Darkness.
Not the kind you blink away. Not the kind that creeps under doors or lingers behind your eyelids before sleep. This was absolute. Suffocating. Fundamental.
Theo Vale drifted in a negative-space void, stripped of temperature, time, even thought. His body felt like a suggestion—no muscles to tense, no lungs to fill, just a thread of awareness knotted to the idea of a name. He wasn't falling. Wasn't floating. Just there.
The void didn't hum. It didn't echo. It was a silence deeper than silence, like the cosmos had forgotten how to speak.
Then—footsteps.
Not loud. But sharp. Measured.
His footsteps.
From the nothingness, a figure stepped into focus like a photo being developed in reverse. Golden lines sketched bones first, then sinew, then skin, until a second Theo stood across from him—half-smile curling, eyebrow raised, eyes lit with something dangerously self-aware.
He looked like Theo might in perfect lighting on a really good day—with more shine, more heat. Glowing faintly gold, like a candle behind warped glass.
"You're not dead," the copy said, his voice stuttering between tones—half digital glitch, half echo in a cathedral. "Yet. Though, to be fair… that's probably a clerical error."
Theo blinked. Or maybe tried to.
"Great," he muttered. "My own inner demon's a smug bastard."
The double chuckled, circling like a predator with all the time in the world. "Demon? Nah. I'm you. Or at least, what's left of your godhood. The part that got chopped up, tagged 'fragile,' and stuffed into the divine junk drawer."
Theo squinted, trying to feel his heartbeat. There wasn't one. "What the hell does that mean?"
"It means," the other Theo said, as if explaining something to a child, "you were born with a god-shaped hole in your soul. Not metaphorical. Literal. A piece of you burned brighter than a mortal should."
He leaned in. His golden eyes sparked.
"And someone got spooked."
Theo frowned. "Who?"
The doppelgänger tilted his head, that grin sharpening into something fox-like. "Your father."
The word hit him—not like a revelation, but like a puzzle piece jamming into a space he didn't want to admit was missing.
Theo stepped back. "My what now?"
"Your dad," the copy said smoothly. "The one who gave you the spark. The one who never left a name, just left messes."
He paused, drawing the moment out.
"…Hermes," he said finally. "God of thieves. Trickster. Eternal absentee parent with great calves."
The name echoed into the dark like a stone dropped in a well. Hermes.
Theo's breath turned into glass. "No. No, no. That— That's a joke."
The doppelgänger laughed, arms wide like he was welcoming applause.
"Wish it were. Your whole life's been one long divine patch update on slow Wi-Fi. Daddy deactivated your Olympus access. I'm the buffering symbol."
Theo ran a hand through his hair—tried to. He felt nothing. He wasn't sure he had hands here.
"He just—left me?"
The fragment's grin dimmed. "He visited. When he could. Cloaked. Careful. Always watching from the edges."
Theo's stomach twisted. "Why?"
"Because if you activated too soon, you'd blow up half a city—or worse." The double's tone dipped. "Because he was afraid of what you'd become."
A ripple ran through the void.
A glitch. Golden static at the edge of Theo's vision. Then—
Flicker.
He stood in a rain-washed alley. Old brick. Flickering neon reflected in puddles. Somewhere, the hiss of a train. His shoes were soaked. He was seventeen.
A man leaned against the wall, just where the shadows pooled deepest. Green hoodie. Low cap. Twirling a drachma like a coin trick that never dropped.
"You know," the man said, voice warm and worn at the edges, "sometimes the fastest way to stay safe… is to be forgotten."
The wind shifted. Theo caught a whisper of cypress.
Flicker.
Back in the void.
Theo gasped—dry, shuddering. He hadn't realized his hands were shaking.
"That—That happened. I know that alley."
The doppelgänger watched him, suddenly solemn. "Memory leak. He buried them deep. But you're waking up. Starting to pull the stitches out."
Flicker.
