neverlandeds
monarch!!
The Stormglass Lighthouse clung to the edge of the Oregon coast like a stubborn barnacle, its glass eye blinking faintly against the gray churn of sea and sky. Inside, the kitchen was lit by the soft flicker of an old oil lamp — Marisol’s preference, despite the working electricity. The smell of kelp soup simmering on the stove mingled with the sharp tang of ocean wind sneaking through the cracked window.
Inna sat on the counter, soaked to the skin, seawater dripping from her clothes and forming a dark pool at her feet. Her bare toes tapped against the wood, restless, while the gills along her neck pulsed gently, fading slowly back into smooth skin. The glow in her eyes hadn’t quite gone out yet — faint and eerie like bioluminescence lingering in deep water.
“You ever think before diving into ancient sea fissures alone?” Marisol’s voice was sharp, the kind of sharp that meant she was scared but too proud to admit it. Her arms were crossed, eyes fierce behind her fogged-up glasses. “Or are we just collecting trauma like seashells now?”
Inna grinned, teeth white against wind-chapped skin. “I found a fossilized megalodon tooth,” she said, casually, like it was just a normal Thursday. “Also, I think something whispered my name. So. . . worth it?”
“You almost drowned.”
“I can’t drown, Mom,” she said, shrugging. “You know that. Ocean kids don’t exactly have a water limit.”
Marisol stepped forward, her mouth a thin line. She reached up and tucked a slimy strand of seaweed out of Inna’s hair, fingers brushing over a patch of glinting scales that shimmered along xe’s jawline. They hadn’t always been there — at least not where Marisol could see.
“These are new,” she said softly.
“They come out more when she’s close.”
The words hung in the air a beat too long. Outside, the wind picked up, rattling the window panes like something pacing along the cliffs.
Then the temperature dropped.
The light dimmed — not flickered, dimmed, like the very air had thickened.
And she appeared.
Keto didn’t use doors. She slid into the room like a tide creeping in, not quite solid, not quite spirit. Her form shifted between the silhouette of a tall woman and the silhouette of something vaster — a wave, a trench, a shadow with too many eyes. Her presence was not warm, not maternal in any human sense. It pressed in like the deep ocean: crushing, cold, infinite.
“You touched the mouth of the trench,” Keto said, her voice the echo of waves hitting stone. “It stirred because you bled.”
Inna didn’t flinch. She looked her divine mother in the eye and said, “I had questions. It had answers. That’s how this works.”
“You are reckless,” Keto said.
“You made me this way.”
Marisol, who had been silent until now, stepped forward. Her voice was steady, but Inna could see that her hands shook. “She’s my daughter too.”
Keto turned her gaze to Marisol, and for a breathless moment, the storm outside seemed to still, as if even the sea was listening. She regarded the mortal woman with something unreadable — curiosity, perhaps, or the faintest spark of something older: affection.
“And yet she thrives,” Keto said, her voice lowering like a tide. “Perhaps both of us were right to claim her.”
It was not praise, but it wasn’t dismissal either.
Keto’s form began to dissolve back into mist, pulled into the shadows of the room like sea foam drawn into the tide.
“You will be called again, child of the abyss,” she said to Inna. “Be ready.”
And then she was gone.
The kitchen brightened. The air warmed. The oil lamp flared back to life with a hiss. Marisol let out a shaky breath, muttering something under it in Spanish — too soft for Inna to catch, but probably not complimentary.
“You know,” Marisol said, pushing her glasses up her nose, “next time she shows up, you’re bringing her a casserole.”
Inna slid off the counter, water squelching under her shoes, a crooked smile playing on her lips. Her teeth were still just the barest hint too sharp. “Sure,” she said. “Seaweed and shark liver pie. Real mother-daughter bonding material.”
Marisol laughed, short and exasperated, and pulled her child into a hug. Inna let herself be held for a moment longer than usual. The storm outside hadn’t passed. Not yet. But it was quieter — for now.
/
The water was thick here, pressing in like a fist around Inna’s ribs. Most beings wouldn’t survive this far down, where light dared not follow and the sea floor stretched endlessly into darkness. But Inna swam through it like it was home. Her heartbeat was slow, calm. Her gills fluttered open and closed in rhythm with the currents. It wasn’t silence down here — not really. There were voices in the dark. Whispers in ancient tongues, carried on tremors and sonar pulses only her kind could hear.
She followed the pull — not a call, not exactly. More like gravity. Like something ancient had opened its eyes and was waiting.
When she reached the shelf of obsidian rock, it was already there. Waiting for her.
Phorcys.
He stood — or floated, anchored in nothing — at the edge of the trench, his body shifting between shapes. Part humanoid, part crustacean, part coral reef fossilized into something animate. His face was ancient, unreadable, framed by curling barnacle-studded horns and eyes that didn’t blink, didn’t move, but saw everything. He smelled of the deep rot of the ocean floor, the kind of ancient decay that bred life and monsters alike.
“Inna,” he said. No title, no affection. Just her name, spoken like it was part of a ritual. “You are not what I expected.”
They hovered in the cold dark, water swirling gently between them.
“That’s not exactly a compliment,” she said, crossing her arms. “You sent a creature after me last week. It tried to rip my leg off.”
“I sent nothing. The ocean is not mine to leash. It simply knows what it recognizes.”
“Right. Totally normal predator behavior, recognizing its long-lost cousin and trying to eat her.”
Phorcys didn’t smile. His expression didn’t change, but something in the water around him pulsed with quiet amusement.
“You wear your defiance like armor. Just like your mother. But you are not Keto.”
Inna narrowed her eyes. Her gills flared slightly, and the water between them grew colder. “No. I’m not. I’m better.”
That made Phorcys shift. Only slightly — a tilt of his head, a twitch of spined fingers — but enough to suggest interest.
“You believe that.”
“I know that,” Inna said. “I may not be a goddess, but I’m not trapped in the past like you. I don’t want to command monsters. I want to understand them. Protect them. Maybe even become something new.”
“New,” he repeated, like it was a foreign word.
“You think I’m supposed to follow your path. That I’m just another piece of your ancient chessboard.” Her eyes flared — bright, oceanic, terrifying. Her mother put into mortal flesh and left to fend for herself. “But I’m not here to be shaped by you. I’m not here for your approval.”
Silence stretched between them.
