Run: 2026-09-23-01M36P2GQD308NDCGSC079SX0S

The pendant warmed before Rory reached the park gates. She stopped beneath a streetlamp and drew it from under her collar. The crimson stone sat against her palm, small as a thumbnail, its faint inner glow visible through the grit of the night. She pressed her thumb to it. Heat seeped into her skin. “Not here,” she whispered. The pendant pulsed once. Richmond Park spread beyond the railings, black lawns cut by pale paths. The city’s glow had thinned behind her. No cars passed on the road. Somewhere beyond the park, a train gave a low, drawn-out moan, then fell silent. Rory checked the time on her phone. 12:18. She had told Eva she would be home before one. She had not told her where she was going. A text about a warm pendant and a hidden grove would have earned a string of questions she could not answer. The warmth had started during her shift at the Golden Empress, while she carried a paper bag of noodles through a quiet stretch of town. It had grown with every turn she took towards the park. The Heartstone had never burned her, but tonight it seemed to press a small, insistent thumb against her chest. She had come to find what it was reacting to. If there was a portal here, she wanted to see it before someone else did. Rory slipped the pendant beneath her jumper and went through the gate. The path gravel crunched under her boots. She kept her phone in one hand and a small torch in the other. The beam picked out wet leaves, a litter bin, the white face of a sign warning visitors to keep dogs under control. She passed the sign and turned from the main path where a narrow track dipped between trees. She had found the track once before, in daylight, after following the pendant’s pull through a stand of oaks. That trip had ended at the boundary stones. She had meant to return with more time and proper shoes. Now the trees closed over her, and the park’s open lawns vanished behind a wall of dark trunks. A twig snapped to her left. Rory swung the torch. The beam crossed bracken and an oak trunk scarred with pale patches of lichen. Nothing stood between them. She held the light on the tree until her wrist began to ache, then lowered it. A second snap came from behind her. She turned. The track lay empty. Her own footprints marked the damp earth, dark impressions that stopped where the path curved. “Fox,” she said. The word sounded small beneath the trees. She kept walking. The ground sloped down. Mist gathered in shallow folds over the grass, though the air above it remained clear. The pendant’s heat seeped through her jumper. With each step, the stone gave a faint pulse against her chest. The grove appeared without warning. One moment, the trees crowded close around the track. The next, Rory stood at the edge of a clearing washed in colour. Wildflowers covered the ground in a dense, bright mat: yellow, blue, white, shades of pink that held their colour beneath a sky with no moon. The clearing was too wide for the space between the trees. Its far side seemed to retreat when she looked straight at it. The standing stones marked its boundary. Ancient oaks, thick and split, rose from the earth in a rough ring. Their roots twisted over the ground like knotted fingers. Rory stopped at the nearest one. She had expected the grove to feel old. She had not expected it to smell of rain-wet soil and crushed flowers, or for the air to be warm enough that she could unzip her coat. Every blossom stood open. A few leaned towards her torch. She checked her phone. 12:26. The screen showed one bar, then none. “Fine,” she muttered. “In and out.” She stepped over the root line. The warmth in the pendant vanished. Rory halted. She touched the stone through her jumper. Its surface felt cool now, almost damp. The sudden absence of heat left her more unsettled than the pulses had. She lifted the torch and swept it across the clearing. Nothing moved among the flowers. No gateway hung between the stones. No shimmer split the air. Just grass and blooms and the black wall of trees. At the centre stood a low mound of earth, no higher than her knee. A single white flower grew from its crown. Its petals looked thin as paper. Rory walked towards it, stepping around the taller clumps so she would not crush them. A sound came from the trees behind her: three knocks, evenly spaced. She turned. The nearest oak stood at the edge of the clearing, its trunk dark and broad. The torch showed no mark, no branch striking against it. Three knocks sounded again, this time from the left side of the grove. Rory’s hand closed around the torch. “Who’s there?” No answer. She waited. The flowers shifted around her boots. A breeze crossed the clearing, carrying the smell of damp bark, though the trees above the flowers stood still. Rory looked back at the mound. The white flower had turned towards her. She lowered the torch, then raised it again. The stem curved from the soil in a clean bend, its blossom aimed at her face. A small bead of water trembled at the tip of one petal. “Not a portal,” she said. “Just a flower.” Her voice broke against the trees. From somewhere behind her, another voice repeated the last word. Flower. Rory spun round. The sound had come from deeper in the grove. It had her pitch, but not her breath. The word arrived dry and clipped, as if spoken through a crack in a door. She shone the torch between the oaks. The beam met a tangle of branches, then darkness. “Who said that?” The pendant warmed against her chest. Rory backed away from the mound. The blossoms brushed her trouser legs. She kept her eyes on the trees and counted the stones as she moved. One, two, three. The nearest boundary oak stood ten paces away. Its roots made a low barrier across the ground. A rustle travelled through the flowers behind her. She turned her torch. The heads of the blossoms trembled in a narrow line, one after another, moving from the centre of the grove towards her. The grass parted, though nothing showed beneath it. Rory backed faster. Her heel caught in a root. She lurched, caught herself against the nearest oak and felt its bark flex beneath her palm. She snatched her hand away. The trunk gave a soft, deep creak. A sound like a person shifting in a chair. “Right,” Rory said. Her mouth had gone dry. “I’m leaving.” She faced the path through the trees. It should have been a few steps beyond the boundary, where the narrow track returned to the park. Instead, the oaks stood shoulder to shoulder, their roots braided together in a dark wall. She could see no gap. She remembered the ring from her first visit. She had entered between two split trunks, one marked by a strip of pale bark. She found that tree now and moved towards it. The pendant pulsed. Heat struck the centre of her chest. The pale strip on the oak looked like a narrow face turned sideways. Rory fixed her eyes on it and walked. The grove narrowed around her. The flowers brushed her knees. Behind her, their stems whispered together. A footstep fell at her back. She stopped. The next step came when she stopped. Rory turned. Her torch cut across the flowers. A shallow path ran through them, the stems bent under the weight of something that did not show itself. The path ended six feet from her boots. Her thumb found the crescent scar on her left wrist. She pressed it hard enough to hurt. “You’re not following me,” she said. A pause. Then, from just beyond the torchlight, her own voice answered. “You’re not following me.” The sound came from beside the oak she had just touched. Rory kept the beam fixed there. The bark remained still. A drop of sap slid down the trunk and caught the light, black as ink. The pendant beat hot against her ribs. Rory backed towards the pale strip of bark. Her heel struck something on the ground. She looked down. A silver chain lay among the flowers, its links bright and clean. It ran from her own collar to the mound in the centre of the grove. She grabbed at her throat. Her chain still circled it. The crimson stone hung beneath her jumper. The loose chain on the ground tightened. Rory’s torch hand shook once. She steadied it against the oak and followed the silver links with the beam. They ran through the flowers towards the mound, then rose from the earth in a shallow curve. At the other end, someone stood among the blossoms. The torch caught a pale hand wrapped around the chain. The rest of the figure remained behind the bend of the oak, but the fingers held the links with Rory’s crescent scar on the left wrist.