Chapter 1: Awakening in Amber
Consciousness clawed its way back through layers of darkness, dragging sensation with it. The first thing Alaric tasted was copper—metallic and wrong, coating his tongue like he'd been sucking on pennies. Then came the smell: rotting garbage, piss-soaked concrete, and something sweet-sick that made his stomach lurch.
His eyes snapped open.
The sky above him was too blue, too sharp, like someone had cranked the saturation on reality itself. Buildings towered on either side of the narrow alley, their fire escapes zigzagging upward in impossible clarity. Every brick held texture he could count from here. Every window reflected light with crystalline precision.
"What the hell?"
The words scraped out of his throat—higher pitched than they should be, younger. He scrambled upright, hands slapping against wet pavement, and that's when he noticed them. Small hands. Kid hands. His hands, except they weren't.
His breath came faster. The last thing he remembered was his apartment—the one-bedroom shithole in Seattle with the broken heater and the neighbor who screamed at 2 AM. He'd been reading. Yeah. Reading his battered copy of The Lightning Thief for the dozenth time because escapism was cheaper than therapy. The book had fallen against his chest as exhaustion finally won, dragging him under after a double shift at the warehouse.
And then... nothing. Until now.
"Okay. Okay." He pressed his palms against his forehead, trying to steady his thoughts. "You're dreaming. You fell asleep reading Percy Jackson, so your brain is just—"
But dreams didn't feel like this. Dreams were fuzzy around the edges, nonsensical, forgettable. This? This was hyperreal. He could feel each individual stone pressing through his jeans. Could hear car horns blocks away with perfect clarity. Could smell hot dogs from a street vendor mixing with the alley's rot.
He looked down at himself. The clothes were wrong—some kind of dark hoodie he'd never owned, jeans that actually fit instead of hanging loose, sneakers without holes. And his body... Christ, his body was wrong. Shorter. Skinnier. Like someone had taken him and compressed him back to thirteen, maybe fourteen years old.
A puddle caught his attention—rainwater pooling in a depression near the dumpster. He crawled toward it on hands and knees, afraid of what he'd see but needing to know.
The face staring back at him wasn't his.
Same general shape, maybe. Same sharp jaw and messy dark hair. But the eyes—the eyes—
One burned crimson like a dying coal. The other glowed molten gold, like someone had poured sunset into his iris.
"No. No, no, no, this isn't—"
His hand shot out to touch the reflection, to prove it was fake, and that's when the world bent.
Golden light flickered around his fingertips, crawling up his wrist in crackling threads. The sensation was electric, terrifying, right—like scratching an itch he hadn't known he had. The light coalesced into a circle, a portal, and through it he saw... weapons. Hundreds of them. Thousands. An armory stretching into impossible distance, each blade and spear and axe hanging in perfect stillness.
His mind supplied the word without conscious thought: Gate of Babylon.
A rusty pipe near the dumpster vanished into the portal with a metallic scrape. One second it was there, the next it hung in that golden void alongside ancient swords and modern firearms, completely out of place and utterly accepted by whatever logic governed this space.
Alaric yanked his hand back. The portal snapped shut with a sound like tearing silk.
He sat there, breathing hard, staring at his ordinary-looking palm. Then he laughed—a high, manic sound that echoed off the alley walls. The laugh built and built until he was gasping, hands pressed against his mouth to muffle the noise, because holy shit, holy shit, this couldn't be real but it was, it absolutely was.
He'd died. That was the only explanation. Died in his sleep, probably from exhaustion or an aneurysm or one of those random medical events that killed people in their twenties, and somehow—somehow—he'd woken up here. In a thirteen-year-old body. In Manhattan. With magic powers from a story he'd read.
"The Percy Jackson universe," he whispered. His voice shook. "I'm in the Percy Jackson universe."
The implications crashed over him like a wave. If this was real, if this was actually real, then somewhere in this city was Percy Jackson. The kid who'd face the Minotaur in—his mind did the math automatically—three weeks. Three weeks until Percy's pre-algebra teacher turned into a Fury. Three weeks until Sally Jackson got taken by Hades. Three weeks until a twelve-year-old boy got thrown into a war he didn't understand.
Unless Alaric changed it.
The thought sat there, heavy and electric. He could change things. He should change things. He'd read the books, knew what was coming, could prevent tragedies before they—
The smell hit him first.
Sulfur and rot, sharp enough to make his eyes water. Then came the clicking—bronze on concrete, rhythmic and wrong. Three shapes detached from the shadows at the alley's far end, moving with an unsettling grace that made his hindbrain scream predator.
They looked like women. Beautiful women, actually, with perfect features and long dark hair. But their legs were wrong—bronze and mechanical from the knee down, ending in cloven hooves. And their smiles... too wide. Too many teeth.
Empousai.
The word surfaced from memory—vampire demons, servants of Hecate, seducers and killers. His body was already moving before conscious thought caught up, scrambling backward until his shoulders hit the alley wall.
"Fresh meat," one of them purred. Her voice slithered over the words, making them obscene. "Young and scared. My favorite."
