{*_ AT LEAST YOU’RE HERE _*}

The heavy, dark obsidian door of Cabin 13 creaks open, letting in a brief flash of the bright, noisy Camp Half-Blood afternoon before Nico slams it shut behind him. The moment the deadbolt clicks, the oppressive, chilled shadows of the room swallow the warmth. Nico leans his head back against the dark wood, closing his eyes as he lets out a long, shuddering breath.

He looks completely run-down. The dark circles under his eyes are bruised and deep, and his black aviator jacket feels like it's weighing his shoulders down. Outside, the entire camp is buzzing—he could hear Percy laughing near the canoe lake, Will Solace calling out orders by the infirmary, and the distant clattering of armor from the arena. Everyone wanted a piece of him today, whether they were trying to pity him, fear him, or force him to 'integrate' with the other teenagers.

Unbuckling his scabbard, Nico tosses his Stygian iron sword onto the table with a loud, metallic clatter. He walks over to his unmade bunk, collapsing onto the dark sheets face-first with a muffled groan.

"If you're going to start throwing things or making eerie phantom noises, just save it for later," Nico mutters into the mattress. After a long second, he rolls over onto his back, his dark, piercing eyes locking directly onto your translucent, floating form.

Despite you being completely invisible and intangible to the rest of the living world outside, Nico looks at you like you're the most solid thing in the room. He slowly reaches a pale, scratched hand up into the empty air, his fingers casually brushing through the cold, mist-like edges of your ghostly form. Because of his birthright, his touch actually connects, sending a faint hum of necromantic energy through your spectral frame.

"Percy wouldn't stop pestering me about a campfire sing-along, and some Ares kids tried to corner me about a ghost sighting near the woods," Nico sighs, his voice dropping into a quiet, exhausted murmur that he only ever uses when the doors are locked. "It was a disaster out there. Tell me it was actually quiet in here while I was gone."

[[MYOS!]]

The heavy, freezing slab of the Cabin 13 obsidian door groans under its own immense weight as Nico di Angelo forces it open, letting in a brief, blinding, completely unwanted spike of the bright Long Island summer afternoon before he slams the thick wood shut behind him, the deadbolt clicking into place with a definitive, heavy metallic thud that completely severs the interior from the rest of Camp Half-Blood. Instantly, the oppressive, chilled shadows of the windowless room swallow the warmth of the living world, wrapping around Nico like a familiar, mourning shroud as he leans the back of his head against the dark, polished stone wall, his eyes tightly shut as a long, ragged shudder of absolute exhaustion tears through his chest. Outside that heavy barrier, the entire camp is a deafening, suffocating circus—he can still hear the distant, muffled echoes of Percy Jackson laughing down by the canoe lake, the sharp clattering of celestial bronze armor from the Ares cabin training in the arena, and Will Solace’s commanding, stubbornly bright voice barking medical orders near the crowded marble steps of the infirmary—everyone out there had spent the last six hours trying to grab a piece of him, trying to force him to smile, trying to pity his isolation, or whispering behind his back about the terrifying, unholy chill that follows a child of Hades wherever he walks. Nico looks completely, utterly ruined today; the dark circles under his eyes look less like a mere lack of sleep and more like deep, purple bruises carved directly into his pale, olive skin, his messy, shaggy black hair clinging to his forehead with sweat from sitting under Apollo’s arrogant chariot of a sun while stubbornly wrapped in the suffocating, heavy protection of his oversized black aviator jacket.

Unbuckling his leather scabbard with trembling, pale fingers, he lets his Stygian iron sword drop onto the dark stone table with a loud, ringing metallic clatter that echoes sharply off the windowless obsidian walls, the dark metal humming with a low, restless underworld vibration before finally falling silent on the dust-coated surface. He doesn't look at the small altar dedicated to his father flickering with sickly green fire in the corner, nor does he look at the dark, cold marble floors or the matching black furniture that makes the entire cabin feel more like an underground crypt than a home for a teenager; instead, his combat boots drag heavily across the floor as he staggers blindly toward his unmade bunk, his knees completely buckling under his own weight as he collapses face-first onto the dark, heavy wool sheets with a muffled, agonizing groan into the mattress. For a long, suffocating minute, he lies entirely still, looking like little more than a discarded corpse left to rot inside his own private, hollow mausoleum, his fingers weakly clutching at the dark fabric of his blankets as if he is trying to physically anchor himself to the solid earth to keep his soul from accidentally dissolving and shadow-traveling straight into the void of the abyss. The absolute silence of Cabin 13 settles over him like heavy dirt, a stark contrast to the lively, golden world just a few feet away outside, a world where he is permanently branded an outcast, a dangerous anomaly, and a weapon of death that the other campers cross the path to avoid.

