CHAPTER 161: THE SEA WOULD RISE.

The waves whispered.

Not the chaotic crashing of storms, not the random chatter of mortal tides, but whispers—intentional, unified, like thousands of voices murmuring in the same breath. And all of them spoke to one name.

Poseidon.

He stood at the edge of the drowned city, bare feet sinking into sand that was no longer sand, but memory itself—saturated with the screams, the prayers, the offerings, and the deaths of those swallowed by his rising tide.

The water around him was impossibly still, mirroring the stars above as though the heavens themselves had been dragged beneath the surface. Yet it was not peace. It was submission. The sea did not act anymore—it obeyed.

And through it, he listened.

Every droplet in the harbor carried sound. Every ripple bore an echo. He heard the prayers of sailors clinging to wreckage. He heard the curses of merchants who had lost everything. He heard the frantic chanting of priests who thought they could cast him out with shells and bells.

But beneath it all, deeper still, he heard something else.

The heartbeat of the abyss.

Thalorin’s hunger pulsed faintly through the currents, a reminder that his vessel was not entirely his own. For the briefest moment, Poseidon’s reflection on the water rippled—his ocean-blue eyes flickering into bottomless voids. He inhaled sharply, steadying himself.

No, he thought. I am no longer boy nor abyss. I am tide. I am storm. I am Poseidon.

Yet even gods could not so easily silence what they carried.

---

The Survivors

Behind him, the remnants of the city crawled from the floodwaters like insects after rain. The once-proud harbor was nothing more than jagged stone teeth jutting from the water. Broken masts and splintered beams floated in heaps.

Some mortals still lived.

Poseidon turned his gaze toward them. Men, women, and children dragging themselves through waist-deep water, their eyes wide with terror as they caught sight of him standing unscathed where the sea was deepest.

"Is that him...?" one voice trembled.

"The god..." another whispered.

"Mercy," a woman cried, clutching her infant to her breast. "Please, Lord of Tides, have mercy."

The pleas brushed against him like foam on the shore. Not one prayer went unheard, but neither did they sway him.

Mercy.

Had the gods shown him mercy when they cursed him as a vessel? When they bound Thalorin’s essence to his mortal flesh? When they decreed his death before he had even drawn his first breath?

No.

Poseidon stepped forward, water curling beneath his soles as though eager to bear his weight. The survivors recoiled. Some fell to their knees, worshipping in desperate terror. Others screamed and tried to flee, splashing wildly in waters that refused to let them go.

He said nothing. Words would mean little to them now. His silence was their answer, heavier than any decree.

---

The Whispering Deep

Beneath him, something shifted.

The drowned bell tower—half-submerged, half-shattered—began to groan. Barnacles cracked off its surface. Weeds slithered upward, twining like skeletal fingers.

And then, from within its hollow, a sound rose. Not the toll of bronze, but a whisper carried through water.

They fear you...

Poseidon’s eyes narrowed. He knew that voice. The abyss within him had decided to speak again.

They bow, they beg, they break. But fear is not enough, vessel. Fear is fleeting. Hunger is eternal.

Thalorin’s words curled in his chest like chains dragging him down.

"You are mistaken," Poseidon murmured aloud, his voice sending ripples across the mirrored surface of the water. "I am no vessel. I am the sea itself. And the sea is not hunger—it is inevitability."

Inevitability? Thalorin laughed within him, the sound echoing like drowning gurgles. Then you already know. No wall can stop us. No god can bind us. No mortal can refuse us. You feel it too, don’t you? The call. The Forgotten Tides stirring.

Poseidon’s jaw clenched. He had felt it—the yawning abyss beyond the divine seals, where ancient things slumbered, older than Olympus itself. His rising power pulled at those seals, loosening what the pantheon had buried for ages.

But unlike Thalorin, Poseidon was not blind to consequence.

If he opened that floodgate now, the mortal world would not merely drown—it would end.

And yet, a part of him wondered: wasn’t that what they deserved?

---

The Sea’s Memory

He lifted his hand. The water responded instantly, rising in a great spiral around him. From the depths of that column came visions, drawn not from his will, but from the sea’s memory itself.

A fisherman decades ago, casting prayers into the waves for safe return.

A child lost in a storm, her body never found, her laughter now woven into the tides.

A fleet of warships shattered against reefs when they dared claim dominion over the currents.

Every soul, every prayer, every scream the sea had ever taken—it showed them all to him.

The sea remembered everything.

And now so did he.

His gaze hardened. This was his dominion. Not Olympus. Not the Council of the Azure Seat. The ocean itself had chosen him as its voice.

---

Olympus Reacts

Far above, Olympus burned with light. He felt it, the way one feels the pressure of a storm long before it breaks. The gods had seen his act of drowning, and they were afraid.

Good.

Poseidon tilted his head back, speaking not to mortals, not to Thalorin, but to the heavens themselves.

"You who sit upon high thrones," he called, voice rolling like thunder over calm seas. "You who think the ocean exists to serve your shores. Remember this day. The tides are no longer yours to command. They are mine."

The sky trembled. Lightning forked across the stars, a clear answer from Olympus.

A challenge.

Poseidon smirked. "Then come."

---

The Choice of the Survivors

The mortals on the shore gasped, some dropping to their knees, others collapsing in despair. One child, no older than ten, raised his tiny hands and shouted:

"Lord Poseidon! If the gods above hate you, then I will not pray to them! I will pray to you!"

The boy’s voice cracked with fear but carried louder than all others. And in that moment, something shifted.

Others joined. Slowly at first, then like a tide breaking its dam.

"Poseidon, spare us!"

"Poseidon, we are yours!"

"Poseidon, save us from the false gods!"

Their prayers poured into him, raw and desperate, filling the silence between his heartbeats. He had not sought worship. Yet it came, unbidden, as natural as the tide itself.

Poseidon’s expression darkened. He had meant only to show Olympus their arrogance, but now... now mortals themselves turned from the heavens and bent to the sea.

The sea remembered. And soon, so would all of creation.

---

The Rising Storm

He lifted his trident—born of current and coral, forged in the marrow of the abyss. The sea around him churned violently, reflecting not the stars, but the storm gathering within.

"I am Poseidon," he declared, voice shaking the drowned ruins. "The tide that remembers. The storm that does not forgive. The god your gods fear."

The survivors fell to their faces, their cries swallowed by the roar of waves.

And far above, Olympus readied its first spear.

---

Poseidon closed his eyes. The storm was coming. Not just in the heavens. Not just in the seas.

But in him.

And the sea would not forgive.

The sea would rise.