Run: 2026-07-25-01KYD5712Z1WNQ8R0M9YE70A4F

The air in Richmond Park tasted of damp earth and something sweeter, almost floral, that didn’t belong. Aurora pulled her jacket tighter, the zipper catching against the small crescent scar on her left wrist. It itched, a habit she’d never gotten used to, even at twenty-five. The streetlights along the path had long since faded behind her, swallowed by the approach of night. Ahead, the ancient oak standing stones stood like sentinels at the grove’s edge, their bark etched with symbols she didn’t recognize but somehow knew. She paused at the boundary. The Heartstone Pendant hung heavy against her chest, its crimson gem pulsing once, twice, in time with her heartbeat. The warmth wasn’t uncomfortable, not yet. It was merely insistent. A signal. The grove opened before her like a dream someone had forgotten to wake from. Wildflowers glowed faintly in the moonlight, their petals shifting color as she watched—blue to violet to a hue that had no name. Time here felt thick, syrupy. She’d only walked ten minutes from the city, but the pendant’s glow suggested she’d crossed into something older. A branch snapped somewhere to her left. She turned, hand instinctively moving to the pendant. No one had followed her from the restaurant. No one knew she’d come here. Not even Eva. The sound came again—closer this time. A scraping, like fingernails against stone. Aurora’s breath fogged in the cool air. She hadn’t needed a coat. The temperature had dropped twenty degrees since she’d stepped past the standing stones. "Hello?" Her voice sounded wrong, too loud, too sharp. The flowers trembled, though there was no wind. Silence answered. She should have turned back. Should have gone to Silas’s flat, ordered another delivery, pretended she’d gotten the address wrong. But the pendant burned now, a steady heat beneath her skin, pulling her forward. The path wound deeper into the grove, narrower, the trees leaning inward as if sharing secrets. The first thing she noticed was the absence of sound. Not quiet—absence. No cricket chirps, no owl hoots, no distant traffic. Just the thrum of her own pulse in her ears and the low hum emanating from the gemstone. It was singing now, a wordless melody that seemed to vibrate through her bones. She stopped. Turned again. The path was different. The flowers had bloomed in the time it took her to blink, their stems twisted into spirals that hurt to look at directly. One petal brushed her arm, and she swore it was warm. When she looked up, the moon had shifted, its light casting shadows that didn’t match the trees. Footsteps. Not the scraping this time. Actual footsteps. Soft, deliberate. Coming from behind her. Aurora forced herself to walk back toward the path, her boots crunching on something that wasn’t dirt or leaves. Grass. Too much grass. The ground had grown uneven, sprouting shoots that moved like worms in reverse. She kept her head up, scanning the darkness between the trees, but there was nothing. No shape, no figure, no— A face. In the bark of an oak, just beyond the clearing. She almost missed it. The face was her own, or at least it had her eyes, her mouth, but it was stretched too wide, the features blurred as if seen through water. The mouth opened. She blinked. The tree was just a tree. The footsteps started again. Closer. From every direction now. The pendant flared crimson, and Aurora stumbled, her fingers finding the chain. It was burning. Too hot to touch. She could feel it pulling, not just toward the stones, but downward, into the earth itself. The ground beneath her feet was soft, yielding. She looked down and saw roots coiling through the soil like veins, pulsing in time with the gemstone. Something was rising from below. Not all at once—just a suggestion, a pressure at the base of her spine. She took a step back, then another, but the path kept narrowing, the trees closing in until she could barely turn sideways to move. The flowers at her knees were no longer glowing. They were weeping. "Who's there?" she whispered, but her voice cracked. The pendant was a furnace now, its light casting long shadows that stretched like fingers across the ground. The symbols on the standing stones were no longer carved into bark. They were scratched into her skin, appearing on her arms, her neck, her wrists—all the places she’d ever felt most exposed. The footsteps stopped. Aurora held her breath. Then a sound like wind through empty air, but it carried words. Whispers in a language she’d never heard but somehow understood. Words for hunger. Words for waiting. Words for the space between heartbeats. The roots beneath her feet began to rise. Not all at once, but inch by inch, coiling up like serpents made of soil and memory. They brushed her ankles, then her calves, and she realized with a sudden, cold certainty that they weren’t roots at all. They were fingers. The face appeared again, this time in the reflection of a puddle she hadn’t noticed. It smiled, and the smile was too wide, too many teeth, but it was definitely her smile. The real her, the one who’d left Cardiff, who’d slept in this park, who’d delivered food to strangers and lied about her address. The reflection smiled wider. The ground split open.