Chapter Text
The first thing Percy noticed was the smell. Smoke, iron, something sharp in the air that burned his nose. He groaned, pressing a hand to his head as the world steadied around him. Stone beneath his palms. Cold night air brushing against his skin.
And then—her.
A woman lay only a few feet away, her body crumpled like a dropped doll. Dark hair spilled across the ground, sticky with blood. Her chest didn’t rise. Her eyes were wide open, staring past him, glassy and unseeing.
Percy scrambled backward, heart pounding. “Whoa—what—what the Hades happened here?”
He swallowed hard, trying to piece together the fragments of memory. One moment he’d been with his friends, the war finally over, and then—what? A flash of light, the ground torn from under his feet, falling, falling—
And now this.
The corpse didn’t move. She couldn’t have been older than her early twenties. She was beautiful, even in death, but there was something heartbreaking in the way her hands were outstretched, as though she had been reaching for something—or someone—before the end.
Percy’s stomach turned. He’d seen death before. Too much of it. But this felt wrong, personal somehow.
“Okay,” he whispered, mostly to himself, “think, Jackson. Don’t freak out. Just… figure out where the heck you are.”
He looked around—rocky ground, shadows of trees at the edge of a clearing. The air felt ancient, heavy, like the myths he used to read before he knew they were real.
“Who are you?” he murmured, as if she could answer.
The night offered no reply.
But then… a strange warmth prickled across his skin. He blinked. For a moment, he thought it was just the shock making him dizzy, but no—light shimmered faintly around the woman’s body. Not fire, not mist, but something golden, like sunlight caught in smoke.
Percy froze. His instincts screamed danger, but something about it was mesmerizing. The glow drifted upward, slow and deliberate, as though it were alive.
It hung there for a heartbeat—then shot straight into him.
Percy gasped, doubling over as fire lanced through his chest.
“G-gods—what—” He clutched at himself, panic and confusion flaring. The warmth wasn’t leaving. It was inside him, burrowing deep, pulsing with an impossible rhythm.
And then—silence.
Only the corpse remained before him, still and quiet.
He looked around, the chamber was Greek. Percy could tell from the way the bricks fit together, from the faint smell of burnt incense clinging to the air, from the carvings faded with age. He dragged his hand along one wall as he walked, feeling the grooves where ancient tools had pressed into stone. The room was scarred in places, blackened as if fire had swept through long ago.
He winced, clutching at his abdomen. Something felt wrong—like a slow burn deep inside, a heat that wasn’t his. It wasn’t exactly pain, but it made his stomach twist.
Shaking it off, he kept moving until his steps brought him back to the body at the center of the room.
The woman hadn’t moved—of course she hadn’t—but up close, the details struck him harder. The arrow was still embedded in her chest, the shaft dark with dried blood. Percy crouched slowly, his breath shallow. He’d seen death before, but this… this looked personal. Deliberate.
He hesitated, then reached out. His fingers brushed the arrow’s shaft—
A faint silver glow rippled across the corpse.
Percy jerked back, heart hammering. For a moment he thought his eyes were playing tricks, but no—the aura shimmered faintly, like moonlight trapped in water.
Cautiously, he reached again, letting his fingertips graze the wood.
This time the aura pulsed—and a sharp sting seared his skin.
“Ah—!” He pulled his hand back, shaking it out, his fingers tingling as if burned.
The glow lingered for a second longer, then faded, leaving only the dead woman and the arrow buried in her heart.
Percy stared, his pulse thundering in his ears.
“What in Hades’ name…?”
His other hand drifted unconsciously to his abdomen again, pressing against the strange warmth that hadn’t left him since he woke. It felt alive somehow—like something was moving beneath the surface.
The silence of the chamber pressed in.
The heavy door slammed against the wall, making Percy flinch.
A guard stumbled in first, clutching his arm, the skin swollen and dark. His eyes swept the room, widening when they fell on the body. His face twisted, pale and horrified—then sharpened into something worse when he looked at Percy.
Two more followed, blades already drawn. In seconds, the three of them spread out, boxing him in. The bruised one’s lip curled, his gaze flicking from the arrow buried in the woman’s chest to Percy standing there like some clueless intruder.
Percy’s thoughts scrambled, trying to string together what the problem was now.
Did Hera transport him again? He wouldn’t be surprised. The gods had a knack for yanking him from one disaster to another. Rest between quests? Yeah, that was a myth.
But seriously—cosplayers? He looked from their bronze helmets to the real swords gleaming in the dim light. Okay, maybe very dedicated cosplayers. Just what he needed.
He could already imagine the headlines:
Teenage Terrorist Appears in Ancient Ruins, Murders Cosplayers.
That’d go great on his record.
Now it was just a matter of convincing them he wasn’t some murderer standing over a dead woman with his hands suspiciously empty.
Percy swallowed, raising his palms slowly. “Look, I don’t know what you think happened, but I swear, I didn’t—”
The guards didn’t even blink. Their eyes burned into him, unreadable, like they were seeing something he couldn’t.
Percy wished Annabeth was with him. Instead, it was just him. And three very angry, very armed, definitely-not-cosplayers closing in.
Percy kept his hands raised, heart hammering. “Okay, before you do something drastic—like, I don’t know, stab the random teenager you found standing here—I’d just like to say… I didn’t kill her. Seriously. Corpses aren’t my thing. I’ve got enough on my plate without adding ‘homicidal LARPing’ to the list.”
The guards didn’t laugh. Shocker.
One snarled something Percy didn’t catch, their swords gleaming as they lunged.
“Whoa—hey!” Percy dove sideways, the blade slicing the air where his chest had been a heartbeat earlier. He rolled hard across the stone floor, his palm smacking against something in his pocket.
