The Weakest Tidecaller at the Abyssal Academy

Chapter 7: The Voice Behind the Seventh Chain

The moment the ancient door began to open, Ethan Vale realized that something on the other side was pulling it toward him.

He stumbled backward as the seven chain-like markings carved into the stone flared with an unnatural blue light. A grinding roar echoed through the forbidden staircase, shaking dust from the ceiling and sending fragments of stone tumbling down the steps behind him.

“Ethan, move!” Milo shouted.

Milo seized Ethan’s jacket and dragged him away just as a narrow black tendril burst through the widening gap. It struck the floor where Ethan had been standing moments earlier, leaving a smoking groove across the ancient stone.

Ethan’s heart hammered against his ribs as he watched the tendril writhe across the floor. It did not withdraw immediately but twisted from side to side as though searching for something, its surface rippling like dark water disturbed by an invisible current. After several seconds, its pointed tip turned toward the strange mark on Ethan’s palm.

“It recognizes you,” Milo whispered.

“No.” Ethan stared at the symbol on his hand. “It recognizes whatever is inside this door.”

The distinction should have comforted him, but the tendril’s movements suggested that the thing beyond the door had already discovered his presence.

Without warning, the black tendril snapped toward him.

Ethan threw himself sideways just before it struck the wall, causing a section of ancient stone to collapse with a deafening crack. Milo stumbled against the staircase railing and nearly lost his footing as the entire corridor shuddered beneath them.

“Tell me you have a plan!” Milo yelled.

“I am working on one!”

“Then work faster!”

Ethan forced himself to look beyond the writhing tendril. His Abyssal Sight awakened with a familiar stabbing pain behind his eyes, and the ordinary world dissolved beneath layers of luminous lines that revealed the hidden structure of the door and the spellwork holding it shut.

Seven chains of magic extended from the circular entrance into the surrounding walls. Six remained connected to enormous binding circles buried deep within the academy. Their blue light pulsed weakly, but their underlying structures remained intact.

The seventh chain was different.

It had not simply broken. Someone had severed its original magical connection and replaced it with a false binding, a convincing imitation that redirected the seal’s power toward the door.

Someone had deliberately weakened the prison.

Ethan’s stomach tightened as he traced the false binding to its origin. The thread disappeared beneath the staircase, extending farther down than his sight could comfortably follow. Yet another thread rose from somewhere in the depths, winding through the hidden structure until it reached a point inside his own chest.

He gasped and clutched his shirt as an icy sensation spread beneath his ribs.

“Ethan?” Milo grabbed his shoulder. “What’s happening?”

“I can see the spell.” Ethan struggled to keep his voice steady. “The door isn’t opening because the prison is failing. Someone is deliberately making it open.”

Before Milo could respond, the black tendril jerked violently toward them.

Ethan saw the movement a fraction of a second before it happened.

“Jump!”

They leaped in opposite directions as a wave of black water swept across the corridor. It struck the staircase railing, swallowed the metal without making a sound, and dissolved into droplets that evaporated before reaching the floor.

Milo stared at the empty space where the railing had been.

“That isn’t water.”

“No,” Ethan replied, keeping his eyes fixed on the door. “It’s something pretending to be water.”

The gap widened, allowing a stream of freezing air to pour into the corridor. The air carried the smell of salt, rust, and something disturbingly familiar. Ethan remembered standing beside his mother’s bed as a child, listening to rain tap against the windows while she held his hand. Her fingers had always carried a faint scent of the sea.

Now that same scent filled the forbidden passage.

His throat tightened, and before he could stop himself, a single word escaped his lips.

“Mum?”

The movement behind the door ceased.

For several seconds, nothing happened. Even the trembling staircase became still, leaving Ethan so aware of his surroundings that he could hear Milo breathing beside him.

Then a woman’s voice answered from the darkness.

“My little boy.”

Ethan’s knees nearly gave way.

