AN: If you wish not to go through the Character Setting of Ayaan Saltzman, You can skip this volume (till fifth chapter) and start directly from the sixth chapter: "Summary before the pilot episode". However, if you wish to be invested in the lore, do give it a read. It will be much more interesting.
Anyhow, enjoy the read! Namaskara!
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July 2002 - Age 11
Dear Diary,
Tonight something happened that I'll never forget. Bonnie and I stayed over at her grandma's house. You know how Mrs. Bennett is—everyone in town thinks she's strange, but I love listening to her stories. They make the world feel bigger, like Mystic Falls is just one page in a much larger book.
That's when I met Ayaan. Mrs. Bennett said he was staying with her for a while, learning things she teaches. He's quiet, almost too quiet, but not in a scary way. More like he's always listening. At first, I thought he didn't like me. But then, when Bonnie left the room, he leaned over and whispered a joke about the biscuits being so hard you could use them as weapons. I laughed so loud that Bonnie came running back, asking what was so funny.
Later that night, we sneaked into the yard. And then… it happened. The sky lit up. Colors, like waves of green and purple, moving across the summer air. Like northern lights, except how could that be here? It was so beautiful I forgot to breathe. Ayaan just stood next to me, calm, like he'd been waiting for it. And then he said, "Rahasyaṃ prakāśe guptaṃ" — literally: "The secret remains hidden in the visible."
I didn't understand what he meant. But I remember thinking he was different. Not weird different. Just… special.
He doesn't talk much, but when he does, it makes me giggle or perplexed by his profundity. For for some reason, it feels like he sees things that no one else does.
I think I want to be his friend.
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Nov 2006 - Age 15
Dear Diary,
Today was… everything.
I turned fifteen. Fifteen isn't supposed to feel this heavy, but it has. This whole year has been awful.
It feels like the whole world is stacked against me—grades slipping, fights with bonnie, Caroline acting like my shadow isn't even worth stepping on. And then Mom and Dad; they are unnecessarily strict; whereas, they don't even care when Jeremy almost flunked his Science class.
And then there is 'Him'. Like always, silent but always present. He noticed I was down, even though I didn't want anyone to know.
This evening, he forced me to walk with him. Bonnie—that witch—ran off to god knows where leaving me alone. He didn't say much in the beginning. He seemed nervous, which is rare for him, but he wouldn't tell me; which annoyed me further.
Then, just before we reached my porch, he stopped. He pulled out this little brown box, rough around the edges, like it had been carried everywhere. It was a necklace. Not store-bought, not shiny-perfect like the one I thought I wanted from that gift shop in the city boulevard. But something even more precious. He'd made it himself.
He told me he spent weeks on it—learning, failing, burning his hands (he laughed at that), and starting all over again.
It is a very simple pendant. But when he placed it around my neck, it felt like the most beautiful thing I'd ever owned. The moment it touched my skin, I felt all my worries disappear, as if they had never existed in the first place.
And then—he just looked at me. That quiet way of his, like he was saying a thousand things without a single word. I didn't know what to do, so I reached for his hand. Just held it.
That was it. No fireworks, no music, no sweeping declarations. Just us. My grief, my doubts, everything that made me feel small—gone in that single moment.
So today, we weren't just Elena and Ayaan. We were Elena with Ayaan.
And I think… that's all I'll ever need.
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Jan 2008 - Age 16
Dear Diary,
I can still hear his voice.
The way it shook my heart, even though his face stayed calm, like he was holding some secret I could never touch.
"Ayaan… why? Why can't you just tell me what's happening? Why do you vanish and leave me guessing?"
Then it all spilled out of me in anger, frustration, and hurt:
"Then I can't be with you, Ayaan. I can't be with someone who hides from me what matters immensely to him."
He didn't flinch. Not really. He only looked at me with those dark, impossible eyes, and for a moment, I felt like I was staring into something far older than him, something I wasn't meant to see.
"Elena… some paths are walked alone. Some truths are carried only by those willing to bleed for them. If I speak… it will change everything, and you… you are not ready for the weight of knowing."
And then he whispered, almost like a mantra:
"Lokasya rahasyaṁ prākāśe gūptam… bind what must be bound, release what cannot follow."
And just like that… he was gone. The words hung in the cold night, cryptic and impossible. I didn't understand them. I didn't know he was almost dying, that by the next time I'd see him, he might never be the same.
