AI Rory had been in Richmond Park before, but never at night, and never alone.
The path vanished behind her after the second oak.
She stopped. The trees stood in a rough circle, their trunks thick and black in the moonlight. By day they would have looked old. Now they seemed old in the way ruins seemed old—left behind by something that had not gone anywhere. Between them, the park’s familiar slope and scatter of bracken had given way to a clearing bright with wildflowers.
The flowers should have been closed. It was November, and the night was cold enough to bite through Rory’s coat. Yet white heads nodded in the grass, opening toward her as she moved.
She had come for the pendant.
Not to find it; she already wore it. The small crimson stone rested beneath her jumper, its silver chain cold against her skin. She had come because, earlier that evening, it had begun to warm. Not much. A faint, steady heat that could have been body warmth , except she had taken it off and set it on the counter at the restaurant. It had warmed there, too.
Then it had pulsed .
Rory had remembered what the stranger told her when they gave it to her: If it ever wakes, go where the stones are. Don’t wait for morning.
She had almost laughed at that. Then the Heartstone had glowed in her palm.
Now she stood in the clearing, listening to the night, with the pendant tucked under her clothes and her phone showing no signal.
“Right,” she said, to no one . “I’m here.”
Her voice went nowhere. The trees swallowed it without even the courtesy of an echo .
She turned to look back the way she had come. The standing stones made a broken ring around the grove, pale shapes sunk into the earth. Beyond them, the park should have stretched away toward the road, dark and ordinary. Instead, she saw only trees. Their trunks crowded together, branches knit across the sky.
Rory checked her phone again. The time read 11:48. The battery, which had been at sixty-eight percent, showed thirty-one.
She put it away.
The pendant warmed against her chest.
At the far side of the clearing, something rustled through the flowers.
Rory held still. The sound came again, a soft brushing, like a sleeve drawn over grass. It travelled from left to right, though nothing moved where she could see.
A breeze stirred the flowers around her boots. The rest of the grove remained calm.
She took one step toward the centre. The pendant pulsed .
A second rustle came from behind her.
Rory turned too quickly and caught her toe on a root. She steadied herself on the nearest oak, palm flat against its rough bark. A crescent of pale moonlight lay across her wrist, showing the small scar there.
Nothing behind her. Only the stones and the dark between them.
She forced herself to breathe out slowly . She knew what panic did. It made every shadow a threat and every thought a prophecy. There were explanations. An animal in the undergrowth. A pocket of still air. A trick of light.
The grove smelled of damp soil and something sweet, bruised and green. She could hear her own breathing. The faint, quick tick of the Heartstone against her ribs.
Then came a sound like a door closing.
It was quiet, almost polite. A soft click, followed by the hush of a latch settling into place.
Rory’s hand tightened on the tree.
The clearing had no doors.
She listened for the ordinary night sounds that ought to follow: an owl, the far-off hum of traffic, a dog barking somewhere beyond the park. None came. Not even the whisper of wind in the branches. Silence settled so completely that she became aware of a low, almost musical note beneath it, felt more than heard. It seemed to rise through the soles of her boots.
The pendant grew warmer.
“Is this what you brought me here for?” she asked.
The question felt foolish as soon as she said it. She swallowed and pressed a hand to the stone through her jumper. It was no longer just warm. It throbbed against her palm with a slow, deliberate rhythm.
Across the clearing, a figure stood among the flowers.
Rory jerked her hand away.
It was difficult to tell how far off the figure was. The grove held no shadows in the usual sense. Moonlight silvered the flowers and the standing stones, but the figure was a darker patch in a dark place, thin and upright, its head tilted as if listening .
Rory said nothing.
It did not move.
She looked down at her phone. The screen lit her fingers blue. No signal. The battery now read seventeen percent.
When she looked up, the figure stood closer.
Not much closer. A few yards, perhaps. She could see the suggestion of shoulders and the long fall of something dark. No face. No hands.
Her first instinct was to run for the stones. Her second was to remember that the stones marked a boundary. She had no idea what they kept out. Or in.
The figure made a sound.
A light tap, like a fingernail against glass.
Rory stepped backward.
The Heartstone pulsed once, hard enough to hurt.
At the grove’s edge, between two standing stones, the air seemed to bend. Rory saw the clearing reflected there, bright and clear—but not as it was. In the reflection, the flowers had grown taller, brushing her knees. The figure was behind her.
She spun.
The clearing was empty.
The note beneath the silence deepened. Her teeth began to ache. She could hear her pulse now, fast and uneven, and beneath it another pulse , slower, coming from the earth.
The stone in her palm glowed through the fabric of her jumper.
Rory drew the chain out from her collar. The pendant hung between her fingers, crimson light faint beneath its surface. It looked like a drop of blood seen through deep water.
The air at the boundary shivered again. A thin seam appeared between the stones, blacker than the night around it. Not a gap. A line. It widened by the width of a breath.
