'What's in your soul?'
The words rang in his head while his world spun around him, coated in red embers. A thick layer of ash clogged his throat, or at least he thought it was ash. It was getting hot, so unbearably hot.
'Is your heart so damp and bleak that you won't give us a peak of your soul?'
His limbs seized up, muffled voices turning to molten ringing. The world tasted like salted liquid iron. The pain behind his eyes got so bad and so dry that he was forced to shut his lids and drift off into the hope for silence and peace.
He tried to think back to what exactly happened. Is he dead now?
There he was, on Olympus, war raging around him like an aura of death. Statues crumbling, pavement crackling, gold roofs on temples disappearing under a thin film of ash. He looked around, holding back a cry. What was going to happen next?
The harsh voice in the back of his head grumbled to life.
"Throne room, boy, Throne room."
He hesitated. The voice sighed in rage and grappled his legs, forcing him forward.
Streamers of shadows danced his vision, his head spun with lack of blood. He wasn't bleeding, not that he could feel. But the pressure behind his eyes kept building and building. It was becoming more and more painful.
The next thing he knew, he was staring at nothing for a single moment. The sound took a moment to catch up to him. He turned to review around him, collapsing from the pain. His hands were in ruins.
Somehow he found his voice, His Own Voice, leaving his crackling and chapped lips.
"Please Percy…"
He watched the boy struggle to get to his feet, holding a familiar knife. He couldn't place his finger yet on why it seemed so familiar.
Percy took a step forward in a hesitate motion. The raspy angry voice in the back of his mind, though unusually distant, started to panic.
"He'll kill us. Is that what you want? We must protect-"
He licked his lips and looked straight at the boy.
"You can't… can't do it by yourself. He'll break my control. He'll defend himself. Only my hand. I knew where, I can…"
The voice grew louder.
He managed to gather his own thoughts enough to finish the word.
"... can keep him controlled."
The voice threw a bone shrilling screech, and all around him glowing smoke emerged. His vision fuzzed in and out, in and out, making him lose track of what's happening.
Is it too late?
He could still try.
"Please," his voice came out in a pleading hoarse groan, "no time."
A moment passed. Then two. Then five.
The chilling feeling of godly metal landed in his hands, and his vision grounded itself to stable. The details shook him to the core - this was Annabeth's knife. The girl who pleaded for him to be family, like a father to her.
He failed that. But he won't fail this.
From the back of his mind, a strange tempo of a song played from a song he didn't know.
'Oh god!
Just stop it! I'm split in two!'
He slowly unlatched straps from his left side, just enough to expose his mortal spot.
Kronos' screech only got louder, but the song kept going. It was panicked, in horror.
'Is this me, or is this you?
Am I dead? I'm coming apart
At the seams!'
He took a deep breath, then stabbed himself. His vision blacked out, his hearing rang louder and louder as Kronos screeched curses at him. The pain was unworldly, seething into his bones and shattering him like glass.
The world went silent for a long time.
From the distance, the song's voice - at a more ballad tempo - coaxed his mind.
'I've never been happy
Wouldn't that be nice?
Is this the secret?
Singing and dancing through life?
Is my integrity worth anything at all?
But happiness can't come before its fall'
'Am I crazy?
Maybe I've always been
Become what I've hated?
Or maybe I never did
It's awful freeing now
To share the hate I felt
But what will I let in if I
Let it out?'
He didn't understand why, but peace fell over him for a moment. He didn't know the song, why it played so sweetly but so hatefully in his head, but it sounded exactly how he felt.
Then his world descended back into pain and ash.
It was only when a cold and shriveled hand touched him did his mirage of pain snap into the ruins of the ceiling of the Olympus Throne Room.
He snapped up, gasping for air.
The room fell deadly silent. He wasn't aware anyone was talking before that suffocating rain of silence danced his way.
"... Luke?"
He looked around. The gods were here, some holding their weapon of power at him. He stared back at them, slowly moving his hand off the floor and to his chest.
Gasps fill the room, stunned. He took a moment to register it was aimed at him.
"What?" His voice made him cringe. It was akin to the skin crawling sound of nails on a chalkboard.
"Where…. Luke, where did you get ichor from?"
He turned his head a little to see a small group of demigods - oh god was that all that remained of the gods' forces? - staring at him. Percy's hand was on his sword, Annabeth clutching some girl's arm and staring at him. Her lips lingered on the words she just spewed out, confused and dazed.
He looked at his hand. Gold covered it like a midas touch, shimmering brighter than his future had ever been.
Softly, and with feeling, his hoarse words left his throat. "What the fuck."
Someone cleared their throat next to his ear and he flinched back, turning to stare at the oldest lady he's ever seen.
"That seals this fate." She croaked, holding a sewing needle and poked his cheek.
"Ow!"
"A god is a god, regardless of origin. Luke, what do you want to be the god of?" She had a frog like grin on her face.
He heard a pin drop from a mile away.
"I'm… wha…. Excuse me?"
"You're a… god?" Hermes' voice from behind him quivered in disbelief.
"Yes, as all mortals have found, you can not create nor destroy energy, so-" The old lady was rudely interrupted by another god, Athena.
"When kronos died, in order to contain all that energy, his body absorbed it."
The old lady frowned.
"You didn't have to interrupt me, Pallas Athena."
"So… I'm… the thing I hated?" His own voice sounded hopeful, even though that wasn't what he felt inside.
"I forbid i-"
"Zeus if you continue that statement, you're grounded forever." The lady croaked. Zeus, uncharacteristically, wisely shut his mouth.
The lady turned back to him.
"Well then, Luke. What are you the god off?"
He thought for a moment, the song seeping back into his mind slowly.
'God help me out… If I let it….'
Luke looked at the old lady.
"Time is the only thing fitting enough.
'Out!'
