Run: 2026-09-02-01M1HCEFMVMQKHF62FRHTB1ZJX

The last bus rolled away from Richmond Park without Rory on it. She waited until its red tail lamps vanished around the bend and lifted her bicycle over the low chain between two gate posts. The frame knocked her shin. She bit down on the sting and pushed into the dark. The note in her jacket pocket had gone soft with damp. Its ink bled where her thumb had worried the edge. Bring the Heartstone to the oak ring. Come before the second chime. Come alone. No name. No signature. Only the scent of char and sugar that had clung to the paper and followed her from the flat above Silas’ bar to the park gates. Against her chest, the pendant warmed through her shirt. The deep crimson stone, no bigger than her thumbnail, sat on its silver chain and tapped her sternum with a pulse that did not match her heart. She had laughed at the first beat. By the third, she had put on shoes. By the tenth, she had left a half-eaten bowl of rice on the counter and a delivery bag still smelling of soy and steam. The path narrowed. Richmond Park spread around her in black shapes, and the city lights pooled low behind the trees. Rory walked with one hand on the handlebar and the other holding the note. The grass did not bend under the tyres. She stopped. The grass stood straight, each blade separate, each tip wet with no dew. A gate she did not remember closed behind her. The air changed. It carried the smell of wildflowers, thick and green, though January should have kept the ground bare. Ahead, the trees drew together into a ring. Oak trunks rose like pillars, their bark ridged and pale where moonlight found them. Between them stood older shapes, stones worn smooth, or roots grown hard as stone. Boundary markers. The Fae Grove. Rory set the bicycle down. It fell without a sound. She kept her hands open at her sides and stepped between the oaks. Wildflowers covered the clearing. Daisies, poppies, bluebells, and thin violet things with petals like paper shavings grew in one bright carpet. They faced her. Not toward the moon. Toward her. Their stems held no tremble. The clearing held no wind. “Right.” Her voice landed flat against the trees. “I’m here.” The words did not echo. They dropped into the flowers and stayed there. She pulled out her phone. The screen lit her fingers in cold blue. 23:58. The signal bars sat empty. No messages. No missed calls. The note had promised a second chime, and she had no idea where a chime might come from in a place that had swallowed the hum of London. She put the phone back. The pendant pulsed, hotter this time, a coin pressed under skin. A footstep sounded behind her. Rory turned. The bicycle lay where she had left it. The grass around it stood straight. No one stood beyond the ring. The oaks kept their places. “Hello?” The grove gave back nothing. She faced the centre of the clearing. The flowers had made a path she had not noticed before. It led to a split oak at the far side, its trunk opened into a black seam tall enough for a person. The Heartstone beat against her chest in two quick strokes. Rory did not move. A kettle began to boil somewhere under the ground. The sound came from the roots near her left foot, high and thin, the whistle of a kitchen kettle in the flat above Silas’ bar. She stepped away from it. The whistle stopped. In its place came the clatter of a wok, the shout of a cook calling an order, the sharp slap of a delivery bag being set on a counter. The Golden Empress at full rush. Every sound sat in the wrong direction. The wok hissed above her head. The cook called from below the split oak. “Funny.” Her hand closed around the pendant. The chain bit her neck. “I brought it.” The flowers turned their heads an inch. The phone in her pocket rang. Rory flinched. She stared at the pocket, then drew the phone out. The screen showed no caller. Only 23:58. It rang a second time, a long bright tone that belonged to a landline, not a mobile. She answered. “Rory.” The voice held her name with a weight that did not belong to speech. It had her mother’s cadence and Eva’s breath and none of their faces. “Who sent the note?” “You did.” The line held a wet quiet. “I didn’t send any note.” “You sent it.” The voice softened, and the softness wore her own accent. “You sent it.” She ended the call. The screen stayed dark. Her thumb pressed the side button. Nothing happened. The phone had become a cold rectangle of glass. The pendant burned. Rory lifted the chain over her head. The Heartstone hung in front of her, its crimson depth lit from inside by a glow that moved like something breathing underwater. The warmth spread down the silver links and into her fingers. The stone pulled toward the split oak. It did not sway. It leaned, attached to a wire she could not see. A shape passed between two oaks on her right. Tall. Straight black hair. Delivery jacket. Rory’s head snapped that way. The space held no one. One of the oak trunks wore a long scrape of white bark, fresh and damp. Another shape passed on her left. She turned. The clearing stayed empty. The flowers stayed turned toward her. The split oak waited at the end of the path. “Come out.” Her voice cracked on the second word. She cleared her throat. “Come out and show yourself.” “Come out.” The answer came from the split oak. It used her cracked voice, note for note. “Show yourself.” The ground under her shoes gave a small knock, someone tapped from below. Rory backed a step. Her heel touched something solid. She looked down. Her bicycle lay behind her, still on the grass. She had watched it lie at the edge of the grove. She had not moved it. The second bicycle had her saddle. Her lock. The scratch across the frame where she had hit a kerb in Cardiff at nineteen. Its front wheel turned, no wind touched it. “Two chimes.” The words came from the first bicycle’s bell. The bell had not rung. “Two chimes.” Rory looked at her phone. 23:58. She looked at the sky above the oaks. The moon hung in the same place it had occupied when she entered. The same thin branch crossed its face. The same cloud held still beside it. The pendant jerked in her hand. The split oak widened by a finger’s breadth. The black inside had no grain, no splinter, no depth. It took the moonlight and gave nothing back. A smell drifted from it, not rot, not earth. Clean laundry. Dish soap. The shampoo she kept in the flat above Silas’ bar. Her own scent, carried out of a place that had no door. “Bring the Heartstone.” The voice came from the trees and from her own throat half a beat after the trees spoke it. “Come before the second chime. Come alone.” “I am alone.” The grove answered with her laugh. It was the laugh she used when Eva teased her about taking the wrong turn near Camden. It came from under the wildflowers. It came from the split oak. It came from the white scrape on the oak trunk where the passing shape had gone. Rory took one step backward. The flowers closed around her shoe. She looked down. The daisies and bluebells had leaned over her trainer, their stems looped around the laces. The violet petals touched her ankle with no weight. They did not crush. They held. The pendant grew so hot that her hand jerked. The crimson glow spilled between her knuckles and lit the grass in red threads. Where the light touched the flowers, they pulled away. The path to the split oak opened. Beyond the black seam, a hand appeared. It was pale. Small. The sleeve belonged to her delivery jacket. The wrist bore a crescent-shaped scar. Rory’s lungs locked. The hand rested on the edge of the seam. The fingers tapped. The tap came from under her own feet. “Rory.” The voice in the oak used the exact shape of her name as she thought it inside her own skull. “Second chime.” From every oak in the ring, a bell of ice-thin sound rang. The hand reached toward her.