Run: 2026-09-03-01M1K5K7RMZWAKHB5VBPC05YTV

The Richmond Park gate wore its chain and padlock for the night. Aurora Carter rattled it and the metal bit cold into her palm. She stepped back and found the gap in the fence where the wire bowed out, where every kid and dog walker knew to cut through after hours. She squeezed through. Brambles snagged at her jacket. Her phone threw white light across the grass. Past midnight and the park held no sound. No traffic from Roehampton. No planes. The dark felt too thick for London. The Heartstone thumped against her sternum. The silver chain stuck to sweat on her neck. The stone itself, thumbnail-small and deep crimson, threw off heat through her t-shirt. It never did that unless a Hel portal breathed near. She tugged the pendant out and cupped it. The inner glow pulsed against her skin, off-beat with her own heart. "Eva? You copy? I am at the path. The one with the split oak." Static chewed the speaker. Then Eva's voice, thin and stretched. "Rory — you near the stones yet? I left it — by the —" The line broke into clicks. Aurora pressed the phone hard to her ear and stared down the avenue of trees. Mist sat low over the grass. It held the shape of the ground and did not drift. "Eva, say again. What did you leave? You said grove. You said midnight." "I didn't — not me —" Eva's laugh cracked in half. "Rory, listen, the flowers. Don't step on the —" Silence cut the call. The screen lit up: CALL FAILED. NO SIGNAL. The time read 00:43. Aurora shoved the phone into her pocket. The Heartstone burned hotter. She walked. The path dissolved under leaf litter. Richmond Park at night played tricks with distance, but this pocket bent it more. The Fae Grove existed behind a fold and Aurora knew the trick of it. The standing stones marked the threshold, ancient oak pillars that rose from the earth like knuckles. She counted them as she passed. One. Two. The third hid behind a hawthorn. Wildflowers choked the ground between the trees though frost rimmed the park beyond the fence. White campion and foxglove opened in the dark. Their petals gave off colour that night should have killed. Their scent hit sweet and wrong, sugar over rot. She stopped at the boundary. The air on the other side hung still. "I hate this place." Her whisper fell flat. No echo. She stepped through. The temperature dropped. Not cold. Absence of heat. Sound went with it. Her trainers sank into soil that gave no crunch. The grove opened around her, a perfect circle maybe thirty feet across, the oak stones ringed tight and tall enough to blot stars. The canopy above wove shut. No sky. The Heartstone flared. Heat shot up the silver chain and into her jaw. She hissed and let it fall. The wildflowers blanketed the grove floor, knee-high in places, and each bloom faced her. Not the moon. Her. Aurora turned a full circle. The bark on the standing stones looked less like bark now and more like skin stretched over wood, fissures deep enough to hide a hand. She pulled out her phone again. No signal. The clock still read 00:43. "Okay. Funny, Eva. You want your cardigan or what?" No answer. The grove swallowed the words. She moved to the centre. The flowers brushed her calves. Their heads turned to track her passage. She stared at them and they stilled. In the centre a flat stone sat, altar or table, and on it lay a small pile of things. A denim jacket she recognised. Eva's, with the patched sleeve. Beneath it, a leather delivery bag from Golden Empress, the one Yu-Fei gave riders for takeaway runs, and beside that, a single dark shoe. Not Eva's size. Larger. Mud caked the sole. She crouched. The crescent scar on her left wrist caught the Heartstone light, pale against her skin. "Eva? If you fell over in here I swear—" A branch snapped behind her. Not a twig. A limb. The crack echoed from the wrong side of the circle, from a place where no tree stood. Aurora spun. Nothing. The standing stones loomed. Mist curled around their bases, ankle high, though no mist had followed her in. She straightened. Her breath made no cloud. Another sound came. A wet rustle through the flowers though no wind moved. The blooms shivered in a line, as if something dragged its weight through them, low to the ground, just beyond the ring of light her phone threw. She swung the light. The beam hit flowers and stone and flowers again. Empty. "Who is there? Show yourself." The grove gave back her voice a beat too late, with an extra syllable, as if something else shaped the echo. Her phone clock flickered. 00:43. 00:41. 00:47. Time slipped. An hour inside could eat minutes or days outside. She knew that. Her father Brendan told tales from Donegal, warnings dressed as folklore. She had laughed at them in Cardiff. Now her mouth dried. The Heartstone pulsed. The heat turned to a throb that matched footsteps. Step. Pause. Step. Not hers. She backed toward the altar stone. Her shoulder brushed one of the oak pillars. The bark flinched under her jacket. She jerked away. The flowers parted. A narrow track opened through them, from the far edge of the circle to the centre, though no feet cut it. The track stopped at the flat stone. The shoe on the stone twitched. Aurora stared. The laces, dark with mud, tightened. As if a foot flexed inside. She did not breathe. The mist thickened. It rose to her knees now. It clung. It smelled of river water and cold earth, of the Hel mouth Yu-Fei warned riders never to linger near after dark. The Heartstone chain seared. A shape moved at the edge of vision. Tall. Thin enough to hide behind a stone. When she looked direct, it folded back into the bark pattern. She caught it again from the corner of her eye, nearer. Closer. Its limbs held too many joints. "Eva, this stopped being funny. If you are behind that stone, come out." Silence. Then a giggle. Not Eva's. A child's giggle, cracked and adult at the edge. The wildflowers rustled again. Louder. A ring of them around her ankles bent outward as though something circled her just out of sight, brushing the stalks. Aurora pressed her back to the altar stone. The denim jacket smelled of Eva, cheap perfume and smoke from Silas's bar. She grabbed it. The leather bag beneath it opened and spilled paper. Receipts from Golden Empress, each stamped with the same time: 00:43. Dozens. She dropped the jacket. The giggle came again, now from above. She looked up. The canopy had lowered. Branches knotted together, and between them eyes opened, or knots that looked like eyes, wet and bright blue like her own. They blinked. The standing stone to her left exhaled. A seam split down its trunk. Light the colour of the Heartstone bled out. The pendant answered and burned her chest. She ripped it off over her head and held it out. The deep crimson light threw the grove into relief. The mist recoiled from it. The flowers hissed and furled. For a second she saw the thing between the stones clear. It wore the shape of a woman in outline, hair straight and black to the shoulders, height to match her own, but its skin held bark grain and its hands ended in root tangles. It wore Eva's face badly, as if it borrowed the memory and missed the details. It smiled with too much mouth. Aurora's grip on the pendant went slick with sweat. "What do you want?" The thing cocked its borrowed head. Its mouth did not move with the words that came. The voice came from the flowers, from the stones, from the mist that now wrapped her calves like hands. "You opened. You carried. You came." The phone in her pocket buzzed though it had no signal. She fumbled it out with her free hand. The screen lit with an incoming call: EVA. She answered and held it to her ear while she kept the Heartstone raised. "Rory?" Eva's real voice, clear and scared. "Where are you? You said meet at the grove. I waited. You never came. I went home." The mist tightened around Aurora's legs. "Your jacket is here. Your bag." "What jacket? Rory, I am at the flat above Silas's. I never—" The line dissolved into that same child's giggle. The call cut. The thing between the stones stepped forward. Flowers crushed under root-feet without a sound. The seam in the oak pillar widened. Cold poured out. The Heartstone pulsed against her palm, hot enough to brand. Aurora backed until the altar stone hit her spine. The track through the flowers now ringed her feet. The bloom heads all turned inward. She held the pendant higher. Its glow caught the crescent scar on her wrist and made it shine.