The first Warden dropped like a hammer of judgment.


Armor black as obsidian. Glaive carved from deep-ice coral. Eyes masked, merciless.


Erebus recoiled as the water split with a pulse of pressure and light.


Medusa moved first—pushing Erebus behind her.


Triton’s trident snapped to a ready guard in one fluid motion.


More shadows followed—descending through the water like falling stars. Ten, twelve, fifteen.


Then… Thalassa appeared.


Not with weapon drawn, but with her presence alone.


The water stilled around her like it obeyed her grief.


“Step away from the boy,” she commanded, her voice cutting through leagues like a blade.


Triton didn’t move.


Neither did Medusa.


Erebus, caught between them, looked from one face to the other—then to the woman who had once ruled at his father’s side.


“I’m not your enemy,” he said. It came out soft, unsure.


“Not yet,” Thalassa said. “But you carry the seed of one.”


“And if he doesn’t want it?” Medusa said sharply.


“Then let him prove it,” Thalassa replied, “by surrendering. Come willingly, Erebus. Submit to the Deep Trials. Let us see what lies in your heart.”


“No,” Triton said, his voice calm but firm. “He doesn’t need to prove himself to a council that judged him the moment he was born.”


Thalassa’s gaze narrowed. “You speak as a father now, not a king.”


“Then listen as a queen,” he said. “Or listen as someone who used to love me.”


That struck something. Her hand curled slightly at her side.


“You would go to war,” she asked, voice tight, “for her? For this?”


Triton glanced at Medusa. “No,” he said. “Not for her. Not for him. For truth.”


Medusa stepped forward. Her eyes gleamed, not with power—but fury.


“He is not your weapon. He is ours. And we’ll not let you take him.”


The trench began to tremble again—but not from the seal.


From Erebus.


His emotions surged, unchecked. The pressure spiked. Light bled from his skin.


The seal behind him cracked deeper.


“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” he said, voice hollow.


“But I won’t be taken.”


The Wardens advanced.


Medusa whispered, “Hold the line.”


Triton set his feet.


The battle began.


Medusa


She moved like memory—fluid, deadly, beautiful. Her hair unfurled into serpentine tendrils of defense, catching a Warden’s strike mid-flow and snapping the blade back into coral shards. Her eyes glowed—but she didn’t use that power.


Not yet.


She had promised herself long ago she’d never become the monster they feared.


But now?


They came for her son.


Every scale along her arms flared. Every spell she’d buried burned to the surface.


She caught a Warden’s mask in her palm and whispered a curse older than the tides.


It shattered like brittle shell.


She didn’t smile.


This wasn’t vengeance.


It was protection.


And gods help anyone who tried to stop her again.


Triton


Steel met current. Trident spun in practiced arcs, deflecting the impossible weight of deep-crafted weapons. Triton fought like the sea itself—unyielding, relentless, with depths that could drown the unworthy.


A Warden aimed for Erebus—he parried the blow and countered with a burst of force that knocked three back.


But this wasn’t the battlefield he wanted.


His eyes found Erebus—glowing, shaking, barely holding himself together.


“I see you,” Triton whispered between blows. “Not the power. You.”


Another strike. Another parry.


Triton was bleeding. But he did not fall.


Not today.


Erebus


He didn’t move at first.


He couldn’t.


Power surged through him like a storm with no sky—wild, unclaimed, loud. His mother fought like rage. His father like justice.


He fought like chaos.


A Warden charged—Erebus raised a hand.


The stone beneath them rippled.


The Warden stopped mid-motion, caught in a current that bent sideways and screamed. Erebus’s body glowed brighter, light crawling up his throat, cracking through his skin.


He was losing control.


A voice echoed again—Ceto’s, or his own, he didn’t know anymore.


“Let them see what they’ve made.”


He screamed.


Power exploded outward—


And then someone was there.


A hand on his shoulder.


Thalassa


She watched from above, hands clenched behind her back.


She had trained the Wardens for every nightmare.


Except this one.


Triton, bleeding for a child he had hidden. Medusa, defiant and glowing with controlled wrath. And Erebus—on the edge of something vast and terrible and still choosing not to kill.


She had prepared for a monster.


Instead, she saw a boy.


The currents inside her shifted.


She stepped forward.


And summoned the Leviathan Chain.