Then Phorcys moved closer, a ripple in the water that set the trench walls groaning in the distance.
“You are the child of a mortal and a force. That makes you volatile. Unstable. But perhaps. . . useful.”
Inna scoffed. “I’m not your weapon.”
“You will be something,” he said, voice low and seismic. “I only wonder whether it will be a force of order, or of destruction.”
“I’m not interested in either,” she said. “I’m interested in the truth.”
Phorcys didn’t answer. Instead, he turned and began to sink into the trench, his body dissolving into shadow and pressure.
“Then dive deeper, daughter of the abyss,” he said. “Truth lies where even gods fear to look.”
And then he was gone.
Inna hovered alone for a long moment, her heart hammering despite the cold. She looked down into the blackness of the trench — bottomless, endless, calling.
She wasn’t afraid. Not really.
But she was starting to understand just how deep her blood ran.
And just how far she might have to fall to find out who she truly was.
/
The sun was still stretching across the sky, just beginning to burn away the silver mist that drifted over the canoe lake like breath on glass. Camp was humming. Not in the busy, chaotic kind of way it usually was — but soft. Peaceful. Campers were training in the distance, the occasional clash of bronze weapons echoing across the fields, and a few early birds were already out in the water, paddling around in half-sunk canoes like they had something to prove.
Inna sat at the edge of the dock, her boots discarded beside her and her feet skimming the lake’s surface. The water didn’t resist her touch. It never did. Instead, it seemed to reach up toward her toes in tendrils, curious and familiar. Her hair was still damp from the morning dive — salt-wet, tangled, and sticking to her cheek — and her shirt clung to her frame in patches where the water hadn’t quite finished drying.
She’d gone deeper than she probably should have. Again. But something in the lake had been whispering last night, and she never ignored a whisper.
Xe leaned back on her hands, chewing idly on a strip of dried squid she’d brought from the mortal world. Her mother made it all the time back home, and it tasted better than ambrosia to her, though most campers recoiled at the smell. Whatever. It was salty and chewy and familiar — homey in a way that wasn’t quite home.
She didn’t hear the footsteps right away. One set was easy to recognize, steady and confident. The other. . . a bit uneven, a rhythm like a soft drumbeat and a skipping stone.
Inna’s spine straightened instinctively. Xe almost choked on her squid.
“Hey, trench gremlin,” Percy called out, loud and bright, a grin in his voice.
Inna forced herself to swallow. “I thought you were training with Clarisse this morning.”
“Yeah, I was,” Percy said, flopping down beside her with a loud sigh. “But she got annoyed when I knocked her into the creek. Again.”
“You’re really good at making enemies.”
“I’m really good at being right,” he corrected, nudging her with his shoulder. “Anyway, figured I’d come check on you. You’ve been brooding out here like a sea cryptid.”
“I don’t brood,” Inna mumbled.
“Right. You lurk.”
Before Inna could retort, the dock creaked softly behind them, and xe tensed. Xe didn’t have to look to know who it was. Xe felt him before anything else — the faint rustle of leaves, the smell of earth and moss and something green.
Grover.
“Hey, guys,” he said, dropping into a cross-legged seat on Inna’s other side. His horns gleamed faintly in the sun, and his curly hair was a little mussed like he’d run all the way from the Big House. “Chiron says the kelpies got into the nymph gardens again. Someone's gonna have to round them up.”
Inna nodded mutely, trying not to notice how close he’d sat. Xe had fought sea monsters the size of ships without blinking, but Grover’s warm, unbothered smile short-circuited something in xyr brain every single time.
“Oh,” Grover added, turning to Inna, “and by the way, that wasn’t a ghost in the lake last night. I checked with the naiads.”
Inna blinked. “You — you were checking for me?”
Grover shrugged, bashful. “Well, yeah. You were down there a long time. I got worried.”
Xe turned abruptly toward the lake, staring at the water like it owed xem answers. Their face was heating up, which was ridiculous, because the water was freezing.
“I wasn’t in danger,” xe muttered. “Just listening.”
Percy leaned forward, chin in hand, very obviously grinning. “So that’s what we’re calling it now. Listening to the whispering trench ghosts. Totally normal behavior.”
Grover laughed. Inna wanted to melt into the lake.
“I mean, for her,” Grover said, nudging Inna lightly with his elbow. “It kind of is normal. Which is cool. I think it’s. . . really cool, actually.”
Inna’s heart did something weird and traitorous in xyr chest. Xe stiffened, eyes wide, mouth halfway open to say literally anything, but nothing came out. Instead, xe coughed into their sleeve and took another too-large bite of dried squid, chewing aggressively to avoid speaking.
“Smooth,” Percy muttered under his breath. Inna elbowed him, hard.
Grover turned to him as Percy began to cough — they'd hit his gills straight on, making it a little hard to breathe . “What?”
“Nothing.”
The three of them sat in silence for a bit, the breeze skimming across the lake and tugging at their clothes. Somewhere in the distance, someone shouted, followed by a dull splat. Probably someone getting nailed by a pegasus again. Whoever was in charge of the Infirmary today was going to have a fun time.
Percy leaned back on his elbows, looking up at the sky. “You know,” he said, “for a kid of a primordial sea monster lady, you’re surprisingly chill.”
“I’m not chill,” Inna said automatically.
Grover smiled. “You're kind of chill.”
Inna tried to shrug it off, but xe couldn’t stop the little smile that tugged at the corner of xyr mouth.
The lake whispered again, quiet and ancient, but for once, Inna didn’t feel like answering it.
Not yet.
/
The sun hung low over the trees, draping the Camp in rich orange light. The strawberry fields glowed gold and crimson, stretching far and quiet. Most campers had wandered off after dinner, the warm air heavy with the promise of a lazy summer evening. A few dryads peeked out from the tree line, watching in drowsy curiosity as Grover moved between the rows.
He knelt in the dirt with practiced grace, long fingers brushing the leaves like he was greeting old friends. His soft humming drifted on the breeze — gentle, wordless melodies that made the air feel calmer just by existing in it.
Inna stood at the edge of the field, arms folded stiffly across their chest, and toes twitching against the grass. Xe wasn’t even sure why she’d come this way. It wasn’t like she liked plants, or sunshine, or dirt. The ocean was more her speed — deep, cold, unknowable. But she’d caught sight of Grover walking this way after dinner and, against all logic and self-preservation, had followed.
