Run: 2026-04-24-01KQ0PPJR59R1CNK1EARD8Y4SN

Aurora reached the oak stones just after midnight, with Richmond Park behind her and the wrong kind of silence ahead. The city had not vanished all at once. It had thinned. First the road noise had slipped away behind the trees. Then the last orange wash of streetlight had broken apart on the branches and left her with her phone torch, a narrow white blade that made every trunk look like it had moved since the previous second. The wind had died ten minutes ago. Not softened. Died. She stopped before the boundary stones. They stood in a half circle between the oaks, old and dark, each one shoulder-high, each one slick with dew though the grass around them stayed dry. Their surfaces held pale scratches in no alphabet she knew. When she breathed out, her breath fogged and hung there, pinned in the air. “Lovely,” she muttered. “Ancient spooky murder rocks. Exactly my sort of midnight appointment.” No answer came from the trees. That bothered her more than it should have. Rory adjusted the strap of her delivery bag across her chest. The thing looked ridiculous out here, bright red and boxy, Golden Empress stitched in fading gold on the flap. Inside, beneath two foil-wrapped containers that had gone cold long before she entered the park, lay the folded note that had brought her here. Come to the Grove after midnight. Bring the Heartstone. Come alone if you want answers. No name. No explanation. No threat. Just three lines written on the back of a Golden Empress receipt, tucked under the wiper of her scooter while she had been dropping noodles to a student flat in Camden. She would have ignored it if the pendant had not warmed against her chest the moment she touched the paper. The Heartstone hung beneath her jumper now, deep crimson on its silver chain, roughly the size of her thumbnail. It pulsed once, faint and warm, against her skin. Rory put a hand over it. “Not helping.” The warmth came again, a little stronger. She looked through the gap between two of the stones. Beyond them, the clearing waited. Wildflowers grew in heavy clumps beneath the moon, bluebells, foxgloves, primrose, poppies, all wrong together, all blooming as if the year had got drunk and lost count. Their colours looked dark under the silver light, too rich for night. The grass beyond the stones bent in a circle, though no wind crossed it. Rory had been here once before with Eva in daylight. Eva had laughed too loud and dared her to touch one of the stones. Rory had done it because she had been nineteen and tired of looking careful. The stone had felt warm then, like skin under sun. Tonight it looked wet. Not wet with rain. Wet from within. She glanced back. The path she had taken through the trees had narrowed. Brambles leaned in from both sides where there had been open ground moments before. Her phone showed 00:07, no signal, seventy-two percent battery. The torch beam flickered once. “Of course.” She stepped between the stones. The air changed. Not colder. Closer. It pressed against her ears and teeth, as if she had stepped underwater without the mercy of drowning. The wildflowers gave off a scent thick enough to chew: honey, damp soil, crushed herbs, and something metallic underneath, like a coin held under the tongue. Rory walked towards the centre of the clearing, keeping her phone raised. Each footstep sank into grass that did not spring back behind her. The delivery bag scraped against her hip. The foil containers shifted inside with a small, greasy rustle that sounded too loud. “Hello?” The word left her mouth and came back from the trees in pieces. Hello. Lo. O. Rory stopped. Echoes did not behave like that in an open clearing. She turned, slow, phone light sweeping across oak trunks and standing stones, across wildflowers with faces closed against a sleep they did not seem to need. Nothing moved. “Whoever wrote the note, I’m here. If this is your idea of theatre, the lighting’s doing most of the work.” A faint click came from her left. She snapped the torch towards it. A twig lay on the grass, broken clean in half. There had been no twig there when she passed. Rory’s fingers tightened around the phone until the plastic case creaked. She moved closer to one of the standing stones, putting its bulk at her back. The Heartstone warmed again, steady now, a little heartbeat beneath cloth. “That you?” she asked the pendant. It gave no answer. Artifacts never did when manners would have helped. From somewhere beyond the trees came the sound of cutlery. A fork against a plate. A knife dragged once through something soft. Rory held still. The sound repeated. Fork. Plate. Knife. A tiny domestic noise, careful and neat, made hideous by its location. It came from deeper inside the grove, though she could see the whole clearing from where she stood. No tables. No people. No plates. Then a woman laughed. Not loud. Not theatrical. A brief laugh, the kind given at a kitchen table when someone made a comment under their breath. Rory’s mouth dried. “Mum?” The word slipped out before she could stop it. The clearing swallowed it. No. Not her mother. Jennifer Carter was in Cardiff, asleep beside Brendan if the world still made any sense. And the laugh had not been right. The rhythm had matched, but the warmth had been missing, like someone had copied the shape of a key and left the teeth blank. Rory looked down at the grass. There were footprints beside hers. Not behind. Beside. Bare feet, long-toed, narrow at the heel. They pressed deep into the earth as if whoever had walked there weighed more than a person should. The prints ran parallel to her own from the boundary stones to the place where she now stood. Her scalp tightened. She had seen nothing. Heard nothing. Yet the prints had walked with her. Rory swallowed once, then forced air through her nose. Panic would make her stupid. Evan had taught her that, if nothing else. Panic handed people your wrists. She shifted her weight, felt the small crescent scar on her left wrist tug as she flexed her hand around the phone. “Right. You wanted me alone. I’m alone. Say your piece.” The cutlery stopped. The whole grove