The potion's warmth hit Jin Mu's veins like molten glass. At first it was only heat, a throb in his chest and temples. But then it sharpened into knives. His skull felt split from crown to jaw, his breath staggered, and his body buckled in Orin's chair.
He slammed his eyes shut, forcing himself not to scream, not to let the sound escape. Pain was something he had long known. But this—this was different. It was not flesh being torn. It was not bone breaking. It was the unraveling of the self.
So he did the only thing left. He folded his hands, steadied his breathing, and forced his thoughts into rhythm. Meditation. It wasn't perfect—never had been—but the techniques Camellya had once shown him rooted themselves into his mind.
Anchor. Focus. Let the storm break against the mountain. Be the mountain.
And then—something cracked. Not in his head, but beneath it. Beneath his soul.
The world fell away.
When Jin Mu opened his eyes again, there was no ceiling. No Aurelius. No Orin, no walls, no fire. Only water. But not water as mortals knew it.
He floated above an endless sea. Waves rippled outward, each one tinted with colors that weren't on any spectrum, carrying whispers that weren't sound. Countless fragments flickered beneath the surface like shards of mirrors—millions, billions, each reflecting a different possibility. He caught glimpses: himself dead in a gutter, himself crowned, himself never regressed, himself broken, himself whole.
The Sea of Time.
And not the linear thing sages whispered of in cloistered libraries. This was truth raw and unshielded. It wasn't a river. It wasn't a line. It was a sea stretching in all directions, infinite but alive. Each wave birthed another, splitting, converging, collapsing into itself.
Many worlds. All choices. All times.
He gasped, though his lungs weren't working. His body wasn't here. Only soul. His form shimmered in outlines of black flame and shifting silver script, unstable, but real enough to sense.
Below him, the Sea swelled, waves rising like towers, crashing into one another, birthing new streams. Above him—
He froze.
Aurelius.
Not the Aurelius of streets and towers, not the grand city he had bled in and laughed in and hated. This was Aurelius in truth.
It hung above the Sea like a bubble—fragile, perfect, impenetrable. From inside, it had seemed vast, a city that touched horizons. From here, it was contained. Yet when he squinted, when his soul strained, the veil cracked, and the shape behind it revealed itself.
Nine.
A nine-dimensional lattice. A structure woven in directions his mind strained to comprehend. Each axis folded upon itself, curving into spaces that could not exist yet undeniably did. Aurelius was wrapped, protected, caged—depending on the perspective—by that geometry.
His breath caught though he had none. That's why… that's why Aurelius is cut off. Why it cannot be found, why only through transcendence could one reach it. It isn't a city within the Sea of Time—it is a city above it, cocooned in nine-dimensional armor.
The realization rattled him to his marrow.
And yet, as he stared, something deeper stirred. Beneath the Sea, currents shifted. They moved not like water but like thought. They beckoned. The reflections whispered. He saw himself—not just one self, but infinite. And he knew, somehow, that if he reached, he could touch them. He could bleed their realities into his.
But to do so would be perilous.
Still, his soul burned. The potion had forced this. It wasn't mere accident. It was revelation.
For the first time since regression, Jin Mu felt not just like he was fighting the world, but like the world was unfolding to him piece by piece, daring him to take hold.
He looked down at the Sea, then up at Aurelius. He felt the chains of trauma coiling tight in his chest, the fractures of his minds colliding, merging, stabilizing in ways he had never intended.
And in the midst of it, a thought whispered—half his, half from the Sea itself.
If all possibilities exist, then no fate is final. Not even mine.
The Sea of Time churned, and Jin Mu's soul drifted deeper, pulled by currents older than stars.
The Sea beckoned. Jin Mu stared at its rippling surface, every wave carrying whispers of possibility. His soul trembled with equal parts dread and hunger. He knew he shouldn't. Knew meddling with this ocean was like sticking his hand into a furnace of infinity. But when had caution ever granted him survival?
He took the plunge.
The instant his essence touched the surface, the water was no longer water—it was memory, choice, and consequence crashing down all at once. His vision shattered into a thousand lives.
He sank into one.
He was standing on blood-soaked soil. A battlefield stretched beyond sight, corpses of soldiers and titans alike piled high. He looked down—his hands were soaked red, his veins blackened with corruption. The Black Emperor Pathway was complete here, towering, monstrous.
The other him raised his head. His eyes were voids, burning like eclipses. Around his neck hung chains of broken stars, and beneath his feet, entire civilizations wailed.
This Jin Mu had surrendered everything—humanity, memory, even mercy. He had become power unchained. A ruler of nothing but ash.
"Is this… me?" the real Jin whispered.
The other turned, gaze piercing through space, as though he had been waiting. "No. I am what you could be, if you kept bleeding until nothing remained."
Jin flinched. His soul quivered, but the current pulled him further, deeper.
Now he stood in sunlight. Fields of wheat rippled in the breeze. A cottage. A family. His family. Faces that in his world had long been buried stared back at him, smiling. A sister alive, unscarred. Parents proud and strong. Even a little brother—one who had never been born in his reality—raced up to him, clutching his hand.
Here, Jin Mu had never regressed. Never walked the Black Emperor's Path. He had lived as a farmer, then a scholar, then a teacher. Simple, loved, whole.
Tears seared his soul. His throat locked. He wanted to stay. Gods, he wanted to stay.
But the current tugged again.
This time, he stood in chains. Shackled, beaten, nothing more than a slave. His power sealed, his will broken. The world mocked him, spat on him, until his name was nothing but dust.
He screamed, trying to tear free, but this was not his fate. It was another's. Another possibility.
The Sea roared around him. His soul cracked under the pressure. He couldn't hold them all. Couldn't live all these lives. Each fragment threatened to bury him, drown him in versions of himself that weren't his but still were.
He clawed upward, forcing himself back to the surface. The currents resisted, dragging him sideways, down, across. But his will—the stubborn, jagged will that had carried him through regression, betrayal, trauma—lit up like a blade.
He broke free.
Jin burst from the surface, soul blazing with black fire. He hovered above the Sea, panting though he had no lungs. Fractures ran through his astral form, leaking sparks. But his eyes—his eyes burned sharper.
He had seen too much. Too many selves. Too many truths.
The Sea rippled beneath him, whispering in infinite tongues. Above, Aurelius' nine-dimensional cocoon glimmered like a false heaven.
Jin clenched his fists. He had come close to drowning, but he hadn't. And now, he carried fragments—ashes from the tyrant-self, warmth from the farmer-self, agony from the broken-self. They clung to him, small twigs on his ever-branching path.
Not fate. Not prophecy. Possibility.
He stared at Aurelius. "You're not untouchable," he murmured. "Not anymore."
The Sea of Time roared in answer.