The Weakest Mage at the World's Greatest Academy

Chapter 20: The Mother Behind the Forbidden Door

“Awesome, don't let your father open that door!”

Lyra Voss's warning rang through the narrow gap just as Awesome's father reached for the silver handle. He stopped so abruptly that Awesome nearly collided with him, while Lyra's fingers tightened around the edge of the door until her knuckles turned white.

Another violent tremor shook the passage, sending dust and fragments of ancient stone cascading from the ceiling. The silver door shuddered in its frame, and something on the other side struck it with enough force to make the handle rattle.

“Lyra?” Awesome's father whispered, staring at the trembling fingers visible through the gap.

“Move away from the door!” she shouted. “He has already found the archive!”

A deafening impact struck from within the chamber. The silver door buckled outward, and black symbols crawled across its surface, swallowing the ancient Voss crest one line at a time.

Awesome seized the handle before his father could stop him.

“Mother, what is happening in there?”

“Awesome, listen to me carefully. Whatever you hear or see, do not allow the original identity to leave the archive!”

His heart lurched as he understood what she meant.

The hidden boy was in there. Somewhere beyond that door, the consciousness that had shared his memories, fought beside him, and begged not to be erased again was trapped inside the same archive that held the secret of his creation.

Awesome pulled harder on the handle, but his father caught his wrist.

“Stop! If the archive has been compromised, opening it could release everything stored inside.”

“Everything stored inside includes him!”

“And the First Witness may be waiting for precisely that reaction.”

Awesome stared at his father in disbelief, struggling to understand how the man could expect him to abandon the person who had suffered alongside him.

“You expect me to leave him in there because you're afraid of what might happen?”

“I expect you to understand that your decisions affect more than just you!”

“And whose decisions put us in this position?” Awesome shot back. “Yours? Mother's? Professor Elara's? Everyone keeps telling me what I must do, but nobody ever asks what I want!”

His father released his wrist.

For a moment, the older man's expression revealed something beyond fear. Shame, perhaps, or the exhaustion of someone who had spent years convincing himself that terrible decisions had been necessary. Whatever answer he had prepared, he seemed unable to offer it now.

Then the door screamed.

A black tendril burst through the narrow gap and wrapped itself around Lyra's wrist. She cried out as the creature dragged her toward the darkness, her fingers scraping against the silver frame while she desperately tried to hold on.

Awesome reacted without thinking. He forced his fingers between the door and its frame, reaching through the gap until he caught his mother's hand.

“Mother!”

The moment their skin touched, his vision shattered into a thousand fragments.

He saw a laboratory buried beneath the academy, where a younger Lyra stood over a circular platform surrounded by silver machinery. Two identical children lay inside separate containment chambers, with golden symbols rotating above their chests while a shadow moved behind the reinforced glass.

One child was crying, his small hands striking the transparent barrier as he desperately tried to reach the people outside. The other remained unconscious, his face pale beneath the strange light illuminating the chamber.

Lyra stood between them, trembling as a voice whispered from the darkness.

Choose which one gets to live.

Awesome tried to pull away from the memory, but the vision held him captive. He could neither close his eyes against it nor force his mind to return to the present.

His mother lifted her head and stared directly at him, even though the scene had occurred years before he was born.

“I choose both,” she declared.

The shadow laughed, and the sound seemed to shake the laboratory itself.

Then both will belong to me.

The memory shattered.

Awesome staggered backward, gasping as the present returned around him. His mother was still gripping his hand, but the black tendril had climbed past her elbow, leaving dark marks beneath her skin.

Lyra met his eyes, and her expression changed when she realized he had witnessed the memory.

“You saw it,” she whispered.

Awesome nodded slowly.

“You were there when they created us.”

“Yes.”

The admission hurt more than he expected. Even after everything he had discovered, some foolish part of him had hoped his mother might deny what happened, explain it away, or offer a version of the truth that would make the past easier to bear.

Instead, Lyra looked at him with tears gathering in her eyes.

“I am sorry.”

Awesome tightened his grip on her hand as the tendril continued pulling her toward the darkness.

“Then help me bring him back.”

Lyra's expression changed, and the fear in her eyes deepened.

“You don't understand what he is.”

“He is a person!”

“He was the original vessel selected for the First Witness. His identity was altered because the creature had already begun establishing a connection to him. When your consciousness was created, the experiment was supposed to break that connection permanently.”

