Run: 2026-09-10-01M25DDVEWVW5F0N6N7484VZKT

The bus dropped her at the edge of Richmond Park, its tail lights shrinking to pinpricks before the dark swallowed them whole. Rory stood for a moment, listening to the silence. Not a true silence — there were the rustles of small things in the undergrowth, the distant hum of the city she'd left behind — but a heavy, watchful quiet that pressed against her ears like cotton wool. She checked her phone. Ten forty-seven. The last bus back to the city left at midnight from the same stop. Two hours. Plenty of time. The Heartstone Pendant lay warm against her sternum, a second heartbeat beneath her ribs. It had been pulsing since she'd stepped off the bus, a steady thrum that seemed to sync with her own pulse. She'd felt it react before, near the places Eva had marked on her map — thin spots where the world wore through like old fabric. But never this strong. Never this insistent. The gate to the grove stood open. Iron scrollwork, rusted at the hinges, black against the moonlit path beyond. She hadn't expected that. In her experience, the fae didn't leave doors ajar. Rory stepped through. The change was immediate. The air shifted — thicker, older, carrying the scent of crushed wildflowers and something underneath, something like ozone after a lightning strike. The trees on either side of the path grew close, their branches interlocking overhead until the moonlight filtered through in silver slivers. Her footsteps made no sound on the grass. She checked her phone again. Ten forty-nine. Three minutes. She'd been walking for three minutes and covered perhaps a hundred metres. The math didn't add up. The grove was small — she'd studied the maps, cross-referenced Eva's notes. From the gate to the standing stones should have taken no more than five minutes at a brisk pace. The pendant flared hot against her skin. Rory stopped. The path ahead forked around an ancient oak, its trunk wider than her flat. The bark was smooth, almost polished, as though generations of hands had touched it in passing. No moss grew on its surface. No ivy climbed its branches. The grass at its roots lay flat and yellowed, as if something had pressed it down for a very long time. She chose the left fork. The wildflowers began. Bluebells and foxgloves, their colours muted in the dark, blooming in defiance of the season. She'd read about this place — Eva had told her stories, the kind that made her laugh and then stop laughing abruptly. Time moved differently here. An hour inside could be minutes or days outside. Rory checked her phone again. The screen flickered. Ten forty-nine. The same minute. The same second. The clock hadn't moved. She put the phone in her pocket. The pendant burned against her chest, a heat that should have been painful but wasn't. She could feel it pulsing in time with something else now, something deeper in the grove. A rhythm that wasn't hers. The standing stones appeared through a gap in the trees. Nine of them, arranged in a rough circle, each one twice her height. They weren't made of the grey stone she'd expected. They were oak — living wood, twisted and grown into shape, their surfaces rippling with a texture that looked almost like faces. Eyes closed. Mouths open. Rory approached the circle. The pendant pulled her forward, a compass needle drawn north. She stopped at the threshold. The air inside the ring was colder. Not the crisp cold of an autumn night — a cold that settled in her bones, that made her teeth ache. The grass within the circle was white. Not frost. Something else. Something that crunched underfoot like old paper. She stepped inside. The first sound came from behind her. A whisper, soft and sibilant, like wind through dry leaves. She turned. Nothing. Just the dark trees, the path she'd walked, the absence of anything that should have been there. The second sound came from her left. A footstep. Deliberate. Measured. She spun, her hand going to the pendant. The stones stood silent. The wildflowers swayed in a breeze she couldn't feel. The third sound came from everywhere at once. A low hum, a resonance that seemed to rise from the ground itself. The standing stones vibrated with it, their surfaces shimmering. The faces carved by nature or something else seemed to shift, their closed eyes twitching, their open mouths widening. Rory backed toward the centre of the circle. Her breath fogged in the cold air. The pendant blazed against her skin, its crimson light spilling through her shirt, illuminating the space around her in pulses. She wasn't alone. She knew it now with a certainty that bypassed logic. The grove was watching. The stones were listening. Something moved at the edge of her vision — a shape, a shadow, a suggestion of limbs too long and angles too sharp. She didn't look directly at it. Some instinct told her that looking would be a mistake. The hum grew louder. The ground beneath her feet began to pulse, a slow rhythm that matched the pendant, matched her heart. The white grass crunched as she shifted her weight. The air tasted of copper and wildflowers. A voice spoke. Not words — a sound that shaped itself into meaning somewhere behind her eyes. You came. Rory's mouth opened. No sound came out. The pendant burned. The stones leaned inward, their branches reaching, their faces turning. The shape at the edge of her vision moved closer, and she felt its attention on her like a weight, like hands pressing against her skin. She closed her eyes. The voice spoke again, and this time she understood. We have been waiting. The hum stopped. The cold vanished. Rory opened her eyes. The circle was empty. The stones stood silent, their faces blank, their branches still. The white grass had turned green. The wildflowers nodded in a gentle breeze. She checked her phone. Eleven fifty-two. An hour. She'd lost an hour. The pendant lay cool against her chest, its light extinguished. Rory turned and walked back the way she'd come, her footsteps loud on the path, her breath steady, her eyes fixed on the gate ahead. She didn't look back. She didn't need to. She could feel the grove watching her leave, the stones remembering her shape, the thing at the edge of vision still there, still waiting, still hungry. The gate swung shut behind her. The iron scrollwork groaned. The city lights glittered in the distance, impossibly far away. Rory ran for the bus stop.