Run: 2026-07-09-01KX4006SGXN0MJ4XJJ19NXSN6

Aurora found the first oak stone at twelve minutes past midnight. It leaned beneath a hawthorn on the far side of Richmond Park, taller than she was and grey in the moonlight, its grain twisted into whorls that looked almost like fingerprints. At least, she assumed it was oak. When she laid a hand against it, expecting bark, her palm met something cold and smooth. Stone pretending to be wood. Or wood that had forgotten what it was. “Brilliant,” she murmured. “Perfectly normal.” Her voice travelled farther than it should have. It threaded between the trees, thinned to a whisper, then came back from somewhere ahead. Normal. Rory snatched her hand away. Nothing moved. Beyond the hawthorn, the park lay under a colourless wash of moonlight. Ferns crowded the slope. Old trees hunched against the sky. London’s glow dirtied the eastern horizon, but the city itself had vanished behind the dark, leaving no engines, no sirens, no late aircraft groaning toward Heathrow. Not even wind stirred the dead leaves at her feet. She checked her phone. No signal. The time still read 12:12. The message had told her to come alone. MIDNIGHT. RICHMOND PARK. FIND THE OAK STONES. BRING THE HEARTSTONE IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHO SENT IT. No name. No number she could trace. The message had appeared on her phone three nights ago while the device lay switched off on her bedside table, its battery dead. She had tried ignoring it. Then the pendant had begun to warm every night at midnight. Now it rested beneath her jumper, its silver chain cold against the back of her neck and the deep crimson stone warm between her breasts. Not hot. Not yet. A pulse of heat every few seconds, faint but distinct. A second heartbeat. She pulled her jacket tighter and stepped around the standing stone. The grove waited on the other side. There was no gradual boundary, no thinning of the trees. One step took her past brambles and damp fern; the next placed her ankle-deep in wildflowers. Poppies, cornflowers, foxgloves, snowdrops—summer and winter tangled together beneath a sky that seemed suddenly higher. Ancient oak pillars ringed the clearing. Some stood straight. Others bent inward like robed figures conferring over a grave. At the centre lay a black pool no wider than a roundabout. The message had said nothing about water. Rory stopped at the threshold. The flowers brushed her boots, vivid even at night. Their colours seemed to come from within, a restrained gleam in every petal. She recognised the place despite never having seen it. Isolde’s grove. The hidden clearing in Richmond Park. A pocket snagged between Earth and somewhere older. She had been warned about its time. An hour in the grove might cost her a few minutes outside, or a week. She had left a note in her flat above Silas’ bar, though it sounded deranged even to her: Gone to Richmond. If I’m not back by morning, ask Eva about Isolde. Don’t come after me. It was not much of a safeguard. It was, however, better than no safeguard, and Rory had learned the value of leaving evidence. She looked back. The hawthorn was gone. Behind her, wildflowers ran unbroken to the ring of oak stones. There was no slope, no park, no gap through which she had entered. Her breath caught. She turned slowly, resisting the urge to bolt toward the nearest opening. Running blindly had saved her once. It had also taught her that escape required a destination. The pendant warmed again. The pulse came stronger now. Rory took it out. The Heartstone was roughly the size of her thumbnail, set in plain silver. Its crimson depths held a faint inner glow, as though an ember had been sealed inside it. She had examined the clasp, the chain, the setting. No maker’s mark. No mechanism. Nothing to explain why an unknown benefactor had sent it to her, wrapped in brown paper, with only one word written on the parcel. MALPHORA. The stone pulsed in her palm. From the far side of the pool came the soft scrape of a shoe. Rory looked up. No one stood there. The flowers were motionless. Moonlight silvered the pool’s surface. The oaks watched with their knot-dark eyes. “Hello?” Silence. She hated herself a little for saying it. People in horror films said hello into dark rooms because the script required stupidity. Real people backed away and found something heavy. Rory bent and picked up a fallen branch. It was as thick as her wrist, knotted at one end, and