AI The path behind Aurora Carter had vanished. One moment she’d been following the faint trail worn through the Richmond Park undergrowth, the next she’d stepped between two ancient oaks so gnarled their bark looked like frozen screams, and the world on the other side had simply… stopped being the world she knew.
She stood in a clearing. The air was thick, sweet, and unnaturally still, smelling of night-blooming jasmine and something else—something loamy and old, like a freshly opened tomb. A fat, pollen-drunk bee drifted past her ear, its buzz unnervingly slow, like a recording played at half speed. The wildflowers at her feet were impossible: great, luminous moonflowers and night phlox, their pale petals glowing with a soft, internal light, as if they’d soaked up starlight and were slowly exhaling it. It was beautiful. It was deeply wrong.
Her reason for being here was Eva. Eva, with her frantic text from three hours ago: *I found it. The spot Isolde mentioned. In Richmond. Meet me?* Isolde, Eva’s newest obsession—a woman who claimed to be a historian of ‘liminal spaces’ and had been feeding Eva a steady diet of folklore about doorways and doorkeepers. Aurora had scoffed. She was a delivery driver and a part-time legal clerk, not a believer in folklore. But Eva had sounded scared, and after everything with Evan, Aurora couldn’t say no to a scared friend.
She pulled out her phone. No signal. The time glowed 9:47 PM. She’d stepped through the oaks at 9:45. Two minutes. It felt like an eternity in this silent, glowing place.
“Eva?” Her voice was swallowed by the thick air. No echo . It died flatly, as if the trees were eating the sound. A shiver traced the line of her spine.
The Heartstone Pendant, a gift from a benefactor she’d never met, lay cool against her collarbone. It usually carried a faint, pleasant warmth , like a sun-touched pebble. Now it was cold. Not icy, just… neutral. Absent of any feeling. She gripped it through her shirt, the tiny crimson gem smooth and inert.
She took a step. The ground was soft, yielding, like moss over deep peat. Each footfall made a barely-audible *shush *. As she moved toward the center of the grove, she noticed the standing stones. They weren’t arranged in a circle, but in a rough, broken semi-circle, like the decaying teeth of some subterranean beast. They were oak, not stone, or perhaps they were stone that had taken the shape of oak. Their surfaces were carved with spirals and interlocking knots that seemed to shift when she didn’t look directly at them .
A sound. A dry, skittering noise, like fingernails on bark, coming from behind the largest stone.
She froze. “Eva? Is that you?”
The skittering stopped. The silence that rushed back in was heavier, more profound than before. Aurora’s heart began a slow, heavy thump against her ribs. She was a rational person. A fox. A badger. Something small and nocturnal. She forced herself to move forward, circling around the largest standing stone.
Nothing. Just the glowing flowers and the unnaturally bright stars above—too bright, too many, clustered in constellations she didn’t recognize. Then she saw it. A path, a narrow gap between two other oaks, leading deeper into a darkness that seemed to pool and thicken . And on the edge of that darkness, a flicker of movement. The shape of a person, shoulder-length dark hair, ducking into the trees.
“Eva!”
Aurora broke into a run. The ground sucked at her boots. The slow-buzzing bee was suddenly joined by others, a whole chorus of them, their droning harmonizing into a low, monotone hum that vibrated in her teeth. She plunged into the deeper trees. The glowing flowers vanished here, replaced by an ordinary, oppressive blackness, but her eyes adjusted quickly .
She could see the figure ahead, just a silhouette, moving with a strange, loping grace. Not Eva’s walk. Eva was a brisk, purposeful strider. This was something else.
“Eva, wait! It’s me!”
The figure paused, half-turning. In the faint, filtered starlight, Aurora could make out a face. It was Eva’s face—the same high cheekbones, the same pixie cut. But the expression was blank, placid, and the eyes… the eyes reflected the faint light too brightly, like a cat’s.
It smiled. It was Eva’s smile, but stretched a fraction too wide. Then it turned and melted into the darkness between the trees.
A cold, logical terror began to uncoil in Aurora’s stomach . This wasn’t Eva. This was a memory of Eva, or a copy of Eva, something that had seen her and was wearing her shape. Isolde’s stories slammed back into her mind. *They don’t have imagination. They take what they find.*
She stood, rooted, listening. The bee-hum faded. A new sound started: a soft, rhythmic *tap-tap-tap * from somewhere to her left. Then an answering *tap-tap-tap* from her right. It was wood on wood. Like someone knocking gently on a tree trunk, over and over.
Aurora’s hand went back to the pendant. Still cold. She took a steadying breath, the cool, earthy air doing nothing to calm her. She had to find the real Eva. Get them both out.
