Run: 2026-09-03-01M1K5DPSVD822ZFEJH7VVDY21

The gate to Richmond Park hung open after midnight. Rory slipped through the gap and the iron barked against her hip. Her trainers ate the gravel with a crunch crunch crunch that bounced off the dark and came back wrong. The air tasted of wet bark and diesel from the road behind her, then none of that. The road noise cut out between one step and the next, as if a door shut. She tugged the strap of the red delivery bag higher on her shoulder. The bag still smelled of chilli oil and plastic from the last Golden Empress drop. Yu-Fei had paid her for the shift in cash and added an extra tenner for the Richmond run. "Eva, it's me. I'm here. Where the hell is here?" Her mobile threw white light up her chin. No bars. The call screen showed 00:14, then 00:12, then 00:14. Rory thumbed the volume up and down. Her breath fogged the screen. "You sent a pin and then nothing. This better not be one of your jokes." The path dissolved into grass. Dew soaked through canvas and bit her ankles. Richmond stretched wide and black around her, a flat sea of frost-tipped green. Above, cloud smothered the moon. Below, in the dip of the land, a cluster of upright shapes broke the line of the field. Rory crossed toward them. Her pulse knocked at the base of her throat. The shapes resolved into oak pillars, tall as doors, black with moss at the foot. Lichen split their faces in pale maps. Between two of the stones the grass gave way to wildflowers. Knots of primrose and campion and violet crowded ankle-deep in September, heads open, sweet enough to coat the back of her tongue. Petals held no frost. Rory stopped at the boundary. She tucked a hank of straight black hair behind her ear. Her bright blue eyes swept the stones, the flowers, the dark beyond. "Okay. I'm at the big rocks you talked about. The grove thing. Talk to me." Static chewed the speaker. Under the static, for half a second, a woman laughed. Not Eva. The sound held no warmth. Rory lowered the mobile. She stared at the blank screen until the light died and left purple ghosts in her sight. Against her sternum, under her T-shirt, a coal woke. The Heartstone Pendant sat thumbnail-small and deep crimson on its silver chain. An envelope with no stamp had held it that morning outside her flat above Silas' bar. No note. No name. The stone now burned through cotton. A faint inner glow bled through the weave and painted a red disc on her chest. Rory fished it out with two fingers. The chain stuck to sweat on her neck. The stone throbbed with heat in time with the knock in her throat. "Right. Warm means close. Close to what?" She stepped between the oak stones. Cold poured over her scalp and down her spine. The smell of flowers thickened until it turned rotten at the edges, honey over compost. The grass underfoot sprang soft, too soft, and sprang back late, as if the ground considered each footprint. Rory walked ten paces in. The stones closed behind her. She glanced back. The pillars stood closer together than her memory allowed. The gap she had passed through narrowed to a slit. She rubbed the small crescent scar on her left wrist with her thumb. The skin there shone white. "Cardiff to London to get away from one psycho ex and now I walk into parks for ghosts. Dad would love this. Brendan Carter's daughter, trespassing." Her voice sounded flat. The grove swallowed echo. No planes crossed overhead. No cars. Richmond at night always hummed with the A-roads. Now the dark held a pressure, a low tone at the edge of hearing that lived more in her teeth than her ears. A twig snapped to her left. Rory swung the mobile torch toward the sound. The beam shook across campion heads. Stems nodded though no wind touched her face. Beyond the flowers, blackthorns knotted together in a wall. Nothing stood there. The light shook harder. She locked her wrist with her other hand. "Eva? If that's you messing about, pack it in." Her own voice came back to her from the thorns a beat late, syllable-wrong. Pack it in in it pack. A mimic with a mouth full of leaves. Rory killed the torch. Darkness rushed in thick. She stood blind while purple ghosts swam. She counted her own breaths. In. Out. In. Out. Under that, another rhythm tapped the leaf litter. A footfall that landed half a step after hers and stopped when she stopped. She forced her legs forward. Each stride dragged through flower stems that clutched her laces. The pendant swung and slapped her collarbone, hot, hotter. The smell of singed cotton rose. "I'm leaving a bad review for this meeting spot." She aimed her words at the dark ahead and kept walking. The grove tilted. The thorn wall curved. The wildflowers spread wider, a bright carpet that the torch, when she risked it again, rendered in hard colours: yellow throats, blue veins, red freckles. Petals turned to follow the light. To her right, something detached from a stone and rejoined it. A smear of paler dark. Rory snapped her head toward the motion. Her neck clicked. The stone stood bare, moss and lichen, nothing else. Sweat ran down her ribs. She walked faster. The second set of footfalls kept pace, out of sync, deliberate. Gravel crunched where no gravel lay. Only soft earth and petals lay under her soles, yet behind her left shoulder grit ground under weight. Rory spun. The beam caught empty air full of drifting pollen. Pollen at midnight. The motes hung too still, then drifted sideways in a line, parted around a shape she could not see. A tall absence in the air bent the light. Her nose filled with the stink of stagnant water and cut grass. She backed up. A root caught her heel. She windmilled, caught balance, scraped her palm on an oak pillar. Bark stripped skin. She pressed the graze to her mouth and tasted salt and copper. "Who's there? Show yourself." The low tone in her teeth rose into her skull. The flowers around her feet shivered. Petals lifted without wind. The pollen line thickened and curved, as if something circled her, close enough for her T-shirt to stir. Rory held the pendant out in front of her like a ward. The crimson core flared. Heat blistered her fingers. Light spilled red across the ground and threw her shadow long behind her and threw another shadow beside it, thin and jointed wrong, with too many angles at the shoulder. The second shadow moved when she stood still. Cold fingers of air brushed the short hairs at her nape. The flower stems bent in a ring around her, pressed flat by feet that left no print in the dew.