Run: 2026-03-15-01KKS38BERBB2A54GRYKWETMG3

The oaks marked the boundary. Aurora had memorised their shapes from Eva's descriptions—three standing stones grown through with ancient bark, their surfaces carved with symbols that hurt to look at directly. She found them easily. The pendant at her throat had warmed half a mile back, its faint crimson glow visible through her jacket. She needed answers. Dymas had sent the thing to her flat with no note, no explanation, and Yu-Fei had gone missing three days later. The trail led here, to Richmond Park, to a grove that didn't appear on any map. The wildflowers shouldn't have been blooming. Not in November. Not at eleven at night. Yet there they carpeted the clearing beyond the stones—bluebells and foxglove and things she couldn't name, all vibrant despite the darkness. She stepped through the gap between the oaks. The temperature dropped. Not the gradual cooling of evening, but a sudden shift, like walking into a cellar. Her breath fogged. The grove stretched wider than it should have. She'd read about pocket spaces, places that existed between realms, but reading and standing inside one were different experiences entirely. The moonlight that had guided her through the park didn't reach here. Instead, a pale luminescence seemed to emanate from the flowers themselves. The pendant pulsed. Warmth spread across her collarbone. "Hello?" Her voice came out wrong. Muffled, as if the air itself was thicker. She tried again. "Is anyone here?" Nothing moved. The flowers swayed without wind. She pulled out her phone. No signal. The time read 11:04. She pocketed it and stepped further in, scanning the tree line for any sign of a path, a structure, anything that might explain why Yu-Fei had been drawn here. A sound. Behind her. She turned. Nothing but the oaks and the flowers and the wrong-coloured light. "Yu-Fei?" The silence pressed against her ears. Not absence of sound—silence as a presence, a weight. She became aware of her own heartbeat, the rustle of her jacket, the soft crunch of her boots on soil that felt too damp for the season. Something moved at the edge of her vision. Left side. She snapped her head that direction and caught only the tail end of motion—a shadow that wasn't cast by anything, sliding behind a birch tree. Rory counted to three. Kept her breathing even. Her father had taught her that in courtrooms—control the body and the mind follows. "Right." She addressed the grove directly. "I don't know what you are. I'm here to find someone. A woman, Chinese, late fifties. She might have come through here in the last few days." The flowers nearest to her closed. Not wilted—folded shut like hands clasping together. She backed up a step. The pendant's warmth flared hot enough to sting. She grabbed it instinctively, and the crimson glow brightened, throwing shadows across the clearing that moved independently of any light source. Time. Eva had warned her about the time. An hour inside could be minutes outside. Or days. She checked her phone again. 11:04. The same minute. She stared at the screen. Waited. The seconds didn't change. "Okay. Okay, that's not good." A laugh. Soft and distant, coming from everywhere and nowhere. Not Yu-Fei's laugh. Too high, too musical, like wind chimes in a storm. Rory's hand found the small scar on her left wrist. An old habit, grounding herself with something familiar. The crescent-shaped mark from when she'd fallen through a glass table at seven. The pain had been sharp and immediate and real. Nothing here felt real. The tree line had changed. She was certain of it. The birch that the shadow had ducked behind now stood closer. Or she stood closer to it. The geometry of the grove refused to stay fixed. Another sound. Footsteps this time, unmistakable. Behind the birch. Slow. Deliberate. Circling. She pulled her jacket tighter and forced herself to stand still. Running from something you couldn't see in a place where directions didn't work—that was how people died in horror films. "You're not Yu-Fei." She kept her voice level. Practised. "You're not going to scare me into running. So either show yourself or let me leave." The footsteps stopped. The wildflowers began to bloom in reverse. Petals unfurling, then closing, then unfurling again in a rhythm that matched her pulse. The pendant burned against her palm. From somewhere deeper in the grove, past the shifting trees and the breathing flowers, something answered her. Not with words. With a sound like a name being whispered backwards, like recognition, like something that had been waiting a very long time finally hearing the right footstep on the path. Rory's cool-headedness cracked. Just a hairline fracture, but she felt it—the first cold tendril of genuine fear threading through her controlled calm. She'd come here looking for Yu-Fei. Something else had found her first. The shadows between the trees lengthened. Not from any change in light. They simply grew, stretching toward her like fingers reaching for something precious that had been dropped on the floor. Her phone screen flickered in her peripheral vision. She didn't look at it. Didn't want to know what the time read now. Didn't want to know how long she'd actually been standing here. The whispering grew louder. Still not words she could parse, but closer to language with each repetition. Learning. Adapting. The pendant's glow dimmed. The warmth faded. In the sudden grey half-light, Aurora Carter saw what stood between her and the oaks, and understood with perfect clarity that the grove had never intended to let her leave at all.