AI The third standing stone was warm.
Rory’s fingers lingered on the rough, moss-clad surface. Not sun-warmth . This close to midnight, in the heart of Richmond Park, the ancient oak should have been cold as bone. The heat seeped into her skin, a deep, living pulse that matched the rhythm against her sternum.
The Heartstone pendant glowed, a faint crimson ember in the dark. It had led her here, its gentle warmth turning insistent the moment she’d slipped past the park’s boundary fence. Now, nestled under her jumper, it felt like a second heartbeat . A warning.
She pulled her hand back. The grove waited.
It was a perfect circle, carved from the world. Nine vast standing stones of blackened oak formed a silent ring. Between them, wildflowers bloomed in impossible defiance of the season—foxgloves stood tall and white like skeletal fingers, and night-scented stock released a cloying, sweet perfume that didn’t quite mask the underlying scent of damp earth and something else . Something metallic.
*Time moves differently here.*
The thought came unbidden, a fragment from the research she’d scrawled in her notebook. An hour inside could be minutes or days outside. She’d checked her phone after passing the first stone. No signal. The clock had frozen at 11:47 PM.
A twig snapped.
Rory spun, her torch beam cutting a frantic path across the clearing. Nothing. Just the sway of long grass, the dance of shadows between the trunks of the surrounding trees. Richmond Park was never truly silent, but the usual chorus of night creatures—the hoot of owls, the rustle of foxes—was absent. The silence here was a thick, smothering blanket.
She forced a slow breath. *Cool-headed. Think.*
She’d come because of the dreams. Visions of this place, of the stones, and a voice that wasn’t a voice, more a pressure in her skull, whispering a single word: *Malphora.* An alias from her own file. Someone, or something, knew her. Knew names she hadn’t used in years. The pendant was the only tangible clue, a gift left in her flat with a note containing a map to this grid reference. No signature.
Another sound. Not a snap this time. A scrape. Like stone dragging over stone.
It came from her left. She swung the torch. The beam illuminated the fifth standing stone. Nothing out of place.
Then she saw it. The wildflowers at the base of the stone were moving. Not from the wind. There was no wind. The white petals of the foxgloves trembled , then began to curl inward, blackening at the edges as if touched by an invisible flame. A soft, sizzling whisper reached her ears.
The pendant throbbed , a sudden spike of heat that made her gasp.
She took a step back, her heel sinking into soft mulch. The torch beam wavered . At the edge of the light, between stone four and stone five, a shadow detached itself from the greater darkness.
It was man-shaped, but wrong. Too tall, too thin, its limbs jointed at severe, impossible angles. It didn’t walk. It unfolded, a series of jerky, stuttering movements that carried it a few feet into the ring before it paused, a silhouette cut from the night.
Rory’s mouth went dry. She killed the torch.
Darkness crashed in, absolute and choking. The after-image of the figure burned in her vision. She crouched low, one hand pressed over the pendant to mute its glow, the other gripping the cool plastic of the torch like a weapon.
Seconds bled into minutes. The only sound was the frantic drum of her own heart. The metallic smell grew stronger, coating her tongue. Iron. Blood.
A laugh echoed through the grove.
It was a beautiful sound, high and clear, like bells. It held no mirth. It was the sound of ice cracking over deep water. It came from everywhere and nowhere, bouncing off the stones, disorienting her.
“Laila.”
The voice was inside her head. A silken thread drawn through her thoughts. It used the old name, the one from Cardiff, the one Evan had whispered like a curse.
“Show yourself.” Her own voice sounded small, swallowed by the grove.
“We are.” The plural. Spoken with a child’s curiosity.
Rory’s eyes strained against the dark. Shapes resolved . Not one, but several of the tall, thin shadows now stood at irregular intervals around the stone circle. They were perfectly still, watching her with unseen eyes.
The flowers were all dying now. A wave of decay spread out from the centre of the clearing, petals withering to ash, stems collapsing into grey dust. The sweet perfume vanished, replaced by the stench of rot and that persistent, coppery tang.
