THE SCREAMS SOUNDED DIFFERENT NOW. When Ophelia heard the spirits of the Dead crying out for mercy in her mind, their voices sounded as clear as the conversations she had with Kitty or Alex. Smaller, quieter perhaps. But still crisp. Still agonizingly comprehensible.

The cries she heard as she led the way over another hilltop of slate and shale echoed in her ears, not her mind. Like the ebbing rumble of a distant sea coast, the Dead cried out in many voices with many words. Ophelia didn't understand the words, but she understood the pain.

Smoky shades dissipated as she stood at the top of the last hillock. Behind her she could hear small rocks sliding and tumbling downwards as Alex and Kitty worked to join her. Ophelia looked left. She looked towards the unintelligible screams.

The darkness there transitioned from black to grey and red. She took a deep breath. Ophelia remembered flashes of raging fire and the glint of barbed wire under the hazy light of the Fields of Punishment. Her throat tightened as she felt the smoke fill her lungs.

A hand brushed her lower back. Ophelia turned, taking a deep breath as she looked at Alex. The dim ambient light of the Underworld couldn't change the ice blue of his eyes. Dried blood still smeared across his pale cheeks and if they'd had the time, she would've cleaned it off of him.

But they didn't have time.

He'd taken his last ambrosia. He'd survive.

Ophelia turned away from him. To their right, a soft golden glow settled over a distant part of the Underworld. Elysium. The artificial light must've been what passed for a sun down here.

In the pit of her stomach, knots twisted and coiled. She clenched her fists. How could Luke have ended up there, the orchestrator of the whole traitor demigod army, for reversing his fortunes in the end and yet those who hadn't had a chance, who had died with arrows of Apollo or the spears of Ares through their chests, got to burn forever?

"Come on," Alex said, gently brushing her back again. "We should get moving."

Ophelia nodded. Straight ahead, stretching another mile perhaps, the strangest garden she'd ever seen glistened and glowed in the darkness. It didn't take much descending to reach the subtle entrance of bent, ghostlike birch trees with neon orange leaves.

The air temperature dropped the moment Ophelia crossed the threshold. The Mist permeated every inch of this odd but beautiful place. The ground changed from shale to a deep, grey green moss. With silent step forward, the Underworld got quieter and quieter.

None of them spoke. It didn't seem right. Surrounded by sculpted marble trees, towering bioluminescent mushrooms, even the odd poppy, Ophelia couldn't tear her eyes away.

She couldn't tell how long they wandered through the alien garden before coming up on a sculpted slate path inlaid with rubies and topaz. Not far, they heard the babbling of a brook, the first sound in what felt like eternity beside their pounding hearts and quiet breaths.

Ophelia didn't like the silence. It made her skin crawl. But Kitty seemed to have lost her voice and Alex only spoke when spoken to.

Where was Eris?

Skeleton trees and gemstone flowers faded. Instead, Ophelia marveled at the blood red and ghostly white poppies that sprung up in chaotic bunches. As the trees fell away, she caught her first glimpse of civilization since Daedalus's overpass.

Towering up twenty, thirty, forty feet in the air was a dark veranda balcony attached to the walls of what looked like a small castle in a strange but alluring combination of Gothic and Greek architecture. Beneath the balcony, a patio of slate dappled with inlaid rubies held two ghastly white birch rocking chairs. Two torches sat in sconces on either dark pillar holding up the veranda.

Both chairs sat occupied. Ophelia recognized them. On the left, Persephone, wearing a beautiful green dress with brown hair intricately braided, rocked back and forth while she held a goblet of wine. On the right, Hecate, blonde hair draped over porcelain white skin, wore a layered dress of black and purple, wine glass at her lips. Both women turned to them as one.

Her mother lowered her goblet. "Ophelia."

It hit her like a blast of cold air. The Mist swirled between them, invisible to the eye of tangible to her. Ophelia frowned. What was there to say? The necklace of Hecate’s symbol weighed heavily against her sternum. Even before she spoke, she knew, in her heart, her mother couldn’t help them. Zeus had decreed it, and she’d just returned to his favor.

Persephone watched from behind her wine goblet, eyes wide darting between them. After a moment, she stood and gestured toward them. “Welcome, heroes.” She glanced between them, eyes lingering on Kitty and the Lyre of Orpheus for a few beats. “Yes, heroes works.”

Ophelia felt the shadows shift. Movement on the veranda above drew her gaze. The slightly sunken pale face of Nico Di Angelo stared back, dark hair even more black in the ambient luminescence of Persephone’s gardens. His frown deepened as their eyes met.

Alex moved past her. She watched him glance up at Nico before turning to the goddesses. To her surprise, he bowed slightly.

“I’m sure Hepheastus TV has been broadcasting us,” he said. “We have the Lyre. We need--”

Hecate cut him off. “I must speak with my daughter.”

