Run: 2026-07-25-01KYD6QM7FBDDW2NEN9JY8TDCX

Richmond Park after midnight locked its gates and swallowed sound. Rory stood outside the Petersham fence line with her bike laid in the wet grass. The chain ticked against the frame as it cooled. She did not remember parking it. She checked her phone. No signal. The screen lit her chin, her black hair stuck to her cheek with sweat. The message from Eva was still open. *you left it in the grove. you have to go back before morning.* Rory stared at the last line. She had no memory of any grove. She had no memory of leaving anything. But the Heartstone sat cold against her sternum. When she touched it the silver chain bit into her neck. It pulsed. That was new. "Okay. Okay, fine." Her own voice sounded too loud. The trees beyond the fence did not move. She climbed. Trainers slipped on damp iron, bark scraped her palms. On the other side the grass grew higher than it should have. It brushed her knees. Summer wildflowers pushed through in February, white and yellow heads open to a moon she could not see. The air smelled wrong. Too sweet. Too still. The path she expected was not there. Instead a deer run cut between oaks, beaten down by narrow feet. Rory followed it because the alternative was standing alone by the fence while the pendant thumped against her skin like a second heart. Cold bled through her shirt. The crimson stone warmed. The standing stones marked the boundary. She knew them from childhood visits, lichen-crusted, waist high. Now they rose over her head, black oak, not stone at all, bark split and weeping sap that caught the dark and held it. Between them the air shivered. She stepped through. Sound changed. The distant hum of the A3 vanished. The wind stopped. Her breath became the loudest thing. The grove opened beyond, a perfect circle perhaps thirty feet across, flowers dense enough to hide her feet, the great central oak in the middle with its branches articulating against a sky crowded with too many stars. Rory stopped at the edge. The small crescent scar on her left wrist prickled. The pendant burned. "Eva?" No answer. Her voice fell straight down into the flowers. She forced a laugh. "Real funny. You get reception in here and I don't." The flowers did not stir. The trees around the circle stood shoulder to shoulder, trunks dark. After a beat Rory noticed the gaps between them were not empty. Shadows pooled there and held shape. She looked at the central oak. Something hung from a low branch. A strip of fabric, pale, twisting though no wind moved. As she watched it stilled. Her mouth dried. She came here for a reason. Eva said she left it. She patted her delivery bag though she had left it with the bike. Her pockets were empty except for phone, keys, the stone. She stepped onto the flowers. They did not crush. Each stem sprang back after her foot lifted, leaving no track. The scent rose up, cloying, thick with pollen and rot underneath. A twig snapped to her left. Rory spun. Nothing. The standing stones behind her were further away than when she entered. The gap between them had narrowed to a slit. "Who's there?" Her hand closed around the Heartstone. The metal seared her palm and then went ice cold. The inner glow caught in her fingers, deep crimson light spilling between her knuckles. In the light, the grove gained edges it lacked before. Roots ribbed the ground like knuckles. The flowers were not flowers. Each head was too symmetrical, each petal too thin, veined like skin. Another snap. Behind her this time. Closer. "Stop. Just stop." She turned in a full circle. Her shoulder-length black hair whipped and stuck again. Movement at the edge of vision. Not a figure. A lack of light that kept pace when she turned her head, always a half-step out of reach. When she looked straight at it, only trees. Her heart hammered against the pendant. She counted. Four beats hers, one beat stone. Then three beats hers, one stone. Then two. The fabric on the oak twitched again. Rory edged toward the centre. Each step sank. The ground breathed. The oak's bark was not bark. In the crimson glow it showed pattern, whorls that resolved into fingerprints, thousands of them pressed and overlapping, small and large, all pointing up. She touched it. The wood gave like flesh. It was warm. She yanked her hand back. Sap welled from where her fingers had been, dark red and thick. From above, a drop hit her cheek. Warm. She did not wipe it away. "I'm leaving. I left nothing. There's nothing here." The air behind her displaced. A pressure. As if something tall had stepped into the circle and stooped to listen. The flowers rustled. No wind. A path opened through them, flower heads bending away from the rings edge toward her feet, a straight line where something had walked and the stems refused to rise again. Rory's knees locked. The pressure came closer. The hair on her arms rose. The pendant pulsed once, hard, against her chest and went dark. In the new dark she heard it. Breathing. Not hers. Slow inhalation that drew the sweet rot deeper into her lungs. Exhalation that brushed the back of her neck with heat that smelled of copper and moss. She stared at the oak. The hanging fabric resolved. It was not fabric. It was a shirt, her shirt, the cheap white tee she wore under her Golden Empress uniform, sleeves torn. It hung empty and dripped. "Don't." The word tore from her. Raw. "Don't touch me." Something brushed her ankle. Soft. A flower head? She looked down. A hand, white, too long fingered, pushed through the bloom cover. Palm up. Waiting. The breathing paused. Everything paused. The grove held its breath with her. From the black beyond the standing stones a chorus of faint lights woke, crimson pinpricks, low to the ground, bobbing, approaching one by one in no hurry. Rory's fingers found the chain at her neck. The silver cut. She pulled. The clasp held. The hand at her ankle closed around empty air, then found the hem of her jeans and tugged, gentle, insistent.