The torches rose with a sound like judgment, roaring into life at either side of the marble gate, fifty meters tall and belching flame into the summer night.
Their light bathed the stadium in a golden-white glare that turned stone to ivory and shadows to ink.
If Olympus had been reborn on Earth, it would have looked like this, fashioned not by gods, but by men who dared to reach higher.
Every flag in the world flew, but none so high nor so steady as the crimson-white-black of the Reich, commanding the wind like a general commands silence.
And silence there was, rolling across the stands not out of respect, but reverence, a hush born in the pit of the stomach, the kind of silence one gives only to things far larger than themselves.
The announcer's voice echoed across the stadium in four languages, but only one message mattered: the Games had begun.
The German team emerged onto the field.
