He could not go to Olympus. No one could go to Olympus except the people who had been going there — Percy's group, the Olympians themselves, the specific participants in the 600th floor confrontation that was happening above the city in the divine space that the Empire State Building anchored to the mortal world.
He stayed at street level and held his position and waited.
The waiting was, as it had always been, the hardest part. He had the Crossroads Sight open at low intensity, not enough to project into the building but enough to read the ambient divine quality of the air around it — the enormous weight of what was happening above, the specific quality of the Titan's power pressing against the Olympian stronghold, and underneath it, threading through it like a faint current in a strong river, something that was not Titan and not Olympian.
Luke.
He felt it and then he did not feel it and he could not tell whether what he had felt was real — the actual sensation of Luke Castellan's specific divine signature inside the Titan's overwhelming presence — or the wishful reading of someone who had been hoping for that signal for three years.
He thought: I do not know. And not knowing is the correct state to be in right now. I have done what I can do. The rest is happening in a place I cannot reach.
The Threshold Network held their positions. The battle in the city was in its later stages — the main Titan force had not broken through, the defensive lines had held, and the coordinated pushes had fragmented as the morning's coordination fell apart under sustained resistance. What was happening now in the streets was the disorganized remnant activity of an army whose central command had lost cohesion.
Emmett, from Zone B: 'The energy pattern is changing. Something is shifting in the building.'
He felt it too — through the Crossroads Sight, through the Healer's Ear picking up the health status of everyone within its range, through something simpler than either: the air changing. The weight of Kronos's presence, which had been a physical pressure on his extended perception since he entered Manhattan, was shifting. Not gone. Changing quality. From active, directed, intentional to something less coherent.
He thought: it is happening. Whatever is happening up there, it is happening now.
He put his hand on the wall of the nearest building — the solid, ordinary mortal brick of a Midtown building, older than the camp, older than most things he knew. He thought: Hestia. The hearth that has never gone out. The warmth that stays. He felt, faintly and definitely, the hearthfire warmth in his chest responding to the thought.
He thought: whatever happens next — I am here. I am grounded. I have done the work. The work is done.
Above him the divine weight shifted one more time. Then it broke.