The Supreme Mage in a Loser's Body

Ch 9 - Building a New Core

The car Elena had called stopped outside while Kael was still trying to stand. Maya took his arm, slipping beneath it before he could tell her that he could manage.

“You can lean on me,” she said. “I'm not the one with broken ribs.”

He let her help him through the doorway. Elena supported Thomas on the other side, and they left the damaged shop locked behind them. None of them suggested that Maya remain there alone.

At the clinic, Kael lay still while his injuries were examined again. He could not argue with the pain whenever he moved, or with Elena's account of what had happened. Thomas sat nearby with his left leg supported, answering questions about the old injury and the new blow.

They returned after dark with medicine, instructions, and a bill that took another share of the hotel's payment. Thomas's leg was badly bruised, though the examination found no new fracture. Kael had been told to rest and return if his condition worsened. Elena repeated those instructions when she caught him looking toward the workbench.

“Whatever you're thinking of fixing can wait,” she said.

Kael lowered his gaze to the tool bag beside it. Earlier that day, he had believed earning money would give them room to deal with Marcus. Rafe had answered by bringing six men and threatening Maya.

He could repair every machine in the hotel and still fail to keep one attacker away from his father.

“I need a few things from the bench,” Kael replied. “Then I'll lie down.”

Elena stayed beside him while he chose a short length of copper wire and two flat pieces of scrap metal. He added a pair of pliers, moving slowly enough that she would not have to remind him again.

“No work tonight,” she said.

“I won't repair anything tonight,” Kael replied.

She studied the objects in his hand, then took the pliers from him and put them back. “The rest can sit on your table,” she said. “I'm bringing you food.”

Kael carried the small pieces away without arguing. The wire was thin enough to bend with his fingers. He could work without the tool.

Once alone, he took Rafe's ring from his pocket and set it beside the metal. The tiny stone hidden inside it remained empty. Nothing had returned to it since he drew out its stored power, and the last of that power had gone into throwing Thomas's attacker across the shop.

Only the trace attached to his soul remained.

He could not spend it on another fight. It helped keep him inside Ethan's body, and tearing it free without replacing that support might leave the body empty again.

But if he used it to form a core, the new core could hold his soul in place while giving future magic somewhere to gather. That was the risk he had been avoiding since he woke here.

Ethan had been born without an inner core. His body had no prepared paths through which magic could travel safely. Every spell Kael had forced through it had strained flesh already damaged by the beating.

Skill had let him survive. It would not let him survive indefinitely.

Kael bent the wire around the ring, leaving its ends resting against the two metal pieces. The ring's stone had once held energy. Even empty, it could help keep a small flow steady while he directed it inward. The copper joined the pieces so the power could return along the same route instead of scattering.

There was no magic in the scraps themselves. They would guide what he had, not create more.

He placed the arrangement against his lower stomach, beneath his shirt, and supported his back against the pillows. Then he loosened the smallest thread of energy from his soul.

His fingers went cold immediately.

Kael paused, keeping the rest firmly in place. A little more would have made the work easier, but it also would have weakened his hold on the body. He fed only that first thread into the ring and waited until its movement steadied.

The stone grew warm beneath his palm.

He drew the thread back inside and guided it toward the place where the core needed to form. A narrow burning line followed its path. Ethan's body resisted even that small amount, tightening around it until Kael's stomach cramped.

He stopped before the pain spread.

In the Nine Realms, a prepared vessel would have accepted this work in moments. Here, pushing harder would tear the very paths he needed to open. He had to give the body time to bear the flow before taking it any farther.

Kael waited through several breaths, then moved the thread a little deeper.

By the time Elena knocked, sweat had soaked the back of his shirt.

He settled the unfinished flow into the ring before answering. Stopping too abruptly would send it back through the half-open path, undoing the work and possibly damaging him further.

“Come in,” he said.

Elena set a bowl on the table and came straight to his bedside. Her hand touched his forehead before he could move the cloth covering the metal.

“You're burning up,” she said.

Kael opened his mouth to tell her it would pass. She was already reaching for the thermometer, her face drawn with the same worry he had seen when Ethan's memories first came to him.

“Are you having trouble breathing?” she asked. “Is the pain worse?”

“I can breathe,” Kael replied. “I'm hot, and I'm tired.”

He disliked how little that explained. He could tell her exactly where the heat came from, but the explanation would lead to questions about Ethan that he could not answer honestly without hurting her.

Elena checked his temperature, then reached for her phone to contact the clinic.

Kael did not stop her. He held the power still while she described his condition and answered the questions she was asked. After the call, she pulled a chair beside the bed instead of leaving.

“I'm staying here until it comes down,” she said. “If it rises again, we're going back.”

She offered him the water glass. His first impulse was to take it quickly, before she noticed his trembling hand. Instead, he let her steady it while he drank.

