Percy's POV

"What have you done to him!?" I run towards the boy on his knees.

"Stand away!" The woman stands in front of him.

"Eury, have you given his memories back?" Irene walks past her with a cold shoulder, placing her hand along Jackson's back.

"Y-yes Irene" Eury responds with a stutter.

"Then I think it's about time we explain ourselves...wouldn't you say, Jackson?" She taps his back, calling him to stand beside her. They hold hands while turning to face me, tilting their head with a small smile. Closing their eyes to reopen and reveal the pearl white from before, "The boy who was given a chance, did I not say we'd meet again?" Their voices speak in unison.

"What?" I flinch back a little out of fear and confusion.

"When you left us, you didn't leave us alone. Not this time Percy."

"I don't understand, Jackson. Can someone explain please?"

"Eury, I bet you're just dying to explain. Aren't you?" They turn to the woman.

"I-I can't begin to explain it, I'm sorry. I didn't intend for this to harm you." She backs up into a wall, looking down with guilt.

Using this opportunity I walk towards her with questions in mind, "Cliodhna said you were the one who made the ones who attacked us, why would anyone do that?" I walk closer to her despite her towering height still looming over me.

"I di-"

"You locked yourself away, forcing your own law of a Kindred onto your very soul so that you'd never have to face your creations again." They both spit out to her.

"Pl-"

"If that was the case, then why did you let us in?" They continue to pressure her.

"IT WASN'T THAT SIMPLE!" She screams throughout the space, causing the room to drip with different colours. Falling to her knees as the building and everything inside gradually leaks down and around her. "It...wasn't that simple." She murmurs out with sadness. Picking up some of the ink and reshaping it into shadowy figures as if to reenact a play.

"I made the Shades because someone asked me to. They needed a species to populate the desolate lands! They wanted imagination and creativity to run across the plain fields and fill it up with life. I didn't know they'd be tortured, broken, beaten and burned. Rebuilt until satisfaction. I didn't know they'd suffer like that only to never see the gleaming sun or the glistening moon!" The shadows grab each other by the throat, tensing and eventually bursting apart back onto the floor as all the building's colour drains.

"This place...you've seen the Theatre of Truth before, haven't you Percy?" She lifts her head towards me.

"Yes, I have" I confirm.

"That place was modelled after this. This place was where I made them all from nothing more than ink and a breath of soul. The Kindreds were different...I made them with pieces of myself. Giving them the kind memories and the bad memories, a balance that would satisfy and develop faster than anything one of those selfish gods could of given them." She rips out her own black heart, crushing it and forming a number of small objects and people.

"...Veritas was one of the first." She looks up at the two, raising her hands to cup their face but dropping the motion before she reached them." A Kindred is a Shade that's been given that chance of a life, I can't offer them a physical body but I could offer them a place, a person to tie themselves to and experience life through them!" She tosses ink up into the room, forming it into the completed mirror.

"I imagined a place much like this, except made out of glass and iridescent crystals. A place that could reflect both the truth and the ideals of anything it saw, anything it touched. I gifted it to a friend of mine" She brightens up a pitch black ball, colouring it to a blazing yellow. "Amaterasu, the goddess of the sun was in love with it. Going as far as to call it her child" Eury smiles a little bit, "The children of the sun, that's what you two are...or at least used to be." She pulls out a smaller orb, colouring it a pearl white.

"She used the mirror day in and day out, unbeknownst to me she began to change...her ideal of beauty began to show her the truth she never wanted to see. Fallen to the image of my own creation. Eventually shattering the two, dividing all the traits of what it means to be alive, to feel, breathe and even the right to exist. Irene, the Ideal. Jackson, the Truth." She stands to her full height, encouraging us to follow her.

"The beast that's inside you Percy, he's given up on reincarnating. He's forcing himself to become you this time, something new." She points to my stomach, pulling out and reimagining a gargantuan shadowy figure of something indescribably hideous. "But that's not all that you left inside the mirror, is it?" She pulls the moon from earlier, throwing it into the sky alongside the sun.

"She just couldn't be left to rot...she had to escape as well." Eury places her hand on Irene and Jackson's joined hands. Pulsing an ooze of ink between the two and separating them, sending Jackson to the sun and Irene to the moon.

"Irene!?" Jackson screams out.

"I'm sorry..." She whimpers out.

