AI Aurora left her bike chained to the last iron railing before the path gave up pretending to be a path.
Richmond Park lay behind her in strips of moonless grass and black tree trunks, the city pushed so far back it might have belonged to someone else. No traffic. No late runners. No dogs tugging at leads. Even the planes had stopped dragging their bellies over London.
She checked her phone.
23:17.
No signal.
“Course.”
Her breath made a small white cloud. It should not have been that cold. April had come in damp and mild, all wet pavements and takeaway steam, but the air between the oaks bit through her jacket and needled the skin beneath her sleeves.
The Heartstone pendant rested under her jumper, warm against her chest.
Not warm. Hot.
Rory hooked a finger beneath the silver chain and pulled it out. The deep crimson stone glowed with the dull pulse of something alive under skin, brightening, dimming, brightening again. The size of her thumbnail, Yu-Fei had called it “pretty trouble” when she had spotted it during Rory’s shift at the Golden Empress. Eva had called it “witchy”. Silas had told her not to wear anything that bled light after midnight.
Rory had laughed at him then.
She did not laugh now.
Ahead, the old oaks stood in a half-circle, their trunks broad enough to hide doorways, their limbs bent over the grass like arthritic fingers. Between them, the standing stones waited. At first glance they looked like rotted stumps, black and hunched. Then she took three more steps and the moon slid from behind cloud, and the stones shone pale along their edges, each one cut with shallow grooves that no rain had filled.
The pendant pulsed harder.
“Right,” she breathed. “So this is either genius or the bit where I get my own plaque.”
She had come because the pendant had woken her.
Not chimed. Not flashed. Woken.
At ten past ten, as she climbed the narrow stairs to the flat above Silas’ bar, it had gone hot enough to sting. She had yanked it off and dropped it into a mug by the sink. The mug had cracked down the middle. A thin red line had crawled across the ceramic, and through that split came a smell of wet ash and old pennies.
Then the pendant had turned, on its own, the point of the stone dragging across the counter until it faced west.
Richmond.
She had known it without a map.
That had been the worst part.
Now she stood before the boundary of the Fae Grove, a place Eva had once described after too much wine and not enough sense. Hidden clearing. Oak stones. Flowers in winter. Time going strange round the edges. Rory had filed it with pub stories, fairy rings, and customers who swore the Golden Empress prawn crackers cured hangovers.
The stone at the centre of her chest thudded once.
The oaks answered.
Not with sound. With pressure.
Rory stepped between two standing stones, and the park vanished behind her like someone had drawn a curtain across the world.
The Grove opened in front of her.
Wildflowers covered the clearing, white and yellow and violet, blooming in thick clusters despite the cold. Their heads faced her. Every one. A narrow footpath cut through them towards a dark pool ringed with roots. Beyond the pool, more oaks crouched close together, their branches knitting a ceiling that kept the sky out.
The place smelled of rain on hot stone, though no rain had fallen. Under that sat another scent, faint but sour. A kitchen bin left too long in summer. Burned sugar. Iron.
Rory looked back.
The standing stones stood behind her.
Good.
She fixed their shape in her mind: the left stone split near the base, the right one tilted like a bad tooth. Exit. Remember the exit.
The pendant warmed again.
“Find the portal, confirm it’s real, leave. That’s the whole plan.”
Her voice went flat in the clearing. It did not echo . The words dropped from her mouth and disappeared before they reached the trees.
She took the path.
The flowers brushed her boots without moving. Their petals stayed turned towards her, rows of tiny pale faces. She kept her eyes on the pool and her hand around the pendant.
Halfway across the clearing, something clicked behind her.
Not a twig. Not a stone underfoot.
A bike chain.
Rory stopped.
The sound came again. Metal links shifting. Then the soft chime of a bicycle bell, once, distant and polite.
Her bike was outside the Grove. Chained to iron.
“Nice try.”
No answer.
The flowers closest to her boots trembled . Nothing touched them.
Rory turned.
The standing stones remained at the edge of the clearing.
Between them, where the path should have led back to Richmond Park, hung a narrow strip of darkness. Not shadow. Shadow belonged to things. This darkness had no source, no edge the eye could hold. It lay between the stones like a vertical wound.
The pendant burned her palm.
