Chapter 317: Bind Him
But now, facing him anew, they felt the difference.
Poseidon was not the same.
He was calm. Patient. Eternal.
And when he spoke, his voice filled the broken throne hall like a tide:
"You cling to order built on lies. Your Olympus is a reef grown over corpses. And I... I am the current that strips reefs bare."
Zephyros’s thunder cracked. "You would drown the heavens themselves? This is not your realm!"
Poseidon lifted his trident. "The sea was never bound to realms. It is in the blood of mortals, in the marrow of gods, in the silence between stars. You fear me because you remember me."
He struck the trident against the floor.
The sound was not thunder. It was the deep boom of pressure far beneath the waves—an abyssal pulse. The pillars of Olympus groaned, and for a moment, the gods themselves swayed, as though standing on a ship rocked by unseen waves.
"Enough!" Seraphin roared, hurling fire that split into a thousand spears. They rained down, white-hot, each strike strong enough to incinerate worlds.
But as they touched Poseidon’s aura, the flames hissed out, swallowed whole by walls of seawater that manifested around him. Steam exploded upward, cloaking the chamber in scalding mist.
Nymera’s shadows struck next, weaving into spears that pierced even light itself. They plunged into the mist, stabbing through Poseidon’s chest—only for his body to ripple like water. The spears emerged dripping brine.
He was not evading. He was becoming.
Zephyros struck last. His wings unleashed a cyclone so vast that Olympus shook. Divine lightning lanced through the storm, jagged bolts tearing through mist and shadow alike, hammering against Poseidon with the wrath of judgment itself.
The sea god staggered—once. Salt blood sprayed into the air. For the first time, they had drawn him back.
The three gods pressed together, their voices combining into a single battle-cry. For a moment, they believed they could smother him.
But Poseidon only smiled.
From his wound, seawater gushed—not as blood, but as an ocean unto itself. The wound did not weaken him. It birthed a tide.
The chamber filled. Olympus itself tilted. Waves roared upward where no sea should exist. Lightning drowned, flame hissed, shadow broke apart in ripples. The gods themselves were forced back, choking on brine.
And above it all, Poseidon’s voice resounded:
"You call this blasphemy. I call this memory. This is the world before you caged it."
The three gods struck together once more, desperation fueling their divine strikes. But for every blow, a wave rose higher, faster, hungrier.
And then Poseidon raised his trident, the weapon glowing with abyssal light.
"This is no battle. This is reclamation."
He brought it down.
The impact split Olympus itself. The sky screamed. Mortal lands trembled as seas rose, coastlines cracked, and rivers reversed their flow. Across the world, mortals wept, prayed, or drowned as they felt their world shift under Poseidon’s dominion.
The three gods staggered, broken but not fallen. Blood dripped from their lips, ichor mingled with brine. They looked at Poseidon with fear they could not mask.
Zephyros spoke first, voice hoarse. "He is not Thalorin."
Seraphin clenched her fists, flames guttering. "No... he is worse."
Nymera, coughing blood, whispered: "He is inevitable."
Poseidon stepped toward them, the ocean roaring in his wake, and raised his weapon again.
The battlefield no longer resembled land. It was a fracture between realms—half drowned in crashing waves, half split open to skies roaring with divine fire. The banners of Olympus hung tattered over the cliffs, their golden glow dimmed by the suffocating mist that rose from Poseidon’s dominion.
He stood at the center of it all. Not as Dominic. Not as a vessel. But fully as Poseidon, Lord of the Deep, his trident pulsing with abyssal light. His aura pressed against the world itself, drowning out mortal cries and silencing the hearts of lesser gods who dared to watch from the edges.
Three titanic presences pressed back against him.
Zephyros, God of Judgment and Sky, wings burning with lightning.
Nymera, Goddess of Shadows, her cloak spreading like night over half the battlefield.
Seraphin, Goddess of Flame, fire spiraling from her palms as if she carried the sun in her veins.
The council had sent their mightiest—three against one.
The storm did not wait for words.
Zephyros struck first. Lightning coiled around his arm, condensing into a spear that cracked the air itself. He hurled it with all the authority of Olympus, aiming straight for Poseidon’s chest.
But water rose like a wall—no, like a living serpent. It coiled around the spear, devoured it, and spat it back upward, exploding harmlessly into the clouds.
"Your judgment is hollow," Poseidon said, his voice rumbling like an undertow. "The sea bows to no sky."
Nymera’s shadows swept in next, slashing across his body in tendrils sharper than steel. They cut through waves, through mist, through stone. One lashed against Poseidon’s shoulder, biting deep enough to draw ichor.
The crowd of minor deities watching from afar gasped—Poseidon could be wounded.
But when the shadows retracted, his wound did not bleed. Instead, water poured from it, forming into spectral shapes—phantoms of drowned soldiers, their eyes glowing blue, dragging Nymera’s shadows into themselves and dissolving them.