Mist and shadow shifted again. Ophelia stepped forward. But before she could speak, Persephone spoke for her.

“Of course. Nico.” She turned, her voice hardening as she said his name. "Take—"

The world disappeared. Instead of darkness, a rush of Mist encircled Ophelia and Hecate, drowning out the voices and faces of her companions. The luminescence stretched, then faded, as the shadows looped and intertwined to form a cocoon of only Ophelia and her mother.

When the shadows faded, Ophelia found herself in a familiar and yet entirely alien space. At the center sat a familiar stone table, like an altar, carved with the symbols of Hecate. Ophelia had seen this many times, most recently when she'd spoken to her mother at Camp Half-Blood. But the area around the altar had changed drastically.

She could see clearly for about fifty feet in all directions before fading into shadow. Fields of black grass and red poppies dotted the landscape, echoing Persephone's garden but different. Where there should've been a sky was darkness except for an artificial lamp like the sun fifty feet above. It bathed the poppies in a sickly yellow hue.

Around the altar, arranged like a pentagram, five skinny Greek columns stood about ten feet high. They held no roof. Hecate stood across from her, around the other side of the altar.

Ophelia caught her breath. Her mother looked ethereal here, eyes shut, white skin almost ghost-like. Phantasmal wisps of grey and white smoke hovered in the air, moving and dancing. Ophelia had never really seen the Mist. She felt it, sensed it. But to see it with her eyes left her speechless at the beauty.

"I saw this path before you, but hoped you would choose another," Hecate said. She opened her eyes and they shone a cloudy mix of dark grey and blue. "You did not."

Ophelia paused. Choose a path? She hadn't chosen to fall into the Underworld. She'd been dropped into the abyss by a murderous son of Nike. And Kitty. It took all her strength to push down memories of Camp Half-Blood. Kitty had saved herself over the team in the relay too.

But they had a job here. They had to protect the Lyre. That came first. That had to come first.

"I didn't choose to come down here," Ophelia said. "I fell."

Hecate took a deep breath. "Your choices have set you on this path, Ophelia."

"What choices?"

She couldn't believe her mother. She couldn't remember many choices she'd made for herself, uninfluenced, since her childhood. First, she'd been sent to Luke by Hecate. Then she'd been sent to Kronos's service by Luke. Alex had helped free her from him. But then every step of the way, the gods had tried to drag her in a dozen directions until she'd been left hanging by a snapped wire above an abyss into the Underworld. Her only choice had been to stay the course, to complete the quest, even when offered a way out by Artemis. Was that what this was about?

Ophelia narrowed her eyes. She stepped closer to the altar, raising her hand to point at Hecate. "You never liked him. Is that what this is about? You wanted me to leave Alex behind?" With a scoff, she felt her body shaking. "How dare you. While you buddied up to Kronos, Alex was the only one to stand beside me. Me, not what I could do."

Hecate made no move to respond. She stood silent, as still and straight as the pale white columns surrounding them. The Mist twisted and turned, agitated. But Ophelia hadn't finished.

"You wanted me for my power. Because I'm blessed by Night, or some bullshit like that." She refused to break eye contact with her mother. Unafraid, she told another half step forward. "Alex loves me. And because of that, because of the choices you made, he's stuck down here with me while we save all the children you gods abandoned. Don't talk to me of choices."

She could feel the air grow colder. The wind shifted.

"You've reached your crossroads," Hecate said. "I cannot guide you further."

Ophelia straightened up. Her mother's necklace weighed heavily against her skin. The shadows seemed to shift, to darken. "You never did. I will go further. I'm going to save your children, my brothers and sisters. All of them. Not for you, not for Zeus. For us."

Hecate released a long breath. She quieted. "You've made your choice."

"Yes," Ophelia said. "Finally. I'm choosing. Me, not you and not the Titans and not the Olympians. We don't need you."

The false sun sparked. The light went out, encased in darkness. Ophelia reached into the dark and drew it to her, spinning the shadows like webs until she had control. The cocoon formed again. Void shadows whipped around her in circles freezing her skin but not uncomfortable.

When the shadows broke, she reappeared back on the patio. Ophelia didn't know if they'd ever really left, or if her mother had manipulated the Mist to make it seem so. Or were they one in the same?

She stood alone. Persephone had gone away. Alex, Kitty, even Nico had left. Her mother was nowhere to be seen.

Movement on the terrace above pulled her attention skyward. Nico. So he hadn't left. Or if he had, he'd returned. He must've felt the shadows move.

Neither spoke. He watched her too closely. Ophelia didn't like it. He had the same intense stare as her own mother, and as Hades his father. But he simply pointed to a side stairway before disappearing again. A way up. She paused only briefly in the fourth step up as she heard Eris for the first time in days.

The clock is ticking. We've got work to do.