Annabeth never thought she would be so happy to be crushed by falling rock.

Or nearly crushed, anyways. It was a close enough call that the grip on her slackened, allowing Annabeth to pull herself away, stumbling backwards onto the ground.

Perseus. She could see him just a few feet away, a few cuts on his forehead, but otherwise mostly unharmed. Whoever had been tasked with holding onto him had failed; maybe shaken off by him, or maybe had to dive out of the way of falling stone, and had never managed to find him again. Annabeth closed the distance between them, grabbing his arm. He turned to her, eyes wild before he realized it was her.

"I—" he started, but never had the chance to finish. The room shook again, less violently than it had before, but enough that Annabeth didn't want to waste time standing around. She pulled her knife out from under her dress, slitting the rope that bound his hands together in one smooth motion. He staggered to his feet, helped along by her hand.

The room was in absolute chaos. The ceiling was still collapsing in huge chunks, dust was settling in the air. The noise was overwhelming, not just the crumbling interior, but screaming, swords clanging, someone laughing, high and wild.

"Annabeth!" A familiar voice yelled. She whirled around, barely able to process the sight in front of her.

There was a huge crevice in the floor, splitting the entire space in two. It was surrounded by jagged chunks of falling rock, not so much that it would be insurmountable, but enough that it would take minutes they didn't have to climb over it and figure out a way over the crack in the ground. Jason, Piper, Hazel, and Fai were somehow there on the other side.

Or, at least, she assumed the lion was Fai. If it wasn't, she might have to assume this was all a hallucination.

She had no idea how they had gotten here, how they'd found out exactly where to burst through the earth, how they had burst through the earth, but she was so overwhelmingly happy to see them she didn't even care.

Jason and Hazel were already well into combat. Piper had been the one who called out to her, but a second later she was catching someone's sword on the hilt of her knife, drawn into the battle too.

They were all exceptional fighters. But Fai was a force unto himself. He roared, baring his fangs, tossing two people aside with his massive head. She could have sat there and stared all day, but something else caught her attention. A pulsating heartbeat, a pressure in her chest. She turned towards the corner of the room, where the pithos still stood, all but forgotten in the confusion.

She could feel it growing weaker. In the absence of Perseus and Annabeth's allegiance or blood, Kronos was drawing more and more heavily on its other source of strength— the goddess. Annabeth was almost positive she finally knew who it was, but that mattered less right now than getting her free.

"The jar!" Annabeth screamed, desperate to be heard above the cacophony of battle, "She's trapped in—"

A fit of coughing overtook her, dust burning against her throat and her lungs, but it had been enough. Piper had heard, and was now pulling at Jason's shoulder, telling the others.

Then Perseus was pushing her out of the way as another boulder fell from the sky, landing right where they had been a second before, shattering against the stone ground. He was unhurt, but now a meter away. She had every intention of getting back to him, but before she could even try she saw his eyes narrow. Annabeth followed his gaze, which led her right to Octavian. Staggering up from the ground, a cut on his face pouring blood, still dragging Riptide in one hand— he looked half-mad.

Perseus surged forward, weaponless, but Annabeth doubted he would stay that way for long. He hit Octavian's barely risen figure, slamming him into the ground again. She could have easily watched that fight all day too, but confident that Perseus would win, she managed to drag her eyes away.

It had been maybe a minute or two since the chaos had started, and the distinct lack of the voice scared her worse than just hearing it would have. When Annabeth turned to the coffin, she saw why.

Black smoke was billowing out of it, acrid and thick. Luke was standing over it, a glazed look in his bright blue eyes.

"Luke!" she called, barely even knowing why. He didn't move, didn't look up, just stood, completely frozen. Smoke was starting to swirl around him, wrap around him like chains, pulling him to his knees. Annabeth watched, horrified, as smoke started to flow into him, shooting up his mouth and nose. His eyes rolled up into the back of his head, blue irises completely concealed.

"Luke," she called again, her voice breaking.

It was as if her voice had triggered something. The last of the smoke melted away into darkness, and Luke took a deep shuddering gasp. His eyes had closed in the meantime, but when they opened…

Gold. The bright blue of his irises was replaced with a shimmering, angry gold.

"I suppose if I wanted something done right," Luke said, and it was his voice, his exact voice, but at the same time it wasn't, "I should have known I had to do it myself."

Annabeth didn't realize she was fully frozen in fear until Luke lunged forward, blade first.

If instinct hadn't taken over, Annabeth would have been cleaved in half. She brought her knife up just in time, catching Luke's sword on the hilt of it.

He was close, so close, too close— and yet it wasn't him at all, just his body being used like a puppet. When she looked up into his golden eyes, all she saw was pure unadulterated evil.

Her arm was shaking from the effort of holding him back, her bronze knife sliding against his black blade. She ducked out from under him, trying to roll away out of reach of his sword. She managed to unhinge herself from him, managed not to get sliced apart, but only ended up a few paces away.

"You should have just joined me, Annabeth," he said, his face twisted into a wicked smirk, "And we could have avoided all this nonsense."

He swung his blade once, twice, just barely missing her feet each time as she scrambled back. They were lazy blows, ones he knew would never hit, but they forced her backwards anyways, crawling across the floor until she was just at the edge of the cliff, Luke looming over her.

"Luke," she begged, knowing he couldn't hear her, desperate to try anyways, "Luke, please stop."

Luke— but not Luke, Kronos— just laughed. It was Luke's laugh, the same laugh she'd heard a hundred times before, but distorted somehow. Sadistic, angry, cold in a way Luke had never been, at least not to her.

