AI Aurora found the first oak stone by its smell.
Not the damp, green smell of Richmond Park after rain, nor the sour musk of deer bedding down in the bracken. This was older. Charred leaves. Cold iron. Something sweet underneath, cloying as rotting fruit.
Her torch beam skimmed over the path ahead, caught on wet grass, then struck bark.
The standing stone rose out of the earth like the stump of a colossal oak, though no blade had cut it. Its surface twisted with grooves that resembled grain until she looked too long and saw faces in them: long narrow brows, shut eyes, mouths sealed by roots.
Aurora stopped.
The park behind her had vanished into a wall of black trunks and silver rain. She could still see the faint blurred wash of London beyond the trees—perhaps she could. A distant amber glow hung low in the sky, but it seemed farther away than it had any right to be .
She checked her phone.
No signal. Eleven forty-three.
The battery, which had been at sixty-seven percent when she left the road by Pembroke Lodge, now read twenty-one.
“Brilliant,” she muttered.
Her own voice did not travel properly. It fell from her lips and seemed to land at her feet.
She pulled the collar of her coat closer around her throat. Rain beaded on the dark wool. Her black hair, already damp at the ends, clung to her jaw. The Heartstone pendant rested beneath her jumper, warm against her sternum.
Warm was the wrong word.
It felt alive.
The deep crimson gem had begun to pulse as she crossed into the trees. Not visibly, at first. She had felt it through cloth and skin: a faint, measured throb . Now its warmth pressed harder against her chest, a small fever burning in the hollow beneath her collarbones.
Near a Hel portal, the unknown benefactor’s note had said. It had been written in an elegant, old-fashioned hand on thick cream paper, folded around the pendant in an unmarked parcel.
You will know where it leads.
Aurora had spent six weeks trying not to know.
Then Eva had called at half past ten, crying so hard Aurora could barely make out the words.
I saw him, Rory. I saw Evan.
Not Evan himself, perhaps. Eva had corrected that immediately, voice tight with self-disgust. A man in a black coat outside her building. The same way he stood. The same tilt of his head. He had looked up when she looked down from her window, and he had smiled.
Aurora had told her to call the police. To lock the door. To call Silas, if she needed someone nearby. She had said every sensible thing in the right order.
Then the line had gone dead.
A minute later, Aurora’s own phone had received a message from Eva’s number.
COME TO THE GROVE ALONE.
No punctuation. No explanation.
Aurora had not called back. She had tried. The call failed before it rang.
The sensible thing had been to wake Silas. To call the police herself. To wait in the bar’s warm, crowded light until morning.
Instead, she had dressed, pocketed her torch and a small folding knife she had bought after Evan, and taken a cab as far as the driver would agree to go.
The driver had looked at the wooded edge of the park and said, “You sure, love?”
No, she had thought.
“Yes.”
Now she stood before the first ancient oak stone and wished she had listened to the part of herself that had been shouting since the cab pulled away.
The Heartstone pulsed .
Once.
Twice.
Then it stopped.
Aurora slipped two fingers under her collar and drew it out. Rain darkened the silver chain. The stone itself glimmered faintly in her palm, crimson light moving somewhere deep inside it like blood seen through skin.
Her torch flickered .
She smacked it once against her thigh. The beam steadied, thin and white.
Ahead, between the standing stones, lay the clearing.
She had seen it once before in daylight, or something close enough to daylight. Wildflowers had spread across the grass in impossible colour—bluebells beside foxgloves, snowdrops with poppies, late roses blooming among frost-white blossoms. It had been beautiful in the way a knife could be beautiful: too perfect , too sharp, inviting a hand to close around it.
Tonight, the flowers were pale blurs under the rain.
There was no wind.
That was what made her step forward.
Rain fell straight down, cold on the top of her head and shoulders. But not a leaf moved. The bare branches overhead held still as wire. The long grass did not bend beneath the drops. Even the rain seemed wrong here, making no sound when it struck the ground.
