AI The pendant was a furnace against her ribs.
Rory’s fingers closed around it through her jacket, the silver chain biting into the back of her neck. The map she’d found, tucked inside a library book about Welsh folklore, was a crude pencil sketch on yellowing paper. A circle of oaks in Richmond Park, marked with a single rune that matched the one on the back of the Heartstone. It had seemed like a sign. A way to understand the thing that had been left for her, the key to the nightmares that had followed her from Cardiff.
Now, standing at the edge of the Fae Grove, it felt like a trap .
The air tasted wrong. Not foul, but *different *. Too sweet, like honeysuckle and damp earth left to rot in a sealed jar. The normal sounds of the park at night—the distant hum of the South Circular, the rustle of deer in bracken—had faded ten minutes ago, swallowed by a dense, woolly silence . In their place was a low, almost subliminal hum, the sound of a high-tension wire heard from a great distance. It vibrated in her molars.
The standing stones weren't stones at all. They were ancient, gnarled oaks, their trunks fused and twisted into a perfect ring. Their bark was black in the moonlight, slick as wet slate. Between them, the air shimmered , a heat-haze on a cold night. Wildflowers she couldn't name bloomed in riotous colour at their roots, petals glowing with a faint, internal phosphorescence. Year-round blooms, the codex had said. Time moves differently.
She checked her phone. No signal. The clock read 11:47 PM. She’d entered the park at 11:15.
*An hour inside can be minutes or days outside.*
"Brilliant," she muttered, the word flat and dead in the thick air. Her voice didn't echo . It just got eaten .
She had to know. That was the problem, had always been the problem. Evan had called it her fatal flaw. *You can't leave a puzzle unsolved, Rory. Even if it's wired to blow.* He’d meant it as a compliment, back when compliments weren't laced with broken glass. Now, standing here, she felt the truth of it like a cold stone in her gut.
She stepped between two of the oak-stones.
The pressure change was immediate. Her ears popped. The hum intensified, resolving into something that was almost a melody, a discordant, looping tune played on glass and wind. The grove inside the circle was both smaller and larger than it should be. The grass was too green, too uniform. The flower-scents intensified, cloying now, with an undercurrent of something metallic. Blood on the breeze.
Her left wrist, the one with the small crescent scar, began to itch.
"Hello?" The word was out before she could stop it, a stupid, human impulse to announce herself to the dark.
Nothing answered. But the silence *changed *. It became a listening silence .
She walked further in, her trainers sinking slightly into the soft turf. The Heartstone's warmth had become a distinct, rhythmic pulse , syncing with her own quickening heartbeat. *When near a Hel portal.* She didn't know what a Hel portal was, but the word ‘Hel’ did nothing for her nerves.
A flicker of movement, left. She snapped her head around.
Nothing. Just the bizarre, unmoving flowers and the twisted trunks.
She kept walking, aiming for the centre of the clearing. Her eyes darted, scanning the deep shadows between the trees. The rules were different here. Physics felt optional. The light seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, a sourceless, moon-washed gloom that cast no clear shadows.
There was a sound.
Not the hum. Not the glass-wind melody. This was a soft, wet *crunch *. Like someone stepping on a rotten apple.
She froze. The sound had come from behind her, near the ring of stones she’d entered through.
Slowly, she turned.
The grove was empty. But ten feet away, in the centre of a patch of glowing blue flowers, was a perfect , fresh footprint. It was sunk deep into the soil, and dark moisture seeped up around its edges. It was long, narrow, with toes that seemed too articulated.
It hadn't been there thirty seconds ago.
Adrenaline, cold and sharp, flooded her system. Her mind, the one that had breezed through tort law essays, began firing options. *Run. Now. Back the way you came.* But the way she came was where the footprint was. And the stones… were they in the same place? The configuration looked subtly wrong. The gap she’d entered through seemed narrower .
*Don't run straight. Don't look back. Don't let them herd you.*
She changed direction, angling away from the footprint and the nearest section of the stone ring, moving in a wide, cautious arc towards the opposite side of the clearing. The pulse from the pendant was a frantic drum against her sternum.
*Crunch.*
To her right this time. Closer.
She didn't look. She forced her breathing to stay even, her steps measured . *It's testing. Seeing if you'll panic.* She’d seen the tactic before, in a different kind of dark, in a flat in Cardiff with too many locks on the door. Predators liked to see you run.
A low whistle sliced through the air. It was a perfect imitation of a song thrush, a melody she’d heard her mother whistle while gardening. But it was off. The notes were a fraction too long, the pauses between them just slightly wrong, as if the thing whistling had learned the tune from a corrupted recording.
It came from above.
Her gaze shot upwards. The branches of the oaks wove a tangled canopy against a sky that was no longer black, but a deep, bruised purple. No stars. Nothing moved.
The whistling stopped.
Then, from directly behind her, close enough that she felt the displacement of air, a voice spoke. It was a dry, papery rustle, like leaves skittering on concrete. It mimicked her own.
"Hello?"
