There are thresholds you cross where turning back is no longer a choice, where the smell of ash clings to your skin, not because you walked through fire, but because you set the fire yourself. You can lie to others. You can even lie to yourself if you're good at it—paint the pyres as sacrifices, the smoke as necessary, the flames as purifying—but somewhere between the second and third scream you utter in your mind, you realize you were wrong. Or at least, you hope you were.
Because if you weren't?
Then the only thing left is the knowledge that this was always who you were becoming.
I knew. I knew. Long before the body of the Cyclope had fallen at my feet, before seeing the corpse of the child he had murdered, desecrated, the moments Beryl made me realize the world I was living in, I knew that my actions would have costs
I told myself that I would give everything. My blood, my bones, my breath. My name. My future. My soul, if someone would take it.
Everything—except my humanity.
And yet here I am, standing in the ruins of a choice that doesn't feel like one I cannot unmake, wondering why I had to became this.
When did It all begin to rot?
Was it the first time the stars of potential of the inspired inventor had appeared in my mind, the first time I shaped one?
Or was it earlier—when I looked at a child and saw nothing but something that should not be? When I told Alabaster, "you're human," and meant it—because I needed it to be true? Because if he was still human, then so was Thalia.
"You really thought you were human, didn't you?"
Her voice was quiet. A murmur. No need for volume when the truth was a blade, and it had already found the soft place between my ribs.
Hecate looked at me not with accusation, but with pity. It sickened me. I would have preferred rage. Indignation. Anything but this heavy, silent grief in her eyes. A goddess who had seen countless mortal lives flicker and fade, and yet she grieved me, she grieved me when she had probably hadn't when some of her demigod children died.
"I did," I said, voice rough. Not from the cold, not from the dryness of a throat long used to screaming—but from the rawness of the thing inside me. "I truly did. Because otherwise… what would be the point of it all?"
There was no grand battle here. No clash of swords or bolts of lightning. Just a man—or more precisely something that was one—and a goddess, standing in the aftermath of the two trying to hurt each other as much as possible.
I had wanted to go against the heavens. To spit in their eye. To break their chains not because I believed they were wrong—but because I refused to accept a world where might made right. I wanted to challenge them as a man, only a man. With nothing more than grit, cunning, and that foolish little ember mortals call will.
To prove that it was enough.
That being mortal—being human—could still change everything.
Even in a world where gods walked, where monsters hunted, where fate itself bent and turned around godly bloodlines and prophecies like reeds in wind… I wanted to prove that we were not ants. Not pests. Not toys.
I wanted the heavens to tremble, not because I had stolen their fire, but because I had earned something equal if not more than it.
And now? Now the fire burned in me, yes—but it did not feel earned.
It felt taken.
"I read through the memories of my child," Hecate said quietly. "I saw your promise to him. The words you shared. For what it's worth… he may not have shown it, but he believed them. He loved them. He hoped they were right."
Hope.
A fragile thing, isn't it? Like a paper bird flying toward a storm. And I—I had placed that bird in his hands and told him to believe in the sky.
A promise. I had made a promise.
And if what she said was true—if he had clung to that hope, even though. the world had constantly try to crush him—then I had no right to falter now.
I would not break that promise. Not for anything.
But what was humanity?
Was it just the flesh? This meat and sinew? The bones that splintered, the organs that failed?
Was it the soul? That invisible thread of self that clung to dreams, to guilt, to laughter?
Or was it something else—something in between, something beyond?
I didn't know.
Hours ago, I'd stood before Alabaster and said, "We're all human." I'd meant it. Meant it with the fierce conviction of someone trying to nail themselves to the idea of being good. Of being true.
Because if he was human—this broken, tormented half-child the world spat on—then I was too.
And hadn't that been the point all along? Wasn't the whole damn plan to make humanity stronger? Smarter? Better?
To carve a future out of stone with nothing but bleeding hands?
I may be an outlier now. Maybe I had already stepped too far into the shadow of divinity. Maybe I had begun to bend the rules in ways that made me unrecognizable to the nature those who once like me.
But if everyone were like me—if all of us became this version of ourselves, improved, uplifted, forged in a better fire—would we cease to be human?
I scoffed inwardly. Of course not.
The Ship of Theseus had all its pieces replaced, yet it remained the ship. The one that sailed, that dreamed, that carried.
Its point of origin remained.
Its purpose remained.
So too with us.
Limiting humanity to mere flesh was cowardice. It was the act of a child who feared that growth meant loss. That evolution was betrayal.
But we change. That's what we do. That's what makes us human—we endure. We fall, and we rise again. We are broken, mended, and broken once more. We transform.
So maybe I had crossed a line. Maybe I had stepped beyond some threshold and left my past self behind.
But I had not abandoned humanity.
I had become something more because of it.
"You gave him hope," she repeated, as if it was an absolution.
No. Not absolution.
A burden.
Because if he had believed me—if he had loved the dream I'd handed him with calloused palms—then I owed him more than words.
I owed him victory.
But victory at what cost?
