Percy Jackson: An Endless of All

The sea sighed gently against the shore of a forgotten island, tucked between time and tide near the distant lands the mortals would one day call Britannia. On the beach, where the sand glimmered silver in the moonlight, lay the severed head of Orpheus—my son.

Still beautiful. Still young. Still weeping.

And still alive.

His eyes fluttered open as my presence blanketed the beach like shadowed starlight. He gasped—whether from pain or the cruel surprise of recognition, I could not tell.

"Hello, Orpheus," I said softly, sorrow curling around each word like smoke. My voice was low, distant. Filled with things unspoken.

"Father..." he rasped, barely more than a breath. His decapitated form trembled with faint, immortal life.

"I have come to tell you," I said, kneeling beside him in the sand, "that I visited certain priests who dwell on this isle. They are devoted to Apollo and me. I came to them in their dreams, and they will find you soon. They will care for you. You will not be alone."

He coughed. A weak, broken sound.

"But I will not see you again," I added, my voice faltering. "Not for a long time."

"Father... no—please... Father?"

"Did you not say," I whispered, tears stinging my immortal eyes, "that you were no longer my son?"

"Please," he begged, eyes wide with agony. "Help me. Let me die. I beg you."

"I cannot spill your blood, my child," I said, the pain inside me like a blade. "You are my only son. I cannot lose you. Not like this. Not truly."

"You were unwise to seek favors from Hades and the dead," I added, not as a rebuke, but as a bitter truth. "You have made your choice. And just as your life is your own... so too is your death."

I stood. Slowly. Unwilling.

"Farewell, my son," I said, voice breaking. "We shall not meet again anytime soon."

"No. No—please!" he cried, anguish erupting from his immortal throat. "Please kill me! Father, come back! Please kill me!"

His sobs tore into the night air like knives.

"Father! Please... kill me...!"

But I did not turn back.

I walked away, every footstep a storm behind my ribcage. His cries followed me, echoing like the chime of broken glass in the wind, carried across eternity.

I wept.

Not for what I could not do—but for what I had done.

In my love, I had doomed him. In my selfishness, I had spared him.

And I could only hope… someday… he might forgive me.

Days passed like centuries in the Dreaming. Since I left my poor son alone. 

My grief festered, raw and endless, a wound that would not close. Though I am Dream of the Endless, though I am the lord of stories and sleep, I am also a father. And I am broken.

In the throne room of my castle, I sat upon my onyx seat of stillness and silence, my eyes fixed on the mortal world above me. There, I watched as the priests and priestesses—those devoted to both Apollo and me—finally found him.

Orpheus. My son.

Or what remained.

They lifted his severed, immortal head from the shore, their hands reverent, their hearts stricken. Carefully, tenderly, they brought him into the grand temple that Apollo and I had shaped long ago—built with song and light and dreams for a time we thought would never come.

At the center of the temple stood a podium of moonstone and obsidian, veined with living starlight. Upon it, they placed him. Orpheus, whose voice once calmed monsters and melted hearts. Orpheus, my child, now a relic of sorrow.

But duty demanded I remain. I am Dream. The Dreaming does not stop, even when my heart is ash.

Still... I am also Endless.

And so I made a choice. A rash one. A father's choice.

I left the Dreaming and tore open the veil between realms. I sought them out—the Sisters of the Frenzy. The Maenads. Those who had butchered my son. The wild ones, beloved of Dionysus.

And when I found them… I unleashed everything.

The fury of the dreaming. The horrors of every mortal nightmare. The unending screams of those they had torn apart. I fed it to them.

I bent the Dreaming to my wrath and broke them.

I cursed them to feel every shard of pain they had ever inflicted—turned their madness against them, until they clawed at their own minds in futile agony. And then I unmade them. Torn from flesh to soul until all that remained was golden dust, scattered on divine winds.

But my rage did not ease the pain. My grief did not burn away with their bodies.

So I went further. I sealed their fates.

I rewrote their essence into monsters—cursed to be reborn in Tartarus, again and again. Each life is a nightmare. Each death is a punishment. Slain endlessly by demigods whose stories I would shape.

Let the myths remember what they did to my son.

Then, when there was nothing left but silence, I found the pieces of Orpheus' Lyre.

Scattered across the Forrestes and the land. The splinters of the lyre I had gifted Orpheus when he was but a child, when his fingers still trembled with new music and his smile reached his eyes. Just remember, the day brought me great joy and love. 

I gathered each fragment. Each memory each sprinter holds. 

And I reforged it.

Whole once more, it gleamed with a mournful light—his light. I held it in my hands, and I fell to my knees.

The Dreaming shuddered.

I cried. I wept. I screamed.

And the sound of my grief echoed through all the world—through gods and monsters, through mortals in their sleep, through time itself. Mountains trembled. Oceans stirred.

Even the stars dimmed.

For the Endless had broken.

For a father whose son was hurt and left cursed to be just a head and an oracle to Dream of the Endless. My past human self brought understanding to mortals, but sometimes it brought out the hurt or the perels of being human as much as i did understanding and love.