Ten-year-old Theo, balanced on a fire escape in Brooklyn. Summer. Paper airplane in hand. He launched it with a shout—and it soared. Straight into the wind, rising higher than it should've. He swore he heard a laugh in the breeze.
And in a window across the street—a man in a green hoodie disappeared behind a curtain.
Flicker.
The void again. Only now, something moved beneath it. Like the air itself had heartbeat.
Theo's voice cracked. "He was there. He was there."
The fragment stepped closer, soft now. "He always was. Nudging. Guiding. Screwing things up the way gods do best."
Theo's throat burned. Guilt. Rage. Loss. A thousand emotions clashed like tectonic plates.
"I don't want this," he whispered.
"Too late," the fragment murmured. "You are this. You can hate it, run from it, scream into every mirror you find—but it's already waking up."
Theo looked up.
And for the first time, the void didn't feel empty.
It felt haunted. Like a cathedral with all the gods watching through the cracks.
The doppelgänger leaned in close, his golden eyes glinting like molten coin under glass, his grin sharp enough to slice through the void. The very air seemed to hum with his presence, a force that was part magnetism, part cosmic joke.
"Let me in," he whispered, voice syrupy sweet, as if offering Theo a poisoned apple. "Share the body. I'll keep us breathing, and you—" he tapped Theo's chest lightly, mock-affectionate, sending a ripple through the void "—you get answers. Power. All the shiny things you've been craving without knowing why."
Theo raised an eyebrow, more out of instinct than curiosity. The entire situation was bizarre, but if he was going to be dragged into some dark corner of his psyche, he might as well have some fun with it. "And what's the fine print?"
The doppelgänger's grin stretched impossibly wide, as if pleased that Theo wasn't completely losing his cool. "No fine print," he said, smooth as butter, "Unless you count the part where I eventually eat your soul."
Theo blinked, his mind trying and failing to process what had just been said. "...Right. Just a light possession. Real BOGO deal."
The doppelgänger chuckled, his laughter a low, dark rumble that seemed to make the void twitch. "We're the same coin, Theo," he said with mock seriousness, tapping his own chest, "I'm just the face Hermes didn't want in circulation."
Theo could feel the truth of it hit him—harder than a sucker punch from a god—but he wasn't about to let this twisted version of himself think he'd won. His fists clenched, but nothing happened. No satisfying crack of bone, no thrum of power. Just the void. A void that had begun to feel like it was pulling at him, not like gravity, but like a bad high school breakup that just wouldn't let him go.
And then, without warning—the void cracked.
A jagged seam sliced through the blackness like someone had swiped a cleaver across a painting. Golden light poured in, dazzling, but not warm. Not cold. Just… wrong. Like the glow of something that was both too bright and not bright enough, pulling at Theo with an undeniable force.
Theo staggered back, his body feeling weightless, as if someone had turned off gravity. His hair whipped back, his cloak—what cloak?—was gone. For a second, he felt like he was floating in space, with no tether, no roots, nothing to keep him grounded.
And that's when the doppelgänger piped up, clearly enjoying the dramatic effect. "Tick tock, me," he said, his grin widening, like he was savoring some inside joke Theo hadn't quite caught. "Pick your poison. Deal with me—or roll the dice with whatever's tugging your leash."
Another crack splintered through the void, and this time it wasn't golden light. No, it was something far more ominous. The scent of burnt ozone—definitely not Theo's favorite air freshener—and something else. Cypress? Wet stone? He could practically taste the forest in the air, as though the universe was serving him a strange cocktail of apocalypse and overgrown landscaping.
He could feel it—pressure building. Futures crashing into each other like cars at a demolition derby. Choices, all stacked on top of one another, tumbling and twisting in midair. But the worst part? He could feel them. He could feel every single possible outcome swirling around him, suffocating him. A dizzying blur of what could be, what might be, and what should have been.
Theo's chest tightened. Not with fear, though. No, this was different. This was clarity. The kind of clarity you get when you've been wandering around for ages trying to figure out which direction to take, and then—boom—you realize you've been going the wrong way the entire time.
