Chapter 355: Do not call me brother
The night sky over Olympus did not know peace.
What had once been a realm of shimmering clouds and golden palaces now trembled beneath the weight of an ocean not meant to exist in the heavens. Towers carved from ivory and light bent like reeds, dripping with water that had no source but Poseidon himself. The sea had climbed into the sky, and it was not leaving.
The gods had thrown everything at him. Lightning, flame, chains wrought of starlight, even the dreaded Seal of Eternity that bound Titans in the abyss. But the god they had once banished had returned not as he was—but as something more.
Poseidon stood upon the shattered steps of Olympus, his trident glowing with abyssal light, his hair flowing like ink through water. Behind him the sea churned, breaking against the marble steps of the Pantheon. His presence alone bent the air, filling it with the sound of crashing waves, though none should exist here.
"You thought to bind me again," Poseidon’s voice rolled like a storm tide, every word a crashing breaker. "You thought the Rift had broken me. Instead, it tempered me."
Zeus himself had descended from the upper halls, his form blazing with lightning, eyes white suns of fury. His thunderbolts had once shattered continents, but now he hesitated—for every strike he hurled into the tide was consumed.
"You are a danger to the balance of all realms," Zeus roared. "Not a brother, not even a god—just the abyss wearing flesh!"
Poseidon leveled his trident at him. "And you, Father of the Sky, are a coward who feared the sea’s depth. You caged me because you could not drown me. Now... you will learn what drowning truly means."
Behind Zeus, Hera, Athena, and Apollo stood arrayed, weapons drawn, their forms luminous and terrible. They were not mortals to be cowed by storms. They were gods who had ruled the world for millennia. And yet, as the water climbed higher, licking at the pillars of Olympus, they felt it too—Poseidon was no longer their equal.
He was becoming something else.
Hera was the first to strike. With a wave of her scepter, chains of dominion lashed from the air itself, trying to bind Poseidon’s limbs. They struck true, but the moment they touched him, the chains dissolved into foam. Her eyes widened.
Athena rushed next, spear aimed straight for his chest. It was a thrust that had once slain giants, sharpened with wisdom and divine cunning. But as it pierced the tide wrapping his form, the sea closed over the blade. Athena pulled, but the spear would not return. Her weapon was swallowed.
"Impossible," she whispered.
Poseidon’s eyes flicked toward her, abyssal and endless. "You have fought wars on land, daughter of wisdom. But the sea has no war. Only inevitability."
With a single sweep of his trident, the tide surged upward, blasting Athena from her footing. She was hurled across the marble court, crashing into a column that cracked from crown to base.
Apollo loosed a rain of solar arrows, each one blazing brighter than the sun. They seared into the tide, hissing steam, filling Olympus with blinding light. For a moment, the ocean hissed and boiled... but then the arrows vanished, their light absorbed into a greater abyss.
Poseidon emerged unscathed. His laughter rolled like thunder beneath waves. "You burn the surface. But the depths remain untouched."
Zeus finally struck, hurling his thunderbolt with all the wrath of storms and skies. It slammed into Poseidon with such force the heavens themselves shook, Olympus quaking as if the very foundations might crack. Mortals in the world below cried out as lightning split the night sky.
But when the light cleared, Poseidon still stood. His body bled with rivers of black water instead of blood, his aura deeper, darker. The trident in his hand pulsed, drinking the lightning like wine.
"Brother..." Zeus’s voice wavered for the first time in an age.
Poseidon’s voice was low, but it carried through every chamber, every hall, every trembling god.
"Do not call me brother. I am the tide that breaks Olympus."
The sea surged.
It did not crash. It did not rage. It simply rose, as if the sky itself had been tilted, and Olympus was sinking into it. Palaces of marble and gold drowned in silence, their flames extinguished, their statues swallowed whole. Gods screamed as their halls filled with saltwater, as the realm they had thought eternal crumbled like a sandcastle.
Hera screamed commands, summoning spirits of air to hold the sea back, but they were snuffed out. Athena tried to reform her spear, but the waters would not release it. Apollo’s light flickered like a candle guttering before an endless gale.
And Zeus, king of the gods, fought to hold Olympus aloft with his lightning—his arms outstretched, his body blazing. But for every bolt he hurled into the flood, the abyss answered with silence.
The drowned bell that had tolled in the mortal harbor now echoed here too, impossibly, its sound vibrating through the bones of every god.
The bell of drowning.
Olympus itself was drowning.
Far away, in the halls of other pantheons—Asgard, Duat, the Jade Heavens—their gods watched through trembling mirrors of divination. They saw the sea climb Olympus, saw Poseidon wade through halls where once he had been shackled.
Some grew fearful. Others furious. Some whispered of alliances.
But all of them felt it: if Olympus fell, none of their realms would stand untouched. The tide would spread.
Thalorin’s abyss, wearing the name Poseidon, would consume them all.
As the waters broke through the Pantheon’s throne room, Zeus stood alone before Poseidon, lightning arcing across his chest, his body battered but unyielding.
"Even if Olympus drowns," Zeus growled, "I will not kneel to you."
Poseidon’s eyes glowed with fathomless depths. He raised his trident, water spiraling into a vortex behind him that stretched beyond sight, a whirlpool in the very fabric of heaven.
"You will not kneel," Poseidon said. "You will fall."
And with a single thrust, the vortex collapsed inward, dragging Zeus into its abyss.
Lightning screamed. The sky split. Olympus shattered.
And the world below, every ocean, every river, every drop of water, whispered a single name.
Poseidon.