Run: 2026-07-25-01KYD6W2FEVES42PEY2KKXWWPR

Richmond Park after midnight swallowed sound whole. Aurora stood at the treeline and checked her phone. No signal. 00:47. The screen threw white light across her face and she killed it. She hadn't meant to come this deep. Eva texted at ten — *he knows where you live now* — and then the photo. The front door of the flat above Silas' bar, taken from street level. Evan's boots in the frame. Rory locked the flat, took the back fire escape, and ran because running beat thinking. The standing stones marked the boundary. Everybody in Richmond knew not to cross past the old oaks, even drunk. Local legend shit. She crossed anyway because the dark between the oaks looked safer than the dark on the street. The air changed on the other side. It went warm. Too warm for November. The smell hit her next, wildflowers and rot, sweet and turned at the same time. Her trainers sank in moss that hadn't been there a second before. Beyond the moss, the Grove opened in a perfect circle. "Oh, fuck you," she whispered. Her breath didn't fog. Moonlight fell straight down through the canopy and stopped. It lit the clearing and nothing else. The trees around the edge stood black and close. The grass in the middle grew knee-high and each blade held still, like cut glass. No wind. Rory's hand went to her throat on reflex. The Heartstone hung against her collarbone under her hoodie. Silver chain, stone the size of a thumbnail. It burned. Not hot. Warm. A pulse. Then another. Right against her skin, in time with her heart, then out of time. Faster. She pulled it out. The heartstone glowed. Deep crimson light bled through her fingers. "No. No, you don't get to do creepy shit right now." She tucked it back under the fabric. The heat stayed. She came here because the Grove hid her. That was the story. Kids got lost in Richmond and came out an hour later two days older, or two minutes later with pockets full of flowers that never died. A pocket between here and somewhere else. Time slipped. That meant Evan couldn't follow. That was the logic at ten pm when her hands shook too hard to hold her keys. The logic thinned fast. The grass to her left rustled. Rory spun. Nothing. The grass stood straight again, undisturbed. The flowerheads — white, too many petals — faced her. All of them. She stared. The white heads tracked a half-inch left when she stepped right. She stepped right again. The flowers moved. Her stomach dropped to her trainers. "Okay." Her voice sounded too loud. The Grove ate it. No echo. She backed toward the stones. Her shoulder hit bark, not stone. Rough oak where the gap had been. She turned. The two standing stones still stood, but the space between them now held a third tree, young, thin, its trunk pale as bone. It hadn't been there when she entered. She pushed at it. It didn't give. The bark felt soft. Behind her, something exhaled. Not wind. The sound came low, from the grass, a long breath out through teeth. Rory froze with both palms flat on the pale trunk. The Heartstone thumped against her chest. Heat pulsed up her neck to her ears. The grass parted. A line cut through the knee-high green, ten feet long, straight, as if a foot dragged through without bending a single blade. Then another line crossed it. Then another. A pattern formed, quick, deliberate. Geometry that hurt to follow. "Who's there?" The lines stopped. In the new silence she heard it — a second set of footfalls in the moss that weren't hers. Bare feet. Light. Circling. She pressed her back to the pale tree. The crescent scar on her left wrist caught moonlight. Her right hand found the small kitchen knife she kept in her hoodie pocket. The blade shook. The footfalls stopped directly behind the tree. Something brushed the other side of the trunk. Fingertips, or twigs. The bark flexed under the touch. Rory held her breath until her ribs ached. A voice came from the flowers. Small. A girl's voice. Welsh accent, round vowels. "You dropped it." Rory's eyes snapped down. In the moss at her feet lay a silver chain. The Heartstone. Impossible. She felt its weight still against her sternum. She looked down at her chest. The stone still hung there, glowing through her hoodie. But on the ground, a second pendant lay, identical. Crimson heart. Silver chain. Lying in a perfect loop. The grass around it darkened, as if wet. The footfalls behind the tree shifted closer. The pale trunk creaked. A knot in the bark at eye level split open. Not a knot. An eyelid. It opened. Under it, not wood. Blue iris. Bright blue. Human. Rory stared into an eye the exact shade of her own, set in bark, weeping sap. The eye blinked. The Heartstone against her chest went cold. The girl's voice came again, this time right next to her ear, though nothing stood there. "You left it open."