Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMMCVC2GTCRZVA22FGSEZD8

The path through Richmond Park seemed darker than usual as Rory made her way toward the ancient oak stones. Her footsteps crunched on fallen leaves, the sound too loud in the evening stillness. The Heartstone pendant pulsed warmly against her chest, a steady rhythm that matched her quickening heartbeat. She needed answers about the strange symbols that had appeared in her flat that morning, and the Grove was the only place she could think to find them. The standing stones loomed ahead, their weathered surfaces catching the last purple light of dusk. As she passed between them, the air changed – became thicker, heavier with the scent of blooming flowers that shouldn't exist in November. The wildflowers carpeting the Grove glowed with a pale phosphorescence, casting just enough light for her to see by. Rory pulled her jacket tighter, her fingers brushing against the warm stone at her throat. Something felt wrong. The Grove had always been unsettling, with its too-perfect circle of trees and ever-blooming flowers, but tonight it felt...aware. "Hello?" she called out, her voice barely above a whisper. The word seemed to die in the thick air, absorbed by the darkness between the trees. A breeze stirred the flowers at her feet, but the branches overhead remained perfectly still. Wrong direction, her mind supplied. The wind is moving wrong. The Heartstone's pulse quickened against her skin. Rory turned slowly, scanning the treeline. The crescent scar on her left wrist itched – an old tell from childhood that always meant trouble was coming. She'd learned to trust that warning. A soft sound came from behind her – like bare feet on grass, or perhaps something being dragged. She whirled around, but there was only darkness between the trees. The flowers' glow seemed to dim, creating deeper shadows that shifted and moved when she wasn't quite looking at them. "I know someone's here," she said, proud that her voice remained steady. "I just want to ask about the symbols." Something laughed – a high, thin sound like breaking glass. It came from everywhere and nowhere at once. Rory's heart hammered against her ribs as she backed toward the standing stones. The Grove's strange time-shifting properties meant that even if she spent hours here, only minutes might pass in the real world. Or days. Right now, that uncertainty felt less like magic and more like a trap. The flowers stopped glowing altogether. In the sudden darkness, Rory could hear breathing that wasn't her own. It came from multiple directions, soft and wet and wrong. The Heartstone burned against her skin, its pulse now a frantic warning. She fumbled for her phone, hands shaking as she activated the flashlight. The beam caught something moving between the trees – a flash of pale flesh that didn't look quite human. The breathing sounds grew closer. Her light flickered and died, and in that moment of darkness, she felt something brush against her hair. Rory ran. She sprinted toward where she thought the standing stones were, her feet catching on unseen obstacles. The breathing followed, closer now, accompanied by the soft pat-pat-pat of feet on grass. Many feet. Too many feet. A root caught her ankle and she stumbled, catching herself against rough bark. Not a standing stone – just another tree. She was lost in the Grove's endless circle, and the things in the dark were getting closer. The Heartstone flared suddenly, blazing with crimson light that illuminated the Grove in harsh relief. In that brief flash, Rory saw them – pale, twisted shapes crowding between the trees, reaching for her with too-long fingers. Their faces were wrong, all angles and darkness where features should be. She screamed, the sound shocking her out of her paralysis. The standing stones appeared to her right, their ancient surfaces glowing faintly in the Heartstone's light. Rory ran for them, feeling cold fingers grasp at her jacket. She burst through the stone archway at full speed, not stopping until she was well clear of the Grove's boundary. The normal sounds of Richmond Park rushed back – distant traffic, wind in the trees, a fox's bark. Rory bent double, hands on her knees, gulping in the cool night air. When she finally gathered the courage to look back, the Grove appeared peaceful, its wildflowers glowing softly in the darkness as if nothing had happened. But as she turned to leave, her phone's screen caught her reflection. In her straight black hair, woven so tightly she had to cut it out later, was a single strand of spider silk, glowing with the same phosphorescence as the Grove's flowers. And when she finally made it home to her flat above Silas' bar, she found new symbols scratched into her door – but these weren't the ones she'd gone to ask about. These were answers she wasn't sure she wanted to understand.