The sea does not rage so much as it writhes.

Foam lashes at the sky in twisting tendrils, and the waves hurl themselves against the cliffside. Like the whole of the salt-born deep has taken up Poseidon's grief and ground it into a storm.

The sea is wrath tonight.

The brine thick in the air, the press of something vast and ancient rising from the deep. The wind tastes of salt and vengeance. Waves rear like warhorses beneath a blackened sky, and in their thunder is the voice of a god.

You stand at the edge of it, hem soaked, sandals braced against the slick stone. You should not be here. No one should. But the wind has always sounded like song to you, and the ocean has always known your name.

Far below, the surf shatters into spray. The sky is blackening, clouds rolling thick with wrath. And above it all—his voice.

It rises from the heart of the sea like thunder cracked open, ancient and booming and too vast to belong to anything mortal.

“That wretched man, Laertiades, who blinded my son, Polyphemus—”

The sea swells higher.

"Who stitched cleverness into cowardice and called it virtue—who slips from every snare like an eel and dares to name himself favored! You struck my blood.”

It is not spoken, not truly. It resonates, pulled from the throat of the sea itself, and when it crashes against you, you feel it in your chest like a drumbeat.

You step forward anyway. You have always come when the tide calls.

The crew staggered beneath the lashing spray, hands blistering on soaked ropes, eyes wild with dread. Odysseus stood near the prow, shouting over the gale, defiant as ever, eyes flashing like bronze struck by flame.

And then it stopped.

Not the storm—no, that still roared—but time itself seemed to hold its breath. Skin like bronze dragged from the deepest trench. Hair thick with kelp and sea-foam. Eyes the color of a sea just before it swallows a ship.

His shoulders crest above the tide.

“Let him wash upon foreign shores ‘til time forgets his name—”

Then, he stops.

Mid-sentence. Mid-curse. The fury in his brow caught, as if someone has wedged a stone in the wheels of Olympus itself. His eyes land on you—truly land—and all at once, the sea stills.

Not silence. Not peace. But a halt. Like the moment between a breath drawn in and not yet exhaled.

A beat passed. And then another. And in them, a thousand memories.

"You," Poseidon says, but the word was not wrathful. It was reverent. Puzzled, even—aching.

You do not move. You know better than to speak before he does. So, you stand, as you always have, spine straight, heart open, palms empty.

And Poseidon—god of the deep, father of storms—recognizes you.

His jaw tightens.

He looked at you as though you were a relic lost to the waves, a prayer whispered by sailors in their sleep. As though he’d forgotten your name only to find it again, carved on the inside of his ribs.

"You are with him?" The question laced with disbelief. “You, my cherished one?”

The truth hung heavy in the brine between you: yes, you were his. Had always been. The sea had called you young, and you had answered. You had offered figs at his altars, knelt on rocky shores with wet palms raised to his temper. You had learned his moods, sung his hymns, traced his myths on the backs of shells. You had been devoted.

But ultimately, you had chosen the journey. And what were the odds—Poseidon was suddenly struck dumb, hesitated.

“I should wreck this hull,” he gritted. “Should pull it down to the marrow of the sea, feed its timbers to the beasts below. But once again, you temper me."