Run: 2026-09-23-01M37J026E4DDCJGNJ2X2BW347

Aurora reached the first standing stone at eleven forty-three. She knew the time because she had checked her phone at the end of the park path, where the Heartstone had warmed against her collarbone. She had checked it again beneath the trees. Two minutes had passed on the screen. The walk had taken long enough for sweat to cool under her coat. The stone rose from a bed of wildflowers, its narrow top lost among the lower branches of an oak. More stones stood beyond it. In daylight she had walked past this part of Richmond Park without seeing them, though she had looked for the grove twice. Tonight the crimson gem had led her straight here. “That answers one question.” Her voice fell flat among the trees. No traffic reached the clearing. No wind moved the flowers. Rory pulled the pendant from her collar and held it out by its silver chain. Its faint light coloured the lines in her palm; the small crescent scar on her wrist looked darker beside it. The stone gave off a steady warmth. Near a Hel portal, it was supposed to pulse. That was what she had come to test. She stepped between the standing stones. Warmth beat once against her fingers. Rory stopped and counted to six. Nothing followed. She took another step, then another. The chain swung, and the gem knocked against her knuckle with each stride. She couldn’t tell whether the next small throb came from the Heartstone or her hand. “Fine. We’ll do this properly.” She laid her phone on the ground, screen up, and walked back to the nearest stone. The display showed eleven forty-four. Its glow threw the grass into hard, thin shadows. Rory paced towards the centre of the clearing with the pendant pinched between thumb and forefinger. At four steps, it warmed. At seven, she felt a beat. At eight, a second. A noise came from the trees behind her: a short metallic rattle, followed by a squeak. She turned. Branches crowded the gap through which she had entered. The flowers beneath them stood at different heights, their pale heads visible in the dark. The rattle came again. It sounded like the loose basket on her delivery bike when she struck a kerb. Her bike sat outside the flat above Silas’ bar. Rory shut her fist around the pendant. The sound stopped. “Fox,” she told the trees. “You’ve found somebody’s rubbish.” She waited for leaves to shake. Nothing moved. A few feet from her shoe, a white flower turned on its stem. Its petals faced her, then continued round until they pointed into the clearing. The stem held still. Rory crouched. Another flower brushed her sleeve as she lowered herself, though she had left a hand’s width between them. She looked at it. The petals rested where they had before. She stood and stepped away. Her phone lay beside the stone. From here its screen was no brighter than a match head. She walked back to it, careful to follow her own footprints through the grass. Halfway there, she heard a footstep. She stopped. A second step sounded from her left. Dry earth pressed beneath a sole. “Who’s there?” The clearing kept her question. Even the oaks seemed too close to let it travel. Rory raised the pendant. Its light reached the stone in front of her and caught on a thread of spider silk. It showed her no one behind it. She circled the stone anyway, keeping one hand against its rough side. The ground on the other side lay bare of flowers. Nothing had marked it. She retrieved her phone. Eleven forty-four. Rory tapped the screen off and on. The minute held. She opened the camera and pointed it towards the stones. In the preview, each trunk and flower sat where it belonged. She turned in a slow circle, watching the little rectangle rather than the clearing. A dark shape crossed the far edge of the screen. Rory swung the phone back. The camera showed an oak trunk and a spread of white flowers. She lowered it. From where she stood, the oak had no flowers beneath it. Only fallen leaves and a crooked root. For a moment she tried to place the image. She had turned too far; the camera had caught another tree. She lifted the phone again and framed the oak, its root clear at the bottom of the screen. White flowers filled the preview. Their heads shifted against one another. Rory took a picture. The shutter click rang out with a sharpness the grove had denied her voice. In the saved photograph, the flowers were gone. The root curved across bare ground. She looked up. Bare ground. “Right.” She slipped the phone into her pocket, then pulled it out again. Leaving the camera open had been a poor idea. Putting it away felt worse. The metallic rattle came from deeper in the grove. Three quick shakes, a pause, then one. Her bike basket made that pattern when she rode across the loose paving stones behind the Golden Empress. She had heard it often enough to know which paving stone came last. This time, after the last shake, she heard a wheel spin. Rory gripped the phone. She could see her route out between two standing stones, a strip of dark grass leading back towards the park path. She started for it. The Heartstone heated through her fist. One beat. Two. A gap. One more. She halted and opened her hand. The crimson light had strengthened. It traced the creases of her fingers and shone against the underside of her chin. She faced the exit; the warmth eased. She turned towards the sound of the wheel, and it rose again. “That’s what I came to find.” The words gave her something firm to stand on. She had followed the pendant here because she wanted to know whether it worked. It did. She had no reason to go farther into the grove. She faced the exit. The wheel spun somewhere behind her, its spokes ticking as they slowed. Rory took a step. From the trees ahead came a soft tap, like a fingernail against glass. She looked between the stones. Nothing blocked the gap. Another tap followed, farther to the right. Then one to the left. She crossed to the nearest stone and put her hand against it. Cool grit pressed into her palm. Across its face ran a shallow cut, almost hidden under moss. She had passed this stone on her way in. She remembered the cut because it looked like the seam of a pocket. On her way in, it had been on the other side. She ran her fingers along it. The moss caught beneath her nail. Perhaps she had walked around the stone without noticing. Perhaps she faced a different one. They were similar heights, and the dark took their edges. Her phone vibrated. Rory snatched it out. The screen showed eleven forty-three. She opened the call history. There was no signal. She opened the photographs. Her picture of the bare root sat at the top, marked eleven forty-six. A breath touched the back of her neck. Rory moved before she thought, turning with her elbow raised. The pendant struck the stone, and a deep note ran through it. She stepped back and held the phone towards the space she had occupied. No one stood there. The note continued. It came through her boots now, a low vibration in the ground, and each flower beside the stone dipped its head. Rory watched them lift as the sound faded. None of the flowers farther away had moved. She drew a hand across the back of her neck. Her skin was dry. From the dark beyond the clearing, a voice spoke in her own low register. “Fox.” It had her Cardiff vowels. It had the clipped edge she used when she wanted to sound less frightened than she was. Rory held still. The word had come from beyond the oaks, not from the empty space behind her. She could see no one between the trunks. She unlocked her phone and opened the voice recorder. The red dot appeared. She kept her eyes on the trees. “Say it again.” A click answered her: the noise of a bicycle wheel settling against a frame. Then came the scrape of a shoe over dry earth. Rory’s recorder showed twelve seconds. She had heard the voice at four. She stopped the recording and played it back. Her own challenge came from the speaker, small and tinny. Beneath it ran the scrape of her thumb against the phone case. No other voice sounded. At the end, just before the file stopped, came a single tap. She replayed those last two seconds. Tap. Silence. Across the clearing, something tapped the standing stone. Rory looked up. The sound had come from the stone with the shallow cut, the one she had just touched. She could see its whole face. Her phone’s light reached the moss, the groove, the flowers at its base. Nothing stood beside it. Another tap struck the stone while she watched. The moss in the cut trembled. Rory backed away. Her heel landed among flowers that had not stood there a moment before. Their stems bent beneath her weight. She looked down at the crushed white heads, then up at the gap between the stones. She could still see it. She took one step towards it, phone in one hand, pendant burning in the other. Behind her, the loose basket rattled once. Rory kept her eyes on the gap and took another step.