Chapter 339: You burn. I drown
The battlefield of gods was no longer the skies, no longer the seas, no longer Olympus itself. It was everything.
From the heights of heaven to the drowned canyons beneath the mortal seas, every ripple of power echoed in two realms at once. The clash between Poseidon and the pantheon had escalated beyond mere divinity—it had tilted existence.
Mortals could no longer tell where the tide ended and where the air began. The horizon bent unnaturally, ships drifted across rivers that were never connected to oceans, and cities hundreds of leagues inland woke to find their streets slick with seawater that should never have reached them.
Poseidon stood at the center of it all.
The God of Seas reborn—his trident pulsed with a resonance that shook both mortal stone and divine marrow. Around him, waters rose not like waves, but like continents, flowing upward into living shapes. Entire rivers uncoiled like serpents, and deep-sea leviathans broke the surface at his unspoken command.
Three gods had already fallen to his wrath, their names extinguished like snuffed candles. But Olympus was not yet done.
The Council had unleashed a new triad—a fusion of raw celestial law meant to cage the sea before it swallowed everything.
Zephyros, the God of Judgment and Skies, descended with thunder snapping at his heels. His wings spread wide, each feather edged with lightning, his eyes hard as molten suns.
Beside him, Seraphin, the Goddess of Flame, rose in a storm of fire. Her presence blazed so hot the sea beneath hissed and turned to black steam.
And between them drifted Nymera, the Goddess of Shadows, her form folding in and out of reality, eyes reflecting a void deeper than trenches Poseidon himself had shaped.
Three gods. Three wills united. Their presence was enough to crush mortal armies without lifting a hand.
But Poseidon only raised his trident, the glow of abyssal blue burning along its shaft.
"You come again," his voice rolled like waves against cliffs. "You’ve sent armies. You’ve sent your laws. And now you send yourselves. Tell me, will you throw Olympus itself next?"
Zephyros leveled his blade of stormlight. "We will throw eternity if we must. You are no longer the Poseidon we knew—you are a blight. A vessel of the drowned abyss. You must be cut down before the balance breaks."
Seraphin’s firestorm roared higher. "Balance is already broken. Your tides choke cities. Your storms sink empires. You call it reclamation. I call it tyranny."
Nymera’s voice slithered through the dark. "And yet beneath the sea’s crown, I hear whispers not your own. You are not alone in your skin, Sea Lord. Who truly speaks when you breathe?"
At that, Poseidon’s smile was sharp as coral. His eyes glowed brighter, not just with sea-blue but with something darker, something abyssal. The presence of Thalorin pulsed behind his gaze, ancient and hungry.
"I am no vessel," Poseidon answered. "I am what your council feared to name: the tide unbound. You buried Thalorin because you could not drown him. You buried me because you could not chain me. But the sea returns. Always."
The trident struck the waters.
And the battlefield split.
Waves rose into walls taller than mountains, bending into arcs as though the ocean itself wished to collapse heaven. Leviathans screamed from the depths, their fins slicing through the air, their roars shaking Olympus’s gates.
Zephyros answered first. His wings flared wide, storms bursting outward in rings of blinding lightning. With a single downward stroke of his blade, the sky itself split, dragging Poseidon’s waters upward into a cyclone of divine law.
Seraphin hurled a sun at him—no metaphor, no illusion. She conjured a burning sphere of living flame and flung it like a meteor across the darkened seas. It struck, boiling away entire miles of tide, leaving a crater of vapor and death.
But Nymera was worst of all. Shadows flowed beneath Poseidon’s feet, trying to coil around his ankles, dragging him down into realms even the sea did not touch. She whispered curses of silence, making his waves momentarily still, breaking his voice where mortals prayed.
Three gods.
Three attacks.
And Poseidon laughed.
The trident whirled, and the abyss answered.
The cyclone Zephyros had raised broke apart, torn into spirals by serpents of water older than Olympus itself. Leviathans leapt through lightning, swallowing bolts like prey, spitting them back as shattered shards of raw power.
The burning sun struck again—only for Poseidon’s wave to rise, swallowing it whole. Not extinguished, not snuffed. Swallowed. The fire became a burning core trapped inside a living ocean, screaming as water wrapped tighter around it until it cracked apart.
As for Nymera’s shadows—Poseidon closed his eyes. He felt her void. He felt her silence. And then he opened his hand, and the abyss beneath her listened to him, not her.
Her shadows betrayed her. They bent. They bowed. They whispered his name.
She staggered back, lips curling in sudden, uncharacteristic fear.
"Impossible..."
Poseidon advanced, every step pressing the sea higher. Mortal cities far away vanished beneath tides they had no warning for. Rivers reversed. Lakes spilled. The world tilted toward him, one heartbeat at a time.
Zephyros roared and charged, stormblade flashing. He met the trident head-on. The impact was like two worlds colliding. Waves of raw power blasted outward, drowning entire constellations of stars from mortal eyes. The sea itself seemed to buckle.
Seraphin dove next, fire blazing hotter than any forge. She aimed for his heart.
Poseidon caught her flame with his bare hand. It scorched his flesh, cracked his godly skin. For a heartbeat, pain tore across his body.
And then the abyss within him surged.
The wound drank the flame. His veins turned molten-blue, devouring her gift, and when he spoke, fire poured from his mouth as if mocking her own.
"You burn. I drown. But fire always dies when the tide comes."
He released her own flame back upon her. A tidal wave engulfed her form, swallowing her screams.
Nymera tried again, but her shadows no longer answered her—they bled into the sea, into his will, into the abyss that was Poseidon’s now.
And in that moment, for the first time since his rise, Poseidon saw it clearly: not resistance. Not a fight. But inevitability.
The world was already tilting. The tide was already rising. And Olympus itself would drown.
Zephyros’s blade trembled as he pressed against the trident. Sweat poured down his brow. His lightning faltered.
"You cannot win," Poseidon said softly, almost mournfully. "Not because you are weak. But because you fight the sea itself. And the sea... does not lose."
The storm above cracked. The flames broke. The shadows bent.
And Poseidon roared—
—his voice carrying not just through heaven and earth, but through the abyss that even gods had tried to bury.
The roar of the drowned god.
And the battle was only beginning.