AI Aurora Carter reached the ancient oaks just after midnight with a takeaway bag in one hand and the Heartstone Pendant clenched in the other.
The order had gone cold twenty minutes ago. Some man with a clipped voice and no surname had rung Golden Empress at closing and asked for dumplings, chilli oil, and jasmine rice to be delivered to the edge of Richmond Park. Cash on arrival. Yu-Fei had narrowed her eyes at the address.
“No one lives there, Rory.”
“Then he can tip me for the scenic route.”
“You hear anything with bells, you turn back.”
“I’m Welsh-Irish, Yu-Fei. Bells don’t scare me. Council tax scares me.”
Yu-Fei had not smiled. She had pressed a red paper charm into the crease of the takeaway bag and muttered something under her breath that sounded older than Cantonese.
Now the charm had blackened at the edges.
Rory stood beneath the first oak and watched her breath cloud the dark. Richmond Park stretched behind her in its ordinary winter hush: grass silvered with frost, distant road noise softened into a low urban hum, the faint, blunt shape of a sleeping deer herd near the ridge. Ahead, between the oaks, the air bent.
Not moved.
Bent.
The grove waited past the boundary, where ancient oak trunks grew in a rough circle like standing stones. Their bark carried pale ridges that caught moonlight without reflecting it. Wildflowers crowded the frost-cracked earth beyond them — foxgloves, bluebells, primroses, buttercups — blooming all wrong for January, each petal too open, too eager.
The Heartstone pulsed in her palm.
Warm.
Then warmer.
Rory loosened her fingers. The deep crimson gem hung from its silver chain, thumbnail-sized and glowing from inside, as if someone had trapped an ember behind glass. Heat licked the crescent scar on her left wrist. She tucked the delivery bag against her hip and stared between the oaks.
“Nope.”
Her voice flattened in the cold. The grove swallowed the word before it reached the trees behind her.
She glanced back. The path to the road remained clear, a chalky line under the moon. Her scooter sat beyond the scrub, orange delivery box strapped to the back, helmet hooked over one handlebar. Sensible options stood there in a neat queue: go home, call Yu-Fei, lie about a puncture, eat the dumplings, sleep with a chair under the door.
The pendant throbbed once.
A thin sound answered from the grove.
Not a bell. Not quite.
A teaspoon tapped against porcelain somewhere deep among the flowers.
Rory stopped breathing.
Tap.
Pause.
Tap-tap.
She raised the takeaway bag.
“Your food’s here.”
No answer. The flowers shifted though no wind crossed the clearing.
Rory stepped through the oaks.
Cold vanished.
Warmth slid over her face, damp and green, rich with soil, blossom, and rot under leaves. Behind her, the park’s night sounds folded shut. No traffic. No owl. No distant plane. The grove held its own silence , round and padded, the kind that gathered inside old houses after an argument.
The moon hung above the clearing, too large and washed yellow at the rim. It lit the wildflowers in hard detail. Each stem cast a thin shadow. Each shadow leaned the wrong way.
Rory looked at the ground.
Her own shadow stretched ahead of her towards the centre of the grove.
The flowers’ shadows reached back towards her.
“Brilliant. Love a theme.”
She kept moving because stopping had become worse. The pendant rested against her sternum now, beneath her black jacket, pulsing heat through cotton. Her shoulder-length hair stuck to the damp at her neck. She shifted the delivery bag to her other hand and checked her phone.
No signal.
The time read 00:03.
It had read 00:03 when she left the scooter.
“Of course.”
A low wooden table sat in the centre of the clearing.
It had not been there a moment before.
Rory’s grip tightened on the takeaway handles until the plastic cut her fingers. The table looked domestic, almost plain, with four short legs and a dark varnished top. Someone had laid one place setting: white plate, white bowl, bone-handled spoon, folded linen napkin. A glass of water stood beside it. The surface of the water trembled .
Tap.
The spoon lifted, struck the bowl, and settled back into place.
Rory did not move.
The spoon lifted again.
Tap-tap.
“Cute.”
Her mouth had gone dry. She forced herself forward, each step flattening flowers that sprang upright behind her with tiny wet clicks. She reached the table, set the bag down, and slid Yu-Fei’s blackened paper charm from the side.
The charm crumbled between her fingers.
The smell hit next.
Not rot now. Perfume.
Her mother’s lavender hand cream.
Rory’s chest tightened. For half a second, she was eight years old again at the kitchen table in Cardiff, chin sticky with jam, her mother guiding her wrist away from the broken mug. Blood had made a neat crescent under the skin. Her father had sworn in the hallway, arguing with someone on the phone about evidence, always evidence.
