Before you could think, "Hey, this sounds like a story I have read before, the one with that Hecate kid that was reborn into the Danmachi world and entered the Hestia Familia. Isn't this a badly-copied version of that story?", the answer is yes.

It is familiar. I adopt it from the original writer, he gives me his permission, though I did try to make this story as original as possible.

Soooo, yeah. This is my first fanfic, some characters may OOC, I may change some canon things to fit in better with the story, etc. Also, English isn't my first language so don't be surprised if there is any grammar mistake. I can only sorry you in advance.

An additional note, since I'm preparing for my college exams, I might not have the time to publish chapter after chapter or an update schedule for that matter. I will try to write as much as I possibly can in my free time and update the story.

Also, since the story is set in the Danmachi world and the only crossover character is a PJO!OC who didn't even interact with the PJO canon that much, I decided that I will mainly put it in the non-Crossover section. If I do decide to make more changes that involve the PJO elements, which I doubt I will, I might change it in the future.

Chapter 1: A Second Chance

Reincarnation: Also known as "rebirth" or "metempsychosis", it means the birth of a soul in a new body. It is also used to refer to a person or an animal in whom a particular soul is believed to have been reborn, or a new version of something from the past.

That was the dictionary definition of what reincarnation was supposed to be.

In reality, however, no one could truly understand what it was, much less defining it was with just a couple of sentences without either missing the marks entirely or sounding like a complete lunatic.

It was a concept shrouded entirely in mystery. One of the few unexplainable phenomena of nature that still baffled the world to this day. No one could truly understand what it was. Not the philosophers, not the preachers, not the scientists... Not a single human being.

To summarize it all, this was still a mystery beyond our understanding.

And perhaps, that was why so many questions had been raised revolving around this concept throughout the millennia, if not throughout human civilization as a whole. Questions about its existence, its role in the grand plan of everything, about how it might happen and the entire process itself… Despite it all, the largest and most important one out of them all was simply: What will happen to us after death.

For such a simple question, the ways people had tried to answer it ever since the beginning had always been so baffling. It couldn't be helped though, life and death had always been two of the most interesting matters to mankind, ever since they began to realize that there was more to the world than just hunting and mating and trying to survive another day in the wild. And the most common way to explain it for those primitive folks was through stories.

Through such stories, humans started to understand death, seeing it as something that deserved both reverence and fear, and their fascination with the possibility of another chance after death only grew from there.

After all, how could one possibly know what would happen when someone died or where they would go after they closed their eyes for the final time?

I obviously didn't know that.

And that was coming from a kid born from a chthonic goddess and someone who had experienced both death and rebirth.

Let me give you a short summary of me.

My name was Aiden, Aiden Sangster, and I was around 18 when I died.

Now, before you freaked out because of how young I died, well… yeah, I had nothing else to say. By all means, that was still a very young age to die at, and yet, for someone like me, this was almost the norm.

You see, I was a half-blood, born of the short-lived union between a human and an immortal god. Their divine blood ran through our veins, imbuing us with powers and lesser divinities that made us greater than fellow men, purifying ourselves from the restrictions of mortal flesh. And it was because of such boons that our life was doomed from the start.

Now you might be thinking, "But Aiden, your life sounds amazing! Aren't you a little ungrateful?" If you did, please forgive me as I laughed straight in your face at how ridiculous that sounded.

Just let me set something straight, this would be the first and last time I told you this.

Being a half-blood was dangerous.

It was scary.

Most of the time, it got you killed in painful, nasty ways.

Forgot about all the special powers we got, they were meaningless to most of us half-bloods. We didn't want to be someone special, to be a hero saving the day or anything.

We just want to be normal, and apparently, that was too much to ask.

Like how the gods still existed, long after their civilization and ancient cults had fallen apart, the monsters featured in their mythos were still alive and roaming the city streets to this day.

