Run: 2026-09-01-01M1ENKPBNG2ECW1YW5ZETX6NS

The last bus left her at the Richmond gate with the park already locked. Rory climbed the fence anyway, dropped into wet grass, and followed the pull in her chest. The Heartstone sat against her collarbone, a thumbnail of crimson on a silver chain, and it had burned for three nights without pause. Isolde knew the stones. Isolde knew the grove. That was the whole of the plan. Richmond Park stretched black in every direction. No rangers. No late dog-walkers. The lamps along the main drive sat dark, their glass filmed with something that caught no light. She kept to the treeline, one hand on the pendant, the other shoved in her jacket pocket around her keys. The standing stones rose out of the dark without warning. Ancient oak, pale as bone, set in a ring that the maps never showed. Wildflowers carpeted the ground between them, white and gold and a blue so deep it looked wet. They had no business blooming. The air inside the ring tasted of crushed petals and rain that had not fallen. Rory stepped through. The park noise died. No traffic from the road. No wind in the high branches. Her own breath sounded too loud, too close to her ears. “Isolde.” The name went nowhere. It hit the flowers and stopped. She took another step. The grass under her boots felt springy, almost warm. The stones seemed farther apart now than they had from outside. She turned to check the gap she had come through and found two trunks where one opening had been. “Brilliant.” She pulled her phone. The screen lit her face, threw the wildflowers into sick colour, and showed no signal. The time read 11:47. She could have sworn it had been past one when she left the flat above Silas’s bar. A twig snapped to her left. She pocketed the phone and stood still. Another snap, farther off, then a third that did not match any rhythm of an animal moving through brush. Four beats. Pause. Four beats. Rory moved toward the centre of the ring. The pendant grew hotter. Not painful. Present. Like a second pulse under her own. Something pale slid between two stones at the edge of her sight. She turned her head and caught only bark. She looked forward again and the pale thing was there, lower, near the flowers, gone when she committed to it. “I can hear you.” The four-beat rhythm stopped. She waited. Counted her own heart. The grove held its breath with her. A child’s laugh, thin and high, came from the trees behind the northern stone. Then another laugh, same pitch, from the opposite side. Rory’s shoulders stayed loose. She had grown up on streets that taught her not to startle for the sake of it. She turned a slow circle, mapping the stones, counting them. Seven. She had counted five from outside. The wildflowers nearest her boots had closed. They had been open when she arrived. Their heads now pointed inward, toward her, as if the stems had joints. She crouched and touched one. The petals felt like skin. Rory stood. She walked to the nearest stone and laid her palm on it. The oak was smooth, almost polished, and cold in a way that had nothing to do with night air. Carvings ran under her fingers, grooves worn shallow, shapes that might have been faces if she let her mind go there. She did not. The laugh came again, closer, from inside the ring. “Isolde, if this is a test, you can pack it in.” Silence answered. Then, from somewhere near the ground, a wet sound, like a mouth opening after a long time shut. Rory’s hand went to the pendant. The crimson stone threw a dull inner light against her jacket. Her crescent scar caught that light, a pale hook on her left wrist. She dropped her arm. Footsteps now. Not the four-beat. These matched a person’s gait, unhurried, circling just beyond the stones. She tracked them by ear. They never entered the ring. They never left it either. The circle of sound tightened by degrees. She spoke toward the dark between two trunks. “I came for answers. The pendant. You know who sent it.” The footsteps paused. A voice, when it came, sat just behind her right shoulder. “Aurora.” She did not turn at once. The voice had used her full name. No one in London called her that except on paperwork. It had the cadence of someone reading it off a page for the first time. She turned. Nothing. The flowers, the stones, the black press of trees. Her own footprints in the grass, and a second set beside them that she had not made. Smaller. Bare. Rory followed the second set with her eyes. They led to the centre of the ring and stopped, as if the owner had lifted off the ground. The time on her phone, when she checked it, read 11:47. She put the phone away. A branch creaked overhead. She looked up. The canopy should have shown stars, or at least the orange wash of the city. It showed a ceiling of leaves packed so tight they looked painted. Between them, for half a second, a face. Too long in the jaw. Eyes that reflected the pendant’s glow and then did not. Rory walked. She picked a stone at random and made for the gap beside it. The gap narrowed as she approached. She did not speed up. She reached it, turned sideways, and the oak on her left leaned. Not a fall. A shift, like a man changing his weight from one foot to the other. The space closed to the width of her hand. She backed into the ring again. The second set of footprints had multiplied. They crossed themselves, overlapped, some facing in, some out. None of them were hers. The wet sound returned, nearer the ground, nearer her boots. She looked down. The closed flowers had opened again. Their centres were not yellow. They were dark, and they contracted, a slow blink. Rory kept her voice level. “Whatever you are, I am not leaving without what I came for.” The child’s laugh again, but the pitch had dropped. It sat in an adult chest now, still shaped like a laugh, the notes in the wrong order. The footsteps resumed, inside the ring this time. Two sets. Then three. They moved in a pattern that her mind tried to map as a dance and failed. They passed behind her. In front. The air they displaced was cold and smelled of river mud and old honey. She turned with them, slow, keeping the centre of the ring at her back. The stones had changed position. She was certain of the northern one because of a lightning scar down its face. That stone now stood to her east. The pendant’s glow strengthened. It threw her shadow long across the flowers, and a second shadow beside it that did not match her shape. The second shadow had too many joints in the arms. It moved a half-beat behind her own. Rory stopped turning. The footsteps stopped with her. She could hear breathing that was not hers. It came from several places at once, a wet, even pull and push, as if the grove itself had lungs. The wildflowers leaned toward her in a wave, stems bending without wind. A hand, or the idea of a hand, brushed the back of her neck. Cold. Too many fingers. She did not flinch. She reached up and closed on empty air. “Show yourself.” The breathing hitched, all the lungs together, and then a figure stood between her and the lightning-scarred stone. It had her height. It had her hair, shoulder-length and black. It had her jacket. The face was a blur, as if someone had smudged wet paint, but the eyes were bright blue and they did not blink. It smiled with a mouth that went too far toward the ears. Rory took one step back. The flowers gave under her heel with a sound like a sigh. The figure took one step forward, matching her, and the second shadow on the ground peeled away from hers and stood up on its own.