The sea changed.
Not slowly.
Not quietly.
But with certainty.
---
Tides churned in reverse.
Currents howled beneath the ocean skin.
Creatures deep in the trenches stirred from generations of slumber, blinking eyes older than nations.
And all across the oceans, one truth spread like salt through a wound:
The sea remembers.
---
At the Vault's Edge
Dominic hovered in silence, water-light shimmering around him. The marks of the Old Ones pulsed gently across his arms, glowing like rivers of living ink.
His voice had merged with the song beneath the sea.
But he remained… Dominic.
For now.
Varun was the first to speak.
> "You don't look like Poseidon anymore."
Dominic's lips twitched.
> "That's because I'm not."
Maelora floated beside him, watching closely.
She could still hear the hum—a low undertone in Dominic's very presence, like a whale's call woven with thunder.
> "What did they give you?"
> "A memory," he said. "A responsibility."
> "And power?" she asked.
