Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQEJ6NXYJT8Z9A2G49X0QD

The standing stones waited in the dark like silent judges. Rory had passed through Richmond Park countless times on her delivery runs, always during the day, always with the sun warming her back and the noise of the city a constant hum in the distance. She'd never noticed the old oaks standing in their perfect circle. She'd never felt the pull that had drawn her here tonight, an itch beneath her skin that wouldn't let her sleep until she answered it. The Heartstone pendant hung cold against her sternum, a dead weight beneath her shirt. She'd expected warmth—that was what it did, wasn't it? Pulsed with heat when something was wrong. Now it felt like a stone from a riverbed, heavy and lifeless. She should have turned back then. The grass whispered against her jeans as she stepped through the gap between two of the ancient oaks. The air changed. Not colder, exactly, but thinner, as if the oxygen had been diluted with something else. Something that tasted like copper and old earth. Wildflowers dotted the clearing, their pale petals catching the starlight. That was wrong. She couldn't have said why, not immediately, but the wrongness settled into her bones like a chill. It was November. She'd seen frost on her windowsill this morning. These flowers shouldn't exist. Rory's breath misted in front of her face. She touched the pendant through her shirt, a nervous habit she'd developed over the past few weeks, and took another step into the grove. The silence pressed against her ears. No, not silence. That wasn't quite right. Silence was the absence of sound. This was something else—a presence that swallowed noise whole. Richmond Park at night should have been alive with rustling leaves, distant traffic, the calls of nocturnal birds. She'd heard owls on her walk here, had passed a fox slinking through the underbrush. But the moment she crossed the threshold of standing stones, all of it had been cut away. She stood in the center of the clearing, her boots planted in the soft earth, and listened to the absence. Then: a sound. Rory turned her head sharply. Footsteps, maybe. Or the crack of a branch. Something that belonged to the world outside this pocket of stillness. But the grove remained empty, the wildflowers swaying in a breeze she couldn't feel. "Hello?" Her voice came out thin, swallowed by the dark. She waited. Counted her heartbeats. One. Two. Three. A flicker of movement at the edge of her vision. She spun toward it, her hand closing around the pendant. Nothing there. Just shadows and standing stones and those impossible flowers. She thought of Evan. She hated that she still thought of him, that her mind reached for him in moments of fear. But she couldn't help it—the pattern had been carved deep, those years of learning to read the silences in a room, to track the movements of someone who meant her harm. This wasn't the same. She told herself that. This was something else entirely. Rory walked the perimeter of the grove, her fingers trailing over the rough bark of the ancient oaks. Each tree stood exactly ten paces from its neighbor. She counted. The precision of it was unsettling, too deliberate to be natural, too old to be human. What had the codex called this place? A pocket between Earth and the Fae realm. She didn't believe in the Fae. She didn't disbelieve, either—not after everything she'd seen since the pendant had found its way to her. But believing and understanding were different things, and she understood nothing about where she stood. A whisper brushed against her ear. She whirled. Her hand came up instinctively, protecting her face, and she felt the crescent scar on her wrist pull tight as her muscles tensed. Nothing. No one. The whisper came again, and this time she caught the edge of it—a word, maybe, or something that had once been a word. It came from everywhere and nowhere, threading through the standing stones like they were the strings of some vast instrument. Rory backed toward the center of the clearing. Her heel caught on something, and she stumbled, catching herself before she fell. She looked down. A flower had been crushed beneath her boot. Its pale petals were dark with something that looked too much like blood. She stepped away, her breath coming faster now. The pendant was warming against her chest, a gradual heat that built with each passing second. Not the gentle pulse she'd felt before—this was urgent, insistent. Get out. The thought wasn't hers. She knew that with the same certainty she knew her own name. It had been placed in her mind, clean and sharp as a knife. Rory turned toward the gap in the standing stones, the way she'd come. Twenty paces. She could make it in seconds. She took one step. Then another. The gap was gone. She stopped. Blinked. Told herself her eyes were playing tricks on her. But the oaks stood shoulder to shoulder now, an unbroken wall of ancient wood. She ran her hands over the bark, searching for the opening, for any seam or crack that would show her the way back. Nothing. Just tree after tree after tree, circling her in their silent judgment. A sound rose from the earth. Low and rhythmic, like breathing. Like something massive drawing air deep into lungs that had not been used in centuries. Rory pressed her back against one of the oaks and made herself small. She was good at that—had practiced it for years without knowing it. How to take up less space. How to disappear. How to survive. But there was nowhere to hide in this clearing. The wildflowers stretched in every direction, their pale faces turned toward her now, watching. She could feel their attention like a physical weight. And from the darkness between the standing stones, something else watched too. She couldn't see it. Not clearly. But she could feel the shape of it pressing against her awareness, vast and patient and old. It had been waiting here long before she'd arrived. It would be here long after she was gone. Unless it decided otherwise. The pendant burned against her skin now, hot enough to hurt. She pulled it free, and the crimson gemstone blazed in the darkness, casting strange shadows across the clearing. The wildflowers recoiled from the light, their stems bending backward like they were trying to flee. The breathing sound quickened. Rory wrapped her fingers around the pendant and held on. She didn't know what it was or why it had been given to her, but it was the only weapon she had. She thought of her father, of the cool logic he'd tried to instill in her. Assess the situation. Identify your options. Choose the one that gives you the best chance of success. She had one option: the pendant. She pushed away from the oak and walked toward the place where the gap had been. The trees still stood solid and unbroken, but she could feel it now—a thinness in the air, a spot where the barrier between here and there was weak. The pendant pulled her toward it, her body following the heat like a compass needle. Behind her, something moved. She didn't turn around. Didn't give it the satisfaction. She walked forward, one step after another, until she stood so close to the standing stones that she could smell the moss and age on their bark. The pendant's light cast the trees in shades of red and black. She reached out and pressed her palm flat against the oak. The world shifted. It was like stepping through a waterfall—cold and disorienting, the air rushing past her ears. Then she was through, stumbling onto the frozen grass of Richmond Park, the city lights a distant glow on the horizon. The sounds of the night rushed back in a flood: wind in the branches, the distant bark of a dog, the ever-present hum of London. Rory fell to her knees. Her hands shook. The pendant had gone cold again, lifeless as it had been when she arrived. She looked back at the standing stones. They stood in their circle, ancient and patient. The gap between them was there again, clear as day, revealing the empty clearing within. Empty. As if nothing had ever been there at all. But she'd felt it. That vast and patient thing in the dark. And she knew, with a certainty that settled deep in her gut, that it had felt her too. The wildflowers were already blooming back in the gap between the stones, pale petals unfurling toward the starlight. Rory climbed to her feet and walked away, forcing herself not to run. She didn't stop until she reached the road, until she found a streetlamp, until she could see other people—a couple walking their dog, a jogger in a reflective vest. She didn't look back at the grove. She could feel it watching her go.