Run: 2026-10-05-01M46BD8ECRSPYP610100B9SZ6

Rory reached the first standing stone at twelve minutes past midnight. Someone had laid a clean white napkin across its top. She stopped with her hand on the torch. The napkin carried the Golden Empress logo: a red crown above a bowl of noodles. A crease divided the crown where someone had folded the paper in half. She had folded dozens like it during the lunch shift. “No.” Her voice sounded flat between the trees. No echo followed it. She swept the torch over the ground. Wet leaves, exposed roots, a scatter of pale flowers. Nothing led towards the stone except the narrow track she had followed through Richmond Park. Behind her, the beam picked out two muddy footprints. Her footprints. Ahead, the grove opened into a clearing that should not have fitted between the trees. She had checked the park map before leaving her flat. She had checked it again at the gate. No clearing appeared here, and no path branched from the one she had left. She pulled the note from her coat pocket. Richmond Park. The oak stones. Midnight. Bring what you were given. I can explain why it found you. No name. No number. Someone had pushed it beneath her flat door while she worked downstairs. She turned it over. Blank. “You could have knocked.” The stone stood taller than her shoulder. Ridges ran through its surface like oak bark, though the torch showed grey rock beneath the moss. Five more stones marked the clearing’s edge. Wildflowers crowded their bases, their petals open despite the cold. Rory kept the torch in her right hand and reached for the napkin with her left. The corner lifted before she touched it. She withdrew her hand. No wind moved the flowers. The napkin rose another inch, held its shape, then settled against the stone. A thread, she thought. Fine fishing line stretched into the trees. Some elaborate piece of nonsense meant to frighten her. She angled the beam above the stone. Nothing. “I came for an explanation. You can start with the restaurant.” The clearing gave her the drip of water from a branch. She waited. Another drop fell. Then came the sound of a spoon striking a ceramic bowl. Rory turned towards it. Her torch caught the six stones in pieces, strips of bark-patterned rock appearing and vanishing as the beam passed. Beyond them stood trees packed so close their trunks overlapped. The spoon tapped again. Three small knocks. That was how Yu-Fei called from the kitchen when the extractor drowned out her voice. Three taps against the nearest bowl. Rory could have picked the sound out of traffic. She lowered the beam to the ground. A fox could have carried rubbish into the park. A cracked bowl. A spoon. Something she had not seen beneath the leaves. “Yu-Fei?” The name slipped out before she could stop it. A faint scrape followed, metal travelling across ceramic. Rory took her phone out. No signal. The lock screen showed 12:12. She had walked from the park gate for at least twenty minutes since checking it. She opened the clock, watched the seconds advance, then opened her messages. Her last text to Eva sat beneath a photograph of the note. If this turns out to be a bloke selling crystals, you owe me a cab. No reply. She typed, At the stones. Someone’s been to work. The message acquired a red exclamation mark. Rory put the phone away without sending it again. A warmth spread beneath her shirt. She hooked a finger through the silver chain and drew out the pendant. The thumbnail-sized crimson stone glowed at its centre, a weak red light that stained the pad of her thumb. Its heat rose and faded. Rose and faded. It had done that once before, beside a locked service door behind Silas’ bar. She had blamed the radiator on the other side until Silas told her the room contained no radiator. She held it away from her chest. “All right. That’s what you wanted.” The spoon stopped. She listened to the gap it left. No cars. No plane crossing London. No bark from a dog, no rustle from deer feeding beyond the path. Even her coat made too much noise when she moved. Something clicked behind her. Rory turned. The napkin lay on the ground now. The stone’s top stood bare. She had not heard the paper fall. “Come out where I can see you.” Her torch beam shook once. She pressed her elbow into her ribs to steady it. A narrow strip of darkness lay between two trees beyond the stone. At first she took it for the space between their trunks. Then the beam reached it, and the darkness stayed. Light picked out a branch passing across its middle, each twig white and sharp. Behind the branch, nothing emerged. She shifted a step to the left. The strip narrowed. A person standing sideways could look like that. Someone in a black coat, keeping their face turned away. Rory moved the light to their feet. Flowers. Moss. No shoes. She brought the beam back up. The strip had gone. “Fine.” She backed towards the path without taking her eyes off the trees. Her heel struck a root. She lifted her foot over it and took another step. The napkin crackled under her boot. She looked down. It lay beside the stone. She stood beside the stone too. The clearing spread in front of her, although she had backed out of it. She could see the flattened grass where she had stood, four paces away. Rory turned her head towards the track. No track. She rotated the torch through a full circle. Trees enclosed her on every side. Six stones. White flowers. A patch