Run: 2026-09-23-01M36RE7WQABR5YZV27PF493FE

Aurora Carter left the marked path where two ancient oaks leaned towards each other. She had come to Richmond Park with a charged phone, a torch, and the pendant tucked beneath her jumper. The rest of the park lay behind her: dark grass, distant road noise, the occasional wash of headlights through the trees. Ahead, the oaks framed a patch of deeper dark. The Heartstone had warmed at the same place three nights running. Rory had marked each spot on her phone map. The points had narrowed to this stretch of woodland, though the map showed no path here and no clearing beyond it. She pressed the pendant through the fabric. Its silver chain shifted against her skin. The crimson stone held a faint glow, visible through the knit. “Right,” she whispered. “Let’s find out what you want.” Her voice came back from the trees in a thin, delayed echo. Rory stopped. The park’s night sounds continued behind her—a car on a distant road, wind stirring the high branches—but nothing answered from ahead. She drew the torch from her coat pocket and stepped between the oaks. The ground dipped. Her boots sank into soft leaf mould, though the rest of the park had been dry beneath her feet. A few paces on, the trees parted around a clearing. Wildflowers crowded its edges, their heads open beneath the night sky. White petals, yellow petals, blue petals; none of them folded against the cold. Rory turned and looked back. The two oaks stood behind her, trunks knotted with age. Beyond them, the path she had left should have been visible. Instead she saw more trees, packed close together, their branches braided across the dark. She raised her torch. Its beam caught pale bark, then black gaps between trunks. No path. A small crescent scar crossed the inside of her left wrist. She pressed it with her thumb, the old habit of checking that her hands belonged to her. Then she took out her phone. No service. The time read 11:18. “Fine. No bars. Still have a clock.” She opened the compass. The needle shivered between north and east, spun once, then settled pointing towards the centre of the clearing. The pendant gave a warm pulse beneath her jumper. Rory looked up. At the far side of the flowers, four stones rose from the earth in a crooked line. They looked less like a wall than the remains of one, tall and dark, their surfaces ribbed with lichen. She had read about standing stones in the area, but the park’s map had shown nothing here. She took a photograph. The screen showed the clearing, the flowers, and a pale blur where the stones stood. Rory lowered the phone and checked the real stones against the image. They had not moved. The blur might have come from her hand. She took another picture, this time bracing her wrist against a tree. The shutter clicked. From somewhere behind the stones, a second click answered. She swung the torch that way. Its beam crossed flowers, earth, stone. Nothing else. A breeze brushed the tops of the flowers, moving them in a single sweep towards the standing stones. The air against Rory’s face stayed still. She moved to the nearest stone. The pendant warmed again, a measured pulse against her chest. She could feel the chain tighten where it had caught beneath her collar. The stone’s surface held shallow marks. Not letters, as far as she could tell. Long cuts and branching grooves, as if someone had pressed the point of a blade into the rock and drawn it down. She brought the torch closer. The grooves looked wet. Rory touched one with a knuckle. The stone felt dry and cold. She rubbed her hand against her jeans. A sound came from the woods behind her: three knocks, spaced like someone tapping on a door. She turned. The clearing’s edge closed around the torchlight. Trunks, leaves, dark. “Who’s there?” No reply. The quiet after her question had weight. It pressed out the distant road noise, the wind, the insects. Rory heard her own breath catch, then forced it slow. She put the phone in her pocket and held the torch in both hands. Three knocks sounded again, farther off this time. She backed away from the stones. A flower brushed her trouser leg. Its stem bent, though nothing had touched it. She watched it lift again. The phone buzzed in her pocket. Rory flinched, then pulled it out. The screen showed a missed call from an unknown number. The time still read 11:18. She tapped the screen. The call log displayed no number, only a grey bar where the details should have been. A new message appeared beneath it. COME THROUGH. Rory looked at the standing stones. The message vanished. Her phone dimmed, then went black. She pressed the side button. Nothing. “Not funny.” The words sounded small beneath the trees. She shoved the phone into her pocket and turned towards the way she had entered. The oaks stood at the clearing’s edge, though she remembered coming in on the other side. Their trunks made a narrow gap. Beyond them, the ground rose towards the park. She walked towards it. The wildflowers shifted around her ankles. Their faces turned as she passed, following her in a slow, even movement. Rory picked up her pace. The pendant’s warmth sharpened with each step until it felt like a coin held against a flame. At the gap between the trees, she stopped. Beyond the oaks, a familiar strip of grass sloped down towards the park path. A metal bench stood beneath a tree, its slats silver in the torchlight. She recognised it from the first time she had come to test the pendant. She had passed that bench less than ten minutes ago. Her phone remained dead. Her watch showed 11:19. Rory crossed between the trunks. The air changed on her face, cooler and damp. She stepped onto the grass and looked over her shoulder. The clearing waited beyond the oaks. The flowers pressed close to the boundary, all their open faces turned towards her. She took another step towards the bench. From the clearing came the scrape of a boot on stone. Rory froze. She had heard her own boots make that sound against the standing stones. The scrape had matched her pace exactly: one step forward, one drag of the heel. She lifted her right foot and set it down on the grass. Behind her, inside the grove, a boot scraped stone. Rory kept her eyes on the bench. Her fingers closed around the dead phone in her pocket. The pendant throbbed once, hard enough to knock against her breastbone. A voice came from between the oaks. “Rory.” It was her own voice. Not an echo, not a recording played through a phone. The words carried the same dry edge she heard when she was tired, the same slight catch on the first syllable. She turned. The grove stood empty. The nearest standing stone showed its dark grooves beneath the torch beam. At its base, a white flower had opened wider than the others. Something narrow and black lay across its petals. Rory took one step towards it. The flower’s stem bent under the weight. Then the thing on its petals tapped the stone. Once. Twice. Three times.