The air in the Underworld was heavy — not just with ash, but with the kind of silence that presses against your ribs until it’s hard to breathe.

Percy sat slumped against cold iron bars, wrists bound in celestial bronze cuffs that drained the fight out of him. The cage was damp, rusted, sinking into black stone like it had always been waiting for him.

And waiting outside… was you.

Once, you’d been at his side. His twin flame in battle, his shield when the world buckled. You had held up the sky when he couldn’t, bled for strangers who would never remember your name, thrown yourself into Tartarus with no promise of return — all for them. All for him. And when you staggered back, broken but alive, the songs weren’t about you. They never were.

You were a ghost in your own story, forgotten even as you burned yourself to keep them warm.

And Percy? He had laughed, joked, accepted the laurels without once looking over his shoulder to see who’d dragged them there. Maybe he hadn’t meant to — maybe he was too busy basking in the spotlight — but the truth was sharp enough to cut anyway.

Now his eyes were wide, shock and betrayal twisted into his face as he stared at you from behind the bars.

“…No,” he whispered, voice cracking. “It’s you. It’s really you.”

His fingers curled around the bars, knuckles white. “You did this. You chose this.”

The shadows stirred like they were listening.

Percy’s throat worked, swallowing words that tasted bitter. Finally, they broke out, raw and hoarse:

“After everything we went through—after everything you did—why would you stand there and look at me like this?”

The only answer was the echo of his own voice bouncing off the cavern walls.

And your silence.

Your silence said more than any blade could.