"You are an incarnation," Solarius said, and now there was respect in his voice. "No mere blessed mortal could wound me as such."

He straightened.

"I acknowledge you."

Suddenly, three more Solarius appeared, flanking Finn from different angles.

Illusions? Afterimages? Divine multiplication?

All four immediately burst forward, moving simultaneously as they swung their swords in perfect coordination.

Finn activated [Frame Skip] to quickly evade, but one of the four Solarius anticipated the direction, waiting with his blade swinging where he predicted Finn would appear.

Finn felt the edge bite into his shoulder as he materialized, cutting through the simple robe he wore. Blood welled, spurting forth from the wound instantly.

He bit his lips in agony, weaving away with more frame skips. The pain of the wound brought a surge of clarity to his thoughts as he moved.

These versions of Solarius were definitely not illusions or even lesser versions of the original. He had subconsciously thought of them as lesser, but they were exactly like the original, just as wily, just as fast, and just as powerful.

That meant defeating the Champion had just gotten a whole lot harder.

He was only one man against four equally powerful divine champions.

He needed to do something to even the playing field fast. He needed a broader, area of effect spell. Something that could affect the entire battlefield.

His eyes glowed fierce green through the eye slits on the mask.

[Corrupt Input]

Error pulsed outward in a wave, invisible but tangible to anything trying to process information about Finn's position, his trajectory, his next move. False data flooded the space around him.

He was moving left. No, right. No, standing still. No, already behind the champion and his clones.

The four Solarius hesitated for a split second, overwhelmed by the flood of contradictory information flooding their perception in a jumble.

Finn used that moment to create distance, frame skipping to the edge of the square, breathing hard.

This wasn't working.

He was reacting and surviving, but not winning. Solarius was testing him, learning his capabilities, and Finn could feel the gap between them. Divine authority versus Transcendent power. The Champion had wealth of experience. Way more than Finn's meagre experience, clever tricks, and desperation.

It wasn't enough.

Think, Finn. Analyze. There has to be something—

His attention snapped back to Solarius.

The champion coalesced back into a single form, raising his free hand, and the morning sun responded.

Light gathered in his palm, condensing, compressing into something that hurt to look at directly. The same spell that had unmade the temple, but smaller. Focused. Meant for a single target.

"You fight well," Solarius said, almost gently. "Even with more creativity than most incarnations I've faced. But you're young. Unrefined. Your god is absent, and so far you haven't used any grand divine spells."

The compressed sunlight grew brighter, more terrible.

"I have lost my patience. You will die now. But I will be merciful and make your death swift."

He released the spell.

Finn's mind raced through options in the fraction of a second it took for the divine radiance to cross the distance.

[Invalid]? No, this was too powerful and contained too much certainty. The spell's logic was backed by divine authority that wouldn't simply fail.

[Frame Skip]? Maybe, but Solarius had already figured out the weakness of [Frame Skip], he'd anticipate the destination.

[Corrupt Input]? Wouldn't matter. The spell didn't need to track him, it just needed to hit the general area and everything would be unmade. The power it contained would ensure that.

There was no good option.

No clever trick that would—

Finn felt it then. A stirring. Deep inside, where the stolen divine essence lay dormant within him.

It had been resonating since the fight started, pulsing in time with each exchange, responding to Solarius's divine authority like an echo.

But despite resonating, it remained inert, unactivated, and essentially unusable.

Solarius's spell was three feet away.

Two feet.

There's no time to analyze!

Finn reached inward desperately, grasping for that divine essence, trying to force it active through sheer will…

Nothing happened.

The spell hit?

No.

Something flickered at the last instant. Deacon's concept, Truth, suddenly imposed itself between Finn and the divine radiance. Not as a shield, exactly, but a clarification. The truth — His truth — that Finn was not where the spell thought he was, that reality had room for interpretation, that perhaps this attack had already missed…

The divine radiance curved around Finn by a hair's breadth, close enough that he felt his skin blister from the heat, close enough that the edges of his mask began to char.

But it missed.

Finn stumbled backward, gasping in relief at the close call.

