Run: 2026-09-02-01M1HCFZSQG8E63GVS81032Q5M

Rory found the gap in the iron fence where a hawthorn had forced the bars apart. The note in her fist had gone soft with damp. Above her, Richmond Park spread under a moon the colour of milk skin. She slipped through the opening and listened. No traffic. No wind. No distant bark from the houses along the edge of the common. The city stopped at the tree line. She touched the collar of her jacket. The Heartstone rested against her collarbone, thumbnail-sized, deep crimson, hung on the silver chain the unknown sender had left with it. The pendant had stayed cold all day. Twenty minutes from the bar it began to warm. Now it pulsed against her skin in time with her pulse. “The oak stones.” The words dropped into the dark without echo. The note had given her a time and no name. Midnight. The old boundary oaks. Bring the stone. Come alone. She had spent an hour telling herself it was a trick, then another hour remembering how the paper had smelled of the wet earth under Silas’ bar. Evan would have laughed at her for coming. Eva would have demanded she call the police. Rory had done neither. She had locked the flat above the bar, taken her delivery torch, and walked until the streetlights thinned. A path of crushed chalk led uphill between bracken. She followed it until the trees opened around a clearing. The standing stones waited there. Nine grey shapes rose from the grass, each no taller than her shoulder, each worn into a curve that put her in mind of a bent spine. Oak trees ringed them, their branches knit so thick that the moonlight reached the ground in thin threads. Wildflowers crowded the roots of the stones: bluebells, campion, foxglove. Their petals looked wet and new, and they bloomed in every season at once. Rory stopped at the edge of the clearing. “Midnight.” She lifted her phone. “It’s twenty-three fifty-six.” The screen showed no service. The battery symbol had dropped to a sliver. She had charged it before leaving. She stepped into the grove. The grass made no sound under her shoes. Not the muted press of turf, not the brush of stems. Nothing. She looked down. The wildflowers had bent away from her feet, leaving a bare ring around each step. When she lifted her shoe, the flowers leaned back into the print and filled it. A sound came from the trees to her left. A bicycle bell. One bright ding. Rory turned the torch toward the trunks. The beam caught bark, roots, a tangle of bramble. No path. No bike. “If you wrote the note, I’m here.” The bell repeated, deeper, the note swollen with metal. Then came the clatter of the Golden Empress ticket machine. The little printer spat its rhythm from somewhere beyond the stones. Tick. Tick. Pause. Tick. Her throat tightened. She knew that rhythm. She heard it every shift when the kitchen backed up and Yu-Fei shouted orders over the fryers. The grove held no socket. No machine. No paper. “Very funny.” The printer stopped. Rory moved along the outside of the stone circle. She counted the stones as she passed. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. She reached the far side and looked back. The stones stood in their places. The ninth stone had moved closer to the centre. She blinked. The torch beam shook over the grass. The stone sat where a stone should sit, patient and blunt. “Nine stones.” She counted again. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Ten. The tenth stone had no moss on it. Its surface held a pale shine, like skin kept too long underwater. It leaned toward her. Rory backed away. Her heel caught a root, and she grabbed one of the oaks to keep her balance. The bark was warm. She snatched her hand away. The pendant grew hot. She pulled the chain over her head and held the stone in her palm. Its crimson heart had begun to glow. The light did not spread like torchlight. It gathered inside the gem and pressed outward, making the silver chain shine. The warmth travelled up her wrist and stopped at the small crescent scar there. The scar throbbed. A woman laughed among the trees. Rory spun. “Who’s there?” The laugh answered from the trees. It had her own pitch. Her own catch at the end. It matched the laugh she heard in recordings, the one that sounded foreign in her skull. The flowers around the stones turned their faces toward her. Every bloom lifted. No wind touched them. Rory forced her breath to settle. She lifted the pendant. The crimson glow reached the nearest stone. Carvings filled its surface. Not weather marks. Lines arranged into mouths. Dozens of small mouths, each open a grain’s width. She stepped closer before she decided to. The mouths had teeth made from the grain of the stone. Each tooth leaned in a different direction. “I brought the stone.” Her voice came out steadier than she felt. “Show me why.” The clearing answered with the sound of her own flat door closing. The click of the latch. The creak of the third stair above the bar. Then the soft thud of her delivery bag hitting the kitchen tile. Each sound belonged to a place she had left. Each sound came from the dark between the stones. Her phone vibrated and jerked in her hand. The screen had woken. No signal. The clock read 00:00. Then it read 23:56. Then 04:17. She pressed the side button. The screen held the last time, 04:17, though the night around her had not changed. The moon hung in the same branch. The shadows lay in the same thin threads. “Time’s wrong here.” She aimed the words at the stones. “I know that. I’m not stupid.” A footstep sounded behind her. She whirled. Nothing. Another footstep came when she moved. It fell half a beat after her shoe left the ground. She took three steps toward the edge of the clearing. Three answers followed. She stopped. The last answer came one step late. Rory held still. The pendant pulsed. The glow brightened, and the shadows around the stones stretched in the wrong direction. They reached toward her, not away from the light. “Stay where you are.” She aimed the torch at the farthest gap between the oaks. “I see you.” The gap held nothing. The nothing had shape. It stood taller than a person and bent where a person should stand straight. Rory could not find edges. Her torchlight slid around it and caught bark behind. The flowers rustled. They rubbed together without wind, producing a dry whisper that formed syllables. Come alone. Rory’s fingers closed around the Heartstone. “I did.” The whisper changed. It used her voice. Not yet. The ticket machine began its rhythm anew. Faster now. Tick tick tick tick. The bicycle bell rang under it, one ding after another, until the sound became a single sustained note. The oaks overhead creaked, though no branch moved. The tenth stone shifted. It did not scrape over grass. It appeared closer. Then closer. The pale surface opened along a seam no one had cut. Inside, something silver caught the pendant’s glow. Rory should leave. Her legs refused. The pendant pulled forward. The warmth in her hand became a tug, solid as a chain around her ribs. “Right.” She swallowed. “You want me to look.” She moved toward the open stone. The clearing widened around her. The trees drew back without walking. The stones leaned in. The silver thing inside the tenth stone was a chain. It hung from nothing, looped once, and held a pendant the size of a thumbnail. Deep crimson. The same chain. The same stone. The glow inside it answered the one in her hand. Her own reflection stared at her from the surface of the second stone. Not the stone. The surface had become dark glass. In it, she stood with her torch raised and her black hair loose around her face. Behind her reflection stood the clearing, empty. No bent shape. No moving stones. In the reflection, the tenth stone stood closed. Rory lifted her free hand to touch the glass. The reflection did the same. Their fingers met on opposite sides of the cold surface. The pendant in her palm grew so warm her fingers loosened. The reflection smiled. Rory had not moved her mouth. The flowers whispered, many voices this time, all wearing hers. Bring it in. The thin threads of moonlight snapped.