Chapter 47: Defective

Chapter 47: Chapter 47: Defective

Seraphina stayed quiet for several seconds, and Felix let her take the time she needed, he could already tell whatever came next was something she’d spent years refusing to touch.

"I was sixteen when I awakened," she said finally, eyes lowered. "Everyone thought it’d be a great day."

Her father had already arranged an official evaluation. Her mother had invited half their social circle. They’d expected a celebration: a prodigy, proof that every sacrifice they’d made had finally paid off.

"And I did awaken with an enormous core. The evaluator was shocked, said my mana volume was extraordinary, way past anything he’d expect for my age." A flicker of something like pride crossed her face before it faded again.

"My parents were thrilled. For about an hour."

Then the testing continued, and that’s when they found the problem.

"My channels were abnormal," she said, looking down at her hands. "Too narrow. Fragile."

Felix frowned. "Your core outgrew your channels."

She nodded. "Enough mana to fill an ocean. Channels like glass."

That was the whole problem in one sentence: a core that could generate and hold tremendous power, and a body that couldn’t safely move any of it. Every attempt at a spell turned into pressure tearing her open from the inside.

"The first time I tried to use my affinity, I couldn’t control any of it. Mana came out wrong, the spell collapsed, and the pressure tore straight through my channels." She swallowed.

"There was blood. Pain. And the look on the evaluator’s face: Confusion, then disappointment."

He’d told them she needed time. Her parents didn’t want time. They wanted results, immediately.

"They asked if the channels could be strengthened. He said they might develop naturally with age. *Might.*" Her voice carried something bitter on that word.

"They hated hearing that."

At the Academy, word had already spread that she was Tier 1 which should have made her special. Instead it made everything worse.

"People expected a monster. Instead they got someone who couldn’t cast a basic spell without falling apart." The whispers started fast.

*Tier 1? That’s her? She can’t even control her own mana. Defective.* The word followed her everywhere after that, and it stopped being background noise fast.

"Kids from the wealthy families used to perform for me," she said, expression going blank. "Ice, lightning, fire, wind. Then they’d ask me to show mine."

Every time, the same result, mana surging wrong, her channels burning, the spell collapsing into a puddle of water, a weak spark, sometimes nothing at all. "And they’d laugh. Called me a battery. A useless one."

Felix’s fists tightened slowly at his sides.

"Don’t," she said. "Don’t be angry."

"I’m listening."

"I know. I just don’t want you hating them because of me."

He held her gaze a moment. "I don’t hate anyone." A pause. "I don’t like what I’m hearing, though."

Something close to a smile touched her mouth and disappeared just as fast. "The Academy wasn’t the worst part."

His expression shifted. "Your parents."

She nodded. "They decided the channels could be forced open."

They’d started with mana-enhancing medicine, legal at first, then not. She remembered sitting in a chair with restraints around her wrists, bottles lined up on a table, her mother standing over her and her father taking notes on a clipboard, adjusting the dosage upward every time it failed.

Every attempt was supposed to strengthen her channels. Instead each one tore something new open: she’d vomit blood, collapse, sometimes couldn’t move for hours afterward.

The experiments never stopped, no matter how badly they went. "Whenever it failed, they said I wasn’t trying hard enough," she said, voice starting to shake.

"That I was wasting the talent they’d given me, that they’d spent everything on me, so I had to become what they wanted." She took a breath that didn’t quite hold steady.

"I thought if I just endured it, got stronger, they’d finally be proud of me. So I endured. Four years of it: the Academy, the experiments, being treated like a defective weapon every single day."

"And eventually," she said, looking at him now, "I stopped talking."

Felix understood, finally.

She’d simply stopped wanting to. "Words never helped me," she whispered. "They just gave people another way to hurt me."

He stayed beside her, saying nothing, and she stared down at the floor.

"Then I turned twenty." All the warmth drained out of her voice at once. "That was the night everything ended."

He already knew the shape of it. But he’d never heard it from her directly.

"My parents called it a final test," she said, hands starting to tremble. "Said if I couldn’t control my mana that night, there was no reason to keep me around." Her voice went flat.

"They took me outside. Three of my classmates were already waiting, everything prepared in advance. They’d drained the water out of the air around me first, made sure I had nothing to work with. Then they started attacking. Just enough to hurt: lightning, fire, small blades, again and again. I kept falling. They made me get back up. I fell again. They laughed. My parents just watched."

Eventually she’d looked toward her mother. With something closer to begging. *Please. Make them stop.*

Her mother had looked down at her and said the words that ended everything.

"’You exist only to be useful to us,’" Seraphina said, lips shaking. "’And right now, you are completely worthless.’"

Felix’s breathing went heavier.

"Something inside me broke. My core. The walls around it. All of it." Four years of mana trapped behind channels too narrow to ever let it through, and then, all at once, it broke free.

"There was no technique, just everything that had been building for four years finally coming out at once. Water everywhere. Lightning right behind it. The whole neighborhood was just gone." Her voice had gone almost emotionless by then.

"When I opened my eyes, my hands were covered in blood."

"The Association found me sitting in the middle of it. I didn’t run. Didn’t fight. Just sat there." She swallowed. "And after that, I never spoke again."

Felix sat completely still. He understood what her silence had actually been: not something trauma had done to her, but the one thing left she could still control, after the world had already taken her family, her childhood, her dignity, and finally her voice.

And now, slowly, she was giving that voice back. To him.

"I’m sorry," she said.

He frowned. "For what?"

"For telling you."

"Why would you need to be sorry for that?"

"Because now you know, what kind of person I am."

He looked at her for a long moment, then sighed. "Seraphina." She met his eyes. "You survived. That’s what I see. Not a defective core, not a murderer, not a monster. Someone who survived something horrible."

Her eyes started to redden.

"And if you want to keep talking," he said, quiet,

"I’m listening."