These monsters were terrifying forces of nature in their own right, yet they were still vastly inferior to the gods of Olympus - yes, the Olympians, the same ones you learned about but didn't pay attention to - their enemies. And as a way to revenge against them, they went after their mortal children, us. Even from ancient times, monsters had always preyed upon half-bloods and mortals alike, devouring us like nothing while leaving behind them a trail of ruins and destruction.

So yeah, just think about that.

Powerful monsters who despised our parents with an additional side of craving for human flesh were actively seeking out half-bloods born of their enemies to kill as revenge against our parents, even though all of us knew none of them would actually give a damn if we lived or died.

And Mr. D still wondered why so many of us had parental issues.

Anyways, back to my story.

I was going to be honest with you, I didn't really remember the way I died, which was surprising because if there was anything all half-bloods born to chthonic gods would vividly remember, it would be their death. Even when our soul vanished into nothingness, our body rot and decayed, the memories of others about us faded into oblivion, we would still remember it, not because we held a grudge but rather because of acceptance. Regardless of how poetic our godly parents might call it, that was still morbid as faex.

All I remembered was me being trapped inside a dead-end, face-to-face against my darling half-sister Lamia, the infamous child-eating bogeywoman from Greek mythology. I didn't clearly remember what happened afterward. I remembered casting spells after spells as both my body and my brain became strain at how magically exhausted it was. I remembered how she mumbled curses in ancient tongues - in Attic and in Anatolian, in Libyan and in Mycenaean - languages so old that there was barely any non-immortal even remember it, much less spoke it. I remembered being torn apart, pieces by pieces, before having thrown into a swirling vortex of something… cold, and primordial of some sort.

To make it worse, I didn't even know in which ways I died. Was it because of my magical exhaustion? Was it because of Lamia's spells? Was it because I was literally thrown in that strange void?

I didn't know.

All I knew was that I was dead and, to my knowledge, didn't seem to be in any part of the Underworld.

There wasn't any scream or cry from the sinners in the Fields of Punishment. There wasn't any groan from the shades standing in the ghostly white asphodels. There wasn't even any sound of music and laughter and festivity from the gilded neighborhood of Elysium. There was almost nothing to indicate that this place where I was in was the same Hades that I knew of, that my mother took me to in dreams and told me about in the songs she whispered in my ears at night.

Perhaps this place wasn't even Hades?

According to my mother, my paternal side was ancient in its own right, having inter-mingled with the magic of both Ancient Greek origins and magic of outsiders. Perhaps those outsiders she spoke off might have an Underworld of their own, unlike the Underworld of Hades like us Greek half-bloods. It was possible. I meant, there were literally Greek gods and monsters literally walking among modern humans in this current day. Tartarus, just last week I even saw Lord Hermes and an Asian goddess hanging out in a pub in Manhattan, so unless there was a plausible explanation other than "magic" and "divinity" for why there was an Asian god in a Mediterranean pantheon, I would like to believe there were more than just us Greeks living in this world.

So was that the reason why I wasn't in Hades right now? My father was half-Vietnamese on his mother's side, so perhaps it was because of my grandmother's heritage that I was taken to the… Vietnamese Underworld? Was there even a thing? Ugh, perhaps grandma was right. It wasn't hurt to find out more about both sides of my heritage than just the freaky Greek gods' side.

And yeah. That was what happened to me.

I died and got placed in some afterlife I didn't even know of.

I wanted to scream but I couldn't. Literally. For as much as I tried to scream, nothing came out of my mouth. I tried to swing my arms and failed, not because something was blocking me from doing so, but rather I couldn't physically do so as there were no more arms to do so. My entire body was like mist, formless and spread throughout whatever this place was, unable to be concentrated into a single humanoid form. Maybe I did die of magical exhaustion after all, mother had warned all of us about this possibility before. Such as she was the goddess of mist, we - her children - were born from the mist as well, for she was also a virgin goddess like that of Athena, Artemis, and Hestia. If we ever so pushed too far beyond our limitations, our body would return back to its original form, Mist.

