Thick smoke billowed into the night sky, illuminated from beneath by the dying orange pulse of the hellfire that had just finished consuming the air. The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by the settling of debris and the hiss of cooling marble.
As the grit cleared, Michael stood in the center of the devastation, he stared at the empty space where the Banshee had been, his jaw tightening as he let out a sharp, irritated "Tch."
"Slippery snake," he muttered with a level of annoyance he hadn't felt in over five hundred years.
He had felt the shift in the air at the last microsecond. The Banshee hadn't just screamed to attack; she had used the raw kinetic resonance of her own vocal cords to propel her physical form backward, tearing through the veil of reality to teleport just as his chains of light had begun to constrict. On the floor, the parchment, the cornerstone of Esther's gambit finally shrivelled into a fine, grey ash that drifted away in the rising heat.
Michael turned his head slightly, his eyes losing their blinding crimson intensity, "Are you okay?"
As the smoke behind him dissipated, a shimmering, transparent dome of oscillating heat became visible. In the heartbeat before he had unleashed his fury, Michael had sensed that the localized detonation of his power would have leveled the entire estate, liquefying the bodys of every human and vampire within its walls. He had anchored a static field of thermal energy around the center of the room, a localized shield that had held firm against the shockwave.
Inside the dome, the scene remained frozen. Elena, Jeremy, Bonnie, and the others lay in their state of deep, protective unconsciousness. Beside them, the vampires whose necks had been snapped by Esther's whim began to twitch, their healing factors finally overcoming the magical trauma.
As the dome flickered and vanished into the air, Elijah and Klaus blurred to Michael's side, Klaus looked at the smoldering crater where the Banshee had stood, his hands still trembling with a mixture of adrenaline and fury. "They're gone."
Elijah stepped over a fallen beam, his gaze sweeping across the ruins of their home. His expression was one of profound, weary contemplation. "She did not just slink away Niklaus, She has our brother as her vessel and she has the backing of a power that predates our very existence."
Elijah turned to Michael, his eyes searching his brother's face. "I have spent a millennium priding myself on foresight, on the ability to navigate the shifting loyalties of this family. But Mother... her deviousness has reached a depth I find myself wholly unprepared for. She played us like an instrument, Michael. She used our history as the bait and our own brother as the hook."
Michael brushed a layer of soot from his shoulder, and looked at him with an unreadable expression. "She played her game well because she no longer views you as her children. To her, you are just items on a checklist of cosmic mistakes."
"She didn't need to kill us tonight. She only needed to prove that we are vulnerable. She has turned our own home into a graveyard of intentions, and she did it while wearing the face of the brother we failed to protect."
The superheated air within the manor's ruins began to swirl as the pressure equalized, carrying the scent of charred pine. "We underestimated her reach," Michael said, his voice cutting through the ringing silence. "I didn't expect her to move so decisively on Matt and Carol."
Rebekah clutched her arms, her eyes darting toward the scorched dining wing. "And Kol? He's our brother, Michael. How could she just... hollow him out like that?"
Elijah straightened his torn suit jacket with an expression of wary disappointment, "Because Kol has always been the victim of his own nature. He was careless. He has spent ten centuries being rash, acting without tact, care, or even the basic awareness required to survive someone like Mother. He made himself an easy target by wandering the fringes of this town like a glutton."
"I told you," Klaus said from the side, "Michael should have never removed the silver dagger from that idiot's chest. He's safer as a decorative statue than he is as a liability."
Michael let out a long, heavy sigh. He turned his gaze toward Damon, Stefan, and Anna, who were groaning as they pushed themselves up from the marble floor. "What's done is done. Recrimination won't pull the rot out of this house."
His eyes narrowed as they landed on Bonnie Bennett. She was sitting up, rubbing her temples, Michael felt a flicker of genuine confusion. He had expected Esther to target the Bennett line immediately. It was why he had Tamara and Harry assign twenty of his elite Death Dealers to guard Abby Bennett, and why he had kept a silent, predatory watch over Bonnie himself. Yet, strangely, Esther had treated the young witch as little more than background noise.
"What now?" Rebekah asked, as she looked around the ruined estate.
"What now?" Damon barked, stumbling to his feet and shaking his head like a wet dog. "How about we talk about the part where the house exploded? Or the part where I have a massive migraine because some opera-singing freak decided to turn my brain into Jell-O? What the hell happened?"
Rebekah spared him a look of pure loathing. "You were useless, as per usual, Damon. You spent the entire 'family reunion' napping on the floor while Mother reorganized the furniture with our blood."
