Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTXQV8PASER5EB3WG01M7CD

The standing stones rose against the night sky like blackened teeth. Rory counted them again. Seven. There had been seven when she entered the grove twenty minutes ago. She was certain of it. Yet here she stood, counting eight ancient oaks arranged in their imperfect circle, each trunk twisted with age, bark grooved deep enough to lose a finger in. She adjusted the strap of her courier bag and looked up through the gap in the canopy. No stars. The moon hung fat and orange where it had been silver and sharp when she'd pedalled through Richmond Park's gates. Time moved strangely here. She'd known that. Isolde had warned her. But knowing and experiencing were different beasts entirely. The note had been specific. Come to the grove at midnight. Come alone. The pendant will show you the truth. No signature. No return address. Just those words printed on cream-colored paper that smelled of woodsmoke and something else, something that made her think of her grandmother's attic in Cardiff. Dust and old secrets. She touched the Heartstone through her shirt. The gem pulsed against her sternum, a second heartbeat that had grown stronger with every step she took past the park's boundary. Now it thrummed with a heat that bordered on uncomfortable. Midnight. She was late. The ride from Camden had taken longer than expected, her bike chain threatening to snap twice on the dark paths through the park. Rangers didn't patrol this far into Richmond after dark. She'd seen precisely one other living soul, a man walking his dog near the Pen Ponds, his flashlight swinging wild arcs across the grass. Neither had acknowledged the other. The wildflowers should not have been blooming. It was November. Frost had crisped the grass outside her flat this morning. Yet the clearing floor swayed with white blooms that caught what little light filtered through the trees, their petals luminous as bone. She crouched, brushing her fingers against a stem. Warm. The plant was warm, as if it had been lying in summer sun. Her phone buzzed in her jacket pocket. The sound cracked through the silence like a gunshot. Rory stood quickly, her heart hammering. The screen lit her face blue when she pulled it out. No signal. Of course there was no signal. But a notification glowed at the top of her display, timestamped three minutes from now. WE SEE YOU. Her thumb hovered over the message. Before she could tap it, the screen flickered. The notification vanished. Her messages app opened to an empty thread, the number field blank. Then her phone went dark. Dead. It had been at sixty percent when she'd left the flat. She was breathing too fast. Rory pressed her palm flat against her sternum, feeling the Heartstone's rhythm beneath her skin. Steady. Even. Far calmer than her own racing pulse. 'This was a mistake.' The words came out too loud. The clearing swallowed them without echo. No birds answered. No insects chirped. The silence pressed against her ears like deep water. She turned to leave. The path she'd taken into the grove had vanished. Rory blinked. Rubbed her eyes. The standing stones formed a complete circle now, no gap between them where she'd slipped through. The trunks stood shoulder to shoulder, their branches interlocking overhead in a lattice that blocked even the strange orange moon. 'Okay.' She spun in a slow circle, taking inventory. 'Okay. Think.' Someone was playing games. Evan, maybe. No. Evan was in Cardiff. She'd made certain of that before she'd fled to London. A year of silence from him, a year of rebuilding, of learning to sleep without checking the locks three times. This felt like him, though. The control. The manipulation. Make her paranoid. Make her doubt. But Evan didn't know about the pendant. No one knew about the pendant. She'd told no one about the stranger who'd pressed it into her palm outside the Golden Empress three weeks ago, a woman in a grey coat who'd vanished into the dinner rush before Rory could ask a single question. Something shifted at the edge of her vision. Rory snapped her head left. Nothing but wildflowers and stone. She looked right. The same. The standing stones stood motionless, their bark catching the faint glow of the flowers below. She started walking toward the easternmost oak. There had been a gap there. She was sure of it. The ground was soft beneath her boots, the wildflowers parting around her ankles like water. When she glanced down, they were already closing behind her, stems straightening, petals unbruised. The oak's trunk was wider than she'd realised. She had to extend her arms to span half its circumference. The bark was warm under her palms, warmer than the flowers, almost fever-hot. She pressed her shoulder against it and pushed, testing for a hollow, a hidden passage, something. The tree pushed back. Rory stumbled away, her boots catching on the uneven ground. She caught herself before she fell, one hand slapping against stone, and turned to face the oak. It hadn't moved. Of course it hadn't moved. Trees didn't move. 'Get a grip.' She was talking to herself again. Eva would have laughed at her, would have told her she was working herself into a state over nothing. Eva, who'd held her while she cried in a train station at three in the morning. Eva, who wasn't here. The Heartstone burned. Rory gasped, her hand flying to her chest. The pendant seared through her shirt, through her skin, a brand of heat that made her vision swim. She yanked the chain over her head, the silver links scalding her fingers, and held the gemstone away from her body. It glowed. A deep crimson pulse, rhythmic as a heartbeat, lighting the clearing in flashes of blood-red. Each pulse came faster than the last, a strobe that made the standing stones seem to dance at the edges of her vision. A portal. The pendant pulsed near portals. The stranger's words echoed back to her, delivered in a voice like autumn leaves skittering across pavement. When the stone burns, run. When it glows, hide. But there was nowhere to hide. The circle was complete. The path was gone. And something was moving between the stones. She saw it first as a shadow between shadows, a darkness deeper than the night around it. It passed behind the northern oak, silent, height impossible to gauge, form impossible to define. Rory held the pendant away from her body like a ward and turned in place, trying to track the movement. It circled. She could hear it now, a soft whisper of something against the wildflowers, too deliberate to be wind, too rhythmic to be animal. Steps. Something was taking steps around the grove's perimeter, just out of clear sight. 'Who's there?' No answer. The whispering stopped. Rory's eyes darted from stone to stone. The orange moon cast shadows between the oaks, black gaps where anything could hide. The wildflowers swayed without wind. And at the base of each standing stone, she realised now, something pale protruded from the earth. She moved closer to the nearest oak, her legs stiff, her breath shallow. The pale shapes resolved themselves as she approached. Hands. Stone hands, emerging from the ground, fingers clawing upward as if the earth itself were drowning. Each oak had one. Eight trees. Eight hands. The one nearest her was smaller than the others. Child-sized. Its fingers were curled inward, the stone weathered smooth in places, detailed enough to show fingernails, knuckles, the subtle ridge of tendons beneath the surface. Rory backed away. Her heel caught on something, and she went down hard, her spine cracking against a root that hadn't been there a moment ago. The pendant flew from her grip, its chain slithering across the wildflowers, and came to rest three feet away, pulsing faster now, its glow approaching a steady blaze. She scrambled toward it. The ground shifted beneath her palms, the wildflowers pressing down, flattening themselves against the earth as if bowing. Her fingers closed around the silver chain. The whispering resumed. Closer now. Much closer. Not circling anymore but approaching, the sound of movement coming from directly behind her, from the gap between two oaks where no gap had existed before. Rory clutched the pendant to her chest and turned, rising to her knees, her back pressed against the warm bark of the tree. A figure stood in the moonlight. It had no face.