Grover glanced over his shoulder, his curls catching the light like a halo. “Hey,” he said with that easy smile of his, the one that never felt forced. “Didn’t expect to see you out here. Thought you’d be haunting the lake or something.”
“I was. Got bored.” Inna’s voice was clipped, neutral, carefully disinterested. Xe was already regretting being here. Why was this so hard? She’d argued with sea serpents without blinking. But Grover? One look and her pulse did weird things, like it wanted to climb up into her throat and explode.
“Well,” he said, patting the earth beside him, “want to help?”
Inna blinked. “Help. . . with the plants?”
Grover nodded. “You won’t have to talk to them or anything. You can just carry the basket if you want. Or, you know. . . keep me company.”
That last part was quieter. Not shy, exactly, but open. Like he genuinely meant it.
Inna hesitated. Then, slowly, like she wasn’t sure if she was walking into a trap, xe stepped forward and crouched beside him. Grover passed her a woven basket, and their fingers brushed. It was barely a touch, but xe felt it like a shock all the way to her spine.
She stared down at the basket like it might bite her.
“Just pick the ripe ones,” Grover said. “The bright red ones. Gently, so the leaves don’t get mad.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“Only a little.”
They worked in companionable silence for a few minutes, the only sounds the rustle of leaves and the occasional chirp from a nearby tree spirit. Inna was clumsy at first, nearly pulling an entire plant up by the roots, but Grover gently corrected her without laughing.
“You know,” he said, brushing a patch of dirt off his shirt, “I think you’re better at this than you think.”
“I’m better at tridents and teeth,” Inna replied without looking at him.
“I noticed,” Grover said, his voice carrying a smile.
Inna’s hands faltered on the next strawberry. Xe looked up, and for the first time, really let herself see him — soft curls, eyes like fresh moss after rain, a smudge of soil on his cheek.
“Why. . . aren’t you afraid of me?” she asked suddenly. It slipped out before she could stop it.
Grover looked surprised, then tilted his head, thoughtful. “Why would I be?”
“I’m the daughter of a sea monster goddess,” she said. “People flinch when I walk past.”
“You’re not your mother,” he said simply, like it made any sense. “You’re you.”
“But she gave me to the trench when I was a baby.”
“And you still came back up,” he said softly. “You made your own way. That’s. . . kind of amazing.”
Inna looked down quickly, her throat tight. Xe felt like xe was on the edge of a cliff again — not because xe was afraid of falling, but because she was afraid of wanting to fall. Afraid of how safe this all felt. Of how much she wanted him to keep saying things like that.
“I don’t get you,” xe murmured.
Grover grinned, plucking a berry and popping it into his mouth. “That’s okay. I think you’re fascinating.”
And that — well. Inna didn’t say anything after that. She just kept picking strawberries, red creeping into her cheeks that had nothing to do with the sun.
/
The arena shimmered under the heavy summer sun. Dust clung to the air, the scent of sweat and bronze sharp and metallic. Campers crowded the outer rings, some sparring, others watching with mild curiosity. The buzz of energy was constant — clashing swords, shouted encouragements, the occasional magical mishap.
In the center ring stood Percy Jackson, son of Poseidon, shirt clinging to his chest with sweat and a teasing smile on his lips.
Across from him, barefoot in the sand, stood Inna.
Xe held her trident — an old, vicious thing forged from abyssal metal, its surface slick like oil and etched with barnacle-like ridges. It hardly resembled the pearl ring it disguised itself as when she wasn't swinging it around. The weapon had been a gift from Keto herself, offered in a moment that had felt more like prophecy than affection. It thrummed in xyr hands, hungry for movement, pulsing faintly with ocean-deep magic.
“You sure about this?” Percy asked, twirling Riptide around with casual flair.
Inna’s eyes glinted. “Afraid of a little sea monster spawn?”
“I’ve fought monsters,” Percy said. “I just try not to train with them.”
“You’re stalling.”
“I’m hydrating.”
“You’re weak.”
That did it. Percy lunged, and the fight began.
Inna met him with a pivot and a twist of her trident, catching his blade between the prongs and wrenching it aside. The impact reverberated through xyr arms, but xe moved fluidly, like the sea itself — relentless and fast.
They circled each other, weapons dancing, feet skimming the sand. Percy was more disciplined (barely) and trained (very) — but Inna was chaos in motion, every strike a risk, every block an instinct.
“You’re not bad,” Percy said between grunts, deflecting another jab. “Still wild, though.”
“I’m not trying to win politely.”
“No kidding.”
He ducked as the trident whistled past his ear, missing by inches. Inna twisted it downward, kicking up a spray of sand and surging forward, baring her teeth.
Percy staggered back, grinning despite himself. “Keto would be proud.”
“She’d be annoyed that I'm still wasting time with mortals.”
“You don’t believe that.”
Inna hesitated. Just long enough for Percy to knock the trident aside and step in. He pressed the edge of his blade against her shoulder in a mock finish.
“Gotcha.”
Inna growled and twisted out of reach, summoning her weapon back to her hand and slamming the butt of the trident into the sand to pivot herself backward. She tripped over a rock and went sliding into the sand.
Xe panted, wiping sweat from xyr brow. They didn't pick up their head as they spoke, “Next time, I will drown you.”
“You say that every time.”
“One day it won’t be a joke.”
“I can't drown,” Percy countered. He changed his sword back into a pen and shoved it into his pocket and offered her a hand. “You’re improving. You don’t flinch anymore.”
“I never flinched.”
“You used to overthink. Or rush.” Percy gave her a once over, smile pulling at the corners of his mouth, “Now you’re. . . dangerous.”
Inna stared at his hand. Then, after a beat, took it, and for a moment the arena faded. Just two children of the sea — one born from prophecy, the other from something much older, much darker — breathing hard, bruised and smiling.
“I’m not done yet,” Inna said.
Percy grinned. “Good. Neither am I.”
And they went again.
/
The ocean was black this far down — so deep the sunlight didn’t bother trying to reach it. No fish dared wander this trench, no ships had ever mapped its edges. It wasn’t just a part of the sea; it was the ocean’s memory, cold and vast and ancient. Pressure here would crush mortals like eggshells. But Inna wasn’t mortal.
