AI Aurora shoved aside the low-hanging branch and stepped into the clearing. The Heartstone Pendant burned against her collarbone, a steady pulse that matched the frantic beat of her heart.
She had come for answers. Eva's final message mentioned this place, the grove tucked behind the ancient oaks of Richmond Park. A meeting point. A doorway. Yet the air tasted metallic now, like old pennies left on the tongue, and the wildflowers that should have nodded in the breeze stood frozen, petals rigid as though carved from bone.
"Enough games," she muttered, scanning the tree line. The pendant's glow cast faint crimson shadows across her wrist, catching on the small crescent scar. "Show yourself."
Silence answered first. Then a soft rustle, like silk dragged over dry leaves, circled behind her. She spun. Nothing. Only the standing stones, grey teeth jutting from the earth in a perfect ring. Their surfaces glistened though no rain had fallen.
Her trainers sank into moss that yielded too easily, wet and clinging. She crouched beside the nearest stone, fingertips tracing grooves that might have been runes once. They felt warm. Too warm for midnight in November.
The pendant flared brighter. A low hum rose from the ground, vibrating up through her bones until her teeth ached. Aurora straightened, breath shallow. The flowers stirred now, but not with wind. Each bloom turned its face toward her in slow, deliberate unison, black centres wide as pupils.
She swallowed hard. "Eva? If this is your idea of a joke—"
A twig snapped to her left. She jerked toward the sound, pulse spiking. Shadows pooled between the oaks, thicker than they should be, swallowing what little moonlight reached the grove. Something shifted there, a flicker at the corner of her eye. When she focused, it vanished. Her skin prickled as though invisible fingers trailed down her spine .
*Keep moving,* she told herself. *Running solves nothing.* Yet her legs carried her toward the centre of the ring anyway, where the grass grew taller and the air hung heavier. Each step released a damp, sweet rot from the earth, cloying and intimate, like breath against her neck.
The hum deepened into a whisper . Not words exactly, more like wind through hollow reeds, shaping almost-syllables that tugged at the edges of understanding. Aurora pressed her palm to the pendant. Its heat seeped into her skin, steadying her even as the whispers multiplied, layering over one another until they formed a chorus of wet clicks and sighs.
She reached the centre stone, larger than the rest, its surface etched with spirals that seemed to unwind under her gaze . Her reflection stared back distorted, eyes too wide, mouth slightly open as though mid-scream. She touched the carving. The stone pulsed once, hard enough to jolt her arm.
Behind her, the rustling returned, closer. She refused to turn. Not yet. Instead she dug into her jacket pocket and pulled out Eva's last note, the paper crumpled and damp from her own sweat. The words blurred under the pendant's crimson light.
*Grove at the witching hour. Bring the stone. They remember you, Rory.*
"They," she whispered. The word tasted bitter. Who were they? And why did the thought of them knowing her name send ice through her veins?
The flowers leaned closer now, stems bending at impossible angles, their black centres following her every breath. One petal brushed her ankle. She flinched. The contact left a cold spot that spread upward, numbing her calf.
"Stop it." Her voice cracked . She hated how small it sounded against the growing chorus of whispers. They no longer hid in the trees. They slithered through the grass, coiled around the stones, pressed against her eardrums until her head throbbed .
A shape detached from the nearest oak. Tall. Wrongly jointed. It hovered at the edge of her vision, testing how long she could resist looking directly. Aurora fixed her eyes on the central stone instead, tracing the spirals with trembling fingers. The pendant flared hot enough to sting.
The shape took a step. Grass crunched, but the sound arrived delayed, as though the grove itself lagged behind reality. Another step. The whispers coalesced into something almost like laughter, low and intimate, the way Evan used to laugh when he cornered her in their old flat.
Her scar itched fiercely. She rubbed it without thinking, remembering the night her father had stitched it after she'd fallen from the garden wall trying to escape one of Evan's rages. The memory brought bile to her throat.
"Leave me alone," she said to the shadows. Her words emerged steady despite the tremor in her hands. "Whatever you are."
The laughter sharpened. The shape drifted closer, now visible even when she stared straight ahead. Limbs too long, head tilted at an angle that suggested broken vertebrae. It wore Eva's face. Or something wearing Eva's face. The smile stretched wider than human jaws allowed.
"Rory," it whispered. The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, sliding into her ears like oil. "You kept us waiting."
Aurora backed away until the central stone dug into her spine. The pendant now burned steadily, its inner glow bright enough to illuminate the thing's eyes. They weren't eyes. Just holes that reflected her own terrified expression back at her in infinite recursion.
"I came for answers," she managed. "About Eva. About what happened to her."
The Eva-thing tilted its head further. A wet crack echoed through the grove. "She gave you the stone. Clever girl. Or stupid. The line blurs after the first century."
Century. The word lodged in Aurora's chest. Eva had vanished only six months ago.
The other stones began to hum in harmony, their surfaces rippling like water. From each one, smaller shapes peeled away, not quite solid, not quite mist . They drifted toward her on currents she couldn't feel, their forms suggesting hands, mouths, things that remembered being human once.
