Run: 2026-10-05-01M46BEQVKTAH9Y3YP0PYFTDRZ

The first thing Rory noticed was the absence of mud. Rain had followed her across Richmond Park, needling through her coat and turning the paths into black ribbons of slop. Yet on the other side of the boundary, her boots sank into dry grass. The water on her sleeves stopped dripping. She stood between two of the standing stones and looked back. The torch on her phone lit the path she had taken, the shine of rain in a hoofprint, the lower branches of an oak. Everything looked ordinary. She could still leave. “Excellent,” she said. “Keep that option open.” Her voice sounded flat in the clearing, without even the small echo she expected from the stones. Wildflowers crowded her boots: white bells, yellow stars, little purple things she couldn’t name. In November. That alone should have sent her back across the park, but she had been told what to expect. Wildflowers. Standing stones. An oak split by lightning. And, beneath that oak, someone who could explain the pendant. The note had arrived folded inside a Golden Empress takeaway bag. She had found it after her last delivery, beneath the cardboard carton of spring rolls that Yu-Fei had insisted she take home. No name. No explanation of how the writer knew she wore the crimson stone under her shirt. Come alone after dark. Find the split oak in the Richmond grove. Bring what was given to you. She had spent three evenings deciding not to come. Now she was here, and whoever had written the note was not. Rory checked her phone. 22:14. No signal. She took a screenshot of the time. It was a small, practical thing to do in a place where an hour might cost her a weekend. Then she turned the torch towards the clearing. The split oak stood on the far side, its trunk divided almost to the roots. One half leaned over the flowers; the other reached straight up, bare branches catching no moonlight. Something pale rested in the fork. A piece of paper. Rory stayed where she was. “Hello?” The word went nowhere. She listened for traffic beyond the park, an aircraft, wind. There should have been something. London did not become silent just because you stepped behind a tree. A soft metallic clink came from her left. She turned the torch. Flowers. Grass. One of the boundary stones, its surface furrowed like oak bark. The sound came again. A spoon touching the inside of a cup. Rory knew it precisely. She heard it at the Golden Empress every afternoon when Yu-Fei stirred honey into her tea. She waited. Nothing followed. Some bird, then. A drip striking something hollow. She did not have to identify it. She only had to stop her mind furnishing the clearing with people who weren’t there. She walked towards the oak, counting her steps. At nine, the pendant warmed against her breastbone. She stopped. The Heartstone had been a nuisance before it became a mystery. A silver chain without a clasp she could find, a thumbnail-sized crimson gem that sometimes held a light no room could account for. The first time it had warmed near a Hel portal, she had thought she was developing a rash. Now the heat was unmistakable. She drew it out by the chain. A dull red glow lived inside the stone. “Oh, that’s reassuring.” She swept the torch across the ground. There was no tear in the air, no darkness deep enough to suggest an opening. Only the flowers and the split tree. The note was still in the fork. She approached from the side, keeping clear of the gap between the two halves of the trunk. Up close, the wood smelled faintly of old smoke. The paper was held in place by a thorn. Rory pulled her sleeve over her fingers and took it. There were five words, written in the same neat hand as the invitation. Please wait until you hear— Nothing after the dash. She turned it over. Blank. The paper was dry, except for a dark mark along its bottom edge. She held it beneath the torch and rubbed the mark with her covered thumb. Damp. Fresh. Somebody had written this recently. Somebody might still be here. “Who am I waiting for?” A little way behind her, a man cleared his throat. Rory turned so fast the torch beam skimmed the flowers in a white arc. No one. Her breath had become loud. She pressed her tongue against the roof of her mouth, then let the air out slowly through her nose. “Not funny.” The silence returned. She could see the gap in the boundary where she had entered, perhaps twenty paces away. Rain silvered the darkness beyond it. She put the second note in her pocket. Whatever this was, she had brought no obligation to it. She started back. A phone vibrated in the grass. Rory stopped with one foot raised. Her own phone was in her hand. The screen showed 22:14. The buzzing came again, just behind her right heel: two short pulses, a pause, then one longer pulse. Her message pattern. She lowered the light. A white flower trembled. Everything around it remained still. She backed away without bending to look. Three steps. Four. Something at the edge of the beam moved in the opposite direction, keeping pace. She swung the light towards it. Empty grass. Her grip tightened around the phone. There was a sensible sequence here. Reach the boundary. Step through. Walk to the nearest lit road. Call Eva. Work out what had happened somewhere with central heating and other people. The gap between the stones no longer showed rain. It showed more flowers. Rory stopped. She raised the torch to the standing stone on her right. A long groove ran down its face, widening into a shallow notch at the base. She had noticed it coming in because the groove looked like a crack in a tooth. This was the right gap. Beyond it, the clearing continued. Ten or twelve paces farther on stood the split oak. The paper was back in its fork. For a few seconds she could only stare. Then she put her hand into her pocket. The folded note was still there. She felt its corner, sharp against her fingertip. “All right,” she whispered. She made herself look away from the tree. Places had rules. Even places like this. There had been an entrance; there