This thing, this golden doppelgänger that looked like a low-budget version of himself, wanted control. It wanted power. It wanted fusion. But Theo Vale? He wasn't the kind of guy to just hand over the keys to the kingdom to some knock-off version of himself.
Theo stood tall, eyes locking onto his doppelgänger's with a look that could melt steel. No more running. No more second-guessing.
And then, with a final flourish of defiance—without missing a beat—he flipped him off.
"Classic," the doppelgänger muttered, not even a hint of surprise in his voice. He clearly wasn't taking this whole thing seriously. "Really. A middle finger? You're pulling out the big guns now?"
Theo's lips curled into a smirk, even as the void began to collapse around him. "Hey, if you've got something better, feel free to suggest it," he quipped, his voice dry as a desert.
The void splintered further, cracks spiderwebbing through the fabric of space, like someone was playing a particularly brutal game of Jenga with the universe. Reality was coming apart at the seams, and it wasn't even polite about it. The air turned thick, the kind of pressure that made Theo feel like he was about to get crushed under the weight of a thousand bad decisions.
Theo didn't flinch. Instead, he planted his feet, letting the energy of all those possible futures swirl around him. He was an anchor in the storm now. This wasn't a fight he'd run from. It wasn't a choice he'd hand over to some second-rate version of himself. No—he was Theo Vale. And this… this was his show.
Then, the world collapsed.
It shattered into a million pieces, like glass dropped from Olympus.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
"Okay, I got you here," Peter Parker muttered to no one in particular, his voice thin with strain as he dragged Theo's limp, unconscious form across the threshold of the Sanctum Sanctorum. A trail of dirt and bad decisions marked the path as he pulled his friend through the heavy front doors. "No pressure. Just your standard teenage soul-retrieval mission, right? Easy peasy. I got this."
Sweat clung to Peter's face, mixing with the residual cosmic juju that had gotten into his system from dealing with the mess Theo had unwittingly created. The boy was out cold, his face pale, like someone who'd just gotten a peek behind the curtain of the universe and didn't like what they saw. Peter wasn't feeling much better, to be honest. Every time he glanced down at Theo, it felt like a piece of his reality was slipping away, a little more each time.
"Yeah, no pressure," Peter muttered again, dragging Theo across the marble floors of the Sanctum like he was moving a particularly large, particularly mystical piece of furniture. Behind him, the Cloak of Levitation fluttered nervously, circling his head like a bird on Red Bull, desperate to help—or at least distract. Every few seconds, one of the cloak's corners would swipe at Peter's hair, like it was trying to tell him something important.
"I know he smells like god-juice and taco grease, Cloak," Peter said, speaking aloud as he tried to dodge the cloak's advances. "Stop nagging me. We're all under a lot of pressure here."
With an exaggerated grunt, Peter threw open the massive, ornately carved doors to the Sanctum. The hinges creaked in protest, but they gave way without argument. "Strange!" Peter yelled, waving his free hand in the air like he was hailing a cab. "I brought you a problem! And maybe a corpse, but that part's up for debate!"
As if on cue, Doctor Stephen Strange descended the stairs from the higher levels of the Sanctum, his usual mix of dramatic flair and serious intensity on full display. His cape swirled behind him like it had a life of its own, and his expression was that perfect balance of annoyance and barely-contained rage. Peter had long ago concluded that Stephen Strange was the kind of guy who lived in permanent state of "disappointed dad."
"Peter," Strange greeted, voice smooth but heavy with irritation. "Did you really think I wouldn't notice when you were distracting a very powerful, very dangerous soul?"
Peter smiled sheepishly. "What can I say? I was hoping you were busy with other problems. You know, the usual: time loops, interdimensional portals, dark magic. Stuff like that."
Strange's brows knitted together as he stepped closer, his eyes narrowing at the unconscious Theo. "You're really doing this now? Bringing this kind of issue to my doorstep?"
