CHAPTER 206: THE ARRIVAL OF MESSENGERS

The tide did not rest.

Even after the harbor lay broken, its markets drowned, its temples silenced, the sea continued to press against the world with the weight of a god’s breath. Mortals believed storms came in peaks, with rage and then calm—but this was no storm. This was a will. The sea had no need to relent, not when Poseidon had fixed his eyes upon the shore.

He stood at the cliff’s edge now, salt spray glimmering across his shoulders like shattered stars. His trident—newly awakened, though it had always been part of him—hummed faintly, its points dripping not water, but the essence of dominion itself. He breathed, and the sea below breathed with him. He exhaled, and the waters swelled, slapping against broken walls like obedient beasts.

Behind him, the survivors of the drowned city cowered. Some prayed. Others cursed. All stared at him as though he were the horizon itself—inescapable, omnipresent, inevitable.

"Please... Lord Poseidon..." one fisherman croaked, dragging his half-conscious son from the brine. "Spare us. Spare the children."

Poseidon turned. His gaze, once Dominic’s, now fathoms deep and alien, lingered on the man. Once, compassion might have softened his grip. Once, he might have remembered the choking nights of mortality, the fragile weight of love and loss. But now the ocean whispered louder than memory.

"Do you not understand?" His voice was not a roar, nor a shout, but a rolling undertone that made the stones quake. "I do not come to spare. I come to reshape."

The fisherman collapsed into tears, clutching his son tighter. Poseidon’s shadow stretched over them, long and unrelenting in the moonlight. Yet he did not strike them down. He merely turned away, his eyes fixing on the horizon where Olympus itself glittered faintly in the skies above.

The gods were stirring. He could feel them. Like sharks circling blood.

---

The Rumor of a Drowned God

By the second dawn, every surviving merchant ship carried the tale. They spoke of waves that climbed walls like serpents, of towers that bled salt, of a god who walked from the surf and silenced the bell that no storm had ever stilled.

And with each retelling, Poseidon’s name grew sharper in mortal mouths. Some spat it in fear. Others whispered it with trembling reverence. In distant kingdoms, prayers already began to shift. Altars once dedicated to the Seven Currents were stripped, their shells smashed and replaced with crude offerings to the god who had answered with undeniable power.

Poseidon felt each prayer. Not individually, not like voices in a room—but like droplets merging into tide. The faith of mortals was not a trickle now. It was beginning to flow.

And with it, his power deepened.

He closed his eyes and tasted the salt on the wind. It was not the salt of his ocean. It was the salt of mortal sweat, mortal blood, mortal devotion.

A smile touched his lips—cold, inevitable.

---

The Whisper Below

Yet even as he drank in their fear, another voice stirred within him.

Thalorin.

The drowned abyss. The name the gods refused to speak, buried beneath centuries of silence. The old hunger that had merged with his rebirth.

More, the whisper coiled through his bones, dark as trenches. They fear, yes. They bow, yes. But fear alone will not suffice. Break them. Drown them all. Let no stone rise dry.

Poseidon’s grip tightened on the trident. "Silence."

The whisper chuckled—his chuckle, yet not his own. You are me, and I am you. The sea is endless. Do you think Olympus will kneel to a god who stays his hand? No... They will only kneel when you leave no shore untouched.

Poseidon’s jaw clenched. He could feel the pull, the temptation. The ocean within him yearned for expansion, for annihilation, for unrelenting conquest. But there was something else too—something Dominic’s human heart had left behind.

Memory.

The face of a girl. The warmth of sunlight on grass. The sound of laughter before sickness took it all away.

He inhaled sharply, shoving the abyss back into silence. He would not let Thalorin dictate his reign. He was Poseidon now—not a boy, not a shell, not merely an abyssal hunger. Something new. Something more.

And the world would learn to bow.

The Arrival of Messengers

The sea shifted behind him. He turned.

From the depths, three figures emerged—clad not in mortal garb, but in the flowing kelp and scaled armor of divine emissaries. Their eyes glowed with starlit blue, their forms half-fish, half-god. They did not bow. They did not pray. They carried decree.

One unfurled a scroll that shimmered with the sigils of Olympus. His voice was clear, steady, but beneath it throbbed the weight of fear.

"By command of the Azure Seat, by decree of Zeus himself, the council declares you outlaw. Poseidon, drowned god, reborn—your vessel has broken the balance of the world. You are summoned to Olympus for judgment. Refusal is defiance. Defiance is war."

The scroll dissolved into foam. The emissary met Poseidon’s gaze with grim finality. "What say you, drowned one?"

The sea itself seemed to pause, holding its breath.

Poseidon raised his trident. For a heartbeat, the emissaries stiffened, bracing for violence. But he did not strike. Instead, he let the trident rest against the cliffside, water hissing where its points touched stone.

"My answer is simple," he said, voice low and carrying across the waves. "I do not kneel."

He stepped forward. The ground beneath him cracked, seaweed sprouting where his feet touched.

"Olympus sat silent when I drowned in sickness as a boy. They watched when the Rift swallowed me. They left the sea untended, divided, broken. And now, they dare to summon me as if I were their errant child?"

His eyes burned, twin abysses of salt and fury.

"I am no one’s child. I am the tide. If Olympus seeks war, then let them choke on their own storm."

The emissaries faltered. The oldest among them bowed his head—not in obedience, but in grief. "So it begins."

They dissolved into spray, carried back to the heights of Olympus.

Poseidon stood alone once more, though the world around him seemed to lean closer, waiting.

---

The Mortal Choice

Below, the survivors of the drowned city gathered again. Not all cursed him now. Some knelt. A mother pressed her child’s head to the wet earth, whispering prayers that reached his ears like faint threads of light.

"Lord Poseidon... Deliver us. Lead us. Protect us."

He turned, eyes narrowing. Protection. The word felt foreign, and yet it kindled something. To be feared was easy. To be worshipped through love—that was a different dominion entirely.

The abyss whispered break them, but Poseidon lifted his hand instead. The waters that still clawed at the ruins stilled. They did not recede—but they calmed, cradling rather than crushing.

Gasps echoed through the crowd. Some wept. Others bowed outright. The first temple stones would be laid that very night.

And Poseidon, standing at the cliff’s edge, realized the truth: Olympus could decree, the abyss could whisper, but the mortals—their faith—would be his true kingdom.

He raised his trident high. Lightning crackled across a cloudless sky, and the sea roared in answer.

"Olympus shall learn," he said, voice echoing into eternity. "The tide does not ask permission. The tide takes."