CHAPTER 210: "DOES IT TERRIFY YOU?”

The sea was restless.

Not in the way mortals feared — storms or waves — but in its silence. A silence that pressed against lungs, a silence heavy enough to feel like drowning on dry land.

Poseidon stood at the edge of the ruined harbor, where the drowned bells had fallen silent days ago. The city’s bones still jutted out of the waves like rotting teeth — towers snapped in half, ships wedged between streets, entire marketplaces tilted sideways and buried beneath waterlogged silt. What had once been a city of trade and laughter was now a graveyard.

And yet the tide had not retreated.

The ocean held fast against the land, as though claiming it.

Poseidon’s gaze was not on the ruins, nor on the survivors clinging to them, but on the horizon. He could feel Olympus stirring, feel their hatred like knives pressing against the waves. The decree had been sealed — he was marked, hunted, condemned.

"War is coming." His voice rolled low, echoing across the drowned stones. "But it will not be me who starts it."

---

Survivors in the Flooded Streets

Below him, survivors scrambled through half-flooded alleys, carrying what little remained. Children floated on doors. Old men clutched talismans, muttering prayers that trembled with fear.

They saw him. Some dropped to their knees in reverence, whispering his name like an old, forgotten prayer. Others cursed him, spitting salt and tears into the tide, blaming him for their drowned homes.

Poseidon neither blessed nor punished. He only watched. Their voices mingled with the hum of the sea, becoming part of the current.

Then one voice cut through.

"God of the sea!"

A woman stood at the half-submerged steps of the temple that once belonged to the Seven Currents. She was young, her robes torn, her hair plastered to her face, but her eyes burned bright as a storm-lit horizon.

"You drowned us," she shouted, pointing a shaking hand. "And yet you stand here... like you pity us?"

The crowd stirred uneasily, some shouting for silence, others urging her away. But Poseidon lifted a hand. The water stilled. Silence fell heavier than any storm.

He looked down at her. "I gave you back to the sea. It was always yours, long before walls and harbors chained it away."

Her voice cracked with grief and fury. "You call this mercy?"

Poseidon’s eyes glowed faintly, tidal force flickering beneath them. "Mercy is not in tides. The sea takes. The sea gives. You chose to live upon its edge. Now you live within it."

The woman collapsed to her knees, sobbing into the floodwater. Around her, the survivors bowed their heads — not in worship, not entirely in hatred either — but in a dawning realization.

They could not fight him.

They could only endure him.

---

Olympus Watches

Far above, in halls cut from cloud and flame, Olympus burned with anger.

Zeus stood at the center of the council, lightning crawling across his shoulders. "He does not cower. He does not bend. He dares to speak as though the world belongs to him."

Hera’s eyes narrowed. "It always belonged to him. That is what makes him dangerous."

Athena tapped her spear against the marble floor, her tone colder than ice. "We delay too long. Already mortals kneel to him. Every drowned city becomes his shrine. If he is not ended now, his dominion will swell until no land remains untouched."

Ares laughed, low and savage. "Then let us end him. Let us send armies to the coasts and drown his arrogance with war."

But Apollo spoke sharply, golden eyes flashing. "War at sea? Against the sea? You are a fool, Ares. Every drop of blood spilled will sink beneath his tide. He would only grow stronger."

The council bickered, their voices a storm of thunder and flame. But above them all, Zeus’s decree settled heavy as the sky itself:

"Poseidon has chosen the mortal world as his battlefield. Then so be it. We will not wait for his tides to rise further. We will descend."

---

Poseidon Beneath the Waves

That night, Poseidon sank into the depths.

He left the ruined city above, its survivors whispering prayers and curses alike, and dove into trenches where no mortal light reached. The water swallowed him, cloaked him, embraced him like an old throne long abandoned.

The abyss stretched endlessly — black ridges of stone, canyons split wider than kingdoms, and in their heart, the pulsing glow of something older than Olympus itself.

The Forgotten Tides.

A prison. A memory. A door.

Poseidon extended his hand, and the abyss answered. Currents bent to him, threads of salt and shadow weaving around his fingers. He could feel them — the chained remnants of what the gods had buried here eons ago. Monsters, titans, fragments of drowned divinity.

"You stir when I stir," Poseidon murmured, his voice echoing through the trench. "You hunger when I hunger. Soon... you will rise when I rise."

The abyss pulsed in response, a slow, massive heartbeat.

---

The First Challenger

But he was not alone in the dark.

A figure emerged from the trench wall, armored in coral and bone, wielding a harpoon tipped with obsidian. His eyes glowed faintly with divine fire.

Aegirion. The young sea-god.

"Poseidon." His voice was steady, though the trench trembled around him. "I came alone, against Olympus’s orders."

Poseidon regarded him, expression unreadable. "To beg me to surrender?"

"To warn you," Aegirion replied. He lowered his harpoon, though his grip was firm. "The council has decided. They will strike soon. They will send gods, armies, weapons forged to unmake even tides. You will not be allowed to rise."

Poseidon’s lips curved faintly. "And you, young one? Do you side with them?"

Aegirion’s jaw tightened. "I side with the sea. But you are not only the sea anymore. You are... something else. Something greater. And that terrifies them."

"Does it terrify you?" Poseidon asked.

The young god hesitated. Then, with quiet honesty: "Yes."

For the first time, Poseidon’s laughter rolled through the trench, deep and resonant. The abyss stirred at the sound.

"Good. Fear is the beginning of reverence."

He turned his back, the water shifting like a cloak around him. "Tell Olympus this: I do not rise to war. I rise to reclaim what was always mine. If they wish to chain the tide again, let them come and drown in it."

---

The Surface Shifts

By dawn, strange tides gripped the coasts across the world.

In far kingdoms, fishermen awoke to find their boats stranded on dry seafloor, the water pulled out for miles as though the sea itself had withdrawn. In others, villages found waves already licking their doorsteps, creeping inland though the skies were calm.

Everywhere, mortals whispered the same name.

Poseidon.

Not as a myth. Not as a god long buried. But as a presence. A certainty.

And in Olympus, thunder cracked across the sky as Zeus readied his spear of lightning.

The war had not begun.

But its tide was inevitable.