The Breaker (The Secret of Spellshadow Manor #2)(48)

He devoured the book quicker than he had the Battles tome. Every page was filled with something new and exciting that thrilled Alex, making him antsy to try out some of the spells and techniques described within.

However, as he flicked further through the fragile pages, coming to the last section, the writing began to change. No longer formally informative, it took on a more thoughtful, less practical tone. The sentences were scattered more haphazardly, penned wherever the writer could find space. Alex was surprised to find bullet points that noted previous wars and battles between the Spellbreakers and the Mages, repeating the ones mentioned in the other book Elias had given him. At the bottom of the page, beneath the long list of battles, there was a hastily written note within a sketched square:

My father has fallen in battle. My brother has fallen with him. I feel it will soon be my turn. There are not many of us left now. I look to my brothers and sisters in arms and we are growing few. We still hold our defense, but we cannot last much longer. Most of the Houses are already gone, wiped from the face of the earth. I do not simply mean we soldiers. I mean all of them—all of them, gone. Men, women, children, elderly, all. Of the Six Great Houses, three hold fast. I am the last of House Wyvern. On the field, the two remaining daughters of House Volstag fight with the savage fury of the Banshee. Beside us, the head of House Copperfield and his three sons. Never have I seen braver or bolder men and women than these few, who fight as one with me.

I wonder what will happen when we are gone? We are the last.

The pages only grew scrappier as the notebook came to its sorrowful conclusion. The writing was rushed and spiky, Alex having to squint to make out some of the words as he read them. There was something macabre about reading words written by a dead man, but Alex could not tear his eyes away.

I do not know what it will mean for the world, when the last of us falls. The world demands balance. There has to be light with dark, dark with light. Without one half, what will be left instead? It will create a void.

Alex heard Elias’s words echoing in his head, poignantly recalled. “They left a void behind that day, and voids must be filled.”

A void has to be filled.

The notebook parroted Elias. Or had Elias somehow gained those words from these very pages?

A world cannot exist in which there is only magic. It cannot simply be the Mages without the Spellbreakers. If you take one away, you leave a void; something has to replace it. It is like digging a hole in the sand—water will fill it, no matter how far from the sea you are. When a void is created, something has to fill it. Something has to restore the balance.

When the last of us falls, I wonder what will come to balance the scale?

Alex flipped the page over, finding it to be the very last one. He had never thought of it like that before, in terms of a balance that needed to be kept even. Nor could he imagine the terror of knowing his time was running out. And yet it seemed he and Leander had something in common. The tragic title of Last they shared.

We are desperate.

The daughters of House Volstag have sacrificed themselves in the hopes that we may hold out a while longer. I begged them not to, but they used the last resort of their death magic. They could not be stopped, and though it broke my heart to watch them, their last moments proved a fantastical sight. To see their bodies shimmering with bright, blinding silver light as they stormed across the field, channeling their souls into a single pulse of raw destruction, was something I shall never forget. Still, we miss their presence more keenly for their loss. I wish they had not done so, but they were as desperate as I am now, as I write this. It is no easy task, to use one’s death magic, and I wish there had been another way. But those ferocious Howling Valkyries would not be swayed. They did not wish to end their days cowering behind rocks, as we do.

I envy their courage. We all do.

I heard the others talking of performing a similar ritual, but I know they will not.

The aura of the Volstag sacrifice still ripples across the field like ice on a river, almost liquid to the touch, evaporating any Mage who sets foot on it. But they will wait us out. The aura will not remain forever, and they will come for us before long.

I do not wish to use the essence of myself in battle, yet I know I will, should they push me to it. I will take down as many as I can before the end, though I do not imagine the end is far off. We are so very few now. Dillane of House Copperfield fell yesterday, and his sons are bereft.

All hope is lost.

We are the final players in the game of life and death. We are the final weights holding everything steady, before the scale tips. We are all that stands between balance and the void.

I hope they are ready to pay the price for what they have done. May their wrongdoing haunt them to the ends of the earth.

There were only four more words on the page, with the date written rapidly at the very bottom right corner. 1908. Alex’s heart was in his mouth as he let the words sink in. He knew the outcome of the story, and yet Leander had still been alive when he had written those sentences. Leander could not have known what would happen to him. The ambush, the scaffold, the death by magical firing squad. He pictured Ellabell’s description of a burning silver light in the eyes of Leander Wyvern and wondered if it was the same silver light the daughters of House Volstag had radiated as they had walked to their deaths. A flicker of a Spellbreaker’s essence.

It was the first Alex had heard of this mysterious death magic, though he guessed it to be similar to the life magic of the Mages. Everything in balance. Every magic having an anti-magic counterpart. A kind of dark magic that took something from your soul in order to use it—a high-stakes, high-cost power. One to be used only in desperation.