Basically, we were nothing more than a much fancier, more powerful version of those Mistforms we so enjoyed using. According to my mother, the differences between us and them were as much and great as the differences between modern humans with Nakalipithecus, which was apparently the original apes that evolved into mankind apparently (I didn't know. For all I knew, I could evolve from a bunch of stones and nothing much would change).

That didn't make any of us less disturbed about the fact though.

So there I was, formless and possibly beyond any salvation, stuck in the darkness for eternity, waiting to be inevitably faded away into oblivion much like any other things in existence, until that happened.

There was a crack upon the area before me, much like how one would form upon the earth's surface. And from the other side, I could feel life. I could feel my freedom.

I didn't know what awaited me on the other side if there was any punishment or consequence for leaving the place I was now in, but I knew for sure whatever could happen to me would undoubtedly be less terrifying and boring than floating for eternity in this formless void.

The pain that followed, however, wasn't something I had thought of before making my sudden decision.

It was beyond anything I could possibly feel, more than what I could even comprehend. Normally, for something this painful, my mind would have shut itself down long ago. But since I was without a corporeal form, I was forced to endure every single passing moment of it, trust me. Now, imagine the worst feeling you could possibly think of, and this feeling I had would make the one you imagined seemed like nothing.

I couldn't even fully describe it with any word without lessening how terrifying it was. Just, imagine your body being stretched beyond the possible limits like some sort of clay before being torn apart into countless miniature pieces, each with its own nervous system and you could feel all of them at the same time, and the process repeated itself again and again and again until your mind had started to go completely numb and those even more miniature pieces got mushed back together again and thrown directly into what I could only imagine as Greek Fire. Now, since I doubted any of you had experienced a Greek Fire burnt in your entire life, congratulations, but if you did then the feeling was partly the same, just the flames being thousands of times hotter yet just as cold as the same times. The feeling of being burned alive and freezing to death kept interchanged with one another. My mind was becoming more numb, yet getting clearer with every switch. By that point, I didn't even bother to wish for it to stop anymore, I already accepted my fate, and the only thing I wanted more than anything was to scream. And I did.

And much to my surprise, something did come out this time.

The scream was strange, almost inhuman even, but it was still mine nonetheless. It was loud and violent and resembled more of a screech than an actual scream. 'This is a voice of thunder and rocks,' my mind told me, 'This is the voice of your mother and the voice of her parents before her. The voice of the gods.'

Almost like a miracle, I could feel my body slowly reforming, parts by parts. First, my throat was formed and I could feel the loud vibration within my mouth. Next, it was my body as I felt the chilling air on my naked skin. My limbs soon followed, scrambling just to hold myself straight onto the nearest wall I could, almost like a baby trying to stand for the very first time. Then my head arrived with how my hair touched my bare skin, still matted and tangled with what I didn't even want to know.

The last to appear was my eyes, and despite the dimness of the place, I was still almost blinded when I first opened them.

I didn't know where I was, only that the chthonic fumes and the magical energy in the air were too overwhelming for my senses as if a god of the world beneath had just revealed their divine form in the place mere seconds before I arrived. The place was strange, but still mildly beautiful in its own right, a seemingly endless cavern illuminated by the luminous moss grown on the ceiling, which glowed like fireflies in the dark of night. I could still feel life within the place. Life running deep within the stone wall of the giant cavern I was in, like gleaming stones beneath layers of earth and stone.

Yet, terror still managed to fill my heart and soul.

'Where am I? Why am I here?' I wondered, 'How am I here?'

By all means, I should be dead. There was no other explanation. The dead couldn't return from the Underworld after they had entered the otherworldly realm unless the king and queen allowed an exception to be made, like Eurydice or Semele. But those souls were exceptional of their own, one was the muse of the legendary musician Orpheus, the other was the mother of Dionysus. I wasn't them. I had no songs or poems or tales of my, non-existed, heroic deeds. My father might not even bother to notice how I disappeared, his wife would be overjoyed at my death, and my grandparents - the only people that ever cared about me - had already died years ago. To mother… she didn't care, none of the gods ever cared, even if she appeared in our dreams once in a while to teach us about magic, it was to popularize her name and powers, to polish her reputation among other immortals, not because she cared for us, for me.

