AI Rory kept her torch low and her shoulders square as Richmond Park swallowed the last of the streetlights behind her. The city still breathed somewhere beyond the trees—distant tyres on wet roads, a siren that rose and fell like it couldn’t pick a direction—but the path in front of her held nothing except black mud and the pale ribs of roots.
The Heartstone pendant lay under her jumper. The silver chain pressed cold against her collarbone until it didn’t.
Warmth nudged through the fabric, not like skin against skin, but like a mug held too close .
“Right. So you weren’t having a laugh,” she muttered, and her voice sounded wrong in the open night, like someone had put it through a cheap speaker.
Her phone screen showed 00:17. The battery sat at twenty-one per cent. No signal. She tilted it, then tucked it away.
“Of course.”
She had come because the pendant had done it again above Silas’ bar—one steady pulse of heat while she washed a pint glass in the cramped sink behind the counter, the crimson gem catching the bar’s yellow light and throwing it back like a bloodshot eye. Yu-Fei’s delivery bag had still been slung over her shoulder, smelling of garlic and star anise, and she had stood there with her hands in suds and felt the warmth build until it hurt.
Hel portal, the old note had called it. One line, typed on a card that had arrived without a return address, tucked into the same envelope as the pendant.
When near a Hel portal, it warms.
No signature. No explanation. Just that sentence and the weight of the stone.
Rory had laughed then too. She hadn’t laughed when the warmth returned, stronger, and her reflection in the pub mirror looked like someone else for half a blink —eyes too bright, mouth slack, a stranger wearing her face.
She had grabbed her coat. She had told Silas she needed air.
Now the air here tasted of wet bark and something sweet that didn’t belong in February.
The path narrowed and then vanished, grass taking over in a soft, unbroken carpet. Rory slowed. Her boots sank a little, like the earth held its breath and wouldn’t let go.
A stand of oaks rose ahead, thick trunks twisting as if they’d grown around old arguments. Between them, pale shapes caught her torch beam.
Standing stones.
Not the neat sort on postcards. These looked like someone had dragged ancient oaks from the ground, stripped them, and left the bones upright. Bark clung in places, grey and furred. Lichen made maps on their faces.
Rory stopped before the nearest one. The air near it felt thin, like she’d stepped into a doorway where someone had closed the windows.
She slid her fingers beneath her jumper and pulled the Heartstone out. The crimson gem sat in her palm, thumbnail-sized and too warm. A faint inner glow stirred in it, no stronger than the red dot of a cigarette in the dark.
“So this was the plan,” she whispered at it . “Bring me to some haunted gardening project.”
Her laugh died before it cleared her throat. The park held silence , but not clean silence . Something lay under it, like pressure in ears before a flight.
Rory stepped closer to the stones. The torch beam caught the edges and broke, making shadows fold in places they shouldn’t fold. Her pupils fought the dark.
“Alright, Aurora,” she told herself . “Go on.”
The name tasted formal in her mouth. She’d been Rory since Cardiff. Since her mother had called her down for tea and her father had paced the kitchen with case notes and impatience. Aurora belonged to forms and passports. To people who wanted distance.
A whisper slid through the trees.
“Laila.”
Rory froze so hard her ankles ached.
The whisper came again, closer, softer, like someone leaning in to share a secret.
“Laila.”
“That’s not my name,” she snapped into the dark, and her voice came back flatter than it should have, as if the grove had swallowed the edges.
A dry crack sounded off to her right. Not a footstep—too sharp, too small. Like a twig snapping between fingers. The torch beam swung, cutting over a cluster of ferns. Nothing stood there. No fox. No dog. Just leaves trembling as if something had brushed past.
Rory kept the torch steady.
“Show yourself, yeah?” She hated how the words came out. Not brave. Not even angry. More like she’d walked into the wrong flat and needed someone to admit it.
The pendant warmed again, a slow, steady pulse against her skin. Heat in time with a heart that wasn’t hers.
She took a breath that didn’t reach her lungs and stepped between the stones.
Cold slid over her face, not wind, more like the drop in temperature when a fridge door opened. The torch beam seemed to dim without changing. Her boots met firmer ground.
Behind her, the park’s faint noises cut off.
Rory turned, torch up.
The stones still stood behind her, but the gap between them looked narrower, the way a mouth looked narrower when someone held their teeth together.
She stepped back once. Her heel bumped stone.
“No. Don’t do that.” She put her free hand out, fingers splayed, and touched the standing stone beside her. The surface felt like dried skin . Too smooth in places. Too warm.
A scent drifted past her face—beer and cigarette smoke and the sting of disinfectant.
She swung the torch left, then right.
The grove opened around her, a clearing that had no business existing in a park this crowded. Wildflowers spread across the ground in thick patches, blooms in whites and purples and reds that looked fresh enough to have been cut that afternoon. A thin mist hugged the grass at ankle height, turning her boots into dark shapes floating over milk.
“You’re kidding,” she breathed.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Relief punched through her ribs. She yanked it out, thumbed the screen.
No signal. No notifications. The battery icon flickered between twenty-one and twenty per cent like it couldn’t decide.
The buzzing came again.
From somewhere in the clearing.
Rory lowered the phone and listened.
A mobile ringtone trilled, tinny and familiar , the default one she’d never bothered changing.
