Beneath the Breaking Tide

The glow from the broken seal cast a pallid shimmer across the walls of the trench.

Medusa landed in a slow spiral, her cloak dragging behind her like the tail of a shadow. The sigils throbbed at her back—hot, pulsing, too familiar. She didn’t care.

She only looked for him.

Her son.

But what she found instead made her heart stop.

A shape, cutting through the water. Strong. Swift.

She knew that silhouette. Every current of her body still remembered it.

“Triton,” she whispered.

He landed beside her a breath later, trident held loosely, eyes wide—like he’d never truly believed she would be here until now.

And for a moment, they simply looked at each other.

So much water between them. So much time.

“You came,” she said, voice trembling despite herself.

“I always would,” he replied. “You never called.”

“I didn’t think I had the right.”

He stepped closer. “You had more right than anyone.”

The silence between them was heavier than the trench. But there was no anger in it—only ache. The ache of old choices.

Her voice cracked. “He’s down there. Erebus. He’s touching things I swore he’d never even know existed.”

“I saw the marks,” Triton said. “Felt the shift in the sea. The old magic is moving through him.”

She turned away, ashamed. “I tried to keep him from it. From her. From the blood.”

“You gave him everything you could,” Triton said gently.

“I gave him a curse.”

“No,” he said, stepping beside her now, “you gave him you. And that's not a curse. That’s what might save him.”

Their eyes met again.

This time, softer.

“You never asked me,” she whispered, “if he was yours.”

“I didn’t need to,” Triton said. “I always knew.”

A pause. Then, quietly: “And I loved him before I knew what it meant.”

Something shifted behind them—a pulse in the trench. Not violent. But calling.

Both of them turned.

“He’s still close,” Medusa said. “But she’s in him now. I can feel it. And if we don’t reach him soon…”

Triton raised his trident. “Then we go together.”

She looked at him—really looked.

And for the first time in years, Medusa nodded.

“Together.”

They dove.

Side by side, cutting through the dark like twin blades—one forged of wrath, the other of regret—racing toward the boy who could end or heal everything.

The pulse of the seal had quieted.

Erebus stood still in the chamber, breath shallow, hand still marked from the stone’s response. The water trembled faintly around him, but not with Ceto’s call.

Something else now.

Something… familiar.

He closed his eyes.

And he felt them.

His mother—her presence a thousand layered memories: lullabies woven with warnings, soft hands turned hard by fear. A presence like stone underwater: unmovable, necessary, misunderstood.

And then—

Triton.

The ocean changed where his father moved.

Erebus had only seen him at a distance, in court parades or through veiled glimpses—always the king, never the man. But now the current knew him. The trench recoiled around him. Not out of fear… but respect.

They were coming for him.

Not to chain him.

To reach him.

He stumbled back from the stone, breathing hard. Ceto’s voice stirred again at the edge of his mind, colder this time, like frost on the bone:

“They will try to save you. But they will not understand you.”

Erebus shook his head.

He wanted to be understood.

But the light was so far above now. The pressure of the deep had reshaped him—within and without.

Still… her face.

Mother.

Could she still see the boy who swam too close to storm eels and asked too many questions?

Could he still be that boy?