Shadow Reapers
Shadow Reapers are collectors of souls, servants of Obellius Kalaar who live by feeding off the souls of other beings and adding what they take to their own lifespan.[1][2] Most, if not all, were killed in the War of Shadows, and none had been seen in Eslura for years when Demise returned to it carrying the Heart of the Book of Fire.[3][1]
Appearance
A Reaper announces itself before it arrives. Lamps and candles go out, daylight turns black, cold comes in under the door, and smoke pools across the floor. As Millennium Loftwind puts it, Shadow Reapers have quite the knack for sucking all light and life out of a situation.[4][5]
Out of the smoke a Reaper can take the shape of a man. Demise walks in long black robes with grey beneath, brown hair braided tight over his shoulders, claws for hands and jagged shark teeth, and where his eyes should be there are pits, a nothingness of shadows hallowed by suffering, with smoke rolling out of them.[6][5]
The appendix to the books places Shadow Reapers among the creatures of Eslura and warns that anyone close enough to see one is very likely past saving. It adds that their number in Eslura is unknown.[7]
Powers
To take a soul, a Reaper drives its claws into a victim and draws them out again, pulling a gust from the victim's mouth and the last of the life with it. The soul hangs above the open palm as a swirling ball of air, which the Reaper corks into one of the glass bottles hung on its belt. Demise reckons one such soul worth another thirty-two moons of his life.[6]
A touch is enough to do damage without killing. Alistair Archibald says a single stroke of a Reaper's claw can extract half a victim's lifespan and add it to the Reaper's own, and Nordwelg adds that part of the Reaper stays behind inside the prey, eating away at the energy that lives there until nothing is left. Beatrice Tidal was clawed across the wrist by Demise, and the Sacred Symbol on her wrist darkened from gold toward black as her strength drained. The only remedy Alistair knew was to reconnect her to the Books.[2]
A Reaper can also make hounds. Demise held his hands at his side and poured black smoke from his claws until it pooled and stood up as two wolves with red eyes and smoke spilling from their mouths. They sink into floorboards and swim through them like fish in a pond, and their bite leaves an inky blackness spreading under the skin.[5]
Alistair began to explain to Bea what a Reaper actually is and got no further than the first clause.
He was interrupted, and the books never come back to finish the sentence.[8]
Origin
Two accounts stand side by side and are not reconciled.
The appendix reports that Shadow Reapers are said to be brought to life by the god Nelazgus himself.[7]
Demise's own account is different. He was a man before he was a Reaper, forced as a young and clueless man into a role he never asked for and never wanted, cursed by Obellius and put into a position of complete submission. The two hounds at his heel were his children.[9] Watching Obellius work on a caged dragon, Alpin Loomin concludes that his master has figured out how to turn not only people into Reapers but dragons, and that there is no reason to suppose he will stop there.[10]
How Obellius came by the power, and whether the god's part in it is the same thing the appendix means, is not explained.
The curse broken
When Demise attacked Bea in the woods, gold light flashed from the Sacred Symbol on her wrist and roots tore up out of the path and carried him into the canopy.[11] He woke long afterwards against a tree with flowers grown around his legs, a scar across his chest, no memory of how it got there, and eyes in the sockets that had been empty. The hunger for other people's lives was gone. His hounds found him as dogs, and he knew them again as his own children.[9]
Demise puts it together himself: the girl's gold light undid the spell Obellius cast on them all. How a Sacred Head's power unmakes a Reaper is not explained, and no one in the books sets out to do it deliberately.[9]
Known Reapers
Demise is the only Shadow Reaper the books name. The cleansed dragons Obellius raises in the mountain core are the nearest thing to another: Barnaby Britto says outright that they look like Demise, and the three of them fumble for a name, trying "A Shadow Reaper Dragon?" and "A Dragon Reaper?" before settling on nothing.[10]