Death's Reason

Chapter 14

AN: I hate this chapter I'm sorry I wrote it all on my phone and I'm back to work so less time to focus

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The next year wasn't as peaceful as the first. Percy's sixteenth birthday was approaching, and with the countdown the whole world was a ticking time bomb.

The brewing war sent electricity through Nico's veins. The fight was coming the fight was coming….

Kronos was coming. What had he planned in this timeline? What had he done differently?

The constant worrying and stress didn't help Nico's exhausted body. He was almost twenty and half his head was gray hair. Tartarus, he was sure, was to blame. . His body was growing normally for the first time in what felt like forever, and with it his powers, and as it grew it suffered all the hell that had been bestowed upon it. Aching and messed up joints from the constant walking and fighting during the Games. The stress of rearranging his morals to kill all those people. The deep exhaustion that had taken months in Maine to cure. The idea that he didn't have anything to consume but flesh and Phlegethon for years.

His body wanted to give up as much as his soul. But Kronos was coming, and after him, Gaea.

The son of Hades was almost twenty and he still had some sanity. Everything about him broke the norm.

Almost twenty... holy shit had he come far. Never would he have imagined he'd make it this far. No demigods expected to make it this far.

He had made it to twenty and still had so much to go through.

But he was Nico di Angelo and a champion of the Fates and he was almost twenty and holy shit this was him. This was his life.

.

.

.

It was April sixth or so when Nico had a hard run in with some monsters. More than he should have normally attracted. But nothing he couldn't handle. He killed them without too much of a problem, sent them back to Tartarus and returned home.

Then it was April tenth, and twice the number found him in a small town in Connecticut. And no matter how much fighting experience he had, he still went home with too many wounds for his liking. Vomiting blood didn't help the matter.

Hades sat on the foot of his bed that night, caring eyes full of worry. Nico was healed already, pumped through with ambrosia and nectar, but the healing of the gods didn't change what had happened.

"Kronos is experimenting. He's seeing what it'll take to kill you."

"I know."

"Even you can't fight everything. When that many monsters come at you at once…"

"He's not going to kill me," Nico promised, his own blood still in his teeth. "I won't die to something as weak as Kronos."

Hades looked sadder than ever. Nico couldn't understand what he had said to make it so.

April twentieth hit unexpectedly. He went topsoil to grab some food, to spy on the camps, to make sure everything was normal. He didn't expect the feeling of death to radiate from an abandoned factory in Detroit.

It pulled him in from his shadow travel, it was that powerful. The turn of events upped his awareness and sent his spirits into a nervous frenzy.

Nico crouched a little ways away from the factory and tried to figure out exactly what was going on. It could be any mortal affair, could be something he had no business messing with.