AI Rory’s torch beam sliced through the darkness between the ancient oak standing stones. She tightened her grip on the silver chain around her neck, the Heartstone pendant warm against her sternum. One step past the boundary and the air changed, thick as syrup, sweet with the scent of wildflowers that had no right to bloom at midnight in November.
She should not have come alone.
The delivery from Golden Empress had ended hours ago, the last order dropped at a flat in Richmond. The old woman who answered the door had pressed a crumpled note into her palm instead of a tip. *Isolde’s grove waits. Bring the stone.* The handwriting matched the anonymous letter that arrived last week, the one tucked beneath her pillow each night since.
A twig snapped behind her. Rory spun, torch cutting a useless arc. Nothing. Only the circle of pale trunks and the carpet of moonlit petals that stirred without wind.
She exhaled through her teeth. “If this is some prank, Eva, I swear I’ll—”
The words died. Eva had moved to Glasgow six months ago. No one knew Rory was here. Not Silas. Not Yu-Fei. Not even the ex whose shadow still made her check locks twice.
Another sound, closer: a soft chime, like crystal kissing crystal . The pendant flared hot, a sudden pulse that made her collarbone ache. She pressed her palm over it. The warmth spread into her blood, quick and unwelcome, as though the stone had recognised the place and approved.
The standing stones loomed taller now, their bark etched with spirals she had not noticed before. Each groove glistened, wet though no rain had fallen. Rory stepped sideways, boots sinking into soil that yielded like flesh. The wildflowers brushed her ankles, petals clinging with tiny hooked seeds. She shook one leg. They clung tighter.
A low rustle circled her, always at the edge of the torchlight. She whipped the beam left, right. The beam trembled in her hand. “Show yourself.”
Silence answered, perfect and mocking. Then a child’s laugh, high and fleeting , somewhere behind the largest oak. Rory’s stomach clenched. The laugh held no joy, only the bright sharp edge of something that had once been human and forgotten how.
She backed toward the stones. The air thickened further, pressing on her eardrums until her own heartbeat boomed. The pendant throbbed in time with it, a second pulse that was not hers. She tasted iron at the back of her tongue though she had bitten nothing.
The child laughed again, closer. Directly behind her.
Rory whirled. The torch beam caught a flicker of movement low to the ground, something small and pale that vanished between two roots before she could focus. A footprint remained in the loam, too narrow, toes too long. It filled with dark water that was not there a second earlier.
Her scar itched, the small crescent on her left wrist burning as it had the night Evan slammed the car door on her arm. She rubbed it without thinking. The itch deepened, burrowed.
“Enough games,” she muttered. The words sounded wrong, swallowed by the grove before they reached her own ears.
She forced herself forward, toward the centre where the note had promised answers about the pendant’s origin. The ground rose in a gentle mound covered in white flowers that glowed faintly, as though lit from beneath. Their centres were not yellow but black, perfect circles that seemed to watch her approach .
Kneeling, Rory brushed petals aside. Beneath them lay a flat stone disc carved with the same spirals as the oaks. At its centre waited a hollow the exact size of the pendant. The stone’s edges looked melted, fused by heat no earthly fire could produce.
The pendant flared so brightly she gasped. Heat lanced through her chest. She yanked the chain over her head. The silver links left red welts on her neck. For one mad second she considered flinging it into the trees. Instead her fingers moved without permission, lowering the crimson gem toward the hollow.
A breath ghosted across her nape, cold and deliberate.
She froze. The torch lay forgotten on the ground, its beam pointing uselessly at her knees. The child’s laugh returned, layered now with an adult’s chuckle, both sounds braided together like wet rope. They came from everywhere and nowhere.
Rory’s hand shook above the disc. The pendant’s inner glow brightened until the deep crimson looked like fresh blood held to candlelight. It wanted this. It had always wanted this.
She whispered, “What are you?”
The grove answered with her own voice, thrown back at her from a dozen directions at once. *What are you?*
The words carried an undertone she did not recognise, an eagerness that made her skin crawl. She tried to pull the pendant back. Her arm refused. Muscles locked. The gemstone descended the final inch.
Contact.
A soundless concussion rolled outward. Every flower in the clearing snapped upright at once. Their black centres dilated like pupils adjusting to sudden dark. The standing stones groaned, bark splitting along the spirals with wet popping noises. Sap the colour of ink oozed down the trunks and hissed where it touched the ground.
Rory’s knees buckled. She stayed upright only because the pendant now anchored her, fused to the stone disc by threads of scarlet light that looked horribly like veins. Warmth flooded her wrist. She glanced down. The crescent scar had opened, a neat red smile leaking blood that flowed upward, defying gravity, toward the pendant.
“No,” she hissed. The single word scraped her throat raw.
Something moved at the edge of the trees, tall this time, not small. A silhouette stitched together from night and petal and bark. It wore her face. Same straight black hair, same bright blue eyes. But the smile stretched too wide, splitting past the jawline in a grin of jagged bark.
The figure lifted one hand. Rory’s left hand lifted in perfect mirror, though she fought the impulse with every fibre. The scar on her wrist yawned wider. More blood rose in thin scarlet ribbons, feeding the stone.
The doppelgänger tilted its head. When it spoke, its voice was Rory’s own, but slower, as though dragged through water. “You brought the key. Good girl.”
“I brought nothing for you.”
A soft laugh. The figure stepped closer. Petals clung to its bare feet and burrowed beneath the skin like eager parasites. “Liar. You came because the stone sang. Because Evan’s fists never quite drowned out the song. Because part of you has always belonged here, Malphora.”
