Charmed | 𝐉𝐀𝐒𝐎𝐍 𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐄

chapter one

[ 01 - CHAPTER ONE ]

― the one where carol almost dies ―

Liquid fire splashed in front of Carol's eyes like a flaming orange river. It coursed over layers of stark stone, its warm currency an incongruity to the gray rock it trickled over, tinging every strand of vine it touched with a layer of black, lifeless ash. Why the inhabitants of Camp Half-Blood were forced to maneuver this lava-ridden climbing wall, Carol would never know. It reeked of death.

A boulder tumbled down the side of the looming wall, and the campers who'd gathered at its base winced as the deluge of lava fluctuated in its path. The wave of fire nicked a half-blood's arm - this unfortunate child of Hypnos had taken too long to climb the gnarled surface - and yelped as his friends scrambled to pull him up the remainder of the wall.

The group of onlookers let out a collective sigh of relief when the last of his gangly body had been dragged to safety, their fretful, scrunched-up expressions lingering on their faces. It wasn't typical for the demigods to act so anxious around the climbing wall. After all, climbing the thirty-foot wall of fire was a weekly occurrence for them. Just another practice routine that most campers grew accustomed to by their second year at camp.

But something was different. The campers could feel it, in the underlyings of their bones and the warbled tissue that lied beneath their chest. There was a reason their climbing performances resembled someone grasping at straws. It was something that had lodged itself in the air at Camp Half-Blood, immovable, permanently harbored in the countenance of everyone that resided in the little niche on Long Island, until the right person forced it out of its hole. Except it appeared no one was the right person. Carol couldn't help but think that it was a sick, twisted retelling of the Sword in the Stone.

Though no one would come right out and say it, everyone knew what was plaguing the minds of campers. Their savior was missing.

Percy Jackson had vanished earlier that morning - or sometime during the night before, no one knew the exact time. He hadn't shown for breakfast, which was incredibly odd, given the renown for his cavern of a stomach. But no one had really freaked out. At least, not until lunchtime, when not even his girlfriend - ex-girlfriend? Acquaintance? Carol wasn't sure what label applied to the two anymore, ever since their big fight a few weeks back - the one person who should've known his whereabouts, didn't know where he was.

The Savior of Olympus was gone, and no one's nerves would settle because of it.

Carol, on the other hand...aside from her sorrow at the mere idea of an innocent boy's disappearance, she hadn't felt so weightless in months. When the son of Poseidon was around, people looked at her differently. Their eyes morphed into daggers of scorn, their lips into scowls of contempt, their thoughts harsh in remembrance of her actions during the Second Titan War. These things still happened when he was gone, but not nearly as often as when his presence - a beacon of Camp Half-Blood in itself - had been a constant reminder of her misdeeds against her own kind.