The Weakest Mage at the World's Greatest Academy

Chapter 5: The Monster Behind the Door

The enormous eyes opened wider behind the stranger, and the entire underground chamber began to tremble as though something buried beneath the academy had finally remembered how to breathe. Ancient mechanisms groaned beneath the stone floor, sending vibrations through the pillars while golden symbols flickered across the walls and gradually surrendered to the spreading darkness.

Awesome stumbled backward when a crushing wave of pressure slammed into his chest. His knees nearly struck the floor, but he managed to catch himself against a broken pillar, gripping its jagged edge as golden cracks spread across the stone beneath his fingers. The air had become so heavy that every breath felt like an exhausting struggle, and the black symbol in his palm throbbed painfully with each beat of his heart.

Despite the terrifying presence behind him, the stranger wearing his face stood perfectly still, seemingly unaffected by the destruction unfolding around them.

“It's time you met the real you,” he repeated, extending his pale hand toward Awesome as though inviting him to approach a familiar friend rather than a place of unimaginable danger.

Awesome ignored the gesture and stared past him into the darkness. Whatever had opened its eyes was too enormous to belong to any creature he had ever imagined, and the sight of it made him question whether the academy's ancient systems had been built to protect humanity or merely to delay its inevitable destruction.

Two burning circles hovered within the shadows, each surrounded by concentric rings of symbols that shifted faster than his eyes could follow. The air smelled of scorched metal, and every movement from the unseen creature caused the surrounding darkness to ripple like water disturbed by an approaching storm.

“What is that thing?” Awesome demanded, forcing his voice through the pressure constricting his chest.

The stranger slowly turned his black eyes toward him.

“Your first mistake,” he replied, “was assuming it was a thing.”

Before Awesome could question what he meant, another violent tremor shook the chamber. A massive stone statue collapsed behind Professor Elara Veyne, narrowly missing her head as it struck the floor and shattered into several enormous pieces.

Elara threw herself aside, rolled across the fractured stone, and immediately raised both hands to cast a defensive spell. Blue magical barriers formed around her body, their translucent surfaces covered in protective runes that shimmered beneath the fading golden lights.

However, the moment her barriers touched the surrounding walls, black veins began spreading across their surfaces, corrupting the defensive enchantments from within.

Elara stared at the spreading darkness, and the color drained from her face as she realized that her magic was being contaminated by an influence she could neither identify nor resist.

“Awesome, don't listen to him!” she shouted, struggling to reinforce the failing barriers. “Whatever he shows you, remember that he wants you to open the gate!”

The stranger finally turned toward her, and his expression twisted with contempt.

“Still pretending you understand what you did?”

Elara's fingers tightened as she struggled to maintain her spell.

“I know what I sealed,” she answered, refusing to look away despite the fear visible in her eyes.

“No,” the stranger replied coldly. “You know what he allowed you to remember.”

Before Elara could respond, the stranger closed his extended hand.

The floor beneath her erupted.

Black chains burst from the stone with a violent metallic shriek, twisting through the air before wrapping themselves around her wrists and ankles. Elara cried out as the chains tightened and dragged her toward the towering darkness, while the blue light surrounding her hands began draining away.

The protective runes disintegrated one after another, leaving her fingers trembling and unnaturally pale. She struggled to summon another spell, but every attempt was absorbed by the chains before it could take shape.

Awesome reacted without thinking.

“Release her!”

The command burst from his throat with enough force to echo throughout the chamber, and the black symbol embedded in his palm flashed brightly in response.

Golden lines exploded into view across his vision, revealing the chains as complicated structures composed of interlocking magical commands. He reached toward the nearest connection, intending to sever the spell before it could pull Elara any closer to the darkness.

However, the moment he attempted to interfere, an invisible force slammed him against the broken pillar.

Pain tore through his shoulder, and the impact forced the air from his lungs. He slid halfway down the fractured stone before managing to catch himself, struggling to remain conscious as a translucent message appeared before his eyes.

