Chapter 346: The End of Three gods (nymera, seraphin and zephyros
The world had never known silence like this.
The battlefield stretched across the shattered coasts of Erythra, where cities had once thrived under marble domes and golden harbors. Now, those domes lay sunken beneath fathoms of black water, their spires jutting from the sea like broken teeth.
The air itself was heavy with salt. It clung to the lungs, burned the eyes, and blurred the line between sea and sky. Mortals who had fled inland whispered of it: the drowning of the horizon.
And at the center of it all, he stood.
Poseidon.
No longer a boy. No longer a vessel. No longer the trembling shadow of gods. He was the tide itself—endless, relentless, sovereign. His form radiated with blue-white luminescence, veins lit like rivers of lightning, eyes fathomless trenches of storm.
The earth bent to him. The sea obeyed him.
And before him, three gods had dared to descend.
The Challenger Trio
Zephyros, God of the Sky, his wings unfurled like storms waiting to break. His spear shimmered with crackling thunder, every movement promising death.
Seraphin, Goddess of Flame, cloaked in whirling fire that turned rain into steam before it touched her skin. Her eyes burned with both fury and fear.
And Nymera, the Shadow Weaver, her shifting form half-real, half-nightmare, sliding between silhouettes as though she wore the void like a gown.
The Council of Olympus had finally grown desperate. The first waves of divine warriors Poseidon had drowned. The emissaries they had sent, he had broken. So now, they had chosen their three strongest hunters—champions bound by oath and fear—to strike together.
"Poseidon!" Zephyros’s voice rolled like thunder. "This ends tonight. Return to the Rift—or be ended forever."
Poseidon’s lips curved, not into a smile but into the stillness before a storm surge. His voice came like currents grinding stone.
"Tonight... it begins."
The first strike was Seraphin’s. A pillar of fire split the horizon, searing through sea and sky alike. Waves boiled instantly, sending geysers of steam across the battlefield.
But Poseidon did not move. The sea moved for him.
With a flick of his hand, the ocean rose in a wall a hundred meters tall, swallowing the inferno and smothering its roar. The flame hissed into silence, reduced to ash on the surface of his tide.
Zephyros followed, spear flashing. Lightning tore downward, jagged forks splitting the heavens. Each bolt struck Poseidon’s sea, a thousand suns exploding on impact.
The mortals watching from leagues away saw only light. But in the heart of the blast, Poseidon lifted his arm. The water conducted the storm. He bent it, broke it, and hurled it back—forks of lightning bursting upward, striking Zephyros squarely in the chest.
The god of the sky reeled, wings scorched, thunder betraying its own master.
Nymera moved next, her shadows darting like serpents. They coiled around Poseidon’s limbs, strangling, binding, pulling him toward the abyss she carried. Her whispers seeped into his ear, voices of forgotten drowned: Sleep, drown, dissolve into night.
For a moment, the battlefield dimmed. Poseidon’s glow flickered.
But then—
The sea itself screamed.
From the depths, tendrils of abyssal water lashed upward, thicker than masts, each one striking with the force of mountains. They wrapped Nymera’s shadows and tore them apart strand by strand, until her illusionary forms shredded into black spray.
Poseidon’s voice thundered through her unraveling veil:
"I was born in the abyss you fear."
And Nymera fell back, clutching her chest as her own shadows recoiled.
The battle did not pause. Poseidon spread his arms wide, and the ocean obeyed in full.
The coast tilted. Entire sections of land slid into the sea. From the cracks rose leviathans made of water and storm, their forms sculpted by his will—serpents of foam, titans of current, each one striking at the gods like living embodiments of wrath.
Seraphin screamed as one crashed upon her, her fire barely keeping its maw from crushing her whole. Zephyros’s wings beat furiously as another slammed upward, dragging him higher, forcing him to waste his lightning against Poseidon’s endless replenishment.
And Nymera, bleeding shadows, could not keep pace at all. Every step she took backward was swallowed by the rising tide.
Still, they fought.
Still, they struck.
Lightning burned craters into the sea. Fire seared Poseidon’s creatures to mist. Shadows clawed through the waves, rending holes that should not heal.
But for every attack, the ocean closed again.
For every wound inflicted, Poseidon rose higher.
It was not a battle of equals. It was drowning.
Poseidon’s Awakening
As the gods faltered, Poseidon tilted his head back and breathed.
The inhale dragged storms from distant horizons. The exhale forced the battlefield into submission.
The sea pulsed outward with every breath, a heartbeat vast enough to eclipse Olympus itself.
And then... the whisper came.
Not his.
Theirs.
Thalorin.
It was in his blood, in his bones, in the marrow of the tide itself. That ancient hunger, that abyss without end. For the first time in this war, Poseidon did not fight the voice.
He let it in.
Power surged. His form cracked with fissures of deep-blue fire. His aura flooded the battlefield like a drowning prayer.
Zephyros’s eyes widened. "This... this is not just Poseidon."
Seraphin spat blood. "It’s the abyss reborn."
And Nymera, shivering in the ruins of her shadows, whispered:
"It’s Thalorin."
Collapse
The sea tilted again. Not like a wave. Not like a storm. The entire ocean bent inward toward him. Ships sank leagues away, entire archipelagos drowned under the drag. The gods struggled to remain upright, their wings and fire and shadows useless against the sheer gravitational pull of water answering its master.
"ENOUGH!" Zephyros screamed, spear raised. He gathered all his lightning, all his divinity, into one desperate thrust. The sky itself split open as he dove, spear aimed for Poseidon’s heart.
The strike landed.
Thunder exploded. The sea boiled. The horizon vanished in light.
And when the glow cleared—
Poseidon still stood.
The spear jutted from his chest. His veins glowed brighter. His eyes burned deeper.
He grasped the weapon, yanked it free, and with one motion shattered it in his fist. The fragments fell into the sea and dissolved.
Zephyros collapsed to his knees, blood trailing from his lips.
"You cannot... be..."
Poseidon looked down on him, voice carrying like a tidal hymn:
"I am not what you remember. I am not what you feared. I am the tide that does not break. I am Poseidon."
And with a wave of his hand, the sea rose, crushing Zephyros beneath its weight.
Seraphin screamed, unleashing her last inferno, but Poseidon’s water surged higher, wrapping her flame in a suffocating embrace. The fire goddess’s blaze flickered, shrank, and was gone.
Nymera tried to flee into shadow, but the sea was everywhere now. There was no night untouched by water. Her scream was swallowed before it left her lips.
When the tide finally stilled, there were no gods left standing. Only Poseidon—his body radiant, his presence terrible—stood at the heart of a world that had learned a new truth.
The abyss had returned.
And Olympus itself trembled.