The grove breathed.
Rory stepped back from the table.
“No.”
The word came out small. She hated that.
A laugh rippled through the flowers.
It sounded like Eva after two glasses of wine , head thrown back, bangles clattering against a bar top.
Rory turned.
Nothing stood between the oaks.
The laugh came again, softer, farther to the left.
“Rory?”
Her name slid out from the darkness beyond the bluebells.
She knew Eva’s voice. Knew the crack in it when panic bruised the edges. Knew the way Eva dragged the first syllable when she wanted forgiveness without saying sorry.
Rory’s jaw set.
“Eva’s in Camden, and she doesn’t call me Rory when she’s scared.”
Silence.
A twig snapped behind her.
Rory spun. Her hand went to the pendant. The Heartstone burned hot enough to sting.
At the edge of the clearing, between two oak trunks, a shape pulled itself out of shadow.
Tall. Narrow. Not a person.
It wore the idea of a person badly, like a coat stolen from someone much smaller. Moonlight skimmed a pale curve where a face should have been and found no features. Only a surface. Smooth as wet clay. Its arms hung too low. Its fingers brushed the flowers without bending them.
Rory backed away from the table.
The shape did the same.
She stopped.
It stopped.
Her stomach turned cold despite the grove’s warmth .
A mirror game.
She lifted her left hand.
It lifted its right.
Not quite mirror, then.
The crescent scar on her wrist prickled.
“Who ordered the dumplings?”
The faceless thing tilted its head.
The takeaway bag behind her rustled.
Rory didn’t look. Every nerve screamed for it. She kept her eyes on the thing at the oaks.
The rustling grew sharper. Paper folded. Plastic stretched. Chopsticks clicked free.
Then came chewing.
Slow. Wet. Polite.
Rory’s skin crawled up her arms.
She turned her head a fraction.
The place setting had changed. The bowl now steamed. Dumplings sat on the plate, pale skins split, chilli oil shining under moonlight. One dumpling lifted from the plate without a hand and vanished into the empty air above the chair.
Chewing.
The glass of water drained by half.
Rory moved away from the table, angling towards the oak boundary. The faceless shape copied her, gliding along the opposite side of the clearing. No footsteps . No crushed grass. The flowers passed through its calves as though it were mist, but its shadow dragged behind it, dark and thick, flattening petals.
Her phone buzzed.
She flinched so hard the pendant struck her ribs.
The screen lit in her hand.
Unknown Number.
No signal bars. No battery percentage. Just the call.
Rory let it ring once.
Twice.
The chewing stopped.
The faceless thing raised one long hand to the side of its blank head.
The phone kept vibrating.
Rory answered and held it away from her ear.
Static filled the grove, loud enough to stir the petals.
Then a man breathed down the line.
“Laila.”
Not Rory. Not Aurora.
Laila.
The name pressed against her like a thumb on a bruise. She had used it once in London, the first week after Evan, when every footstep outside the flat above Silas’ bar had sounded like his return. Cash jobs. No paper trail. No forwarding address. Laila had signed for cheap sheets, a burner phone, a life she could lock from the inside.
Rory’s fingers went numb around the phone.
“Wrong number.”
The breath on the line hitched.
“You always said that when I found you.”
Her ex’s voice should not have reached this place. Evan had never sounded like a monster in the way people expected monsters to sound. No snarl. No theatrical rage. Just calm, powdered with concern, every word dressed for court.
The faceless thing took one step forward.
Rory ended the call.
The phone screen went black.
In the reflection, someone stood behind her chair at the table.
Rory did not turn.
The table creaked as weight settled into the empty seat.
A spoon touched porcelain .
Tap.
“Eat before it gets cold, Aurora.”
This voice was hers.
Not similar. Not close. Hers. Cardiff softened by London, consonants clipped when annoyed. It came from the chair, from the space where no body sat.
Rory swallowed.
“I delivered. Transaction complete.”
Coins clinked onto the table one by one.
Not pounds. Older. Heavier. Each landed with a damp slap, though the table stayed dry.
“Take your pay.”
“No.”
“You came for it.”
“I came because someone placed an order.”
“You came because it called.”
The Heartstone flared.
Red light spilled through her jacket, painting her hands as if she had cupped them around a lantern. The faceless thing at the oaks bent towards the glow. The flowers turned too. Every bluebell, primrose, and foxglove swivelled on its stem, petals facing her chest.
Rory pulled the pendant out.
The gem pulsed faster. Heat climbed the chain. The silver bit into the back of her neck.
At the far side of the clearing, between two oak trunks, a seam opened in the air.
