AI The path into Richmond Park should have been familiar . Aurora had taken deliveries through these gates dozens of times, knowing the way the sodium lamps cut through the dusk, the smell of damp earth and distant traffic. Tonight, the air tasted different. Ozone, maybe. And old copper. She held the Heartstone pendant in her fist, its silver chain wrapped tight around her fingers. It was warm, a steady, puling heat against her palm that had been growing more insistent for the last hour, leading her off the main paths, deeper into the park’s western stretches.
The standing stones appeared not as a gradual reveal but as a sudden, silent punchline. One moment, dense tree line. The next, a clearing ringed by enormous, ancient oaks, their trunks thicker than her flat’s doorframe. They weren’t arranged in a circle, but in some irregular, sprawling pattern that felt less like a monument and more like a wound in the land. The air inside the ring was still. No wind. The sounds of the city—the distant rumble, the bark of a dog—vanished, swallowed by the trees. The silence pressed against her eardrums.
The pendant pulsed , hotter. *Here. Go in.*
She stepped between two of the stones. The sensation was like walking through cold cobwebs that weren't there. One step: park. Next step: somewhere else. The grass under her boots was impossibly soft, springy. Wildflowers, pale blues and violets, bloomed in defiance of the season, their scent cloying and sweet, like funeral lilies. The moonlight, which had been a pale smudge behind London’s glow, now streamed down, unnaturally silver, casting sharp, black shadows from the standing stones. They stretched like grasping fingers.
Her reason for being here, the one Eva had sworn was vital, suddenly felt flimsy. *“The pendant knows, Rory. It hums for a reason. Silas said the grove answers those who are called.”* A reason to stand alone in a place that didn’t obey the clock.
She moved toward the centre, her boots making no sound on the strange grass. The Heartstone’s glow was visible now, a faint, deep crimson light seeping between her knuckles. It pulsed in time with the warmth . *Thump-thump. Thump-thump.*
A sound.
She froze. It was distant, a soft, rhythmic scraping. Like long nails on rough bark. It came from the north side of the grove, beyond the nearest oaks. Aurora held her breath. The sound stopped. Silence rushed back in, heavier than before.
*Just an animal. A fox.* She told herself, but the thought felt hollow here. Her skin prickled. She scanned the tree line, the deep shadows between the massive trunks. Nothing moved. The wildflowers, headless and pale, nodded in a breeze that didn't touch her hair.
She took another step. The scraping resumed, closer now. To the west. She whipped her head around. A tree branch, thick as her thigh, swayed gently , forty feet up, though the air was still. She watched it, counting the seconds. It stilled. Had it moved before she looked? The certainty that she’d caught it mid-motion settled in her stomach like a cold stone.
The pendant’s pulse quickened . *Thump-thumpthump. Thump-thumpthump.*
A flicker at the edge of her vision. To the left. She snapped her head to the side, staring hard into the gloom between two standing stones. Nothing. Just more pale flowers and silver grass. But the impression lingered—a shape, low to the ground, that was there and then wasn’t, leaving no rustle, no sign. Like a thought glimpsed and forgotten.
Her breath felt too loud. She could hear her own heartbeat in her ears, a frantic counter-rhythm to the pendant’s steady, eerie heat. The wrongness wasn’t a single thing. It was a collage. The impossible flowers. The silent, watching stones. The scraping that circled. The sense that the grove itself was holding its breath, waiting for her to do something.
She started moving again, faster, her goal the vague centre of the clearing. The pendant was a hot coal in her hand now. The scraping followed. It wasn’t circling anymore. It was keeping pace. Off to her right, just out of sight. A dry, repetitive *shhhk… shhhk… shhhk…* like something dragging itself through the leaves that weren't there.
“Who’s there?” Her voice was a croak, swallowed by the unnatural quiet. No echo .
The scraping stopped.
In the silence that followed, she heard breathing. Not hers. It was wet, ragged, coming from all around her, from the stones themselves. In. Out. A laboured, hungry sound.
A shape detached from the shadow of the nearest oak. It was tall, impossibly thin, with limbs like gnarled branches. It didn't walk. It unfolded. Its head, a featureless lump, tilted. Aurora’s heart hammered against her ribs. She stumbled back, her heel catching on the spongy grass. The shape didn't advance. It simply stood, its form wavering at the edges as if it were made of smoke and moonlight.
The Heartstone flared. A silent, crimson pulse illuminated the clearing, a wave of ruby light. In that brief, bloody glow, she saw them. Dozens of them. Standing in the spaces between the oaks, pressed against the standing stones, their tall, twisted forms frozen in the act of watching. Motionless. Except for their heads, which all tilted in unison, a faint, dry clicking sound accompanying the movement.
The light faded. Darkness, deeper than before, rushed back. But she’d seen. The wet breathing resumed, louder now, overlapping. A chorus of gurgling inhalations.
She ran. The direction didn't matter. Back toward where she’d entered. Her boots pounded the silent earth. The wildflowers crushed underfoot released their sickly sweet scent in waves. The scraping started again, on all sides, a frenzied, gibbering sound. The shapes were moving with her now, keeping pace in the trees, flitting between the stones. She caught glimpses of them—long, pale limbs, the flash of something dark where a mouth should be.
The standing stones blurred past. Which way was out? They all looked the same, ancient and grim, their shadows merging into a black labyrinth. The pendant burned, a brand on her skin. It wasn’t guiding her anymore. It was an anchor, a hot, angry pulse that said *here, you are here, they see you.*
She risked a glance over her shoulder. One of them was closer, just a dozen yards back, moving with a lurching , broken gait. Its head was thrown back, and a sound escaped it—not the breathing, but a low, vibrating keen, like a saw through bone .
A root, black and thick, erupted from the ground in front of her. She vaulted it, landing hard, pain shooting up her ankle. The keening grew louder, joined by others. The grove was waking up, and it was hungry.
Ahead, a gap between two oaks. It looked narrower than the others, a dark slit. The Heartstone’s glow illuminated it for a second—a path, maybe. The stones there were different, more uniform. A possible exit.
She poured everything she had into the sprint, lungs burning, the coppery taste of fear thick on her tongue. The shapes in the trees paralleled her, their scraping a deafening rattle. The one behind her was gaining . She could feel its presence, a cold spot in the air, a focus of wet, desperate intent.
She plunged into the gap. The oaks pressed close, their bark slick and wrong to the touch. The passage twisted. Moonlight vanished. The sounds cut off abruptly, as if snuffed out.
Silence again. Her own ragged gasps echoed in the tight space. She sagged against a trunk, her chest heaving. The pendant’s heat was fading, subsiding to a dull, residual warmth . She was out. She had to be.
She looked down at it, nestled in her palm. Its faint crimson glow showed the bark under her fingers. Deep grooves were carved into the wood, in a pattern that made her breath hitch. They were the same shape as the scar on her wrist. A perfect crescent moon.
A long, cold finger traced the line of her jaw. A whisper , dry as autumn leaves, brushed her ear.
*You left the path.*