Run: 2026-09-23-01M37HPTXM8VNKN25JGECKESYQ

The last oak in Richmond Park stood behind Aurora like a gatepost. Beyond it, the path she had followed through the dark ended at a ring of standing stones and a clearing full of flowers. Her phone showed 11:43 p.m. It had shown 11:43 when she crossed the fence. “Brilliant.” She slipped it into her coat pocket and lifted the silver chain from beneath her collar. The Heartstone rested against her palm, a crimson sliver no bigger than her thumbnail. For three nights it had warmed against her chest whenever she faced west. Tonight, in the middle of her flat, it had grown hot enough to wake her. She had followed its heat through empty streets, onto the night bus, and across the park with a torch she now kept pointed at the ground. The stone cooled the instant she stepped into the clearing. That was wrong. She had come to the grove to find out what had called to it. Wildflowers crowded the grass, bluebells and poppies and small white blossoms she could not name. A few brushed her boots as she walked. Their heads turned beneath the torch beam. When she moved the light away, they held their new positions. Rory stopped and swept the beam back across them. The flowers faced her. A sound came from the far side of the stones. Three soft taps, with a pause between each one. She aimed the torch at the gap where she thought they had begun. Beyond it stood more trees, trunks packed close enough to swallow the light. A branch scraped bark behind her. She turned. The last oak stood where it should, its broad roots lifting the earth beside the path. Nothing hung from its branches. Nothing crossed the ground beneath it. She had heard deer moving in the park before. They cracked twigs and shoved through bracken. Whatever had touched the bark had made one short stroke, as though testing the sound. Rory stepped towards the nearest standing stone. Up close, it was oak rather than rock, a dead trunk cut flat on two sides and worn grey by age. Grooves ran down its face. She traced one with a finger and found damp soil packed into the cut. The taps came again. This time she counted four. “Is someone there?” The flowers stirred around her ankles. No wind reached her face. She waited for an answer, then pulled her hand from the trunk. A smear of dark soil marked her fingertip. There were no birds calling from the trees, no road noise from outside the park. Even the distant aircraft she had heard on the walk in had gone. Rory checked her phone. 11:43. She opened the compass. Its needle spun once and settled on the last oak. Rory turned. The needle stayed fixed on the screen, pointing towards her wrist. “Fine. Keep your secrets.” She put the phone away. The Heartstone had begun to warm again. A portal. That was the one thing she knew the pendant could find, though nobody had told her where this one led or what shape it might take. The grove had been her best guess. She had planned to walk the boundary, watch the stone, and leave before midnight. She hooked the chain around two fingers and walked towards the gap between the first pair of standing oaks. The warmth rose with each step. At the gap, the pendant gave a faint pulse. Beyond the boundary, Richmond Park looked as it had when she arrived. Grass dipped towards the path. A fallen limb lay across it, pale where the bark had split. Rory crouched beside the limb. She had stepped over it on her way in. The wood was dry, though the grass beneath her palm was wet. At the far end, a cluster of small white flowers grew through a knot in the timber. She had not seen flowers on the path. Rory took a step back into the clearing. The Heartstone cooled. She stepped towards the limb. It warmed. She lifted it by the thicker end, carried it aside, and looked down at the ground it had covered. No path. Just grass, thick and unbroken from one side to the other. Behind her, something tapped twice against wood. She stood without turning. Two taps. Not four. The sound had come from one of the boundary oaks. “Whoever you are, I’m leaving.” She faced the clearing. The flowers stood upright, their faces angled towards the nearest stone. Her torch beam caught a patch of pale colour at the edge of the trees. She moved the light across it. A strip of exposed wood on a trunk. When she lowered the beam, the pale strip seemed to move. Rory raised the torch again. The exposed patch was gone. The Heartstone pressed heat into her palm. She looked at the gap, then at the blank stretch of grass beyond it. Her way back had been there minutes ago. She could still see the fence through the trees, or what looked like it: three thin horizontal lines between the trunks. She chose the fence. Keeping her eyes on the lines, she walked through the gap. Cold air struck her cheeks. Her boot came down on grass and sank to the ankle. Rory jerked her foot free. Water filled the print. The beam showed a narrow pool at the edge of a bed of reeds. Its black surface held the reflection of the standing oaks behind her, though she could no longer see their tops when she looked up. There had been