Zoe’s POV - Over ten years ago

  It had been a quiet morning in the compound, one of the rare ones where everything felt safe. I was eight, maybe younger, and Helena was already fourteen—already taller, already stronger. My hair had gotten long and tangled from all the wind lately. I hadn’t said anything, but Helena noticed. She always noticed.

  She sat me down on one of the benches in the training yard, gently combing her fingers through the knots with a patience only she had. Her hands were rough from training, but she was careful, always careful with me. I remember fidgeting, wings twitching with impatience, cheeks flushed from the embarrassment of needing help.

  “Hold still,” she said, her voice soft but firm, the kind of tone that made you want to obey without question.

  “I don’t see why it matters,” I muttered, hugging my knees to my chest.

  She smiled behind me, working a smooth rhythm through my hair. “Because when you fly, the wind will twist it until you can’t see, and if it gets in your eyes during a fight, you’ll miss.”

  I rolled my eyes. “So this is tactical now?”

  Helena laughed, a light sound that melted some of the tension in my shoulders. “Exactly. Strategic braiding.”

  She started weaving, humming a tune I didn’t recognize. It felt like a lullaby from a life I never had. The sun was warm on my back, the air filled with the scent of earth and distant baking bread. Her fingers worked quickly and with practiced ease, like she’d done this a hundred times before. Maybe she had.

  “You’ll be strong someday, Zoe,” she said after a while. “Stronger than all of us. But it doesn’t hurt to have your hair out of your eyes.”

  When she finished, she tied off the end with a bit of blue ribbon she’d tucked into her sleeve. It didn’t match anything she wore—I think she brought it just for me.

  “There,” she said. “Now you’re ready.”

  I remember standing and running to the edge of the courtyard, wings lifting with the excitement I always felt before trying to fly. And I remember Helena watching me the whole time, arms crossed, smiling like she believed I could fly before I ever had.

  We camped just outside the boundary of Olympic National Park, tucked in the shadows of towering trees and a sky choked with stars. The quiet here felt different. Not peaceful. Not safe. Just… still. Like the world was holding its breath, waiting for morning.

  I didn’t sleep much.

  The others did what they could—Phoenix curled tight in her sleeping bag, Bay half-sitting against a tree, arms crossed and eyes closed. Damian hummed softly for a while before drifting off, and Xandor, as usual, stayed on watch longer than necessary. But I couldn’t rest. Not when I could feel them.

  Helena. Ella. Leander. Angelina. Stephen. Hector.

  Their minds pulsed faintly in the distance—threads tangled and fraying under Cole’s control. It was like walking through a dream and knowing it wasn’t yours. I couldn’t reach them yet, not without drawing attention. But I knew exactly where they were. Inside the park. Waiting. Preparing.

  Tomorrow, we would fight them.

  Our friends.

  The words echoed in my head, and my heart clenched with each beat. These weren’t faceless enemies or nameless monsters. They were the ones I grew up with, trained beside, laughed with. We shared birthdays and battle scars, stories whispered after lights out, and silent promises that we’d always look out for one another. Now I had to look them in the eye and raise my blade, hoping—praying—that somewhere inside, they would remember who I was. That they would remember who they were.

  Peter had taken over most of the drive yesterday, laying out plans, scenarios, contingencies. He’d mapped out likely choke points in the terrain and potential ambush zones. He even created code words in case any of us had to break formation mid-battle. But every plan came with a caveat: If Zoe can’t break Cole’s control, we might not win.

  The pressure of that truth sat heavy on my shoulders now. It had for days. But tonight, with the fire low and the air cooling around us, it was suffocating.

  I curled up on the ground beside Bay and the dying fire pit, my wings wrapping tightly around me like a cocoon. The warmth they held was comforting, but it was more than just the cold I was shielding myself from. I needed something—anything—to keep the ache in my chest from spilling over. I watched Xandor as I lay there, his silhouette leaned back against a tree, silver eyes reflecting the starlight as he stared upward in silent thought. He looked so calm, but I knew better. We were all carrying too much.

  Sleep found me slowly, slipping in between breaths, wrapping around my frayed edges. My last thought before the dark took me was of the people we used to be. Of what tomorrow might demand of us. And of Xandor, still watching the stars like they could somehow guide us through the war that was coming.

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  They all wake early in the morning, dread in their chests, their bodies trembling with anticipation. I felt it too—like something thick and heavy pressing against my ribs, making it hard to breathe. We packed up in silence, everyone lost in their own thoughts. There wasn’t much left to say.

  I led them into the national park. The air was cool and sharp, the trees towering above us like sentinels. I could feel the minds of our friends ahead—Helena, Hector, Ella, the others—tugging at the edge of my senses. Distant and frayed, like strings being pulled too tight. Cole was already there. I didn’t need to see him to know.

  Peter was the only one who spoke as we moved, his voice low but firm. He went over our strategy again, reminding us of each step, each fallback plan. We didn’t need the review—we knew it by heart—but hearing it out loud anchored us. We all knew what was at stake.

  If we lost, Cole would take control of our minds and use us to invade Olympus. He didn’t just want to open the gates—he planned to storm through them with us at his side and an army of monsters behind him. And if that happened, the gods wouldn’t stand a chance.

