Run: 2026-02-20-01KHXQ6QTV0TAKA08QHSSP0ETR

The air smelled wrong the moment Rory stepped past the standing stones. Not rotten, not sour—just *off*, like the scent of rain on hot pavement when the sky stayed stubbornly clear. She paused, fingers brushing the crimson pendant at her throat. Its usual faint warmth had sharpened, a slow pulse against her skin. The trees loomed too close, their gnarled branches knitting together overhead, blocking out the moon. She’d been here before, in daylight, when the grove hummed with bees and the wildflowers swayed in the breeze. Now, the petals lay flat, crushed under something unseen. Her torch flickered. The beam wavered, then steadied, carving a shallow path through the dark. She adjusted her grip on the handle, knuckles tight. A twig snapped. Not under her boot. Behind her. Rory turned, light sweeping the undergrowth. Nothing. Just the skeletal fingers of brambles, the occasional glint of dew on spider silk. She exhaled through her nose, forced her shoulders to relax. *Richmond Park’s full of foxes. Deer. Probably just a badger.* But the pendant’s pulse didn’t slow. She moved forward, boots sinking into damp earth. The clearing should’ve been just ahead—the one with the split oak, its heartwood blackened by old lightning. Isolde had left the package there, tucked into the hollow where the roots twisted like arthritic hands. *In and out. Five minutes.* That’s what she’d told herself. Another sound. This time, a whisper of fabric—*no, leaves*—but the wind hadn’t stirred. Rory swung the torch left. The beam caught a flash of pale between the trees. Too tall for a deer. Too still. “Hello?” Her voice came out thinner than she meant. The pendant’s warmth seeped into her collarbone, a slow burn. Silence. Then—a laugh. High, breathy. Almost childlike. Not from the trees. From *above*. Rory jerked the torch up. The branches were empty. Just knots of wood, a few stubborn leaves clinging to the season. She lowered the beam, heart hammering. The laughter came again, closer this time, curling around her like smoke. “Who’s there?” A rustle. A shadow detached itself from the trunk of an elm, slender and swaying. Rory’s breath hitched. The figure was *wrong*—too many limbs, too many joints, moving in ways that made her stomach clench. It stepped forward, and the torchlight slid over skin that wasn’t skin, but something *smooth*, something *shiny*, like oil on water. “Lost, little moth?” The voice was a chorus, layers of itself speaking at once. A hand—no, *hands*, too many fingers—reached for her. Rory stumbled back. Her heel caught a root, sent her sprawling. The torch flew from her grip, rolled into the undergrowth. The beam spun wild circles, illuminating snatches of the grove: the split oak, its hollow gaping black; the wildflowers, their petals now *glistening*; the thing in front of her, its mouth stretching too wide, too many teeth glinting in the dark. She scrambled up, fingers closing around the pendant. It burned now, hot as a coal. The thing hissed, recoiled. Its limbs twisted, knotted together like a spider retreating into its den. Rory didn’t wait. She ran. Branches whipped at her arms, her face. The grove had changed—paths she knew by heart now looped back on themselves, trees she didn’t recognise looming out of the dark. Her lungs burned. The pendant’s heat seared her palm, but she didn’t dare let go. A shape moved ahead. Human-shaped. A woman, her back turned, dark hair spilling down a familiar coat. “Eva?” The figure didn’t turn. Didn’t move. Just stood there, between the trees, like she’d been waiting. Rory slowed, chest heaving. “Eva, we need to—” The woman turned. Her face was a smooth oval of featureless skin. No eyes. No mouth. Just *smoothness*, like a mask stretched too tight. Her hand lifted, fingers—*too long, too many*—beckoning. Behind Rory, the thing from earlier laughed. She bolted, crashing through the undergrowth. The torch lay abandoned somewhere, its light swallowed by the dark. The pendant’s glow pulsed in time with her steps, casting bloody reflections on the leaves. The trees thinned. The standing stones appeared ahead, their ancient oak surfaces grey in the moonlight. Almost there. A hand closed around her ankle. Rory screamed, kicked out. Her boot connected with something soft, something that *squished*. The grip vanished. She didn’t look back. The stones loomed closer, their carvings—*faces*, she realised, faces she hadn’t noticed before—twisting in the dark. She lunged between them, expecting resistance, expecting *pain*— And then she was through. The night air hit her like a slap, cold and clean. The scent of cut grass, distant traffic. Rory collapsed to her knees on the path, gasping. Her hands shook. The pendant’s glow faded, its warmth retreating to a dull ache against her skin. Behind her, the standing stones stood silent. Just rocks. Just trees. No whispers. No laughter. She clutched the pendant, pressed it to her chest. The metal was cool now. Normal. But as she turned to leave, her torch lay on the path, its beam steady and white. She hadn’t dropped it in the grove. She’d never picked it up.