Westover Hall had the specific quality of institutional solemnity that military academies cultivated: stone walls, clean grounds, the posture of a place that took itself seriously. It sat in a converted manor house on a hillside, surrounded by the kind of old pines that New England produced in abundance, the kind that remembered things.
He arrived in the late morning, when the students were in class. Theron stayed with the car — present, ready, monitoring the perimeter with his usual systematic thoroughness. Kael walked the grounds alone.
He was not invisible. He walked with the measured confidence of someone who belonged where they were and had business being there — not infiltration, simply presence. His reconnaissance authorization from Chiron was in his jacket pocket, though it was not the kind of document Westover Hall's security would recognize. What would actually allow him to move through the grounds unquestioned was more fundamental: he looked like someone who knew where he was going and had the weight of the Keeper of Oaths title in every step.
He used the Crossroads Sight carefully, in short pulses, conserving MANA while reading the site's branch points. The primary monster population was in the northwest wing — dracaenae, he could feel the shimmer of them even from outside, that snake-legged wrongness distinct from other divine presences. Grover was somewhere in the building; he could feel the satyr's nature-shimmer, nervous and contained. And on the east side, in a classroom block that overlooked the pines: two demigods with signatures he had never directly encountered before but recognized.
One powerful, direct, the specific shimmer of Underworld blood — ancient, cold at the edges, the particular quality of divine energy that came from the domain of the dead. Nico, he thought, though the signature was not distinguishable by individual. The other was the same bloodline but different in character: warmer somehow, as though the same cold power had found a way to run at a higher temperature. Bianca.
He found the schedule on a bulletin board in the main hall and identified when the afternoon break was. Two hours from now. He found a bench in the covered walkway between the main building and the east wing, where the break traffic would pass, and he sat down with a book — not performing casual, actually reading, because he had brought the book specifically for this purpose and the waiting had to go somewhere.
He read for two hours. He breathed. He let Hestia's warmth settle in his chest and let the Crossroads Sight idle at its background level, watching the branch points of the afternoon coalesce as they approached.
At two-thirty the classroom doors opened.
[ WESTOVER HALL — ARRIVAL SCAN ]
Location: Westover Hall Military Academy, Maine
Date: December, Year 4
ENTITIES DETECTED:
— Dracaenae: 6-8, northwest wing
— Grover Underwood: northeast, contained/hiding
— Di Angelo demigods: east wing classroom block
(Nico + Bianca — signature confirmed)
— Other students: mostly mortal
(3-4 with faint divine blood, low-level)
PRIMARY GROUP ETA:
Annabeth / Percy / Thalia: ~18 hours
(Night arrival — canon timing)
WINDOW FOR BIANCA CONTACT:
Afternoon break: 2:30 PM — NOW
Pre-battle window: viable
CROSSROADS SIGHT — ACTIVE READING:
Branch point: contact in 3-5 minutes
High-probability path: she will listen
if approached correctly
Correct approach: direct, non-threatening,
let the information lead
MANA: 118 / 120 (reserving for emergency)
LANTERN STEP: available if needed
STAFF: accessible
Note: envelope in left jacket pocket.
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