Percy moved first. He scrambled towards Thalia and Zoe, Riptide forgotten on the damp rock. "Is she..." he choked out, eyes fixed on the Lieutenant's terrifyingly vacant stare. One Hunter shook her head mutely, pressing a damp cloth to Zoe's pale forehead. The demigod's breathing was shallow, uneven; her eyes remained unseeing, locked on horrors only she witnessed. Annabeth gripped her knife tighter, the cool bronze biting into her palm. Her strategic mind screamed – Camp Half-Blood was exposed, Chiron unaware, a god-level predator walking unseen through their woods. *He knew.* He knew Artemis's absence was anchored. He knew Zoe's brittleness. He knew Bianca's fate. Her gaze snapped to Thalia, kneeling frozen amidst Hunters weeping over their shattered commander. "Thalia," Annabeth hissed, urgency overriding protocol. "The camp. *Now*."
Thalia didn't respond. Her blue eyes burned not with sparks, but with a terrifying blend of cosmic horror and raw shame. Madera's cruel words echoed: *Your father discarded you beneath a pine tree*. Zoe Nightshade's broken stillness was the icy proof of divine abandonment. It was Nico who reacted. His shadows surged outward, thicker than smoke, wrapping protectively around Bianca even as he pulled her urgently back towards the path Madera had taken. "We need to warn them!" Nico gasped, his voice trembling. "He went *that* way!" He pointed towards the darkening woods eastward. "Towards Camp!"
***
Behind the spiraling mask, Madera's crimson Sharingan-Rinnegan pulsed hungrily as spatial compression folded reality like origami. Kamui dissolved the pine canopy into swirling crimson fractals, depositing him instantly atop Half-Blood Hill's eastern ridge – a vantage point where Thalia's pine stabbed skyward beside the decaying Golden Fleece. Stone chilled his sandals through the dimensional shift's lingering ozone stench. Below, the valley unfurled: strawberry fields bleeding into the Big House's peeling blue walls, the shimmering barrier flickering like faulty neon where the woods met training grounds. His eye traced the amphitheater's crescent curve, the forge's distant smoke plume, the canoe lake's glassy stillness – cataloging weaknesses with clinical precision. *So this,* he mused, distortion flattening his rasp into detached curiosity, *is where Olympus stores its spare parts.*
The scent hit him first – burnt ambrosia and dragon dung, woven through with adolescent sweat and desperation. Sound followed: distant clangs from the armory, a satyr's off-key reed pipe, the Argus-eyed security cameras whirring on their posts. His gaze skipped over pegasus stables and Hermes' cabin's chaotic sprawl, lingering instead on Zeus's marble-columned fortress and the obsidian shard of Hades' empty barracks. *Predictable segregation,* the crimson eye narrowed. *Division as defense mechanism. Fragile.* A dry chuckle vibrated behind the mask. Children playing at war while gods napped.
Movement flickered near the sword arena – two demigods sparring, bronze blades flashing too slow for his enhanced vision. His Sharingan dissected their forms: sloppy footwork, overextended thrusts, the taller one favoring his left side after yesterday's injury. *Amateurs.* A cold wave of disdain washed through him. This pitiful garrison couldn't stop a determined cyclops, let alone… him. Kamui's vortex teased at the edges of his perception, whispering of effortless invasion. Yet… his eye snapped to Thalia's tree. Golden light pulsed within its bark – the Fleece's fading power, a tether to the sky's absent lord. The barrier thrummed louder here, pricking his senses like static.
