Poseidon had warned him. Not once, but many times, his voice as deep and unyielding as the trenches below. “Never go to the surface. Humans are cruel.”

It was not fear that shaped the warning, but restraint. The gods, for all their might, lived bound by accords older than storms. Conflict was a luxury they could not afford, not when even a whisper of their wrath could fracture the world itself.

And yet… Xiao had not listened.

That alone was strange. He had never been the curious kind, never one to drift beyond the quiet certainty of the depths. But something had shifted, subtle as a current, until it carried him upward… and into ruin.

Now he lay caged within the bowels of a pirate ship, torn from his element, his spear lost to the indifferent sea. Without it, the tides no longer answered him. Without water, even breath came as a quiet struggle.

Pain lingered in small, insistent ways. His gills were scratched raw, each movement stinging like salt pressed into open wounds. His tail bore the marks of the net that had dragged him from his domain, its strength diminished, its grace stolen. Hours without water had leeched the power from his body, leaving behind a fragile, unfamiliar weakness.

His thoughts drifted in and out like a failing tide. Nothing felt anchored. Time stretched, warped, dissolved. For a deity, it was a humiliating state.

If his father saw him now, there would be no fury, only cold disappointment. And Amphitrite… she would be unraveling, her worry echoing through the halls of the sea.

The world around him blurred into sound more than sight. The groan of timber. The restless breath of the ocean just beyond reach. Then—

A sharp interruption. The basement door creaked open.

Footsteps followed, slow and deliberate, descending the wooden staircase. Each step echoed through the cramped hold, mingling with the ship’s strained timbers and the distant roar of waves.

Someone was coming. And Xiao, weakened and unarmed, could do nothing but wait.