The woman in the mirror turned.
It was Pandora. Not quite as I remembered her; she wore a face similar to Aria's, but older. Sadder. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her cheeks wet with those legendary crystal tears.
She looked directly out of the mirror, her gaze locking onto mine.
I froze. My heart slammed against my ribs. It wasn't a recording. She was lookingat me.
"My love," the image of Pandora whispered. Her voice didn't come from the glass; it seemed to vibrate from the pomegranate seed in Aria's hand.
Aria gasped, nearly dropping the seed. "She... she's speaking."
"It's a trick," I snarled, stepping between Aria and the mirror. "A memory trap. Apollo’s parlor games."
"No," the image said. She stepped closer to the glass, placing a hand against it from the other side. "Not a trick, Kaelen. A message. Left in the one place Hera never looks, for she despises history."
"You are dead," I said coldly, the old hurt rising like bile. "You died a thousand years ago."
"I am," Pandora agreed, a sad smile touching her lips. "But my sight... my sight was always long. Like Elias. I saw this moment. I saw the daughter who would come."
Her gaze shifted to Aria, peeking out from behind my shoulder.
"The seed," Pandora said. "Do not eat it, child. Do not plant it."
"Why?" Aria asked, her voice trembling.
"Because it is not a seed of the Underworld," Pandora said. "Hades lied. He loves a gamble, that one."
"Then what is it?" I demanded.
"It is a heart," Pandora whispered. "The crystallized heart of the Titan whose bones hold up this mountain. Hades harvested it eons ago. If you break it, you don't just alert the Underworld."
She pressed her hand to the glass, and cracks formed in the reflection.
"You wake the mountain," Pandora said. "And the mountain is hungry too."
The image flickered and died; the glass turning back to a normal, dusty mirror reflecting my own shocked face.
I looked at Aria. She was staring at the small, red kernel in her palm with absolute horror.
"A heart," she whispered. "We're carrying a Titan's heart?"
"Hades gave us a weapon," Flynn said from the shadows, his voice full of dark appreciation.
"Why?" I asked after a moment of silence. "Why give us the means to wake the Titan?"
"Because," Elias said, his voice dropping to a whisper that carried across the hall. "If the Titan wakes, he will shake the Devourer off his back. He will destroy Olympus to scratch the itch."
"It's the last resort option," Aria realized. "If we can't save Olympus, we'll use this. We wake the Titan and drop the whole realm into the void, sea, whatever it is."
The ground beneath the Hall of Muses gave a violent lurch. A crack appeared in the glass dome above us, star-like patterns sprinting across the sky.
"We might not have a choice," Thane rumbled, hefting his hammer. "The void is knocking."
Outside, the silence of the storm was broken by a new sound. It wasn't the Colossi. It wasn't the wind.
It was the sound of wings. Thousands of them.
"Harpies," Flynn growled, his daggers flashing into his hands. "Zeus's hounds. They found us."
