Ambient I — 12,000 BC

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Prometheus saw something else: Zeus preferred submission over equality.

So he tricked him.

At a great sacrifice, Prometheus divided an ox into two offerings:

• One pile: beautiful fat and bone, wrapped in glistening white.
• The other: rich meat, hidden inside the stomach lining.

He invited Zeus to choose.

Zeus, blinded by appearance, chose the fat and bone.

Humans kept the meat.

Zeus was furious.

Humiliation burns hotter than fire.

So Zeus did what insecure rulers do.

He took fire away from humanity.

But Prometheus was not finished.

He climbed to Olympus.

He stole flame from the forge of Hephaestus — or from the chariot of the sun, depending on the telling.

He hid the ember inside a fennel stalk.

And he brought it down to earth.

Fire.

Warmth.

Metalwork.

Cooking.

Light.

Civilization.

The beginning of everything.

Zeus could not allow defiance to look successful.

Prometheus was chained to a rock in the Caucasus Mountains.

Every day, an eagle descended.

It tore open his abdomen

and devoured his liver.

Every night, the liver regenerated.

Immortality became a sentence.

Pain without end.

But here is the important part:

He never apologized.

He never begged.

The eagle ate flesh.

It never touched his will.

Centuries later, the hero Heracles passed through the mountains.

He killed the eagle.

He broke the chains.

But even then, Zeus required Prometheus to wear a ring made from the rock he had been bound to — so that technically, he was still chained.

Because power hates to admit defeat.