of flattened grass. “No. I walked in here.” She crouched and found her footprints in the mud. Their deep heel marks led to the stone from a gap between two roots. She aimed the torch into that gap. A thick trunk filled it. She touched the bark. Cold water slipped beneath her fingers. The tree had no broken branches, no dragged earth around its roots. Moss covered its base. She pressed harder, as though pressure might expose a seam. Behind her, something breathed through its nose. Rory stood. “Don’t stand behind me.” She swung the torch around. The clearing remained empty. The pendant warmed her closed hand. She loosened her fingers and saw the silver chain wrapped across the crescent scar on her wrist. The stone’s red glow brightened, then contracted to a point. A sound came from the far side of the clearing. Rubber against wet ground. Then the soft metallic chatter of a bicycle chain. Her delivery bike had made that sound for three weeks. A loose link caught when she pushed it backwards. She had left the bike chained outside her flat. The chatter stopped. Someone squeezed a brake lever. The cable gave a thin squeal. Rory swallowed. “Whoever you are, you’ve made your point.” Her mouth had dried enough that the words rubbed. She lowered the torch, switched it off, then switched it on. The same stones returned. The same flowers. No bicycle. A leaf brushed her cheek. She flinched and swept a hand beside her face. Nothing hung above her but clear night sky. She turned the beam upwards. The branches stopped at the clearing’s edge, leaving an oval of stars. One of the stars went out. Then another. A black shape crossed the opening without a wingbeat. It took its time. The stars appeared behind it in the same order they had vanished. Rory brought the torch down. “Not looking at that.” The words gave her something to do with her breath. She tucked the pendant beneath her shirt. Heat pressed against her breastbone. She pulled it out again. The spoon struck the bowl. This time the sound came from the stone beside her. She placed the torch on the ground with its beam directed across the clearing, then bent to pick up the napkin. She pinched one corner and lifted it without shaking it open. Something hard slid within the fold. Rory set the paper on the stone. “No sudden movements. That applied to both of us.” She peeled back the upper half. A teaspoon lay inside. Its handle carried a dent near the bowl where Yu-Fei had shut it in the dishwasher door. Rory had cut her finger on that dent while unloading the cutlery last Tuesday. A pale blue thread wound around the handle. She stared at it, then pulled at the cuff of her coat. Her jumper had caught on the restaurant’s back-door latch that afternoon. A little ladder ran through the blue wool above her wrist. She kept her hands away from the spoon. The napkin had writing on its inner fold. PUT IT HERE. Block capitals, black ink. The words followed the crease. Rory lifted the pendant by its chain. “This?” A small knock came from beneath the stone. She took a step back. The knock came again, with the patient spacing of someone waiting at a door. “You wrote that you could explain.” No answer. “I didn’t agree to give you anything.” The paper stirred. Its upper edge lifted towards the pendant, although the chain hung still. Rory lowered the stone into her palm and closed her fist. The tapping ceased. Across the clearing, a woman coughed. Rory knew the cough. She had heard it through her own teeth an hour earlier, outside the park gate, when a mouthful of coffee went down wrong. She picked up the torch. “Use your own voice.” The beam reached the opposite stone. A hand withdrew behind it. She caught the fingers, the blue cuff, a silver line stretched across the wrist. No face. No body. Her torch remained fixed on the stone. “Come around the front.” A shoe scraped the grass. Rory adjusted her grip. Her thumb found the torch’s ridged switch. She kept the pendant enclosed in her other hand, chain slipping between her fingers. A voice came from behind the stone, close enough that she heard the tongue part from the roof of its mouth. “Come around the front.” Her voice. Same scraped throat. Same breath caught before front. Rory moved sideways until the stone no longer blocked the ground behind it. Nobody stood there. The grass held two fresh heel marks. She raised the beam along the stone’s edge. A blue thread clung to a notch in the rock. Behind her, paper dragged across stone. She turned without moving her feet. The napkin had opened flat. The spoon lay at its centre, its dented handle pointing towards her. Beneath PUT IT HERE, a second line pressed through the paper in wet black strokes. Rory held the light on it. The final letter formed while she watched, ink sinking into the fibres without a pen. OPEN YOUR HAND. She tightened her fingers around the pendant. “No.” The paper puckered beside the spoon. Five shallow hollows appeared in a row, each shaped like a fingertip pressing from beneath. Rory lowered the beam to the stone’s base, then followed its edge back up. She found no gap, no wire, no hand concealed under the napkin. The spoon moved half an inch towards her. She held her fist against her chest and reached with the torch, pushing the napkin’s nearest corner away from the spoon. The paper resisted. She pressed harder, scraping the metal rim over the rock until the fold opened beneath the five hollows.