Chapter 310: The war of pantheons
The battlefield no longer resembled the mortal world.
What had once been a fertile valley lay drowned beneath walls of black water. The mountains that had ringed the horizon were now jagged islands, their peaks barely visible through the mist. Lightning split the clouds above, but it was not Zeus’s wrath that summoned it — it was the echo of Poseidon’s rising tide.
The gods had thought to contain him here. Three pantheons had sent champions, their spears and blades laced with divinity, their bodies cloaked in the shimmering auras of immortality. They had believed that a mortal-turned-god would falter beneath their numbers.
They had been wrong.
Poseidon stood waist-deep in the ocean he had called, trident in hand, eyes burning with a storm that was not merely his own, but something older, deeper. Every surge of water was his heartbeat; every crash of thunder, his breath.
And still they came.
Helior, god of dawn, descended first, wings of burning light spread across the drowned valley. His sword cut arcs that seared holes through the storm. "Your reign ends here, sea-king!"
From the shadows at his flank slithered Nymera, goddess of whispers, her serpentine body coiling in and out of sight. With every hissed syllable, mortal soldiers drowned themselves in terror before they even reached him.
And last came Veyron, war-bringer of the northern host, clad in armor forged from the bones of titans. His axe drank thunder as though it were wine, his roar shaking even the waters Poseidon had raised.
Three gods. Three blades pointed toward him.
Poseidon’s grip on his trident tightened. The sea below churned, and with it, so did the memory of every oath broken by the divine council, every city drowned by their neglect, every mortal left to beg for mercy from gods that gave none.
"I am no longer a vessel," Poseidon said, his voice carrying not only over the storm, but through the veins of the gods themselves. "I am the tide. I am the abyss you buried and thought forgotten. You will not chain me again."
The battle ignited.
Helior struck first, his blade descending in a shaft of burning daylight that split the stormclouds. Poseidon raised his trident to meet it, and when steel met steel, the valley itself screamed. The waters boiled under the heat of dawnfire, but Poseidon twisted the tide, dragging the light downward, drowning flame in salt.
Nymera struck next. Her whispers coiled into Poseidon’s mind, illusions bleeding into sight — the image of Dominic’s mortal life, his weakness, his dying breaths on a hospital bed before rebirth. She hissed: You were nothing. You are nothing. You will be nothing again.
Poseidon closed his eyes. For a heartbeat, he almost saw himself as the fragile boy he once was. But then the abyss stirred. Thalorin’s ancient will surged through his veins, shattering the illusions like glass. His gaze snapped open, and the shadow-serpent recoiled.
"Nothing?" Poseidon roared, water bursting upward in pillars that scraped the heavens. "Nothing is what you will become!"
The tidal spires collapsed inward, smashing into Nymera with the weight of oceans.
But Veyron was already upon him. The war-bringer’s axe swung with the force of ten armies, splitting whirlpools, parting waves. The strike hit Poseidon square in the chest, and for the first time, the sea-king staggered.
Blood — black, glowing faintly with abyssal light — splashed into the water. The ocean itself recoiled as though struck.
Helior’s wings flared, Nymera slithered back from the flood, and Veyron raised his axe again. "Even the sea bleeds!" he bellowed. "Even the drowned god can be slain!"
But Poseidon only smiled.
The wound did not close — it expanded, unraveling into runes that pulsed with forgotten power. The ocean drank his blood eagerly, glowing brighter, deeper, until the drowned valley became an abyss without bottom.
Poseidon’s voice thundered through the storm.
"You think you fight the sea. But you fight what feeds the sea. You fight the Depth That Devours."
The waters answered. From beneath the waves, shapes stirred — colossal, ancient, forgotten. Leviathans uncoiled, their eyes glowing with abyssal hunger. Tendrils thicker than temple spires rose from trenches that had not existed until now. The battlefield was no longer mortal land, but a doorway to the void beneath creation.
Helior slashed his blade wildly, burning away tendrils that reached for him. Nymera screamed as her illusions collapsed under the sheer presence of the abyss. Veyron, for all his fury, found his axe sinking deeper into the tide as though the sea itself sought to consume him.
And Poseidon rose above them all, trident lifted, cloak of waves flowing endlessly into the storm.
"This is no longer your world to command," he declared. "It is mine to remake."
Daylight, shadow, and war crashed against ocean and abyss, every strike creating new maelstroms, every roar reshaping the drowned land. Mortals far beyond the valley saw the sky break into black and silver, heard the bellows of beasts that should never have been freed, felt the tug of tides that pulled at their very souls.
And somewhere, high above Olympus itself, the rest of the council felt it too.
The drowned god had risen.
The war of pantheons had begun.
The battlefield stretched wider than any mortal eye could comprehend. To the west, seas boiled and rose higher than mountains. To the east, the skies bled crimson where divine fire cut through the clouds. Every clash of god against god cracked the firmament itself, hurling fragments of star and storm into the mortal seas below.
And standing in the midst of it all was Poseidon.
Not a man, not merely a god, but the ocean incarnate. His hair streamed like endless waves, his trident burned with abyssal light, and every heartbeat of his chest pulled the tides closer, hungrier. The mortals watching from the coasts could no longer see where sea ended and god began. He had become the tide itself—inevitable, devouring, infinite.
Yet the gods did not falter.And no mortal dared to tell the story.