Lightning cracked across the horizon, a fork of divine fury slicing the sky. Poseidon didn't flinch. Instead, he lifted the trident high, and the ocean answered. A towering wall of water surged upward as if summoned by his very heartbeat. For a moment, he felt the thrill of absolute control—the kind of power no mortal should ever touch.

And yet, it frightened him.

The water obeyed, yes, but there was something else beneath it. Something ancient. When he called the sea, he felt watched, as though eyes from the abyss stared back.

He dropped the trident, letting the wave collapse with a roar. Salt spray washed over him, cool against his fevered skin.

Then—footsteps.

Soft, deliberate, behind him.

Poseidon spun, trident in hand, power gathering instinctively. His gaze met a woman's. She stood tall, robed in white and silver, her hair like strands of moonlight. The aura around her was unmistakable—divine.

"Athena," he said flatly.

The goddess of wisdom and war regarded him with piercing grey eyes, her expression unreadable. "Brother."

The word felt strange. Once, he had been Dominic, a boy shackled by mortality. Now, gods called him kin, though the bond was strained and false.

"You shouldn't be here," Poseidon said, his voice low.

"And yet I am," Athena replied, stepping closer, her sandals leaving no trace on the wet stone. "Because Olympus debates. They weigh your existence like a blade at their throat. Some argue for restraint. Others…" Her gaze hardened. "Others would see you destroyed before your roots dig deeper."

Poseidon's lips curled into a bitter smile. "And where do you stand, Athena? Do you join their chorus?"

She didn't answer at once. Instead, she studied him, as though searching for something buried beneath his skin. Finally, she said, "I stand where wisdom demands. And wisdom tells me this: You are not the same as the brother I knew. You are… something else."

Poseidon felt a pang, not of guilt but of recognition. She was right. He was not just Poseidon. Not just Dominic. He was Thalorin's vessel.

"Then you came to judge me," he said.

"No." Athena shook her head. "I came to see. To understand. Before Olympus makes its choice."

Her words stirred something within him—a flicker of hope, or perhaps suspicion.

"And what did you see?" he asked.

Athena's eyes lingered on the trident glowing faintly in his grip, then lifted to his face. "Power. Hunger. Pain. And a storm that will either cleanse the world… or drown it."

Her honesty struck him harder than any blade.

For a long moment, neither spoke. The sea rumbled below, restless as their silence stretched.

Finally, Athena's tone softened. "Tell me, Dominic—" She deliberately used his mortal name. "When you close your eyes, do you still remember who you were? Or has that boy drowned in the tide of this… curse?"

The question pierced him deeper than she could know. He wanted to answer, but the truth lodged like a stone in his throat. He remembered his illness. The hospital bed. The moments of loneliness. The way his mother had cried, powerless to save him. He remembered dying. And then—rebirth in salt and shadow, rebirth as something no mortal could fathom.

He whispered, "I don't know anymore."

Athena's gaze softened ever so slightly. For the briefest moment, there was no goddess, no war, no politics—only the bond of two souls who knew what it meant to be broken.

But the moment passed.

Her expression hardened again. "Then know this: Olympus is watching. If you cannot master yourself, if you give in to the abyss within… we will have no choice but to strike."

Poseidon's hand tightened on his trident until his knuckles whitened. He wanted to roar, to unleash the sea and show her he was no pawn for their judgment. But deep down, he knew her warning was not malice. It was truth.

Athena turned to leave, her silver cloak billowing like mist. Before she vanished into the night, she said quietly, "Choose wisely, brother. The line between god and monster is thinner than you think."

And then she was gone.

Poseidon stood alone on the cliff, heart hammering, torn between rage and despair. The sea called to him, promising power, vengeance, eternity. But Athena's words lingered like an anchor.

Who am I becoming?

---

The night stretched on, but Poseidon could not sleep. Dreams, when they came, were violent. He saw Olympus burning, gods screaming as waves swallowed their thrones. He saw himself atop a throne of coral and bone, the ocean bowing to him alone. And in the deepest shadows, he saw eyes—glowing, endless, watching.

When he woke, the trident lay beside him, humming faintly as though alive. His fate was no longer just his own.

And somewhere in Olympus, the gods sharpened their blades.

The ocean pulsed with a rhythm only he could hear. Poseidon stood upon a vast plateau of black stone, the trench walls rising like jagged cathedral spires around him. The weight of the sea pressed upon his shoulders—not crushing, but steadying, as though the ocean itself leaned against him in solidarity. His trident glowed faintly, its tips bleeding streams of pale-blue light that curled upward like wisps of flame, only to dissolve in the pressure of the abyss.

