I felt myself beginning to hyperventilate in panic, wheezing loudly.

Those three old ladies I'd met before hadn't been regular old ladies, they were the freaking Fates! Knitting giant Godzilla socks and all, exactly like the books had said!

…Which meant that the winged man had been none other than Thanatos, the god of death.

What the actual hell?!

Someone rushed into the room at the sound of my pathetic wheezing — which, by the way, sounded way too high-pitched — and gathered me up in her arms. I registered a faint scent of flowery perfume, and realized that this was probably my new mother.

"Hush, piccolo," she said gently, in a heavy Italian accent. "It's alright. I've got you."

I was so confused and shocked by the events of the day that I didn't even register the sleep passing over my eyelids until I was already snoring away.

—-

My days as a newborn passed without much excitement. It was a simple cycle of wake up, eat, wriggle around, and sleep, sprinkled with the occasional random screaming like I was being tortured, because why not.

Well, I say it was without excitement, but it was also rather embarrassing to get my, ahem, business cleaned up by my mother. I mean, it wasn't like I could do anything about it, but it still made me blush on the inside.

However, for the record, she didn't seem to mind that much anyway.

The one major event that I remembered from that time was me learning about my name.

Yeah, so I was apparently Callie di Angelo.

The twin sister of a certain Bianca di Angelo.

Which, you know, meant I was the older sister to Nico di freaking Angelo.

Good grief.

I had screamed for a solid minute after.

I couldn't even get reincarnated as some side character, could I?

Noooo. I had to be the twin to one of someone who was destined to die, the older sister of one of the most important people in the entire freaking plotline.

Wherever the Fates were, they were probably rolling on the floor laughing at my predicament.

Because what the hell was I even supposed to do?

If those stupid old ladies thought I wasn't going to interfere with the story, they thought wrong. Any thoughts I had about preserving the timeline got thrown out of the metaphorical window when I realized that Bianca, my twin, my sister, was going to die.

Literally, fully, irreversibly, die.

Like hell I was going to let that happen.

I'd only been here for a rather short amount of time, and yet my twin sister had already managed to wriggle her way into my heart.

There was no way I was going to let anything happen to her.

With that thought in mind, I nodded to myself and went to sleep.

—-

In hindsight, I should've known I'd shoot myself straight into a nightmare, but I didn't know that demigods could get their stupid dreams so early in life.

I was, what, a few weeks old? Honestly, I'd lost track. The days were so predictable and boring that they'd blurred together.

However, I digressed.

The nightmare in question was about Cyclopes, and them enjoying their dinner. It would've been fine, except this dinner was of freshly murdered demigod.

Since I was a demigod, this was not cool.

I watched in horror as they tore off bloody pieces of the poor half-blood's body, and devoured it with a grin streaked in red. Bile rose in my throat as the sounds of bones crunching in between the Cyclopes' teeth, and the wet sounds of chewing.

I woke up and vomited all over myself, trembling all over and crying like my life depended on it.

After that night and for several others following it, I was absolutely inconsolable.

I'd always associated this world with wonder and magic. The thing about reading about a fictional world is that it's fictional.

Not truly real.

It was easy to ignore all the danger in favour of simping over the characters.

Before now, I'd felt that I could easily just use my powers that being the daughter of Hades granted me and save Bianca, just like that.

I hadn't thought about how much danger I would be exposed to.

I hadn't thought about how hard it was going to be.

Bianca's death was, after all, one of the most important character-developing points in the entire plotline, as hard as it was for me to think of her like that.

If I did manage to save her, what would happen to the story?

Would Hades still join the Battle of Manhattan?

Would Nico still help Percy bathe in the River Styx?

Could Kronos still be defeated?

So many possibilities, and not all of them good.

I'd cried and cried and cried that night, my head aching from all my strenuous thinking. I still had the brain of a baby, after all: I wasn't even supposed to know how to talk yet, much less wonder about deaths and possibilities and timelines and whatnot.

My mother, Maria, was obviously shocked by my distress. Compared to all the other babies, I was relatively quiet. I had never had such a bad reaction to anything, and she fretted about me for over a week, worrying if she had given me something that I shouldn't have received.

I felt bad about making her so stressed, but I was so lost and helpless that I couldn't control myself.

Unfortunately, the nightmares never really left. They just kept getting worse as I grew older.

Bianca, thankfully, remained blissfully asleep every time I woke up screaming, but I couldn't say the same for myself. While she enjoyed dreamless nights and comforting darkness, I was relentlessly punished with visions of what was going on around me — and since we lived in the Great Depression, pre-WW2 era, it was safe to say that none of those visions were particularly nice to see — so by the time I was five years old, I was regarded as a rather quiet, frightened-looking kid, always jumping at things that weren't there.

Yeah, so, not off to a great start on the whole 'heroic saviour' thing.

My twin, Bianca, on the other hand, was soft and caring. She didn't seem to mind my shyness, which was great for me since I didn't seem to have any other mode other than 'frightened'.

Like I said, not off to a great start.

I sighed and skulked into a shadowy alcove, sitting down and drawing my small knees to my chest, setting my chin on them.

