AI Aurora slipped her thumb under the silver chain and felt the Heartstone’s warmth answer her like a second pulse . The crimson gem beat against her skin, steady, insistent, as if something on the other side had learned her rhythm.
“Okay,” she said to the quiet, because silence in Richmond Park always felt staged. “Show me where you want me.”
She stood between two ancient oak markers set into the soil like old shoulders. The standing stones looked harmless until she noticed the carvings, the places where moss refused to take. The Grove did that, the postcards never explained it, the rumours never managed. It existed in a pocket between Earth and the Fae realm, a hidden clearing that breathed wrong. She hadn’t believed until she’d seen the pendant glow in a restaurant kitchen, a warm little furnace in the dark, while the air thickened with something that smelled like iron and crushed stems .
Golden Empress had closed late. Silas had locked up his bar downstairs. Eva had texted once, a single line, then vanished from her phone as if the message had never left the wires.
Bring it to the stones. Don’t talk to what answers.
Aurora had copied the directions from Eva’s call logs, because Eva never wrote down anything she couldn’t deny. She’d driven out of London with the windows closed, the city noise dissolving behind her, and she’d used her own common sense as a compass. When she reached Richmond Park, her headlights had swallowed familiar lanes, her satnav had stuttered into nonsense, and her GPS pin had sat stubbornly on nothing at all.
So she walked the boundary marked by the oaks, counted her steps, and pressed her palm to the nearest stone.
Cold licked her skin. Not the honest cold of stone, the cold that held its own temperature, patient and exact.
The Heartstone warmed anyway.
She drew a breath and checked her hands, as if she expected them to betray her. Her left wrist bore the small crescent scar from childhood, pale and delicate, a reminder that accidents liked patterns too. The pendant sat against it now, close enough to throb harder, close enough to make her stomach tighten.
She didn’t like this part, the waiting. Not because she feared Fae tricks. Because she feared timing. Something in the Heartstone’s rhythm matched the way her thoughts began, each one snapping into place with an awful certainty.
Tap, breathe.
Tap, breathe.
She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a folded scrap of paper. Eva had smuggled the instructions in there, ink pressed so hard the fibres bruised.
Circle the third stone.
Do not cross the boundary with bare feet.
Count your steps backward if you hear singing.
If someone says your full name, cover the pendant.
Aurora read it once, memorised it, and burned the paper against the stone’s edge. The flame took reluctantly , as if the air disliked honest fire. It crackled, then died down to a thin curl, no ash drifting away. The smoke didn’t rise. It sank, as if gravity had changed its mind.
A sound came after. Not a footstep, not a branch. A soft click, like fingernails tapping glass.
Aurora froze with her hand still on the stone.
The click repeated, farther away than it should’ve been. Twice, then a pause. Then again, closer, as if whoever tapped knew she listened.
She let her fingers slide from the bark-textured surface and took one step back. The pendant answered her movement with a sharp warmth that stung, like it had teeth.
“Count,” she said. Not out loud, she didn’t want language to become an invitation, but the instruction lived in her mouth anyway . “Steps back.”
She lifted one foot, then the other, retreating from the third stone. Her boots struck the earth with dull sound that didn’t travel. The clearing swallowed noise the way deep water swallowed light.
Halfway through her backward count, she heard the click turn into something else.
A whisper of fabric. A faint rustle that didn’t belong to her clothes. Her coat moved once, the hem lifting as if a breeze had grazed it.
There hadn’t been wind when she arrived. She knew because she’d tested the air with her hairpin, the way she always tested a room before she trusted it.
The pendant pulsed hard enough to make her bite her tongue.
At the edge of her vision, something pale shifted between two wildflower clusters. She didn’t turn immediately. Turning felt like acknowledging bait.
The flowers stood bright where they should’ve been gone , wild blooms forced to bloom year-round in a pocket that refused the rules of her calendar. Petals trembled , but not from motion of stems. The petals trembled like breath on skin.
Aurora kept her eyes on the stones and counted backward. Her numbers fell out of her head with a smooth, lawyerly discipline, each digit a brick laid in a wall between her and whatever wanted in.
Twelve. Eleven.
A voice threaded through the quiet, close enough that it should’ve felt like breath at her ear .
“Rory.”
She stopped counting.
Her full name never appeared in the warning. It didn’t matter. Names still mattered. The voice didn’t use the warning like it respected it, it used it like it had learned the shape of the fear beneath it.
