The worst part about the supernatural wasn't the monsters. It was the paperwork. Or in my case, the social maintenance required to pretend the world hadn't just glitched.
We were standing in front of the museum. The rain had started to fall in that gross, gray New York drizzle that makes everything smell like wet pavement and exhaust. Percy was pacing back and forth, looking like he was about to vibrate out of his skin.
"Sol," he said for the tenth time. "You saw her. You saw her."
I was sitting on a concrete bench, eyes closed behind my sunglasses. My energy levels were critically low. Taking that hit from the bat-lady—Mrs. Dodds, whatever she was—had drained my battery from a comfortable 80% to a shaky 40%. My bones felt heavy, like they were made of solid lead. Every time I moved, I felt a phantom drag, as if the shadows on the ground were trying to pull me into a hug.
"I saw Mrs. Dodds take us into the gallery," I said, choosing my words with the precision of a lawyer. "Then I saw you swinging a bat. Then I saw dust."
"A sword!" Percy insisted, his voice cracking. "Mr. Brunner threw me a sword! And she turned into a... a thing! She had wings, Sol! And she hit you! Look at your arm!"
I looked down. My hoodie—a vintage dark gray zip-up I'd thrifted—was shredded at the forearm. Three distinct tears revealed my skin underneath.
My dark brown skin was flawless. Not a scratch. Not a bruise.
"Percy," I said gently. "Look at the arm. If a monster hit me, I'd be bleeding. I probably snagged it on a display hook."
Percy grabbed my arm, rubbing his thumb over the smooth skin. He looked like he was about to cry. He looked so betrayed, not just by reality, but by me.
"But... I heard the noise," he whispered. "It sounded like a hammer hitting a wall."
"Adrenaline," I lied. It physically hurt to lie to him. Percy was the only person in this school who didn't treat me like a fragile glass doll. But if I validated him, I validated the monsters. And if I validated the monsters, I had to deal with them. I just wanted to go back to the dorms and sleep for fourteen hours.
Grover Underwood trotted up to us. He was breathing hard, and he smelled strongly of damp wool and anxiety.
"Hope Mrs. Kerr was nice to you guys," Grover bleated.
Percy blinked. "Who?"
"Mrs. Kerr," Grover said, his eyes darting around nervously. " The pre-algebra teacher. Who did you think it was?"
I watched Grover carefully. My vision, even behind the sunglasses, was... different. When I focused on Grover, the air around him shimmered. It looked like heat haze rising off asphalt in the summer. It was a distortion field.
The Mist, I realized. The term popped into my head from my fragmented past-life memories. It's trying to rewrite the scene.
For Percy, the Mist was a thick fog, confusing his brain. For me? It was just a bad special effect. I could see the panic in Grover's eyes. I could see the way he was sweating. He was a terrible liar.
"Right," I said, standing up. My knees popped. "Mrs. Kerr. Short, blonde, smells like peppermint. She's always been our teacher."
Percy stared at me. "Sol? You too?"
"I'm tired, Perce," I said, walking toward the bus. "Let's just go home."
I felt Percy's gaze burning into my back. It felt worse than the Fury's claws.
The next few weeks at Yancy Academy were a slow-motion car crash.
The weather turned psychotic. We had a blizzard in New York, followed by a thunderstorm that flooded the gym. The other students complained about climate change, but I knew better. The sky felt angry.
Every time thunder rumbled, I felt a vibration in my teeth. It felt like a frequency I wasn't supposed to hear. A warning.
My "condition"—the Hypnolepsy—got worse. I started sleeping through every class. I'd walk into Latin, put my head on the desk, and be out before Mr. Brunner finished roll call.
But here was the weird part: I wasn't just sleeping. I was learning.
In my dreams, I was standing in a void. A space of pure, silent darkness. It was cold, but a comforting cold, like the cool side of a pillow. In this space, I practiced.
I would visualize a shape—a simple sphere—and the darkness around me would coalesce. It would twist and harden until a ball of solid shadow hovered in my hand. It had mass. It had weight.
Constructs, I thought in the dream. I'm making matter out of nothing.
When I woke up, I'd be exhausted, but I'd ace the test. It was like the information was being whispered into my ear while I slept. I passed Latin without opening the textbook. I passed History because I dreamt of the wars we were studying.
Percy, on the other hand, was drowning. His grades tanked. He was getting into fights. He was cranky, irritable, and paranoid. He kept looking at Mrs. Kerr—the perky blonde woman who had "replaced" Mrs. Dodds—waiting for her to grow fangs.
One night, a few days before finals, I was lying in my bunk. The dorm room smelled like gym socks and cheap deodorant. Percy was pacing again.
"I'm not crazy, Sol," he said into the darkness.
I kept my eyes closed. "I never said you were."
"Everyone else acts like she never existed. Even the other students. It's like... like a mass hallucination."
"Maybe the world is just glitching," I murmured. "Maybe we're in a simulation and the devs put out a bad patch."
"It's not a joke!" Percy snapped. He kicked his bedframe. "And you know something. I see you watching Grover. I see you watching Mr. Brunner. You look at them like... like you're analyzing them."
I opened my eyes. The room was pitch black, which meant I could see perfectly. To me, darkness wasn't the absence of light; it was just a different texture of the world. I could see the dust motes floating in the air. I could see the tension in Percy's shoulders.
I sat up. "Percy, listen to me. Tomorrow we get on a bus. We go back to the city. We leave Yancy. Whatever is happening here... leave it here. Don't go looking for trouble."
