Chapter 307: The Gods’ Desperation
The battlefield was no longer a place. It was a wound carved into creation itself.
Above, the heavens split open in jagged fractures, lightning spilling like broken veins. Below, the mortal seas writhed, no longer seas at all but a shifting, breathing entity. The ocean rose and fell with Poseidon’s pulse, each wave not born of wind but of his will.
And at the center of that maelstrom stood Poseidon.
No longer the boy, no longer the vessel. He was the sea now — his hair flowing in streams of saltwater, his eyes burning with abyssal fire, and his trident thrumming with the rhythm of the deep. Each breath he took dragged tides across continents. Each step bent the seabed.
The gods had come to kill him.
And yet, even united, they wavered.
---
The Three That Stood Against Him
Zephyros, Lord of Sky, descended first. His wings spanned horizons, every feather woven from storm. His voice cracked like thunder.
"Poseidon, breaker of chains. You should never have returned."
Seraphin, Flame Incarnate, followed, her entire body a pyre that burned even water. Each flick of her wrist birthed a new sun.
"You’ll drown the realms in ruin. I’ll see you turned to ash before that happens."
And then Nymera, Shadow Eternal, slipped from the void itself. Her presence was silence, her eyes two abyssal lanterns.
"I warned them once. They did not listen. But this time, I will not hesitate."
Three gods. One sea.
---
The Clash
Poseidon raised his trident, and the world screamed.
The ocean surged upward, sculpted into an armored titan of water that mirrored his stance. As he thrust, the titan thrust, its spear tip crashing against Zephyros’s wall of storms. The impact ripped clouds into ribbons, lightning scattering like sparks across the waves.
Seraphin followed with a column of flame that descended like judgment itself. The heat seared even the salt, evaporating vast swathes of sea in an instant. But the void left behind was not emptiness — it was Poseidon’s domain. He pulled the vacuum into himself, and from the emptiness birthed a new current, a whirlpool that dragged her fire into spiraling coils.
Nymera’s shadows wove silently through the chaos. She was not storm nor flame, but inevitability. Her darkness slipped through water, through light, through space itself, aiming for Poseidon’s throat.
But his eyes caught her.
The abyss within him widened. And the shadows faltered.
"You cannot drown darkness," she whispered.
"No," Poseidon replied, his voice carrying across storm and fire. "But darkness cannot drown the sea either."
He clashed against all three at once.
Zephyros conjured a spear of lightning and hurled it downward. Poseidon caught it with his trident, snapping it into a thousand shards of molten sky. The shards pierced the ocean, but each became harmless ripples as they touched the tide.
Seraphin screamed, her flames turning white, hotter than stars. She dove straight into the oceanic titan, burning through its chest. Steam exploded outward in a blinding veil, and through it, her blade of pure fire aimed for Poseidon’s heart.
But the sea does not fear fire.
He let her strike. Let the blade pierce his chest.
Water gushed from the wound, not blood. And with a roar, he wrapped his arms around her, drowning her flame in a suffocating embrace of abyssal tide. She ripped free, her body smoking, her form flickering.
Nymera, meanwhile, spread her shadows like nets, trying to anchor him in a prison of absence. She hissed a thousand curses, each one meant to bind gods.
But Poseidon laughed.
"Your curses were made for mortals. I am beyond mortal. I am beyond god. I am the tide that will swallow even your silence."
And with a sweep of his trident, he unleashed a tidal wave so vast it towered above Olympus itself, cresting like the edge of a new world.
---
The Turning Point
The gods reeled.
Zephyros’s wings shredded as the tidal wave tore through them. Seraphin, half-drowned, retreated into firestorms that could barely keep her alight. Nymera’s shadows were scattered across leagues of water, fragments of void that hissed impotently against the flood.
Poseidon stood tall, his aura expanding, pressing even Olympus downward.
But then—
The heavens cracked.
From beyond the battlefield, other gods stirred. Not just three, but many. Their eyes turned downward, their decrees whispered like blades against stone.
"Poseidon must fall."
"The drowned one cannot be allowed to rise."
"Seal him. Break him. End him."
A dozen voices. A dozen hands preparing to descend.
And Poseidon felt them.
Not as enemies. Not even as rivals.
As prey.
He planted his trident into the seabed, and the entire ocean roared in response. The surface convulsed, splitting to reveal an abyssal trench, deeper than mortal minds could fathom. From that trench rose pillars of water shaped like serpents, each crowned with a fragment of his will.
"Do you not understand?" Poseidon bellowed, his voice louder than storms. "You are not fighting a vessel. You are not fighting a memory. You are fighting the ocean itself."
The serpents struck upward, battering Zephyros from the sky, wrapping Seraphin’s flame until it sputtered, dragging Nymera into currents of drowning silence.
One god. Three foes. And he did not falter.
The heavens themselves tilted, stars bending closer as if dragged by tides that reached beyond worlds. Mortals far below cried out, their prayers incoherent, half in terror, half in awe.
For the first time since his return, Poseidon smiled.
Not with Dominic’s boyish hesitation. Not with Thalorin’s hunger.
But with his own certainty.
The sea was his.
The world was tilting.
And Olympus itself would kneel.
The sea was no longer still.
It roared with a hunger that had not been heard since the first age, when gods warred over who would hold dominion over the tides. From the shattered coastlines to the storm-wracked heavens, mortals whispered the same name in terror and awe:
Poseidon.
He had broken Olympus’s decree. He had shattered three gods in open combat. Now, the waters themselves pulsed with his will, as though every wave, every droplet of rain, carried his heartbeat. And Olympus could no longer pretend he was merely a threat—they knew he was war incarnate.