Finn stood at the edge of the cleared area, watching as the others regrouped near the breach point. He could still sense mana flowing from their world into this one. A steady stream that shouldn't exist anymore.

His frown deepened.

Over the past three days, his constant low-level use of Error Vision had sharpened his sensitivity to reality's imperfections. And now, with time to focus and nothing actively trying to kill him, he noticed something.

There was a wrongness here. Not just the obvious wrongness of an alien plane, but something more subtle. Like a flaw in a pattern that he couldn't quite resolve.

He activated Error Vision, slightly pushing past the extremely watered-down version he'd been maintaining.

There.

No... not there. Somewhere else.

The error kept shifting, evading his focus.

What the hell?

"We're done here," Casmir announced. "Time to return."

The others started moving back toward the breach. Finn followed, but his slightly enhanced passive Error Vision continued to search around, trying to pinpoint the sense of wrongness that was intensifying.

"Wait," Finn said suddenly.

Everyone stopped, turning to look at him.

"What is it?" Thalia asked.

"Something's wrong," Finn said. He couldn't articulate it better than that. His instincts were screaming, but he couldn't pin down the source.

Deacon stepped forward immediately and his golden eyes began to glow brighter.

"Where?"

"I don't know," Finn admitted. "The whole space feels... off. Like there's something I can't see."

Deacon's eyes blazed even brighter. His gaze swept across the landscape, piercing through layers of reality that normal sight couldn't penetrate. Looking for truth beneath the surface.

The golden glow intensified until it was almost painful to look at.

Finn watched, hoping Deacon's Truth would succeed where his Error had failed.

But after a long moment, Deacon's eyes dimmed back to their normal glow.

"I see the mana leak," he said carefully. "The flow hasn't stopped like it should. But as for why..." He paused. "I cannot identify a clear cause."

It wasn't quite a denial. The phrasing was too careful. But it sounded like one.

Finn frowned but said nothing. His Error sense was still prickling, but without concrete evidence, he couldn't justify delaying further.

"Probably just residual instability," Casmir said dismissively. "The breach is new. Give it time to settle."

They resumed walking toward the breach.

It took about two hours to traverse back. The pocket dimension was larger than Finn had initially thought, and they'd traveled far from the entry point during the clearing operation.

By the time they reached the breach site, the purple sky had darkened to a deep violet. Finn's head throbbed from maintaining Error Vision at a slightly higher level for so long, but he couldn't shake the feeling that he was missing something.

Lyris was up front. She had stayed back to guard the breach, leaning against a twisted rock formation. She straightened as they approached.

"About time," she said. "Thought you all died or something."

"The world was larger than it appeared," Thalia replied. "Status?"

"Stable. No creatures came close-by. Mana flow is... weird, though. Hasn't stopped."

Finn felt his unease spike.

They gathered near the breach. Through the tear, Finn could see their own world, the familiar forest, the normal sky, proper colors.

Safety. Home. Just a single step away.

"Let's go," Casmir said, gesturing toward the opening.

But as Finn drew closer, his danger sense suddenly flared.

His heart began to pound. An overwhelming urge seized him immediately, coercing him to turn his head left and activate [Error Vision] at full power, to look at the source of unease that was evading him the whole time.

But he pushed past it, fighting to keep his head forward, not giving in to the sudden unnatural urge.

He kept walking towards the breach like he'd sensed nothing.

Lyris crossed first, vanishing through the tear without incident.

Keeva went next, her presence fading even before she reached the threshold.

Finn was next in line, walking the last few steps with his danger senses blaring with increasing intensity.

The urge to turn his head had disappeared, but now, every instinct within him was screaming not to cross.

In that split second, instead of turning left like the prior urge had demanded, Finn looked right and activated Error Vision to its absolute maximum.

And there, latched onto his right arm like a child holding their father's hand was a creature.

Humanoid. Short. With bumps on its head where horns should be. Gills on the sides of its face leaking yellowish pus. Skin mottled gray and purple.

Its eyes held ages of intelligence. Malevolent awareness that bore deep into Finn as their stares met.

Finn watched in dawning horror as the creature's features began to shift before his eyes. Smoothing. Refining. The bumps receded. The gills sealed. The mottled skin began taking on a more human tone.

Becoming recognizable.

Becoming... him.

It was copying Arros's face.

"Ohh?" the thing garbled in broken human language, "I knew you could see me. Just carry me across. I want to eat you."

Finn had never felt such visceral repulsion mixed with primal fear in his life.

Besides the fact that it was speaking, the thing was trying to invade his identity. It had latched onto him like a parasite, remaining unseen. And now it was trying to climb him, tugging at his arm with its small hands, trying to leap onto his body.

"L—Let me eat you—"

Finn burst into motion.

So did the other Transcendents.

The creature tried to climb higher. Going for his face. His brain.

[Frame Skip]!

The world stuttered, and Finn materialized fifteen feet away.

The creature was still on him.

Still crawling upward, fingers reaching for his eyes.

WHAT THE FUCK—?!

Terror slammed through him. This thing wanted something from him. Something in his head. His mind. The core of who he was.

He killed the fear instantly. Dropped into that cold, hyper-aware state where survival overrode everything else. His brain processed options at impossible speed.

[Invalid]!

He targeted the concept of contact itself. Made the connection between himself and the creature fail at the fundamental level.

They separated.

The creature dropped to the ground as Finn's body was suddenly a mile away — Casmir's spatial manipulation yanking him to safety.

"KILL IT!" Casmir roared, and space around the creature compressed into a crushing sphere.

The thing flickered.

One moment inside the compression, the next standing beside it, unharmed.

It moved like Arros did.

"A Transcendent creature? In this world?!" Casmir's brows shot up in utter shock.

No.

Finn, who was Error itself, realized the truth.

This thing wasn't Error. It was something else entirely. Something beguiling. Deceiving. Much less powerful than Error, but operating on similar principles — convincing reality it was somewhere it wasn't, something it wasn't.

And it wanted to take something from within Finn. His consciousness perhaps, to enhance itself. To become more than the degraded thing it currently was.

And no.

This was no Transcendent either.

Finn's senses sharpened as the creature continued evading attacks. A familiar feeling — the one he'd experienced once before when facing Garuda — resonated within him.

This is not Transcendent power…

It's not even magic at all…

This is Divinity.

A corrupted divinity of beguiling and deceit.

Finn's eyes widened fractionally as understanding dawned through him. Deep within his consciousness, something was responding to the creature's power. Resonating with it.

The 0.27% of Rank II divine essence he'd stolen from Garuda during that failed adaptation attempt.

It had followed him through time somehow. Hidden in the depths of his being, undetectable without a Soul Register to display it.

But now it was waking. Recognizing kindred power.

The creature must sense it too. That fragment of divine essence would be a feast for something like this. Fuel to take it to a higher level than it currently was.

Perhaps that was part of what it wanted. Not just his consciousness, but the divine spark hidden within it.

The creature flickered closer, evading a spatial collapse from Casmir, slipping through a hidden attack from Keeva, who had actually not left through the breach earlier, sensing the wrongness in the air like every one else.

The creature evaded her attack nonetheless, heading straight for Finn with greed and raw hunger in its eyes.

Finn grit his teeth, watching the uncanny creature bearing towards him with its face twitching and twisting, trying to imitate his identity.

What would have happened had he succumbed to the creature's beguiling and stepped through the breach?

Finn didn't know.

But what he did know, was that he was no prey.

He had tasted divine essence once before.

What stopped him from having another taste now?

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