-Prologue

July 11, 2020

Camp Half-Blood:
Half-Blood Hill

I blinked. For one moment, I was back at camp. The brilliant black's vastness dared the campers to come alive and run through the woods. Well, to me it did. To others it was just a terrifying, starless sky with little to offer but a small crescent moon that hid behind a fluffy grey cloud.

Tonight seemed endless and vain as the sun just refused to shine again. I prayed to Apollo that he would be his cocky self and just knock Artemis from the sky. Just this one night. I was begging. But it didn't happen. Tonight was the night, the deadline, the end of the road. This would be her last night. I had done everything to stall it, to keep it from happening, but I couldn't delay the inevitable. She was going to come with me whether she liked it or not.

And I knew she wouldn't.

I thought back on the night that it happened to me. It seemed so recent, but it was so long ago. Years ago. Four to be exact. Four years without me and she had changed so much.

Annabeth refused to let her hair down. She hid the golden locks from anyone. Anything that made her less attractive. She wore t-shirts a few sizes too large and jeans that dragged in the mud or clung to the bottom of her shoes. Her grey eyes were dull now, there was no excitement. No one was dumb enough to entertain her—no one but me. When the Aphrodite cabin offered her a makeover or wanted her to hang out in their cabin, she would decline and say she had some buildings to tend to up on Olympus.

Olympus had been finished for six years by now.

Anyways, the night it happened to me, the night I was stolen, I had been offered something that no one else had been able to do. I could take their place. I could become the Thief in return for Elysium if I was replaced. It hasn't happened yet, but I'm still waiting.

It's a miserable life being the Thief. The looks on their faces is always the same and something screams at you, something inside falls apart. But you do it anyway, because you know you can't stop it or prevent it from happening.

I breathed in the cool night air and reveled in the familiar scent. Where I was currently held, a foul smell that nipped your nose and tore at your eyes was all that was present.

The waves shook the ground violently and the sky crackled with electricity. Birds scattered from the trees and shook them. It would've been terrifying if I wasn't so focused on getting the job done right. I felt her mother's presence and glanced around me to make sure she hadn't materialized to stop me.

The mothers were always the hardest. They complained. They whimpered. Then they resorted to threatening you. And when you see the look in their eyes you just want to cry and stop yourself cold in your tracks. But you keep going.

The Athena cabin was in my sight by now as I raced down past Thalia's tree and towards the original set of the cabins. Everything doubled and my sight was blurry. It bothered me—what I was about to do.

The name's Perseus. Perseus Jackson. Official Soul Thief of Hades.