The countryside was a breathing painting. The grass spilled into gentle hills, a velvety green dotted with pale flowers, tall trees guarded the horizon like the columns of an ancient temple.
The sky, already on the brink of dusk, drank in the last hues of a late twilight, lavender, amber, a thread of purple like a secret. The air smelled sweet of damp earth, and, farther away, a light laugh cut through the breeze.
Hayley. She ran barefoot, her curls loose, spinning with a little girl who couldn't yet exist. Hope laughed soundlessly, her thin dress swelling like a sigh. It was a scene so certain it hurt… and therefore impossible.
Klaus, leaning against a tree trunk, let the back of his neck rest against the bark and watched. His chest, which rarely gave way to anything but calculation, took a deep breath, aching with hope.
It was then that he felt, no heard, the weight of another presence settling to his right. A shift of silence, as if the the landscape itself found a place.
The man sat motionless on the grass. Tall, nearly six feet tall, broad-shouldered, his strength marked not in iron halls but in the geographies of battle. His hair, black and shoulder-length, gave the light a metallic sheen, as if the moon, even invisible, were touching him. Stone features: a straight nose, a firm jaw, a short beard disciplining his austere face. His pale skin was a map of scarred runes, ancient lines that curved across his chest, arms, and back, pulsing in a light unearthly. His eyes... deep gray, almost silver, with a faint violet erupting from their irises every now and then, the color of a secret whispered.
Dark clothes, leather and heavy fabric, the kind of simplicity that doesn't ask for permission. There was something about him that made the wind polite. Even the birds there chose not to sing.
For a moment, neither of them said a word. Hope spun around, and Hayley lifted her into the air, both of them glowing as if someone had lifted the weight of the world off its axis, and Klaus knew. Not through logic, but through the strange, soft rush of joy that surged through him.
"Who are you?"
He asked, without changing his tone.
"And what are you doing inside my dream?"
The man allowed a slight smile to touch his lips.
"My name is Veydrassil."
The voice was deep, full of hardness.
"From a very distant past, brought into existence by God."
Klaus turned his face, studying him, the answer didn't come as a surprise. It came like a piece finding its place.
"The first Alpha."
Klaus said simply. The word sank in.
"The legend that Jack wove into the fabric of this world to give meaning to what throbs inside me."
The other's smile grew a millimeter.
"My essence lives in you."
Veydrassil replied.
"Not just by blood, but by design. Call it descent, call it reincarnation… Jack pulled an ancient thread and crossed its ends."
Klaus snorted, a humorless almost laugh.
"Of course it was Jack."
The purple in Veydrassil's eyes flickered, a contained lightning bolt. The smile faded, like someone closing a knife.
"Have you started preparing to be his champion yet?"
Klaus's eyebrow rose, and for an instant the old instinct to distrust, to negotiate, to hide, played its cards.
Surrendered them.
"Prepare how?"
The patient boredom of someone who has already broken the world and knows the price.
"I agreed to the title, Veydrassil, but I have no idea what 'champion' means in Jack's language."
"It means surviving what comes."
The gray gaze cut across the horizon where Hayley was spinning with the child.
"And not just survive: prevail. To do that, you need to become more powerful than you are now."
Klaus didn't laugh. His pride was a disciplined but lively animal. Still, he knew how to measure. He was strong like few others, holding a crown no one dared dispute. The word "more" didn't intimidate him, it intrigued him.
"How much more?"
He asked dryly.
"Very."
Veydrassil didn't break the sentence with adjectives. He let it fall whole.
"Enough to gaze into the abyss and make the abyss recompose itself in your image."
A muscle jumped in Klaus's jaw.
"And what the hell is being Jack's "champion" other than a damn poem?"
"I don't know."
Veydrassil didn't blink.
"What is divine was not given to me to read in its entirety. My role here is not to reveal the end of the path. It is to adjust your pace."
Klaus sighed, an old, familiar disappointment tugging at his ribs. Half-answered. Prophecies without a map. Still, he pressed on to what mattered.
"Then adjust."
He finally turned to face him.
"Can you make me stronger?"
Veydrassil was silent long enough for the wind to pick up. Then he turned his face, and his eyes, now indeed, flared purple.
"I can teach you the way."
He spoke with Klaus as if he were some rare species found in the right book.
"Becoming a creature like me. A Delta."
The word cut through the field. Klaus felt his body respond before his mind, the blood that was beastly, the part that didn't need grammar to understand hierarchy.
"There is something above an Alpha."
It wasn't a question. Still, disbelief rasped the tone.
"Yes there is."
Veydrassil nodded.
"In parallel worlds, in stories you haven't heard yet, Deltas are the rarity that turns the tide. If Alphas are kings of wolves, Deltas are emperors of the supernatural. They don't rule only betas and omegas. Their influence spans races: vampires, witches, druids, ghosts, chimeras... everything that breathes other than humans feels the order in the air. Only those who wield similar power resist, and that is almost never."
Veydrassil's hands rested relaxedly on his knee. The world around him seemed to tilt half a degree, as if he could hear better.
"A wolf's common abilities, strength, speed, senses, resilience, are just the first page. A Delta reads the rest of the book. He sees the spirit world. He sees memories trapped in walls, echoes left by the dead, the footprints of a spell that has ended. You can interact with it."
