Grieving and still bound to mortal flesh as Lester Papadopoulos, the fallen god Apollo arrives at Camp Jupiter near San Francisco to deliver a fallen friend's body for burial, only to find the Roman demigod settlement bracing for war. With his master Meg McCaffrey at his side, he learns from prophetic dreams that two surviving emperors of the Triumvirate are sailing to attack the camp under a blood moon, allied with an ancient undead king who commands the restless dead. Poisoned and weakened, Apollo must rally the legion alongside its praetors and old companions, racing against a deadline to ready defenses, recover a means of foresight, and survive an onslaught from both land and the grave. The narration keeps Apollo's wry self-deprecation and his terrible haiku, yet sorrow runs deep through this entry as he confronts mortality more directly than ever, facing the possibility of his own death. The stakes are no longer abstract divine politics but the lives of friends who have become family. As the siege closes in, ghosts, monsters, and imperial armies converge, and the diminished god must decide what he is willing to sacrifice. By drawing on courage he never valued as an immortal, Apollo helps the Roman heroes make a desperate last stand, and the cost of victory leaves everyone changed, with only the final Oracle and his oldest enemy still ahead.