Run: 2026-10-27-01M5YHGGEJ6R7T99649WD12S6B

Rory reached the standing stones with one glove on and the other stuffed into her coat pocket. The torch in her bare hand cast a narrow beam across the grass, catching a bank of white flowers where no flowers should have grown in January. She checked the path behind her. The gate into Richmond Park stood beyond the trees, its metal bars black against the road. A bus passed on the other side, its windows lit and empty. “Phone, then home.” She stepped between the stones. The bus vanished. So did the hum of its engine. Her torch picked out the same white flowers, the same clumps of grass, but the path behind her had disappeared beneath a spread of roots. Rory turned in a circle. Oak trunks crowded the edge of the clearing, their branches knitted together overhead. The sky showed through in scraps, dark as the water in a drain. She had dropped her phone there that afternoon. She remembered lifting it to photograph the flowers, then shoving it into her coat when she heard a voice calling from somewhere among the trees. By the time she reached the restaurant and found her pocket empty, the light had started to go. Yu-Fei had offered to lend her an old handset. “Your delivery addresses are on the other one,” she had told Rory, pressing a spare battery into her hand. “Get it before tomorrow.” Rory had borrowed the torch too. She kept its beam low now, searching the ground between the stones. She had walked from the entrance to the fallen oak, crouched beside the flowers, then left by the same route. The phone had to be somewhere along it. A damp smell rose from the earth. Under it lay another scent, sweet and stale, like water left in a flower vase. She found her footprints near the fallen oak. The tread of her trainers had cut a row of small diamonds into the soft ground. They led to the tree and back again. A second set lay beside them. Rory crouched. The prints were narrow, with no pattern on their soles. Each one had a blunt heel and a long front, as though someone had walked through the grove in stocking feet. They followed her tracks towards the fallen oak, then turned when hers did. She pressed a finger into one print. Mud filled the mark. Her fingertip came away wet. “Someone else walked through.” The words sounded short and dry. The clearing gave nothing back. She rose and swept the torch over the oak. Its trunk lay across the grass with its roots torn from the ground. She remembered the pale wood inside the split, the thick green moss along one side. Her phone had not landed on top; she would have seen it there. She knelt and shone the torch underneath. A beetle crawled across the beam. Behind it, something silver caught the light. “There you are.” Rory reached beneath the trunk. Her fingers closed around a dead leaf. She pulled it out and found a strip of foil stuck to the underside, its surface wrinkled and smeared with soil. She dropped it. Somewhere beyond the trees, a phone began to ring. Rory stood so fast that her shoulder struck the oak. The ringtone came again: three bright notes, a pause, then three more. She knew it. She had chosen it because it cut through the noise of the restaurant kitchen. She aimed the torch towards the sound. The beam passed over flowers and tree trunks. Nothing moved. The ringing continued, farther away than she had expected, from the opposite side of the clearing. Rory took out the spare battery Yu-Fei had given her and turned it between her fingers. Her phone had been almost dead when she lost it. She had watched the last red bar shrink while she photographed the flowers. The ringing stopped. She waited for it to start again. When it did not, she crossed the clearing, keeping the torch on the ground. Her steps crushed flowers beneath her boots. She found no footprints on this side, only a scatter of acorns and a patch of bare earth where the grass had peeled back in a neat circle. A breath sounded close to her left ear. Rory spun, swinging the torch. The beam flashed across a standing stone, an oak trunk, then open ground. The breath had carried a faint whistle, the sort a person made through a blocked nose. She held still. Her own breathing rasped in her throat. “Who’s there?” No answer came. She backed towards the stone and put her hand against it. The surface felt cold through her glove. She kept the torch trained on the trees while she moved around the stone, checking its far side. Nothing stood behind it. The phone rang again. This time the sound came from the fallen oak. Rory stared across the clearing. The trunk lay where it had before, its roots lifted like a torn fan. The ringing came from beneath it, where she had found the foil. She walked back. The notes stopped as she reached the tree. The phone lay in the grass, screen up, a hand’s width from the gap beneath the trunk. She had swept her torch over that patch twice. Rory crouched and touched its edge. The case was hers: blue silicone, split at one corner where she had dropped it on the restaurant tiles. Mud flecked the glass. The screen showed no missed call. She picked it up. The battery icon showed a full charge. The spare battery slipped from her other hand and landed in the grass. She retrieved it, shoved it into her pocket and opened the call log. The last entry was Yu-Fei’s number, from the afternoon. Nothing else appeared. A scuff came from the trees. Rory raised the torch. A dark shape passed between two trunks, low and quick. She caught only its edge before it disappeared behind a third. She put the phone in her coat and stood. “I can see you.” The scuff came again, from farther right. Grass bent at the foot of a tree, then lifted. Rory moved away from the fallen oak. Her heel found the line of her earlier footprints. She followed them towards the entrance, watching the trees. A step sounded behind her. She stopped. The step stopped too. She took two more. A soft tread answered each one, close enough for her to hear the grass part. Rory turned the torch behind her. Empty ground shone in the beam. Her footprints ran from the oak to where she stood, paired with the narrow marks she had found earlier. One fresh print sat beside her left boot. She moved her foot away from it. Water seeped into the hollow. Her pendant warmed against her chest. She pulled it free of her collar: the crimson stone glowed beneath its surface, its silver chain taut between her fingers. The warmth spread into her palm, stronger than it had been at the edge of the clearing. Rory looked towards the stones. She could see one through the trees, but the other had vanished from sight. She took her phone out and switched on its torch. Its light joined the borrowed beam, whitening the flowers. She held the two lights apart and turned towards the entrance. The second stone stood several paces beyond the first, half hidden behind an oak. She had entered between them, but the gap now faced a bank of tangled roots. She did not remember climbing over it. Her phone vibrated. A voice memo had opened on the screen. Rory had not touched the app. A red line crept across the display as the phone recorded. She pressed stop. The grove remained silent. She watched the file save, then tapped it. Her own footsteps came through the speaker, followed by the scrape of her coat and the small clink of the pendant against its chain. Beneath those sounds ran another set of steps. They matched hers for several paces, then broke away. Rory lowered the volume and listened. A breath filled the speaker. The same narrow whistle caught in it. Then a voice spoke, so close to the microphone that the words blurred. Rory raised the phone to her ear. “Phone, then home.” Her voice. The recording repeated the phrase she had spoken at the entrance, though the file was only eleven seconds long. A flower stem brushed her boot. She looked down. The grass beside her had flattened in a long strip, pointing towards the stones. Another strip pressed down alongside it. The white flowers bowed, their petals scraping over one another. Rory stepped back. The phone slipped in her grip, and she caught it against her coat. The flattened grass shifted towards her. She put both torch beams on the spot. A shallow dent formed in the earth, then another, each in line with the narrow prints. Nothing stood above them. “Stop.” The next print appeared against the toe of her boot. Rory pulled her foot away. The pendant burned against her fingers. She kept both lights on the ground and backed towards the stones, placing each step with care. The prints followed. When she moved left, they moved left. When she raised the phone, its light caught a faint shape above them, no darker than a shadow on glass. Rory lifted the borrowed torch and aimed it at the shape. “Take another step and I’ll see you.”