The impact of the bullet was instantaneous. Its power tore through flesh, obliterated bone, and left a cavern of destruction in its wake. There was pain: scorching, unrelenting agony that set every nerve on fire, until all Logan could feel was the brokenness of his chest and the hole in his heart.

He'd never been shot before. Shot at thousands of times, and grazed, sure—and blown up too, though the hit wasn't direct. But shot? He looked down, at first unable to comprehend that a bullet had pierced his heart, and that he still could see and feel despite that fact. He heard a woman say his name, and he looked at her, but he couldn't keep his eyes focused, couldn't keep his heavy skull up, so he turned away.

The seconds dragged on. Another bullet came, carving the same path through his body. His arms tingled for a moment and then went numb. Something fell from his hands; he heard it clatter.

His head was heavy. He rested his chin against his chest. That felt good. He just needed to sleep. Everything would be okay if he took a quick nap. There was a voice—two voices, male and female, screaming and cursing. He forced himself to look up at the man standing before him. The man was aiming a gun at him. If his heart was somehow still beating, he couldn't feel it.

Logan smiled. The pain was going away. He didn't even feel cold anymore. The seconds ticked by. He waited. He didn't feel the next two bullets as they went through his head, but he saw them, looking down at himself.

Thanatos was next to him, hand on his shoulder. "I tried to make it painless," he said, sounding morose.

"So this is it, then," Logan said. "I'm dead."

"Yes." Thanatos turned to him. "But only mostly dead."

"Mostly dead?"

Thanatos grinned. Logan didn't understand what he could possibly be smiling about. "Of course. Mostly dead is still slightly alive."

"Are you...are you jokin' with me?"

"Have you not seen The Princess Bride ?"

Logan blinked. "What does that have to do with—"

Thanatos rolled his pale eyes. "Never mind. Luckily, I planned for something like this, and your son is softhearted enough that he'll look the other way as regent." Thanatos reached towards Logan's unmoving body on the ground. Stella was crying over him. He'd caused her so much pain. That's all he did, right? All he did was hurt people...especially the people he cared about.

"Maybe it's just better if I stay dead."

"Don't be ridiculous, Hades. This isn't just about you."

"Than—"

He couldn't say anything else: the world blazed white, and he was in his body, soundlessly screaming as he looked up at Apollo, who currently had his hands inside his chest.

"Relax, Uncle." He didn't relax: he could see and feel Apollo's golden, shimmering fingers inside him, touching his heart, reforming it, bit by bit, stitching together his bones and his flesh, and his lungs burned.

"Can't you work faster?"

"Excuse me, dear Death, but this is a delicate process. And he's quite squirmy."

"I can feel his soul slipping to the Other Side—"

Logan wanted it to end. All this talk of gods, of myths; all the pain he endured, and all the pain he caused—he didn't want any part of it anymore. He shut his eyes. Thanatos' and Apollo's voices sounded distant.

He blinked, and saw fog. Dead, rotted trees surrounded him. He looked down at his hands, which shimmered blue.

"Father…"

He turned, saw a young man with green eyes. "It didn't work?" The boy looked scared, overwhelmed, even.

"What didn't work?"

"Thanatos said he—you weren't supposed to die!"

"Everyone dies, Zagreus."

"Not today, Uncle," Apollo said, and Logan could feel the god's blazing hand clenching around his heart.

"Let me go," Logan groaned.

"He dies, and it's all over for us."

"I'm well aware of the stakes, Death. Maybe you should've been keeping a closer eye on him."

"Tch. Careful, Apollo, or I'll be paying your brother a visit next, and I doubt that the Prince will be tolerant or merciful towards him, considering his actions."

Logan wanted to scream. The sun god's hot fingers were burning him, incinerating his insides, and the banks of the Styx called to him. He had no obols for the journey; he would remain a lost soul there, forever wandering, until he was driven completely mad. It would be a fitting end. He wanted it. "Please just let me die," he ground out. He kept seeing Stella in the snow, crying over his lifeless shell, and he hated himself. "Mercy."

"Tempting offer, Uncle, truly—but I am not known for showing mercy. Now drink this."

The searing liquid poured down his throat, and he coughed and choked, struggling to breathe with Apollo's fingers still inside his chest. His entire body burned as if he'd been placed in an oven.

"I think you gave him too much."

"He wasn't going to survive without it."

"Those holes in his head..."

"Patience, patience, I'll get to them—"

Logan sat up suddenly, startling both gods with his movement. His head was swimming. He felt energy...a dark, intoxicating sense of power at the edges of his fingertips. Shadows called to him. Their darkness promised to cool the fire on skin, in his body.

