Long ago — before Percy Jackson lifted a sword, before Annabeth Chase deciphered her first runes, even before the last sigh of Pan drifted into leaves — a child was born in secret.
Her mother was a demigod, daughter of Demeter, keeper of sacred harvests and golden grain. She knew the names of every herb that grew wild on the hills, sang lullabies to seedlings, and could coax fruit from barren trees. Her love was deep, her roots strong.
Her father was not mortal. He was the whisper between tree branches, the heartbeat beneath moss, the laughter of rivers. Pan, god of the Wild. Already waning. Already withdrawing from a world of steel and fire, of progress and poison. But for a time — a breath in the long lungs of eternity — he stayed. For her.
From this union, a child bloomed.
She was not meant to be. Not in prophecy. Not in plan.
Not because they did not love her — they did, fiercely — but because her very existence defied balance.
From Demeter, she inherited the quiet power of growth: planting, reaping, rebirth. From Pan, she inherited chaos: instinct, transformation, the sacred terror of the untamed.
Dryads once whispered:"She could mend a forest with a touch. And undo a mountain with her cry."
When she slept, ancient animals emerged — wolves with leaves in their fur, snakes with eyes of root amber. Storms followed her sorrow. Fields bent toward her when she passed. Her lullabies coaxed dying flowers to bloom in frost.
She was not a weapon.
But the world — greedy, frightened, desperate — wished to make her one.
The gods took notice.
Demeter, her heart bound in a mother's golden sheaf, pleaded. "Let her live. Let her grow. She is the Wild's heir, the soul of the green."
Athena, ever wary, warned, "Unchecked, she becomes decay. Wildfire does not choose what it consumes."
Zeus said nothing — but watched. Always.
And Pan — fading into myth — made his final choice.
He gathered three faithful ones:
A satyr with mourning eyes,
A huntress who had once turned her back on Artemis,
And a daughter of Hecate who read omens in the smoke of burning cedar.
Together, they journeyed to the last unbroken place:Heartwood Grove.
There, beneath the roots of a throne older than Olympus, they performed the sealing rite. Not a prison. A preservation. The girl was laid among vines and stone, wrapped in dreams spun from moonlight and myrtle, bound not in chains but in purpose.
She did not die. She waited. Unchanged, but not untouched.
And the forest kept its promise.
Seasons passed. Wars raged. Gods rose and fell. But beneath bark and root, her heartbeat echoed in time with the earth.
Waiting for the moment the Wild would call her name again.