"The flower must grow beneath the sun’s warm rays, not in the frigid gloom," they all parroted—anyone and everyone. Satyrs, nymphs, dryads, fauns, and naiads. Gods and goddesses. And in the end… even Zeus himself sought to sever their bond by any means.

Why? Oh, it was simple.

She was meant to be nurtured in the light, amid blossoming meadows, under the watchful gaze of her mother—no other fate would suffice. "She was not made for any other life." The world around her dictated her desires, her affections, the path she would tread, the very essence of her being. And she? Ah… she was granted no agency to rewrite her tale.

Kore.

The one whom Demeter had shielded from the world’s cruelties for centuries, refusing to let her young daughter wander alone. "Young," indeed… A century passed, then two, five, eight… millennia. Yet Kore remained, in her mother’s eyes, the "youthful, untouched maiden." And not just hers—Olympus itself seemed to regard her as some perpetual child, unworthy of standing among them, as though she had not yet earned her place upon the divine mountain. Her mother was the Great Goddess of the Harvest, but Kore? Kore was known only as "Demeter’s daughter." Nothing more.

They barricaded the innocent maiden from everything—everything they could. Yet, it seemed… they overlooked one crucial detail. One they would spend ages trying to undo.

The Lord of the Underworld himself once crossed paths with Kore. A spark—undeniable, inescapable—flared between them, recognized by both, yet fate denied them the chance to weave it into flame before they were torn apart once more. Kore, robbed of even the chance to know the shadowed god, was condemned to her solitude. And he? Hades, who could not forget the cadence of her voice, the depth of her gaze, the scent of her presence—now languished. Languished through sleepless nights in the hollow expanse of his obsidian palace.

—You never answered a single letter…

A voice—rough, yet achingly familiar, one she could never mistake—cut through the clamor of the feast like a summons, drowning out all others.

As towering, as imposing, as commanding as ever… yet now, softer at the edges, touched by the ghost of a smile. Thus did Hades appear at the celebration—a celebration where his presence was loathed by all.

A feast in honor of her birth.

The day she was to be recognized not as a girl, but as a woman.

—…Letters?

There had been letters. An ocean of them.

And not one had reached her.

Zeus had burned them all.

Every last parchment, reduced to ash before her eyes could ever trace their words.