“Supposed to?” Awesome demanded.

Lyra glanced toward the black tendril tightening around her arm.

“We failed.”

The tendril suddenly jerked, dragging her another few inches toward the opening. Awesome's father raised his silver blade and struck the black substance, but the weapon passed through it as though it were smoke. Even so, the impact released a flash of silver light that forced the tendril to recoil.

“Lyra, we need to get you out!” he shouted.

“Not until you understand what is inside this archive!”

She turned toward Awesome again, refusing to let the creature's attack silence her.

“The original identity isn't simply a memory or a second personality. The archive contains the first version of the authority sequence used to create your body. If the First Witness gains access to that sequence, it can rewrite the identity of every magical system connected to the academy.”

Awesome remembered the messages that had appeared when the First Witness announced its return. He remembered the ancient chains breaking beneath the academy and the enormous body waiting inside the darkness.

“How do we stop it?”

“You must find the first command.”

His father went pale.

“Lyra, no.”

She ignored him and continued speaking to Awesome.

“Your ability to analyze magic is not a weak form of spellcasting. It was designed to recognize the structure of magical laws without being bound by them. That is why the academy's examinations could never measure your true potential.”

Awesome stared at her, struggling to reconcile her words with the years he had spent being treated as someone incapable of performing even the simplest spells.

“You knew I could do this?”

“I knew what the experiment was intended to give you. I didn't know whether it would work.”

“So you let me grow up believing I was useless.”

Lyra flinched as though his words had struck her physically.

“I thought keeping you ignorant would keep you safe.”

“You thought wrong.”

“I know.”

Her voice broke, and for the first time, Awesome saw no attempt to defend herself or justify her decisions.

“I know,” she repeated, looking directly into his eyes. “And I will spend whatever remains of my life trying to make things right, if you'll let me.”

Before Awesome could answer, the black tendril surged again.

His father struck it with the silver blade, but the creature responded by releasing a shock that raced through the entire passage. The walls split, and fragments of ancient stone rained around them as the silver door groaned beneath the pressure.

Awesome's father was thrown to his knees, his blade skidding across the broken floor.

Elara, who had followed them from the containment chamber, thrust both hands forward and raised a barrier around the group. Silver light flickered above their heads as the damaged ceiling began to collapse.

“We have to move!” she shouted. “The archive is destabilizing!”

Awesome glanced toward the door. Beneath the crashing stone and the pulsing black symbols, he could feel the hidden boy's presence beyond it. The connection was faint, like a distant heartbeat struggling beneath layers of stone and magic, but it was unmistakable.

I'm coming for you, Awesome promised silently.

He turned back toward his mother.

“Tell me how to open the archive without releasing the Witness.”

Lyra swallowed, visibly struggling with the consequences of what she was about to reveal.

“You need two independent identity signatures. Yours and his. But the archive will reject any attempt to restore the original designation unless both identities consent.”

“Then we ask him.”

A fragile flicker of hope crossed her face.

“You can still hear him?”

“Not clearly, but I know he's there.”

Lyra looked away, and the expression on her face suggested that another truth was weighing heavily on her conscience.

“There is something else you need to know. The First Witness did not choose the original subject randomly. It recognized something in his identity that existed before the experiment began.”

Awesome felt his stomach tighten.

“What does that mean?”

His mother hesitated, but his father answered before she could speak.

“It means the First Witness may not have created the connection between the boy and itself. It may have discovered a connection that was already there.”

Awesome felt the corridor tilt beneath him.

“Are you saying he was born connected to that thing?”

“I'm saying we never understood why the Witness recognized him.”

Lyra shook her head desperately.

“That isn't the whole truth.”

Her husband turned toward her, and the look in his eyes made Awesome realize that even his father had not known everything.

“Lyra, what did you do?”

She closed her eyes as another tremor shook the passage.

“I changed the original identity record before the experiment began.”

The corridor fell into a tense stillness, broken only by the groaning of the damaged walls and the distant rumble of the creature beneath the academy.

Awesome stared at his mother.

“Why?”

“Because the original record contained a designation that should never have existed in a living person. I believed the First Witness was following that designation, so I removed it and created a second identity to conceal the original.”

“And you never told anyone?”

“I told your father that the original record was corrupted. I thought destroying it would sever the connection.”

His father looked at her with open horror.