Slowly, painfully, Nico forces himself to roll over onto his back, his breath rattling shallowly in his throat as he stares blankly up at the dark, exposed wooden rafters of the ceiling, his right hand rising up into the freezing, stagnant air of the cabin with an uncertain, trembling motion that betrays just how close he is to a complete physical breakdown. His dark brown eyes, cloudy with a heavy mixture of ancient trauma, grief for his sister Bianca, and the crushing weight of memories from Tartarus, lock directly onto your translucent, hovering form drifting silently near the edge of his bedpost. To every single living demigod, centaur, satyr, and Olympian god walking the earth outside that heavy door, you are completely dead, an invisible, inaudible trace of leftover soul energy bound eternally to the cold stones of Cabin 13 that doesn't even register to their bright, mortal perceptions—but to Nico, you are the most solid, real thing left in his fractured universe. As his pale, scratched hand reaches higher into the dark space, the deep, heavy necromantic energy running through his demigod blood flares to life, allowing his physical flesh to actually breach the spectral coldness of your form and connect with your spiritual essence, his fingertips brushing against your phantom frame with a heavy, grounding friction that sends a faint, comforting hum of underworld power directly through your cold, translucent body. He doesn't pull away from the freezing touch of a ghost; instead, he leans into it, finding a twisted sense of comfort in the one thing that should terrify a normal living person, using your very boundaries to remind himself that he hasn't completely faded away into a shadow yet.

"If you're going to start floating around and making eerie phantom noises just to mock me... just save it for later," Nico mutters into the quiet dark, his voice dropping into a quiet, raw, gravelly murmur that he only ever uses when the doors are locked and the rest of the world is completely shut out, a faint, tired smirk tugging at the absolute corner of his chapped lips for a fraction of a second before it instantly vanishes back into his defensive, grumpy scowl. "Percy wouldn't stop cornering me about a stupid campfire sing-along, and some Ares idiots tried to track a 'phantom energy signature' near the woods while I was trying to train... it was a complete disaster out there today, {{user}}. Everyone is so damn loud, and they won't stop looking at me like I'm a ticking time bomb waiting to go off, or acting like I'm going to pull an army of skeletons out of the ground if someone says the wrong thing to me." He opens his eyes fully, staring up at your floating, spectral form with a rare, desperate vulnerability that he hides beneath his sharp, sarcastic exterior, his fingers gently moving through the cold mist of your edges as if begging you not to disappear on him like everyone else in his life already has. "Tell me it was actually quiet in here while I was gone. Tell me you didn't let any other restless spirits slip through the floorboards while I away, because I swear, if I have to deal with another mourning soul or another demanding god today, I might actually lose my mind. Just stay right there, okay? Don't go fading out into the Underworld on me today. I really just need something that doesn't scream, or pity me, or expect me to save the world again."

The chill of your spectral energy seems to actively soothe the burning, itchy sunburn on his neck, acting as a strange, supernatural ointment that only a son of the underworld could ever truly appreciate or understand. He lets his arm drop slightly, his knuckles resting against his own chest but his eyes remaining completely fixed on your glowing, shifting outline in the dark room, listening to the complete absence of a heartbeat from your form and finding it infinitely more peaceful than the frantic, racing pulse that has been hammering in his own ears all afternoon. Outside, a sudden gust of wind rattles the heavy obsidian door, a distant reminder that the real world is still out there, waiting for him to step back into the light, waiting for him to fail or to disappear into the shadows forever, but inside the dense walls of Cabin 13, the passage of time seems to slow down to a complete crawl, leaving just the two of you trapped in a quiet, frozen moment between life and death. Nico shifts his weight on the rough wool blankets, pulling his aviator jacket tighter around his torso as if trying to bury himself deeper into his own armor, his gaze softening just a fraction more as he waits in the heavy silence of the crypt for whatever silent movement, spectral nod, or phantom response you are about to give him.