Run: 2026-10-27-01M5YHQNFT099GQ7629MB6MBFP

Rory found the first standing stone where the path should have continued. It rose between two ancient oaks, its grey surface furred with moss. Beyond it, the beam of her torch fell on wildflowers. White petals nodded among the grass, though the rest of Richmond Park had spent the week under frost. She checked the message again. Midnight. The grove. Bring the pendant if you want to know where it came from. No name, no number she recognised. It had arrived on a scrap of paper pushed under her flat door, folded once around a photograph of the Heartstone. The picture had been taken close enough to show the little flaw in the silver chain. She had checked the lock afterward. It was still sound. Rory glanced back along the path. The trees stood motionless behind her, their branches black against a clouded sky. Somewhere in the park a stag called, a harsh, lonely bark. It was the last ordinary sound she heard. She stepped past the stone. The air changed first. It lost the cold, damp smell of London in winter and took on the heavy sweetness of flowers in a closed room. Her torch illuminated a clearing ringed by standing stones and the thick trunks of oaks. The grass was silver with dew. Yellow and blue flowers crowded the edges, fresh and upright. The pendant warmed against her breastbone. Rory stopped. The crimson stone had a faint inner glow, just visible through her shirt. She hooked the chain out at the collar and held it between finger and thumb. Its warmth had always meant a Hel portal was near. She scanned the clearing again. No person, no movement. No obvious door into another realm. “Hello?” Her voice carried less than it should have. The trees seemed to take it in. She had told Silas where she was going, though not why. He had offered to come. She had refused because the note had been left in her flat, and she wanted to know who had got close enough to put it there. If she was walking into a trap, she preferred not to bring him into it too. That had seemed a sensible distinction at the bar. Now she wished she had at least told him about the photograph. Rory walked toward the centre of the clearing, keeping the stone at her back in view as long as she could. Dew soaked the toes of her trainers. Her phone showed one bar of signal; when she raised it, the bar disappeared. A footstep sounded behind her. She turned sharply, swinging the torch across the grass. The beam caught a scatter of pale petals and the standing stone. Nothing moved. Rory waited. Her own pulse knocked in her ears. The footstep had been soft, a shoe pressing down wet grass. It might have been her own, delayed by an echo. She took one deliberate step. A second step followed it, an instant later. She stood still. So did everything else. “All right,” she said quietly. The grove gave her no reply. She put the phone away and walked toward the stone she had entered by. This time she counted her steps. One, two, three. On four, the other footstep came again: a damp, close sound, just behind her left shoulder. Rory stopped and turned. The torch beam swept across empty grass. She crouched and touched the ground. The blades were bent where she had walked, dark tracks leading back toward the centre. Beside them ran a second track. The impressions were shallower than hers, but they matched the shape of her trainers down to the worn outer edge of the left heel. The most recent print was a few inches behind her own. Rory straightened slowly. Her torch shook once, then steadied. She had come to learn who had given her the pendant. Whoever had sent the note knew she would come for that. There was no reason to think they intended to let her leave with an answer. She backed toward the standing stone. When her heel crossed the line between it and the oak beside it, the pendant grew hot enough to sting. She jerked her hand away from it. The grass beyond the boundary was still green. The gravel path had gone. Rory looked from one side of the stone to the other. She remembered stepping off the path, remembered the crunch beneath her shoe giving way to wet grass. She had not turned since then except to look back. She passed between the stone and the oak. The clearing continued on the other side. More wildflowers, more oaks. Another standing stone rose thirty feet ahead, its top split into two blunt points. Rory turned around. Behind her stood the stone she had just passed, with the clearing beyond it. The footstep came again. It sounded from the other side of the stone, where she had been standing a moment before. She moved quickly, circling the oak and returning to the first clearing. Her torch beam jumped across the flowers. The two tracks through the grass ended where she had left them. There was no third set coming after her. From somewhere deeper among the trees came a woman’s voice. “Rory?” It was Eva’s voice. Not a vague resemblance: Eva’s low, rough note when she was tired, the familiar lift at the end of Rory’s name. Rory’s mouth opened before she caught herself. “Rory, I can’t see you.” The voice came from beyond the standing stone with the split top. Rory pointed the torch toward it. The beam reached the stone, the flowers at its base, the dark between two trees. She could not see Eva. She took out her phone and called her. For a few seconds there was only silence. Then, very faintly, a phone began to ring among the trees. Rory held her breath. The ringtone was Eva’s, an old song she had refused to change despite years of complaints. The call cut off. A moment later, Rory’s screen showed no signal. The ringing stopped too. “Please,” Eva said. “I think I’ve hurt my leg.” Rory looked at the phone. It had not rung long enough for Eva to answer and hang up; the call had failed. Yet something had made the right sound. She could not be certain it wasn’t Eva. That was the trouble. If there was even a chance she was lying hurt out there— The pendant burned against her skin. Rory pulled it free. Its crimson centre glowed brighter now, a low red light seeping over her fingers. She turned toward the voice and felt the heat sharpen. When she turned away, it eased. “Tell me where we met,” she called. A pause. “At school.” “What were you wearing?” “Rory.” The voice sounded wounded. “Come on.” “What were you wearing, Eva?” The answer came softly. “You know what I was wearing.” Rory did. Eva had been seven and dressed as a daffodil for a school assembly. She had spent the morning refusing to take off the yellow headpiece, even for lunch. Rory