The Battle Ahead

Remember what I said about being different?

The odd one out? Being freakishly smart and a genius in school despite not putting the same effort as some of the more talented people in school?

Well, it turned out there was a solid reason for it.

My whole life, I have been living a lie since the very beginning, a fantasy woven together by my mother in order to create a false sense of hope, to make real a reality where I could be free from my destiny.

But life moves on, time can't be in stasis. It's the painful truth about being alive.

And once again, I had the privilege of rediscovering the misery of knowing I wasn't normal.

It only took one night before everything about my picturesque dream was shattered.

Many secrets were kept or hidden from me, but in fact, I was already an integral part of a mythological world that was much scarier and harsher than the real world.

In fact, I was a demigoddess: a half-human and a half-God. My mother was an Olympian, or formerly one because her decision to have me in this world stripped her of her Godhood.

In fact, I still found it hard to believe the Greek pantheon existed, the prophecy that foretold of certain doom of the world we shared with mortals...

In fact, I wished all of this was just a figment of my overactive imagination. I wished nothing about our new reality was real and this nightmare was soon to end.

It was a silly dream.

My existence had always been a part of this mythological world. There was no escape.

There was only one fact I could accept: the boy I've met that day in the coffee shop, the seaweed brain who took care of me so much since then, the son of Poseidon who one day would determine the outcome of the aforementioned prophecy…. I loved him so much I didn't want to face our new dreadful reality alone.

And I won't face it alone because he promised.

Even knowing the horrors we might face, he promised to protect me, to keep me safe, to do everything he can to keep me by his side.

That's why I knew I could promise him the same thing.

I was going to protect him, to keep him safe, and to keep him at my side throughout the challenges that we would eventually face, no matter what.

….

….

But I never could have guessed who would be our first enemy.

The bully who terrorized our school, the troublemaker whose bad influence corrupted even the best in people, the monster who once almost had his way with me…

His name was Luke Castellan.