The city air hit him like a wall of static. Not the clean, electric charge he remembered, but a thick, grimy hum—a million machines breathing at once. Athens stretched out below, a jungle of concrete and glass where marble and bronze should have been. Streetlights cast a sickly orange glow on faces buried in glowing screens. No one looked up. No one watched the sky.
Zeus walked through the chaos, a king in a ghost town. Cars honked, their fumes stinging the air. A young couple arguing over a map never noticed the man whose footsteps made the pavement tremble. He was a relic, a forgotten signature on a contract the world had torn up.
He found himself climbing clean, modern steps to a temple of a different kind. The museum stood polished and cold, a mausoleum for his own memory. Guards waved him through, mistaking his otherworldly stillness for some kind of VIP status.
