Run: 2026-09-02-01M1HADE3MP0M1TT2PZCBJZKSB

Richmond Park closed around Aurora Carter with the patience of a mouth deciding whether to swallow. The last iron gate shut behind her without a click, though she remembered lifting the latch. Her bicycle lay abandoned by Queen's Road, chain undone, basket holding a Golden Empress bag that smelled of ginger and cold oil. She had not meant to leave it. The text from Eva had turned her hands stupid. The Grove. Now. Bring the red stone. Don't let it go cold. Rory touched the lump beneath her jumper. The Heartstone pendant hung against her sternum, deep crimson and no bigger than her thumbnail, silver chain damp from the walk. It lay cool in the flat above Silas' bar each morning. It warmed when she passed Richmond station. Now it pulsed. One beat. Another. The rhythm lagged her pulse. The ancient oaks marked the boundary like teeth sunk into the dark. Their trunks had taken the shape of standing stones, bark ridged and pale where moonlight found it. No sign named the place. No path led to it. Wildflowers crowded the ground inside the ring: yarrow, bluebell, foxglove, thrift. All bloomed with wet summer brightness, though frost silvered the railings outside. Rory stepped between two trunks. The city dropped. Not faded. Dropped. No traffic from the road. No airplane stitch overhead. No wind in the upper branches. Her own breath made too much noise. She drew out her phone. The screen showed 23:47. No signal. The message from Eva remained open, its timestamp missing. "Eva." Her voice fell into the flowers and did not carry. Rory moved deeper because the pendant pulled heat toward her ribs. The stems brushed her ankles without bending under her weight. Each step left a print in dark soil. The print filled with water before she lifted her foot. A voice note bloomed on the screen. No download arrow. No network. It had not existed a second before. She pressed play. Eva's whisper scraped from the speaker. "Rory, if this reaches you, don't cross the oak stones after dark. I thought I could close the seam. The pendant burns when the mouth opens. If it burns, run." The recording skipped. "It counts breath. Don't answer if it uses me." The phone went black. Rory lowered the device. The flowers around her ankles leaned inward. "Eva, if you stand in here, make a sound I can place." A bicycle bell rang beyond the trees. Rory turned. The sound belonged to her bike, the cheap brass bell she had tapped with her thumb outside Queen's Road. The grove held no bicycle. The grove held no road. The bell rang a second time. "Very funny." Her voice came back from the left. Not an echo. The pitch sat too flat. The words carried a smile she had not made. Rory thumbed the pendant through her jumper. Heat bit her fingertips. "Who's there?" Silence gathered. A soft knock struck wood, low and deliberate. One knock. Another. The noise came from one of the oak stones, from the height of a forehead. She backed toward the gap she had used to enter. The gap had narrowed. The two trunks stood closer than a shoulder's width. Their bark faced smooth and unmarked, no split, no passage. Beyond them, more oaks waited in a second ring she had not seen. Rory counted the stones. Eight. She counted a second time. Nine. The ninth trunk stood where no trunk had stood, its surface wet, its roots sunk through a bed of bluebells without crushing them. Her phone lit. 23:47. The screen flickered. 04:13. The digits snapped back to 23:47. Rory rubbed the crescent scar on her left wrist. The skin there had gone cold. She opened her call list. Eva's name sat at the top. She pressed it. The phone produced no dial tone. It produced breathing through the speaker. The breath matched her own until she held it. The breath kept going. A tongue clicked against teeth. Rory ended the call. The call timer read 00:00. The timer changed to 00:01. It returned to 00:00. The wildflowers turned their heads. One bluebell lifted. A yarrow stalk followed. The foxglove bells tilted toward her, each blossom opening a dark throat. No breeze touched them. Rory's throat tightened. She had carried lilies to a funeral parlour above a Cardiff betting shop. The air there had held the same sweetness: wet, green, and crowded. She looked for the gate. Moonlight fell in a straight lane through the trees, but the lane ended at a standing stone carved with a mark like a thumbnail pressed into clay. The mark glowed with the same crimson as the pendant. Rory lifted her chin. "I came for Eva." The grove answered with the sound of a restaurant kitchen. A wok hissed. A ticket machine chattered. The noise rose from the ground at her feet and died before it became words. Golden Empress closed at eleven. The kitchen should have sat dark over cold tiles. The pendant pulsed. It pulsed with the kitchen sound. It pulsed with the bell. It pulsed with the knock. "I know the rules. I don't answer." A breath touched the back of her neck. Warm. Close. She spun. No shape occupied the space behind her. The flowers there had pressed flat into a path. The path pointed toward the ninth oak. At the edge of her sight, black hair slid around the trunk. Straight. Shoulder-length. Rory blinked. Her bright blue eyes stung from the cold, but the hair remained. Rory's own hair hung against her shoulders. "Don't use me." The voice note had said that. Eva had said that. The thing behind the oak spoke with Rory's throat. "I'm not using you." The words came from the trunk, from the wet bark, from the roots in the bluebells. Rory took one step toward it because the pendant burned through her jumper and because her feet obeyed the burn before her mind gave permission. The Golden Empress bag lay at the base of the ninth oak. Its paper had darkened with grease. Its knot sat tied the way Yu-Fei tied orders for delivery riders. A receipt peeked from the fold. Rory crouched. The receipt bore her name. Aurora Carter. No address followed. No phone number. No order. Only a line of ink that had not dried. The Grove. Now. Bring the red stone. She touched the paper. The paper touched her back. Fingers, cold and thin as root hairs, closed around the silver chain at her neck.