"Luke is gone. I admit, using his body was always a crude back-up plan— it could never carry the full might of my true form. In a few minutes it'll be burned away into ashes, and Luke's soul will burn away with it. But that's more than enough time for me to get what I need."

There was a contradiction in that statement, one the back of Annabeth's mind was already starting to work out. The forefront was focused on dodging his strikes, trying not to fall off the edge of the cliff.

Now that she was right over the edge, she realized that while some of the chill in the room could be attributed to Kronos's coffin, most of it was emanating from whatever was over the cliff. This was no normal ledge— there was something unnatural about it, something not right.

Something in Annabeth knew instinctively that anything that fell off this ledge wasn't coming back up.

A plan started forming in her mind. She couldn't beat him with just her knife. If Kronos had Luke's body, he had his sword fighting skills as well. She would never be able to fight him one-on-one like this.

But if she could get him close enough to the edge…

He was only a few paces away. If she got him to step forward, to take one more swing— she crawled backwards, subtly shifting her position as she did so that she was skirting parallel to the edge, instead of towards it. She tried to look as scared as possible, which really wasn't difficult, considering she was genuinely terrified. If she could make it look like she had given up, like she wasn't going to fight anymore, he might put more force into his swing. Annabeth laid on the ground, fighting every instinct that told her to get away, pretending to be paralyzed underneath him.

He smiled, probably thinking that he had her trapped. Maybe he was right, but she wasn't the only one.

He stepped forward, raised his black sword over her. At the last second she rolled sideways. His swing only made contact with the air, throwing him just barely off balance— but enough for Annabeth to kick her legs out forward as hard as he could manage, hitting his shins, causing him to stumble backwards, just barely far enough—

Kronos cried out in pain and surprise, and suddenly he wasn't Kronos at all, but Luke, Luke again, terrified blue eyes widening as he started to slip over the edge.

Annabeth didn't mean to. But maybe trying to save him was as instinctual as raising her knife to save herself. Before she even fully processed the little glimmer of Luke that was still alive she was lunging forward, grabbing his hand as he toppled over the edge.

Suddenly she was flat on her stomach, her whole arm being tugged with the weight of him as he fell. She was gripping her wrist and he was gripping hers.

Then he looked up at her, eyes bright gold.

Annabeth's heart plummeted. She could feel herself slipping over the edge, falling down with him at an excruciatingly slow pace.

"Do you know where this pit leads?" he asked, Kronos fully back in control. He was laughing at her, a wicked grin blemishing Luke's features. Annabeth said nothing, just tried her best to fight back tears.

"It goes all the way down to Tartarus, to the deepest depths of hell. Right where I told your boy I'd put you."

He didn't seem all that concerned about falling down with her, Annabeth noted, but clearly he'd risen from the pit once before, and didn't seem all that concerned about his ability to do it again. Annabeth, on the other hand— she wasn't coming back from this.

"Lord Kronos always keeps his promises."

Promises. How many promises had been made to her that hadn't been kept? There was a bitter irony to his words, to the fact that Annabeth's first and last conversations with Luke were marked by promises. How had it turned out that the one being kept wasn't even his?

And yet, even with his gold eyes, the sharpness and sadism in his expression that was so not Luke, she couldn't force herself to let go of his hand. It didn't matter, really. He still had a vice-like grip on her arm, one that wouldn't be letting go anytime soon.

Was Luke still in there? Could he still hear her? She was slipping more and more every second, her ribcage nearly over the edge. In a few more moments, it would be too late. She would plummet down with him.

She had to try. It was her only hope.

"Luke," Annabeth choked out, "You promised."

She didn't even know which one she was referring to— there were so many he'd made. That first one, where he'd told her they would be a family, that they would be heroes; the last one, where he'd promised he'd be back. The inherent unspoken promise that he would love her, that he would take care of her, that he would keep her out of harm's way. All half-broken and half-kept, about to be swept one way or the other by one final action.

She felt the grip on her arm shift, just barely. He stared up at her, eyes suddenly flashing back to blue.

"Annabeth—" he gasped, "Let me go."

"I can't," Annabeth said, tears streaming down her face, so much she could barely see. He had completely let go, the only thing connecting them now was Annabeth's own grip.

"I can't— I can't hold him back much longer. You need to let me go."

"Luke—"

"Let go," he repeated.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

Her fingers screamed in relief as she released her grip, her whole body sagging forward as Luke slipped through her fingers, plummeting into the darkness.

Even without Luke's grip on her hand, she still felt like the pit was sucking her in. She couldn't seem to move, could barely even breathe, could do nothing but slip further and further off the edge.

"Annabeth!"

Suddenly strong, familiar arms were around her, pulling her back from the ledge.

"Are you—" Perseus started to ask, her face cradled in his hands.

He was cut off by a crash, completely different to the sound of falling rock from earlier. No, this was the sound of pottery breaking, of ceramic shattering into a million pieces. Both their heads turned around to see that the others had finally succeeded in what they had come here to do in the first place— break the goddess free.

There was a figure on the floor, a vaguely familiar woman in Greek robes. Without even thinking, Annabeth started to stumble forward, even as she could hear Perseus's warnings against it. The woman was glowing, faintly at first, but growing stronger and stronger with each passing second as she rose from the floor, standing at her full height. And then some. The light was bright, painfully so, but Annabeth couldn't look away.

As if sensing her presence, the goddess turned towards her. Dark hair, stormy grey eyes. A sword and a shield in her hand. The light around her shuddered slightly, then flashed impossibly bright.

Annabeth locked eyes with her mother, and her vision went white.