Rory let it go and sucked air through her teeth.
A whisper moved behind her left ear.
“Laila.”
She spun.
No one stood there.
Her heart struck her ribs with enough force to hurt. The name had not been spoken in years. Evan had used it when he wanted to sound tender in public, when his hand clamped too tight around her wrist under restaurant tables, when he smiled at her parents and told them she got anxious over nothing.
Rory rubbed the crescent scar on her left wrist without meaning to.
“Don’t.”
The Grove held still.
Then, from the far trees, came a sound Rory knew better than she wanted to.
The Golden Empress ticket printer.
Chik-chik-chik-chik.
She saw it without wanting to: the little white slips curling from the machine, Yu-Fei shouting table numbers over the hiss of woks, steam pearl-bright on the tiles, her own hands bagging orders, tying knots, counting change.
Chik-chik-chik-chik.
The sound came from the oak line beyond the pool.
Rory moved towards it because the pendant pulled her that way. Each pulse tugged at her sternum. She had to lean against it, one foot after another, as if she walked into a hard wind no flower acknowledged.
At the pool’s edge, she crouched.
The water reflected nothing.
Not the trees. Not the flowers. Not her face. It held a flat black surface, broken only by rings that widened from the centre though nothing had fallen in.
The ticket printer stopped.
A child laughed somewhere to her right.
Rory stood so fast her knee popped.
A girl in a red coat slipped behind an oak trunk at the edge of sight.
“Oi.”
The word came out sharper than she intended.
The coat vanished.
No footsteps followed. No rustle. No breath.
Rory stared at the tree until her eyes watered. The bark held deep ridges, black and silver, and in one groove something pale gleamed. She lifted her phone, turned on the torch, and cut a white beam across the trunk.
An old receipt had been pinned to the bark with a thorn.
Golden Empress. Delivery order. Her name written at the bottom in Yu-Fei’s square capitals.
RORY - TAKE THIS ONE LAST.
The address line had smeared, but beneath it another line had appeared in cramped red letters.
YOU WERE LATE.
Rory stepped back from the tree.
“No.”
A wet tap sounded from the pool.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
She angled the torch down.
The water had begun to ripple in time with the pendant’s pulse . The stone grew hotter with each ring, light leaking between her fingers. Her skin prickled. The sour smell thickened until she tasted copper at the back of her throat.
The pool spoke in her mother’s voice.
“Aurora, cariad, answer me.”
Rory froze.
Her phone screen lit in her hand.
Mum.
No signal still showed in the corner.
The call kept ringing.
The pool spoke again, voice soft and Welsh-warm and close enough to hurt.
“I know you’re there. Don’t be stubborn.”
Rory’s thumb hovered above the green icon.
The pendant flared.
Pain snapped through her palm, bright and clean. She dropped the phone. It landed in the grass with the torch still on, beam angled up through the flowers, making their stems into thin white bones.
The ringing stopped.
In the dark glass of the phone screen, another face appeared over her shoulder .
Long. Pale. Too still.
Rory did not turn.
Her breath came through her nose, shallow, controlled. She kept her gaze on the phone, on the reflection standing behind her. It had the outline of a person, tall and narrow, with hair hanging in wet strings around a face without features. No eyes. No mouth. Only smooth skin stretched where expression should have been.
It leaned closer.
The pendant rested against her jumper, its glow turning the black fabric red.
Rory lifted one foot.
The reflected thing lifted none.
She took one step forward.
In the phone screen, it remained behind her, neck bending, featureless face lowering towards the place where her shoulder met her throat.
“Not real.”
The words barely crossed her teeth.
A breath touched the back of her neck.
Cold. Damp. Patient.
Rory bolted.
She snatched the phone as she ran, fingers closing around wet grass and plastic, and tore back along the path. Flowers whipped at her jeans. The clearing stretched longer than before. The standing stones had stood a few dozen metres away; now they crouched at the end of a tunnel of oaks she had not passed through on the way in.
Behind her, something walked.
Not ran.
Walked.
Its steps landed in the spaces between hers.
When she stumbled, it stopped.
When she caught herself and lunged on, it followed.
Rory jammed the phone into her pocket and gripped the pendant. Heat soaked through her fingers. The stone’s pulse had changed. No longer a heartbeat. A knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
From the trees came the scrape of a chair across a classroom floor. Her mother’s work voice called roll.
