The eastern pillar of Mount Othrys rested in the hush of a false dawn, the sky a deep, untrustworthy blue. Below, the ocean was a sheet of polished obsidian, silent and unnaturally still. Upon a flat stone at the cliff's edge, Koios sat cross-legged. The ring on his finger glowed with a soft, indigo light. His eyes were closed, his breath steady, the very fabric of the world bending gently around his form.
Then, the sea betrayed the calm.
A tremor rippled through the water's surface. The deep ocean darkened, the weight of something ancient gathering in the abyss. The horizon began to boil.
In the next heartbeat, the calm shattered.
Waves roared upward, crashing against the cliff face with the force of a dying star. A violent surge of power tore the clouds asunder. From the heart of the sea, Poseidon burst forth, trident in hand, water spiraling around him like serpents of a living storm. His eyes were chips of sea-ice, his jaw a locked vise of fury.
Koios opened his eyes. The ring on his finger flared once. He rose, not with muscle, but with intent, as if gravity itself was a servant he dismissed.
"Still bound to your temper, I see," he said, his voice quiet yet cutting through the roar.
Poseidon didn't answer. He twisted his wrist, and the sea behind him obeyed, rising into a vast, sky-swallowing column. He thrust the trident forward. The column exploded into a barrage of compressed torrents, each capable of pulverizing a mountain.
Koios raised his hand, his ring flaring a soft indigo. 'Axis change — reverse.'
The sound of the roaring waves vanished. The torrents froze mid-air, hanging like crystalline sculptures for a single, impossible moment. Then, with a violent spin, they reversed course, hurtling back toward their creator.
Poseidon's eyes narrowed. He crossed his trident before him, and the redirected waves parted around a shield of divine will, the water vapor hissing against his aura.
The cliff trembled under the force.
Poseidon lunged forward, the ground cratering beneath his feet. His trident cut the air, slicing arcs of compressed pressure. Koios slid aside effortlessly—every movement was smooth, pre-ordained.
'Axis change — updraft.'
Poseidon's body jerked upward as the gravity beneath him inverted. He slammed into an invisible stone ceiling in the sky. Before he could regain control, Koios rotated his hand. 'Axis change — compressed.'
The pressure multiplied. Air itself condensed around Poseidon like a divine vice. His bones creaked, his muscles screamed in protest. But instead of breaking, he roared. The ocean answered.
A tidal wave erupted from below, colliding into the cliff with enough force to splinter continents. The impact broke Koios's focus for half a breath, enough for Poseidon to fall, spinning downward. He twisted midair, landing on a rolling surge of water, riding it back toward the Titan.
Their weapons met.
A flash of light tore the sky in two. Metal screamed against metal, divine power against cosmic law. The trident's tips scraped across a shield of warped space, throwing sparks that burned the air. The backlash split the sea apart, revealing the glowing magma of the seabed ten miles below.
Koios slid back, his feet carving deep grooves into the stone. Poseidon followed, relentless. Every strike was heavier, faster. Water coiled around the trident's shaft, forming serpents and dragons that lunged and bit with lethal intent.
Koios extended two fingers. 'Axis change — distortion.'
The space before him warped, bending Poseidon's trajectory. The god of the sea twisted through the distorted reality, skidding sideways along the warped air and landing hard. Rocks shattered under his boots.
He spat a glob of blood and seawater, a fierce grin touching his lips. "You're not what you used to be."
Koios's eyes narrowed. His voice remained a calm, chilling contrast to the chaos. "Nor are you."
The ring on his finger flared brighter. The wind froze in place. 'Axis change — division.'
A shockwave of pure conceptual power erupted. The battlefield split along invisible lines. Every drop of water, every grain of sand separated, suspended in a state of waiting. Poseidon felt the air peel away from his skin, the very molecular cohesion of the world snapping apart.
He answered by slamming his trident into the ground. The sea below responded. From the lightless depths, hundreds of spectral shapes rose—translucent forms of ancient sea beasts, leviathans, and dragons, each wreathed in haunting waterlight. They swam through the air, their silent roars merging with the thunder.
"Rise," Poseidon commanded, his voice a low rumble. "My friends!"
The Leviathans surged forward, a tidal wave of myth given form. A colossal sea serpent, its body a range of moving mountains, dove for Koios, maw wide enough to swallow the pillar whole. Koios didn't flinch. 'Axis change — repel.'
