Run: 2026-07-01-01KWE9CSEJQRQXJDQVPF8BTY8K

The moon hung low over Richmond Park, catching on the standing stones like frost on old teeth. Rory crossed the last stretch of grass with the Heartstone Pendant clutched tight in her fist, its chain wound twice around her knuckles. It had gone warm an hour ago in her flat above Silas' bar, warm enough that she'd nearly dropped her mug of tea, and she'd known then she'd have to come. She hadn't expected the grove to feel different at night. By day it was the sort of place tourists photographed by accident, wildflowers nodding between the oaks, the boundary stones softened by lichen and time. Now the flowers had folded shut, and the stones stood black against a sky gone the colour of a bruise. Rory stepped between two of them, and the temperature dropped so fast her breath fogged in front of her face. "Right," she said, mostly to hear her own voice. "Just checking. Not stopping." The pendant pulsed against her palm, a slow heartbeat that didn't match her own. She'd been in the Grove before — twice, both times in daylight, both times with Eva's voice in her ear reminding her not to eat anything and not to make promises. Tonight she was alone, and the silence pressed against her ears like something with weight. No traffic hum from the road beyond the park. No wind. Even her footsteps on the grass sounded wrong, too soft, as though the ground swallowed the sound before it reached her. Something rustled off to her left. She turned. Nothing—just wildflowers, closed up tight, stems trembling like they'd only just stopped moving. "Isolde?" Her voice didn't echo. It just stopped, like the trees ate it. She kept walking. The grove was bigger at night. She was almost sure of that — the clearing had never taken this long to cross before, and the standing stones behind her should have still been in view, but when she glanced back there was only more grass, more dark, more trees crowding closer than she remembered them standing. A twig snapped. Not near her feet. Above her. Rory's head snapped up, and for a heartbeat she saw movement in the black lattice of branches—something long-limbed pulling itself higher, out of sight, quick and neat as a spider drawing its legs in. She stood very still. The pendant burned hot enough now that she could feel it through her coat pocket where she'd shoved her fist. "Isolde, if that's you being funny, it's not funny." Nothing answered. But now she heard breathing that wasn't hers, slow and deep, coming from everywhere and nowhere, like the grove itself had lungs. She made herself walk forward. Running felt like the wrong instinct here — she'd learned that much from Eva's warnings, from the stories that came with the Fae-touched places. Running invited chase. Walking, calm and deliberate, might convince whatever watched her that she hadn't noticed it at all. The flowers at her feet had started to open, slow as a held breath being let out, and their petals weren't the pale colours she remembered from daylight. They gleamed wet and red under the moon, and their scent — sweet, then rotten, then sweet again — caught in the back of her throat. Something moved at the edge of her vision, low to the ground this time, weaving between the flower stalks with a wet, dragging sound. She didn't look at it directly. She'd read that too, somewhere, some warning passed between people who dealt with things like this — don't give it your full attention, don't let it know you've seen. She kept her eyes on the middle distance and let her peripheral vision catch the shape sliding along beside her, matching her pace exactly. "I'm here for Isolde," she said, louder this time, and her voice cracked despite her best effort to keep it level. "That's all. I'll go the second I've spoken to her." The breathing sound thickened, doubled, as though something else had joined in. The pendant scalded her palm now, and she had to switch it to her other hand, shaking out fingers gone stiff with heat. Its glow bled red through the fabric of her coat pocket, painting a small bloody circle on the wool. She'd never felt it this hot before. Not even in the tunnels beneath the club, not even near the door Yu-Fei had warned her about. Ahead, the trees opened into a smaller clearing she didn't remember from before — a perfect circle of flattened grass, ringed by wildflowers gone the deep wet red of the ones she'd already passed, and at its centre, nothing. Just grass. Just the moonlight falling in a clean unbroken column, like something had cleared a space for her. She stopped at the tree line and didn't step in. "This isn't where she meets people," Rory said, and this time she didn't bother pretending the words were brave. They came out thin, and true, and the shape in the grass beside her — the one she still hadn't looked at — went still. Then it moved again, faster, circling behind her, and she heard the wet drag of it change to something lighter. Quicker. Feet, maybe, though the pattern was wrong, too many beats between each step for two legs and too few for four. She turned in a slow circle to keep whatever it was in front of her, and found nothing there at all — no shape, no shadow, just trees standing exactly where trees should stand, exactly like nothing had ever moved among them. The breathing had stopped. The silence that replaced it was worse.