AI The rain tasted like metal. It slicked the cobblestones of Richmond Park, reflecting the weak glow of the streetlights in fractured , oily patches. Rory pulled her collar higher, the damp wool doing little to combat the chill that had settled deep in her bones. The air hung thick and silent, save for the persistent drip, drip, drip from the oaks. She’d followed the directions—a scribbled note on aged parchment—to the standing stones. Isolde’s grove.
It wasn't a place you stumbled upon. Not really . The map, a charcoal sketch on linen, had warned of disorientation. It hadn't warned of this.
The stones themselves were imposing , weathered giants sunk into the mossy ground. They were ancient, undeniably, their surfaces etched with symbols she couldn’t decipher. A prickle crawled across her skin. Not fear, exactly. Something colder. Like recognizing a forgotten name.
“Right,” she muttered, checking the pendant around her neck. The Heartstone pulsed , a faint, insistent warmth against her skin. It hadn’t reacted like this before. Just a gentle thrum, usually. Now, it vibrated with a restless energy.
She’d been told to find it here. The note – delivered by a courier who seemed to materialize from the fog – had spoken of a “resonance point.” A place where the veil between realities was thin. She’d dismissed it as the ramblings of a paranoid collector, until the pendant had appeared, nestled in a velvet box, unsigned. The accompanying words simply stated: *“The answer lies within.”*
Rory had a healthy skepticism, a product of too many late nights spent navigating London’s underbelly. But she wasn't one to ignore a cryptic gift.
The rain intensified, drumming a steady rhythm against the stones. She shifted, investigating a darker hollow beneath the largest stone. The scent shifted—earth, yes, but layered beneath it, something else. Something subtly rotten, like decaying fruit. She took a cautious step closer.
Silence. Then, a rustle.
Not the wind. The branches of the oaks didn’t stir. It was a small movement, beneath the undergrowth, too quick to identify. She held her breath, listening.
Nothing.
“Just the animals,” she told herself, her voice sounding brittle in the vast, unwelcoming space.
She should turn back. The rain was picking up, and the temperature was plummeting. The note hadn't specified a time limit. But the pendant compelled her forward.
She continued deeper into the grove, pushing through tangles of brambles and ferns. The wildflowers, though vibrant, seemed unnaturally bright, almost luminescent in the gloom . They hadn’t bloomed in that particular shade of lavender and crimson at this time of year.
The silence returned, heavier this time, laced with a subtle, unsettling hum. It wasn’t audible, not exactly, but she felt it in her teeth, a vibration that resonated in her skull. Her reflection in the damp stone revealed a stranger—eyes wide, the dark hair plastered to her face, a grim line etched around her mouth.
A branch snapped. Close. She whirled around, her hand instinctively reaching for the small, sturdy knife she carried. Empty. She’d left it at the edge of the park. Annoyance tightened her stomach .
The rain shifted again, a localized downpour directly above her. She looked up. The sky was a solid, featureless grey.
Then she heard it. A child’s giggle.
High-pitched, echoing , utterly devoid of joy. It sliced through the silence , bouncing off the stones, twisting in the air. It felt wrong, like a discordant note in a carefully composed melody.
“Hello?” she called out, her voice a shaky whisper .
Only the rain answered.
She moved towards the sound, cautiously pushing through a curtain of weeping willows. The air grew colder, the scent of decay stronger. The ground beneath her feet became softer, yielding with an unsettling sponginess.
She stepped into a small clearing.
In the center stood a swing set.
Old, rusted, and completely out of place. It looked as though it had been transported from some forgotten corner of a suburban garden. The chains groaned softly in the wind. The swing swayed gently , though there was no breeze.
As she watched, a small figure appeared on the swing.
A child. A little girl, dressed in a faded yellow dress, her dark hair tangled and wild. She didn’t speak. She didn’t move. She just swung, slowly , rhythmically.
Rory took a step closer. “Are you…are you okay?”
The girl stopped swinging. She turned her head, her face obscured by shadows. It wasn't a movement of acknowledgment. It was a deliberate, studied stillness.
“Lost?” a voice whispered, a voice that sounded like dry leaves skittering across pavement .
Rory felt a cold dread grip her heart. The voice didn’t belong to the girl.
“Who are you?” she demanded, gripping the small of her back.
The girl tilted her head, and a single, crimson petal drifted from her hair. It landed on the ground at Rory’s feet.
“I’ve been waiting,” the voice said again, softer this time. “For a long, long time.”
Suddenly, the standing stones began to glow. A faint, pulsating light emanated from their surfaces, intensifying, bathing the grove in an ethereal radiance. The Heartstone pulsed violently against her chest, screaming with heat.
The girl on the swing began to shimmer, the edges of her form blurring. Her dress seemed to unravel , revealing…nothing. Just a swirling vortex of shadow.
“This place…it remembers,” the voice said, closer now, invading her thoughts. “It remembers everything.”
Rory backed away, instinctively clutching the pendant. It wasn’t warming her anymore. It was burning . The ground beneath her feet rose, the moss receding to expose bare, black stone. The scent of decay intensified, becoming almost unbearable.
She turned to flee, but the trees seemed to shift, to close in around her, forming a living wall. The rain turned to sleet, stinging her skin.
“You shouldn’t have come,” the voice hissed, a sound like ice cracking. “You shouldn’t have sought the answer.”
A hand, cold and impossibly thin, reached out from the shadow of the swing. It brushed against her cheek.
Rory screamed, a raw, desperate sound swallowed by the rain and the oppressive silence of the grove. She didn’t dare look back. She just ran, blindly, desperately, praying to escape the thing that had waited so patiently in the heart of Isolde’s grove.
She didn't know where she was going . She didn't care. Only that she had to get away.
As she stumbled through the thickening fog, she caught a glimpse of the swing set, bathed in an unnatural green light. The girl was still there, still swinging. And something else—a faint, almost imperceptible smile played across her shadowed face.
The pounding in her ears wasn’t the rain. It was the sound of time itself distorting, bending, unraveling . She realized, with chilling certainty, that she hadn’t found an answer. She’d stumbled into a trap.
The Heartstone pulsed , now burning with an agonizing heat. As the light faded, her vision blurred, and she collapsed to the ground, the last thing she heard was a child’s giggle, echoing through the timeless, haunted grove.