I wanted to beg him to stay, to tell me the truth, to let me help. But he had already stepped onto a path that even I couldn't follow. And somehow… I think I just let him go.
I don't know how I'll survive this, Diary. I feel like part of me went with him tonight.
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September 2008 - Age 16
Dear Diary,
Tomorrow we're going to the hospital. The Council arranged it—something about showing support—but it feels more like a performance than kindness.
They want us to line up like perfect little students, smile, and pretend we're all still connected to him. But we're not. Not really.
I haven't seen Ayaan since… since before everything. Before the fight. Before the fire. Before the scars that made everyone suddenly forget the boy they once bragged about knowing.
He's been awake for weeks now, but I still haven't had the courage to go see him. I did go when he was in the coma, sitting beside him as if my silence could keep him safe. But since he opened his eyes? Not once. I couldn't go.
Matt has been kind. Safe. That's the word for him. He holds my hand, he waits for me to smile, but deep inside, I know that, it is not the same. It has been four months, and it still feels like standing still. No sparks. No fire. Just comfort.
Maybe that's what I wanted—something easier than what I had with Ayaan. But it doesn't stop me from wondering if he would've been hurt at all if I'd stayed. If I hadn't broken us apart. If I hadn't let him go alone.
---
People have abandoned him. The golden boy—the gentleman, the captain, the one everyone looked up to—is just gone in their eyes. They walk past him now as if his laughter, his brilliance, his charm never existed.
The friends who used to brag about knowing him, now avoid him like plague. They whisper behind his back, pretending he's not there. And it makes me ache, because I still remember everything.
I remember him bringing me chocolate when I thought my first period would swallow me whole.
I remember how he held me when I cried over the Olympiad. How he made the bullies back down when I wasn't strong enough. How he listened to every unreasonable complaint and still looked at me like I was worth his time. He never made me feel small.
I remember that summer night at Bonnie's grandma's house when I met him for the first time. It was strange, magical. For a moment, life felt endless. There were no reports of that night's phenomenon, as if I was the only one who saw it. I know the night was real because he was there with me. Just us, two children staring at something bigger than we could understand. He made me feel safe, even then.
I remember the necklace he gave me. Mat doesn't know it was a gift from him. I haven't been able to tell him, nor could I get rid of it. Especially not after we broke up and I woke up in this nightmare—the forest fire, the town's chaos, him surviving the burns. Everything is unreal. There's a different emptiness in the air since that wildfire incident, like a crucial piece of our (my) world is missing.
But it didn't start with our breakup. He started slipping away before that, since last year winter.
Disappearing for days on end. Receiving packages he never explained. Acting like he belonged to another world I wasn't invited into. The Continental motel opened around then, maybe six months prior to Ayaan's change.
I was scared for him. I thought he was going away from me. People still whisper about that place—drugs, parties, and hookups are synonymous to "The Continental". I knew he went there sometimes, without letting any of us know.
The packages he received had the Continental logo—a golden crown on black. I had seen them many times. He had been receiving such packages for years.
His locked study, never open to even Bonnie's grandma, is a forbidden place where he kept the items he received from that place. He never admitted that his secret life had anything to do with the motel, but I knew he was intertwined with that place even before the damn hotel opened in Mystic Falls.
When I asked, he'd just smile and change the subject. It made me feel small for the first time with him, like I wasn't worthy of knowing. That's what broke us. Not the motel, not the locked room, not his disappearances. The lies. The distrust he had of me.
But now, after that incident, he has found his confidante. Things he couldn't share with me, he seems to have found someone to share with. Vicki.
With her trouble and her smoke-stained laughter, somehow she has become worthy of his pain. But what does she know about him? She is just an opportunist. She's goes to see him everyday, ever since he woke up. Everyone sees it. Everyone is talking about it.
I pretend not to care, but it twists my insides to hear her name with him. There are already whispers in school of the two, "dysfunctional couple with a secretly depraved lifestyle".
It makes me angry—after all the years he spent shaping Mystic High, leading the sports team, earning national scores and prestige… This is what has become of him? Like everything in the past was just a dream?
Where is the Ayaan that brought sunshine? He's being sidelined everywhere. People treat him like he's invisible. As if he never existed. And it hurts me, more than I expected. I don't know what I'm supposed to feel right now.
Tomorrow, I'll see him again. I don't know if I'll have the courage to look him in the eye. I don't know if I'll still be able to pretend.
– Elena