"Well, I wasn't gonna do it alone," Peter said with a shrug. "I mean, you are the Sorcerer Supreme. I thought you'd be happy to help out. Plus, this kid's soul's been hacked, and I know you've got all those special tools to, you know, un-hack things."
Strange didn't respond right away, his eyes flicking over Theo's body. He snapped his fingers, and glowing sigils appeared around the kid, illuminating the air with swirling, ancient runes. They flickered like neon lights that were struggling to stay lit. Then they sputtered.
They flickered again.
Peter started to sweat more. This was definitely not the good kind of flickering.
"Something wrong?" Peter asked, trying to sound casual, but his voice came out more like a question tossed into a void.
Strange's eyes narrowed even further. He waved his hand, a sharper sigil appearing with more force. It didn't flicker, but the result wasn't much better.
Then, with an audible pop, the glowing sigil emitted a strange, glowing red error message:
ERROR: UNKNOWN ROOT ACCESS — SIGNATURE: LOKI
Peter blinked. Twice.
"Uh… is that… like a Windows update?" he asked with a look of confusion and horror creeping onto his face. "Because I don't think I'm the only one getting an error here."
Strange didn't look at him, his gaze firmly locked on the sigils. "No, Peter. This is worse than a malfunction. This is malware on a divine level. Someone's been tampering with the kid's fate… And it's not just anyone."
Peter's stomach twisted. "It's… not… Loki?" he ventured slowly, his voice creeping upward like he was being dragged into a conversation he definitely didn't want to be part of.
"Loki," Strange confirmed grimly, not looking up, his hands still tracing sigils in the air. "Someone has rooted themselves deep inside Theo's soul. And I have a very bad feeling I know who's to blame. Loki's signature is unmistakable."
Peter sighed dramatically, collapsing onto a nearby chair. "Great. Loki. Loki... Again." He looked down at Theo, who was still out cold, and rubbed his forehead. "I knew it was gonna be one of those days, but I didn't think it was gonna be this messy."
"We're not dealing with just another god's mischief," Strange said, his voice taking on a sharper edge. "Loki's magic is—if anything—manipulating Theo's destiny. His fate has been altered at its core. This isn't just possession. It's far more… sinister."
Peter straightened up. "Okay, so we're dealing with Loki's brand of chaos magic, and now Theo's soul is basically his new pet project. Got it. So, how do we fix this? Am I supposed to perform a soul exorcism or—"
"Hold on," Strange interrupted, his attention now on the floating sigils. "There's more. Look here."
He pointed at a particular sigil, which had now turned from a flickering light to a steady, ominous glow. The sigil showed a series of strange, shifting patterns that looked disturbingly like code. And then, like an error popping up on a computer screen, a second message appeared:
ROOT ACCESS CODE: LOKI — SYSTEM OVERRIDE INITIATED.
"Well, that's ominous," Peter muttered, looking between Strange and the sigil. "So, do we call tech support, or…?"
"Not funny," Strange snapped, his voice hardening with urgency. "This isn't just about magic. Loki has tied Theo's soul to something far darker. It's like hacking the mainframe of his very being. We need to sever the connection."
"Right. Sever the connection. I'm sure this is a thing I can do, too. I've got a killer USB drive back at my place," Peter quipped, pulling at his suit's collar to loosen the tension. "But seriously, this is gonna involve more magic, right? You've got the magic thing down, I've got—"
Before Peter could finish his sentence, a small, rippling glow appeared in the corner of the Sanctum. The air in front of them shimmered, warping as if the space itself was bending.
A smile—a familiar grin—spread across the glassy surface of a floating mirror.
"Oh, good. A cameo," Peter muttered under his breath, eyes narrowing. "I guess Loki just couldn't stay away."
The grin turned into a full-on smirk as Loki's image materialized before them, leaning casually against the mirror. He held a cup in his hand, sipping from it as if it were the most normal thing in the world. It was shaped like a screaming face. Because of course it was.
"Well, well, well," Loki purred, his voice dripping with an almost maddening amusement. "Look who's come to clean up my mess. And Peter Parker, always in the thick of things. Tell me, Spidey, what are you doing here, hmm? Soul retrieval? Or just collecting trinkets along the way?"
