Circe stepped from the reflection into the radiance of the Luminous Court. The sheer scale of ordered divinity, the burning sea beside the desert of time, the silent libraries of secrets, it was a far cry from her wild, isolated island. She breathed in, and the air tasted of potential and refined power.
She did not request a domain. She claimed a space. At the edge of the Cupbearer's burning sea, where the vital blood-rivers flowed strongest, she planted her will. From the iridescent waters, she drew not just the essence, but the location of the pathways, the concept of journeys taken and connections forged. Merging this with her own internalized world, the miniature cosmos within her, she began her work.
What grew was not a palace or a garden, but a tree. A colossal, breathtaking structure she named the Tree of Pathways. Its trunk and mighty branches were formed of solidified, deep blood-red crystal, pulsing with a slow, powerful rhythm like a cosmic heart. But within this crimson architecture, veins of purest starlight traced intricate, glowing patterns, the mapped capillaries of world-mountain itself. Each major branch did not end in leaves. Instead, its tip tapered into a needle-sharp point of concentrated spatial energy.
And each of these points was driven seamlessly into the shimmering umbilical cord connecting each semi-plane to the World-Mountain.
The Tree was not an invasive parasite; it was a symbiotic nervous system. Through it, Circe could feel the unique pulse of each world. She could sense the roaring heat of the Forgefire realm, the serene melancholy of the Rain-Silvered Gardens, the silent, logical hum of the Crystal Canyons.
She could regulate the flow of the Cupbearer's essence-blood to each, strengthening a growing world here, calming an overactive one there. She could, with a thought, thin the barriers between compatible realms, allowing for the potential of travel or exchange, or thicken them into impermeable walls.
She became the weaver of the web that held the growing multiverse together, the Lady of the Blood Pathways in truth. Her internal island-world served as the control chamber, a perfect model she used to simulate and direct the flows within the greater Tree.
Nicholas observed her integration with satisfaction. Her pride and power were not diminished; they were instrumented, made part of the grand design, but overall they were contained, she was a glorified store manager, she had authority but it was limited by his nature as the creator of the World-Mountain. The Atrium now had a circulatory system, intelligent and alive.
Then, on a day indistinguishable from any other in the eternal twilight of the Luminous Court, he felt it. A tremor in the tapestry. Not a violent rip, but the subtle, inevitable snick of a long-prepared thread finally sliding into place. It originated from the mortal world, from a specific point in New York City. It was the birth of a soul, one whose latent potential echoed with the familiar, storm-charged signature of the sea, and a fated weight that was utterly unique.
Percy Jackson had been born.
Nicholas, who had been reviewing a star-chart of new semi-plane formations with the Warden, went very still. A slow, knowing smile touched his lips, devoid of malice but full of profound recognition. He looked away from the chart, his gaze turning inward to the vast loom of Fate he commanded.
"And so it begins," he murmured, the words quiet but carrying the weight of prophecy.
Circe, who was nearby, gently adjusting the flow to a nascent world of whispering forests, glanced over. "Hmmmm, that feels significant" She said sensing the fate he was currently observing.
"The central thread," Nicholas confirmed. "The one around which the fate of the old puppet masters was meant to unravel."
"And you just smile?" she asked, her tone laced with curiosity. "I thought you had frozen their prophecy."
"The mechanism is frozen, as long as I'm willing, I gave them instructions, it is not my fault they disobeyed. The potential was always there. His birth does not restart the clock. It simply... places the key into the lock. A lock I hold the master key to." His smile remained. "But Olympus must not know that. They must see only what they fear, and act according to their fear."
He turned his full attention to the newborn thread of fate that was Percy Jackson. With the authority of the Shaper, the master of forty percent of Fate's domain, he did not cut the thread, or alter its essential nature. He cloaked it.
He wove around it a pattern of stunning, convincing ordinariness. To any divine scrutiny, especially the frantic, paranoid gaze of the Morai and Olympus, Percy's fate would read not as that of a potential prophecy-child, but as one of the many sadly suppressed children of the Big Three.
His thread would appear muted, dampened, lost in the fog of mortal anonymity, another success for their policy of hiding their offspring. He would seem like a boy with a faint, unexplainable affinity for water and bad luck, nothing more.
But cloaking from Fate alone was not enough. Mortal records, the curiosity of minor spirits, the persistent search of satyrs, these were threats of a different kind that could show the discrepancy between what fate was showing and what the reality was. Percy was powerful and he needed that to remain hidden.
"Keeper," Nicholas said, his voice echoing in the shared space of their minds.
Julian's presence, a shifting mass of arcane geometry and silent knowledge, coalesced nearby. "The child of the sea has come?" Julian said clear and unmistakable.
"Hide him," Nicholas commanded. "Use your authority. Let him be a secret kept even from the seeking wind and the curious eye. Not erased. Not removed. Just... placed under a veil of disinterest. A secret so deep it becomes part of the background noise of the world. Until he is needed."
The Keeper gave a ripple of understanding. A single, silent rune, the sigil of the Overlooked Truth, spun into existence and then dissolved, its power seeping into the fabric of mortal reality around the newborn Percy Jackson. To teachers, he would be an unremarkable troublemaker.
To school records, his name would be prone to minor misspellings and administrative delays. To any monster or spirit not of the highest order, his divine scent would be bland, generic, easily dismissed. He was hidden not in a casino, but in the open, through a divine decree of secrecy.
Circe watched the proceedings, her fingers still resting on the pulsing starlight vein of her Tree. A faint, ironic smile played on her lips. "How poetic," she said, her voice dry. "The great architect, weaver of new worlds, master of a new pantheon... and here you are, hiding a baby. I must admit, I thought you were above using children as tools. It seems some habits are endemic to godhood."
Nicholas did not take offense. He met her gaze. "I am not using him as a tool. I am preserving his life. The story of the new world requires him. The balance of the old world, the final resolution of Olympus, needs its hero. Not to mention that I did not create him; his existence is not my responsibility. He will make his choices." He paused. "Is that not a kinder fate than being hunted from birth, or frozen in a hotel, or smothered in obscurity by his own father's fear? I am giving him a childhood. A normal life, for a time. There is a mercy in that secrecy."
Circe considered this, her smirk softening into something more thoughtful. She gave a slight, conceding nod. "Excuses, Excuses. A delayed tool is still a tool, Shaper. But a well-preserved one, I'll grant you that." She returned her attention to her Tree, her touch on the starlight veins becoming almost gentle. "Let's hope your preserved hero grows into an interesting key. Dull tools make for poor storytelling."
Nicholas said nothing, trying to pretend he didn't see his own hypocrisy. He looked back into the tapestry, at the perfectly hidden thread that was Percy Jackson. The boy would grow. He would be ordinary, troubled, unnoticed.
And when the time was right, when Nicholas's designs for the old pantheon reached their critical point, the veil would lift. The key would find the lock. And the final act of the Olympian age would begin, not in chaos, but according to the script Aeon had written.
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