My hands curled, unbidden. I could still feel the blood beneath my nails, even though there was none. I could still smell the burning flesh, even though the wind had long since scattered the ashes I had surely left behind when she had burned me with her arcane might.
Some things don't leave you.
Some things shouldn't.
And if I had to carry this weight—this guilt, this slow erosion of self—to keep that hope alive?
Then so be it.
There was a silence between us. Not empty. Not peaceful. The kind of silence that pressed. That demanded.
"I thought I could do this," I whispered to an existence I could not but hate, to the one that I had almost made me lose it all, the words slipping from my throat like confession. "I thought I could walk through hell and come out with clean hands. I thought I could touch power and not be touched by it in return, without becoming like you in any way possible."
I hadn't wanted to be in any shape or form like that bastard of Zeus.
Our eyes crossed and this time, instead of fractal green, I saw that her eyes held galaxies unborn, and her voice came not from her throat, but from somewhere beneath your skin.
"You do not like us," she said, her tone not accusatory, but curious. Like a biologist watching a wounded fox chew off its own leg.
I met her gaze. Didn't flinch. I would never flinch before one of them
"Is that what the wind told you?" I replied to her my voice sufficed with so much sarcasm that one could probably choke on it. "Or did the mist whisper it in your ear? In any case, bravo for guessing the obvious."
She didn't smile. Gods like her don't need to.
"I know. The question is why."
I inhaled. My fists clenched without meaning to. "Because of Thalia."
A silence stretched between us—tight, buzzing with unsaid names.
"She &/ a child," I said. "Brave. Fierce. Bright like lightning bottled up in a girl's body. She should've been safe at my side and if not my side, somewhere else, somewhere else where you would be treated like a queen."
"And yet," I said, my voice sharpening, "your king—Lance—decided that the world should not be good, pleasant enough for the child he begetted, for the innocent half-blood brought to life by his pantheon. He chose pride over his blood. Chose to not take care, to not raise his children, to make my sisters suffer, to do less than the bare minimum and act as if it was mercy."
Hecate's eyes flickered, an infinitesimal twitch of something ancient. She didn't interrupt. That, at least, she understood.
"It's not just her. Demigods are hunted like beasts. Born only to be broken. Monsters smell them the way wolves smell bleeding deer. And their divine parents? They sit in their sky-thrones, wrapped in egos as thick as fog, pretending it's all part of the natural order. Let's not even talk about humans without divine parentage that are in many ways in a worse situation."
A bitter laugh escaped my lips. "Natural. As if being born to die is a sacrament."
"You think this is injustice," she said, not quite questioning. She already knew the answer.
"No," I whispered. "I think this is design." I didn't think that the system set up by the Olympians was supposed to be like this. No, if anything, I believed that all my problems with it were not bugs but intended features.
Her gaze narrowed, shifting. A ripple passed through her outline—like something underneath her form had moved.
"Say it."
I looked at her, and for a moment, I saw not a goddess, but something else. A mother, perhaps. The idea of motherhood, distorted by eons.
"It's not wrong because it hurts, Hecate," I said. "It's wrong because it was built this way. Because the very rules of our world were etched by beings who saw us as amusements at best. Because suffering is not a bug, it's a feature."
"And what are we?" I asked. "Pawns? Toys? Pets? Flawed imitations of immortality, made only to worship and perish?"
Her lips parted, but I raised a hand.
"No. Let me finish."
She allowed it not that I would have let her stop me even if she had not allowed it.
"You—all of you—you see yourselves as necessary. As inevitable. But you aren't. You're not stewards. You're jailors. The world is your prison, and we? We're the inmates who don't even know they've been sentenced."
There was fire behind my ribs. Words I hadn't known I'd carried, roaring to be born.
"You created systems where children rot in alleys while their divine parents watch. You allow monsters to kill because it prunes the weak. You demand worship from people who've never known safety, only fear."
I took another step. "You, Hecate—you say you love your children. Do you love Alabaster?"
Her expression didn't change, but the air did. The purple light dimmed without dimming. The air thickened like molasses and something else I could not put my finger on.
"Yes," she said. "More than the thousand temples they built in my name."
"Then where were you when he screamed for you?"
The silence after was not empty. It was heavy.
"I am a goddess," she said finally. "And that is the tragedy."
"Then change it."
She looked at me like I had asked the moon to drown.
"I have tried. When the Titans fell, I stood with Olympus. I thought… they might be better."
Her voice frayed like parchment, crackling around the edges.
"But they weren't. They simply were. Different crown. Same rot. Worse rot."
She lifted a hand and the space shimmered—like curtains pulled back just an inch. I saw children turned to monsters. Demigods hunted. Prayers unanswered. Dreams smothered in divine negligence.
"I was mistaken," she said. "And in the span of millenias, I have watched my mistakes repeat themselves in flesh and suffering."
"And now you want to stop it?" I asked, arching an eyebrow. "How convenient."
"No," she said, softer now. "I want to study you."
My stomach twisted. At least she we honest. I began to prepare discreetly to activate the perks given to me by the stars in my mind. This time if we clashed, I felt more confident that things would be way more different.
