The waves bowed to him.
That was the first thing Dominic—no, Poseidon—noticed as he walked barefoot across the shoreline of his dominion. Each step pressed not into sand, but into living memory. The waters did not resist him anymore; they sang to him, a deep, primeval hymn thrumming in his blood.
Yet beneath that hymn, something else stirred—darker, heavier, like chains rattling at the bottom of an abyss. Thalorin's essence.
He clenched his trident tighter, his knuckles whitening. I am Poseidon now. Not a vessel. Not prey. Not a dying boy counting hospital hours.
But the ocean answered differently.
"You are both," whispered a voice like rolling thunder in the deep. "And when the tides turn, you will learn which half drowns the other."
Poseidon shut his eyes, forcing the whisper down. The ocean stretched endless before him, yet no longer felt like freedom—it felt like a cage too vast to escape.
He wasn't alone.
