Reincarnated As Poseidon

The battlefield smelled of burnt ozone, shattered stone, and blood thickened with saltwater. The air was split apart by lightning and drowned by waves as three gods circled him in a storm of rage and fear.

Poseidon stood at the center, barefoot on a floor of shifting currents that obeyed only him. The sea lapped eagerly at his heels, like a predator waiting for command. His trident gleamed with living tides, each barb shimmering as though it had been carved from storms themselves.

Across from him, Zephyros, god of sky and judgment, hovered with wings unfurled, his golden spear buzzing with thunder. To his right stood Seraphin, goddess of flame, a crown of fire orbiting her head as her skin glowed like molten stone. To his left was Nymera, goddess of shadows, her form fractured into shifting silhouettes, every movement cloaked in suffocating silence.

Three against one. Yet none dared to make the first strike.

Because Poseidon's presence was not that of a god to be challenged. It was that of the sea itself—eternal, patient, inevitable.

He smiled faintly. "So… the council sends judgment, fire, and shadow. A trinity of fear."

"Fear is not why we stand here," Zephyros spat, his voice like rolling thunder. "Balance is."

"Balance?" Poseidon laughed, low and bitter. "You mean the prison you call order. The chains you wrapped around mortals, seas, and even yourselves. I was gone a thousand years, and still the council clings to its hypocrisy."

Seraphin raised a hand, fire curling into a spear. "Then perhaps it is time to end the relic you have become."

She hurled it.

The spear ripped through the air, burning with a heat that turned the sea into vapor on contact. Poseidon raised his trident lazily, and the water beneath him surged upward, coiling into a great serpent. The spear pierced its head, igniting it in an inferno—yet instead of dissipating, the serpent swallowed the fire, its scales glowing red before snapping its burning jaws toward Seraphin.

She hissed, dodging aside as the serpent lunged, scorching trails burning in its wake.

Zephyros struck next. Lightning fell like a thousand javelins, splitting the battlefield into craters of smoking salt. Poseidon did not flinch. He exhaled, and the sea rose to meet the storm. Bolts crashed into the water, dispersing harmlessly, devoured by the endless tide.

"You mistake me for something finite," Poseidon said, voice booming across the chaos. "But you cannot pierce the horizon. You cannot wound what has no end."

Nymera made no sound. She had not moved—yet her shadows already coiled around Poseidon's ankles. Chains of midnight, sharp as razors, constricted and tried to pull him down into void. The battlefield dimmed, stars overhead blotted out as though the world itself was being unmade.

But then the water answered.

The sea beneath Poseidon churned violently, erupting upward as if furious that shadow dared touch its master. Black tendrils dissolved into frothing foam. With a flick of his trident, Poseidon turned the tide into a spinning gyre. The whirlpool stretched into the sky, ripping Nymera's veil apart and dragging her into view.

Her form flickered, reforming a dozen feet away, panting, her lips slick with blood.

"You cannot hide from the tide," Poseidon growled.

The three gods regrouped, circling tighter now. For all their bluster, Poseidon could see it—the flicker of hesitation in their eyes, the realization that their combined strength might not be enough.

Still, Zephyros lunged. His spear clashed against the trident, thunder meeting tide. The impact rippled outward, splitting the sea in half for a mile before crashing back together in roaring fury.

Seraphin followed, flames dancing from her hands, her body a streak of burning comet as she slashed across the battlefield. Nymera's shadows chased her fire, twisting around Poseidon's blind spots, aiming for his throat.

Poseidon slammed his trident into the ground.

The battlefield shifted.

No longer were they fighting on the shattered marble of the council's arena. In an instant, they stood knee-deep in the middle of a rising sea. Waves climbed around them, dragging their footing, disorienting their rhythm.

"You wanted to face the sea," Poseidon thundered, his voice carrying with the crash of waves. "Then drown in it."

The water roared to life. A wall of liquid fury rose behind him, taller than mountains, blotting out the sky. The three gods threw themselves forward, but the wave crashed down with the weight of eternity.

Zephyros was hurled into the depths, wings broken by the torrent. Seraphin's flames sputtered and hissed, her fire devoured in boiling steam. Nymera's shadows shattered, swallowed by blinding light refracted through a billion droplets.

When the waters finally receded, Poseidon alone stood unmoved.

But the gods were not so easily broken.

Zephyros exploded from the flood, his spear crackling, eyes blazing with stormlight. "You think yourself eternal? Then face the full wrath of the sky!"

Seraphin followed, her body igniting into pure flame, burning away even the seawater clinging to her. Nymera reformed from the darkness inside the wave itself, her eyes glowing with cold fury.

Together, the three gods raised their power to its peak. The sky blackened, the air burned, and shadows bled across the horizon.

Poseidon's trident pulsed with living tides. He could feel it—the ocean inside him roaring to be unleashed, to erase this pantheon of hypocrites in one final, devastating sweep.

But he hesitated.

Not out of fear. Not out of weakness.

But because deep within, the voice of something older than him stirred.

Thalorin.

It whispered, not as a master, not as a rival, but as the abyss itself. Unleash me. Let the gods learn what it means to drown forever.

Poseidon's grip tightened on the trident. His eyes burned with blue light, torn between his own will and the abyss clawing to be freed.

The three gods charged.

And Poseidon roared, unleashing the Ocean's Wrath.

The battlefield stretched endlessly beneath a storm-wracked sky. Shattered mountains lay broken like teeth across the horizon, their jagged edges jutting out from a sea that should not have existed there. The world itself had been reshaped by Poseidon's fury—valleys drowned, peaks swallowed, plains tilted into lagoons of black water. The very air reeked of brine, heavy with salt as though all winds now bent to the ocean's will.

At the center of it stood Poseidon.