...From the highest peak where mortals could not climb, a figure of impossible brightness gazed upon his domains. Cities prostrated themselves. Armies fought in his name. Lovers prayed to him for favor they could never deserve. He felt neither pity nor pride in this arrangement, only a sense of rightness, as fundamental as gravity. When he descended to walk among mortals, they wept not from joy but from recognition that they were in the presence of something so elevated it barely registered them as real. He had fathered a thousand heroes, and he would not remember a single name....