Strange's eyes tightened, and Peter, unable to keep the sarcastic comment in, groaned. "Oh, I don't know, Loki. Just another day at the office for me. Seems like you've been poking around in Theo's life, huh?"
Loki gave an exaggerated sigh, setting the cup down on an invisible surface. "Oh, Peter, if you're going to make small talk while I'm manipulating the threads of fate, I suppose we can't all be on the same level of power. But this boy, this messenger's boy, has far more importance than you know. When he opens that door, Olympus will realize why secrets are best left in the dark."
He tossed a coin high into the air. It spun once, twice, then melted into a shimmering key.
Peter blinked. "Oh, great. So we're not just chasing down a possessed kid; we're unlocking more problems. Classic Loki."
Strange, to no one's surprise, was less than pleased. "I'll deal with you later, Loki," he muttered under his breath. "We've got bigger issues."
"Do you now?" Loki asked, grinning. "It seems you're about to embark on quite a journey, Doctor Strange. Be careful with what you wish for."
With a wink, Loki's image flickered and vanished, leaving behind only the silent hum of magic.
Peter turned back to Strange. "Well. That escalated quickly." He rubbed his temples. "So, what's the game plan now?"
Strange let out a long breath. "Now? We find Loki—and we break the link. Because if we don't…" He shot Peter a pointed look. "Theo will never be the same again."
Peter nodded, already bracing for what came next. "Let's go break some magical code, then."
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Theo plunged through the fractured, chaotic landscape, the shattered pieces of reality twisting around him like bizarre snapshots of a world undone. The void had turned into a dreamscape, a nightmarish mashup of Salvador Dali and a city lost to time. Skyscrapers bent and twisted like flowers reaching toward some unseen sun, their spires curling in on themselves, impossible and illogical. Traffic lights dripped golden ichor, trailing like tears in slow motion. Billboards flickered with half-formed memories: him as a child in the museum, his mother laughing, Hermes watching them from across the street, his figure vanishing the moment Theo turned his head.
Theo fought to hold onto himself, ignoring the heavy pull of nostalgia and the chill that clawed at his heart. This was his mind. His memories. And if the doppelgänger wanted to be here, it would have to go through him.
The doppelgänger appeared, stepping out of the distorted city, now clad in Hermes' battle armor—gleaming and unsettlingly familiar, like a forgotten part of Theo's own soul. The armor seemed to belong here, but not to Theo. Not now.
"This is your mind, Theo," it taunted, voice smooth and mocking, eyes glittering with malicious amusement. "Pretty, huh?"
Theo clenched his fists, feeling his resolve harden. "You want in my head?" he growled. "Then you're going to have to fight for it."
The doppelgänger smirked. "I was hoping you'd say that."
And then it charged.
The world around them shifted with each blow, a whirlwind of fractured memories and half-realized decisions. Every punch was a battle for control. Every dodge, a reflection of Theo's deepest fears—his mistakes, his doubts, his every choice that had led him here. He fell through shattered rooftops, his childhood crumbling beneath him. He rose through them again, clinging to the memories that defined him. But the doppelgänger—it—was relentless, every blow cutting deeper into Theo's psyche, trying to claim him piece by piece.
Theo's pulse thudded like a drum in his chest. This was his fight. And the doppelgänger would not win.
BZZZZZ-ZZAAAP!
The air crackled, and something unlocked inside Theo—a surge of power, a crack in his very being. Light exploded from his chest, so brilliant it felt like the sun had burst open within him. Wind screamed. Reality itself seemed to fracture, like the world was splintering at the seams.
Theo was no longer falling through his mind. He was moving. He wasn't running—he was glitching.
His body flickered from one space to another, phasing through fire escapes, rooftop edges, and distorted billboards, leaving golden afterimages in his wake like electricity snapping through the air. The doppelgänger screamed, but its voice became more distant, more desperate, as it disintegrated into a cloud of sparks, unable to keep up with the sheer speed of Theo's new power.