No flash. No crack. Just a vertical absence, blacker than the gaps between trees, edged in a dull red shimmer. The smell of iron drifted through it, along with cold ash and something buried beneath deep water.
The pendant answered with a steady glow.
Rory stared at the seam.
A Hel portal.
She knew without wanting the knowledge. The word sat in her skull like it had waited years for a door to open.
The chair scraped.
Her own voice spoke from the table.
“You were late.”
Rory’s eyes tracked the faceless thing. It had stopped copying her now. It stood closer to the portal, its blank face angled towards the red seam. Its arms hung open at its sides, welcoming or waiting. The flowers nearest it had darkened from stem to tip.
“I get that a lot.”
“Not from us.”
The voice came from the table. Then from the oaks. Then from under the ground, threaded through roots.
Us.
Rory’s mouth tasted of pennies.
She edged left, away from the table, away from the shape, towards the oak boundary nearest the way she had entered. The shadows of the flowers slid with her. Each one pointed at her feet. Each one lengthened.
The grove had changed behind her.
The path out no longer showed Richmond Park. Between the oaks, darkness pressed thick and close, as if someone had hung black velvet beyond the trunks. Her scooter had vanished. So had the frosted grass, the deer, the dull orange bruise of London’s sky.
A child giggled from somewhere low to the ground.
Rory looked down.
The wildflowers around her boots had opened small mouths.
Not animal mouths. Not human. Just slits in petals, lined with pale threadlike teeth. They opened and closed without sound at first.
Then they whispered.
“Carter.”
“Rory.”
“Laila.”
“Malphora.”
The last name struck the clearing flat.
The pendant went cold.
Every flower shut.
The faceless thing jerked as if a hook had caught its spine. Its blank head turned towards Rory with speed that broke the mirror-game softness. No face, yet she felt the stare land on her skin.
Rory had never heard that name before.
Her body had.
Her pulse kicked hard in her throat. The crescent scar on her wrist whitened. The Heartstone dimmed until only a coal-red point remained.
The phone buzzed again.
She looked at the screen.
Mum.
Rory’s thumb hovered.
Her mother never rang after ten. Never. Jennifer Carter texted first, even for emergencies, with punctuation and restraint.
The call vibrated in her palm.
The table behind her shifted. Plate. Bowl. Spoon. Chair.
The faceless thing raised its hand again, copying the act of holding a phone to an ear.
Rory declined the call.
The screen lit again at once.
Dad.
Brendan Carter’s contact photo appeared: him in a raincoat outside the Cardiff courthouse, eyebrows raised as if the camera had insulted him.
The grove listened.
Rory’s grip tightened until her knuckles blanched.
“Stop rummaging through my life.”
The phone stopped ringing.
For one breath, nothing moved.
Then every oak around the clearing knocked.
Not branches. Trunks.
A deep, hollow rap came from inside the wood.
Once.
Twice.
Then all together.
Knock knock knock knock knock.
The sound rolled around the grove, patient and formal, like a courtroom door struck by many hands. Bark split in thin vertical lines. Pale sap welled out and shone silver.
Rory stepped back from the nearest tree.
A voice seeped through the cracks.
“Open.”
Another trunk answered.
“Open.”
The table voice joined them in her own tone.
“Open.”
The portal thinned to a red wound at the edge of sight. The faceless thing began to walk towards her.
This time, it did not match her pace.
Rory snatched the takeaway bag from the table. The air above the chair hissed as if burned. Coins scattered across the varnish and rolled to the edge, each one marked with a symbol she could not focus on. Where they fell into the flowers, the petals curled and blackened.
She backed towards the centre of the clearing, eyes moving from the faceless thing to the oaks to the portal.
“No refund if you’re creepy.”
Her voice came out rough, but it held.
The faceless thing stopped.
Its head tilted.
The flowers whispered again, softer.
“Malphora.”
Rory tore the silver chain over her head.
The clasp snapped. The Heartstone dropped into her palm, cold as river stone now, its red core dim but not dead. She held it out between herself and the faceless thing.
The grove’s warmth vanished.
Frost raced across the wildflowers from the oak roots inward, whitening petals, stiffening stems, turning the whispering mouths to brittle seams. Her breath burst out in clouds. The portal flickered . The faceless thing drew one arm across its blank face as if shielding eyes it did not have .
From the table, her own voice laughed once.
“Better.”
Rory’s gaze cut to the empty chair.
The napkin unfolded by itself.
Words had appeared across the linen in dark red thread.
DELIVER TO THE DOOR.
The red seam at the far side of the grove widened by the length of a finger.
Beyond it, something knocked back.