He held up two fingers, and the light shifted position, as if the moon had been moved a hand's breadth. The shadow of the tree beneath them stretched, then obediently withdrew.
"He can touch the wind, the shadows, the very tide of the moon."
The violet in his eyes faded to gray again, but the feeling remained, as if the fabric of reality had been pinched.
"And there is the weight of your aura."
Continued.
"A wolf can take another's pain for an instant. A Delta can absorb it completely, physical, emotional, spiritual, healing trauma, illness, curses. It receives pain, converts it into life, like fire that burns wood and turns into heat. It balances the surrounding nature, calms poisons, settles madness. It is not a curse, it is synthesis. The final form between man and beast."
Klaus held his gaze. He didn't flinch. Interest in him always came with a question.
"How does a werewolf become a Delta?"
Veydrassil shook his head with a slight movement, not of mockery, but of ceremony.
"I can't give you the diagram."
He said, and it didn't sound cruel.
"Power received without a path is unsustainable. But I can tell you what needs to exist for the door to open. First: no one becomes a Delta from a Beta. It's a conquest based on foundation. Only an Alpha can cross the bridge."
Klaus nodded curtly. That he had.
"Second: perfect balance between man and beast."
Veydrassil spoke slowly, as if driving stakes.
"Don't dominate the beast by force, nor surrender to it. Accept it as your own, without shame or hesitation. Know the limits of your appetite and your silence. The first Alpha won by surrendering, the Delta is born when surrender becomes a daily choice."
"Third?"
Klaus asked, already knowing that the answer would come like a stone and water.
"Third: do what is necessary for your pack."
Veydrassil's eyes touched, for the first time, the image of Hayley and the girl.
"Not in words, but in the bones. A wolf without a pack is nothing but noise. An emperor without people is nothing but a noisy tyrant. A Delta doesn't prove himself in the mirror, Niklaus. He proves himself when he's called to bleed for the whole. When he chooses the whole even when his heart demands otherwise. When he orders nature to save his own, even if the price is his."
A breeze swept across the field. Hope froze in midair, and Klaus, for a second, felt what it would be like to hold it in his hands.
He laughed mirthlessly.
"Balance, sacrifice, and power. The old triad."
He turned his face back to the man.
"Is there anything else I should know?"
"There will be signs."
Veydrassil looked up at the treetops.
"You will recognize them when the time comes. Your blood will know, as it knew today, before the pack. Find your center. Build your anchors."
A pause.
"And don't confuse love with weakness."
Klaus stared at the floor for a moment, his thumb twisting the ring on his index finger. The prince of a thousand wars hadn't been afraid of the word "love" for a long time, he'd been afraid of what the world did to it. Yet, Hayley laughing, Hope spinning, he found his chest expanding.
"And you?"
Klaus asked quietly.
"What do you gain by guiding me?"
Veydrassil let the violet return, a firey glow contained in the metal of his eyes.
"Permanence."
He replied.
"Every time your bloodline chooses to grow rather than devour itself, I breathe a little more."
The corner of his mouth lifted.
"And a world where a Mikaelson chooses to be more than the sum of his wounds… is a curious world to visit."
They fell silent. The distant scene softened. Hope, her head on Hayley's shoulder, gave in to the tiredness of playing. The field seemed like a well-placed promise of the future.
Veydrassil rose. When he did, the grass did not move.
"Time is up here."
He announced, without drama.
"Wake up, Niklaus. What you need is on the other side."
Klaus turned his face, just once more, toward the two figures in the distance. When he looked back, Veydrassil was already walking, each step reminding the forest that silence is also a sound. Before he disappeared into the trees, the first Alpha spoke without turning his face:
"Remember: the moon does not rule over those who understand it."
The world blinked.
He woke in the familiar dimness of the room, the dawn still clinging to the cracks. The mansion's ancient ceiling traced familiar lines. Beside him, Hayley slept on her side, breathing softly, her hand splayed over the soft curve of her belly. The uncertain light of dawn traced her eyelashes, and for a moment, Klaus wasn't king, nor hybrid, nor ancient monster, he was a man who remembered the taste of a promise.
He lay there, silent, listening to the precise rhythm of her sleep. One of his fingers moved forward, without touching, merely tracing the strand of hair that fell across her forehead. His chest ached, not with fear, but with determination. The field, the impossible child, the violet in the eyes of an ancient ghost, none of it felt like metaphor.
It sounded like a mission.
He would be Jack's champion. The title now carried weight. To carry it, he would need to be more. He would need to find the center where beast and man don't grapple, they dance. He would need to bleed for the whole without losing his name.
He leaned down and placed his lips on Hayley's forehead with the gentleness of someone sealing a pact unheard. Then he leaned back against the pillow, his eyes open in the darkness that was already beginning to lighten.
"I will become a Delta."
Klaus thought, without any bravado. It was a thought as calm as a well-honed blade.
"One way or another."
From the hallway, the mansion breathed, creaking wood, old echoes. Outside, the moon gave way to a pale blue. Inside him, something settled. It wasn't peace, it was direction.
And finally, Klaus closed his eyes once more, not to escape the day, but to sketch, in the silence before dawn, the precise outline of the world he would build. For Hayley. For Hope. For the family he had chosen to create. And for the old, nameless wolf, who now had a name and a place in his blood.
It was only a matter of time.