✓ | 𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗿𝘂𝘀 𝗳𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘀, luke castellan

ᴇɪɢʜᴛʏ-ꜱᴇᴠᴇɴ

The Sun Will Rise Again.

🌃

"I'll wait for you," he promised with his dying breath.

And then—nothing.

The world kept turning, the stars remained in their places, the war raged on beyond the throne room—but for Rory, everything stopped.

A lot of things happened on the 18th of August.

Luke Castellan died.

Percy Jackson turned sixteen, fulfilling the Great Prophecy.

And Aurora Cooper was claimed by her mother, eight years after first arriving at Camp Half-Blood.

A golden sun blazed above her head.

She didn’t move. She didn’t breathe. The light above her burned like a second sun, bright and undeniable—but it felt distant. Meaningless. Because nothing mattered. Not now. Not when Luke lay dead before her.

She let out a choked gasp, but it wasn’t enough. The pain inside her chest expanded, stretching, burning, suffocating. It clawed at her ribs, at her throat, at every inch of her being. Her hands, trembling, reached for Luke’s, gripping them so tightly her knuckles went white.

They were still warm.

Gods, they were still warm.

“No,” she whispered. It started quiet, barely audible. A plea to the Fates. A prayer to a pantheon that had never listened before.

But then it grew.

“No. No, no, NO!”

The scream ripped out of her, raw and untamed, a sound that belonged more to a wounded animal than a girl. It shook her entire frame, scraped her throat until it felt like she was breathing fire. She bent over Luke’s body, pressing her forehead to his shoulder, her sobs breaking free in shuddering waves.

She couldn’t do this.

She couldn’t do this.

He wasn’t supposed to die. He couldn’t die.

Not him.

Her hands clutched at his shirt like she could anchor him here, like she could pull him back from the Underworld through sheer force of will. Like if she just held on tight enough, the Fates would change their minds.

The tears came hot and unrelenting, mixing with the blood that stained her hands. Her fingers curled tighter around him, her body shaking so hard she thought she might shatter. She had fought in wars, stared death in the face, but nothing—nothing—had ever felt like this.

And the worst part? The world didn’t care.

The world didn’t stop for her grief.

The world was still spinning, as if it didn’t realize that Luke Castellan was dead.

And then—light.

It erupted around her, sudden and blinding, golden and pure, surging outward in waves. The energy hummed beneath her skin, thrumming like an overburdened current, like it had been waiting—waiting—for the right moment to break free.

She didn’t know how she had done it.

She didn’t care.

All she knew was that she wasn’t letting anyone take him from her. Not yet. Not now.

Beyond the barrier, voices were calling her name—desperate, frantic. She recognized them: Percy, Annabeth, Grover. But their voices felt distant, like echoes in a world she no longer belonged to. They were just sounds, muffled beneath the roaring emptiness inside her.