Theo didn't stop. He couldn't. This was his mind. His reality. And he wasn't about to let some cheap imitation take it from him.
He slammed into a wall—no, not a wall—another memory, the remnants of a broken moment. His body jolted, but instead of crumbling, he pushed through it, breaking through the barrier between this fractured world and the next.
CRASH!
And then—nothing.
For a moment, there was no sound. No movement. Just a void of silence.
Then—light.
Theo blinked. His chest rose with a sharp breath as if he hadn't inhaled in ages. He felt solid ground beneath him, not shifting, not warping. The air was different—cooler, more real. The sounds of a city came rushing back: the distant hum of traffic, the faint murmur of voices, the rustle of trees outside the window.
He was back. In the real world.
His eyes shot open, and the first thing he saw was the ornate ceiling of the Sanctum Sanctorum, its strange symbols spinning lazily above him. He was lying on a plush couch in the dimly lit room. The flickering shadows cast by candles danced along the walls. His body was sore, and he felt... tired—but there was something else, too. A deep, resonant hum within him, like the remnants of a battle fought deep inside his own mind.
"Whoa, okay," Peter Parker's voice broke through his daze, the familiar sound of someone talking to themselves in mild panic. "Okay, you're... definitely not dead, that's a plus."
Theo tried to sit up, but his body protested, as though the very act of standing was too much effort after what had just happened. He groaned and rubbed his face. "What... the hell?"
Peter appeared in his field of vision, standing over him, looking concerned but also absurdly disheveled. "You kinda glitched there for a bit. We thought maybe you went full 'divine meltdown,' but you were more like... glitching through the Matrix, so—yeah. Definitely a weird Tuesday."
Theo blinked at him. "I... I was in some weird dream world. And then... that thing—"
"That thing?" Peter's eyebrows shot up. "That would be your doppelgänger, I assume? Y'know, the one who tried to do the 'possession deal' with you."
Theo ran a hand through his hair, feeling the lingering sense of something fading from his mind. "Yeah. That guy. I kinda... fought him off?"
"Fought him off?" Peter echoed, a mix of admiration and disbelief in his voice. "Buddy, you did more than fight him off. You kicked him out of your own brain, then glitched across reality, leaving a trail of golden static behind you. I thought you were going full spaghetti code for a second."
Theo looked down at his hands, still tingling with that strange, newfound energy. "So... what happened to him?"
Peter shrugged, stepping back. "Not sure. Disintegrated into sparks, I guess. Last time I checked, no one walks out of that kind of thing. But knowing you? I'm guessing you did more than just survive."
Theo's gaze shifted, focusing on the open window. The soft breeze and the glow of sunlight outside felt like a world apart from the chaotic mindscape he'd just emerged from. A part of him wanted to reach out, to feel more of this real world, to ground himself.
"I'm guessing... I'm not just some normal kid anymore, huh?"
Peter's grin widened. "Oh, absolutely not. But hey, welcome to the weirdest, most dangerous part of the universe, my friend."
Theo chuckled, despite the weight of everything. "Yeah, guess I'm starting to get that. And, uh—thanks for... keeping me from dying or whatever."
Peter waved it off. "It's what we do. But next time? Let's try to not nearly melt reality. Just a suggestion."
Theo smiled—an easy, relieved thing. He was still figuring out what all of this meant, still trying to grasp the power now thrumming in his veins. But he wasn't scared. Not anymore. He was ready to take on whatever came next.
"Yeah," Theo said, standing up with a little more steadiness this time. "Next time, I'll glitch less."
Peter held out his hand, his grin still wide, but now with a bit of genuine warmth. "Well, since we're probably going to be seeing a lot of each other, I think introductions are in order."
Theo looked down at Peter's hand for a second, then took it, shaking it firmly. "Theo Vale," he said, his voice steady. "And you are...?"
