Run: 2026-10-20-01M5C68NSEH2XT3KZ6YSKM0MWQ

The iron gate at the edge of Richmond Park stood open. Rory had expected to have to climb it. She stepped through, her delivery bag slung over one shoulder, the strap digging into the muscle. Her torch beam cut a narrow path through the trees, catching the undersides of leaves, the pale bark of birches. The air smelled of wet earth and something sweeter, like crushed flowers. The pendant against her chest pulsed once. A small warmth, gone as quickly as it came. She walked. The path curved, marked by no signs, no lamps, only the grooves of a trail worn by feet. Her boots squelched in the mud. Above, the moon hung in a clear sky, but the trees grew thick here, their branches interlocking like fingers. She kept the torch on. It helped. The silence was wrong. Not quiet — silence. The kind that pressed against her ears and made her swallow just to hear the sound. No owls. No distant traffic. No wind through the leaves. Even her footsteps seemed muffled, swallowed by the damp ground. She checked her watch. Nearly eleven. She'd promised Yu-Fei she'd make this delivery and be back before midnight. A special order for a customer at the edge of the park. The address had been written on a scrap of paper in Yu-Fei's neat handwriting, but there was no house number, no street name. Just "the Grove" and a set of directions that felt more like a riddle than a route. Rory stopped. The trees had thinned. Ahead, a clearing opened up, ringed by standing stones. Ancient oaks, their trunks wide as cars, their roots knotted into the earth. She stepped into the clearing and felt the shift. The air changed. Warmer. Still. The same way a room feels after someone has just left it. She took out the paper again. The instructions said to wait by the largest stone. She found it — a massive oak on the far side, its bark scored with markings she didn't recognise. She set her bag down and sat on a flat rock nearby. The pendant pulsed again. Stronger this time. She pressed her hand to it through her shirt, felt the heat radiating. "Hello?" Her voice came out thin. She cleared her throat. "Delivery from the Golden Empress." No answer. The wildflowers at the edges of the clearing seemed to lean toward her, their pale petals open despite the hour. She didn't know much about flowers, but she knew they closed at night. These didn't. She checked her watch again. Eleven-fifteen. She'd give it ten more minutes. A sound. Soft. Like someone dragging a sack over grass. She turned her head. The edge of the clearing was dark, the trees beyond a black wall. She aimed her torch. The beam lit a ring of trunks and ferns, nothing else. "Anyone there?" The sound stopped. The silence that followed was deeper than before, heavier. Rory stood up, the torch held out like a weapon. Her mother used to say that fear was just a lack of information. Fill in the blank and the fear goes away. She'd never told her mother how wrong that was. A whisper. Not words — just breath passing over something. She spun. The standing stones. Had one of them moved? She counted them, then counted again. Fourteen. She was sure there had been fourteen before. She walked towards the nearest stone, her footsteps deliberate, her torch fixed on its surface. The markings were not random. They formed shapes she almost recognised — spirals, crescents, something like a hand with too many fingers. She reached out to touch it. The pendant burned. She yanked her hand back, hissing through her teeth. The heat spread through her chest, radiating outward, and she pulled the pendant out by its chain. It glowed. Crimson light pulsed from the gemstone, bright enough to cast shadows on the stone. The shadows moved. Not with her hand. Independent. A shape at the corner of her vision, low to the ground, slipping behind a tree. She whipped around. Nothing. "Okay," she said, her voice steadier than she felt. "I'm going to leave now." She bent to pick up her bag. The strap was caught on something. She tugged. It gave, and she stumbled back. The rock she'd been sitting on was gone. In its place, a patch of wildflowers, their stems bent as if something had crushed them. She didn't run. Running felt like surrender. But she walked fast, back the way she came, her torch beam swinging wildly. The path was there. It was there. She followed it, her breath coming in short bursts, her ears straining for any sound. The whispering started again. From all sides now. A soft, continuous murmur, like a crowd reciting a prayer under their breath. She couldn't make out words, but she felt them in her teeth, a vibration that ran up her jaw and into her skull. The pendant pulsed in rhythm with the whispers. Warm. Steady. Almost comforting. She stopped. The path ahead was gone. She turned in a circle, her torch beam catching only trees, ferns, the same standing stones she'd just left behind. She was back in the clearing. Or a clearing. The largest stone was there, its markings faintly visible, glowing in the red light of the pendant. "No," she said. "No, no, no." The whispers grew louder. She pressed her hands over her ears, but the sound didn't diminish. It was inside her head now, a pressure behind her eyes. She squeezed them shut. When she opened them, the clearing was full of people. Not people. Shapes. Tall, thin, made of shadows that moved against the moonlight. They stood between the stones, still as the trees, their heads tilted toward her. She couldn't see faces. Just the suggestion of them, hollows where eyes should be, a faint ripple where mouths might form. She didn't scream. She couldn't. Her throat had closed, her lungs locked. She stood frozen, the torch beam swinging from one shape to the next, her hand shaking. One of them stepped forward. Its movement was wrong — too smooth, like a puppet on strings. It reached out a hand. Long fingers, too many joints, ending in points. The pendant flared. A wave of heat washed over her, and the shape recoiled, its hand snapping back. The whispers turned to hisses. Rory found her voice. "What do you want?" The shapes didn't answer. But one of them — the one who had reached for her — tilted its head. A sound came from it, not speech, but something like wind through a hollow reed. The pendant pulsed again. The light it cast grew brighter, pushing the shadows back. The shapes retreated, melting into the trees, their forms dissolving like mist. The whispers stopped. Rory stood alone in the clearing. Her torch flickered, then died. The pendant's glow was the only light, casting a pool of red around her feet. She could see the path now, clear and straight, leading back the way she'd come. She ran.