The Weakest Mage at the World's Greatest Academy

Chapter 14: The Father Who Begged Me to Run

“Whatever you do, Awesome, do not open that door!”

Professor Elara Veyne's warning came a heartbeat too late. Awesome had already taken three steps toward the sealed entrance, his attention fixed on the familiar voice pleading from the other side. It belonged to the man whose face haunted the academy's restricted memories, the man whose authority had been divided during a forbidden experiment, and the father Awesome had never been given the chance to know.

“Please,” the man begged again. “I cannot hold it back much longer.”

A violent impact shook the chamber, forcing Awesome to grab the nearest console to keep himself upright. The reinforced metal door buckled inward, and golden light seeped through its narrow seams, illuminating the black symbols spreading across its surface. Each symbol resembled the mark on Awesome's palm, except these ancient inscriptions twisted and writhed as though something trapped beneath the metal were desperately trying to escape.

Before Awesome could move closer, the original boy seized his wrist.

“That's not Father,” he whispered, keeping his terrified gaze fixed on the entrance. “Whatever is speaking to you knows exactly what you want to hear.”

Awesome pulled his arm free and turned toward him. “You told me our father was responsible for the experiment. You said his authority created the thing inside me. Now you're telling me the man behind that door isn't him?”

“I'm telling you that our father would never ask you to open this door.”

The boy's voice broke as he finished speaking, and Awesome noticed that his entire body had begun to tremble. Until that moment, his brother had spoken with the bitterness of someone who had spent years blaming others for his suffering. Now, however, genuine terror had replaced his anger, revealing a fear that seemed far older than their confrontation.

Another violent blow struck the door, making the surrounding metal groan.

“How touching,” the voice outside murmured. “Even now, your brother is trying to decide whether you deserve the truth.”

Awesome froze as the word brother echoed through his thoughts.

The revelation struck deeper than the discovery that his consciousness might have been copied from another person. He had spent his entire life believing he was an ordinary boy whose lack of mana made him an embarrassment to everyone around him. Now he had discovered that his body had been created for a purpose nobody dared explain, and the boy standing beside him claimed a place in his life that Awesome had never known existed.

“What did you call him?” Awesome demanded.

The original boy took another step backward. “Don't listen to that thing.”

“Tell me who he is!”

The voice behind the door answered before the boy could speak.

“He is the child your mother chose to save when she decided that one of her sons had to become a monster.”

The black veins beneath Awesome's skin began to stir, spreading a cold sensation through his wrist and forearm. Deep inside his chest, the First Witness awakened with a low, delighted laugh that made Awesome's stomach tighten.

Open it.

The voice entered his mind with such unsettling intimacy that he nearly mistook it for his own thought.

Let your father come home.

Awesome pressed his marked palm against his chest and fought the sudden urge to obey. The First Witness had threatened him, seized control of his body, and revealed that the world's magical laws were connected to its existence. Yet the moment it mentioned his father, something inside Awesome changed. The entity was no longer merely trying to escape its prison. It was tempting him with the one thing he had always wanted: answers about who he was and where he had come from.

Elara quickly stepped between Awesome and the door.

“Listen to me carefully,” she said, gripping his shoulder. “The First Witness can imitate memories, emotions, and magical signatures. It doesn't need to invent a convincing lie when it can use the truth to manipulate you.”

“Then explain why it knows about my brother.”

Elara's face tightened, and Awesome immediately recognized the expression of someone who had been caught concealing information.

“You knew?” he demanded.

“I knew there was another consciousness associated with the experiment,” she admitted. “I didn't know what had become of him.”

The original boy released a bitter laugh.

“That's convenient, Professor. You always know just enough to avoid admitting what you did.”

Elara flinched at his accusation, but before she could respond, a series of messages appeared in Awesome's vision.

[GLOBAL AUTHORITY ACCESS: 7%]

[FOREIGN CONSCIOUSNESS DETECTED BEYOND CONTAINMENT DOOR.]

[IDENTITY VERIFICATION: INCOMPLETE.]

Awesome concentrated on the final message. If the system could not verify the identity of the person outside, neither his longing nor the familiar voice could prove that the man was truly his father.

Instead of approaching the entrance, he turned toward the console.

“Can you identify the magical signature?” he asked.

Elara shook her head. “The system has been compromised. Anything it tells us might have been altered.”

“Then I'll analyze the original signature myself.”

Awesome placed his marked palm against the console and activated the strange ability that had always distinguished him from other students. His mana reserves were practically nonexistent, but he could perceive structures that even powerful mages often overlooked. Where others saw a wall of glowing inscriptions, Awesome saw intersecting patterns, broken connections, and invisible threads of authority holding the chamber together.

The golden signature surrounding the sealed door gradually emerged before his eyes.

