Jörmungandr's Kiss struck Apollo's hastily raised guard, and the clash between cursed weapon and divine blade sent shockwaves across Olympus. But where their first exchange had been relatively even, now the momentum had shifted.
Apollo fought with the desperate fury of someone who had just realised his fundamental assumptions about reality were wrong. His sword work was still technically perfect, each strike and parry executed with millennia of practiced skill. But compared to Achilles' battlefield-honed skills, his technique was just choreography.
Achilles fought with the freedom of someone who had already accepted the worst possible outcome and found it lacking. Each exchange saw him learning, growing, becoming something more than he had been moments before.
