Pain.

  It was all I knew. All I felt.

  It roared through my body like wildfire, licking at my veins, gnawing at my bones. The venom pulsed inside me, each beat of my heart sending another wave of agony crashing through my limbs. I wasn’t sure if I was alive or just existing inside the pain.

  Then—voices.

  Distant. Warped.

  “Mark—MARK—”

  Hands on my shoulders. Someone shaking me.

  I forced my eyes open. The world was a smear of colors and shifting shadows. Too slow. My brain felt too slow.

  Finn’s face hovered above me, pale, frantic. Relief and fear tangled together.

  “Hey—stay with me! Can you move?”

  I couldn’t answer. Could barely breathe.

  I shifted slightly, and the pain flared, so intense my vision blacked out for a second. My fingers twitched—wet. Sticky. Blood coated my hands from where I’d sliced them open. The wound had sealed—barely—but my strength was gone.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  The battlefield around me was silent.

  Too silent.

  I turned my head, muscles protesting every inch. The campers stood in tight clusters, weapons still drawn. Medusa was gone. No body. No proof she’d even been here. Just shattered stone where she’d stood.

  Had we won?

  Why did it feel like we hadn’t?

  Then—Chloe’s voice, sharp and urgent.

  “Something’s wrong.”

  I followed her gaze.

  The ground.

  It wasn’t settling. It was moving.

  Cracks spiderwebbed through the dirt, spreading out from where Medusa had stood. The earth rippled, like something massive was shifting just beneath the surface.

  My gut clenched.

  No. No, no, no.

  We’d seen this before.

  Titan work.

  Damien whispered, “We need to run.”

  Then the ground exploded.

  A shockwave of stone and dust detonated outward, knocking us off our feet. Something massive burst from the ground—a shape made of shadows and bone, rising like a nightmare from the underworld.

  A voice, deep and ancient, echoed through the battlefield.

  “You think Medusa was the worst of it?”

  A figure emerged from the dust.

  Not a monster.

  Not a Titan.

  Something else entirely.

  And suddenly, I knew.

  We hadn’t just fought Medusa.

  We’d woken something worse.