Run: 2026-09-23-01M36P3HHX13G4AQ48G4F4FNF6

The standing stones stood in a ragged line beneath the oaks, black against a sky with no visible stars. Aurora stopped at the first one. Richmond Park stretched behind her, broad and familiar by daylight, but the trees had crowded close around the path. Her torch caught pale trunks, wet leaves and a scatter of gravel. Beyond the stones, it found nothing. The Heartstone rested against her chest. Its silver chain had snagged on the collar of her coat during the walk, and she freed it with two fingers. The deep-red gem warmed her palm. “You don’t get to drag me out here and then go quiet,” she murmured. Her voice slipped between the trees and vanished. No answer came from the park. No traffic carried over the hill. Even the wind had stopped. She had come because the pendant had pulsed for the first time in weeks. Not a flicker of warmth. A steady throb beneath her shirt, strong enough to wake her and keep her awake. The map pin on her phone had led her to the standing stones. Here, the gem had glowed through the fabric of her top. Now it looked like a piece of dark glass. Aurora checked her phone. One bar of signal. The time read 11:47. She sent Eva a message: At the stones. Pendant stopped. I’m heading back in ten. The message sat beneath a grey loading wheel. She pocketed the phone and stepped through the gap between two stones. The air changed against her face. A damp, earthy smell gave way to something sweet and green, like flowers left in a closed room. Her torch swept across a clearing crowded with wildflowers. Small white blossoms grew between the roots and across the grass, though frost had silvered the leaves outside. Their heads turned in the light. Aurora held still. The flowers stopped turning. A narrow track crossed the clearing and disappeared between two oak trees. She expected the Grove to look as it had in daylight: strange, but legible. The oaks should have marked the edges. The standing stones should have stayed at her back. She glanced over her shoulder. The gap between the stones had narrowed. Not much. A few inches, perhaps. Their lichen-scarred sides leaned towards each other, as if the dark had put weight on them. Aurora walked to the nearest oak and pressed her palm to its bark. The tree felt warm. She took her hand away. A click sounded behind her. She turned. The stones stood where they had stood. “Branch,” she told herself. The word came out small. She cleared her throat and looked at the pendant again. Its surface held a faint inner glow, red at the centre, as if a coal sat under the stone. The gem warmed. Aurora’s fingers closed around it. A low note rolled through the clearing. It had no direction. She felt it in her teeth, in the bones of her wrists. The flowers bowed as one, then lifted. Her torch blinked out. She thumbed the switch. The beam returned, thin and yellow, but the track no longer ran between the same trees. It bent left, crossed the far side of the clearing, then doubled back towards her. She watched the path while she turned in place. Each angle brought a different arrangement of oaks. The flowers stayed where they were. The phone buzzed inside her pocket. Aurora pulled it out. The screen showed a new message from Eva. Don’t go in. The time beneath it read 11:47. She typed, I’m already in. What’s wrong? The wheel spun. The phone buzzed again. Don’t go in. A third buzz. The same message. Aurora lowered the phone. Her thumb hovered over the call button. She looked past the track, into the dark between the trees. Something shifted there, just outside the beam. She swung the torch towards it. Nothing stood among the trunks. The beam touched a pale patch of bark, a thick root, a scatter of flowers. One blossom trembled after the rest had gone still. Aurora backed towards the stones. Her heel caught on a root. She steadied herself against the oak, and the bark gave a soft, hollow knock beneath her palm. The tree knocked again. She snatched her hand away. Behind her, somewhere beyond the stones, a dog barked once. The sound was sharp and ordinary. Aurora turned towards it with a breath lodged in her chest. A second bark came from the far side of the clearing. Then a third, close enough that she felt it at the back of her neck. Her phone lit in her hand. The screen had gone black except for the time. 11:47. The minutes had not moved. Aurora opened the clock app and tapped the display. Nothing changed. She pressed the side button. The phone stayed lit. “Fine,” she whispered. “No phone. No map. I can manage that.” Her words landed among the flowers. From somewhere behind the trees came her own voice, thin and distant. Fine. No phone. No map. Aurora froze. The echo had copied her cadence, but not the words’ weight. It