Run: 2026-09-03-01M1K5R7BRV2YARPSNF0VBCDST

The last bus coughed past Roehampton Gate and left Rory in diesel stink and dark. She stood with the red delivery bag from the Golden Empress slung across her chest and stared at the pedestrian gate. Richmond Park locked its gates at dusk in November. Everyone in London knew that. The iron hung wide on black hinges. No padlock. No ranger. A paper coffee cup rolled in a slow circle by the notice board and stopped dead at her trainers. Her phone screen threw white light up under her chin. "You there yet?" Rory tugged the strap higher on her shoulder and stepped off the pavement onto wet gravel. "Gate hangs open. You sure about the time?" "Bloody hell, Ror. Turn back if it feels weird." "The note said after dark. Alone." She thumbed the folded receipt in her jacket pocket. It was no receipt. Block capitals in blue biro on the back of a Golden Empress order slip: GROVE. AFTER DARK. DO NOT BRING HER. It sat in her bag after the dinner rush. No customer claimed it. Yu-Fei waved her out for the last drop and the Heartstone Pendant burned a hole through her T-shirt all the way down Priory Lane until she stopped at the park wall. The pendant hung at her collarbone now, thumbnail-sized and deep crimson on its silver chain. Heat bled off it into her skin. A faint inner glow pulsed under the stone's surface with her own heartbeat. Eva's breath crackled over the speaker. "Rory? Talk to me." "Still on the path. Give me a sec." She killed the torch on her phone and let her eyes adjust. Cloud smothered the moon. The main ride stretched ahead, pale gravel between black bracken, and then the oaks swallowed it whole. Rory knew Richmond Park from daytime runs. Deer. Dogs. Planes out of Heathrow dragging white lines across blue. This was no daytime park. Sound fell off a cliff past the gate. No North Circular hum. No sirens. No wind in the traffic lights wires. Her own inhale scraped loud in her ears. She walked. Gravel popped under her soles. A half-beat after each step, a second pop answered from somewhere to her left. Rory stopped. The echo stopped. She rolled her shoulders and walked on, longer strides now, cool head on, Cardiff law seminar voice counting facts in her skull. Fact one: 23:47 on a Tuesday. Fact two: she delivered chow mein to a bedsit in Roehampton and cut through here on foot to save the bus fare back to Silas' place. Fact three: wildflowers lined the ride. Wildflowers. In November. White lace and violet heads and yellow trumpets stood knee-high along the ditch where frost should have blackened everything. Their scent hit thick and sweet, honey and crushed green stems and rot underneath. Moths batted around them, dusted the air with pollen. Rory sneezed. Her straight shoulder-length black hair stuck to her lip. She dragged it free with the back of her hand. "Eva? You getting this?" "What? You're breaking up." "The flowers. It's November and the ditch looks like June." Static chewed the reply. Rory pushed into the tree line where the path narrowed. Ancient oaks marked the boundary, trunks wide as vans, bark split into deep black furrows. Someone had chalked a fresh line at eye height? No. Lichen. Pale green in the shape of an arch from one standing stone to the next. Beyond them the ground dropped into a hollow clearing. The Fae Grove. Eva's word for it after three pints, laughing it off, Isolde's grove, Richmond grove, don't go wandering, Ror, you law types get lost past the M25. The air past the stones held summer warmth. It kissed her cheeks and turned the sweat under her jacket to slick film. Her bright blue eyes watered. She checked the phone. 23:12. She frowned and tapped the screen. 23:12 blinked to 23:47 then back to 23:12. Signal bars hollowed to nothing. Battery at eighty percent dropped to four. "Eva?" Silence stretched, complete and rubbery. "Eva, if you hear me, I lost—" The call dropped. The screen died to black glass. In the black she caught her own reflection, mouth a flat line, scar on her left wrist a small crescent where her sleeve rode up. Rory shoved the dead phone into her back pocket and unzipped the delivery bag for the small torch Yu-Fei made all riders carry. The beam shook once across the clearing, then steadied in her grip. The Grove opened round and perfect as a coin. Short grass glowed silver-green under the torch. Wildflowers packed the centre in a dense ring. In the middle the grass lay flat in a deer bed, stems bent in a spiral. No deer. No droppings. No prints she could see. She stepped over the lichen line. Warmth climbed up her throat from the pendant. The crimson stone lit from inside, threw red flecks across her chin and the front of her jacket. Her left wrist ached around the old scar. "Hello?" Rory swung the beam left across the oaks. Bark. Ivy. A plastic bag snagged high in a branch breathed in and out. "Who left the note?" Her voice fell into moss and vanished. No echo. The torch beam thinned at the edges, as if the dark drank it faster than batteries could feed it. She walked the rim of the flower ring. Trainers sank into soft earth. Each footfall landed with a dull thud. Half a second late, a second thud answered under the ground, too close to be echo, too far left to be her own weight settling. Rory stopped by the deer bed and crouched. She pressed her palm to the flattened grass. Warmth rose off it, animal warmth, recent. A twig snapped behind her. She spun. The beam lanced between trunks and caught nothing but trunks, row after row, bark shining with damp. Moths spiralled through the light and out. "Who's there?" The flowers nodded though no wind touched her face. Rory stood and backed toward the centre. Her heel caught on a root. She caught her balance with arms wide, delivery bag thumping her hip, sesame oil and garlic leaking rich into the honey-rot air. Movement flickered at the rim of her vision. Tall. Too tall for deer. It folded between two oaks and was gone when her head turned. Her peripheral vision prickled. She tracked it by refusing to look straight, torch low at her side now, red glow from the pendant strong enough to read by. "Show yourself." A laugh bubbled out of the dark to her right, low and wet, cut off mid-breath. Rory pivoted. The beam hit the flower ring. Every head turned toward her at once, stems creaking. Petals gaped, white and violet and yellow, centres black and slick as nostrils. The scent thickened until she tasted it on her teeth. Footsteps circled outside the light. Bare feet on leaf mould. Slow. Deliberate. They paused when she paused. They started when she breathed. She yanked the pendant free of her skin. The silver chain bit her neck. The stone seared her palm. Heat shot up her forearm and pooled around the crescent scar until the old white line flushed pink. "Enough." She stamped her foot. The ground thumped back twice. Cold air brushed the nape of her neck, though the clearing held summer. It carried a voice with no words, an exhale shaped around her name. The moths dropped from the air and lay shivering on the flower heads. Rory turned round.