Xe swam through the water like it was a second skin, trident strapped across xyr back, scales shimmering faintly along xyr arms and cheekbones as xe descended. The silence here wasn’t empty. It was full of something vast and waiting. Xe felt it thrumming in xyr bones.
The trench opened below like a mouth. And at its center, like a pearl inside a jagged shell, stood Keto.
She was towering and beautiful in a terrifying, unnatural way. Her eyes were black voids, her hair a crown of tangled kelp and teeth, her body shifting with the current like a creature that had never been fully human. Her presence radiated cold, the kind that curled into you and hollowed out your warmth.
“Inna,” she said, her voice echoing in the water like a thousand voices layered together. “You came.”
Inna hovered just beyond the trench floor, wary but steady. “You summoned me.”
“You’re not obligated to answer.”
“I wanted to.” Xe hesitated. “I have questions.”
Keto tilted her head, eyes unreadable. “Then ask.”
Before Inna could speak, the water shivered. A ripple moved through the trench like a disturbance in a dream. From the shadows emerged Phorcys — Keto’s consort, her counterpart in monstrosity, his body vast and shifting with fins and eyes and barnacle-covered limbs. He was older than language and quieter than his wife, but not less dangerous.
His many eyes blinked in unison as he drifted beside Keto, his voice a gravelly murmur: “Our daughter grows bold.”
“I always was,” Inna replied. Xe didn’t flinch, though xyr fingers tensed her trident. Xe had only met Phorcys a handful of times, and each one had felt like swimming beside a sleeping volcano. And then her brain caught up to what he'd called her. Our daughter. “Since when am I yours?”
Keto smiled faintly. “You are both my daughter and something. . . different. I do not shape you. You were born forged. But the sea remembers what it’s owed. And so it comes to you.”
“I don’t understand what that means,” Inna said. “You gave me to the trench as an infant. Then you let me find my way to the surface. Now you watch. Why? What do you want from me?”
Phorcys let out a low hum, like a whale-call from some far-off place. Keto’s gaze darkened.
“There is a prophecy,” she said.
Inna went still.
“I didn’t make it,” Keto added. “This is not like that dribble passed through Apollo. Prophecies are not ours. They’re breathed by the sea itself, whispered into the bones of the oldest sharks, carried in the songs of the tides.”
She moved closer, not swimming — gliding — her presence filling the space between them like pressure. “It came before you were born. Before Marisol. Before I even imagined a child.”
Inna’s heart pounded. “What does it say?”
Keto didn’t answer right away. Instead, she reached into the water, and a strand of current coiled into her palm like a living ribbon. She let it spiral outward, and it formed words — not spoken, but felt.
When the sea-born child walks both trench and shore,
Where mortal blood and monster war,
When salt and storm converge as one,
She will rise — and kingdoms fall undone.
Born of the sea monster’s kin, beneath the black tide,
One must descend to raise what the gods wished to hide.
To seal the wound, the child must become the flood.
Inna stared at the words, then at her mother. “That could be about anyone.”
“It is about you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do,” Keto said, quieter now. “Because I saw it again when you cried out in the trench for the first time. When your lungs filled with water and you survived. When your mortal eyes met mine, and I saw what you would become.”
Inna’s mouth was dry despite the water all around them. “A weapon?”
“No,” Keto said, and her voice was softer than Inna had ever heard it. “A reckoning.”
Phorcys drifted closer, his many limbs moving with strange, slow grace. “The world above has forgotten what the deep is. What it costs to build on land, to drain the ocean, to turn away from the old gods. You are the reminder.”
Inna backed up a little, heart pounding. “I don’t want to destroy kingdoms.”
“You don’t have to,” Keto said. “But you will be the wave that offers the choice. Wash away or learn to float.”
“That’s not a choice.”
“It never is.”
Silence settled between them. A strange, thrumming weight hung in the water like fog. Inna looked at her trident where it peaked over her shoulder — her mother’s gift — and thought of Camp Half-Blood, of Grover’s gentleness, Percy’s friendship, Marisol’s voice calling her in for dinner, warm food and warm hands.
“I’m not a monster,” Inna said quietly.
“No,” Keto agreed. “You’re not.”
Phorcys didn’t speak. He only watched, unreadable and vast.
“You came from the trench,” Keto said. “But you climbed out of it. You carry both. You are both. And someday, when the prophecy comes to pass, you will have to decide who you are. No one else can.”
Inna felt like the pressure was crushing her — like the water itself was listening, waiting for her answer.
“I’m not ready,” xe whispered.
Keto drifted closer. Her hand, clawed and bone-pale, reached out and gently touched Inna’s cheek. “You will be,” she said. “And when that day comes, the ocean will rise to meet you. No matter which way you choose to swim.”
And then she was gone, sinking back into the trench’s darkness, her presence fading like the tide. Phorcys gave one last look — half-proud, half-patient — and vanished with her.
Inna floated there, alone, heart still pounding, the prophecy echoing in her chest like waves against the shore.
She will rise — and kingdoms fall undone.
Xe didn’t know what it meant. Not fully. Not yet.
But xe knew this: when the sea called again, xe had to be ready to answer.
/
The moon hung low over the water, casting silver ribbons across the sea. The little beach house sat perched on the edge of the dunes, its porch light glowing warm and golden. Inna sat on the end of the dock, feet dangling just above the water, trident laid beside her like a sleeping guard dog. The tide was gentle tonight, lapping softly against the wooden beams. Far on the cliffs above, the lighthouse beam shone bright.
Behind her, the screen door creaked open.
“I thought I’d find you here,” Marisol said, her voice warm with just a trace of concern.
Inna didn’t look up. “Couldn’t sleep.”
Marisol padded down the dock in her old slippers and threadbare cardigan. She sat beside Inna with a small sigh, her legs crossed under her, hands folded in her lap. The scent of lemon balm clung to her skin, soft and grounding.
Neither of them spoke for a moment. Just the sound of the waves, the wind in the grasses, and the creaking of the dock.
“I saw your eyes when you came in,” Marisol said at last. “The deep-set ones. The ones you get when you've been with her.”
Inna clenched her jaw. Xe didn’t have to ask who she meant.
“Did she say something?” Marisol continued gently. “Something bad?”
Inna hesitated. Then exhaled slowly, the breath leaving xyr lungs like a tide going out.
“She told me the sea whispered a prophecy about me. Before I was even born.” Xe picked at the dock’s edge, nails scraping against salt-warped wood. “She says I’ll be the thing that breaks kingdoms. A reckoning. A wave no one can ignore.”
