AI The iron gates of Richmond Park had long since clicked shut, but the gap in the hawthorn hedge near the Victorian boundary wall remained. Aurora squeezed through, the thorns catching on her waxed jacket. She didn't mind the tear. The air inside the park felt heavy, thick with the scent of damp peat and something cloyingly sweet, like lilies left too long in a vase.
She reached into her collar, fingers brushing the Heartstone Pendant. The crimson gem burned against her collarbone. It didn't just warm; it throbbed , a rhythmic pulse that matched the frantic cadence of her own heart. The silver chain bit into the back of her neck.
"Just a quick look, Rory. In and out."
The sound of her own voice felt flat, swallowed by the dense fog rolling off the Pen Ponds. She stepped off the paved path, her boots sinking into the rot-blackened mulch of the forest floor. London’s orange glow vanished behind a curtain of grey. The distant hum of the A3 died. In its place came a silence so profound it made her ears ring.
The ancient oak standing stones loomed ahead. They weren't stone at all, but petrified wood, gnarled and twisted into pillars that reached like skeletal fingers for a starless sky. This was the boundary. The entrance to the Grove.
As she crossed the threshold between two oaks, the temperature plummeted. Her breath bloomed in a jagged white cloud. Sunlight shouldn't exist here at midnight, yet a pale, sourceless luminescence bathed the clearing. Wildflowers—primroses, bluebells, and foxgloves—carpeted the ground in a riot of impossible spring colors, despite the October frost waiting just outside the veil.
Rory touched the crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist. The skin there tingled.
"Eva? You here?"
A rustle came from the treeline. Not the sway of branches in the wind, but a sharp, deliberate snap . A dry branch breaking under significant weight .
Rory spun. The foxgloves swayed, their bells nodding in a breeze she couldn't feel. Nothing stood there. She moved deeper into the clearing, her eyes darting between the silver-barked trees. The Heartstone flared, casting a bloody light across her chin and chest. The heat grew prickling, uncomfortable.
A soft, wet thud echoed behind her.
She whirled again, hand gripping the hilt of the small folding knife in her pocket. The space where she’d stood a moment ago was empty, but the grass remained flattened, three distinct circular depressions pressed into the soil. They were too large for a deer, too irregular for a man.
"I know someone’s there. Silas sent me. We just want to talk."
The silence stretched. Then, from the heights of a canopy that seemed to stretch miles upward, a voice drifted down . It wasn't a voice so much as a vibration in her marrow.
"Talk is for the salt-bloods, Laila."
Rory flinched at the name. Nobody called her Malphora’s old title anymore. She backed away, her heel catching on a thick, exposed root. She stumbled, falling hard onto her palms. The soil felt unnervingly warm, like the skin of a feverish animal.
She scrambled up, wiping dirt from her jeans. The trees had moved. The two oaks she had passed through were gone , replaced by a wall of interlocking thorns that pulsed with a slow, vegetable heartbeat. The clearing had shrunk. The standing stones seemed closer now, leaning inward at impossible angles .
A high-pitched whistle, like a teakettle left on the stove, pierced the air. It came from the left. No, the right. It circled her, spiraling inward.
Rory gripped the Heartstone, the crimson light leaking through her fingers.
"Show yourself. Stop the games."
Something white flashed at the periphery of her vision. A tall, spindly shape, draped in what looked like moth-eaten lace or perhaps translucent skin. It ducked behind a standing stone before she could lock her gaze on it.
The whistling stopped.
"Isolde?"
The name felt like ash in her mouth . She shouldn't have said it. The Grove responded instantly. The wildflowers turned their heads toward her, their petals peeling back to reveal rows of tiny, needle-like thorns. The sweet scent shifted, turning metallic and sharp.
A rhythmic clicking started. *Tiptap. Tiptap. Tiptap.*
It sounded like fingernails tapping on a glass table. The noise originated from directly behind her. Rory didn't turn this time. She frozen, her muscles locked in a primal rejection of what her senses suggested. A shadow stretched out before her, elongated and distorted by the sourceless light. The shadow’s neck was too long, ending in a head that sat at a jaunty, broken angle.
"The stone is hungry, Rory. Are you?"
The voice whispered directly into her ear, though she felt no breath against her skin. It carried the dry, papery quality of dead leaves skittering over pavement.
