AI Aurora Carter knew Richmond Park well enough to resent it when it changed.
By day, the park was all open grass and deer tracks, the broad brown shoulders of the trees lifting against the London sky. At night, it became a country assembled from scraps: a lane of silvered weeds, a stand of black oaks, the pale suggestion of water somewhere beyond the dark. The city remained close, but the darkness swallowed its evidence. No traffic muttered. No aircraft crossed the clouds. Even the glow from London had thinned to a weak stain behind the trees.
Rory checked her phone.
11:47 p.m.
The screen showed one bar of signal, then none. She turned in a slow circle, though there was no point. Every direction looked the same: trunks, bracken, low mist collecting in the hollows.
She slipped the phone into her coat pocket and touched the pendant at her throat.
The Heartstone was warm.
Not body-warm. It had a pulse of its own, faint and steady beneath the fabric of her shirt. Each beat sent a little bloom of heat into her fingertips. The deep crimson stone glimmered when she drew it out, no brighter than a coal hidden under ash.
This was why she had come.
The first pulse had started just after eleven, while she was carrying a delivery from the Golden Empress across town. The sensation had been so distinct that she had stopped on the pavement, one hand pressed over the pendant, while a bus exhaled fumes beside her. The stone had warmed again when she reached Richmond, and again at the park gates.
A Hel portal was near.
That knowledge should have been enough to send her home.
Instead, she had followed the heat.
The pendant trembled once against her palm.
Ahead, between the trees, stood the ancient oaks.
They were not arranged like a natural grove. Their trunks rose in a broken ring around a clearing, thick and twisted, their roots gripping the earth like knotted fingers. Some had been split by lightning and grown around the damage. Others leaned inward, their branches interlocking overhead.
Standing stones marked the boundary between them.
Rory had seen the stones once before, in daylight, though she had not known what she was looking at. Then they had seemed like weathered slabs half-sunk in the earth. Now they stood taller than she remembered, narrow and pale beneath the moon, their surfaces slick with moisture. Strange grooves ran across them. Not writing. Not exactly. They looked like scratches made by something that had been trying to climb out.
She stopped several paces away.
The Heartstone pulsed .
Warmth. Pause. Warmth.
The grass inside the ring was thick with wildflowers.
They bloomed in impossible profusion despite the season. Bluebells, foxgloves, white star-shaped flowers she did not recognize, all nodding in the night breeze. Their colors seemed too clear, each petal edged in silver. No insects moved among them. No moths. No beetles. Nothing disturbed the flowers except the wind.
There was no wind outside the stones.
Rory noticed that first.
The trees behind her were still. The clearing breathed.
She drew a slow breath through her nose. Damp earth. Moss. A sweetness like crushed apples. Underneath it, something faint and metallic.
She should have called someone. Eva, perhaps, though Eva would ask questions Rory could not answer. Silas would have come without asking, but he would also have insisted on bringing a weapon and a second person. Rory had not told either of them because she had spent too long pretending the impossible was manageable.
And because the pendant had led her here.
She stepped over the nearest stone’s shadow.
The air changed.
It did not become colder. It became thinner, as if the clearing had been sealed beneath glass and she had broken through. Sound fell away behind her. The distant city, the park, the soft scuff of her boots—all gone.
For one moment, Rory heard nothing at all.
Then the clearing sighed.
Not the trees. Something lower and closer. A long, patient exhalation from beneath the flowers.
Rory stood very still.
The pendant’s heat spread up her throat.
“Hello?” she called.
Her voice traveled only a few feet before the dark took it.
No echo returned.
She looked back at the boundary. The stones were where they had been, but the gap between two of them seemed narrower now . Or perhaps the trees had shifted. She blinked, and the impression vanished.
A sensible person would leave.
Rory had always been good at identifying sensible decisions. Acting on them was more complicated.
She moved toward the center of the grove, where the pendant seemed to pull. The flowers brushed her knees. Their stems bent away from her boots and then slowly straightened behind her, closing the path.
A twig snapped somewhere to her left.
Rory turned.
Nothing.
The black spaces between the trunks held only darkness. She waited for movement, for the pale flash of an animal’s eyes. Nothing appeared.
Then a second twig snapped behind her.
She spun again.
The path she had made through the flowers was empty.
Her hand went to the small folding knife in her pocket. The blade was hardly protection against anything that belonged in this place, but its familiar weight steadied her. She kept walking.
The clearing was larger than it had looked from outside.
That thought came and went so quickly she nearly dismissed it. The stones were a distant ring now, blurred behind flowers and shadow. She counted her steps. Fifteen. Twenty. Thirty.
The pendant pulsed more quickly .
Ahead, the air wavered .
A vertical seam of darkness hung between two trees. It was not a shadow. Shadows belonged to objects; this had no source. Its edges flickered like a reflection disturbed by water. Beyond it lay nothing she could see—not blackness, but an absence of depth .
A Hel portal.
Rory stopped.
The seam was about the width of a door. Crimson light trembled within the Heartstone, answering it. The sensation of warmth became almost painful.
Something moved at the edge of her vision.
She looked right.
A flower nodded.
She looked left.
Another flower nodded.
The breeze had risen inside the grove. It slid over her face, cold now, carrying the scent of wet stone. The wildflowers bowed in a wave that began somewhere behind her and traveled toward the portal.
Rory did not turn to watch it arrive.
She listened instead.
There it was again: a soft disturbance in the flowers. Not footsteps . Too light for footsteps . A brushing sound, like fabric dragged over grass.
She tightened her grip on the knife.
“Who’s there?”
The brushing stopped.
For several seconds, the only sound was her breathing.
Then, from behind her, someone said, “Rory.”
Her stomach clenched.
The voice was Eva’s.
