Run: 2026-09-23-01M37HHQ5J0X9WA532CPH1TNCR

The gate into Richmond Park stood open. Rory passed through it with one hand around the pendant beneath her coat and stopped three steps later. Behind her, rain ticked against the pavement. Ahead, the path lay dry. She looked up. Clouds covered the moon, and the branches above the path held no leaves thick enough to shelter it. Water ran down the iron gate and gathered in the grooves of the road. None reached the gravel at her feet. “Fine,” she murmured. “One strange thing at a time.” The note had given her no name. It had arrived at her flat that afternoon in an envelope without a stamp, slipped under the door while she was downstairs at Silas’ bar. Inside, on a strip of paper torn from the back of a receipt, someone had written: If you want to know who gave you the Heartstone, bring it to the oak stones after dark. Come alone. The writer knew what the pendant was called. Rory had never told anyone she owned it, let alone worn it where a stranger might have seen the deep crimson stone beneath her shirt. She had spent an hour over tea deciding not to come, then another looking up the last bus to Richmond. Now the path under her boots gave a small, brittle crack. She glanced down. The gravel had become a scatter of pale twigs. She turned to check the gate. Its bars showed through the rain, perhaps twenty paces away. A car passed beyond it, headlights washing over the road. No light fell through to her side. Rory took out her phone. Full signal. At 11:17, Eva would still be awake. Rory opened their messages and typed, At Richmond. Checking something. Back soon. She read it once, deleted Checking something, and sent the rest. The reply arrived before she put the phone away. What are you doing in Richmond? Rory left the question unanswered and followed the path. She had found the grove once before, in daylight, after taking a wrong turn through a stand of bracken. Wildflowers had covered the clearing despite a week of frost. At its edge stood a ring of ancient oak trunks, stripped of bark and pale as stone. She remembered pressing her palm to one. It had felt warm. Tonight, the trees on either side of the path leaned close enough to blot out the park. Water shone on their branches. Every few steps she heard a drip fall, but nothing struck the ground. A bell rang somewhere ahead. One clear note, followed by the soft rattle of a bicycle chain. Rory moved to the side of the path. No cyclist appeared. The chain rattled again, farther away this time, then stopped. She listened for wheels on gravel and heard only the low hum of traffic beyond the park. “Come on, then,” she called. No one answered. She felt foolish for speaking and more foolish for waiting. At the next fork, she found the path to the grove. A narrow track cut through brambles on her right, its entrance marked by two bent hawthorns. Tiny white blossoms showed among their thorns. She paused. March had brought a cold snap that morning. Ice had coated the delivery scooter outside the Golden Empress. The pendant warmed against her chest. Rory pulled it free. The crimson stone, no bigger than her thumbnail, held a faint glow at its centre. She touched its face. Warm, not hot. The silver chain had left a red line across her neck where she had gripped it. She stepped between the hawthorns. The traffic vanished. Rory stopped with one foot planted in the track, the other still hovering above it. She set her boot down and turned her head towards the main path. No cars. No rain. The wind had gone as well, though the brambles moved around her, thorns rasping against one another. Her phone showed 11:19. She took a photograph of the hawthorns. The screen caught their white flowers, the path behind them, and a blur of her own shoulder at the edge. She checked the image, then put the phone in her coat pocket without looking at her messages. The track descended into a hollow. Flowers crowded its banks: bluebells, foxgloves, small yellow cups she could not name. Their colours looked washed clean in the dark. A sweet smell rose from them, strong enough to cover the damp earth. At the bottom of the hollow, something tapped three times against wood. Rory stopped. A pause. Three more taps. “Hello?” The tapping ceased. She pulled a coin from her pocket and struck it against a nearby trunk. The sound landed flat and close. Whatever she had heard came from beyond the trees. She walked on, keeping the coin in her fist. The clearing opened without warning. One step brought her out of the narrow track and into a wide circle of grass. Flowers spread to the roots of