AI The Heartstone thrummed so loud it drowned out the rustle of the oak leaves.
Rory stopped, one boot hovering over a patch of bluebells she’d never seen this late in December. She’d mapped every inch of Richmond Park on her Golden Empress delivery runs over the past six months, but this clearing wasn’t on any of her scribbled notebook pages. Not that she’d ever looked for a hidden spot choked with wildflowers that bloomed bright and unbruised, even when the hedgerows nearby were brown and crisp with frost.
She pulled the pendant out from under her thrifted charcoal jumper, the silver chain cool against her palms even as the crimson gem thrummed warm against her sternum. The unknown benefactor who’d left it on her doormat at 2 a.m. three weeks prior had left no note, no explanation, but Rory had learned to trust the pulse that flared only near whatever the stone’s label had promised: Hel portals. She’d finished her last delivery of the night, a pad thai for a student near King's Cross, and ridden her rusty bike east, following the thrumming until it led her here.
She shifted her weight, glancing back over her shoulder. The park’s usual night sounds were gone : no distant bark of a fox, no rumble of the mainline train that ran along the park’s eastern edge, no late-night shouts from the pub on Queen's Road. All she could hear was the steady thrumming of the Heartstone, and the high, thin whine of something she couldn’t place, like a radio tuned between stations. She’d thought about calling Eva, her childhood friend from Cardiff, but Eva was working a double at the hospital in Bermondsey, and she didn’t want to drag her into this. She should have called Silas, the bar owner whose establishment sat below her flat, but he’d be closing up in ten minutes, and she didn’t want to drag him into this either.
She stepped forward again, boots sinking into soft moss that shouldn’t have grown this thick in winter. The air smelled like rain and polished silver, sharp and cold, nothing like the damp leaf mould she’d expected. She rounded the first of the standing stones, tall gnarled oak trunks polished smooth by decades of wind and rain, arranged in a tight circle around the clearing’s center, and her left wrist itched.
She looked down. The crescent-shaped scar, the one she’d gotten when she fell through a garden fence as a kid, glowed faintly, a thin silver line against her pale skin. She’d not noticed it flaring since she’d left Evan, back in Cardiff. She rubbed at the scar with her thumb, the itch fading a little, but the thrumming of the pendant grew louder.
She peeked around the oak stone, and her breath caught. The full moon sliced through the canopy above the clearing, casting silver light over every bloom. She glanced down, half-expecting to see her own shadow stretched across the bluebells, but there was nothing. Just the bright flowers, glowing in the moonlight, no dark edge to mark where they ended.
She stepped fully into the circle of stones, and the air grew thicker, like she was walking through cotton. Her arms felt heavy, and the whine in her ears blended with the pendant’s thrumming until they were the only two sounds in the world. She fumbled for her phone in her pocket, her hands shaking. The screen lit up, showing 12:03 a.m. She’d locked her bike to the fence at 11:15 p.m., twelve minutes prior. Twelve minutes in the outside world, almost an hour inside the clearing. The time dilation hit her, cold and sharp, and she stumbled back, tripping over a root half-buried in moss.
She caught herself on the nearest standing stone, the cold of the oak trunk seeping through her jumper. The stone felt wrong, older than the ancient oaks she’d seen in the park’s designated ancient woodland area, like it had been carved and polished by something not human. She pulled her hand away, and noticed fine, dark dust coating her fingers, like crushed charcoal, that didn’t wipe off on her jeans.
A soft, tinkling laugh drifted through the clearing, high and sweet, like a seven-year-old’s. But there was no one else here. Rory froze, her grip tightening on the pendant. She turned slowly, scanning the brambles and gorse that ringed the stone circle. Nothing moved. Just the wind rustling the leaves, but that sound didn’t match the laugh. It had come from directly behind her.
She spun back around, eyes darting to the center of the clearing. The patch of bare earth she’d spotted earlier was now split by a thin, twisting crack, glowing with the same deep crimson light that filled her pendant. The crack spread wider by the second, and she could feel a faint heat seeping from it, warm and familiar , like the inside of a car parked in the sun, even though the December air bit at her cheeks.
A soft, scrabbling noise followed, like claws dragging against oak wood. She looked at the nearest standing stone, and for a split second, she saw a shadow pressed against the back of it, tall and lanky, with long, thin fingers curled over the top. She blinked, and it was gone . Just the smooth, polished oak trunk, no shadow, no marks.
Her scar began to itch again, worse this time. She yanked up her jumper sleeve, staring at the crescent shape, which now glowed bright silver, matching the chain of her pendant. The thrumming of the Heartstone was so loud now it made her teeth ache. She stumbled backward, tripping over another root, and fell into the soft moss at the edge of the circle. A strand of shoulder-length black hair fell into her face, sticking to the damp moss on her cheek. She brushed it back, her fingers shaking.
The crack in the earth spread faster now, the crimson light spilling out over the wildflowers, turning them a vivid, unnatural red. She could hear a soft, wet sigh coming from the crack, like someone breathing too slowly , too deep, like they were asleep and dreaming of something terrible.
She scrambled to her feet, reaching for the bike keys in her pocket, but her hands were shaking too hard to fumble with the clip. The scrabbling noise returned, louder this time, coming from all around the stone circle. She looked from stone to stone, and now she saw them: shadows, dozens of them, pressed against the oak trunks, moving closer, their long fingers dragging against the wood.
The pendant flared bright red, so bright it blinded her for a second. When she blinked the spots away, a voice curled around her, soft and musical, wrong in a way she couldn’t name, like it was speaking through two different throats at once. “You came.”
Rory’s blood turned cold in her veins. The scrabbling stopped, and the shadows pressed closer to the circle’s edge. She could smell it then, thick and sweet, like overripe fruit left in a locked car for weeks, curling through the air with every breath she took.
The first shadow stepped out from behind the nearest standing stone, tall and gaunt, with skin that looked like peeling oak bark, and eyes that glowed the same deep crimson as the crack in the earth.
Rory opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out.