The Supreme Mage in a Loser's Body

Ch 13 - Ethan Was Chosen

Kael moved his finger beneath the date, careful not to touch the faded writing. Below Ethan's name, a short note gave the name of his primary school. Another recorded the time he usually left with his mother.

This was not a loan application.

He searched Ethan's memories for the school gate. A low wall came first, followed by a crowded pavement and Elena holding his hand. The memory carried no sense of danger. He had been concerned about a drawing folded inside his bag, afraid the rain would spoil it before they reached home.

Someone else had been concerned with when he came out.

“There's another date underneath,” Evelyn said.

Kael read the next note. It recorded a later visit, then another several months afterward. The handwriting changed between entries, but the address remained the same. Whoever began the list had passed it to someone else.

“They were watching me,” Kael said. “This says which days my mother collected me.”

Evelyn leaned closer without moving the page. “Do you remember anyone approaching you?” she asked.

He tried to reach farther into the childhood memories, but they came in fragments. A man speaking to Thomas outside the shop. Elena pulling the curtains earlier than usual. None of it gave him a clear face or a name.

“Not well enough to identify anyone,” Kael replied.

Evelyn asked her colleague to photograph each folded sheet separately. Kael watched the old pages being lifted from the pocket in the book's cover. The Iron Vipers had kept a record of Ethan long before they could use his debt against him.

It did not explain why. It did mean the collectors had not first found the family because Ethan needed money.

“I'll ask Marcus where these came from,” Evelyn said. “You should go home once you've been checked.”

Kael looked toward her. “I want a copy of that page,” he replied.

“You'll have it,” she said. “And I haven't forgotten what I agreed about your family.”

He nodded. His parents might remember what a five-year-old boy had missed, but he would ask them himself.

A member of Evelyn's team helped him to the vehicle waiting outside. Before they left, Kael called Elena as promised. He told her there would be a stop to have his ankle and the marks on his arm examined, then he was coming straight home.

She did not argue about the delay once she knew its purpose.

By the time he reached the shop, his ankle had been wrapped and the torn sleeve cut away from his bruised forearm. The woman driving him stopped close to the entrance so he would not have far to walk. Across the street, one of the people guarding the family stepped out of a parked car and watched until he was inside.

Maya took the small bag containing his treatment notes. Elena brought a chair before he could choose somewhere to sit, while Thomas remained beside the counter with his injured leg supported.

“You look worse than when you left,” Elena said.

“I feel worse,” Kael replied.

She paused with a hand on the back of the chair, then helped him lower himself into it. “At least you're saying it,” she said.

Thomas put his phone on the counter. The photographs of the loan record were still open.

“They really took him?” he asked.

“Marcus and the men at the warehouse,” Kael replied. “The records are being kept as evidence.”

Thomas rubbed his hands together. He seemed about to speak, then looked at Elena instead. She moved closer and rested a hand on his shoulder.

“We paid it,” Thomas said. “All those weeks I kept trying to find more.”

Kael could remember the figures they had worked through at the table, the tools Thomas had considered selling, and Maya pretending not to need things for school. The money had gone out while the real balance already stood cleared.

“Keep our book and every receipt,” Kael said. “Evelyn has their records now, but ours still matter.”

Maya set his bag down. “Can I go back to school?” she asked.

“We'll arrange it with the people outside,” Elena replied. “Someone goes with you until we know it's safe.”

Kael waited while his mother brought water and checked the instructions sent home with him. He drank before taking out his phone. The old page had arrived while he was being examined, and he had looked at it twice during the drive.

“There was another record in the book,” he said. “An old one.”

He placed the phone where Thomas and Elena could both see it. Maya leaned over her father's shoulder.

Elena read the name first, then the address. Her hand stopped on the counter when she reached the date.

“Why would they have this?” she asked.

“I don't know yet,” Kael replied. “Do you remember anyone asking about me around that time?”

Thomas pulled the phone closer. He enlarged the photograph, studied the school name, then looked at Elena.

“That was after the hospital,” he said.

Elena did not answer immediately. She sat in the chair Maya brought for her and folded her hands on her knees.

“What hospital?” Maya asked.

“Your brother had a fever when he was five,” Thomas replied. “It came on quickly. By the time we got him there, he could barely stay awake.”

Kael found a memory of a white ceiling and a blanket pushed away from hot skin. Elena's voice was close, but the words would not settle. He could remember being frightened by her crying more clearly than he could remember the illness.

“I remember you beside the bed,” he said to her.

Elena nodded. “I didn't leave much,” she replied. “They kept checking you, but they couldn't tell us why the fever was so high.”

Thomas leaned back, his gaze still on the old record. “Two men came to the shop after you were discharged,” he said. “They asked whether you'd had another fever. Whether you were sleeping properly. Whether anything strange had happened at home.”

“Did they say where they were from?” Kael asked.

