Chapter 343: The Gathering of the Twelve 2
The throne hall of Olympus was never still. Even in silence, the very walls whispered with the voices of past decrees, oaths, and betrayals. The great columns carved from sky-marble caught the flicker of lightning as it bled from the storm outside, casting shadows that writhed like serpents across the floor.
Zeus sat at the pinnacle of it all, thunder in his gaze, fingers drumming slowly against the armrest of his throne. His crown of lightning, though dimmed, hummed in response to the storm rolling endlessly across the skies above. He had called the council. And they had come.
But it was not harmony that filled Olympus tonight. It was unease.
Athena stood nearest to Zeus, clad in bronze that shimmered faintly as if lit from within. Her grey eyes were narrowed, calm yet calculating, absorbing every detail.
Beside her lounged Dionysus, wine spilling from his cup though his face was stripped of its usual amusement. Even the god of revelry seemed unsettled.
Hades, permitted entrance from the depths, leaned heavily on his obsidian staff. Shadows clung to him like carrion birds, and though he said nothing, his gaze flickered with something between irritation and grim satisfaction.
"Speak it plainly," Hera broke the silence, her voice sharp enough to slice through marble. "The sea no longer answers to us. The tide leans only to him."
A murmur rippled across the chamber. None dared question who him referred to.
Poseidon.
Not the brother who once stood by their side, trident raised in unity, but the reborn god who now carried a weight none of them could match.
"He has drowned three cities without lifting a finger," Apollo said, his golden lyre cradled in one hand like a weapon waiting for the right moment. "Do you not feel it? The sun itself bends its reflection to his command. The horizon belongs to him now."
"And whose fault is that?" Ares barked, slamming a gauntleted fist against the floor. Sparks jumped across the polished marble. "We should have struck when the first whispers of his awakening reached us! But no—" he shot Zeus a glare "—we debated, we doubted, and now he grows unchecked!"
"Watch your tongue, boy," Zeus thundered, lightning flashing through his teeth. The whole hall shook under the weight of his voice.
But Ares did not yield. His eyes gleamed, feral and eager. "What good is thunder if the sea does not fear it?"
The silence that followed was heavier than stone. Even Zeus did not immediately answer.
It was Hades who finally broke it, his voice low and cutting, a blade dragged slowly across glass.
"You mistake the matter, brother. Poseidon does not defy you. He has transcended you. His dominion is not one of rebellion. It is one of inevitability."
Zeus’s eyes narrowed. "You think him inevitable?"
"I know it," Hades replied, shadows thickening around him like smoke. "Mortals already whisper his name in their sleep. Their blood remembers him. Even the dead carried to my halls wash ashore with his salt in their veins. His reach is not confined to the seas. It stretches into the very bones of existence."
"Then he is no longer our brother," Hera said coldly. "He is a rival."
Athena’s hand tightened around her spear. "And a rival with patience. He does not storm our gates. He tilts the world, inch by inch, until we topple without a battle."
The council erupted into arguments—Ares demanding war, Apollo urging caution, Dionysus laughing bitterly into his cup, muttering that mortals would drown regardless of divine decree.
Hera pressed for alliances with forgotten gods. Hermes suggested subtle strikes against Poseidon’s growing cults on earth.
Athena, however, remained silent until the noise reached its peak. Then she spoke, and the hall stilled.
"Every plan you suggest assumes he is still what he once was—a god, bound by our laws, limited by the balance of Olympus. But Poseidon has become something else. Something... more."
She turned, eyes fixed firmly on Zeus. "If we fight him as gods, we will lose. We must fight him as an idea. Break his inevitability before it takes root. Shatter belief before it becomes law."
"Sacrilege," murmured Dionysus, almost amused. "You would wage war not against the sea, but against faith itself."
Athena’s gaze hardened. "Faith is the battlefield he has chosen."
For the first time in an age, Zeus looked old. Not weak, never that, but weary—the kind of weariness born of carrying dominion for longer than mountains had stood.
He remembered Poseidon not as the reborn tidebringer, but as the brother who had fought beside him against Kronos, trident and thunder side by side. He remembered laughter, feasts, the sound of oaths sworn when the world was young.
But the brother he remembered was gone.
In his place stood a god who had drowned cities and called storms without lifting his weapon, who bent the tides of men and immortals alike.
And Zeus knew—deep in the marrow of Olympus—that if Poseidon walked these halls now, the very foundations of the mountain would quake.
He clenched his fist, thunder hissing through his veins. "Then we do not wait. Assemble the war council. Call the furies, the forges, the hunters. Olympus must remind the world where true dominion lies."
Ares grinned savagely. "At last."
But Athena’s eyes narrowed. "If you rush into war without understanding, Father, you will only hasten our end."
"Then enlighten us," Zeus snapped.
Her gaze shifted to the storm beyond the hall. "We cannot slay him as he is. We must unravel him where he is weakest—his humanity. The shell he wears, the mortal memory he carries. That is the fracture line. Strike there, and the tide may yet turn."
The council stirred uneasily. They all knew what she meant.
Poseidon was reborn in mortal flesh once. Some part of that flesh remained.
To kill him... they would have to kill the man.
As the gods debated, something else stirred beneath the marble floors.
The old stones of Olympus remembered. They remembered blood spilled, oaths broken, betrayals hidden. And now, they shivered with a presence not invited, not welcomed.
A ripple of water spread silently across the base of Zeus’s throne. No one saw it. No one heard the faint hum carried within it.
But if they had listened closely, they would have heard the whisper.
I am listening.
And I am waiting.
Poseidon’s voice, carried on the veins of water seeping into the heart of Olympus itself.
At last, the council settled on a decree.
Zeus rose, lightning forming a halo around his head. "So be it. The armies of Olympus prepare for war. The mortal shell must be hunted, and Poseidon’s name struck from every temple, every tongue. Faith will be severed before it can drown us all."
The gods bowed—or pretended to.
But Athena’s gaze lingered on the storm beyond.
And Hades’s lips curved into something that was not quite a smile.
The council believed they had chosen war.
But Olympus was already tilting.
And Poseidon was listening.