The pendant was burning hot. She fumbled with the chain, pulling it out from under her jumper. The crimson gem shone with its own bloody light, pulsing faster and faster, painting the nearest stones in brief, lurid flashes.
In the strobing light, she saw them clearly.
They wore tattered remnants of clothing that might have been centuries old. Their skin was the colour of old parchment, stretched taut over elongated skulls. They had no eyes, just smooth, dark hollows. But they were smiling. Wide, lipless gashes filled with needle-sharp points.
One of them took a step forward. Its movement was a flicker , a jump-cut in reality. One moment it was ten yards away, the next it was five.
Rory stumbled back, her shoulder hitting the warm surface of the third stone. The contact sent a jolt through her, a shock of vertigo. The world tilted. The stars overhead smeared into long, luminous streaks. Time was unspooling , speeding up or slowing down, she couldn’t tell.
“You carry a key,” the chorus of voices whispered in her mind. “A little key to a little door. We have waited for the key.”
They were talking about the pendant. The Hel portal. It wasn’t just a detector. It was a key.
Another flicker . The lead creature was three yards away now. She could smell it—dry leaves, cold soil, and that iron-rich blood-smell. Its head cocked to one side, a bird-like gesture of inquiry.
“Give it,” the voices sighed, a sound like wind through a crypt.
Her fingers closed around the Heartstone. The heat was nearly unbearable. A part of her, the cool-headed part that had survived Evan, that navigated London’s hidden edges, screamed a warning. *If it’s a key, then it opens something. What’s on the other side?*
She looked from the advancing figure to the stone at her back. The warm stone. In her research, boundaries were places of power. Thresholds.
With a gritted teeth, she shoved away from the stone, not deeper into the circle, but towards the gap between the third and fourth monoliths. The way she’d come in.
The laughter returned, sharper now, tinged with annoyance.
“No exit that way, little key. Not for you. Not anymore.”
The space between the stones, which should have shown the dark outline of the park beyond, shimmered . The air thickened, became opaque, like looking through murky water. She saw trees, but they were twisted parodies of the oaks outside, their branches clawing at a bruised purple sky.
Not an exit. Another threshold. A different door.
A cold, dry hand closed around her wrist.
The touch was electric , a jolt of numbness that shot up her arm. She cried out, yanking back, but the grip was iron. The creature’s smile widened, inches from her face. Up close, she saw its teeth weren’t white, but a dull, stained ivory. Its breath smelled of open graves.
The pendant flared, a blinding crimson explosion of light that seared her vision.
The creature shrieked, a sound of pure agony that split the night. Its grip loosened for a fraction of a second.
Rory tore her arm free and ran.
Not for the shimmering, false exit. Not deeper into the circle. She ran for the centre of the grove, where the flowers were now a circle of ash. The creatures flickered around her, their movements frantic, disorganised by the sudden light. She felt a swipe of cold air as a clawed hand missed her hair.
The centre was just bare, packed earth. In its middle, she saw it—a faint, jagged line in the soil, glowing with the same sickly purple light as the twisted sky in the false exit. A crack. It pulsed in time with the dying light of her pendant.
The key and the lock.
The chorus in her mind became a deafening roar of hunger and anticipation . They were all around her, closing the circle, their forms bleeding together into a wall of shadow and teeth.
Rory skidded to a halt at the edge of the crack. The heat from the pendant was gone , replaced by a deep, gravitational cold that pulled at the very core of her. The crack widened, a inch, then two. From its depths , a sound emerged—a vast, distant rushing, like a subterranean river, and beneath that, a low, rhythmic pounding .
A heartbeat.
She looked down. The crack was no longer just in the earth. It was in everything. The world was splitting along a seam, and she was standing right on top of it. The things from the stones reached for her, their whispers now commands, their smiles now hungry rictus grins.
The ground beneath her feet gave way.