Run: 2026-07-09-01KX41ANN2KGJ2DGFS4KA7M29B

Aurora reached the oak stones at eleven forty-three, though the time on her phone changed when she looked away. Eleven forty-one. She stopped beneath the last working lamp on the Richmond Park footpath and checked again. The screen held steady. No signal. Half a battery. A hairline crack ran through the top corner, splitting the moon icon into two white chips. The message that had brought her there sat open beneath the clock. IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHO GAVE YOU THE HEARTSTONE, COME TO THE GROVE ALONE. MIDNIGHT. ENTER BETWEEN THE TWO TREES THAT HAVE NO SHADOWS. No number. No name. No reply option. Rory tucked the phone into her coat pocket and touched the pendant beneath her jumper. The crimson stone rested against her breastbone, warm from skin rather than magic. Nothing about it had changed since she left the flat above Silas’ bar. That should have reassured her. It didn’t. Beyond the lamp, the path narrowed into black woodland. Richmond Park had never felt empty during the day. Cyclists, dogs, deer, families dragging children away from puddles. At night, the land had shed all evidence of London. No tyres hissed on wet roads. No aircraft crossed overhead. Even the city’s orange haze stopped at the treetops as if the park had raised a lid against it. Rory took the small torch from her pocket and clicked it on. “Brilliant idea, Carter.” Her voice struck the nearest trunks and vanished. No echo. Not even the soft return of sound from bark and earth. She left the lamp behind. Rain had passed through earlier, but the path held no mud. The soil gave beneath her boots with a dry, fibrous crunch. Ferns crowded the beam. Droplets clung to them without falling, each one a hard silver bead. The instructions on the anonymous message had included a map. Rory had memorised it, unwilling to rely on a phone that had already begun lying about the time. Left at the split oak. Down the slope. Follow the ditch until it bent north. The entrance to the Grove waited beyond a stand of hawthorn. She found the split oak after nine minutes. Then she found it again. Rory aimed the torch at the trunk. Lightning had opened the tree from crown to roots, leaving a narrow black cavity in its centre. A strip of red cloth hung from a low branch. She had tied it there on her first pass, tearing the lining from her coat pocket with her keys. The cloth stirred. No wind touched her face. “All right.” She crouched and studied the ground. Her boot marks led towards the oak from the west, but none continued beyond it. Four prints. Heel, sole, heel, sole. They ended under her toes. Behind her, something stepped on a twig. Rory stood and swept the beam around. Hawthorn. Bracken. The white shafts of birch trees. No animal eyes caught the light. No shoulders withdrew behind a trunk. The darkness remained flat and packed between the branches. A second twig snapped from the same place. Not closer. Not farther away. The exact sound repeated, down to the brittle double-click at the end. Rory kept the torch fixed on the undergrowth and slid one hand into her pocket. Her fingers closed around the little canister of pepper spray Eva had bought from a website that called it dog deterrent. “Come out.” Nothing moved. She stepped backwards. A fern brushed her calf. The touch dragged a cold line through her jeans. The twig snapped a third time. Rory turned and walked past the split oak. No running. Running spent breath and narrowed thought. She counted her steps instead. At twelve, the ground dipped. At nineteen, the ditch appeared. At twenty-six, the pendant warmed. She halted. Heat spread from the crimson stone in a slow pulse. Warm, cool, warm. A second heartbeat laid over her own, weaker but out of rhythm. Rory pulled it free. The Heartstone glowed through her fingers, faint red seeping between them. Its silver chain had turned cold enough to sting the back of her neck. The ditch curved north. “There you are.” The warmth sharpened. Not enough to burn, but enough to feel deliberate. She followed the ditch. Tiny flowers grew along its banks. Bluebells, poppies, snowdrops and foxgloves stood together in the torchlight, their petals open despite the cold, despite the season, despite midnight. None bowed under the old rain. The air above them smelled of cut apples. Rory passed the hawthorn and found two oaks standing close together. Their branches knitted overhead. Moonlight silvered every tree around them, but those two cast nothing across the path. No lattice of branches. No dark bars from their trunks. The ground at their roots shone clean and pale. Her phone vibrated. Rory drew it out. A message from Eva filled the screen. where are you? The clock read two seventeen. “No.” She refreshed the screen. Two seventeen became eleven forty-six, then five thirty-two, then midnight. The numbers settled at eleven forty-three. The moment she had arrived. Another message appeared. Rory answer me Then another. you’ve been gone since yesterday The signal icon showed no bars. She pressed the call button. The phone remained silent for six seconds before producing a low, wet tapping through the speaker. Tap. Tap-tap. Tap. Rory ended the call. The tapping continued. She held the phone away from her ear. The sound no longer came from the speaker. It came from the trees beyond the shadowless oaks, faint but distinct, as if someone knocked one fingernail against a hollow branch. Tap. Tap-tap. Tap. Her phone vibrated again. don’t go in The sender showed her own number. Rory stared at it until the screen dimmed. Behind her, a boot pressed into the path. She spun. The torch found her own footprints. They trailed back towards the hawthorn, dark impressions in the pale soil. At the far end, where the beam weakened, another print formed. The earth sank at the heel first. Then the sole. No foot occupied it. A second print appeared closer. Rory stepped between the oaks. Cold folded over her, thin as a sheet drawn across her face. The woodland disappeared. She stood at the edge of the Grove. Ancient oaks ringed the clearing, their trunks thick and weather-twisted, their crowns woven into a roof that showed no stars. Some had grown into the shapes of standing stones, roots buried deep and bark ridged like eroded carvings. Others might once have been stones before the wood swallowed them. Rory couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. Wildflowers