the standing oaks. There were seven trunks, each set upright in the ground, their dead branches reaching into the black canopy overhead. She counted them again. Seven. The note had not told her which stone to approach. Rory checked the pendant. Its glow showed through her fingers, no stronger than before. “Whoever left the note, I’m here.” Her voice crossed the clearing and seemed to stop at the opposite trees. She had expected an echo. The hollow around her gave none. Rory waited, watching the gaps between the oaks. At the edge of her vision, one of the foxglove stalks bent. She turned towards it. The stalk stood straight, its bells still. “Didn’t bring much patience,” she called. A dry scrape came from behind her. She spun. Nothing occupied the track. The flowers along its edge swayed, their heads brushing together. She stared until they settled. The pendant gave one pulse of heat. It pressed against her fingers like a living fingertip. Rory crossed towards the nearest standing oak. Close up, its pale surface held deep splits filled with darkness. She ran her hand down one split, searching for a mark, a seam, anything that might explain why the pendant had led her here. Cold wood. A fleck broke off beneath her nail. At her back, a bicycle bell rang. She turned so fast her heel tore a strip of turf. The clearing remained empty. The bell had sounded less than an arm’s length from her ear. She could still feel its note in her teeth. Rory drew a breath and counted the trunks again. One to her left. Two beyond the track. Three across the far edge. One beneath her hand. Seven. She looked down at the grass. No tyre marks crossed it. No footprints, either, apart from hers leading from the track. She crouched and touched one of her boot prints. Its rim crumbled under her thumb. Something rustled overhead. Rory looked up. The dead branches of the oak held a cluster of leaves. They were dark, almost black, and shook against one another. She had seen bare branches when she entered the clearing. Her phone buzzed. She took it out. Eva had sent six messages. Rory, answer me. Where in Richmond? It’s nearly one. Are you with someone? I’m calling you. Rory. The clock at the top of the screen read 11:21. A call from Eva came through while Rory stared at it. She answered and pressed the phone to her ear. “Eva? I’m all right.” A breath caught on the line. “Rory? Where have you been?” “In the park. My phone says—” “Your phone’s wrong. I rang you for an hour.” Rory glanced at her own recent calls. No missed calls showed above Eva’s name. “I only got here a few minutes ago.” “Get out of there. Tell me which gate and I’ll come.” “The gate near the road with the—” The line filled with a faint clicking sound. Rory held the phone away from her ear. Three clicks. A pause. Three more. “Eva?” Through the clicking, a voice spoke. It sounded like Eva, though its words came from a distance, as if she had turned away from her phone. “Rory, who’s breathing next to you?” Rory stood without moving. The leaves above her made a small, dry sound. “No one.” The clicking stopped. For a moment she heard the room around Eva: a television, a kettle beginning to boil. “Listen to me,” Eva began. The call cut off. Rory looked at the screen. No signal. The time changed from 11:21 to 11:22. She lifted the phone towards the open sky and walked back towards the track. Halfway across the clearing, the pendant warmed again. This time the heat pulled her attention to the oak on her right. Its base rose out of a bank of flowers, their stems thick and tangled around the roots. Rory kept walking. Another pace, and the pendant cooled. She stopped. When she stepped back, heat returned to the stone. She looked from the track to the oak. “Two minutes,” she told herself. “Then the gate.” The flowers at the oak’s base reached her knees. She pushed them aside with her boot and found a narrow gap between two roots. Earth had fallen away beneath them, leaving a hollow large enough to take her arm. The sweet smell of the flowers thinned. Cold air came out of the gap. Rory crouched. She turned on her phone’s torch and shone it beneath the roots. The light fell on packed soil, a broken bottle neck, and the corner of something white lodged farther back. She stretched her hand into the hollow. Her fingertips brushed paper. Behind her, her own boots crossed the grass. Rory held still, one hand beneath the roots. She heard a heel press down, then the faint grind of soil under a turning foot. Her torch lit the paper in the hollow. She kept its beam there while she withdrew her hand and rose to face the clearing.