Run: 2026-03-11-01KKFF73ZX1NHD6F3JQH45ABEN

The November wind bit through Rory’s scuffed delivery boots as she scaled Richmond Park’s perimeter fence, the frayed logo of Golden Empress restaurant peeling from the back of her padded jacket. She’d snuck out of her flat above Silas’ bar an hour earlier, her pockets stuffed with a portable charger and a crumpled printout of an email she’d read a hundred times, the same note that had been pinned to her front door three days prior— I found you, in Evan’s messy scrawl—still crumpled in her jeans pocket. The unknown benefactor who’d left the Heartstone on her delivery bike a week earlier had promised they’d hand over a charm to keep Evan away forever, if she brought the pendant to the hidden grove by midnight. She’d thought it was a hoax until the crimson stone had glowed the second Evan’s note had crossed her threshold, warm as a living thing, warning her before she’d even processed what the words meant. She picked her way through shadowed bracken, the distant hum of the A3’s traffic a low backdrop to the crunch of leaves under her feet, until she spotted them: two ancient oak standing stones, gnarled and thick as castle walls, marking the grove’s boundary. She’d passed this spot on childhood hikes with her mum, who’d brought her to Richmond Park to hunt for wild bluebells every spring, but she’d never seen these trees look so stark, so intentionally placed, like they’d grown overnight to bar the path. She brushed a strand of straight shoulder-length black hair out of her face, squeezed the crescent scar on her left wrist—her nervous tick, leftover from every time Evan had grabbed that same wrist to yank her back when she’d tried to leave—and stepped between the oaks. The noise of London vanished. Not quietened. Vanished. One second she’d heard a siren wail in the distance, the next there was nothing, not even the rustle of wind in leaves, not even the sound of her own breath for a long, stretched beat. She stopped short, fumbling for her phone, the screen flaring to life to show 9:17 PM, the same time it had read when she’d climbed the park’s fence. She told herself it was a dead zone, that Richmond Park had always had terrible cell service, that the clock had just glitched, but her thumb hovered over the battery icon: 87%, full enough to last the rest of the night. She shifted her weight, and the Heartstone, tucked under her t-shirt against her sternum, hummed, faint and warm, like it was waking up. She walked further into the clearing, and froze. Wildflowers bloomed all around her, bluebells and poppies and clover, bright and dewy, as if it was mid-May instead of the first week of November, when the only things growing in London’s parks were dead bracken and discarded coffee cups. Her mum, a Welsh teacher who’d spent her life teaching Rory native flora, would have known these flowers didn’t belong here, didn’t grow this late, didn’t grow in a perfect unbroken carpet that stretched all the way to the treeline on the other side of the clearing. The air was warm too, soft as spring, enough that she unzipped her jacket, her fingers brushing the Heartstone again. It had grown warmer, thrumming in time with the slow beat of her own heart. “Hello?” she called, her voice coming out thinner than she meant it to. “I’m Aurora. I got your email.” The words died before they’d even traveled ten feet, swallowed by the grass and the trees, no echo, no ripple of sound to prove she’d ever spoken. She waited. No answer. She pulled her phone out again, heart picking up speed when the screen still read 9:17. The battery icon had dropped to 42%, draining in the ten minutes she’d been in the grove like she’d spent three hours streaming video. She jammed her portable charger into the port, but the number kept ticking down: 38, 31, 24, 19. She rubbed her left wrist so hard the scar stung, the old memory of Evan’s fingers wrapped around that same wrist, squeezing hard enough to split the old childhood injury open, rising unbidden in her throat. A flash of black moved at the edge of her vision. She spun, heart lurching into her mouth. “Who’s there?” Nothing. Just the wildflowers, swaying in a wind she couldn’t feel, the trees standing silent. She waited, and then she heard it: a soft footfall, right behind her, so close she could feel the brush of fabric against the back of her jacket. She ran before she could think, boots slamming into the earth, and as she moved the wildflowers under her feet crumbled to dust, bright petals turning to brown ash in her wake, the trees around her twisting, their branches lurching down like gnarled fingers trying to catch her sleeve. The Heartstone burned now, hot as a coal pressed to her chest, and she remembered the throwaway line in the benefactor’s email, the one she’d skimmed past in her rush to read about the charm: If the stone burns, run. Don’t look back. She smelled Evan’s cologne next, the cheap pine body spray he’d bought in bulk from the Cardiff supermarket, the scent that had lingered in her flat for months after she’d fled, strong enough to make her gag. It was right behind her, and she could feel breath on the back of her neck, hot as a furnace, wrong in the mild spring air of the grove. She didn’t dare look back, her lungs burning as she ran, searching for the oak boundary stones she’d stepped through, the only way out. She passed the same split-trunk oak three times, the grove looping back on itself, time stretching and folding to trap her inside, an hour inside stretching into what felt like days, her phone’s battery ticking down to single digits even as the clock still read 9:17. She tripped over a root, falling hard, her left wrist slamming into a half-buried stone, and the old crescent scar split open, blood seeping down her palm, warm and sticky. She looked up, and there he was, ten feet away, in the black hoodie Evan always wore, his hands stuffed in his pockets, his face shadowed by the hood. “Rory,” he said, and it was his voice, that low drawl she’d spent a year terrified of, the tone that meant he was angry, that he was going to hurt her. She crawled backwards, her hands scraping in the dirt, and the Heartstone tore free from her t-shirt, flying a few feet ahead of her, flaring so bright the crimson glow lit the entire clearing. The man stepped forward, and his hood slipped. It wasn’t Evan. His face was wrong, eyes solid black, no whites or irises, his mouth stretched too wide, splitting his cheeks, the scar she’d thought was Evan’s on the wrong hand, a gash that oozed clear sap, not blood. A fae, she remembered her mum’s old stories, the things that steal shapes to lure people close, that feed on the fear of the lost souls who wander into their hidden spaces. It hissed when the Heartstone’s light hit it, recoiling, covering its face with its long, clawed hands, and Aurora scrambled forward, grabbing the pendant, the silver chain burning her palm as she squeezed it hard. She looked past the thing, and there they were: the oak boundary stones, just ten feet away, the crack between them glowing faint silver, the only way out. She ran, slamming between the oaks before the thing could recover, and suddenly the noise of London hit her, traffic and sirens and wind howling through the park, the cold November air hitting her face so hard she gasped, her breath fogging in front of her, real and solid and back in the world. She collapsed on the bracken, sobbing, her phone falling out of her pocket, the screen flaring to life one last time to show 1:47 AM, the battery dead, four hours and a half that had vanished into the grove’s weird time. The Heartstone in her hand was cool again, the glow gone, only the faint thrum of it left, a quiet warning. She looked back at the two oaks, ordinary trees now, just like every other in the park, no sign of the wildflowers, no sign of the thing that had worn Evan’s face. She stumbled back to her flat, locking the door behind her, shoving her dresser in front of it before she slid down the wood, clutching the Heartstone to her chest. She never went back to the grove. She never heard from the benefactor again. But every night, she wears the Heartstone around her neck, and every time she feels it warm, even a little, she knows she’s safe, that whatever is hunting her, Evan or the fae thing or anything else, can’t cross the line the stone draws around her.