Chapter 348: Arrogant bastard!
The sea was not calm.
It was never calm when Poseidon moved.
The horizon rippled like molten glass, waves rising without wind, currents bending around his will. To the mortals huddled in half-drowned cities, the ocean looked alive — a beast stretching beneath the moonlight, restless, ancient, and hungry.
And at its heart, standing upon a platform of water so dense it turned solid beneath his feet, was Poseidon.
His trident pulsed with abyssal glow, every crack in its shaft filled with the light of a thousand drowned stars. His chest rose and fell with deliberate calm, but his aura — the weight of the tide itself — pressed upon the world like a storm crouched just above the surface, waiting to descend.
Behind him, the Abyss stirred.
No longer sealed. No longer forgotten. The rift he had torn months ago had grown wider, wider still, and now, at last, it groaned open like a leviathan’s maw. Black water surged out, but it wasn’t water alone — it was memory. It was power. It was the ancient, primordial essence that once made Thalorin feared among gods.
And it was his now.
Poseidon closed his eyes. He could feel it — the pulse of every drop of water in the mortal seas. Rivers answered him, rain bent toward him, and deep trenches whispered secrets into his veins. It was intoxicating, frightening, inevitable.
But before he could lose himself in the abyssal hum, a ripple of resistance struck him.
The gods were moving.
High upon Olympus, the marble spires shook. Mortals in the valleys below claimed they heard thunder with no lightning, wind with no storm. But the truth was worse — it was the will of the pantheon colliding against the ocean’s surge.
Zeus sat upon his throne, his storm-wreathed hand gripping the armrest until cracks spread through the marble. His eyes blazed like suns.
"His reach grows unchecked," Zeus growled, voice rolling through Olympus like thunder. "Each drowned city feeds him. Each tide strengthens his claim."
Athena, seated to his right, her silver helm glinting, leaned forward. "And now the Abyss opens at his command. If we allow it to fully breach, the old ones will stir. The tide will not stop with mortals. It will reach us."
"Then we strike now," Ares snarled, slamming his fist against his shield. Sparks burst into the air like fireflies. "Send me, send Hermes, send the full wrath of Olympus. I’ll spear him through before he takes another breath."
But the room grew cold.
Hades spoke from the shadows of the council chamber, his voice low, his words heavy with finality.
"You will not spear him, war god. Not as he is now. You mistake him for a storm to be broken, a rebellion to be crushed. This is the sea. Endless. Patient. Crushing. Already he has devoured three of our kind. How many more will Olympus lose before you accept the truth?"
Zeus turned his gaze to the god of the underworld. "Speak plainly."
Hades’ expression did not change. "If Poseidon is not checked... he will not become Thalorin reborn. He will become something worse. Something new."
A silence followed. A silence broken only by the crash of waves echoing even here in the divine halls.
Three gods — Ares, Hermes, and Amphitrite — descended like falling stars, crashing upon the water in a circle around Poseidon. The sea surged against their impact, but none sank. Olympus blessed its champions well.
Amphitrite’s gaze was the most cutting of all. Her sea-green eyes, once filled with affection, now carried only betrayal.
"You were never meant to rise again," she hissed, summoning torrents of water around her hands. "This power should have been mine, ours, but you’ve twisted it, corrupted it!"
Poseidon turned his head slightly, regarding her with calm that only infuriated her more. His voice rolled, steady, cold:
"Do not confuse the truth, Amphitrite. You were queen of the shallows. I am the abyss."
"Arrogant bastard!" Ares roared, surging forward, his spear cutting through the air. Lightning from Zeus himself danced upon the blade as it struck toward Poseidon’s chest.
But Poseidon lifted his trident, and with a single flick, the ocean itself rose between them. A tidal wall thicker than any fortress swallowed the spear, cracking with divine lightning before bending it, snapping its force like a twig.
Hermes darted in next, faster than sight, a blur of silver wings. His blade kissed Poseidon’s shoulder before water hardened against it, locking the dagger in place as though it had struck stone. Poseidon turned, his eyes glowing with abyssal power.
"You move quickly," he said, voice resonant. "But you cannot outrun the tide."
The sea surged beneath Hermes’ feet, dragging him down, no matter how fast he moved. The messenger god gritted his teeth, wings straining, but the water clung like chains.
Amphitrite struck then, unleashing a vortex of spinning whirlpools, each one sharp enough to cut stone. The ocean itself screamed as it bent to her will — but Poseidon simply raised his hand.
And the whirlpools stopped.
One by one, her attacks froze in place, spheres of spinning death suspended in the air, bound by his command.
"No..." Amphitrite whispered, disbelief breaking through rage. "That’s not possible—"
Poseidon’s trident pulsed. The whirlpools shattered, collapsing into rain that fell harmlessly into the sea.
"Everything you bend," Poseidon said, his voice rumbling across the battlefield, "already belongs to me."
The rift behind him groaned wider. Mortals far across the world gasped as tides shifted violently, rivers reversed their flow, and lakes boiled upward toward the sky. The Abyss was no longer a wound in the sea — it was a door.
And from within it, something stirred.
Dark silhouettes, larger than mountains, twisted in the deep. Chains groaned. Eyes like lanterns flickered open in the gloom.
The Forgotten Ones — the ancients Olympus had cast away — pressed against their prison, tasting freedom for the first time in eons.
Hermes’ eyes widened in horror. "Gods preserve us..."
Poseidon turned, the abyssal glow bathing his features in unearthly light. His voice was soft now, almost human, but laced with inevitability.
"They do not preserve you, Hermes. They only preserve themselves."
Ares snarled, striking again, fury masking fear. Amphitrite screamed as she unleashed her full power. Hermes struggled against the drowning chains.
And Poseidon raised his trident.
The sea bent, the Abyss roared, and the battlefield tilted — not just the ocean, not just the land, but the very balance between gods and the forgotten past.
For the first time since Olympus rose, the tide was no longer theirs.
It belonged to Poseidon.