"You are something… other. Your magic—it is foreign. Not born of ichor or legacy. Not born of me or other deities like me. It pulls from truths even I do not fully grasp."
"And you want to use it."
"I want to understand it. And if you let me… I would also join you."
I didn't speak. I couldn't. The idea tasted like rust and blood. A goddess on my side? An absurdity.
But power… was power.
I didn't trust her. Of course not. She was divine. Which is to say, fallible without consequence.
And yet… she was ancient. She knew things I didn't. Could move through places I couldn't. Could smother truths in lies and lies in mist. She could serve as an excellent spy.
And the mist—it had always been a veil, a shield for Olympus.
But perhaps… perhaps it could work the other way.
It hid monsters from mortals. Gods from scrutiny.
Why not us from them?
"Do not lie," I said. "You don't care about humanity. Not really."
"I care about my children."
"That's not the same thing."
"No," she said, solemn, "but it is close enough for now."
I exhaled through my teeth, thoughts clashing like swords in my skull.
If I accepted her… I'd gain an ally with reach, with knowledge, with protection.
But I'd also be inviting a serpent into my den.
Yet…
She controlled the mist.
She was the mist.
The veil that blinded the world could be turned.
Used.
Bent.
The thought repeated itself like a cancer. What if the same illusions that shielded the gods from mortals… could shield mortals from the gods?
What if I could build something beneath their noses?
Raise cities while they stared at clouds?
What if they looked—and saw only what I wanted them to see?
I thought, silent, war raging behind my eyes.
And then she spoke—softly, carefully, like placing a blade into my open palm.
"For a parent to another," she said, "so that you give me a chance, so that you know that I am on your side…"
Green mist bloomed from her palms and changed colours. It reminded me of the opening of a curtain. The mist rose and it flickered into shapes—a child in them, dark-haired that I had recognised because it was the same as the one I had before being changed into whatever I was now. She was asleep, bruises, dried blood and dirt on her skin, clothes that were such in bad condition they could not be called rags.
"I would give you the most precious thing to a parent."
She looked at me, not with grandeur, but with something frighteningly human.
"The safety of their child."
My breath caught.
Not because she'd said something clever.
But because she'd said something that could not be more true.
After is there anything a parent would not accept for the well-being of their child?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
She cut the cake with a plastic fork.
It was pink. Not violently so—nothing garish, nothing that screamed birthday like a child's drawing of joy might—but soft, sugar-dusted, like the kind Alex used to pretend not to like and always asked for second helpings of when he thought no one was looking.
Her hand trembled. Not from effort. The cake was the consistency of sponge, collapsing with too much ease. No resistance. No fight.
Just like—
Stop. That wasn't a thought. That was a knife too close to bone.
She blinked once, twice, eyes not on the girl across from her but somewhere in between the crumbs, the air, the silence. Somewhere in the space where her brother's voice should still echo.
Happy birthday, Elpida. The words had been left behind like a bookmark in a novel she wasn't sure she'd ever finish. A note recorded—not because he believed he'd never return—but because Alex was the kind of idiot who planned for everything, because even though the odds were against him, he still planned to return. And for a moment, a terrible, knife-twisting moment, Beryl had believed the message had been for her.
But no.
Of course not.
It had been for the girl before her. For his daughter. For the niece she hadn't earned the right to call family.
"Why does it taste like strawberries?" Elpida asked, chewing like she wasn't sure how the act worked, how pleasure functioned. There was icing on her lip.
Beryl shrugged with one shoulder, a loose-limbed motion too casual to be sincere. "Because he had always liked strawberries. Or maybe it's because I had liked them too much when I was younger and fed more than he needed because I liked strawberries. Or maybe Thalia did. It's all a soup in my head, probably."
Elpida tilted her head in that eerie, precise way that reminded Beryl of clockwork. A movement made, not grown. As if she were still learning how to be a girl in a body built from blueprints and guilt. As if she was trying to smile with borrowed instructions.
She looks like Thalia.
No, not exactly. Thalia had more lightning in her eyes, more rebellion on her tongue not that Beryl had not deserved it. This girl was quieter, stiller—like Alex had distilled ironically hope into something delicate. Something unbreakable only because it didn't know it could shatter.
Hope.
Elpida.
Beryl couldn't even say the name without something splintering behind her ribs.
She took a breath that tasted like old regrets and said, "You're one now. That's something."
"I am not." Elpida's voice wasn't defiant. Just… correcting. As if facts were things that mattered to her more than feelings.
"You're eating cake. On a day he called your birthday. That's close enough."
"I was not born. I was manufactured."
There was no self-pity in her tone. Just precision. She could've been describing how a toaster worked.
Beryl felt her face stretch into something that might have been a smile in another lifetime. "So was Thalia, if you ask Lance. But that doesn't mean she didn't matter."
Silence returned. Not uncomfortable. Not yet. Just full. Like a room that had forgotten how to echo.
Beryl looked at her. Really looked. And it hit her—not like lightning, but like falling through a memory you thought you'd burned out of yourself. The girl didn't just look like Thalia. She looked like her. Like pieces of Beryl had been stitched into her cheeks and tucked beneath her lashes.
