Prologue:
Nico
"…It was like walking through hell.
No, it was walking through hell. Tartarus. There was so much fire. It can't seem to leave my head,
you know?
The monsters, the wailing, the searing burn of the river water as it entered my body, supposedly to keep me alive.
Does this count as living? So many times, I think it is now a part of me. The fire river?
It's in my blood.
The searing air— it's in my lungs, with every breath I take. The voice of Tartarus, he's in my head.
And I'm afraid…
... and I'm afraid, whenever the darkness surrounds me every night and I open my eyes…
that I'll still be there,
in that darkness."
Nico cried out and sat upright in his bed. He was sweating, he was cold, his whole body was trembling from the chill of fever that was broiling in his mind. He swung his legs over the side of the bed. His bare feet touched the cold stone floor of the Hades cabin, and the blatant shock of its chill jolted all thoughts that had arisen in his sleeping stupor. Blankly, he stumbled out of bed and across to the cracked mirror.
Panting heavily, he gripped the edges of the cold marble counter with white knuckles and stared transfixed and despondently into the smudged and shadowy glass. The face staring back at him was the face of death itself - gaunt, lean, haggard. Pale as the waxen lifeless and just as cold... his eyes glittering hollowly like broken shards of pure black glass. His hair hanging stringy and limp across his tormented expression. It was the look that had been his since as long as he could remember.
Since his mother died. And the pain only had only ever gotten worse.
What was he doing here? Nico knew he'd never belonged here in Camp Half-Blood. It was because of Will, he told himself. But here, in the shadowy draft cabin where the echoes of dreams teetered on the edge of reality, it was impossible to convince himself of this. It was nearly impossible even to imagine even the reality of Will's existence. There was no place for sunniness in the brutal reality of Nico's present moment... the times when the curtains of his carefully concealed emotions were ripped aside in excruciating revelation.
An involuntary shudder arced through his body, a blazing spark of electricity, and Nico nearly collapsed in front of the mirror. He shook his head vehemently, desperately, but the screams were breaking through the thin muted barrier that blocked them from the present, growing louder and harsher. The wails, the moans, the fire...oh, the fire. His cheeks were burning up, his cracked lips parted in a groan of agony. His spidery white fingers trembled uncontrollably, and his thin weak knees buckled beneath his pajama pants. Nico wildly looked straight at the mirror, staring directly into his own eyes.
I'm going mad, he thought blankly, emotionlessly. A fact. And then his face crumpled into nothingness as Nico tumbled limply beside the bed stand. He was drifting out of consciousness... were those footsteps...? Then... darkness.