He had heard that voice twice since the assessment chamber, once through the diagnostic crystal and again inside the sealed room of his dormitory. Each time, it had carried a warning or a fragment of truth that made him question everything he believed about his mother’s death.

This time, however, the voice sounded close enough to touch.

“Where are you?” he demanded.

Milo caught his arm before he could move toward the entrance. “Ethan, don’t answer it.”

“That’s my mother’s voice.”

“You told me you can barely remember her face, and you also told me that something inside this academy has been interfering with your memories.” Milo tightened his grip. “What if it has learned to imitate her voice, too?”

The question cut deeper than Ethan expected.

He desperately wanted to reject the possibility. He wanted to believe that his mother had somehow survived and had been waiting behind the door, and that everything he had suffered since entering Abyssal Crown Academy had finally brought him back to her.

However, hope could become dangerous when he had no way to distinguish it from a trap.

Ethan stared into the darkness and forced himself to speak.

“Tell me something only my mother would know.”

The woman behind the door gave a quiet, sorrowful laugh.

“When you were six, you hid beneath the kitchen table because you believed the thunder was angry with you. I sat on the floor beside you and told you that storms were simply the ocean speaking to the sky.”

Ethan stopped breathing.

He remembered the kitchen table and the rain hammering against the roof. He remembered covering his ears with his small hands while someone wrapped a blanket around his shoulders.

But when he tried to recall his mother’s face, he found nothing except a pale blur surrounded by darkness.

A sharp pain erupted behind his eyes, forcing him to stagger against the wall.

A message appeared across his vision.

ABYSSAL SIGHT: MEMORY ACCESS REQUESTED.

WARNING: RECOLLECTION IS NOT VERIFICATION.

FOREIGN MEMORY SIGNATURE DETECTED.

Ethan recoiled from the message. The voice had revealed a detail from his childhood, but the warning suggested that the memory itself might not be trustworthy.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

The woman sighed as though his suspicion disappointed her.

“You have grown so distrustful.”

“Then answer me!”

“I am the one who has been waiting for you.”

The ancient door shuddered again, and the opening widened enough to reveal a narrow strip of pale light. Beyond it lay an enormous chamber submerged beneath a transparent barrier. Seven chains stretched through the darkness, disappearing into a vast circular structure suspended above what appeared to be a bottomless pit.

A woman stood at the center of the chamber.

Her long hair floated around her shoulders as though she were underwater, although the air around her remained perfectly still. She wore a silver dress covered in symbols Ethan could not recognize, and chains bound her wrists, passing through her body without drawing blood.

Her face remained hidden behind a veil of shifting shadows.

Yet Ethan felt an unbearable sense of familiarity as he looked at her.

The woman raised her head.

“Come closer, First Witness.”

The mark on Ethan’s palm burned, and he instinctively took a step forward. Before he could approach the threshold, Milo caught the back of his jacket and hauled him away from the entrance.

“Absolutely not,” Milo said, although his voice trembled despite his attempt to sound firm. “We are not walking into a mysterious underground prison because a ghost knows your childhood stories.”

The woman slowly turned her head toward Milo.

For the first time, the shadows surrounding her face shifted enough to reveal the suggestion of a smile.

“Your friend is wise to fear me.”

Milo’s face lost what little color remained in it.

“Wonderful,” he muttered. “The nightmare agrees with me.”

Ethan barely heard him because his attention had settled on the chains binding the mysterious woman. Through his Abyssal Sight, he could see that each chain consisted of thousands of interwoven magical threads. Some glowed blue, others shimmered silver, and several had darkened until they resembled veins filled with ink.

The seventh chain, however, was connected neither to her wrist nor to the circular structure behind her.

It extended through the floor, passed beneath the academy, and rose toward Ethan.

The chain ended at the mark on his palm.

He jerked his hand away, but the connection remained visible.

“Why am I connected to you?” he asked.

