Run: 2026-04-24-01KQ06K4QQ7A830YKPKK2XQ63P

The air tasted wrong. Not just cold—Richmond Park at midnight was always damp and chill—but *old*, like opening a tomb that hadn't been disturbed for centuries. Aurora Carter pulled the collar of her jacket tighter, the fabric whispering against her neck. The map on her phone was useless here. The signal had died the moment she'd stepped between the two largest oaks, their branches knitting together like a gnarled doorway. She'd come for Eva. The cryptic text had been enough: *The Grove. After midnight. I found it.* No follow-up. No answer to Aurora’s frantic calls. Just three words that sent a spike of ice through her veins. Eva didn’t play games like this. The standing stones were supposed to mark the boundary. They weren't stones at all, but ancient oaks, their trunks twisted into unsettling shapes that, in the shifting moonlight, looked like hunched figures or grasping limbs. Wildflowers carpeted the ground beneath them, their petals open and luminous in the dark—violets, foxglove, flowers that shouldn’t exist in January. Their perfume was cloyingly sweet, a scent of decay folded into honey. "Okay, Eva. Not funny." Her voice sounded flat, swallowed by the silence. The normal nocturnal orchestra of the park—the rustle of deer, the distant hum of London—had vanished. Here, the silence was a presence. It pressed against her eardrums. She took a step forward, her boots sinking into soft, damp earth that felt almost like moss. A flicker of movement to her left. She snapped her head around. Nothing. Just the shadow of a branch swaying in a breeze she couldn't feel. "Hello?" The word dropped into the quiet like a stone into a well. No echo. Just absorption. The Heartstone Pendant lay cold against her skin beneath her shirt. No warmth. No glow. It was just a piece of jewelry. She shoved the thought away. She wasn't here for that. The grove, as Eva’s text called it, was a clearing, but it felt more like a bowl. The twisted oaks rose up around the edges, forming a natural amphitheatre. The moonlight here was different, too. Sharper. It etched the scene in silver and black, bleaching the wildflowers to bone-white and deepening every shadow to an inky void. Then she heard it. A giggle. High-pitched, childlike, but layered with something brittle, like dry twigs snapping. It came from everywhere and nowhere. "Eva?" Aurora called, her voice tight. She turned in a slow circle, scanning the tree line. The giggle faded, leaving a ringing in its wake. She pushed forward, towards the centre of the clearing where the grass grew longest. Each step felt deliberate, loud. The ground here was uneven, treacherous. She almost stumbled over a root, catching herself with a hand against a nearby oak. The bark was unnaturally smooth, like polished stone. And it was warm. She snatched her hand back. A whisper. Not words, but the cadence of speech. A sibilant rush of air that sounded like her name. *Ror-eee.* Her throat went dry. "Who's there?" The silence that answered was deeper than before. It hummed. She felt it in her teeth. She checked her phone again. 12:47 AM. She’d been here for less than twenty minutes. But it felt like hours. The time distortion. The lore in the codex file had been clear about that. An hour inside could be minutes or days outside. How long had Eva been here? Days? A chill unrelated to the temperature traced a line down her spine. This place wasn't just strange. It was *watching*. Her gaze drifted to the far edge of the clearing. A shape, dark and low, huddled at the base of one of the twisted oaks. A person? "Eva?" No movement. Aurora took a hesitant step closer. The shape resolved itself. Not a person. A pile of… something. Leaves? No. It was a mound of shed antlers, bleached white, piled in a grotesque nest. Dozens of them. From deer, but also from things she couldn't identify—spirals, forks, too many points. Bile rose in her throat. She backed away, her boot crunching on something hard. She looked down. A small, flat stone lay in the grass, carved with a spiral that seemed to spin in the moonlight if she looked at it from the corner of her eye. There were others, she realized. Scattered throughout the clearing. Not arranged in a pattern, but there. Markers. Or offerings. The giggle came again. This time it sounded closer, coming from just behind the antler pile. Aurora’s breath hitched. She fumbled inside her