[COMMAND REJECTED.]

[AUTHORITY CONFLICT DETECTED.]

[SECONDARY INSTANCE HAS PRIORITY.]

The stranger watched him with a faint, mocking smile.

“You see? You can issue commands, but you don't understand whose commands you're overriding. That is the difference between the boy you are now and the person you used to be.”

Awesome gritted his teeth and forced himself upright, fighting the dizziness clouding his vision. His shoulder throbbed painfully, but the sight of Elara being dragged toward the darkness prevented him from surrendering to the pain.

“Then teach me,” he demanded.

For the first time since emerging from behind the ancient door, the stranger's expression changed. A flicker of surprise crossed his face before disappearing beneath the cold smile he had worn throughout their confrontation.

“You want me to teach you how to control the power that destroyed an entire civilization?”

“I want to stop you from hurting her.”

The stranger glanced toward Elara, who was still struggling desperately against the chains tightening around her body.

“That,” he said quietly, “is exactly how it began last time.”

He closed his hand again, and the chains immediately tightened around Elara's throat.

She gasped, clawing at the dark restraints as they began restricting her breathing.

Awesome felt something shift inside him. His fear transformed into anger so quickly that he barely recognized the intensity of the emotion, and the golden markings beneath his skin brightened as he raised his marked hand.

He ignored the sharp pain spreading through his palm and forced himself to concentrate on the magical connections surrounding Elara.

The golden lines returned, revealing the intricate structure of the chains in greater detail. This time, Awesome resisted the instinct to attack the nearest connection directly. Instead, he followed the threads through the surrounding network, searching for the source of the authority that allowed the stranger to control them.

What he discovered made his stomach twist.

The chains were not connected to the stranger.

They were connected to him.

A single golden thread extended from the black symbol in Awesome's palm, crossed the chamber, and disappeared into Elara's chest. The connection pulsed with every beat of his heart, carrying an energy that felt disturbingly familiar.

Awesome stared at the thread, unable to understand why his own power appeared to be controlling the person who had spent so much time trying to protect him.

“Why is my power controlling her?” he demanded.

Elara stopped struggling long enough to meet his eyes.

“Because I asked it to,” she whispered.

Awesome stared at her in disbelief, struggling to comprehend how she could possibly have arranged something so dangerous.

“What?”

“I built a safeguard into the seal,” Elara explained, her voice growing weaker as the chains continued constricting her throat. “If your authority ever returned, it would use my life as an anchor. I believed I could control the connection if something went wrong, but I never expected the system to react this way.”

“You made yourself a hostage?”

“I made myself responsible.”

The stranger laughed, and the sound echoed through the chamber like breaking glass.

“How noble,” he said with bitter amusement. “How stupid.”

Awesome ignored the taunt and focused on the golden thread connecting him to Elara. As his perception examined the structure more closely, he realized that it differed fundamentally from the other magical formations he had encountered.

The connection was not an ordinary chain of commands. It was a contract, woven from promises, restrictions, and conditions that bound two lives together.

At its centre, a small black knot pulsed like a living heart.

Awesome understood that destroying the thread would free Elara from the chains, but he also sensed that the connection served another purpose. The contract appeared to be maintaining a protective boundary between the stranger and the enormous creature behind him.

If he severed it completely, he might save Elara while removing one of the few remaining barriers protecting the chamber.

He had no idea what would happen if that protection disappeared.

The stranger seemed to recognize his hesitation and smiled as though he had anticipated the dilemma long before Awesome discovered it.

“Go on,” he encouraged him. “Save your professor. Prove that you are still the same frightened boy who chooses one life over thousands.”

Awesome's fingers trembled as he examined the knot, searching for an alternative that would allow him to free Elara without unleashing the creature behind the stranger.

“And if I do nothing?” he asked.

“She dies anyway.”

The chains tightened another fraction, and Elara released a strangled gasp as the pressure around her throat increased.

