Run: 2026-03-18-01KM081ZV8JN4YERPHXYGZ088Y

Rory slipped through the last line of bracken and stopped with one boot still on the path. The air changed at the grove’s edge. Richmond Park behind her held the usual London night smells — wet earth, old leaves, a hint of traffic breath from far roads — but the clearing beyond the ancient oaks carried something sweeter and colder, like flowers kept in a shut room too long. Wildflowers packed the ground in drifts despite the season, pale heads bobbing in the dark. The standing stones rose from them, thick oak trunks stripped bare and sunk into the earth like teeth. Her pendant warmed against her sternum. She thumbed the crimson stone through her shirt. The Heartstone sat on its silver chain, small enough to hide in her palm, yet it had gone from cool to a steady pulse in the last half mile. Not a flare. Not a blaze. Just a patient, stubborn heat, as if some buried engine had woken up under her skin. “Brilliant,” she muttered to the empty trees. No reply came, though the grove had not felt empty since she crossed the last hedge. She stepped in. The moment her trainers pressed the soil, the noise of the city vanished so cleanly it made her ears ring. No sirens. No distant dog barking from a terrace. No rustle of a bus on wet tarmac. Only her own breath and the faint crackle of twigs underfoot. Then even that seemed too loud. She drew in a careful breath and looked back over her shoulder. The park path had gone. Behind her stood another cluster of standing stones, half swallowed by ferns and white blossoms, their surfaces slick with moonlight. The opening through which she’d entered had folded shut without a sound, leaving only dark trunks and a wall of branches. Rory let out a slow breath through her nose. “Not a fan of that,” she told the grove. She had come for a reason. The pendant had started heating on her bus ride home from the delivery run, right above the last stretch near Richmond. By the time she reached Silas’s bar and climbed the stairs to her flat, it had burned hot enough to make her stop in the hall. The little crimson gem had pulsed once, hard, and then settled into a steady throb that pointed her east through the city like a compass with a grudge. She’d followed it here because ignoring strange artefacts had never improved her evening. Besides, she knew this place. Sort of. Isolde’s grove. The Richmond grove. The Fae Grove. Eva had used the names in different tones, like none of them fit properly in a mouth. Rory had only seen it twice before, both times in daylight, both times under circumstances that had made her wish for a bus and a locked door. The place had felt wrong then too, but at least she’d had the sun and a path and the comfort of seeing where her feet landed. Tonight, the clearing owned the dark. She moved deeper, keeping her steps measured. The pendant warmed in little knocks against her chest, each pulse landing just out of rhythm with her heartbeat. The silver chain rubbed her neck cold. She reached up and pressed the pendant flat, half to steady it, half to steady herself. A gust moved through the grove. The wildflowers bent together in one smooth wave. Rory halted. The trees did not move the same way. Their upper branches held still, black cut-outs against a clouded sky, while the flowers below whispered and nodded as if someone had passed a hand inches above them. Her skin tightened at the back of her neck. “Wind doesn’t do that,” she murmured. Another gust slid through, but this one came from behind her. The flowers in front of her bent the wrong way. She turned sharply. Nothing stood there. No figure. No face between the trunks. Only the standing stones and the pale floor of flowers and the dark seams between the trees. Her mouth went dry. She reached into the pocket of her jacket and curled her fingers around the small torch she’d brought. Not on yet. She didn’t want a beam slicing the place apart unless she needed it. Light had a habit of making bad things feel closer. The pendant gave a small, hard thump. Rory stared down at it. The crimson stone glowed faintly from within, not bright enough to light her hands, just enough to colour the edge of her fingers red. “Okay,” she said to it. “You dragged me here. We’re here. Now what?” The grove answered with silence so complete she caught the wet click of saliva in her mouth when she swallowed. Then something moved at the edge of her vision. She snapped her head left. A pale shape slipped behind one of the standing stones, too fast for her to make out, low to the ground and narrow as a shoulder. She held still, every muscle locked. A fox, maybe. A rabbit. The shape had been too upright. Her torch stayed in her pocket. She didn’t want to reach for it and admit how hard her pulse had started to kick. “Who’s there?” she called. The trees absorbed the words. A second shape passed behind her, farther off. She caught it only in the corner of her eye, a blur that could have been a person or just a shadow shifting against shadow. It crossed from one trunk to another without disturbing a leaf. Rory turned in a full circle. The flowers near her boots trembled, though no wind touched her face. “You’re