thermal bag. It was the unmistakable sound of teeth snapping together. Not animal teeth. Flat, human molars grinding and clicking in the dark. Rory didn't turn around. Instead, she took a slow step sideways, keeping her peripheral vision trained on the center of the clearing while facing the boundary stones. Something pale and segmented uncurled from behind the central oak's roots. In the edge of her vision, it looked like an arm—if an arm had three elbows and ended in a cluster of long, pale reeds. It reached toward the red nylon of Yu-Fei's delivery bag. Rory looked directly at the tree. Nothing was there. Just the bag, sitting crookedly on the flowers. *It only moves when I don't look at it.* The realization settled into her gut like swallowed glass. Her legal training at Cardiff had taught her to look for rules, for precedent. Every system had laws, even the nightmares bleeding out of a Hel rift. "Alright," Rory breathed. Her voice trembled, betraying the ice she was trying to force into her veins. "I see how it is." Behind the northernmost standing stone, a low chuckle vibrated through the soles of her boots. It wasn't a voice; it was the mimicry of a voice, assembled from the sounds of grinding stones and rushing water. Then, from the southern pillar, a different sound drifted across the flowers. *"Rory."* Her spine locked. It was Evan’s voice. The exact, heavy cadence her ex-boyfriend used right before he threw a punch. *"Come here, Rory. Look at me."* She refused to turn her head toward the southern stone. If she looked at the voice, she would take her eyes off the central tree. And in the blur of her left periphery, that pale, multi-jointed shape was already creeping out from behind the trunk again, stretching across the bluebells like spilling milk. "Not falling for that," she said to the empty air. "You aren't him. He's in Cardiff, and you're bad at geography." The Heartstone burned against her palm, the silver chain digging into her calluses. She held it out in front of her like a dowsing rod. As she angled it toward the left gap in the standing stones, the crimson stone burned hotter, pulsing frantically. The rift was that way. Which meant the real exit was to the right. She began to walk backward and sideways, keeping her wide, unblinking gaze sweeping in a frantic figure-eight across the entire clearing. Look at the tree. Look at the stones. Never let any quadrant sit in her peripheral vision for more than a second. Her eyes watered from the strain of not blinking. In the split second she shifted her focus to the right-hand pillars, the grass five feet to her left flattened. Something heavy paced parallel to her. She smelled it now—copper, wet dog, and the ozone stench of a blown fuse. *Click-click.* The sound was right behind her left ear. Warm, damp air ruffled the black hair against her neck. Rory didn't flinch. She didn't spin around. Instead, she threw her weight backward, lunging blindly between the two rightmost oak pillars while keeping her eyes locked dead ahead on the center of the clearing. As her heels crossed the threshold, a long, grey limb snapped into her field of view, slapping down onto the exact patch of bluebells she had vacated half a second prior. The fingers—eight of them, bendable as rubber—dug into the soil, ripping up handfuls of petals. Cold autumn wind slammed into Rory's back. The distant roar of a bus engine on Richmond Hill flooded her ears. She hit the damp earth of the regular park, scrambling backward on her palms and heels until her spine hit the iron fencing of the public footpath. In front of her stood two ancient, rotting oak pillars. Between them lay a patch of dead October bracken and mud. No wildflowers. No massive central tree. No red thermal bag. In her palm, the Heartstone Pendant went cold, its crimson light dying to the dull, lifeless color of dried blood. Rory pulled her knees to her chest, her eyes still locked on the gap between the timbers, refusing to blink.