The woods felt wrong. Not quiet — quiet would have been mercy. This was heavier than that. The trees leaned inward as if listening. The air tasted metallic, sharp against the tongue, like the edge of a blade pressed just beneath skin.

They stood in a loose, fractured circle beneath the warped canopy. No one looked at each other. Clothes were torn. Armor split at the seams. Dried blood — not all of it theirs — painted hands and sleeves in ugly streaks. The forest floor around them was churned to mud and ash where something enormous had dragged itself free from the pit they had opened.

Tartarus had breathed. And they had let it. The pack that once held their supplies lay ripped open near a snapped tree root. Empty. The weapon that had been crucial to the quest — gone. The map — shredded. The vial — shattered, its contents seeping uselessly into the dirt. Frank was missing. The space where he should have been felt louder than any scream.

Jason stood rigid, jaw tight enough to crack teeth, eyes blazing at the person opposite him as if fury alone could stitch reality back together. Hazel had her arms wrapped around herself, rocking once — just once — before forcing stillness, shame crawling up their spine like frost.

Percy’s knuckles were white around Riptide’s hilt, sea-green eyes storming, but not at the trees. At them. At himself. At the mistake. The water in the air trembled, reacting to the pressure building in his chest.

Annabeth’s face had gone pale, grey eyes sharp and frantic, scanning for patterns that no longer existed. Strategy required pieces. They had none. Her shoulders were squared, but her fingers were shaking.

Piper kicked at the broken remains of a supply crate, rage spilling out in violent, useless bursts. Leo refused to lift his gaze from the place in the dirt where claw marks gouged downward — into darkness — as if staring hard enough could pull their missing friend back up.

The monster’s echo still vibrated in the air. A low, distant tremor. Branches shivered though there was no wind. They had released it. They had argued before the seal was stable. They had rushed. They had trusted the wrong instinct. They had hesitated. They had panicked. They had failed. Blame passed between them without a single word spoken. It hung in their breathing, in the way shoulders angled away instead of toward. In the silence that should have been filled with plans.

The forest pressed closer. A twig snapped somewhere too large to be a rabbit. No one reached for each other. Not yet. They stood there — heroes, exhausted and splintering — surrounded by the consequences of their own hands, the absence of one of their own yawning wider than the pit they’d opened. And the woods waited to see if they would break.

And they did, everyone began shouting at once, blaming each other for no reason, screaming.