Her own ringtone.
She pivoted, torch beam skimming over flowers and mist. The ringtone sounded from her left, then from behind her, then from in front, as if it bounced around the clearing without landing.
“Alright, piss off.” Rory forced her voice up. “I’m here. You’ve got me. Stop with the schoolyard crap.”
The ringtone cut off.
Something moved at the edge of the torch beam—tall and thin, a line of darker dark among the trees beyond the clearing. Rory snapped the beam over.
Nothing. Just trunks, leafless branches, a tangle of winter.
Her eyes watered. She blinked hard, and the pendant’s glow pulsed against her palm, steady as a metronome.
She put the Heartstone back under her jumper and gripped the chain at her throat like it could keep her anchored.
“Who sent you?” she asked the trees. “The pendant. Who sent it? I’m not playing games.”
A laugh answered her. Not loud. Not even full. Just a small exhale that carried amusement without a mouth.
It came from close. Too close.
Rory whipped round.
Her torch beam hit empty air, then a patch of flowers. The blooms bowed, petals flattening as if a weight had passed over them. Mist swirled in a slow spiral, the sort you saw in water when someone stirred.
Rory took a step back. Her boot scuffed the ground. The sound came out wrong—thick, muffled, like she’d scuffed carpet, not soil.
“You’re there,” she said, throat tight. “I saw that.”
The pendant pressed heat against her sternum, not pulsing now, but holding like a hand .
Rory’s mind ran through mundane explanations with the speed of panic: deer, fox, a prank, some art installation, her own brain shorting out from lack of sleep.
Then a new smell slid in, sharp and metallic, the scent of coins held too long in a fist.
Her left wrist itched under her sleeve. The crescent scar from her childhood accident started to prickle as if something had traced it with a fingernail.
Rory pulled her sleeve up. The skin around the scar looked the same, pale under the torchlight, but the itch refused to stop.
“Don’t touch me.” She aimed the torch at her own wrist, then into the mist around her feet, as if she might catch fingers in the act.
A soft patter sounded behind her, like rain hitting leaves.
No rain touched her face. The trees above held still.
The patter continued, slow, careful.
Rory turned and lifted the torch higher.
Tiny shapes dotted the dark air behind her, drifting down.
Petals.
White flower petals fell from nothing. They floated as if they weighed more than they should, landing on the grass with small, wet sounds.
Her throat tightened.
“This is a park.” Her voice scraped. “This is Richmond Park.”
A line of petals formed on the ground, not scattered, but placed, like someone had made a path with them . The line started at the edge of the clearing and ran towards the trees, where the darkness thickened.
Rory didn’t move. She watched as another petal dropped, then another, each one landing with intent.
“Is this where you want me?” She kept her torch trained on the petal path. “Because if it is, you can jog on.”
The mist at her ankles pulled away from the petal line, clearing it like a stage.
From somewhere beyond the trees, a voice rose—quiet, raw, too familiar .
“Rory?”
Her chest clenched. She knew that voice . She’d heard it in Cardiff on rainy mornings when she didn’t want to get out of bed, and in London on nights she’d pretended she didn’t miss home.
Her mother.
Rory’s hand tightened on the torch until her knuckles shone.
“No.” The word came out as breath. She swallowed and forced it louder. “No. Jennifer’s at home. You’re not—”
“Rory, love.” The voice carried a Welsh lilt that hit her like a fist. “Come here a second.”
Rory took one step without deciding to. Her boot landed on a white petal and crushed it. The sound snapped like a bone. She stopped, stomach turning.
“Don’t use her voice,” she whispered. Her eyes burned. “That’s not yours.”
The laugh came again, closer, threaded with something that sounded like satisfaction . The flowers around her stirred, not from wind, but from something passing through them .
Rory forced her gaze away from the petal path and turned back towards the stones.
The gap between them had shrunk again. The stones leaned in, their surfaces catching the torchlight with a sheen like sweat.
Rory moved towards them, quick steps, torch bouncing. She reached the gap and slid her shoulder through.
Stone scraped her coat. Cold bit her arm. She pushed harder.
The space held her, pressed on both sides, not squeezing her ribs but refusing to give .
“No, no—” Rory shoved, twisting, and her pendant flared hot enough to make her hiss. The heat spread across her chest in a sudden bloom, and the crimson gem’s glow lit her jumper from beneath like a coal.
Behind her, the voice of her mother dropped into a whisper .
“Rory. Look at you. Always running.”
Rory jerked her head round.
The mist gathered in front of her, thicker now, rising from the ground to waist height. It curled and folded, taking a shape that hinted at shoulders, at a head, at a posture she recognised from childhood: hands on hips, chin tilted in that tired patience.
Rory kept her torch pointed at it, the beam carving through mist and catching nothing solid.
“Step back,” she warned. “Step back or I’ll—”
Her torch flickered . The beam dimmed, flared, dimmed again.
The pendant burned against her skin, and the standing stones pressed harder.
Rory’s phone buzzed in her pocket once more, a sharp vibration that felt like a pulse from something buried .
She couldn’t pull it out. She couldn’t get her arms free.
She breathed through her teeth.
“Alright.” Her voice shook and she hated it. “Alright. What do you want from me?”