Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTZ0EK8AV2X0888ANZ2RBTA

The last rays of twilight bled through the ancient oaks as Aurora Carter ducked beneath a low-hanging branch and stepped into Richmond Park. The gate had been locked for hours, but she'd found the gap in the fence months ago, back when she'd first started making these trips. Back when the dreams had started. She pulled her jacket tighter against the November chill and checked her phone. No signal. There never was, this deep into the park, but tonight the dead screen felt less like an inconvenience and more like a warning. The Heartstone pendant lay cool against her collarbone, dormant. She touched it through the fabric of her shirt anyway, a nervous habit she'd developed since the unknown package had arrived at her flat three weeks ago. No return address. No note. Just the silver chain and that deep crimson stone that seemed to hold light even in complete darkness. Tonight, it held nothing. Rory moved deeper into the park, her trainers crunching on frost-stiffened grass. The standing stones would be another ten minutes' walk through increasingly dense undergrowth. She'd made this journey four times now, always at night, always alone. Eva would kill her if she knew. Silas would have words. But the dreams— The dreams showed her the grove. Showed her standing among those ancient oak pillars, the boundary between worlds, and they showed her someone waiting. Someone who needed her help. A branch snapped somewhere to her left. She froze mid-step, breath clouding in the air before her face. The sound had been sharp. Deliberate. Not the settling of old wood or the scurrying of some nocturnal creature. "Hello?" Her voice came out steadier than she felt. "Is someone there?" Silence. Not even the rustle of wind through leaves, though she could feel the cold air moving against her exposed cheeks. The absence of sound pressed against her eardrums like cotton wool. Rory exhaled slowly and forced herself to keep walking. Richmond Park was massive. Dog walkers came through at all hours despite the official closing time. Teenagers looking for somewhere private. Homeless people seeking shelter among the ancient trees. A snapping branch meant nothing. She repeated this to herself as the darkness thickened around her. The path narrowed, oak branches weaving together overhead until the night sky became nothing but fragments glimpsed through a lattice of black. Her phone's torch cut a pale wedge through the gloom—she'd turned it on without consciously deciding to, the light a small rebellion against the pressing dark. Something moved at the edge of that light. Rory swung the beam left, her heart hammering against her ribs. Nothing. Just more trees, more undergrowth, more shadows that seemed to lean inward as she watched. "Get it together, Carter." Her whisper sounded too loud in the silence. "You've done this before." But she hadn't. Not like this. The previous visits had felt different—charged, yes, but with anticipation rather than dread. The grove had called to her, a gentle pull at the base of her skull that promised answers. Tonight, that pull had turned to pressure. Something pushing rather than drawing. Something that wanted her here, in this specific darkness, at this specific moment. She should turn back. The thought arrived with sudden clarity, and her feet kept moving forward anyway. The standing stones emerged from the darkness gradually, gray shapes that resolved into towering oak pillars arranged in a rough circle. They shouldn't exist—the park service had no record of them, no historical documentation, no explanation for how ancient trees had been carved into monoliths that predated the Norman conquest. Rory had checked. She'd spent hours in the university library, cross-referencing maps and surveys, finding nothing. The grove existed in the spaces between official records. In the cracks of the rational world. She stepped between two of the outer stones and felt the air change. Warmer here, despite the frost that crunched beneath her feet. Sweeter, somehow, carrying the impossible scent of wildflowers that shouldn't bloom in November. The pendant flared hot against her skin. Rory gasped, her hand flying to her chest. Through her shirt, she could feel the Heartstone pulsing with rhythmic warmth, matching—no, anticipating—her heartbeat. The crimson glow seeped through the fabric, painting her fingers red. "What—" The light died. Not faded. Died. Her phone's torch cut out without warning, plunging her into absolute darkness. She thumbed the button frantically, uselessly. The screen remained black, the device suddenly cold and heavy in her grip. Somewhere behind her, something exhaled. Rory spun, her back pressed against the nearest standing stone. The rough bark bit into her shoulder blades through her jacket. She couldn't see. Couldn't hear anything beyond her own ragged breathing and the blood rushing through her ears. But she could feel. Something