no pool on the path in. The fence lines were reeds. She backed through the gap and found solid ground. In the clearing, the air felt warmer. The pendant cooled once more. A voice spoke from among the trees. “Rory.” It used Eva’s voice, including the rough catch at the end that came when Eva had spent a night talking over pub noise. Rory’s grip tightened on the torch. Eva was at home. Rory had left her a message before boarding the bus, and Eva had replied with a demand for the address. “Rory, where are you?” The voice came from beyond the pool now. It sounded close enough to belong to someone standing in the reeds. Rory took out her phone and found Eva’s message. What address? Send me the pin. Below it, her own reply sat unsent, a grey bar across the bottom of the screen. She had typed Richmond Park, near— The rest of the line was gone. The voice called again. “Answer me.” Rory pressed the call button beside Eva’s name. The phone showed one bar of signal. It rang. Across the clearing, from inside the trees, a phone began to ring with the same bright tune Eva used. Rory ended the call. The ringing in the trees stopped halfway through a note. She shut off her screen. Her torch lit only the ground directly ahead. In its narrow circle, the flowers bent away from something she could not see. A line of motion crossed the clearing, slow enough that each stem had time to fold and rise. It passed five feet in front of her and reached the oak where she had first put her hand. Soil dropped from a groove in its face. Rory took one step back. The flowers near the stone leaned inward. A print appeared in the soft earth at its base: a long, narrow hollow, deeper at one end. A second print formed beside it. The voice came from the other side of the oak. “You took a long time.” It was not Eva now. Rory knew the words, though she could not place the speaker. She had heard them in the dream that sent her into the park three nights ago, with the pendant burning against her chest. In that dream a man had stood behind a door and repeated the sentence until she woke. “You know what this is?” Rory asked. No answer. A third print sank into the earth. She moved towards the centre of the clearing. The Heartstone warmed, then gave another pulse. The prints stopped forming. There was a circular patch of bare ground among the flowers. She had skirted it on the way in because it looked muddy. Her torch showed smooth dark earth, with no leaves, no shoots, no trace of the flowers that pressed against its edge. A narrow seam crossed it from one side to the other. The pendant pulsed again. Heat spread through her fingers. Rory crouched. From this angle she could see that the seam was a gap between two pieces of earth. She touched one edge with the end of her torch. It gave beneath the plastic casing. Behind her, the voice made a sound like a breath drawn through teeth. “Stay there.” Rory kept the torch against the seam. She had meant to address the thing by the oak. Instead, the words had gone into the ground. The flowers around the bare patch folded flat. A sound rose through the soil: a dull knock, then another. Farther down, something answered with three taps. Rory pulled the torch away. The knocking stopped. At the edge of her sight, a pale shape passed between two standing oaks. She turned the light on them. The trunks stood empty, but one carried a fresh mark across its face, a clean strip at the height of her shoulder. “Rory.” Eva’s voice again, from much nearer. “Look at me.” She fixed her eyes on the seam. The Heartstone had become too hot to hold. Rory let it fall against her jumper and pushed the chain beneath her collar. Warmth gathered over the scar on her left wrist where the links had brushed it. The bare ground trembled. A little soil slid from one edge of the seam and dropped into darkness. Rory eased the torch back towards it. The beam entered a crack no wider than a finger. It showed roots threaded through the soil beneath the clearing, and, below them, a flat surface marked with scratches. She leaned closer. The surface had the colour of old bone. Across it ran a neat row of small holes. The voice beside her ear whispered, “Don’t open it.” Rory swung the torch. Light struck flowers, then the standing oak, then the empty space between them. No face. No body. The nearest flowers still lay pressed flat. One white blossom rose, its stem bending against the weight of something that had moved off it. She got to her feet and retreated until her shoulder touched the oak. The wood was cold through her coat. Beyond the opposite gap, the pool waited among the reeds. Her phone showed 11:43 when she checked it again. The bare patch gave another dull knock. Soil lifted along the seam, held for a breath, and settled. “Rory?” The voice came from the gap that had led her in, her own voice this time. She held the torch steady on the opening. Beyond the stones stood the last oak, the path, and the fallen limb with its pale split bark. White flowers grew from the knot at one end. Her voice spoke again from behind that limb. “Come and look.”