“Reeve!” Viri shouted in alarm, but he was already throwing his magic to douse the fire, only for it to rise again almost instantly.
She was about to ask if there was anything her own magic could do to help, but another scream from Jessalyn had her whipping back toward the young girl—
Just in time to see the Reaper Lord’s bone dagger plunge downward.
“JESSY!NO!” Soren bellowed from somewhere to Viri’s right, the terror in his voice feeding her own.
Her heart stopped as the blade seemed to move in slow motion, both Soren and Jessalyn’s screams piercing her eardrums, but then her pulse sped twice as fast as resolve burned through her. Before she could second-guess herself, she flung out her arm and released her magic, visualizing an invisible shield forming around Jessalyn, just like the one she’d created to protect herself from the Reaper Lord’s ellixen attack. She had no idea if it would work against a solid object, but she pushed everything she had into it, begging,pleadingwith her magic to do the impossible.
The bone dagger continued downward, now just inches from Jessalyn’s chest. Viri was aware of the reapers still surrounding her, of Reeve fighting them off while trying to combat the raging flames, of Braedan and Sage lunging forward to assist, of Wynter tossing her scarlet powder at yet more attackers heading their way. But while all that was happening, Viri’s concentrationremained on pushing her magic outward, praying, praying,prayingfor it to work.
The Reaper Lord’s dagger was a hair’s breadth away from striking Jessalyn’s heart—
And then it met Viri’s barrier and shattered like glass, falling in harmless white shards to the ground.
“NO!”the Reaper Lord roared over the chaos. He flung out a furious hand, and Viri was too busy keeping Jessalyn protected to stop his magic from slamming into the people closest to the dais—Nox, hunters, and reapers combined—all of whom flew violently through the air and smacked hard against the arched walls and pillars before crumpling to the ground.
None of them rose again.
Viri’s blood turned cold at how many people had just died with a single blast of the Reaper Lord’s magic, the power he commanded unfathomable. She reinforced the barrier around Jessalyn, fearing he would shift his rage onto her, but as Viri watched, he seemed to peer across the cathedral, taking in the battle with a calculating air.
She realized what he was going to do an instant before he did it, and she leapt forward to stop him, dodging between fighting opponents and avoiding the snaring vines and crumbling stone, tripping once and cutting her palms on broken glass before scrambling back up to continue her sprint toward the dais.
But when she finally made it there, it was too late.
The Reaper Lord was already gone.
The Journal ofCelestial Mage Kadmus Castro
TEPHRYN ALEMEDES
Eleventh Sun, Fourteenth Cycle, Twelfth Age
I stole Kadmus’s journal.
I needed to read the truth for myself, in his own words.
He really did it.
He turned himself into a monster.
Areaper.
And he’s not the only one. They’re spreading like wildfire all across Elverdine Isle, the temptation of magic too strong for so many of the shallows, who have longed for power their whole lives.
But more than that, now that they’ve had a taste for siphoning, they can’t stop. Their addiction is only growing, with them stealing ellixen from mages, from creatures, from other shallows.
They’re even stealing it from children.
Killingchildren.
It’s—It’s—
“Evil” is too tame a word.
We’re doing what we can to capture as many as possible, imprisoning them in the Underlock—a warded prison the fabricator mages have constructed deep beneath the mountain. The reapers are too strong to contain anywhere else. They’re also fast, and heal much quicker than they should, making them unnaturally difficult to kill. I thank the Elders that they seem unable to use the magic they siphon in any practical way—once a shallow, always a shallow, at least when it comes to stolen ellixen. Kadmus is the sole exception, most likelybecause he was a mage before he became a reaper, and he continues to have his own stores of power.
Mage. Reaper. Mage Priest. Reaper Priest. Reaper Lord…I don’t know what Kadmus is now. What he’s become.