Seraphin wasted no time. She screamed, a battle cry of fire, and the sky itself caught flame. Thousands of blazing arrows rained down. Each one carried enough force to melt steel.
Poseidon raised his trident.
The sea answered.
Waves hundreds of meters tall erupted from nowhere, curling upward to form a dome of water. The fiery arrows hissed into steam, filling the air with a blinding fog that turned the battlefield into a nightmare of shadows and flickering light.
Within the fog, Poseidon moved.
The trident swept once.
The sea heaved in response, dragging the battlefield toward him. The very ground tilted, pulling Zephyros and Seraphin off balance as though the world itself leaned toward the abyss.
Zephyros roared, wings bursting outward, stabilizing himself in the storm. "You will not drown Olympus, sea lord!"
"Not Olympus," Poseidon replied. His eyes glowed like twin abysses. "The world."
He struck the trident into the earth.
The ground shattered. Water exploded upward in geysers, swallowing soldiers and minor gods alike. War banners vanished under torrents. What had once been a battlefield became an ocean, with only floating fragments of marble and broken weapons above the waves.
"Bind him!" Zephyros shouted. He soared high, lightning trailing from his wings, forming a cage of crackling energy across the heavens.
Nymera’s shadows spread, weaving into chains that lashed around Poseidon’s limbs, dragging at his arms, sinking into his flesh like venom.
Seraphin ignited the very sea around him, turning the waters red-hot. Steam rose in clouds so thick it burned the lungs of all who inhaled it.
Together, the three gods roared as one, forcing their combined will against him.
Poseidon staggered. The chains of shadow tightened. Lightning burned into his aura. Flames seared even his endless waves. For a heartbeat, the Lord of the Deep seemed mortal again.
The council’s watchers cheered. The gods had him.
But then—
The water around Poseidon stilled.
And the battlefield fell silent.
---
The Abyss Stirs
Poseidon’s eyes closed. His voice was not a roar, but a whisper that reached every ear.
"Do you know what sleeps beneath even me?"
The sea split apart. For the first time, the gods felt it—the deeper abyss. Black, endless water where no light had ever touched. And from it, something stirred.
Tentacles of darkness rose, not of shadow, not of flame, not of storm—but of pure abyss. They wrapped around Nymera’s chains and shattered them. They struck Zephyros from the sky, slamming him into the sea. They smothered Seraphin’s fire until her screams echoed in the boiling mist.
Poseidon opened his eyes. They were no longer blue. They were voids filled with the weight of the trench—the eternal hunger of Thalorin still slumbering inside.
"You fight Poseidon," he said, "but the abyss fights with me."
---
Breaking the Balance
The ocean rose higher still, swallowing entire mountain ridges around Olympus’s outposts. Cities below screamed as floods devoured their streets. Mortal armies who had come to witness the divine battle were swept into oblivion, their cries silenced under the tide.
Zephyros dragged himself from the sea, lightning sputtering. His golden armor cracked, ichor leaking. He looked up at Poseidon, horror dawning in his eyes.
"He’s not... just Poseidon," he whispered.
Seraphin clawed her way free of the boiling sea, her flames guttering. Her body trembled. "He carries... Thalorin..."
Nymera’s face was pale as death, her shadows retreating instinctively. She said nothing—because she had seen the abyss inside him before any of the others, and she knew this was not a battle that could be won by force.
---
Poseidon’s Ultimatum
The storm calmed suddenly, unnaturally. The ocean lay flat like glass.
Poseidon stood above the water on a rising platform of waves. His voice carried across the shattered battlefield.
"You call me vessel. You call me threat. You call me drowned god."
He raised his trident, pointing it at Olympus’s distant peaks.
"I am none of those things. I am the tide that cannot be chained. I am Poseidon reborn—and I will not kneel to your council."
The gods listened in silence. Even their rage faltered before the weight of his will.
"You have one choice," Poseidon declared. "Withdraw. Or drown."
---
The Retreat
Zephyros clenched his fists, lightning trembling across his body. Pride warred with fear in his blazing eyes. At last, he turned away, wings curling tight. "This isn’t over."
Seraphin spat blood into the sea, her flames extinguished. She vanished in a burst of cinders, retreating.
Nymera lingered longest. Her shadowy eyes met Poseidon’s void, and for a heartbeat, they shared an unspoken truth: she knew what was coming, and she feared it. With a final whisper, she dissolved into the night.
The battlefield was silent.
The ocean, endless and sovereign, belonged to him alone.
---
Closing Scene
Poseidon lowered his trident. His body ached with the strain of summoning the abyss, but his will did not falter. Above, the stars themselves seemed to tremble.
He had faced three of Olympus’s greatest and forced them to retreat.
But deep inside, the whisper of Thalorin stirred again, pleased.
Yes... drown them all.
Poseidon clenched his jaw, forcing the voice back into the trench of his mind.
Not yet.
First Olympus. Then the world.
And the tide... would never recede.