Reincarnated As Poseidon

The battlefield smelled of salt and blood.

Even after the clash with the three gods, the ocean still groaned under the strain of divinity. Broken tridents floated beside shattered shields, and the horizon glowed faintly red where divine ichor had touched the waves.

Poseidon stood at the center, barefoot on the water, each step making ripples that refused to fade. His chest rose and fell like the tide itself—measured, inexorable, eternal.

The mortals watching from distant shores would speak of this moment for centuries. They would say the sea itself had a heartbeat. That its god had returned, not as a myth or whisper, but as a storm that walked like a man.

But Poseidon's eyes were not on them. They were fixed on the abyss below.

For something stirred.

Not Thalorin. Not yet. But the shadow of what he had been, the hunger he had carried, pressed from the trench miles beneath. The deep abyss groaned like a leviathan turning in its sleep.

And Poseidon—though he now bore the name fully, though he wielded the ocean like a limb—felt the danger of it.

Not even gods were meant to wake what lay beneath.

High above, Olympus convulsed with unrest.

The marble halls, once radiant with eternal sunlight, now shivered with storm clouds. Statues of forgotten heroes cracked as thunder boomed in skies that had never known rain.

Zeus stood upon his dais, lightning snarling around him like chained hounds. His face was carved in fury, his voice carrying across the council chamber.

"You allowed this," he thundered, pointing toward the sea reflected in the great mirror of Olympus. "You watched as the drowned god carved a city into his altar!"

Athena sat poised, her gray eyes sharp as blades. "It was not allowance. It was inevitability. He has already fused with the essence. No strike short of annihilation will undo what he has become."

"And yet you counsel patience?" Zeus roared. "Patience while the abyss stirs at his call?"

Ares, leaning lazily on his spear, smirked. "If he is the sea itself, then war is already written. Better we march and taste blood than wring our hands like cowards."

"Your taste for battle will drown us all," Athena snapped.

"Silence!" Zeus's voice cracked like thunder, silencing both. He turned, his gaze burning toward the youngest seat of the pantheon. "Apollo. You saw the signs. Speak."

The sun god's golden face dimmed. His fingers trembled around his lyre. "I saw the harbors fall. I saw the drowned bell toll. And worse—I saw the abyss open wider than it has in an age. He is not only Poseidon. Something else bleeds through him. Something older. Something… hungry."

A hush fell.

Even gods feared hunger older than themselves.

Finally, Hera rose. Her gown trailed like storm clouds, her crown gleaming faintly. "Then it is decided. Olympus will not merely watch. We will bind him—or bury him."

The decree rippled through the pantheon. Sigils lit the air. Oaths were made.

The hunt for Poseidon would begin.

Far below, survivors of the drowned city clung to wreckage, their prayers desperate. But some of those prayers had shifted.

They no longer prayed for rescue.

They prayed to the sea.

To Poseidon.

And he heard them.

Their words rose with the salt mist, threads of devotion curling into his being. Not worship offered to a statue, not hymns sung in comfort, but raw, terrified supplication—the kind that rooted itself in blood and marrow.

Poseidon inhaled, and the prayers flooded into him.

Power surged, subtle but undeniable. The mortals were beginning to choose.

And Olympus, he knew, would not forgive that.

Poseidon

He closed his eyes.

The sea below whispered. The abyss shivered.

And in that silence, a voice—one he had not heard in many chapters, one buried in the deepest part of his soul—slid across his mind like oil over water.

You feel it too, don't you?

Poseidon's breath stilled. "Thalorin."

The laugh that followed was cavernous, endless, like stones sinking into an infinite trench. You borrowed my tides. You wear my name. But you cannot hold the abyss back forever.

Poseidon clenched his fists, the sea rising with him. "I am not your vessel anymore. I am not your echo. I am Poseidon."

You are drowning, Thalorin whispered. And the deeper you go, the harder it is to tell if it's you breathing, or me.

The voice faded with the surge of the trench. The abyss exhaled, and the surface rippled.

Poseidon opened his eyes again, calm returning like the tide. But the words lingered.

He would have to master the abyss—before it mastered him.

By the time Poseidon lifted his gaze toward the horizon, the first signs of Olympus's decree had already reached the mortal sky.

The clouds split, not with rain, but with fire. Spears of golden light fell like meteors, each one a god's oath made manifest. They did not strike yet. They marked territory. Lines drawn upon the sea.

Poseidon narrowed his eyes.

The war had begun.

He raised his hand, and the ocean bent with him, curling around his wrist like a serpent awaiting command.

Let Olympus send its hunters.

Let the abyss whisper its hunger.

The sea was his.

And he would not kneel.

The battlefield was no longer mortal, no longer earth, no longer sea.

It was a rift carved between realms, where Poseidon's tides clashed against the heavens themselves.

The air was split with fire, the sea churned into whirlpools, and the sky cracked with lightning so violent it seemed the stars themselves flinched. Mortals who looked upon it from afar saw only the horizon burning, as if day and night had been ripped apart and forced to fight.

But in the center of it—there stood Poseidon.

Not the half-boy, half-vessel he had once been. No—this was the god reborn. Trident blazing, eyes like abyssal storms, each breath pulling the ocean higher into his command.

Across from him, three gods had converged.

Zephyros, the Sky-Judge, wings unfurled, his hands searing with lightning that could cut mountains in half.

Nymera, the Shadow-Walker, her form bending like ink across the battlefield, daggers drawn from darkness itself.

And Seraphin, the Flame-Bearer, her hair burning like a crown, each step melting sea into steam.

Together, they struck.