He tilted his masked face skyward. Storm clouds boiled where Olympus should gleam, heavy with unspent lightning. Artemis's silence was a screaming confirmation. *Holding up the sky,* Madera confirmed, distortion twisting satisfaction into glacial certainty. *While her Lieutenant breaks.* Below, oblivious campers laughed near the singed volleyball net. His crimson eye tracked Chiron emerging from the Big House, centaur legs stiff with alarm – too late, old teacher. Far too late. Kamui's vortex yawned open beside him, swallowing the camp's panorama whole. One last, icy observation echoed before the dimensional tear sealed: *Let them enjoy their final sunset.*
Madera rematerialized silently beside Thalia's pine tree, its needles whispering against the unnatural stillness left in his wake. The Golden Fleece shimmered against the ancient bark – bold gold scales thrown into stark relief by the dying light, its warmth radiating faintly even through the lingering ozone stench clinging to Madera's cloak. His crimson Sharingan-Rinnegan eye narrowed, ignoring the weeping nymph's spectral face momentarily coalescing within the trunk. His gaze dissected the Fleece not as treasure, but as a containment system. *Poison,* the distorted rasp echoed internally. *Hydra venom seeping into roots... barriers... sky-tethers.* He scanned the tree's scarred bark where Ladon's fangs had pierced deep – the source of the slow, insidious corruption leaching into Thalia's resurrected lifeforce and Camp Half-Blood's flimsy magical shield. Could he excise it? Purge the venom without destroying the tree… and its crucial anchor? A gloved finger traced the air inches from a weeping amber droplet of solidified poison clinging to the Fleece's fringe.
The Sharingan spun faster, mapping venomous tendrils deep within the pine's sapwood – tangled, complex, inseparable from its vascular system. Purification demanded surgical precision impossible for brute force. Madera's gloved hand lifted slowly, deliberately hovering millimeters from the gnarled bark beside the Fleece. Beneath the spiraling mask, cold calculation crystallized. Wood Release: a stolen kekkei genkai, alien to this reality, yet pulsing within Obito's implanted cells. He recalled Konohagakure's forests twisting to his will – roots as weapons, trunks as shields. Could it heal? Could it *cleanse*? The Fleece's faint pulse felt like a dying heartbeat against his palm's lingering chill. Only one way to know. He pressed his bare palm flat against the poisoned scar.
Bark rippled outward from his touch, dark wood softening instantly into living grain that flowed like viscous water. Emerald light erupted beneath Madera's hand – not magic, but raw cellular manipulation searing through the pine. Tendrils of pure, viridian chakra snaked deep, entwining Ladon's venomous roots parasitizing Thalia's lifeforce. The Fleece blazed gold in protest. Madera's Sharingan-Rinnegan pulsed violently crimson, dissecting the corruption strand by molecular strand. Wood Release wasn't gentle regeneration; it was *dominion*. He commanded the tree's biology – accelerated mitosis in healthy cells, forced apoptosis in poisoned ones. Sap hissed where venom boiled away into acrid steam. The earth beneath Thalia's pine trembled as new, untainted roots tore through bedrock, seeking purer water. The nymph's spectral face contorted in agony and ecstasy within the trunk.
The clearing pulsed with unnatural vitality. Pine needles overhead unfurled into startlingly bright jade, thick and heavy with sudden, accelerated growth. Sunlight fractured through the denser canopy above, casting dappled emerald patterns onto Madera's cloak. Distantly, near camp volleyball nets, shouts rose – the trembling earth, the scent of ozone and crushed pine, the impossible verdant surge atop Half-Blood Hill. Madera ignored it. His focus narrowed to the microscopic battlefield within the bark: wood chakra coils constricting venom pockets, incinerating them cell by cell. Sweat beaded above his brow beneath the mask – not exertion, but the strain of wielding forbidden biology in a world rejecting his very presence. The Fleece dimmed, its golden light no longer fighting decay but merging seamlessly with the tree's revitalized pulse. One last, stubborn knot of Hydra toxin resisted, thrashing where it touched Thalia's tethered essence.
With a final surge of chakra that burned cold against his fingertips, Madera *wrenched*. The corrupted root cluster disintegrated into fine, black ash blown away on a wind smelling suddenly of alpine snowmelt. The scar tissue smoothed over instantly, replaced by seamless, healthy bark. The Golden Fleece settled back into place, its glow now steady, warm, and pure. Madera withdrew his hand slowly. The Sharingan spun down. Beneath the mask, breathing steadied. He observed his handiwork: Thalia's pine stood taller, radiating impossible health, its barrier stronger than ever. Yet his crimson eye registered only the cost – Obito's implanted Hashirama cells flared angrily beneath his skin. A necessary sacrifice. Below, panicked shouts echoed as campers pointed towards the transformed hilltop, figures scrambling towards the Big House.