not subtle,” she muttered. The pendant pulsed again. Heat spread from the gem, not painful but insistent, and it pointed her left, toward the largest standing stone near the centre of the grove. That oak trunk stood taller than the others, its bark twisted into a shape that made her think of old ropes and clenched fingers. She started toward it. Each step felt heavier than the last. The ground had gone soft under the flower roots, and the blossoms brushed against her ankles in cold, damp caresses. Their stems clicked lightly together, too many tiny sounds making one larger whisper she could almost hear as speech if she listened too hard. No. That was nonsense. Exhaustion. The delivery shift had run long, and she had spent half the evening worrying over the pendant instead of eating. Her brain had a talent for turning shadows into stories when it got tired. She set her jaw and kept walking. The standing stone loomed ahead. Something pale hung from one side of it, just out of reach. She stopped and narrowed her eyes. A strip of cloth, maybe. No — not cloth. Skin? No. The shape shifted when she looked directly at it and became a curling vine of white blossoms, drooping under their own weight. Her throat tightened. At the base of the stone, someone had laid a ring of stones no bigger than her fist. They formed a neat circle in the flowers, and inside it the ground had turned dark and bare, as if burned clean. Rory crouched slowly, careful not to touch the bare earth. She saw marks there. Not carved. Pressed. A pattern of shallow grooves crossed the black dirt in spirals that tightened toward the centre. Her pendant jerked hot against her chest, so sudden she hissed and pushed it back under her shirt. “Oi,” she whispered. “No need to scorch me.” The air around the stone had changed. Thinner. Heavier. It sat on her tongue like metal. The flowers near the circle leaned inward, their heads bowed as if listening. Rory rose to her feet. Something breathed behind her. It was close enough that the hairs on her arms lifted. She spun, fist up, and found nothing there but the grove folding around its own darkness. “Very funny,” she snapped. The answer came from somewhere to her right, soft and low. “Funny?” Rory froze. The voice had not carried from far away. It sounded like someone had spoken from just beyond her shoulder, with a mouth almost brushing her ear. She did not turn. Every instinct told her not to give it her face. “Who’s there?” she asked again. No reply. The pendant settled against her chest, then gave three quick pulses in succession, each one hotter than the last. Rory lifted her hand to the chain and felt the gem’s warmth through the fabric. The heat pointed not at the stone circle anymore but beyond it, deeper into the grove where the trunks stood close and the dark lay thick between them. She took one step. A twig snapped underfoot. The sound rang out like a gunshot. The grove answered with a ripple. Not in the trees. In the space itself. The flowers nearest the standing stone flattened at once, as if an invisible body had lain across them. Rory backed away so fast she caught her heel in a root and lurched, catching herself on the edge of the stone. It was warm. Not sun-warm. Skin-warm. She snatched her hand back. Something thudded once inside the grove, far off and hollow, like a palm striking the inside of a door. Rory stared into the trees. The dark between the trunks had depth now. Not emptiness. Depth. She could feel it the way she felt a stair missing under her foot. A wrongness opened there, quiet and patient, as if it had all night to wait for her to lean in. “I’m not interested,” she said, though her voice had thinned. The pendant burned. She pulled it free and held it in her palm. The crimson gem glowed stronger now, a dark ember under the skin of the stone. Its heat lit her fingers red, and for a heartbeat she saw a second outline within it, like something trapped under the surface. Not a shape. More like a movement, a shimmer of intent. The grove around her went still. No leaves stirred. No flowers bent. Even her breathing sounded muffled, as if the air had packed itself tight. Then, from somewhere beyond the nearest line of trees, came the sound of footsteps. Soft. Measured. Barely there. Rory lifted her chin and listened. One step. Then another. Not approaching fast. Not running. Just crossing the ground with steady care, each footfall sinking into the silence one by one. Her mouth went tight. She kept the pendant in front of her like a knife she didn’t know how to use. “Show yourself,” she called, and hated how little force sat in the words. The footsteps stopped. A long beat passed. Then, from the dark to her left, a shape drifted into view between two trunks. Not fully. Only enough for her to catch a suggestion of height, a pale line where a face might have been, a dark fall of fabric or hair that moved without wind. It stood just outside the reach of the moonlight. Rory did not breathe. The figure tilted its head. Her pendant gave one hard pulse and went scorching hot in her hand. “Right,” she whispered, and the word cracked on the edge of fear. “That’s enough.” The shape took one step forward.