Not similar. Not close. Eva’s voice exactly—the little lift at the end of Rory’s name, the faint rasp from too many cigarettes, the warmth threaded through the sound.
Rory kept facing the portal.
Eva was not here. Eva was in London. Eva had no reason to be in Richmond Park at midnight. Eva knew better than to follow Rory into a place like this.
“Rory,” the voice said again.
The flowers behind her rustled.
Her mind supplied the image before she could stop it: Eva standing barefoot among the bluebells, hair hanging over her face, one hand raised in greeting.
Rory shut her eyes.
The voice gave a soft laugh.
“You came alone?”
She opened her eyes.
The portal had widened.
Not by much. A finger’s breadth, perhaps. Enough to reveal a dull red gleam far within the dark. Something pulsed there, slow as a sleeping heart.
Rory forced herself to study the seam. Its edges were not stable. They shivered inward and out, opening onto glimpses that made no sense: a corridor lined with roots, a sky crowded with white stars, a narrow room with a chair facing the wrong way.
Behind her, the flowers shifted.
A stem brushed her coat.
She turned sharply .
No one stood there.
The grove was empty.
The certainty that she was not alone arrived without drama. It simply settled into her, cold and complete.
There was something behind her.
Not in the flowers. Not among the trees.
Behind her, close enough to touch.
Rory felt its attention like pressure between her shoulder blades.
She did not move. The pendant’s pulse had become erratic, beating against her palm like a trapped insect.
“Eva?” she said, and hated herself for it.
The thing behind her inhaled.
It took a long time.
The breath began somewhere near the stones and drew inward, gathering the air of the clearing. Flowers shuddered. Leaves lifted. The portal’s red glow dimmed as if the darkness were drinking it.
Then the thing exhaled against the back of Rory’s neck.
The skin there tightened.
She stepped forward.
A second later, something stepped forward behind her.
She heard it this time—not a footfall, but the soft compression of earth beneath weight .
Rory moved toward the portal, keeping her eyes fixed on the seam. The distance shortened by inches. The red light grew stronger, reflecting in the wet surfaces of the standing stones.
Another step behind her.
She walked faster.
The flowers tore against her boots. Their sweet scent thickened until it coated the back of her throat. At the edge of her vision, a pale shape paced her between the stems. It was too tall. Too thin. Whenever she looked directly at it, there was nothing but flowers.
Her hand closed around the Heartstone.
It burned.
The portal shuddered.
From behind her came Eva’s voice, no longer amused.
“Rory, wait.”
She did not.
“Rory, please.”
The voice broke on the last word.
That was wrong. Eva had never sounded helpless with Rory. Angry, sarcastic, frightened in private—never helpless. The thing had borrowed the shape of her voice but not the truth of it.
Rory reached the portal.
The air before her thrummed. Tiny hairs rose along her arms. Within the seam, something moved beyond the red glow. A silhouette crossed from one side to the other, tall and angular.
The thing behind her whispered, “Don’t look.”
Rory looked.
There was a figure standing three feet away.
It wore her face.
Not perfectly . The hair was longer, wet and hanging in ropes around the shoulders. The eyes were bright blue, too bright, with no reflection in them. A small crescent scar marked the left wrist. Its mouth had opened slightly , and darkness filled the space behind its teeth.
Rory’s mind refused the image. It slid away, returned, slid away again.
The copy smiled.
“Come home,” it said.
The portal gave a violent pulse . Heat burst from the pendant, and Rory cried out. The crimson stone flared in her hand. The seam of darkness snapped wide enough to show a landscape on the other side: pale ground beneath a black sky, trees growing upside down, their roots tangled overhead.
Something reached through.
A hand emerged, long-fingered and gray.
Rory acted before fear could make the decision for her.
She dropped the pendant.
It struck the earth between her boots.
The portal collapsed.
There was no explosion. No flash. The darkness simply folded inward with a sound like a door closing underwater. The reaching hand vanished. The red light went out.
The copy screamed.
The sound was not loud, but it passed through Rory’s bones . She stumbled, covering her ears, and saw the thing’s face ripple. Eva’s features slid away. Rory’s features stretched. Beneath them was something smooth and pale, with a vertical mouth opening down the center.
It lunged.
Rory kicked the Heartstone toward the nearest standing stone.
The pendant skittered through the flowers and struck the stone’s base.
Every wildflower in the grove bent toward it.
The pale thing stopped.
For the first time, it seemed afraid .
The stones groaned.
A crack split the earth between them, running in a jagged line through the clearing. The flowers vanished into the soil. The air snapped cold. The thing recoiled, its limbs folding at angles no human body could manage.
Rory ran.
She did not look back. She followed the path that should have led to the boundary, crashing through flowers and branches, one hand outstretched. The grove stretched around her, trees repeating in endless rings. Her lungs burned. Her boots slipped on wet ground.
Behind her, the thing began to call her name.
It used Eva’s voice first.
Then Silas’.
Then her mother’s.
At the stones, Rory saw a gap.
She threw herself through it.
The night of Richmond Park slammed back into place: traffic in the distance, wind in the trees, the faint bark of a fox. She hit the grass hard enough to bruise her shoulder.
For a moment, she lay there, staring at the ordinary sky.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket.
Rory flinched and pulled it out.
The screen read 11:52 p.m.
She had been inside for five minutes.
Behind her, beyond the standing stones, something brushed slowly through the flowers.
Rory rose.
The Heartstone lay in the grass at her feet, cold now, its crimson glow gone.
On the other side of the stones, a woman with Aurora’s face stood among the trees.
It did not cross the boundary.
It only watched her leave.
And when Rory turned toward the park road, her phone buzzed again.
This time, the message came from her own number.
I’m still inside.