For a single breath, he saw a man standing on the other side, his face exhausted and his clothes stained with blood. The man's features matched the fragmented memories of his father, but something about the image disturbed Awesome. The magical pattern surrounding the man's body did not flow outward from a living consciousness. Instead, it spiraled inward, as though the person behind the door were being assembled from something buried deep within the academy.

Awesome narrowed his eyes and examined the pattern more carefully.

There were two signatures.

One belonged to the man whose face he recognized, while the other was woven through the first like a parasite hiding inside its host.

“Professor,” Awesome whispered, “there's something inside the person behind the door.”

Elara went pale.

“Step away from the console.”

“What is it?”

“I said step away!”

Her sudden panic confirmed that she knew considerably more than she had admitted. Awesome refused to move, pushing his analysis deeper until the overlapping signatures separated clearly in his vision.

The first signature flickered weakly.

The second opened like an enormous black eye.

The pleading voice outside abruptly stopped.

“Very good, my son,” it said. “Your mother was right about your gift.”

The door groaned as the golden light vanished, leaving only the black symbols pulsing across its surface. Then the man began to laugh, and the sound spread through the chamber's speakers with an unnatural resonance that made Awesome's teeth ache.

He stumbled away from the console, but the voice followed him.

“You can see the difference between a person and the authority that imitates him. That means you're finally ready to understand what happened to your father.”

“Where is he?” Awesome demanded.

“Closer than you think.”

A metallic crash erupted behind the sealed entrance, followed by the scraping sound of something dragging itself across the floor. A strangled cry came next, sounding so painfully human that Awesome instinctively moved toward the door.

“Awesome!” the voice screamed. “Don't let it wear my face!”

The First Witness surged inside him, sending a violent wave of cold through his chest.

Now you understand why I told you to open the door.

Awesome's knees buckled as black veins spread across his wrist.

That thing is not your father.

He struggled to breathe as the entity's urgency filled his mind. For the first time since it had awakened, the First Witness sounded genuinely frightened rather than amused or threatening.

Then what is it? Awesome demanded silently.

The answer arrived through a sudden flash of someone else's memory.

He saw a laboratory drowned in golden light, where his father lay strapped to a metal platform beneath a network of glowing restraints. A masked researcher stood beside him, holding a blade covered in ancient symbols, while a woman behind reinforced glass screamed for the experiment to stop.

Awesome recognized the woman immediately.

Lyra Voss.

However, the memory continued beyond the point where his previous visions had ended. This time, he witnessed what happened after the third shadow emerged from his father's body.

The faceless presence turned toward the observation window, but instead of reaching for the glass, it extended its hand through it as though the barrier did not exist.

Its fingers stretched directly toward a small child standing behind Lyra.

A child with Awesome's face.

The memory shattered before Awesome could understand what he had witnessed.

He collapsed onto one knee, clutching his head as the system flooded his vision with warnings.

[FOREIGN AUTHORITY INTERFERENCE DETECTED.]

[GLOBAL AUTHORITY ACCESS: 12%.]

“It's using the network to reach the original containment chamber,” Elara said, rushing toward the console. “If it connects completely, the academy won't be able to distinguish legitimate magical commands from its instructions.”

“Then shut it down!”

“I can't shut down the network without destabilizing the barriers protecting the surrounding cities. Hospitals, transportation gates, and residential shields all depend on that connection.”

Awesome forced himself upright, refusing to accept that there was no solution.

“So we're supposed to let it take control because disconnecting it would hurt innocent people?”

“No,” Elara answered, her voice trembling. “We're supposed to stop it before it reaches twenty-five percent.”

“Why twenty-five?”

“Because that's when the authority can begin rewriting the rules governing the entire network.”

Before Awesome could ask another question, the original boy seized the console and tore open its lower panel. He worked quickly, exposing a cluster of silver conduits hidden beneath the metal casing.

“There's another way,” he said. “The original containment system was designed to recognize our father's bloodline. If we reach the memory core, we might be able to force the network to reject the foreign authority.”

Elara grabbed his shoulder before he could continue.

“You cannot enter that chamber. The seal recognizes your signature as part of the experiment, so it will interpret your presence as an attempt to restore the original configuration.”

“Then let it kill me,” the boy replied.

Awesome caught his arm before he could pull away.

“You spent years blaming me for being alive, and now you're prepared to die for a mistake neither of us chose?” Awesome demanded.

The boy stared at him, and the anger in his expression briefly gave way to something more complicated.

“You don't understand,” he whispered. “If that thing reaches the network, it won't just control magic. It will remember every consciousness it has ever touched.”

“And what happens if it remembers them?”

“It will find every version of me.”

The words hung between them, revealing a fear that neither Awesome nor Elara could easily dismiss.