"Trouble is looking for me," he said darkly.
I didn't have a response to that. Because sitting in the corner of our room, huddled in the shadow of the wardrobe, was a creature. It looked like a small, hairless dog made of smoke. It had glowing red eyes. It was watching Percy.
I flicked my wrist. A tendril of my own shadow shot out from under my bed, whipped across the floor, and snapped the smoke-dog's neck. It dissolved into nothingness.
"Did you hear that?" Percy asked, looking around.
"Hear what?" I yawned, lying back down. "Go to sleep, man."
The bus ride home was the final nail in the coffin of my "normal life" fantasy.
Percy and I were sitting in the back. Grover was sitting near the front. I was pretending to sleep, my hoodie pulled up over my dreads, sunglasses on.
The bus broke down on a country road in the middle of nowhere. Of course it did. The engine blew with a sound like a cannon shot, and smoke started pouring into the cabin.
We filed off. We were stuck in front of a roadside fruit stand.
"Great," I muttered, stretching my arms. "Fresh fruit and diesel fumes. My favorite combo."
Across the road, sitting in the shade of a maple tree, were three old ladies.
They were knitting. And when I say knitting, I don't mean scarves. They were knitting something the size of a sleeping bag. The yarn was electric blue.
Percy froze next to me. "Sol. Do you see them?"
"Old ladies knitting socks," I said. "Probably for a giant with cold feet."
But as I looked closer, the Vantablack irises of my eyes adjusted. The Mist peeled back.
They weren't just old ladies. They were ancient. Their skin looked like parchment paper stretched over dry bone. And they weren't looking at the socks. They were looking at us.
The one in the middle looked up. Her eyes met mine.
Most people, when they looked into my eyes, flinched. They looked away. It was instinctual to fear the void.
But this old woman didn't flinch. She smiled. It was a sad, knowing smile. She nodded at me, a microscopic dip of her chin, as if to say: Hello, little shadow.
Then she looked at Percy.
"I think they're looking at me," Percy whispered. He grabbed Grover's arm. "Grover?"
Grover was hyperventilating. "Tell me they aren't looking at you. Tell me they aren't looking at you."
The woman in the middle took a pair of scissors out of her basket. They were gold and silver, long-bladed, like shears used to dress a carcass.
She reached out, grabbed a thick blue thread, and... SNIP.
The sound was impossibly loud. It echoed across four lanes of traffic. It sounded like a suspension cable snapping.
My stomach dropped. A wave of exhaustion hit me so hard I stumbled. It wasn't physical tiredness; it was spiritual. It felt like someone had just turned down the dimmer switch on the sun.
"We need to get back on the bus," Grover squeaked. "Right now."
"What did they do?" Percy asked, his face pale. "Sol, did you see the string?"
I leaned against the bus, feeling the cold metal against my back. "Yeah. I saw it."
I couldn't gaslight him on this one. The energy in the air was too heavy. It tasted like ozone and funerals.
"What does it mean?" Percy asked.
I adjusted my sunglasses. "It means someone's warranty just expired."
When we got to the Port Authority, the vibe was terrible. Percy's mom wasn't there yet. Grover was looking at us like we were already dead.
"Here," Grover said, shoving a business card into Percy's hand. "Take this. If you need me... if anything happens..."
"Grover, what is going on?" Percy demanded.
"I have to go," Grover said. He looked at me. "Sol... take care of him. Please. You're... you're different."
I stared at Grover. I looked down at his feet. He was wearing baggy jeans and Converse hi-tops, but the way he stood was wrong. His center of gravity was weird. And as he turned to run to the bathroom, I saw his walk. It was a trot.
Satyr, my brain supplied. Goat legs.
"Weird," I muttered.
"Weird?" Percy looked at the card. It just had a fancy script on it: Grover Underwood, Keeper. "Sol, come home with me. My mom makes blue cookies. You can... you can explain to her that I'm not crazy."
I looked at Percy. He looked so young. Just a kid who wanted his mom.
"I can't," I said. My mom, Maya, was waiting for me in Queens. She was working a double shift at the hospital tonight, but she'd text me the second I got in. "I gotta check in with my mom. She worries."
"But... the old ladies," Percy said. "The shears."
"We're in New York, Percy," I said, forcing a grin I didn't feel. "Weird old ladies are a demographic here. Go home. Eat cookies. I'll call you."
Percy hesitated, then nodded. "Okay. Call me. Seriously."
"I will."
I watched him walk away into the crowd. I waited until he was gone.
Then I turned and looked at a shadow cast by a trash can.
"You can come out now," I said softly to the empty air.
The shadow rippled. It didn't form a monster, but it shivered, acknowledging me.
I held out my hand. I concentrated. My wakefulness dropped. My eyelids felt heavy.
From the shadow of the trash can, a small shape materialized. It was a dagger. Crude, made of solidified darkness, jagged at the edges. It hovered in my palm for a second, cold and solid, before dissolving into smoke.
I clenched my empty fist.
"Monsters are real," I whispered to the busy bus terminal. "Magic is real. My best friend is being hunted by the Fates."
I hailed a taxi. I climbed in and leaned my head back against the seat.
"Where to?" the driver asked.
"Queens," I murmured, closing my eyes. "And wake me up if we drive off a cliff. Otherwise, let me sleep."
The driver grunted. The car started moving.
I drifted off instantly, plunging back into the void, back to the dark, cold place where I didn't have to be a hero. But even in my sleep, I could feel the clock ticking. The yarn had been cut. The nap was over.
The long wake was about to begin.