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Chapter 7: The Harbinger's Rise
The Astral Realm shimmered like a sea of diamonds, infinite stars swirling in spirals of color and silence. Percy stood atop a floating shard of crystallized void, his celestial bronze armor reflecting the glow of nearby constellations. Beside him, Jason exhaled steadily, electricity humming in rhythm with his breath. Their mentor, Aetherion, stood before them in his full majesty—formless yet present, robed in galaxies and ringed with ever-shifting halos of light and darkness.
"The Wound has stirred," Aetherion said, his voice resonating through the realm. "A Harbinger walks."
Percy's hand clenched instinctively around the hilt of his blade—Okeanós, reborn in Aetherion's forge. Jason's fingers crackled with golden lightning.
"Where?" Jason asked, his voice sharp, disciplined.
"The Veiled Abyss," Aetherion replied. "A realm bent and twisted—warped by the Wound's touch. This Harbinger is not mere brute. It manipulates thought, memory, truth. You must go together. Only united can you withstand its madness."
Percy exchanged a look with Jason, the tension between them long dissolved. They were not the boys who had bled on Olympus or been cast into Tartarus. They were the Forged Sons now.
"We're ready," Percy said.
Aetherion stepped aside, and a rift tore open in the stars—an obsidian gate, pulsating with threads of crimson and gold. Without hesitation, Percy and Jason leapt in.
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The Veiled Abyss was wrong.
They landed not on ground, but on perception itself. The world stretched and blurred, colors bled into one another, and the air smelled of ash and salt and rain—every scent Percy had ever known, fused into confusion. Gravity shifted with every breath, and voices whispered in languages that hadn't existed for millennia.
Jason staggered. "It's like… we're standing inside someone's mind."
"No," Percy muttered. "Worse. We're inside something that wants to be real."
The sky churned above them—deep violet, then grey, then blood-red. Shadows slithered along the edges of their sight. And then, without warning, the world stabilized.
They stood in Camp Half-Blood.
Percy blinked. His heart clenched.
The Big House. Thalia's tree. The cabins. The lake.
Children laughed in the distance. Annabeth's voice called his name.
"No," he whispered. "This isn't real."
Jason frowned. "I see New Rome."
Percy looked at his friend—and saw something else entirely. Jason's form shimmered, shifting between his present self and the boy Percy had once fought at the Roman camp. Fear stabbed into Percy's mind.
"Jason?" he asked carefully.
"I—I'm fine," Jason replied, though his voice wavered. "It's the Harbinger. It's trying to split us up."
Percy drew his blade. "Then let's find it before it finds us."
They walked forward—through illusions of friends and memories. Percy saw Grover trapped in chains, Nico turned to stone, and Annabeth calling out for help before crumbling to dust. Jason heard Reyna's scream echo from a tower, only to vanish. The illusions clawed at their senses, turning love into terror, twisting joy into guilt.
And then the ground fractured.
A being rose from the lake—blacker than shadow, taller than any god. Its body was a mockery of form: skeletal arms cloaked in rotted starlight, a chest that bled ink, and a face that changed with every heartbeat—sometimes Annabeth, sometimes Hera, sometimes Aetherion himself.
The Harbinger.
"Children of Order," it spoke in a thousand voices, layered and discordant. "Abandoned. Exiled. Forged into weapons."
Percy raised Okeanós. "You know who we are."
"You are fuel for the undoing," it said. "Your pain. Your betrayal. It feeds us. You bear the spark of the One Who Binds—Aetherion's curse made flesh."
Jason summoned his divine spear, electricity dancing around him. "We're not his curse. We're his answer."
The Harbinger didn't attack. It simply existed—and the world cracked. The lake dried up. The Big House burned. The sky folded inward.
Percy moved first. With a cry, he surged forward, slicing through reality, his blade cutting not flesh but memory. Jason followed, hurling lightning into the creature's face.
The Harbinger exploded—into fragments of time.
Suddenly Percy was eleven again, standing in the Principal's office.
"You're a failure," Gabe shouted.
He blinked, and the image shattered—replaced by Luke's betrayal on Mount Tam.
"You let her fall."
"NO!" Percy screamed.
Jason relived his own death—stabbed by Caligula's blade again and again. He fell to his knees, choking on air that wasn't air.
The Harbinger was thought. It was trauma. And it was endless.
But then—a thread of golden light.
Aetherion's voice cut through the chaos.
"Balance your soul. Remember your truth."
Percy stood. "I am not defined by betrayal."
Jason stood too. "Or by sacrifice."
Their auras ignited—Percy's a storm of seafoam and darkness, Jason's a hurricane of thunder and creation.
Together, they struck.
Okeanós cleaved through the Harbinger's illusion. Jason's spear burned its body with primordial flame.
The Harbinger screamed—a terrible cry that echoed through existence.
It shattered—but not before whispering:
"He is not what you think. Even stars may fall."
And then it was gone.
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The Veiled Abyss faded.
They were back in the Astral Realm, kneeling on the starlit floor of Aetherion's palace.
Their mentor stood before them, silent.
Jason rose first. "We won."
"No," Aetherion said. "You survived. That is different."
Percy's brow furrowed. "It spoke of you… said even stars may fall."
Aetherion's cosmic form flickered for the briefest moment. "There are truths even I cannot shield you from. The Wound was not born. It was released."
Jason and Percy shared a glance. "By who?" Percy asked.
Aetherion turned his gaze to the stars. "That, my pupils, is the mystery yet unsolved."
And with a wave of his hand, a new rift opened—this one to a forgotten place, where gods had no name and time did not tread.
"You have begun your path," he said. "But the Harbinger was only a whisper."
Percy sheathed his blade.
Jason raised his spear.
Together, they stepped forward—into the next abyss.
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