AI The air in Richmond Park after sunset held a damp chill that seeped through Rory’s denim jacket. Her bike leaned against the trunk of a massive oak just beyond the glow of the path lights, the city’s distant hum a low throb against the silence . She pushed her hands into her pockets, her fingers brushing the smooth, warm metal of the Heartstone pendant. It had pulsed twice during her ride west from her flat, a persistent warmth against her sternum that faded only when she passed through the park gates.
She’d followed the feeling, a stupid, reckless impulse driven by weeks of sleepless curiosity. The pendant had been left on her doorstep in a plain velvet pouch, no note, no explanation. Silas had taken one look at it and gone pale, muttering about old magic and bad omens before refusing to say another word. Eva had just told her to throw it in the Thames. But Rory had kept it, and tonight, it had pulled her here.
The grove wasn’t on any map. She’d overheard two older regulars at Silas’s bar whispering about it weeks ago—a patch in Richmond where the trees grew too close, the paths didn’t line up, and time got slippery. A place touched by the Fae. They’d laughed it off as drunken folklore, but Rory had remembered the name. The Fae Grove. And now, standing at the edge of a thicket of hawthorn, the pendant was warm again, a low, steady pulse like a second heartbeat.
She stepped off the gravel path. The city sounds muffled, swallowed by a sudden, dense quiet. The moonlight seemed to collect in pools between the trees, leaving the undergrowth in deep shadow. She moved slowly, her boots crunching on frosted leaves. The air smelled different here—not just earth and decay, but a faint, sweet scent like blooming roses in deep winter.
The standing stones appeared sooner than she expected. Five ancient oaks, their trunks gnarled and massive, formed a rough circle around a clearing. They looked natural, but the symmetry was too perfect . Moss hung from their lower branches in silver-green curtains. Rory paused at the gap between two trunks, the threshold. The pendant throbbed , a sharp, urgent heat.
“Okay,” she whispered to herself, her breath frosting in the air. “In for a penny.”
The moment she crossed between the trees, the temperature shifted. The chill fell away, replaced by a still, cool air that carried the stronger perfume of those impossible flowers. The clearing was carpeted in short, velvety grass dotted with tiny white blossoms that glowed with their own soft light. In the center, a flat, grey stone rested like an altar. The grove was beautiful, serene, and utterly wrong.
It was the silence that got to her first. Not true silence —she could hear the rustle of leaves, the distant trickle of water—but a complete absence of life. No scuttling of rodents, no hoot of an owl, no distant traffic. As if the grove existed in a bubble, separate from the world.
Rory walked toward the stone, her footsteps soundless on the grass. The pendant’s pulse had settled into a constant, warm rhythm. She pulled it from under her shirt, the crimson gem catching the pale light and glowing from within. It cast a faint red wash over her fingers.
A twig snapped behind her.
She froze, her head half-turned. Nothing moved between the dark trunks of the oaks. Just shadows upon shadows. She let out a slow breath. Imagination. The place was getting to her.
She turned back to the stone, examining its smooth surface. There were markings etched into it—swirling, interlacing patterns that hurt to look at for too long. She reached out a hand, not to touch, but to feel the space above the carvings .
The air above the stone shimmered , like heat haze off tarmac.
Rory snatched her hand back. As she did, a soft sigh echoed through the clearing, a breathy exhalation that didn’t come from her. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, lifting the hair on her arms.
“Hello?” Her voice sounded small, swallowed by the grove.
No answer. Only the rustle of leaves again, though there was no wind.
She took a step back from the stone, her eyes scanning the tree line. The shadows between the oaks looked deeper now, solid. One of them seemed to shift, a tall, slender darkness detaching itself from the rest for just a second before blending back in. Her heart gave a hard knock against her ribs. Trick of the light. Had to be.
She decided to leave. This had been a mistake. The pendant was a beacon , not a key, and she’d walked right into its signal. She turned to retrace her steps to the gap between the stones.
The gap was gone .
Where there had been an opening between two specific oaks, there was now uninterrupted tree trunk, bark seamless and ancient. She spun slowly , her pulse quickening. All five oaks stood in their unbroken circle, no space between any of them wide enough for her to squeeze through. The circle had closed.
“No,” she muttered, walking quickly along the inside of the ring, pressing her hand against the rough bark. Solid. Real. She completed a full circuit. No exit. The grove was a perfect , enclosed cell.
A low chuckle drifted through the air, a dry, papery sound that raised goosebumps on her nape. It came from above. She looked up. The branches wove a tight canopy, blocking most of the sky. Something moved up there—a flicker of pale, long-limbed something shifting through the leaves. It was gone before her eyes could focus.
Her breath came faster, clouds of panic crystallizing in the cool air. Think, Rory. Think.
The stone. The shimmer. It was a focus, a… a something. A door? A lock? The pendant burned against her chest. She strode back to the center, kneeling before the stone. The etched patterns seemed to swirl more actively now, the lines undulating in her peripheral vision. She gripped the pendant’s chain, pulling it over her head. Instinct, raw and desperate, guided her. She held the Heartstone above the center of the stone, the crimson gem dangling.
The gem’s inner glow brightened. The shimmer above the stone intensified, warping the air. From the corner of her eye, she saw the shadows around the clearing start to move. Not just shift, but flow, creeping like liquid along the ground toward her . They didn’t belong to any object; they were entities themselves, thin and grasping.
Another sound joined the low rustle—a skittering, clicking noise, as of many dry insect legs tapping on stone. It came from the edge of the clearing, behind her. She didn’t turn. She kept her eyes on the Heartstone, on the stone altar.
A voice, this time. It was a whisper that seemed to form inside her own ear, a collage of rustling leaves and breaking twigs shaped into words.
“You should not have brought that here.”
Rory’s hand trembled . “Who’s there?”
A dry rustle answered, like laughter. The skittering grew closer, moving in a semi-circle around her back. She could feel them now—a cold, focused attention prickling between her shoulder blades. They were behind her, maybe three yards away. Closing in.
“The stone is a wound,” the leaf-voice whispered. “A tear. You hold a plug. Or a key.”
“I don’t know what it is,” Rory said, her voice steadier than she felt . She focused on the logic, the puzzle. The pendant was an artifact. It reacted to this place. This place was a threshold. Therefore, the pendant was meant for the threshold. “What happens if I put it here?”
“The wound closes,” the voice hissed, a note of urgency—or warning—in its tone . “Or it opens wider.”
The shadows at her feet had reached the base of the altar stone. They pooled there, thick and dark, tendrils rising like seeking fingers toward the pendant in her hand. The skittering was right behind her now. She could smell something dry and old, like dust and dead flowers.
She had a choice. Keep the pendant, try to find another way out, with those things at her back. Or trust the instinct that had brought her here, and place it.
A cold, brittle touch brushed the back of her neck.