Run: 2026-09-03-01M1K58TM910Q1M2K23N176B1K

Richmond Park locked at dusk. The gate stood open. Aurora Carter stared at the gap in the iron and the dark beyond it. Her bike leaned against the fence behind her, front wheel ticked and spun in the wind, the insulated delivery box still strapped to the rack and empty. She pulled the silver chain out from under her shirt. The Heartstone pendant sat in her palm, thumbnail small, deep crimson, and lit from within with a dull pulse. Heat beat against her skin with each throb. Heat that had started three streets back and grown stronger with each pedal stroke toward the park. She came because the stone had never done that before. The Fae Grove lay beyond the oaks. Wildflowers broke through frost-hard ground and opened their heads in the night, white and yellow and absurd. Aurora stepped off the path and the air altered. Sound fell away. Traffic from Roehampton cut off mid-hum. No planes overhead. No wind in the branches. Her breath made a cloud and vanished. She passed between the first two standing stones. Ancient oak, bark black with age, roots sunk in earth that did not belong to Richmond. The trunks rose and twisted into an arch. "Right. You called me here, you get me here." Her voice hit the arch and dropped flat. No echo. She rubbed her left wrist with her thumb, over the small crescent scar, and forced her hand down. The grove opened in a circle. Grass grew thick and soft under her trainers. Flowers pressed against her ankles. In the centre stood the ring of stones, taller than her by a head, lichen pale on their shoulders. The Heartstone flared. Warmth turned to bite. She curled her fingers around it. The metal chain stung cold against the back of her neck. She checked her phone. No signal. Screen showed 11:47 and then 11:46 and then 11:47 again. She shoved it in her pocket. A branch cracked behind her. Aurora spun. Nothing but trees and stone and flowers. The entrance arch stood empty. Beyond it the park had gone. No fence line. No distant sodium lamps. Black crowded the trunks. "Who's there?" The grove gave nothing back. She took a step toward the ring and stopped. The grass did not spring back where she stepped. Her footprint stayed pressed flat, dark. Another sound came. A wet drag through grass, left to right, beyond the stone on her far side. She turned her head. The stone blocked her view. She moved to see around it. The ground lay untouched. Flowers unbent. Aurora laughed. The sound hurt her throat. "Funny. Proper funny now." She circled the ring with small steps, shoulder near the stones but not touching. Her straight black hair caught on the wind that did not exist and brushed her cheek. She pushed it behind her ear with a sharp hand. Bright blue caught the pendant light when she looked down. The Heartstone pulsed out of rhythm with her heart. One hard beat. Pause. Two quick beats. Pause. The air behind her shifted. Pressure brushed her neck, as if someone exhaled close to skin. She whirled and threw a hand out. Empty air. Her palm met cold. She held the pose, chest tight, and lowered the hand inch by inch. A rustle ran through the flowers at knee height, though no foot disturbed them. A line of stems bowed and sprang back, ten feet long, as if something low and long pushed through them and passed out of sight behind the next stone. Aurora backed toward the centre. The stones ringed her. She counted them to fix her mind on a task. Eight. "You want the stone, you come and get it. I stand here." Her words cracked in the middle. She swallowed and locked her jaw. The Heartstone burned. She opened her fist and stared at it. The crimson light threw red across the underside of her chin and the front of her jacket. The glow caught the bark of the stones and made the lichen look like bone. Movement snagged the corner of her eye. Left side. She snapped her gaze there. Stone. Still stone. She looked ahead again and caught motion on the right. A smear of darker dark against bark, gone when she faced it. Her head pinged from side to side. Each turn showed nothing straight on. Each peripheral glimpse showed a shape that held the height of a person and the stillness of wood until it did not. The flowers closed. Petals folded inward all at once, a soft chorus of clicks, though night flowers had no cause to shut. The drag sound came again. Closer. From behind the largest stone, the one with a split down its face. A soft scrape, then a stop. Then a scrape. Aurora stepped toward the sound before fear made a cage of the thought. She planted her feet and leaned around the stone. A hollow waited. In the hollow the grass grew flat in a spiral, pressed down in a circle wide as a bed. At its centre the earth lay bare and damp and breathed. The bare patch rose and fell. Aurora's stomach turned. She stepped back. Her heel caught a root and she caught balance with a windmill of arms. "Okay. Nope." She turned for the arch. The arch had moved. Or she had lost it. The ring looked identical in each direction. Eight stones. No gap that she could pick as entrance. She turned in place. Each stone faced her with the same blank front. A giggle broke the silence. High and thin and wrong, like a child imitated a child and missed the shape of it. The sound came from above. Aurora tipped her head back. Branches wove a roof against a sky with no stars. No child crouched there. The giggle came again from behind her, at ground level. Aurora spun and found the bare patch empty. The spiral of flat grass had widened while she looked away. Inches wider. The damp earth at its centre now showed a crack, a dark line no wider than a coin. The pendant beat hard enough to jar her collarbone. She pressed it down with her palm and the heat shot up her arm toward her elbow. Footsteps pressed the grass outside the ring. Soft. Bare. One after the other, slow around the outside of the stones, though no feet showed in the gaps between trunks. The steps paused at each gap, as if something stopped to look in at her. Aurora crouched. She put her back to the largest stone. Cold seeped through her jacket and into her shoulder blades. The stone felt damp and gave a little under her weight, as if bark covered flesh. "You walk out here and you walk past me, keep walking." The footsteps halted opposite her. Grass rustled. A hand touched the edge of the stone beside her. Fingers long and pale and tipped with earth under the nails slid into view, gripped bark, and held there. The fingers stretched. Joints popped. Then the hand withdrew. The grove inhaled. Flowers shivered. The crack in the bare earth widened with a soft sigh and showed a second layer of dark beneath. Aurora stared at the gap between two stones where the hand had been. The gap stayed empty. Shadows pooled there and held a shape taller than the stones would allow. The shape did not move. It occupied the gap and looked in. Her breath came short and loud. She clamped a hand over her mouth and breathed through her nose. The silver chain cut into her palm where she clenched it. The shape in the gap tilted. A sound like bark split. Aurora shoved off the stone and ran for the opposite gap. She hit open ground and the grass grabbed at her ankles though no vine grew there. She tore through flowers that slapped and stuck to her jeans. The Heartstone swung out on its chain and threw red light in arcs across the ground. She reached the ring edge and found another stone where the gap had been a second before. Solid oak. No way through. Behind her the footsteps started again. Unrushed. Around the ring. The drag sound joined them, a body pulled through flowers. The giggle rose and fell with the steps, now from one side then the other, as if the voice threw itself. Aurora slammed her palms against the stone in front of her. Bark flaked under her hands. Cold sap stuck to her skin. "Let me out! Open!" The ring answered with silence. Then the pendant pulsed once, hard, and light flooded the grove. For a half second the stones showed not as oak but as figures with bark for skin and arms raised and faces pressed flat. Then they showed as stones again. The footsteps stopped right behind her. Breath touched her hair. The grass at her feet bent down in two prints where no one stood.