Run: 2026-04-25-01KQ2EB8QG09RABFXPTCVM39YK

The last tube had left Richmond station forty-seven minutes ago, and Rory was beginning to regret her choices. She pushed through the undergrowth, one hand holding her phone up as a flashlight, the other batting aside branches that seemed to reach for her face with deliberate spite. The battery sat at twelve percent. She'd checked twice. The first time had been twenty minutes ago, back when she still had signal and the map on her screen made sense. Now the GPS had given up entirely, spinning its little blue dot in circles like a trapped insect. *Just past the Isabella Plantation,* Isolde had said. *Past the gate, through the birch stand, and before the old oak that looks like a bent woman.* Every oak in Richmond Park looked like a bent woman at this hour. The night air had gone cold in the way London nights never did—sharp and metallic, like licking a frozen railing. Rory pulled her jacket tighter around herself and kept walking, stepping over roots that seemed to rise higher than any roots had business being. She hadn't wanted to come. The delivery had sat on her counter for three days, a small parcel wrapped in brown paper that smelled of earth and honey. *For Isolde, in the Grove,* the note had said, the handwriting elegant and old-fashioned, the ink something dark that caught the light like dried blood. There was no return address, no name. Just the package, waiting for her each morning when she opened her eyes. And then this evening, the flickering of the Heartstone had started. A pulse of warmth against her chest, constant and demanding, like a second heartbeat demanding attention. She'd ignored it for six hours. Then the lights in her flat had begun to buzz, and every clock had started ticking in reverse, and the package had begun to *hum*. So here she was. Alone. In Richmond Park. At half past one in the morning, chasing after a clearing that supposedly existed between worlds. The birch stand appeared ahead, their white trunks glowing spectral in the dim light. Rory stopped. The trees were dead straight, unnaturally so, their bark smooth as bone. They grew in a perfect circle, each trunk spaced exactly the same distance from its neighbour, as if planted by a hand that cared deeply about geometry. *This is it. This is the place.* She stepped through. The moment her foot crossed the threshold between the first two birches, the world changed. The ambient noise of the park—distant traffic, the rustle of leaves, the ever-present drone of the city—cut off like someone had flipped a switch. Silence pressed against her ears, thick and physical, the kind of silence that made her want to swallow just to prove she still could. And then the cold hit. Not the cold of a winter night. Something older. Something that seeped through her skin and settled into the marrow of her bones, making her teeth ache and her breath come in short, sharp clouds. Rory wrapped her arms around herself and walked deeper into the grove. The oak appeared as promised—twisted, gnarled, leaning at an angle that looked like a woman bending to pick something up off the ground. Its bark was covered in symbols, carved deep into the wood, too uniform to be natural. They spiraled up the trunk, following the grain, and Rory could have sworn they *moved* when she looked away. She didn't look away twice. The clearing opened beyond the oak, and there it was. The Fae Grove. A perfect circle of grass so green it looked painted, ringed by standing stones that rose from the earth like crooked teeth. Wildflowers bloomed at their bases, blue and white and a purple so deep it was almost black, their petals catching a light that had no source. In the center of the clearing stood a single stone, flat-topped and waist-high, covered in moss that seemed to pulse with a faint phosphorescent glow. Rory stepped into the circle. The wrongness hit her all at once. It wasn't visible—not yet. But she felt it, a pressure against her skin, a weight in the air that made her want to duck, made her want to run. Every instinct she had was screaming at her to turn around, to leave, to forget about the package and the Heartstone and the humming and just *go*. She took another step. The wildflowers rustled. There was no wind. Rory froze. The grove was completely still. The flowers had stopped their subtle swaying, the grass stood rigid, the air itself felt like it was holding its breath. She could hear her own heartbeat, loud and fast, and something else beneath it—a low, rhythmic thumping, like a drum played far away. *Thump. Thump. Thump.* It was coming from beneath her feet. She looked down. The grass at her shoes was moving, rippling in concentric circles, as if something below was rising toward the surface. Rory ran. She didn't think about it. Her body acted before her mind caught up, legs pumping, lungs burning, the package clutched against her chest. She sprinted for the edge of the circle, for the gap between two standing stones, for anywhere that wasn't *here*. The flowers screamed. Not a sound—an actual *scream*, high and piercing, a chorus of voices that rose from every petal and stem around her. The shriek hit her like a physical force, rattling her teeth, making her stumble. She caught herself on one of the standing stones, her palm slapping against cold, wet rock. The stone was warm. Rory pulled her hand back. The warmth was familiar—the same pulse, the same heat she felt from the Heartstone against her chest. She looked at the stone, at the carvings that covered its surface, and realized with dawning horror that they were the same symbols carved into the oak. The same symbols on the package. Her hands were shaking as she tore at the brown paper. It came away in strips, revealing a wooden box the size of her palm, carved from the same dark wood as the standing stones, covered in the same spiraling symbols. The lid was already open. She peered inside. Nothing but black velvet lining the bottom, smooth and undisturbed, as if it had never held anything at all. The screaming stopped. The silence that followed was worse. Rory stood frozen in the center of the grove, the empty box in her hands, the Heartstone pulsing against her chest like a trapped bird. The flowers were still. The stones were still. Even the air had gone quiet, no longer pressing against her, no longer heavy with the sense of wrongness. Instead, there was a new feeling, creeping up her spine like fingers tracing her vertebrae. *Recognition.* The grove knew her. The stones knew her. The symbols carved into every surface had been waiting for her, had called her here, had summoned her with a package she didn't remember receiving and a heartbeat that wasn't her own. She lifted her head. On the other side of the clearing, just beyond the ring of standing stones, a figure stood in the darkness. Rory couldn't make out details—just a silhouette, taller than any person she'd ever seen, limbs too long, head tilted at an angle that suggested a neck with too many joints. It didn't move. It simply *watched*, and the weight of its gaze pressed against her like the pressure before a storm. The Heartstone pulsed once, hard, and then went cold. The figure raised one long arm and pointed directly at her. Rory's phone buzzed. She looked down, heart hammering, and saw a text message from an unknown number glowing on her screen. *You opened it. Now come home.* She looked up. The figure was gone. But the path through the birches was visible now, the way clear, and the distant hum of London traffic had returned, muffled but present, as if the world was slowly stitching itself back together around her. Rory didn't run. She walked. Fast. Straight through the birches, past the bent oak, through the undergrowth, her phone's light bobbing ahead of her, leading her back toward the park gate, back toward the tube station, back toward anything that felt like *real*. She didn't stop until she reached Silas's bar. The lights were on. The door was unlocked. She pushed through, the bell above jangling, and leaned against the wall, gasping for breath. Silas looked up from behind the counter, a glass in one hand, a towel in the other. He took one look at her and set the glass down. "Rory." She opened her mouth to explain, to tell him about the grove and the flowers and the figure and the box, but the words wouldn't come. Instead, she pulled the Heartstone out from under her shirt. It was glowing. Not the faint inner light it usually held. A steady, angry red, pulsing in time with her heartbeat, hot against her skin. Silas crossed the room in three strides, grabbed her wrist, and turned her hand over. His fingers were cold, his grip firm. "Where did you go tonight?" "The Grove," she whispered. "Someone left a package. I had to take it there. I had to open it." His face went pale. "Did you see anything?" "A figure. In the trees. Tall. Pointing at me." Silas released her wrist and stepped back. His hand went to his face, rubbing his jaw, and when he spoke, his voice was barely a whisper. "There are things in the Grove that shouldn't be touched. Things that slumber. And you just woke one of them up." The Heartstone pulsed again. Somewhere deep in the park, something answered.