Run: 2026-11-11-01M7556BR1H6E4XZHZAC9HK4WQ

She reached the iron gate on Richmond Road at eleven forty-three and found it locked against the night. Her delivery bag still hung from her shoulder from her shift at Golden Empress, the strap damp where rain had soaked through the canvas during the last run. The note sat in her coat pocket, a thin square of paper with an address in block capitals and three words underneath. Bring the Heartstone. Midnight. Richmond. She had carried that note since she found it taped inside the door of her flat above Silas' bar, and she had carried the pendant since supper, first against her skin under her shirt and then out in the open when the metal chain grew cooler. She stared at the padlock, at the wet rails, at the deer warning sign bolted to the post. Her reflection floated in a puddle at her feet, black hair plastered to her forehead, blue eyes wide in the glow from a passing bus on the road behind her. "Gate's shut. Brilliant start, Rory." She tested the rails with both hands. The leather of her gloves squeaked. She walked the fence line away from the road, past the tea kiosk with its shutters down, past a bin tipped on its side, until she found a gap where a branch had pushed through and a stretch of mud marked a deer path into the dark. She squeezed through sideways, bag first, coat snagging on a thorn. The park swallowed sound behind her. Trees rose in black columns. The grass soaked through the knees of her jeans within ten steps. A fox crossed the path ahead of her and stopped with its head raised, and she stopped with it, and the animal trotted on without a noise. The deer path led her down toward the older trees, toward a part of Richmond Park her maps named with no name at all. She kept her phone light on low to save battery, the beam in a narrow cone ahead of her boots. Ancient oak standing stones showed through the trunks in a broken circle, each stone taller than she stood, grey and pitted, moss thick on the north side of every face. Wildflowers grew between them in a ring despite the month and the cold. Bluebells, cornflowers, poppies torn open to the moon, petals bright enough to catch light that no source gave them. The scent hit her at the boundary, sweet and green and wrong for a night that bit through her coat. She counted the stones as she walked. Nine. Seven visible from where she stood. Two hidden behind the oaks. "You got the note. You wore the thing. No backing out now, Carter." She touched the pendant through her shirt. The crimson stone, no bigger than her thumbnail, pushed heat against her ribs. The heat came and went in a rhythm she felt in her teeth. She had worn it for six hours and the pulse had quickened each time she turned toward Richmond. She pressed her thumb against the crescent scar on her left wrist, a habit from childhood, and the friction steadied her fingers. The chain tickled her neck. She zipped her coat higher and lowered her phone light to the ground, where dew lay on the flowerbeds in a bright skin. The flowers moved before she did. She took a step and the bluebells along the edge of the path leaned toward her boot. She took another step and the poppies turned their faces up. No wind touched the higher branches. No wind touched her hair. A drip sounded from the nearest oak, a single drop striking a leaf, then another, then a run of drops in a pattern too even for rain. She lifted her face to the canopy. The branches held dry. The drip kept time with the pulse in the pendant, one beat for one drop, one beat for one drop, until she could not tell which rhythm belonged to the stone and which belonged to the tree. "Hello?" Her voice came back off the stones in a flattened shape. She waited for another voice to answer it. None answered. The drip stopped mid-pattern. In the quiet that followed, a shape shifted between two stones at the far side of the circle, tall and narrow, darker than the shadow around it. She fixed her eyes on the spot and the shape stayed, and she blinked and the shape stood in a different place, closer to the oaks, closer to her, with no movement between. The flowers parted along a line that reached from the stones toward the path. Wet grass bent there, fresh, and the dew shone on the bend. She checked her phone. The clock read eleven forty-seven. She had entered the park at eleven forty-three and she had walked for what her legs called twenty minutes. She locked the screen and unlocked it again. Eleven forty-seven. The signal bars showed nothing. The map showed a blue dot in a blank space with no roads. She turned in a slow circle to get her bearings and found footprints in the dew behind her, her own bootprints coming out of the dark, and beside each print a second print, longer, narrower, heel to toe, made at a pace that matched hers stride for stride for thirty steps and then stopped. "Eva, pick up. I'm in Richmond Park. I'm in the Grove. There's a note and I followed it and I need you to call me back before my battery dies." The voicemail tone sounded. She ended the call and stared at the black screen. Her own face stared back, blue eyes set in a white oval, hair stuck wet to her cheeks. She wiped her face with her sleeve and the reflection wiped with her. The pendant burned against her sternum through two layers of cloth. She pulled the chain out from under her shirt and held the stone in her palm. It throbbed against her skin, hot then less hot then hot again, and each throb sent a matching throb through the stones in the circle. A low tap answered from inside the nearest standing stone, wood on hollow wood, three taps, a pause, three taps. She stepped to the stone and put her hand flat against its face. The rock felt warm from the moss side to the smooth side. The tap came again, from the center of the stone, where no seam showed. The flowers around her feet pressed close to her ankles and held there. The dew marks in the grass formed a ring around her boots with a gap at her back, the gap facing the broken part of the circle, the part where the path went deeper between the oaks. The footprints behind her had multiplied. She counted pairs in the phone light and lost count at eight. "Show yourself. I didn't come this far to play guessing games." The tap stopped. A breath moved through the flowers, a thin sound with no wind behind it, and the petals lifted for it. The shape appeared between the two far stones where the gap in the dew ring pointed. It did not walk out. It became visible in the place, taller than a person, shoulders narrow, head tilted at an angle her neck could not copy, and the wildflowers bent away from it in every direction as if the ground under it gave off heat. The pendant went hot enough to sting her palm. She raised her phone light and the beam caught no face, no eyes, no coat, only the stones behind the shape and the flowers bent flat around its feet. She spun back toward the stones and her own voice said her name from the place she had stood a second before.