would be a way out. She did not need to understand the whole grove. She needed one useful fact. She crouched beside the notched stone and laid the note at its base. Then she searched her pockets and found a receipt, her flat keys, and a fortune cookie in a plastic wrapper. She placed the receipt beside the note. The fortune cookie made a ridiculous little crackling noise in her hand. From the far side of the clearing, something crackled in answer. She held still. Another crackle. Slow and deliberate. Rory put the cookie away. She left the receipt and walked to the next pair of stones, keeping the boundary on her right. The torch showed flowers beyond that gap too. At the third, the same. At the fourth, she found her receipt. It lay beside the folded note beneath the stone with the tooth-shaped groove. She had taken twenty-three steps. The boundary should have required far more. A woman laughed behind her. Not loudly. A brief, private laugh, as if someone had just read something amusing. Rory knew that laugh. For one reckless instant she nearly said Mum. Instead, she bit the inside of her cheek. The laughter had come from the oak. “Rory?” Her mother’s voice, with the slight questioning lift she used on the phone when the connection was poor. Rory watched the standing stone. “Rory, love, are you there?” Her mother was in Cardiff. Her mother had no idea where she was tonight. There was nothing in the clearing entitled to sound like her. The pendant heated sharply. Rory pulled it away from her skin. A light had appeared between the halves of the oak. Not bright enough to illuminate the trunk. A thin vertical red gleam, narrowing and widening with the warmth in the stone. A portal. It had been there all along, perhaps. Hidden in the split. She looked down at the unfinished note. Please wait until you hear— A warning, interrupted. She had read it as an instruction. Near the tree, the flowers bent. One patch, then another. Something was coming towards her through them, although no feet broke the stems. “Your dad’s worried,” the voice said. It sounded closer now. Rory turned off the torch. Darkness shut around her so completely that she swayed. The pendant remained visible in her fist, its red light staining the creases between her fingers. She covered it with her other hand. The voice stopped. For the first time since she entered the grove, she heard wind. Faintly, from somewhere to her right. She listened, resisting the urge to switch the torch back on. There: leaves dragging against one another. Rain tapping wood. And nearer, inside the clearing, a soft scrape. Rory reached towards the stone. Her fingers found its cold, furrowed face. She kept one hand against it and sidestepped towards the sound of rain. The scrape followed. She stopped. It stopped. Her phone vibrated in her coat pocket. She had not put it there. She was still holding it beneath the pendant. The vibration in her pocket continued, buzzing against her hip. She did not reach for it. “Rory,” said her mother’s voice, a yard away. “Look at me.” She shut her eyes. Her hand slid off the edge of the stone and met open air. Cold touched her fingertips. Real cold, wet and bitter. She extended her foot. Mud gave beneath her boot. She moved towards it. Fingers closed around her left wrist. No jerk, no violent wrench. Just a firm hold, exactly where the small crescent scar lay beneath her cuff. Rory went rigid. The fingers felt dry. Warm. Human. “You’ve forgotten something,” the voice said. She kept her eyes closed. Rain struck her cheek, but only the right one. The pendant burned in her hand. Of course. Come alone. Bring what was given to you. She had come expecting answers. Someone had been expecting a delivery. Rory drew her trapped arm inward, testing the grip. It tightened. She could not pull free. She could, however, move her other hand. She hooked two fingers beneath the silver chain and lifted it over her head. The stone dragged through her hair. For a moment it snagged, and she nearly opened her eyes from sheer frustration. Then it came loose. The grip on her wrist eased. “There,” the voice murmured. Rory held out the pendant towards the clearing. The fingers released her. She dropped the Heartstone and stepped backwards into the rain. Something brushed her coat. She stumbled, caught herself against the stone, and backed another pace. Mud slid beneath both boots. Wind pushed wet hair across her mouth. She opened her eyes. Her torch was off, but there was enough light from the clouded sky to see the oak ahead of her, an ordinary oak beside an ordinary park path. No stones. No flowers. She switched on the phone. 03:37. Her lock screen showed eleven missed calls from Eva. Rory laughed once, badly, and covered her mouth. Then she walked. She did not run. Running would mean looking where she put her feet, and she needed to keep watching the path ahead. She passed a bench, a fenced sapling, a sign whose small print shone under her torch. She touched each one as she went. At the road, she called Eva. The call connected on the first ring. “Where the hell have you been?” Rory bent forward, one hand on her knee. Headlights crossed the wet tarmac beyond the gate. “I need you to come and get me.” “What happened?” “I’ll tell you in the car.” “Are you hurt?” She looked at her wrist. Four pale marks showed below the cuff. “No. I don’t think so.” “Send me your location. Stay on the phone.” Rory did both. Eva kept talking while she found her shoes and keys, blessedly ordinary talk about parking and petrol and which gate Rory could see. The cold had begun to reach through Rory’s coat. She tucked her free hand inside it. Her fingers touched a silver chain. She stopped breathing. Beneath her shirt, the Heartstone rested against her breastbone, cold now. She drew it out and stared at the deep crimson gem. “Rory?” Eva said. Behind her, somewhere across the dark park, a spoon touched the inside of a cup. Rory closed her fist around the pendant. “I’m here,” she said, and kept her eyes on the road.