AI The ancient oak standing stones formed a ragged circle in the moonlight, their shadows long and twisted across the clearing. Rory stepped between two of them, the air shifting from the cool damp of Richmond Park to something still and heavy. The boundary of the Fae Grove.
She hadn’t wanted to come.
The Heartstone Pendant lay against her sternum, a familiar weight beneath her jacket. It had been warm all evening, a persistent, low-grade heat that intensified the closer she got to the park. Now, inside the circle, it was hot. A deep, crimson pulse beat against her skin in time with her own heart, a silent alarm.
“Just a quick look,” she muttered to the empty air. Her voice sounded thin, swallowed by the dense silence .
Yu-Fei hadn’t asked for this. The delivery to the address in East Sheen had been straightforward—a sealed bamboo container of steamed dumplings and black bean ribs. But the recipient, a gaunt man with eyes that reflected the streetlights like an animal’s, had pressed a folded note into her hand instead of a tip. The paper had smelled of damp earth and something sweetly rotten. Two words, in a spidery hand: *The Grove *.
She’d thrown the note away. The pendant had burned for three hours straight afterward.
So here she was. Because cool-headed, intelligent Rory didn’t ignore warnings. Not anymore. Not after Evan. She rubbed the small crescent scar on her left wrist, a childhood relic that felt like a brand in that moment .
Wildflowers carpeted the ground, a impossible riot of colour under the weak moonlight. Bluebells, foxgloves, primroses—all blooming out of season, their petals perfect and untouched by frost. The wrongness started there, in that defiant, cheerful life. Nothing decayed here. The air held no scent of loam or rot, only a cloying, floral perfume that coated the back of her throat.
A twig snapped to her left.
Rory froze, her breath catching. She turned her head slowly , her straight black hair brushing her cheek. Nothing moved between the thick trunks of the oaks that ringed the clearing. The standing stones watched, impassive.
“Animal,” she told herself, the word barely a breath. Richmond Park was full of deer. It was probably a deer.
The pendant throbbed , a sharp, insistent heat.
She took another step forward, her trainers sinking soundlessly into the thick moss. The centre of the grove was marked by a flat, grey stone, like an altar. Something gleamed on its surface. From ten feet away, it looked like a scattering of coins .
Five feet away, she saw they were teeth. Human molars, clean and white, arranged in a spiral pattern.
Her stomach tightened. She took a step back.
A low hum vibrated through the soles of her feet, a sound more felt than heard. It travelled up her bones, settling in her teeth. The floral scent intensified, becoming sickly, like overripe fruit left in the sun.
“Okay,” Rory whispered. “Time to go.”
She turned back toward the standing stones she’d entered through. They were still there, a gap between two mossy monoliths. But the path behind her, the one she’d just walked, was gone . In its place was a wall of brambles, thick and glossy with thorns the length of her finger. They hadn’t been there a minute ago.
“No.”
She walked to the brambles, reached a hand out but didn’t touch. The thorns gleamed wetly in the moonlight. Not possible. She’d come straight in. The stones were right there.
“This isn’t funny.”
The hum deepened. A rustle came from above. Not wind—there was no wind. The leaves of the great oaks shuddered as if brushed by a giant hand, yet the air remained utterly still.
She looked up. The canopy was a black mosaic against the lesser black of the sky. For a second, she saw nothing. Then a shape detached itself from a high branch, falling not with the heavy thump of an animal, but with a silent, drifting grace . It landed on the moss twenty feet from her, crouched.
It was the size of a large dog, but skeletally thin, its skin pulled tight over a frame of sharp angles. It had no fur, only a grey, leathery hide. Its head was long and narrow, like a horse’s skull stripped of flesh, but it had too many eyes—dark, liquid pools that reflected no light. It unfolded itself to stand on two spindly legs, its arms too long, ending in hands with too many fingers.
It didn’t look at her. It tilted its head, listening.
Rory stopped breathing. Every instinct screamed to run, to shout, to do anything. Evan’s face flashed in her mind—his smile right before his hand would clamp around her arm. The cold panic was the same, but this was colder. This was ancient.
She didn’t move. She became a statue in the clearing, her bright blue eyes wide, fixed on the creature.
It took a step, not toward her, but toward the altar stone . Its movements were jerky, all disjointed angles. It reached out one of those long-fingered hands and picked up a molar from the spiral. It brought the tooth to where a mouth should have been. A faint, wet clicking sound echoed in the silence .