Awesome could no longer afford to hesitate.

He reached toward the black knot and concentrated on the magical contract binding their lives together. Rather than attempting to overpower the structure, he focused on the relationship between its two ends, searching for the command that would allow him to separate the connection without destroying either person.

Then he found it.

“Separate.”

The command struck the contract like a hammer against glass.

Golden symbols flashed throughout the chamber as the thread shuddered violently, splitting into two distinct strands before dissolving in a shower of brilliant sparks. The black chains immediately loosened around Elara's body, crumbling into fragments that scattered across the floor.

She dropped heavily onto her knees, coughing violently as she struggled to draw air into her lungs. Awesome rushed toward her, but before he could reach her, a deep sound rolled through the darkness behind the stranger.

It was not a roar.

It was laughter.

The enormous eyes brightened, illuminating the chamber with a terrifying brilliance that caused the remaining golden symbols to flicker.

The stranger's smile vanished.

For the first time since appearing through the ancient door, he looked genuinely afraid.

[CONTAINMENT BARRIER: COMPROMISED.]

[UNKNOWN ENTITY RESPONSE: AWAKENING.]

[WARNING: ALL LOCAL AUTHORITIES OVERRIDDEN.]

Awesome watched the messages appear before his eyes, and the relief he had felt after freeing Elara quickly dissolved into dread.

“What have I done?” he whispered.

The stranger spun toward him, his expression twisted with fury.

“You foolish child! You broke the wrong connection!”

“You said I needed to remember who I was!”

“I said you needed to meet the real you. I never said you were ready!”

The darkness behind him began to move.

Something immense dragged itself forward, scraping against the unseen walls of its prison. Golden chains stretched across its enormous body, each one thicker than the pillars supporting the underground chamber, and every movement sent violent tremors through the surrounding stone.

As the creature advanced, the enormous eyes separated, revealing that they belonged to a face hidden beneath layers of black armor. Its features were barely distinguishable beneath the overlapping plates, but the golden light burning within its eyes seemed to penetrate every shadow in the chamber.

Awesome could barely breathe as he watched the creature approach the failing barrier.

The armored head tilted toward him.

Then a voice entered his mind.

FIRST AUTHORITY. IDENTIFICATION REQUIRED.

Awesome clutched his temples as the words reverberated through his consciousness. The pressure was no longer confined to his body; it seemed to originate from somewhere deep inside his mind, forcing its way through barriers he had never known existed.

Images flashed through his thoughts.

He saw a magnificent city burning beneath a fractured sky, its streets filled with fleeing civilians and shattered magical constructs. Armies of mages stood in surrender before a towering structure, while a black sun hung above a spire that stretched beyond the clouds.

At the summit of that tower stood Awesome.

Except he was no longer the sixteen-year-old boy who had spent his life struggling to cast a basic spell. He had become a man wearing a long black coat, and the black symbol on his palm shone with an intensity that made the surrounding darkness appear pale.

Countless golden lines stretched across the world like invisible strings, connecting cities, armies, magical formations, and living beings to a single point of control.

Every line ended at his fingertips.

The vision shifted, revealing an army gathered beneath the tower as its soldiers prepared to launch an attack. The man raised one hand, and the entire army froze in place, every soldier becoming motionless as though time itself had stopped.

He closed his fist, and their magic vanished.

Thousands of magical signatures disappeared simultaneously, leaving the battlefield filled with powerless mages who could do nothing but stare at the figure standing above them.

Then the man turned toward a kneeling woman whose face Awesome could not see.

“Seal the world away from me,” the man commanded, his voice carrying the cold certainty of someone who had already accepted the consequences of his decision. “If I ever return without remembering why I made this choice, do not trust me.”

The woman began to cry, her shoulders shaking as she struggled to understand how the person she trusted could ask her to carry such a terrible responsibility.

“What if you remember everything?” she asked.