"They've always managed to become one again after sometime...but not this time." Eury holds her hand out in the direction of Irene. Revealing strings being pulled from the painted moon, tugging on all of Irene's actions. "The Moon Goddess, she took Irene after she defended Jackson. She can't reincarnate or move into her body, she can't do anything with her from what I know."

"And what exactly does that mean?" Nimue questions.

"I'm sure Irene's felt it. But now that she has a soul within her, the mirror can't accept her like before. Veritas no longer exists, Jackson and Irene can no longer be what they used to be." She explains as Jackson drops to his knees again, sending ripples along the black swamp of ink that buries our feet.

"So Jackson just need-"

Eury cuts me off, "The mirror was designed to be commanded by Veritas, if Jackson goes back then he'll get trapped just like the others were." She shatters the image of the completed mirror, handing us the empty disk. "You cannot let either of them use their powers like they've been doing, they're something reality altering, something beyond nature goes against this world. Irene being able to force an ideal image of anything and everything, Jackson giving that ideal a truth, pulling it from something inanimate and building it into its own life."

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"And we're just supposed to sit here and accept it!?" Jackson screams out.

"Jackson you weren't meant to...be you. We should feel blessed that you both can continue to live on." Eury calms him down, reaching her hand out to him but he rejects it.

"It's fine Jackson, it really is." Irene comforts him but he still shows a visible discomfort.

"The power of a god, creation?" Nimue questions. "How's that so different from your power if you've created all of these individuals in the first place?"

"I...was given permission." She hesitates.

"You were given permission to use your own power?" Nimue folds her arms in annoyance.

"I can't tell you anymore than that. It's built into us gods like the biological bond between a parent and a child, I can't simply explain it through words" She stresses.

"And what about this Holl-"

"Theta?...it's still alive!?" She panics, cutting off Nimue. "Where is it!?"

"In the Underworld...was that not where you sealed it?" I confusingly ask.

"No, I never heard a single whisper about that thing. Not even-it's been moved...how?" She folds her hand over her mouth in shock. "Who-could be strong enough..." She paces back and forth, the watery droplets of ink from the floor getting kicked up from her constant turning.

"What do you mean it's been moved!?" Nimue exclaims.

"It was never in the Underworld, not from what I recall." She explains.

"So where was it before?"

"Elysia, it's what you would call the Heavens. A place that gods such as Amaterasu and the Moon Goddess called their home." She calms down but continues to stare at us with a stressed face. "Percy show me your stomach again" She walks up to me, towering over as usual. Raising her hand to my lifted shirt.

"What is it?" She questions.

"You mean you don't know what it is?" I worryingly ask.

"I've never seen nor can even begin to imagine what it could be. I assumed it was caused by Fenrir due to your interactions with him, but I do not know the capabilities of it."

"There was a book shaped through someone's lost memory, it said something about Singularities, three of them?" Nimue points out.

"This may be beyond me, or possibly something new that I never encountered through my dormant time?" She ponders.

"It spoke about a wolf, a human and a witch. Although we haven't been able to find anything relating to those words." Nimue continues to explain.

"Are you perhaps referencing the three children?" She points her finger up towards Nimue.

"Maybe? Even if it isn't then at least we found something out." I quickly comment.

"There were carvings of this all throughout ruins and tablets. Three orbs that we came to recognize be recognized as siblings, as time went on and years have come to pass they began to change. Taking the shape of a Beast, a Storm and a Serpent." She redraws the tablet across the open space, showing us a memory of hers.

Nimue traces her hand against the figures, "We know what a wolf looks like, given y'know. You" She points at me with a smirk which I return with a smile. "This may be a leap, but Percy. The mark on you was carved by what someone could refer to as a beast. Right?" She continues talking without looking back at me.

"I guess so." I confirm.

"If your mark is a beast's...Athena's looks like the eye of a storm, the interlocking triangles?" She retains a deep focus on the final marking without anyone answering her. "All that we're needing to see..." She lays her hand on it. "Is the Serpent."

She steps away from it to face us, "The wolf Fenrir-the Beast, Oracion who history tells to be once human-the Storm...and yet the last one was another human? Someone that scared the perished Lycan. Being both the Witch and the Serpent." She skips over to me, spinning in circle around me and placing her head on my shoulder. "Doesn't this just excite you Percy?"

"These markings must be something similar to a creature marking its territory from what I can tell Nimue, so no. I'm not particularly excited." I drop my shirt much to her disappointment.