“You didn't destroy it.”

“No,” she whispered. “I hid it inside the archive.”

A new system message flashed across Awesome's vision.

[ORIGINAL IDENTITY RECORD LOCATED]

[SEALED DESIGNATION: FIRST HEIR]

[AUTHORITY SOURCE: UNKNOWN]

Before Awesome could process the message, another warning appeared beneath it.

[WARNING: ORIGINAL IDENTITY RECORD IS NOT AUTHENTICATING AS HUMAN.]

Awesome felt the blood drain from his face.

The hidden boy's voice suddenly burst into his mind, stronger and more desperate than it had been since the separation command activated.

Awesome! Get away from the door!

The warning came too late.

The silver door swung open.

Beyond it stretched a vast chamber filled with suspended memories, each one preserved inside a transparent crystal. Thousands of scenes floated through the darkness, showing children undergoing examinations, mages casting spells, professors studying ancient artifacts, and strangers whose faces Awesome had never seen.

Some of the memories flickered like damaged recordings, while others appeared so vivid that he could almost hear the voices trapped within them. The entire chamber felt less like a storage room and more like a world built from the lives, secrets, and identities of countless people.

At the center stood a young man.

He looked exactly like Awesome, but his eyes glowed with a cold golden light that seemed to pierce through everything they touched. Silver chains wrapped around his wrists and ankles, connecting him to a massive black structure that pulsed like a mechanical heart.

Awesome took a cautious step forward.

“Are you the one I've been talking to?”

The young man raised his head.

For one brief moment, Awesome recognized the hidden boy's expression, the familiar mixture of resentment, fear, and wounded hope that had accompanied their conversations inside his mind.

Then the expression disappeared.

“You came back,” the stranger said.

Awesome's chest tightened as he struggled to understand the sudden change in the boy's presence.

“I'm here to get you out.”

The young man examined him with unsettling curiosity.

“Get me out?”

“Yes,” Awesome answered. “You deserve to live.”

The stranger's face twisted into something resembling grief, and for a moment, his golden eyes seemed almost human.

“You still don't understand,” he replied. “I was never the one trapped in here.”

Awesome stopped moving.

Behind the stranger, the enormous black structure began to unfold, revealing layers of ancient symbols that matched the markings on the First Witness's body. The symbols rotated around a central point, forming a pattern that Awesome recognized from the authority core beneath the academy.

His system flashed another warning.

[IDENTITY AUTHENTICATION FAILED]

[ARCHIVE SUBJECT: FIRST HEIR]

[CONSCIOUSNESS MATCH: 0%]

Awesome's breath caught in his throat.

The person standing before him wore the hidden boy's face, but the system could not recognize his consciousness. Whatever stood in the archive, it was not the boy Awesome had been speaking to.

His mother stumbled through the doorway and stared at the figure in horror.

“No,” she whispered. “That's impossible.”

The stranger smiled at her.

“Hello, Lyra.”

She recoiled, shaking her head as though she were looking at a nightmare she had spent years trying to forget.

“I sealed you away.”

“You sealed away the wrong thing.”

The black structure behind him opened like an enormous eye, revealing a depth of darkness that seemed to stretch beyond the chamber itself.

Awesome felt a familiar presence stir deep inside his consciousness. The hidden boy's awareness was distant and terrified, but it had returned strongly enough for him to understand the warning.

That's not me, the boy whispered. Awesome, whatever you do, don't let him touch you.

The stranger extended his hand toward Awesome, and his expression softened into something that might have been mistaken for affection if not for the cold light burning in his eyes.

“My brother,” he said warmly. “You've spent your entire life wondering why you were different. Come closer, and I'll show you what our mother took from us.”

Awesome stood frozen between the warning inside his mind and the figure wearing his face. Every instinct urged him to retreat, yet the stranger's words threatened to expose the final secret behind his existence.

Then the young man spoke again, and his voice carried an authority that made every crystal in the archive tremble.

“I am the identity that existed before the First Witness.”

Every crystal in the chamber shattered at once.

Fragments of preserved memories burst into the air, releasing thousands of overlapping voices that filled the archive with screams, cries, and broken whispers. Lyra threw up her arms to shield her face, while Elara struggled to maintain a protective barrier around Awesome and his father.

From somewhere deep beneath the academy, the ancient creature answered with a scream that shook the foundations of the entire building.