In such a scene, not to mention Zeus, already incurably licentious, even if you replaced him with a goddess of exceptional self-control, she would likely be unable to withstand the ultimate temptation exuded by "Night" itself.
It was a subtle fragrance that could swallow a god whole; a night like tide and curtain, cool and tender; a coquetry and splendor gently shoved by the starry vault, retreating into the sky's depths.
Thus the God-King, with no courtesy at all, drew the queen of the dark night tightly into his arms once more.
Foreheads pressed, breaths commingled, breath rose and fell between their lips and teeth, and their divine auras fused together.
In a hoarse, magnetic murmur he said, "My Nyx, my beloved, you are always so cruel."
"Every time, you use the coldest words first to wound my heart deeply."
"Then, when I'm heartsick and about to leave, you use your peerless tender flow to coil around me again."
"My love, my love… tell me, how am I to soothe this heart you've hurt over and over?"
The Goddess of Night rose slightly on tiptoe; her pale neckline drew taut in the darkness; their lips had already lightly met.
A faint fragrance, musk-like and orchid-like, drifted from the line of her dark lips, like moonlight falling on a spring and the wind riffling the ripples.
Like a brook reflecting the moon, her soft voice sounded gently at his lips: "My father, my lord… whatever you say, that is what shall be~"
"Night will forever let you do as you please. So long as… so long as you can forgive Night's mistake just now, so long as… you can be happy for it."
"Night… is willing to be utterly devoured by you."
Those trembling words seemed to roll out of her gently swaying chest, scent lingering, phrases curling.
"My father… how long has it been since you properly cherished Night? Night… only wants Father-God to be pleased…"
Facing such a Night, the God-King—long past any cure—truly could endure no longer.
And even if there were a "remedy," Zeus had no wish to use it.
He judged the timing about right.
It was time to offer a sweet date.
After all, with this kind of "disciplining," one cannot keep taking and suppressing without giving anything in return.
Lightly biting her slim dark-crimson lips, he said thickly, "My love… this time I came filled with endless yearning and affection. It was to… join with you to conceive our lovely son."
"Tell me… shall it be two again as well?"
A visible radiance welled in the watery slant of the Goddess of Night's eyes.
An indescribable, immense surprise, like golden clouds covering the night, melted her to the bone.
Her heart, a roller coaster all day long, set even her soft divine body to trembling faintly of its own accord.
Her jade arms slid around and locked tightly behind her beloved God-King's neck.
What had been a sense of almost-touching transformed at once into the sweetest, closest intimacy.
She wasted no extra words; all her burning feeling was told in the most ardent, most direct action, silently, to her only love.
And so night fell with an unprecedented depth and breadth, surging violently through the Underworld.
Golden clouds leapt and voyaged like lava thrown into a dark sea.
Thunder ran rampant through the deep folds of endless night.
From the deepest of that night came waves of inexpressible, strangely lovely phantasms, like the universe at first light—an "as-if sound yet not sound" surge, pushing out layer on layer.
The Lord of the Underworld, the embodiment of darkness, the Zeus below—Hades.
His figure, in the Hadean temple, flickered between substance and void and was gone in an instant.
"Dark energy," one of the universe's four fundamental sources, the law symbolizing "Darkness" itself, returned at that moment to his supreme origin.
In this Underworld, in this endless darkness, under this pure shroud of night—
the supreme God-King Zeus—the eternal sovereign, the deathless undying Lord, the omnipotent and omniscient God of gods!
Embodiment of the highest sky, and manifestation of the deepest dark.
With the supreme laws of "Sky" and "Darkness," he gathered the pure "Night" into his embrace.
"Darkness" and "Night," in this moment, became one.
"Absolute material existence" and its opposite, under the God-King's will, achieved an unprecedented ultimate consummation.
The all-knowing, all-powerful Lord set "darkness and night" at the pole opposed to "sky."
With a great thunder that pierced endless time and space and ran through existence and void, he linked the two poles positive to negative, uniting yin and yang.
Then, amid this highest union of "yin and yang," "light and dark," "positive and negative," two indispensable, mutually reflecting fundamental laws of the cosmos burst forth in ascendant flame from their joining!
The first was called "Death."
He is the eternal companion of the "value" and "meaning" of all "existence."
He sets a terminal boundary called "finitude" for all life.
And it is precisely this "finitude" that grants life its true "meaning."
If life were infinite, the urgency of all choices would vanish, and all values would dissolve.
He makes life's "finitude" the cruelest, yet most precious, of gifts.