Marisol went still beside her, and Inna could feel it — the sharp inhale, the pause, the way her mother’s mortal heart weighed ancient words.
“What do you think about that?” Marisol asked, her voice careful.
“I don’t want it,” Inna said. “I don’t want to be some force of nature. I don’t want to destroy anything. But she. . . expects me to. Like I was made for it. Like she shaped me to crash against the world and see what survives.”
Marisol looked out at the water, her expression unreadable. Then she said, quietly, “She didn’t shape you. I did.”
Inna turned to her. “What?”
“You were born from me just as much as from her,” Marisol said, meeting xyr eyes now, steady and fierce in a way only mothers can be. “And I didn’t raise you to be a weapon.”
“You didn’t even know what I was when I started changing,” Inna whispered.
Marisol’s gaze didn’t falter. “I didn’t need to. You were always mine. Whether you were growing gills in the bathtub or screaming into salt water at three in the morning. I didn’t love the monster parts less. I loved all of you.”
Inna swallowed hard. “Even the parts you didn’t understand?”
“Especially those,” Marisol said, her hand reaching out to tuck a strand of damp hair behind xyr ear. “Because you didn’t understand them either. And I couldn’t leave you alone in that.”
Inna looked away. “She’s. . . cold. Not cruel, exactly, but not like you. She thinks the prophecy is inevitable. Like it’s already happening, and I just have to let it.”
Marisol’s eyes softened, her hand still resting lightly on Inna’s cheek. “And what do you think?”
“I think. . .” Inna hesitated, then said, quieter, “I think I’m scared.”
Marisol leaned forward and kissed xyr forehead, her hand cradling the back of xyr neck like she used to when xe was a child, shivering from nightmares.
“It’s okay to be scared,” she murmured. “Even gods get scared. They just don’t admit it.”
Inna let herself lean into her mother’s touch, eyes fluttering closed. For a moment, the prophecy, the trench, the weight of destiny — none of it mattered. There was only this: the quiet lap of waves, the warmth of a cardigan that smelled like home, the steady heart of a mortal woman who had loved a sea goddess and raised a child from darkness.
After a long silence, Inna spoke again.
“If it comes true. . . if it really happens. . . and I have to choose between the sea and everything else. . .”
Marisol pulled back just enough to look xyr in the eye.
“Then I’ll still be here,” she said. “Even if the whole world sinks, I’ll be the last thing still loving you.”
Something cracked open inside Inna then — something old and briny and full of longing. Xe wrapped her arms around her mother and buried xyr face in her shoulder. For the first time in what felt like ages, xe let herself cry — not like a storm, but like rain. Gentle. Cleansing. True.
And beneath them, the sea kept its secrets. But for tonight, the waves sang softly, like even they knew to hush and listen to a mother’s promise.
/
The Big House was filled with the warm glow of oil lanterns and the low hum of conversation. Chiron stood at the head of the long table, reviewing patrol shifts and monster sightings with the cabin leaders. Annabeth sat nearest to him, scribbling neat notes in her leather-bound planner. Percy lounged with his feet hooked on the table leg, tapping a pencil against his knee. Clarisse grunted through a mouthful of ambrosia jerky, and the Stoll brothers were suspiciously quiet, which only meant trouble.
Dionysus sipped a Diet Coke in the corner, trying and failing to look bored. The camp leader meetings were one of the few times he tolerated being in the same room as all the "brats," as he so lovingly called them.
Then the front door slammed open.
All eyes turned as Inna burst in, sea-wind clinging to xem like a second skin. Xe was damp from the shoulders down, hair curling in salt-stiff waves, boots trailing sand across the hardwood floor.
“Inna?” Chiron said, blinking.
“You weren’t invited,” Dionysus added dryly. “Unless you’re here to replace the plumbing.”
“I need to speak,” Inna said, voice low but urgent. “Now.”
Annabeth stood halfway from her chair. “What happened? Are you hurt?”
“No,” Inna said. “But you’re all going to want to hear this.”
Clarisse rolled her eyes. “This better not be about another leviathan showing up. We just handled one.”
“It’s not a monster,” Inna said, stepping forward. “It’s a prophecy.”
That silenced the room.
Chiron’s face changed instantly — calm replaced by a sharp, alert stillness. Dionysus finally put down his soda.
“From the Oracle?” Annabeth asked. “Did you go to the attic?”
“No,” Inna said. “Not from the Oracle. From the sea.”
Connor laughed once, awkward and loud. His brother shot him a look. “The sea? Like, you mean Poseidon?”
“No,” Inna said again, firmer. “Not him. From the sea itself. The deep. My mother, Keto. And Phorcys was there, too.”
Clarisse stood, her chair scraping back. “Wait. You talked to them? You’ve been gone for two days!”
“I dove,” Inna said. “To the trench. I needed answers. I didn’t expect what I got.”
Percy stood, slowly. His expression had shifted from casual to serious in a heartbeat. “The trench? You mean — like, her domain?”
Inna nodded.
Chiron motioned for everyone to sit. “Then let’s hear it.”
Inna stepped into the center of the room, xyr hand instinctively brushing the ring on xyr finger — a luminous pearl set in silver. Nobody questioned it. Everyone at camp had seen it transform before. Xyr trident wasn’t a surprise anymore. But the gravity in xyr voice was.
Then, carefully, xe recited the words:
“When the sea-born child walks both trench and shore,
Where mortal blood and monster war,
When salt and storm converge as one,
She will rise — and kingdoms fall undone.
Born of the sea monster’s kin, beneath the black tide,
One must descend to raise what the gods wished to hide.
To seal the wound, the child must become the flood.”
The final word seemed to echo. A long, rippling silence fell across the room.
Annabeth’s lips moved silently, mouthing the lines again. Her pencil hung forgotten in her hand.
Percy looked stunned. “That. . . didn’t come from Delphi?”
“No,” Inna said. “The water itself spoke. It wasn’t like the Oracle. It didn’t possess anyone. It moved through my mother. Through the current. Like it’s been waiting.”
Chiron’s brow creased deeply. “The sea — primordial and vast as it is — has never given prophecy in recorded history. Not in Poseidon’s reign.”
“It felt older than the gods,” Inna murmured in return. “Like the ocean knew this was coming long before Olympus was even built.”
