Run: 2026-10-20-01M5C6CC2J1JY5RZ5T5Z1C8JY8

The Grove didn't want her there. Rory felt it the moment she stepped past the first standing stone, a cold dread that settled in her bones like damp. The air was thick with the scent of crushed grass and something else, a metallic tang that reminded her of the pennies her grandmother used to press into her palm. She’d come for Eva. Two days of silence was one day too many. Eva’s last text had been a photo of this place, a blurry shot of wildflowers and ancient oaks, with a single word: *‘Look.’* The moon, a pale, sickly coin, offered little light, but the clearing itself seemed to possess its own faint, emerald luminescence. The wildflowers, bluebells and foxgloves, bloomed in defiance of the late autumn chill, their colours too vibrant in the gloom. A low mist clung to the ground, muffling the sound of her boots. It was a pocket of summer, trapped and suffocating. She pulled her jacket tighter. The pendant, the strange crimson stone she’d received anonymously last week, felt warm against her collarbone. Just a trick of body heat, she told herself, ignoring the way it pulsed in time with her heart. “Eva?” Her voice came out thin and reedy, swallowed by the oppressive stillness. “Eva, it’s Rory!” No answer. Just a soft, wet sound, like a heavy fruit splitting open, from somewhere beyond the tree line. Rory froze, her breath catching. She waited. The sound didn't repeat. Crickets this late in the year were a bad sign. She’d been in London long enough to know silence was worse. She took a few careful steps forward. The grass underfoot was soft, springy, but wrong. It didn't crunch. It felt like walking on a plush carpet. She aimed her phone’s flashlight at the ground, the beam cutting a bright, sterile path through the spectral light. *Nothing. Just grass.* A whisper of movement to her left. She snapped the light up. A figure, tall and thin, stood just past a great oak, half-hidden by its trunk. It was a silhouette of deeper darkness against the gloom, unnaturally still. “Eva?” Rory’s voice cracked. “Is that you? Stop messing around.” The figure didn’t move. Rory’s heart hammered against her ribs. She kept the light on it, her hand shaking. It wasn't Eva. The proportions were wrong, the limbs a little too long, the head a little too small. It was more like a shadow puppet cut from the dark itself. Then the pendant seared her skin. A sharp, insistent heat, not a gentle warmth. It pulsed once, a distinct throb of heat that made her gasp and flinch. Her free hand flew to it, the stone almost hot enough to blister. When she looked back, the figure was gone. “Okay,” she breathed, the word a puff of mist in the cold air. “Okay. This is a joke. Eva put you up to this.” She tried to sound angry, but the tremor in her voice betrayed her. She pushed forward, her goal now less about finding Eva and more about just getting across the clearing. The trees seemed to lean in, their branches clawing at the star-dusted sky. She kept her flashlight pointed straight ahead, refusing to look at the edges of the beam’s reach. The darkness there felt alive, a pressure against her senses. A sound, close by. A small, wet pop, like a cork being drawn from a bottle. It came from directly behind her. Rory spun around, her beam sweeping across the empty space. The mist swirled in the light, forming shapes for a moment before dissolving. There was a faint, sweet smell on the air now, like rotting lilies. It coated the back of her throat, cloying and thick. She fought the urge to gag. “I know you’re there,” she called out, absurdly proud her voice didn’t shake this time. “You can come out.” Silence. The oppressive, waiting silence of a predator. She took another step and her boot sank into something soft. Not mud. It gave way with a wet, yielding suction that made her stomach turn. She yanked her foot back, the sound sharp and final in the quiet. She aimed her light down. It was a patch of the wildflowers, but they were crushed, blackened, as if every drop of moisture had been sucked from them. And in the centre of the patch, a single, perfect circle of bare earth. Like something had been standing there, rooted to the spot, for a very long time. The pendant throbbed again, a steady, insistent beat against her skin. A warning. It wasn't a comforting warmth. It was the heat of a fever, of infection. Another sound. Scraping. A slow, deliberate drag of something heavy and rough across the ground, coming from the direction of the standing stones she’d passed. She pictured claws on stone. The sound stopped as suddenly as it started. Rory’s breath hitched. She backed away from the circle of dead flowers, her eyes fixed on the darkness between the trees. Her phone battery was at fifteen percent. The light seemed to be getting weaker, the darkness pushing in. She saw it then. Not a figure, not a shape she could name, but a distortion in the air, like heat haze on a summer road, at the very edge of her light. It flickered, a smudge of wrongness against the emerald glow. It was there for a single, heart-stopping second, and then it was gone, leaving behind a raw, primal certainty. She was not alone. The sweet, cloying smell grew stronger, now mixed with the wet earth and something else—the same metallic scent from before, but fresher. Sharper. Like blood on the air. Her flashlight died. The world plunged into a terrifying, absolute blackness. The emerald luminescence of the Grove was gone, swallowed by a night so complete it felt like a physical weight. Her phone was dead in her hand. She stood frozen, a scream trapped in her throat. The silence was total, a suffocating blanket. Then, from the darkness directly in front of her, where she knew the path back to the stones must be, came a soft, dry sound. A rustle of cloth. And then a voice, impossibly close, a dry whisper that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, a sound like dead leaves skittering on stone. “You came for the girl.” A statement, not a question. “But you brought the stone.” The pendant on her chest blazed with a final, agonising pulse of heat, and a pinprick of crimson light bloomed to life in the centre of the darkness, a tiny, malevolent eye.