"My lord…" Thanatos said, his voice rising like he was asking a question, but uncertain as to whether or not he wanted to ask it.

"What's this power?" Logan asked, opening his palms. Black smoke poured from his hands, its gloom sucking in all semblance of light, and Apollo backed away. "Okay," Apollo said, pulling Thanatos back by the elbow. "Maybe I did give him too much."

Inside, Logan burned: he felt rage, rage that had built upon bit by bit, death after death, until it was a monstrous storm inside that threatened to consume him. Every short, miserable human life he lived; every moment he came close to reuniting with his wife, to seeing his son, dashed. He wanted to destroy everything: to raze the Earth to the ground and walk upon its burned foundations, crushing anyone underfoot who dared to stand in his way. That would be justice.

"Seems like he's back," Apollo said, nervous. "Calling upon the powers of darkness and all."

"No," Thanatos countered. "He's overheating on Ambrosia."

"He's alive, isn't he? You Chthonic gods can work out the rest amongst yourselves."

"Nephew," Hades said, his voice cold and menacing. The god stopped moving. "You stay."

Apollo gulped. "Yes, Uncle, of course." Darkness enveloped him, cooled his burning skin, but the rage did not subside. He felt the solid weight of Thanatos' hand on his shoulder. "My lord, you need to stop."

"I cannot."

"Your soul is still too shattered. You will destroy yourself, and we will not be able to help you—"

"I am...so angry." He saw Horatio—Cronus—full and corporeal, outside of his prison in Tartarus, human and malicious, driven to destroy his children each and every time. "This rage—it's eating me alive."

"My lord—"

Hades felt himself split across space, and across time. He saw the lightly shimmering, golden soul of Hermes—Henry Olsen—and felt his control slipping. In the shadows of Henry's apartment, he appeared, though the corruption of this lifetime took hold once again and guided his actions. He touched his nephew's cheek, fighting with the urge to rip him apart, so that his human soul would wander the Underworld blind, deaf, and dumb.

He found Demeter, who was sitting in her office, and who did not bother to turn around to his presence.

"Seems the boy wasn't lying," she said, looking out her massive window into the night. The storm outside was violent: snow flurries blanketed the streets, and the wind pushed the building to and fro.

"Have you enjoyed all this?" he asked, sneering, not bothering to hide his disgust.

"If you're asking whether I've enjoyed all the times I've spent raising my daughter, lifetime after lifetime, then yes. And I've enjoyed seeing you suffer. Although I did not anticipate that Apollo would ally himself to you this go around." She turned to face him, beautiful and terrible. "Welcome, Hades."

"Why have you done this?"

She laughed, cold as the ice she commanded. "I've not done anything, little brother. All this suffering is your doing."

"Mine?"

She stood, walking up to him. She adjusted his tie, wiped the ichor that was oozing down his forehead. "Quite an accurate shot, isn't he? Especially for a human. Perhaps Apollo saw fit to bless him; a gift for his slumbering brother."

"Demeter…"

"You smell like ash and death, you know." She moved away from him, sliding to her wine cabinet. "I thought you would have at least cleaned up a bit before arriving to pull rank on me. You have always been...fastidious." She uncorked a fresh bottle, poured a glass, and offered it to him. He took it.

"I've not been myself."

She sipped her wine, turned to face the window once more. "As you say. Neither have I." A moment passed between them. "Did you manage to meet your son?"

The rage on his skin burned; he shut his eyes. "Yes."

"I've heard tell that he's a good man."

"He's just a boy."

She raised an eyebrow. "Still?"

He had no answer for her. Every cell in his body called for violence. He did not move. The clock in the room marked each passing second. "I suppose that makes sense," she said, still gazing out the window. "Given what's transpired."

"What has transpired?" he asked. He drank some of his wine, hoping it would help to settle the anger and fury burning inside him. It did not.

"You really don't know, do you, little brother?" She looked at him, stunned.

"I would not be asking if I did...sister."

Her eyes narrowed. "What do you remember of the Gigantomachy?"

A spear going through his back; blood and ichor on the ground. "Death."

"Death indeed," Demeter said. The edges of her mouth turned up. "Your death as well as our brothers' and Hestia's." Her eyes flashed then, with a rage to match his own. "And my daughter's."

"What can bring about the death of a god?"

"Many things. Tempting Fate. A duel for power amongst our kind. Lack of worship. We all struggle with this now."

"That was not the problem then."

"No, it was not. No—you were the problem. You and your son, who was born of a union that should have never occurred—"

"She chose to eat the seeds, Demeter. She chose me." Darkness erupted from him, and Demeter smiled. His body burned.

