AI The ancient oaks loomed against the moonless sky, their branches twisted into shapes that seemed wrong even in darkness . Aurora pulled her jacket tighter as she stepped through the gap in Richmond Park's fence, the wire mesh bent back by countless trespassers before her. The Heartstone pendant lay cold against her chest, its usual warmth absent.
She'd been here before—once in daylight with Isolde as her guide, when the grove had shown its prettier face. Wildflowers and sunshine, birdsong and the smell of honey on warm air. But Isolde had warned her: never come alone, never come at night, never come without invitation.
The text had arrived three hours ago. Isolde's number, Isolde's words: *The grove. Midnight. Come alone. Urgent.*
Aurora's phone screen cast pale light across the deer path. No signal now. The bars had dropped to nothing the moment she'd crossed into the park proper. She tucked it away and let her eyes adjust, following the path by memory and moonlight. Her breath misted in the October air, though the weather report had promised an unseasonably warm night.
The standing stones should be just ahead—those ancient oaks that Isolde claimed had stood since before the Romans, their trunks grown thick and gnarled enough to serve as waymarkers between worlds. Aurora had laughed at that description in daylight. She wasn't laughing now.
A branch snapped somewhere to her left. She froze, listening. Deer, probably. Richmond Park had hundreds of them, though she'd never seen one this deep in the woods, this close to—
There. The first oak stone, its trunk split by centuries of growth into something that resembled a doorway. She pressed her palm against the bark, finding the carved symbol Isolde had shown her. The wood felt warm, almost feverish.
"One down," she whispered, her voice too loud in the stillness. Six more to find, forming the circle, and then the grove would reveal itself. That's how it had worked before.
She moved counterclockwise as instructed, searching for the next marker. The path that had seemed so clear in daylight now branched and doubled back on itself . Twice she thought she'd found the second oak, only to discover unfamiliar trees, their shadows playing tricks in the darkness.
The Heartstone pendant shifted against her skin. Not warm, but ... something else. A sensation like ice water trickling down her spine . She touched it through her shirt and yanked her hand back. The metal chain had grown so cold it burned.
A sound drifted through the trees—musical notes, hollow and wrong. Wind chimes, her rational mind supplied, though she knew no one hung wind chimes in Richmond Park. The melody repeated, closer now, a discordant tune that made her teeth ache.
Aurora quickened her pace, stumbling over roots that hadn't been there before. Or had they? The forest floor seemed to shift with each step, reliable footing becoming treacherous the moment she committed her weight .
The second oak materialized from the darkness, and relief flooded through her until she pressed her hand to its trunk. The bark crumbled like ash beneath her fingers, revealing pale wood underneath that gleamed with a sickly phosphorescence. Wrong. This was all wrong.
But Isolde needed her. The text had said urgent.
She forced herself to continue, finding the third oak, the fourth. Each tree felt different—one blazing hot, another weeping a dark sap that smelled of copper and rot. The wind chime melody followed, sometimes ahead, sometimes behind, always just out of sight.
At the fifth oak, she heard footsteps .
Not the cautious tread of deer or the scurrying of small nocturnal creatures. These were deliberate, measured steps that circled her position, maintaining a perfect distance. Aurora held her breath, straining to see through the darkness. Nothing. But the footsteps continued their patient orbit.
"Isolde?" Her voice cracked . "If that's you, this isn't funny."
The footsteps stopped. The silence that followed was worse than any sound. Even the wind had died, leaving her in a bubble of perfect stillness that pressed against her eardrums.
Then, from directly behind her: "Laila?"
She spun, heart hammering. No one called her that except—
"Evan?"
But the forest was empty. The footsteps resumed, closer now, and that couldn't be Evan's voice because Evan was in Cardiff, Evan was the reason she'd fled to London in the first place.
"Laila, love, I've been looking everywhere for you."
The voice came from her left now, then her right, then somehow from above. Not Evan's voice exactly, but something wearing it like an ill-fitting coat . The cadence was wrong, the warmth too perfect , as if someone had learned human speech from a recording.
Aurora ran.
She crashed through the underbrush, abandoning the path, abandoning the ritual. Branches tore at her jacket and hair. Behind her, that horrible approximation of Evan's voice called out endearments that turned her stomach .
"Don't run from me, Laila. You know you can't run from me."
The sixth oak rose before her like a wall. She slammed into it, palms scraping against bark that felt like broken glass . The carved symbol pulsed with cold light, and she traced it with bloody fingers, desperate now.
"Please," she whispered. "Please, I need to find her."
The footsteps had stopped. The voice had stopped. But the silence that replaced them crawled with possibility, with the certainty that something stood just beyond her vision, waiting for her to turn around.