He didn't turn. His posture remained utterly still, cloak settling around him like sculpted stone. His crimson Sharingan-Rinnegan eye scanned the valley with unnerving patience. *They will come,* he pulsed internally, the distortion humming faintly within his skull. *The centaur smells disturbance. The drunkard senses uninvited guests.* He tracked the commotion swirling below: campers pointing frantically up the hill, Dionysus's bored shuffle turning abruptly sharp at the commotion outside Cabin Twelve. Chiron, bow materializing in hand as if conjured, moving with surprising speed towards the hill – his wise eyes already narrowed towards the unnaturally vibrant pine. Madera remained impassive, radiating glacial stillness atop the ridge. He waited. The air thickened with building alarm, the tremors having ceased but replaced by the frantic energy of a hornet's nest stirred. Seconds stretched into brittle silence punctuated by distant gasps.
Chiron emerged from the amphitheater path, cantering to a halt midway up the slope. His bow was raised but slackened instantly as he absorbed the impossible sight atop Half-Blood Hill: Madera perched casually on a thick pine branch beside the Golden Fleece, his Akatsuki cloak draped like spilled blood against the bark. The centaur's aged eyes widened beneath furrowed brows, not at the intruder's presence, but at Thalia's pine itself—now unnaturally robust, its canopy shimmering with preternatural jade vitality spreading through needles like wildfire. The Fleece pulsed with pure, steady gold, untainted by Ladon's poison. Madera's masked head tilted slowly downward, crimson Sharingan-Rinnegan locking onto Chiron's stunned gaze. Below the branch, pine needles still steamed faintly where corrosive venom had been scorched away. The silence stretched, thick with ozone and crushed pine resin.
"Impossible," Chiron breathed, bow trembling minutely as he scanned the healed scar tissue knotting the bark where Ladon's fangs had pierced deep. His gaze darted from the radiant Fleece to Madera's unnaturally still form. Centuries of wisdom warred with visceral disbelief. Hydra venom was eternal, woven into the tree's essence—inescapable. Yet here it stood, *purged*. His centaur instincts screamed *trap*, but his teacher's heart recognized a miracle, however terrifying its source. "What… did you do?" The question escaped, raw and stripped of diplomacy. Beneath the mask, Madera's distorted rasp sliced the air, devoid of triumph, colder than moonlight on stone.
"Applied pressure," Madera stated flatly, gloved fingers brushing a stray pine needle clinging to the Fleece's fringe. The crimson eye remained fixed on Chiron's wary posture. "And broke what was brittle." Chiron's knuckles whitened on the bow grip. Zoe's fate. Artemis's silence. The implication hung like frozen fog between them: Madera had not merely cleansed poison—he'd exposed divine fragility. Footsteps pounded on the lower slope: Dionysus lumbering uphill, martini glass forgotten, his usual languor replaced by rare, sharp-eyed vigilance. Campers clustered at the tree line, whispering fearfully. Madera shifted his weight on the branch, the Akatsuki cloak rustling softly. His distorted voice dropped to a whisper only Chiron's keen ears could catch: "Ask yourself, Son of Kronos… which is the greater poison?" His crimson gaze flickered meaningfully skyward, where Olympus's storm clouds gathered. "The hydra's venom? Or the neglect of gods?"
Without warning, Madera vanished—not in Kamui's crimson swirl, but as seamlessly as a shadow dissolving at dusk. Only a displaced pine needle spiraled downward past Chiron's horrified face, landing gently on freshly healed bark beneath the Fleece's unwavering glow.
He rematerialized silently beside Dionysus's plodding form just as the god reached Chiron's side. The suddenness froze Dionysus mid-stride—grape-stained lips parted around an unspoken curse, a martini glass materializing then shattering forgotten on the turf. The scent of ozone and woodsmoke clung to Madera, clashing violently with Dionysus's stale wine aura. The Akatsuki cloak brushed the god's purple tracksuit sleeve, a whisper darker than nightfall. Dionysus flinched violently, stumbling backwards as demigod campers gasped from below. Madera's crimson Sharingan-Rinnegan remained fixed solely on Chiron, utterly ignoring the Olympian beside him. "Neglect festers deeper than venom," Madera rasped, his distorted voice slicing the charged air. "It rots loyalty into... fragility." His masked head tilted infinitesimally toward Zoe's absence—a wound raw and bleeding miles away.
