OPHELIA'S LUNGS FILLED WITH FROZEN AIR and shadows more refreshing than any draught of nectar. She held up her void-black hand to snap apart yet more barbed wire lying in her path.

Each breath left her feeling more alive. Every scream to her right and to her left renewed her fury against the gods. A flick of her wrist and the barbed wire screeched and snapped, sparks flying as she tossed the barbaric fence aside.

Terrible.

Help us.

Ophelia had fought many battles, but until this moment she had never known what it meant to describe a scream as blood-curdling. She could feel the vocal cords of the suffering Dead shredding.

You can't block them out. I know because I've tried.

Ophelia stepped forward. Beyond the screams, beyond the voice of Samuel or the voice of Eris, she couldn't find silence. Incoherent whispers drowned out Hades's rock music to become the only ambient white noise.

You aren't alone in your hatred of the gods, child. The world was better without them. It was better in the dark.

What did a world without the gods look like? Kronos had wanted dominion over all, and he had been willing to send children to their doom to get it. Luke had been his puppet. Perhaps, if he had not grown up wounded by the Olympians, he could've done the right thing.

She'd heard rumors that without the Olympians, the world would fail. The West depended on the on going existence of the Olympians. But how could she trust that? How could she trust the words of brainwashed children or the gods who subsisted off even the silent worship of the masses? Luke had been right, had he not become a puppet.

She stopped at the top of a small hill. As Ophelia took another deep breath of the darkness of the Underworld, she realized it wasn't really a hill. She stood on the edge of a massive crater. The blackened tree she'd seen from the entrance ridgeline towered from the center.

Do you see it? How beautiful it is? The last of its kind, my golden apple, all alone.

The apple sparkled from the ambient light of raging infernos. It glistened like crystal, hanging from the lowest branch. Ophelia felt her skin crawl. For a brief moment she felt the faintest whisp of a hand on her shoulder, but it disappeared, replaced by a rush of cold air.

Before Hades usurped us, the Underworld was beautiful. Then he and his siblings threw us into the pit, cast away, abandoned.

Ophelia felt the Mist thicken. With every step down the side of the crater towards the beautiful dead tree, she found it easier to block the screams. It became almost peaceful. Wrapped in the calm, invisible blanket of Mist and led forward by shadows, Ophelia allowed herself to fully focus on her goal: reach the tree.

Down here in the Underworld, she never felt the oppressive heat of the sun. Apollo's grandeur couldn't touch her. In the Underworld, she never lost her gifts. Hades, king of the Underworld, didn't even feel love for this place. He ruled it in opposition to the Olympians. When the gods had overthrown the Titans, they'd divided up the world as spoils of war.

That's what the Olympians do. They destroy. They corrupt.

Luke, a son of Hermes, had no love for the Underworld. It was no wonder he failed. He didn't know the shadows like Ophelia did. As Ophelia walked to the tree, she glanced to either side. Some of the Dead sat bored in pens like animals. Others burned in flames. Still others seemed to be casting stones at each other across a moat of lava. She recognized some. Gemma, a daughter of Ares who had helped train the recruits, stood in the center of burning flames, untouched but eternally restrained. Had she deserved this? She'd died in battle defending young recruits.

Dmitri, an unclaimed demigod, had died in crossfire when a few Hunters of Artemis had ambushed them. Now he languished in a pool forced to tread water. Had he deserved this? An abandoned soul who had found family in Luke's army.

Hades may be King but he is not the only deity to wield power in the Underworld, Ophelia. Before him, Night ruled over all and we with her. The world had balance. The Protogenoi kept the world pure. You, child. You wield that balance.

The tree rose up on far away. Blacker than any shadow Ophelia saw around her, but matching the darkness of her now colorless hands, it stood in opposition to the machinations of Hades surrounding it. Ophelia had though it dead. But as she stepped closer, the branches towering above her head hundreds of feet, Ophelia realized she was wrong. It lived.

A single, golden apple dangled from a low branch. Ophelia couldn't tear her eyes from it. She'd seen that apple before. She'd seen it, a prize for the one most worthy, in the shadows of the Underworld that escaped into Manhattan. It stood now in reach.