sounded as if someone had spoken them from the bottom of a well. She swept the beam across the grove, moving it from trunk to trunk. The light found no face. A moth crossed the beam and broke into a bright fleck, then vanished into the dark. The path had shifted again. It now led straight towards the stones. She took one step along it. The ground beneath her boot felt soft, though the grass appeared dry. Something brushed her trouser leg. Aurora jerked back. A white flower had bent against her shin. Its petals carried a bead of clear water. She crouched and looked at the stem. It grew from the earth. No string, no wire, no trick she could see. The petals folded shut while she watched. A small dark opening remained at their centre. The Heartstone thumped against her palm. The sensation came once, twice, then held. Warmth spread through her fingers. Its inner light strengthened until the crimson gem showed through her closed hand. Aurora looked towards the path. A faint red glow shone between the trees ahead, low to the ground. It flickered at the pace of a pulse. She didn’t follow it. Instead, she went back the way she had come. She counted the trees she passed: one split trunk, a pair twisted together, a young oak with white flowers clustered at its roots. The stones should have appeared after the fourth tree. At the fourth, the path opened onto a second clearing. Aurora stopped. The same flowers crowded the grass. The same young oak stood at its centre, white blossoms gathered around the roots. Its bark bore the dark print of her palm. She checked her hand. Sap streaked her fingers, though the first tree had felt dry when she touched it. A rustle crossed the clearing. Not through the grass. Overhead. She raised the torch. The oak’s branches filled the light. Nothing sat among them. The rustle came again, travelling from branch to branch against the windless air. Then every leaf turned to show its pale underside. Aurora’s throat tightened. She forced herself to breathe through her nose. Damp earth. Green sweetness. Under that, the dry smell of dust in a room that had been shut for years. Her phone screen flashed. The message from Eva disappeared. A call filled the display. The caller name read AURORA CARTER. She stared at it. Her hand tightened around the phone until its edge pressed into her palm. The call stopped. A ringtone sounded from somewhere in the clearing. Aurora held her phone up. Its screen had gone dark again. The ringtone came from the ground, beyond the young oak, beneath a mat of flowers. It played the first few notes of the tune she had set for herself years ago, then cut off. A voice spoke from that same spot. “Rory?” It was Eva’s voice. Not through the phone. Not from outside the Grove. The sound rose from the flowers with the damp, muffled quality of someone speaking under a floor. Aurora’s torch beam shook across the clearing. “Eva, if that’s you, stop.” The name travelled through the trees. A pause followed. Then, from beneath the flowers, her own voice answered. “Fine. No phone. No map. I can manage that.” The Heartstone pressed hot against her skin. Aurora let it fall from her hand. It struck her shirt and swung on its chain, the gem shining red between the folds of her coat. The blossoms around the oak opened. Every white flower faced her. Each one held a dark centre, round and smooth as a closed eye. One by one, they turned towards the ground. The flower nearest her boot bent until its stem touched the earth. From below it came three knocks. Aurora backed away. The knocks followed beneath her feet. One. Two. Three. The last struck beneath the sole of her boot. She ran for the stones. The clearing stretched ahead, its trees drawing apart as she moved. The stones appeared at the far edge, but the gap between them had closed. She threw her shoulder into the nearest one. It did not shift. Behind her, the path rustled. Aurora spun around. The red glow hovered between the oaks, low and steady now. The flowers along the track had opened, each dark centre angled towards her. The phone rang again. This time, the sound came from her pocket. Aurora pulled it free. The screen showed her own name. She pressed the answer icon. Silence filled the speaker. Then a breath, close and uneven. Her breath. She lowered the phone. The breath continued through it, matching the rise and fall of her chest. She held her own lungs still. The breathing on the phone stopped. A moment later, something in the clearing took a breath. The flowers lifted with it. Grass flattened in a broad circle near the red glow, as if a body had risen from a crouch. Aurora’s thumb pressed against the phone’s edge. Her other hand closed around the pendant chain. The voice in the speaker formed the start of a word. “Rory—”