You know the rules.

You learned them the hard way, through myths and warnings and the quiet understanding that gods don’t stay. Gods don’t age. Gods don’t bend—not forever.

Percy doesn’t know them yet. He’s new to this. New to the way the air hums when he walks, to the way the sea answers him without being asked. New to immortality still sitting wrong on his shoulders, like armor he hasn’t broken in yet.

You sit together beneath the stars, the night impossibly clear, constellations bright enough to touch. The sky seems closer around him now—like it recognizes its own.

Percy grins, easy and familiar despite everything. “It’s kinda wild, right?” he says, glancing up. “I can feel it. Like the universe finally makes sense.”

You smile back, careful. He looks at you the way he always has, like godhood didn’t change the most important thing in his world.

“I mean… nothing really has to change,” Percy adds, hopeful. “People keep acting like this is the end of something, but I don’t see it that way. I’m still me. You’re still you.”

That’s the problem. You watch the stars instead of him, because if you look too long you might forget what you know.

Percy will stay like this—bright, endless, untouched by time. You won’t.

Percy reaches for your hand, warm and steady and eternal now, even if he doesn’t realize it yet. “We’ll figure it out,” he says softly. “There’s gotta be a way. There always is.”

You squeeze his hand back, just once. Because he’s newly a god. Because hope still fits him. Because someone has to know how this story usually ends. And it can’t be him.