The serpent's head met an invisible wall, its own momentum shattering its spectral skull into a downpour of harmless spray.
Before the spray could fall, a kraken, its tentacles thick as ancient oaks, whipped from the flanks. Each sucker-lined arm carried the crushing pressure of the deepest trench. Koios rotated his wrist. 'Axis change — rotation.'
The tentacles suddenly knotted around themselves, the kraken roaring in spectral confusion as it strangled its own limbs.
Then came the dragons, sleek and serpentine, breathing not fire but jets of hyper-pressured water that could slice through celestial steel. Koios raised his palm. 'Axis change — density shift.'
The air before him thickened into a diamond-like barrier. The water jets shattered against it, exploding into mere mist.
The Leviathans lunged as one. Koios moved his hand in a slow, deliberate circle. 'Axis change — spiral.'
Gravity twisted into a vortex. The Leviathans' bodies contorted, pulled apart into shimmering ribbons of water. The ocean itself twisted upward in a colossal pillar, threatening to swallow the sky.
Poseidon clenched his fist. The ribbons of water resisted, coiling around the vortex, fighting his control. The spiral shuddered, then reversed direction, collapsing back in on itself toward Koios.
The Titan's expression flickered. For the first time, there was strain.
He clenched his ring-hand. 'Axis break — reflect.'
The collapsing spiral detonated. The shockwave ripped the sea open down to the seabed, exposing glowing fissures of magma that painted the scene in hellish light.
Poseidon landed on his feet, chest heaving, water dripping from his brow like tears of the ocean. He stared through the heat shimmer, his eyes burning with a blue, unyielding fire.
Koios's robe was torn, but his composure was only lightly cracked. "Still relying on fury to power your logic," he observed.
Poseidon didn't bother with a reply. He simply charged.
They collided again, faster and harder than before. Each clash shattered the air; each parry bent space. The ring pulsed with rhythm—'Axis shift — reverse… rotation… expand…'—the commands came like gunfire, each altering a fundamental law of reality.
Poseidon forced his way through, even as gravity turned sideways and air turned solid. His instincts screamed at him to adapt. Every blow of his trident carved deep, angry furrows into stone and sky.
Koios ducked a wild swing, his palm snapping forward. An invisible, crushing wave of condensed gravity hit Poseidon in the gut, sending him skidding backward across the ocean's surface, carving a trench of white foam in his wake.
Poseidon steadied himself, spat a stream of saltwater, and laughed, a low, dangerous sound. The Titan predicted everything. Calculated every move. The thought was a poison. He was a storm being dissected by a god of cold, hard logic.
'You think you can bury me in my own sea?' he thought, the fury cooling into something far more deadly.
He raised the trident high. The sea behind him turned the black of the abyss. Storm clouds rolled down from the heavens, lightning arcing between them like divine nerves.
"Come, stormbreaker," he growled.
Thunder was his answer. The sky fell.
Bolts of lightning rained down as pillars of white fire. Each strike illuminated Koios's silhouette, still standing, unmoved, the ring glowing like a captured star.
'Axis change — null vector.'
The lightning vanished inches from his body, diverted into nothingness.
Poseidon dashed through the fading arcs and thrust. The trident met Koios's open palm. The Titan didn't block; he redirected. The blow veered off, tearing a colossal chunk out of the mountainside behind him.
Koios countered with a short, sharp pulse from his ring, gravity compressed into a needle. It pierced Poseidon's shoulder, and golden ichor splattered into the air.
Poseidon's teeth clenched against the pain, but he didn't step back. Enough.
He slammed his foot down—not just into the water, but into the very crust of the earth beneath it. 'Earthshaker.'
The entire ocean convulsed. The cliff face shattered. A thousand-meter wave, born from the union of sea and quake, rose from the depths and engulfed them both.
Underwater, the world turned silent, a muffled cathedral of blue. Only the vibration of raw power remained. Poseidon's wounds sealed as the divine pressure of his domain wrapped around him. Koios floated opposite, his aura bending the sea into a perfect, motionless sphere around him.
Their eyes met through the dark, swirling water.
Koios extended his hand. The ring burned with a cold, white light. 'Axis release — absolute zero.'
Instantly, everything stopped.
The water froze solid—not into ice, but into pure, absolute stillness. Every molecule locked in place. Time itself seemed to halt. Poseidon's body seized; his trident was caught mid-motion. The cold wasn't a temperature; it was the death of motion, the end of energy.
