The Weakest Mage at the World's Greatest Academy

Chapter 16: The Boy Fighting for My Body

“Stop him!” Elara screamed as Awesome’s body slammed against the stone floor.

A violent surge of black energy erupted from his palm, tearing through the chamber and throwing everyone backward. His father struck the wall with a strangled cry, while the original boy grabbed the edge of the shattered containment platform to keep himself from being swept into the open shaft beneath it. Elara reacted immediately, raising a protective barrier around them, but the force struck its blue surface with such violence that deep cracks spread across it.

Awesome could hear everything happening around him, yet he could not move a single muscle.

Something had taken control of his body.

His fingers scraped against the floor as his right arm rose without his permission. The black mark on his palm widened, exposing thin golden lines beneath his skin that twisted toward his wrist like living threads. His left hand remained pressed against the stone, trembling as he fought to resist the invisible force controlling the other half of his body.

Inside his mind, the white room had returned.

The boy stood before the shattered mirror, his face identical to Awesome’s, except his eyes carried a lifetime of anger and suffering that Awesome had never experienced. The expression on his face was not merely that of someone seeking revenge; it belonged to a person who had spent years believing that the world had deliberately erased him.

“You took everything from me,” the boy accused.

Awesome tried to step backward, but his legs refused to respond. “I never asked them to create me!”

“You still took my name.”

“They gave it to me!”

“And you accepted it.”

The accusation struck Awesome harder than he expected because he had no answer that could undo the boy’s suffering. He had never known that the first consciousness existed, much less that someone had been forced to surrender his identity so Awesome could live. Every memory he possessed had convinced him that he was simply a boy struggling to understand his strange abilities, not the result of an experiment built upon another child’s destruction.

However, the fact that he had been ignorant did not mean he had deliberately stolen another person’s life.

“I didn’t know,” Awesome insisted. “I was a child, just like you. I had no idea any of this was happening, and I never chose to take anything from you.”

The boy approached him, and the shattered pieces of the mirror rose from the floor, floating around them like fragments of frozen lightning.

“Neither did I when they took me away from Mother,” he replied. “I didn’t understand what was happening when they strapped me to that table and told me that my suffering was necessary for the future of magic. Why should your ignorance make your life more valuable than mine?”

Awesome felt anger rising inside him, but he forced himself to confront the truth beneath the boy’s accusation. The child standing before him was not an enemy who had deliberately chosen to hurt him. He was another victim of the same people who had constructed Awesome’s existence, and his hatred had grown from a betrayal that no child should ever have experienced.

Nevertheless, the boy’s suffering did not give him the right to destroy the person Awesome had become.

“You deserve answers,” Awesome said, trying to keep his voice steady. “You deserve to know everything they did to you, and you deserve a chance to live the life they stole from you. But I won’t let you erase me to get it.”

The boy stopped moving, and for the first time, the anger in his expression gave way to uncertainty. He seemed unprepared for Awesome to acknowledge his suffering without surrendering his own right to exist.

Then the First Witness laughed from the darkness beyond the white room.

“How touching,” it murmured. “Two children arguing over a body neither of them truly owns.”

Black light began spreading across the walls, bleeding through the cracks in the white surface until the entire room appeared to be rotting from within. Awesome turned toward the sound, and his brother’s expression changed immediately. Fear replaced his anger as a tall, faceless figure emerged from the darkness.

The First Witness had followed them into the hidden space between their consciousnesses.

“You promised me freedom,” the boy whispered.

The entity tilted its featureless head, appearing almost amused by the accusation.

“I promised you that you would never be forgotten.”

“That isn’t what you said!”

“Promises are interpreted according to the authority of the speaker.”

The First Witness raised one long hand, and the floating mirror fragments turned toward the boy. Each piece reflected a different memory of his suffering: the cold laboratory, the sealed chamber, his mother’s tearful face, and the endless years he had spent trapped in a place where nobody could hear his cries.

Awesome finally understood the deception.

The First Witness had been feeding on the boy’s resentment, preserving his identity by keeping his pain alive. Now that the hidden consciousness was awakening, the entity intended to turn that suffering into a weapon it could use against Awesome.

“You’re using him,” Awesome said.

The faceless figure turned toward him.

“Of course I am. I have watched human beings destroy themselves over far less than what was taken from this child. His suffering is an excellent foundation for obedience.”

The boy clenched his fists, and the golden fragments surrounding him trembled.

“He’s right,” he whispered. “You have everything. You have a body, a name, and a life. I have nothing.”

Awesome took a careful step toward him, ignoring the growing darkness around them.

“You still have a choice.”

The boy stared at him as though he had spoken in a language he had never heard before.

“What choice?”

“You can decide what happens next. They took that freedom away from you before either of us understood what it meant to be alive. Don’t let the First Witness take it away from you again.”

