The third fragment fell like a droplet of darkness into the endless blue.
Unlike the others, it was small, barely a sliver of the vast power the other fragments carried.
But what it lacked in size, it made up for in sheer corruption. This was no ordinary sea—it was a piece of a realm where the waters bore madness, where creatures beyond mortal comprehension lurked in the abyss, their very existence an affront to sanity.
The fragment disappeared beneath the waves, but its effect was instantaneous. The oceans screamed.
From the deep trenches to the raging storms above, every drop of seawater felt the change. Something had entered, something that did not belong, something that carried with it an alien, forgotten will.
Poseidon, god of the sea, felt it first.
A surge of power unlike any he had ever known coursed through him, crashing against his very essence like an unstoppable tide. He grasped his head, staggering atop the shifting waves as memories—no, someone else's memories—poured into his mind like an unstoppable flood.
He saw a time before Olympus.
Before the reign of Zeus.
Before the Titans themselves.
A time when the world was young, when the sea was not his domain, when the ocean belonged to another.
Pontus.
The primordial sea god. The first ocean. The father of all marine life. The being who had been forgotten, erased by history and slain by Uranus when the sky god sought to claim dominance over creation.
Poseidon's chest heaved as the memories consumed him. He was Poseidon. But he was also Pontus.
The two personality in his soul collided, their identities clashing within the divine vessel of the sea god.
Poseidon resisted. He was the ruler of the seas, the god who had fought alongside Zeus and Hades to bring down Cronus. He was a king, the deity to whom sailors prayed, whose name was etched into history through war and worship. He would not be overtaken.
But Pontus pushed back.
He was the ocean before the gods, the unshaped depths, the being who had no need for temples or prayers. His existence was the sea itself, eternal and unyielding. He had been cast aside, forgotten by the world—but now, he had returned.
The battle for dominance raged within their shared being.
The ocean responded in kind. Storms raged. Tidal waves surged. Creatures of the deep twisted, their bodies shifting, growing, evolving into new horrors that had never before existed in this world. The fragment had begun its work, reshaping the very essence of the sea.
Poseidon roared, gripping his trident, lightning flashing through the sky as he fought for control.
Pontus howled, the depths answering him, ancient power coiling around them both.
It could have lasted an eternity.
But in the end, they fused.
No longer was he just Poseidon, the brother of Zeus, the ruler of the seas. No longer was he Pontus, the discarded primordial, slain and forgotten.
He was now Poseidon, the True God of the Sea.
His body pulsed with newfound might, his veins carrying the power of both gods. His presence stretched beyond Olympus, beyond mortal shores. He was no longer just the god of the Greek seas—he was the ocean itself, untamed and boundless, a force that no god, Titan, or mortal could ever hope to chain.
And as he lifted his trident, the sea itself bowed to his will.
A new age of the ocean had begun.