Run: 2026-09-02-01M1HHC2GDNPK46CGGQG11VHXZ

The gate had no name. Richmond Park had gates with iron teeth and signs warning dogs to keep to the path, but this one stood under a broken rail where the pavement ended and the trees swallowed the road. Rory propped her bicycle against the gate and left the headlamp burning. The beam shook across the leaves. Her phone showed 11:47 p.m. She stared at the time as if it might blink and give something back to her. It did not. The Heartstone pendant pressed warm against her chest, the small crimson gem ticking against her skin as if it had learned her heartbeat and found it boring. She pushed through the gate. The path ran downhill between hawthorns. No litter. No footprints. The night smelled of wet bark and something faintly green, the sort of green that had no business living after frost. Rory adjusted the delivery backpack on one shoulder. Yu-Fei’s late invoice still sat in a plastic wallet inside it. That was the only reason she had come to this corner of the park after shift. Silas had told her a man wanted a package left at the Grove. Silas had not told her a man’s name, only where to go. The grove opened after fifty metres of trees. Standing stones rose from the grass, oak-dark and taller than Rory remembered from any photograph she had never seen. Their tops were cut square. They formed a rough circle, or a mouth. Wildflowers grew between them in thick pale clumps, cow parsley and clover, all facing the centre as if a crowd watched something small and dying there. Rory stepped inside. The circle had no wind, yet the flowers lifted and leaned away from her left shoulder. She looked behind her. Nothing stood there. Only the path, and the gate, and the hawthorns bending under their own weight. She took the package from the backpack and held it out to the empty circle. “Delivery for the Grove,” she said. Her voice hit the stones and fell flat, without echo. A sound came from the far side, soft as a finger drawn over cloth. Rory turned with the torch. The beam swept past the flowers and caught the edge of one standing stone. On the other side of it, pale skin moved. It vanished before she could be certain what it had been. She walked toward the stone, package still in hand. Her shoes sank into the grass. Each step pulled her ankle with wet resistance, although the ground looked dry. Nothing waited behind the stone. A single clover stem lay bent where it had been. Rory’s phone vibrated in her pocket. She almost dropped the package. The screen lit with Eva’s name. “I know where the stones are,” Eva said before Rory could speak. “Did you bring the Heartstone?” Rory glanced at the circle of wildflowers. The pendant pulsed once, warm enough to sting. “I’m holding a package.” “No.” “I don’t have it.” “Yes, you do.” Eva’s voice thinned, catching on a noise at the far end of the line. It sounded like many small stones rolling in a glass jar. Rory pressed the phone to her ear and stepped back. “What are you talking about?” “The stone wants to be given back.” “Who wants it given back?” Eva stopped breathing. The line kept the connection anyway, a low hum filling the gap between them. Rory stared at the screen. No call timer. No signal bars. The time on the phone stayed at 11:47 p.m. A twig snapped inside the circle. Rory turned. The standing stones had not moved, but the flowers had. The pale heads all turned toward her now, opening and closing, opening and closing, as if each plant had a mouth. “Hello?” she called. The word went out and did not return. She should leave. The instruction formed clean in her mind, and beneath it rose another thought: she had not come far enough to find the portal. The pendant had drawn her here by the throat, and it still burned against her chest. She lifted the chain and watched the crimson gem glow in the torchlight. The light did not spill from it. It gathered at the centre, a drop of blood trapped in glass. Rory followed the warmth. It led her to the north side of the circle, where one standing stone leaned outward over a patch of black grass. Air above it felt wrong, too thick for night, like the breath before a storm breaks inland. The pendant pulled against her collarbone. She touched the small crescent scar on her left wrist where the chain swung near and the metal left a cold line across old healed skin. A figure stood beyond the stone. Rory’s hand went to the package. The figure did not step into the light. It stood as still as the oak stone beside it, tall and narrow, its outline blurred at the edges. It wore the dark shape of a coat, or maybe its shoulders were simply too high. The torch caught the lower part of its face and found only white space where a mouth should be. Rory moved backward. Her heel struck a stone root under the grass. She stumbled and caught herself on the edge of the standing stone. Bark flakes came away beneath her palm. The stone was warm. Not the warmth of the pendant, but the slow living warmth of an animal asleep. The