Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQY3572N36VC3Z44D3Q3AN

The pendant had been warm against her sternum for three miles, a steady thrum like a second heartbeat that intensified as Rory passed through the gates of Richmond Park. November air bit at her cheeks, but the gemstone remained hot, almost uncomfortable, pulsing in rhythmic intervals that matched no biological function she understood. She pulled her coat tighter, her left hand instinctively finding the crescent scar on her right wrist—a childhood habit that surfaced when the ground felt unstable beneath her feet. She shouldn't have come. That thought cycled through her mind with the precision of a legal brief, each objection catalogued and overruled by the inexorable pull of the artifact. The chain was silver, thin enough to snap if she tugged, yet it felt like an anchor dragging her past the frozen duck ponds and bare-branched oaks toward the park's ancient heart. The note that had accompanied the pendant—unsigned, dropped through the mail slot of her flat above Silas' bar three days prior—had simply read: *When it burns, find the stones.* The stones appeared at midnight, though she could have sworn she'd entered the park at eleven. Rory checked her phone. 11:47. She checked again. 11:46. The digital numbers shivered, flickering backward by a minute, then held steady as if catching their breath. She pocketed the device, her breath misting in silver clouds that lingered too long in the air, hanging suspended like ectoplasm. Three oaks stood in a triangle, their trunks wider than her arms could span, bark blackened not by fire but by age. Between them, wildflowers carpeted the ground—bluebells and foxgloves and something white and star-shaped that shouldn't have existed in late autumn. They released a fragrance too sweet, cloying as rotting fruit, as she stepped into the clearing. The temperature dropped ten degrees. Rory stopped. Her trainers sank into loam that shouldn't have been soft; the ground had been frozen concrete on the path, yet here her soles disappeared into moss that squelched with the sound of wet wool. The pendant flared, crimson light bleeding through her cotton shirt, casting her hands in arterial red. She pressed her palm against it, feeling the rhythm accelerate—not frantic, but eager. Welcoming. She had come because of Evan. Because three nights ago, standing in the alley behind the Golden Empress waiting for her delivery moped to warm up, she had seen him across the street. Same hooded jacket, same stance that had once seemed protective and later became a cage. The pendant had begun to burn then, too. She had run, not toward her flat where he knew to look, but into the sprawl of London, letting the stone guide her until she stood here, shivering in a lawyer's overcoat and delivery driver's trainers, surrounded by flowers that whispered when there was no wind. The whispering wasn't metaphorical. Rory turned slowly, her shoulder-length hair catching on a low branch. The sound came from the bluebells, or perhaps from the spaces between them—a susurrus that resolved into syllables, then words. Not English. Welsh, she realized with a jolt that tightened her throat. Her mother's tongue, butchered and stretched into something that sounded like Jennifer Carter's voice calling from the bottom of a well. "Aurora," it said. Then: "Laila." Then: "Malphora." She backed toward the nearest standing stone. The granite was warm, humming against her spine like a tuning fork struck against bone. The scar on her wrist ached, a phantom pain from a fall off a Cardiff climbing frame twenty years ago, suddenly fresh and weeping. She covered it with her hand, felt wetness, looked down to find her fingers clean but trembling. The shadows between the oaks moved. Not the wind—there was none. The air had gone stagnant, heavy as water in a stagnant pond. The shadows lengthened independently of the moonlight, stretching toward her in attenuated fingers that melted the wildflowers where they touched. Rory pressed harder against the stone, her analytical mind scrabbling for purchase. Hypothermia. Carbon monoxide from some underground vent. A psychotic break induced by stress and sleep deprivation and the persistent, grinding fear that Evan had found her new address. But the pendant knew. It had known since she'd fled Cardiff, since she'd slept in Eva's spare room in Croydon, since she'd taken the delivery job to stay mobile, untraceable. It pulsed now in warning, a deep crimson glow visible in her peripheral vision, and she understood with horrible clarity that the grove existed in a pocket—that the boundary marked by these stones was permeable, and something had been waiting for the gem to bring her here. Time fractured. She blinked, and the moon jumped across the sky. Blinked again, and her breath froze mid-exhalation, crystallizing into a hovering cloud that did not fall. The whispers coalesced into footsteps—bare feet on moss, circling the clearing. She saw nothing, but the flowers bent in a spiral pattern, pressed down by invisible weight. "You're early," a voice said. It came from everywhere and nowhere, with the cadence of her father's courtroom authority and the breathy intimacy of Evan's worst apologies. Rory's hand found the pendant, wrapped around it, felt the silver chain bite into her palm. The stone was searing now, and she understood it wasn't merely an artifact but a beacon. A key. A meal bell rung in the dark. She pushed off from the stone and ran. The clearing stretched. Three steps became thirty, the oaks receding like figures in a dream, their black trunks multiplying, the triangle becoming a labyrinth of ancient wood. Her trainers slipped on moss that had grown wet with something darker than dew. Behind her, the footsteps matched her pace exactly—when she sprinted, they sprinted; when she stumbled, they waited, patient as geology. Rory stopped, gasping, her bright blue eyes stinging with cold or tears or both. She had trained for this, she realized—not in law school, not in the self-defense classes Eva had forced her to take, but in the three years with Evan. The hypervigilance. The cataloguing of exits. The ability to stand very still while danger circled, pretending to be part of the furniture until the moment came to bolt. She stood still now. The grove held its breath. The wildflowers stopped their whispering. The pendant cooled abruptly, leaving a cold spot above her heart that felt like a missing tooth. In the silence, she heard breathing that was not her own—low, rhythmic, originating from inside the standing stone she had leaned against. The granite face shifted, mineral grains rearranging into features: a mouth, wide and lipless; eyes like knots in wood, opening to reveal depths where stars were dying. "Rory," the stone said, using Eva's nickname for her, using the intimacy of shared history. "You've brought it back." She looked down at her hand. The pendant's glow had dimmed to a sullen ember, but the chain was moving, writhing against her palm like a serpent, tightening. The scar on her wrist split open, blood welling in a perfect crescent that dripped onto the bluebells. Where it fell, the flowers turned black. The footsteps resumed, closer now, accompanied by the rustle of something dragging through the undergrowth. The air pressure dropped, her ears popped, and the London night—the distant traffic, the reassuring glow of civilization—faded into a silence so complete she could hear the individual beats of her own heart. Too slow. Her heart was beating too slow. She checked her phone. 11:03 PM. She had been in the grove for hours, or seconds, or years. The standing stone smiled. The footsteps stopped directly behind her. Rory closed her fingers around the pendant one last time, feeling its familiar warmth, its promise of portals and escape, and realized with perfect, crystalline horror that she hadn't been running toward safety at all. She had been summoned. The delivery had been made. The grove exhaled, and the darkness between the stones rushed in to claim her.