For a brief moment, the white room became unnaturally still. The floating mirror fragments stopped moving, and even the black light spreading across the walls seemed to hesitate.

Then the First Witness drove its hand into the boy’s chest.

The boy screamed as black tendrils erupted from his back, wrapping around his arms and throat. They tightened with every desperate movement he made, lifting him from the floor and dragging him toward the shattered mirror.

Awesome lunged forward, but an invisible force slammed him against the wall.

“Your body belongs to me,” the First Witness declared. “Your memories belong to me, and now your identity will belong to me as well.”

The boy struggled against the tendrils, his terrified eyes meeting Awesome’s through the darkness.

“Don’t let it take my name,” he gasped.

Before Awesome could reach him, the mirror exploded into thousands of fragments.

The white room disappeared, and Awesome’s mind went dark.

---

Awesome awoke to the sound of his own voice screaming.

His body arched above the chamber floor, held in place by strands of black energy extending from the mark on his palm into the surrounding walls. Every strand pulsed with stolen magic, and with each pulse, another fragment of his strength disappeared. Elara’s protective barrier had collapsed, leaving the chamber exposed to the violent energy pouring from the open containment shaft.

“Awesome, can you hear me?” she shouted.

He tried to answer, but the words emerging from his mouth did not belong entirely to him.

“Stop interfering, Professor. You have already destroyed one family.”

Elara recoiled as the accusation escaped Awesome’s lips. Before she could respond, his father seized a fallen metal rod and struck one of the black tendrils. The impact released a burst of golden sparks, but the tendril immediately wrapped around his wrist and flung him against the wall.

“Father!” the original boy cried.

He rushed forward, desperate to reach the injured man, but the floor split beneath his feet. Elara caught him with a strand of blue magic and pulled him away from the collapsing stone just before he plunged into the shaft.

“Don’t approach him!” she warned. “The First Witness is using Awesome’s body as an anchor. If you touch him, it could establish a connection with your consciousness as well.”

The boy struggled against her magic, his face twisting with helpless anger.

“Then what are we supposed to do? Stand here while it steals his life?”

Elara looked toward Awesome, whose fingers were curling inward as though an invisible hand was closing around his heart. The black energy had begun spreading beyond his palm, crawling beneath his skin in branching patterns that resembled the roots of a dying tree.

“No,” she whispered. “We must separate the consciousnesses before the restoration reaches a critical point.”

His father pushed himself away from the wall, blood running from a cut above his eyebrow. Although his legs trembled beneath him, he forced himself to remain standing.

“You cannot separate them with ordinary magic,” he said. “The First Witness was never contained by a spell. It was contained by a choice.”

Elara turned toward him sharply. “You told me the containment system was built around the First Authority.”

“It was, but the authority was only the lock. The real seal was the decision made by the person who carried it.”

Awesome heard their conversation as though it were happening underwater. The black strands continued tightening around his consciousness, dragging him toward the place where the hidden boy had disappeared. He fought to remain aware of the chamber, but his thoughts were becoming increasingly difficult to hold together.

With considerable effort, he forced his eyes open.

The system flickered into view.

[HIDDEN CONSCIOUSNESS RESTORATION: 9%]

[FIRST WITNESS SYNCHRONIZATION: 31%]

[WARNING: HOST IDENTITY COLLAPSE IMMINENT.]

The First Witness had begun overwriting his memories. Awesome felt the edges of his childhood dissolving, and for one terrifying moment, he could no longer remember the sound of his mother’s voice. He knew she had spoken to him when he was young, but the warmth and familiarity he had once associated with her seemed to be disappearing into a void.

He fought desperately to hold on to what remained.

The voice inside his mind returned, weaker than before.

You cannot save me.

Awesome clenched his teeth, resisting the pressure crushing his thoughts.

I’m not letting it take you.

You don’t understand. If I disappear, it will stop fighting for control of your body.

The boy spoke with a terrible certainty, as though he had already decided that his own destruction was the only way to protect Awesome. Even after everything that had happened, he still believed his existence mattered less than someone else’s survival.

Awesome refused to accept that conclusion.

You were never supposed to die for me.

A faint light appeared in the darkness, revealing the boy standing alone with his head lowered. The black tendrils had vanished from his body, but their absence had left him looking painfully fragile.

Then what am I supposed to do? He asked.

Awesome reached toward him, struggling against the invisible force pulling them apart.

Live.

The word echoed through the hidden space, and the black tendrils surrounding them began to tremble. The First Witness turned sharply, its faceless head directed toward Awesome as though it had heard something it had never expected a human being to say.

“You cannot give him a life,” it hissed. “His identity was constructed from your existence. He is only the reflection of a person who should have remained forgotten.”

Awesome forced himself to stand.

“Then why are you afraid of him?”

The entity became still.