"And shouldn't, you're messing with a catastrophe." Irene steps through the tablet alongside Jackson.

"Something that could be referred to as anything but a human" Jackson finishes.

"What, how do you know her?" Eury asks.

"...I-" They both try to speak but a crack appears down their chest. "Her-" The crack widens bit by bit.

"Stop stop!" Eury runs towards them, bringing them both together in a hug. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to!" She reasons with them.

Their faces are given slight relief from the dulling pain but not fully, "Th-that's not the problem." Irene lets go of Jackson's hand getting some distance from him.

"What's wrong then?" Nimue approaches her with care.

"The more I try to remember her face...her voice...her name. It feels like I'm losing something." Irene explains, stumping herself to the floor to relax. "What about you Jackson?" She calls out.

"I can't either" He responds, holding his head tightly as if still in pain.

"We'll find out in our own time, don't worry about it" I notify them before spinning to Eury. "Why not come with us? There's no need to stay in here anymore right?" I extend my hand to her.

Her pale skin lights up with colour before briefly looking behind her, losing the sudden glow she previously claimed. "I don't want to"

"Why not?" I retract my hand back to sides.

"It's not that easy Percy."

"Why not?"

"Percy...those Shades that I made. They're out there, waiting for me. They're drawn to the very air I breathe, waiting to take me out at any given moment." She opens her palm towards the floor, stirring a current of ink together "You're losing time within your normal world", she explains. Quaking the floor to rise the shelves of artifacts and dusty text books, reconstructing the room we first stepped in.

She continues to spiral the floor with a saddened gaze, "You guys have so much to do, I wish you the best on your journey." She tenses her hand, causing it to ooze black. "There's only one way to stop them...find one of my creations, one that you can wield for yourselves, the golden sword that rests in stone. Each of the Shades should be linked to a shard of the mirror, if you don't maintain authority over the shards then the restless will just reanimate themselves."

Our bodies gradually become pulled into the swirl, locked into place and sinking by each second that passes. "Wait! There's still more we have to ask!" I try to unstick myself but the ink only grabs us tighter, wrapping around my body and encasing my torso.

"I'm glad I got to meet you two again albeit short, Jackson, Irene." She waves to them both, folding her hand against her chest when they delay their response with hesitation.

"Goodbye Eurynome" Nimue waves in place of the two, bringing a small smile to her face.

Through the darkness encasing our eyes I hear one last audible...breath?

-

The swishing and swashing noises of liquid gush past my ears as I open my eyes, having my body thumped onto the wooden floor. "So-" Nimue crushes me, pushing my face back onto the floor and nearly knocking me out.

"Oops, so-" Jackson lands on her, forcing her into the exact same position as me.

"What a shame" I smile at her sinisterly.

"Sorry" Jackson climbs off her hastily before meeting eyes with the individuals storming in.

"Guys they're here!" Athena runs in to greet us, picking us all up and tightly suffocating us in a hug.

Dropping us back down to our feet when Adam slides his hand in to get me. "Pl-ease, stop wit-h the hugs" I squeeze out of my lungs.

"I can't help it, do you guys even know how long you were gone for!?" He yells out despite us being right in front of him.

"Hours?" I question.

"Days, three of them." Arthur sits by a table, waving at us from afar which visibly flares Nimue with annoyance.

Earning a smack on the head from her, "Where's my hug and unconditional love?" She places her hands on her hips.

"Right here" He lifts his foot to her, "Lick". He commands, earning another smack to his head which knocks him to the floor.

All of us turn to laugh before continuing to converse, "So what did you learn?" Athena asks.

"It was similar to the mirror in some aspects like Cliodhna said, but then we ra-" I hold my head as fuzziness fills throughout my memories. "We me-" I pause again to shake my head.

"Something wrong?" She asks while looking down to me.

"No, not at all. I feel better actually. Jackson in particular found out the most about himself, isn't that right?" I hold my hands on his shoulders as his head sinks down.

"Percy...you don't remember her name, do you?" He asks.

"Who's name? Who are you talking about Jackson?" I shake his shoulders a bit.

"She didn't want to leave us...she was helping us...I'm sorry I wasn't paying attention." He murmurs under his breath, tensing his fist and jaw. Leaving the rest of us speechless for words, confused by his sudden display.

I look towards the odd canvas one more time spotting some ink leaking off and onto the floor, reaching down and wiping it from the floor out of respect to Cliodhna's home. Turning my back to it I hear another breath...again?