The Weakest Tidecaller at the Abyssal Academy

Chapter 10: The Body That Remembered Me

“Don't let him reach the empty tank!”

Professor Thorne's desperate scream echoed through the underground chamber just as a blinding flash of light erupted beneath Abyssal Crown Academy. The suspended glass tanks trembled violently, and the machinery supporting them groaned as though the entire chamber were struggling to contain something that should never have awakened.

Ethan barely had time to turn before a figure emerged from the darkness beyond the broken tank.

The stranger possessed Ethan's height, his broad shoulders, and the same uneven walking rhythm he developed whenever his left knee hurt. Even the small scar above his eyebrow was identical to Ethan's, leaving no doubt that they shared more than a passing resemblance.

However, the stranger's eyes were completely different.

They glowed with a pale, ancient light that seemed to have existed long before humanity discovered magic. When the stranger smiled, Ethan felt an inexplicable chill spread through his chest before he could understand what the expression meant.

The man was not looking at him as though he had discovered a lost brother. Instead, he regarded Ethan with the cold satisfaction of someone who had finally recovered a possession stolen from him long ago.

“Finally,” the stranger repeated. “I've waited long enough.”

Milo seized Ethan's sleeve and pulled him backward, keeping his eyes fixed on the approaching figure.

“Please tell me that isn't you.”

“I don't know what it is!” Ethan snapped.

“That's not reassuring!”

The stranger stepped casually over the broken glass scattered across the floor. Every fragment that touched his bare feet dissolved into black mist, while the magical lights above the suspended tanks flickered and dimmed as he passed beneath them.

Behind Ethan, Chancellor Voss shouted at the security officers to activate their weapons, but none of them obeyed. Their faces had turned pale, and their weapons trembled in their hands as though an invisible force were pressing against their bodies.

The stranger glanced at them, and every suppression device shut down simultaneously.

“Still using borrowed magic to control things you don't understand?” he asked Voss. “Some habits survive even the end of the world.”

Voss raised his weapon despite the obvious danger.

“You are not supposed to exist.”

The stranger laughed softly, his pale eyes never leaving Ethan's face.

“Neither was the boy you sent to school.”

Ethan felt those words strike somewhere deeper than his chest, stirring a fear he could neither explain nor suppress.

“What do you mean?” he demanded.

The stranger finally looked directly into his eyes.

For a moment, Ethan saw his own face reflected in those pale pupils. Then the reflection changed, revealing a frightened little boy who was crying beneath the gentle hands of a woman Ethan immediately recognized as his mother.

The vision disappeared before he could understand what he had witnessed.

“You've been asking the wrong questions, Ethan,” the stranger said. “You want to know what your mother did to you, why the academy has been watching you, and why something inside your head keeps stealing your memories.”

He stepped closer, and the black mark on Ethan's palm began to burn beneath his skin.

“But the real question is much simpler.”

The stranger's smile widened as he studied Ethan's frightened expression.

“Which one of us deserves to be alive?”

Ethan forced himself to remain still, although every instinct urged him to run. He had spent his entire life being treated as the weakest Tidecaller in every room he entered, but the person standing before him made him feel vulnerable in an entirely different way.

“You said you wanted your body back,” Ethan replied, trying to keep his voice steady. “Then explain why you need it.”

The stranger's smile slowly disappeared.

For the first time, Ethan sensed something beneath his confidence that resembled genuine pain.

“Because this body belonged to me before your mother stole it.”

Milo moved closer to Ethan, shaking his head in disbelief.

“That's impossible. Ethan was born sixteen years ago.”

“Was he?” the stranger asked.

He raised his hand and revealed a seven-chain mark identical to the one covering Ethan's palm. Unlike Ethan's mark, however, the circle at its center was complete, forming a perfect symbol that seemed to absorb the surrounding light.

The stranger pressed one finger against the mark.

Immediately, the suspended tanks shuddered, and dozens of motionless bodies opened their eyes.

Ethan stumbled backward as identical faces stared at him through the glass. Some of the bodies belonged to children, while others appeared to be teenagers or adults who had lived considerably longer than the stranger standing before him.

