Run: 2026-02-17-01KHNG0QGBGQE62HMH29EYZMPM

The night air in Richmond Park was cool and still, the kind of quiet that felt like the whole city was holding its breath. Aurora Carter’s boots crunched softly on the gravel path, the sound unnaturally loud in the hushed dark. She pulled her leather jacket tighter, the silver chain of the Heartstone pendant cold against her throat. She shouldn’t be here. The text from the blocked number had been simple, a command more than an invitation. *The standing stones. Midnight. Come alone. Answers await.* After the things she’d seen lately—the shifting shadows that were more than just tricks of the light, the whispers that weren’t the wind—‘answers’ was a word with a powerful pull. Even if every instinct screamed that this was a spectacularly bad idea. She found the familiar clearing, the one Eva had dared her to find when they were teenagers, thinking it was just a local ghost story. The Fae Grove. The ancient oak standing stones formed a rough circle, looking less like deliberate architecture and more like sleeping giants. In the moonlight, their gnarled bark seemed to writhe. Aurora stepped between two of the massive trunks, crossing the invisible boundary. The air changed instantly. It became thicker, sweeter, heavy with the scent of blooming wildflowers that had no business existing in an English autumn. The oppressive silence of the park was replaced by a low, almost melodic hum, like a wire singing under immense tension. The wrongness was immediate, a cold finger tracing the line of her spine. She was here for answers, she reminded herself, her hand instinctively going to the pendant at her throat. The deep crimson gemstone was warm. Not the ambient warmth of her skin, but a distinct, pulsing heat. It had done that before, she realized with a jolt, right before that thing with the shimmering air in the alley behind the Golden Empress. “Hello?” she called out, her voice swallowed by the dense, flower-scented air. It didn’t echo. It just died. “Anyone there?” No answer. Only the hum. Aurora began a slow circuit of the grove, her senses on a razor’s edge. The wildflowers, a riot of colour even in the monochrome night, seemed to tremble as she passed, though there was no wind. She stopped, holding her breath, listening. The hum was still there, but beneath it now was something else. A soft, skittering sound, like dry leaves scuttling across stone. It came from behind her. She spun around, heart hammering against her ribs. Nothing. Just the dark trunks of the oaks and the swaying blooms. *Get a grip, Rory,* she told herself, the old childhood nickname a talisman of normalcy. *It’s a park. There are foxes. Rats. Pigeons with a death wish.* But the rationalization felt thin, a flimsy curtain over a yawning darkness. The Heartstone pulsed again, a little warmer, a little faster. A warning rhythm. She moved toward the centre of the circle, where the flower growth was most dense. That’s when she saw the first one. A flicker of movement at the very periphery of her left vision. A tall, impossibly thin shade that darted between two stones. It was there and then it wasn’t, so fast she could almost believe she’d imagined the long, spindly limb, the suggestion of a head that was too narrow. She froze, every muscle locking. She didn’t breathe. She just stared at the empty space where the thing had been. The skittering sound came again, this time from her right. She didn’t want to look. She had to look. She turned her head, slowly, muscles screaming in protest. There was nothing there either. But the flowers… the flowers directly in front of her were bent. Several stalks were pressed down, as if something with weight had just stepped off them. *You are not alone.* The certainty was a cold stone in her gut. The hum of the grove began to shift, the pitch twisting into something less melodic, more dissonant. It was the sound of metal grinding, of bones cracking. Underneath it, a new sound emerged: a wet, rhythmic clicking, like a monstrous insect testing its mandibles. It was closer now. Much closer. Aurora’s breath hitched. Her mind, usually so quick, so adept at finding the escape route, the loophole, the clever way out, was scrambling in pure, animal panic. *Think, Carter. Think.* But all she could think was that the text was a lure. The answers were a lie. Something brushed against the back of her jacket. It wasn’t a grab. It was a whisper of contact, fleeting and intimate. The sound of clicking stopped instantly. Aurora didn’t scream. She couldn’t. Her throat had sealed itself shut. She whipped around, stumbling back, her boots crushing a patch of glowing blue flowers that released a cloud of sickly-sweet pollen. There was nothing behind her. But the air… the air directly in front of her was wrong. It wasn’t empty. It shimmered, a heat-haze distortion in the shape of a man, but stretched and pulled like taffy, seven feet tall at least. It had no discernible features, only a suggestion of a faceless head that tilted, regarding her. The space where its eyes should have been were two deeper pits of absolute blackness. The Heartstone pendant burned against her skin, a brand of pure heat. The crimson gem glowed from within, casting a bloody light on her throat. The thing in the shimmering air took a step forward. It made no sound. The flowers did not bend under its weight. Aurora’s paralysis broke. She took a stumbling step back, then another. The thing mirrored her, gliding forward silently. It was herding her. She glanced over her shoulder. The standing stones seemed farther away than they had a moment ago, the paths between them narrowing, the oak trunks leaning in to watch. The clicking started again, but this time it wasn’t coming from around her. It was coming from the shimmering shape. It was the thing’s voice. She backed up until her shoulders hit one of the great standing stones. Cold, rough bark through her jacket. Trapped. The shimmering figure paused a few feet away. The distorted air around it seemed to solidify, and for a horrifying second, she saw it clearly. It wasn’t a man. It was a collection of sharp angles and impossible joints, skin the colour of a day-old bruise. Its head was elongated, its mouth a simple slack hole from which that terrible clicking echoed. Then the shimmer returned, and it was just a waver in the air again, a nightmare glimpsed through frosted glass. It raised a limb—an arm that had too many bends in it—and pointed past her, not at her, but at the stone she was pinned against. Slowly, afraid that any sudden movement would be the last thing she ever did, Aurora turned her head. Carved into the ancient oak, hidden in the deep shadow and grooves of the bark, was a symbol. It was a spiral, complex and unnerving, carved with such precision it seemed impossible it was made by any human hand. And beneath the spiral, something was scratched fresh into the wood, the sap still weeping from the letters. It was a single word. Her name. *Aurora.* The breath left her lungs in a silent rush. This wasn’t a random haunting. This was for her. It had always been for her. The clicking from the shimmering thing mutated, forming a sound that was almost, but not quite, a word. It was a wet, guttural approximation of her name. A mockery of speech. *“Auuu… rooo… raaa…”* The thing took another gliding step forward, closing the distance. The temperature plummeted. The sweet scent of the flowers curdled into the smell of ozone and rotting meat. The Heartstone was searingly hot now, its glow the only defiant light in the crushing darkness, a tiny heartbeat of crimson against the infinite black of the thing’s eyes. It reached for her.