Chapter 311: More. Deeper. Take it all.
From Olympus itself, three figures had descended, their combined radiance casting even the drowned horizon into shadow.
Zephyros, Lord of Skies, whose wings blotted out the sun.
Nymera, Goddess of Shadows, who carried night wherever her feet touched.
And Seraphin, Flame Sovereign, whose very breath burned water into steam.
They came not as rulers. They came as executioners.
"Poseidon!" Zephyros roared, his voice shaking the bones of the world. "Your dominion ends here. Return to the Rift where you belong!"
Poseidon turned slowly, his gaze unblinking. When he spoke, the waters answered. "You call it dominion. I call it balance restored. You speak as though you rule the seas, yet you never dared to touch them."
With a sweep of his trident, the ocean buckled, sending a tidal wall screaming upward. But Zephyros was faster—wind lances burst from his wings, slicing through water, dispersing the tide into mist.
Seraphin followed, flames carving across the mist to burn the very vapor into choking smoke. The air itself became a furnace.
But then the sea exhaled.
Poseidon’s will pressed outward, and the smoke curled back into water, the flames hissed into silence. He stepped forward, each stride pulling the battlefield deeper into his tide.
Nymera appeared from the shadows behind him, daggers gleaming black as midnight. They sank into his back—only to be swallowed whole by water before they pierced skin. The liquid surged backward, striking her like a hammer and sending her sprawling.
"Your tricks drown easily," Poseidon said.
She spat blood but smiled faintly. "So does arrogance."
The fight grew monstrous.
Zephyros unleashed cyclones, tornadoes lashing the seas into whirlpools that could drag entire fleets under. Poseidon countered with stillness, flattening the ocean into a mirror-surface so calm the storms collapsed under their own weight.
Seraphin breathed an inferno down upon him, flames hot enough to turn seawater into pillars of steam. Poseidon roared, and the water turned black with depth, swallowing the fire until it vanished into the abyss.
Nymera wove shadows into blades, into chains, into beasts that slithered through the tide to pierce his form. Poseidon’s trident shattered them one by one, until even the shadows bled.
And still he did not fall.
For every attack they hurled, the sea rose higher. For every wound they sought to carve, the tide closed it, healed it, became it. Poseidon was not fighting. He was becoming.
The mortals far below could not comprehend the battle. To them, the horizon simply ended. A wall of storm, fire, and darkness devoured the sky, and the sea beneath them pulled harder and harder, as though begging them to bow.
At last, their combined strike landed.
Zephyros unleashed a sky-lance forged of thunder.
Seraphin poured her life’s flame into a spear of fire.
Nymera bound them together with shadow, weaving storm and flame into a single weapon.
They hurled it into Poseidon’s chest.
The world cracked.
The ocean bucked outward, waves splitting like shattered glass. The air itself tore, sucking mortals into the sky as though into a void. The trident shook in Poseidon’s hands. For the first time in centuries, his knee bent beneath the force.
But he did not fall.
Instead, he laughed.
Low. Cold. Terrifying.
Water poured from his wound, yes—but the water itself was alive, writhing, hissing, birthing serpents of tide and leviathans of abyss. Each drop that spilled became a beast, and each beast turned on the gods who struck him.
"You would wound the sea?" Poseidon thundered. "Then drown in its blood!"
The leviathans surged. Beasts of current and abyssal depth tore through the skies, ripping into Zephyros’s wings, coiling around Seraphin’s flames, dragging Nymera back into the shadows she thought she commanded.
And Poseidon rose again, unbroken.
The Echo of Thalorin
Deep within, something stirred.
Poseidon could feel it—the echo of Thalorin, the ancient drowned king whose essence still lingered in his veins. With every clash, with every wound, the echo whispered:
More. Deeper. Take it all.
For a heartbeat, his vision warped. The ocean became endless void. The gods became prey. The world itself felt small enough to devour.
He shook it off, anchoring himself. "Not yet," he growled under his breath. "Not yours. Mine."
But the gods noticed.
Zephyros narrowed his golden eyes. "You... are not only Poseidon. Something else lives in you. Something older."
Poseidon leveled his trident at him. "You fear the truth because it drowns your lies. You call me drowned god, abyssal king, vessel of ruin. But I am none of these."
The sea surged behind him, blotting out horizon and sky.
"I am Poseidon."
The declaration rippled through both worlds. Mortals shivered in their flooded cities, whispering his name with both awe and terror. In Olympus, the council chambers cracked, gods watching in horror as the tide turned against their champions.
Zephyros faltered, his storms losing cohesion. Seraphin screamed as her fire dimmed against the abyssal cold. Nymera staggered, her shadows crushed beneath the weight of a tide that could not be pierced.
One by one, they fell back.
And Poseidon advanced.
The sea followed him like an army. Each step thundered like waves breaking on cliffs. Each breath pulled more of the horizon into him. The gods who had come as executioners now found themselves cornered prey.
"Do you see?" Poseidon roared, his voice shaking sea and sky alike. "You sought to end me. Instead, you awakened me."
His trident struck the sea.
And the horizon tilted.
Mortals screamed as the ocean itself leaned, pulling cities, forests, even mountains toward the abyss. Olympus trembled as the tide rose beyond its borders, licking at the edges of the divine realm.
The sea boiled.
Not with heat, but with power. A rolling, endless thrum that bent reality itself, as if the ocean were the heartbeat of a colossal god. And perhaps it was—for here, Poseidon stood at its center, no longer a mortal boy clutching at fragments of divinity, but the living embodiment of the tide’s will. His trident pulsed in his grip, not as a weapon but as a sovereign’s decree.
Above him, the heavens cracked. Clouds were shredded apart by lances of divine fire, lightning coiling in serpents across the sky. Olympus had moved.