Awesome finally understood what the First Witness had been trying to accomplish. It had never wanted two independent consciousnesses to coexist because their combined existence threatened its control. It had encouraged the boy’s hatred because hatred made him predictable, convincing him that reclaiming his identity required destroying Awesome.

By turning two victims against each other, the entity had ensured that neither would recognize the real enemy until it was too late.

“You don’t want him to return,” Awesome said, his voice growing stronger. “You want him to believe that destroying me is the only way he can exist. You’ve made him think that he must become a murderer just to reclaim the life you helped steal from him.”

For the first time, the First Witness stepped backward.

The boy emerged from the darkness, his body covered in cracks of golden light. Although the black tendrils remained attached to his chest, he was no longer struggling against them. Instead, he stared at the entity with a growing understanding that slowly replaced the hatred in his eyes.

“You told me I could become whole again,” he said.

“You can,” the First Witness replied smoothly. “Everything that was stolen from you can be restored.”

“By taking his body?”

“By restoring what was stolen.”

The boy glanced at Awesome, who remained standing despite the pressure threatening to tear his consciousness apart. Then he shook his head.

“No. You want us to fight until neither of us can resist you.”

The First Witness lunged toward him, abandoning its attempt to manipulate him through promises.

Awesome moved instinctively, placing himself between the entity and the boy. The black tendrils struck his chest with enough force to send a shock through his entire body, but instead of dragging him backward, they encountered a surge of golden light erupting from his palm.

The system flooded his vision with warnings.

[UNAUTHORIZED AUTHORITY ACTIVATION.]

[FIRST AUTHORITY RESPONSE DETECTED.]

Outside the hidden space, Awesome’s body slammed onto the floor. The black veins spreading across his skin began to recede as golden symbols travelled from his palm to his wrist. Elara stared at the transformation, unable to understand how a boy with almost no mana could activate the same authority that had once belonged to his father.

His father, however, understood what he was witnessing.

“He isn’t overpowering the entity,” he whispered. “He’s rejecting its right to decide who he is.”

The original boy dropped beside Awesome and placed his hand against his brother’s shoulder. For a brief moment, their authority signatures aligned, and a warm golden light spread between them.

The black tendrils snapped one after another.

The First Witness released a sound that shook the foundations of the academy. Cracks raced across the chamber walls, and every remaining screen went dark as the ancient entity was forced away from Awesome’s consciousness.

Awesome collapsed into his brother’s arms, gasping for breath.

The boy held him tightly, his expression caught between relief and grief.

“I thought I would have to destroy you to become myself,” he whispered.

Awesome struggled to sit upright, using his brother’s shoulder for support.

“You don’t have to destroy me to exist.”

The boy lowered his head, and tears slipped down his face. For the first time, Awesome saw him not as a rival or a stranger, but as someone who had been denied the chance to become anything beyond the tragedy imposed upon him.

Their father approached them slowly, still struggling with the injuries he had sustained.

“Both of you must leave this chamber,” he warned. “The First Witness has been weakened, but it has not been defeated.”

Awesome looked toward the ruined containment platform, where black energy continued twisting through the open shaft.

“Where did it go?”

His father hesitated before answering, and the uncertainty in his expression made Awesome’s fear return.

Then the academy’s alarms began to sound again.

A new message appeared across the remaining screens.

[GLOBAL AUTHORITY ACCESS: 47%]

[REMOTE CONTROL ESTABLISHED.]

Elara stared at the display, horror spreading across her face.

“That is impossible. The entity was disconnected from the network.”

Awesome slowly rose to his feet, leaning against his brother as he struggled to regain his balance. His father turned toward the ceiling, listening to the deep vibration that had begun travelling through the stone.

“No,” he whispered. “It was disconnected from the network.”

He looked directly at Awesome, his face drained of colour.

“But it was never disconnected from the academy.”

A deep vibration passed through the chamber, shaking dust from the ceiling. Far above them, hundreds of magical barriers flickered across the academy grounds, while the lights in distant corridors began turning black one by one. The protective systems that had guarded students and staff for generations were being accessed by something that understood their original design.

The First Witness had not escaped into the world.

It had awakened inside the very institution built to contain it.

Then a voice emerged from every connected magical device in the academy, speaking with a calmness that made the alarms seem insignificant.

“Thank you, my children. I finally remember where I buried my body.”

Awesome looked down as the mark on his palm opened like a golden eye. The symbol pulsed once, and a sudden wave of unfamiliar memories flooded his mind, revealing a vast underground chamber filled with enormous chains.

The system delivered one final message.

[ORIGINAL BODY LOCATION IDENTIFIED.]

[WARNING: THE FIRST WITNESS IS NOT THE ONLY CONSCIOUSNESS AWAKENING.]

Awesome raised his head toward the darkness beneath the platform as a sound rolled through the depths below them.

Something enormous had begun to breathe.

And whatever lay beneath the academy was waking up alongside the First Witness.