Reincarnated As Poseidon

The battlefield no longer resembled the mortal world.

Where once there had been a fertile coastal plain, now there was only a drowned wasteland: craters filled with brine, rivers reversed into the sea, and the shattered husks of temples whose prayers had been silenced by salt. The tide had come and refused to leave.

And at its heart stood Poseidon.

Not a man. Not merely a god. But the will of the ocean made flesh. His trident gleamed with a light that was not sunlight, and his eyes burned with a depth no mortal could measure. Each breath he took sent ripples across the battlefield, as though reality itself were a shallow pool around him.

Across from him, the three gods who had come to end him—Zephyros the Sky-Judge, Seraphin the Flame Sovereign, and Nymera the Shadowed Moon—stood bloodied, broken, yet unyielding. They had been chasing him since the first city drowned, since the bell tolled its final knell. And here, in the wastelands where the mortal and divine clashed, they had cornered him.

Or so they thought.

"Your war is not with us," Zephyros growled, golden wings flaring even as blood streamed down his arm. His voice carried the crack of thunder. "It is with Thalorin, the abyss that once devoured the seas. Yet you wear his hunger. You breathe it. You are not Poseidon—you are what he left behind."

Poseidon tilted his head, the faintest smile ghosting across his lips. "You gods cling to labels like children clutching driftwood. If I carry the abyss, then I am the abyss. But I am also the tide, the flood, the weight of every ocean. Do not insult me by suggesting I am anyone's remnant."

Seraphin spat flame onto the drowned ground, her eyes like burning coal. "Arrogant wretch. You would unmake the balance we bled to preserve. The seas were bound for a reason."

Poseidon raised his trident, the water around him curving upward like an obedient army. "And what has your balance brought? Stagnation. Rot. Mortals who kneel to idols yet starve in drought. Empires that crumble not to fate, but to the cruelty of gods too busy fighting each other to tend their domains."

Nymera's shadow-cloak rippled like a starless night. Her voice was quiet, but it carried. "You speak like a mortal still. And yet… you drown cities without hesitation. Which half of you is the lie, Poseidon?"

He met her gaze. "Neither."

Without warning, the ground itself split. Saltwater geysered upward, twisting into serpents of impossible scale. Poseidon's command sent them slamming toward the gods.

Zephyros countered, his wings beating once, unleashing a wall of lightning that turned the water to steam. But from steam came mist, and from mist came shadow—Nymera seized it, shaping it into a thousand blades that rained down.

Poseidon did not flinch. His trident struck the ground once, and the tide rose like a shield, swallowing lightning and shadow alike. When the wave collapsed, Seraphin was already charging through the foam, her body blazing hotter than any forge.

She screamed as she plunged a blade of living flame at his chest.

The trident caught it. Sparks met spray. Steam hissed as fire met water. The clash echoed like the cracking of worlds.

Poseidon leaned in, his voice a whisper only she could hear:

"You burn bright, Seraphin. But even flame cannot live without the sea's mercy."

And then he twisted. The wave surged behind her, catching her mid-lunge and hurling her bodily across the battlefield. She struck the ruins of a temple and vanished in a spray of shattered stone.

Beneath the fight, the earth moaned. The drowned plains trembled as if something vast moved below them. The mortals who had not fled—those who clung to crumbling cliffs in awe or terror—felt the pull in their very blood.

It was not Poseidon alone.

It was Thalorin, stirring inside him. The abyssal hunger that had once devoured worlds whispered louder, demanding more. More ruin. More blood.

Poseidon gripped his trident tighter, jaw set. He would not be ruled by it. He was not merely a vessel. He was Poseidon. But denying it came at a cost—his veins felt as though filled with molten lead, his vision clouding with fragments of a darkness older than the sea itself.

Zephyros saw the hesitation.

"Do you see it, shadows and flame?" he shouted to his allies. "He cannot contain it. If we hold him here, the abyss will swallow him whole. And then he will fall by his own hand."

But Nymera's eyes narrowed, doubt flickering across her face. Was it true? Or was Poseidon not falling, but evolving?

Zephyros struck first, summoning a storm. The sky blackened, lightning threading downward in spears of gold. Poseidon responded with the sea, hurling walls of water that rose to meet the storm head-on.

Where lightning struck, water boiled. Where waves crashed, the storm split. The world became a cauldron of storm and tide.

Then Seraphin reemerged from the rubble, body wreathed in a crown of flame, her hair molten, her scream primal. She unleashed a beam of fire that tore through the sky itself, and for a moment the storm parted, revealing stars above.

Poseidon raised his trident. The fire struck—yet the trident drank it, swallowing the blaze into its core. The weapon glowed brighter, burning with a fusion of sea and flame.

He turned it on them.

One thrust.

The sea exploded outward in a spiral, a vortex that dragged gods off their feet. The battlefield collapsed into a whirlpool, land and sea indistinguishable. Mortals screamed as the edge of the maelstrom tore at distant cliffs.

Nymera alone resisted, sinking into her shadows, darting between currents like a phantom. Her daggers struck from behind, slicing into Poseidon's shoulder. Divine blood—blue and luminous—splashed into the maelstrom.

The ocean howled in response.

Every drop of his blood that touched the water birthed another serpent, another soldier of the tide. The battlefield filled with writhing forms—half-wave, half-beast, their jaws snapping with the hunger of the abyss.

---

A God Unchained

Poseidon roared—not of pain, but of release.

The abyss inside him surged, and for a moment, the gods saw not a man wielding the sea… but the sea itself wearing the mask of a man. His form blurred, as though flesh were only a suggestion. His eyes became bottomless trenches, his voice the crush of pressure in the deep.

"I am not your enemy," he thundered. "I am your end."

He raised his arms, and the maelstrom obeyed. The land itself tilted, dragged into the spiral. Whole ruins vanished beneath the waves. Zephyros struggled to stay aloft, wings sparking and broken. Seraphin's flames guttered, steam choking her lungs. Nymera's shadows thinned, dissolving into the mist.

The tide was no longer battle. It was judgment.

And Poseidon was no longer holding back.

The Final Stand

With a cry, Zephyros gathered the last of his storm. Lightning wrapped his body, condensing into a single spear of judgment. "Then drown, pretender!" he screamed, hurling it with all the fury of the sky.

At the same time, Seraphin flung her entire being into one final conflagration, a sunburst that seared the edges of the maelstrom. Nymera, silent, whispered words of binding older than Olympus itself, weaving shadows to anchor him.

Three gods. One strike.

Poseidon met them with his trident.

The clash split the heavens.

Light, flame, shadow, and water collided, a detonation that erased sight and sound alike. Mortals who watched from afar were blinded, their ears ringing with the echo of creation's first roar.

When the light faded, all was ruin.

Zephyros lay broken, his wings charred. Seraphin collapsed, her fire dimmed to embers. Nymera knelt, bleeding shadows into the tide.

And Poseidon stood.

His trident buried in the ground, his chest heaving, his body scarred and bleeding—yet unbowed. Around him, the maelstrom slowed, but did not cease. The sea would not retreat. Not anymore.

He looked at the three gods with something almost like pity.

"You fought well," he said softly. "But the sea does not yield to storms, to flame, or to night. The sea remains."

And as the abyss stirred once more, Poseidon turned his gaze upward—toward Olympus.

He knew they would come next.

And he would be ready.