The pendant’s glow sharpened.
A sound came from the seam. Not a voice exactly. More like someone speaking with their mouth pressed against the other side of a wall.
“Rory.”
Her hand clenched around the stone.
The voice had come from nowhere near the seam. It had come from behind her, close enough that she felt its breath at the back of her neck.
She turned, but there was only the empty clearing.
“Rory,” it said again.
This time the voice was Eva’s.
Her friend’s low, warm London drawl, the way she said Rory’s name when she was trying to make it sound like a joke. But Eva was at home. Rory had told her she was going for a walk, not where she was going . She had not even called her.
The stones clicked softly .
One by one, around the clearing.
Rory backed toward the centre. The figure reappeared at the edge of her vision, standing to her left. She kept her eyes on it now. It had no face, she thought. Then she saw the pale oval where a face ought to be, smooth as a blank mask.
“Eva?” she said, and hated herself for it.
The figure lifted one arm.
Rory’s fingers closed hard around the Heartstone. Its heat bit into her skin. The figure’s arm lowered. Its head tipped farther to one side.
The seam between the standing stones widened. In its darkness, Rory saw a room. A small, familiar room with a narrow window and a cracked mirror. Her old bedroom in Cardiff. The wallpaper her mother had chosen. The door, half open.
Someone stood just beyond it.
She could not make out the face, but she knew the posture. One hand on the doorframe. Shoulders squared. Waiting.
Her stomach tightened so hard it hurt.
No. Not this. Not him.
The man in the doorway leaned forward, and the bedroom light caught one side of his face.
Rory shut her eyes.
She heard a footstep in the clearing.
Then another.
The grass rustled near her boots. Something moved around her in a slow circle, keeping close. She kept her eyes shut and held the pendant against her chest. The silver chain dug into her fingers. She could feel the scar on her wrist where it pressed into the metal.
“Rory,” said her mother’s voice.
It was gentle, tired, and full of disappointment.
The thing circled.
“Open your eyes, love.”
Rory’s breathing came shallow. She fixed her attention on the warmth of the pendant, the hard shape of it in her palm. The stranger’s warning had been clear: go where the stones are. Don’t wait for morning. Nothing about what to do once she arrived.
The Heartstone pulsed again. Once. Twice.
On the third pulse , the low note in the earth stopped.
The silence that followed was different. Not empty. Attentive.
Something stood directly in front of her.
Rory opened her eyes.
The blank-faced figure was close enough to touch. Its surface reflected her, though not quite right: a dark-haired woman with bright eyes, pale and still . The reflected Rory wore no pendant. Her mouth was open in a soundless scream.
Rory drew back. The figure leaned forward.
Behind it, between the stones, the seam had become a doorway. The room beyond it was gone . There was only depth, an impossible dark that seemed to slope downward .
The figure raised its hand and placed its palm against Rory’s.
Its hand felt like cold glass .
The Heartstone flared crimson.
The figure recoiled. Its blank face cracked—not open, but across, a fine white line from brow to chin . From the crack came a sound like a breath drawn through a straw.
Rory tore herself away and ran.
The flowers dragged at her boots. She aimed for the stones, not the doorway but the gaps between them , and nearly fell as the ground tilted under her. The grove stretched. The boundary slid away, stone by stone, no matter how fast she ran.
Behind her, footsteps matched her pace.
She reached the nearest standing stone and slammed into it with her shoulder. The impact drove the breath from her. Her hand found the rough edge, and she clung to it.
For a moment, the ordinary park existed beyond the stones. She saw an empty stretch of grass, the dim outline of distant trees. Somewhere far off, a car passed on a road.
Then the figure’s hand touched the stone on the other side.
Rory felt the contact through the rock.
She jammed the Heartstone against the standing stone. Heat surged into her palm. The pendant shone so brightly its red light filled the grove, showing every flower bent toward her, every hollow between the roots.
The figure stood a few feet away. Its cracked face turned toward her. The thin line widened.
Rory pushed harder.
The stone in the boundary began to hum. The grass flattened in a ring around it. From beyond the grove came the sound of the park again: leaves stirring, distant traffic, the small, ordinary creak of a branch.
The figure stretched out its hand.
Rory kept the pendant pressed to the stone.
The black seam snapped shut.
The figure vanished. The hum ceased. Night rushed back into the grove with all its familiar noises at once: a fox barking somewhere in the park, wind in the branches, the rumble of a vehicle on a distant road.
Rory stayed where she was, forehead pressed to the stone, until the shaking in her knees eased.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. The screen had gone dark. When she woke it, the time read 11:53.
Five minutes.
The pendant had cooled. Its faint inner glow was gone .
She stepped through the standing stones and found the path exactly where it should have been. The park lay empty beneath the moon. Nothing followed her out.
Only when she reached the gate did Rory look back.
The oaks stood in their loose ring. The grove beyond them was hidden in darkness.
A white flower nodded among the roots, though there was no wind.