Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTYRQM8387X6Q66GEDHBVYG

The standing stones rose against the night sky like the ribs of something long dead and incompletely buried. Rory checked her phone. 11:47 PM. The screen's glow seemed feeble against the darkness pressing in from all sides, and the battery icon had turned an angry red sometime during her walk from the bus stop. She thumbed the screen off and tucked it into her jacket pocket. The Heartstone pendant hung cold against her sternum, its silver chain biting into the back of her neck. She'd felt its warmth fade three hours ago, that subtle pulse of heat that had drawn her across London like a thread pulling through fabric. Now it sat dormant against her skin, and she stood at the edge of Richmond Park with nothing but dead warmth and a growing knot in her stomach. The grove waited beyond the ancient oaks. She could see the gap between two of the standing stones, a slice of darkness marginally deeper than the darkness surrounding it. She shouldn't have come alone. The thought arrived with the clarity of truth, and Rory pushed it aside. Eva had been clear — the pendant's warmth meant a Hel portal was opening somewhere nearby. The pendant had led her here. That was the plan. That was the whole reason she'd taken the late shift, told Silas she'd be late tomorrow, caught the last bus out to Richmond. But the pendant had gone cold the moment she'd stepped off at the stop near the park entrance. Wind stirred the grass at her feet. Somewhere beyond the trees, an owl called — a low, resonant sound that seemed to come from much too far away. Rory stepped between the standing stones. The air changed. Not colder, not warmer — different. Thinner, somehow, as if she'd stepped into a room where the atmosphere had been partially drained. The sounds of the city that had followed her from the bus stop, distant traffic and the hum of streetlights, vanished entirely. Her own breathing seemed muffled, contained. The grove spread before her, a perfect circle of wildflowers that shouldn't have been blooming in October. White petals caught light from no visible source, and the stems swayed in a breeze she couldn't feel against her skin. She took another step. The grass beneath her boots made no sound. "Hello?" Her voice came out wrong — flattened, stripped of echo. The word existed only directly in front of her face and then died. Rory walked forward. The wildflowers gave way to bare earth after perhaps twenty paces, and the trees that ringed the clearing seemed to lean inward, their branches tangling overhead into a lattice that blocked out the stars. The moon had been half-full when she'd entered the park. Now she couldn't find it at all. She pulled out her phone again. No signal. The time read 11:47 PM. Same as before. She'd been walking for at least a minute. The time should have changed. The pendant remained cold against her chest. Rory reached up and touched the gemstone, running her thumb across its smooth surface. Nothing. No warmth, no pulse, no faint inner glow. Whatever had drawn her here had either stopped or was hiding. She turned in a slow circle, taking in the grove. The standing stones were gone. The gap she'd walked through had sealed itself, leaving only unbroken tree line in every direction. "Okay." She kept her voice level. "Okay. This is fine." A branch cracked somewhere to her left. Rory spun toward the sound. Nothing moved among the trees. The stillness had a quality she couldn't name — not the ordinary stillness of a forest at night, but something held, deliberate, as if everything around her had paused and was waiting. She started walking. No point standing still. If she'd come in from the north, south should lead her out. The trees weren't that thick, and Richmond Park was crisscrossed with paths. Someone would be walking a dog, jogging, something. It wasn't that late. The ground sloped downward. Rory hadn't remembered any hills in the grove, but she kept moving, picking her way between the trees. Moss carpeted the earth here, silent under her boots. The wildflowers had vanished, replaced by pale mushrooms that grew in perfect circles, their caps luminescent in the darkness. The air grew warmer. Not the warmth of the pendant — she would have welcomed that. This was damp and organic, the heat of a greenhouse or a closed room. Rory unzipped her jacket, her skin prickling with sweat despite the October chill she'd felt outside the stones. Another sound. This time to her right. She didn't turn. Kept walking. Whatever was making the noise wanted her to look, and looking felt like exactly the wrong thing to do. The mushrooms thickened. Their glow strengthened, casting her shadow long and distorted across the ground. Her shadow moved wrong — the arm that hung at her side in the light stretched at an impossible angle, fingers elongated into something with too many joints. Rory stopped walking. Her shadow stopped a half-second later. "Someone's there." She didn't phrase it as a question. The words fell into the warm air and hung there, unmoving. Silence