Every body carried the same seven-chain mark.

Every body had Ethan's face.

“What are these?” Ethan whispered.

“Attempts,” the stranger answered without hesitation. “Your mother kept trying to build a body capable of surviving the authority of the primordial ocean. She failed repeatedly until she discovered something she had never anticipated.”

His gaze returned to Ethan.

“Somewhere along the way, one of her attempts developed a mind of its own.”

Ethan felt his stomach twist as the implications settled over him.

“Are you saying I'm an experiment?”

“I'm saying the name Ethan Vale belongs to the only version of the experiment that survived long enough to believe he was a person.”

Milo stepped between them, his fear giving way to anger.

“Stop talking to him as though he's an object!”

The stranger slowly turned toward Milo, and the air around them tightened.

Before Milo could retreat, his feet lifted from the floor, and an invisible force dragged him toward the nearest glass tank. He grabbed a metal support beam, desperately holding on as his fingers slipped against its polished surface.

“Milo!” Ethan shouted.

The stranger did not need to raise his voice to make his threat clear.

“You are an interesting friend,” he observed. “The previous versions never had anyone willing to stand beside them.”

Ethan's fear erupted into anger.

“Let him go!”

The black mark flashed with a burst of dark light.

The invisible force holding Milo shattered, throwing him onto the floor several feet away. Milo coughed violently as he struggled to catch his breath, but he was free.

The stranger studied Ethan's hand with unmistakable interest.

“You are becoming stronger.”

“No,” Ethan replied, fighting to steady his breathing. “I'm becoming tired of watching you hurt people.”

For several seconds, the two of them stared at each other while the damaged chamber trembled around them. Then the stranger smiled again, although his expression carried a bitterness that had not been there before.

“Your mother said something similar.”

Ethan's anger faltered as he searched the stranger's face for an answer.

“What happened to her?”

The stranger's expression changed, and the temperature inside the chamber seemed to drop.

“She chose you.”

“Everyone keeps saying that, but nobody tells me what it means.”

“It means she chose to preserve the weakest version of you rather than allow the original consciousness to return.”

Ethan stared at him, struggling to comprehend the accusation.

“Are you the original consciousness?”

“I am what existed before you were given a name, a face, and a life.”

The stranger walked toward a tank containing a small boy whose eyes remained closed. Thin silver threads extended from the child's wrists into the surrounding machinery, holding his body in place.

“Your mother called me the First Witness. The academy called me Subject Zero, while the prisoner beneath this school called me her jailer.”

He turned back toward Ethan, and the ancient light in his eyes intensified.

“But the oldest records gave me another name.”

The lights flickered as an unfamiliar message appeared across the glass tanks.

ORIGINAL CONSCIOUSNESS: RECOGNITION REQUESTED.

Ancient writing spread across the glass, but Ethan's Abyssal Sight could not translate it. The symbols shifted whenever he attempted to focus on them, as though the system itself were deliberately concealing their meaning.

The stranger noticed his difficulty and shook his head.

“Your sight is incomplete. You can perceive the architecture of magic, but you cannot yet understand the authority behind it.”

“Then teach me,” Ethan said.

Milo turned toward him with an expression of disbelief.

“Are you serious?”

Ethan refused to look away from the stranger.

“I need answers. If he knows what happened to my mother, I need to hear them.”

“And what happens if everything he tells you is a lie?” Milo demanded.

“Then I'll find the lie.”

The stranger laughed, but this time the sound contained no amusement.

“That's the difference between us. You still believe truth is something you can separate from the person telling it.”

He extended one hand toward Ethan.

“Come closer, and I'll show you the memory she took from you.”

Professor Thorne immediately stepped between them.

“No!”

The stranger's pale eyes narrowed.

“You still think you can protect him, Adrian?”

“I know what you are,” Thorne replied.

“Then you should understand that I have no reason to obey you.”

Thorne reached inside his uniform and produced a small crystal containing a spinning silver symbol. The moment he activated it, a circular barrier formed around Ethan and Milo, separating them from the stranger.

The stranger struck the barrier with his palm.

Cracks spread across its surface.