And more than that, more than anything—she looked like Alex.
The line of her jaw. The way her mouth turned down when she thought. The way she looked at the world like it was a puzzle with a missing piece.
It should've scared her. It should've made her turn away. But all it did was make her feel smaller.
Smaller and older and so goddamn tired.
Of course she looked like them. She was one of them. A homunculus, he'd said—created from magic, brilliance, desperation, and DNA. A last-minute miracle sculpted with trembling fingers and too many hopes.
His daughter.
Her niece.
And Beryl—what was she, really? A broken matchstick trying to light a fire that had already gone out? She hadn't earned the word mother. Hell, there were no chances she would ever earn the title of aunt.
She remembered being twelve and thinking Alex was her baby. She never said it aloud—because she was Beryl Grace and affection had always been a thing weaponized or whispered when it was already too late—but she remembered feeding him formula when their own mother was too wrecked to notice, remembered tucking him in, singing lullabies she didn't even believe in.
He had been hers. And then Thalia had been hers. And Jason. And she had failed all of them.
It had been Alex who kept things together. Even when he shouldn't have. Even when it was her job as the older sibling.Her role. Her responsibility.
Even when she'd drowned her guilt in alcohol and broken promises, it had been Alex who pulled the pieces together.
So no. She didn't deserve to look at this girl like she mattered. Like she was something Beryl could help in any way, could approach.
But…
If she walked away now, if she left Elpida alone after being the reason her father was gone—probably fighting a god—probably dying, even with all his impossible magic—then wouldn't that be just another mistake?
One more brick on the wall she'd built between herself and the people she loved?
Elpida's voice was soft. "What are you doing?"
Beryl blinked. "Feeding you cake. Badly. Why?"
"You shouldn't be here. I should've left the moment the cake was uncovered. My purpose is retrieval. Of Thalia. I was made for it. Staying here is… inefficient."
"You stayed," Beryl said quietly, "because of the cake?"
"I didn't want to disrespect him. He left this for me. He didn't have to. I'm not a real person. Just a tool."
The fork snapped in her hand.
Not loudly. Just enough.
Beryl didn't speak for a moment. She forced herself to breathe, to be. Then she set the broken utensil down like it was made of porcelain, and said with a kind of tired ferocity, "You're not just a tool."
"I was made—"
"I know what you were made for." It was her fault after all. Beryl leaned forward. Her voice was low, cracked in the center like something held together with glue and spite. "Alex told me. I know. I alsoknow he gave you a name."
Elpida blinked.
"Do you know what that means?" Beryl asked. "He didn't call you Subject 3 or Operation Rescue. He named you Elpida. That means—"
"Hope."
Beryl nodded, a sharp motion. "Exactly. And Alex doesn't name things lightly. If he named you Hope, it's because you are. Not just for Thalia. For him. For all of us. For the family he tried so damn hard to hold together."
Elpida frowned, uncertain. "But—"
"He made this for you." She gestured at the half-eaten cake. "And you think he did that because you're a mission brief? Because you're a tool?"
Beryl exhaled, eyes wet without weeping. "He's not like that. Not like me."
The words sat heavy in her chest. Rotten fruit she couldn't throw away.
"Alex always understood family. He never let us go. No matter how much we deserved it. Me, most of all."
She gave a smile that felt like glass. "That's why I'm sure. You matter to him. You're his daughter. And that makes you mine too."
Elpida stared at her. Not with awe. Not with recognition. Just with quiet, stunned stillness. Like she didn't know how to receive the gift she'd just been given. Like no one had ever told her she was wanted.
Beryl took a breath and began to sing.
"Happy birthday to you…"
Her voice wavered but didn't break. Not entirely.
"…happy birthday, dear Elpida…"
The name was a prayer. A promise. A plea.
"…happy birthday to you."
When the song ended, silence stretched between them again.
Beryl didn't move.
Elpida spoke softly. "Thank you."
It wasn't much. But it was something.
And for once, Beryl didn't try to twist it into a joke, didn't lash it with sarcasm or self-loathing.
Because Alex had done so much more than this. Had given everything, always. Even now. Probably dying, probably gone.
The least she could do was this.
Even if she was the last person in the world who deserved to try.
Because that was the thing about her, wasn't it?
She broke everything. She ruined everything. Thalia. Jason. Alex. Even herself.
That was the one thing she'd ever been good at.
And yet—
And yet here she was.
Trying.
Still trying.
Still breathing.
Even if it hurt.
Even if she only wanted to give up and would have long ago if she didn't know it would hurt her brother Because he still cared for her, and loved her even though she never did and would probably never deserve it.
Like the eye of Zaun once said, is there anything as undoing as a daughter? Had Hecate not mentioned Thalia, Alex would have made Alabaster an orphan. It is also ironic I think that after all his plans and schemes, the perfect opportunity to retrieve his daughters come from the goddess who almost ruined everything he did. Beryl is still a mess but not in a different way. Anyway, hope y'all like the chapter.