Rory lunged forward, sprinting toward a gap in the thorns. The ground beneath her softened, turning into a loamy slurry that tried to claim her boots. She didn't look back. She could hear the *tiptap * accelerating behind her, a frantic, skittering gallop.
She vaulted over a fallen log, her shoulder clipping a branch. The wood didn't break; it flexed like muscle, dragging a jagged line across her jacket.
"Leaving so soon? The hour has barely begun. Or has it been years?"
The voice came from the log she had just jumped over.
Rory halted, gasping for air that tasted of copper and old honey. She looked at her watch . The second hand had stopped moving. It didn't twitch. It simply sat dead at the twelve.
She looked up at the sky. The moon hadn't risen, but the stars were wrong. They were too large, swirling in rhythmic patterns that made her vision swim. The Heartstone was screaming now, a vibrant, angry red that illuminated the entire clearing.
In the glow, she saw them.
They weren't hiding anymore. They stood among the trees, dozens of them. Tall, pale figures with limbs like peeled willow branches. They had no eyes, only deep, vertical slits where noses should be, and mouths that stayed perfectly circular, frozen in a silent 'O'.
They didn't move. They simply watched with those sightless faces.
Rory’s breath hitched in her throat. She gripped the pendant so hard the silver chain snapped. She held the stone in her palm, its heat blistering her skin.
"I have the Heartstone. You can't touch me."
One of the figures, the one closest to the petrified oak, stepped forward. Its movements were stuttered , like a film skipping frames. It tilted its head, the neck cracking audibly in the silence .
"The stone doesn't protect the wearer, little bird. It marks the meal."
The creature raised a hand. Its fingers were tipped with long, black talons that looked like obsidian . It didn't reach for her throat. It reached for the stone.
As the creature moved, the Grove began to fold. The trees leaned further, the canopy descending like a heavy velvet curtain. The boundaries of the clearing blurred, the grass rising up to meet the sagging sky.
Rory backed away until her spine hit the rough, vibrating bark of a standing stone. The wood felt sticky. Looking down, she saw thick, amber resin oozing from the trunk, pinning her jacket to the wood.
"Let me go."
The tall figure stopped inches from her face. It smelled of ozone and ancient dust. The vertical slits on its face twitched, inhaling her scent.
"You brought the key back to the lock. Why would we let you go?"
The creature’s circular mouth stretched wider. Small, translucent cilia vibrated inside the throat.
Rory fumbled with her knife, but her fingers were numb, the cold of the Grove finally seeping through her skin. The Heartstone in her hand pulsed one last time, a blinding flare of crimson that turned the world to the color of a fresh wound.
In the flash, she saw the creature’s true face—a mass of writhing, pale grubs beneath the translucent skin.
The light died. The clicking resumed, intensified, a thousand fingernails tapping on the stones around her.
"The others are coming, Aurora. They’ve missed the taste of Cardiff rain."
A hand, cold as a tombstone, settled over her mouth. The fingers were long enough to wrap entirely around her skull.
Rory tried to scream, but the sound was muffled by the creature's palm. The resin from the tree crawled up her arms, warm and suffocating, pulling her into the bark. The wildflowers at her feet began to grow, their thorny vines winding around her ankles, dragging her down into the shifting, hungry earth.
The last thing she saw before the darkness took her was the Heartstone, falling from her numb fingers and rolling into the Foxgloves, its glow fading to a dull, dying ember.
The whistling started again, a cheerful, lonely tune that echoed through the trees.
"Don't worry," the voice whispered, now coming from inside her own head. "Time moves differently here. You won't be forgotten for at least a century."
The thorns closed over the clearing. The pale light flickered out. Richmond Park stood silent once more, the fog thick and impenetrable, hiding the gap in the hedge where a girl had walked in and never walked out.
The Heartstone lay in the dirt, waiting for the next hand to find it. The shifting shadows of the trees danced over the crimson gem, and the clicking sound faded into the rustle of leaves.
"Rory?"
A voice called from the distance, far beyond the veil. It sounded like Silas. It sounded like home. But the voice was too high, too melodic, and it was laughing .
She tried to move her hand, but it was wood. She tried to blink, but her eyelids were stone. The Grove breathed, a slow, deep inhalation that pulled the very air from her lungs.
"Stay still," the creature whispered, its face pressing against hers . "The change is almost complete."