Long before the ambush on Black Sky Peak, Kael had learned to watch anyone who approached him when he was weak. A servant might be paid. A student might want a secret. Someone offering medicine might have put the poison there.

Elena adjusted the pillow behind him and complained that he had barely touched his food. When she lifted the spoon, he accepted that too.

He could not remember the last time he had allowed someone to help him without wondering what it would cost afterward.

The pause gave his body time to cool. Beneath his hand, the ring held the thread steady, and the pain inside him slowly eased. Kael had been trying to complete each step as soon as the previous one held. Resting between them was working better.

Elena checked him again before calling Thomas in.

His father entered with Maya supporting his arm. He sat in the chair while Elena went to fetch fresh water. Maya left the door partly open when she followed her mother.

For a while, Thomas said nothing. He looked at the untouched half of Kael's meal, then at the small bundle beneath his hand.

“Still can't leave things alone,” Thomas said.

Kael loosened his fingers over the cloth. “I'm resting,” he replied.

“You used to say that with a screwdriver hidden under your blanket,” Thomas said. “Your mother found screws in the bedding for a week.”

A memory rose before Kael could search for it. Ethan, small enough that his feet did not reach the floor, sat beside an opened radio. Thomas's hands guided his away from a part he should not touch.

“The radio,” Kael said.

Thomas smiled faintly. “You wanted it working before my birthday,” he replied. “You took it apart while I was out buying parts.”

Kael could remember the pieces on the table and the sick feeling when Ethan realized he could not put them back. He remembered waiting by the door with an apology ready.

“I broke it,” Kael said.

“You lost two screws and pulled a wire loose,” Thomas replied. “We fixed it together.”

Kael looked toward his father's injured leg. “It wasn't always that easy,” he said.

Thomas followed his gaze. He rested both hands on his knee, careful to avoid the fresh bruise.

“No, it wasn't,” he replied. “But somewhere along the way, you started thinking every mistake meant there was something wrong with you.”

Kael remained silent. Ethan's memories held more than a broken radio now. There were unpaid bills, abandoned studies, and evenings when he could not make himself face his family. He had remembered the shame clearly from the beginning. Until now, he had paid less attention to the hands still reaching for him through it.

“I should have helped more,” Kael said.

“There were times we needed you and you shut us out,” Thomas replied. “I'm not going to pretend that didn't hurt. But failing us sometimes never made you worthless.”

His father leaned forward as far as his leg allowed.

“You don't have to earn your place here by letting people beat you half to death,” Thomas said. “You're my son when the repair works. You're my son when it doesn't.”

Kael swallowed before answering. “I don't want them to hurt you again,” he said.

“Then stay well enough to help us think,” Thomas replied. “Your mother needs sleep. Maya needs to stop checking the window. None of us needs you hiding how badly you're hurt.”

Kael nodded. He could not give Thomas the whole truth, but he could stop treating every offered hand as an obstacle.

When Elena returned, he asked her to leave the water within reach. He ate the rest of the food before letting Thomas and Maya help each other back down the passage.

The house grew quiet slowly. Elena checked him twice more, and each time his temperature had fallen. Only after she settled nearby did Kael resume the work, using less power than before.

He opened one short path, rested, then joined it to another. He did not attempt the wider routes that would someday carry power through his limbs. Tonight, he needed only a small closed course around the place where the core would sit.

Near dawn, the thread completed its first full turn inside him.

Kael eased the remaining usable trace from his soul into that circle. For one frightening moment, his hands felt distant, as though he were reaching for them from outside the bed. He kept the flow moving instead of trying to seize it back.

The circle tightened, gathering the energy into a tiny point.

His hands became his own again.

Kael removed the ring from the wire and waited. The power continued to turn without its support. It remained inside the new core instead of leaking through the injured body, and his soul held firmly in place.

He had succeeded, but the amount it contained was painfully small. He could guide a little into his muscles or sharpen his sense for nearby magic. One short push of force would empty it. He could not throw another man across the shop and remain standing afterward.

His ribs still hurt. Thomas's leg still needed care. The core had given him a way to hold and use power, not enough to mend everything at once.

He began to wrap the ring in the cloth when the new core pulled sharply toward it.

Kael stopped. A faint pulse passed through the empty stone, too weak to have reached him while he struggled to hold energy against his soul. Now the settled core caught it clearly.

The pulse came again from beyond the window, answering the old magic in the ring.

Kael closed his hand around it and followed only far enough to judge the direction. The source was strong, but this was no clear view across the city. He could feel its pull, nothing more.

Ethan's memories supplied a place in that direction: the warehouse where collections were taken to Marcus Vale. Kael checked the address on his phone, then turned the map to match the street outside.

The pull led toward the same block. Beneath the building, lower than the street itself, power pressed against his new core with each slow pulse.

Marcus's warehouse held more than the records of the family's debt. There was a strong source of magic beneath it, and the empty ring had just answered its call.