Aurora looked over her shoulder.
Nothing stood there.
But the air carried a pressure, a presence that leaned into the space between her and empty ground. The clearing seemed to narrow, her peripheral vision compressing until the edges of the standing stones blurred like wet ink.
She swallowed and forced her body to move again.
Nine. Eight.
The click returned, faster now. In twos. In threes. A pattern that tried to mimic her count, but it slipped, landing a beat behind as if someone else tried to copy her rhythm without understanding what rhythm meant.
Aurora pivoted her gaze again to the boundary stone line. The third stone waited where it always waited, oak and ancient, carved with marks she hadn’t studied because she hadn’t wanted to admit she cared.
The Heartstone warmed so sharply her fingers prickled.
When she edged closer, the crimson gem’s glow sharpened from inner warmth to a faint, directional light. It didn’t shine out like a torch. It shone inward, making the world around it seem dimmer by contrast.
She lifted her free hand and drew a slow circle in the dirt around the third stone. Not a perfect line. Her chalkless outline came from scuffing her boot toe, a messy imperfect loop.
The ground accepted it without complaint.
Then something in the circle answered.
Not with a sound.
With a sensation, like her skin had briefly forgot how to belong to her.
Aurora jerked back and pressed her palm flat to her chest, checking for heartbeat, checking for damage, as if she expected her heart to skip out of her body and hide. Her pulse stayed stubbornly present.
The sensation faded, leaving behind a new wrongness. A low hum crawled along her bones. It carried the faintest hint of singing, the kind you felt more than heard.
She tightened her fingers around the chain, just enough to keep the pendant against her scar. The warm beat against her wrist synchronised with the hum. Tap, sing, tap, sing.
She didn’t cross the boundary with bare feet. She kept her boots on, checked the circle with quick eyes, and shifted her weight carefully , toe testing the edge.
Her boot sole hovered at the boundary line.
The hum stopped.
The clearing listened.
Aurora felt the air lean again, a predatory attention that waited for her to make the first mistake. She stared at the space just inside the ring. Her breath sounded too loud, too sharp in her own ears.
Then the flowers moved.
Not as a cluster moved. As individual blooms twisted their heads toward her, petals angling as if something with no face had chosen her as its point of focus.
A thin sound came, the scrape of something dragged slowly over stone. Her eyes flicked to the standing stones, and her stomach tightened.
The carved marks along the boundary shifted.
They didn’t crumble. They didn’t glow. They rearranged, lines sliding against each other like shutters closing. The oak stones wore new symbols, fresh grooves where there hadn’t been grooves before.
Aurora took one step backward.
The click returned, satisfied this time. It sounded nearer, closer to her spine.
She felt it then, not in her ears but in her teeth . A vibration that made her molars ache.
The pendant brightened again, heat rushing into her skin. The warmth spread into her wrist scar as if it had been waiting for permission.
She remembered Eva’s final line and the instruction that had been printed in hard ink under the rest.
If someone says your full name, cover the pendant.
Aurora’s throat went dry.
“Rory Carter,” the voice said, crisp and clear, like it stood just behind her left shoulder.
Her body reacted before thought. Her left hand shot up. She covered the Heartstone with her palm, blocking the glow, smothering it with skin.
The moment her hand touched the pendant, the air snapped cold.
The flowers stopped turning.
The hum died.
For a heartbeat, the clearing held still, as if it had never existed.
Then the ground cracked.
Not in a dramatic break. It split with precision, a seam forming under the third stone, the oak and earth parting like a mouth learning its teeth. No blood. No gore. Just an opening where there shouldn’t be an opening, darkness pooling where soil had been.
Aurora yanked her hand back as the crack widened, the Heartstone pulsing through her fingers anyway, heat trying to escape her control.
She stumbled back half a step, nearly catching herself on the boundary line.
The darkness inside the seam smelled of wet iron and winter-green bruises, a scent that didn't belong in any season. It rose in slow curls and wrapped around her boots without touching her skin.
The seam widened again.
A faint red light flared within, not the Heartstone’s crimson glow, something deeper, like blood seen through old water. The Heartstone warmed until it throbbed against her scar.
Something pushed upward from the gap.
Aurora kept her eyes on the seam, because looking away felt like agreeing to blind faith . Her mind raced for patterns, for rules, for loopholes. This place loved rules, even if it bent them.
The seam exhaled.