Thorne's face tightened as he struggled to maintain the protective spell.

“Ethan, listen carefully. Whatever he shows you, do not accept it as your own memory. The original consciousness can manipulate recollection and create convincing memories from fragments of truth.”

“Can he tell the truth, too?” Ethan asked.

Thorne hesitated before answering.

“Yes.”

“Then I need to know which parts are true.”

“You don't understand the cost of finding out!”

Before Ethan could respond, a sharp pain exploded behind his eyes.

His Abyssal Sight activated without permission, flooding his vision with glowing structures and intricate magical threads. The stranger's body became transparent, revealing thousands of threads extending from his chest into the walls, the suspended tanks, and the foundations of the academy.

Most of those threads were damaged, their light flickering like dying stars.

However, one thread was different.

It stretched directly from the stranger's heart into Ethan's own chest, connecting them through a binding that neither of them appeared capable of breaking.

Between the two of them, hidden beneath layers of ancient restraints, Ethan noticed a small silver thread trembling like a dying flame.

It was not a chain.

It was a memory.

Ethan reached toward it.

Thorne shouted, “Don't touch that binding!”

But Ethan had already made contact.

The chamber vanished around him, and the darkness gave way to an unfamiliar white landscape beneath a strange sky. Rain fell upward from the ground, rising toward the clouds while an endless sea stretched across the horizon in every direction.

A woman knelt beside a stone table, holding a newborn child against her chest.

Ethan recognized his mother immediately.

This time, he could see her face clearly. Her eyes were swollen and red from crying, and a deep cut crossed her forehead. Despite her exhaustion, she held the child with extraordinary tenderness, as though the world itself might shatter if she loosened her embrace.

A man stood opposite her, his face concealed behind a smooth silver mask.

“You cannot keep dividing the consciousness,” the masked man warned. “Each separation damages the original structure.”

His mother looked down at the baby, brushing one finger gently across the child's cheek.

“Then help me save this part.”

“You are not saving him,” the masked man replied. “You are creating another version of the same catastrophe.”

She lifted her head, and the determination in her eyes became unmistakable.

“His name is Ethan.”

The masked man remained silent for several seconds before leaning closer to the table.

“He will grow up,” his mother continued. “He will make his own choices, form his own friendships, and discover who he is without being forced to carry the crimes of someone who came before him.”

“And when the original returns?”

His mother pressed the baby against her chest, shielding him as though the masked man might attempt to take him away.

“Then I will face him.”

The masked figure leaned over the table, and his voice became colder.

“You cannot defeat what you are trying to separate. The original consciousness is not merely a person. It is the authority that holds the prison together.”

Tears gathered in his mother's eyes as she looked down at the sleeping child.

“Then let the prison fall.”

The memory shattered.

Ethan was thrown back into the chamber with a strangled gasp, and the pain behind his eyes intensified until his vision blurred. He stumbled against Milo, who immediately caught him with both arms and tried to keep him standing.

“Ethan! Look at me!”

Ethan blinked rapidly, struggling to focus on his friend's face.

For one terrible moment, he could not remember Milo's name.

He recognized the face before him and understood that the person holding him mattered deeply. He could remember their shared experiences and the trust that connected them, but the name itself had vanished, leaving an empty space in his mind.

His stomach dropped.

“No,” he whispered. “Not again.”

Milo's expression changed as he realized what had happened.

“What did it take from you?”

Ethan tried to answer, but the memory of his friend's name remained just beyond his reach, like a word written on the other side of a locked door.

Messages appeared across his vision.

ABYSSAL SIGHT: MEMORY EXTRACTION CONFIRMED.

RECOVERED MEMORY: MATERNAL INTERVENTION.

PERSONAL MEMORY LOSS: PARTIAL.

WARNING: FURTHER CONTACT MAY DESTROY HOST IDENTITY.

Ethan clutched Milo's arm, refusing to let go.

“I know you,” he said desperately. “I know you're my friend.”

Fear shone in Milo's eyes, but he tightened his grip on Ethan's shoulders.

“Then that's enough for now.”

Across the chamber, the stranger watched them without speaking. Something in his expression had changed, and he no longer looked like someone who had won a long-awaited victory.

