CHAPTER 165: MONSTER...

The ruins of the drowned city still wept salt.

Streets that once bustled with merchants and festivals now lay beneath a shallow inland sea, their cobblestones warped into reefs where fish already darted. The bell tower was gone, swallowed whole. Survivors clung to rooftops, their voices hoarse with prayers—but the ocean did not recede. It lingered, claimed, and waited.

On the broken steps of what had once been a temple, Poseidon stood.

He was no longer the boy Dominic. That name was a husk, a shell sloughed off like skin. The sea had chosen its truth, and he was that truth—Poseidon reborn, yet not the same god who had fallen ages ago. He was more. Mortal heart fused with abyssal will. A vessel no longer, but the tide given form.

The water at his feet rippled in rhythm with his breath, pulsing outward as if the entire harbor were his chest, inhaling, exhaling.

His eyes glowed faintly blue, but deeper still, within the depths of his gaze, shadows writhed—Thalorin’s remnants. Not yet whole. Not yet free. But alive.

---

The Pull of the Sea

He stretched out his hand.

Water rose, not in waves, but in spears—columns sharpened into points of liquid glass. They hovered in the air before dissolving back into foam. Poseidon’s fingers trembled. This power was limitless, yet heavy. Mortal flesh should not have borne it. And yet... it bent, it yielded, it obeyed.

He turned his gaze to the horizon where the sea met the sky. The hum of the drowned bell still echoed faintly, not in the air but in his blood. Every drop of ocean across the world whispered now. Every tide recognized him. He could feel distant coasts, river mouths spilling into seas, storms coiling far across unknown waters.

They all bent toward him.

For the first time since his awakening, Poseidon smiled.

---

The Survivors

Behind him, a voice cracked like brittle driftwood.

"Monster..."

Poseidon turned slowly. A woman, one of the surviving priestesses of the Seven Currents, stood knee-deep in the flood. Her white robes clung to her like kelp, her hands shaking as she clutched a broken staff. Her eyes were red, her voice hollow.

"You were meant to protect us. Poseidon, lord of the deep, savior of sailors... and yet you come as destroyer."

Her words echoed, desperate, but Poseidon’s face remained calm. He tilted his head, as though regarding a child.

"Protection is illusion," he said softly, voice rolling like undertow. "You prayed for calm seas, yet cursed the storms. You worshipped the tide only when it fed you. Did you think the ocean lived for your convenience?"

She flinched but spat, "Then what do you live for? To drown us all?"

Poseidon’s eyes darkened, the abyss swimming behind them. For a moment, Dominic’s humanity flickered—a shadow of guilt, of empathy—but Thalorin’s whisper surged, and the moment vanished.

"I live," Poseidon said, "to unmake the balance that chained me. To remind gods and mortals alike that the sea does not ask. It takes."

The priestess dropped to her knees, sobbing. But Poseidon was already walking past her, each step sending ripples that bent the water outward like fleeing animals. Behind him, she muttered one last broken prayer—to the land gods, to the sky, to anyone but him. And her words, faint as they were, drifted upward.

To Olympus.

---

The Storm on Olympus

The cries of mortals reached the summit.

Olympus, carved from light and eternal stone, trembled as though the sea itself gnawed at its foundations. The gods had gathered once more, their thrones aligned in a semicircle above the mortal world. From their heights, they had watched the drowning of the city, the tolling of the bell, the priestess’s desperate plea.

Zeus sat unmoving, lightning coiled lazily around his fingers. His expression was not thunderous fury, but something far more dangerous: thought.

Beside him, Hera’s lips were tight, her jeweled crown gleaming coldly. Ares leaned forward, eager for war, his bronze skin lit with sparks of bloodlust. Athena’s eyes narrowed, calculating. And in the shadows near the pillars stood Hades, silent but watchful, his cloak dripping with darkness from realms unseen.

"He rises," Ares said, voice like clashing swords. "Poseidon returns. Brother or not, we strike now before his tides swallow more cities."

Zeus’s golden eyes flickered. "Not brother. Not as we knew him. This... creature is Poseidon fused with something older, deeper. Dominic, Thalorin, and the sea itself. He is not the god we cast into the Rift."

Athena’s voice cut sharp as a blade. "That makes him all the more dangerous. A mind unbound by the old pacts. A power without check."

"And yet," Hades spoke at last, his tone low and grave, "he is not whole. I see it. A fracture within. The mortal soul still lingers. Dominic."

A hush fell. The name carried weight.

"Then there is hope," Hera said slowly. "Perhaps he can be turned. Controlled."

Ares scoffed. "Controlled? He drowned a city. The drowned bell tolls for Olympus too if we hesitate."

But Zeus raised his hand, silencing the argument. "War will come. But first, we must know whether he is Poseidon... or something worse. Send envoys. Test him. If he bows, he lives. If not..."

Thunder growled faintly across Olympus, though the sky above was clear.

"...then he dies."

---

Back to the Shore

Poseidon reached the edge of the city where land met sea. The waters stretched endlessly before him, calm, obedient, reflecting the pale moon. He breathed deeply, filling his lungs with brine.

But inside, Dominic stirred.

Not his body. His memory.

Faces flashed unbidden—his mother’s tired smile, his father’s voice reading old myths, the sterile smell of hospitals. The boy who had once been weak, who had once prayed for more time, more strength. That boy had died, and yet he was not gone. He whispered now, faint but persistent, against the roar of Thalorin’s abyss.

"You don’t have to destroy them all..."

Poseidon froze, his reflection quivering in the water. His jaw tightened. For a moment, his hand trembled again.

And then the tide surged, swallowing his doubt. His reflection twisted—no longer Dominic’s face, not even wholly his own, but something monstrous, crowned with coral and teeth of jagged shell.

Thalorin.

Poseidon straightened. "The gods will come," he murmured, half to himself, half to the abyss within. "Let them. Let Olympus send its thunder, its blades, its wisdom. They will learn that the sea does not kneel."

The water answered with a low, resonant hum—the same hum that had drowned the bell.

And far above, in Olympus, the gods felt it.

The first true challenge to their reign in an age had begun.

---

Closing Scene

In the drowned city, survivors wept.

On Olympus, gods sharpened their decrees.

And in the heart of the sea, Poseidon walked the shore, every step tilting the balance of worlds.

The storm had not yet broken.

But when it did, it would not end with mortals.

It would end with gods.