✓ | 𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗿𝘂𝘀 𝗳𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘀, luke castellan

ꜰᴏᴜʀᴛᴇᴇɴ

A Hero's Resolve.

⚡

    EVERY NIGHT AFTER THAT WAS THE SAME.

    Endless. Inescapable. Exquisitely cruel.

    Each time she closed her eyes, the world fell away, and she with it—plunging into a void so vast and black it seemed to stretch beyond death itself. There was no light, no end, no hope. Only the fall.

    Down she went, again and again, as though her soul had forgotten how to rest, how to do anything but spiral into nothingness. The screaming came early now—ragged, throat-torn shrieks that never echoed, never landed. Sound was swallowed whole by the dark, like everything else. Her body pitched through the abyss like dead weight, flung from the world above. Sometimes her limbs flailed; other times she stayed limp, arms outstretched like wings—though not to fly. Never to fly. There was no sun to chase, no sky left to burn.

    Only the hunger of gravity and the sick, sick hope that maybe this time, the bottom wouldn't come.

    But it always did.

    She would land—hard, always harder than the night before. Bone met rock in grotesque splinters. Her spine would crumple with a nauseating crunch. Her knees snapped sideways, muscle tearing with it, skin splitting open to expose raw meat and mangled ligaments. Her mouth would open in a silent scream as her jaw fractured on impact, dislocating so violently it hung open in the dream like a broken door.

    The blood soaked her clothes, warm and sticky, pooling around her in grotesque halos. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t beg for it to end. Could only lie there, twitching in the gore of her own undoing while some cruel version of her mind whispered that this—this was what she deserved.

    Even after waking, the pain clung to her like a shadow. Sweat plastered her hair to her face, her breath came in frantic gulps, and tears tracked silently down her cheeks. Her sheets were tangled, twisted around her limbs like restraints. The room was always cold. Too cold. As if the abyss had followed her out.

    And yet… she never screamed aloud.

    Never cried for help.

    Never told anyone.

    Kronos didn’t have to chase her. Didn’t have to trap her. She went willingly. Night after night, like a sinner returning to confession.

    She never ran.

    Never fought back.

    She just… fell.

    And maybe, somewhere deep down, some fractured piece of her believed the nightmare was truer than the world outside. Maybe part of her hoped that one night, the dream would stop being a dream. That she wouldn’t wake up at all. That the final fall would be real.

    That she would crash and break and burn, and never rise again.

⋆⁺₊⋆ 𖤓 ⋆⁺₊⋆

    Grover and Annabeth returned to Camp the day after Rory’s first nightmare, both looking visibly worn and exhausted, their faces marked by dirt and faint bruises. Yet despite their ragged appearance, they were—unfortunately—very much alive.

    When pressed, Grover and Annabeth exchanged a glance—hesitating on how much to reveal, how much to hold back. Slowly, carefully, they shared what they could: they had found the bolt. But that was only the beginning. Ares had not only stolen Zeus’s master bolt but also Hades’s Helm of Darkness. Ares had intended to ignite a war not just between Poseidon and Zeus, but also including Hades in that battle.