Chapter Text

Part 3: The Years of Ash

The banners rot, the drums decay,
the stars turn their eyes away.
No song can cleanse, no prayer atone,
for cities built of blood and bone.

The sea remembers every name,
of those who fought and burned for fame.
No glory lingers, none endure —
the tide erases all for sure.

So let them die, both god and king —
for war is but the same old thing.
The sea will take, the sea will keep,
and lull the dead in endless sleep.

For in the end, when empires fall,
war leaves no victors — only all.

The war no longer announced itself with horns.

It woke instead in small, quiet ways: the rasp of shovels biting into sand too packed with old blood, the wet cough of men who should have been dead weeks ago, the slow creak of funeral pyres being rebuilt because the last ones had burned down to ash before the bodies ran out.

Morning came gray and reluctant, the sun a dull smear behind smoke that never quite cleared. The air tasted of rot and salt and old iron. Somewhere inland, dogs howled—not in fear, but hunger.

Percy stood at the edge of the burial field with his cloak pulled tight around his shoulders, watching his Guard work.

They moved without ceremony now. No speeches. No prayers shouted to deaf skies. Just hands lifting the fallen—Greek and Trojan alike—and laying them down with the same care. Someone closed each set of eyes. Someone else pressed coins into stiff palms even when others spat and called it treason.

“Why waste rites on the enemy?” a Greek soldier muttered as he passed, his armor rusted green at the seams. “They do worse to ours.”

Percy didn’t answer.

He had learned, over the months, that answering only made the rot spread faster.

Nery knelt near the pyre, murmuring names under his breath as if afraid the dead might vanish entirely if no one remembered them. Thalos stacked shields for burning—dent by dent, scrape by scrape, each one telling the same story of panic and exhaustion. These weren’t warriors who’d died for glory. They were boys who hadn’t learned yet how to be afraid in time.

By noon, the wind shifted, carrying smoke back toward the camp.

It drifted through the tents, clung to fabric and hair, settled into lungs already raw from dust and shouting. Men gagged. Some wept openly. Others laughed too loudly, the sound brittle and wrong.

This was what the war had become.

Not battles—those were rare now. Not victories—those meant nothing when the ground refused to stay still beneath your feet. It was waiting. Hunger. Watching the horizon and knowing nothing would change when the sun rose again.

Percy walked through the camp slowly, feeling the weight of every step. He passed a group of soldiers gambling with knucklebones carved from something that looked too much like human femurs. He passed a healer washing blood from his hands for the third time that morning, the water in the basin already brown again. He passed a man staring at a dented helmet, whispering a name Percy didn’t recognize.

They didn’t bow to him anymore.

They didn’t cheer.

Some crossed themselves when he passed, whispering prayers under their breath—not to him, but away from him. Others muttered the old name they’d given his Guard.

The Sea’s Dead.

Cursed.

Percy pretended not to hear.

Near the medical tents, Patroclus sat on an overturned crate, sleeves rolled to his elbows, hands steady as he tied off a bandage. His face was drawn, shadows deep beneath his eyes. There were too many wounded, and never enough time. When he noticed Percy, he offered a small, tired smile that broke something loose in Percy’s chest.

“You haven’t eaten,” Patroclus said softly, as if the camp itself might be offended by the sound.

Percy shrugged. “Neither have you.”

Patroclus snorted faintly. “Occupational hazard.”

Achilles was nearby, sharpening his spear with short, angry strokes. He looked up only once, eyes bright and restless, like a blade left too long in its sheath. He hated this kind of war—the waiting, the rot, the slow bleeding-out of men who never even got the dignity of a clean death.

“This is pointless,” Achilles muttered. “We raid. They rebuild. We starve. They starve. And Agamemnon sits on his damned throne counting how many bodies it takes to call this progress.”

Percy didn’t argue.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d believed in progress.

That evening, he slipped away from the camp and walked down to the shore alone.

The sea met him without enthusiasm, its waves sluggish, heavy, as if even it were tired of being asked to carry blood away. Percy knelt and pressed his palm into the damp sand. The water crept forward, then stilled.

“How long?” he whispered—not to a god, not even to his father. Just to the endless, patient thing that had always listened before.

The sea did not answer.

It only lapped once against his fingers, cold and indifferent, and retreated again.

Percy let his hand fall.

Behind him, smoke from the funeral pyres drifted out over the water, blurring the line between sky and sea until everything looked the same color—ash-gray, endless, without horizon.

Percy wondered if even the sea was starting to forget why it remembered at all.

And that frightened him more than any blade ever had.

Night did not bring silence.

It brought coughing, the distant snap of green wood in dying fires, the low murmur of men who couldn’t sleep because sleep meant dreaming. The camp lay half-lit and restless, like an animal that had learned pain too well to ever fully lie down again.

Percy sat outside his tent with his back against a supply crate, knees drawn up, staring at nothing. His hands were dirty with ash that wouldn’t wash off no matter how hard he scrubbed. He had stopped trying.

Patroclus found him there.

