Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTXVZNPFRD4GN1NSAZ02CFD

The air tasted of copper and ozone. Rory pulled her jacket tighter, the leather creaking in the silence. Richmond Park stretched out around her, a black ocean of grass and ancient boughs, but she had crossed the invisible line ten minutes ago. The familiar hum of the city—sirens, distant traffic, the ceaseless drone of London—had evaporated. Here, the quiet was heavy. It pressed against her eardrums like deep water. She checked the glowing face of her phone. No signal. Just a pale battery icon blinking in warning. She shoved it into her pocket. The map Silas had drawn was crumpled in her hand. ‘Isolde’s Grove,’ he’d scrawled, the ink bleeding where his hand had shaken. He hadn't wanted to give it up. People didn’t come here. Not anymore. Rory looked up. The standing stones loomed out of the mist, jagged teeth biting into the night sky. They were massive oaks, really, petrified into stone by centuries of old magic or something worse. They formed a rough circle, marking the boundary. She stepped between two towering trunks. The temperature dropped. Instant frostbite against her skin. The breath hitched in her throat, fogging as she exhaled. "Okay," she whispered. The sound was swallowed by the trees. The Heartstone Pendant beneath her shirt flared. A sharp spike of heat against her sternum. She clutched the silver chain through the fabric of her top, the deep crimson gem pulsing in rhythm with a second, slower heartbeat. It hadn't done that since the night Eva gave it to her. She moved deeper into the clearing. The flora was wrong. That was the only word for it. It was late October, the dead of autumn, yet the grove was a riot of colour. Foxgloves and bluebells carpeted the ground in thick, choking mats. They glowed with a faint, sickly luminescence—ultraviolet pinks and toxic greens that hurt the eyes if stared at for too long. Rory stepped carefully, placing her boots on the bare earth between the flowers. They weren't blooming; they were vibrating. A low-frequency buzz she felt in her teeth more than she heard. She paused. The pendant throbbed again. Harder. This was the spot. Silas said the energy converged here. She knelt, ignoring the damp soaking into her jeans. She brushed her thumb over the small crescent scar on her left wrist, a nervous habit she couldn't break. Focus. The ground here felt soft. Too soft. Like rotting meat. A sound snapped behind her. Rory spun, hand flying to the pocket of her jacket, fingers wrapping around the handle of a tactical flashlight. Nothing. Just the standing stones, silent and judging. The mist curled around their bases like ghostly fingers. "Wind," she said aloud. Her voice sounded thin. "Just the wind in the branches." But there was no wind. The air was dead still. The leaves on the stunted trees at the perimeter didn't so much as twitch. She turned back to the ground. The Heartstone was searing now, nearly burning a hole through her shirt. She needed to dig. She needed to find what the stone was screaming at. She pulled a folding trowel from her bag. Metal bit into the earth. It came up black and wet. *Thump.* Rory froze. The trowel stopped mid-scoop. *Thump.* It came from beneath her. Not the ground shifting. A solid impact. Like a fist knocking on a door from the other side. She scrambled back, dropping the tool. It hit a stone and clattered, the noise deafening in the enclosed space. The wildflowers nearest the hole she’d made began to writhe. They weren't moving in the breeze. They were twisting, stems knotting together, petals opening wide to reveal centres that weren't pollen, but raw, red flesh. "Christ." Rory scrambled to her feet, backing away toward the southern edge of the circle. The silence broke. It started as a whisper. A thousand voices overlapping, speaking a language that scratched at the primal part of her brain. It wasn't coming from the woods. It was coming from the stones themselves. She looked up at the ancient oaks. The bark seemed to ripple. Movement in her periphery. Left. She snapped her head around. A shadow detached itself from the darkness of the tree line. It was tall, impossibly thin, with limbs that jointed in too many places. Rory didn't wait. She ran. Her boots slipped on the unnatural foliage. She skidded, catching herself on the rough bark of a standing stone. It felt warm. Warm and pulsing, like the skin of a living animal. She shoved off it, sprinting for the gap in the stones she’d entered through. The gap was gone. Where the two massive trunks had stood, there was now only a solid wall of intertwining branches, thorny and dense. The path had sealed itself. Rory slammed into the barrier, thorns tearing at her jacket, scratching her cheek. "No. No, no, no." She pounded her fist against the wood. It gave slightly, spongy and resistant, then bounced back. The whispering grew louder. It wasn't words anymore. It was laughter. High-pitched, childlike laughter that echoed from every direction. She spun around, back pressed against the living wall. The figure in the trees stepped into the clearing. It had no face. Just a smooth, pale oval where features should be. It wore a suit that looked like it had been stitched together from rags, hanging loose on its skeletal frame. Rory's hand shook as she raised the flashlight. She clicked the button. The beam hit the creature and dissolved. The light simply... stopped. It hit the thing’s chest and vanished, swallowed by the darkness radiating from it. The pendant against her chest went ice cold. The heat vanished instantly, replaced by a chill that seeped into her ribs. The thing tilted its head. It raised one long, spindly arm and pointed a finger—not at her, but at the ground beneath her feet. Rory looked down. The wildflowers were gone. The black earth was boiling. Hands—small, translucent, child-sized—were pushing up through the soil. Dozens of them. Hundreds. They grabbed at her ankles. Cold, slippery fingers clamping onto her boots. "Get off!" She kicked out, her heel connecting with something solid. A hand shattered like glass, but two more took its place. The faceless figure took a step forward. Its movement was wrong, jerky, like a film skipping frames. Rory yanked her leg free, tearing the sole of her boot. She lunged sideways, away from the grasping hands and the advancing figure. She had to climb. If the path was blocked, she went up. She grabbed a low-hanging branch from the trapped wall and hauled herself up. Thorns raked her hands, lines of fire burning across her palms. She gritted her teeth, kicking furiously at the tree trunk, finding purchase on knots and gnarls. Below, the hands were clustering, waving in the air like sea anemones. The faceless thing stopped below her. It stood at the base of the tree, looking up. Then, the bark began to move. Rory froze, hanging from the branch. The tree was groaning, wood grinding against wood. The branch she held onto thickened, the wood shifting under her grip, trying to engulf her hand. She scrambled higher, swinging her leg over a higher limb. The laughter stopped. The grove fell into a silence so absolute it rang in her ears. High in the tree, Rory clung to the trunk, her chest heaving. She looked down. The figure was gone. The hands were gone. The flowers were back, perfectly still, glowing innocently. But the standing stones had turned. Every single one of them. They were no longer facing inward. They were facing her. And in the centre of the grove, where she had been standing a moment ago, a tear in the air was opening. A slit of absolute blackness, darker than the night, wider than a man. The Heartstone pendant, dangling from her neck, began to swing on its chain. Not from her movement. It was pointing at the tear. Pulling toward it. The cold wind from the slit hit her face, carrying the smell of decay.