The road stretched before me like a scar carved through the heart of the forest. It was narrow, winding and swallowed by darkness. My car hummed softly as it rolled over uneven ground. Its headlights slicing through the fog. Each turn pulled me deeper into the woods, further from the world of the living, until I came to a stop. The road ahead are not suitable for cars.
So I stop my car, and turn off the engine. My eyes scanned the area as I step out from my car. From this path onwards, I need to walk.
It had been centuries since I last stood anywhere near this area. If my memories served me right, just a few miles away from the tomb was the church area that was burned down. Despite always telling myself to never walk myself into my past, yet tonight, fate or irony had held me back to it.
The tomb. A prison of stone and spell, buried beneath the earth thick with secrets.
The silence outside was dense, broken only by the whispers of leaves brushing against my leather coat. I should have felt unease, but instead, there was a strange calm in me. The kind that comes after centuries of chaos.
Still, beneath the calm, a weight pressed against my chest. I thought this has ended centuries ago, but to my surprise, the world has made another plan for me, and today, I will meet Katherine again.
The trees thinned as I reached the edge of the clearing. My steps become smaller and my chest feels heavier. The air was cold, heavy with damp earth and the faint hum of ancient magic that lingered in the ground like buried thunder.
Somewhere below us, the dead were waiting.
I walked quietly, the hem of my coat brushing against the wet leaves, until I saw them. Elena, Stefan, Bonnie, Sheila and Damon. They stood near the old stone entrance hidden beneath the slope of the forest floor.
Bonnie's hands twisted together nervously, her shoulders tense. Sheila in contrast, stood tall and steady, and her eyes locked on the tomb as though she could already feel the pull of the dead inside. Elena paced nearby. She look pale and restless, and Stefan ever the protector, hovered close, trying to calm her.
And then there was Damon.
He was a storm barely contained within skin. His eyes are sharp as glass and his jaw set in defiance. The moment he saw me approach, his expression darkened. Suspicion flared, quick and fierce. He moved in front of the others, posture rigid, as though he was preparing for a fight.
"Who the hell is she?" His voice cracked the air, and it was sharp and impatient.
"Why did you bring someone I don't know here?" He added.
I stopped a few feet away, unbothered by his hostility. His kind of anger was familiar. It had lived in the eyes of every man who thought power belonged only to him.
"She is here to help, Damon." Stefan said as he stepped between us. His tone was measured.
"Help?" Damon scoffed as he give me a once over.
"You are telling me this stranger just shows up out of nowhere, on the night I finally get Katherinbe back, and I am supposed to believe she is here to help?" Damon said and his words hung like barbed wire in the air.
"I am not here for your trust. I am here to make sure things go as planned." I said quietly, and hearing what I said, he smirked, though the tension in his stance never eased.
"And what exactly is your plan, sweetheart?"
"To keep my end of the deal." I said, my tone was calm and deliberate.
"You want Katherine? Then you will have her. But I suggest you prepare yourself for disappointment. She is not the woman you know." I said and Damon's eyes narrowed. His mouth curving into a humorless smile.
"You sound like someone who knows her well." Damon said.
"My name is Natalia Petrova. She is my descendant. So yes Damon. I do know her well enough to know that she is the kind of danger that burns everything it touches." I could see Damon's forehead furrow with the new information.
"Take you two brothers, for example. You were close one, inseparable, if I remember correctly. But then she came along, and burned that bond to ash. Now, you look more like enemies than blood."
For a brief moment, the silence between us deepened. The forest seemed to hold its breath. Damon's expression flickered. Something unspoken passing through his eyes but it vanished as quickly as it came.
He didn't want to listen.
He was consumed by obsession. I could see it in every line of him. The kind of obsession that destroys reason, that blinds even the sharpest mind. Once, long ago, I had known that hunger too.
And it had cost me everything.
Sheila stepped closer then, breaking the silence.
"We are ready." She said, and her tone steady, though I could hear the faint strain in her voice. The spell that she is going to do was not a simple one. I nodded at her and reached into my coat, pulling out a folded piece of parchment.
"This is the spell you will need to use. It won't hold fore long. Just long enough for the two of them to get out." I handed it to her and our fingers brushed. The contact was brief, but in that instant, her breath caught. Her eyes glazed over as if she glimpsed something she wasn't meant to see.
My past. My centuries of sins and survival. The wars, the blood, the loneliness that stretched across ages.
