Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTYC4EMJGYP9J1V2P85SJAB

The gate to Richmond Park was a black maw in the London night. Aurora Carter slipped through it, the metal cold against her hand. The city’s hum, a constant she’d grown used to, faded behind her with each step on the damp path. She wasn't here for a midnight stroll. The pendant resting against her sternum had been pulsing with a slow, insistent heat for the last hour, a silent demand pulling her west. Her phone’s flashlight cut a nervous path through the undergrowth. The beam caught the reflective eyes of a deer, which vanished without a sound. Even the animals were quiet tonight. The air grew still, the usual rustle of leaves and chirp of insects absent. A silence so complete it felt like a pressure against her eardrums. She knew the way. She’d only been here once, with Eva, on a bright summer afternoon. The Grove had felt magical then, a sun-dappled secret. Now, in the moonless dark, it felt like a mouth waiting to close. The ancient oak standing stones loomed out of the gloom, smooth and grey, taller than she remembered. They didn't look carved so much as grown, their bark like gnarled, ancient skin. Stepping between them was like crossing a threshold. The air changed, growing thick and heavy with the scent of earth and something else, something sweet and cloying. The wildflowers Isolde had spoken of were still here, a carpet of impossible colour in the gloom. Petals the colour of bone and bruised plums, of deep indigo and sickly green, all blooming under a sky with no light for them. The pendant grew warmer, a deep, thrumming heat spreading into her chest. It wasn't just a guide anymore. It was a beacon. Rory stopped in the centre of the clearing, her flashlight beam sweeping over the circle of stones. Nothing. Just the flowers and the oppressive silence. She pulled the chain from under her jumper. The crimson gemstone, usually faintly glowing, now pulsed with a visible inner light, like a trapped heart. It cast a red shimmer on her fingers. A sound broke the silence. It wasn't a snap of a twig or the hoot of an owl. It was a single, clear note like a stone dropped into a deep well. The sound resonated, hanging in the dead air long after it should have faded. Rory swung the flashlight towards the source, the beam trembling slightly. Nothing. Just the dark, impassive faces of the stones. Her heart hammered a little faster against her ribs. Cool-headed, she told herself. It’s just the wind. Or a fox. They make strange noises. But there was no wind. She took a slow breath, the sweet scent of the flowers catching in her throat. It was too sweet, thick and cloying like funeral parlour flowers left in the sun for a week. She scanned the clearing again, this time more slowly, from the edges inward. A flicker of motion at the base of the largest stone. Not an animal. It was a shadow that moved against other shadows, detaching and then melting back into the darkness. She froze, the beam of her torch fixed on the spot. Her knuckles were white around the phone. Nothing there. The pendant was hot now, almost uncomfortably so. She let it drop, the silver chain stinging her skin. This was wrong. All of it. The silence, the heat, the single, impossible note. She pulled out her phone to check the time. Maybe it wasn't as late as she thought. The screen lit up, casting her face in a pale, ghostly blue. 11:47 PM. She frowned, thumb hovering over the screen to check her messages. She looked up, scanned the grove again for a full minute, the hair on her arms prickling. The feeling of being watched was a physical weight, a pressure between her shoulder blades. She looked back down at her phone. 11:47 PM. The numbers hadn't changed. She stared at them, her mind refusing to process it. She locked the screen and unlocked it again. The same time. A cold dread, sharp and acidic, coiled in her stomach. The time in the Grove. It didn't just move differently. It could stop. The sweet scent of the flowers was gone, replaced by the smell of ozone and wet stone, like the air after a lightning strike. The colours of the petals seemed to deepen in the gloom, the whites taking on a pearlescent sheen, the purples darkening to a flat, lightless black. They were no longer just blooming. They were drinking in the darkness. Another sound. A soft, scraping noise. Like fingernails being drawn slowly across bark. Rory backed away, one step, then another, her eyes fixed on the standing stone where she’d seen the shadow move. Her cool-headed intellect was screaming at her to run, to get out of this place, but her legs felt heavy, mired in the unnatural air. The pendant against her skin was a brand. *They are not like us, Eva had said, her voice a memory. They don't see the world the same way. Their rules are not our rules.* A shape uncurled from behind the stone. It was tall and thin, a spindly silhouette that seemed to absorb the faint light around it. It moved with a liquid grace that was not human, its limbs bending at angles that made her own bones ache in sympathy. It stepped clear of the stone, and the moonlight, weak as it was, caught it. Its skin was the pale, waxy white of a grub. It was naked, its form sexless and smooth. But it was the face that held her, that froze the scream in her throat. There were no eyes, no nose, just a smooth, featureless oval of skin. And below it, a mouth. A thin, perfect slit that opened too wide, revealing not teeth, but a row of bristle-like filaments, twitching. The voice wasn't a sound. It was a vibration in the bones of her skull, a thought that was not her own. *Little bird. Little Laila. You have brought us a key.* Rory’s breath hitched. Laila. A name she hadn't heard in years, a name from a life she had fled. It knew. It knew her. The creature’s head tilted, a gesture of curiosity that was infinitely more terrifying than any snarl. Its long, pale arm rose, a finger pointing not at her face, but at her chest. At the pendant. The heat from the gemstone intensified into a searing agony. *Give it to us,* the thought-voice resonated, calm and devoid of all emotion. *Let us open the door.*