Run: 2026-07-09-01KX4056PX74JHMGNZ25DDPME3

Richmond Park had locked its gates three hours ago, which meant Aurora had climbed one. She dropped from the iron bars, trainers sinking into wet turf. The impact jarred her knees. Behind her, the road shone beneath the streetlamps, every passing car a brief promise of civilisation. Ahead, the park swallowed the light within twenty paces. Her phone read 00:17. The message beneath the clock had no sender. COME TO THE GROVE. BRING THE HEARTSTONE. COME ALONE IF YOU WANT EVA BACK. Aurora read it once more, though the words had lodged behind her eyes hours ago. Eva’s number had gone straight to voicemail. Her flat stood empty, the front door unlocked, dinner congealing beside the sink. No sign of a struggle. No note. Only a scattering of wet leaves across the hall carpet. Oak leaves. “Your dramatic streak’s getting tedious,” Aurora muttered, and locked her phone. The darkness offered nothing in reply. She zipped the mobile into her jacket and touched the pendant beneath her shirt. Its silver chain rested cold against her neck. The deep crimson stone sat in the hollow above her breastbone, no warmer than her skin. The stranger who had given it to her had called it a Heartstone. He had refused to explain the name. Useful near doors that ought not exist, he’d told her, wearing the pleased little smile of a man withholding the only relevant fact in a room. Tonight, a red pulse had spread through the stone when she’d opened Eva’s flat. She set off. The footpath curved between bracken and thorn. Clouds hid the moon, and Aurora kept her torch pointed at the ground to preserve what little night vision she had. The beam skimmed slick roots, chalky stones and deer droppings. Her own breathing sounded intrusive. She knew this route. At least, she knew the version of it used in daylight, when cyclists swore at dogs and children charged through the ferns with sticks. Isolde had brought her once, entering the grove by a track invisible until the moment they stepped onto it. “Fae paths don’t care where you’re going,” Isolde had warned. “Only why.” “Convenient excuse for poor signage.” “You’ll joke less when one takes offence.” Aurora had laughed then. She did not laugh now. A branch snapped to her left. She stopped. The torch beam swung across shoulder-high bracken. Every frond hung motionless beneath beads of rain. Beyond them, ancient oaks crowded the slope, their trunks the colour of old bruises. “Deer,” she whispered. Something clicked its tongue. Aurora’s hand tightened around the torch. The click came again, farther back among the trees. A soft, fleshy sound. Not a hoof on stone. Not antlers brushing bark. Three clicks answered from the opposite side of the path. She walked on. Her pace stayed measured, though every muscle between her shoulders demanded speed. Running in darkness invited a broken ankle. Running from something she couldn’t see invited worse. The path forked. It should not have forked. The left branch climbed towards a dead oak split by lightning. The right descended between banks of foxgloves, their pale bells luminous in the torchlight. Foxgloves did not bloom in November. Aurora crouched and touched one. The petal recoiled. Not under her fingertip. Before it. She snatched her hand away. The entire cluster turned from her in a slow ripple, flower after flower rotating on its stem until every bell faced downhill. “All right.” Her voice fell flat against the earth. She took the right-hand path. The foxgloves remained turned away as she passed. A smell reached her after fifty yards: woodsmoke, warm bread and the orange soap Eva kept in her bathroom. Aurora’s throat tightened. The scents mingled with damp soil, impossible and intimate. “Rory?” Eva’s voice floated from the bracken behind her. Aurora stopped with one foot raised. “Rory, where are you?” Too close. Eva sounded no more than ten paces away. Aurora lowered her foot without turning. The pendant remained cool. “Rory, my phone’s dead. I can’t see.” The voice held the exact rasp Eva got after crying. Aurora pictured her childhood friend in pyjamas, barefoot in the wet, arms wrapped around herself. The image came complete, down to the chipped purple polish on Eva’s toes. She clenched her jaw until it hurt. Eva never called her Rory when frightened. She called her Carter, as if surnames could function as armour. “Come onto the path,” Aurora called. “I’ve got a torch.” Silence. Then, from close behind her: “I can’t.” Aurora turned. Empty bracken bent beneath