"To be fair," Stefan added, helping a dazed Alaric to his feet, "none of us were exactly winning."
"My head..." Bonnie whispered, leaning against a pillar. "I can't feel the spirits and the air is too hot."
"Oh my god," Caroline suddenly gasped, her voice hitching as she stared at the hole in the wall. "Matt. He... he turned into that thing. What the hell was that?"
Michael walked over to her with his bare foot, "A Wendigo," he said simply.
Jeremy, who was supporting Elena, looked up with a frown of disbelief. "Wait... a Wendigo? Like the legends? But Michael, you told us those shouldn't exist."
Tyler's voice finally broke out, "I don't care about the logistics! Of a fucking Supernatural that shouldn't exist, my mother is dead! She's dead because of this family!"
"She's not dead," Michael interrupted Tyler's hysteria. He looked around the room, his gaze lingering on the hollowed-out hole in the masonry. "And neither is Matt."
Elijah straightened up, a flicker of his usual composure returning despite the soot on his brow. "Explain, brother. We saw you kill her twice and we saw Matt... transform."
"What Esther used on Carol Lockwood was a high-level recursive illusion," Michael said, his eyes scanning the psychic residue still clinging to the walls. "A projection so dense it bled when it was struck. Carol is still alive somewhere. And Matt... the Wendigo didn't 'take over' him. It was a shape-shifter, a mimic born of the pit that used his face to bridge the gap into this world. The real Matt Donovan is probably alive somewhere."
"Great," Liz Forbes snapped, her hand trembling as she holstered her service weapon. "So, apart from the fact that I just watched a thousand-year-old witch dismantle the most powerful family on Earth with a surprise party, what else could be more surprising?"
"Unless there's something else we don't know about," Bonnie whispered, her eyes dark with a sudden, mounting dread.
Michael's jaw tightened up at that and his mind raced over possibilities, "For some reason, I feel like this is about to get worse. I don't know how, and that's the problem. Esther isn't a gambler; she's a grandmaster. She doesn't lose this much ground without a safety net."
"Bloody hell," Klaus breathed, his eyes wide as he stared at the center of the room.
"What is it, Niklaus?" Elijah asked, his voice sharp with alarm.
"She didn't get all our blood," Klaus muttered, his mind racing back to her chilling smile. "And she said... she said it wasn't a problem. She said nature was on her side."
Michael's eyes widened. The realization hit him like a physical blow. In a burst of speed that shattered the floorboards beneath him, he vanished. A second later and Michael reappeared in the center of the ballroom, a heavy, ancient oak coffin gripped in his hand. He slammed it onto the marble with a force that made the room shake.
The lid was missing. The silk lining inside was cold. It was empty.
Damon let out a low, dry whistle. "Please tell me we didn't just lose a 'Sleeping Beauty.' Because if there's another Original wandering around with a grudge and a fresh tan, I'm retiring to Fiji."
"Finn," Rebekah whispered, her face going deathly pale.
"Wait," Anna said, stepping forward beside Jeremy. "... then this entire night was just a distraction?"
Elena looked at Michael and said with a tremble her voice trembling as she asked a question, "She lured you into a fight she knew she'd lose just to buy time to wake him up?"
"She now has two of the Originals with her," Michael said, his voice dropping into a dangerous, low register. "Finn and the shell of Kol. Now that the linking has failed, she will pivot. She has the blood of the line, and she has the devotees of the pit."
"Well then," Klaus snarled, his eyes flashing gold. "All we need to do is find them. We hunt her down and we murder Mother before she can do any more damage to this world."
"And our brothers?" Elijah asked, his voice heavy. "What of Kol and Finn?"
"I don't know for now," Michael said, looking at the charred remains of the house materials on the floor. "But whatever she's planning will have to wait. After the loss I just handed her, she'll need to lick her wounds."
/////////////////
Miles away, tied to the stone walls of an underground cavern were two figures, their faces bruised and exhausted. Matt Donovan and Carol Lockwood had been missing to the world for twenty-four hours.
"Matt?" Carol whispered, her voice hoarse.
"I'm here," Matt rasped. He remembered the last moment of normalcy, the clink of glasses at the Grill, a sudden wave of lightheadedness, and then the dark. Carol had described the same; one minute she was preparing for the party, the next, the world had tilted and vanished.
