A voice, low and vast, speaking not in words but in currents, in tides, in the weight of crushing oceans.
You are mine.
The cavern walls rippled as if the stone itself bent under pressure. His vision blurred—Dominic's hospital bed flickered before his eyes again, then a battlefield of gods, then a world drowned in endless storm.
"No!" he roared, forcing the vision back. Lightning cracked overhead, striking the cavern roof. Rocks fell, crashing into the pool and sending pillars of water skyward. "I am not yours. I am Poseidon."
The reply came like the collapse of continents.
You are nothing but a vessel.
The pool exploded upward, a column of water wrapping around him, dragging him toward its depths. He fought, summoning whirlwinds to resist, but each surge of power fed the pull instead of breaking it. He was dragged under, swallowed into a place that wasn't water but memory, a drowning not of body but of self.