the torch beam. No Eva. No footprints. Nothing large enough to hide a person moved among the fronds. A patch of darkness stood between two oaks. Her light struck bark on either side, but the space between them absorbed the beam. The shape rose narrow and tall, almost human, except a human silhouette would have broken at the shoulders. This one tapered upwards like a thorn. Aurora blinked. There was only another tree. Something tugged the back of her jacket. She spun, driving the metal torch in a hard arc. It hit air. The beam whirled across fern, mud, trunk, fern, mud. Her pulse hammered in her gums. The hood of her jacket hung stretched behind her. A black twig protruded from the fabric. Aurora stared at it. No branches overhung the path. She pulled the twig free. It resisted for a moment, barbs catching the cloth, then came away with a wet pop. A clear bead swelled at its broken end. The bead rolled upwards. It travelled along the twig against gravity and vanished beneath the bark. Aurora dropped it. The thing landed soundlessly in the mud. A child began humming somewhere ahead. The tune wandered through five notes, paused, then repeated. Aurora knew it. Her mother used to hum it while marking schoolwork at the kitchen table, red pen tapping between verses. Her torch flickered. “No.” The beam weakened to a brown glow. She struck the casing against her palm. It brightened, catching a small figure at the next bend. A girl stood with her back to Aurora. She wore a yellow raincoat. Black hair touched her shoulders. One bare hand hung at her side, and a crescent-shaped scar marked the left wrist. Aurora’s fingers closed over her own scar. The girl hummed. “Turn round,” Aurora ordered. The figure tilted her head. Too far. Her ear approached her shoulder, then passed it, neck bending with the pliancy of grass. Aurora stepped backwards. The girl lifted her left hand and pointed between the trees. The torch died. Darkness pressed against Aurora’s open eyes. She heard fabric rustle ahead, followed by the delicate pad of bare feet. One step. Another. Coming closer. She dragged out her phone. The screen lit her hands and the rain beaded on her sleeves. No signal. The time read 00:17. She had walked for at least twenty minutes. The humming came from behind her now. Aurora switched on the phone torch and turned. The path lay empty. Mud glistened in the narrow beam. Small bare footprints crossed it from one bank to the other, each no longer than her palm. Halfway across, they changed. The next impression resembled a hand pressed into the mud. Five long digits. Then another. A trail of handprints continued into the bracken. Something moved through the plants beside her. Not away. Alongside. Aurora walked. The unseen thing matched her, fronds shivering one after another. When she stopped, it stopped. When she took two fast steps, the disturbance surged to keep pace. “You want the pendant?” The bracken settled. Aurora slipped her hand beneath her shirt and wrapped it around the Heartstone. The gem had grown hot. Its pulse nudged her palm, faint but regular. A second pulse answered from the trees. Slower. Heavier. The ground seemed to feel it. A tremor passed through the soles of her trainers. She followed the pendant’s warmth. The path thinned, then vanished beneath drifts of fallen leaves. She chose between trunks by the rhythm in her fist: warmer to the left, cooler to the right. Each turn carried her deeper into woodland that could not fit within the park. The oaks grew wider than houses. Their roots rose from the earth in walls, forcing her to climb. Pale moths clung to the bark with wings spread, each one the size of a hand. They had no markings except a black dot on each wing. The dots followed her. Aurora kept her gaze ahead. The child’s humming had ceased. In its place came a faint murmur, too low to catch. At first she mistook it for wind. Then she heard the cadence—dozens of voices speaking under their breath. Her name surfaced among them. “Aurora.” “Rory.” “Laila.” “Carter.” The last name made her falter. “Malphora.” The voices fell silent. A cold line crept down her spine. She had never heard that word, yet something inside her recoiled from it with the force of recognition. “Who’s there?” Leaves shifted overhead. “Aurora Carter,” the murmur resumed, each syllable passing from mouth to unseen mouth. “Daughter of Brendan. Daughter of Jennifer. Door-bearer. Red-hearted. Oathless.” “Not much for introductions, are you?” A laugh passed around her. It contained