"Ophelia please!"

"Help us!"

"We need you! Please!"

She spun around, the voices of her siblings beyond the mist and flames. Ophelia shouted into the darkness. "Samuel?"

No one answered. Her heart pounded as she moved away from the tree, trying to see through the flames that lined the outskirts of the base of the crater. Beyond the wall of fire, she knew her siblings languushed. In her mind, Samuel's shock and horror as she distracted him amidst the battle until he burned himself alive replayed over and over and over. Ophelia felt tears on her cheeks.

It wasn't fair. None of this was fair.

"Ophelia."

A familiar female voice drew her back to the tree. What she had only heard in her dreams and her mind, she now heard aloud beneath the bows of the black tree in the Fields of Punishment. Ophelia turned around. Eris stood before her, cold and majestic. Her skin shifted from pale skin like Ophelia's own to an almost sickly grey. Black, straight hair framed her ageless face, the strands reaching down below her breasts. She wore a black toga, wrapped to excentuiate her beauty. Eris's smile should've been comforting, but her shining, golden eyes held no warmth. Above her, the golden apple had disappeared.

"Eris?"

"Come here, child."

Ophelia obeyed. Her hair and robes matched the void-black bark of the tree beside her. In all her years, Ophelia had never felt power like the goddess before her. Hades played at power. Eris commanded it. The shadows deepened around them.

"My dear child," she said. Eris reached out a hand, her freezing skin caressing Ophelia's cheek as they stood in darkness. "You wanted the apple?"

Ophelia released a tight breath. She wanted it more than anything. Proof that she had not fought for her life for a decade and a half for nothing. "Yes."

"No," Eris said. "No, you want to win the quest."

The quest. "I want to free my siblings."

Her smile widened, blood red lips parting even further to betray her bright white teeth. "The apple and their freedom are one in the same goal." She paused, placing her hand on Ophelia's shoulder. "Why do you think returning an instrument to the god of the sun and the god of the skies is the way to do it, though?"

Ophelia stopped breathing. Fury bubbled up inside her again, remembering all the times she'd cowered from the sun. She remembered the laughter of the gods on Mount Olympus as they celebrated a victory hard fought not by their immortal blood but by the deaths of their sons and daughters. Ophelia heard Apollo's mindless chatter in Camp Half-Blood celebrating the return of his Oracle while she and Alex recovered from burning the bodies of their fallen comrades.

"You're only fighting half the battle, Ophelia."

Half the battle. Here she stood amidst the Dead trying to save the living. Alex led them to victory. She did not doubt that he would win the day and save Leah, save the living soldiers of Kronos's army. No one could beat him. He loved to hard to stop fighting before victory.

Alex had the lyre. He and Kitty could win the battle.

"But they can't win the war."

Ophelia looked up at Eris. The goddess never blinked. They couldn't win the war. But she could. Ophelia had the blood of Nyx, Night herself. She had the blood of Hecate, Titan goddess of necromancy and magic and the Mist itself. Alex could win the battle. He could save the living.

She could save the Dead. She could win the war.

They didn't need to bow before the self-righteous Olympians that thought the only way to civilization was their abuse of power. Hades fought only for himself and his kin. Ophelia looked around at the flames, heard the screams. They had a whole army here. She had Shadow and Mist at her fingertips. Luke, Alex, they fought battles.

She would end the war.

When Ophelia looked back, Eris had disappeared. Ophelia stood alone. The tree towered above her, alive but black as night. No apples. Just a promise of what could be.

The clock is ticking. Tartarus is behind you, Ophelia. Power stirs beneath these fields.

She left the tree behind. The way out of the Fields of Punishment seemed to clear as she approached, black stone paving the way while she used the shadows to float over lava. She had to find Alex.

He wouldn't understand. She had to find a way to make him understand. They could win the quest without bowing to the gods. All they had ever wanted, all they sacrificed for, they could seize it. She only wished Alex had not learned to control his anger, not just yet.

A glint of gold caught her eye at the top of the crater. Ophelia smiled. She'd earn the golden apple. She would save Leah. She would save Samuel. She would win the war.