HIRAETH

Epilogue

Caleb's POV

Help.

I couldn't see anything.

Help me.

I was lying on an alley in New York, obviously dying.

Dark.

My eyes stung and throbbed, just hurting. I couldn't feel my right arm, and my neck was limp.

How was I alive?

It didn't really matter though. I was dying.

I let out a long sigh.

Eternal darkness.

This was what the fates were talking about.

It won't be eternal though.

I knew this was impossible.

Why was I alive?

I was too tired to feel the pain. Maybe just in shock that my eye sockets were empty.

And I died.

And I could see.

I stared at my corpse lying on the ground, one arm ripped off and eye's gone, only big bloody sockets. I wanted to throw up, but unfortunately I was dead.

I waited.

Somebody found me. They threw up but they called the police and they put police lines all over the place and took my body.

I could drift pretty much everywhere, but not so far from my body. I watched TV with the janitor and other ghosts in the morgue.

UNIDENTIFIED CORPSE FOUND DEAD IN NEW YORK ALLEY

and there were censored pictures flashing by, and I could imagine my body again.

They burned me.

I didn't know how they got the case solved. It just dissapeared from the news, and it wasn't mentioned anymore.

It just got too old.

I could go anywhere now.

I went to camp.

I couldn't cry, and I couldn't feel anything.

So I curled up in a ball and rocked back and forth, staring at the stone walls of the Posiedon cabins.

Camp was destroyed.

Monsters override the camp and burned most of it down.

But I wasn't feeling anything at all.

It was scary in my head, but I didn't get what was happening.

2710.

I floated through a wall, just drifting away. People jogged in the new, green city among the crowded chattering ghosts who had nowhere to go since the Underworld was gone.

I floated through the people and ghosts, just floating.

I froze into place.

I didn't know why she had color.

She was a ghost.

All the emotions I hadn't felt before came over me in a big wave. I felt like I was suffocating, and then something warm came up from my chest.

Then I was desperate.

Annabeth.

My dry lips barely opened to say the word. I kept on whispering until it became screams, as she stared at me with blank eyes, chattering.

No.

"Annabeth...."

I fell to my knees, and she drifted through me.

Fear welled up inside me at last.

I whipped around and looked through the crowd, but I couldn't see a glimspe of golden hair.

I screamed.

All the new emotions coming over me just took over, and I tried so hard to get it all out.

I don't want it.

Stop.

Stop it.

I gasped for breath.

Help me.

My mind went blank.

And at the last moment, I realized.

I was just another chattering ghost now.

End.

Really.

The end.

Next chapter is an A/N