No one notices you slipping at first.

You’re good at that—being present without being held. Camp has always expected something sharp from you, something dangerous or useful, and lately you’ve had neither the energy nor the patience to keep up. Too many quests. Too many people deciding what you’re meant to be.

So when the offer comes, it doesn’t sound evil. It sounds like rest. A place where the rules don’t change. Where the work is honest, endless, and uncomplicated. Where no one watches you waiting for you to mess up or rise to the occasion. You sign because you’re tired of choosing wrong.

Hadestown takes you quietly. Grover feels it first—the sudden tug, like a string cut underground. Percy notices next, because your absence is loud in a way he can’t explain. Annabeth puts the pieces together with a sickening speed, the way she always does when the answer is worse than the question.

You didn’t die. You left. And that’s somehow harder to forgive—until they realize why.

They don’t ask permission. They don’t tell Chiron. Percy doesn’t even complain. He just sets his jaw and starts moving, like if he stops you’ll sink too deep to reach. Grover follows, heart aching, hooves unsteady. Annabeth memorizes every scrap of myth she’s ever heard about contracts and places that don’t like to give back what they’re owed.

Hadestown greets them with heat. With rhythm. With work that never ends. They step inside together, tired already, the sound of metal ringing in their ears. Lamps glow low. Workers pass without looking up, faces blurred by routine. Percy scans the crowd desperately. Grover’s eyes shine with unshed panic. Annabeth’s hands clench at her sides, already calculating what it would cost to break a deal like yours.

Somewhere in the noise and the labor and the rules written in stone, you are here—moving in time with a place that doesn’t care why you came, only that you stay.

And Percy Jackson has just entered Hadestown to bring you home.