surprisingly dry. She tested its weight. The scrape came again. This time it sounded behind her. She wheeled, branch raised. Still nothing. Yet one of the standing stones seemed nearer than before. Rory studied the ring. There were eleven pillars. She was almost certain there had been twelve. She counted again. Eleven. The flowers around the nearest stone had been crushed into a narrow trail leading toward her. Her mouth dried. “That’s enough.” The words came out level, for which she was grateful. Fear could have her pulse and her stomach. It did not get her voice. Something breathed near her left ear. Not a gust. Not leaves. A slow inhalation, intimate and wet, close enough to lift the hair against her cheek. Rory swung the branch. It cut empty air. The force spun her halfway around, and the Heartstone slipped from her fingers, jerking against its chain. It struck her sternum with a burst of heat. Across the pool, a woman stood among the foxgloves. Rory froze. The woman wore a pale dress that hung straight to her ankles. Her black hair reached her shoulders. Her face was turned away, but the line of her body felt horribly familiar—the slight cant of one hip, the squared shoulders, the left hand curled close to the thigh. A small crescent-shaped scar marked the inside of her wrist. Rory’s own scar prickled. The woman turned her head a fraction. Rory stepped back. “Don’t.” The figure stopped. For several seconds they remained like that, facing one another across the pool. The stranger’s face stayed hidden behind a curtain of black hair. She was Rory’s height. Rory’s build. Even the pale dress tugged at memory: the white nightdress she had owned at twelve, the one her mother had thrown out after Rory’s childhood accident left blood all over the sleeve. The figure raised her left arm. Rory did not move. The figure pointed at the pool. A ripple crossed the black surface. It began at the bank nearest Rory and travelled inward against no wind, concentric rings tightening toward the centre. The reflection of the moon warped. For an instant the pool showed not sky but a narrow London street under rain, yellow light shining from the windows of the Golden Empress. A bicycle lay in the road. Its front wheel turned slowly. Rory leaned despite herself. “What is that?” The image changed. Her flat above Silas’ bar appeared on the water, seen from the foot of her bed. The room was dark. The note she had left lay on the bedside table. A shape stood beside it. Tall. Motionless. Blurred at the edges, as if the water refused to hold its form. Rory’s grip tightened on the branch. “Who are you?” The shape in her bedroom bent over the note. Across the pool, the woman in white spoke. “He knows where you live.” Rory’s own voice came from beneath the black hair. The certainty of it struck colder than a scream. Every private flaw was there: the soft Cardiff edge she had never quite lost, the careful flatness she used when frightened, the small catch before the word live. Rory forced her gaze from the water. “Who does?” The woman’s head lifted. Her hair fell aside. There was no face beneath it. No eyes, no mouth, no features at all—only smooth, moon-pale skin stretched over the shape of a skull. Rory stumbled backward. The thing crossed the pool without disturbing the surface. One moment it stood among the foxgloves. The next it was halfway over the water, bare feet resting on the moon’s reflection. Its dress did not sway. Its faceless head remained tipped slightly toward her, listening. The Heartstone flared hot. Rory dropped the branch and seized the pendant through her jumper. Heat bit her palm. The crimson glow bled through the fabric, bright enough to stain her fingers red. Near a Hel portal. The knowledge arrived with sick clarity. The black pool was not a pool. Its surface bulged. The faceless woman halted above it. Beneath her feet, something vast shifted in the darkness. Not swimming upward. Turning over in sleep. A sound rose from below: the creak of immense weight pressing against a door. Rory backed toward the stone ring. “You wanted me to bring this.” The woman’s head twitched. Not an answer. A reaction. “You sent the message.” Another twitch, sharper this time. The pool shuddered. The image of Rory’s room returned in broken fragments. The dark shape beside her bed now held the note between two long fingers. Then it looked up. Though it had no visible face, Rory felt its attention snap through the water