The air in the Underworld trembled — not from sound, but from the weight of want.

Percy knelt on the cold obsidian floor, his hand clasped tightly around Annabeth’s. Her skin was pale as riverglass, her breath thin and uneven. Hades sat upon his throne, gaze distant, chin resting on one knuckle like a man already bored of tragedy.

The River Styx murmured in the distance, a black current twisting in lazy loops, whispering secrets it never kept.

“Can we go?” Percy’s voice cracked on the second word, the syllables heavy, desperate. It wasn’t the tone of a hero — it was the tone of someone who had already lost, and still refused to let go.

Hades didn’t answer right away. He leaned forward, his eyes like shards of onyx — old, cold, and full of something that might have been pity once, before the centuries ground it out of him.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. The words fell like coins into the river — soft, final, and gone before they hit the surface.

The shadows stirred. The air shimmered faintly — you were there, somewhere in the dark, watching. Maybe you were a Fate, or something older still, something that didn’t quite fit in the world above or below. You knew how this story went — the pleading, the promise, the turn.

Mortals always thought they could bargain with forever.

Percy’s fingers tightened around Annabeth’s. “Please,” he whispered, to no one in particular — or maybe to you, to whatever unseen presence might be listening. “Please, she doesn’t belong here.”

Hades tilted his head. His voice was smooth, measured. “No one belongs here. They simply arrive.”

The torches dimmed. The river hissed softly.