Aurora crossed the boundary.
At once, the park disappeared.
The distant traffic hum went out as neatly as if someone had shut a door. No tyres on wet roads. No train groaning somewhere beyond the trees. No fox bark, no wingbeat, no rain.
Only silence .
The clearing opened around her, larger than it should have been. The ring of oak stones stood at its edge, dark and uneven. Beyond them grew trees packed so tightly their trunks made a wall. Their branches braided together overhead, shutting out the sky.
Her phone buzzed.
Aurora nearly dropped it.
The screen lit in her wet hand.
EVA CALLING.
Relief struck so hard it hurt.
She answered at once. “Eva?”
Static breathed into her ear.
“Eva, it’s me. Where are you?”
A faint sound came through the interference. Not crying. Not exactly.
A child humming.
Aurora’s grip tightened around the phone. “Who is this?”
The humming stopped.
Then Eva’s voice said, very softly , “Rory?”
Aurora turned in a slow circle, torch raised. “Eva? Where are you?”
“I can’t see.”
The voice was close. Close enough that Aurora expected to see Eva crouched among the flowers, white-faced and soaked through.
But the clearing was empty.
“I’m here,” Aurora said. “Stay on the phone. Tell me what happened.”
“I can’t see,” Eva repeated.
The words had changed. The first time, they had sounded frightened. This time, they sounded curious.
The static crackled.
Then a man’s voice came through the speaker.
“Still running, Laila?”
Aurora went cold.
Her thumb hit the end-call icon so hard the screen jolted in her hand.
For a second she could not breathe.
The name hung in the silence .
Laila.
Evan had called her that when he wanted to make a joke of her name. When he wanted to make her feel childish, foreign to herself. He had said it with his mouth close to her ear, a private little cruelty dressed up as affection .
No one else used it.
No one.
Her torch beam shook. She lowered it deliberately until the circle of light settled on the wet flowers at her feet.
Think.
Someone had access to Eva’s phone. That was possible. Evan knew Eva. He had known where Aurora lived once; he could have found out where Eva lived. He could be here. He could be playing some vile, elaborate game.
That was possible.
But the trees had swallowed the city. Her phone was dead in every practical sense and had rung anyway. The pendant was burning against her palm.
Possible did not mean likely.
Aurora slid the Heartstone back beneath her jumper and forced herself to move.
The clearing had one obvious feature: a narrow path of flattened grass leading toward the far stones. She did not remember it from before. It ran straight through the flowers, though no mud marked it, no footprints pressed into its edges.
At the end of it stood something pale.
A figure.
Her breath caught.
“Eva?”
The shape did not answer.
Aurora took three steps toward it.
The pale figure remained where it was, half-hidden behind one of the oak stones. It had the loose outline of a woman in a light-coloured coat, head bowed. Rain streamed over its shoulders—or appeared to . The rain was still soundless.
“Eva, if that’s you, say something.”
The figure lifted one hand.
Its fingers curled around the edge of the stone.
They were too long.
Aurora stopped.
The hand slid back out of sight.
The figure was gone .
Her torch winked out.
Darkness pressed against her face.
Aurora swore under her breath and hit the torch again. Nothing. She twisted the base, checked the battery compartment with fingers that had started to lose feeling.
Behind her, something stepped on wet grass.
A soft, deliberate compression.
She did not turn.
The rational part of her mind listed facts with the calm, clipped cadence of a solicitor preparing a case. One: someone was behind her. Two: they had made no sound approaching. Three: it might be an animal. Four: no animal she knew walked with such measured care.
Another step.
Aurora snapped the torch back on.
The beam sprang to life.
She swung it behind her.
Nothing stood there.
Just the path she had crossed, flowers bowed beneath rain, the black teeth of the standing stones.
Except the stones seemed closer.
