AI The air in Richmond Park held the damp, earthy chill of a London night, the kind that seeped through layers and found the bone. Rory pulled her leather jacket tighter, the familiar weight a small comfort against the unease coiling in her stomach . The path was a tunnel of deeper black between skeletal trees, the city’s orange glow a faint smear on the low clouds above. She shouldn’t be here. The park was closed. But the pull had been insistent, a physical itch beneath her sternum where the Heartstone pendant lay against her skin.
It had begun as a faint, warm pulse hours ago, as she’d sorted delivery receipts in the cluttered office above Silas’s bar. By midnight, it was a persistent, rhythmic throb , like a second heartbeat out of sync with her own. The crimson gem, usually a cool, dormant weight , now held a subtle inner light she could see even through her shirt. She’d tried to ignore it, to chalk it up to stress or the leftover adrenaline from a near-miss with a taxi that afternoon. But the intelligence that Eva always praised, the part of her that solved problems by looking at them sideways, had whispered a different conclusion. It was a signal. And the only place that made any twisted sense was the Grove.
She found the stand of ancient oaks, their massive trunks like pillars in the gloom . Between them, the standing stones weren’t visible from the path; you had to know they were there, had to step off the gravel and into the bracken with a specific, almost reluctant turn. Rory did so now, her trainers sinking into soft, damp soil. The moment she passed between the first two oaks, the sound of distant traffic vanished. It wasn’t a gradual fade; it was as if a door had been shut . The silence that replaced it was absolute, and profoundly wrong. No rustle of night creatures, no sigh of wind through branches. Just a thick, listening quiet.
The clearing opened before her, a perfect circle bathed in an impossible, sourceless moonlight that cast everything in sharp silver and ink-black shadows. The wildflowers—foxgloves, night-blooming catchfly, moon-pale roses—glowed with their own faint luminescence, blooming out of season as the codex said they would. It was beautiful. It was terrifying. The air smelled not of damp earth and leaves, but of ozone and crushed petals, with an underlying note of something metallic, like old blood.
Rory’s hand went to the pendant, her fingers closing around the stone. It was hot now, almost uncomfortably so, the warmth bleeding into the palm of her hand. The small crescent scar on her left wrist itched, a phantom reminder of a broken greenhouse pane and a childhood scream. She took a cautious step forward, the grass springy and silent underfoot.
*You came for a reason *, she told herself, her own voice loud in the confines of her skull. *Figure it out and leave.*
But what reason? The benefactor who had slipped the pendant into her coat pocket during the chaos of the Hel-tainted fog weeks ago remained a ghost. The pendant was a guide, or a key, or a trap. Tonight felt like the moment of discovery .
She moved toward the center of the clearing, where the tallest of the standing stones, carved with spirals that seemed to move in the corner of her eye, thrust upward like a broken tooth . Her breath plumed in the air, which was noticeably colder here than on the path. As she watched, the vapour of her exhale didn’t dissipate but hung for a second, twisting into a faint, intricate shape—a rune she didn’t recognize—before vanishing.
A sound.
She froze, head cocked. It had been soft, a scrape of stone on stone, coming from her left. She turned slowly, her heart hammering against her ribs. Nothing but the silent stones and the glowing flowers. Her cool-headed logic fought for purchase. *The place is old. Things settle. It’s just the land.*
Then, from her right, a whisper . It wasn’t a word, not in any language she knew. It was the sound of dry leaves skittering across pavement, given voice. It seemed to come from just behind the broad trunk of an oak at the clearing’s edge.
“Hello?” Her voice was a dry crackle, swallowed by the hungry silence .
No answer. But the flowers directly in front of that tree, a cluster of white bell-shaped blooms, slowly tilted their heads, as if turning to look at her . Not a movement from the wind—there was no wind—but a deliberate, creaking adjustment. Then they were still.
*Time moves differently here *, she remembered. An hour inside could be minutes or days outside. The thought sent a fresh lance of panic through her. How long had she been here? Two minutes? Ten? She glanced at her watch . The digital face was a scrambled mess of symbols, the numbers melting and reforming nonsensically. She ripped her gaze away.
Something moved at the extreme edge of her vision, a swift, grey dart between two stones behind her. She spun, her jacket rustling loudly in the quiet. Empty space. But the shadow cast by the central stone… it was wrong. The moon-source, wherever it was, hadn’t moved, yet the shadow was longer, thinner, and for a heartbeat, it hadn’t been the shadow of a stone at all, but of something tall and spindly with too many joints.
