The Weakest Mage at the World's Greatest Academy

Chapter 18: The Name That Should Never Be Spoken

“Awesome Voss, come down and meet the person you were created to replace.”

The voice had barely finished speaking when the final containment anchor shattered beneath the academy.

Awesome felt the connection inside his chest tighten violently, as though invisible hooks had sunk into his ribs and were dragging him toward the widening crack in the floor. His boots scraped across the broken tiles while he struggled to resist the pull, and Elara seized his wrist with both hands, desperately trying to keep him from being dragged into the darkness.

“Awesome, fight it!” she shouted, her fingers trembling as the force pulled them closer to the fissure. “Whatever that thing is showing you, you cannot trust it!”

Black light surged from beneath the floor, swallowing the remaining fragments of the containment symbols. Elara's grip began to slip, and Awesome reached desperately for her other hand, but his body had already crossed the edge of the widening abyss.

His father lunged forward and caught the back of Awesome's jacket just as he began to fall. For one brief moment, the older man managed to halt his descent, but a second force erupted from below and struck him with tremendous violence. He crashed against a stone pillar, and the impact sent cracks racing across its surface as he slumped to the floor, clutching his injured shoulder.

Awesome heard his father groan, but he could not reach him. He was suspended above the abyss, with Elara still clinging to his wrist and the darkness stretching endlessly beneath his feet.

Then the voice spoke again.

“Return what was stolen, and I will release you.”

The invisible force stopped pulling.

Awesome hung motionless above the darkness, unable to move his limbs despite his desperate attempts to escape. Far below, the enormous creature shifted inside its ancient prison, and the golden light within its hollow head brightened until the surrounding darkness seemed to recoil from it.

A new series of messages appeared across Awesome's vision.

[IDENTITY RESTORATION PROTOCOL INITIATED]

[ORIGINAL SUBJECT: AWESOME VOSS]

[CURRENT SUBJECT: AWESOME VOSS]

[CONFLICT RESOLUTION REQUIRED]

Awesome stared at the messages as dread settled in his stomach.

The system was treating him and the boy inside his mind as competing records of the same person. If the original identity were restored, what would happen to the consciousness that had grown up as Awesome Voss? Would he disappear completely, leaving his memories behind for someone else to inherit, or would the First Witness use the restoration process to take control of everything that made him himself?

Don't listen to it, the hidden boy whispered.

Although fear trembled through the boy's voice, Awesome sensed something unfamiliar beneath it. For the first time since their confrontation began, the boy's determination seemed stronger than his resentment.

It wants you to believe that one of us must disappear. That's what it has always wanted.

Awesome tightened his grip on Elara's wrist, refusing to let the force pull him any closer to the creature.

“Then tell me how to stop it!” he demanded.

I don't know!

The admission struck Awesome harder than he expected. He had spent so much time fearing the hidden boy's anger that he had almost convinced himself the other consciousness possessed answers to every mystery surrounding their existence. However, the truth was far less comforting. The boy was not an ancient master of magic who understood the secrets of the containment system. He was another victim of the same experiment, a consciousness that had been imprisoned without ever understanding why his life had been taken from him.

Awesome could no longer pretend that defeating the creature meant defeating the boy inside his mind.

“Professor!” he shouted toward Elara. “Find another way to break the connection!”

Elara glanced at the shattered floor, her face pale with exhaustion. She struggled to maintain her grip while the black energy beneath them continued to rise.

“The connection is anchored to your identity!” she replied. “If I destroy it without understanding how the structure works, I could destroy both of you!”

“Then understand it!”

“I am trying!”

Her answer came out more sharply than Awesome expected, and for a moment, he saw the terror she had been concealing beneath her usual composure.

Elara had helped create this disaster. She had activated the separation procedure that divided two identities and turned one of them into a living anchor for an ancient prison. Yet she was still risking her life to save him, even though she knew that restoring the truth might expose everything she had done.

Awesome did not know whether he could ever forgive her, but he knew he needed her alive.

“Look at the symbols,” he said, forcing himself to concentrate despite the pressure crushing his chest. “The system keeps identifying us as the same subject. What if that is the mistake?”

Elara's expression changed abruptly.

“What did you say?”

“The system is trying to resolve our identities by choosing one of us over the other. What if we stop it from making that choice?”

His father struggled to his feet, keeping one hand pressed against his injured shoulder. Blood trickled between his fingers, but his attention remained fixed on the glowing symbols surrounding the abyss.

“The containment architecture requires a single authenticated identity,” he explained. “It was designed that way deliberately.”

“Then it was built wrong.”

Despite the pain etched across his face, his father released a bitter laugh.

“Your mother used to say the same thing.”

Before Awesome could ask what he meant, the abyss roared.