PS: I got a p.a.t.r.e.o.n.c.o.m / Eileen715 with two more chapters. With less than 5 dollars. You have access to everything I write in a month. Don't hesitate to visit if you want to read more or support me. Like ReplyReport Reactions:EyeSeeYou, Kiden, Addlcove and 340 othersAllen1996Apr 22, 2025NewAdd bookmarkView discussionThreadmarks Misericordia New View contentApr 24, 2025Add bookmark#1,589Allen1996Versed in the lewd.I do not remember the first time I loved her.
Perhaps it was when I first saw her smile, a toothless one that had felt at that moment like the purest thing that could be, one I had decided the moment I saw it that I never wanted to be gone, to have someone hammer the joy in it until it shattered and cracked. Or maybe it was when I watched her sleep, the defiance dulled from her brow, and I could almost convince myself the world had not done to her what it had, that she had better parents, that she had rightfully more than everything I could have given her.
But love, real love, is quieter than all that. It creeps. It consumes. It grows until it becomes indistinguishable from motive, from breath, from the axis upon which the world spins. And so I do not know the first time I loved her—but I know that now, everything I do, everything I have done, built is for Thalia Grace.
It was always her.
Even when I told myself it was for me—revenge, justice, spite against the ones who had played at divinity with the fragile lives of demigod children and humans not strong enough to do anything—I knew, deep down it had never been. It was for her. For Thalia.
My niece.
My daughter.
The world had placed her on a pyre since her birth and would like her to burn prettily.
And I—I would rip the sky from its hinges before I let it happen.
My eyes drifted to the scrying spell, to the image of Thalia, sleeping beneath a fucking cardboard. Just by looking at her, I could see that her cheeks were hollow, bruised by exhaustion. Her fingers clutched a knife like a lifeline, as if it was the last thing real she had. She looked like she had crawled out of the jaws of death and found no welcome waiting on the other side.
Thalia should have never looked like that. She had never looked like that when she had been in my care. Even with Beryl at her worst, while I was still able to interact with her, Thalia had not looked that bad. Instead, she looked like a ghost painted in ash and looking at her hurt more than anything made by Hecate, that she had inflicted on me in our fight. It made it feel like nothing.
"I suppose now's the part where you tell me how you knew," I murmured to the goddess. Under her, I saw her shadow move like something that didn't belong to the world. It moved without wind, without sound, and moved wrong. I ignored it to focus on the goddess.
"I pried," she said with a voice like silk dragged through broken glass. "A hunch first. A curiosity, unseemly, perhaps. Yet I am not a god of restraint, Alexander."
She looked at me, head tilted, eyes dark as dried blood under fingernails. "I gleaned. I asked the world a question and bent the answer from it like a shepherd cracking the spine of a lamb for marrow. The fact that your mortal governments record everything made it even easier.
"You know your words are anything but reassuring right? That they are only proof that I am right to not like y'all."
She smiled without warmth, without cruelty either—just the absence of both. "It is meant to show you that I am invested, my dear little anomaly. I have no desire to gamble with empty pockets. Thalia Grace—your daughter Thalia—may well be the fulcrum upon which Olympus is either saved or razed, salvaged… or salted and sown and it is known of all with the littlest of importance."
Was she truly telling me in other words she had been able to glean into what I was doing accidentally? Nah, the Moirai must have it for me because I could not be this unlucky. "So you're telling me you staked everything on a guess?"
She circled the room like a serpent tasting air. "A guess that confirmed itself. A truth in disguise is still a truth when unmasked."
And she was right, wasn't she?
If she truly stood to gain nothing from betrayal, if she put herself so far past redemption with this knowledge—then there could be no comeback for her. No repentance. No sly retreat. There was no way in hell Olympus would accept backsies from her if they had an inkling of the fact that she betrayed them.
"I've not made it a secret," I said at last, staring down at my hands. "I don't like your pantheon. I don't like any pantheon. I don't like any of you so-called gods. I hate the concept of your existence. I don't like what you do to the people, what your bullshit did to so many and my niece. This is why you must already know that what you're doing is in the last interest of your brethren and you, on your species as a whole."
"Yet here you are willing to work with me," Hecate murmured, voice cool as moonlight on a corpse.
"Here I am," I agreed, tasting bitterness like iron on my tongue. There were few things I would not do for Thalia and if I had to interact with Hecate even though it was the last thing I wanted to do, I would do so for Thalia. "What now? How do you help? How will you hide her?"
Her gaze sharpened. "You don't think the Mist sufficient?"
"It's a pretty veil. But I would be more than surprised if it lasts long enough before gods and monsters and the like realize something is wrong."
She chuckled, low and feral. "You're not wrong. If I relied on the Mist alone, it would be but a matter of time before someone peeled back the glamour like skin off fruit before the next time the moon rose."
"But," she went on, "I am not merely a weaver of illusions. I am Magic, Alexander. Not the tricks the mortal world and even some immortals would confuse with miracles. Not the party favors of warlocks or hedge witches. I am the shape beneath reality's flesh. It would be a problem—if I relied on Mist alone."
I straightened. "Then what will you do?"
Her eyes changed again, and for a heartbeat, they looked entirely human. Tired. Intrigued before going back to utterly alien.