Clarisse crossed her arms. “'She will rise.' That’s you, isn’t it? Sea-born, mortal blood and monster — your moms. Keto and. . . that marine biologist, right?”
Inna nodded. “Marisol. She raised me on the surface. Keto waits in the depths. I exist between them.”
“‘Salt and storm converge,’” Annabeth said softly. “That sounds like a war. Or a disaster.”
“Or both,” Percy muttered.
Connor glanced at Travis, suddenly less amused. “Kingdoms fall undone. That’s kind of a big deal.”
“Could it mean Olympus?” Annabeth asked. “Or the sea realms? Or even. . . here?”
“I don’t know,” Inna said. “But Keto didn’t give it like a warning. She gave it like a fact. Like a clock already ticking.”
Dionysus stood up, brushing snack crumbs off his floral print shirt. “Well. Delightful. Another prophecy, another end-of-the-world. Can’t we ever get one that’s just, oh, I don’t know, mildly inconvenient?”
Chiron ignored him, turning back to Inna. “Did Keto say anything else?”
“Just that I was born for this,” Inna said. “That the sea made me to be a wedge between things. That I would tip the balance — one way or another.”
Percy stepped closer. “And what do you think, Inna?”
Inna looked around the room. At Annabeth, calculating and fierce. At Clarisse, rigid but grounded. At Percy, concerned and calm in a way xe hadn’t expected. At Chiron and Dionysus, gods and guides and something in between. And at all the campers whose lives would be changed if this prophecy came true.
“I think the sea wants something,” Inna said finally. “And I don’t know what it will cost.”
/
The room emptied slowly.
Annabeth was the last to leave, casting one last glance at Inna as she tucked her planner under her arm. Percy offered a short, reassuring touch on Inna’s shoulder before following her out the door. The Stoll brothers whispered something under their breath as they trailed after Clarisse, who paused at the threshold and muttered, “Don’t die or anything,” before disappearing into the twilight.
Then it was quiet again.
The sun had dipped below the trees, casting long shadows through the window panes. The Big House felt older in the stillness, as if its wooden bones remembered all the past wars whispered in rooms like this.
Inna stood at the center of the room, still and silent, xyr trident ring now a cool weight on xyr hand. Chiron remained at the head of the table, thoughtful. Dionysus leaned against the wall, arms folded, gaze unreadable.
“Well,” Chiron said gently, “you’ve turned the tide, haven’t you?”
Inna let out a breathless laugh, flat and hollow. “I didn’t mean to.”
“No one ever does,” Dionysus said dryly. “Especially not the ones in the prophecies. They just stumble into doom and take the rest of us with them.”
Inna turned toward him, a flicker of irritation flashing in xyr eyes. “You think I want this? You think I asked to be born from a goddess and given a ticking time bomb for a future?”
“I think it doesn’t matter what you want,” Dionysus said, his voice devoid of cruelty but also lacking warmth. “The sea doesn't ask permission.”
Inna swallowed hard. “Neither did my mother.”
Chiron stepped forward, his hooves quiet against the floor. “Keto has never been one to move lightly. For her to speak — truly speak — it means something is shifting on a scale most of us can’t see.”
“She made it sound inevitable,” Inna said softly. “Like no matter what I do, kingdoms will fall. Like I’m just the first stone in a landslide.”
“Perhaps,” Chiron said. “But landslides don’t choose where they start. You can.”
Inna sank into one of the empty chairs, the tension in xyr shoulders unraveling just slightly. “You’ve seen this kind of thing before. Prophecies. Do you think I’ll survive it?”
Dionysus chuckled bitterly. “You’re asking the wrong question.”
Inna looked up at him, brow furrowed. “Then what’s the right one?”
He tilted his head, shadows falling strange across his face. “Whether or not the world does.”
Chiron shot him a warning glance. “Enough.”
Inna ran a hand through xyr hair, still tangled from saltwater. “Keto said I’m a wedge. That I’ll force the world to split — between old and new, sea and land, monster and mortal. What if she’s right? What if I was never meant to choose anything — just be the breaking point?”
Chiron approached and rested a hand on the back of xyr chair. “And what if you’re the bridge instead of the blade?”
Inna didn’t answer right away. Outside, the crickets had started to sing. The sounds of camp — the clatter of bronze, a distant burst of laughter — felt like they belonged to another world.
“I don’t know how to be that,” xe whispered. “A bridge.”
“You already are,” Chiron said gently. “You exist between two worlds, two mothers, two truths. You’ve walked the trench and stood on the shore. No one else can say the same.”
Inna blinked hard and nodded, eyes fixed on the table.
Dionysus finally pushed off the wall. “I hate being involved in things. I hate when mortals ask me for wisdom. And I hate having to care. So let me make this very clear —”
Inna looked up.
“— if the sea’s put its bet on you, don’t waste it. Because the ocean doesn’t pick favorites, but it remembers failure. And it never forgives it.”
With that, he vanished — blinked out of the room in a shimmer of wine-colored air, leaving only the scent of grapes behind.
Inna let out a shaky breath. “He’s. . . not wrong.”
“No,” Chiron agreed. “But you are not a failure, Inna. And you’re not alone.”
He stepped back, hooves creaking on the floorboards. “Take the night. Rest. We’ll talk more in the morning.”
Inna stood slowly, the weight of the prophecy still tucked tight beneath xyr ribs. “Thank you, Chiron.”
The centaur nodded, his eyes kind but ancient. “The sea may have called you, Inna — but you decide how you answer.”
/
Keto’s cabin stood apart.
Not physically — its footprint was modest, tucked between Poseidon’s stone-and-seashell fortress and Demeter’s vine-draped grove — but in spirit. The air around it felt different, cooler, more still, like the ocean floor. Its walls were a strange mix of driftwood, black stone, and deep-sea coral that pulsed faintly in the dark like it was still alive. Where other cabins welcomed sunlight and fresh air, Keto’s shut it out. The only light came from softly glowing jellyfish suspended in orbs of enchanted water, drifting lazily just below the ceiling like hanging lanterns.
Inside, the space was cavernous and dim, full of damp silence. The scent of salt clung to every surface. Shells — huge, polished, and hollow — were arranged like sculptures. Fossils crusted the floors. A shallow pool sat at the far end of the room, deep and still, carved right into the stone floor like a mirror for something that didn’t reflect.
