Chapter 126: The Harbor 5
The first toll of the harbor’s great bronze bell was meant to warn of fire. The second was for warships spotted on the horizon. But the third—so rarely struck that many thought it only ceremonial—was the bell of drowning, a knell that no city should ever hear.
On this night, that bell screamed its third toll.
The deep, resonant bong rolled over Veyrus like a death sentence. The harbor shuddered with the sound, echoing across every street, every stone wall, every trembling soul. It was not merely a warning—it was an admission. The city was already dying.
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The Mortal Chaos
Salt wind lashed through the docks, but it wasn’t natural. The sea surged unnaturally high, dragging ships from their moorings and smashing them against stone piers. Masts splintered like bones. Sailors and dockhands screamed as waves reared up like walls of blue-green death.
"Hold the lines!" someone cried. "Chain the gates! Brace the walls!"
But no chain, no gate, no wall could hold back the thing that had risen from the sea.
The Watcher of Tides, a gaunt priest who had tended the bell for forty years, stumbled back as water poured from his own temple steps. He fell to his knees, clutching at the cold marble floor.
"It is him," he whispered. His voice shook like the water slamming against the docks. "The god... the sea itself..."
He wasn’t wrong.
The flood didn’t behave like water should. It didn’t break apart when it hit the piers. It climbed. Liquid serpents writhed up stone battlements, wrapping and squeezing until entire towers buckled. One watchman screamed as a tide-worm of saltwater coiled around him, dragging him over the wall and into the abyss.
"Poseidon!" a merchant shrieked, dragging his children through knee-deep water. "It’s Poseidon come for us!"
But Poseidon was long gone from mortal prayers. What rose now wasn’t worship—it was judgment.
The drowned bell tolled again, its sound muffled by water choking the streets.
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Veyrus
Deep within the palace, Chancellor Veyrus clutched at soaked scrolls, his chambers already flooding. Priests staggered in, robes heavy, their chants broken by coughing.
"My lord," one cried. "We cannot hold it back. Every ward breaks. Every prayer drowns."
Veyrus’s sharp face glistened with sweat—or was it seawater creeping up the walls? He slammed his fist on the table.
"No god should hold this much power!" he hissed. "The seas were bound, divided, kept in check!"
Another priest fell to his knees. "This is no longer a storm. This is will. Someone has awakened Poseidon’s fury."
The chancellor’s teeth bared in a grimace. He had heard whispers of the boy. The vessel. The reincarnated shell walking the world with Poseidon’s spark inside him.
And now, it seemed, the spark had become a blaze.
"Find him," Veyrus snapped, voice hoarse. "Find the vessel before the city drowns entirely. If we kill the shell, perhaps the tide recedes."
But even as he gave the order, another priest collapsed, seawater gushing from his mouth as though his lungs had become the ocean itself. Their gods were already watching—and they were not merciful.
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The Divine Realm Stirring
Far above mortal screams, where the constellations bent into corridors of white fire, the gods stirred.
The Council of the Azure Seat was in session. But tonight, the waters trembled even here.
Columns carved of starlit coral shuddered. The glass floor beneath them rippled like disturbed tidepools. A voice, old as creation, cut through the growing chaos.
"This is no storm," boomed Aegirion, the young sea-god with hair like breaking waves. His trident rattled against the marble. "This is Poseidon. His essence moves again."
Murmurs broke through the council. Some gods sneered, others shivered.
"Impossible," spat a sharp-toothed goddess of reefs. "Poseidon was banished into the Rift. The drowned god has no claim to this age."
"And yet," said Aegirion, pointing down through the glass floor at the mortal world, "the bell tolls."
Indeed, from their vantage, they could see Veyrus’s harbor being swallowed alive. Ships sank like toys, mortals scrambled like ants, and the great bronze bell rang muffled and desperate as the waters smothered it.
Another god rose—a figure draped in black kelp, voice like a deep trench. "If Poseidon’s vessel awakens, it is not merely the sea that returns. It is Thalorin."
At that name, silence fell.
Even among gods, the name Thalorin was not spoken lightly. The ancient drowned king. The abyss without bottom. The one whose hunger even gods could not measure.
"Blasphemy," hissed the reef goddess. "If the boy carries Thalorin’s seed, then the entire pantheon must—"
"—Must kill him before he matures," Aegirion finished grimly. "Or drown with him."
The council chamber trembled again as if the ocean itself pressed against its walls. It was no longer debate. It was inevitability.
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The Harbor’s Collapse
Back in Veyrus’s city, the flood had reached its crescendo.
The bell tower cracked down the middle, bronze clapper ringing one final time before water surged over it, silencing it forever.
Streets vanished. Markets dissolved. Temples collapsed, their idols swallowed by tides. Mortals clung to rooftops, shrieking prayers that dissolved into salt foam.
And then came the silence.
The sea pulled back, dragging bodies, wood, stone, and cries with it. The city that had stood for centuries was gone—half sunken, half erased.
The Watcher of Tides, clinging to his broken temple steps, whispered the truth that others feared to say aloud:
"The drowned god walks again."
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The Council’s Verdict
Back above, the gods cast their votes. Sigils burned in air, each mark binding fate tighter.
"By decree of the Council of the Azure Seat," the high arbiter declared, voice heavy as crushing depths, "Poseidon’s vessel is to be hunted. The mortal shell is to be destroyed. The drowned god must never rise."
Aegirion’s jaw tightened. He had voted no. He had felt the ocean’s pulse, the rage, the inevitability of it. Killing the boy might not save them. It might damn them.
But the decree was sealed.
And below, among the ruins of the drowned city, Dominic—Poseidon’s vessel—stood on the receding shore, his breath ragged, his eyes glowing with tides no mortal should carry.
He did not know yet of the council’s decree.
But he felt it. The ocean inside him churned, whispering of gods sharpening blades above.
And Thalorin, buried deep within his veins, stirred with hunger