Rory’s blood turned to ice. Every muscle locked. She could smell it now, cutting through the floral perfume—a scent of dry rot, of old mushrooms and cold clay.
She didn't turn. She knew, with a certainty that hollowed her out, that turning would be the end. Seeing it would be the end. Some ancient, lizard part of her brain screamed that if she didn't acknowledge it, it wasn't fully here. It was a child's logic, but it was all she had.
The thing behind her breathed in, a long, scraping inhalation.
"You are… in the wrong place." The voice was learning , adapting. The rustle smoothed into a horrid parody of her Cardiff accent.
Her hand was clenched so tightly around the Heartstone that the gem’s edges dug into her palm. The warmth was searing now, almost painful. A beacon . She was a beacon in this wrong, silent place.
*Think. Out of the box. Now.*
The map. The rune. The stones were a boundary. The pendant reacted to portals. She wasn't just in a weird copse of trees; she was in a *between * place. A threshold.
Thresholds have rules.
She forced her voice to work, aiming for a tone she didn't feel—cool, analytical, the one she used to de-escalate drunken fights in Silas’s bar. "Is this your grove?"
A pause. The presence behind her shifted. She felt a cold draft on the back of her neck.
"It is… a place that is. You are a thing that passes through."
"Did you bring me here?"
Another wet *crunch *, a step to the side. It was circling her. She kept her eyes fixed straight ahead, on a particularly knotted oak that seemed to have a face in its bark . "You rang the bell," the voice whispered, now from her left. "Little bell of blood and stone. We answer."
The Heartstone. It had called them. Or called to this place.
"You have a question," the voice said. It was directly beside her ear now. She could feel the cold radiating from it. "All who come bear a question. Ask."
This was the trap. The reason for the map, the lure. Ask a question in a place where time and truth were currency. She thought of the stories her father’s mother had told, warnings disguised as tales. *Never give the Fair Folk your name. Never eat their food. Never, ever thank them.* And never, *ever * ask a direct question without knowing the price.
But she had one. Burning in her since the pendant arrived in a plain box with no postmark. *Who gave this to me?*
She opened her mouth. The words trembled on her tongue.
And she stopped.
Evan’s face flashed in her mind, not angry, but smiling his charming, manipulative smile . *Ask me, Rory. Just ask. I'll tell you the truth.* The truth had always cost her more than she had.
This thing’s price would be worse.
She changed the question at the last second, shaping it not as a plea, but as a statement of observation . A lawyer’s trick. "The one who left the bell for me… they wanted me to find this place."
A hiss, like steam escaping. Annoyance? Interest?
"The paths are many. The walker chooses."
"Did they walk here too?"
Silence. Then, a sound that might have been a laugh, a brittle, clicking cascade. "Some stones remember footsteps . Old footsteps . Heavy with grief."
Grief. The word hung in the air , tangible as the scent of rot.
*Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.*
It was moving away, back towards the centre of the grove. The pressure at her side lessened. She dared a glance from the corner of her eye.
She saw only a suggestion—a tall, wilting shape, like a sapling stripped of its bark, moving with a broken, jerky grace. It seemed to bleed into the shadows between the trees, becoming one with the pattern of trunk and branch.
It was leaving . The interrogation was over.
She should go. Now. While it was distracted .
She took a step backward, toward where she thought the entrance was. The oak-stones seemed to have shifted again, their openings now mere slits.
The whistling started once more. The thrush song. But this time, it was joined by another. And another. A chorus of perfect , soulless imitations, coming from all around the circle of trees. They weren't alone. They had never been alone.
The thing in the centre spoke again, its voice now a chorus of rustles and clicks. "The bell may ring again, passer-through. Next time… you will ask. And we will answer."
The temperature plummeted. The glowing flowers winked out, one by one, as if snuffed by an unseen hand. Darkness rushed in, total and absolute, a physical weight .
Rory spun, disoriented, the pulse of the Heartstone her only compass. She ran, not straight, but in a stumbling zigzag towards the darkest patch between two stones, hoping it was an exit and not a solid wall of ancient wood.
The whistling rose to a deafening, gleeful shriek.
She hit the gap shoulder-first. There was a sound of tearing silk , a sudden, violent suction, and the world snapped back into focus with a nauseating lurch .
She stumbled onto normal grass, under a normal sky peppered with stars. The distant rumble of traffic was the sweetest sound she’d ever heard. She was back in Richmond Park, on the familiar footpath. Her phone buzzed in her pocket.
She fumbled it out. The screen blazed to life.
11:19 PM.
Four minutes. She’d been gone four minutes.
She looked back. The stand of oaks was there, but it was just trees now. No ring, no glowing flowers, no shimmer in the air. Just a dark patch in the park.
The Heartstone had gone cold against her skin.
She started walking, then jogging, then running flat out towards the park gate, the taste of honeysuckle and rot still coating her tongue. The thing’s final words echoed in the rhythm of her pounding feet.
*Next time… you will ask.*
And she knew, with a dread that had already taken root deep inside her, that it was right. She would have to go back. The puzzle was still there, wired to blow. And now she knew where the detonator was.