When Diana settled onto the remaining corner of the bed, Kaandor finally began.
"As you know, vampires and werewolves are beings born of witchcraft—created to protect a clan and resolve certain… unpleasant matters within a coven that had split in two. Creatures never meant to exist within Nature's original design continued to live long after the need for them had vanished. Their creator could not bring herself to destroy her own creations and instead kept drawing from the shared source of magic, draining it without ever giving anything back."
Kaandor paused, and Max translated his words for those who couldn't see the spirit, rendering them shorter and far less grandiose.
"Magic itself is a force of light, as is everything that naturally stems from it—everything woven into the greater order of things without disturbing it. Witches who honored the laws returned to the earth everything they took, in full. Covens guarded this balance obsessively, fearing punishment that might fall upon all existence. No one wished to face the consequences of their own mistakes, and for many years, they succeeded in avoiding them. With rare exceptions."
Once again, Max relayed the essence of Kaandor's speech to his siblings, while I was left locking gazes with the dark companion. When he wanted to, he could be clear and methodical. Though perhaps I was being generous—after all, he still hadn't reached the point. The informational preface about witches was rather elegant, but I already knew the core of the conflict that had given birth to the first vampires and, later, the werewolves, from my father's stories. The only truly new element was this notion of magic as an inherently light force.
"Yet even in the best of times, when witches committed no grave transgressions, cataclysms still occurred. Mother Nature has her own understanding of balance, and like an exceedingly conscientious ruler, she sometimes made highly questionable decisions in order to preserve it. Prosperity is impossible when there are so many living beings that resources cannot replenish fast enough. She believed in choosing the lesser evil, trusting that its cost would yield a greater good in the future."
Max once again took it upon himself to translate, condensing the entire explanation into a single, succinct sentence that conveyed the core idea. Meanwhile, I couldn't help thinking that Mother Nature would have gotten along famously with Dr. Smirnov. He, too, firmly believed in the necessity of sacrificing a small number of conveniently available people for the sake of a grand goal—namely, finding a cure for vampirism. A dangerous thought crept into my mind: Vladimir might even now be searching for a new victim. I pushed it away as quickly as I could.
"All natural disasters that claim hundreds—sometimes even thousands—of lives are nothing more than Mother Nature's response in her attempt to fine-tune an illusory balance. Each catastrophe serves a specific purpose. Some are unleashed to call someone to account for their sins; others are meant to recalibrate the rhythm of the world according to her own, rather peculiar, understanding of it. Every phenomenon she sends forth creates a surge—if you will, even a discharge—of magic, sustaining life on a grand scale. Yet sooner or later, light gives way to darkness. Though the events she sets in motion generate new energy, they also release pain, grief, and fear into the world in such concentrated measure that a current is formed. And it is this current that gives rise to another form of magic—darkness."
"So magic can be drawn from the original source, from Mother Nature's light," Max clarified, "but there's also a second source—darkness?"
The others stared at him in confusion; they hadn't even received a brief summary. I had to improvise. Leaning closer, I whispered a rough explanation to Stas, who pushed himself up on his elbows and hurried to relay it to his sisters. Meanwhile, Max and Kaandor continued.
"One cannot call upon the source of darkness without a compelling reason. Unnatural beings such as vampires and werewolves are, for the most part, deprived of magic. It flows through their veins, but only in limited measure. They are incapable of creating new spells or even wielding existing ones. The sole exception are those who, in another life, were once connected to the light," he inclined his head toward Viola. "Like you and your sister."
"So Viola turned to the dark source?" Max asked.
Kaandor's golden eyes flared with a sharp, amber glow.
"Things are not so simple, my friend."
I rolled my eyes, fully aware that Max was the only person in the room Kaandor truly found interesting. The rest of us might as well have been an audience, filling the seats before the curtain rose.
"For a long time, Mother Nature failed to take into account the darkness she herself was creating, believing its quantity too insignificant to pose any real threat. She assumed it would dissolve into trivialities and eventually fade away. She did not understand the properties of this new substance, nor its rules. In truth, she never even tried—too accustomed to the order she herself had established. Pride led her astray. This was Nature's fundamental mistake."
Only then did Max remember his role as interpreter and, lacking any immediate questions, returned to it. I silently thanked him; it was difficult enough to process Kaandor's words myself, let alone translate them for the others.
"Darkness behaves differently from light. Born in small fragments, it did not dissipate but instead settled in scattered pockets of power, wherever the wind carried it. Things were far worse than Mother Nature had imagined: the particles began to seek one another, drawn together like magnets, as though something were calling them with the sweet promise of more. And they answered that call."
Max sat in silence, wearing the expression of someone trying—and failing—to fully grasp what he had just heard. His brows were drawn together, his face unusually serious. I waited a moment, giving him the chance to translate everything for the others again, but he remained lost in thought, turning the new knowledge over in his mind, searching for the right question. To my surprise, Kaandor was in no hurry either, granting him that time. This time, I was wiser: afraid that any attempt to shorten the explanation might distort the Dark Companion's meaning, I repeated his words as faithfully as I could from memory.
"The more darkness spread, the more awareness it developed. It began to manifest like a living being, though it had not yet fully formed its nature before Mother Nature noticed the intrusion of something new—something ephemeral—into her established order. It was not difficult to trace what was reaching out to all living things and leaving its mark upon them, but understanding how to counter it proved far less clear. Mother Nature found herself trapped in a causal paradox born of her own belief that good and evil were equal forces. As darkness continued to grow, feeding on the energy of light, it became so vast that it took on a form modeled after the very ruler of the light itself. Darkness discovered within itself new ways to influence the world and to weave its own design into the fabric of existence."
"So, in simple terms," Max concluded, "Mother Nature ended up with an evil twin?"
Viola immediately stretched out and tried to smack him on the back of the head. Fortunately for Max, she was still too weak. She couldn't even lean forward properly; only the tips of her long fingers brushed against the light golden curls on his head. Even that small movement drained what little strength she had left. With a soft, indignant huff, she collapsed back into the heap of pristine white pillows and pushed out her lower lip.
"Just because siblings are born as twins doesn't mean one of them has to be evil and the other good," she muttered. "That's a childish interpretation of good and evil."
"Afraid you might turn out to be the villain, sister?" Max half-turned toward her, flashing a teasing smile.
Viola tugged the blanket higher in a futile attempt to hide, but with so many people crowding the bed, she managed to cover little more than the tip of her nose.
"You were born together and are parts of the same whole, just as Asya and I are," Kaandor explained—and I frowned.