"To make Thalia Grace seem gone would be infeasible to the extreme. Too many vectors. Too many questions. Too many beings asking where her soul has fled. And in this world, where one's essence is never truly lost, such questions tend to draw attention."
"So, not hiding," I said slowly.
"No. Duplication. I would craft a simulacrum—a twin sculpted from Mist and Memory, charmed with enough vitality to fool all but the most intrusive of inquiries."
"And if those inquiries did come?"
"They would not matter by then." Her voice was sudden steel. "Because by the time Olympus notices the shadow, the girl will already be safe in the firelight, too much time should have passed that it would be irrelevant with the great prophecy possibly happening at her sixteenth birthday."
I closed my eyes. I could see it—see it as plainly as if it had already happened. Thalia, free from all of this thing she should have never gone through, should have never faced. Free from the monsters. Free from the gods. Living. Laughing. Happy with me. Restored to herself. And a puppet made of mist taking the brunt of the world's gaze.
"And the imperfections?" I asked. "The things you can't replicate because of the…divinity in her blood?"
Hecate allowed herself a small, amused smirk. "She is the daughter of the sky's tyrant. There will be flaws. Subtle ones. But you—" she waved a hand toward me like brushing away cobwebs "with your strange magic. Something tells me that if necessary, You could smooth the rough edges."
"And at the same time study and examine it," I added. She smiled without shame at my words. My mouth curled. "The plan is more than viable."
"Yet I feel hesitation."
"Yes," I said after a moment. "Because there's something I need to know."
Her silence beckoned me forward like a confession booth.
"If the clone acts like her… walks like her… talks like her… does it feel like her?"
There it was. Not in what I said—but what I meant.
Would I be making something real? Would I be condemning something to live and feel and hurt—only to cast it aside? Would I condemn another version of my daughter to suffer?
Hecate's expression didn't change, but the purple sky above seemed to darken.
"It should not be the case," she said, voice measured like a verdict. "It may mimic her manner. Her presence. Her instincts. But in the end, it is not Thalia Grace. It will not suffer. It will not hope. It will act, and end, and vanish like smoke after its creator deems its duty done. It is a machine, just one made with magic instead of iron."
She stepped closer. Her eyes never blinked.
"But even if it did… would it change anything?"
I looked away. I looked at the still image on the scrying pool, flickering gently like an old film.
Thalia, curled under cardboard, skin too pale, cheek bruised purple. My daughter looked like she had crawled through a battlefield made of years and silence and survived only because she forgot how to die.
No.
It wouldn't change anything.
Maybe I'd feel something. A twinge. A weight. But I had made my peace long ago with what had to be done. Her joy—her freedom—was not a luxury. It was a necessity. The only goddamn necessity that mattered.
Because children do not earn love, because all children should be able to be safe and happy. They are owed it. Without clause. Without compromise.
And if this world—these gods—refused to see that, then I would be the exception. More of a heretic than I already was. I would always choose to be the heron that breaks its wings to feed its young.
No matter what I may feel, no matter what I may, no matter what I may sacrifice, no matter how despicable the act is, as long as my daughter would be happy, I would do it without hesitation.
I turned to her, to the goddess with fractals on her skin, the one I had tried to kill with everything I had.
"Let's do it."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The world folded itself wrong around us as I stepped through Hecate's portal—a sensation like being pulled through the ribs of a living thing. One moment, I stood in the realm she once had been the queen of, bathed in a purple haze; the next, I was here, close enough to smell the stale sweat and blood clinging to the air.
The scent that greeted me was old wood and mildew, rust and iron and the stale sweat of forgotten fear. A room made not for rest but for recovery. That miserable in-between where the body lies still but the soul paces behind its ribs.
I found myself meters away from the slumbering wreckage of a child who should have been laughing. Now that I was closer, I could see that Thalia was in worse shape than I had thought she was. Thalia lay curled on a moth-eaten mattress, her small frame swallowed by shadows. Bruises flowered across her skin as ink spilled on parchment. Her knuckles were split. Her breathing hitched, uneven, as if even sleep couldn't grant her peace.
My daughter.
And beside me, Hecate—the goddess cloaked in shadow and the shimmer of sickly green fire—exhaled as if she was shedding a skin she had worn too long.
"I have veiled us in Mist," she murmured, her voice like the rustling of old scrolls with ink and feathers of ravens. "Unless the Fates themselves spit in our eyes tonight, no hound shall scent you. No eye shall see you."
Her eyes, bright and liquid with something that looked like kindness if one squinted hard enough, shifted toward the sleeping girl. "The final rite is simple. One strand of her hair. That is all I require to shape the shell."
A silence fell between us, filled only by Thalia's uneven breath.
"She looks…" I began, and couldn't finish.
Hecate nodded, solemn and ancient, as though she had seen countless parents stand where I now stood—on the edge of something that might be joy, or might be annihilation. "I will wait for you beyond these rotting walls," she said. "Do what you must. I shall not witness this. As a mother, it is the least I can offer."
And with a flick of her hand, she peeled herself away from the world, melting into a plume of green fog and brittle shadow. A god leaving as quietly as she came.
