The city was silent.
No birds, no bells, no merchants haggling over spice or steel. Only the sound of water lapping against broken rooftops, sloshing in windows, dripping endlessly from every carved gargoyle and drowned arch.
Poseidon stood at the heart of it.
The ruined marketplace stretched before him, now a half-submerged basin, its cobbled streets lost under dark water. Lanterns floated like orphaned stars, bobbing gently in the brackish tide he had birthed. He could feel the salt in every broken stone, hear the faint gurgle of water squeezing through cracks in foundations centuries old.
He breathed.
And the city answered.
Each inhale pulled water higher. Each exhale eased it back, like the lungs of a slumbering giant. The harbor did not merely drown—it pulsed with his will.
"Not a city anymore," Poseidon murmured, voice rippling over the surface. "A vessel."
