Run: 2026-10-05-01M46BBAYKFPK4V6BKHHQ0SQ1B

Rory found the gap between the stones where the note had promised it would be. She stepped through, caught her sleeve on a ridge of granite, and heard the park disappear. No traffic. No wind in the trees. The distant barking she had followed across the grass stopped between one bark and the next. She freed her sleeve. “Good start.” Her voice carried across the clearing. It returned without an echo, spoken at the same volume from somewhere among the trees. Good start. Rory kept her hand on the stone. The boundary markers stood taller than she did, their surfaces cut into branching shapes. Lichen filled the grooves. In the torchlight, the carved oaks looked like trees pressed flat beneath sheets of stone. She turned towards the gap. Beyond it lay Richmond Park: grass silvered by moonlight, a narrow dirt path, the fence she had climbed because every sensible entrance had been locked. Nothing blocked her way out. She checked her phone. Eleven forty-three. No signal. “Twenty minutes. That’s all you’re getting.” She started a timer. The note had arrived inside a takeaway bag at the Golden Empress, folded beneath the receipt for an order nobody had placed. It had contained no threat, no signature, and one detail she had never given anyone at work: the small crescent scar on her left wrist. If you want to know who gave you the stone, bring it to the grove in Richmond after dark. Find the oak that has split without falling. She had spent three days looking for another explanation. A prank needed someone who knew about the pendant. A trap needed someone who knew she possessed it. Neither list contained a name. Now the Heartstone rested against her chest beneath her jumper, warmer than her skin. Rory drew it out by its silver chain. A faint light filled the crimson gem, no brighter than an ember viewed through closed fingers. “You got me here. Do something useful.” The chain hung motionless. Around her, wildflowers crowded the grass. White petals shone beneath her torch; blue flowers folded around yellow centres. She crouched beside a patch and touched a leaf. It felt soft and wet, though the park outside had suffered a week without rain. When she lifted her hand, the leaf remained bent beneath the weight of her finger. She watched it. It stayed down. Rory stood. Across the clearing, an oak had split from crown to roots. Both halves leaned away from the wound, yet the branches interlocked overhead, holding the trunk together. Darkness filled the opening. Her torch reached into it and found no back. “That would be you.” She chose a line through the flowers, keeping the entrance behind her left shoulder. The ground gave beneath her trainers with each step. Not mud. Something springy under the turf, like thick carpet laid over loose boards. Halfway to the oak, she heard a key turn in a lock. She stopped. The sound had come from her right: the small scrape of teeth entering a cylinder, the reluctant click, the handle following. She knew that sequence. The door to her flat above Silas’ bar needed a lift before the lock would release. Her torch found a hawthorn bush. “No.” She waited for the rest of it. The stair creaking. Her bag hitting the floor. Pipes knocking inside the wall. A branch shifted in the hawthorn. Rory swept the beam through its leaves. Two pale flower heads swung together, although nothing else moved. She turned back towards the entrance. The gap remained visible. She could make out the path beyond it. “Keys. Wind. A bird.” She listened to the explanations in her own voice and rejected the last two. The pendant pressed heat through the fabric where it had fallen against her jumper. She lifted it again. Its light had strengthened. She took one step towards the oak. A key turned in the lock behind the hawthorn. Rory walked backwards until the bush lay beyond the reach of her torch, then turned and crossed the remaining ground. The split oak smelled of damp paper. Up close, the opening measured less than a foot across. Ragged wood bordered the gap, but no splinters littered the roots. Pale ridges ran down the exposed heartwood in straight lines. She brushed one with her fingernail. The ridge yielded. She pulled her hand away. A thin thread clung to her nail. Not wood. Silk. A web filled the split, stretched so tight and fine that her torch had passed through it. Rory angled the beam. Hundreds of threads appeared, each running from one side of the wound to the other. Something small sat behind them at chest height. An envelope. She leaned closer without touching the web. Cream paper. Her name across the front. AURORA CARTER. “Rory would’ve done.” The flowers behind her rustled. She turned. Her own route across the clearing lay pressed into the grass. Beside it ran another track. No footprints marked that second line. Flowers leaned in pairs, one patch after another, as if someone had walked beside her without putting feet on the ground. The track stopped three paces away. Rory held the torch there until her wrist began to ache. “Who’s there?” Nothing answered. “I can see where you’ve been.” A white flower folded at the end of the track. Then another, closer. She moved around the oak, keeping its trunk between herself and the flattened grass. Bark scraped her shoulder. Her fingers found her phone. The timer read nineteen minutes, fifty-two seconds. Eight seconds had passed. She opened the clock. Eleven forty-three. “No. I’ve been here longer than that.” She locked the screen and held down the side button