A wave of black energy erupted from below, tearing the remaining floor apart. The sudden force ripped Elara away from Awesome, and his body dropped several feet before the invisible power caught him again. He swung helplessly above the darkness as the fabric of his jacket strained under the pressure.

The creature's enormous body began to rise inside the chamber.

Ancient chains dragged across its pale limbs, cutting deep grooves into flesh that seemed to regenerate almost immediately. Its faceless head tilted toward Awesome, and the golden light within its hollow opening began to pulse in rhythm with his heartbeat.

“Your mother understood,” the creature said. “She knew that identity is merely a door. She believed she could create a second door without opening the first.”

Before Awesome could respond, images flooded his mind.

He saw a laboratory filled with silver machinery, where glowing symbols rotated above an examination table. Behind a thick glass barrier stood a woman whose familiar features made his breath catch.

His mother.

Lyra Voss.

Awesome had never witnessed this scene before, yet he recognized the way she held her hands whenever she was worried. He recognized the tiny scar near her thumb and the quiet expression she wore when she believed nobody was watching her.

In the memory, Lyra leaned over a small boy lying on the examination table. Golden symbols revolved above the child's chest, while silver restraints held his arms against the surface.

“I'm sorry,” she whispered.

The image shifted, revealing another child standing behind the observation glass. He looked exactly like Awesome, but his tear-filled eyes carried a terrible understanding that no child should have possessed.

The boy watched Lyra turn toward the examination table, and his small hands pressed against the glass as though he desperately wanted to reach her.

Then Lyra faced the researchers waiting behind her.

“Proceed with the separation,” she ordered.

Awesome's breath caught in his throat.

The memory vanished before he could witness what happened next.

“You showed me that memory to make me hate her!” he shouted at the creature.

“I showed you what she did.”

“You showed me one moment and expected me to believe you understand everything!”

The golden light inside the creature's head dimmed slightly, as though it found his anger amusing.

“Your mother loved you, Awesome. That was her greatest weakness. She believed love could justify the things she did in its name.”

The accusation struck deeper than Awesome wanted to admit because some part of him feared that it might be true.

His entire existence might have begun with a decision made by someone who loved him enough to sacrifice another person. If the hidden boy had been the one sacrificed, Awesome could not dismiss his suffering simply because he had never chosen to be born.

The boy's voice reached him again, quieter than before.

I remember her.

Awesome closed his eyes, allowing the words to settle inside his consciousness.

She promised she would come back for me.

For the first time, the hidden boy sounded younger than Awesome had ever imagined. His anger had always made him seem older and more dangerous, but beneath that anger lived a child who had waited for his mother until waiting had become another form of imprisonment.

I waited until I couldn't remember her face anymore, the boy continued. Then I started forgetting my own.

A sharp ache spread through Awesome's chest.

I don't want your life. I just want to know why I had to lose mine.

Awesome opened his eyes and looked down into the abyss.

“Then we'll find out,” he said quietly. “But neither of us is going to disappear just to satisfy that thing.”

The creature's limbs stopped moving.

For the first time, its attention seemed to sharpen with genuine interest.

“You cannot exist together,” it declared.

“That's what your system says.”

“Your identity records are incompatible.”

“Then the records are wrong.”

Awesome activated his analytical ability and pushed it beyond the limits he had always been told he possessed. Instead of examining the creature's physical structure, he focused on the invisible connection between himself and the hidden boy.

His vision filled with layers of information that stretched through the darkness, revealing intricate patterns of magical authority beneath the system messages.

[SUBJECT A: AWESOME VOSS]

[SUBJECT B: AWESOME VOSS]

[IDENTITY OVERLAP: 100%]

[MEMORY DIVERGENCE: CRITICAL]

[AUTHORITY CONFLICT: UNRESOLVED]

Awesome studied the final line, searching for the underlying meaning.

Authority conflict.

The First Witness was not merely trying to choose between two identities. It was using the academy's ancient system to decide which identity had the right to control their shared body. The system treated their existence as a problem that required one record to overwrite the other, and the First Witness had manipulated that process to make their conflict inevitable.

That meant the problem could not be solved by proving which boy had been born first.

They had to challenge the authority that demanded the choice in the first place.

Awesome turned his attention inward, reaching toward the hidden boy through the strange space they shared.

Can you hear me?

Unfortunately.

Despite everything that had happened, the answer carried the faintest trace of bitterness that almost resembled humor.

Awesome swallowed against the tightness in his throat.

I can't give you back the years you lost, and I can't take your memories and pretend they belong to me without hurting you. But if we work together, we might be able to stop this thing from deciding what either of us is allowed to become.

The boy remained silent for several seconds.

And afterward?

Awesome wanted to promise him a future in which everything would be repaired, but he refused to offer comfort he could not guarantee.

Afterward, we decide for ourselves.

