Run: 2026-09-23-01M36R7KK5VT4AWSQ7R9W56DMN

The pendant warmed before Rory reached the park gate. She stopped beneath the streetlamp and lifted the silver chain from her coat. The thumbnail-sized stone sat against her palm, dark red except for a faint glow inside it. Its pulse pressed against her skin. Once. Then again. Across the road, Richmond Park lay behind iron railings and a stretch of black trees. No cars passed. The traffic on the distant road made a low, steady hush, as if the city had drawn a blanket over itself. Rory closed her fingers around the Heartstone. “Fine. I’m here.” She had spent three evenings following its reactions through London, turning down streets whenever the stone cooled and doubling back when it warmed. The route had brought her to the park. She had come to find the Hel portal—or, if the pendant had led her wrong, to learn that much before dawn. Her phone showed 11:18. The park gate stood open. She slipped through, then checked the road behind her. A bus rolled past without slowing. Its lit windows showed empty seats. Rory pulled her hood up and started along the path. Wet grass brushed her boots. The path forked beneath a stand of trees. She had studied a map before leaving, but the map showed broad lawns and walking routes, not the old oak stones she needed. She chose the narrower track and switched on her phone’s torch. The beam picked out roots, a fallen branch, a scatter of leaves. At its edge, a pale shape crossed between two trunks. Rory stopped. A fox would have made a sound. A deer would have held its height above the grass. Whatever had moved vanished before she could place it. She turned the torch along the tree line. Nothing shifted in the beam. No eyes reflected back. “Deer,” she said. The word came out too loud. It carried down the path and returned from somewhere behind her, thinner and later than it should have. She faced forward and kept walking. The pendant’s warmth grew by degrees. She followed the pulse rather than the path, cutting between trees where the ground dipped. A low branch snagged her sleeve. When she pulled free, the fabric rasped against bark. Far off, a dog barked once. Rory counted the seconds. Another bark came after three. Then another after three. She stopped counting when the pattern continued through a fourth and fifth call. Each bark sounded the same: the same pitch, the same short rough edge, the same pause. The dog never moved closer. She slid the phone into her pocket but kept the torch on. The beam had become a narrow strip between the trunks. A cluster of white flowers brightened near her left boot. She crouched. The flowers should not have been there. Their thin petals opened from a patch of dark soil, each face turned towards the light. Rory touched one with the back of a finger. It bent beneath the pressure and sprang upright. She stood. Another patch of flowers dotted the ground ahead, then another. They ran through the trees in a crooked line, their white petals catching the torch beam. A breath of damp sweetness reached her, clean and faint, like crushed stems. The Heartstone pulsed against her hand. A few minutes later, she found the oak stones. They rose from the earth in a broken ring, dark with age. The nearest stood taller than her, its surface furred with moss. The others leaned at angles, half swallowed by roots. Beyond them, the trees opened onto a clearing. Rory stopped at the boundary. The grove held its own light. Not much; enough to show a carpet of wildflowers, all white and gold, and the black shapes of branches overhead. No moon showed through them. No stars either. The trees around the clearing stood close together, their trunks packed tight as a fence. The pendant had gone warm enough to hurt. She took out her phone. The screen read 11:18. Rory tapped it once. The numbers stayed fixed. “Battery’s fine.” The charge indicator showed eighty-three per cent. Her compass spun through a full circle, stopped, then pointed at her shoulder. She shut the app and opened the map. The blue dot sat in the middle of a blank grey patch. No path. No trees. No park. Her thumb hovered over the screen. She could turn back, walk to the road and try again in daylight. She had already done that once. The pendant had cooled before she reached the gate, then warmed again in her flat above Silas’ bar, where she had spent an hour staring at it and waiting for a second instruction that never came. Rory tucked the phone away. “I came to see what was here.” She crossed between the standing stones. The air changed on the other side. It held no wind, though branches stirred above her. The trees outside the ring made a dry whisper; inside it, the flowers stayed still. Rory walked into the clearing. Her boots pressed into soft earth. The wildflowers crowded her shins but left a narrow bare strip down the centre, as if someone had worn a path through them. She followed it to the far side. A small stone lay there, flat and grey. Its top held a round hollow filled with rainwater. Rory leaned over it. The water reflected no sky. It reflected the flowers, the trees, and her face. Her reflection looked up at her. Rory straightened. The surface trembled, though she had not touched the stone. A noise came from behind her: a soft scuff in the grass. She turned. The path through the flowers stood empty. Rory picked up a fallen branch. It fit her hand and felt heavy enough to use. She held it low, keeping the stone between herself and the far edge of the clearing. The scuff came again. Not from behind. From the trees on her right. She aimed the torch that way. The trunks stood in neat ranks. Between them, the dark seemed thicker than the night beyond the grove. She swept the beam over bark and low branches, then the flowers beneath them. At the edge of the light, a shape slipped behind a tree. Rory moved the beam back. The tree showed a strip of peeling bark and a black hollow where a branch had broken away. Nothing else. She took one step towards it. A twig snapped behind her. Rory spun around. The sound had come from close to the standing stones. Her torch caught the ring in sections: moss, rough bark, a spill of pale blossoms. No one stood there. The pendant gave a sharp pulse. Warmth flared through her palm. She tightened her grip on the branch. A thin note drifted from beyond the stones, almost too high to hear. It might have been a bird. It might have been a hinge moving on a gate. The note came again, lower this time. Rory backed towards the centre of the clearing. Her boot crushed a flower. Its stem cracked with a small, wet sound. The other flowers turned. Not all at once. One by one, their pale faces angled towards her. A slow ripple passed across the bare strip, from the standing stones to the stone basin. Rory kept her eyes on the tree line. She could feel the movement at her feet without looking down. “Who’s there?” Her voice crossed the clearing. The dark between the trees swallowed it. No answer came. She drew her phone from her pocket. The screen still read 11:18. She held down the power button. The phone went black, then lit again with the same time. A scrape travelled along the far side of the stone ring. It started near the biggest oak and moved around the circle, stone to stone. The sound had weight. It dragged through the grass, paused, then continued. Rory shifted until the standing stones sat at her back. Her scarred wrist pressed against the branch. The crescent on her skin had gone pale under her clenched fingers. The scrape stopped. She listened for the dog. The repeated bark had ended. She heard no road now, no passing bus, no wind in the trees beyond the grove. Only the faint click of her phone as its screen dimmed. Then something breathed from the hollow in the stone basin. Rory raised the torch. The water lay flat. Her reflection stared up from its dark surface, one hand around the branch, the other holding the light. Behind her reflected face, a second shape stood among the flowers. She turned. Nothing occupied the clearing behind her. The reflection’s second shape stayed put. It stood close to her shoulder, tall enough that its head reached the lower branches. Rory held the torch over the basin. The light washed across the water. Her face vanished in the glare. A fingertip touched the back of her coat. The fabric pulled tight between her shoulder blades. Rory did not turn. She brought the branch up, slow enough to keep its tip from scraping the stone. The fingertip pressed again, just below her collar. Then it traced a short line down the seam of her coat. The fabric shifted beneath it. Her pendant beat once against her palm. Rory raised the torch towards the standing stones. In the nearest stone’s dark face, a pale shape leaned out from behind her. A hand rested on her shoulder, each finger too long to fit the width of it.