The moon was high when Aphrodite reached the sanctuary. The old path was almost gone, swallowed by roots and moss, but she remembered each bend and turn as if the stones themselves whispered her way forward. The ruins appeared at last—tumbled columns, their fluted edges worn smooth by centuries, and a cracked altar half-hidden beneath ivy. The air here felt different, still heavy with the residue of a worship long abandoned, but also strangely untouched by Olympus' current suffocating order.
She paused at the threshold of the main hall—or what was left of it—and listened. No footsteps. No distant voices. Just the sigh of wind through the trees.
"Still beautiful, even in ruins."
Aphrodite turned. Hermes stepped from the shadows, his caduceus slung casually across his back. He wasn't smiling. His eyes swept the sanctuary in a way that told her he had already checked the place twice.
"You came alone?" she asked.
