Betrayed But Never Forgotten

At least I'm in charge of Blue food!

Percy's pov

Percy crashed into the heart of Chaos's throne room, the impact reverberating through his bones. An unnatural silence hung in the air, thick and oppressive. The once-majestic throne—repository of ultimate cosmic power—now barely flickered in the dying torchlight, casting grotesque shadows that danced across the obsidian walls. A knot of dread tightened in Percy's stomach. Something was terribly wrong.

"Father?" The word fell dead in the vast chamber.

The torches sputtered, their flames struggling against an invisible force. Percy reached out with his senses, probing the darkness for any sign of his father or the usually bustling servants, but encountered only a void—an absence so complete it felt deliberately crafted.

"PRINCE PERSEUS!"

Percy's heart nearly burst from his chest as he whirled around, instinctively summoning shadows to his fingertips. A warrior staggered into the throne room, his armor dented and his face a gruesome mask of dried blood and fresh wounds. The celestial bronze sword in his trembling hand dripped crimson ichor onto the marble floor, each drop hissing with otherworldly energy.

"Where is my father?" Percy demanded, his voice cracking with barely contained panic. The shadows around him writhed and coiled in response to his emotions, drinking in the darkness that was slowly consuming the palace—a palace his father had always maintained as a beacon of brilliance against the cosmic void.

"Gone!" The warrior's eyes were wide with terror. "Everything's falling apart! Three days ago, we discovered a cure for the princess's curse, and then—" his voice faltered, "—then Chaos vanished without a trace. The realm is descending into madness! People are fleeing to O-Order by the thousands!"

The warrior seized Percy's arm with surprising strength, his fingers digging painfully into Percy's flesh as he dragged him through corridors that bore the unmistakable signs of abandonment and decay. Once-magnificent paintings hung crookedly on the walls, their subjects distorted by spreading mold. The ceiling groaned ominously, showering them with fine dust and fragments of what looked horrifyingly like crystallized time.

"Order?" Percy's mind raced frantically. "Who is—"

"SILENCE!" The warrior violently shoved Percy into a storage chamber filled with ancient artifacts and sealed the entrance with frantic movements, piling mystical urns and enchanted weaponry against the door. Percy could hear the thundering of multiple footsteps outside—heavy, purposeful, predatory.

In the suffocating darkness, the shadows gravitated toward Percy like starving wolves, recognizing their master. The warrior pressed his blood-caked face close to Percy's, his breath reeking of fear and something more insidious.

"Order is your father's sister—the one he never speaks of," he whispered, eyes darting nervously. "She's been waiting millennia for this opportunity. Your father's disappearance triggered ancient protocols. The corruption spread like wildfire through our ranks—warriors who served Chaos for eons now kneel before her, training day and night for a single command: to lay waste to Earth and any realm that opposes her!"

"Your name," Percy demanded, fighting to keep his voice steady as rage and terror battled for supremacy in his mind.

"Seth Kent, Commander of Chaos's Warriors... or what remains of them." The warrior's eyes reflected the darkness around them. "Your sister... she's gone beyond our reach. She aligned herself with Tartarus—he was merely a distraction, a puppet show to occupy you and the Greek world while the real threat gathered strength."

White-hot fury surged through Percy's veins. The shadows pulsed around him, responding to his wrath, stretching their tendrils toward the ceiling where they twisted into grotesque shapes of warfare and destruction.

"How many remain loyal?" Percy's voice had dropped to a dangerous whisper, cold as the void between stars.

"Twenty-six spellcasters survive, their powers diminished but intact. Between two and three hundred warriors scattered across planet Fyn, hiding in the mountains and forests, awaiting orders that never come." Seth's voice cracked with exhaustion. "Without Chaos, the universe has no anchor. The fundamental forces are unraveling. Even Order cannot claim the throne—only direct bloodline descendants can stabilize the cosmos."

"Gather them all. Bring every loyal soul to Earth immediately," Percy commanded, his aura darkening as power—ancient and untamed—began to stir within him. "We'll build our defenses while there's still time."

As Percy prepared to teleport, Seth's grip tightened painfully around his wrist. "The universe cannot survive without an Emperor! The void grows by the second. Without someone of Chaos's blood on the throne, reality itself will collapse. Your sister is corrupted, which leaves only you, Perseus!"

Emperor. The word echoed in Percy's mind like a death knell. Unlimited power thrummed just beyond his reach—power to crush enemies, to reshape galaxies as easily as molding clay. But with it came responsibility beyond comprehension. For a moment, selfishness whispered seductively in his ear.

Then he thought of countless civilizations teetering on the brink of oblivion, of trillions of innocent lives hanging by a thread... of his father, who might still be out there somewhere, fighting to return.

"I accept the burden," Percy declared, each word tasting like ash on his tongue. "Until my father returns, I will hold the cosmos together."

The instant those fateful words left his lips, blinding purple and white energy erupted around him, lifting him off the ground in a violent maelstrom. His body convulsed as cosmic power ripped through every cell, rewriting his very essence. It felt as though each atom was being torn apart and forged anew in the heart of a dying star. Worse than bathing in the Styx—at least then, he had his mortal anchor. Now, he was untethered, spinning through dimensions of agony beyond mortal comprehension.

A scream tore from his throat, primordial and raw, as his mortal shell struggled to contain the essence of creation itself. Then, as suddenly as it began, the storm subsided.

Percy collapsed to his knees, vision swimming with afterimages of realities that never were and could never be. His lungs heaved as they adjusted to breathing not just air, but the essence of existence itself.

Another flash of light, so bright it seemed to bend reality, filled the room. Through his pain-blurred vision, Percy beheld the Three Fates, ancient beyond reckoning, crammed incongruously into the small storage chamber. Behind them, Seth knelt in terrified reverence.

"ALL HAIL PERSEUS JACKSON," their voices crashed together like tectonic plates colliding, 

"TEMPORARY PRIMORDIAL OF THE UNIVERSE, OF DEFIANCE, OF BLUE SUSTENANCE, OF WARRIORS! KING OF THE UNFATHOMABLE DARKNESS!"

Before them floated a sea-green thread that seemed to pulse with its own heartbeat. As Percy watched through increasingly clouded vision, golden flecks materialized along the thread, multiplying rapidly until the entire strand gleamed with cosmic power. Then, in a cascade of divine sparks, both thread and Fates vanished from the mortal plane.

"Contact me... when..." Percy slurred, darkness encroaching from the edges of his consciousness. Power unlike anything he had ever known coursed through his veins, but his body—even his enhanced demigod body—was not yet ready to channel it.

"I believe you mean your army now... Your Highness," Seth's voice seemed to come from impossibly far away, tinged with both awe and something darker.

With the last fragments of his conscious mind, Percy summoned the power to teleport, feeling his newly divine essence tear through space and time. He materialized in his cabin at Camp Half-Blood, where Luke and Charles leapt to their feet in shock.

"Probably should catch me now," Percy managed to mumble before the weight of godhood claimed his consciousness completely.

As Percy's divine form crashed to the floor of the Chaos cabin, neither he nor Seth were aware of the three figures watching from the deepest shadows of the storage room—particularly the one whose piercing blue eyes burned with ancient hatred as they bored into the newly crowned Emperor's back, already plotting the undoing of creation itself.