Run: 2026-03-18-01KM09X66DXRKBZAN0JGP40EZK

Rory stepped through the archway of standing stones and into the grove. The air smelled wrong before she took another breath—thick, as though dipped in syrup. Like the time she’d sliced her finger open gutting pigeon for Eva’s pa’s restaurant and the scent of blood had coated her throat for hours. Only here it wasn’t copper, wasn’t warm. It was cold and green and old, like wet moss left to fester in the dark. The standing stones groaned behind her—not with wind, not with any natural sound she recognised. It was the sound of stone shifting, reluctantly, like a throat trying to swallow when it shouldn’t have to. She was still wearing her delivery jacket, the Golden Empress logo still pinned to her breast, the denim dark with kitchen grease in places. She hadn’t even had time to tie her hair back. Now it hung loose, black as a raven’s wing, catching the dim glow that shouldn’t have existed. No moon swung overhead in Richmond Park tonight. No streetlamps. No light from hovering neons or passing cars. Just a sulphurous half-twilight, the hue of bruises. The grove wasn’t supposed to be like this. She checked the pendant beneath her collar—the Heartstone. A warning pulse, faint but insistent, its crimson warmth throbbing once against her sternum like a misfiring heart. Normally it glowed like poker-red gem held to candlelight. Now it flickered, barely there, as though fighting against a current it couldn’t name. She clenched her fists. “Okay,” she said aloud. Her voice sounded muffled, as if the trees lining the clearing had leaned in to listen. “You wanted to find the source. You wanted to—” A twig snapped. Not behind her. Not to her sides. Straight ahead, past the first ring of oaks. She hadn’t passed any on her way in. The path had been clear. Now something stood between the trunks, something dark and hunched. It didn’t move when she did, didn’t flinch when she froze. It simply waited. Rory exhaled through her nose. She unzipped her jacket just enough to let the pendant fall free. The chain snagged on her hoodie for a second before it swung into view. The Heartstone pulsed again, sharper this time, like a finger jabbing her ribs from the inside. She took a step forward. The ground beneath her trainers was wrong. Too soft. Too spongy. When she lifted her foot, the earth clung like wet clay, and a sound rose from below—wet, leathery, like something breathing through a mask of mucus. She jammed her foot down harder. The sucking stopped. Whatever had been exhaling through the dirt had gone silent. Another step. The air thickened. The grove’s edges blurred, as if the trees were melting back into a memory. The standing stones behind her had begun to sway, their tops bending inland like reeds before a tide. Not swaying—leaning. Bowing. As if the whole sky were pressing down on them. She forced herself to walk. The hunchbacked silhouette remained stationary. Its posture was impossible—too many joints, too many angles, its spine curving in directions a human spine shouldn’t. It wore a cloak, but the fabric didn’t flutter. It clung, dark and damp, to something underneath. Rory couldn’t see what. She reached into the side pocket of her cargo pants and closed her fingers around the box cutter she always carried. Not much, but enough to make her feel armed. “Who’s there?” she asked. The figure tilted its head. The motion was too smooth, too precise, like a compass needle locking onto north. Then it spoke. Not in words. Not in English, or Welsh, or any human tongue. It emitted a sound like a struck tuning fork vibrating through water. The frequencies rippled inside her skull, rearranging thoughts. For a heartbeat she saw the grove differently—the oaks weren’t trees at all. They were ribcages splayed open, their bark peeled back like skin. She smelled iron then, hot and fresh, dripping from the fissures. The pendant flared scarlet. Rory stumbled, the blade of the box cutter biting into her palm. She welcomed the pain. Pain was human. Pain was solid. She amplified it by clenching harder, letting a thin line of bloodwell down her wrist. The crimson streak caught the grove’s sickly light and for a second the air above her own blood seemed to writhe, as though the droplets were dangling from invisible threads being pulled by something beneath the soil. The hunchback lunged. It wasn’t running. It was unfolding, limbs lengthening like accordion pleats, its cloak dissolving into the dark so that she glimpsed only an expanse of moss-green skin stippled with what looked like lichen or possibly old scars. Its face was a smooth oval, featureless except for a