The Winter Storm

Prologue

Chiron:

Chiron has seen many wars. He has seen heroes come and go, live and die. He is almost too used to the emotions that come as a result of death and destruction. He wants to help the campers but he isn't ready for that yet. Before he can help any of them, he has to help himself.

Annabeth Chase:

After making it through Tartarus, she and Percy were losing it. She knew that he was planning on staying behind to close the Doors of Death but she couldn't let him do that- for one, she thought that she was smart enough to still be able to find a way out but she also couldn't stand living without Percy. As they approached the doors, staggering and supporting each other, she whispered in his ear, "I love you, Seaweed Brain. I'll find you. I'll make it out another way. Don't worry." She shoved Percy through the doors and slammed them shut behind her. Then, she turned to face the onslaught of monsters behind her. Despite what Annabeth thought, there was no other way out. Without Percy, she died only a few hours later. Nico was the one to break the news to him.

Leo Valdez:

After Annabeth's sacrifice at the Doors of Death, the Seven (now including Nico) were desperate for someone to come up with a plan- a task that for some reason fell to Leo. Jason and Frank weren't able to fully understand and work with the Greeks who were too unorganized for their liking. Hazel, Piper, and Nico either didn't want that pressure or just didn't know what to do. And Percy. Percy was too broken to be able to form a coherent plan that wasn't a suicide mission for himself. So, Leo organized a form of attack that he thought would best be able to stand against Gaea and her army. However, things started to go wrong- his lines were being pushed back farther and farther until they had nowhere else to go. Desperate, Leo came up with the only plan he could. He flew Festus to the middle of Gaea's armies and pulled the wire that would cause Festus to blow up. "I'm sorry," Leo whispered his final words to Calypso before being engulfed by the fiery shrapnel and debris.

Nico di Angelo:

After the deaths of both Leo and Annabeth as well as feeling all of the other lives claimed by the war, Nico never settles down. He freely travels the world. Simultaneously, his father thinks he is at Camp Half-Blood while Chiron and the rest of the camp assume he is with his father. No one comes to look for him. Nico is alone, just the way he likes it. No one even notices he's gone.

Thalia Grace:

The war changed Thalia, though not enough for anyone but her to notice. Despite the fact that she refuses to abandon Artemis and her Huntresses, she is restless- even more so than usual. She has trouble following the simplest of orders, always running potential ulterior motives through her head before performing the task that was asked of her. It's not that she can no longer trust Artemis, its that she can no longer trust anyone. Losing her only true friends, Percy and Annabeth, in the very same moment has condemned her to a life of solitude, even amongst the Hunters.

Frank Zhang:

Despite his knowledge that they were necessary, all of the casualties of the war still caused Frank pain. As the son of Mars he understood that casualties always happen and that he would be naive to expect everyone he loved and cared about to make it through the war unscathed; nonetheless, he still didn't expect to be hit quite so hard. As a result, Frank throws himself into his work, becoming praetor of New Rome and allowing all of his personal relationships to disappear.

Hazel Levesque:

After the war, Hazel suffers from severe PTSD. She retreats to New Rome in order to attempt to heal. Unintentionally, Hazel allows her relationships with everyone to slowly dry out until they are no more.

Clarisse LaRue:

This war changed Clarisse more than she would ever admit, more than the last one did. She retreated inside herself and would allow no one anywhere near her for the fear that she would get hurt again. All of the people who lived at camp, whether they thought Clarisse liked them or not, they were all her family and losing them hurt. Gods be damned if she would ever let someone get that close again, if she ever let herself get hurt like that again.

Jason Grace:

The war. The war was something different for each of them, Jason saw that. For him, the war was pain and misery and death and destruction and despair. Nothing good came from war and nothing good could ever come from it. This particular war gave Jason an overwhelming sense of his own mortality. He realized just how fragile life was and how important it was to take advantage of the few fleeting moments that you had. After the war, Jason decided to travel the world and learn about the place so many of his friends had died to protect- before his own time ran out.

Piper McLean:

Similar to Jason, Piper emerges from the war with a new sense of the fragility of life. As a result, Piper intends to spend every minute of the rest of her probably too-short life with her friends, cultivating her relationship with each of them. However, her plans go awry when she instead abandons each of them in favor of accompanying Jason on his travels. Instead, Piper concentrates all of the energy she had been planning for each of her friends into her relationship with Jason, forcing them both into a codependence that they were better off without.

Grover Underwood:

Grover's two best friends, Percy and Annabeth were gone. Annabeth was dead and, without her, Percy had lost focus and his purpose. Without the two of them, he had lost his purpose too. In an attempt to regain some semblance of normalcy, he assigned himself the task of finding new half-bloods and bringing them to camp to try and prevent any more kids from dying, because that's what all of those casualties had been- children. They were all children. One day, he stopped reporting back to camp. Demigods stopped showing up. He is presumed dead.

Rachel Elizabeth Dare:

The conclusion of the Second Great Prophecy set Rachel on edge more than she would care to admit. While most of the others were feeling simple relief that it was over and slight triumph that they had prevailed, Rachel could feel nothing but restless anticipation. Would she be forced to share the Third Great Prophecy? Would her friends be forced to fight and to die for what she said? She was full of pent-up anticipation. In an effort to try and relax, Rachel tried to do some good by joining Grover in his efforts to find as many half-bloods as possible and get them to camp. She is presumed dead along with Grover.

Percy Jackson:

Annabeth. Annabeth was gone. His fatal flaw was loyalty but without Annabeth, he didn't know what to be loyal to. How was he supposed to go on like this? How was he supposed to go on without her? He was lost and couldn't see any way around it. He was lost without his Wise Girl. One day, he left camp to go on a walk through the woods. No one has seen him since. He is presumed to be dead and to have allowed himself to be killed by a monster.