Run: 2026-07-25-01KYD62VARPZTNFSN43S2VGHM2

Richmond Park after closing breathed different air. The fence where the locals cut a gap sagged inward, brambles holding the wire like stitched fingers. Rory ducked through and the city fell off behind her. She had not wanted to come. The note under her flat door had no name on it. Small paper, cheap. Come to the grove at midnight. Leave your phone. Bring the stone. Her flat above Silas' bar shook with bass every night till two and she knew every kind of drunk lie that slipped under doors. This one sat wrong. The ink bled. The Heartstone weighed against her collarbone. She wore it because she did not know where else to keep it. Silver chain cold against sweat, thumbnail-sized crimson that caught low light and held it. The whole walk from the flat it held heat. Not much. Enough to make skin prickle under the metal. Past the oaks the path thinned and then vanished. Rory pushed into trees that should have been bare for November. Leaves hung on. A smell rolled out, summer-wet earth and crushed stalks. The standing stones rose. Ancient oak, not granite, trunks petrified where they broke ground, roots thick as a man's waist twisting back into soil that never showed wear. Moss grew up their sides in one direction only. Inside their circle the grass grew too green. Wildflowers opened in the dark. White ones. Yellow ones with heads too large. Rory stopped at the line where leaf litter met flower. Something about the clearing pulled wrong. The air inside looked thinner. The dimensions off, like a room measured once and then measured again. She checked her wrist. The little crescent scar showed pale. "This is stupid." Her voice went into the trees and landed nowhere. "Whoever you are. I came. So come out." No answer came back. Leaves rustled. A distant dog barked and cut off. The pendant burned hotter. A pulse, dull throb against bone, then again, in rhythm with nothing she owned. Each beat pushed warmth up into her throat. Rory stepped over the root wall and into the Grove. Cold clamped on her ankle. Then gone. She looked down. Nothing. Soil. Flowers that did not crush under her boot so much as lean aside. The wind dropped inside the stones. Outside, branches swayed. In here, nothing moved. That stood out wrong first. The oaks beyond the circle bent and creaked. The air inside hung still as water. She turned in a slow circle. Shoulder-length black hair stuck to her neck. "Eva? If this is you messing around —" The name cracked. No one answered. Her breath fogged. It had not fogged outside. Second thing wrong: sound. London never went quiet. Even in Richmond after midnight a low hum lived behind everything, road and river and plane. In the Grove she heard her own pulse loud in her ears and under it another sound. Bare feet on soft ground. A step. A pause. A step that matched no step she took. Rory went rigid and listened. The footfalls stopped when she stopped. She took one step forward toward the center where the flowers grew thickest. The other feet took one step forward behind her, off-beat, a half-second late. She spun. The clearing held empty. The standing stones loomed, bark faces shifting in low light. "You need to show yourself." Silence swallowed the words. The flowers ticked, heads turning a fraction she almost missed if she did not stare straight at them. The Heartstone pulsed faster. Cold spots opened in the air and shut. One brushed past her cheek. Rory backed toward the oak that marked what she thought was south. The trunk rose twice her height and curved inward like a doorway half-built. She kept her back to it. Her hand found bark. Bark moved. Not much. A shiver under her palm, sap rolling thick under skin-thin wood-flesh. She snatched her hand back. Her palm came away damp, tacky. "What—" She scrubbed her hand on her jeans. The damp stayed. At the edge of vision something detached from a standing stone and slid between two others. Low. Too low. Shape of a person on all fours, or a person that forgot how knees bent. Rory forced air in through her teeth. She counted. One standing stone, two, three, four, five. She had counted six on the way in. Now five. The gap where the sixth should have been showed trees beyond, black trunks, black space. While she stared at that gap, movement flickered at her left. White. A flicker. Gone before eyes locked. Her mouth dried. "Enough. I'm leaving." The words cost effort to push out. Her legs did not want to obey. She made them. She aimed for the gap. Each step rustled flowers. Each step behind her rustled flowers a breath later. She kept from looking back. The back of her neck prickled hard, a cold needle point fixed on her spine. A laugh came. Small. A child's giggle, high and clean, from somewhere above though no branch hung low enough to hold a child. Rory stopped. Shoulders up around ears. "Who's there?" Giggle again. This time from her right. Then from left. Then directly overhead though the grove had no canopy, though stars should have shown and showed nothing, a flat black that pressed down. The oak stones creaked though no wind passed. Another movement at the edge, quicker now. White flashed between flowers. A hand. Then an arm too long, jointed wrong, pulling itself through grass that should have tripped it. Rory bolted for the gap. The clearing stretched. One step became two. The gap did not get closer. The air thickened and smelled of iron and old honey. Her lungs worked for less. Light from the Heartstone flared. Deep crimson bled through her T-shirt, painted the white flowers red. Heat seared skin. She grabbed at chain with both hands. The other footsteps stopped mimicking and ran. Not behind her now. Around her. Circle pace, too fast, bare soles slapping wet earth, more than one set, more than two. The patter closed in, tightened. Rory spun, chest heaving, fists knotted around pendant that branded her palm. Flowers tore. A shape stood between two stones that had been five and now were six again. Tall, edge-blurred, wrong proportioned, head cocked at an angle no neck allowed. It smiled with a mouth that held no teeth. The pendant beat once, hard, like a hammer against chest, and warmth flooded out in a single wave. The flowers between Rory and the shape blackened and folded. The shape took one step back. "Stay back." Her voice cracked to nothing. Blue eyes wide, bright with reflected red. It took one step forward. The air behind her opened cold. Something breathed on the back of her neck, close enough to stir black hair.