CHAPTER 167: THE TIDE’S CLAIM

The ocean was quiet now.

Not calm, not merciful—quiet.

The drowned city lay half-submerged in its own ruin. Roofs jutted from brackish pools like gravestones. The market square was a lagoon where fish darted between shattered stalls. The bell tower—once the city’s pride—stood split and half-devoured, its drowned bronze tongue muffled beneath seawater.

And in the silence, Poseidon stood at the shoreline, barefoot on stones slick with salt.

The mortals had fled, those who could. The others were simply gone, pulled into the tide. But Poseidon could feel them still—their heartbeats, faint echoes resonating in the veins of the water that now ran through him. Each one was a drop in his tide.

And every drop belonged to him.

---

The Weight of Silence

Poseidon inhaled. The breath was not merely air, but sea, rising into him as if the world itself bowed. The horizon tilted, faintly, as if the ocean strained toward him.

Thalorin’s voice stirred in the undertow of his mind. More. You have only begun to taste. Let the seas claim another city. Let them choke on the flood.

But Poseidon’s jaw clenched. "Not yet."

The god within pressed, oily and vast. Mercy is a mortal weakness. You are not mortal. You are tide. And tide knows no restraint.

Poseidon closed his eyes, pushing the whisper down. For a moment, he let the silence stretch. The world seemed to breathe in rhythm with him, and he realized with a cold certainty: this silence was not peace. It was surrender.

The sea does not ask. It takes.

And the mortals knew it now.

---

A Survivor’s Plea

Movement caught his gaze. Among the wreckage, a child staggered through the water, clutching a piece of driftwood. His eyes were wide, not with fear but disbelief. Somehow, he had survived the flood.

The boy slipped and fell, choking on saltwater. Poseidon raised his hand, and the tide obeyed—lifting the boy gently onto a half-submerged stair.

The child coughed, shivering, then stared up at him.

"You’re... you’re him," the boy whispered. "The drowned god."

Poseidon’s chest tightened. The title was not wrong, yet something in the way it trembled from mortal lips made him pause.

"I am the sea," he said quietly, his voice rolling like surf on stone.

The boy lowered his head, pressing his forehead to the wet stair. "Then... then take me. Better to drown in your hand than be left behind."

Poseidon blinked. The boy’s prayer was not fear—it was devotion.

A smile, faint and bitter, touched his lips. Once, mortals had prayed to him. Once, they had built temples, sung hymns, carved his trident into their gates. And then they had turned away. Now, with a single drowned city, faith was reborn—not as worship, but as surrender.

Thalorin’s voice surged again. Yes. This is what they were meant for. Not prayers, but obedience. Not offerings, but their very breath.

Poseidon dismissed the whisper. Instead, he placed his hand upon the boy’s head. Saltwater swirled, washing grime and blood from the child’s skin. "Go," he commanded softly. "Live. Remember who holds the tide."

The boy wept, nodding, before stumbling off into the ruined streets.

Poseidon watched him disappear and wondered if mercy had just weakened him—or set a seed in the world that even Thalorin could not devour.

---

The Sea Inside

The waves lapped higher, drawn unconsciously by his pulse. Poseidon realized with a chill that his own body was no longer separate from the sea. Every breath deepened the water. Every heartbeat pulled the tide.

He flexed his fingers. Water spiraled upward, forming blades, then serpents, then a crown. He let it fall again, watching it rejoin the flood.

The truth was clear now: Poseidon did not command the sea. He was the sea.

And yet...

The god within pressed against him, ever hungrier. Thalorin’s shadow curled like black silt, testing the edges of his mind.

You hesitate. You speak of mercy. You act as though you are not eternal. Remember—oceans have no need for compassion. Oceans only consume.

Poseidon’s gaze hardened. "And yet oceans give life as well. Without tide, there is no shore. Without water, there is no breath."

Thalorin laughed, a cavernous echo. Life is only fodder for the next flood.

Poseidon turned away from the drowned city, his bare feet leaving no mark on the stone. "Perhaps. But the sea belongs to me. Not to you."

For now, at least, he believed it.

---

Olympus Stirs

Far above, Olympus had felt the shift.

In Hera’s marble hall, the gods gathered, their arguments ringing like clashing steel. Some demanded war. Others whispered caution. Zeus himself sat silent, thunder in his veins, his eyes fixed on the mortal horizon where Poseidon’s tide had risen without storm.

When the drowned bell tolled, Olympus trembled. The mortals had named him already. Poseidon. Not a vessel. Not a boy.

The drowned god had returned.

And Olympus would not ignore him.

---

The Tide’s Claim

Back on the shore, Poseidon raised his trident.

The weapon had not been forged. It had been remembered—drawn from the memory of every ocean, every drowned prayer, every drop of salt in mortal blood. It gleamed, not with light, but with depth, a reflection of seas unending.

He drove it into the stone beneath his feet.

The ground split. Water surged upward, not in destruction but in declaration. Pillars of sea rose like sentinels, circling the drowned city, their tops crowned with foam.

A boundary. A mark. A warning.

"This place belongs to me," Poseidon said, voice carrying across waves and wind alike. "Let the gods see. Let the mortals know. The sea does not ask—it takes."

And in that moment, the drowned city was no longer ruin. It was temple.

The first of many.

Far beyond, in the trench where darkness pressed thicker than stone, something stirred. A shape vast and endless. A hunger old as time.

Thalorin was not gone.

He waited, deeper still, patient as the abyss.

And even Poseidon could feel it—the thin veil between his reign and the abyss’s hunger thinning with every tide.

The war between gods was not coming.

It had already begun.