Instead, he appeared almost jealous.

“You see?” he said quietly. “She made you fragile on purpose. She gave you a life that could be taken away, a friend you could lose, and memories that could be erased.”

Ethan slowly straightened, forcing himself to meet the stranger's gaze.

“She gave me a choice.”

“She gave you weakness.”

“She gave me the chance to become someone different from you.”

The stranger's face hardened, and for the first time, the two identical faces seemed to belong to entirely different people.

“You think having a choice makes you free?”

He raised his hand, and every tank in the chamber cracked simultaneously.

“Then choose.”

The glass exploded outward, scattering fragments across the floor. The bodies inside the tanks fell among the debris, remaining motionless for a moment before their fingers began to twitch.

Black water spilled across the chamber, flowing uphill toward the stranger's feet as though gravity no longer applied to it.

Chancellor Voss shouted for the security officers to retreat, but the exits slammed shut before anyone could reach them. Thorne's protective barrier finally collapsed, leaving Ethan and Milo exposed to the spreading darkness.

The stranger lunged toward Ethan.

Ethan immediately activated his Abyssal Sight, searching desperately for a weakness in the threads connecting their bodies. Pain tore through his skull as his vision blurred, but he managed to locate a narrow binding stretching from the stranger's wrist to the black mark on his own palm.

He could sever it.

However, the moment he focused on the binding, he sensed that breaking it would damage something deep within himself.

Ethan hesitated, uncertain whether he was about to free himself or destroy the only thing keeping his identity intact.

The stranger seized him by the throat.

Freezing energy flooded Ethan's body as the ancient presence forced its way into his thoughts. Images rushed through his mind in a violent, overwhelming sequence: a drowned city beneath an endless ocean, a throne surrounded by seven chains, a vast shadow imprisoned beneath the sea, and a woman screaming as the waters swallowed the world.

Then another image appeared.

His mother stood before the stranger, holding a blade made of pure light. Her face was streaked with tears, but her hands remained steady as she drove the weapon into his chest.

The stranger screamed, and the world shattered around them.

Ethan gasped as the vision ended, struggling to breathe beneath the stranger's tightening grip.

The black mark on his palm spread across his fingers, and the binding connecting their bodies began to glow.

“Now you remember,” the stranger whispered.

His pale eyes burned with an ancient fury.

“She didn't merely hide you from me.”

Ethan struggled against the hand around his throat, but the stranger's grip remained unyielding.

“She killed me to create you.”

The revelation struck Ethan with devastating force. His mother had not simply hidden him from a dangerous being or sealed an ancient power inside his body. According to the memory he had just witnessed, she had deliberately separated one consciousness from another, creating Ethan as a distinct existence.

Yet he still did not know which part of that existence had truly been his from the beginning.

The black mark continued spreading toward his elbow as the binding between them pulsed with growing intensity.

Behind the stranger, a cracked tank suddenly illuminated.

Inside it lay another body bearing Ethan's face, but this version wore a peaceful expression and possessed no seven-chain mark. Unlike the other bodies scattered across the chamber, it appeared untouched by the corruption spreading through the academy.

A message appeared across the glass.

SUBJECT ONE: SUCCESSFUL SEPARATION.

CONSCIOUSNESS: INDEPENDENT.

The stranger glanced toward the tank, and genuine alarm crossed his face.

“No,” he whispered.

The body inside the tank opened its eyes.

Then another voice, identical to Ethan's, emerged from the opposite side of the chamber.

“Brother, you weren't supposed to wake him.”

Ethan's blood ran cold.

The stranger released his throat and turned toward the new voice, while Milo seized Ethan's arm and pulled him away from the spreading black water.

Ethan barely noticed his friend's movement because his attention had become fixed on the darkness ahead.

Two figures now stood in the chamber, and both possessed his face.

The second figure stepped out of the broken tank, brushing the remaining glass from his shoulders as though he had merely awakened from an inconvenient sleep.

He looked at Ethan with a warm, unsettling smile.

“Welcome to the family, Ethan,” he said. “I'm the version your mother tried to save.”