Awesome slowly released his brother's arm. He finally understood why the boy had looked so terrified when the voice called him a brother. The original consciousness had not merely been copied into Awesome's body. Something had happened during the experiment that left his brother connected to the same ancient entity, perhaps through every memory the academy had attempted to erase.

The First Witness was not simply escaping its prison.

It was reclaiming everything it believed belonged to it.

A deafening alarm interrupted their thoughts as the sealed door split down the middle. A narrow line of golden light appeared between its halves, and something on the other side pressed against the opening, forcing the heavy metal apart while the reinforced hinges screamed under the strain.

Elara raised both hands, summoning a protective barrier around the group.

“Whatever happens, nobody crosses that threshold!”

The door opened another inch, and a bloodied hand emerged through the gap.

Awesome immediately recognized the ring on its middle finger. His father had worn that same ring while lying on the laboratory platform, just before the experiment began.

The hand trembled as its fingers reached desperately toward him.

“Awesome,” the man whispered. “You have to believe me.”

Awesome studied the ring and searched for the hidden magical signature he had detected earlier. The second presence remained concealed beneath the first, but he noticed that the entire pattern was deteriorating. Whatever held the two signatures together was gradually coming apart.

“Tell me something only my father would know,” Awesome demanded.

The man laughed weakly, and the sound carried a painful familiarity.

“You want proof? Your mother used to sing whenever she was frightened. She stopped singing the night you were born because she believed the sound would awaken something inside you.”

Lyra gasped behind them.

Awesome turned toward her and saw that she had covered her mouth with one trembling hand. Tears filled her eyes as she struggled to meet his gaze.

“That's true,” she whispered. “I never told anyone about that.”

For one terrible moment, Awesome wanted to believe the man. The memory was too intimate to dismiss, and the pain in the stranger's voice sounded genuine enough to reach the part of him that had spent his entire life longing for a father.

Then the First Witness spoke inside his mind.

She didn't tell anyone because she wasn't singing to you.

Awesome's blood ran cold.

She was singing to me.

The hand behind the door convulsed violently.

The man's voice changed, becoming deeper and more resonant as black symbols crawled across his fingers.

“Your mother made many mistakes,” the entity said through him. “But her greatest mistake was believing that love could change what you were created to become.”

Elara unleashed a bolt of blue energy, striking the exposed hand and forcing it back through the opening. The door slammed shut, and the protective barrier around the chamber flashed brightly enough to blind everyone inside.

When Awesome could see again, a new series of messages had appeared before his eyes.

[GLOBAL AUTHORITY ACCESS: 19%.]

[ORIGINAL CONTAINMENT SEAL: FAILING.]

[EMERGENCY PROTOCOL ACTIVATED.]

The floor beneath the console divided along a circular seam, and ancient machinery rose from the darkness. As the mechanism unfolded, it revealed a narrow staircase descending into the academy's hidden foundations.

Elara stared at the opening in horror.

“The memory core has opened itself.”

“Then we go down,” Awesome replied.

“You don't understand what you're agreeing to,” she warned. “The core contains the original record of the experiment, but it also contains the consciousness that was removed from your father. If you enter, it may recognize you as its rightful host.”

Awesome glanced toward the sealed door, remembering the desperate voice that had begged him to run.

His supposed father had warned him against the creature wearing his face. His mother had helped create him, his brother had suffered because of the experiment, and an ancient entity was preparing to seize control of every magical system in the world.

Running would not make any of those truths disappear.

“I'm done letting other people decide what I am,” he said.

The original boy stepped beside him.

“Then you're not going alone.”

Elara hesitated before following them toward the staircase, although the fear in her expression suggested that she understood how little chance they had of returning unchanged.

Behind them, the sealed door began to shake again.

A familiar voice slipped through the metal, quiet enough that only Awesome could hear it.

“My son, whatever happens down there, don't trust the woman who gave you life.”

Awesome stopped on the first step, his heart pounding as he tried to determine whether the voice belonged to the man he had been searching for or the entity that wanted to deceive him.

From somewhere deep beneath the academy, another voice answered. It sounded identical to the one behind the door, but its words carried a different kind of desperation.

“Don't trust the man wearing my face.”

The staircase lights died, plunging the passage into darkness.

A final warning appeared in Awesome's vision, its glowing letters illuminating the surrounding stone.

[TWO ORIGINAL AUTHORITY SIGNATURES DETECTED.]

[ONE SIGNATURE BELONGS TO YOUR FATHER.]

[THE OTHER SIGNATURE BELONGS TO YOU.]

Awesome stared into the darkness below, realizing that the greatest danger might not be the creature attempting to escape its prison. It might be the truth waiting for him at the bottom of the staircase, where the academy had hidden the evidence of his creation.

Whatever that truth revealed, one of the two men claiming to be his father was about to die.