And I was alone.
I had created Elpida, created, made and thought about so many complicated plans to reunite with my daughter yet wasn't ironic that it was because of none of those plans I would reunite with her? None of those schemes had brought me to her.
No. Zeus—that lightning-raping ass bastard—had been the one to tear her from me. His cruelty, his pride, his pettiness had been the reason and now, another god was the reason why I would have her back to me.
There are ironies so vast they make you laugh. And then there are the ones that split you down the middle like a rusted cleaver. It felt like the later
So many nights, times I had envisioned this. Reunions with open arms. Tearful apologies. Maybe a punch to the jaw, followed by a broken laugh and a hug too tight. Words had been rehearsed, rewritten, bled dry into his mind like ink across pages.
But now that she was here—real, tangible, close enough to touch—my mind had become an empty cathedral. Echoing. Hollow. Dust-choked.
I was afraid to breathe. Afraid that if I did, I would wake up and realize that all of this was nothing but a cruel dream. That this would all vanish by me waking up.
So I stepped forward on the balls of my feet, the floor beneath groaning like some wounded thing. I moved like a ghost, a coward masquerading as a father.
But wishes, it seems, are the first things slaughtered by reality.
The creak broke her sleep. Her eyes snapped open.
Blue. Blue not like water, not like oceans, but like voltage. Electric, sharp, unrelenting.
And they locked on me.
No recognition. Not even confusion. Just panic. Raw and feral.
She scrambled back, her body trembling like a bowstring about to snap. And in that moment, I saw her not as a child but as a cornered animal, bruised, exhausted, and ready to tear out throats if it meant survival.
It shattered something in me. Not because she feared—but because she feared me.
She looked at me and saw not her uncle. Not me. Not Alex.
She saw a stranger.
No—worse.
She saw a threat.
That incomprehension sunk in like a knife carved from ice. I had expected fury. Expected her to scream, to hit me, to demand why I had abandoned her. And she would have been right. God or no god, Zeus or no Zeus—I had promised her I would never leave her, and I had broken that promise.
But this? This forgetting? This fear?
Had it been that long?
Or had that bastard done something, tampered with her mind like he had done with me? Had he polished her memories clean of me?
"Stay back!" she screamed, her voice straining as if it were pulled through razor wire. "Whatever thing you are—don't come closer!"
She was ready to bolt. Her body screamed for flight. Her eyes searched corners and cracks, looking for a hole in the world wide enough to crawl through.
I held my hands up, slow. Gentle. As if trying to tame a wounded beast.
"Thalia," I said, barely a whisper. "It's me. It's Uncle Alex."
Something shifted. The fear cracked.
But what spilled from behind it was not relief.
It was rage.
The kind that burns empire to ash and grinds marble to dust.
The kind that no child should carry.
Her teeth clenched. "How dare you?!" she spat, voice rising, trembling, seething.
And the air changed.
Ozone sharpened the room like a blade. The scent of copper and singed metal made my mouth go dry.
Electricity flickered around her in jagged little spasms. Her eyes, they glowed. Her hair lifted as though pulled upward by unseen hands. Sparks danced across her shoulders like moths drawn to pain.
She hissed again, voice cracked as if she had been crying too much and had too little sleep. "it is not enough that you lie try to eat me alive, lie to stab me, chase after me, make me bleed. It is not enough you make everything hurt and hard. Now, you dare use his name to try to hurt me even more?!"
Tears streaked her cheeks, each one shining in the flickering blue haze.
Her blade was drawn, and it wasn't just a knife anymore—it was swaddled in pure lightning, a weapon of vengeance. Thunder rumbled above us, not in the sky but inside the bones of the room. Glass cracked. Windows rattled.
I caught my reflection in her eyes.
And I saw the difference. The reason she hadn't known me.
It was normal, after all, the uncle Alex she had known had eyes not of the same shade but of the same blue colour as her, had hair as dark as hers, not the ashen I now had on the head.
She didn't see her uncle.
She saw another thing trying to break her.
"I'VE HAD ENOUGH!" she shrieked, voice ripping out of her throat like a battle cry torn from the heart of a child soldier.
And she moved.
It was a thunderclap.
She didn't run. She struck.
And for a sliver of an instant, the world stilled. Had it been the version of me before my fight with Hecate, without my armour capable of enhancing my perception, seeing things move at least a thousand times faster, I would have been blindsided and I would never have seen her move. I would have been dead before I blinked, unable to see Thalia move but now it was not the case.
Because now—now it felt as if time bent just for me. My senses expanded. I saw her cross the distance in a thousand fractured images. Her bare feet barely touched the floor. Her blade was first. Her grief was second.
I could have stopped her. Dodged. Parried. I could have dodged. I knew I could have easily stopped her through pure physical prowess or magic. I could have reinforced my flesh to make sure the knife doesn't even leave a graze, I could have invoked my armour made of Necrodermis. I could have caught the blade with two fingers and watched it shatter.
But I didn't.
I didn't even flinch.
Her blade met flesh.
I let it.