*Don’t look directly at it.* The thought came unbidden, an instinct older than reason. She focused instead on the pendant in her hand, its crimson glow now visible between her fingers, pulsing in time with the frantic rhythm of her heart. The warmth was a focal point in the creeping cold.
A melody began. It was faint, achingly beautiful, played on a pipe or a flute of some kind. It wound through the clearing, a thread of pure, sorrowful sound that spoke of lost kingdoms and endless twilight. It came from everywhere and nowhere. Rory felt a powerful, drowsy pull towards it, a desire to sit among the flowers and just listen, to let the time slip away. She took a step toward the sound, her muscles loose.
A sharp, searing pain lanced through her palm. She gasped, looking down. The Heartstone was burning hot, the heat intense enough to break the melody’s spell. She jerked her hand open, but the stone clung, its glow fierce. The metal of the silver chain was cool, but the gem was a coal.
The music stopped, cut off as if by a knife.
In the abrupt silence , the new sound was unmistakable: a footfall . Not the soft crush of grass, but the deliberate, weighty press of a boot on soil . It was behind her, and close. Too close for her to have not heard someone approach.
She didn’t turn. Every nerve screamed to run, but her intellect, her last bastion of control, warned her. Turning might be an invitation. Acknowledgment. She stared straight ahead at the spirals on the stone, which now seemed to be rotating, slowly , hypnotically.
Another footfall , to her left now. Then one to her right. They were circling her.
She could hear breathing now, not her own. It was a ragged, wet sound, as if through damaged lungs. It didn’t smell of ozone and flowers anymore. The metallic scent was stronger, and under it was the ripe, sweet stench of decay.
*You are not alone.* The certainty was absolute, a cold stone in her gut. It wasn’t a person. Nothing human made that sound , or moved with that predatory, patient cadence.
“What do you want?” she whispered, the words barely audible .
The footsteps halted. The breathing stopped. The clearing was once again plunged into that profound , listening silence . It was worse than the sounds.
Then, a voice. It was layered , like many voices speaking in imperfect unison—a man’s baritone, a woman’s sigh, a child’s giggle, all woven together into something that scraped against her ears.
“We want what you carry, little gate-crawler.” It came from directly over her shoulder. She could feel a cold spot growing there, a void of heat.
The pendant. They wanted the Heartstone.
Her mind raced , options flickering and dying. Run? Where? The exit between the oaks might not even be there anymore. Fight? With what? Her fists, her wits? She thought of Evan, of the trapped, frantic feeling she’d fled in Cardiff. This was different. This was older, hungrier.
“It was given to me,” she said, forcing her voice to steadiness. “It’s not for you.”
A low chuckle, the multiple tones creating a dissonant, sickening harmony. “Given? Nothing is given. All is traded. Leave the trinket. Walk away. Your time here is already… stretched.”
A trade. Her time. The distortion in the Grove. How long had it been? Hours? Days? She thought of Eva, of Silas, of Yu-Fei wondering where she was. They’d find an empty flat. A missing person report. Nothing.
Her fingers, numb with cold, tightened around the burning stone. The pain was clarifying . It was a link, a tether to something, maybe to the unknown benefactor. Letting go felt like surrender, and Rory Carter, in her core, did not surrender.
“No,” she said.
The reaction was instantaneous. The air temperature plummeted. The glowing flowers around her withered, blackening and curling in on themselves as if scorched. The sourceless moonlight dimmed, the shadows deepening, pooling and stretching. From every direction, she heard the soft, sliding scrape of movement through grass. She saw them then, not by looking directly, but in glimpses: figures of shadow and suggestion, tall and impossibly thin, limbs too long, heads tilted at unnatural angles. They stood among the stones, at the tree line, a silent, gathering audience.
One detached itself from the darkness near the central stone and flowed toward her. It had no clear features, just a suggestion of a face, hollows where eyes should be, a slash for a mouth. It extended a hand that was more like a collection of twigs bound together, reaching not for her, but for the pendant .
Rory did the only thing her quick, out-of-the-box thinking could devise. She didn’t throw the pendant, or try to hide it. Instead, she yanked the chain over her head and, in one swift motion, clenched the blazing stone in her fist and pressed her closed hand, and the scar on her wrist, against the cold spiral of the central standing stone.
The world erupted in silent, crimson light.