The pendant jerked against its chain, pulling toward the largest gap between two oaks. A portal, she realised with dawning horror. The Hel gate her unknown benefactor had warned her about in the note tucked behind the stone's description. *It calls to what you've lost,* the note had said. *Feed it, and it feeds you lies.*
She gripped the chain, knuckles white. The burn travelled up her arm now, matching the itch in her scar. The crescent mark glowed faintly, as though answering the pendant's light .
"You shouldn't have come alone," the Eva-thing crooned. It had closed half the distance without seeming to move. Its feet didn't touch the ground. "But then, you always did prefer your own company. After what Evan did. After what we helped him do."
The words hit like a physical blow. Aurora's knees buckled. Memories she had buried surged forward: the night she'd fled Cardiff, the bruises shaped like fingerprints, the way Eva had appeared at her door with plane tickets and a promise of safety. Had it all been orchestrated ? Had the grove been waiting even then?
The smaller shapes circled closer, their whispers resolving into voices she almost recognised. Her mother's lullaby, distorted. Her father's courtroom baritone, slowed to a funereal pace. Evan's final threat, repeated in an endless loop.
She forced herself upright, jaw clenched . Cool-headed. That's what they called her at the bar, at the restaurant, in her old life before this madness swallowed everything. She would not break here.
"Tell me what you want," she demanded. The pendant flared in response, its chain vibrating against her palm.
The Eva-thing smiled wider. Something dark dripped from the corners of its mouth, pattering onto the flowers below. They drank it eagerly , stems writhing.
"We want what you promised when you accepted the stone. A door needs a key, Rory. And keys bleed."
Aurora's free hand flew to her wrist. The scar split open without warning, a clean line that parted skin like paper. Blood welled, warm and immediate, dripping onto the central stone. The spirals drank it greedily, glowing with the same crimson as the Heartstone.
The whispers became a roar.
She staggered, vision blurring at the edges. The grove tilted, reality fracturing along invisible seams. Through the gap between the oaks, she glimpsed another place: towers of black glass, skies filled with too many stars, figures that moved in ways that hurt to watch.
The Eva-thing reached for her. Its fingers elongated, joints popping in rapid succession. "Come home. Your real family waits beyond the veil."
Aurora wrenched the pendant over her head. The chain caught in her hair, yanking strands free. She held it before her like a talisman, its light cutting through the gathering darkness. The shapes shrieked, recoiling, but the blood continued to flow from her wrist, tracing patterns across the stone that matched the spirals exactly.
"Get back," she growled. Her voice sounded foreign to her own ears, layered with something ancient and furious.
The ground trembled . The standing stones ground against each other, ancient mechanisms waking after centuries of sleep. Cracks appeared in the earth between them, leaking sour yellow light that smelled of ozone and decaying lilies.
The Eva-thing lunged.
Aurora swung the pendant in a desperate arc. The chain wrapped around the creature's reaching wrist. Where metal touched false flesh, smoke rose in thin grey spirals. The thing howled, a sound that drilled straight into her skull and scrambled her thoughts like eggs in a hot pan.
She pulled hard. The pendant flared white-hot, searing an afterimage into her retinas. The Eva-thing's arm came away with a wet tearing sound, dissolving into black motes that the flowers devoured with wet smacking noises.
More shapes poured from the trees now, shedding their borrowed human forms. They moved like spilled ink given purpose, rushing toward her from every direction. The whispers had become a cacophony of stolen voices, all screaming her name in pitches that scraped her sanity raw.
Aurora pressed her bleeding wrist to the pendant. Blood hissed against the stone, releasing a burst of crimson light that drove the creatures back several paces. Her head swam from blood loss, but she forced her legs to hold her upright. The portal between the oaks widened, its edges fraying like burnt paper.
She had come seeking truth about her friend. Instead she had found the mouth of something ancient that had been wearing Eva's face like a mask. The certainty settled in her gut: Eva was gone . Had been gone since the moment she pressed this cursed pendant into Aurora's hand outside Silas's bar.
The creatures regrouped. Their bodies folded and unfolded in ways that defied bone structure , creating new limbs from the darkness between stars. One of them wore her own face now, complete with the crescent scar glowing on its wrist. It smiled with her mouth.
"Run, Rory," it said in her own voice. "Like you ran from Evan. Like you ran from Cardiff. Like you'll run from this."
She bared her teeth. The pendant pulsed in time with her racing heart, its chain slick with blood. The central stone beneath her feet had begun to sink, revealing stairs that spiralled down into impossible depths . The sour yellow light from the cracks grew brighter, illuminating roots that moved with purpose, reaching for her ankles.
The false Aurora stepped closer. Behind it, the others formed a closing circle, their forms blurring together into one vast hunger.
She glanced at the portal, then at the descending stairs. Two paths. Neither safe. The pendant tugged toward the stairs, its glow dimming as though exhausted.
The circle tightened. Cold fingers brushed her shoulder, leaving frost on her jacket. Another set grazed her hair, gentle as a lover's touch.
Aurora made her choice.
She stepped backward onto the first stair, blood dripping from her wrist like breadcrumbs. The creatures surged forward with a sound like thousands of wet throats swallowing at once.
The pendant blazed one final time, its light swallowing the grove, the stones, the watching flowers, everything.
Then darkness slammed down like a closing jaw.