Disclaimer: I am not, and will never be, Rick Riordan. Sadly, this means I don't own Percy Jackson.

Warnings: Self-edited, major character deaths. Rather depressing, to be honest.

"Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

-Dylan Thomas

Where did it go so wrong?

Dispassionately, Clotho could only muse on how the world could have come to an end such as this as her sisters cut, with only a soft snip, so many lives before they were meant to end.

Desperately, the Seven attempted to keep the battle even, all the while praying to gods who did not listen.

But for all their efforts, the Gigantes inexorably advanced, the blood of Olympus long since spilt; Gaea was awoken, and her wrath shook the world as the last bastions of Western Civilization resisted with the last dregs of power they possessed.

Leo Valdez and his master creation were the first to fall.

Clotho watched her sister cut several threads at once with her silver scissors, with something that might have been a resigned sigh in a mortal. The Argo II had been almost certainly doomed, but the Fates had foreseen it making a far larger impact on the battle—preferably with the interference of the gods. Her other sibling had held ready a longer thread for the son of Hephaestus's life, now to never be used.

She turned back to the impending end of the war, and patiently waited for her father to lead the Olympians into battle, to save both Rome and Greece.

The Fates could only but watch, watch as this end of their own unwitting making unfolded.

Gaea's wrath shook Camp Half-Blood, and she walked her own body for the first time in millennia, serene smile fixed. The demigods and their leaders did not tremble, and stood to meet the Primordial.

In vain, Lachesis thought with a facsimile of pity. She watched her oldest sister efficiently end thousands of lives as what remained of the great training camps died screaming, returned to the Mother.

An unsatisfied parent, it would seem. Her essence dissipated from the place humans called Long Island, and began to concentrate, fury undiminished, where the focus of the world now turned, even if the mortals remained ignorant: Athens.

At the latest hour—too late, it could be argued—the god of thunder finally roused himself, both aspects temporarily corralled. The king of the gods led Olympus into battle, unaware of the futility of his gesture.

Surprisingly, Dionysus was the first to fall. Lachesis watched as the god was felled by the twins, who then turned their attention to hunting the minor immortals. The glee of their mother quite literally rippled through Greece, ripping and tearing and grinding the land to dust.

Unsurprisingly, a chain effect was initiated by the death of the son of Semele. The daughter of Athena was next, killed by her mother's arch-nemesis, only for him to be killed in turn by the child's grieving mother; the goddess of wisdom soon found her end in the form of a soon twice-victorious Alcyoneus, ineffective in the new home of the counterpart of Hades.

And Pallas Athena's great enemy? In certain defeat, he gave up his life, his memories, his power to the Earth Mother.

Gaea surged in response, and islands around the world were wiped off the map.

The second great Perseus roared with rage, and with four blows of his sword, defeated five combatants at once before having his attention forcibly caught by he who had been defeated twice before. He was joined by his father, and the three fought as their comrades continued to fall around them.

All the while, the earth continued to shake, and the Ring of Fire began to break.

Hephaestus let out a yell as he felt his forges' destruction—at least until a resurrected Typhon broke the god's back for the last time.

Piper McLean fell soon after, at the hands of Periboia, inciting the goddess of love to war and a beauty of terror unparalleled. Although mother soon joined daughter, it was not before the Gemini traitors went first.

Clytius, Hecate's ancient and learned foe, grappled with her champion, whose tricks with the Mist failed to save her, as instead of death, she was trapped in a nightmare both of and of not her making; eternal life in the land beyond the gods, spent on her last night and the first day of Gaea.

In grief, her dragon of a boyfriend failed to either rescue or follow, his newly-gained senses were manipulated by the shadowed Gigante, who watched in grim glee as Frank Zhang began to find his way to the Underworld of his ancestors. At the same time, Jason Grace met the fate spun by Thoon on the razor edge of the Gigante king's spear, where two immortal sons of Zeus had already found their end.

Lachesis could only shake her head at the massacre, and wonder: how did it come to this?

Unabated by the blood already staining her, Gaea began to crack the world as she stretched for the first time in so long, already seeking to meet her first love.

If she had been any being but a goddess, Atropos would have tutted. Were her sisters really so surprised at the finish the world received from their manipulation?

Anger palpably rippled through the air as the youngest son of Kronos was gradually forced to concede ground to his grandmother and would-be usurper, before at once collapsing as his final sister—the youngest, and one he had never quite cherished enough—was forced to yield permanently, her essence at last worn and gone.

In contrast, the king of the sea and his newest mortal heir triumphed at last over their foe, nearly exhausted by their efforts.

But even as they triumphed, the eldest of the Fates could only think: too little, too late.

Look behind you, son of Poseidon.

He did not.

Atropos closed her silver scissors over a dark green thread.

The youngest child of sea died with a knife in the small of the back, in the arms of his father.

Atropos watched impassively as the second son of Kronos cried out to them, uncaring of the world cracked and burning around him and the few conquered that remained. He would quickly follow, after all.

She turned away from the howls of the fallen, unconcerned.

They would die soon enough, and she had more important deeds to complete with her sisters.

In their attempts to fix Western Civilization, heal Olympus, and avert the Age of Gaea's Children—it mattered not which—they had instead delivered it to the malevolent Primordial on a silver platter, as the mortals would have once said. They had been prideful fools.

It had to be fixed—undone, to be more precise. The newly-arrived Age of the Gigantes would never allow for a hero to rise. Out of the corrupted tapestry of time they had created, a thread would have to be pulled. A seeming paradox for the Fates: for their problem to be fixed, the tapestry unwittingly woven could never be.

Time would have to be manipulated, fates be changed. The power required would, under any normal circumstance, be considered impossible. No god or goddess had the power to manipulate time.

A certain Titan, however, did. Or he once had, at least.

Atropos joined hands with her sisters, and together, reaching though the fabric of the universe, began to seek out the last of Kronos's rapidly fading essence in the corners of reality. Through a process that would be considered long enough to span generations by standards of any but their own, they collected every golden grain.

Then, and only then, at last, the Moirai pulled, and tightly—for however short a period—bound the Lord of Time's power to their own; with a long-practiced efficiency, they worked.

Clotho pulled from the dark and tangled tapestry a thread as green as the sea, far too short.

Lachesis measured out the thread, connecting it with a length from a new skein of thread, thicker and stronger than the one she previously utilized.

Atropos, last of all, with a soft, ominous snip from her golden scissors, severed the new, repaired thread from their previous corrupted work.

In unison, the three sisters began to chant in a language that sounded extraordinarily like to Ancient Greek, except not—every syllable throbbed with power, and the air itself seemed to burn as the goddesses intoned to an unseen force.

Ananke, perhaps. Or maybe Order and Chaos themselves. Even Atropos was unsure on the particulars of the ritual; but it would work, she knew. There was no other option.

Suddenly, the thread began to glow, as if it had been imbued with the Titan of Time's power itself; subtle at first, it increased in intensity until almost blinding, and the heat of it soon burned the Fates' hands, forcing them to release the life-thread.

Atropos could not help but wonder; for a brief second, it had. . .But that was impossible, surely.

And then she knew. A hint of trepidation shivered through her soul, and she turned to Clotho and Lachesis, old eyes wide.

What have w—

And the world ended, not with a roar, but a whisper.

Perseus Jackson came roaring to life with a violent gasp, green eyes wild. After a moment of panicked flailing and struggling to breathe, his fear-filled gaze settled upon a girl with blonde hair and stormy grey eyes, her face stern and unimpressed.

"You drool in your sleep."