The Heartstone pendant flared with sudden heat, searing through her shirt. She gasped, clutching at it, and in that moment of distraction felt breath on the back of her neck. Impossible. Nothing stood that close. She would have heard—
"Found you."
Not-Evan's voice, directly in her ear. She bit back a scream and dove forward, through the space between the sixth oak's split trunk. The world tilted, colors inverting, and she tumbled onto soft grass that smelled of summer.
The grove. She'd made it to the grove.
Aurora pushed herself up on shaking arms, spitting out flower petals that tasted of copper. The clearing stretched before her, those impossible wildflowers blooming in profusion despite the October night. But wrong, all wrong—the flowers were black in the moonlight, their petals edged with frost. The air hung thick and sweet with decay.
At the grove's center, where Isolde had served tea in delicate china cups just two months ago, something waited.
Not Isolde.
The thing wore Isolde's face, but the proportions were subtly wrong—eyes too wide, smile too sharp, fingers too long where they beckoned Aurora forward. It spoke with Isolde's voice, warm and welcoming, but underneath ran that same discordance she'd heard in not-Evan's words.
"Rory, darling, you came. I was so worried you wouldn't find your way."
Aurora's hand found the Heartstone pendant, now burning hot enough to blister. She stayed at the grove's edge, every instinct screaming warnings.
"You're not Isolde."
The thing's smile widened past human limits. "Clever girl. Isolde spoke so highly of your quick thinking." It tilted its head at an angle that made Aurora's neck ache in sympathy. "She screamed your name, you know. At the end."
The words hit like physical blows. Aurora forced herself to breathe, to think. The pendant's heat centered her, kept her from running blindly into the dark.
"What are you?"
"Hungry." The thing wearing Isolde's face took a step forward, movements too fluid, too graceful. "So very hungry, and you smell delicious. Fear and love and loss all mingled together. Isolde barely kept me fed for a day, but you... you could sustain me for weeks."
Another step. The wildflowers withered where its feet touched the ground, leaving circles of ash. Aurora backed away, but her heel caught the boundary where grove met forest. The standing stones had sealed behind her—solid oak where the entrance should be.
"The pendant burns you," she said, grasping for any advantage. "You can't touch me while I wear it."
The thing laughed, a sound like breaking bells. "Can't I?"
The voice came from behind again. She spun to find not-Evan stepping from between the sealed oaks, his face a perfect replica except for the eyes—flat black from edge to edge, reflecting nothing.
"Hello, love. Did you miss me?"
Trapped between two nightmares, Aurora did the only thing she could. She wrapped her fingers around the Heartstone pendant, ignoring the searing pain, and pulled. The chain snapped.
The grove convulsed. Colors bled back into the world—true colors, dawn colors though dawn was hours away. The thing wearing Isolde's face shrieked, a sound that drove Aurora to her knees. Not-Evan simply... ceased, unraveling like smoke.
Real sunlight, impossible sunlight, flooded the clearing. The black flowers blazed into their daylight hues—golden buttercups, purple foxglove, white wood anemone. And there, crumpled among them, lay Isolde. The real Isolde, breathing but unconscious, her red hair spread like blood across the grass.
Aurora crawled to her, still clutching the pendant despite the blisters forming on her palm. Around them, the grove shuddered between realities—day and night, summer and winter, truth and lie.
"Wake up," Aurora whispered, shaking Isolde's shoulder. "Please, wake up. We need to leave."
Isolde's eyes fluttered open, focused with difficulty. "Rory? How did you—the text, I didn't send any text."
"I know. Can you stand? We need to—"
The sunlight flickered . Went out like a snuffed candle. The flowers began to wilt again, and Aurora heard something vast and hungry stirring in the spaces between the trees.
She hauled Isolde to her feet, supporting most of her weight . The standing stones had changed—no longer sealed, but gaping wide like mouths. Through each opening lay a different darkness. Richmond Park should be out there, London should be out there, but Aurora saw only variations of void.
"The pendant," Isolde mumbled, seeing Aurora's burned hand. "You broke the binding. The grove can't hold its shape without—"
A sound like tearing silk . The air split, revealing depths that hurt to perceive. The thing that had worn Isolde's face pulled itself back into existence, but its disguise was failing . Aurora caught glimpses of too many teeth, too many joints, a form that violated the basic rules of geometry.
"Clever girl," it hissed through disintegrating lips. "But not clever enough."
Aurora half-carried, half-dragged Isolde toward the nearest oak portal. Whatever lay beyond couldn't be worse than what pursued them. The Heartstone pendant pulsed in her burned fist, each beat of warmth slightly weaker than the last.
They tumbled through together, leaving the hungry darkness behind.