“I never wanted to, you know,” he whispered. “Of all of us that there have been and will be, I was the only one who ever tried to just... live. To try to make the best of it, to move on. I’d thought... when my son was born... I’d had hope that they had been rejoined enough. That humanity might be whole enough.”

“Even the first times. But they snuff out one another’s lives with less consideration, less purpose, than we ever did,” Hades furrowed his brows. “Don’t misunderstand me. We had tried nigh everything else for thousands of years before then. I don’t like to inflict suffering on them, even if they do nothing but design it for themselves. They’d already built the fire, we only handed them the match.”