answered her. Then, from directly behind: "You came." Rory whirled. The trees stood empty, their branches motionless. The mushrooms glowed steadily. The moss showed no footprints, no disturbed earth, no evidence that anyone had ever stood where she now looked. But she'd heard it. A voice — low, genderless, familiar in a way that made her stomach clench. Not Eva's voice. Not anyone's voice she could place. "Who's there?" The trees seemed closer than they'd been a moment ago. The gap between their trunks had narrowed, branches extending toward her like fingers reaching across a table. "You weren't supposed to come alone." The voice came from everywhere now. From the moss beneath her feet, the mushrooms, the bark of the surrounding oaks. Rory backed up until her shoulders hit a trunk. The bark was warm against her spine. Pulsing faintly, like skin. She pushed away from the tree, stumbling forward. Her boot caught on something — a root, a stone — and she went down hard on one knee. The moss cushioned her fall, but her hands sank into it up to the wrists, and when she tried to pull them free, the ground held fast. "Let go." The moss released her. Rory scrambled backward, her heart slamming against her ribs. She got her feet under her and ran. The trees blurred past. Branches whipped at her face and arms, leaving thin lines of fire across her skin. She didn't slow down. The pendant bounced against her chest, still cold, useless, and she wanted to rip it off and throw it into the darkness. A root caught her ankle. Rory fell. The earth rushed up to meet her, and she rolled, coming up against something hard and unyielding. She lay still for a moment, breathing hard, tasting copper where she'd bitten her tongue. The thing she'd hit was warm. She sat up slowly. Her hand found the object beside her — smooth, curved, the size of a man's rib. Bone. Bleached clean and arranged in a perfect semi-circle. More bones extended beyond it. Ribs, vertebrae, a partial skull still bearing teeth that gleamed in the mushroom-light. The skeleton had been laid out with care, each bone in its proper place, as if someone had been in the process of assembling it when they'd stopped. Or waiting to add to it. Rory rose to her feet. Her hands shook. She could feel the edges of herself fraying, panic nibbling at the cool rationality she'd always prided herself on. She'd come here because the pendant warmed. That was the only reason. The pendant had led her toward Hel portals, toward danger, and she'd followed it like a thread through a labyrinth. Only now the thread had snapped, and she was lost in a grove that shouldn't exist, surrounded by trees that moved when she wasn't looking and bones that had been arranged with deliberate care. A sound rose from somewhere deeper in the forest. Humming. The tune was old, something her grandmother might have sung. A lullaby. The notes drifted between the trees, unhurried, patient. Coming closer. Rory's back hit another tree. She hadn't meant to retreat. Her legs had made the decision without consulting her brain. The humming stopped. In the silence that followed, she became aware of a new sound — soft, wet, regular. Breathing. Close. Directly to her left. She turned her head. The thing stood not three feet away. It had the shape of a person, roughly — two arms, two legs, a head — but the proportions were wrong. Limbs too long, joints bending in directions they shouldn't. Its skin was the colour of old milk, stretched tight over a frame that seemed made of angles rather than curves. It had no eyes, no nose, only a mouth that opened slightly as she watched, revealing teeth that went back further than any mouth should allow. "You came," it said, in the same voice as before. "We've been waiting." Rory's hand found the pendant. The gemstone flared hot against her palm — burning hot, suddenly alive with the crimson glow she'd almost forgotten. The creature took a step toward her. The pendant pulsed. And the creature stopped. Its eyeless face turned toward the gemstone, and something flickered across its features — recognition, perhaps. Or hunger. "Where did you get that?" Rory didn't answer. She held the pendant tighter, the metal biting into her fingers, the heat spreading up her wrist and into her arm. The creature's head tilted. A smile spread across its face, too wide, too knowing. "It doesn't matter," it said. "You're already here. You came alone. And time moves differently in the grove, little carrier. Your people won't find you for days yet. Weeks. Maybe longer." It took another step. Rory raised the pendant between them. The glow intensified, casting red light across the creature's pale features. It didn't recoil. Didn't slow. "But they gave you that for a reason. Didn't they?" Its hand reached toward her. The fingers were too long, too jointed, the skin almost translucent. "Who are you?" Rory's voice came out steady. Somehow. The creature paused. Its smile widened further, splitting the corners of its mouth. "I'm the one who watches the door." It leaned closer. "And you, Aurora Carter, just walked through it."