Run: 2026-10-20-01M5C6B1HQYB105ZJAHWDJWN65

The iron gate at the edge of Richmond Park stood open. Aurora had expected that. What she hadn’t expected was the silence. Not the quiet of a city park at night, with its distant hum of traffic and the rustle of urban wildlife, but a profound, swallowing stillness that felt deep and deliberate. It was a silence that pressed against her ears like cotton wool. She stepped through the gateway, the gravel of the path crunching too loudly under her boots. Her phone’s screen was a dead black rectangle. No signal, no time, just her own reflection staring back, a pale oval with worried eyes. She’d come because of the pendant. It had been pulsing all evening, a steady, warm thrum against her collarbone, a heartbeat that wasn’t her own. It felt like an invitation. Or a summons. Now, as she walked deeper into the Grove, the warmth had become a frantic, almost painful heat. It was a compass needle pointing her forward. The ancient oaks that marked the boundary came into view, their massive trunks like pillars of a forgotten temple. Their branches, stripped of leaves, twisted into skeletal fingers against a sky bruised with clouds. The moon was a cold, silver coin, offering just enough light to turn the world into a study of shadows. As she passed between two of the largest trees, the air changed. It grew heavy, thick with the scent of damp earth and something else, something sweet and cloying, like flowers on the verge of rot. This was the Fae Grove. Eva had told her stories, her voice a low whisper as if the walls of their flat had ears. A place where time was a suggestion, a place that existed in the seams of the world. Rory had dismissed it as folklore. Now, the damp chill seeping through her jacket felt like a confirmation. She followed the insistent pull of the pendant into the clearing. Wildflowers, impossibly bright in the gloom, carpeted the ground. They were blossoms she couldn’t name, their petals the colour of old bruises and moonlight, and they were all turned towards the centre of the clearing. Towards her. The pendant blazed. A sharp, searing heat. She gasped and clutched at it through her shirt, the crimson stone feeling like a live coal against her skin. “Hello?” Her voice was a dry croak. The Grove swallowed it whole, offering no echo. A soft sound answered her. A whisper, a rustle of cloth on stone. She spun around. The clearing was empty. “Is someone there?” The silence returned, heavier than before. It felt like a held breath. She took a step back towards the path, and her boot caught on a root. She stumbled, her hand flying out to brace against one of the standing stones that ringed the clearing. Her palm met the cold, rough surface, and a jolt of something cold and electric shot up her arm. She snatched her hand back as if burned. The stone was humming. A low, resonant frequency that vibrated deep in her bones. It was a sound she felt rather than heard, a thrum of ancient, dormant power. She pushed away from the stone, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. This was a mistake. The pendant had led her here, but it felt less like a guide and more like bait. From the corner of her eye, a flicker of movement. A shape, darker than the shadows between the trees, that slipped from one trunk to another. It was too quick for her to focus on, a mere suggestion of a figure, tall and thin. “Eva?” she called out, the name a foolish, hopeful guess. “Eva, if this is some kind of joke…” The air grew colder. Her breath plumed in white clouds. She could feel it now, a presence. A pressure in the air around her, a feeling of being watched by a thousand unseen eyes. The wildflowers at her feet seemed to lean away. She started to back away, her eyes darting from tree to tree, trying to track the flickers of movement that were now coming faster, more frequent. A glimpse of pale skin here, the swish of a dark cloak there, the low murmur of voices that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. The whispering grew louder. Not words, just a rustle of sound, like leaves in a wind she couldn’t feel, like the chitter of insects you can’t see. It surrounded her, a chorus of the unseen. It was in the air, in the ground beneath her feet, in the very stones of the Grove. She turned to run back the way she came and froze. The path was gone. Where the gap between the boundary trees had been, there was now a solid wall of shadow and twisted wood, the trees grown so close together they formed an impenetrable barrier. The way out had vanished. A laugh, light and brittle as broken glass, echoed through the clearing. It was a woman’s laugh, and it held no warmth. It came from directly behind her. Rory’s blood turned to ice. She turned slowly, her body protesting every inch of the movement. Standing at the far edge of the clearing, where the shadows were thickest, was a figure. She was tall, impossibly so, her form draped in a gown the colour of midnight, the fabric rippling as if stirred by a breeze only she could feel. Her face was beautiful in the way a winter landscape is beautiful—sharp, cold, and utterly without mercy. Her eyes, the colour of deep, still water, held no reflection. They were fixed on Rory. The pendant at Rory’s neck gave one final, agonising pulse of heat, then went completely, terrifyingly cold.