Chapter Text
The ghosts started following me when I was four years old. My father always thought they were my imaginary friends. Tiny shadows trailing behind me, following my footsteps, whispering things no child should ever hear. But imaginary friends don’t leave frost on the floor. Imaginary friends don’t cry in voices that sound like cracking ice. Imaginary friends don’t linger after the lights go out. By the time I was seven, the dead had learned how to tether themselves to me properly; thin shadows curled around my ankles like loose threads stitched to my soul. Most demigods at Camp Half-Blood only saw the shadows. They’d glance at the ground beside me and look away too quickly, pretending not to notice the extra movement trailing half a second behind my footsteps. I saw them completely. Every hollow face, every grieving stare, every spirit too afraid to let go.
Tonight they wouldn’t stop whispering. So naturally, I couldn’t sleep. Cabin 13 was silent as it always was, so I was extra careful when I slipped out the door, trying not to wake up my half-brother Nico. Cold air rushed against my face immediately, carrying the scent of pine trees and saltwater from the beach below the hill. The camp was always quieter after midnight. Lanterns glowed faintly along the paths while distant laughter drifted from Cabin 11.
The ghosts followed closely behind me as I walked. One of them, a little boy missing half his face, kept tugging anxiously at the sleeve of my sweater.
“I know,” I muttered.
He pointed toward the woods again.
“I said I know.”
The other ghosts stirred restlessly around my feet, their forms stretching across the ground beneath the moonlight like living ink. Something in the forest was calling out for the dead tonight. Unfortunately for me, the dead always answered first. The deeper I walked into the trees, the quieter the world became.
Branches twisted overhead tightly enough to block the moonlight. The air smelled damp and cold, like rain-soaked earth left untouched for years. Dead leaves crunched beneath my boots while the ghosts clustered closer behind me. None of them had spoken a word; that should have been my first warning.
The trees finally opened into a clearing I knew for a fact shouldn’t exist, and I stopped walking. Gravestones stretched across the clearing in crooked rows, half-swallowed by weeds and tangled roots. Some leaned sideways; others were cracked in the middle. Moss covered nearly every inch of stone, making the names impossible to read. It was a graveyard, and a very old one at that.
Camp Half-Blood doesn’t have a graveyard. At least not one that I’d ever seen before. A cold wind swept through the clearing. Behind me, the ghosts refused to step onto the grass.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?”
None of them answered. The little boy shook his head frantically, then pointed toward the center of the graveyard. I followed his gaze to a single pink peony. It had bloomed from the earth beside one of the graves. Everything else around it was dead. The flower looked almost painfully alive beneath the moonlight- soft, pink petals trembling gently in the wind.
I stepped forward carefully, and the ghosts recoiled immediately. One of the older spirits grabbed desperately for the edge of my shadow like he wanted to pull me back, but I shook him off.
“It’s just a flower,” I whispered. But even as I said it, I knew that wasn’t true.
I crouched beside the grave slowly. The name carved into the stone had almost completely worn away. Only a few letters were still visible.
“L-U--”
The peony swayed toward me, like it recognized me. A strange warmth spread through my chest and without really thinking, I reached out and picked it. The petals felt impossibly soft against my fingertips. I stared at the flower quietly, my heartbeat slowing for reasons I couldn’t explain.
I felt heat rushing through the flower and a sharp pain shot across my fingers. I screamed and nearly dropped the peony as the edges of the petals blackened suddenly. Smoke curled upward between my hands. The flower began collapsing inward, but it wasn’t wilting; it was burning. Ash spread rapidly across the pink petals until the entire bloom crumbled apart in my hands, scattering gray dust across my skin.
The burn stung hard enough to make my eyes water. Behind me, every ghost in the clearing shrank back at once. The wind tore violently through the graveyard. For the first time in years, I knew what it felt like to be afraid of the dark.
I barely slept after that. By morning, the burn across my fingers had darkened into thin red marks curling around my skin like vines. I kept my sleeves pulled low over my hands during breakfast. The dining pavilion buzzed with noise around me. Plates clattering, campers laughing, the smell of syrup and burnt toast hung thick in the warm morning air.
Nico sat across from me looking half-dead. Which, honestly, was normal for him.
“You look terrible,” he said before taking a sip of coffee.
“Thank you.” I rolled my eyes and stabbed my fork into a freshly harvested strawberry.
“You were talking in your sleep again.”
I stiffened slightly; the ghosts around my chair shifted closer to me. “What was I saying?”
Nico shrugged. “Something about flowers.”
My stomach twisted but before I could answer, a sudden burst of laughter rose from the pavilion entrance. A familiar laugh.
No.
It couldn’t be.
Slowly, I looked up. A group of campers stepped into the pavilion, sunlight spilling around them from the open doors. And there he was.
Rowan Arden.
Older now.
Taller.
His brown curls had lightened from all the time he was probably spending in the sun.
His blue and green eyes looked like tiny kaleidoscopes.
But he still looked like the Rowan I once knew.
He laughed at something one of his siblings said, and for one horrible second it felt like the air had been ripped from my lungs. I watched as the flowers bloom faintly beneath his shoes as he walked. Tiny white blossoms pushed through the cracks in the wooden floorboards before disappearing seconds later. He was the only demigod child of Persephone who could grow flowers.
Nobody else seemed to notice.
But I did. Of course I did.
Rowan glanced up suddenly, like he could feel someone staring. His eyes met mine from across the pavilion; the smile slipped from his face at once. The ghosts around my shadow began whispering all at once. Somewhere deep inside my chest, something I thought had died years ago started breathing again.