Inna was the cabin’s only inhabitant.
Xe lay on xyr bedroll in the far corner, not on a bunk — there were none — but on a sloped shelf of stone smoothed by centuries of water (how, Inna didn't know; the cabin had only existed at Camp for as long as she had). Wrapped in a heavy kelp-fiber blanket, xe stared up at the ceiling where the jellyfish drifted. The cabin pulsed around xem, like a heartbeat barely heard.
When sleep came, it came like drowning.
/
The dream began with silence.
Not peace — silence. The kind that feels like it’s pressing against your ears, demanding something be heard. Inna stood on an endless shoreline of black sand, sky a flat, featureless gray. The ocean spread before xem like a sheet of glass — perfect, still, wrong.
No wind. No waves.
No life.
Only the sense that something enormous was awake beneath the water. Watching. Waiting.
Then, the ocean peeled open like an eye. A slit forming in the surface, vertical and wrong. Saltwater didn’t ripple — it split. The line widened until it became a mouth. And it spoke.
Not in words, not exactly.
The voice of the sea was vast and hungry, less a sound than a sensation, like a pressure in Inna’s chest that made it hard to breathe.
Sink.
Xe tried to turn. Tried to run. But the black sand clung to xyr feet like mud, dragging xem forward, step by step, into the water’s gaping mouth.
The temperature plummeted.
Inna dropped below the surface without a splash. Water closed overhead like a coffin lid. The light died almost instantly. Darkness swallowed everything except the pounding of xyr heart and the tight, cold grip of the sea. It wasn't water anymore. It was thought.
Memory. Grief. Weight.
Shapes passed around xem in the dark.
Colossal things. Tentacles long enough to strangle islands. Teeth like coral reefs. Blinking eyes larger than buildings. None of them touched Inna, but they knew xem. They circled and whispered, their voices made of whale-song, tectonic groans, and the hush of waves retreating from a bloodstained shore.
The tide has turned. . .
The sleeper stirs. . .
The fulcrum wakes. . .
Inna spiraled deeper.
Then — an opening. A rift in the trench below. And from within it, something began to emerge.
Not Keto.
Not Phorcys.
This shape was older, deeper. Made of layered scales and ancient hunger, of fossil and fang and the hush of extinction. A crown of spiraled horns. Eyes like abyssal vents. Its mouth opened, and Inna could feel the dream around xem flex, like it wanted to break.
But then Keto was there, blocking Inna’s view of whatever creature had crawled out of the depths to greet her. Her mother was a wall of darkness and shape, of sleek scales and regal stillness, her silhouette lit from behind by bioluminescent currents. Her gaze held the calm of absolute depth.
“Inna,” she said, voice not soft but still — like the sea before a storm. “You are drifting.”
“I don’t want this,” Inna said, pleading and small. “The prophecy. The war. The thing I become.”
Keto moved closer, her form fluid and endless. “The sea does not wait for consent.”
Something massive stirred behind her — Phorcys, rising like a pillar of stone, eyes glittering with ancient knowledge and venomous pity.
“You are a splinter,” he said, voice like underwater thunder. “You will crack the crust of what was. And through you, the trench will speak again.”
Inna’s limbs felt heavy, like the water was thickening, turning into sap or blood or ink.
“I don’t know how to stop it,” xe whispered.
“You don’t,” Keto said, and her eyes gleamed with a grief too vast to name. “You become it.”
The trench opened again below.
And from it came visions.
Not symbols — scenes. Camp in flames. Half-bloods fleeing through trees as something massive tore the earth behind them. A temple, ruined and flooded. Grover, standing in the middle of a drowned forest, weeping. Percy, bruised and breathless, standing with xyr trident clutched in his hands like a shield. Marisol, on a cliff’s edge, reaching toward the sea with both hands and calling for her child.
The voice of the sea returned — cold, loud, final.
The one who walks the trench and the tide will wake the old teeth.
The wedge becomes the wave.
You will not choose sides. You will cause the choosing.
So be sharpened, daughter of the abyss. Or be snapped in two.
Then everything cracked.
The dream shattered like ice.
/
Inna woke with a jolt, heart pounding, mouth tasting of salt. The jellyfish lights above flickered wildly, disturbed by something unseen. The pool at the end of the cabin rippled — though no one had touched it.
Xe sat up, drenched in cold sweat, and looked at xyr ring.
The pearl at its center pulsed once with a dull, inner light.
Outside, the night was still.
But the tide, somewhere deep beneath the world, had already begun to shift.
/
The sea swallowed everything.
There was no light beneath a thousand feet, only pressure and silence so absolute it rang in Inna’s bones. The trench yawned before xem like a wound in the world — black, endless, older than Olympus itself. Even the ocean spirits stayed away from this place. Even gods dared not name it.
The Trench had no name. It had been forgotten, buried beneath myth and time. But Inna knew it now. It sang to xem like blood sings in a cut, like a mother whispering in a language made of waves.
Xe gripped the trident tightly in xyr hand. Its surface shimmered faintly with runes that only revealed themselves in the dark. They pulsed with every beat of xyr heart. The ring had melted away into its true form the moment xe entered the water — an offering accepted.
Behind xem, the current died. Even the tides held their breath.
The prophecy echoed in xyr mind like a heartbeat:
When the sea-born child walks both trench and shore,
Where mortal blood and monster war,
When salt and storm converge as one,
She will rise — and kingdoms fall undone.
Born of the sea monster’s kin, beneath the black tide,
One must descend to raise what the gods wished to hide.
To seal the wound, the child must become the flood.
This was the end. Or the beginning.
Inna descended.
The pressure tightened around xem, heavier than any weight xe had ever carried. Not just physical. It was memory. Fear. All the dead things the gods had cast down into the abyss. Leviathans, forgotten gods, monsters too old to die.
Xe passed bones the size of ships, silent carcasses that drifted like sleeping titans. Teeth longer than buildings. Wings shredded into kelp. The sea was graveyard and cradle, and xe walked through it like something half-born.
The gate lay at the bottom.
Not a door. Not a structure. Just a tear. A rip in the world’s skin, still pulsing with ancient hunger. It bled darkness, and that darkness called to xem.
Xe raised xyr trident.
A voice stirred within it — Keto’s, distant and full of sorrow. Phorcys' low hum. The primal chorus of the deep. Not guidance. Not comfort. Just the truth.
