Zeus stood at the high window of his golden tower and watched the council gather below. He had built this tower to see everything: the white peaks of the mountains, the cloud floor of Olympus, the small fires of mortals far past the gates. From here he ruled the sky and held the line between gods and men. From here he was supposed to be unanswerable. This morning a single golden scroll on a public banner made that a lie. The banner stood at the foot of the marble steps, framed in bronze and gilded columns. Hera had posted the list there at dawn. Every name of every mortal woman he had ever touched ran down the scroll in clean script. The gods had come to read it. Poseidon stood with his arms crossed. Athena kept her face still. Demeter would not look up at the tower at all. Hermes hovered near the back, ready to run. They were not whispering. That was the worst part. Zeus's plan had been simple. Write a law that bound every god to his judgment. Carve it. Seal it. Make them swear. He had done all of it. The tablet was already signed. But a law needs a lawgiver the council still trusts, and the scroll downstairs was eating that trust by the minute. If he stayed in the tower, the law would go soft before the ink dried. He lifted his arm and the great eagle came down from the rafters, lightning running along its feathers. He spoke into its ear. Then he sent it out the window. The bird climbed once over the peaks and dropped toward the council, slow enough that every god saw it coming. It landed on the top of the banner and folded its wings over the scroll. It did not burn the names. It only stood there, claws on the gold, and waited. Zeus walked down from the tower alone. He crossed the marble and stopped in front of the banner with the eagle above him and the council in a half circle around. He did not deny the list. He read the first three names aloud himself. Then he said the law he had written bound him too, and that the scroll was proof he had needed to write it. He asked the council to judge the law on what it did, not on who had asked for it. Themis was not there to rule. The other gods had to choose in the open. One by one, they gave him the day. Not forgiveness. Just the day. The law would stand. The eagle lifted off the banner and the scroll stayed where Hera had pinned it. Zeus turned back toward the tower and saw her watching from the far steps, unbound, already counting what he had spent to keep his law alive. She had lost the morning. She had not lost the fight.

By noon the law was a piece of paper and nothing else. Zeus stood on the marble below his tower and watched the gods drift away from the banner. They had given him the day. They had not given him a way to keep it. A law without a hand behind it was a rumor. He knew the next god to break it would prove that out loud, and the one after that would not even bother to hide. He walked the open ground past the council steps and stopped where the hill flattened into bare stone. This was the place. He called for the eagle. The bird came down through the clouds with lightning running in its feathers and landed on his wrist. He spoke the order plain. Build here. Build it so they see it from every door on the mountain. He set the work himself. He had the stone cut from the mountain and dragged up the slope. He raised a marble seat on a high base and set a likeness of himself upon it, crowned, holding a bolt. He placed the eagle in bronze beside the throne, wings half open, claws on the base. He cut the law's first line into the plinth so any god passing could read it. Then, across the path, he laid the foundation of a hall with wide steps and tall doors. He called it the place of answer. Any god accused under the law would be brought through those doors and stand before the seat outside until the council ruled. He called Hermes to him and gave him one task. Carry the summons. The first god named under the law would be walked up that path by Hermes himself, in daylight, where the others could watch. Hermes looked at the hall, looked at the monument, and did not argue. He took the staff and went. Then Zeus did the thing he had not yet done. He walked to the foot of the new monument and laid his own hand on the base. He swore, where any god could see, that he would be the first dragged up that path if he broke the law he had written. The eagle above him cried once. The bronze did not move, but the oath went into the docket beside it, cut by the same hand that cut the law. The mark held. The threat was real now, and it pointed at him first. Hera watched from the far steps. She had not sworn. She did not need to. She read the hall's tall doors and the seat above them and counted what they meant. Zeus had given his law teeth. He had also shown every god in earshot where those teeth would bite first. She turned back toward her own rooms with a small, careful smile, already deciding which god to push through those doors before he could.