The Isu, for all their power, did not survive. Their civilization ended. The gods that Greece worshipped — built from their remnants, their technology, their memory — are not eternal in the way the myths claim. Mortality is not a limitation that the Isu escaped. It is the condition that gives the mortal choices their weight, that makes the suffering and the love and the blade-held-for-justice mean something that immortality cannot access.

Living as if every day is our last is not recklessness. It is the full presence that mortality makes possible — the attention that comes from knowing the time is finite, the choices that have weight because they cannot be undone. The gods envy this. Kassandra embodies it.