Walk With the Shadows [ Percy Jackson OC ]

THIRTY-SIX | Ophelia

THE LAST THING OPHELIA SAW was blood seeping from her splitting fingertips as she desperately tried to claw herself up the crumbling earth.

It didn't work.

Ophelia didn't know how long she spent tumbling through the air. It could've been a few minutes. It could've been months. On all sides, only blackness surrounded her. Her hair whipped into her face, catching in her mouth and sending her sputtering.

No noise penetrated the darkness around her. She couldn't scream. She couldn't cry. Ophelia could only stare up where she knew the sky once lay.

As the void consumed her, Ophelia didn't bother to close her eyes. It made no difference. She knew what her body hurtled towards. Raging fires and freezing lands of soot and barbed wire would be her final resting place. And as she fell, Ophelia found she missed only one thing.

She wanted to see Alex's face one more time. Ophelia wanted to brush his tousled blond hair out of his ice blue eyes. Her bleeding fingers longed to trace every scrape and scar on his pale skin. She wanted to feel her own cool lips against the warmth of his. To breathe him in one last time.

Ophelia could still see the moment she'd first met him play out in her mind as if it had happened yesterday. He'd been sitting alone on a dock at Miami beach, tying on a pair of brand new black and red Adidas. The fading golden light of another October day turned his blond hair the color of the celestial bronze sword by his side.

While she had stood shivering despite the warmth, torn black dress and purple leggings not enough to make up for years without proper food and hygiene, this boy had sat shirtless beneath the sun, silhouetted against the waves. Luke had sent her to himal, a man more Greek god than mortal. He'd told her his brother could get her a weapon and a place to sleep while they waited for the Princess Andromeda.

She remembered how quiet her voice had sounded to her own ears when she spoke his name for the first time. Alex Griffith. He'd turned to face her. At that moment, she'd wondered if all Hermes's children looked as beautiful, and as angry, as this boy and his older brother. But the anger had faded quickly.

As Ophelia fell through void shadows and silent dark, she clung to that first smile. She clung to the memories of grabbing his hand for the first time when he slipped on the top wooden step. His hand had been so warm, and hers so cold. Even as he'd steadied himself and quickly released her, she'd released her caught breath.

The first thing Ophelia saw was caked blood on healed finger tips. She twisted around in free fall as the black void turned grey. The ground rapidly approached. Ophelia threw out her hands. A shock slammed into her body as out of the stagnant air, shadows answered her command.

She stopped falling ten feet off the ground. Floating in a haze of shadows and mist, Ophelia took in the Underworld for the first time beyond her nightmares.

In the distance, what passed for a sky glowed a faint red against lighter grey and black smoke. But beneath her and all around, there was no fire. No warmth of any kind. Just the occasional dead, black tree and wandering spirits of the dead.