Apollo woke to the clattering symphony of a village coming to life. Wooden wheels rumbled over cobblestones, their steady rhythm punctuated by the distant ring of a blacksmith's hammer striking hot metal. Children's voices rose and fell like birdsong, their laughter carrying through the open window of his room at the inn.
He lay still for a moment, savoring the unfamiliar sensation of waking without dread. The gold in his veins hummed contentedly, a warm current flowing just beneath his skin.
Not the painful burning of power suppressed, nor the desperate surge of battle, but a steady presence that felt, for the first time since his fall, almost natural.
'This is how mortals begin each day,' he thought, listening to the ordinary sounds of life continuing outside. 'Not with the weight of divinity, but with simple purpose.'