The gods had sealed it once. But only the sea could unseal it — and only the sea could bind it again.
Xe stepped into the rift.
It wasn’t a place so much as a sensation. The absence of everything. Xe fell upward and downward at once. The sea unmade xem — salt tearing through xyr skin, power unraveling xyr spine like seaweed strands.
And in that nothing, Inna gave herself.
Xe opened xyr arms.
The flood wasn’t water. It was will. It was love and rage and legacy. Xe poured out xyr name, xyr blood, xyr history — everything the gods had denied. And the wound sealed.
The gate shuddered closed not with violence, but with sacrifice.
The trench exhaled. Inna drifted upward in silence, not dead, not whole. Changed.
/
Camp Half-Blood was quiet in the way only places touched by divine power can be — washed clean and trembling after something ancient had passed through.
At the edge of the shore, where the sand met the sea in soft, shushing waves, Inna stood barefoot and still. The water lapped gently around xyr ankles, familiar and strange. The sea had always been part of xem, but now it was something more. Something heavier.
Xyr trident was embedded in the sand beside xem, still humming low, a resonance only xe could feel. It wasn’t glowing anymore. Just... waiting.
Inna didn’t move.
Xe had barely spoken since returning from the trench. Since the prophecy had fulfilled its final line.
No one had understood, not fully. Not even Keto.
But now they did.
Inna was the sea-born child. The one who had walked both trench and shore. The one who bore the line between mortal and monster in xyr blood — Keto’s power and Marisol’s heart bound together. Xyr journey had taken xem to the bottom of the sea, into a forgotten place where time stood still and the gods turned their eyes away. A rift, long sealed, had cracked open. And xe had closed it — not through force, but through surrender.
Xe had become the flood.
Xe had given part of xyrself to the deep to bury what should never rise again.
It hadn’t killed them.
But it had changed her forever.
The wind shifted behind xem, soft with the scent of earth and pine, and xe didn’t need to turn to know who was there.
Grover approached slowly, like he was afraid to break whatever fragile thing had settled around her.
He stopped just a few feet away, shoes crunching lightly in the sand.
“I heard you were out here,” he said gently.
Inna nodded once, eyes fixed on the horizon. “Couldn’t sleep.”
Grover hesitated, then came to stand beside her. The water barely touched his boots, but he didn’t step back. He just looked out at the sea, the moonlight silvering the waves.
“Does it feel different now?” he asked quietly.
Inna didn’t answer for a long time. Then: “It feels like it remembers me.”
Grover glanced at them.
There was something distant in xyr expression, but it wasn’t cold. Just... far away. Like part of them was still deep beneath the waves, watching through kelp and stone and the bones of long-dead leviathans.
“Are you okay?” he asked, even though he already knew the answer was complicated.
She laughed, a soft, hollow sound. “Define ‘okay.’”
He didn’t push. Just stood there in the silence with xem. After a while, she spoke again, voice quieter. “It was never just about closing the gate. The gods sealed it for a reason. Not because they were protecting us — but because they were afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Of what would be remembered. What they tried to drown. And what would rise if someone like me ever found it.”
Grover swallowed. “And you did.”
Inna nodded. “And I didn’t let it rise. I took it back down with me.”
Grover looked down, then reached slowly toward xem, brushing her hand with his. Not taking it. Just close.
“You came back.”
Inna finally turned to face him. Her eyes looked older now. Like they held pieces of the ocean no surface-dweller could ever understand. But they also softened when they met his.
“I couldn’t stay there. Not with you still here.”
His breath caught just a little.
“You know,” he said, voice breaking, “you scared me. More than anyone ever has.”
“I scared myself.”
“Is it over?” he asked. “The prophecy?”
Xe paused. And then, with a strange, bittersweet smile: “That one is.”
Grover reached for her hand again, this time curling his fingers around hers. The contact was warm. Real. Not a dream or a promise made under moonlight, but something that belonged to the after.
“I don’t know what we’re supposed to do now,” Inna whispered.
“We live,” Grover said. “We wake up tomorrow and eat camp pancakes and argue with the Stolls about who left the mess hall a disaster. We rebuild.”
She looked at him. “You make it sound simple.”
“It’s not. But it’s what we’ve got.”
Inna leaned into him then — not a collapse, but a quiet leaning. A choice.
They stood like that for a long time, the waves brushing against their ankles, the stars shining down, and the prophecy no longer between them.
And for the first time in a long time, Inna didn’t feel like the sea was pulling xem under. They felt anchored.
/
The Oregon coast was mist-wrapped and moody, the sky bleeding pink through the heavy clouds. The lighthouse stood like it always had, half-crumbling and wind-battered on the cliff’s edge, overlooking the endless gray sea.
Inna hadn’t returned since the storm.
She didn’t walk. She emerged. Out of the surf like something called back by the tide. The waves whispered against the rocks as xe climbed the worn path, the familiar stones guiding them like a heartbeat.
The lighthouse door creaked open before xe touched it.
Inside, it still smelled like sea air and old books. The floors still groaned the same way. The coffee pot still clicked on even though no one had touched it.
“Hello?” Inna called, voice raspy from salt and silence.
A pause, then: “Inna.”
Xe turned. Marisol stood at the top of the stairs, hair streaked with a little bit more gray than she remembered, eyes wide with wonder and heartbreak. Her hands trembled against the bannister.
And beside her —
Keto.
Massive, shifting, veiled in a shimmer of scale and shadow, barely shaped like a mortal woman anymore. Her eyes were storms, her hair writhing kelp and bioluminescence. Next to her stood Phorcys, taller still, his features coarse and ancient, like carved reef.
They all watched xem.
“You’re late for dinner,” Marisol said, smiling wetly as she rushed down the stairs, and Inna laughed — and then collapsed into her arms.
Marisol held xem like she had the first time she fell on the beach as a child. Like nothing had changed.
But everything had.
Keto stepped forward slowly, and where her feet touched the floor, it turned damp and slick. She knelt before Inna, her eyes level with xyrs now.
“You descended,” she said softly.
“I came back,” Inna whispered.
Phorcys didn’t speak. He simply placed one massive hand on xyr shoulder and bowed his head.
Inna looked between them — mortal and divine, love and duty, past and future — and exhaled.
There was still more to come. Always more.
But for now —
Xe was home.