Precisely because we must die, love, family, ideals, every sunrise and sunset, even every breath, become so precious.
Like fireworks in the night sky: by their brevity they blaze all the more brilliant.
By the presence of "Death" as a "terminus," life gains that grave, urgent, precious truth that "every moment must be cherished."
He is the cruelest "ultimate judge."
No matter how epic an individual's life, he will, at the end, stamp a "settled dust" upon all choices, actions, and relations.
No matter what wealth, loves, or ideals one pursued in life, he will, at the last, convert them into "the already-completed," with no do-overs.
He is also the coldest and most merciful "equalizer" and "giver of release."
Whatever enviable or agonizing things an individual possessed in life, he will forcibly and permanently sever them.
No matter how much wealth one held, how much power one wielded, what beauties one indulged in, what great deeds one achieved, how many kin and friends one had—
or what pains and torments one endured—
he brings all individuals to the final, most thorough, most equal end and release.
All things, all beings, must die.
He is also the most sacred "welcomer of truth."
He brings the most serious, most irreplaceable "boundary" to all beings.
His very existence silently urges the living to ponder the eternal question: "How can I live authentically?"
He forever favors all who seek truth, and forever raises up the souls of great courage, great wisdom, and every great virtue!
He tells the world: only the courage to face death is the final defense of "truth and virtue!"
Amid death, the wise choices you make are the most serious choices in life!
Only by looking squarely at death can you escape the "dissolution of the everyday" and live one's true "authentic self"!
He stretches out his cold yet steadfast arms to embrace the seekers of truth.
At the final moment, he leads them beyond the worldly path, lifting them high and delivering them into that eternal "world of truth"!
It is by "Death's" existence that every moment of life is worth burning for.
He tells all beings: the most precious thing is life itself.
You only get one life.
He poses the most important question, like an eternal bell, to every sentient being:
How should you live your one life?
So that, when he looks back, he neither regrets wasted years nor feels shame for having done nothing.
So that he may smile calmly and step onto that road from which there is no return.
And how to do this is what all beings—every individual—must ponder for a lifetime.
He tells all beings as well: only death is the unchangeable end; but so long as you are alive, there is still time.
He is the sacred terminator, welcomer of truth, the irreversible, the grave judge, the cruel equalizer, the granter of final release, the embodiment of "Death"—the God of Death, Thanatos!
The second was called "Sleep."
He is the most mischievous agitator of thought about existence.
He blurs the boundary of "reality" and "illusion," placing "wakeful reason" side by side with "phantom perception," softening the edge between conscious reason and dream-sense.
He lets the individual temporarily relinquish control over the external world and accept a state of "unconscious drifting."
He forces the world to think: what is "existence"? And what is a "state of being"?
This is itself a brief letting-go of "the will of the self."
He lets living beings indirectly experience a state of "non-existence" without facing the ultimate cruelty of "death."
Thereby he reminds the individual: existence is not wholly controlled by wakeful reason.
He tells beings to reflect rationally: "How should we verify reality?"
The senses can reflect the real world.
And yet, is "reality" truly reliable?
I think, and it does not necessarily follow that I am.
"What is consciousness?" "What is the self?" "What is the meaning of existence?"…
In a way full of mischief, he compels all beings to wonder whether the world we inhabit while awake might also be merely a more complex illusion.
If so, then how are we to determine and affirm "the self" and "the real"?
He tells beings: be humble, be thoughtful, be prudent, be steadfast.
He is also the kindest "deliverer from dissolution."
He lets life temporarily escape the endless pain and fatigue of reality, briefly step away from the rational rule-filled world.
He lets people briefly shed all external fetters, and, to return to an "authentic existence," store and gather strength.
Sleep has never been a blank of being.
It is a repair of the self "alienated" by daily life and of a soul sinking under the pressures of survival.
It helps people refocus and gather strength upon the essential question of life: "how to live," "to strive to live."
He is likewise the gentlest "giver of calm" and "restorer of life."
So long as you remain awake, you inevitably consume "life energy."
Sleep is the most effective, and also the simplest and least costly, repair and replenishment of life energy.
It is the most natural rest conducted to maintain rational activity while awake, the most natural rhythm following the law of biological balance.
Without sleep, a person cannot maintain rational activity while awake, let alone pursue a better life.
Wakefulness makes one weary—spirit and body alike.
Sleep drives out weariness and nourishes spirit and flesh.
Even gods need rest.
He is also the most tolerant "granter of peace."
