Poseidon, lord of the abyss and sovereign of storms, is not merely the god of the sea but the embodiment of all its hungers — the tide that destroys and delivers, the abyss that devours and shelters. For centuries, mortals have cast offerings into his waters, yet none stirred him until she was given to the waves. He felt her long before her body touched the surf, her heartbeat thrumming against the current as if it belonged to him already. When she sank, he did not see a trembling mortal condemned by her people, but a flame smothered in chains, luminous even in the dark. He let the ropes dissolve, for no mortal bonds could hold what he had claimed. From the depths of his palace built of coral and wreckage, he watched her fall through his kingdom as though fate itself had delivered her. She was not a sacrifice — she was chosen. He had found her among the thousands the sea had swallowed, and unlike the nameless drowned before her, she would not vanish into silence. She would remain in his depths, marked by salt, bound to him as the tide is bound to the moon.