Chapter Text
Prologue – The Breaking Point
After the war against Gaea, came a betrayal deeper than any wound.
The war was over.
Gaea had fallen. The Giants lay dead; their essence scattered across the depths of Tartarus. The gods had returned to their thrones. Olympus had been rebuilt. Peace—tenuous and fragile—reigned once more.
And Percy Jackson, the hero who had led them through two wars, who had stood on the edge of the world and fought primordial chaos itself, stood alone before the gods.
He should have felt relief.
Instead, he felt like he was suffocating.
"You disobeyed direct orders during the final assault," Zeus said, voice like distant thunder rolling across a stormy sea. “You endangered divine strategy.”
Percy stared at him, soaked in blood—none of it his. “Your ‘strategy’ was going to get everyone killed. I saved lives,” Percy growled, his voice raw from shouting, from battle, from grief. “Jason would be dead if I hadn’t gone in. So would Leo, Hazel, and—”
“You acted alone,” Artemis cut in, her expression cold. “Reckless. Emotional. Mortal.”
Annabeth stood silently beside her mother. Her armor was clean. Her face was a mask.
Percy’s voice dropped. “Annabeth... Tell them. You know I did what I had to.”
She didn’t look at him. “You didn’t have the right.”
It was a knife to the gut.
“You agreed with me!” he snapped. “You said the plan was suicide!”
“I said it in private,” she replied, still not meeting his eyes. “I didn’t act on it.”
He took a step back, as if her words had weight. “So that’s what this is? I made a call—won the war—and now I’m being punished because I didn’t ask permission first?”
“There are consequences to insubordination,” Hera said icily. “Especially when it challenges the authority of Olympus.”
“I challenged you because you were wrong!” Percy shouted. “You left people to die!”
“You are not a god,” Zeus thundered. “You were never meant to lead.”
A heavy silence settled in the chamber.
“I never wanted to lead,” Percy said, his voice soft now. “I just didn’t want my friends to die.”
“You are too dangerous,” Athena said. “Too independent. Too beloved.”
“And that scares you,” Percy replied. “Doesn’t it?”
“No,” Hades answered, stepping forward from the shadows. “But it makes you a threat.”
He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
Not after Tartarus. Not after Gaia. Not after everything he’d done.
“You can’t be serious,” Percy whispered. “You’re exiling me?”
“You are to be stripped of all honors, titles, and protection from Olympus,” Zeus said. “You will walk the world nameless, abandoned, and forgotten.”
“Like a criminal,” Percy muttered.
“Like a tool that outlived its usefulness,” Athena said.
Poseidon remained silent.
Percy turned to him, desperation in his chest. “Dad?”
His father’s eyes were distant. “They’ve already decided.”
Percy stared at them all—his family, his friends, the gods he had saved—cold realization dawning.
“You’re all afraid of me.”
“We fear what you might become,” Hera admitted. “One day, you might turn against us.”
Percy didn’t scream. Didn’t fight.
He just turned and walked away.
Far in the north...
The winds never stopped.
The snow never melted.
And in the heart of the eternal frost, a lone figure stumbled through a blizzard that never ended. His thoughts were splintered, his soul cracking from within.
He didn’t remember his name.
Only the pain. The betrayal. The cold.
Something broke inside him—and something new rose to take its place.
Jack Frost.
Winter.
Snow.
The gods forgot Percy Jackson.
But the world would remember the storm he became.