Peter's grin softened into a half-smirk. "Peter Parker. Friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. But since we're in the same business now—feel free to call me 'Spider-Pal.'"
Theo laughed, feeling the weight of the moment settle around him. "Spider-Pal, huh? I like it. Yeah, I think we'll be seeing a lot of each other."
As they stood there, the hum of the city outside the Sanctum seemed to quiet for a moment. Theo reached into his pocket, pulling out his phone. A notification flashed across the screen, and his heart skipped a beat as he read it.
"Great," he muttered under his breath.
Peter cocked his head, noticing the sudden shift in Theo's mood. "What's up?"
Before Theo could respond, a familiar whirring sound echoed in the distance. He looked up just as a sleek, retro-futuristic bike came into view, its wheels humming with strange, glowing energy. The bike rolled up to him, its frame gleaming in the soft light of the Sanctum. It came to a stop right beside him with an almost... intentional flair.
Theo's lips twitched into a smile. "Strophie," he said, patting the bike's frame as though it were a pet. "What's the rush this time?"
Strophie's headlight winked. The compartment spat out a laminated note: Next delivery: 3 AM. DON'T BE LATE OR I'LL REV IN YOUR EAR ALL NIGHT.
Theo groaned. 'Great. My bike's unionizing.'
It nudged against his leg in what could only be described as a request, its tires spinning in anticipation.
Theo grinned, tapping his phone again. "Looks like I've got another delivery to make. You ready to roll?"
Strophie hummed louder, as if in answer, the metal frame practically vibrating with excitement. A small compartment on the bike opened, revealing a neatly packaged parcel, its contents hidden beneath layers of magical encryption.
Theo sighed, more amused than annoyed. "I swear, sometimes it feels like I'm living in a courier's nightmare."
Peter raised an eyebrow. "Another delivery? You, uh, do this often?"
Theo gave a half-shrug. "When you're a son of Hermes, even your bike starts working overtime."
Peter's eyes widened as he glanced at Strophie. "I gotta say, that's one weird courier system you've got there."
Theo chuckled, running a hand through his hair. "You don't even know the half of it. And hey, looks like my ride's already packed and ready for the next leg of the journey. Guess it's time for me to go make another delivery... and get a little more tangled up in the chaos of this world."
With a final pat to Strophie's frame, Theo swung a leg over the bike and revved the engine, feeling the familiar surge of power as it came to life beneath him. He looked back at Peter, who was still standing there with a bemused expression on his face.
"Catch you around, Spider-Pal," Theo said with a wink.
Peter grinned. "Don't go glitching the world again while you're at it."
With that, Theo sped off into the unknown, Strophie humming happily beneath him, and a new adventure waiting just around the corner.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Beneath the shadow of the city's sprawling roots, Annabeth Chase crouched low beside a trembling dryad, her fingers brushing the rough bark of the tree's skin. The air was thick with the scent of magic, ancient and unsettled.
In her hand, she held a vial of glowing red ichor—a peculiar, almost otherworldly shade of crimson, far too bright for anything natural.
"This blood..." Annabeth muttered under her breath, leaning in to inspect it more closely. She inhaled sharply. "It's from an Olympian's kid. But... there's something off about it. It smells like... rust?"
The dryad whimpered, its branch-like limbs trembling as it instinctively shrank away from the vial.
Annabeth straightened up, a sharp glint of worry crossing her expression. She wiped her hand on her jeans, the unease in her eyes growing. "We need to find him," she said, her voice hardening, "before they do."
The trees around her rustled ominously, their leaves shuddering as if they too sensed the threat closing in. Annabeth's mind raced and her fingers tightened around Percy's old camp necklace. If Olympus was hiding another demigod this powerful… war was coming. The energy surrounding this vial was unlike anything she'd felt before. If he wasn't already in danger, it was only a matter of time before someone—or something—snatched him up.
A low wind picked up, carrying a whisper through the forest, though there was no one there to speak it. But Annabeth knew that whisper all too well.
And it wasn't just the dryads they needed to worry about anymore.