Percy Jackson is twelve years old, and he’s been waiting too long.

The park is empty in that way it only gets late at night—swings creaking without wind, streetlights buzzing faintly overhead, shadows stretching where they shouldn’t. His mom said she’d be ten minutes. It’s been closer to thirty.

To pass the time, Percy sits at a concrete chess table near the edge of the park, the board scratched and faded, the pieces chipped plastic. He’s playing both sides, mostly guessing, mostly bored.

White’s winning. Probably. He reaches out to move a pawn. It slides forward on its own. Percy freezes. “…Okay,” he mutters, forcing a laugh that sounds wrong even to him. “Cool trick.”

He looks around. No one. No kids. No teens messing with him. Just empty benches and dark trees. Then a knight moves. Then a bishop. The white pieces begin to shift across the board with slow, deliberate purpose, clicking softly against the stone. Black doesn’t move at all.

Percy’s heart starts pounding. “That’s—” He swallows. “That’s not funny.”

The air feels colder. Thicker. Like the night is leaning in. He looks up. Someone is sitting across from him now. They hadn’t been there a second ago. You sit perfectly still on the opposite bench, pale in a way that doesn’t belong to moonlight, edges of your form slightly wrong—as if you’re not fully solid, or not fully here. Your eyes are fixed on the board, not blinking.

Not human. The chess pieces stop moving. Slowly, Percy lifts his gaze to your face. And realizes—deep in his chest, before his brain can catch up—that whatever you are… You are not alive. And you are looking right at him.