She had entered through an opening wide enough to walk through without brushing either side. Now the nearest two stood perhaps six feet apart, their roots bulging from the ground like knuckled hands. The faces in their bark had opened their eyes.
Aurora stared.
The torch beam quivered .
The eyes were only knots in wood. Dark hollows. Rainwater.
She blinked.
They were still knots.
“Fine,” she whispered. “Fine.”
She turned back toward the far side of the clearing.
The path was gone .
Not obscured. Gone.
Flowers covered the ground in an unbroken spread. White petals trembled on black stems. At the centre of the clearing, where the path should have been, stood a child.
Aurora’s first thought was that the child must be freezing.
She was barefoot in the grass, wearing a yellow raincoat buttoned to the chin. Her hair hung in wet ropes around her face. She stood with her back to Aurora, small shoulders raised as if she were listening .
Aurora’s whole body locked.
The child hummed.
It was the same tune from the phone. Three notes, then two. A nursery tune Aurora almost recognised and did not want to.
“Hey,” she said, because silence had become unbearable. “You shouldn’t be out here.”
The humming continued.
Aurora did not approach. “Are you lost?”
The child tilted her head.
Slowly, she turned.
There was no face under the curtain of hair.
Only smooth, pale skin from forehead to chin, blank as an eggshell.
Aurora’s stomach lurched .
The child opened a mouth that had not been there before.
“Still running, Laila?”
Aurora ran.
She did not choose a direction. She chose away.
Flowers slapped wet against her shins. Roots caught at her boots. The torch jerked wildly in her fist, turning the grove into fragments: grey stone, black trunk, a flash of red petals bright as fresh paint. Behind her, the child’s voice broke into laughter.
Not a child’s laughter.
It came from too many throats, layered high and low, carrying from every side at once.
Aurora saw the boundary stones ahead.
She aimed between them.
The gap narrowed.
She threw herself forward anyway, shoulder first, expecting bark or stone to smash her back into the clearing. Instead she passed through a cold resistance, like plunging into deep water.
The world lurched .
Sound returned in a violent rush.
Rain hammered leaves. Wind tore through the park. Somewhere far off, a car horn blared. Aurora hit the ground hard on one knee and both palms, skidding in mud.
For several seconds she stayed there, head bowed, coughing air into her lungs.
Her phone rang.
She flinched so sharply she nearly dropped it.
The screen showed Eva’s name.
Aurora stared at it.
The signal bars were back. Four of them.
The clock read eleven forty-seven.
Four minutes.
Her finger hovered above the answer icon. Then she pressed it and put the phone to her ear.
“Eva?”
“Rory?” Eva sounded breathless, angry, alive. “Jesus Christ, are you all right? I’ve been calling you for ages.”
Aurora looked over her shoulder.
The grove stood beyond the trees, though it looked like nothing more than a dense, dark thicket. There were no standing stones. No clearing. No faint red glow beneath the branches.
“I’m fine,” Aurora said.
It came out rough.
“You don’t sound fine.”
“Where are you?”
“At home. I’m sorry, I know it’s late. I had this horrible dream and woke up convinced something was outside. I called you, but you didn’t answer.”
Aurora looked down at the phone. There were no missed calls.
“You texted me,” she said.
“What?”
“From your number. You told me to come to Richmond. To the grove.”
Silence.
Rain ran from Aurora’s hair down her neck.
“Rory,” Eva said at last, quieter now. “I didn’t text you.”
Aurora’s fingers closed around the pendant beneath her jumper.
The Heartstone had gone cold.
On the other side of the thicket, something knocked three times against wood.
Not loud.
Not urgent.
Patient.
Aurora rose carefully to her feet.
“Go inside,” she told Eva. “Lock your door. Call Silas, not me. And don’t answer anyone who knows my name.”
“Rory, what’s happening?”
Aurora watched the trees.
A shape shifted between them—a pale oval where no face should be, waiting in the dark.
“I’ll tell you tomorrow,” she said.
Then she walked away without looking back.