Dionysus snarled, recovering with shaky bravado. Purple energy crackled around his pudgy fists as he shoved between Madera and Chiron. "Who dares—" he began, voice thick with false authority. Before the god could finish, Madera's gloved hand rose slowly, palm open toward Dionysus—not threateningly, but dismissively, like swatting an insect. The gesture froze Dionysus instantly—not through force, but through sheer psychic contempt radiating from Madera's visible eye. Every demigod watching felt it: an ancient, glacial indifference that stripped Dionysus's divinity bare. The god's words choked into silence—his defiance withered under Madera's palpable disdain. "Wasted nectar," Madera hissed, the distortion twisting into serpentine mockery. His crimson gaze slid past Dionysus's paralyzed form, locking once more on Chiron's strained face. "Your masters are... preoccupied. Holding heavy burdens." A pause sharper than fractured ice. "Shall we speak? Or shall you... join them?" Behind Madera, Thalia's pine rustled softly, its unnaturally vibrant needles casting long, accusing shadows across Half-Blood Hill.
Madera began walking—slow, deliberate strides toward the Big House. He didn't glance back, yet his presence commanded the slope like a glacier advancing. Dionysus stumbled aside, trembling, looking suddenly small in his stained tracksuit. Chiron's bow lowered fractionally, centuries of tactical instinct warring against paralyzing dread. Madera paused at the treeline edge, crimson eye flickering toward the clustered demigods below. A whisper escaped his mask—so low it slithered into their bones: **"Follow."** The word sliced through hesitation. Campers exchanged panicked glances—Clarisse La Rue hefted her spear, Beckendorf tightened fists around a hammer still warm from the forge, Silena Beauregard clutched her dagger's hilt until her knuckles bleached. They formed a loose, trembling crescent behind Chiron: twenty demigods flanking Madera's unhurried descent toward the peeling blue walls. Annabeth's knife stayed unsheathed; Percy's Riptide gleamed dully. Each step echoed louder than Hephaestus's anvil—an invading silence storm forcing their obedience. Madera's cloak snapped against the windless air, a black hole advancing on their sanctuary.
Chiron moved stiffly beside Dionysus's rattled shuffle, his hooves sinking into soft turf scented sharply of strawberries and terror. Madera strode ahead unhindered, the demigod escort trailing like nervous shadows. Near the volleyball net, Pollux flinched as Madera's masked head tilted toward Cabin Twelve—a silent appraisal sharper than any insult. "He moves like Tartarus," whispered Katie Gardner, vines trembling beneath her fingertips. Clarisse spat defiantly into the dirt, but her spear tip dipped lower. Percy watched Madera's path slice through Aphrodite's rose gardens—blooms wilted instantly as he passed, petals curling black with frost. The Big House's porch loomed ahead, its oracle-green paint peeling beneath buzzing Argus cameras. Madera halted mere feet from the warped steps, his crimson eye roving over the boarded windows. Behind him, Chiron signaled a frantic standstill—demigods freezing amidst trampled strawberries. Dionysus managed a shaky step forward, martini glass reforming. "State your—" The distortion cut him off before the final word, colder than a soul's extinction.
Madera pivoted abruptly on his heel, facing the assembled demigods with glacial stillness. His Sharingan-Rinnegan gleamed beneath its spiraled prison, dissecting their fear-clenched faces like pinned insects. **"You cower behind walls,"** he rasped, his voice scraping against the sudden hush. **"Built by those who discard you..."** A gloved hand gestured dismissively toward Thalia's distant pine—a monument to abandonment. **"...or they would have come."** Bianca's choked sob echoed from the woods' edge—she and Nico stood panting beside Percy, having sprinted back too late. Madera's crimson gaze snapped toward her instantly. **"Behold,"** he hissed, the word twisting into a curse. **"Your protectors."** Chiron's bow clenched tight; Dionysus shrunk backward. **"Artemis holds the sky."** Madera's masked head tilted skyward toward the boiling storm clouds. **"Zeus... watches."** His distortion dripped venomous sarcasm. **"And Apollo?"** A pause stretched, suffocating as Zoe's vacant stare. **"Still tuning his lyre."** Annabeth's breath caught. Percy tasted ozone like blood. The silence roared louder than Kronos's chains. Madera turned slowly toward the Big House's unlocked door. **"Shall we discuss... cages?"**