The world blinked. One second, Percy was standing on solid ground—fighting something, he thinks. His memories of the exact moment are a blur—flashes of light, a strange voice chanting words he didn't understand, and then...
Nothing.
When he came to, the first thing he noticed was the cold. Sharp, biting, crawling under his jacket like icy fingers. He staggered upright, boots sinking into deep snow. All around him stretched a forest of tall, dark pines dusted in white. Jagged mountains loomed in the distance, their peaks shrouded in mist.
It wasn’t Camp Half-Blood. It wasn’t New York. It wasn’t anywhere he recognized.
"...What the Hades..." he muttered, turning in a slow circle.
No sounds of cars. No sounds of people. Not even the usual chirp of birds or rustle of squirrels. Just... wind. Whistling through trees. Whispering against rocks.
His hand automatically went to his pocket. Riptide clicked into sword form with comforting familiarity. He held it tightly, though there was no immediate threat. Not yet.
The air smelled weird. Clean, but also... wild. Earthier. Older.
Percy trudged forward a few steps, crunching through the snow, scanning for any kind of sign — a trail, a road, footprints, anything. But all he saw were endless woods broken by distant cliffs and stone outcroppings.
"Okay. Think, Jackson. Either this is some godly prank, or... No. Not a prank. This feels wrong. Way too real."
His breath steamed in front of him. He pulled his jacket tighter. The mist on the horizon shifted, revealing something — not buildings, not a city. Just... ruins. Crumbling stone towers half-sunken into the hills, moss-covered and ancient.
No Olympus. No Empire State Building. No Camp Half-Blood. No signs of his world at all.
"...Where in the Styx am I?"
A gust of wind kicked up snow, howling through the treetops like a distant voice. Percy gritted his teeth, turning toward the nearest rise to try and get a better look.
He was alone. For now.
But something about this place made his skin crawl — the kind of tension he got right before a monster attack.
And something told him... he wasn’t in his world anymore.