Run: 2026-10-27-01M5YHPXSG0TTSQJRWT1C5HDGB

Rory arrived at Richmond Park with soy sauce on one cuff and Eva’s voice note on her phone. The service gate stood open by the width of a person. Its chain hung from the post, the padlock shut around nothing. A sign faced the road with the closing time painted over and scratched out again. Beyond it, wet gravel held her torchlight in small white points. She checked the time. Twenty-three forty-six. Eva’s message had asked for eleven fifty. Rory played it once more with the volume low. “Rory? Don’t ring this number. Richmond, the old service gate. Follow the white flowers. Bring the pendant. I’ll wait by the stones.” Nineteen seconds. Eva’s voice, scraped thin around the consonants. No greeting, no explanation, no room for questions. The number had been disconnected when Rory rang it from the Golden Empress. Yu-Fei had watched her take off her delivery jacket, then put it back on, and had not asked where she was going. Eva had got Rory out of Cardiff. Rory could cross a park after closing. She slipped through the gate and left it as she had found it. For the first few steps, tyres hissed on the road behind her. Then they didn’t. The change came without a fade. Rory stopped and looked back. The gate remained visible between two trees, framed by the orange glow of a streetlamp. Aircraft lights travelled above the park. She waited for the engine noise to catch up. The lights cleared the oaks and continued towards Heathrow without bringing any sound with them. Rory switched off the torch. The road lamp still marked the gate. A cloud moved across the moon, and the park’s geometry settled around her: trunks, path, bramble, the metal bar of a boundary fence. She counted to five, switched the torch back on and went in. The flowers began beyond the first fallen log. White stitchwort grew along the path in a line too consistent for chance. Poppies stood among it, their petals furled for the night. Frost had silvered the grass near the gate. None touched the flowers. Rory crouched and rubbed one white petal between finger and thumb. It broke with a wet snap and left a green smear on her skin. A real plant, whatever the calendar thought. Under her jacket, the Heartstone pulsed. She drew it out by the silver chain. The crimson stone rested against her palm, no larger than her thumbnail. Its inner glow did not reach her skin. When she held it still, the glow contracted around a point at its centre, paused, and opened again. The warmth faded when she stepped off the path. It returned over the flowers. Rory took three paces to the left. Cool metal. Three back. Heat. She coiled the chain once around her fingers and followed. At twenty-three fifty-one, the path reached a boundary of ancient oaks and standing stones. Roots had buckled the earth around the trunks. The stones leaned at different angles, their surfaces dark with moisture. Some stood no higher than her knee; others rose above her head. None bore a name or mark that she could see. Before crossing between them, she tore a strip from the delivery receipt in her pocket and tied it to a low branch. She pulled the knot tight, checked that she could see it from both sides and stepped through. The clearing had not been visible from the path. It opened in front of her, round and uncluttered, with wildflowers crowding its edges. The grass at its centre lay flat beneath the moon. No fountain. No bench. No sign of Eva. Rory looked back. The receipt strip hung beyond the stones, a pale stitch against the oak. A way out she could see. “Eva? It’s Rory. I’ve brought it.” Her voice thinned before it reached the far trees. Nothing echoed. “Five minutes,” she told the clearing. “Then I’m going.” She walked the boundary with the torch aimed at the ground. Her trainers pressed water from the grass. Now and then she found a hollow beneath a root or a stone chipped by weather, but no bag, no coat, no footprints that didn’t belong to her. At twelve paces from the entrance, she stopped. A thirteenth step sounded behind her. Rory turned with the torch low. Her track lay dark across the grass. Empty space separated her from the boundary stones. A drop of water fell from her cuff and struck a leaf with a hard, distinct tick. Not the same sound. She took two paces and stopped. Nothing followed. Three more. Only the wet compression beneath her own feet. Deer moved through Richmond at night. So did foxes. Water settled. Branches shifted. She gave each explanation its due and kept walking. Near a split oak, something pale withdrew at the edge of the torch beam. Rory lifted the light. A standing stone occupied the spot. Its top sloped towards the ground, and white flowers grew close around its base. She could see no gap behind it wide enough to conceal an animal larger than a cat. She glanced towards the receipt to fix her position. The split oak stood on her left. The stone stood ahead of it. When she looked back, the split oak was on the stone’s right. Rory moved one pace sideways. The stone’s outline shifted against the trees with the solidity of everything else in the clearing. Moss clung to its northern face. A beetle crawled from beneath a flake of lichen and vanished into a crack. She backed away from it. The Heartstone had stopped responding to direction. Its warmth came at regular intervals now, wherever she turned. Against her sternum, under the cloth, then through it. At the centre of the clearing, the wildflowers ended along a straight seam in the grass. Rory crouched without crossing it. No cut marked the earth. The stems on either side had simply grown in different directions, leaving a gap no wider than her finger. The pendant pulsed again. Something beneath the seam answered with a sound too low to hear. She caught it in her teeth. Rory stood and put the Heartstone back inside her jacket. Her phone vibrated. One bar of signal had appeared. The lock screen read 03:18. Under it, the date said Thursday. She had left the restaurant on Monday night. The first message was from Yu-Fei. Rory, it’s Thursday. You’ve missed your shifts. Are you safe? Rory read the date again. Her stopwatch, started after she entered the clearing, had counted eleven minutes and twenty seconds. The seconds were still advancing. She opened Yu-Fei’s message. Her thumb missed the reply box, then found it. Richmond Park. Old service gate. Grove inside. Bring someone with you. She pressed send. The signal bar disappeared. A red mark appeared beside the message. Rory tried a call. The screen showed Yu-Fei’s name without connecting. She ended it before the silence could become another thing to listen to. “No more waiting.” Her voice had gone rough. She cleared her throat and faced the receipt marker. “Eva, if you’re here, I’m leaving. Follow my voice.” She walked towards the boundary without running. The grass pulled at her laces. Once, at the edge of vision, the whole line of standing stones seemed to lean away from her, but when she turned her head they stood in their original places. The Heartstone pulsed against her chest. From the centre of the clearing, Rory’s own voice called, “Eva? It’s Rory. I’ve brought it.” The same breath before Eva’s name. The same drop in volume at the end. Not an echo. An echo would have returned the clearing’s shape. This returned her. Rory stopped. She pressed the torch against her thigh, shading its glare without switching it off, and let her vision reach into the grey beyond it. The receipt marker remained ahead. The clearing stayed behind her. She did not turn. “If you’re Eva, tell me the first thing I said when you met me at Paddington.” A stem tapped against another stem. Then came a wet sound in the grass behind her, close to her left shoulder. Not a footstep. A weight settling. Eva’s voice answered from the dark. “You weren’t wearing the pendant.”