The old alias hit like a slap. She had not heard it since Cardiff, since the night she burned every reminder of the girl who let a man break her bones for sport. “That name is dead.”
“Names never die in the grove.” The double crouched opposite her, close enough that Rory smelled damp soil and something sweeter, like rotting fruit left too long in sun. “They only wait.”
The veins of light thickened between pendant and disc. Rory felt her pulse sync completely with the stone’s. Each beat dragged something vital out of her and fed it into the ground. The flowers shivered in ecstasy. Their black centres now bore tiny white specks that might have been stars or eyes.
She tried to yank her hand away. The light held her fast. Panic rose, sharp and metallic. “Let me go.”
The double’s smile widened further, splitting the corners of its mouth with audible cracks. “You came for truth. Here is truth.” It leaned in until their noses almost touched. “The stone does not belong to you. You belong to the stone. And the grove is hungry after such a long sleep.”
Behind the doppelgänger, shapes detached from the oaks. Smaller forms, child-sized, with limbs too numerous and joints that bent backward. They skittered between the flowers, leaving trails of disturbed petals that bled black nectar. One paused to lap at the sap oozing from a tree. Its tongue was Rory’s own, small and pink and wrong.
Her scar burned white-hot. She smelled her own blood, sharp and immediate. The ribbons feeding the pendant thickened, became ropes. Her vision tunnelled. The torch beam on the ground dimmed as though something sucked the batteries dry.
The double placed a hand over hers. Its skin felt like living bark, rough and warm and pulsing. “Stay. Become. The hours outside mean nothing here. Your flat above the bar will gather dust. Your little job delivering prawn toast will be forgotten. But you will never be alone again.”
Rory’s lips moved before her brain caught up. “I’d rather be alone than become you.”
The double’s eyes flared the same crimson as the Heartstone. It gripped her wrist, pressing directly on the scar. Pain lanced up her arm, bright and pure. She cried out. The sound echoed back from every direction, layered with other voices, hundreds of them, all screaming her name in different stages of terror.
The child-things giggled. One darted forward and snatched the torch. It held the metal cylinder to its mouth and bit down. Glass crunched. The light winked out.
Darkness swallowed the grove. Only the pendant and the veins of light remained, painting everything in shades of gore.
Rory’s free hand found the delivery bag still slung across her body. Inside, the insulated container for the last order. Her fingers closed around the plastic lid. Not much of a weapon, but the only thing she had .
She swung.
The lid cracked against the double’s temple with a wet thud. Black sap sprayed across her cheek. The thing howled, a sound that shredded the air and made the standing stones shudder. Its grip loosened.
Rory tore her hand free. Skin ripped. Blood sprayed. The pendant remained fused to the stone, but the chain snapped, leaving her holding the broken silver links like a garrotte.
She scrambled backward. Flowers tangled her ankles, pulling with surprising strength. She kicked. Petals tore. Something beneath them squealed.
The double rose. Half its face hung loose, revealing not bone but smooth white wood beneath . It smiled anyway. “Run then, Rory. The grove loves a chase. Time bends here. You will run for days and emerge tomorrow, or next year, or never. We will be waiting every second.”
The child-things poured from the trees now, a tide of pale limbs and stolen laughter. They moved on all fours, joints clicking like castanets.
Rory gained her feet. Her wrist throbbed , bleeding freely. The scar had split open completely , revealing something that glinted deep inside the wound, something crimson and faceted that definitely did not belong in human flesh.
She did not look at it. Could not.
Instead she ran toward the gap between the nearest stones, the way she had entered. The ground fought her, roots rising like veins to trip her. She leaped. Landed hard. The air grew thinner, less cloying. Hope flared.
Behind her the double called out in her own voice, soft and almost kind. “The stone remembers your blood now, Aurora Carter. It will call you back. Every night. Every dream. Until you return and finish what you started.”
A small hand caught her ankle. Rory kicked blindly. Cartilage gave with a pop. The hand fell away.
She burst between the oaks. The world lurched . Richmond Park reappeared around her, ordinary grass, ordinary night air that tasted of distant traffic and damp leaves. Streetlights glowed beyond the tree line. Her bicycle waited where she had left it, chained to the railing exactly as before.
She risked one glance back.
The standing stones were gone . Only empty air remained between two ordinary oaks. Yet the flowers still bloomed in a perfect circle, white petals stark against the winter ground. At their centre pulsed a faint crimson glow, the Heartstone, waiting.
Rory’s broken chain dangled from her fist. The pendant was gone , yet her wrist still burned. She raised her arm to the streetlight.
The scar had closed, but something moved beneath the new pink skin. A tiny crimson spark, no larger than a match head, flickered once and then settled deep into the meat of her.
She tasted iron again. This time she knew it was not fear.
From the circle of flowers came the soft sound of a child laughing, faint as a dream but growing stronger.
Rory fumbled with her bike lock. Her fingers slipped twice. The chain refused to open. The laughter multiplied, layering until it sounded like dozens of children, all delighted by the same cruel joke.
The lock finally clicked. She swung her leg over the frame, heart hammering against ribs that suddenly felt too small. The bicycle’s front wheel turned reluctantly , as though the ground itself clung to the rubber.
She pedalled. Hard.
Behind her, petals rustled though no wind blew. The laughter followed, skipping from tree to tree, keeping perfect pace. It knew her route home. It knew the stairs above Silas’s bar. It knew the exact window she would climb through and the precise moment she would realise the pendant had never truly left her.
Rory didn’t look back again. She didn’t need to.
The grove had already taken root inside her wrist, small and warm and patient, beating in perfect time with the terror rising in her throat.