Because the pain of being stabbed was nothing before the one I felt seeing her cry, because the pain was irrelevant here. If anything, it was something I deserved.
I had done something unforgivable after all, u had made her cry.
This is why I didn't dodge, move.
The only thing I did was hold her, hug her as if it would be the last thing I would do.
I held her, and the world fell still.
She froze in my embrace.
The kind of stillness not born from fear, but from something more jagged, more terrible—a child's disbelief. A tension wrought from too many nights alone, too many dreams ending in loss. She stiffened as though my arms were ghosts pressing in, as though love itself had become something foreign, dangerous, a thing not meant for her.
Her small body trembled, not from the cold of but from the war I was sure was happening behind her ribs. I knew her. She was my daughter after all.
Holding her, I remembered her warmth. Not this fragile, shaking wisp but the incandescent spark she used to be, always moving, always talking, laughing like the world could never break her.
I spoke, finally.
Softly. Tenderly, with everything good and pure and kind and honest my soul could muster.
"I remember when you were so excited after we came back from the cinema."
Her breath caught. I pressed on.
"The Little Siren. You wouldn't stop singing that terrible song." I laughed, just a breath of it, bitter and soft. "You were running all over the apartment even though I told you not to. Then you tripped and scraped your knee. I lost my mind. Do you remember? I was fussing over you like a lunatic, acting like you'd been hit by a car. And you—you laughed."
I could feel the memory unfold between us, like a crumpled photograph smoothed open.
"You were supposed to cry. But you laughed at me instead."
She still hadn't spoken. But she hadn't pulled away.
I pulled the past further forward.
"I remember finding you sneaking into the kitchen when you were supposed to be asleep. You had your tiny feet tiptoeing across the tiles like a spy." I smiled. "I told you off. But barely. I made popcorn instead. You fell asleep mid-bite."
A breath, ragged and tight, rattled in her throat.
"You didn't want to sleep, but your body needed it. So I let you sleep there, slumped against my side."
Still nothing. But I felt her now, her hands twitching against my t-shirt.
"I helped you with your schoolwork. You'd get so frustrated with your ADHD and your dyslexia. You told me you were stupid."
My voice broke.
"And I told you—God, I told you—you weren't. That you were brilliant. That you were perfect. Even when it took hours and you cried into your math book, you still did the work. You always did the work, Thalia."
A hiccup. Then another.
A crack in her silence, like ice beginning to break.
"I remember the promise I made. That I would never leave you. That I would always be here."
And then she broke. Shaking like a branch caught in wind too strong for it to bear, her voice cracked open like lightning cleaving the dark.
"Is it truly you, Uncle Alex?!"
Her disbelief made the air feel thick, like breathing through water.
I pulled her tighter, my own heartbeat thudding so loudly it hurt.
"I've changed, Thalia… but yes, it's me." My words were soft, cloaked in grief and wonder. "Sorry for being late."
It happened then.
The tension vanished. Like a bow unstrung after years of being drawn taut. I felt her collapse—not fainting, not unconscious—but her body simply gave up the act of holding everything in. Her weight slumped into me as if gravity had returned to her, after years spent floating in loss.
Something told me that if I weren't holding her, she'd be on the ground, curled into herself, unable to rise.
"I'm here to bring you with me, Thalia," I said gently. "To bring you home."
And her voice, barely audible, as if the wind itself were ashamed to carry it:
"I thought you had forgotten me. Please tell me this is not a dream, that this is not a lie. Please, tell me it is real."
I kneeled on one knee. I pressed my forehead to hers.
"It is real, Thalia. I could have never forgotten you. I could never stop caring. Never stop loving you."
And then came the sob. Not the quiet kind. Not cinematic.
But the raw, ugly sob of a child who has remembered how to hurt.
She shifted in my arms, clawing at my shirt, and then—
She remembered about, she saw the knife.
Her whole body changed. The fear didn't ebb—it turned, grew fangs, turned inward. Her sobs became frantic, disjointed. Her voice panicked.
"I stabbed you! You're bleeding! I—I stabbed you when you came for me! I hurt you! You could die! We should go to the hospital or maybe—maybe we shou—"
"It's okay, Thalia," I interrupted, not sharply, but like sunlight interrupting a shadow. "Don't panic. Trust me. It'll be alright."
Her fingers gripped my shoulders so tightly I thought she'd snap bone.
Between hiccuping breaths, she whispered again and again, each time fainter than the last—
"I trust you… I trust you… I trust you…"
And she clung to me.
As if I were the last thing in a world not painted with blood and betrayal.
Her arms wound around my neck like ivy seeking the sun. I held her as one holds the last light in a dying world.
And for the first time in years—perhaps lifetimes—I felt whole.
I pressed my lips to her temple, tasted the salt of her tears.
"Let's go home, Thalia."
This chapter is kinda one of the most important. There were so many ways it could have been probably better. I am not sure I was able to give justice to what I had in mind but I hope y'all like it.
Ps: I got a p.a.t.r.e.o.n.c.o.m / Eileen715 with two more chapters. With less than 5$, you have access to everything I write a month in advance. Don't hesitate to visit if you want to read more or simply support me.