Another rustle above. And another.
Shapes dropped from other branches, landing with the same eerie silence . Three more of them. They gathered around the stone, a silent congregation, passing the teeth between them with those delicate, horrible hands.
Rory’s mind raced , scrabbling for purchase. *The Grove . Time moves differently.* How long had she been here? Five minutes? An hour? Could it be days outside already? No one knew she was here. Eva thought she was working a late shift. Silas, downstairs in the bar, wouldn’t check on her until the morning.
The creatures finished with the teeth. As one, they turned their skull-like heads.
They looked at her.
Not with malice, not with hunger. With a flat, empty curiosity that was worse. The one who had come first took a step in her direction. Then another.
The Heartstone Pendant burned like a brand. Its faint inner glow was visible now, a deep red light bleeding through her shirt and jacket.
The creature paused. Its head cocked again. A low chittering sound came from it, a question.
Rory’s hand moved to her chest, fingers closing around the pendant through the fabric. The silver chain was scalding . The creature took a hesitant step back.
The other three mirrored it, their too-many eyes fixed on the faint crimson light.
They were afraid of it.
The realization cut through her terror like a shard of ice. She forced air into her lungs.
“Stay back.” Her voice was a ragged thing, but it held.
The lead creature let out a hiss, a sound of dry leaves scraping together. It didn’t advance, but it didn’t retreat further. It watched.
From the edge of the clearing, where the shadows beneath the oaks were deepest, something else moved. It was not like the spindly creatures. It was a shift in the darkness itself, a coalescence of shadow into a tall, slender form. It stood just beyond the ring of standing stones, observing.
Rory saw it from the corner of her eye. She didn’t dare turn her head. The new presence radiated a deeper wrongness, a pressure that made the air feel thick and electric . The spindly creatures cowered, shrinking in on themselves, their attention torn between her pendant and the shadow at the edge.
The shadow took a single, soundless step forward into the moonlight.
It wore a shape that was almost human, but its proportions were subtly off—the limbs a fraction too long, the neck too slender. Its face was a smooth, pale oval, devoid of features save for two dark, vertical slits where a nose should be. Where eyes might be, there was only a faint silver sheen, like mercury.
It looked past the creatures. It looked directly at Rory.
A sound escaped her throat, a tiny, choked gasp.
The featureless face tilted. A voice spoke, but not from it. The words formed inside her skull, smooth and cold as a river stone.
*You are not the expected delivery.*
The voice held no emotion. It was a statement of fact, invasive and absolute.
Rory’s fingers tightened on the pendant. The heat was a focal point, the only real thing in the swirling wrongness of the grove. She found her voice, forcing it out through clenched teeth.
“I brought nothing for you.”
*You brought yourself.* The shadow-being took another step. The spindly creatures scuttled backward, melting into the brambles as if they were smoke. *And you brought a key.*
It was looking at the pendant.
*The stone is a ward. It sings of closed doors. Who gave you a song to lock a door you have never seen?*
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her mind was working , piecing it together. The pendant pulsed near Hel portals. This grove was a pocket between worlds. The thing before her was not of her world. The pendant was a key? A ward? It was keeping it at bay.
*A mystery,* the voice sighed inside her mind, a sound of infinite boredom. *Mysteries are… sticky. They pull at the threads of things.*
It raised a hand—a long, pale hand with too many joints. It pointed not at her, but at the space beside her .
The air there rippled, like heat haze off tarmac. It tore.
A jagged line of darkness split the world, hovering a foot from her shoulder. From within the tear came a sound—a distant, hollow roaring , like wind through a vast tunnel, and beneath it, a chorus of whispers, thousands of them, layered over each other in agony and hunger.
The Hel portal. The pendant was a screaming brand against her chest now, its glow so bright it lit the moss at her feet with a hellish red light.
*The key yearns for the lock,* the shadow-being communicated . Its silver-sheen gaze was fixed on the tear. *All things seek their nature. You should not have brought it here. You have made the door hungry.*
The whispering from the tear grew louder. Shapes moved in the profound blackness beyond—swirling, formless things that pressed against the edges of the rift.
The shadow-being watched her, its head tilted with that same alien curiosity.
*You can close it,* it said. *The key can turn. Or you can leave it open. The choice is a thread. Pull it, and see what unravels.*
Rory stood between the standing stones and the weeping tear in reality, the pendant’s heat searing her palm, the whispers clawing at the edges of her mind. The creature waited. The grove held its breath.