Hi guys!

Um yea, it's been so long since i wrote, that i feel like my writing skills are really really rusty right now. So I apologize for whatever bad writing here. I do hope I will get better as the time goes by though.

Hope you enjoy this chapter!

~Kuntakintae


Annabeth's POV

Luke…had saved Percy? Luke Castellan?

As soon as the words left Percy's mouth, my head went dizzy. It had a hard time registering those words, and an even harder time actually accepting those words.

The Luke I had known all those years ago was an arrogant, selfish, murderous, cruel and vicious boy with a heart as cold as ice and eyes as hard as steel. He never did anything helpful to anyone unless he could get something from it. He never did anything out of pure kindness.

That's right. He must have had something to gain from Percy. Perhaps he wanted riptide? Perhaps he had wanted to use Percy for some reason?

"Why did he save you?" I asked, eager to prove my inner guesses. I just couldn't accept the fact that Luke had done something good for once.

Luke had unknowingly become the Lucifer- the devil- to me, incapable of having an ounce of goodness in him.

My head became even dizzier as I saw Percy shake his head. He looked at frowned- and me his eyes shining with concern but also suspicion. He had noticed.

Thankfully, he quickly glanced away, not wanting to expose me in my current state. He probably knew that my current state was due to Luke.

"At that time, Luke had already started the whole business of killing people. But," Percy emphasized. "He wasn't a cold-blooded killer. Yet."

"He hadn't earned his title as the 'killer of thousands' yet. In fact, even though he had started killing from four years old, he never became a cold-blooded killer until he was eight. Before that, he always tried to plead safety for his opponent's life after a match, and only killed when the audiences were adamant about it."

I had met Luke when I was around 12 years old. That would mean that Luke had already turned by then. My heart finally started to settle down and I sighed quietly, the dizziness that had been plaguing me a moment ago fading away.

At least what Percy said finally made sense to me.

Luke had left a deep imprint in my heart, in my mind, in my soul…in my entire existence. The Luke I had known…would have never done what he had done for Percy.

Shivers ran down my spine as a memory suddenly flashed through my mind. A single sentence, said in such a perverted and disgusting way.


"Oh Annie, where are you?"


old sweat started to layer my skin. I clenched my fist and bit my lip, squeezing my eyes shut as I tried to think about something else. Anything but what had happened on that horrific night, five years ago.

It was only after a few seconds that I could focus on Percy's words once again.

"He brought me to Tartarus- which was where he lived- and introduced me to Kronos. It was then that my 'career' started."

Percy's eyes were downcast at this point, and his voice was very low. I could tell from his body that he was extremely tensed and wasn't having a very good time going through those memories of his in the past.

It struck me that both he and I had something similar- a dark past which will never stop haunting us for the rest of our lives.

"We trained together, ate together, sparred together and practically did everything together. We were like blood brothers- even though we weren't related by blood."

"But then, something happened. In a particular match when he was eight years old, a well-trained gladiator by the name of the old greek hero, Hercules, fought against him. It was a very tough match, and he was pushed to his very limits."

When he started to describe this, all of us were at the edge of our seats, leaning towards him, our minds totally focused on him and his story.

It was hard to believe that Percy and Luke had been like blood brothers- especially when it seems like their personalities are polar opposite.

It was even harder to imagine the Luke in his story. Just how could the Luke we had seen just a few days ago be anything like the Luke in the story who saved Percy's life.

If the present Luke had been the one there when Percy needed help, he would have enjoyed seeing Percy get beaten up to death.

"He was almost killed at that battle. But, at the very moment the sword came rushing down towards his face, something broke in him," Percy's pained voice echoed throughout the silent house and reverberated in our souls.

His voice told us that this particular event hadn't been easy for him at all. The grief in his voice was so dense and heavy that it even invaded into my feelings and made my heart clench.

"It was the first time he had been at the disadvantage. He had never known what it was like when people lost. Hence, he never knew that some people were not as kind as him- most would not give a chance for their opponents to survive. Hercules was one of these people."

"When Luke realized that Hercules was going to kill him without even giving him a chance to live, he turned cold. His heart froze and he suddenly lost all the kindness he held in his heart in that split second."

A deathly silence hung heavily in the atmosphere as the ominous words seemed to thunder throughout the area. Everyone was staring at Percy's hunched figure with wide eyes, staring in trepidation. We all knew that this exact scene was when the monster 'Killer of thousands' was created.

It seems that the saying "Sometimes, the cruelest demons were once the kindest Angels" is true.

"Before that, every match Luke fought, he had always been careful to never permanently injure an opponent. Hence, he had never fought with his full strength in the arena before. He always aimed to incapacitate his opponents without handicapping them."

"However, after that close shave with death, he threw all of the values he had held before to the wind and became the Luke you know today."

"First, he managed to dodge the finishing blow. Then, he severed all the limbs off Hercules' body. He then stood there and stared at Hercules as he slowly bled to death." Percy's voice was now like a whisper.

I could feel the pain radiating off him- the pain he was going through as he recalled how his blood brother became a monster, as he recalled how he lost the one person he had held dear.

"From that day onwards, he changed dramatically. No longer was he the blood brother I once had. In his place stood the new, more dangerous and cold-hearted Luke Castellan. We spoke less and less, each time ending with a huge argument. He also stopped caring about people's lives, and killed everyone on the arena in under a minute every time he stepped onto it."

"Hence, people started giving him the name 'Killer of thousands'."

With a tone of finality, he said the last sentence before abruptly standing up and walking briskly to the stairs, not meeting any of our eyes.

Without a word, he disappeared upstairs, leaving us to deal with our swirling mass of messed-up feelings about the tragic and morbid story.