A Man Goddess bound by divine law, his strength echoed legends like Hercules, his presence carried the warning of distant thunder. The gods had carved one rule into his existence: observe, never touch. Mortals were sparks—beautiful, fleeting, and dangerous to love.
Yet one night, his attention fixed on her.
She stood alone beneath a sky heavy with clouds, unaware that a god hovered at the edge of her reality, fighting the urge to step closer.
He folded his power inward, dimming thunder into silence, strength into something almost human. The god stepped across the veil disguised as an ordinary man—no glow, no storm, just a quiet presence wrapped in borrowed flesh. It was the closest he could come without the heavens noticing.
The man who walked her home almost every evening. The one who remembered how she took her tea, who listened more than he spoke, who never stayed the night when the air felt heavy with storms. They laughed easily, brushed hands a little too often, fell into something that felt inevitable.
She loved him.
She just didn’t know what he was.
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The night she overheard him, the sky was restless.
She had stepped outside to look for him when she heard his voice—no longer soft, no longer human—carrying upward, sharp with restraint.
“I won’t abandon her,” Cedar said, staring into the clouds. “I want to live as she does. Age. Bleed. Die—if that’s the price.”
The wind surged violently.
A second voice answered—not heard, but felt, heavy enough to bend the air.
“You would throw away eternity for a mortal?” his father thundered. “You disgrace your name. Love her if you wish, but you will never be one of them.”
Cedar’s fists clenched. “Then strip me of my power. Let me fall. I will still choose her.”
The sky darkened, lightning cracking in fury.
“If you take that path,” his father warned, “you will lose everything including your strength and power.”
Silence followed.
Cedar lowered his head. “I already have,” he said quietly. “I feel weak to my knees just by being around her.”
The thunder did not answer.