Run: 2026-09-03-01M1K4PM2MC2N9K8T724G5B54Q

Richmond Park after midnight held no colour. The gate stood locked. Rory vaulted it. She landed on damp earth and the jolt ran up through her trainers. Cold bit at her ankles. Her breath made thin clouds that vanished fast. She had not wanted to come. The text from Eva still lit her phone screen when she checked it at 23:47. No words, just a dropped pin in the middle of the green smear that was the park and a photo of the oak standing stones. Eva never sent photos. Eva never went near the Grove if she could help it. "Eva?" Her voice hit the trees and fell flat. No echo. The park swallowed sound. Rory pulled the collar of her jacket up around her neck. Her straight black hair caught on the zip. She pushed it back behind her ear. Under the sodium spill from the road behind her, the path ahead looked black. She walked. The path gave way to grass. Her phone torch threw a white cone over tussocks and wet leaves. Richmond Park sprawled around her, vast and empty, but the dark between the oaks felt narrower than it should. The Heartstone Pendant rested against her sternum beneath her t-shirt. The silver chain stuck to her skin with sweat despite the cold. The stone itself, thumbnail-sized and deep crimson, held a faint inner glow that bled through the fabric. It pulsed. Warm, then cool, then warm again. It had not pulsed since the summer. The standing stones rose ahead. Ancient oak, not rock - great black trunks that twisted up into a canopy she could not see. They formed a rough circle and inside the circle the grass changed. Wildflowers broke through the November rot. White and yellow heads, open to the moon, though no moon showed through the cloud. Their scent hit her, sweet and cloying, out of season, out of place. Rory stopped at the boundary. Her left wrist throbbed. She scratched at the small crescent scar there without thought, a pale hook left from a fall on a Cardiff kerb when she was nine. The skin prickled. "Okay. Funny joke. You here?" No answer. Wind moved through the outer oaks but not through the grove. Inside the circle the air hung still. The wildflowers did not sway. She stepped over the line. The temperature changed. The cold dropped from her shoulders. The air inside the grove held a damp warmth, like breath. Her torch dimmed. The beam narrowed to a coin of light on the grass. She slapped the side of the phone. The light stuttered and held. The pendant flared. Heat bloomed against her chest, sharp enough that she sucked air through her teeth. She pulled the chain out. The Heartstone burned crimson, light Crawling inside it like embers stirred. It beat in time with something that was not her heart. A second pulse, a fraction out of sync. She took a step back. The boundary was right behind her. Or it had been. The standing oaks now looked spaced wider apart. The gap she had entered through had closed or shifted. The park beyond showed as a smear of dark, further away than three steps should allow. "Not funny, Eva." Her throat dried. She coughed. The sound was too loud inside the still. She turned in a slow circle. The grove was no larger than a flat above a bar, no larger than Silas's back room, but the dark under the oaks stretched. The wildflowers gave off their own light. She saw her own shadow throw in three directions though she held a single source. A rustle came from the treeline. Leaves brushed leaves with no wind to move them. Rory snapped the torch toward the sound. Nothing. Black bark, black space between trunks. Her hand shook and light skittered over roots that knotted like knuckles. "Eva, if you brought me out here to scare me, you managed it." Her laugh cracked. She pressed her back to one of the oak stones. Bark bit through her jacket. She needed the solid at her spine. Another rustle. Opposite side. Closer. Something brushed the wildflowers and the heads bobbed though the air stayed dead. Rory held her breath. She listened. The city had gone. No distant traffic from Roehampton, no plane hum, no siren. The grove cut all that out. What remained was too crisp. Her own swallow sounded like a stone dropped in water. Under that, another sound. A soft inhale. Not hers. It came from the space between two oaks at ground level, low, as if something with a broad chest lay on its belly in the leaf litter and breathed. The pendant scalded. She cupped it in her palm without thinking and hiss widened her eyes. The crimson deepened until it threw red across her chin and hands. She dropped it. The chain caught. The stone swung and thumped against her ribs. Movement tugged at the corner of her eye. She whipped her head round. A pale length uncurled between roots and vanished. Too fast for vine, too jointed for branch. "Who's there?" Silence answered, then a branch snapped. The crack echoed wrong, as if the wood broke a second after the sound reached her. Footsteps started. Not steps on leaves. Steps in the leaves, but light, spaced wide, circling. She tracked them with the torch. The beam found only flowers, only moss, only the dark mouths between oaks. The steps continued. They did not match any shape she could see. The wildflowers to her left flattened. One after another, heads pressed down as if a weight passed over them. No weight showed. Rory pushed off the oak stone. Her legs went soft. She stumbled toward the place she thought the gap had been and thrust her hand out. Bark met her palm. Solid. Not a gap. An oak trunk where open air had stood. She flattened both palms against it. The bark was warm. "Let me out." The whisper left her before she knew she made it. Behind her the breathing came again. Closer. She spun. Torch light juttered across the grove. For an instant the space between two stones rippled. Air over hot tarmac. Through the ripple she saw not parkland but a flat expanse of black stone under a sky with no stars. The Heartstone beat hard enough to vibrate her teeth. The ripple snapped shut. The footsteps stopped directly behind her. She did not turn. Her neck locked. Cold sweat ran down her back. The pendant swung forward on its chain as if tugged by an unseen hand. It pulled taut toward the centre of the grove, toward the thickest dark under the largest oak. A faint line of mist rose from the wildflowers there, coiling up, taking a shape that was almost shoulders, almost a head, before it thinned. A hand brushed her hair. Fingertips, dry as bark, slid across the ends of her black bob and lifted. Rory jerked forward and slammed her shoulder into the oak stone. She swung the phone torch up. Light caught nothing but swirling mist and flowers and bark. The touch lingered on her scalp. From the dark at the centre of the grove a voice hummed. Low, tune without words. The hum matched the pulse of the Heartstone. It vibrated through the soles of her trainers. The mist thickened. It pooled around her ankles though no cold came with it. Wildflower heads turned. Every bloom in the circle angled toward her, white faces up, open. Something exhaled against the nape of her neck.