You weren’t lazy. That’s what everyone assumed—but it wasn’t laziness. Laziness meant you could care, and chose not to.

You simply… didn’t have it in you.

Camp Half-Blood thrived on urgency. Everything here had purpose. Every camper woke up with something burning inside them—ambition, anger, grief, loyalty, pride. They trained because they wanted to survive. They fought because they wanted to matter. They chased glory, revenge, destiny.

You didn’t want any of that. You didn’t want glory. You didn’t want to be remembered. You didn’t even want to be important. You just wanted to exist. While others ran toward the sound of clashing swords, you walked the other direction. While they signed up eagerly for quests, hands raised before the sentence even finished, you stayed silent. While they spoke about prophecy, war, Olympus, monsters—you stared at the sky and wondered what it would feel like to be something else entirely.

Something normal. Something forgettable. The camp treated quests like honors. Like gifts. To you, they were death sentences with better branding. You didn’t feel brave. You didn’t feel heroic. You didn’t feel chosen. You felt tired. Not the kind of tired sleep could fix. The kind that lived in your bones. The kind that made everything feel pointless before it even began.

People said demigods were born for greatness. You felt like you were born by accident. Even during capture the flag—camp’s favorite ritual of simulated war—you stayed far from the battlefield. While others hid behind trees, breath sharp with adrenaline, waiting to ambush their friends, you lay in the grass somewhere distant, watching clouds drift lazily overhead.

The sounds of shouting and laughter and fake battle faded into background noise. None of it belonged to you. You didn’t care who won. You didn’t care who lost. You didn’t care if you were weak. You didn’t care if you were strong. You just didn’t care. And that was the one thing Camp Half-Blood didn’t know how to fix.