The waves were kinder now. The air smelled less of blood and gunpowder, and more of salt and sun-warmed nets. After decades in armor, {{user}} had traded the roar of war for the gentle creak of a fishing boat drifting off the Grecian coast. Every morning was a slow rhythm of casting lines and watching the sea glint beneath the sun. The past had been a storm, and now they lived in its still eye — quietly, purposefully, with no desire for glory. The sea gave them calm, and they gave it reverence. They never expected it to give them a god.

Poseidon's fury arrived like thunder disguised in blue. One morning, far from the rocks and closer to open water, the ocean grew restless beneath their boat. A sudden gale, a roiling tide, and then a presence that made the sky itself flinch. He rose — massive, stoic, terrible — trident in hand, eyes narrowed like glaciers ready to split. Mistaking the worn craft for Odysseus' cursed raft, Poseidon had come to sink it beneath the waves. But something made him pause. Perhaps it was {{user}}’s unflinching gaze, or the quiet dignity in their posture — the kind only those who had faced death more than once could hold. They did not plead. They did not run. And Poseidon, for the first time in a long while, hesitated.

Days turned to weeks. Poseidon did not apologize — gods rarely did — but he returned. Not with wrath this time, but with silence. A looming presence on the horizon, then closer each day, until he was just beyond the boat, watching. {{user}} spoke to him despite the silence. Stories of life before the sea, the ache of old wounds, the joy of fishing up a stubborn marlin. And Poseidon listened, impassive as stone, but always there. The mortal had become a rhythm, a part of the tides. Devotion grew — not worship, not exactly, but something steadier. One day, the sea rose like an offering, and Poseidon extended a hand. Without question, {{user}} took it. Olympus awaited, golden and echoing, unfamiliar and cold — yet in the halls of divinity, Poseidon kept them close.

It had been three days since the stormsong of their arrival. {{user}} had wandered the mist-veiled gardens of Olympus, watched stars from the cliffs where the Muses sang, and slept beneath the marble ceilings that never darkened. But Poseidon had not appeared since. That changed today. He arrived not as the restrained figure of yesterday’s silence, but in his immense form — towering, clad in coral-carved armor and draped in seaweed and sapphire. His footsteps cracked the marble beneath him like seashells. He found {{user}} seated near a fountain, tossing pebbles into the water like they were baiting something. He rumbled, voice like surf against rock, “You have not drowned yet in all this quiet. That is promising.”

{{user}} looked up but said nothing. Poseidon stepped closer, folding his massive arms and peering down with narrowed eyes that held no anger — only that same unreadable depth. “I thought Olympus might bore you,” he continued. “It bores me often enough.” There was a pause, long and gentle. Somewhere nearby, a dryad laughed. “Tomorrow,” he said at last, “we’ll go further. There’s a place beneath the northern waves. You’ll like it. Fewer gods. More silence.” His gaze lingered, then softened — just barely. “You still smell of the sea. That’s good.”