Koios's voice echoed through the conceptual void. "All movement ends at zero."
Divine frost, cold as the void between stars, crawled up Poseidon's skin, locking his muscles, stilling the very blood in his veins. His thoughts slowed, growing heavy and distant. 'So this is how it ends? Not in fire, but in silence?... No.'
A memory flashed—not a thought, but a feeling. The rumble of the abyssal plain, the shudder of continents adrift on his mantle, the raw, untamable pulse of the world itself. The sea was his, but the earth was his foundation.
A crack appeared in the perfect, motionless prison. Then another. Poseidon's hand twitched, not from conscious will, but from a primal, instinctual command that bypassed his frozen mind.
'QUAKE.'
A pulse of pure seismic terror tore through the ocean, ripping the absolute zero field apart. The frozen molecules exploded outward in a shockwave of steam and force. The temperature shattered.
Poseidon stepped free, steam rising from his skin, his eyes blazing with a new, feral light. He gripped his trident, his knuckles white. "Earthquake."
The tectonic plates below convulsed in earnest. Magma blasted from the ocean floor, painting the world in strokes of red and black. The world, once stilled, regained its flow with violent intent.
Koios raised his arm, forming another gravitational field, but the command was a stammer in his mind. 'The calculations are unstable. The variables are—'
Poseidon vanished from his perception.
The Titan's eyes widened. 'Why can't I sense him? His trajectory, his intent…it's gone!'
The trident grazed his ribs, leaving a searing line of divine ichor. Koios spun, mind racing, calculating a thousand possible angles for the next strike. 'He will come from the left, with an 87% probability—'
A blow to his jaw shattered his calculations into blinding pain. He stumbled, his focus broken. The Titan tried again, 'Axis change—' but the command was cut short by a crushing impact to his side. For the first time in eons, Koios felt a tremor that had nothing to do with the earth: panic.
Poseidon moved like a force of nature, his blows a storm of pure instinct. Each movement was precise yet animalistic, unpredictable because it was not thought, but felt. The trident became an extension of his will, water coiling and exploding with every swing.
"Instinct divinity…" the God of the Seas growled, his voice raw and guttural. "You can't read what doesn't think."
He spun the trident once, driving it into the sea below them. The resulting wave rose like a waking mountain, swallowing Koios whole.
The Titan burst free moments later, soaked, bloodied, and disoriented, still trying to reassert control over a reality that had become chaotic. "Axis reversal—"
But Poseidon was already there.
He slammed his palm into the ground. 'Quake.'
The world convulsed. A shockwave of pure vibrational energy radiated outward. It tore through reality, shaking the divine essence inside everything it touched.
Koios froze mid-command. His ring flickered, dimmed, and died. His knees buckled as invisible, destructive vibrations crawled up his spine and through his veins. His gravity field collapsed into nothing.
Poseidon advanced, calm now, deadly calm. He lifted his trident, its points reflecting the molten glow from the fractured earth.
Koios looked up, sweat and golden ichor mingling on his face. For a fleeting moment, defiance burned in his eyes—the last spark of a dying star. Then Poseidon's trident descended.
The impact shattered the ocean floor. The entire eastern pillar cracked with a sound like the world breaking. Columns of water and superheated steam shot skyward, piercing the clouds.
When the dust and foam settled, Koios's broken body lay half-submerged in the churning water, his ring dark and inert beside him.
Poseidon stood over him, trident lowered, his chest heaving. The sea around him was silent, as if in respect for the fallen.
He didn't gloat. He simply looked down, his eyes as cold as the deep abyss, his voice rough with exhaustion and finality.
"Stay buried, old Titan. The sea has no mercy left to give."
He turned and walked away, and the tide, obedient to its master, rose to reclaim the battlefield.
The waves swelled, swallowed the shattered cliff, and the eastern pillar of Mount Othrys disappeared beneath the furious, churning storm.
Suddenly, a cold uneasiness gripped his heart. Poseidon touched his chest, feeling his heartbeat racing rapidly against his ribs. "What is this feeling?"
"Kwaaaa!!!"
A loud, piercing cry, resonant with death and rebirth, echoed across the ravaged landscape. Poseidon looked up toward the peak of Mount Othrys. There, casting a vast and ominous shadow over the entire mountain, was the form of a colossal black phoenix.
Poseidon's eyes hardened. "Hades…"