In the end, I was just a regular demigod, son of a minor goddess who didn't even have her own cabin at camp.

I was nobody.

And so, I began to walk. It wasn't an easy task, I almost forgot how to walk entirely when I was stuck in that void, but soon, the ability started to return. I walked along the strange cavern with no guide but my own feelings, trying to find the entrance to this place.

Throughout the short journey, I couldn't help but squirm at the fumes in the air. It was miasma, pollution of the worst kind, born from deeds against the gods and unpurified crimes. Regardless of how long I was familiar with it through the yearly purification of the woods and the borders of Camp Half-Blood, I was still sickened by that strange energy. This miasma I felt in this place was no exception, though this one was… older? No, primordial even, just like the one that radiated from the edges of Tartarus, where the worst enemies of the gods like the Titans or the Gigantes were imprisoned. And no matter what it was, I didn't want anything to do with it. My best bet right now was to get out of here and find the nearest altar to be cleansed, purified of all the vile aura of the cavern.

I tried to cast a basic cleaning spell but failed. For some reason, my magic was blocked and unusable, as if someone had put a seal upon it. My magic was going crazy, out of control, like a rampaging bull trying to escape my body. Normally, I didn't pay attention to it much. Such was a normal reaction to, uhm, a traumatizing experience like, you know, being killed and revived in some random place reeked of pollution. I usually just went to a clearing and let it all out, you know, destroyed some random stuff to relieve my stress levels and it would go back to normal.

But the seal, that was the worrisome part.

No magic should be capable of doing such a feat, or at least, no mortal should be.

Mother had made it clear. From magic we were born and to magic we would go. As such, there was virtually no way for mortal men to forbid us from doing magic, unless a specific god had ordered mother to do so and she had to obey.

But if a god had decided to revive me, why should they seal away my magic? My powers?

I was still a half-blood. I could still feel the ambrosial blood running in my veins, diluted it might be, imbuing my body and mind with its sacred power. I could still see in the darkest places in the cavern. I could still feel the running ley-lines all over the cavern, on the ceiling and on the floor, etched deep into the stone walls, forming a giant spider web that made even the toughest Athena kid wept in fear. I still had that innate instinct to know which directions I should go and which ways I should choose.

But my magic, it was gone. The only thing that mother acknowledged me about, the only thing that connected me to her, that proved I was more than that strange kid at school with no friends. Sure, it made me a freak, but at least that freakiness was something unique and put me above my peers. Without it, I was just a boring loner kid with severe parental issues.

If I had to return to that point in time and lived it the rest of my life, I would rather-

Wait, what was I thinking? I normally didn't think like this. So why did those thoughts just…

The miasma.

That must be it.

It was slowly turning me insane. There was no doubt about it.

I must get out of this place as soon as I could, or else those morbid thoughts would turn into reality.

So I did what I thought was most natural and I closed my eyes and ran.

I ran and ran and ran.

I didn't know where I would go. I just knew that I needed to run. To let my half-blood instinct take over and guide my way. Besides, rushing head-first into dump stuff was a half-blood trait, regardless of what the Athena Cabin might say, it was in our blood. So who was I to deny what was imbued into my blood?

I ran and ran and ran.

I didn't know how long I had been running. Minutes? Hours? I completely blacked out and just focused on running, on surviving. The more I stood on the cavern's ground, the more miasma I felt infiltrating my body, polluting my mind and soul. I felt like the ground was slowing me down, as if the earth itself was trying to take a hold of me.

I ran and ran and ran until I stopped.

The moment I felt the miasma detached from my body, the cavern's cursed touch loosened yet lingered at the same time, I stopped and finally opened my eyes, only to find I was from one unknown place to another unknown one.