until it lit again. Eleven forty-three. The note had warned her about the grove’s boundary. It had told her to enter between the marked stones and not cross through the trees. It had said nothing about clocks. Rory took a screenshot. A small, stupid action, but something she could keep. Evidence of a fault instead of an impression she might talk herself out of later. Behind the oak, a breath caught. She stopped moving. It had not sounded like an animal. Someone had drawn air through their mouth and held it. Rory held hers. The silence pressed against her ears. She heard the blood beneath her jaw, a faint hiss from her phone, her thumbnail tapping the plastic case. The breath left the other side of the tree. It matched the one she still held. She backed towards the boundary stones. The envelope remained in the split. She could leave it. Whoever had put it there could arrange a meeting in a café, under lights, with a till receipt and people who would remember her face. “Bad venue. Send an email.” She aimed the torch at the gap. The park beyond it had changed. The path remained, but the grass stood waist-high. A pale strip of fencing sagged between posts. Where she had climbed, a thick stem had grown through the wire and pulled it towards the ground. She lowered the beam, then raised it. The grass outside lay short again. Rory’s hand shook once. She clamped the torch against her thigh until the tremor stopped. “Light plays tricks.” From the oak came the sound of her flat door opening. This time the stair creaked. She knew which stair it was. Third from the top. She stepped over it after a late shift so Silas would not hear her come in and offer her food she lacked the strength to refuse. The sound came again. A bag hit a floor. Rory looked down at the grass around the roots. No boards. No door. Only flowers and the black opening crowded with silk. Then her voice came from inside the trunk. “Keys. Wind. A bird.” She turned the torch off. The grove retained a little light. Moonlight outlined the stones, though she could not find the moon through the canopy. The Heartstone glowed against her jumper. Something stood in the place her beam had left. She saw no body. The flowers showed beneath it. But a narrow strip of the clearing had lost its light, extending from the ground to the height of her face. Rory moved her head. The strip did not move with her. She switched the torch on. Empty grass. She switched it off. The strip stood closer. Rory left the torch on. “No more of that.” She walked towards the entrance, refusing to look at the oak. Her trainers crushed flowers. She kept her eyes on the granite markers and counted her steps. At twelve, the gap narrowed. Not much. A shoulder’s width became the width of her hips. The stones made no sound. She stopped. The space between them widened. Rory swallowed. Her mouth tasted of metal. She took a step sideways. The gap remained open. Another sideways step. The same. She moved towards it. The stones drew together. “Fine.” She set her phone on the ground, screen up, with the torch still burning beside it. Light spread across the flowers. Then she walked backwards towards the gap. The ground yielded beneath her heels. She held her arms behind her, reaching for granite. Her fingertips touched bark. Rory turned. The split oak stood behind her. Across the clearing, her phone and torch lay where she had left them. The entrance waited beyond them, wide enough for two people. She dug her nails into the trunk. Bark flaked beneath them. Real bark, rough enough to cut. Inside the split, the envelope stirred. None of the threads around it moved. “You wanted me at the tree. I’m at the tree.” Her voice sounded small without the stone’s imitation. “What now?” The silver chain lifted from her collarbone. Rory caught the pendant before it could rise farther. Heat bit into her palm. The chain drew taut between her fist and the back of her neck, pulling towards the envelope. She gripped it with both hands. “Let go.” The pressure stopped. She stumbled against the trunk. The gem cooled enough for her to open her fingers, but its light now showed the web in full. The threads did not run between the two sides of the oak. They passed through the wood. Rory followed one with her eyes. It emerged from the bark beside her wrist and crossed the clearing at waist height, vanishing beyond the reach of the abandoned torch. Another stretched towards the boundary. More hung overhead, crossing through branches without bending them. She had walked through them. She lifted her left wrist. A thread lay inside the crescent of her scar. Rory pinched it between her nails. It had no weight she could feel, yet when she pulled, the skin along her forearm dimpled. She released it. The envelope slid an inch towards her through the split. “Give me something to cut.” Her phone answered from the grass. Not a ringtone. Not a voice. Three knocks came from beneath its screen. Rory kept her wrist still. She searched her pockets with her other hand and found her house keys. The smallest had a chipped edge near its tip. She worked it beneath the thread, keeping the metal flat against her skin. The oak gave a low wooden creak. She pressed harder. Across the clearing, her phone rose onto one edge. Rory scraped the key towards the scar. The thread stretched. Beneath her sleeve, something tightened around her elbow. She pushed the cuff back. Five shallow dents marked her arm, arranged like the tips of fingers. As she watched, a sixth dent appeared beside them.