The man looked toward the black sun hanging above the ruined world.

“Then you must pray that I remember how to be human.”

The vision shattered.

Awesome staggered backward, barely catching himself before he collapsed. His heart hammered against his ribs, and a thin stream of blood slipped from his nose as the pressure inside his skull began to recede.

Elara hurried toward him, placing a hand against his shoulder to steady him.

“Awesome! Look at me. What did you see?”

He tried to answer, but the words refused to come.

The memory had felt too real to dismiss as an illusion. He had felt the unbearable heat of the burning city, heard the screams of people dying beneath his command, and experienced the crushing loneliness of someone who had sacrificed everything without knowing whether that sacrifice would save anyone.

Most frightening of all was the certainty he had felt while issuing the command to seal the world away from himself.

The man in the vision had not appeared confused or unwilling. He had known exactly what he was doing, and whatever he had feared seemed powerful enough to make him abandon his own memories.

The stranger approached slowly, watching Awesome struggle to process what he had witnessed.

“Now you understand why I exist.”

Awesome forced himself to look up, his breathing still uneven.

“You're a part of me.”

“I'm the part that remembers.”

“Then tell me what that creature is.”

The stranger glanced over his shoulder toward the armored head pressing against the invisible barrier. Cracks were spreading through the air around it, distorting the golden light as though the chamber itself were a fragile surface about to shatter.

“That,” he said, “is the reason you divided yourself.”

Awesome stared at him, trying to connect the stranger's explanation with the memory that had just invaded his mind.

“You divided yourself to create you?”

“To create me, to create the seal, and to hide your authority inside a life that could grow without remembering what it was capable of,” the stranger explained. “You believed that if your power developed naturally, without the burden of your former memories, you might discover a way to destroy the creature without repeating the catastrophe that nearly ended the world.”

Awesome shook his head, struggling to accept that the decisions of a person he could barely remember had shaped every moment of his life.

“Why would I do that?”

“Because you discovered that the creature could not be killed.” The stranger's voice dropped, losing some of its earlier arrogance. “You tried everything, but every attack only made it stronger. Eventually, you understood that the only way to prevent another catastrophe was to keep it asleep, and the only power capable of maintaining its prison was your authority.”

Awesome glanced at the enormous creature, whose movements continued to weaken the remaining barrier.

“Then why are you trying to open it?”

The stranger looked back at him, and for the first time, Awesome noticed something beneath the contempt and bitterness that had defined their encounter.

Desperation.

“Because I am tired of being imprisoned inside a memory,” the stranger replied. “I have existed in the darkness for longer than you can understand, trapped with every recollection of what you did and every consequence you tried to escape.”

He stepped closer, and the golden cracks across his skin brightened as the connection between them began to pulse again.

“I have watched you grow through the seal. I felt every rejection, every humiliation, and every moment when someone looked at you and decided that a boy without mana was worthless. I remember the truth, Awesome, while you have spent your life believing the lies that were built around you.”

“Remembering doesn't give you the right to destroy everyone,” Awesome replied, forcing himself to stand straighter despite the pain spreading through his body.

“And forgetting doesn't make you innocent!”

The stranger's shout reverberated throughout the chamber with such force that dust rained from the ceiling. The golden symbols flickered violently, and the creature behind him struck the barrier again, sending another wave of energy through the underground structure.

For a moment, Awesome and the stranger stared at each other, their identical faces reflecting two entirely different responses to the same buried history.

One wanted to understand the truth before making another terrible decision.

The other had already decided that the world deserved to face the consequences of what had been done to him.

Before either could speak again, the creature behind the stranger transmitted another command directly into Awesome's mind.

FIRST AUTHORITY. FINAL GATE RELEASE SEQUENCE INITIATED.

A line of red symbols appeared across his vision, accompanied by a warning that seemed more urgent than anything the system had displayed before.

[PURGE AUTHORIZATION REQUIRED.]

[TARGET: SECONDARY INSTANCE.]