She began to move again, not toward the sound, but parallel to it, keeping the trees between her and the source. The tapping followed, echoing her movements, a perverse game of follow-the-leader. As she walked, she noticed the trees themselves. Their bark, in the scant light, seemed to form patterns. Faces. Wailing mouths, hollow eyes, all frozen in silent agony. Her mind was playing tricks. It had to be.
Then she heard her own voice.
It came from ahead, soft and conversational. “The university was a mistake. Dad was so disappointed when I dropped out of Pre-Law.” Her own words, her own inflection, perfectly mimicked.
She stopped dead. That was a thing she’d told Eva, late one night, drunk on cheap wine in their tiny flat. A secret.
Another voice, from the right. Eva’s voice this time, low and urgent. “Rory, Evan’s here. He found me. He’s right behind you.”
Panic, cold and sharp, spiked through her. *It’s lying. It’s trying to get you to run. It’s trying to get you to turn.*
She squeezed her eyes shut. *Calm. Be calm. Think.* The Evan reference was a weapon, aimed at her deepest trauma. This thing was digging through her head, through Eva’s head, and constructing weapons from their memories.
The tapping grew louder, closer, merging into a continuous, frantic drumming. The air grew colder. Frost began to glitter on the glowing flowers at the edge of the deeper woods, their light dimming to a sickly green.
Aurora opened her eyes. Directly ahead, standing in a small pool of clearing where the starlight fell, was a child. It looked about eight years old, wearing a simple white shift. It had no face. Where its features should have been, there was only smooth, unbroken skin, like a mannequin not yet finished.
The faceless child raised a hand and pointed at her.
From the trees all around her, the shapes began to emerge. Not just Eva’s shape anymore. She saw her mother’s face on a body that was too tall, her father’s stern profile atop a shape that was hunched and wrong. Figures she recognized from the Golden Empress delivery runs, their familiar smiles now grotesque and unblinking. They didn’t advance. They just stood at the edge of the darkness, a silent, watching gallery of stolen faces.
The Heartstone Pendant gave a single, violent pulse against her chest. Not warmth . A sharp, almost electric *zing * of warning.
The child without a face took a step toward her.
Aurora didn’t scream. She didn’t run. A different, colder part of her mind took over—the part that had outsmarted a manipulative ex, the part that could calculate the fastest route through London traffic in a downpour. She looked away from the child, away from the gallery of horrors. She looked at the standing stones. The path back. She had to find the gate again.
She turned, slowly , deliberately , her back to the faceless child and the mimics. She began to walk, not run, toward the semi-circle of oaks. Every step was an effort against the primal urge to flee. The tapping resumed, now in a frantic, angry staccato. The stolen voices behind her began to whisper , a babble of accusations, pleas, and her own private thoughts thrown back at her in a churning cacophony .
*You left Eva. You always leave.*
*She’s with Evan now. She likes it.*
*That scar on your wrist… he did that, didn’t he?*
She kept walking. The oaks were ahead, their knotted bark seeming to writhe in the periphery. The air grew thicker, harder to breathe, sweet with decay. The Faceless Child’s presence was a cold weight on the back of her neck, a silent, screaming pressure.
Just as she was about to break into a run for the gap between the oaks, she saw something that made her blood freeze. Standing in the very gateway she needed, backlit by the impossible starlight, was another figure.
This one was Eva. The real Eva. Her face was pale, her eyes wide with a terror that mirrored Aurora’s own. She was clutching her phone, its flashlight beam cutting a shaky path through the gloom .
“Rory?” Eva’s voice was a terrified squeak. “Rory, is that you? I’ve been looking for you for hours. Something’s wrong. The path keeps changing.”
Hope, desperate and brilliant, surged in Aurora’s chest. She opened her mouth to call out, to run to her friend.
Then she saw it. A detail. Tiny. Impossible. Eva was holding her phone in her left hand. But Eva was left-handed. She always held her phone in her right.
And the Heartstone Pendant, against Aurora’s skin, pulsed again. A strong, firm, *No *.
The figure in the gateway smiled. It was Eva’s smile, but it held a depth of ancient, patient malice that had nothing to do with her friend. It took a step forward, out of the gateway and into the grove.
Behind Aurora, the whispering stopped. A single, collective intake of breath came from the gallery of stolen faces. The Faceless Child’s cold presence vanished.
Aurora was alone with the thing that wore Eva’s face, standing in a place where time twisted and nature lied, with only a cold gemstone and her own faltering courage for a shield. The real Eva was somewhere out there, lost. And the door home was in the hands of the enemy.