figure spoke. “Rory.” She stopped breathing. “Carter.” The voice had no distance in it. It sounded inside the back of her teeth. Rory’s blue eyes burned from the torch glare. She aimed the beam at the figure and the light poured through it. No coat. No body. Only grass behind it, flattened in a line that did not match any human shape. The phone at her ear gave a wet click. “Rory, stop.” Eva’s voice returned. Rory gripped the phone with her free hand. “I saw something,” she said. “Look at the flowers.” She lowered the torch. Wildflowers crowded around her shoes, stems thick and fresh, petals white as paper. She stepped over them toward the circle’s centre. The grass bent away from her feet, and when she lifted her shoes, the blades stood upright again, slow, as if watching her go. The package hung heavy in her hand. “Where is the portal?” Rory asked. Silence came from the line, but it was not empty. Something moved in it, a sound too close to be on a phone, too far to be inside the grove. “Don’t give it to the stones,” Eva said. Rory looked up. The standing stones had become too many. She counted seven before. Now the circle held twelve, all leaning inward, their dark faces carved with shallow lines that might have been roots or might have been ribs. She spun once, then again, searching for the gate. The path had vanished. Hawthorns rose around the grass wall where none had been. The flowers no longer faced the centre. They faced the stones. Her watch showed 11:47 p.m. The phone showed 11:47 p.m. The pendant beat once hard against her ribs. Rory moved toward the largest stone. The package swung from her wrist. She could not say why she went. The pull in the Heartstone had turned sharp, a hook behind the gem, dragging the chain toward a cleft in the oak bark. The cleft ran at chest height, dark and narrow, breathing a cold breath that smelled of wet iron and old rain. “Rory.” Eva’s voice came from inside the cleft. Rory froze with the package touching the stone’s edge. The wildflowers around her shoes trembled, though the air did not move. She pressed closer. Something touched the back of her neck. It was not hand-shaped. It had too many points, each one tapping once, lightly, like the feet of insects finding a path across skin. Rory turned, torch in both hands. The beam caught a face. Pale, smooth, eyeless, the mouth a vertical seam that had never learned how to open. It wore Eva’s coat, too big for its body, sleeves hanging past the ends of thin fingers. The coat moved as it breathed. The face tilted. “Rory,” it said with Eva’s voice. She swung the torch. The figure folded behind the standing stone and left no footprints on the grass. Rory ran. Her backpack slapped against her spine. The package tore at her wrist. Flowers ripped at her ankles, stems snapping with the sound of tiny bones. The circle of stones spun faster than legs could carry her around, and each stone bore a mark where she passed it: a handprint, low in the bark, palm too wide, fingers too short. The handprints appeared as her breath moved across the stone. She stopped at one, chest heaving, and watched a new print rise from the oak like a bruise. The pendant glowed bright enough to cast her shadow across the grass. Behind her, a second shadow lengthened from the wrong direction. Rory turned away from it. The gate’s hawthorns appeared at the edge of the clearing, but the gap was narrower than before, the railings closed like jaws. She ran toward it anyway. The grass flattened in rows ahead of her feet, as if the earth wanted to help, and the smell of wet iron grew stronger. The standing stones began to hum, a sound low under the trees, a sound like many throats trying to form one name. “Laila,” the hum said. Rory’s feet slowed. “Malphora,” the stones answered. The names slid into her mouth and vanished. She forced herself forward. The hawthorns leaned over the path. Her bicycle still stood where she had left it, headlamp burning, the light now weak and yellow, swallowed by dark between the branches. She reached the gate and pushed through. A branch caught her sleeve and tore it from shoulder to wrist. She did not look back. Rory grabbed the handlebars and kicked the bicycle upright. The chain caught and the wheel jerked under her. She pulled harder. The rear wheel came free, spinning. A flower stem wrapped around the brake cable, white petals opening over the metal. Her phone rang. The screen filled with Eva’s name. Rory stared at it. The bicycle leaned against the hawthorn. The gate behind her groaned shut without wind. The pendant pulsed, once, twice, then went cold. She answered and put the phone to her ear. “Did you leave the grove?” Eva asked. Rory looked at the gap where the gate had been. Trees stood in a straight line, trunks touching, branches woven from the ground to the top of the hawthorns. No path. No opening. The flowers had gone with it. “I’m here,” Rory said. The figure with Eva’s voice answered from the dark between the trees.