The Battle of the Labyrinth

comfort from the familiar weight of the sword in my hand.
    Whenever I’d approached Kronos before, his evil voice had spoken in my mind. Why was he silent now? He’d been shred into a thousand pieces, cut with his own scythe. What would I find if I opened that lid? How could they make a new body for him?
    I had no answers. I just knew that if he was about rise, I had to strike him down before he got his scythe. I had to figure out a way to stop him.
    I stood over the coffin. The lid was decorated even more intricately than the sides—with scenes of carnage and power. In the middle was an inscription carved in letters even older than Greek, a language of magic. I couldn’t read it, exactly, but I knew what it said: KRONOS, LORD OF TIME.
    My hand touched the lid. My fingertips turned blue. Frost gathered on my sword.
    Then I heard noises behind me—voices approaching. It was now or never. I pushed back the golden lid and it fell to the floor with a huge WHOOOOM!
    I lifted my sword, ready to strike. But when I looked inside, I didn’t comprehend what I was seeing. Mortal legs, dressed in gray pants. A white T-shirt, hands folded over his stomach. One piece of his chest was missing—a clean black hole about the size of a bullet wound, right where his heart should’ve been. His eyes were closed. His skin was pale. Blond hair . . . and a scar running along the left side of his face.
    The body in the coffin was Luke’s.
    I should have stabbed him right then. I should’ve brought the point of Riptide down with all my strength.
    But I was too stunned. I didn’t understand. As much as I hated Luke, as much as he had betrayed me, I just didn’t get why he was in the coffin, and why he looked so very, very dead.
    Then the voices of the telekhines were right behind me.
    “What has happened!” one of the demons screamed when he saw the lid. I stumbled away from the dais, forgetting that I was invisible, and hid behind a column as they approached.
    “Careful!” the other demon warned. “Perhaps he stirs. We must present the gifts now. Immediately!”
    The two telekhines shuffled forward and knelt, holding up the scythe on its wrapping cloth. “My lord,” one said.
    “Your symbol of power is remade.”
    Silence. Nothing happened in the coffin.
    “You fool,” the other telekhine muttered. “He requires the half-blood first.”
    Ethan stepped back. “Whoa, what do you mean, he requires me?”
    “Don’t be a coward!” the first telekhine hissed. “He does not require your death. Only your allegiance. Pledge him your service. Renounce the gods. That is all.”
    “No!” I yelled. It was a stupid thing to do, but I charged into the room and took off the cap. “Ethan, don’t!”
    “Trespasser!” The telekhines bared their seal teeth. “The master will deal with you soon enough. Hurry, boy!”
    “Ethan,” I pleaded, “don’t listen to them. Help me destroy it.”
    Ethan turned toward me, his eye patch blending in with the shadows on his face. His expression was something like pity. “I told you not to spare me, Percy. ‘An eye for an eye.’ You ever hear that saying? I learned what it means the hard way—when I discovered my godly parent. I’m the child of Nemesis, Goddess of Revenge. And this is what I was made to do.”
    He turned toward the dais. “I renounce the gods! What have they ever done for me? I will see them destroyed. I will serve Kronos.”
    The building rumbled. A wisp of blue light rose from the floor at Ethan Nakamura’s feet. It drifted toward the coffin and began to shimmer, like a cloud of pure energy. Then it descended into the sarcophagus.
    Luke sat bolt upright. His eyes opened, and they were no longer blue. They were golden, the same color as the coffin. The hole in his chest was gone. He was complete. He leaped out of the coffin with ease, and where his feet touched the floor, the marble froze like craters of ice.
    He looked at Ethan and the telekhines with those horrible golden eyes, as if he were a newborn baby, not sure what he was seeing. Then he looked at me, and a smile of recognition crept across his mouth.
    “This body has been well prepared.” His voice was like a razor blade running over my skin. It was Luke’s, but not Luke’s. Underneath his voice was another, more horrible sound—an ancient, cold sound like metal scraping against rock. “Don’t you think so, Percy Jackson?”
    I couldn’t move. I couldn’t answer.
    Kronos threw back his head and