Lucas walked forward with unsteady steps, his body still recovering from the mental turmoil of the trial before. His hand trailed the stone wall, the chill emanating from it anchoring his mind. The corridor bent in ways that shouldn't be possible, with lamps that flickered overhead and gutters of shadow teasing the path from the sides, dancing just beyond the reach of the light.
And then it changed.
He stepped through a flicker and was no longer underground.
Sunlight struck him. He blinked against the brightness and looked around, then froze.
Camp Half-Blood.
The cabins were there. The forest loomed. The Big House stood in the distance, blue and watching. Campers ran drills, played at the volleyball court, and tended to chores. Smiles. Laughter. All as he remembered.
Lucas was puzzled; was this another trick, or had he truly emerged from that place and escaped here? With no way to judge, Lucas moved to enter the camp, but then a shift occurred.
A shadow eclipsed the sun, swallowing the light and plunging the camp into a deep grey gloom. The laughter disappeared, replaced by piercing screams and agonized shouts of pain.
Lucas didn't know what was happening, but he ran toward the camp. He needed to reach the others, to do something. But as he broke through the tree cover, he halted at the sight before him.
The air carried the metallic scent of old blood and static. The sky above the pine trees was a charcoal smear, and the grass below crunched like ash. No birds. No wind. Just the steady groan of an unnatural world trying to mimic life.
He followed caution and tried using his magic, but it fizzled out. He tried again, and the same thing happened; he couldn't use his magic here. He reached for his sheaths but found them missing, causing Lucas to narrow his eyes. He was in an unknown and possibly dangerous place and had no magic or weapons. He wasn't happy. He tried Veil Sight and his illusions, but again, nothing. He was without power, trapped here, defenseless.
Lucas crouched low, careful not to make noise, and entered the area of the cabins. Maybe he could find someone or something to explain what was happening; as he snuck in, he saw a scrap of paper on the ground, near the back of the Hermes cabin between some boards, glowing slightly. He was curious, since his magic couldn't work, how could the magic on this paper work, so he made his way to the paper and collected it, seeing it was part of a written script:
"The traitor stumbled into camp, unaware that his arrival would mark its unraveling. The gods had foreseen it. The prophecy confirmed it. And so their children would end him before he could destroy all they loved."
Lucas narrowed his eyes.
It was a fragment of some story. He turned the paper over, seeing if there was more, but it was blank on the other side. Just one paragraph.
Behind him, a rustle. A whisper of motion. He ducked and rolled forward, turning.
A blade split the air where his neck had been. A camper was - no, not a camper - something was wrong. Their eyes were hollow, glowing faintly with sick yellow light. Their lips moved, but the words were garbled, as if they were speaking through static; they were encased in a thin film of shadow, with black veins around their eyes.
Lucas rolled back again, barely dodging the next strike of the blade, and sprinted, not fighting without weapons in an uncertain location.
More figures emerged. Some from the trees. Some from behind the cabins. Their clothes bore the marks of the camp, with insignia representing their cabins, allowing him to know who they were. Their gait was jerky, almost stumbling. Each held a weapon: axes, swords, clubs, spears; all celestial bronze that shone with a sickly light. Their mouths twitched in half-smiles. They chased him with the slow inevitability of a nightmare, always just behind him, never letting him out of their sight.
And they whispered.
"-remember the sand-"
"-don't drink the nectar-he lied-"
"-he said we'd be safe-"
Nonsense. Broken fragments.
Lucas ducked into the forge, slammed the door shut, and braced it with a length of piping. His chest heaved. The light inside the forge was dying, leaving pockets of shadow, and inside one, he saw another scrap of paper:
"The traitor reached the forge. But there was no escape. His story had been written; in the end, he would fall under the hammer of Hephaestus."
A crash. One of the possessed stood across the room, having removed the crates that blocked it, hammer raised and moving toward Lucas. Lucas reached out, not with a weapon or magic, but with will. He used spirit manipulation, bending the thing's intuition away from its intended action. As it swung, the grip faltered, and the hammer landed outside the window.
That's when it happened: the ground shook, the wall on Lucas' left collapsed, and the lights in the forge flickered. The world paused, before it all stopped, and continued. The sound of the campers returned, trying to enter the forge, but only the one before him stayed frozen, almost as if it were an error in the script that the writer couldn't remove.
Lucas ran through the broken wall and darted along the outer paths of the camp. He passed bodies; some turned, some not. There had been a fight, and not all had been claimed by the corruption.
Then he saw it. The path to the Big House, guarded by a half-circle of the things. They didn't move, but instinct screamed that the house mattered. That this place, the center of the story, was the key; why else would they guard it?
He acted again. Used spirit manipulation to rewrite the instincts in those husks. Enough to slip past, through the threshold. Inside, on a table beneath a flickering light, sat a typewriter.
He ran to it. The keys were warm. A page already in the spool. Typed words formed the beginning of a new paragraph:
"The traitor fought back, attempting to manipulate the story-"
Lucas ripped the page free. Sat. Began to type a new story, one where this event never happened, no campers turned, no campers died, but it didn't work, whenever he finished typing the words faded, being absorbed by the paper and nothing, he tried other things; vanishing the darkness, maybe having a god interfere but it the ink was just absorbed, nothing changed.
There was banging on the door; the campers were here, and soon they would break in. Lucas didn't believe he could escape, as the sounds indicated that all the turned campers had surrounded the big house, just waiting for him. The script beside Lucas spoke of how they would soon enter and tear him apart, and he wouldn't wait for that to happen.
Lucas thought, trying to figure a way out. He knew the typewriter was key, but he couldn't change anything...wait. He couldn't change it, but what if he added to it, manipulated the story for his benefit, so Lucas started typing:
"Unknown to the rest of the camp, Lucas had laid magical wards when he first arrived. Hidden in the mist, they watched for corruption. When it came, they activated. Their pulse slowly, secretly working to remove the corruption from the campers. The campers, one by one, began to stir. Not all at once. But enough to stop them from being controlled"
The walls trembled. The typewriter hissed. The world shook, not happy Lucas was changing the narrative but nothing could change the outcome, Lucas had used its own powers to shift the narrative for his own benefit.
"Beneath the carpet in the Big House, a forgotten trapdoor remained; a passage built in secret, leading into the unknown. Lucas remembered it now. He reached for the edge, pulled it free-"
A shriek tore through the house. Something clawed at the window. The world didn't want Lucas to escape.
Lucas reached for the carpet and removed it, yanking it to the side. There, he saw the trapdoor, his escape. He opened it and saw that it was again just a black veil. There was no time to think, so he jumped.
A leap of faith.