Chapter Text
It all started with a scroll.
Not just any scroll, mind you. Not the kind you find in a dusty museum case next to a “please do not touch” sign and an audio guide voiced by some sleepy British historian. No, this scroll glowed. It shimmered like celestial parchment dipped in lightning, and it didn’t ask to be found. It chose us.
I was at Camp Half-Blood, lying in the grass with a root digging into my back and a copy of The Iliad balanced on my chest. Annabeth was nearby, reading an actual ancient tablet like it was light summer reading, and Leo was trying to build a toaster that could double as a flamethrower—typical Tuesday.
Then the sky flickered. Not like “ooh, pretty shooting star” flicker—more like “the universe just burped” flicker. And then it appeared.
A scroll, hovering five feet in the air, spinning slowly like it had all the time in the world. Golden runes spiraled across the surface in a language that looked older than Greek, older than time, maybe.
I sat up. “Annabeth? You seeing this?”
“I am,” she muttered, already on her feet. “And it’s impossible. The sigils—those are Sumerian. And…wait, is that Sanskrit?”
Leo dropped a bolt with a clang. “Hold up. Magic scroll. Glowing. Hovering. Has no one considered the possibility that it’s a trap?”
“Of course it’s a trap,” Annabeth said. “But it’s also history.”
That was all the excuse she needed.
She reached out. The moment her fingers brushed the parchment, the runes ignited. A swirl of energy burst from the center like a miniature supernova, and the next thing I knew, we were being sucked into it—no time to yell, no time to brace, just a spinning vortex of blinding light and Annabeth screaming something about “temporal dislocation!”
When the world stopped spinning, we were no longer at camp.
We stood in the middle of a stone hall, surrounded by pale lantern light, calligraphy scrolls, and a dozen confused scholars dressed like they’d stepped out of a Chinese drama. The air smelled like ink and incense. And the worst part? A paper crane was flying straight at my face.
But I’ll get to that.
Because the scroll—the one that dragged us through time? Yeah, it had plans.
Annabeth figured it out first. “It’s a timeline,” she said, breathless, eyes scanning the magical artifact now floating behind us. “A scroll that maps the flow of global civilization. And something—someone—is trying to rewrite it.”
Leo peered over her shoulder. “So we’re in some kind of historical Hunger Games? Great. Do we at least get swords?”
I held up my pen, which turned into a celestial bronze blade. “We’re covered.”
And then, as if summoned by our confusion, we heard the voice.
A slithering, cold rasp that didn’t come from any direction, and every direction.
“History belongs to the victors,” it said. “Unless someone erases the victors first.”
We didn’t know his name then, but we'd come to know it all too well: Chronoscriptor, the Keeper of Unwritten Time.
A cosmic parasite feeding on forgotten moments. A creature so ancient even the Fates didn’t talk about him. His mission? Simple. Rewrite history by erasing the foundations of human civilization—knowledge, belief, governance, balance.
And we were the only ones standing in his way.
Each time the scroll was activated, it hurled us into another turning point in world history. The Song Dynasty in China. The Abbasid Caliphate’s House of Wisdom. Samurai-era Japan. The temples of the Khmer Empire. We saw empires rise, beliefs clash, trade routes flourish. We saw how knowledge spread like wildfire—and how easily it could be extinguished.
Chronoscriptor was always one step ahead, trying to twist the past into something broken. And we? We were the timeline’s immune system.
No pressure.
I didn’t sign up for this. I’m more of a "fight monsters with a sword and maybe a witty comeback" kind of guy. But when the gods decide you’re the designated hitter for Team History, you don’t argue. (You just pray it doesn’t involve another pop quiz.)
So yeah. That’s how it started. With a scroll. With a time vortex. With a boy, a girl, a grease-stained demigod, and a mission no one asked for.
History needs saving.
And apparently, we’re the ones who have to save it.
Again.