Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTXTE6A2S5YMM7THQRZRXYG

The standing stones rose against the night sky like blackened teeth. Rory counted them twice. Seven oaks, twisted into shapes no natural growth could produce, their trunks carved with symbols she almost recognised. Almost. The patterns slipped away whenever she tried to focus on them, sliding to the edge of her vision like oil on water. She checked her phone. 11:47 PM. The message had been clear: come to the grove at midnight. Come alone. Come if you want answers about the pendant. The Heartstone hung cold against her collarbone, a dead weight on its silver chain. No pulse. No warmth. Whatever had drawn her here, the stone itself seemed indifferent to it now. Richmond Park had been easy enough to navigate in daylight. She'd made this walk a dozen times, knew the paths, knew which gates locked at dusk and which stayed open for the deer. But tonight the familiar routes had unravelled behind her like thread from a spool, and by the time she'd found the ancient oaks marking the grove's boundary, she'd been walking for forty minutes longer than she should have. The message had come from an unknown number. No name. No identification. Just coordinates and those five words: answers about the pendant. She should have deleted it. Should have blocked the number and gone to bed and shown up for her delivery shift tomorrow like none of this had ever happened. Instead, she stood at the edge of a clearing she'd never seen before, watching her breath fog in air that smelled of summer flowers and wet copper. Wildflowers carpeted the ground between the stones. Bluebells. Foxglove. Things with white petals that glowed faintly in the darkness, their stems bending toward her like they were watching. Watching. Rory shook the thought away. Plants didn't watch. Plants didn't have eyes. But something did. She felt it between her shoulder blades, that prickle of awareness that someone was standing just behind her, close enough to touch. She spun, fist raised, heart hammering against her ribs. Empty grass. Empty stones. Empty trees. "Hello?" Her voice came out thin. Reedy. It didn't echo the way it should have in an open space. Instead, the sound seemed to sink into the earth, swallowed by the flowers and the dark. The pendant stayed cold. No portal nearby, then. No Hel breach. Just her and the wind and the growing certainty that she'd made a terrible mistake. She turned back toward the way she'd come. The path was gone. Rory blinked. Rubbed her eyes. Blinked again. The standing stones formed a perfect circle around her now. Seven trunks, equally spaced, each one facing her with those carved symbols writhing across their bark. She must have walked deeper into the grove without realising it. Sleepwalking. Autopilot. Something. But she hadn't moved. She was certain she hadn't moved. The flowers at her feet had grown taller. She stepped back, and her heel caught on something soft. She stumbled, caught herself, looked down. A doll. No — a figure. A crude humanoid shape woven from twigs and bound with what looked like hair. Human hair. Its head was turned toward her, and where its face should have been, someone had painted a single eye in red. The pendant flared hot against her chest. Rory scrambled backward, putting distance between herself and the thing on the ground. Her hand found the stone through her shirt, fingers wrapping around its familiar weight. It pulsed now, a steady beat like a second heart, and its crimson glow threw long shadows across the clearing. Shadows that moved wrong. She watched one of them detach itself from the base of a standing stone. It crept toward her across the flowers, shapeless and dark, and where it passed, the petals turned black and curled. Another shadow pulled free from the tree to her left. Then another. Then another. They didn't have eyes. They didn't have faces. But she felt them looking all the same — felt their attention like fingers dragging across her skin, cold and curious and hungry in a way that had nothing to do with food. Rory backed up until her shoulders hit oak bark. The shadows spread across the clearing, pooling between the stones, cutting off every direction of escape. The pendant burned now. She could feel its heat through her shirt, could see its glow intensifying, turning the shadows around her into sharp-edged silhouettes that flinched back from its light. One of them lunged. Rory threw herself sideways. The shadow passed through the space where she'd been standing, and where it touched the ground, the earth hissed and smoked. She ran. The grove shouldn't have been that large. She'd seen the whole of it from the boundary — a clearing maybe fifty feet across, ringed by seven trees. But she ran for thirty seconds, forty, a full minute, and the standing stones never got any closer. The wildflowers tangled around her ankles. Branches grabbed at her hair. The shadows kept pace behind her, silent and patient, like they knew something she didn't. Like they knew she wasn't going anywhere. Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Rory didn't stop running. She pulled it out, glanced at the screen, and nearly tripped over her own feet. The message was from her own number. YOU BROKE THE RULES, it read. YOU CAME ALONE. But she had come alone. She'd followed the instructions exactly. The second message came through before she could process the first. YOU WERE NEVER ALONE. The shadows closed in. Rory felt them before she saw them — that cold pressure building at the edges of her vision, that certainty that something was breathing right beside her ear. She spun, pendant raised, and its crimson light caught the edge of something that made her blood lock in her veins. A face. A face hanging in the darkness, disconnected from any body, watching her with eyes that reflected no light at all. It smiled, and its smile was too wide, too sharp, too full of teeth that belonged in no human mouth. "Found you," it whispered. The Heartstone blazed. Rory's vision went white. When it cleared, she was alone again. The face was gone. The shadows had retreated to the bases of the standing stones, and the grove was silent save for her own ragged breathing. But the flowers at her feet had all turned black. And standing in the centre of the clearing, exactly where she'd been standing moments before, was another twig figure. Bound with hair. Painted with a single red eye. This one was holding a tiny silver chain. Rory's hand flew to her throat. The pendant was gone.