“They said they were following up on the hospital,” Thomas replied. “I thought they meant the doctors had sent them. But they didn't have an appointment, and they seemed more interested in the room than in how you felt.”

Maya glanced at her mother. “What happened in the room?” she asked.

Elena drew a breath before answering. “The equipment stopped working,” she said. “All of it. The monitor went blank, the pump stopped, and the light above your brother's bed went out. Even my phone wouldn't turn on.”

“The corridor lights were still on,” Thomas added. “I remember that because I went out to call for help. Other rooms were fine.”

Kael kept his voice level. “And the fever?” he asked.

“It was gone by morning,” Elena replied. “You woke up asking for breakfast. After everything that happened, you sat there complaining about being hungry.”

Her mouth moved into a brief smile, but it disappeared when she looked at the photograph again.

“They watched you another day,” Thomas said. “Then they let us take you home. We thought we'd been lucky.”

Kael lowered his gaze to the water glass. A violent fever, failed equipment, and a recovery nobody could explain. None of those things proved magic by itself. Together with the record, they gave him a reason to look more closely.

“Was anything found near the bed?” he asked. “A stone, a piece of metal, anything you couldn't explain?”

Elena's fingers tightened around each other.

Thomas turned toward her. “What is it?” he asked.

“There was a piece of glass,” she replied. “Black glass. I found it beneath the bed that night.”

Kael waited while she rubbed her thumb over an old mark on the counter. He did not press her, though the little remaining power inside him seemed to grow easier to feel as his attention sharpened.

“I picked it up before the staff came back,” Elena said. “I thought it might have fallen from a broken machine. Then they started asking what had been touched and whether anyone had brought anything into the room.”

“You didn't tell them?” Thomas asked.

Elena shook her head. “I was afraid they'd think we caused it,” she replied. “Everything was so expensive, and Ethan had only just started getting better. I wrapped it in a tissue and put it away. By morning, I didn't know how to bring it up.”

Thomas reached across the gap between their chairs and took her hand.

“Do you still have it?” Kael asked.

“With the papers from that hospital stay,” Elena replied. “I kept the whole envelope.”

She went to get it while Maya remained beside Thomas. Kael used the pause to compare what he had heard with the dates on the page. The strangers' visit and the early notes belonged to the same period. The later entries showed that their interest had continued after the fever passed.

Someone had done more than notice an unusual illness. They had kept track of the boy who survived it.

Elena returned with a thick envelope and placed it in Kael's lap. Inside were folded hospital papers, a faded wristband, and a small packet wrapped in yellowed tissue.

“Be careful,” she said as he reached for it. “One edge is sharp.”

Kael opened the packet over the envelope. The fragment was no longer than his thumb, with one smooth face and a broken edge that curved inward. He turned it toward the light from the doorway.

Thin lines lay inside the glass, below the surface where no ordinary tool could have scratched them.

He recognized the material before he understood what its presence meant.

Glass like this had been used to guide Soul Crossing. Its inner lines held the direction toward a prepared body, giving a traveling soul a destination when there was no physical path between worlds. It was not a source of strength he could drain. It was a guide.

This fragment had been beneath Ethan's bed eighteen years before Kael arrived.

“Is it valuable?” Maya asked.

Kael closed the tissue loosely around its sharp edge. “I don't know what anyone would pay for it,” he replied. “But I'm glad Mom kept it.”

He could say no more with the three of them watching. They had given him memories of a sick child. They had no reason to know about a spell that moved souls between bodies.

Elena sorted through the papers until she found the discharge date. Kael photographed it beside the glass, then helped her return everything else to the envelope.

He needed to examine the fragment without giving them another reason to be afraid.

“Can I keep this for now?” he asked. “I want to compare it with the things found at the warehouse.”

Elena looked at the glass, then at his bandaged arm. “You can keep it,” she replied. “But you can do the comparing after you've rested.”

Kael agreed. Maya helped carry the envelope while he made his slow way back to bed. She left it on the table and pulled the blanket within his reach before returning to the others.

Alone, he opened his hand.

The fragment explained a possibility he had not wanted to consider. Ethan might have been prepared as another destination, a spare body for the crossing if the intended one could not be reached. The childhood fever could have been part of that preparation.

Kael had not prepared this body. Someone else would have needed knowledge of his spell to do it.

He held the glass still, using only the faint sense his nearly empty core could manage. He would not force power into it. The lines inside already carried a pattern, though most had been cut off by the broken edge.

The glass warmed against his palm.

Kael's fingers tightened around the tissue as the dark surface cleared for a heartbeat. He saw a man's face within it, motionless and sharply defined, with the strong body he had shaped for his own arrival extending beyond the fragment's edge.

Then the image vanished, leaving only black glass in his hand.

Kael knew that face. It belonged to the vessel his soul was supposed to enter.