no breath. Her phone screen blinked. The battery icon showed sixty-eight per cent, then twelve, then eighty-one. The clock remained fixed at 00:17. The Heartstone burned against her palm. Ahead, two oaks leaned together. Their branches knitted high above the ground, forming a narrow arch. Darkness filled the gap beneath them, but the pendant’s crimson glow pushed through Aurora’s shirt, staining her fingers red. She approached. The murmurs tracked her from both sides. No bodies emerged. Once, the corner of her eye caught a pale face level with her knee. When she looked, she found a knot in a root. Ten steps from the arch, her phone light revealed a ring of objects arranged on the ground. A silver earring. A bus ticket folded into a star. A green lighter. Eva’s keys, the enamel strawberry charm cracked across the middle. Aurora crouched without entering the ring. Mud coated the keys, but the strawberry shone clean. “Eva?” A woman sobbed beyond the arch. Aurora rose. The darkness between the oaks rippled. Through it, she glimpsed wildflowers under silver light—blue, gold, white, all blooming in a clearing untouched by winter. Ancient standing stones encircled the grove, though they were not stone at all. Oak trunks rose from the earth in weathered columns, their surfaces carved with lines that squirmed when she looked straight at them. The Fae Grove. A figure knelt at its centre. Long hair covered the woman’s face. Her wrists appeared bound behind her, shoulders drawn back at a painful angle. She wore Eva’s red coat. “Carter.” The woman’s voice broke on the name. “Don’t listen to them. Just get me out.” Aurora’s foot moved towards the threshold. The pendant seared her skin. She jerked back. Smoke curled from beneath her collar, carrying the smell of scorched cotton. The grove flickered. For one instant, the kneeling figure faced the wrong way. Her coat buttons ran down her spine. Her elbows bent towards Aurora. Beneath the curtain of hair, a mouth opened vertically from forehead to chin. Then Eva knelt there again, trembling. “Please.” Aurora pulled the Heartstone from her shirt. The crimson gem glowed like an ember pinched between her fingers. “Tell me what you put in my birthday card last year.” Eva raised her head. Hair concealed all but her mouth. “What?” “The card. You wrote something inside. Tell me.” “Rory, this isn’t the time.” “Wrong answer.” The grove’s flowers turned towards Aurora. Every blossom swivelled at once. The kneeling woman stopped crying. “What answer did you want?” Her voice no longer belonged to Eva. It had no pitch, no age. The words seemed to arrive from inside Aurora’s jaw. “The one she’d know.” The figure stood. It unfolded rather than rose. Its spine lengthened beneath the red coat, each added inch accompanied by the quiet pop of splitting seams. Hair continued to veil its face. Its arms remained pinned behind it. “The grove knows her.” “Then you’d know what she wrote.” “The grove knows you.” The ancient oaks whispered her names again. Aurora kept outside the ring. “Where is Eva?” The figure took one step forwards. Flowers flattened beneath its bare feet, petals leaking black fluid into the grass. “She came when called.” “By whom?” “You.” The phone in Aurora’s hand vibrated. Eva’s name appeared on the screen. For a second, relief stripped every thought from Aurora’s head. She answered and raised the mobile to her ear. “Eva?” Static hissed. Beneath it came ragged breathing. “Carter?” The real fear in Eva’s voice cut deeper than the imitation had. “Where are you?” Aurora stared at the thing in the red coat. “In Richmond Park. Where are you?” “My flat. I woke up on the kitchen floor. There was someone at the door.” Eva sucked in a shaking breath. “I thought it was you.” The figure crossed another pace towards the arch. “What did they look like?” “You.” Aurora’s grip tightened around the phone. Eva spoke faster. “Same hair, same jacket. You stood outside with your back to the peephole. You kept asking me to let you in.” “Is it still there?” “I don’t know. It stopped knocking.” A knock sounded through the phone. Three soft taps. Eva stopped breathing. At the edge of the grove, the figure lifted one bare hand from behind its back. Three knuckles touched the nearest standing oak. Tap. Tap. Tap. The same knocks came through the phone a fraction later. Aurora looked from the raised hand to Eva’s keys in the mud. “Lock yourself in the bathroom. Take something heavy.” “I’ve got the bread knife.” “Good. Don’t open the door for anyone. Not