The woman’s expression became unreadable beneath the shifting veil.

“Because your mother made a terrible choice.”

“Stop talking about my mother as though you knew her.”

“I knew her before you were born. I was there when she carried you into this world, and I was there when she begged me to save your life.”

Ethan’s anger faltered as confusion replaced it.

“What are you talking about?”

“She brought you to me when your heart stopped beating.”

Milo made a small, disbelieving sound, but the woman continued without looking at him.

“You were born without a measurable tide, without proper mana channels, and with a body that could not survive the ancient power flowing through your blood. Your mother believed the academy’s healers could save you, but they would have dissected you to discover why the child of a seemingly powerless woman had awakened the oldest magic in existence.”

Ethan curled his fingers into fists.

“My mother wasn’t a mage.”

“She was much more than that.”

“Then why did she die?”

For the first time, the woman seemed reluctant to answer. Her chained hands lowered slightly, and something resembling grief crossed the shadows covering her face.

“Because she chose you.”

The words struck Ethan with the force of a physical blow.

For years, he had believed his mother’s death was a tragedy unrelated to him. He had imagined an illness, an accident, or some forgotten disaster from the early years of the magical transformation. He had never considered that her death might have been connected to his birth.

“You’re lying,” he whispered.

“I wish I were.”

“Then prove it.”

The woman slowly raised her bound hands. A thread of silver light emerged from her chest and traveled toward the doorway, passing through the narrow opening until it floated inches from Ethan’s face.

A memory unfolded within the light.

Ethan saw a storm raging over a black ocean. A younger version of Professor Selene Marr stood on a stone platform, her robes soaked and her face streaked with blood. Beside her knelt a woman holding a newborn child.

Ethan recognized the rusted compass hanging around the woman’s neck.

His mother’s voice rang through the memory.

“Take him away from the academy. If they discover what he is, they will use him to open the prison.”

A second figure emerged from the darkness.

Although the figure’s face remained obscured, Ethan recognized the voice immediately.

Professor Adrian Thorne.

“You cannot hide him forever,” Thorne said. “The seals are already responding to his presence.”

His mother tightened her arms around the infant.

“Then I will make them forget he exists.”

She pressed her palm against the baby’s chest, and seven chains of light erupted from the ground. They wrapped around the child before disappearing beneath his skin.

The infant began to cry, and his mother’s face crumpled as though she could barely endure what she had done.

“I’m sorry, Ethan.”

The memory shattered into fragments of silver light.

Ethan staggered backward, struggling to breathe. He had seen Professor Thorne standing beside his mother, and he had seen her carrying him toward the prison. Most terrifying of all, he had watched the seven-chain mark form on his body before he was old enough to remember anything.

The woman behind the door lowered her hands.

“Now you understand why your mother died.”

“No.” Ethan shook his head as he fought to steady himself. “I understand that you’re showing me something you want me to believe.”

A flicker of amusement passed through the shadows covering her face.

“Your skepticism will not save you.”

“Neither will your stories.”

The woman leaned forward, causing the chains around her wrists to groan under the strain.

“Then ask the academy why your mother was buried without a body.”

Ethan froze.

He had never been allowed to see his mother’s grave. The official records stated that she had died during a containment incident, and the academy had handled the burial because her death was classified.

He had accepted the explanation because he had been a grieving child who needed somewhere to direct his pain.

Now, the explanation felt like another locked door.

Before he could ask another question, the sharp sound of approaching footsteps echoed down the staircase.

“Step away from the entrance!”

Professor Thorne’s voice rang through the passage.

Ethan spun around as Thorne descended with two armed security officers behind him. The professor’s face was pale, and one sleeve of his uniform had been torn. The officers carried containment weapons designed to suppress magical disturbances, and both devices were aimed directly at Ethan.

Thorne stopped when he saw the open door.

For a moment, genuine horror broke through his usual composure.

“Close it,” he whispered.

