Run: 2026-09-23-01M37HZ886HAXRKT9DVHDCP1AM

The note had said Richmond Park. Oak stones. Midnight. Rory had spent three days trying to decide whether that was an invitation or a warning. At eleven forty-seven, she put on her coat, tucked the note into her pocket, and went to find out. Beyond the last path lamp, the park seemed to have been emptied of distance. Her torch caught wet grass, a fallen branch, the white flash of a deer’s rump far off among the trees. Everything beyond its beam looked equally near and equally black. She walked with her phone in one hand and the other closed around the pendant beneath her collar. She found the oak stones where the note promised. They stood in a rough circle beyond a stand of birches, trunks cut square at the top and sunk deep into the earth. In daylight they might have looked like the remains of an old fence. At night, their bark shone grey and hard as rock. Rory stopped short of them. The park had been quiet on the walk in. Here, it was quieter. No traffic from the road. No wind through the birches she had just passed. Even the loose hem of her coat hung still. She looked back. The path remained visible between the trees, a strip of paler dark. She could leave. No one had seen her come, and whoever had sent the pendant would never know she had failed to follow a note with no name on it. It had been left for her a week ago, the crimson stone on its silver chain in a plain envelope. Since then she had caught herself holding it whenever she was alone. She wanted to know why it had been given to her. She wanted, more urgently, to know whether the things she’d begun noticing were real. Rory stepped between two of the oak pillars. Warmth stirred against her breastbone. She pulled the chain over her head and held the stone in her palm. Deep crimson, no larger than her thumbnail, it carried a faint light within it. The warmth came and went in a slow pulse. “Right,” she said. Her voice sounded too loud. She slipped the chain around her neck again and raised the torch. Wildflowers covered the clearing, dense among the grass despite the cold. White petals, little blue ones, sprays of yellow. None of them moved. The circle of oak stood behind her; ahead, the clearing narrowed between two dark hollies. There was no sign, no door, nothing to explain what she was meant to find. She took a photograph. The phone showed the clearing washed flat by its flash. When she lowered it, she heard a bell. A short, bright ring, like the one above the door at the Golden Empress. Rory turned towards it. Her torch beam swept the birches and stopped on a low branch holding three curled leaves. No door. No bell. She waited. A second ring came from farther away, somewhere past the hollies. It had the same thin metal sound she heard throughout a shift at the restaurant, usually followed by Yu-Fei calling an order or someone stamping rain off their shoes. Rory knew how easily a familiar noise could fool her. She had heard that bell in the squeal of bus brakes before. The pendant warmed against her skin. She followed the sound across the flowers. Halfway to the hollies, something pale shifted at the edge of her torchlight. She swung the beam round. A patch of white blossoms stood beneath one of the oaks, crowded so thickly they might have been a dropped handkerchief. She kept the light on them until her breathing slowed. Then she heard footsteps. They came from ahead of her, a soft press and lift through the grass. Rory stood still. The steps stopped too. “Hello?” No answer. She wished she hadn’t spoken. At least now, if someone was hiding in the trees, they knew exactly where she stood. She backed towards the oak circle, watching the gap between the hollies. The footsteps started again. So did hers. When she stopped, they took one more step. Rory held her breath. The clearing stayed silent. She shifted her weight deliberately from one foot to the other. A beat later, grass whispered near the hollies. A delay. An echo, somehow. She turned and walked quickly towards the standing oaks. Her torch caught the gap she had used to enter, then slid across another pillar, then another. There were more of them than she remembered. She counted eight before the beam returned to the first, though she could have sworn there had been six. At the boundary, she looked for the path between the birches. Beyond the oaks lay more flowers and a bank of trees she didn’t recognise. Rory stepped out between two pillars. The pendant went cool. She took another step, and the birches appeared to her left, the path visible beyond them. She stopped and looked back. From outside the circle, the flowers ran almost to the far side. She could see the hollies. Nothing stood between them. She checked her phone. Twelve minutes past midnight. It had been eleven fifty-nine when she crossed the boundary. A noise came from the clearing: a sleeve brushing bark. Rory kept her torch on the hollies. “Who’s there?” Something scraped against one of the oaks behind her. She spun. Her light found only the pillar, its bark deeply ridged. A small crescent of pale wood showed where a flake had been pulled away. It was at the height of her left hand. Rory looked down. She had been gripping the pendant with that hand. The old scar across her wrist, a small white crescent she’d had since she was a child, showed below her cuff. She had not touched the tree. A footstep sounded inside the circle. It was close enough now that she could hear grass spring back after it. Rory went towards the path. She had taken perhaps six strides when the bell rang again, directly behind her. She kept moving. Another ring followed, duller, as though someone had put a hand over it. The path should have brought her out by the dark shape of an old bench. Instead it curved through birches she did not remember passing, and returned her to the oak pillars. She stopped. Her breath came hard and loud. Somewhere outside this pocket of trees, Richmond Park held roads, houses, people closing pubs and missing the last train. She could picture them clearly. She could not hear any of them. The pendant pulsed. Rory pulled it free of her collar. Its faint glow had strengthened, staining the lines of her palm red. She faced the clearing and took two steps to her right. The stone cooled. She moved left, towards a narrow space between an oak pillar and a holly bush. Heat flowed into her fingers. Whatever the pendant had been meant to show her was there. She approached the space with her torch raised. The beam struck leaves, bark, and a patch of blackness between them that stayed black. She tilted the torch. Light fell on the grass at her feet and on the holly beyond, but not in the gap. The footsteps approached from inside the clearing. Rory turned. Across the flowers, beyond the reach of her torch, a shape stood between the oaks. Human height. A head, shoulders, one arm hanging at its side. When she lifted the light, the shape moved aside with it, keeping just beyond the beam. She lowered her hand. It stopped. She had the sudden, sick certainty that it was watching the pendant, not her. “Rory,” someone said from the dark gap behind her. It was her own voice, low and breathless. She felt the word in her throat, though she had made no sound. The figure across the clearing took a step forward. Rory closed her fist around the stone. The heat was almost painful. She did not look into the gap again. She moved sideways, keeping an oak between herself and the figure, and searched the grass for the place where she had first entered. She remembered stepping over a fallen branch just outside the circle. There—its broken end jutted from the flowers near two birches. The voice behind her said her name again. Softer this time. The way Eva said it when Rory had gone quiet and was pretending she was fine. Rory ran for the branch. Her shoulder struck an oak pillar. Bark tore against her coat. She stumbled over the branch and came down on one knee in mud. The pendant cooled so abruptly that she gasped. She pushed herself up and ran through the birches until she found the park path under her feet. Wind touched her face. Traffic murmured in the distance. A bird called once from a tree overhead. She stopped beneath the first path lamp and looked back. The birches stood close together. Behind them, there was no clearing she could see, only trunks and darkness. Rory took out her phone. Its screen read 12:13. One minute had passed since she last checked it. Her hand shook as she opened the photograph she had taken among the flowers. The flash had caught the oaks, the hollies, the white blossoms beneath the pillar. At the far edge of the frame, beside the holly bush, stood a person in a dark coat. Rory could make out straight black hair to the shoulders and one hand lifted near the collar. She had been holding the phone with both hands when she took the picture. Rory enlarged the image. It blurred before she could see the face. In the silence beneath the path lamp, the bell rang once more. She looked up. Nothing moved among the birches. The sound had come from inside her closed fist. Very carefully, she opened her hand. The Heartstone lay against her palm, dark and cold.