me, not the police, not your gran risen from the grave with a winning lottery ticket.” “What about you?” The figure reached the threshold. “I’m asking questions.” Aurora ended the call before Eva could object and slipped the phone into her pocket. The thing’s toes stopped where silver moonlight met the woodland dark. It could not, or would not, cross. Up close, Eva’s coat hung from a body too narrow to fill it. A smell drifted from under the curtain of hair: cold ash and stagnant water. The pendant throbbed in Aurora’s fist. “You lured me here with her name.” The figure’s mouth shifted beneath its hair. “We opened what you carried.” “Not an answer.” “You brought the key to the lock.” Aurora glanced at the Heartstone. Its inner glow stretched towards the grove in a thin red filament, as though the gem bled light into the clearing. The dark between the arching oaks had widened. She could now see more of the grove: the impossible wildflowers, the standing oaks, and a black seam suspended in the air beyond them. It ran from the ground to twice Aurora’s height. No light touched its surface. The slow pulse came from inside it. Not the rhythm of the Heartstone. A heartbeat vast enough to shake pollen from the flowers. “What’s through there?” The figure’s head tilted. Hair slid aside. There was no face beneath it. Only smooth, pale skin and a shallow indentation where a mouth ought to have been. The answer pressed against Aurora’s teeth from within. “Hel.” Her fingers almost opened. The pendant flared. Deep crimson light flooded the arch and sharpened every shadow. Something moved behind the black seam: a shape passing close to the other side, immense enough that Aurora saw only a curved section of it. A fingernail, she thought. Then the curve flexed. The seam bulged towards the grove. Every flower closed. The faceless figure retreated one step. That frightened Aurora more than anything else had. “Close it.” The indentation in the thing’s face split into a narrow mouth. “You opened it.” “I didn’t.” “You came.” The unseen heartbeat struck again. One of the standing oaks cracked down its centre, sap glinting like tar. Aurora held up the pendant. “Tell me how to close it.” The figure’s mouth widened, though no teeth appeared. “Enter.” “Of course.” “Return the Heartstone to the wound.” “And where’s the wound?” A long finger rose and pointed towards the black seam. The gesture looked almost reverent. Aurora studied the ring of objects at her feet. Bait, trophies, or both. Eva’s keys lay closest to the threshold. Beside them, half buried in mud, rested a small crescent of silver. She crouched and brushed the dirt away. A chain. Not part of Eva’s keys. The links matched the chain around Aurora’s neck. The buried end led beneath the ring. Aurora hooked two fingers under it and pulled. Mud resisted, then released a second pendant with a sucking sound. A thumbnail-sized crimson stone swung from the chain. Identical to the one in her hand. Its surface held no inner glow. A hairline crack divided it from top to bottom. The faceless figure lunged. It stopped at the threshold with its body bent almost horizontal, coat flapping around its bones. One hand raked the darkness inches from Aurora’s face. Its fingers ended in blunt, human nails. “Leave that.” Aurora backed away, holding both pendants. The dead Heartstone swung from its chain. As it crossed the light of the living gem, a shadow appeared inside the cracked stone. A tiny figure hammered against the inner surface. Aurora lifted it closer. The figure had long hair. One palm struck the crimson wall, again and again, while the other pointed past Aurora towards the grove. The thing in Eva’s coat pressed its blank face against the boundary. “Give it back.” Aurora turned the dead stone between finger and thumb. The trapped shape followed her movement, stumbling within its red prison. “Who gave me mine?” The figure’s mouth sealed shut. “Who carried this one?” The murmuring trees answered in fragments. “Before.” “Blood before blood.” “First door.” “Last daughter.” “Malphora.” Aurora’s living pendant pulsed. The cracked stone answered. Between those two beats, the black seam in the grove went still. Aurora slid Eva’s keys into her pocket, looped the broken pendant’s chain around her wrist, and faced the arch. The small crescent scar beneath the silver links had begun to shine red. The faceless figure withdrew into the flowers. “Do not enter carrying both.” Aurora stepped to the edge of the ring. “Now that sounded like an answer.”