Halls of Splintered Souls (Wandering Souls #1)

Chapter Twenty-One

"You know, I'm disappointed that your sister was not the one that freed me."

I stared at the shadow. This was the Dark One? The Devourer of Light? This was the beast, the monster that I've only heard of in the stories my grandmother told me as a child. It's... real.

It threw me off guard how he implied that I freed him. Even more so the implication of him wanting Ayn to be the one who freed him. That night in the dream he was also there with her, wasn't he? He reminded me to look for her and wanted her to remember him. Which means, they've met before?

"What do you want with her?" I croaked out.

The Dark one moved like a mist, moving until he stood over me. "That question has an incredibly complex answer, but to put it in a simple way, I want to take back what belongs to me."

"She doesn't belong to you," I protested weakly.

"No, she doesn't," he laughed, the hundreds of voices making it sounds a lot more sinister. "But some people took something from me, that Sorcerer King and his wretched children."

My tired mind worked well enough to understand what he was saying, but it wasn't enough for me to actually figure out what he meant. It was making my head hurt thinking what I had to do with all this. Ayn and I were the first of my family to actually attend Arce Umbra. Before that, when the school still belonged to the Sorcerer King's descendants, none of us ever came here. Even during the Shadow War, we had been the ones who fought in the coasts of South East Asia. Some of my family died, but the casualties weren't as severe as it was here.

Why was it called the Shadow War again? Because conjurors thought that the royal family dealt with dark magic? No, it was because the royal family was thought to have made a deal with... one of the beasts.

"You're... you were the one the royal family was dealing with," I stated, looking up at the dark shadow of a man, "you're what caused the shadow war."

Professor Cain spoke impatiently from where she had stood up, next to Baekhyun. "Good, you're catching up."

"It's not entirely true. The royal family dealt with me lifetimes ago. I only caused the nightmares that put the idea in those conjuror's head. I wanted their bloodline to end."

I stole a glance at Baekhyun and he was staring at me. His silence irked me, and I was too angry at his betrayal that I looked away immediately. I focused back on the shadow in front of me.

"That doesn't explain why you would target us, the royal family all died out. No descendants of the Sorcerer King survived. We had nothing to do with it," I told him.

The Dark One, the Shadow, whatever he called himself, touched my temple and I felt even weaker than I did before. He was taking my power again, whatever was left of it. The idea of losing all of my magic made me sob.

He let go and I slumped back on the ground. "Not all."

Not all?

"The war didn't work as well as I planned. I had to kill off the rest one by one, and still, some of them survived," the voices sounded bored. It was unnerving how he talked about murder with that tone.

"They escaped the Shadow War massacre?" I asked.

Professor Cain was the one that answered as she walked towards me and dragged me to the table. "This didn't start with the Shadow War, Miss Aya. He's talking about something that happened far in the beginning of our history. Let's see if you remember anything from your history class, now, shall we?"

Our history?

"We began with the Sorcerer King who was said to had an abundance of power in his veins," I started as Professor Cain bound me again with her spell, "because of this, he shared his powers with five mortals, making the first conjurors, and who would eventually create more conjurors. And his generosity impressed one of the deities, who gifted him and his children after him all of the deity's power, turning the deity into a mortal. It was the reason why the royal family was so powerful."

"Correct," the Dark One said, "but I wouldn't call myself a deity. I do prefer to be called a beast."

I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out. It was perplexing to think that he was the source of the royal family's powers. "You gave your powers away?"

"Not without payment." The Dark One laughed. "I gave him some of my powers so that he could build me an army. Then he betrayed me by taking all of my powers and divided it evenly between his children. The only way I could get my powers back is to kill all of the remaining descendants."

"And you did, didn't you? So, why did you still need to leech my power? You seem too weak to be one of the beasts," I taunted.

Professor Cain smirked. "Our history got it wrong, there weren't five originals, there were only four."

That's a ridiculous claim. I counted the names of the originals in my head. Lord Magnus, Lord Fortis, Lady Colubra, Lady Aurora, and Lady Incruentus.

"Lady Incruentus was not an original," Baekhyun spoke.

Lady Incruentus was my ancestor. I am her descendant, one of the last. Our bloodline was dying out, but we preserved it in order to keep the original bloodline alive. But if we weren't an original family...

"What?" I asked, stunned.

"Lady Incruentus was the smartest of them all." The Dark One grew in size, expanding his shadow. "She knew if the royal bloodline ends, I would break free. So, she renounced her title and claimed to be one of the original five made by her own father."

I gasped. That means... my family are actually descendants of the Sorcerer King. And our powers are actually the Dark One's power. That's why it had to be my power to free him. And the curse...

"You're the reason my family is dying out. You were driving them mad with those nightmares and made them kill themselves." I said terrified, wanting to run but was unable to. "But you didn't have your powers... how did you do it?"

"I had my power, a truly small part of it. I used it to lure people like Harper and Baekhyun, who then lured even more people, I collected hundreds of souls over the years. As they died, their powers become mine. Their splintered souls become my tether, to put it simply." He explained. "But none of those powers are as powerful as my own, however, the power in your family's vein."

"Why aren't you killing me then?" I asked.

The Dark One circled me and spoke in a tone that was meant to come off as gentle. "I wanted to give you a chance to say goodbye to your sister."

It was such a cruel statement, causing me take a deep breath. The Incruentus bloodline is from my mother's side of the family. The only ones with powers left are my mother, Ayn, and myself. If he killed me and Ayn... only my mother will be left. He would kill her. Unless... my mother descends. Unless all of us descends.

"I'm not going to let you have your powers back," I spat.

"We'll see what happens when your sister gets here. I thought she'd be the first one here instead of you. Apparently Baekhyun's seduction worked better than I planned."

Baekhyun had the decency to look ashamed, but kept his silence.

Gaining back my composure, I finally spoke. "She wouldn't free you at all if it were up to her."

"Did she tell you that?" He chuckled, taking a few strands of my hair in his hand. "I think she would be delighted to see me."

I frowned. "Why would she?"

At the same time when I asked the question, three figures emerged from the tree lines.

The Dark One chuckled. "Ask her yourself."