He didn’t say Percy’s name. He never did, not when Percy looked like this. He only lowered himself beside him, close enough that their shoulders brushed, close enough to be felt without being asked for.

For a long while, they just breathed.

“You didn’t come back to bed,” Patroclus said eventually, voice low. Not accusing. Just… noticing.

Percy swallowed. “Didn’t feel like lying down.”

Patroclus nodded, as if that made perfect sense. “The ground’s too loud tonight.”

That earned the faintest huff of a laugh from Percy—barely there, more air than sound. He leaned sideways without looking, his shoulder pressing fully into Patroclus’s chest this time. Patroclus shifted immediately, arm coming up around him by instinct, hand resting warm and steady between Percy’s shoulder blades.

They fit together easily. They always did.

“I buried a boy today,” Percy murmured. “Couldn’t have been more than sixteen. He was wearing a helmet that didn’t fit.”

Patroclus’s fingers stilled for a moment, then resumed their slow, grounding circles. “Did you know his name?”

Percy shook his head. “No one did.”

Silence stretched with silent grief.

“I never wanted this,” Percy said quietly. The words felt old, worn thin by repetition, but tonight they cut deeper. “Any of it. Not the war. Not the waiting. Not… watching good people turn hollow just to survive.”

Patroclus rested his chin lightly against Percy’s hair. “I know.”

“I keep thinking—” Percy’s voice caught, just slightly. “—if I had stayed away. If I’d broken the oath. If I’d dragged Achilles and you back to the ships and sailed west until Troy was just a bad story—”

Patroclus’s arm tightened. “You’d still be you,” he said firmly. “And the war would still exist. It doesn’t need you to be cruel. It manages that well enough on its own.”

Percy’s breath shuddered. “I’m tired, Pat.”

“I know, agápi mou.^[1]”

“I don’t want to be brave anymore.”

“I know, kardía mou^[2].”

Patroclus tilted his head, pressing a soft kiss into Percy’s curls—barely there, more comfort than affection, as natural as breathing. Percy let himself sag fully into him then, the last of his tension giving way. His fingers curled into the fabric of Patroclus’s tunic, clutching like the ground might disappear if he let go.

“Stay,” Percy whispered. It wasn’t a command. It was a plea.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Patroclus said, without hesitation. “Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not ever. You hear me? not EVER.”

Percy closed his eyes. For a heartbeat, the camp faded—the smoke, the cries, the endless waiting. There was only the steady rise and fall of Patroclus’s chest behind him, the warmth of a body that still believed gentleness had a place here.

“Promise?” Percy asked, very quietly.

Patroclus didn’t answer with words. He shifted, drawing Percy closer, wrapping both arms around him like a vow that didn’t need sound. He pressed his forehead to the back of Percy’s neck and stayed there.

Above them, the stars were dull and half-hidden by smoke.

But for a little while longer, Percy let himself believe that this—this small, stubborn love—was something the war hadn’t managed to ruin yet.

And that belief, fragile as it was, was enough to let him breathe.

The tent was dim when they stepped inside.

Only a single oil lamp burned, turned low, its flame trembling whenever the canvas shifted in the night breeze. The air smelled faintly of clean linen and saltwater—Percy’s doing, earlier, an unconscious attempt to make the space feel less like a battlefield.

Achilles was already there.

He sat on the furs with his back against a tent pole, legs stretched out, armor discarded in a careless heap near the entrance. His spear rested within reach, but his hands were empty, open and waiting.

His eyes lifted the moment Percy crossed the threshold.

No questions. No sharp words. Just immediate unguarded relief .

“Hey,” Achilles said quietly.

Percy’s shoulders dropped.

Patroclus nudged him forward gently, fingers still curled at the back of his tunic. “You don’t have to be strong,” he murmured. “You’ve done enough of that today.”

Percy exhaled and let himself be guided down.

Achilles shifted instantly, making space without thinking about it, pulling the furs open. Percy crawled in first, curling instinctively toward the warmth. Patroclus followed, settling behind him, one arm slipping around Percy’s waist like it had always belonged there.

Achilles draped himself over Percy’s front, one long arm resting protectively across his ribs, forehead pressing briefly to Percy’s temple.

For a moment, none of them spoke.

Outside, the camp groaned and whispered and refused to sleep. Inside the tent, the world narrowed to breath and warmth and the quiet certainty of bodies that chose each other.

Percy tucked his face into Achilles’s chest, fingers knotting in the fabric of his tunic. Achilles’s heartbeat was steady—faster than Patroclus’s, always—but strong. Real. Alive.

“I thought you’d be asleep,” Percy murmured, voice muffled.

Achilles snorted softly. “Not without you, morá mou^[3].”

Patroclus smiled against Percy’s hair. “He sharpened the same blade three times.”

“It needed it,” Achilles muttered, then sighed when Percy shifted closer. His hand slid up Percy’s back, slow, careful, like he was afraid of startling him. “You okay?”

Percy hesitated.

Then—honestly, quietly—“I don’t know.”

Achilles didn’t push. He never did. He just pressed a kiss to Percy’s hairline, brief and grounding.