Sometimes, the headaches from my visions got so strong that I had to retreat to this place, where the shadows were strong and hid me from everyone else's eyes. The alcove comforted me, as if the darkness itself was lending me strength like water did to Percy Jackson.

I wondered why that was. In the books, neither Nico — who was currently three-years-old — nor Bianca had this ability. In fact, the shadows had actually drained Nico to the point where he'd nearly turned into a shadow himself, but strengthened me to the point where I swore I felt high.

There was also one other thing that I was confused about: my appearance.

My hair, in particular.

It was the colour of ebony like the rest of my siblings, but unlike them, there was a long streak of red shooting through the left side of my head. It was weird not just because it was genetically impossible, but also because that shade of red was the exact colour of my hair in my previous life.

It was a strange thing, and it made me wonder: could attributes from my old self show in this new body?

And if so, were there going to be more changes showing up eventually?

What of the timeline? What if someone realized that this wasn't normal? Would I have to reveal my true identity?

Ack, I groaned, my head beginning to throb again.

I really hated being a kid.

"Callie!" Bianca called, peeking around the corner. Our house was massive, something I suspected was because of our father, Hades — wasn't he the god of riches as well as the Underworld?

Unfortunately, I had to snap out of my thoughts as Bianca knelt next to me, excited. "Do you wanna draw with me?" She asked, shooting me a toothy grin and holding out a hand.

Her expression told me she knew why I was hiding, and I appreciated that she was trying to distract me.

I smiled half-heartedly and she helped me up, chattering animatedly about her day — Ma, our mother, had taken her to the market today. "You should see it!" Bianca told me, eyes sparkling. "Ma says that she shall take you too, tomorrow."

One thing that you should know about us is that we lived in the 1930s, when English was much more formally used, meaning our vocabulary was slightly wider than the five-year-olds in, say, 2010. I supposed I should be glad that we spoke English at all, since we lived in Italy, where hardly anybody spoke the language.

"Okay," I said softly. "But, um, could you perhaps come with me? It would feel strange if you weren't there." Bianca squeezed my hand reassuringly, but shook her head. "Ma already took me, Callie. You know she doesn't let us go out together."

Seeing my crestfallen expression, she hastily tried to amend her statement. "But we can still ask!"

I sighed. "There is no point, though. We already know she won't allow us." I licked my lips nervously. I didn't like going outside. I could always see a couple of monsters, hiding amongst the Italians, waiting for Ma to leave me alone so that they could try and kill me. "I must go…alone."

I was already dreading this.

Bianca let out a sigh too, deflating. "I've upset you," she stated sadly. "I'm sorry." I shook my head rapidly. "No, no," I denied instantly. "I'm not upset. There's no need to apologize." But Bianca still looked like a kicked puppy, so I tried to change the subject. "Hey, you said you wanted to draw, right?"

That did it.

Bianca brightened. "Ma bought us new crayons!" She dragged me to our room, pointing at the vibrant box laying on the floor. She pulled me down next to her and rummaged through our drawer for paper, setting two clean sheets down in front of us. "I'm going to draw our house," she declared to me, nodding determinedly.

"Okay," I agreed. "I'll…draw something else."

With those inspiring words, I took a random crayon from the box and set to work with nary a thought on what I was doing.

I finished long after Bianca, and she stared at my drawing with a strange expression, like a mixture of shock and horror and sadness.

Was it really that bad? I thought, before looking down myself. I blanched.

Crap, I swore, realizing what I'd done.

Unfortunately, the damage had already been done, much to my chagrin. "Oh, Callie," Bianca said quietly, taking the paper from my hands and taking a long look at it. Her expression was so serious it almost looked comical on her small, child-like face. "Is this what you see in your…" She hesitated. She knew I didn't like talking about this subject very much, but she continued anyway. "Is this what you see in your nightmares?"

I looked away, wishing more than ever that I could press undo on my life like I could on a computer.

Not that one existed in this period, anyway.

The drawing was of a dracaena, or more specifically, the death of one.

A broken body of a half-blood lay to the side, ripped open so to expose the poor guy's guts. The remains of a tattered orange shirt were scattered around the scene, along with a glowing dagger that lay flat on the ground, crimson blood splattering the shiny blade. The two demigods who'd survived stood, faces streaked with blood and other injuries, expressions filled with pain as they stared at their fallen comrade, golden dust scattered in their hair.

I hadn't known I was that good at drawing. I'd been an artist in my previous life, sure, but I hadn't known the skill would transcend into this life.

I'd just lost myself for a moment there, and now look what I'd done.

Idiota, I cursed in Italian.

"Callie?" Bianca prodded gently.

I sighed and gave a jerky nod, taking the picture back from her, before violently ripping it into itty bitty pieces so neither of us would have to look at it any longer. Bianca watched me silently until I finished, scowling as the last pieces of the drawing were scattered over the floor.

Then she wrapped her arms around me and gave me a big hug.

I stiffened for a moment, not expecting it, before melting and hugging her back fiercely, burying my head in the crook of her neck, snuggling close. Unbidden, Bianca began singing the lullaby that Ma always sang to us. She was a good singer, I noted drowsily as my eyelids began to close.

I fell asleep to the flowery scent of my twin sister and the last notes of the lullaby still ringing in my ears.