Chapter Text
Erebus was tired; many knew he was among the first of Chaos' progeny. What most weren't aware of was that Erebus was, in fact, the firstborn of Chaos, older than any of his siblings, though Eros was born immediately, almost as his twin, from Chaos' motherly love for Erebus. He spent so many millennia with his mother and brother before their three other siblings were born. Nyx came first, and Eros launched his first arrows. Erebus and Nyx loved one another for an age as Gaea and Tartarus, their other two siblings, slowly formed the Earth and the Underworld before they had children of their own.
Erebus and Nyx had several children who descended to the newly formed Earth and became among the first Primordials. Sadly, they would watch as their family became selfish and cruel towards their own children and other creations. When the Gods of Olympus finally overthrew Kronos and even managed to put Gaea herself to sleep, after the Gigantomachy, Erebus thought his family had finished their petty and selfish ways. He was wrong; in fact, the Gods of Olympus were even worse in some ways than their predecessors had been, and even his own beloved wife, Nyx, and their children proved that power could be a corrupting influence.
Nyx became vain and selfish, claiming a section of Tartarus, named for their brother who formed it from his own essence, and punished anyone who she deemed insulted her, often calling upon their children to enact these punishments. Erebus, however, never became vain or cruel or petty; instead, he flew through the endless vastness of space, which was formed from his own essence, and saw many other planets form much as Earth had from his sister Gaea. Some of these planets even called themselves Earth as well, while others chose different names for themselves, and many of these other planets had Seers just as Earth did.
These Seers would reach out across the universe, aided by Erebus who enjoyed witnessing the stories that played out across these different Earths and others, and dream of the other planets, some even reached threw the very Void of Chaos herself to reach other universes allowing them to tell amazing stories of heroes and villains, magic and monsters, and even the stories of the Gods of Olympus and other pantheons spread to the stars.
Erebus, however, could not simply watch idly sometimes, for there were villains who grew too strong, rivaling the Gods and even becoming as strong as Erebus himself. Naturally, this led to him stepping in, the Shadow Monarch with his Army of Shadows, powerful warriors from across the multitude of this universe and others who had agreed, whether through friendship with Erebus or defeat at his hand, to join his forces as an undead army. It was easy to pluck them from the afterlife as long as he did it immediately after death, after all, Erebus was also the name of the beginning of the afterlife, and it was his domain across the multiple planets and all of their afterlives.
Finally, after so many eons, Erebus was ready to finally rest, move on to whatever came next for the immortals, which only Chaos herself knew and would not tell even her eldest son. Ancient as he was, however, Erebus couldn't simply fade as the lesser gods might do, for without him, the very concept of Darkness would fade despite the titans and gods that came after him. Erebus instead would need to find someone worthy, someone who could become his successor.
"Erebus, my son," Chaos spoke from all around him as he looked down on Gaea's own planet Earth, "are you certain he is the one you choose?" she asked of him as they looked down on a child slumbering in his bed.
The child they were looking upon had a Mediterranean complexion, dark, average-length black hair currently flared out around his head as he slept, and, though they couldn't be seen, deep sea green eyes.
"Come now, mother," Erebus replied as he began to shape his own power with his mother's help, forming into a shape he had seen on several of the other earths as something he felt the child would recognize. "My daughters are the very Fates themselves, I picked up a trick or two," he smirked at his mother, or at least in a random direction since Chaos formed the very fabric of reality and was everywhere, and launched a pitch-black shadow down towards the sleeping child.
Pitch black and invisible to all, the energy flew down from space and across the sky to a small building on a sprawling school campus. Cutting through the building as if it wasn't there, the black energy coalesced on Percy Jackson's bedside table into a simple twist pen, pitch black but seemingly completely normal.
"Percy, my man, wake up." A tall young man with curly brown hair, a small wispy beard slowly growing in, and walking with a set of crutches, knocked on the door and yelled in to Percy. "Come on, man, we've got that field trip back to the city today."
Percy slowly woke up and started getting dressed. "Yeah, man, I'm up, I'm up," he called back to his best friend Grover. "I don't want to miss a chance to get out of this shit hole," he mumbled to himself as he left without noticing the pen on his bedside table, nor how it vanished and reappeared in his pocket as the door to his room closed behind him.