AI The air in Richmond Park after midnight held a wet, clinging chill that seeped through Aurora’s denim jacket. She stood at the edge of the woods, the city’s orange glow smeared across the horizon behind her. In her hand, the Heartstone pendant was a cold, inert weight against her palm. She’d felt the first pull hours ago, a faint, magnetic itch in her chest that had sharpened into a persistent tug as she rode her bike through the sleeping suburbs. The pendant had warmed, just once, a quick pulse like a dying heartbeat, when she’d passed the park’s main gates. Now it was silent again.
She’d come because of the note. Slid under her door this morning, written on thick, cream-colored paper in an elegant, spidery script she didn’t recognize: *The grove remembers. The stones will guide you when the moon is highest.* No signature. Eva had told her to bin it, Silas had grumbled about foolishness, but the pull in her chest had agreed with the paper. Something was here. Something about her parents, about her name, about the dreams of shifting shadows and a woman’s voice singing in a language that made her teeth ache.
She pushed into the tree line. The darkness under the canopy was absolute, swallowing the distant streetlights. Fallen leaves muffled her steps. She didn’t use a torch; the faint, silvery light of a gibbous moon filtering through bare branches was enough. The pull returned, a soft internal nudge, directing her away from the path. She followed.
The woods thickened. Brambles snagged her jeans. An owl called, the sound too close, too sharp. Then another, from a different direction, an exact mirror of the first. Aurora stopped, listening. Only the wind in the highest branches, a dry, whispery sound. She walked on.
The standing stones appeared so suddenly she almost walked into the first one. It was an ancient oak, not stone, but massive and blackened, carved with spirals and looping patterns that seemed to shift in the dappled moonlight . It stood sentinel at the edge of a clearing. Others, six in total, formed a rough circle around a space of unnaturally lush grass. Wildflowers she couldn’t name bloomed in the dead of night—sapphire-blue petals, ivory bells, blood-red poppies. Their scent was overwhelming, cloyingly sweet, like overripe fruit and honey.
The Fae Grove. Isolde’s place. Eva had mentioned it once, in hushed tones over a pint. *A between-place,* she’d called it. *Time gets funny there.*
Aurora stepped between two of the oak sentinels . The air changed. The wind died. The distant city sounds vanished, replaced by a profound , ringing silence . It was warmer here, a damp, spring-like warmth that felt wrong against her November skin. The moonlight in the clearing was brighter, clearer, casting sharp black shadows from the stones.
She moved to the center, her boots silent on the velvety grass. The tug in her chest settled, a quiet hum of rightness. She lifted the pendant, letting it dangle from its silver chain. It remained dark.
“Okay,” she whispered. Her voice was small, swallowed by the clearing. “I’m here.”
Nothing answered.
She turned a slow circle. The flowers nodded in a breeze she couldn’t feel. The carved patterns on the nearest oak seemed deeper, the spirals like tunnels leading into infinite darkness. She took a step toward it.
A twig snapped behind her.
She froze, heart a sudden jackhammer against her ribs. She didn’t turn. She listened. No breath, no rustle of clothing. Just the heavy silence .
Then, a soft, wet sound. A *shlup *, like a foot pulling free of deep mud.
It came from her left, near the tree line outside the stone circle.
She turned her head, slow. The shadows between the normal trees of the park were impenetrable. Nothing moved.
Another sound. From her right this time. A dry scrape, stone on stone. There were no stones over there, just grass and flowers.
Her breath plumed in the warm air, which was impossible. She looked down. Her exhale was a faint white mist. The temperature was plummeting , the damp warmth leaching away second by second, replaced by a bone-deep cold that started from the ground and climbed her legs. The flowers around her feet wilted, petals blackening and curling inward as if burned by frost.
The pendant moved.
It wasn’t a pulse . It was a twist, a jerk on the chain as if an invisible finger had flicked it. The crimson gemstone flashed, a single spark of deep red light.
Aurora clutched it, the metal now searing cold against her skin. Her eyes scanned the circle of stones. The shadows they cast were wrong. They didn’t stretch away from the moon. They pooled around their bases, thick and tar-like, and they were *moving *. Swirling with a slow, viscous intent.
One of the shadows detached from the base of the farthest oak.
It wasn’t a trick of the light. It was a shape, man-height but infinitely thin, a two-dimensional cutout of darkness. It had no face, no features, just a humanoid outline that absorbed the moonlight. It took a silent step onto the grass. The frost followed it, a spreading rim of white across the green.
Aurora backed up, her heel sinking into soft earth. The cold was in her chest now, making it hard to breathe.
A rustle to her left. She whipped her head around. Another shadow-figure peeled from the base of another stone. This one seemed denser, with spindly, elongated arms that trailed down to its knees.
They weren’t approaching . They were just… standing. Watching.
*The grove remembers.*
A high, keening sound pierced the silence , so shrill it felt like a needle in her ears . It came from above. She looked up.
The moon was gone . The sky was a flat, featureless black dome. No stars, no clouds, just void.
The keening resolved into a voice. It was singing , wordless and agonized, the same melody from her dreams. It came from everywhere and nowhere, from the black sky and the cold ground and the spaces between the stones.
The shadow with the long arms moved. It didn’t walk. It slid, its feet not touching the ground, gliding toward her soundlessly.
Aurora stumbled back, turning to run for the gap between the stones she’d entered through.
The gap was gone .
Where an opening had been, a seventh oak now stood, identical to the others, its carved spirals fresh and deep. The circle was complete.
She was trapped.
The singing rose in volume, a discordant choir of pain. It wasn’t one voice anymore, but dozens, layered over each other, some weeping, some whispering in that guttural, aching language. The sound vibrated in her teeth, in the hollows of her sinuses.
The long-armed shadow was ten feet away. It raised one spindly limb, a blade of solid night, pointing at her chest.
The Heartstone ignited.
A fierce, crimson light burst from the gem, not a glow but a beacon, painting the clearing in bloody hues . The light didn’t push the shadows back; it etched them in sharp relief, making them appear more real, more solid. She saw now that they weren’t empty. Within their darkness swirled faint, contorted faces, mouths open in silent screams.
The shadow flinched. It didn’t retreat, but it stopped its advance.
The pendant was burning hot against her sternum, the chain branding her neck. The light pulsed in time with her frantic heartbeat.
A new sound cut through the spectral choir—a low, rhythmic thumping. A drumbeat. It came from outside the circle, from the real woods beyond the stones. Steady, insistent, *alive *.
The shadows shuddered. Their forms wavered , like smoke in a draft.
The drumbeat grew louder, closer. It was accompanied by footsteps , real, heavy footsteps crunching through leaves and twigs.
One of the shadows turned its blank head toward the sound. It dissolved, pouring back into the tar-pool at the base of its stone. The other, the one with the long arms, lingered for a moment longer, its pointed limb still aimed at Aurora. Then it, too, bled away into the darkness, leaving only the freezing air and the wilting flowers as evidence.
The singing cut off, replaced by an echoing silence that felt louder than the noise.
The drumbeat stopped.
A figure appeared at the edge of the clearing, outside the circle of stones. Tall, broad-shouldered, holding a small hand-drum. Moonlight returned, falling on his familiar , scowling face.
Silas.
He didn’t enter the circle. He stood between two oaks, his eyes scanning the frost-bitten clearing, the blackened flowers, finally landing on Aurora. He didn’t look scared. He looked furious .
“What,” he growled, his voice rough in the quiet, “the ever-loving hell are you doing in here?”