AI Thorns tore at Rory’s black wool coat as she forced her way through the dense buckthorn. She ignored the prick of pain across her cheek, keeping her eyes locked on the faint, crimson pulse emanating from beneath her collar. The Heartstone pendant grew heavier with every step, its silver chain biting into her neck. She had tracked the signal from the edge of Silas’s bar, through the winding, affluent streets of Richmond, and deep into the black heart of the park. Now, the modern world lay behind her, reduced to nothing but a faint memory of petrol fumes and orange streetlights.
She broke through the thicket into a silence so absolute it made her ears ring.
The distant, comforting rumble of London’s traffic died instantly. Within Richmond Park, the night should have smelled of wet tarmac, damp peat, and decaying autumn leaves. Instead, a thick, cloying wave of honeysuckle and wild garlic hit her, warm and suffocating.
She stood at the edge of a hidden clearing. A circle of giant, ancient, circular, grey, petrified oak standing stones marked the boundary, towering over her like sleeping giants. Inside the ring, the ground was a different world. Out-of-season wildflowers carpeted the earth in vibrant splatters of violet, gold, and blood-red. They bloomed in winter, defying the freezing air she had left prior to entering.
Rory took a cautious step forward, her boot sinking into plush, green moss. It felt warm, radiating a gentle heat that seeped through the thick soles of her shoes. Her crescent-shaped wrist scar prickled, a phantom itch she always got when trouble brewed. This was the Grove. Silas had warned her about it during a quiet shift at the bar, telling her that time here was a fluid, untrustworthy thing. He had told her that a step inside could cost a day, a month, or a lifetime. At the time, she had laughed, attributing his stories to too many pints of Guinness. She wasn't laughing now.
Her phone vibrated in her pocket, a frantic, erratic rattle. She pulled it out, hoping for a signal. The screen glitched, the digital clock spinning backward through hours, then days, before the display dissolved into a mess of green static. She dropped the dead device back into her pocket. The facts were simple. She was alone, her only lifeline was dead, and she was standing in a pocket of reality that shouldn't exist.
"Eva?" she called out, her voice flat and steady. She had learned to keep her tone cool under her father’s stern gaze during her brief stint in pre-law. A tremor in the voice was an admission of defeat, a crack in the armour that her father, the barrister, never tolerated.
The clearing didn't offer an echo . The silence swallowed her words, leaving no trace.
She walked deeper into the circle. The crimson gemstone against her breast grew hotter, a small, blistering coal that warned her she was standing on the threshold of something terrible. She reached into her pocket, her fingers closing around her keys. Not much of a weapon, but the brass edges offered a desperate kind of comfort .
A rustle broke the silence .
Rory spun, her shoulder-length black hair whipping across her bright blue eyes.
Nothing. Just the empty, glowing clearing and the monoliths.
She held her breath, listening. The forest didn't breathe. No wind rustled the high canopy of the petrified oaks. No insects chirped in the undergrowth.
Then, a rhythmic clicking sound began. *Tick-tock.*
It wasn't a clock. It was the sound of wooden joints popping, heavy and deliberate, coming from the shadow of the nearest monolith.
"Who’s there?"
"Lost, little bird?"
The voice was a dry, rasping whisper , sounding like dry autumn leaves scraping across a gravel path. It came from the branches directly above her.
She stepped back, her eyes darting upward. The canopy was a tangled mess of black limbs against a starless sky.
"I'm looking for the boy," she said, keeping her voice level. "Tommy."
"A boy? So many boys lose themselves in our woods," the voice returned, closer now, shifting to the left. "They taste the fruit. They forget their mothers. They turn into compost. We like the compost. It makes the orchids grow so sweet."
"He’s ten years old," Rory said. "His mother is frantic. I tracked him here."
"His mother should have kept her doors locked." A dry, rattling chuckle vibrated through the trees. "The little screamer didn't like the dolls we made for him. He wept. He bled. He was very loud. Not like you, Laila. You're quiet."
She flinched at the use of her old alias. She hadn't used that name since Cardiff, since the night she fled the shattered glass and fractured promises of her ex, Evan. How did this entity know ? Her chest tightened, the memory of that suffocating flat in Cardiff threatening to choke her, but she shoved it down. Panic was a luxury she couldn't afford.
"Where is he?" she demanded, her knuckles white around her keys .
"Behind you."
She didn't fall for the old trick. She stood her ground, but her eyes flicked downward. The wildflowers near her boots were bending , flattening under invisible steps. Something heavy was circling her in a tightening ring, though the air remained perfectly still. The crushed stems hummed with a sweet, nauseating scent of decay.
The Heartstone pendant began to throb , a beacon of warning that sent waves of heat radiating across her chest.
She backed toward the nearest petrified oak pillar. Her hand brushed the rough bark. It was hot, almost burning.
"The Hearthstone guides you," the voice whispered, brushing against her ear like a cold draft. "But it cannot shield you, Carter."
"Show yourself!"
The crimson pendant pulsed , a blinding beat of light that illuminated the clearing for a fraction of a second. In that single flash, she saw them.
Not one. Dozens.
They clung to the undersides of the branches like giant, bloated spiders, their bodies made of knotted birch wood and wet moss. Their faces were smooth, featureless masks of polished white bone, save for wide, jagged grins carved into the jawlines. They stared down at her with empty, hollow eye sockets.
And they were all leaning down, their long, spindly fingers reaching toward her hair.
She scrambled backward, her heart hammering against her ribs. The silence of the grove shattered into a chorus of clicking joints. *Tick-tock, click-clack.*
"Run, little barrister," one hissed.
"She can't," another gurgled, its voice wet and heavy. "The gate is locked."
Rory turned to run, but the giant petrified oak stones seemed to shift, moving closer together, closing the gaps between them like giant, stony fingers. The path she had used to enter was gone , replaced by a solid wall of petrified wood and thorny blackthorn bushes.
The air grew thick, smelling of old blood and copper.
A hand, cold as river ice and rough as pine bark, gripped her ankle from the moss below.
She screamed, kicking out with her free foot. Her boot connected with something soft and wet, followed by a high-pitched squeal.
"Let go!"
The grip tightened, dragging her downward into the warm, yielding earth. The moss rose up around her calf, swallowing her leg like quicksand. She struggled, but the ground seemed to drink her, pulling her deeper into the roots.
Above her, the white-boned masks descended from the trees, dropping one by one into the clearing around her. Their empty eye sockets pooled with a dark, oily liquid that dripped onto the vibrant wildflowers below, turning them black instantly.
The closest creature slivered forward, its wooden joints popping with every movement. It leaned in close, its carved grin stretching wider, splitting the petrified wood of its face to reveal rows of needle-sharp thorn teeth.
"Welcome home," it whispered, its breath smelling of wet dirt and old graves .
Its wooden fingers reached for her face, the polished bone mask inches from her eyes, as the earth claimed her hips. The finger tips brushed her skin, leaving trails of freezing frost behind, and the dark pool of its eyes opened up, swallowing the last of the light.