"His blood smells interesting," another added, tilting her head like a curious bird. "Different. Wrong."
The third laughed, and flames danced along her bronze legs. "Wrong doesn't matter. Dead is dead."
Alaric's hand jerked up—pure instinct—and golden light erupted around him. The portal tore itself open, and weapons spilled out: a rusty sword, a bent spear, a cracked wooden shield. They clattered to the pavement around him, and he grabbed the sword because it was closest and oh God it was so light, barely any weight at all, like a prop instead of an actual blade.
The Empousai were already moving. The lead one blurred forward faster than should be possible, claws extended, and Alaric swung wild. The rusty sword connected with her arm—and snapped. Just broke clean in half like it was made of balsa wood.
"Pathetic," she hissed.
He threw the broken hilt at her face and dove for the spear. His hands closed around the shaft just as she pounced, and he drove it up blindly. Bronze screeched against bronze—her leg deflecting the strike—but the tip found flesh above her knee. The spear bent, not breaking but warping, and he knew with sick certainty that it wouldn't hold.
Then she raked her claws across his forearm.
Pain bloomed white-hot. Blood welled instantly, and her face was right there, inches from his, inhaling the scent with pleasure. A drop of his blood splashed her cheek.
Everything stopped.
The sensation was indescribable—like someone had grabbed a live wire inside his chest and plugged it directly into her. He felt her. Not physically, but deeper. Felt her essence, her nature, the fundamental truth of what she was: ancient hunger wearing beauty as a mask, seduction as a weapon, flames that burned from the inside out.
And then he was drinking.
Not literally—his mouth didn't move, his lips didn't touch her. But through the blood connection, he was consuming her essence, pulling it into himself in a rush that made every nerve catch fire. The Empousai screamed. Her body dissolved, collapsing into golden dust that scattered across the pavement, and Alaric gasped as knowledge slammed into him.
Fire immunity. Charm resistance. Enhanced beauty perception. The memories were wrong—they felt like his but weren't, fragmented images of hunts and seduction and kills—but the power was undeniable. His forearm still bled, but already the wound was closing, flesh knitting itself back together at visible speed.
The other two Empousai froze.
"What—what did you just—" one stammered.
"Bloodline Devourer," the other whispered, her perfect face contorting with genuine fear. "The legends are real."
They ran. Just turned and fled, bronze legs clattering, leaving him alone in the alley with golden dust and confusion.
Alaric stayed on his knees, staring at his healed arm. The skin was smooth, unmarked except for a faint silver scar where the deepest cut had been. He could still feel the Empousai's essence inside him, integrated into his cells, making his blood burn hotter. When he thought about fire, his hand moved toward a discarded lighter near the dumpster, and the flame that sparked didn't hurt. Barely even warm.
"Holy shit," he breathed. "I'm a Bloodline Devourer."
The term fit perfectly, like a key sliding into a lock. That was the second power—the one that had activated when her blood touched his. He didn't just steal monster traits. He consumed them, made them permanently his own by drinking their essence.
Which meant he could get stronger. Much stronger. If he hunted enough monsters, absorbed enough bloodlines, he could become powerful enough to matter in this world. Powerful enough to change things.
The thought scared him. It also thrilled him, which scared him more.
He climbed to his feet, legs shaking but functional. The broken weapons still littered the ground—the sword in pieces, the spear bent useless, the shield cracked down the middle. His portals could summon infinite weapons, apparently, but right now they were garbage-tier. Barely functional. The rusty sword had shattered against an Empousai like it was made of glass.
That would change. Had to change. If he was going to survive three weeks in monster-infested Manhattan, if he was going to be ready when Percy Jackson's story started, he needed to get stronger. Fast.
He looked down at the golden dust coating his hands. At the faint glow in his crimson eye when he caught his reflection in the puddle.
"Three weeks," he said aloud, testing the words. "I have three weeks to get strong enough to matter."
The choice crystallized. He could hide, could try to survive on the margins, could let the story play out as written. Or he could fight. Could hunt monsters, absorb power, prepare himself to change the tragedies he knew were coming. Percy facing the Minotaur alone. Bianca's death. Luke's corruption. All the pain and loss he'd read about, that he'd cried over as a reader, that now felt viscerally real because this was real.
He couldn't save everyone. Trying to play god with the timeline would probably make things worse. But maybe—maybe he could save some. Maybe he could be the extra variable that tipped the scales toward a better ending.
"Okay," he said, and started walking toward the alley's entrance. "Let's do this."
Manhattan's morning light hit him like a wall of noise and motion. Crowds of people rushed past, none of them noticing the thirteen-year-old boy with mismatched eyes and blood under his fingernails. Taxis honked. Street vendors shouted. Somewhere close, the smell of pretzels mixed with exhaust fumes.
Alaric stepped into the flow of humanity, letting it carry him forward. He had no money, no ID, no plan beyond "get stronger." But he had powers that shouldn't exist, knowledge of the future, and three weeks before everything went to hell.
Somewhere in this city, Percy Jackson sat in a classroom, completely unaware that his story was about to change.
And Alaric was going to make damn sure the changes were for the better.
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