Chapter 291: The Test
The ocean was no longer silent.
It sang.
Not with waves or gulls or winds, but with something deeper—a resonant hum that rolled through water and stone alike. The mortals who fished the shore that morning heard it in their bones. Some dropped their nets and fled inland. Others fell to their knees, palms pressed to the sand, whispering prayers to a god who no longer needed them.
And at the heart of that song stood Poseidon.
He stood barefoot on a stretch of jagged reef, the tide curling upward around his legs as though gravity itself had been inverted. His trident hummed in his grip, but it was not the weapon singing. It was him. His very presence warped the sea.
The battle with the three gods had scarred him, but scars did not weaken him—they deepened him. The divine ichor that still clung to his skin shimmered faintly in the light, and within his veins, the abyss stirred, restless and hungry.
"Limitless..." he whispered, his voice carrying over the water like thunder. "But how deep does that word reach?"
He raised a hand.
The tide obeyed instantly. It did not just rise; it bent. A column of seawater surged upward, spiraling like a serpent, coiling around itself until it formed a tower of liquid glass that blotted out the sun. Within the column, schools of fish floated, suspended in mid-swim as though time had been arrested.
Poseidon clenched his fist. The column solidified into crystal-clear ice, sharp enough to blind. With another flick, it shattered into rain—yet every droplet froze midair, hanging above the reef like a suspended storm.
The god of the sea looked up at the droplets, then spoke a single word.
"Fall."
They did. All at once. The reef vanished beneath a barrage that hit harder than steel, breaking coral and stone as though they were nothing but clay.
Poseidon exhaled, his chest rising and falling with a strange exhilaration. That was only a fraction of what now slept inside him.
But destruction was only one part of the sea. What of creation? What of bending?
He stepped forward, the water parting around his bare feet.
---
The First Test — The Breath of Depths
He closed his eyes and reached not outward, but inward. The ocean inside him, the abyss inherited from Thalorin, stirred in recognition.
The reef beneath him groaned. Cracks spidered across the stone, and from the fissures poured not water, but pressure—pure pressure, condensed into visible waves of distortion that rippled the horizon.
Any mortal ship that had been within sight would have splintered instantly. The very weight of the sea was now his to command.
Poseidon inhaled. The water around him pulled away as though fleeing, leaving him standing in a sudden circle of dry reef surrounded by towering, suspended walls of ocean. He exhaled, and the walls crashed down with a violence that shook the seabed itself, sending tremors inland where mortals thought it an earthquake.
His lips curled into the faintest smile.
"So this is the Breath of Depths," he murmured. "The sea no longer drowns me—I drown it."
---
The Second Test — Command of Currents
Raising his trident, Poseidon pointed to the horizon.
The calm blue waters suddenly churned. Currents twisted in directions no mortal sailor had ever charted. North pulled south. East buckled west. Two whirlpools tore into existence, spiraling wider and wider until their maws reached for the sky.
But instead of letting them devour one another, Poseidon crossed the currents like a weaver at his loom. The whirlpools slowed, reversed, and fused into a single spiral, then flattened into a broad river of moving ocean that split the sea in two.
He stepped onto the flowing river as though it were solid land. The water bore him forward, obedient, eager.
The sea was no longer an element. It was his arm, his leg, his breath.
---
The Third Test — The Calling
But one thought gnawed at him. The sea was vast, endless, filled with countless lives. Did they heed him as well? Or did they resist?
He raised both arms, trident glowing.
The hum of the ocean deepened, becoming a pulse. A summons.
Far below, in trenches never touched by sunlight, creatures stirred. Ancient beasts—leviathans that mortals knew only as myth—shifted in their sleep. One cracked open a single colossal eye, larger than a ship’s hull, and felt the pull. Another uncoiled a body long enough to wrap mountains, its scales shimmering with bioluminescent fire.
The surface broke.
A shadow larger than a temple rose from the deep, water cascading from its form. A creature of fins and teeth, older than human memory, lowered its head. Not in defiance. In acknowledgment.
Poseidon laid his hand upon its brow. The beast stilled. The ocean’s predators were no longer wild. They were his legions.
And this was only the first to answer.
The Fourth Test — The Sea and the Sky
For too long, the gods of Olympus had looked down, believing the sea confined below. But Poseidon raised his trident to the heavens, eyes blazing with abyssal light.
Clouds gathered, though no wind had summoned them. The clear skies churned into storm, lightning forking across the horizon in webs of blue and green. But it was not Zeus’s thunder. It was the ocean itself, climbing skyward, bending the barrier between realms.
Rain fell—except it was not rain. It was seawater pulled from the abyss, heavy with salt, crashing down like spears. The mortals inland would call it a storm. But Poseidon knew better. It was a declaration.
The sea was not below. It was everywhere.
He had only to speak, and the sky itself bent like a tide
When the storm cleared, the reef was gone. Flattened, erased. The horizon stretched in silence once again, but the silence was different now. It was aware.
Poseidon lowered his trident, chest heaving, eyes glowing with the reflection of countless waves.
"This power..." he whispered, the abyss within him echoing back. "It does not end where the sea ends. Because the sea itself does not end."
He had tested his limits.
And he had found none.
Yet, even as he reveled in the revelation, he felt the distant stir of Olympus. Watchful eyes. Whispers of fear. Gods gathering, not yet striking but preparing.
They would not ignore him much longer.
Poseidon turned toward the horizon, water rising to bear him like a throne.
"Come then," he said softly, the sea carrying his voice for miles. "Test me as I have tested myself."
The waves answered in thunder.
And the world listened.