He had nearly died just now trying to force his divine essence.

If not for Deacon, he would've truly been toast.

The Truth bearer had masked his own presence completely, making the Honored One think all the subtle reality adjustments were coming from Finn alone. But Deacon had been there, hidden, supporting Finn beyond just the intent interpretation he spread around the area.

He was also aiding by weaving truth carefully at crucial moments to make Finn's Error spells land more effectively.

And just now, he'd helped redirect the focus of Solarius's spell and saved Finn's life.

But Solarius was already moving again, not giving Finn time to recover. The Champion's sword of light swept toward Finn's neck in an execution stroke.

[Frame Skip].

[Invalid] on the follow-up.

[Corrupt Input] to create confusion.

But it was a delaying action. Finn was being pushed back, overwhelmed, and he could see the irritation forming in Solarius's eclipse eyes. The Champion was practically done analyzing him and wanted to end this here and now.

The divine essence in Finn pulsed again.

Stronger this time. Insistent.

Finn felt it trying to activate, trying to respond to his desperation, but it was like trying to activate something that had no switch.

Why?

He dodged another strike, frame skipped away from a follow-up, barely avoided another that appeared where he'd been about to move.

Why won't it work?

Another exchange. Another near-miss. Finn's shoulder was bleeding freely now, and exhaustion was starting to creep in at the edges. Error magic was taxing, and he'd been pushing hard since the fight started.

Solarius pressed forward relentlessly, divine authority making each strike more certain, more inevitable.

Think, damn it! There has to be a way to activate this divine essence—!

And then it clicked.

As the divine essence thrummed and tried to respond to his will. He realized why it wasn't activating at the final step. Why it wasn't working no matter how he willed it.

It was because it wasn't his.

There was a dissonance that prevented the final handshake. A conflict of recognition. The divinity still contained the essence of Garuda. It still carried the identity of its original owner.

Finn had stolen divinity, but he hadn't claimed it. Hadn't made it his own.

I need to attune it… Rewrite its fundamental nature.

But how? He didn't know the mechanics of divine power, nor did he understand how gods shaped their essence—

Solarius's blade whizzed towards him with blinding speed, and this time there was no clever trick available.

The sword bit deep into Finn's raised left arm, cutting through muscle and scraping bone.

Finn roared.

Not from pain, though that was evidently there. But from frustration. From the realization that he was about to fail. About to die. That his gamble had failed.

This attempt to play the divine. To forge a path and learn how to use his divinity in the heat of the moment because there was no one to guide him through it.

No.

I won't die.

I refuse to die!

He could sense a trace of Order and Glory, along with the concepts of the other Transcendents, begin to rise.

Thalia and the others were about to reveal themselves and come to his rescue.

But he didn't want them to.

A realization had dawned on him. About divinity. About what truly made gods, Gods.

Were they truly Gods if their paths were laid out clearly before them? If they were taught what steps to take and not to take? If there was a teacher that guided them on how to become divine?

No!

The path of the divine was forged from belief. From identity. From will.

And yes, while Faith was the driving factor, Finn had lost sight of who was supposed to be the first faithful…

The God themself. The one who was stepping on the path of the divine.

Something shifted in Finn's mind.

It all begins with belief and ends with belief.

If the divinity won't answer to "Finn," then I won't be Finn.

I'm not Finn Slade. I'm not Arros.

I'm the Errant Heretic.

The one who steals from gods. The one who walks in the cracks between order and chaos. The one whose Error reaches into the divine and takes what it wants.

That's who I am. That's what I am.

The certainty of it flooded through him. Not as a performance this time. Not acting. Not as a simple title either…

This time it was an acceptance of a fundamental truth about himself that he'd been dancing around since the moment he'd stolen Garuda's essence.

He was a thief. A heretic. An errant force that belonged to no pantheon, no theology, no structured divine hierarchy.

And for the first time… He reveled in the certainty of that truth. Immersed himself fully into that identity. Forced the world to acknowledge the truth that this identity was divine…

And the divine essence within him felt that shift.

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