Three years could change everything. Or nothing at all.
Alyssa woke to wrongness.
Not a sound, not a sight—just the sudden, terrible absence where something vital should have been. She sat up in her bunk, fifteen years old and already reaching for shadows that felt hollow, incomplete. The morning light filtered through the cabin windows, but it seemed dimmer than it should, as if the world itself had lost some essential brightness.
Noctis.
She was on her feet before conscious thought caught up, shadows pooling around her ankles in agitation. The other bunks in the Hades cabin were empty—she was the only child of Hades at camp, had been for years—but she barely noticed. All her attention focused inward, on the bond that had grown between her and Noctis over five years of friendship, training, and something deeper than either.
It was still there. That was the first thing she confirmed, and the relief nearly buckled her knees. The thread that connected them—woven from shadow and darkness and fate itself—still hummed with life. Noctis was alive.
But they were gone.
Alyssa dressed in a blur of motion, her hands shaking as she laced her boots. She reached out through the shadows, trying to trace that connection to its source, but it was like grasping smoke. She could feel Noctis—alive, present, real—but the location was obscured, hidden behind something she couldn't penetrate.
The training arena was empty when she arrived. They always met here at dawn, had done so for three years without fail. The space felt cavernous without Noctis's presence, the shadows lying flat and lifeless against the ground.
"They're not here."
Alyssa spun to find Chiron approaching, his expression grave. The centaur had been watching over Camp Halfblood for millennia, had seen countless demigods come and go, but there was something in his eyes now that made Alyssa's chest tighten.
"Where are they?" Her voice came out harder than she intended, edged with panic she couldn't quite suppress.
"We don't know. They were in their cabin last night. This morning..." Chiron shook his head. "Gone. No signs of struggle, no indication of where they went. It's as if they simply vanished."
"They didn't vanish." Alyssa pressed a hand to her chest, feeling the bond pulse beneath her ribs. "I can feel them. They're alive. They're—" She stopped, frustrated by her inability to articulate what she sensed. "They're somewhere dark. Somewhere... old."
Chiron studied her for a long moment. "The bond between you two has grown stronger than I realized."
"We're connected," Alyssa said simply. It was the truth, had been since they were children. "I need to find them."
"Alyssa—"
"Don't." She cut him off, shadows rising around her like a cloak. "Don't tell me to wait, or to be patient, or that they'll come back on their own. Something took them. Something pulled them. And I'm going to find out what."
The centaur's expression softened. "I wasn't going to tell you to wait. I was going to suggest you seek counsel from your father."
Alyssa blinked. In five years at Camp Halfblood, Hades had never directly contacted her. She'd felt his presence, sensed his attention in the way shadows moved and whispered, but he'd never spoken. Never called her to the underworld.
"You think he knows something," she said.
"I think," Chiron replied carefully, "that if Noctis has been drawn somewhere dark and old, there are few places that fit that description better than the realm of the dead. And fewer still that would dare take the child of Nyx without consequence."