“Carter, Aurora.”
A gavel cracked on wood.
Her father, controlled and clipped:
“Answer the question.”
A pub glass shattered .
Silas:
“Rory, don’t look behind you.”
She did.
Only for a second.
The path behind her held a crowd.
They stood among the flowers, shoulder to shoulder, all turned her way. No faces. Just smooth pale ovals catching the pendant’s red light. One wore Yu-Fei’s apron. One had Eva’s short boots. One stood in Evan’s long dark coat, hands tucked into pockets, head tilted at an angle she knew from arguments that had started in whispers and ended with bruises hidden under sleeves.
The one in the coat raised a hand.
It held her silver chain.
Rory looked down.
The pendant still hung around her neck.
The chain in its hand lengthened, link by link, until it dragged through the flowers like a snake.
“Laila.”
That voice no longer sounded like Evan . It sounded like every voice at once, stacked wrong.
Rory ran harder.
The standing stones rushed towards her, then slid away to the left as the path bent. It had not bent before. She skidded, boots carving mud from earth that had been dry a moment ago.
“No. Absolutely not.”
She cut off the path and plunged through the flowers towards the stones. Petals burst beneath her steps without scent. Stems tangled around her ankles. Something thin caught her wrist.
She yanked free.
The crescent scar burned.
A child giggled near her knee.
“Found you.”
Rory kicked through the flowers and hit open ground. The stones stood ahead, split one on the left, tilted one on the right. Between them, the vertical darkness pulsed with the same red light as the Heartstone.
Behind her, the crowd inhaled.
One shared breath .
The whole Grove leaned in.
Rory reached the stones and slammed a hand against the left one. Cold bit into her palm. The grooves in the stone crawled under her skin like writing rearranging itself beneath dust.
The darkness between the stones did not open to Richmond Park.
It opened to a narrow corridor lit by swinging kitchen bulbs. White tiles. Steam. A delivery bag sat on the floor at the far end, red with the Golden Empress logo. Beyond it, something knocked from the other side of a metal door.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
The pendant answered each blow.
Rory stepped back.
“That’s not my exit.”
The crowd had reached the pool. They did not cross it. They waited at the water’s edge, their pale heads lifted. The figure in Evan’s coat stood in front now. It curled one hand around its own wrist, squeezing, showing her.
The old ache sparked in Rory’s bones.
She took the pendant off.
The Grove’s sounds cut out.
No ticket printer. No classroom. No bike bell. No breath at her neck. Silence fell so hard her ears rang.
The Heartstone burned in her hand, crimson light seeping between her fingers and washing the standing stones in the colour of fresh embers. The chain dangled, cold against her knuckles.
The corridor between the stones flickered .
For one blink, she saw Richmond Park: the dark grass, the iron railing, her bike waiting under a bare-limbed tree.
Then the corridor returned.
Rory looked at the pendant.
“Fine. You want the door?”
She hurled the Heartstone into the pool.
The throw cut clean through the air. The silver chain flashed once, then the stone hit the black water without a splash.
The pool swallowed the glow.
For half a second, nothing moved.
Then every flower in the Grove turned away from her. The crowd at the pool snapped its heads down towards the water. The featureless figure in Evan’s coat unfolded its hands and stepped into the pool’s edge, sinking to the ankle in a surface that had held solid moments before.
The standing stones groaned.
Rory lunged between them.
Cold closed around her, tight as a fist. The corridor vanished. Darkness pressed against her eyes, her teeth, the hollow under her tongue. Something brushed her left wrist, searching for the scar.
Rory drove her shoulder forward and tore through.
She hit wet grass on hands and knees.
Richmond Park spread around her, vast and empty beneath a thin slice of moon. Her bike stood by the railing. The city hummed somewhere beyond the trees, distant but real. Her phone buzzed in her pocket once, then died.
Behind her, the two standing stones faced each other with nothing between them but night.
Rory pushed herself upright, mud on her palms, breath scraping her throat. Her chest felt bare without the pendant. Cold crept through the place it had rested.
From inside the Grove, soft and far away, came the Golden Empress ticket printer.
Chik-chik-chik-chik.