Chapter 325: Smaller Gods are Nusiance
Aegirion raised his broken trident and struck with everything left in him, drawing the fury of the tides themselves against his former lord. At the same time, Zephyros’s wings unleashed a storm of lightning bolts that ripped the night sky apart.
For a heartbeat, the world became chaos—shadow, thunder, tide.
The blow landed.
The cliff shattered.
And Poseidon vanished beneath it.
---
The Silence After
The three gods staggered back, panting. The world had been ripped open by their combined assault. Where Poseidon had stood was nothing but a smoking crater, seawater steaming against molten stone.
"He’s gone," Zephyros said, his voice raw, though doubt still lingered in his eyes.
"No," Nymera whispered, her veil of shadow quivering like a living thing. "No, it’s never that easy."
And then came the sound.
A heartbeat.
Not theirs. Not mortal.
The heartbeat of the sea itself.
Thoom.
The crater filled, not with smoke, but with water—boiling, rushing, surging upward as if the ocean floor itself had burst open.
Thoom.
The water swirled, spiraling into a vortex that climbed into the sky. Lightning was swallowed. Shadows were drowned. The trident’s broken fragments were pulled in like driftwood.
And from its center, Poseidon rose once more.
Not wounded. Not weary.
Transfigured.
His body was no longer merely flesh but carved of water and salt, his form shifting with every step like a god sculpted from the ocean itself. His eyes were abysses now, dark blue without end.
"You sought to bind the tide?" Poseidon’s voice boomed, rattling bone and divine marrow alike. "You cannot bind what is."
He moved with a speed that should not have been possible. One instant he stood in the vortex, the next his trident pierced through Zephyros’s golden wing, pinning him to the ground. Lightning scattered uselessly, crackling into the ocean wall.
Zephyros screamed, blood spilling in radiant streams.
Aegirion charged, desperation replacing fear. His broken trident struck again, but Poseidon caught the blow with one hand.
"Little tide," Poseidon said almost gently, "you were never meant to rise higher than the shore."
And with that, he crushed the trident in his grip. The shards dissolved into water.
Nymera’s shadows struck from behind, blades of midnight piercing through Poseidon’s back and out his chest. For a fleeting moment, the goddess of shadows thought she had found the opening.
Poseidon turned his head, water spilling from the wounds instead of blood.
Then he smiled.
Her own shadows turned on her. The blades she had conjured twisted like snakes, impaling her instead. She coughed black ichor, staggering to her knees, eyes wide with disbelief.
"How...?" she gasped.
"Because the sea reflects," Poseidon whispered, stepping closer. "And you are nothing but reflection."
---
The Weight of the Tide
He lifted his trident high, and the suspended wall of ocean behind him began to lean. Slowly. Inexorably.
The three gods felt the world tilt.
This was no wave. No strike. No mere attack. This was the ocean itself being set against them.
The cliff began to crack, entire mountainsides groaning under the impossible pressure. Valleys below filled instantly, villages swallowed before a single scream could rise.
Zephyros tried to push upward with the last of his storm, wings broken but unyielding. Nymera choked on her own shadows, trying to command them once more. Aegirion flung himself at Poseidon bare-handed, his young godhood unraveling with every step.
But Poseidon’s eyes were calm.
"You fought for balance," he said, voice echoing like the abyss. "But balance was never the sea’s purpose."
The ocean fell.
It wasn’t a wave—it was everything.
Darkness swallowed the land, the cliffs, the skies. And in that moment, the three gods were gone, dragged beneath the weight of a tide that even gods could not bear.
When the water finally receded, only ruins remained. The cliffs of Olytherion had been carved away entirely, leaving nothing but jagged islands rising from a newborn sea.
And at the center stood Poseidon. Alone. Unchallenged.
His trident gleamed with abyssal light, dripping not water, but fragments of divine essence—remnants of those who had dared oppose him.
Above, Olympus itself shuddered. The other gods had felt it. Three of their own had fallen.
And in the mortal world, whispers began to spread, carried on the salt wind.
The drowned god had risen.
The age of land was ending.
The tide had claimed its first dominion.
Poseidon lifted his gaze skyward, to where Olympus loomed above unseen clouds.
"Soon," he murmured, voice low but carrying through every ripple of the sea. "Even the heavens will kneel."
The air above the battlefield was fractured.
Not with lightning, nor with storm, but with silence so heavy that even the sea itself dared not breathe. The ocean, which had raged and clashed at Poseidon’s command through countless battles, had now stilled—flat, endless, watching. As if the waters themselves knew what was about to unfold.
Poseidon stood upon the shattered remains of the coastal citadel, his trident raised. His hair was drenched with salt, his frame gleamed like carved marble, and yet his eyes were not those of a god drunk on victory—they were something deeper, darker. His irises no longer resembled blue seas, but abysses that carried no reflection.
The gods he had crushed in the preceding battles—those who thought to bind him, those who sought to return him to chains—all lay scattered in ruin. The mighty Hera, her divine flesh scorched by the pressure of his tides, had fled Olympus broken. Hermes, the fleet messenger, was caught in the spiral current and left to drift in the black trench until his cries vanished into bubbles. And even the vaunted Athena, goddess of wisdom and war, had bowed—not in loyalty, but in acknowledgment of futility.
But the silence was not peace. It was preparation.
From the fissure in the sky above, a shadow pulsed—an ancient wound reopening. It was not the rift between gods and mortals. It was deeper. Older. The Abyss, the prison of drowned divinities, was opening once more.
Poseidon lowered his trident, planting it into the cracked stone at his feet. He closed his eyes. The waves whispered to him in unison, voices of a thousand drowned souls rising in chorus. "The seal weakens. The Abyss calls. What will you do, lord of tides?"
He did not answer them. He simply opened his hand.