stood at the edge of the grove. Something that hadn't been there moments ago, that had arrived without footsteps or sound. It watched her from a darkness deeper than the mere absence of light. "Who's there?" Her voice cracked on the second word. No response. The presence remained, patient and vast and utterly silent. The pendant continued to pulse, its warmth spreading across her chest like a second heartbeat. Like a warning. Like a beacon. Rory's eyes were adjusting now, the grove's darkness resolving into shades of gray and deeper black. The standing stones emerged as darker shadows against the night sky. The wildflowers at her feet gleamed with their own faint luminescence, patches of silver and pale blue scattered across the frosted ground. And between the two stones directly across from her, something darker still. She couldn't make out details. Couldn't see eyes or a face or any feature that would let her name what stood there. Just a shape. Vaguely human-sized, vaguely human-shaped, but wrong in ways her mind refused to process. Too many angles. Too few dimensions. A thing of shadows and hunger that wore the outline of a person the way a hermit crab wore a borrowed shell. It tilted what might have been its head. "You came." The voice arrived without sound, bypassing her ears entirely to echo inside her skull. Neither male nor female. Neither young nor old. Simply present, the way gravity was present, or the slow march of entropy. "We called, and you came." Rory's throat closed around her reply. She pressed harder against the standing stone, as if she could push herself through the ancient wood and out the other side. "The stone knows us." The shape didn't move, but it felt closer somehow. "It belonged to our kind, once. Before the worlds were divided. Before the doors were sealed." Her hand found the pendant through her shirt, gripping it tight. The warmth flared brighter, and for a moment—just a moment—she caught a glimpse of the thing's face. She looked away immediately, her eyes watering, her mind skittering back from what it had seen. The afterimage burned behind her eyelids. Too many mouths. Not enough skin. "Do not fear." The voice carried something that might have been amusement. "We will not harm the bearer. Cannot harm the bearer. You wear our heart around your neck, Aurora Carter. You carry our claim." Her name in that voice made her shudder. It pronounced each syllable perfectly, precisely, as if it had practiced, as if it had been waiting to speak her name for a very long time. "What do you want?" The question escaped before she could stop it. She felt more than saw the shape shift, its non-geometry rearranging itself into something even more unsettling. "The same thing you want. The door to open. The worlds to touch." "I don't—" "You dream of the grove." It spoke over her without raising its non-voice. "You dream of the place between places. You came here tonight because you heard us calling, even if you told yourself otherwise. The stone chose you. We chose you. And now you must choose." The wildflowers at Rory's feet began to wilt. She watched them curl inward, their luminescence fading to gray, life leaching from their petals as the shape at the edge of the grove drew something from the air itself. "Choose what?" She hated how small her voice sounded. How young. "To open the door. To let us through. The worlds were never meant to be separate, Aurora. The walls between them are wounds, scars left by those who feared what they did not understand." The pendant pulsed faster now, its heat bordering on painful. Rory could feel it working against her skin, pressing back against whatever force the shape was exerting. A warning. A shield. Or a key, waiting to be turned. "And if I refuse?" The silence that followed lasted longer than silence should. The grove itself seemed to hold its breath, the standing stones leaning inward almost imperceptibly. When the voice came again, it carried no threat. Nothing so simple as menace. Just certainty, absolute and cold. "Then you will keep dreaming. Keep coming here, night after night, called by the stone you cannot remove. And one night, Aurora Carter, you will forget to ask." The shape at the edge of the grove began to dissolve, bleeding backwards into the darkness between the standing stones. "We are patient. We have always been patient. The walls grow thin, and you grow tired, and eventually—" It vanished. Not departed. Vanished. One moment the presence pressed against her awareness like a hand against glass, and the next moment she stood alone in a grove that suddenly felt merely dark rather than something actively watching. Her phone flickered to life in her pocket. Rory pulled it out with trembling hands. The screen showed three in the morning. She'd entered the park just after midnight. Three hours—but it had felt like minutes, the entire encounter compressed into a handful of heartbeats. The Heartstone pendant had gone cold against her chest. She ran.