AI The cold seeped into Rory’s bones, a damp chill that bit through her jacket. Her scooter idled, exhaust puffing thin smoky clouds into the late evening air. The delivery app displayed a single pin, blinking stubbornly on a stretch of green marked "Richmond Park." No street address, just the park itself, deep within its sprawling expanse. A special instruction read: *locate the old oak circle*.
She killed the engine. Silence descended, heavy and absolute, broken only by the distant hum of traffic from a road she could not see. The colossal iron gates of Richmond Park loomed before her, chained and padlocked. A sign warned of closure after dusk. Rory narrowed her bright blue eyes, her breath fogging in the beam of her scooter’s headlamp. She hadn't accepted a single delivery in this part of London since she started working for Yu-Fei. The entire situation screamed wrong. Yet, the pay was quadruple her usual rate. Needs must.
A low wall bordered the park’s edge a few metres down. She swung her lean frame off the scooter, its kickstand scraping on the tarmac. She scaled the wall, dropping silently onto the dewy grass on the other side. The air tasted different here, earthy and green, but with an underlying sharpness she couldn't place. The park, usually teeming with deer and joggers, now felt like a vast, empty maw . Her phone, gripped tight, found no signal.
She pulled out her phone, its flashlight beam a fragile spear against the encroaching gloom . The path ahead twisted under ancient, gnarled trees, their branches clawing at the sky. A gust of wind rustled through the leaves, a dry, papery sound that held no comfort. She pushed forward, her shoulder-length black hair brushing her cheeks with each step.
Minutes stretched. Or perhaps only seconds. Time felt fluid, the distance she covered oddly out of sync with the effort. A faint, almost imperceptible warmth began to spread across her chest, a gentle thrum against the fabric of her shirt where the Heartstone pendant lay. The sensation pulled her deeper, a silent compass guiding her through the oppressive dark.
The beam of her flashlight flickered over a cluster of ancient oak trees, their trunks monumental, ringed like boney sentinels guarding something unseen. Here it was. The standing stones. Not rocks, but gnarled, colossal oaks, their branches interwoven overhead , forming a skeletal dome. Wildflowers, impossibly vibrant, bloomed at their bases, their petals a riot of purples and golds in the near total darkness. Their colours seemed to glow, an unnatural spectacle that stole her breath. A small crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist, a relic of childhood, prickled with a phantom itch.
The Heartstone’s thrum intensified, a persistent rhythm against her breastbone.
She stepped between two gnarled oaks, crossing the threshold into the clearing. The air did not move, yet something felt different, lighter and heavier all at once. The distant hum of the city, which had been a faint presence, now vanished completely . A profound silence descended, so complete it pressed against her eardrums. It wasn't the quiet of a remote forest, but the quiet of absence, a space where sound simply could not exist.
“Hello?” Rory’s voice, a thin thread, snapped in the sudden void. “Delivery for… the Fae Grove?”
Her words died, swallowed by the silence . No echo . Nothing moved. Shadows clung to the colossal oak trunks, stretching long and distorted, giving the impression of impossible height. The wildflowers at her feet continued their silent, luminescent show, their perfume, cloying and sweet, filling the breathless air.
A sound, a bare whisper of a breath, tickled her right ear. Too close. Rory spun, her flashlight beam cutting a frantic circle through the oppressive darkness. Nothing. No movement, no rustle of leaves, no snapping twig. She held the beam steady, sweeping it over the moss-covered ground and the dense undergrowth. Her gaze snagged on a patch of deeper shadow, an absence of light more profound than the surrounding night, nestled behind one of the standing oaks.
She forced a calm into her voice, a practiced composure honed from countless late-night deliveries to sketchy addresses. “Anyone there?”
Only the silence replied, thick and suffocating. The thrum of the Heartstone grew stronger, a steady pulse mirroring the rapid beat of her own heart. She felt watched, a prickling sensation across her scalp, like unseen eyes dissecting her movements. A tremor, faint but undeniable, started in her hands.
A flicker of movement, abrupt and fleeting , caught her attention at the extreme edge of her peripheral vision. Not behind her this time, but further into the grove, near a particularly gnarled, ancient oak. Too tall to be an animal, too fluid to be a gust of wind. It was gone before her conscious mind registered its shape, a dissolving outline against the encompassing darkness. Rory whipped her head around, bringing the flashlight to bear. The beam illuminated nothing but the twisted roots of the oak and the strangely vibrant wildflowers clustered at its base.
“This isn’t funny,” she called out, her voice tighter now, betraying the calm front she struggled to maintain. “Who’s back here?”
Her chest tightened. The silence stretched, mocking, amplifying every small sound within her – the rasp of her jacket, the quick slide of her shoes on damp earth, the rapid thudding in her ears. The air grew heavy, like humidity before a storm, yet it remained impossibly still. The floral scent, once cloying, now felt suffocating, choking her.
A sound broke the quiet. Not a whisper, but a definite snap, crisp and loud, from the dense thicket behind the farthest standing oak. Too substantial for a broken twig. Rory froze, her breath catching in her throat. She trained her flashlight on the source, the beam trembling in her hand. The light revealed nothing but tangled branches and a deeper well of shadow, a void that seemed to drink the light .
She stood motionless, listening, straining her ears for any further indication of presence. Her eyes darted over the scene, searching for anything amiss . The profound stillness persisted, but the feeling of being observed intensified, pressing down on her shoulders. The crescent scar on her wrist throbbed . The Heartstone, a fiery coal against her skin, pulsed relentlessly.
A cold draft, sharp and sudden, brushed her bare cheek. It carried no scent of the earth or the sweet flowers. It felt like a fleeting , icy breath, too intimate, too close. Rory flinched back, her body recoiling without conscious thought. A shiver, deep and involuntary, coursed through her. She was not alone. The fact solidified into a cold, hard certainty, overriding all rational thought.
A sound drifted from the darkness, a low, guttural chuckle. It was a dry sound, like stones grating together, devoid of humour or warmth . It echoed , not from a single source, but from somewhere deep within the grove, around her, everywhere at once. The sound made the hair on her arms prickle. It was not human.