Nyssa’s whispered words fell into the sudden, ringing silence of the infirmary. “It’s hungry.” The statement wasn’t an observation. It was a verdict. It reframed the entire world. The cold of the scale was not a property; it was an appetite.
Before either Percy or I could react, Nyssa was moving. The fear in her eyes was instantly banked by a forge-fire of pure, practical determination. She dropped to one knee, ignoring the calipers she’d dropped, and her hands, stained with engine grease and metal dust, began rummaging through the many pouches of her heavy leather tool belt. It was the frantic, yet precise, search of someone who knows exactly what they’re looking for, and dreads finding it.
“Nyssa, what are you doing?” Percy’s voice was taut, the leader’s tone fraying at the edges. “Don’t get any closer to that thing.”
She didn’t answer. Her fingers brushed past tiny screwdrivers, spools of celestial bronze wire, and a miniature, self-stoking blowtorch before closing around a flat, bronze disk. She pulled it free. It was a simple, palm-sized amulet, etched with interlocking circles that spiraled toward a blank center. It looked ancient and unfinished.
“My father gave me this,” she said, her voice low and tight. She kept her eyes on the scale, which lay inert and malevolent on the floorboards. “He said some things don’t just need to be melted down. They need to be silenced. Things with an insatiable hunger.”
She held the amulet out flat, like an offering. The interlocking circles on its surface began to spin, rotating in impossible, counter-directional patterns without a whisper of sound. The air in the room grew heavy, compressed. A low hum vibrated up through the soles of my feet.
“Wait.” Percy took a step forward, putting himself between Nyssa and the scale. It was a classic Percy Jackson move: stand in front of the danger. Protect everyone else. But this time, it felt wrong. He wasn't protecting. He was obstructing.
“Get out of the way, Percy,” Nyssa snapped, her focus absolute. She wasn’t looking at him, but at the empty space above the scale. “I have to contain it before its resonance signature draws anything else.”
“Contain it and give it to me,” he ordered. The words were quiet, but they carried the full weight of his command. He was the hero of Olympus, the Praetor of New Rome, the son of the Earthshaker. His quiet requests were heavier than most people’s shouts. “This is my responsibility.”
Nyssa finally looked at him. Her dark eyes, usually so calm and methodical, were blazing. “Your responsibility? You’re the one who brought it in here. You hid it. You let Kaelen touch it. This stopped being just your responsibility when it pulsed with enough void energy to trip alarms in my cabin.”
The accusation hit him like a physical blow. A muscle in his jaw jumped. “I was trying to prevent a panic.”
“You’re going to cause a catastrophe,” she shot back. “You don’t know what this is. I do.” She looked at me, my shivering form still leaning against the bedpost. “You tried to use your power on it, didn’t you?”
I could only manage a jerky nod, my teeth chattering.
A grim understanding settled on her face. “It fed on it. Of course. It’s not just hungry for heat or life. It’s hungry for us. For divine energy. Your attempt to put it to sleep was a five-course meal. You’re lucky it was just a scale. A helmet or a breastplate of this stuff… it could drain a demigod dry.”
The blood drained from my face. My power, the one thing that defined me as a son of Hypnos, was not just ineffective against this new threat; it was fuel. I wasn't just defenseless. I was a liability. The thought was colder than the scale had ever been.
“Now move, Percy,” Nyssa said, her voice leaving no room for argument.
He didn't move. He stood his ground, a stubborn pillar of misplaced authority. “Nyssa. Give me the amulet.”
“No.”
The single word hung between them, more powerful than a thunderclap. No one said no to Percy Jackson. Not like that. Not when the fate of the camp was on the line. But Nyssa’s expertise was a form of power he couldn’t command, an authority he couldn’t override. For the first time, I saw Percy look at another demigod and realize he was completely out of his depth.
With a swift, fluid motion, Nyssa sidestepped him. She held the whirring amulet over the scale. The humming intensified, and the air crackled. The black scale trembled on the floorboards, then lifted into the air as if drawn by an invisible string. It floated slowly toward the bronze disk. As it neared the center, the blank space on the amulet shimmered, rippling like dark water.
The scale touched the surface and was gone. Swallowed. The spinning circles on the amulet slowed to a stop, locking into a new, static configuration. The humming ceased. The oppressive weight in the room vanished. The only cold left was the sweat on my own skin.
Nyssa closed her hand around the amulet, her knuckles white. She was breathing heavily, as if she’d just arm-wrestled a cyclops.
“It’s done,” she said.
Percy stared at her closed fist, his expression a storm of frustration and shock. “What happens now?”
“Now, I take this to the forges,” she said, tucking the amulet safely into a different, more secure-looking pouch on her belt. “I’m going to analyze its properties. Figure out what it’s made of, how to shield against it, and how to destroy it. And I’m going to tell Annabeth.”
Percy’s head snapped up. “No. You bring your findings to me. We decide how to proceed.”
“We?” Nyssa’s laugh was brittle, without a trace of humor. “There is no ‘we,’ Percy. You made that clear when you decided to hide a tactical threat from your strategist. You wanted to slow her down. You just guaranteed she’ll be working on this with the full resources of Cabin Nine before the sun sets. You don’t get to control this anymore.”
She turned to me, and her expression softened for a moment. “Get Will to check you over. The wound’s been exposed to a necrotic energy source. It won’t heal right on its own.”
Then, without another look at Percy, she strode out of the infirmary, leaving a stunned, echoing silence in her wake. Her footsteps were heavy and determined, the sound of an agenda being irrevocably set in motion.
Percy stood frozen for a long moment, staring at the empty doorway. He hadn’t lost a fight. He had lost control. The calm, reassuring leader was gone, replaced by a boy who had been so afraid of his girlfriend’s brilliant, reckless courage that he had made a foolish mistake. And now the consequences were running away from him.
He finally turned to look at me, his sea-green eyes pleading for understanding. “Kaelen, I was just trying to—”
“I know what you were trying to do,” I cut him off. My voice was hoarse, but it was steady. The shivering had finally stopped. The fire in my arm felt distant, unimportant. Something had shifted inside me, a fundamental support giving way. I had always looked at Percy Jackson and seen a hero, a shield for the rest of us. Now, looking at him in the quiet infirmary, I saw something else. I saw the eye of the hurricane, so convinced of its own calm that it couldn’t see the storm it was dragging along with it.