The woman behind the door laughed softly.

“Oh, Adrian. Are you still pretending that you can keep your promises?”

Thorne raised his hand, and the officers immediately activated their weapons. Blue suppression fields expanded across the corridor, surrounding Ethan and Milo with a crushing wave of magical pressure.

Ethan dropped to one knee as the force struck his chest. Milo collapsed beside him, and his mechanical wrist device began sparking when the field disrupted its circuits.

“Professor!” Ethan struggled against the pressure. “You were there when I was born. You knew what happened to my mother!”

Thorne’s eyes flickered toward him.

“I told you to stay away from the lower foundations.”

“You told me because you knew I would find this place!”

“I told you because I knew what would happen if you did!”

The woman behind the door began pulling against her chains.

The entire chamber trembled, and one of the seven glowing chains snapped.

The sound was not particularly loud, but its impact traveled through Ethan’s bones. A wave of pressure surged upward from the abyss, shattering the lights along the staircase. Both security officers fell to the ground, and their suppression weapons discharged harmlessly into the walls.

Thorne grabbed the railing to keep himself upright.

“No,” he whispered. “The second seal wasn’t supposed to fail tonight.”

Ethan stared at the broken chain.

The woman’s veil dissolved, revealing an ageless face with eyes as dark as the deepest ocean. Her expression held neither gratitude nor relief, but an unmistakable hunger that made Ethan’s skin crawl.

“Thank you, Ethan Vale,” she said. “Your sight has given me what your blood alone could not.”

Ethan looked down at his palm.

The seven-chain mark had changed. One line had turned completely black, and the remaining six were slowly darkening.

“What did you do to me?”

“I did nothing that your mother did not begin.”

Thorne lunged toward Ethan, but a wall of black water erupted between them. The water rose into the shape of a towering figure whose head brushed the ceiling and whose arms stretched toward the open doorway. Countless faces appeared and vanished within its translucent body, each one frozen in an expression of terror.

The woman stepped forward.

For the first time, the chains no longer stopped her.

Her bare foot touched the threshold.

The academy shook so violently that cracks spread across the staircase walls. Far above them, alarms began to scream, and a distant explosion sent a shower of dust into the corridor.

Milo crawled toward Ethan and grabbed his arm.

“We need to leave. Now!”

Ethan could not move. The woman had crossed the threshold, and her dark eyes remained fixed on him.

“My name is Nerissa,” she said. “I was the first ruler of the primordial ocean, long before your academy stole its magic and built its walls over my prison.”

Thorne shouted something, but the rising roar from the abyss swallowed his words.

Nerissa extended one hand toward Ethan.

“Your mother sealed me here to protect you from the truth. However, she never told you what you truly are.”

Ethan forced himself to stand, despite the crushing pressure that continued to radiate from the broken seal.

“What am I?”

Nerissa’s smile disappeared, and for the first time, genuine fear entered her ancient eyes.

“You are not the key to my prison, Ethan.”

The mark on his palm split open, revealing a tiny circle of darkness beneath his skin.

“You are the prison.”

A deafening crack tore through the academy.

Far above them, every window in Abyssal Crown Academy shattered at once. The ocean surrounding the floating institution rose into a towering wall, exposing the skeletal remains of an ancient city beneath the waves.

Ethan’s vision blurred as another message appeared before him.

FIRST WITNESS CONFIRMED.

SECOND SEAL: DESTROYED.

PRISONER STATUS: PARTIALLY RELEASED.

A final line materialized beneath the others.

WARNING: THE HOST IS REMEMBERING WHO BUILT THE PRISON.

Then Ethan heard his mother’s voice again. This time, it did not come from behind the door but from somewhere deep inside his own mind.

Ethan, if Nerissa ever reaches you, do not let her remember your real name.

The darkness beneath his palm widened, spreading like an opening eye.

And something inside him answered in a voice that sounded exactly like his own.

At last, you have brought her home.