The corpse of Python lay coiled across the stones of Delphi, vast even in death, its dark blood seeping into sacred ground that had known the touch of older powers long before Apollo's arrival. The creature's jaws hung open, revealing rows of yellowed fangs, and yet it appeared diminished now, stripped of the terror that had once driven men from these slopes. A beast was only a beast once its heart ceased beating.

Apollo regarded it with little satisfaction.

The battle had not been difficult enough to be memorable. The serpent had been ancient, certainly, swollen with the authority of centuries and the favor of powers older than Olympus, but age was not strength. Python had guarded this place like a jealous animal crouched before treasure it could neither understand nor properly possess, and now it lay where all such creatures eventually belonged.

Dead.

His gaze traveled beyond the corpse to the sanctuary itself.

So this was Delphi.

This was the seat of prophecy.

This was the place that had belonged to Themis.

For years he had heard of it, of the sacred chasm from which divine knowledge rose like breath from the depths of the earth, of kings and wanderers alike who crossed mountains for a single answer spoken within these walls. Yet standing here now, Apollo found himself less impressed by what Delphi was than by what it might become.

His.

The thought settled naturally within him.

Why should it not?

He was the son of Zeus. He had slain the guardian. The old order had failed to protect its own sanctuary. If power could not defend itself, then power deserved to be replaced.

A faint smile touched his mouth.

Pilgrims would come here beneath his banners. Songs would be sung in his honor. Prophecy would no longer emerge from darkness and forgotten earth-gods but from a sanctuary bearing his name. Delphi would become a monument to light, reason, music, and divine order. Future generations would scarcely remember a time before Apollo.

The mountain itself seemed to acknowledge the inevitability of it.

With bow still in hand, he stepped into the sanctuary.

The air changed immediately.

The scent of blood and sun-warmed stone gave way to something older. Sacred vapors drifted upward from the chasm in pale ribbons, carrying with them the strange weight of prophecy. Apollo felt it at once. The power beneath Delphi was ancient—older than his worship, older than Olympus, perhaps older than memory itself—and for a fleeting moment he understood why so many had coveted this place.

Then he saw her.

His stride slowed.

Not because he sensed danger.

Because she was not what he had expected.

He had imagined a priestess. An elderly woman, perhaps, bent beneath decades of service to Themis, her eyes clouded by visions and age alike. Instead, a woman sat beside the sacred fissure as though she had always belonged there.

She appeared young.

Yet there was nothing youthful about her presence.

The stillness surrounding her was not the stillness of rest but of mountains, of stone enduring centuries without concern for the passage of time. The sacred vapors curled around her without obscuring her, and as she sat watching the chasm Apollo found himself struck by the absurd impression that she remembered things no mortal should remember.

Not stories.

Memories.

The world after the flood.

The silence that followed destruction.

The first green shoots forcing themselves through wet earth.

The beginning of mankind's second age.

The thought was ridiculous.

And yet it lingered.

As though some part of Delphi itself recognized her.

Then she lifted her head.

Her eyes met his.

Apollo had stood before Titans. He had looked upon gods and monsters and felt neither fear nor uncertainty. Yet beneath her gaze he experienced something unexpected: the faint irritation of a man who had arrived expecting recognition and found himself being evaluated instead.

Not worshipped.

Evaluated.

As though she had seen countless arrivals before him and found none particularly remarkable.