Run: 2026-10-13-01M4V1Z74JS53Q9F7EQ2VK6AHH

Rory stepped between the ancient oak pillars, and the distant hum of London traffic vanished. She stopped. Her boot heels sank into thick, damp turf. Above, the canopy of Richmond Park knotted together, choking out the bloated yellow smear of the city's light pollution. Inside the boundary, a different night reigned. It pressed against her eardrums, heavy and airless, like the silence at the bottom of a well. She lifted the insulated delivery bag from the Golden Empress, the red vinyl crinkling in the hush. "Hello?" Her voice died three feet from her mouth. The air swallowed the syllables without an echo. The receipt taped to the bag read *Isolde — The Grove, Midnight*. Yu-Fei had paid her triple rate in crisp twenties just to take the order, refusing to meet her eyes as he shoved the warm plastic containers into the thermal pouch. Rory had expected teenagers drinking cider in the bracken, or some rich eccentric staging a midnight picnic. She had not expected wild primroses and bluebells in the middle of November. They blanketed the clearing, their petals pale and luminescent in the gloom. No frost touched them. A sickly, overripe sweetness hung low over the grass, like lilies left too long in stagnant water. Rory shifted the strap of the delivery bag on her shoulder and thumbed the switch on her torch. The beam cut a narrow white tunnel through the dark. Nothing stirred. No wind ruffled the blossoms. Even the persistent rustle of badgers and deer that usually haunted the park’s undergrowth was absent. Rory pulled her phone from her jacket pocket. The screen glared, blindingly bright. Zero bars. The clock read 00:03. While she watched, the digits flickered, jumped to 01:47, and snapped back to 00:03. A muscle feathered in her jaw. She shoved the phone back into her pocket and rubbed the small crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist. "Right. Five minutes, then you're eating cold dumplings off the dirt." She walked toward the centre of the clearing. Beneath the wildflower scent, another smell threaded the air. Wet copper. Old iron. Against her collarbone, the Heartstone Pendant shifted. Rory froze. She reached inside the collar of her jacket and drew the silver chain out. The thumbnail-sized crimson gem pulsed against her palm. A slow, rhythmic throb of heat, like a fevered heartbeat, accompanied by a dull inner glow that stained her fingers the colour of a fresh bruise. *A Hel portal.* Her bright blue eyes narrowed, sweeping the perimeter of the ancient oak stones. The Fae realm had no business bleeding into Hel, and Hel had no business in Isolde's pocket of the park. *Snap.* The sound came from her left, back toward the boundary stones. Not a dry twig breaking under a shoe. It sounded thicker, wetter—like a green branch twisted until the fibres gave way. Rory whipped the torch beam around. The white light splashed across the furrowed bark of the oak pillars. Shadows leaped and stretched behind them. In the periphery of the light's halo, a patch of darkness detached itself from the trunk of a yew tree and slid sideways into the brush. It moved without bouncing. A smooth, horizontal glide that ignored the uneven terrain. "Who's there?" Rory kept her voice level, dropping into a balanced stance, the torch held high and away from her body so an attacker lunging for the light would miss her throat. "I have the food. Come and get it." Silence answered. Then, from the opposite side of the clearing, something inhaled. It was a long, rattling draw of air, too vast for human lungs, whistling through a constriction that sounded like dry leaves caught in a grate. Rory spun, her straight black hair whipping across her cheek. The torch beam raked over the year-round wildflowers. Twenty yards away, the bluebells were flattened in a wide, winding trough, as if a heavy sack had been dragged through them seconds ago. At the edge of the depression, individual stems were still rising, springing back into place one by one. Her heart hammered against her ribs, matching the frantic, warming pulse of the crimson stone at her throat. She backed up a step. Her heel struck something solid. Rory looked down. Her boot rested against the stone pillar she had walked past two minutes ago. She hadn't walked backward in a circle. She had walked straight into the middle of the clearing. Yet the boundary oak stood right behind her shoulder, its carved, weathered grooves slick with a black moisture that hadn't been there when she entered. *Leave the bag and go.* She slipped the red strap off her shoulder and lowered the thermal pouch to the grass. As she straightened, the torch beam flickered. The bulb whined, a high-pitched mosquito drone, and dimmed to a jaundiced yellow. In the dying light, the trees around the clearing looked closer. Their trunks leaned inward, an audience craning their necks over an operating table. From the canopy directly overhead came a soft *pat*. Then another. *Pat. Pat.* Rory raised the yellowing beam. Nothing hung in the branches. Nothing clung to the dark boughs. *Pat.* Something warm hit the back of her hand. She lowered the light. A single drop of viscous, colourless fluid sat on her skin, smelling faintly of pond scum. A whisper slithered out of the bracken to her right. "Rory." It was her mother's voice, thick with the Welsh lilt of Cardiff, warbling as though spoken through a mouthful of water. Rory's teeth clicked together. Her fingers tightened around the barrel of the aluminium torch until her knuckles turned white. Jennifer Carter was two hundred miles away, fast asleep in a terraced house in Roath. "Rory," the voice repeated, coming from three yards to her left now. Only the pitch had dropped. The cadence belonged to Evan, mimicking the soft, cajoling tone he used right before his fists came out. "Don't be stupid. Come here." "Piss off," Rory said. Her voice scraped her raw throat. She turned to step between the oak standing stones, back into the normal dark of Richmond Park. Where the gap between the pillars had been, a solid wall of blackthorn brambles towered ten feet high. The thorns were the length of sewing needles, glistening in the weak yellow glow of her failing torch. Behind her, the thermal delivery bag rustled. Not the sound of wind catching the vinyl. The distinct, metallic *zip* of the pouch being opened, tooth by plastic tooth. Rory did not turn around. She stared at the wall of blackthorn, watching her own breath plume white in air that had remained mild and spring-like only thirty seconds before. Beneath her shirt, the Heartstone burned against her skin like a live coal. Two paces behind her heels, something began to chew. Wet, rhythmic, and accompanied by the sharp splintering of the plastic containers.