[WARNING: PURGE MAY CAUSE IRREVERSIBLE MEMORY RESTORATION.]

Awesome stared at the message, struggling to understand the choice the system had placed before him.

It wanted him to destroy the stranger, the fragment of himself that possessed the memories he had lost. However, the warning suggested that eliminating the fragment might trigger the restoration of those memories, potentially returning the very knowledge that had once driven him to seal his own authority.

He glanced toward Elara, who had regained her footing but now watched the two versions of Awesome with unmistakable fear.

“Don't authorize it,” she warned. “We don't know what will happen if that fragment is destroyed, and the system may not understand the consequences of restoring your memories.”

The stranger laughed bitterly, his gaze never leaving Awesome.

“Listen to her. She knows exactly what happens when you remember everything.”

Elara immediately went rigid.

Awesome turned toward her, his suspicion returning with renewed force.

“What is he talking about?”

She opened her mouth, but no words emerged. Her expression revealed a fear that went far beyond the danger posed by the creature, suggesting that the truth she had concealed was connected to something even more personal than Awesome's forgotten past.

The stranger raised his hand, revealing a black mark identical to the one embedded in Awesome's palm. Unlike Awesome's symbol, however, the stranger's mark was slowly losing its glow, and the golden lines beneath his skin seemed to be flowing toward Awesome as though an invisible force were drawing him back into his original source.

“Ask her what happened to the first person who carried your authority,” the stranger said.

Awesome felt the blood drain from his face.

“What person?”

Elara lowered her eyes, unable to meet his gaze.

Before she could answer, the chamber trembled again as another golden chain snapped around the creature's enormous body. The final gate was beginning to open, and the stranger's expression hardened as he realized that they were running out of time.

“Choose, Awesome,” he demanded. “Destroy me and risk becoming the monster you were afraid of, or let me live and watch that thing escape.”

Awesome looked from the black symbol on the stranger's palm to the identical mark on his own hand, desperately searching for a third option that would not force him to sacrifice one part of himself to save the rest.

Then he noticed something that made his breath catch.

The mark on the stranger's hand was not glowing anymore.

It was fading rapidly, and the golden lines beneath his skin were streaming toward Awesome as though the fragment were being absorbed by the person it had been separated from.

The stranger looked down at his hand and swore under his breath.

“No. Not yet.”

Awesome instinctively raised his marked palm, watching the strange energy move between them.

“What's happening to you?”

The stranger seized his wrist with desperate strength, and his black eyes widened as he realized that the movement of the golden lines was no longer under his control.

“It's using me to reach you!”

A black tendril suddenly burst from the creature's chest and shot across the chamber. Before either Awesome or Elara could react, it pierced the stranger's back and wrapped around his torso, forcing him to his knees as an agonized scream escaped his throat.

The golden markings across his body flickered violently, and the black tendril began pulsing in time with the symbol embedded in Awesome's palm.

The ancient system responded immediately.

[SECONDARY INSTANCE COMPROMISED.]

[UNKNOWN ENTITY HAS ACQUIRED A VALID HOST.]

Awesome tried to pull away, but the stranger maintained his grip with the last of his strength. His face twisted in agony as golden light spread through his black eyes, gradually replacing the darkness with a brilliance that matched the markings beneath Awesome's skin.

“Whatever you do,” the stranger gasped, struggling to force the words through clenched teeth, “do not let it finish becoming you.”

Awesome stared at him, unable to understand how the creature could use a fragment of his authority to reach his original body.

The stranger's expression changed as the tendril tightened around his chest, and for one terrible moment, Awesome saw the same fear reflected in the face that mirrored his own.

Then the stranger looked directly into his eyes and spoke in a voice that no longer sounded entirely human.

“Because the creature behind me isn't trying to escape its prison.”

His fingers tightened around Awesome's wrist as the golden light in his eyes grew brighter.

“It's trying to get back into the body you stole from it.”