CHAPTER 172: POSEIDON’S OATH

The drowned city had not gone silent.

It breathed.

Every broken arch, every sunken street, every toppled statue bubbled as if the ruins themselves exhaled. Mortals who had survived the flood huddled on jagged rooftops, shivering as the waters lapped at their ankles. Some whispered prayers, others cursed the gods, but none dared to speak the one name hanging on every tongue.

Poseidon.

Their city was not destroyed by storm or siege. It had been claimed.

---

The Mortal Shore

On the last remaining seawall, a dozen priests of the Seven Currents gathered. Their white robes clung to their skin, heavy with salt, and their sacred shells cracked under the relentless pressure of the sea.

The eldest among them raised his staff. "The drowned bell has spoken. The city is lost. But if Poseidon has truly returned—"

"Returned?" spat another, younger priest, his eyes red with seawater and grief. "He never left. He was waiting. We let the seas slip from prayer, and now he takes them back. Do you not feel it? Every drop listens to him."

The others murmured, shifting uneasily.

For indeed, the waters around the seawall did not churn like storm-surf. They stood as though listening, every ripple aligned toward the trench where Poseidon had breathed himself back into the world.

And then the sea itself spoke.

Not in words. In memory.

Each priest heard something different: a mother’s lullaby drowned long ago, the screams of sailors swallowed in storms, the groan of ships sunk by wars no one remembered.

The water was not just water anymore. It was archive. It was ledger.

It was him.

The younger priest dropped to his knees. "We are not fighting a god. We are drowning inside his memory."

The eldest priest closed his eyes. "Then memory will bury us all."

---

Poseidon Beneath

Far below the surface, Poseidon drifted in the trench like a king on a throne of abyssal dark. His body shimmered with bioluminescent threads, veins of blue-white that pulsed in rhythm with the tides. Around him, leviathans older than mortal kingdoms circled, their vast eyes reflecting his glow.

He was not Dominic anymore. He was not even the "vessel" the gods feared.

He was Poseidon.

And Poseidon was awakening.

His thoughts unfurled like tidal waves. He remembered each temple torn down in his absence, each prayer redirected to lesser sea-gods, each mortal who dared claim dominion over waves with chains and ships. He remembered the Rift where he had been sealed, the laughter of Olympus as they divided his seas among themselves.

Most of all, he remembered betrayal.

And now, the drowned city above was his answer.

But even Poseidon felt the press of eyes. The gods were watching.

Zephyros, the Sky-Judge.

Nymera, the Shadowed Tide.

And Olympus, high and arrogant, whispering war into the wind.

Poseidon’s lips curled into something between a smile and a snarl. "Let them watch. Let them fear."

He raised a hand, and the leviathans bowed.

---

Olympus Reacts

High on Olympus, the marble halls trembled with voices.

Athena stood before the council fire, her grey eyes cold. "The reports are no longer whispers. The drowned city of Veyrus is no accident. Poseidon rises."

"Rises?" Zeus’s voice cracked like thunder. He leaned forward from his storm-throne, beard bristling, lightning crawling across his knuckles. "He defies us."

"Defiance?" Athena countered sharply. "It is reclamation. The sea answers to him, and it does so without hesitation. If he consolidates further, every harbor, every ship, every coastal kingdom will bow to his will before the year ends."

Apollo flicked golden fingers over his lyre, though no music came. His eyes, usually warm, glowed with unease. "Mortals already whisper his name. Prayers swell like tides. That power will grow faster than even your armies, Father."

Hera’s lips thinned. "And we all remember Thalorin."

At that name, silence fell.

Zeus’s eyes burned. "No. I will not allow the drowned abyss to touch Olympus again. If Poseidon’s return heralds Thalorin, then we act before the storm crests."

Athena folded her arms. "You mean to strike him directly?"

Zeus rose, every step a quake. "Yes. Gather the storm legions. If Poseidon thinks the sea shields him, let him taste the lightning that split the Titans."

But in the back of the chamber, Aegirion—the young god of tides—watched silently, jaw tight. He remembered Poseidon’s presence in the Rift, how human sorrow had twined with divine wrath. He alone wondered if Olympus understood what it was truly waking.

---

The Harbor Tilts Again

Back on the mortal plane, the water shifted once more. Not a surge, not destruction—a tilt.

The sea leaned toward the mountains, flooding valleys that had never touched saltwater. Fish swam through farmlands, and rivers bent backward against their natural courses. The drowned bell was gone, but a deeper toll echoed in the bones of every living thing near the coast.

Poseidon’s will was spreading.

In a shattered tavern half-submerged, a fisherman clutched his child close, whispering against the rising tide.

"Don’t cry. Don’t fear. The sea only takes what it always owned."

His words were not his own. They were Poseidon’s.

---

Poseidon’s Oath

In the trench, Poseidon’s eyes opened fully, blazing with abyssal light.

"They call me vessel. They call me drowned king. They call me plague."

He raised both hands, and the sea groaned upward in answer.

"But I am memory. I am debt unpaid. I am the tide that forgets nothing."

The leviathans roared in chorus, their voices echoing through the deep until the very continents trembled.

"Olympus will learn," Poseidon whispered, his voice spreading like salt into every drop of water across the world. "Mortals will learn. And when the harbor tilts for the last time, there will be no walls left to cling to."

The sea remembered.

And the sea would reclaim.

The sea was never silent.

Even when mortals stood upon its shores and swore they heard nothing but calm, the ocean’s pulse never ceased: the crush of unseen currents, the whisper of sand pulled into trenches, the groan of stone ground by abyssal pressure. Poseidon had grown used to those sounds, but now... there was something else. Something that did not belong.

The drowned bell still echoed faintly through the water, but beneath it came a gnawing. A hunger.

It was not his own.

It was the Abyss.

The same Abyss from which he had been reborn—the same trench where Thalorin’s fragments still lingered like venom in his veins. He had thought himself in control, his will the tide, his name no longer Dominic but Poseidon reborn. Yet tonight, as he drifted within the half-drowned ruins of the mortal harbor, he felt the teeth of the trench pressing against the edges of his command.

The sea wished to eat more. And it whispered for him to let it.