They had woken up in this tomb, watched over by a woman who called herself Esther and two creatures that defied every law of nature Carol had ever known. There was the pale woman, the Banshee and then there was the other one. A hunkering, massive creature with grey, matted fur and towering, deer-like horns that scraped the ceiling of the cave. It had stared at Carol with a hunger so profound she had screamed until her throat was raw.
Hours had passed since the trio had left. The cave had been silent until now.
A sound echoed from the tunnel, the dragging of feet and the heavy breathing of someone in immense pain.
A figure emerged into the the cavern. It was a handsome young man, but his appearance was nightmarish. The front of his expensive suit was burnt away, revealing a chest that was a map of black, charred tissue and dead skin. The wound was a horizontal mark of absolute destruction, yet he remained standing.
Over his shoulder, he carried a limp, unconscious body.
The silence of the cavern was broken by the heavy thud of a body hitting the dirt. The handsome young man in the charred suit dropped the unconscious form of Finn casually, as if he were discarding a sack of grain. He leaned against the damp stone wall, his breath coming in shallow, ragged hitches.
"Well," the man said, his voice echoing with a hollow, maternal resonance that made Matt's skin crawl. "That certainly didn't go as planned."
Matt pressed his back against the rock, his chains rattling. "Who are you?"
The man looked up with a terrifying, serene smile stretching across Kol's face. "Oh, that's right. You haven't seen me in this form, have you, Matthew? I am Esther. This is my son. I am merely borrowing his strength for a while, a mother's prerogative."
Before Matt could respond, a shadow stumbled into the mouth of the cave. It was the pale woman, the Banshee. She was a nightmare of ruined flesh. Half of her face was a blackened, melted mask of scorched tissue, and one of her arms had been reduced to a cauterized stump, burnt off entirely by Michael's hellfire.
She gasped as she collapsed against the wall, her face twitching in agony.
"It would seem he was much more than we hoped for," Esther-in-Kol said, eyes narrowing as she took in the Banshee's state. "He is a sun that refuses to be eclipsed. We have incurred a significant loss." She was referring to the Wendigo; the psychic link had snapped the moment Michael's Sol Invictus had vaporized the creature's essence.
"No matter," Esther-in-Kol whispered, her fingers reaching into the folds of Kol's tattered clothing. "I still obtained what I needed."
She pulled a silver dagger she had taken out of Finn's chest.
Finn's desiccated body instantly reacted. His lungs forced in a desperate breath that sounded like grinding glass. His bones began to snap audibly, popping back into alignment as the blood flow resumed. In a blur of desperate motion, he vamp-sped across the cave, slamming into the far wall and gasping for air as his skin filled out and his eyes regained their color.
"Breathe, my child," Esther-in-Kol said softly. "Breathe."
Finn's head snapped up, his gaze landing on his brother. "Kol? Brother?" His confusion was instantly overtaken by a thousand years of repressed rage. He blurred toward Kol, his hands reaching for his brother's throat to demand answers for this madness.
He didn't make it halfway. Finn was suddenly brought to his knees, his hands clutching his head as a massive magical aneurysm tore through his brain.
"Such a temper," Esther-in-Kol remarked, her voice dripping with mock disappointment. "I do not remember you being so quick to attack your own blood, Finn."
As she flicked her wrist to cancel the spell, Finn slumped to the floor, panting. "What... What is going on?"
"My mistake," Esther-in-Kol said, looking down at the slow-healing, blackened wound on Kol's chest. The tissue was dead, refusing to knit back together under the weight of the Hellhound's mark. "This form is causing unnecessary confusion. And," she winced as a spasm of agony shot through the nerves, "a great deal of pain."
Suddenly, Kol's body went limp and dropped to the floor like a puppet with cut strings.
"Perhaps this will be much clearer," a new voice rang out from the mouth of the cave.
They all turned. Walking out of the shadows was the third woman, the one who had accompanied Kol and the Banshee to the manor, the one who had seemingly fled in a fit of mortal terror. But her aura had shifted. The cowardice was gone, replaced by a cold, ancient authority that made the air in the tomb grow heavy.
She walked calmly over to the unconscious Kol. Just as his eyes began to flutter open, she reached down, took the silver dagger from the floor, and drove it straight into Kol's heart.
Kol's eyes widened for a fraction of a second, a silent plea for help dying in his throat as his skin turned grey and the veins of desiccation raced across his face. He became a statue once more.
The woman stood up, smoothing her dress. As she did, her features began to shimmer and melt. The mortal mask fell away, replaced by the high cheekbones and stern, haunting beauty of the original witch.
Finn stared at the familiar face, his voice a mere breath of disbelief. "Mother?"