Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTX8CM25HDH3FT8724NF7RD

She pushed through the wall of brambles. The Heartstone seared against her sternum. Rory stopped. Her breath came in white clouds that hung longer than physics allowed. The standing stones rose before her, ancient oaks carved into pillars that shouldn't exist in Richmond Park. Moss carpeted the ground between them, thick and spongy, and wildflowers—bluebells and foxgloves—bloomed in the December frost. "Just a clearing," she muttered. Her voice fell flat, absorbed by the dark. "Just a weird, warm clearing." The pendant pulsed. Crimson light leaked through her shirt. She stepped forward. The boundary stones marked a threshold. On this side, London traffic hummed a distant lullaby. On that side, silence reigned. Rory crossed. Her left wrist itched—the crescent scar from her eighth birthday, when Evan had dared her to climb the fence. She rubbed it. Time bent. She checked her phone. 11:47 PM. She walked ten paces, boots sinking into the loam. Checked again. 11:43 PM. "Bugger that." The flowers turned. Not with the wind—there was none—but with intention. Hundreds of petals rotated to face her. Bluebell eyes. Foxglove mouths. Rory backed toward the stones. Her shoulder blades met oak. The wood groaned, a sound like old doors opening. The standing stone behind her shifted. Not much. An inch. But the ground cracked where it moved. She wasn't alone. The certainty crawled up her spine, colder than the London winter she'd left outside. Someone breathed in the dark between the trees. The rhythm didn't match hers—slower, deeper, four beats to her one. "Evan?" The name escaped before she could trap it. Stupid. Her ex didn't know this place. Didn't know about the pendant. Didn't exist in pockets where time ran backward. The breathing stopped. Silence pressed against her eardrums, heavy and wet. Then: footsteps. Circling. Boots on moss made no sound, but she heard them anyway—felt them in the vibration of the Heartstone. The pendant thrummed against her chest, a warning in Morse code she couldn't read. Rory pushed off the stone. The wildflowers hissed. She moved toward the center of the clearing. Better to see them coming than have her back to the dark. The moon hung overhead, too large, casting shadows that stretched toward her instead of away. "Show yourself," she said. Her voice didn't shake. Much. The standing stones answered. All twelve of them rotated, grinding through centuries in seconds. Oak bark peeled back, revealing not wood but hollows—dark tunnels leading somewhere that wasn't Richmond, wasn't London, wasn't Earth. The footsteps closed in. She saw the shape now. Tall. Thin. Wrong proportions—arms too long, head tilted at an angle that would break a human neck. It stood between two of the turning stones, and where its shadow fell, the wildflowers died, blackening in seconds. The Heartstone burned. Rory grabbed it. The silver chain bit into her palm. The thing tilted its head the other way. A sound came from it—not a voice, but the memory of one. It spoke with Evan's accent, Cardiff rounded and soft: "You shouldn't have run, Laila." Rory's blood turned to ice. Laila. The name on her fake ID. The name Evan never knew. The stones stopped turning. The flowers screamed. She ran.