Here I was, standing butt-naked in some strange town in the dark of night, my body covered in blood and ashes and dirt. Thanks to the gods that there wasn't anybody here or else I would kill myself in embarrassment. The town itself wasn't like anything I had seen before though. If anything, it looked like something straight out of a video game, a fantasy movie, or some boring old history book. Houses made out of wood with straw roofs, the old-looking stone roads, the softly illuminated street lights. For a city dweller like me, this kind of place was unlike anything I had seen before. Not to mention the magical energy.

Oh, the magical energy.

It was unlike anything I had felt before. Powerful, overwhelming, and both familiar and foreign at the same time. It was as if there were gods dwelling in this city, that their divinity scented every building and every corner, that the stone streets smoothed by centuries of divine feet.

Not only that, the scent of half-bloods, of demigods, was there also, but… stranger, I supposed. It was like all of the half-bloods in Camp Half-Blood were multiplied by tenfold and inhabited the city along with dozens of unknown half-bloods more. The faint smell of divinity cloaked the place like a soft blanket of mist, blocking the miasma from the cavern inside.

I didn't know anything about this place.

I didn't know anything about this new world.

But I did know one thing - I was an outsider, I did not belong in this place.

And once again, I ran.

I didn't know why I was running. I had no reason to run anymore. I had nothing now.

My family wasn't here, my friends weren't here, my rivals weren't here. Anything I knew and loved had disappeared forever. The only thing that differentiated me from the other half-bloods had been locked away, possibly never returned.

Once again, I had nothing.

I was nothing.

I was weak, embarrassing, worthless, useless…

I was everything that I hated. I was everything that I once was.

And I would rather die than to live like that again.

I didn't know how long I had run. I never bothered to care. The only thing I knew was that by the time I stopped, the eastern sky had already turned pink by the sun's touch.

By now, the entrance to the miasma-filled cavern had disappeared behind rows and rows of townhouses behind me, and the first signs of people began to appear on the streets. Thanks to the gods that I wasn't anywhere near the streets by then, having already disappeared into the ruins of an abandoned church into the west of the sky-piercing tower I came out of.

I didn't know why I chose not to enter this, once, religious place, just that there was a little voice inside my head telling me to enter here, that this would be where my fate would finally change.

Whatever happened next, I wasn't really sure. I blacked out the moment I entered the cathedral, my naked butt hanging out for any unfortunate visitor to gaze upon. My body was beyond its limits by then and it seemed like my rebirth took more of my energy than I thought. Soon, everything within my line of sight darkened to oblivion.

Well, nearly everything within it.

Before I completely blacked out, I had a vision of a goddess, petite in form and covered in a hearth's fire, extending her hands to catch me. But my exhaustion was far quicker than my mind, preventing me from understanding what was happening by then.

I only remembered one thing.

I asked her for help.

"Please… have mercy…"

And I accepted her extending hand, soft as the clouds and warm as an embrace.

Much to my surprise, I didn't know how important this instance was, both for me and my goddess. This was the start of everything - of love, of friendship, of new beginnings, of gods and of monsters.

This was the beginning of our Familia Myth.

Well, that's the end of Chapter 1.

I tried my best to differentiate him and Hesiod from the original fic as much as possible, but some similarities can be shown here and there. In regard to the timeline of the story, Aiden died long before the canon of PJO even began while Hestia had just been kicked out of Hephaestus' house, I tweaked the Danmachi's timeline a bit so Hestia's descent happened for a year before Bell's arrival.

Also, I want to make something clear. Aiden will not be in any relationship, random hook-ups here and there or with members of the Pleasure District sure, but not in any long-term one. Neither does Hestia, I don't know why but I just don't want to, so for the entirety of the story, she'd mainly act as the mother/sister of the Familia. Several relationships in canon will be transformed overall, some from romantic to platonic (friendship, family, etc.) and some the opposite.

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