vertical slit where a mouth should be, and two deeper slashes for eyes that were entirely black—pupil, iris, sclera all merged into a void that absorbed the light. It moved faster than she could track. One instant it was twenty paces away; the next it was inches from her face, its breath rolling over her like rotting seaweed. The smell filled her lungs and her vision narrowed to a tunnel. She swung the box cutter in a desperate arc. The blade met resistance. Not flesh. Not bone. Something denser, colder, like striking a pane of ice. White cracks spiderwebbed beneath the surface of its torso, but the cuts didn’t bleed. Instead the cracks pulsed with a faint bioluminescence, cold blue veins spreading from the wound. The thing hissed—a sound like steam through a blocked pipe—and recoiled half a step. Rory didn’t wait. She bolted for the nearest oak, ducked behind its trunk, and pressed her back against the bark. The heartbeat in her wrist now matched the pendant’s rhythm, frantic and syncopated. She risked a glance around the bole. The hunchback hadn’t followed. It stood exactly where she’d seen it first, still bent at that impossible angle, its cloak already half-knitted back into place. The tear in its torso had sealed; the bioluminescence bled out into the surrounding air like milk spilled in water, leaving only a faint green glow hanging in the shape of its silhouette. But something else was moving behind it. Shapes detached themselves from the standing stones. Dozens. Dozens more hunchbacks, their sizes varying from child to giant, all emaciated, all draped in damp cloaks that clung to whatever skeletal frames supported them. They fanned out in a semicircle, their empty slits fixed on her. The air grew heavier, pressing her ribs, making it hard to draw breath. Rory’s fingertips went numb. She clutched the pendant, willing it to flare again. It did—briefly—projecting a crimson halo over her chest. The nearest creatures flinched, their cloaks twitching like startled cats. One at the fringes of the semicircle let out that same struck-fork shriek. The sound arched through the grove, bouncing off the unseen sky, and the entire circle of watchers rippled as though reality had hiccuped. She had maybe three seconds. Rory sprinted for the standing stones, the wrongness of the grove thrumming beneath her trainers like drums. She didn’t dare look back. She knew already what she’d see—the hunchbacks unfolding, lengthening, their limbs stretching impossibly long, their green-eyed voids closing the distance between them and her. Her fingertips brushed the first standing stone. Cold seeped into her bones. Not stone-cold—older. Older than stone. Older than Earth. She felt the years pressing back, an entire continent’s worth of silence screaming through her fingertips. The Heartstone blazed against her collarbone, a branding iron. Her vision pinched to a white point. Then the grove exhaled. The hunchbacks shrieked as one. The sound shattered not only in her ears but in her bones, rattling her teeth and filling her skull with static. The ground bucked. She was lifted off her feet, her delivery jacket flaring like a parachute behind her. She sailed between the stones, her stomach lurching as if she’d dropped several storeys. The last thing she saw before darkness swallowed her was the grove’s boundary waver, the oaks twisting into something vast and tooth-studded, and the standing stones themselves leaning toward each other like fangs about to close. She landed hard on cobblestones. Silas’ bar sign flickered above her: *The Crooked Billet*—wobbly, slightly askew. The streetlights of Camden were bright and human. A bin bag burst nearby, releasing the scent of fried onions and bubble-gum wrappers. Rory rolled onto her side, retching. The Heartstone had gone black, inert, its crimson glow snuffed out like a candle. She pushed herself up. Her trainers were caked in dark, fibrous mud that didn’t belong to any park in London. She spat once, twice, then scrubbed her sleeve across her mouth. Somewhere deep in the lining of her jacket, the box cutter was still clutched in her fist, the blade smeared with something green and iridescent that smelled of rust. She unzipped the pocket slowly, letting the blade clatter onto the pavement. It landed point-first and stuck. She stared at it for a long time. Behind her, the air over the pavement shimmered, rippling like heat haze over a grill. She didn’t turn around. The ripples settled. The night stayed quiet. She pulled her jacket tight, breathed in the reassuring stench of takeaway grease and diesel from the Holloway Road, and walked away without looking back.