Chapter 345: The reckoning had begun.
The silence after war is rarely silence at all.
The battlefield where Poseidon stood was still slick with divine blood, the echo of thunderclaps lingering in the fractured skies. The gods who had dared to bar his way lay broken, their weapons shattered, their forms retreating into smoke as their essence fled back toward Olympus.
And yet... the sea was not calm.
Beneath him, the ocean churned with a hunger that was not entirely his own. The abyss—the endless dark trench where Thalorin’s whispers once slumbered—had begun to stir again. Every victory, every drop of blood spilled upon the tide, was another crack in the prison that had held the drowned abyss at bay.
Poseidon clenched his trident, its sapphire core burning with a resonance that matched the pulsing of the waves. His eyes, once human, now reflected entire storms.
"The gods think me a tyrant," Poseidon murmured to the restless tide. "But tyranny is mercy compared to what sleeps below."
The water answered, rolling in unnatural silence. No gulls, no fish, no whisper of mortal life. The sea itself was holding its breath.
Far above, in the marble heights of Olympus, the council gathered again. Zeus himself leaned upon his crackling scepter, face grave, while Hera’s fury burned behind her eyes. Athena stood rigid, her armor gleaming with freshly forged sigils of resistance.
"Three gods have already fallen," Athena said sharply, her voice ringing like steel on steel. "And yet Poseidon rises higher. Every battle strengthens him. Every storm bends closer to his command."
"Then he is no longer simply Poseidon," Hera hissed. "The drowned abyss feeds him. He is not just a god of the sea—he is becoming the sea itself."
Ares growled from where he leaned against a pillar, still bloodied from his clash with Poseidon weeks prior. "Let him come. I’ll meet him blade to blade again."
"Fool." Athena cut him down with a glare. "Your blade cannot cleave a tide. He does not fight like us anymore. He is the battlefield."
Zeus’s booming voice silenced them. "Enough. I will not watch Olympus crumble because of your bickering. If Poseidon believes himself unchained, then I will chain him myself."
But even as Zeus spoke, lightning flickering from his beard, the marble beneath their feet quaked. Not from thunder. Not from Olympus’s foundation.
From the sea.
Poseidon knelt at the edge of a cliff overlooking the open waters, the horizon stained crimson by the last embers of sunset. Yet what he saw was not the beauty of dying light—it was the faint spiral blooming across the ocean’s skin.
A whirlpool.
But not natural.
It spun with perfect geometry, forming sigils in its wake. It was the mark of the abyss.
The voice came, not as sound, but as pressure. Heavy. Crushing. A reminder of the darkness that had slumbered beneath him since his rebirth.
"You open the gate with every step, vessel."
"No," Poseidon growled. "I am no vessel. I am the god of the sea. I command you."
"Do you?" The abyss laughed without laughter. "The sea does not obey. It devours. It takes. You cannot command the tide, child. You are only the first wave of what comes."
Poseidon’s grip tightened on his trident. For a moment, he felt the weight of mortality pressing in—the human heart of Dominic that still beat within him, defiant against gods and abysses alike.
"No," he whispered. "I will not be your pawn. I am not Thalorin reborn. I am Poseidon. And I choose my own war."
The whirlpool stilled. The abyss retreated... for now.
While gods plotted and abysses whispered, mortals suffered. The cities nearest the coastlines had begun to drown, not in waves, but in shifts. Harbors tilted. Streets flooded upward through dry stone. Entire villages awoke to find the sea resting at their doorstep, calm and glassy yet immovable.
Priests of the old pantheon cried that it was divine punishment. Sailors whispered that it was a new age, an age where the sea itself had taken dominion. And among them all, a scattered handful—those who had felt Poseidon’s touch and lived—spoke in reverence.
"He is not wrath."
"He is not mercy."
"He is inevitability."
The cult of the Deep Tide was born.
Back on Olympus, Athena laid her strategy before the assembled gods.
"He grows with every battle. Alone, none of us can defeat him. Together, perhaps. But there is another way."
Hera frowned. "Speak."
Athena’s eyes glowed with grim resolve. "We do not kill him. We seal him. Chain him where the abyss stirs, so both drown together once more. The sea cannot rise if its god is its prisoner."
Zeus thundered. "Seal my brother? Bind one of Olympus’s thrones in shame?"
"Would you rather watch him wear your throne, Father?" Athena snapped. "He is not simply a rival. He is inevitability. If he wins, Olympus will bow beneath the tide."
The gods fell to silence. Even Ares had no retort.
At last, Zeus’s scepter struck the ground, sparks shattering through the air.
"So be it. Gather your armies. Forge your chains. We will march."
On the other side of the world, Poseidon stood knee-deep in the sea, the waves curling like dogs at his command. The mortal cultists knelt behind him, whispering chants, their eyes glazed with salt-born visions.
He did not ask for their worship. He did not need it. But he accepted it. For worship was power. And he would need all of it.
He could feel Olympus stirring, feel the divine council’s decree pressing against his name like a curse. They were coming. Not as challengers, but as executioners.
And Poseidon was ready.
He raised his trident. The sea split before him, revealing the yawning trench of the abyss below. For a heartbeat, silence reigned. Then the water surged upward, forming titans of brine and bone, their eyes hollow but their presence vast.
His army.
No longer would he stand alone.
"Let them come," Poseidon whispered, voice low as the undertow. "Olympus fears drowning? Then I will show them what it means to breathe the sea."
The storm gathered. The abyss stirred. And far above, thunder split the skies as Olympus itself prepared for war.
The reckoning had begun.