✓ | 𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗿𝘂𝘀 𝗳𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘀, luke castellan

ᴇɪɢʜᴛʏ-ᴛᴡᴏ

Through the Sliver of Light.

🌃

Ethan left without so much as a second glance, his footsteps fading as he strode out of the basement. Clarisse didn’t even bother stopping him, didn’t so much as move to hold him back or imprison him alongside Rory. He had delivered his message, and that was enough. Maybe she saw no point in keeping him here—Ethan was a fighter, stubborn and volatile, unpredictable at best. Rory, on the other hand, was beaten.

She didn’t fight back anymore. Didn’t argue. Didn’t resist.

And that made her an easy target.

Clarisse had decided long ago that Rory wasn’t a threat. Maybe once, before everything, before Luke, before Kronos. But not anymore. She was just a girl sitting in a dark basement, a ghost of who she had once been. She was nothing like the fighter Clarisse used to know, nothing like the second-in-command of Kronos’s army.

And honestly? Clarisse didn’t care anymore. The Ares cabin had made its decision.

Under Clarisse’s orders, they were sitting this war out.

This wasn’t their battle to fight. Not now. Not for them.

Rory barely registered any of it.

Her fingers curled around the golden ring in her palm, pressing it so tightly against her skin that the edges left crescent-shaped indentations.

Half of her wondered how Ethan had managed to slip away in the first place.

Had he just walked out? Surely not. Surely Kronos wouldn’t have allowed it, not if he had known what Luke’s last words truly meant. Not if he had understood the implications. If Kronos had suspected for even a second that Ethan had delivered that message, he would have done everything in his power to stop it. To stop her from knowing.

But it didn’t matter.

Because Rory wasn’t planning on doing anything with that knowledge.

Luke’s last request? His final wish?

It didn’t matter.

It wouldn’t change anything.

He was dead.

And she wouldn’t—couldn’t—finish what they had started.

But then, a terrible thought wormed its way into her mind.

What if Kronos had known?

What if he had let Ethan go?

After all, Kronos possessed Luke’s memories. He had access to every thought, every plan, every desperate, reckless hope that Luke had clung to before the end.

Which meant he already knew.

He knew what Luke had asked of her.

And—perhaps worse—he knew her.

Just as well as Luke had.

He knew what she was capable of.

And he knew what she wasn’t.

Kronos must have known that she would never go through with it.

Never honor Luke’s last wish.

Never take the final step.

He must have known she would refuse—no matter how much Luke pleaded, no matter how much his words haunted her.

Kronos had let Ethan leave because he wanted to remind Rory of what she already knew.