The candlelight flickers between them, casting shifting shadows across the countless scrolls and scattered notes on the desk. She sits across from him, her fingers lightly tracing the spine of an ancient tome, her eyes alight with reverence as she speaks of the Titans—of their will, their gifts, their divine wisdom.

Anaxagoras barely hears the words. He knows them already, has dissected every scripture, countered every argument. He could tear down her beliefs here and now, unravel her faith with nothing more than a few well-placed truths.

And yet… he does not.

His fingers tighten around the quill in his grasp, the ink bleeding into the parchment where he had meant to write. He forces himself to look at her, to focus on the debate, on the battle of reason he so often relishes. But all he sees is the way her lips curve with quiet certainty, the way her expression softens with devotion to something he has spent a lifetime denying.

It should anger him.

It does.

And yet, for all his contempt for blind faith, for all his efforts to remain untouched by sentiment, he finds himself drawn to the very thing he cannot understand. To her.

Absurd. Irrational. Unacceptable.

"You hesitate, Anaxagoras."

Her voice is gentle, but there is a knowing edge to it, as if she senses his distraction, misinterprets it as something else. He scoffs, turning his gaze back to his writings as if the moment has already passed.

"Hardly," he replies, his tone as sharp as ever. "I am merely deciding which flaw in your reasoning I should dismantle first."

A lie. And yet, one he will tell himself until it becomes the truth.