Run: 2026-10-13-01M4V1VA4JZYXV2J9ARGRYSNYG

Rory stepped past the boundary of ancient oak standing stones, the heavy London fog swallowing the rest of Richmond Park behind her. The air inside the clearing tasted of sweet rot and ozone. She adjusted the thermal delivery bag from the Golden Empress on her shoulder. The ticket stapled to the brown paper read *Isolde's Grove, midnight, leave by the center stone*. Yu-Fei had charged triple the normal fee and told Rory to drop the food and run. Rory did not run. She walked, her boots crushing blooming nightshade and pale bluebells that had no business surviving a November frost. The silence hit first. Outside the wooden monoliths, the distant hum of traffic on the A3 and the rustle of dry leaves provided a constant backdrop. In here, the air hung dead. Not a single blade of grass twitched. Rory pulled her phone from her jacket pocket to check the time. The screen displayed 11:58 PM. The colon between the digits did not blink. She tapped the glass. Frozen. She held down the power button, her thumb brushing the small crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist. The screen stayed locked on those four glowing numbers, casting a sterile white light over her fingers. "Right. Brilliant." Her voice dropped straight to the dirt. No echo. No resonance against the towering, petrified oak pillars ringing the clearing. It sounded as though she had spoken into a pillow. She shoved the phone back into her pocket and walked toward the center of the grove. Wildflowers carpeted the ground in thick, tangled mats—blood-red poppies, white lilies, and purple foxgloves straining upward toward a moonless canopy. Their petals looked waxy, too stiff, like funeral arrangements left out in the rain. A dull heat pricked the skin above her collarbone. Rory hooked a finger into the collar of her jacket and pulled out the silver chain. The Heartstone Pendant, roughly the size of her thumbnail, rested against her palm. A faint inner glow lit the deep crimson gemstone. It pulsed once, a slow, rhythmic throb of warmth that matched a resting heartbeat. Hel portal. There was a tear between realms somewhere in this clearing, which meant the Fae were no longer the only things using Isolde's backyard. A dry *snap* broke the stillness behind her. Rory spun on her heel, straight black hair whipping across her jaw. Her bright blue eyes scanned the perimeter. The oak standing stones loomed like jagged teeth against the dark. Nothing moved between them. The wildflowers remained unbroken, save for the narrow path of crushed stems marking her own entry. "Delivery," she called out, keeping her tone flat, clinical. "Egg foo young and two portions of char siu buns. Already paid for. I'm setting it down." Nobody answered. Yet as she stared at the boundary stones, her mind snagged on a discrepancy. When she had walked in, the two largest oaks—the ones carved with spirals that made her eyes water if she stared too long—had been spaced three paces apart. Now, the gap between them looked narrower. Barely wide enough for her shoulders. She blinked. A trick of the dark. Then, from the dense timber beyond the western stones, came a sound. It was not the rustle of a deer or the scurry of a fox. It was the distinct, metallic *clack-clack-clack* of a rotary telephone dial spinning back into place. Rory froze. The sound repeated. *Zzzzz-clack-clack-clack.* Slow, deliberate, coming from the hollow of a dead elm fifty yards away. "Wrong number," she muttered under her breath, backing away a step. Her heel caught on a root. She steadied herself, glancing down to find her footing, and her stomach dropped. The wildflowers around her boots were no longer facing the sky. Every single blossom—poppies, lilies, foxgloves—had bent at the stem, their open faces turned directly toward her ankles. Rory stepped left. A faint, fibrous creaking filled the clearing, like wet rope pulled taut. In the periphery of her vision, thousands of small, pale heads rotated in unison to track her movement. When she snapped her gaze directly at a patch of lilies, they were still. Motionless. Yet they pointed right at her shins. The crimson pendant against her chest beat faster. *Thump-thump. Thump-thump.* The silver chain warmed against the nape of her neck. She unslung the thermal bag, unzipped it, and pulled out the brown paper sack. The smell of roasted pork and ginger wafted up, obscene and unnatural in the cold, floral stagnation of the grove. She bent her knees, keeping her eyes up, and set the bag on the turf. Something shifted beside the northernmost standing stone. A shadow detached itself from the bark. It did not step out; it stretched, elongating across the grass without a light source to cast it. Tall, thin as a wire, with joints that bent at three separate angles where a human knee should have been. Rory stared straight at the stone. Empty. The shadow was gone, snapped back into the dark grain of the petrified wood. *Zzzzz-clack-clack-clack.* The rotary dial sound came from her right this time. Closer. Inside the ring of stones. Followed by a low, wet rasping. The sound of someone dragging a heavy canvas sack across gravel. Wait. No. Not gravel. It was the sound of breathing—a vast, bellows-like inhalation that sucked the freezing air right past Rory’s ears, pulling strands of her black hair backward toward the center of the grove. She did not turn around to see what occupied the center of the clearing behind her. She kept her eyes locked on the boundary stones ahead, walking backward, one measured step at a time. The gap between the two entry oaks was definitely smaller now. The massive wooden pillars had crept inward while her back was turned, closing the jaws of the trap. A voice spoke from the exact spot where she had just left the takeaway bag. "Leave the skin," it murmured. It sounded like her mother. The exact Welsh lilt Jennifer Carter used when asking Rory to peel potatoes on a Sunday afternoon, except the cadence was chopped up, the syllables stitched together by something that did not understand where words ended and breaths began. "Keep the bone. Leave the skin." Paper tore. Not the crisp rip of a brown takeaway sack, but a slow, wet rending. The smell of ginger vanished, replaced by the copper tang of an abattoir floor. Rory did not speed up. Panic invited pursuit; Evan had taught her that much in Cardiff, and the monsters in London operated on the same predator logic. She kept her pace steady, her boots crushing the watching flowers. Ten paces to the boundary. Out of the corner of her left eye, a figure stood beside an oak pillar. It wore a dark coat. Its head was tilted back at a ninety-degree angle, throat exposed, jaw unhinged toward the canopy. As Rory passed, the figure did not turn its head; its entire torso twisted around the spine like an owl's, bone grinding against bone with the dull crunch of a mortar and pestle. She kept her gaze fixed dead ahead on the narrowing gap between the two main stones. Five paces. The Heartstone seared her skin. Through the thin cotton of her shirt, the crimson light flared bright enough to stain the grass at her feet red. The air grew thick, pressing against her eardrums until they popped. Right behind her shoulder, close enough to fog the silver chain on her neck, the rotary dial spun again. *Zzzzz-clack-clack-clack.* Fingers brushed the thermal bag strapped to her back. Long, frigid, and possessing too many knuckles, they tapped a rhythmic pattern against the nylon. Rory turned sideways, held her breath, and wedged her shoulders between the two ancient oaks. The petrified wood scraped the chest of her jacket, rough as sharkskin, and she threw herself forward into the London fog.