"After you seduced her with your wealth and sweet words," she hissed, "as you're doing now. But it no longer matters. The Fates killed the boy, stifling his life in my daughter's womb."

Green eyes. His mother's smile. Zagreus. Alive. Hades' rage quieted, but only just. "I remember."

"That should've stopped you, but it didn't. And we were losing our war against the giants. The lands turned barren; our worshippers died. The end of our pantheon was fast approaching. You made a pact with the Fates to give your son life; you convinced the others to join you so that we would win the war. You died in that final battle; Persephone, not long after. The others? Old age, a stray arrow—human deaths. You live; you die; you live again, endlessly, as humans, while your godly bodies remain in slumber. And thus it has been for two thousand years."

He was shaking. The center of his chest boiled, and the pain radiated to the rest of his body. "And Father?"

Her hard expression softened, almost imperceptibly, but he saw it. "A measure of the pact."

He could picture it clearly. The laughter of the three sisters as they goaded him. His life for his son's would not be enough. Zagreus was never supposed to exist, you see; thus, certain extremes would need to be taken, were he to...revive. Your life for your son's—your family's lives, as well. It would be easy, they argued. You are a cunning man, first-born Son of Cronus. Let those half-truths and outright lies fall from your lips when they suit you the most. For your son.

His jaw clenched painfully at the memory. He had always been too clever for his own good.

I propose a pact with the Fates, he had said. It will win you the war. Zeus hung onto his every word; Poseidon needed more convincing. But in the end, it worked: the Olympians would see this war end. Very few did not join his destructive cause.

The effect on his body was almost immediate, though the others did not realize their doom until much later. His wife was the first to notice, when she could muster the strength to leave her chambers. She could sense he had done something...wrong, and would not touch him. You look ill, she had told him. One of the last things she ever said to him. And he did look ill; his strength had diminished greatly, seeping out of his body every day, so that when he fought in that last battle with the giants, a single mistake was all it took to kill him. He reached out for her, terrified of the darkness that pulled at him, because a god was not supposed to die, and he watched the fear and confusion in her eyes turn into hurt and anger.

"I have done this." He crushed the wine glass in his hands; ichor and wine mixed together, dripping down to the wooden floor of her office.

"Yes, Hades." They locked eyes, and were he just a man, he would fear her. But he was no longer just a man. "You are the reason my daughter dies, and I must grieve her."

"She was not part of the pact—"

"No," Demeter shook her head, her green eyes burning with hate. "But she is married in the old way to you, bound to you. Thus she dies when you do...or shortly thereafter."

He grabbed her shoulders, shook her violently. "You would seek to have me murdered, knowing this?" he shouted.

She spat at him, and his eyes twitched. "She lives; she dies; she lives again."

"Not this time."

She pushed him off her, throwing him across the room with little more than a light tap. The back of his head hit the glass of the window, cracking it, and sparks flew in front of his eyes. "Fool," she seethed, wiping herself off where he had touched her. "There is still so much you fail to understand."

"Enlighten me, then, Demeter." His words were slurred. Whatever strength the Ambrosia had given him was fading: the burning on his skin and in his body was beginning to subside, and he began to feel faint.

"You're bleeding red again. Do you feel the call to your cold halls? Best not keep them waiting."

With the strength he had left, he launched himself at her, knocking her down and pinning her under his great weight. She laughed, absolutely fearless. His hands were around her neck; nausea coursed through him. "You do not own your life, or the life of your son."

"What does that mean?" He shook her. She was laughing. He wanted to kill her. "Demeter, what does that mean?" He was dizzy; the strength in his hands was waning. The power he felt at his fingertips, gone.

"Until next we meet...Mr. Black."

"Demeter!" He was back in the alleyway with Thanatos and Apollo. On his hands and knees, holding nothing, shaking. His body felt clammy and feverish in the cold of the snow. He retched, and the sick was red blood.

"Have fun, my lord?" Thanatos was smacking him lightly on the back. "That's right, get it all out of your system, eh. I wish you hadn't pulled that stunt. Your body isn't ready."

Logan felt small. He felt...human. Death was touching him, and he shuddered. His chest hurt; his head felt so swollen it could pop; his leg throbbed. The wind whipped through the alleyway, sharp as icicles, and he shivered, cold. He was human.

He rolled away from Thanatos, pressing his back against the dirty brick of the alley's wall. The two gods stared at him. His heart beat fast—his heart was beating again! His fingers dug into the snow, curling them at the pain of each pump of blood in his body. "Okay," he said, gasping, "okay, I believe you." He shut his eyes, shielding them from the bitter cold. "I believe you."