AI Aurora picked her way through the tangle of brambles and mud along the edge of Richmond Park, boots caked and cold soaking through denim. Moonlight dappled patches of grass, leaving the rest in murky blackness. Trees lifted their branches ahead: jagged shadows, reaching fingers crowding the edge of the Grove. The air bit sharper inside the ancient oaks, and every inhalation tasted faintly bitter, off.
She paused, drew the collar of her jacket up to her chin, thumb tracing the crescent scar on her wrist. Opening the Grove meant slipping out of one world—her world—and stepping into something deeper. The Heartstone Pendant, warm against her skin beneath her layers, pulsed each time she drew closer to the ring of standing oaks. She’d come on impulse, on a rumour scrawled in Eva’s looping script, desperate and odd: “The Fae Grove, Richmond. There, it can’t follow you. Take the stone.”
Each step over wildflowers—violet, gold, blossoming though it was the wrong time of year—slowed as she neared the centre. The stones ringed the clearing, twisted with age and lichen, roots crawling up their flanks. The pendant pulsed in time with her heartbeat. Shadows curled and pooled along the roots.
She turned in a slow circle, scanning for movement. Silence pressed in: no wind, no city sounds, not even distant laughter or the hum of traffic. Aurora tapped her phone for the time, only to find it dead, black screen staring back. She slid it into her pocket and gritted her teeth.
Distant, a dry twig snapped. She stiffened, her head jerking toward the sound. Nothing moved but the shifting silver haze around the stones. A fox, she told herself, or a deer. She crouched, stretched her fingers toward the closest oak, running them across the scarred bark. Cool, rough, nothing strange.
From the corner of her eye, petals scattered by her boots twisted as if caught by wind that didn’t stir her hair. Their colours seemed brighter, bleeding red and blue as though drawn fresh from the earth. Aurora squinted and the effect faded. She pressed both palms flat to the trunk, forcing her breath out slowly . “You just need time to think, that’s all,” she muttered.
A hush fell, heavy and absolute. From somewhere in the dark, another voice answered—soft as the fluttering of wings—but too low, too honeyed, to parse. Aurora jerked upright, heart thumping against her ribs. The pendant quivered against her chest. She swung round, back flat against the tree, clutching the chain through her shirt.
Branches creaked overhead, not with wind but with the slow, weighty shudder of something shifting unseen . The barely-there glow from the pendant threw the nearest roots into strange angles—shapes that almost resembled twisted hands, beckoning from black earth. Aurora winced and shut her eyes tight, snapping them open again a moment later when her mind’s eye painted worse things than the shadows had.
“Not funny,” she pushed out, her voice scraping the stale air. No one replied. The hush seemed to lessen, enough for a whisper : her own name, maybe, turned inside out. Aurora’s fists balled up.
Light snapped in the undergrowth. Not torchlight—strange, flickering, weaker and wrong. The air tingled, thick with ozone. Another step forward, and she found herself at the centre of the clearing, unsure when she'd moved. The stones hemmed her in, no gap wide enough for more than a quick dash, if she fancied running blind.
The wildflower carpet trembled , as if something burrowed beneath it. Aurora crouched, fixing her gaze on the ground. Roots? Snake? The disturbance passed, silent. She knelt, wondering if she could pull the Heartstone free from its chain to use as a weapon if it came to it.
Something rustled behind her. Not mere leaves this time, but the crumple of leather, brittle as old wings . She spun, arm raised, only to find the space unchanged, the moon above unwavering .
Sweat gathered at her hairline, cold and prickling. She exhaled through her nose. Her voice came out steadier than she felt: “You picked the wrong girl. I’m just here for a minute. Give me the quiet—I’ll go.”
Again, that almost-voice. Not words but the shape of laughter, echoing off the stone . No birds sang, no insects buzzed. Her thoughts stuttered, caged by the presence limping just beyond her sight. Aurora reached for her phone again, tried to flick it awake, knowing before her thumb touched glass that it’d fail.
Above, pale clouds swam across the moon. The Grove, too, shifted with the light. Stones twisted—or did her eyes betray her?—bending imperceptibly closer, ancient faces emerging in the bark. Petals uncurled at the base of one, heart-shaped and raw crimson, matching precisely the Heartstone’s glow.
She strode up to one of the stones, pressed her palm flat against its mossy surface. Warm. Breathing, almost. She yanked her hand back with a hiss.
Leaves rustled on her right, not with wind, but as if a shape pressed through them —a shape that left no mark. Aurora’s breath came fast, fogging in the cold. Something darted at the edge of her vision—a pale blip—gone when she wheeled to face it.
She forced her body to move, circling the clearing’s interior. “C’mon out then. You want the stone?” She swept her hair from her eyes, trying to stare down whatever old thing crouched out beyond the trees. “Take it.”
More movement—a flicker between oaks, light-boned and thin. She knew enough, from Eva’s stories and Nana Ellis’s bedtime warnings, to keep the stone hooked round her neck. She gripped it, pinching hard enough to draw blood under her fingernails.
Grass around her boots blushed red in the Moon’s light. The earth pulsed . The silence built. Something groaned, far off, as though earth itself woke from a long sleep. Aurora found her mouth dry as dust. She pulled the pendant chain from her shirt, letting the Heartstone hang in front of her, a shard of bloody fire.
The heart of the Grove flexed, shadows pulling tighter around her. The oak trunks elongated impossibly, squeezing her sight line to a tunnel. The pulsing from the pendant accelerated—not hers any longer, a rhythm not meant for a living heart.
Her own shadow splintered, drawn thin across the grass. Beyond the stones at last, another shape: wrong in its slowness, something tall, too narrow, gliding rather than stepping. Its edges held no solidity—a threadbare suggestion in the moon’s cold wash.
She couldn’t look away, though every prick of her skin screamed to run. Her jaw ached. “You want it?” Her arm shook as she gripped the pendant. “You’ll have to come get it.”
The shadow froze, details assembling slowly —long arms, antlered crown, a face that suggested teeth but offered no smile. The Grove echoed with breathless anticipation . Another sound swelled: neither footsteps nor speech. A low current in her chest, an urge to kneel, submit, blend into the wildflower beds and become nothing.
Aurora bared her teeth, squared her feet, and spat on the grass between them. “I’m not here for tricks. I want answers. You leave Eva—and me—out.”
Something like a hand raised, palm forward, slow and solemn. Aurora braced, licking copper from her cracked lip.
Around her, the standing stones seemed nearer than before . The Grove pressed in, not in menace but in vast, inhuman curiosity . The pendant’s heat intensified, prickling at her skin, promising a trade she did not understand.
The grass shivered all at once, bowing toward the stranger at the stones.
Aurora forced her breathing level, met the watcher’s hollow gaze, refused to give ground. Her voice dropped, a low snarl threaded with fear: “Then what are you waiting for?”