The air in the old Fell's Church ruins felt like a tomb long before the seal was ever broken. It was heavy with the scent of wet stone, rot, and the residual hum of Bennett magic.
I stood in the center of the ruins, my black hair damp from the Mystic Falls mist. I wasn't alone. Alaric Saltzman was there, checking the tension on his crossbow, and Stefan was pacing the perimeter like a caged animal.
"The grimoire is the key," Stefan said, his voice tight. "Damon is convinced that if we open the tomb, he can get Katherine out. I just want to make sure the other twenty-six vampires stay down there."
I leaned against a crumbling stone pillar, tracing the edge of a silver-coated throwing star with my thumb. "You're still thinking about 'saving' people, Stefan. That's your flaw. Damon wants his girlfriend; you want your brother's approval. Me? I want to see what happens when twenty-six starving predators realize the world has moved on without them."
Alaric looked up. "You're remarkably cold about this, Kael. We're talking about a massacre if this goes wrong."
"It won't go wrong," I said, my glacial blue eyes locking onto his. "Because I'm the one holding the leash. The Council is waiting for my signal. If a single one of those tomb dwellers breathes a word about leaving these woods, the woods become a bonfire."
"And Katherine?" Stefan asked.
"If she's in there," I lied smoothly knowing full well the rumors of her being trapped were likely a vampire's fever dream "I'll let Damon have his five minutes of heartbreak before I put her down for good."
The night of the opening arrived. Bonnie and her grandmother, Sheila, were chanting at the entrance, the air vibrating with a frequency that made my "Singer" blood itch. It was a visceral reminder that I was an anomaly here a creature of biology in a world of spells.
As the stone slab finally groaned open, the smell hit me. Not just blood, but ancient hunger.
Damon didn't wait. He blurred into the darkness, a man possessed. Stefan followed to protect him.
I stayed at the threshold.
"Kaelen, aren't you going in?" Bonnie gasped, her face pale from the strain of the spell.
"A Hunter never enters a cornered animal's den unless he's prepared to burn it," I said. I pulled a flare gun from my belt a modified version that fired a magnesium-phosphorus mix designed to burn at temperatures that would melt vampire bone.
Minutes felt like hours. Then, the brothers emerged. Damon looked shattered. The realization that Katherine wasn't there had finally broken the mask of the eternal playboy.
But behind them, the darkness was moving.
Harper, one of the tomb vampires, stepped into the moonlight. He looked like a corpse that had forgotten how to rot. He looked at me, and his nostrils flared. My scent hit him like a physical blow.
"What... are you?" he rasped, his voice a sound of dry leaves.
"I'm your retirement plan," I said.
I didn't use the flare gun. I moved with a speed that made Alaric's jaw drop. I closed the distance between me and Harper in two strides. I didn't use a sword; I used a specialized "Hunter's Grip" a brass knuckle set with micro-needles that injected concentrated vervain and hemlock directly into the palm.
I caught his arm, twisted, and slammed him face-first into the stone seal.
"Mystic Falls is full," I whispered into his ear. "And I don't like neighbors."
"Kaelen, stop!" Stefan yelled, stepping forward. "He can help us. He's not like the others."
I let Harper go, but I kept my hand on the hilt of my dark blade. "He's a hungry ghost, Stefan. But fine. He's your responsibility. If he so much as looks at a human the wrong way, I'm not just coming for him. I'm coming for the guy who vouched for him."
As the group dispersed, and Damon sat in the dirt mourning a woman who didn't love him, I walked over to the edge of the ruins.
An old, leather-bound journal had fallen out of Harper's pocket during the scuffle. I picked it up. It wasn't a grimoire. It was a set of accounts from 1864.
I flipped to the back page. There was a name scrawled in the margins, a name that made the air in my lungs turn to ice.
Klaus.
Beside it, a sketch of a woman with a familiar face not Elena, and not Katherine. A woman with blonde hair.
My heart did something strange a skip that had nothing to do with adrenaline.
"So," I murmured to the shadows. "The legends were true. The Originals aren't just myths. They're a family."
I tucked the journal into my jacket. The tomb was open, the "animal attacks" were about to become a full-scale war, and for the first time, I wasn't looking at the vampires in front of me.