Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTXXJBM38EG0W2315VPX78Q

Rory pushed through the gap in the hawthorn hedge. The Heartstone Pendant struck her collarbone with a slap of heat that burned through the Golden Empress polo shirt. She stumbled onto the grass, trainers sinking into soil that held too much give for late October. Richmond Park stretched beyond the boundary, but here between the ancient oak standing stones, the air wore a different viscosity. She checked her phone. Eleven-fifteen PM. The screen died as she thumbed it, battery draining from eighty percent to nothing in the space of a blink. She thumbed the power button. Dead weight in her palm. She pocketed the device. Her breath plumed in silver clouds, though the grove pressed humid fingers against her face. Wildflowers bruised the darkness with impossible color—bluebells and poppies and foxgloves that had no business blooming outside June, especially not in the Richmond brownfield. Rory touched the pendant through her uniform jacket. The crimson gemstone throbbed against her palm, matching her pulse, then outracing it. She had followed its pull here from the flat above Silas' bar, abandoning the dinner rush, abandoning the moped with its insulated boxes of kung pao chicken growing cold on the pavement. The benefactor who'd slipped the silver chain under her door hadn't included instructions, only the stone and a note that read: When it burns, find the grove. It burned now. It cooked her skin through the synthetic fabric. Rory moved toward the center of the clearing. Her shadow stretched across the wildflowers, elongated and thin. She stopped. The shadow continued moving. It stretched toward the standing stones, fingers of darkness reaching for the oak bark. She snapped her head around. The shadow snapped back to her feet, docile. False. The crescent scar on her left wrist ached. She rubbed the ridge of tissue, that childhood souvenir of broken glass and Cardiff hospital antiseptic. The ache deepened to a throb that matched the pendant's rhythm. She wasn't alone. The recognition crawled up her neck, separate from the October chill. London lay three hundred yards east—but no planes groaned overhead. No traffic hissed from the A3. The city had evacuated its noise, leaving a vacuum that rang with high-pitched silence. Rory turned in a slow circle. The standing stones marked the boundary, or so the note had implied. But the gaps between them seemed narrower than when she'd entered. The hawthorn gap had sealed itself with brambles that twisted like barbed wire, humming with subsonic vibration. "Laila." The whisper came from the flowers. Rory froze. "That's not my name." "Not yet." The grove breathed the words into her ear. She walked deeper. The pendant guided her, pulling the chain taut against her neck until the links bit into her skin. She passed between two stones. They smelled of copper and old rain. On the other side, the wildflowers grew taller, knee-high, then waist-high. They brushed against her delivery jacket with the persistence of grasping hands. She swatted them away. They left pollen stains on her sleeves that glowed faintly, like crushed fireflies, burning phosphorescent holes in the fabric. A sound cracked behind her. Not a twig. Something jointed popping back into place, wet and deliberate. She spun. The standing stones stood closer. She hadn't walked back. They had walked forward. The ancient oaks creaked, wood grinding against wood with the sound of teeth gnashing, though no wind stirred the leaves. The trunks breathed. She watched them expand and contract, bark rippling like muscle. The pendant's glow intensified. The deep crimson light leaked between her fingers, illuminating the grove in monochrome red. In that light, the wildflowers weren't flowers. They were digits, reaching. Rory stepped backward. Her heel struck stone. The boundary stone hadn't been there a moment ago. She pressed against it. The oak surface yielded. It expanded and contracted, warm and damp, a ribcage under bark. She jerked away. The scar on her wrist split open. Blood welled, black in the red light, and dripped onto the soil. The ground drank it. The earth gurgled. Whispers rose from the flowers. They spoke in the cadence of her mother's Welsh lullabies, but the words were teeth and thorns, clicking and tearing. Rory clamped her hands over her ears. The sound came from inside her skull, vibrating through her jaw. She looked at the standing stones. They formed a perfect circle now, no gaps, no exits. The grove had shrunk to the size of her flat above the bar, then smaller, compressing the air. The oak trees leaned inward, branches knitting a canopy that blocked the moon, creating a dome of wood and leaf. "Carter." The voice came from behind her left shoulder. She didn't turn. Couldn't. Her vertebrae locked. "Malphora." Something moved at the edge of the crimson light. Tall. Bent. Composed of angles that made her eyes water when she tried to trace them, geometry that belonged to different physics. It stepped between the wildflowers, and the flowers bowed away, creating a path. It stepped closer, and the pendant went cold. The heat vanished. The gemstone turned to ice against her chest, frost spiderwebbing across the silver chain, crystallizing against her throat. Rory's breath stopped. The thing didn't breathe at all. It simply occupied the space where the air had been, smelling of cold storage and verdigris and the bottom of ancient wells. Her watch ticked. She glanced at it. The hands spun backward, whirring like insect wings, blurring into a solid line. Three hours lost. Three minutes gained. Time in the grove moved differently, stretched like taffy or compressed like coal into diamond. Her hair brushed her shoulder. She hadn't moved her head. The strands shifted on their own, pulled toward the thing like iron filings to a magnet. The scar on her wrist burned. She covered it with her hand. Blood seeped through her fingers, hot and slick. The thing in the dark tilted its head. The motion created a sound like wet leather tearing, like a scalp separating from skull. Rory backed against the breathing stone. The bark softened behind her, becoming yielding, becoming membrane. She pushed forward, but the wildflowers had tangled her ankles in loops of stem and petal. They weren't plants anymore. They were chains, cinching tighter with every heartbeat. The pendant shattered. The silver chain snapped with a twang that cut the air. The crimson gemstone fell into the soil and was swallowed instantly, pulled under by roots that moved like tongues. Darkness rushed in, absolute and hungry. In the black, something opened its mouth wide enough to swallow the standing stones. The breath that washed over Rory's face smelled of bluebells and blood and her mother's perfume. She reached for the scar on her wrist. Her fingers found only smooth skin. The crescent mark had moved. It pulsed now on her throat, opening into a smile.