For hours, perhaps days—time was strange here—he had felt the storm brewing above Olympus. Zeus's indignation, Athena's suspicion, Hera's disdain—they were all threads weaving into the same web. And though he had not set foot in the halls of Olympus since his awakening, he knew the gods would not remain idle. They would come. They would test him. And if they discovered what truly lay inside him—what he truly was—their judgment would not be mercy.

He closed his eyes and inhaled. The seawater rushed through him like air, feeding a strength that was not entirely his own. There, at the edge of his soul, Thalorin stirred.

"You hesitate," the voice echoed inside his mind, neither thunderous nor gentle, but eternal. "You are meant to rule, yet you linger in shadows like prey hiding from hunters."

Poseidon gritted his teeth. I am not your vessel, he thought fiercely. I will not be consumed.

"Consumed?" Thalorin's laugh was a rolling current, older than Olympus itself. "You are a shard of me, a sliver of the tide that once swept creation clean. Without me, you would still be that sickly boy gasping for life on a hospital bed. Do not pretend otherwise."

The words struck harder than he wanted to admit. He remembered—the sterile hospital lights, the weak rattle of his lungs, the way every breath had felt stolen. And then the darkness. Then the sea. Then this.

He clenched the trident tighter. "I may carry your essence, but I am not your echo. I will make my own path."

Silence followed. Only the hush of the ocean currents, the slow thrum of leviathans prowling in the distance. But beneath that silence, he could sense Thalorin's smile, patient and waiting, as though the ancient entity knew time itself was on his side.

The ground beneath his feet shuddered. At first, he thought it was Thalorin again, testing him with visions. But then he felt it more distinctly—a vibration in the stone, carried down through miles of water. Something vast was moving through the trench.

He raised his trident, its glow slicing through the abyss.

And from the shadows emerged a creature unlike any he had seen since his rebirth.

A serpent, scales black as obsidian and eyes burning with molten gold, slithered forth from the trench wall. Its body coiled endlessly, thicker than temple columns, muscles rippling with a primal power. With each movement, the water churned as if boiling, and the ancient runes etched across its scales flared with sickly light.

Poseidon stepped forward, trident at the ready. "Another beast sent to test me?" he murmured, though the serpent's presence felt too deliberate, too intelligent to be a mere animal of the abyss.

The serpent opened its mouth, rows of jagged fangs catching the faint light. But instead of striking, it spoke—a voice low and guttural, like stone grinding beneath the sea.

"He stirs within you."

Poseidon froze. "You can sense him."

The serpent's coils tightened, circling him as if measuring his worth. "All the deep remembers Thalorin. He was our father, our unmaker, our tide. You… you are fracture and vessel both. The surface gods will fear you. But the ocean—" Its tongue flickered, brushing the currents. "The ocean remembers who it belongs to."

Poseidon's chest tightened. The abyss was not rejecting him. It was bending, recognizing.

"Then you would serve me?"

The serpent's golden eyes narrowed. "If you can prove you are more than a mask."

Before Poseidon could respond, the serpent lunged.

The impact split the trench floor. The force hurled him back, sending shockwaves rippling upward through leagues of water. He caught himself against the current, spinning with the grace of instinct more than training, trident sweeping into guard.

The serpent struck again, faster than something so massive should be. Its body slammed against the rock, sending columns of stone crumbling. Poseidon darted forward, thrusting his trident into the creature's scales. Sparks of blue-white power erupted, searing through the serpent's hide—but the beast did not falter. It coiled tighter, forcing him against the crushing weight of its body.

Poseidon roared, summoning the ocean around him. The water obeyed, condensing into spears of solid current that drove into the serpent's flesh. The beast hissed, twisting, blood black and heavy spilling into the water.

Still, it did not relent.

"Yes," Thalorin whispered, a predator's delight in his tone. "Let it test you. Let it strip away your weakness. You will not survive this abyss unless you accept what you are."

Poseidon's vision blurred at the edges. His lungs—though no longer human—burned with pressure. The serpent's coils pressed harder, bones creaking under the strain. He forced his trident upward, channeling everything he could muster. Lightning cracked through the water, blinding and wild, striking through the serpent's coils.

The abyss howled with light.

When the glow subsided, the serpent recoiled, its body scorched with streaks of raw energy. It did not attack again. Instead, it lowered its head, golden eyes fixed on him with a reverence that sent chills down his spine.

"Wielder of the Tide," it rumbled, its voice trembling with ancient weight. "You are no longer only Poseidon. You are the Harbinger of Thalorin. The abyss bows."

The serpent retreated, its body vanishing into the shadows of the trench as silently as it had come.

Poseidon drifted in the silence that followed, chest heaving, trident glowing dimly. The ocean pulsed around him—not in defiance, not in neutrality, but in recognition. The deep had chosen.

And somewhere above, Olympus trembled.