shirt, her fingers closing around the Heartstone. It was ice-cold. Dead. A branch snapped in the woods. The sound was sharp, explosive in the stillness. She spun towards it, heart hammering against her ribs. Two points of light, low to the ground, reflected the moonlight. Eyes. They blinked. Then they were gone. She wasn't alone. The certainty settled in her bones, cold and heavy. Something was in the trees, circling the clearing, staying just at the edge of her perception. It had been there since she arrived. It had let her in. "Eva!" she shouted, her voice cracking. "If you can hear me, we need to go! Now!" Her own words bounced back at her, distorted, as if the clearing itself were mocking her. *Go… go… go…* She took a step towards the path she'd come from, the direction of the oaken doorway. The wildflowers at her feet rustled. She looked down. They were turning. The luminous heads of the flowers were tracking her movement, their petals curling like hungry mouths. A sound began, a low thrum that vibrated up through the soles of her boots. It was the heartbeat of the grove. And it was speeding up. From the corner of her eye, she saw one of the twisted oaks *lean*. It was subtle, a slow, impossible tilt of the trunk, its branch-limbs reaching. Then another groan of wood, from the other side. They were closing in. The whispers were back, a chorus now, overlapping and urgent. Not her name. Other words. *Stay. Tasted. Sweet.* The scent of the wildflowers intensified, rotting and rich, making her head swim. Panic, cold and sharp, pierced through her shock. The reason for being here—Eva—fought with a primal, screaming instinct to flee. But flee where? The path was gone. The standing oaks had shifted, their positions rearranged into a solid, impenetrable wall of gnarled wood. The way out had been swallowed. She was trapped in the bowl. With them. The moon vanished behind a cloud. For a second, total blackness swallowed the grove. In that pitch dark, the whispers stopped. The thrumming stopped. Even the cloying sweetness in the air paused. Then, all at once, the world *reasserted* itself. The moonlight returned, stark and cruel. But it illuminated a new feature in the centre of the clearing. Where there had been only long grass, there now stood a circle of stones. They rose from the earth like broken teeth, grey and moss-covered. And sitting in the middle of the circle, her back to Aurora, was a figure. Long hair, blonde and tangled with leaves, hung down her back. She wore Eva’s favourite blue jacket. "Rory." The voice was Eva’s, but flat, drained of all colour. "You came." "Eva?" Aurora took a step forward, relief warring with a screaming, primal fear. The Heartstone against her skin gave a single, weak, cold pulse. "What is this place? We have to leave. *Now.*" The figure didn’t move. "Leaving is hard. They don't like it when you leave." Her head began to turn, just a fraction, the movement stiff, unnatural. "They liked my taste." Aurora froze. In the stark moonlight, she saw the roots. They snaked out from the base of the circle stones, thick and woody, and they were tangled around Eva’s ankles, her wrists, creeping up her arms like parasitic vines. They pulsed with a faint, sickly light. Eva’s head completed its turn. Her face was pale, her eyes wide and blank, pupils dilated into vast black pits. A thin trickle of something dark, like sap, ran from the corner of her mouth. "They’re hungry, Rory," Eva said, her voice a monotone echo of itself. "And you’re here." The circle of stones began to hum. The wildflowers at the perimeter of the clearing began to glow, a collective, eerie radiance that cast moving, distorted shadows. The twisted oaks groaned, their bark splitting in places to reveal a pale, pulsing wood beneath, like flesh. From the shadows between the trees, shapes began to detach themselves. Not animals. Not people. Silhouettes that bent and folded in ways geometry didn’t allow. They were made of the darkness and the twisted wood, and they moved with a silent, predatory grace into the clearing, circling, closing the distance. Aurora’s hand went to the Heartstone. It was still cold. Useless. She looked at Eva’s trapped, ruined form, then at the encircling shapes. The wrongness wasn’t just a feeling anymore. It was a physical thing, a tightening net of ancient hunger and silent malice. The grove wasn't just a place. It was a mouth. And it was about to feed.