AI The standing stones hummed against her palms.
Rory pressed both hands flat against the ancient oak, feeling the vibration travel up through her wrists, her forearms, settle somewhere behind her sternum like a second heartbeat. The Heartstone Pendant against her collarbone pulsed in answer, its faint crimson glow seeping through the fabric of her hoodie.
She'd followed the warmth here. Three nights of it growing stronger, pulling her south-west through London like a fish on a line, until she'd found herself pedalling her delivery bike through Richmond Park at half past midnight, the standing stones lit silver by a moon she couldn't see through the cloud cover.
The stones formed a rough circle, seven of them, each carved from heartwood so old it had petrified into something between timber and bone . She'd read about them once, in one of Silas' forbidden books behind the bar. Oak-gate, the old text called them. Doorways that opened one way.
The hum deepened. The pendant flared.
Rory stepped through.
The grove swallowed her.
One moment, Richmond Park, the distant growl of the A3, a helicopter chopping somewhere over Putney. The next, silence so complete her ears rang with the absence of it. She stood in a clearing ringed by trees that weren't quite trees, their bark pale as parchment, their branches tangled overhead in patterns that looked deliberate . Mathematical. Wildflowers carpeted the ground in colours that had no business existing side by side, violet bleeding into amber bleeding into a shade of blue she'd never seen before and couldn't name.
The air tasted thick. Sweet, like overripe fruit, and underneath that, something metallic. Copper on the tongue.
"Right then," she muttered. "This was a terrible idea."
She didn't turn around. The stones behind her had gone quiet. Whether the doorway still existed at her back, she couldn't tell without looking, and every instinct she possessed screamed at her not to look.
The pendant had stopped pulsing. It hung warm and still against her chest, its glow reduced to a faint ember. Job done. It had brought her here. Whatever here was.
Rory took stock. Rucksack with her phone, a torch, the can of pepper spray Eva had insisted she carry, a bottle of water, two protein bars. Phone first. She pulled it out, thumbed the screen.
No signal. Of course.
The time read 00:47. She pocketed it and clicked on the torch. The beam cut through the grove in a white slash, catching the wildflowers, the pale trees, and something at the far end of the clearing that made her breath catch.
A well. Old, moss-capped, its stones dark with moisture. A wooden frame rose above it, a bucket on a frayed rope dangling over the lip.
She swept the beam left, right. Nothing else. Just the well, the flowers, the wrong-coloured trees, and the silence .
Then the singing started.
Not from any direction. From everywhere. A woman's voice, high and sweet, singing something in a language Rory didn't recognise but understood somehow, the way you understand a dream while you're inside it. The words meant arrival and belonging and we've been waiting.
The torch beam shook in her grip. She tightened her fingers around it.
"Hello?"
The singing stopped. Cut clean, like a record lifted from a turntable.
The wildflowers at her feet began to close, one by one, petals folding inward as though retreating . The motion spread outward from where she stood in a ripple, the entire carpet of colour sealing itself shut until the ground around her was nothing but dark stems and darker soil.
Rory's pulse hammered in her throat. She backed toward where the stones should have been, and her heel caught on something.
She stumbled, caught herself, swung the torch down.
A root. Thick, pale, and moving. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, it was curling around the toe of her trainer.
She yanked her foot free. The root didn't follow, but it didn't retract either. It stayed where it was, raised slightly , like a finger pointing.
Toward the well.
"No." She said it out loud, to the grove, to whatever listened. "Whatever you want, no. I'm leaving."
She turned. The stones were there. Seven of them, solid and dark, exactly where she'd entered. She lunged for the gap between the two nearest and slammed into something that felt like compressed air, like pushing through water that wasn't wet.
It threw her backward. She landed hard on the closed flowers, felt stems snap beneath her, and the pendant flared hot against her skin, hot enough to make her gasp.
The torch had rolled from her grip. Its beam lay on the ground, pointing at the well, illuminating the bucket that was now swinging.
Gently. As though someone had just set it in motion.
Rory's hands found the soil. She pushed herself up, wiped her palms on her jeans, and retrieved the torch. The beam was weaker now, the light yellowing as the batteries drained faster than they should.
The singing returned. Closer this time, or maybe just louder, and Rory could make out harmonics beneath the melody, other voices layered beneath the lead, dozens of them, threading through each other in patterns too complex for human throats.
The pale trees shifted. Not in the wind, there was no wind. They moved the way a person shifts their weight from one foot to another, a settling, an adjusting. Their branches rearranged overhead, and the gaps between them revealed not sky, not clouds, but a darkness so deep it seemed to have texture, folds, depth .
Something watched from inside that darkness. She felt its attention the way you feel a spotlight, a physical weight of focus pressing against her skin. It didn't blink. It didn't need to.
The wildflowers at the far end of the grove began to open again. All of them, simultaneously, and they weren't the colours they'd been before. They were red now, every petal, every bloom, a deep arterial red that caught the torchlight and glistened wet.
The copper taste in the air thickened. Rory's eyes watered.
From the well, a sound rose. Not singing. Not wind. A breathing, vast and slow, the rhythm of something enormous drawing air through a throat the width of the well's mouth. Each inhale pulled the wildflowers flat. Each exhale straightened them again.
The pendant burned.
Rory looked down. The Heartstone had changed, its crimson deepened to black, and the silver chain around her neck was tightening , link by link, constricting with mechanical patience.
She clawed at it. Her fingers found no clasp, no give, just the links drawing closer, pressing into the soft tissue of her throat.
The breathing from the well quickened .
At the edge of the torch's dying beam, something pale emerged from behind the well's stones. A hand. Female, slender, the fingers too long by one joint each, the nails dark and pointed. It gripped the well's rim, and a second hand appeared beside it, and then a face rose above the edge .
Beautiful. Inhumanly so. Eyes like polished obsidian, no whites, no iris, just black mirrors that reflected Rory's face back at her, twisted with terror. The mouth smiled, and the teeth behind it were filed to points, each one a tiny white triangle.
"Malphora," it said, in a voice like the singing, like the breathing, like the grove itself speaking through a throat made of wood and flower and dark water. "You came. We waited so long."
The chain tightened another link. Black spots swam at the edges of Rory's vision.
The creature pulled itself higher over the well's rim, shoulders emerging, and behind it, more hands, more faces, more smiles, climbing over each other in a tangle of pale limbs and dark nails.
The torch died.
In the blackness, the only light came from the pendant, and it was fading, fading, as the first creature reached the top of the well and began to crawl toward her on all fours, its too-long fingers sinking into the red flowers, its pointed teeth still bared in that terrible smile.