Often I have thought there were three Hadrians. There was the one who died in the garden of the Demiurge, the one who sat at Valka’s bedside, who was like the first and yet unlike him, both living men made of flesh made separate by the circumstances of their births—one in water, one in blood. And there was a third Hadrian. One born only of voice, one never really born at all. There was Hadrian the myth, not the man. And Hadrian the myth was truly immortal.