Riptide.
Without thinking, he yanked out the battered pen, uncapped it, and swung on instinct. Celestial bronze sang as Anaklusmos slashed through the air—straight through the chest of the closest guard.
Except—there was no blood.
The man staggered back, wide-eyed, staring at himself as if expecting a mortal wound. He touched his chest, his fingers shaking, then looked at Percy like he was a walking curse.
He barked a stream of Greek, the words tumbling out too fast for Percy’s brain to fully process. He caught bits and pieces—weapon… curse…—but the rest blurred together.
Percy tightened his grip on Riptide, sweat prickling at the back of his neck.
“Yeah, sorry,” he muttered. “My ancient Greek’s a little rusty when people are yelling death threats at me.”
The guard’s eyes narrowed. The other two circled in closer, their weapons steady now, their expressions caught somewhere between fear and awe.
Percy’s gut twisted. The strange warmth in his abdomen pulsed—like it was reacting to their words, their movements. Like it knew something he didn’t.
“Look, I don’t want to fight you guys,” Percy said quickly, his voice wobbling somewhere between sarcasm and desperation. “I just want some answers. Like—who is she? Where even am I?.
Percy shoved Riptide back into his pocket, his fists clenched. No time to think. No time to breathe.
The guard lunged again, and Percy met him with a wild strike. His knuckles connected hard, the man’s eyes rolling back as he crumpled. Percy’s chest heaved. He didn’t dare look—didn’t want to know if that blow had crossed a line.
The other two circled in, reckless, their swords ready.
Then more footsteps thundered from the hall. The chamber doors burst wide, half a dozen more guards spilling in, bronze flashing in the dim light. They’d heard the fight.
“Oh, come on!” Percy groaned, throwing his arms up. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”
The new arrivals didn’t hesitate—they charged.
Percy dodged one swing, ducked under another, his mind racing. “Wait! I didn’t—” he shouted, but the words tumbled out in English, useless. Their faces didn’t change. They couldn’t understand.
“Fantastic,” he muttered between grunts as he shoved one man aside. “I survive Titans and Giants only to get murdered by—what, ancient extras from a bad history movie?”
The clash built into chaos, swords clanging, men shouting in rapid-fire Greek. Percy caught maybe one word in ten—enough to know they were calling him a killer, a blasphemer, maybe worse.
He swung his fist again, ducked low, his chest burning, his abdomen aching with that strange, molten heat. He wasn’t going to last. Not against this many.
And then—
“Enough!”
This time, the word wasn’t a command. It was a roar.
The fighting stopped like a curtain dropping. The guards froze, parting as a man strode into the chamber. He was older, broad-shouldered, wearing a heavy cloak and a bronze circlet that caught the light. Authority radiated from him.
The man's eyes swept the room, landing first on the guards, then on Percy—and finally on the body lying cold and still.
The man staggered forward, his voice breaking. “Coronis…”
He dropped to his knees beside the corpse, hands shaking as they hovered over her bloodstained chest. His grief turned swiftly to rage. He whipped around, his words firing like arrows in rapid Greek: “Tis touto epoiēsen? Tis tēn thygatera mou apekteinen?”
Percy caught only fragments— who...daughter… killed… —and his stomach sank.
The king’s eyes locked onto him. The guards tightened their circle, blades lifting again. Percy’s throat went dry.
“Wait! I didn’t—It wasn't me!” Percy blurted, his words tumbling fast, useless in English. His voice bounced back off stone, misunderstood.
The king surged to his feet, his face pale with fury, his hands trembling with barely restrained violence.
Percy didn’t even get the sentence out before the man roared, his voice shaking the chamber walls.
“How dare you!”
The man ripped his sword free from beneath his cloak, bronze gleaming in the torchlight. With a powerful stride, he lunged toward Percy, blade raised high.
Percy’s instincts kicked in. He sidestepped, the weapon slicing the air where his ribs had been a heartbeat earlier. The king pivoted fast, cloak flaring, and swung again.
Clang!
Percy uncapped Riptide in a single, practiced motion, the celestial bronze springing to life just in time to catch the blow. Sparks lit the air as the two blades clashed. The king’s strength was monstrous, forcing Percy back, step by step.
But Percy held.
“Wait!” Percy shouted desperately—in Greek, though the words tumbled out awkward, clumsy on his tongue. “Not me!”
The king didn’t slow. His fury burned too hot.
Percy grit his teeth, shoved forward, and with a burst of strength, twisted his wrist. Riptide knocked the man’s blade free—the king’s sword spun across the stone and clattered against the wall.
Percy’s breath came heavy. He raised his own blade, pressing it just under the king’s chin. “Enough.”
A guard cried out sharply, his words spilling too fast, too thick in Ancient Greek. Percy barely caught a few: “...not… sword… fake…”
Percy blinked at him, sweat dripping down his temple. Not sword… fake? What does that even mean?
He swayed slightly, his stomach twisting with that strange burning ache he’d felt since waking. He was tired—so tired. He had just fought a war. And now this. Waking up next to a corpse, getting blasted by some kind of light, then fighting off cosplayers dressed as guards like he was the villain in some messed-up play.
The man’s eyes blazed. He didn’t care about the sword at his throat. With a guttural snarl, he lunged forward, ramming into Percy with terrifying force.
Percy staggered, Riptide clattering from his hand. A heavy fist cracked against the side of his head—then another. His knees buckled.
The world tilted.
Percy’s last thought before the darkness swallowed him was bitter, almost sarcastic: Great. Just what I needed. Another concussion.
Then he crumpled to the floor, unconscious.