CHAPTER 220: THE ABYSS ITSELF HAD RISEN.

The battlefield had not quieted.

It could not.

The clash of divinity against divinity had left scars in the mortal world that would never heal. Mountains were cut in half where waves had risen like blades. Valleys were flooded into new seas. Cities far from the coast shivered as tremors rolled through the land, carried on the veins of water that linked all living things.

The three gods had fallen back—defeated, but not destroyed. Their broken forms had been dragged away by retreating currents of divine light, vanishing into the heavens above. But their absence did not leave silence.

It left a void.

And in that void, something older stirred.

---

Poseidon stood amid the ruins of the battlefield, water dripping from his trident. His chest heaved with the rhythm of tides—each inhale pulling the sea toward him, each exhale bending the world outward in resistance. His form shimmered, no longer entirely flesh. His body was water, salt, and endless weight given shape.

The mortals who had witnessed the battle no longer whispered his name. They screamed it.

Poseidon. Lord of the Sea. The Drowned God.

The whispers had grown into prayer, and prayer into a tide of its own. His presence thickened with every mortal voice that rose, whether in worship or in terror. For the sea did not care if mortals loved it or feared it. The sea only demanded recognition.

And it was being recognized.

---

But even Poseidon felt it then.

A tremor, deep below.

It was not mortal. It was not divine in the way Olympus had grown accustomed to. It was older, more primal, like the groan of the first trench when the world was young. The battlefield itself seemed to tilt. Rivers surged in directions they had no right to flow. Clouds shattered, dispersing unnaturally across the heavens.

And then—

The Abyss opened.

A tear in reality split the ocean at Poseidon’s back, wider than any canyon. It was not merely water receding. It was the world folding away, exposing an undercurrent that should have never been revealed. Black water surged upward, but it was not water as mortals knew it. It was weight. Memory. Hunger.

The kind of sea that drowned gods.

Thalorin’s voice whispered through it, a murmur Poseidon alone could hear.

"Do you feel it, vessel? The tide without shore. The current without end. This is no longer Olympus’s game. This is ours."

Poseidon gripped his trident tighter. His jaw clenched. "I am not your vessel."

The abyss laughed. It wasn’t sound—it was pressure. The air itself cracked like glass under the force of it.

---

Far above, Olympus trembled.

Zeus himself rose from his throne, lightning bleeding from his eyes. Hera’s calm mask broke into something near fear. Even Ares, who had never quailed at the sight of war, set down his blade as if it could not cut what had just awakened.

The Fates, those three ever-knitting shadows, dropped their threads all at once.

For the first time in an age, Olympus realized it was not in control.

---

Back on the battlefield, mortals dropped to their knees. The ground beneath their feet bled saltwater. Their lungs filled with wet air. Some prayed. Some wept. Some simply stared as if watching the end of all things.

Poseidon’s gaze turned to the abyss.

The hunger there called to him. It was not a command. It was an invitation.

"Step forward," Thalorin whispered. "Become the tide that drowns the sky itself."

Poseidon’s grip on the trident shook. For a heartbeat, his reflection warped in the abyss. He did not see himself. He saw Thalorin—vast, endless, his eyes two suns swallowed whole.

And yet, even as the abyss reached for him, another voice stirred within.

Not divine. Not abyssal. Mortal.

"You were not born for them. You were not born to be their pawn. You were born to be yourself."

It was Dominic’s voice.

The boy he once was.

The boy who had died.

The boy who still lived, somewhere deep inside the sea that was now his flesh.

Poseidon lowered the trident. "No."

The abyss surged violently, slamming against the world’s edges, black tides ripping skyward. But Poseidon raised his hand, and the ocean bent to him—not to Thalorin.

Waves curved, rivers reversed, clouds churned into spirals. His voice thundered across the broken battlefield:

"I am Poseidon. Lord of the Sea. Not your servant. Not your shadow. If you wish to claim me, Thalorin... then rise, and take me."

---

The abyss answered.

A shape tore itself free from the chasm. Not a man. Not even a god. A body of endless water, taller than mountains, formed of nothing but current and abyssal weight. Its head was a whirlpool, its arms the limbs of tsunamis. Every movement pulled the mortal world with it.

The Abyss itself had risen.

Mortals screamed as they were dragged into the air by invisible tides. The battlefield shattered as if the ground had been nothing but brittle glass.

Poseidon stood unflinching. His trident gleamed with blue fire.

And so began the war not of gods, but of seas.

---

High above, Olympus watched.

Zeus raised his arm to command his armies—but Athena’s voice cut through. "No. If we step in now, we are swept into their current. This is not a war we win with blades."

"Then what do you propose, daughter?" Hera snapped.

Athena’s eyes flickered with cold calculation. "We must wait. We must watch. If Poseidon drowns in the abyss, Olympus is spared. If he conquers it... then Olympus must move before he turns that trident toward the sky."

Zeus’s fist trembled on the arm of his throne. For once, the storm-bringer hesitated.

Back in the mortal realm, Poseidon clashed with the abyss’s form.

Every strike of his trident carved trenches across the ocean floor. Every blow of the abyss reshaped continents. Mortals clung to ruins, praying to whichever god would listen, though none answered.

This was no longer the gods’ war.

It was Poseidon’s.

And as the waves swallowed the horizon, as the sky bent under the weight of seas that should not exist, the truth became undeniable:

The abyss had opened.

And the world would never close it again.