Chapter 281: Back To The Future (I)

The realization did not come with a surge of adrenaline or a frantic racing of the heart. Such things were biological, and Finn was currently existing beyond the reach of biology.

Instead, it arrived as a cold, crystalline certainty — a mechanical calculation performed by a mind that had been stripped of everything except its fundamental intent.

He was holding the thread of his own existence in a state of terminal friction.

The tenth soul mass, a dormant entity that had once represented a milestone of his future power, was now nothing more than high-grade fuel. He felt it being stripped away, layer by layer, as the Great Dao’s nullifying force ground against it.

In his future timeline, he would have guarded this soul mass with everything he had, but here, right now, he watched its destruction with a sense of profound, predatory liberation.

These soul masses were Arros’s design. They were the curated weights and measures meant to guide Finn toward a specific, pre-ordained end. By burning them, he wasn’t just surviving the transition through time; he was actively dismantling the cage Arros had built around his potential.

I am burning your legacy to buy the fire that will consume you, Finn thought.

He pushed against the natural urge of the tether to snap him home. He leaned into the agony, using his Error authority to lock the moment of separation into a state of artificial stasis. The Great Dao responded to this defiance by increasing the pressure. The nullification intensified, turning from a grinding friction into a piercing, absolute erasure that sought to resolve the paradox of the two Errors once and for all.

The tenth soul mass vanished, its resonance flickering out into nothingness.

Finn didn’t hesitate. He reached into the darkness of his own soul and dragged the ninth dormant mass into the path of the nullification.

It was a creature of shimmering, obsidian intent — a soul mass that, in another life, might have granted him dominion over the shadows of the physical world. Now, it was merely a shield.

He felt it ignite. The pain was excruciating, a raw, structural scream that vibrated through the core of his being. Even with the soul mass bearing the brunt of the “correction,” the sheer proximity to the Great Dao’s nullification was enough to warp Finn’s consciousness. He felt his memories of the future beginning to blur at the edges, the timeline he was trying to reach becoming a flickering, uncertain destination.

But he held. He anchored himself in the singular, deadly calm thought of Arros’s demise.

The eighth soul mass followed the ninth.

The seventh followed the eighth.

With each sacrifice, the interval of survival grew longer. The higher-ranked soul masses were exponentially denser, their “truth” more difficult for the Great Dao to dismantle. They were vast repositories of concentrated existence, and as they burned, Finn felt fleeting traces of their might — echoes of the power they would have granted him.

He felt the temptation of that power, the seductive pull of what could have been. But he didn’t bat an eye. To him, these soul masses were supplemental, simply tools to be used. He’d already assimilated eleven of them and made them his, but he wasn’t hell-bent on keeping the others.

He was the Errant. In his previous lives, his strength had never been a collection of external trophies. It had been his own inherent violation of the rules. He was returning to that purity now, fueled by the destruction of the very things meant to define him.

Six soul masses remained.

The sixth mass was a conceptual entity, a soul that dealt with the fundamental stability of space. As it met the Great Dao, the void around Finn began to ripple and fold. The pain shifted from a burning sensation to a feeling of being pulled in every direction at once, as if his consciousness were a piece of fabric being stretched across the entire span of history. He grit his teeth — not that he had teeth, but the mental equivalent of the action — and forced his focus to remain narrow.

He still couldn’t sense Arros.

This was the true test of his gamble. He was enduring the equivalent of metaphysical annihilation on the hope that Arros, despite his antiquity and his cunning, was more vulnerable in this state of transition. Arros was a parasite; he required a host to be “whole.” In this “in-between” space, where Finn was separate from his body and Arros was separate from Finn’s subconscious, the advantage should have shifted.

But the silence from the other side was haunting. Was Arros also burning his own reserves? Was he laughing at Finn’s effort? Or was he truly being dismantled by the very force he had spent centuries trying to circumvent?

Finn moved to the fifth mass. Then the fourth.

The power contained in the fourth soul mass was staggering. It lasted twice as long as the previous three combined. The buffer it created was so thick that for a moment, the pain actually receded into a dull, distant ache. Finn used this reprieve to sharpen his intent, honing his soul into a needle-like point of pure hostility.

He reached the third soul mass.

This was one of the “Crowns.” In the future hierarchy, the top three soul masses were not merely tools… they were apex beings when they had lived. Entities carefully selected by Arros. Creatures and things plucked from exotic planes. Things that could contend with Transcendents, and give them a run for their money, purely powered by mana.

As Finn pushed this mass into the Great Dao, the environment changed. The void was no longer black, it was a blinding, iridescent white. The time between the consumption of layers grew drastically now. The third ranked soul mass was a fortress of existence.

Finn watched the process with a clinical detachment, marveling at the depth of the third ranked soul mass’ strength, but also, mainly focused on the thought of Arros.

How are you still there? he wondered. What are you made of, Arros, that you can survive the direct gaze of the Dao without a body to hide in?

He considered, briefly, whether he should continue until the very last mass was gone. If he burned the first and second, he would be entering his timeline completely “empty” of the rest of Arros’s milestones. It would be the ultimate act of defiance.

But he could feel the tether straining. The tension in the line was reaching its breaking point. If he held on much longer, the mechanism of his return might snap entirely, leaving him adrift in the currents of time forever.

As the third ranked soul mass neared its end, its brilliant light beginning to flicker and fade into the gray static of erasure, Finn made his decision. He had done enough. He had forced the confrontation to a point where the veil had to thin.

At the exact moment the third mass fizzled out, Finn relaxed his grip. He released the mental anchors he had placed on the tether and allowed the immense tension of the timeline to claim him.

The lurch was violent. He was snapped through time with a velocity that defied description, the soul-equivalent of being fired from a railgun. The “in-between” space vanished, replaced by a blurring kaleidoscope of ages and events rushing past him in reverse.

And in that moment of transit, the veil between him and the parasite in his soul finally, involuntarily, came apart.

Arros.

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