and seize her. The phone in her pocket vibrated. She nearly cried out. The screen lit as she dragged it free. 12:12. A new message filled the display. DON’T LET IT SEE YOU. Rory stared at the words. Too late, she thought. The shape in the pool raised one hand and placed it against the other side of the surface. The pool dented upward around its palm. The faceless woman pivoted toward it. Her body folded with a series of small, dry clicks. Shoulders narrowing. Neck lengthening. Fingers spreading. Rory caught glimpses of wrong proportions beneath the white dress, a costume no longer needed now that the performance had failed. The thing had not brought her here. It had been waiting. The Heartstone burned against her skin. Pain cleared the fear-fog from Rory’s thoughts. The heat grew strongest when she faced the pool and weakened when she turned toward the northern edge of the grove. A compass. Not to the portal. Away from it. Rory moved sideways, keeping the writhing figure in sight. The flowers tangled around her boots. Behind her, the oak stones seemed to shift whenever she blinked, closing their gaps, but one narrow passage remained between two leaning pillars. The pendant cooled by a fraction as she approached. The thing on the pool spoke again. “Rory.” Evan’s voice. Her foot stopped before she could command it otherwise. It had the exact rough warmth he used in apologies. The voice from the other side of a locked bathroom door. The voice that promised he was calm now, that she had made him angry, that if she would only come out they could be sensible. “Rory, love. Look at me.” Her stomach tightened until she could barely breathe. The faceless head had changed. Skin sank inward. Features pressed from beneath as though a man were trapped inside it, pushing his face against a sheet. “Don’t be dramatic,” it said. That cured her. Rory tore her gaze away and ran. The flowers clutched at her jeans. The oak pillars ground together ahead, slow and inexorable. The remaining gap shrank from the width of a doorway to the width of her shoulders. Behind her, something stepped off the pool. The wildflowers hissed beneath its feet. Rory turned sideways and drove herself into the narrowing space. Stone-cold oak scraped her jacket. The silver chain snagged. She choked as it pulled tight around her neck. No. She shoved one hand between chain and skin. The pendant dangled behind her, caught on a knot in the standing stone, blazing crimson. Footsteps approached through the flowers. Not hurried. They sounded like her own. Rory fumbled at the clasp. Her fingers slipped. The small crescent scar on her wrist shone white in the red light. The footsteps stopped directly behind her. Warm breath touched her nape. “Laila,” the thing whispered. The name meant nothing to her. Her hand went still. The creature inhaled sharply, as though it had made a mistake. Rory seized the chain with both hands and pulled. The clasp bit into her neck. Silver links groaned. She braced one boot against the stone and heaved. The chain snapped. She tumbled through the gap with the Heartstone clutched in her fist. Cold mud struck her knees. Sound crashed back all at once: wind in the bracken, a distant road, the barking of a fox. Rory scrambled forward and spun. The hawthorn stood behind her. Beneath it leaned a single grey stone carved like ancient oak. No gap. No grove. No woman. Rory remained on the ground, one palm buried in mud, the other locked around the pendant hard enough for its setting to cut her skin. Her breath clouded the air. Above the treetops, the eastern horizon had begun to pale. Her phone showed 5:47 a.m. Five and a half hours gone. She pushed herself upright on shaking legs. The broken silver chain hung from her fist. The Heartstone’s glow had faded to a dull ember, its warmth barely perceptible. A dream, some treacherous part of her offered. A panic attack. Exhaustion. Then she saw the flowers. A trail of crushed foxgloves crossed the mud behind her, their purple bells luminous in the predawn dark. They began at the standing stone. They ended an arm’s length from her boots. Rory stepped back. From inside her jacket pocket came a slow, wet inhalation. Her phone vibrated again. She did not want to look. She made herself. The message contained no words this time, only a photograph. Her flat above Silas’ bar. Her bed. Her note unfolded on the bedside table. And on the pillow, arranged with care, lay a pale crescent of skin.