The hidden boy's presence moved closer. For the first time, he no longer pressed against Awesome's consciousness like an enemy trying to force him out. Instead, he stood beside him, and Awesome felt their separate awarenesses acknowledge each other without either one attempting to dominate the other.

Then do it.

Awesome reached toward the glowing connection inside his chest.

He did not attempt to cut it or force it apart. Instead, he focused on understanding the structure that bound them together.

His analytical vision revealed a narrow channel connecting their overlapping identities to the central authority core. The channel carried the First Witness's commands into their consciousness, translating ancient instructions into the system messages that had governed their lives.

The creature was not simply using the containment lock.

It was using the lock to define reality for them.

Awesome followed the channel toward its source, searching for the point where their identities had been connected. Eventually, he discovered something unexpected: a small, almost invisible gap between the two identity records.

The gap was too precise to be accidental.

Someone had deliberately removed a command from the system.

A third option.

“Professor Elara!” Awesome shouted. “The containment architecture has a missing command! It can authenticate one identity or the other, but someone deleted the option to authenticate both!”

Elara stared at him in disbelief.

“That isn't possible. The original system only accepts one identity.”

“Then why is there a space where the third command should be?”

His father suddenly lifted his head, and the expression on his face changed as realization spread through his features.

“Lyra,” he whispered.

Awesome turned toward him. “What about my mother?”

“She must have hidden it inside the original authority sequence,” his father replied. “She couldn't change the system openly, so she concealed a third authentication path where only someone capable of analyzing the structure could find it.”

“Can you restore it?” Elara asked.

“I can try,” Awesome answered, although he had no idea whether the attempt would save them or destroy everything.

The creature released a sound that shook the chamber.

For the first time, its voice lost the patient warmth it had used to manipulate them.

“STOP.”

The command struck Awesome like a hammer. His analytical vision shattered into fragments, and the invisible force around his body tightened until he could barely draw breath.

His system flashed red.

[UNAUTHORIZED AUTHORITY CHALLENGE DETECTED]

[SUBJECT ACCESS REVOKED]

Awesome struggled against the pressure, but the creature continued pulling him toward the golden opening in its head.

The First Witness was no longer pretending to be a benevolent guardian.

It was afraid.

Awesome clung to that realization as the creature dragged him closer, because fear meant the hidden command represented a genuine threat to its control.

His father suddenly hurled his silver blade toward the connection suspended in the air. The weapon struck a black symbol and disintegrated on contact, but the brief interruption weakened the invisible force long enough for Awesome to draw a painful breath.

“Now!” his father shouted.

Elara thrust both hands forward, sending a stream of silver light into the exposed channel. The magical current struck the connection between Awesome's identity and the containment system, causing the glowing structure to shudder violently.

Awesome seized the opportunity and pushed his analytical ability into the hidden gap.

A new command appeared before his eyes.

[DUAL IDENTITY AUTHENTICATION: AVAILABLE]

[WARNING: THIS ACTION WILL ALTER THE ORIGINAL CONTAINMENT PROTOCOL]

[CONFIRM?]

Awesome stared at the prompt, understanding the danger more clearly than ever.

If he confirmed the command, he might restore the hidden boy's identity and finally acknowledge the person who had been erased to create him. However, the ancient containment system had been designed around a single identity, and changing its fundamental rules could destroy the prison that held the First Witness.

If he refused, the creature would continue using their shared body as a battlefield until one of them was erased.

There was no safe choice, only a choice that had to belong to them.

Awesome reached toward the command.

Then the golden opening inside the creature's head flared, revealing something behind the light.

A human face.

Lyra Voss stared out from inside the enormous body, her eyes wide with terror. Her hands pressed against a golden barrier as though she were trapped behind a window separating her from the world.

“Awesome!” she screamed. “Don't restore the second identity!”

He froze, unable to understand why his mother would beg him to abandon the only solution they had discovered.

Lyra pressed her palms harder against the barrier, and tears began to gather in her eyes.

“Please, son,” she begged. “If you bring him back completely, the First Witness will remember which one of you was supposed to be its original vessel.”

Awesome felt the blood drain from his face.

Inside his consciousness, the hidden boy went utterly silent.

Then the First Witness spoke through Lyra's mouth, using her familiar voice to deliver words that made Awesome's heart turn cold.

“And now,” it whispered, “you finally understand why your mother chose to erase him.”

The system changed before Awesome could react.

[DUAL IDENTITY AUTHENTICATION: BLOCKED]

[ORIGINAL VESSEL DESIGNATION: RESTORED]

[FIRST WITNESS HOST COMPATIBILITY: 100%]

Awesome stared at the final message as the golden light swallowed his mother's face.

The creature had never needed to choose between the two boys. It had only needed them to become whole enough to open the door.

And now, with both identities awakening inside the same body, the First Witness had finally found the vessel it had waited twenty-five years to reclaim.