had not known her name until she sat down beside her. The voice spoke again, closer now. “You know what I was wearing.” The words had lost Eva’s inflection. They were flat and careful, as though whoever spoke them was reading from a page. Rory backed away. The grass rustled beneath her feet. Ahead of her, just outside the torch beam, something rustled in answer. She swung the light toward it. The flowers stood undisturbed. Behind them, between the trunks, a narrow patch of darkness shifted. For a moment she thought someone had stepped behind a tree. Then she saw that the darkness was moving against the trunk itself, climbing it without changing shape. She lowered the torch. The patch vanished from the edge of her sight. Rory turned the light back. Nothing. The pendant’s chain had become almost too hot to hold. She let it drop and tucked it inside her shirt, wincing as it touched her skin. She needed a way out. Panicking and running would take her farther into the grove, perhaps toward whatever the pendant had found. She looked for the stone by which she had entered. Three stones were visible now, and none seemed quite right. One leaned to the left; one had a split top; one stood beside an oak with a low, crooked branch. She had not noticed a crooked branch on the way in. From the trees came the sound of her own voice. “Hello?” It was the word she had spoken when she arrived, pitched exactly as she remembered it. A moment later came the echo of her footsteps, four soft presses in the grass. Rory looked down. Her tracks still lay at her feet. The copied prints beside them had filled with water. Something dripped from the low branch of the oak. She swept the torch up. Clear drops hung from the bark, although the night was dry. As she watched, one fell. A second drop landed in the grass immediately behind her. Rory spun. Empty space. Another drop struck the shoulder of her coat. It was warm. She ran. The torch beam lurched over stones and flowers. Branches scraped her sleeves. She headed for the darkest gap between the oaks, away from the pendant’s fiercest heat, keeping one arm raised in front of her face. Footsteps followed: first one pair, then several, all matching her pace. She veered around a standing stone. The footsteps veered with her. Ahead, the trees opened onto another clearing. Rory stopped so abruptly that her wet trainers slid. It was the same clearing. Her tracks crossed the grass. Her phone lay near the centre, its screen glowing. She reached into her pocket. It was empty. The phone must have fallen when she ran. The screen went dark as she approached. Rory picked it up and found a message waiting. I’m home. Why did you call? It was from Eva, sent two minutes ago. Beneath it was another. Are you all right? Rory tried to reply. The message failed. In the trees, Eva’s voice said, “Are you all right?” Then, nearer: “Why did you call?” Rory forced herself to look at the clearing rather than the dark beyond it. Her tracks showed where she had gone in circles. The prints beside them showed the same turns, the same stops, the same stumble when she had run. Whatever was making them had kept just behind her until she stopped looking. She took the pendant out again. Its glow was strong enough to show the lines of her palm. When she faced the split stone, it burned. When she faced the oak with the crooked branch, the heat lessened. She moved a few steps toward the oak. The pendant cooled further. The voice behind her changed. “Rory,” it said, in her mother’s voice. “Don’t leave me here.” Rory kept walking. “Please, love.” The words pulled at her despite herself. Her mother had called her that on the phone the previous Sunday, asking when she would next come home. Rory had promised she would look at train times. She hadn’t done it yet. She reached the oak and touched its trunk. The bark was dry under her palm. The standing stone beside it felt cold enough to numb her fingers. Beyond them lay grass and flowers. Rory took off the pendant. The chain caught briefly in her hair, and she had to stop and work it loose with trembling fingers. She closed her hand around the stone and held it out ahead of her. It cooled. She stepped between the oak and the standing stone. The air smelled of wet earth. The flowers ahead bent, though there was no wind. Behind her, something took a step. Rory stopped. The answering step stopped too, close enough that she felt the grass shift against the back of her ankle. She resisted the urge to turn. The pendant lay warm in her fist, no longer burning. Ahead, between the tree trunks, a thin pale line ran across the dark: gravel catching the light of her torch. Another step sounded behind her. This time she had not moved. Rory walked toward the gravel. The thing followed, slowly, each step separate from hers now. It breathed once, a shallow intake very close to her ear. The pendant grew hot again. She broke into a run. The gravel came up under her feet, skidding and crunching. Cold air struck her face. She kept going along the path, past bare bracken and a park bench slick with frost, until the flowers and the standing stone were out of sight. Only then did she turn. The path behind her was empty. Her torch picked out the white of frost along the grass and the trunks of trees standing where trees belonged. There was no clearing visible between them. Rory bent over, one hand braced on her knee. The pendant was cool in her fist. Her phone found a signal. Eva’s messages arrived all at once, followed by three missed calls from Silas. Rory called Eva first. “Oh, thank God,” Eva said. “Where are you?” “In the park.” Rory swallowed. Her throat hurt. “Are you home?” “Yes. What happened?” Rory looked back down the path. “I thought I heard you.” “Heard me where?” “I’ll tell you when I get there.” She started walking again, away from the grove. “Can you stay on the phone?” “Of course.” Eva talked while Rory walked. She had been at home all evening; she had made too much pasta and was annoyed with herself for eating it all. Her voice came through the phone with the familiar crackle of a poor connection. Rory listened to every word. At the park gate she stopped under a streetlamp and opened her hand. The pendant’s crimson glow had faded. A red mark crossed her palm where she had gripped the chain. “Rory?” Eva said. “You’ve gone quiet.” “I’m here.” The words came back to her from the dark beyond the gate, faint but distinct. I’m here. Rory crossed the road without looking back. On the phone, Eva was still talking.