Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMR9NY247000YGB5SJFGRTW

At the heart of Richmond Park, where the air lingers with the breath of something older than the city, Aurora Carter hesitated at the edge of darkness. Her trainers pressed the mat of sodden moss, the soles gone spongy with dew. She rolled her thumb over the pendant at her throat—deep crimson stone, silver chain cold through her weathered jumper. The Heartstone. For a moment, its warmth seemed the only real thing left in the world. The rest of her—the chill that seeped down her collar and her quickening pulse—could have belonged to someone else. The trees pressed closer than they did by day. Beyond their tangled roots, moonlight slivered between leaves, picking out wildflowers glowing with improbable color. She lost her bearings after the third turning—maybe Richmond Park, maybe not. The world here rippled, subtle as the wind shifting long grass, and she’d stepped into someplace meant for other eyes. Aurora lingered at the threshold, marked by the ring of ancient oak standing stones. She’d come for answers, or maybe just to prove to herself that she could. Eva’s voice echoed—Don’t do anything daft, Rory; you’re not the only one who needs you, you know. She pressed forward, head ducked, the scar on her left wrist tingling beneath her sleeve like the ghost of a warning. In the Grove, time shrugged off its leash. Her mobile winked: 01:42. Useless. She glanced back, expecting the glimmering outline of the path she’d left. Only deep, shifting shadows, and the hush of trees breathing in the dark. The first prickle of wrongness. It was too still. Even the city’s distant pulse seemed blotted out, as if someone had thrown a thick blanket over the world and muffled every sound but her own uneasy footsteps. The air pressed, heavy with the scent of damp earth and something sweet, rotting. She tried not to imagine her father’s voice in her ear, telling her to come home out of the night, as if she were twelve again and hadn’t learned the sharpness of fear yet. She shoved her hands in her pockets. Walked. At first, she blamed her nerves for the sound: a shuffle, slight and irregular—maybe a fox, pawing through fallen leaves. But it didn’t fade. It followed, just behind the rhythm of her steps, stopping when she stopped, starting again at her pace. Aurora’s breath caught. She knelt, fingers pressing into moss, searching for traces of movement. Branches swayed overhead, slow and deliberate, undisturbed by any wind. She reached the center of the clearing. Wildflowers glowed under her feet—violet, blue, gold and scarlet—strange for October. Their scent clung sticky-sweet, pungent as forgotten sugar. The standing stones reared up, massive trunks bleached silver by moonlight, bark deeply whorled like old bones. She checked the Heartstone. Its faint glow pulsed, sluggish and uncertain, casting flickers of red across her palm. The shuffle stopped. Aurora straightened. For a moment, she caught a shape between two oaks—tall, impossibly thin, the suggestion of hair or leaves drifting about its head. She blinked, forced herself not to turn, not to run. She counted to five, steadying her breath. When she looked again, there was nothing but trunks and shadows smeared by mist. “Bloody lovely,” she muttered, voice ragged. “Getting spooked by trees. Top marks, Carter.” She took another step. Leaves crackled. Something moved—no sound, only motion, a ripple behind the spindly birch in her periphery. Aurora jerked her head. Nothing. She forced herself to laugh, quiet and thin. The laugh died, strangled by embarrassment, fear. The air shifted. A low thrumming buzzed up through the soles of her shoes, carried in the roots, not quite sound. More a suggestion—a vibration, a message she couldn’t interpret. The wrongness thickened. A million insect eyes, invisible, turned to watch. Aurora touched the pendant. Its warmth steadied her, a living pulse against her sternum. The pendant’s glow brightened—then flickered out, smothered as if by a pinch of cold fingers. Her skin prickled. She scanned the oak circle. The standing stones leaned closer, crowding in, making the clearing smaller than she remembered, or had it always been just this size? From the dark between two trees came a sound like wet silk dragged over rough stone. Gentle, deliberate, and so out of place it snapped her spine straight. Aurora tried to swallow, throat dry. “Hello?” Her voice, barely louder than the gossamer rustle behind her, vanished into the hush. Nothing answered. Still, the feeling of being observed, prodded from the inside out, grew heavier. She forced herself forward, clumsily, hating how her shoes squeaked. Moonlight trickled through shifting branches, but it didn’t touch the ground, didn’t warm her face. The shadows felt denser, as if something coiled beyond the visible. She passed a patch of wildflowers—red poppy, tiny blue gentian—splayed in a pattern that felt wrong, too deliberate. Something in the crook of one stone glinted. Aurora knelt, squinting, but it was only an old key pressed into the mud, rusted nearly to nothing. Not hers. Not important. She left it for whatever else hunted here. Time scraped by; her mobile, checked compulsively, still read 01:42. The clearing contracted. Aurora’s heart thudded—once, fierce as a fist. The sound answered by a low, glottal hush behind her, like the exhale of something that hadn’t breathed for centuries. She moved as if through syrup. Shadows peeled loose from bark and bramble, forming shapes she didn’t try to name. She tried logic—listed facts in her head, as she’d done as a frightened child: There’s nothing here that can hurt you. You’ve survived worse. You know this city. She repeated the last until it rang hollow. The city had never felt so far away; even Cardiff’s rain-washed alleys were just a story she’d heard as a girl. Branches behind her shivered, a stutter of motion. Aurora whipped around. For one dizzying moment, she glimpsed a hand—long-fingered, gray as lichen—retreating into the bole of a tree. She couldn’t tell if it had fingernails or roots. “Who’s there?” she demanded. Her voice trembled; she pretended not to hear. A ripple passed through the standing stones—no wind, just motion, as if they drew breath in unison. Each bent fractionally toward her, ancient bark groaning. The Heartstone at her throat grew heavy, dragging the chain tight. A chill tunneled up her spine; a flash of childhood, hiding from Evan in the shadowy kitchen, all instincts screaming: get out. But the only way out was forward, into the teeth of whatever watched her. Aurora fixed her gaze ahead, jaw set, and marched through a corridor of oaks. The sounds pressed, insistent—scraping, whispers layered on whispers, not quite language. She clamped her hands over her ears. The noises crawled beneath her skin: a wet murmur, sharp cracking, the hollow laughter of something too old for names. The path narrowed. Wildflowers wilted, drooping under a pressure she began to feel in her lungs. The air whined—high and thready. She stifled panic, breath jagged as glass. Her legs shook. Still, she kept moving, counting: one-two, one-two, the rhythm of her heart and footsteps. The scare on her wrist burned, a memory sparking against bone. Light fractured ahead—a glimmer curled along a branch, humming with fragile life. The Heartstone flickered, pulsed as if in response. She clutched it, prayer-like, and told herself she could make it, she could make it home. A branch grazed her cheek. For a moment, it felt like fingers stroking, coaxing, urging her deeper into the dark. She staggered into the open, a second clearing, moonlight pooling at her feet. The world felt no less close, the wrongness rising from the ground now, not just air. Aurora turned back. The path, the stones, the wildflowers—vanished, erased as if she’d never passed through them. “Please,” she whispered, to herself or to whatever shadow listened. There was no sound then but the slow, smiling hush of the Grove, as if it waited for her to speak a mistake or step the wrong direction. The night slipped past and the pendant cooled against her skin, and in the silence Aurora Carter stood—alone, heart hammering, with only her fear for company.