A sound came out of it, low and rhythmic , like a throat trying to imitate language. Her skin prickled from scalp to wrist scar.
A shape appeared in the darkness, only half formed, as if the portal had started rendering the world and lost interest midway. Too tall. Too thin. Limbs that didn’t know where joints should be. It moved like a puppet pulled by strings that jerked in different directions.
Aurora forced herself to move.
She turned toward the boundary stones, searching for the place where her backward count started, searching for the logic of escape. She couldn’t run in a grove that played with time. Running turned fear into fuel.
She moved instead with stiff, careful steps, keeping her boots planted on Earth’s side of the boundary.
Behind her, the flowers rustled in a way that suggested laughter without humour.
The seam’s red light brightened. It painted the dirt and the soles of her boots. It made the circle she’d drawn look like an accusation.
Aurora reached for her coat pocket for the only tools she’d brought. She found a handful of salt packets, cheap supermarket things Eva had insisted on like salt mattered against Fae, like practicality could wedge itself into the impossible. Her fingers closed around one packet, crinkling in her grip.
The shape surged higher.
The air around her thickened. Sound bent. Her hearing narrowed until she couldn’t tell whether the click came from the seam or from the space behind her eyes.
A whisper skated across the back of her neck.
“You came for it.”
Aurora didn’t answer. She didn’t bargain. She didn’t offer questions. She hated the way her body wanted to obey anyway, as if fear held a lease on her muscles.
She tore the salt packet open.
The crystals spilled in a scatter, bright against the dirt, and she flicked them toward the seam. The salt hit the edge of the opening and steamed as if it had landed on something alive.
The shape recoiled slightly , not from pain, but from correction . Like it had expected different rules.
Aurora used the moment.
She stepped over the line of her own circle, boots first, staying within the boundary as the instruction demanded. She didn’t trust the boundary’s mood, but she trusted her choice to keep her soles on the right side.
The moment her second foot cleared the circle, the carved marks along the oak stones snapped into new alignment.
The hum returned, louder now, and it carried the beginning of singing that crawled under her ribs.
Aurora’s pendant pulsed so hard her wrist hurt. She could feel it through skin, through bone.
The seam expanded again, as if it fed on her movement away from it.
The red light flared, reaching outward.
Aurora forced her breath into steady rhythm, then moved faster, aiming for the narrow path between two stones that she had used to enter. She couldn’t see an exit, not in any reliable sense, but she remembered the shape of the boundary line .
Something brushed her ankle.
Not hands. Not an animal’s fur. The sensation of cold lace against skin, light and possessive, then gone, like a test swipe.
Aurora kicked out instinctively. Her boot connected with empty air and struck stone instead. She turned her foot, stumbled, caught herself on an oak trunk that hadn’t been there a moment ago.
The tree bark felt smooth under her palm, too smooth, like polished wood.
A laugh, finally. Small and crisp.
It came from everywhere and nowhere at once, but the direction sharpened with the gap’s glow until Aurora could tell exactly where it wanted her to look.
She looked.
The seam widened into a throat-shaped opening. The shape inside stepped forward, and for a second, Aurora saw it clearly enough to wish she hadn’t.
No face. No eyes. Just a vertical seam of darkness where expression should've lived, and the darkness moved like thought.
It leaned toward her.
The Heartstone’s glow broke through her palm even though she kept her hand clenched over it, as if the pendant had decided her warning didn’t apply to it. The crimson light flooded her wrist scar, warming it until it felt like fresh injury .
Aurora yanked her hand free and clamped the chain in both hands, desperate to control the light.
The figure raised a limb.
It didn’t grab her like a person. It reached through the air between them, stretching the space itself, drawing the darkness outward in a ribbon that pulled at her boots, pulling at the world.
Aurora’s soles slid on dirt that suddenly felt slick.
The circle she’d drawn flared with red, lines brightening like veins, like the boundary stone marks had decided to mark her back.
She lurched , one step, two, fighting the pull.
The seam exhaled again, and the grove answered with a chorus of wrong singing, soft and layered, too many voices for any throat.
Aurora tried to run, and the world refused her speed, slowing her motion by degrees until her muscles screamed against a tide that came from the gap.
Her heel caught the edge of her own circle.
The last thing she felt before the darkness took hold was the Heartstone bursting into unbearable heat, and the certainty, sharp as law, that it had never been her bringing anything to the stones at all.