“That’s fine,” he said. “You don’t have to be.”

Patroclus tightened his hold slightly, chin resting against Percy’s shoulder. “We’ve got you.”

The words hit harder than any promise shouted on a battlefield.

Percy’s throat burned. He blinked once, then again, and finally let his eyes close.

“I hate this war,” he whispered. “I hate what it turns people into.”

“I know,” Patroclus said.

Achilles’s voice was lower, rougher. “It won’t take you from us.”

Percy shifted, pressing closer to both of them, until there was no empty space left—until the weight of their bodies pinned him gently in place, like an anchor.

For the first time that day, the shaking stopped.

Achilles tucked the furs higher around them, trapping warmth. Patroclus began to trace slow, absent circles over Percy’s arm, the repetitive motion easing him further down into rest.

Outside, a man screamed in his sleep.

Inside, Percy breathed.

He let himself stay there—between strength and kindness, fire and calm—held together by something fragile and stubborn enough to survive even this.

And when sleep finally took him, it did so gently, without dreams of blood or ash.

Just the sound of two heartbeats bracketing his own, steady and real, refusing to let him drift away.

Helen dreams of the sea.

Not the sea she remembers — not blue, not laughing, not warm against her calves as Percy once waded ahead of her and dared her to follow.

This sea is black.

It does not move like water. It heaves like a lung full of smoke, thick and slow, each wave dragging ash behind it. Ships burn upon it without sinking, their hulls splitting and reforming as if death itself refuses to finish the work. Men scream, but they have no faces — only mouths, stretched open, sound pouring out endlessly.

The sky above is wrong. Red, not with sunset, but with something older. Like dried blood rubbed into the heavens.

She walks the shore barefoot. The sand is hot enough to blister.

And there — in the water — is Percy.

Not drowning. Not fighting.

Standing.

Chains run from his wrists down into the sea, glowing faintly, humming like a restrained storm. The water pulls at him, begs him to move, but he does not. Blood slips from his hands, dissolving into the tide.

“Percy,” she tries to say.

He does not look at her.

Behind him, Troy burns.

Walls cracking like bone. Towers collapsing inward. Fire blooming where homes once stood. And beneath her feet, the sand begins to retreat.

The sea pulls back.

Where shells should be, there are bones.

White. Endless.

Helen wakes with her hand over her mouth, breath tearing out of her chest in a sound she barely recognizes as her own.

The chamber is dark, the air heavy with incense long burned down to nothing. Her heart hammers like it is trying to escape her ribs.

It takes her a long moment to realize she is not alone.

Cassandra is sitting by the open window.

She has not been asleep.

Moonlight spills across her hair, silvering the dark strands, catching on the sharp planes of her face. She is staring east, toward the sea, as if waiting for something to rise out of it.

“You dreamed again,” Cassandra says.

Helen swallows. Her throat burns. “Yes.”

“Was it the water?” Cassandra asks. “Or the fire?”

Helen closes her eyes. “Both.”

Cassandra hums softly, not surprised. “It’s always both for you.”

Helen pushes herself upright, pulling the thin linen around her shoulders. Her hands shake. She does not try to hide it.

“I saw Troy fall,” she whispers. “Slowly. Like something rotting.”

Cassandra nods. “That’s how it goes.”

Helen looks at her then, really looks — at the dark circles beneath Cassandra’s eyes, the way her fingers are clenched white against the stone sill.

“You saw it too.”

“I see it every day,” Cassandra replies. “I just don’t bother telling anyone anymore.”

They sit together on the edge of the bed.

Helen stares at her hands. “They all look at me like I chose this. Like I woke up one day and decided to end the world.”

“You didn’t,” Cassandra says flatly. “Men did.”

Helen laughs — a small, broken sound. “Tell that to the songs.”

Cassandra’s mouth twists. “Songs are written by survivors. Or liars.”

Silence stretches between them, thick and heavy.

Then Helen speaks again, softer. “I saw him.”

Cassandra’s eyes flick to her instantly. “The sea prince.”

Helen nods. “He was bleeding.”

Cassandra exhales slowly. “Yes.”

“You’ve seen it too.”

“Yes.”

Helen’s fingers curl into the linen. “Does he die?”

Cassandra doesn’t answer immediately. When she does, her voice is quiet. “I don't know.”

That is somehow worse.

“When the sea prince bleeds,” Cassandra continues, gaze returning to the horizon, “everything end and the gods will stop pretending this is a game.”

Helen shivers. “And Troy?”

Cassandra’s jaw tightens. “Troy burns. It always burns.”

Helen presses her palms into her eyes. “I want it to stop. I want the war to end. I want Percy alive. I want Troy standing.”

Cassandra’s voice is gentle, but merciless. “You don’t get all of those.”

Helen laughs again, wet this time. “I know.”

“For what it’s worth,” Cassandra says, “you’re not the cause.”

Helen looks at her sharply.

“You’re the excuse,” Cassandra clarifies. “They would have found another.”

Helen lets out a long breath she didn’t know she was holding.

They sit in silence, two women cursed never to be heard and believed at all.