Run: 2026-02-17-01KHNEWFN21PV64S4CHQMJYFW1

The ancient oaks of Richmond Park stood silent against the October darkness, their branches reaching toward a starless sky like arthritic fingers. Aurora pulled her jacket tighter and checked her phone again—no signal, just like Eva had warned. The beam from her torch cut through the mist rolling across the deer paths, illuminating nothing but wet grass and the occasional startled moth. She shouldn't have come alone. Eva had begged her to wait until morning, until they could come together, but the message had been clear: midnight at the grove, or the opportunity would pass. The pendant against her chest pulsed with unusual warmth, its rhythm matching her quickened heartbeat as she pushed deeper into the park. The standing stones appeared suddenly in her torch beam—massive oak trunks arranged in a perfect circle, their bark twisted into patterns that hurt to look at directly. Aurora had seen plenty of strange things since arriving in London, but these trees felt different. Wrong. They hummed with a frequency just below hearing, a vibration that settled into her teeth and made her jaw ache. She stepped between two of the oaks, and the world tilted. The torch flickered and died. Aurora smacked it against her palm, but the darkness had weight now, pressing against her eyes like wet velvet. The pendant's warmth intensified, its faint crimson glow providing just enough light to see her breath misting in air that had dropped twenty degrees in an instant. "Right then," she muttered, her voice swallowed by the unnatural quiet. Even her footsteps made no sound as she moved forward, following the pendant's pull toward the center of the grove. The darkness parted like theatre curtains, revealing a clearing that shouldn't exist. Wildflowers carpeted the ground—bluebells and foxgloves and flowers she couldn't name, all blooming impossibly in October's grip. Their petals glowed with a sickly phosphorescence that made her eyes water. The sweet scent of their decay clung to the back of her throat. Aurora checked her phone. The screen showed 12:03, but the numbers blurred and reformed: 12:01, 11:58, 12:07. Time stuttered and skipped like a scratched record. She pocketed the useless device and forced herself to breathe slowly, to think. Someone had sent that message. Someone wanted her here. A branch snapped behind her. She spun, hand instinctively reaching for the pepper spray in her pocket, but nothing moved in the writhing shadows between the trees. The wildflowers rustled without wind, their heads turning to track her movement like an audience of luminous eyes. "I'm here," Aurora called out, proud when her voice didn't shake. "Whatever game this is, I'm playing." The flowers laughed—a sound like children giggling underwater. The pendant burned against her skin now, its glow strengthening until it cast her shadow in multiple directions. Each shadow moved independently, reaching for things that weren't there, recoiling from threats she couldn't see. Something white drifted past her peripheral vision. Aurora turned, catching a glimpse of fabric, perhaps a dress, disappearing behind an oak. She followed, her footsteps finally making sound again—but the crunch of dead leaves beneath her boots didn't match the carpet of living flowers she walked on. "Wait," she called out, quickening her pace. The figure in white stood at the far edge of the grove, back turned, hair hanging in wet tangles despite the absence of rain. Aurora approached slowly, noting the bare feet, the way the dress clung to too-thin shoulders, the absolute stillness of the form. "Are you all right?" Aurora reached out, her fingers nearly touching the woman's shoulder. The figure's head snapped backward with the crack of breaking vertebrae, revealing a face that was her own—her own features stretched and distorted, bright blue eyes rolled back to show only whites, mouth opening wider than any mouth should open. Aurora stumbled backward as the thing wearing her face laughed with that underwater sound. Its limbs bent at impossible angles as it scuttled toward her on all fours, moving like a spider learning to use human parts. She ran. The grove stretched endlessly, the standing stones multiplying, creating a maze of identical clearings. In each one, another version of herself waited—some crawling, some floating inches off the ground, some with faces that bloomed like the poisonous flowers beneath her feet. They whispered in her voice, speaking words she'd never said, secrets she'd never shared, names of people she'd never met but somehow knew. The pendant's heat became unbearable. Aurora yanked it over her head, holding it out like a torch. Its light revealed the truth—the grove was full of watchers. They clung to the trees, hung from branches, emerged from the earth itself. Not versions of her, but things that had tried to become her and failed, wearing her face like an ill-fitting mask. One dropped from above, fingers like twigs raking across her shoulder. Aurora swung the pendant, and where its light touched, the creatures recoiled with sounds like steam escaping. She spun in a circle, using the Heartstone's glow to clear a path. There—a gap between two oaks that looked different from the others, their bark unmarred by those painful patterns. Aurora sprinted toward it, the things behind her shrieking in harmony, a choir of stolen voices singing her name. She burst through the gap and fell hard onto wet grass. Real grass. The torch beside her flickered back to life, revealing the normal park, the normal night, her phone buzzing with a dozen missed calls from Eva. The time read 12:04. Four minutes had passed. Aurora clutched the pendant, its heat already fading to warmth. Behind her, the standing stones looked like ordinary oaks again, nothing special about them except their age. But in their shadows, she could still see the glow of those poisonous flowers, could still hear that underwater laughter. Her phone rang. Unknown number. "Thank you for coming," said a voice that might have been her own, speaking from somewhere that might have been the grove. "We'll be in touch." The line went dead. Aurora's hand shook as she lowered the phone, noting the new contact that had somehow added itself: "The Waiting Ones." She backed away from the grove, then turned and ran properly, not stopping until she reached the park gates. Only then did she notice the tears in her jacket, the scratches on her shoulder arranged in a perfect spiral, and the fact that her shadow, when caught in the streetlight's glare, was still moving on its own.