Run: 2026-04-24-01KQ07Y28FB8DY7TRE716DD8HE

The standing stones rose from the earth like broken teeth. Rory paused at the edge of the clearing, her breath misting in the November chill. The ancient oaks that formed the boundary of Isolde's grove should have been familiar by now—she'd come here three times since Eva first showed her the path through Richmond Park—but something about their silhouettes tonight made her skin crawl. The bark seemed darker, the gaps between the trunks narrower, as though the trees had shifted closer together since her last visit. She pressed her palm against the Heartstone pendant. The crimson gem pulsed against her collarbone, warm and insistent, the same rhythm it had kept for the past hour as she'd navigated the park's winding paths. A Hel portal. Somewhere in this grove, a doorway to somewhere else was opening, and the pendant wouldn't let her ignore it. "Get it done, Carter," she muttered, and stepped between the stones. The temperature dropped ten degrees. The wildflowers that carpeted the clearing should have died weeks ago—frost had claimed everything else in London—but here they bloomed in pale clusters, their petals catching no light. No moonlight reached the grove. The sky above was clear, she'd seen the stars on her walk, but beneath the oaks the darkness sat thick as oil. Rory fished her phone from her jacket pocket. The screen cast a weak blue glow across the nearest flowers. 11:47 PM. She'd entered the park at half ten. The math didn't trouble her—time moved strangely in the grove, Eva had warned her—but the silence did. No wind. No distant traffic. No owls or foxes or any of the creatures that populated the park at night. Just her footsteps on the damp earth, and even those sounded muffled. Swallowed. She moved deeper into the clearing, following the pendant's warmth. The gem grew hotter against her chest, its pulse quickening, and she fixed her attention on that rhythm rather than the shadows pooling between the standing stones. The portal was close. Find it, report back to Silas, let someone else handle the rest. That was the job. A sound stopped her. Not a sound, exactly. The absence of one. The white noise that had filled her ears—so constant she hadn't noticed it—vanished. The silence that replaced it pressed against her eardrums like deep water. Rory turned in a slow circle, her phone's light sweeping the clearing. The standing stones remained where they'd always been. The wildflowers swayed without wind. The oaks stood sentinel at the boundary, their branches skeletal against the starless sky. Everything was where it should be. Everything was wrong. She swallowed. Her throat clicked in the pressure-silence. "Hello?" The word fell flat. No echo. No response. Just the weight of quiet pressing closer. The pendant flared hot against her skin, and she hissed, glancing down. The Heartstone's crimson glow had brightened, its pulse racing now, and the heat seeping through her shirt bordered on painful. She grabbed the silver chain to lift it away from her chest— Something moved at the edge of her vision. Rory snapped her head left. The standing stone she'd been facing stood empty, its surface grey and pitted with age. Nothing behind it. Nothing in the gap between it and the next stone. She swept her phone's light across the boundary. The beam caught the oaks' bark, the wildflowers at their base, the darkness between their trunks. Nothing hiding in the shadows. Nothing she could see. Her heart hammered against her ribs. She forced her breathing to slow, the way her self-defence instructor had taught her, and tightened her grip on the phone. The pendant's heat steadied, settling into a rhythm that matched her pulse. Eva had told her the grove was safe. Hadn't she? Or had she said the grove was safer than other places, which wasn't the same thing at all. Rory couldn't remember. The conversation felt distant, as though it had happened to someone else, or hadn't happened yet. Time moved strangely here. She pushed the thought aside and kept walking. The portal. Focus on the portal. The pendant's warmth led her toward the clearing's centre, where the wildflowers grew thickest and the darkness sat heaviest. Her phone light caught shapes in the blooms—pale petals, darker stems—but no doorway, no shimmer of unnatural light. Another sound. Or the memory of one. Rory froze. Her breath hung in the air. The silence crushed against her ears, absolute and waiting. Then, from somewhere behind her, a footstep. She spun. Her phone light arced across the clearing, cutting through the dark. The beam swept over standing stones, over wildflowers, over the empty space where the footprint sound had originated. Nothing. The wildflowers behind the nearest stone lay flat. Crushed into the earth, as though something heavy had stood there moments before. Rory's mouth went dry. She backed toward the clearing's centre, her heels pressing into the soft ground, her eyes fixed on the spot where the flowers had been flattened. The pendant pulsed faster. Hotter. She could feel it through her shirt like a second heartbeat, alien and urgent. "Is someone there?" The silence swallowed her words. The standing stones offered no answer. But the wildflowers—God, the wildflowers were flattening in a path that curved around the clearing's edge, moving from stone to stone, coming closer. She couldn't hear footsteps. She could only see their aftermath, the broken stems and crushed petals marking a trajectory that spiralled inward. Toward her. Rory ran. The darkness clung to her as she sprinted across the clearing, her phone light bouncing wildly, the pendant slamming against her chest with each stride. The wildflowers snagged at her ankles, their petals pale and grasping in the phone's glow. She didn't look back. She didn't need to. The pressure against her eardrums had shifted, the silence cracking like ice, and beneath it she could hear— Breathing. Not her own. She reached the clearing's far edge and threw herself between two standing stones. The oaks loomed ahead, their branches tangled overhead, and beyond them the familiar paths of Richmond Park waited in the moonlight. Safety. Distance. Away from whatever shared this grove with her. Rory burst through the tree line and stumbled onto the gravel path. The sounds of the park rushed back—the distant hum of traffic, the rustle of wind through leaves, the cry of a fox somewhere in the darkness. Normal sounds. Safe sounds. She bent double, her hands on her knees, her breath ragged. The pendant's heat faded against her chest, its pulse slowing to a gentle throb. The portal was still out there, somewhere in the grove. She'd failed to find it. But she was alive. Rory straightened and looked back at the standing stones. They stood in their familiar circle, ancient and unmoving, the wildflowers blooming bright beneath the oaks' branches. From here, in the moonlight, the grove looked peaceful. Inviting, even. A shape stood between the two stones she'd just passed. It was tall. Taller than any human she'd ever seen, its limbs too long, its proportions wrong in ways her mind refused to process. It had no features she could distinguish—just darkness given form, a void that drank the moonlight and gave nothing back. It didn't move. It didn't need to. Rory's hand found the Heartstone pendant. The gem pulsed once, twice, and went cold against her palm. The shape between the stones tilted what might have been its head, as though it had noticed the gesture, as though it understood. Then it stepped back into the grove, and the darkness swallowed it whole. The standing stones stood empty. The wildflowers swayed in a breeze that hadn't been there moments before. The moonlight fell across the clearing as though nothing had ever interrupted its path. Rory turned and walked away from the grove, her shoulders rigid, her jaw clenched against the tremor that wanted to shake her apart. She didn't run. Running would mean looking back, and looking back would mean seeing. She didn't want to see. The gravel crunched beneath her boots. The traffic hummed in the distance. The night pressed against her skin, ordinary and cold, and the pendant lay still and silent against her chest. Somewhere behind her, in the clearing where time moved wrong and the wildflowers never died, something waited. It had seen her face. It knew her name.