seemed to lean in. A petal fell from a foxglove. It did not drift. It dropped straight down and landed with a wet sound. Rory stared at it. The petal twitched. Something beneath the skin of it moved from one end to the other. A small ripple. Then it lay still again. Rory backed up until her shoulder brushed the standing stone. Damp soaked through her jumper. The stone had a pulse. Not like the pendant. Slower. Deeper. A buried thing breathing through rock. She jerked away. Behind her, from the spot where the stone met the grass, came a whisper. “Rory.” Her torch beam jolted. No one stood there. The whisper came again, from the stone this time, or from inside it. “Rory.” She knew that voice. Evan. The grove went thin at the edges. For one sharp second she stood in a different dark, not among oaks but in the hallway outside the flat in Cardiff, keys digging into her palm, his hand blocking the door, his face soft with apology that never reached his eyes. No. She dug her nails into the crescent scar on her wrist until pain cleared the image. “No.” The stone answered with his mouth. “Don’t be like that.” Rory’s stomach folded. The voice had his lazy weight, his Cardiff edges polished smooth by charm. The old trick. The gentle tone before the grip. The apology before the accusation. She stepped away from the stone. “Dead trick, that.” “Come closer.” “Could at least update the script.” The standing stone gave a small sound. Not speech. A scrape from inside, like fingernails dragged across bark. Rory lifted the phone higher and took a photograph. The flash tore through the clearing. For the blink of white light, shapes stood among the flowers. Tall. Thin. Too many joints. Faces turned away as though caught listening. Then darkness returned, and the grove was empty. Rory’s breath came fast through her teeth. She stabbed at her phone screen with her thumb and opened the photo. The image showed the clearing, washed pale by flash. The flowers. The stones. The black gaps between trees. And directly behind her shoulder, close enough that its blurred mouth almost touched her ear, a face stared into the camera. It had no eyes. Only hollows stuffed with white petals. The phone went black. Rory did not scream. Her throat locked before it could form the sound. The screen reflected her own face: blue eyes wide, black hair stuck damp to her cheeks, lips parted. Behind her reflection, nothing. The Heartstone burned. She hissed and yanked it out from under her jumper. The crimson gem glowed from within, the light faint but alive, like an ember under blood. Heat spread across her palm. Across the clearing, the wildflowers turned towards her. Not all at once. One cluster first, then another, stems bending with soft fibre creaks. Foxgloves lowered their throats. Bluebells lifted their heads. Poppies opened black centres that were not black at all but deep, wet openings. Rory held the pendant out. “What do you want?” From the trees, her own voice answered. “What do you want?” She turned. Her double stood at the boundary stones. Same black hair. Same delivery bag. Same blue eyes. Same small scar on the left wrist, visible where her sleeve had slipped back. But the double’s smile sat wrong, pulled a fraction too high at one corner, as if the face underneath had guessed at amusement and missed. Rory’s fingers closed around the pendant chain. “Nope.” The double stepped into the clearing. “I’m here for answers.” Rory backed towards the centre, keeping distance. “Bad impression. I sound less smug.” “I’m here for the Heartstone.” “That part was never in the note.” “I came alone.” The double’s gaze fell to the red delivery bag. “Cold food. Noodles. Pork buns. One container leaking through the foil. Yu-Fei will moan about the bag in the morning.” Rory’s skin prickled. “Anyone could guess restaurant food in a delivery bag.” “You kept the note.” The double tapped its own chest. “Inside pocket. Folded twice. You thought if anyone asked, you’d say it was a receipt. You planned three exits before leaving your scooter. You hated that none of them looked good.” The cutlery started again in the trees. Fork. Plate. Knife. Rory shifted the phone into her left hand and kept the pendant in her right. The stone’s heat licked her skin but did not burn. Not quite. The double stopped ten feet away. “You shouldn’t have brought it.” Rory barked one dry laugh. “The note said bring it.” “The note wasn’t for you.” “Had my name on the performance, didn’t it?” The double tilted its head. Something clicked in its neck, three small sounds in a row. “It has your warmth now. Your pulse. Your little human panic. It will open if you ask.” Rory glanced at the boundary stones. They looked farther away than before. The clearing had stretched, grass and flowers lengthening into a moonlit aisle. The oaks stood in the distance now, black columns in a place too large to fit inside Richmond Park. She took one step towards the stones. The double mirrored her. “Don’t.” Rory froze. “Why?” The double’s smile fell away. Without it, its face looked unfinished. “Because it heard you enter.” The cutlery stopped mid-scrape. Rory listened. At first, nothing. Then, below the grove, under soil and roots and stone, something knocked. Once. A pause. Twice. The sound rose through the soles of her boots. The flowers shivered. Dew trembled along every blade of grass. The Heartstone’s crimson light flickered hard enough to stain her fingers red. Rory lowered her voice. “What heard me?” The double looked past her. Its pupils had widened until the blue vanished. “Not me.” A breath touched the back of Rory’s neck. Warm. Damp. Patient. She did not turn. The double raised one hand, palm out, as if warning her to stay still. Its fingers had too many knuckles now. The delivery bag on its shoulder sagged and darkened, red fabric becoming something thin and membranous. The breath came again, closer, stirring the hair at her nape. Rory stared at the double’s face and watched horror sharpen it into something almost human. From behind her, a voice spoke in a language that made the standing stones sweat. The Heartstone flared. Every flower in the grove closed at once.