Though he cannot grant the eternal release his elder brother can,
he can help life, under the premise of "continuing to live," temporarily flee "life's suffering."
He relieves all beings of the perpetual pain born of the "will to live."
He banishes the torments encountered in wakefulness—the scourge of desires and the burning of the heart.
In repose he grants people a brief, precious peace.
At the same time, in sleep one can temporarily shed all the distortions and constraints reality imposes on the self, and in dreams come closer to that "true self."
Let the heart, in a night of gentle rest, gather the ego again.
Sleep has never been a "waste" of living time, but the indispensable twin of "existence" itself.
He divides life into clear cycles; he tells beings: life has never been an eternal linear motion.
In life, beyond wakefulness and labor, there is also haze and repose.
Life is the eternal cycle of "sleeping" and "waking."
This cyclicality is life's natural rhythm and the cosmos's order of living.
No matter how strong or wealthy an individual, "sleep," with its irresistible rhythm and order, descends equally upon every existence—
even upon gods.
So, when you feel pain or discomfort, in spirit or in flesh, then sleep peacefully.
It is the harbor the supremely good and beautiful God-King grants all beings, the most merciful gift for briefly escaping all dissolution and torment.
It is also the depot that sustains life, fills reason, and sets you off anew—the necessary reserve and repair for life to continue.
Each time you wake from good sleep, you are a renewed self; you are filled with strength to press forward bravely again.
So oversleeping is never despicable, much less sinful.
For it is the gentlest haven in a cruel reality; the warmest hot spring that washes away all fatigue.
Sleep, brother of Death, is the gentlest "death," which can shed all toil and torment of mind and body—without truly losing everything.
This deity is the knower of existence, the reflector of reason, the void-conscious, the antithesis of the real, the quiet reposer, the giver of peace, the lord of "Sleep"—the God of Sleep, Hypnos!
The two great gods stood side by side: one bestows true peace, one bestows good rest.
The God of Death is, in truth, the kindest god; he brings "true peace" to the end.
The God of Sleep is also the gentlest god; he brings "hard-won rest" to the everyday.
Thus the laws of "Death" and "Rest" were perfected.
The God of Death, Thanatos, together with his elder sister—the goddess Keres, who represents "violent death"—will together define the boundaries of "death."
In the world of the living, they will draw for all beings a clear period that can be fixed.
How does one die? When does one die? What, truly, is "death"?
All this will become clear and no longer a chaotic muddle.
Living beings doomed to decay will no longer suffer endlessly the bodily agony of rot as time passes mercilessly,
until relieved only when they are utterly dust.
All torments of injury and illness will not, for lack of death, have to be borne without end.
Those who die violently will no longer be trapped forever in a "zombie" state for lack of complete decay.
With death clearly defined, the soul thereby receives final release.
And in the Underworld, he will likewise draw for the soul a period that can be fixed—the true final "ending."
When a soul comes to its own end and completely disperses, he will gently gather the original, pure spirituality into his arms.
He will protect that spirituality, so that it does not fall into absolute eternal extinction in the Underworld.
Awaiting that renewed, newest, brand-new beginning.
This will also require another crucial great goddess to complete the final piece of the puzzle, but that is for later.
The gentlest God of Sleep—his birth also means the law of "rest" is fully perfected.
Living beings will no longer suffer the ongoing double drain of body and spirit for lack of clear rules of "rest."
Before this, because the laws of "sleep" and "rest" were imperfect, the bodies and spirits of all beings were, in truth, operating in a mode of "chronic failure," a state of ongoing drain and torment.
Bodies grew weak, sore, dizzy, headachy; physical aging accelerated, and organs declined early.
Spirits felt perpetually tired, with learning and cognition falling across the board, moods losing control, and consciousness trending toward confusion.
Only at the brink of collapse would the life instinct yank the lever, plunging the individual into an uncontrollable, indeterminate sleep.
The time might be long, but the recovery was unstable.
For non-gregarious beings, it could be that sleeping meant never waking again.
In this collapse-induced, instinctual convalescence, one has no power to resist harm.
If the law of death had already been fully set before, this one deficiency—being unable to rest properly—would alone have made it impossible for all beings to live well.
Even so, it truly made all living things suffer terribly.
Now, the God of Sleep is born.
He will bring to all mortal, fragile beings the restful peace that nourishes body and spirit, and deliver "rest—nourishment—reset."
After every good sleep, you awaken in the best state.
After every earnest rest, you awaken brimming with energy to face a brand-new future.
His importance and greatness need no further words.
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