covered the ground. Thousands of them. White, yellow, red, violet. They rose to her knees without brushing her clothes. At the centre stood a shallow pool. The moon floated in it. Rory looked up. Branches sealed the sky. The moon remained in the water. Behind her, the invisible step reached the entrance. Rory moved aside and raised the spray. Nothing crossed between the oaks. The path remained visible for a moment, a dark throat through the hawthorn. Then the two entrance trees leaned together. Their trunks didn’t bend. The space between them narrowed without movement, as if someone had pinched the view shut. The woodland outside became a black seam. Then bark covered it. Rory’s thumb tightened over the spray nozzle. “Of course.” Her voice travelled across the clearing. At the far side, something whispered the last word back. Course. Not an echo. The pitch sat lower than hers, the consonants shaped by a mouth that had learned them late. Rory turned the torch towards it. Flowers. Trees. No one. The Heartstone throbbed against her palm. Its light had strengthened, staining the lines of her skin red. Each pulse sent a ripple through the moon in the pool. She walked towards the water. The flowers bent away before her boots touched them, opening a narrow lane through the clearing. Three steps. The tapping began inside the nearest oak. Tap. Tap-tap. Tap. Five steps. Another tree answered from across the Grove. Tap. Tap-tap. Tap. Seven. The sound spread around the boundary, trunk after trunk, a message passed through wood. The pattern remained exact. One knock. Two. One. Rory stopped. Every flower in the clearing turned towards the pool. They moved at once. Stems twisted. Petals tilted. Thousands of pale faces watched the false moon. The tapping ceased. Rory’s breathing sounded too loud. She drew air through her nose and held it. A breath came from behind her. It matched hers in length. She let her breath out. The other breath followed. Rory turned without shifting her feet. No one stood there. The lane through the flowers had closed. Every stem had straightened again except for one narrow depression that led from the vanished entrance to her back. Something had followed the route she’d taken. The phone rang in her hand. Its screen showed Aurora Carter. Her own contact photograph stared up at her: black hair tucked behind one ear, bright blue eyes narrowed at Eva’s camera, a takeaway bag balanced on her shoulder. Rory declined the call. The phone rang again. Aurora Carter. She accepted and switched to speaker. For several seconds, only a faint hiss emerged. Then her own voice spoke. “Don’t turn round.” Rory kept her eyes on the crushed flowers behind her. “Bit late for that.” On the phone, she heard herself inhale. “No. Not me.” The connection crackled. Somewhere close, a petal tore with a soft, papery rip. Rory lifted the torch, tracking the sound. The beam passed over the trees and caught a strip of red cloth tied to a low branch. Her coat lining. The same piece she had left on the split oak outside. It hung within arm’s reach. A wet gleam marked the bark beside it. Rory angled the light closer. Four letters had been pressed into the oak as if the wood had softened beneath a fingertip. LAILA. The name tightened the muscles along her shoulders. Few people knew it. Fewer used it. “Who are you?” The voice on the phone dropped to a whisper. “It hears names.” A knock sounded from beneath the soil. Rory looked down. The flowers around her boots trembled, not from wind but from something travelling under their roots. A narrow line moved through the clearing towards the pool. Soil lifted, settled, lifted again. The Heartstone flared. Deep crimson light filled her fist. Heat bit into her palm. The small crescent scar on her left wrist shone white against the red. The moon in the pool went dark. Not clouded. Extinguished. Its reflection became a round black opening, and the water around it remained smooth. Rory backed away. The thing beneath the soil changed direction with her. “Tell me how to get out.” Static chewed at the answer. “Rory, you never went in.” Her grip tightened on the phone. “I’m looking at the bloody Grove.” “No. You’re still under the lamp.” The voice broke apart. Through the distortion came another sound: traffic, distant horns, the ordinary grind of London. Then Eva’s voice, far from the receiver. “Why isn’t she moving?” Rory’s gaze flicked towards the oak ring. Between two trunks, she saw the Richmond Park footpath. The working lamp cast a yellow cone over a woman standing beneath it. Straight shoulder-length black hair. Dark coat. Phone held in one hand. The woman faced the woodland and didn’t move. Rory took one step towards her. The woman beneath the lamp turned her head. Even across the distance, her eyes caught the light in a hard, bright blue. The phone slipped against Rory’s damp palm. Under the lamp, the other Aurora raised her free hand and pressed one finger to her lips. The call ended. Darkness filled Rory’s screen. In its reflection, a face rested beside hers, cheek almost touching cheek. Rory drove her elbow backwards. It struck empty air. The flowers behind her flattened in a widening circle. Her torch went out. In the black, the Heartstone gave one deep crimson pulse. The oaks stood around her like ribs. At the edge of its glow, bare feet pressed into the flowers, one print after another, circling closer. A voice breathed against her left ear. “Laila.” Rory sprayed towards the sound and twisted aside. The canister hissed. The sharp chemical cloud caught in her throat, but nothing coughed. Nothing stumbled. Two cold fingers closed around the silver chain at the back of her neck. Rory clamped both hands over the Heartstone. “Get off.” The fingers pulled. The chain cut into her skin. The pendant blazed through her fists, and crimson light flooded the Grove. For that single pulse, she saw what stood behind her. It wore her face. Not a damaged copy, nor a warped mask. Every line sat where it belonged: black hair against pale cheeks, blue eyes, the small tension between the brows that Eva teased her about. It even wore her coat. Only the left wrist betrayed it. Smooth skin. No crescent scar. Rory caught that wrist and drove her thumbnail into the empty place where the scar should have been. The thing smiled with her mouth. “That’s mine,” it whispered, and pulled harder on the Heartstone.