Run: 2026-09-03-01M1K5ENS5V5VQ7PYJT7T2YD7E

She reached the Richmond gate at 23:14 and the gate stood locked. Cold ate through her gloves. Her bike ticked as the chain cooled. Beyond the bars Richmond Park spread in a black wash, oak crowns cut hard against a thin moon. A paper ticket flapped from her jacket pocket where she had wedged it, grease from the Golden Empress bag still on her thumb. "Eva, this better be worth it. Five-six, twenty-five, and I climb a park fence for a drop with no postcode." Her breath smoked. Her voice bounced off iron and died with no echo. She tipped the bike, lifted the frame over the spikes, caught her cuff. The sleeve rode up and torchlight found the crescent mark on her left wrist, white against skin gone pink with cold. "Your mate wrote 'where oaks stand' and drew a map like a kid. Silas keeps my flat key. Bike goes missing, you pay." She killed the call. No bars. The screen held 23:14, then 23:13, then 23:14 again. She pocketed the mobile and shouldered the takeaway bag. Chilli oil and star anise rose from the seams. The ticket read TABLE 9 — GROVE. No street. No name. The rider log at the shop showed one line in unfamiliar hand: leave it where wildflowers grow. She climbed. Trainers slipped on frost-slick bars. Straight black hair stuck to her mouth. She spat it clear and dropped soft onto leaf mulch on the far side. The impact ran up her shins. "No locked gate stops hunger, eh?" Her grin hurt her cheeks. The park swallowed the sound. London sound stopped at the fence. No traffic on the North Circular. No siren. No plane. Her ears rang with the cut. She clicked on her torch. The beam cut a tunnel through mist and lit trunk after trunk, bark split in deep plates, roots humped from frozen earth. She walked. Leaves cracked underfoot and then stopped cracking. The ground changed. Moss took the path, thick and springy, green as March. Frost thinned to damp. A smell rose, crushed stems and wet pollen, wrong for November. Daisies opened in the torch beam. Violets. Red campion. A full spill of them, heads up, petals spread to a moon they had no business seeing. Her boot crushed a cluster and sap slicked the toe. "Flowers in frost. Dad the barrister calls that exhibit A. Mum calls it daft." She laughed once. The laugh came back a half-beat late from somewhere left, flat and short. She stopped. Her torch hand held steady. Cool air burned her throat. She swung the beam left. Nothing but trunks and mist coiling at knee height. She swung right. Mist parted around a low branch and closed again. She touched the pendant under her jumper. The silver chain stuck to sweat at her neck. The stone sat thumbnail-big and heavy in its setting, deep crimson with a weak inner light, like coals under glass. No note had come with it. No name. The box had sat on the bar counter three nights past with RORY inked across brown paper. Since the gate the stone had grown warm. Now heat pulsed from it in a slow beat against her sternum. "All right. Warm means close. Close to what?" She kept the stone out. Its red light mixed with torch white on her palm. Bright blue eyes threw back glare in the steel of her bike bell as she bent to check the map again. She drew a breath through her nose and sorted facts the way she sorted orders on a Friday rush: gate, flowers out of season, phone clock stuck, heat in a stone that held no battery. The path narrowed between oaks grown so close their limbs grafted. Bark flaked under her shoulder as she edged through. On the far side the trees broke in a ring. Standing stones stood among the oaks, old as the roots, lichen scabbed grey-green across their faces. Seven of them, shoulder high and leaning in, Oak grown around one base till wood swallowed rock. In the centre the wildflowers lay thick as a mattress, uncrushed, uncut, heads nodding with no wind. Her mobile buzzed once and died. The screen lit her chin. 23:14. 02:47. 23:14. "Time does not do that." She spoke to hear a human sound. The grove took the words and gave nothing back. Then, under the quiet, a new sound rose: a wet click, like a tongue off a palate, from behind the tallest stone. She cut the torch. Dark poured in, absolute and textured, full of green afterimages. Her pupils widened. Moonlight silvered the mist and turned each flower head to a pale coin. The stones threw long shadows that pointed the wrong way, toward the moon, not away. A footstep pressed moss where no boot stood. The moss dented, sprang up. Another dent formed a pace closer. The air displaced with a soft push against her cheek. "Takeaway for Table Nine. Leave it and go, yes?" Her hands moved while her eyes stayed on the dents. She unhooked the bag, set it on level ground, smoothed the handles flat. Efficient movements. Out-of-the-box was for daylight; here the box was the stones and she stayed inside it. The pendant beat harder. Heat crawled up the chain and kissed her collarbone. The inner light strengthened and threw a red pool across the flowers. In that red light she saw stems bend in a line, as if a leg brushed them, from the tallest stone straight toward her. A breath fogged in front of her face. Hers. Then a second fog bloomed a foot to her left, round and sudden, hanging where no mouth stood. It thinned, shaped again, closer. The mist thickened at the edge of sight. Shapes detached from trunk shadow and rejoined it. Tall, jointed wrong, too still between moves. Her peripheral vision caught an arm span where no arm belonged, a turn of a head with no face to catch light. When she looked straight, bark and stone held their places. The oak leaves rustled with no wind to move them. A low hum rose through the soles of her trainers, up bone, into teeth. The standing stones vibrated faint as struck glass. She stepped around the bag and put her back to the widest oak. Bark ridges dug through her jacket. Her fingers found the crescent scar and pressed it till pain cleared her head. "Evan locked doors. I learned doors. I learned locks. You want the food, take it." The bag rustled. Paper crinkled. No hand showed in torchlight, but the bag tilted, lifted an inch at one corner, settled. Chilli smell sharpened as the lid cracked. The stone flared hot enough to sting. Red light washed the ring. For a heartbeat the shadows snapped into place and she saw them: prints in pollen, narrow and long, circling the flowers, stopping at the edge of her torch beam, starting again behind her back where bark pressed cold through cloth. The hum climbed into a tone. The flower heads turned, all of them, a fraction toward the heat at her throat.