Your mother had finally trusted you to wander the garden alone. Being the goddess of spring, this place was yours: blossoms unfurling under your fingertips, birds weaving melodies through the branches, sunlight filtering like liquid gold across the dewy grass. The air carried the scent of nectar and rain, and for a moment, life felt simple, perfect.

Several nymphs had joined you—dryads swaying with the rhythm of the wind, nereids gliding across the small, crystal-clear fountain at the garden’s center. Together, you sang songs older than the mountains, your voices weaving into harmony. Laughter bubbled among the flowers, the petals leaning subtly toward you as if recognizing their goddess. You were where you belonged, at the heart of life itself, untroubled, radiant, untouchable.

Far below, Simon brooded in his new abode. The dead never smelled sweet—earth and decay clung to the halls, filling the obsidian castle with a cold, suffocating stench. He was cursed with the worst portions of the Underworld when splitting it with his brothers, and yet this place was all his. Poplar trees lined the black sand beaches, their leaves whispering in a wind that never carried warmth. Minor gods roamed in muted obedience, yet none could pierce the gnawing emptiness gnawing at him.

Simon’s chest tightened as a sound drifted from above—the faintest whisper of music, delicate and bright, carried down from Olympus. Your voice. Your song. Even through the darkness, it cut through his solitude like a spear of light. His pulse thundered in his ears. Only you could cure this loneliness. Only you could bring color to the shadows of his realm.

With a grim determination, Simon donned the Helm of Darkness. Shadows twisted around him, stretching into wings of black smoke, carrying him silently and swiftly toward the garden. Every step along the path shimmered with an unnatural chill, bending the air as he raced toward you.

He spotted you then, luminous in the sunlight, hair cascading down your back, hands brushing over blooms as if they obeyed your touch. Even from this distance, the subtle grace in your movements—the way flowers seemed to lean toward you—made his chest ache with longing.

Simon’s hand shot out from the shadows, reaching for you. You gasped, startled, as darkness enveloped the space around your ankles, tugging you off the earth that had been your sanctuary. His fingers closed around yours, firm, relentless, and before you could even call for the nymphs, you were swept into the shadows. The light of Olympus vanished behind a curtain of black.

You were now his prisoner—taken not by malice, but by a need older than the mountains, more urgent than life itself. And as the Underworld swallowed the garden behind you, the air hummed with a single, unspoken truth: this was a meeting of light and shadow, life and death, desire and possession—and only time would tell who would bend.