Chapter Text
Camp Half-Blood had never felt more like home.
The gods had stopped bickering for once. Monsters weren’t crawling out of every shadow. Even the Oracle had gone suspiciously quiet. It had been a whole month of peace—something Percy Jackson had never experienced for more than a week straight. So naturally, it couldn't last.
He’d been walking back from the beach with Annabeth, the sun low and orange over the water, his feet still wet from a dip in the surf. They were joking about something—probably how much Connor Stoll owed them in bets—when the sky cracked open.
Not thunder. Not a storm. It split.
One second there was sunlight and laughter. The next, the sky tore in two like paper and a gust of golden wind howled down from the rift. Percy didn’t have time to grab Annabeth’s hand. Didn’t have time to shout. Just time to fall.
He screamed, or maybe the wind did. Below him, flashes of memory—Annabeth’s face, Grover’s laugh, his mom’s cooking, Blackjack’s whinny. All torn away.
Then silence. And dark.
Then heat.