Run: 2026-07-25-01KYD4XBW3RSVPAWJG2PHCTE4R

The gate to Richmond Park was locked. Rory stared at the chain and the new sign wired above it. PARK CLOSED AFTER DARK. The letters bled in the thin light from her phone. She climbed it anyway. Her trainers slipped on the wet iron. The crescent scar on her left wrist caught the bar and twinged. She dropped to the mud on the other side and her breath came back in white puffs that vanished fast. The Heartstone thumped once against her sternum. She had not meant to come. The pendant was supposed to stay in a drawer in the flat above Silas' place, tucked under socks. It had woken her at two in the morning with a heat that soaked through the wood. When she lifted it, the crimson at its centre held a light that had no business being there. It pulsed. It pulled. Eva's last text sat unread on her lock screen. *Don't go to the grove alone. Promise me.* Rory pushed through the bracken towards the old line of oaks. Richmond at night was a different country. No dogs. No joggers. No planes. The city hum that lived behind every London silence had cut out. Her footsteps sank into leaf rot and made no echo. The air smelled of turned earth and something sweet, too sweet, like crushed stems left in a hot car. She found the first standing stone by walking into it. The oak was black and wide as a lorry. Its bark held deep grooves that ran straight up, too straight, like tool marks. Moss grew thick at its base but stopped in a clean ring a foot from the trunk. Inside the ring, wildflowers opened. Wildflowers. In November. Small white heads and yellow throats. They stared up and they did not shiver in the wind. The Heartstone burned hotter. Rory stepped past the oak and the temperature changed. The wind died mid-gust. The dark on the other side of the stone was a thicker dark. Her phone light hit it and lost a foot. Another stone loomed ahead. Then another. Four of them, half-sunk in the hill, marking a rough circle that her mind wanted to read as a door. Inside the circle, the grove held. The grass was soft. Too soft. It gave under her foot like mattress foam and sprang back without a print. The wildflowers covered every inch. They had no scent now. Or they had too much scent and her nose had given up trying to name it. She stood in the middle of the clearing and turned in place. "This is stupid." Her voice sounded wrong. Flat. Close. The grove swallowed the edges of the sound. She had come to prove it was nothing. To see if the pendant reacted to the place Eva talked about. To check the time slip Eva swore happened here. One hour inside. Minutes outside. Or days. Eva laughed when she said it but her eyes did not. Rory uncurled her fist. The pendant lay in her palm. The silver chain pooled cool over her knuckles. The gemstone at its centre was the size of her thumbnail and it beat with a dull red light that threw no light on her skin. It beat faster now. In rhythm with something else. A branch cracked. Her head snapped up. Beyond the standing stones, the park was an ink wash of tree trunks. No branch moved there. The sound had come from inside the circle. To her left. Another crack. Opposite side. The flowers did not move. Rory's pulse kicked hard against her ribs. She counted. Cool-headed. That was her trick. Count and name. One: oak with growth like scar tissue. Two: moon hidden behind cloud. Three: pendant hot enough to brand. Four: sound with no source. She took a step back towards the northern stone, the one she had entered through. Her trainer found soft grass and then something that was not grass. Her foot went down half an inch further than it should. She looked down. A handprint in the earth between the flowers. Palm and five fingers, pressed deep, as if something had pushed up from below and then thought better of it. The soil inside the print was black and wet and it steamed. The steam should have risen. It fell. It ran sideways across the ground in a low sheet, hugging the flowers. Another sound started. A wet click. Not a bird. Not an animal. It came from above now, and it was rhythmic. Click. Pause. Click-click. Pause. Like a joint popping. Rory lifted the phone. The screen showed NO SIGNAL and the clock read 02:14. She had entered at 02:16. The click came again, closer. In the corner of her right eye, something moved. She turned and there was nothing but a standing stone and flowers. When she faced forward again, the air behind her shifted. A displacement, the way heat shivers off tarmac. She felt eyes on the back of her neck and the feeling had weight. The Heartstone jolted. Not warm now. Cold. A cold that bit straight through her sweatshirt. Someone breathed out near her ear. She spun. Empty air. The flowers quivered this time, a ripple that ran outwards from where she stood, as if the ground transmitted her footfall to every stalk at once. Rory held the pendant up. The crimson light caught the clearing. For a heartbeat, she saw them. Shapes between the oaks. Tall shapes. Too tall. With limbs that folded an extra time. They stood just beyond the stones, shoulder to shoulder, and their heads were bent down, looking in. Light moved in the grove and none of those shapes cast a shadow. Then the glow in the pendant stuttered and died and the shapes were gone. The clearing was only a clearing again. Only. The ripple in the flowers kept going after it should have stopped. The opposite side of the circle now. A trail through the white heads, pressed flat, moving, tracing a slow circle around her. No feet made it. No body. The trail completed its loop and stopped directly behind the southernmost stone. Where something now stood that had not stood a second before. Not tall. Short. Almost her height. It had the outline of a girl with straight shoulder-length hair. Rory's mouth went dry. "You lost, love?" No answer. The outline lifted a hand. The gesture mirrored hers, pendant pinched between thumb and forefinger. The air in the grove pressed in. The wildflowers turned. Every single bloom, all at once, turned its face towards Rory. The cold from the pendant shot up her arm and locked her jaw. Behind the girl-outline, the space between two standing stones stretched. The dark there grew deeper, tall as a door, and wind came out of it that smelled of iron and wet stone and nothing alive. A second trail started through the flowers, fast this time, cutting straight for her ankles.