  We loaded into the van, the silence broken only by the crunch of tires on gravel. Xandor was at the wheel, I sat beside him, my hands clenched in my lap. My heart pounded, not just from fear, but from the pressure of what I knew I had to do.

  I could feel the others shifting behind me—Phoenix sharpening a dagger, Damian humming softly, Bay staring out the window, Peter reviewing his maps for the hundredth time. We were a team. A family. And we were walking into a storm.

  “Here,” I said, my voice quiet but certain. Xandor looked at me, then nodded. He slowed the van and pulled to the side of the trail.

  We stepped out one by one. The wind was cold and steady. Trees whispered warnings we couldn’t afford to heed. We stood in a line, looking ahead into the forest that would lead us to Cole.

  Xandor reached for my hand. His fingers were warm and solid around mine.

  He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.

  It was a silent reminder: he believed in me. No matter what happened next.

  As we walked, Damian spoke up, his voice quiet but urgent, cutting through the rustling leaves. “While we’re fighting them,” he said, “you need to stir their emotions. That’s how Zoe will have the best chance of reaching them. We can’t just hit them hard and hope for the best. We have to remind them.”

  He looked at each of us in turn. “Talk to them. Use your voice. Tell them about the compound, about who they were before all of this. Remind them who we are. Make them feel something.”

  His words sank into me like a stone. We weren’t just fighting a battle. We were fighting for memories, for the people we had once been—the ones I still carried with me in every step.

  We walked through the woods until we came to a large open meadow beside a lake. Bay naturally drifted toward the water, the call of it too strong to resist—it shimmered like it had been waiting for her. Phoenix bent low to touch the earth, fingers splayed, silent and focused. I knew she was searching for the bones buried beneath us, the ones she could summon when the time came.

  As we stepped into the clearing, the tension in the air shifted.

  Across the meadow, six familiar shapes emerged. Helena. Hector. Ella. Leander. Stephen. And at the front, Angelina. Their eyes were blank, distant. And behind them, like a shadow given form, stood an army of monsters. They filled the treeline, hunched and seething, weapons gleaming, claws curled.

  I looked up toward the ridge beyond them.

  And there he was.

  Cole.

  Watching us.

  He stood with his arms crossed, calm, like he was enjoying the show.

  Five of us stepped forward—me, Xandor, Bay, Damian, and Peter. Phoenix stayed behind, still kneeling, already pulling at the threads of death beneath the earth. We didn’t speak. We didn’t need to. The battle had already begun, even before the first strike.

  Angelina was the first to move. Her feet pounded the earth as she launched forward, rage and purpose blazing in her eyes. Damian met her halfway, blades drawn, his expression unreadable but focused. I took to the sky, wings slicing the air as I rose above the chaos.

  Below me, Xandor caught a gust of wind and vaulted into the air beside me, starlight already gathering around him. He landed hard in front of the twins, blasting Ella with a concentrated beam of starlight, the light colliding with her burst of solar flare. At the same time, he sent a whip of wind at Leander, knocking the archer’s first arrow harmlessly off course.

  Peter and Hector collided like clashing storms, Peter darting with chainblade precision, ducking and weaving through Hector’s powerful, grounded swings. It was a battle of speed versus strength, both of them locked in a dance neither wanted to finish.

  Phoenix rose from the earth like a general, calling upon the dead. Skeletons clawed their way out of the ground—some human, some animal—spreading like wildfire across the battlefield. They met the army of monsters in a shriek of steel and bone, halting their advance and drawing their focus away from us.

  Bay stepped forward at the lake’s edge, her trident glowing as the water surged toward her, rising in defiance. Stephen met her with a roar of fire, his flames colliding with her crashing waves in a violent hiss of steam and smoke. Elemental forces warred around them, both fueled by the storm of their emotions.

  And me?

  I dove.

  Toward Helena.

  The girl who had been my sister. My protector. My best friend.

  I wasn’t going to hurt her. I was going to bring her back.

  I didn’t draw my blades. Not yet.

  Instead, I touched down lightly, wings folding in behind me as I walked toward her.

  My voice was low, steady. “Do you remember the night we climbed onto the roof of the compound and watched the stars? You pointed out the constellations one by one until I fell asleep on your shoulder.”

  Helena said nothing. But her eyes—blank and empty a moment ago—flickered.

  I took another step. “You used to braid my hair before training. Told me it would keep it out of my eyes so I wouldn’t miss my mark. You laughed when I tripped over my own feet. Said I was too eager to fly.”

  Still nothing. But her hands trembled at her sides.

  “You taught me how to glide,” I whispered. “Before my wings were even strong enough to lift me. You ran beside me until I could catch the wind.”

  Then, she moved.

  Vines lashed out from the ground, fast and defensive, aiming for my legs, my arms, anything to stop me.

  I leapt back, wings flaring wide, dodging the first strike, then the next. I didn’t reach for my weapons. I didn’t fight back.

  Instead, I kept talking.

  “You called me your shadow, remember? Because I followed you everywhere. Because I trusted you.”

  Another vine cracked through the air, missing me by inches. I rolled, came up on one knee, wings fluttering as I righted myself.

  “I still trust you, Helena.”

  She screamed.

  It wasn’t rage. Not really. It was pain. Twisting and raw and full of everything Cole had buried inside her.

  She charged.

  And I met her head-on—not with weapons.

  With a memory.