When she finally blinked, her eyes shimmered. Not with fear, but with sadness.
"I'm sorry." She whispered. The words were barely audible, yet they reached me like an echo from another lifetime.
I said nothing. Pity was a weight I had long learned to reject. I didn't need it now. Instead, I turned my attention back to the tomb.
"Begin." I said softly.
Sheila nodded. She and Bonnie joined hands, closing their eyes. Power rippled from them in invisible waves. It felt ancient, raw and old as the soil beneath our feet. The ground trembled lightly, the air thickened and slowly, the stone entrance began to shift.
Dust fell from its edges as the tomb opened. A gaping mouth of shadow yawning before us.
"There you go. Katherine is waiting for you, Damon." I murmured as I stepped back.
For a second, he didn't move. His eyes darted between the tomb and me, searching for any hint of deception. Then, without warning, he reached out, seizing Elena by the arm.
"If I am going in, she is coming with me." He said slowly. Elena struggled, shock and fear flashing across her face.
"Damon, no!" Stefan's voice cracked through the air.
"I am serious, Stefan. You try to double cross me, I will kill her before I take another step." Damon snapped. Stefan lunged forward, but I moved between them, calm and still as the air before a storm.
"Let him go." I said. My eyes didn't leave Damon. Stefan froze when he heard what I said. His eyes widened in disbelief.
"Are you insane? He will kill her if anything goes wrong!" Stefan said.
"He won't. I give you my word. Nothing will happen to her." I said, meeting his gaze. For a moment, our eyes held. I could see the hesitation in his expression. The conflict between his instincts and the faint thread of trust he did begun to have in me. At last, he nodded slowly. The four of us watch as Damon and Elena walked into the tomb.
"What do you want me to do?" He asked quietly. I can still sense worry in his voice.
"Go back to the surface. Bring the flamethrower you prepared. If any vampires try to leave this place, burn them." I said and he hesitated. His jaw tightening before he then turned and disappeared up the slope. When I look back, Sheila was watching me again. There was something knowing in her gaze.
"I saw your life." Sheila said softly. Bonnie's brow furrowed beside her.
"When we touched, I saw everything." Sheila added.
"I could tell by the way you looked at me." I said as I tilted my head slightly.
"You have done terrible things." She said and I can see that she has more things to say, but she seemed to be trying to find the right words to use.
"But, in all the things that you have done, I also see your reasons. I saw your pain too. The losses." Sheila's words brushed against something in me that I hadn't felt in centuries.
"I have done what I had to, and I know no amount of good will wash away the blood in my hands. But perhaps, I can do something right this time." I replied quietly. Sheila said nothing, but her eyes softened. That small flicker of trust between us was enough. Until she spoke again.
"There's sthing you should know. I didn't use the spell you gave me." She said carefully. The stillness that followed was deafening.
"What did you do, Sheila?" My voice was calm when I spoke, but it cut through the air like frost.
"I used my spell. The one that I found in my grimoire." She said, slowly and calmly.
"The spell will trap any vampire who enters the tomb. Once inside, they can't leave." She added.
"That was not the deal." I said as my calmness faltered, creating a think crack in a glass.
"We want the same thing. You and I. None of those vampires should ever walk this earth again. This way ensures it." Sheila said as she straightened her posture, unflinching from my change of demonour.
"Including Damon." I said, reminding her what is at stake.
"Yes." She said simply.
"That breaks my word to Elena and Stefan. My deal was that Damon would get Katherine and walk free. If he's trapped, it's the same as killing him." I said.
"You said, you didn't want Katherine to walk this earth again." Bonnie spoke up then. Her young voice trembling but firm.
"I don't-" I didn't finish my sentence as I starts to feel the anger boiling inside me. I take a deep breath before I continue.
"There was a way to keep both ends of the deal. Let her out, and end her myself. I still keep my end of the deal with Elena while I still get what I want. The end of Katherine." I said and Bonnie's eyes widened, but before anyone could answer, a shout echoed from above.
It was Stefan's voice. I turned and my senses sharpening. Something was wrong. Without another word, I blurred up the slope, moving faster than a human sight could follow.
When I emerged into the clearing above, I saw them. Anna and Noah. And between them, held tightly in Noah's grasp, was a boy.
Jeremy. Elena's little brother.
"Let him go." I said and my voice was low, and controlled. The air around us shifted, tension humming through it like static.
"Please. I just want my mother. I won't hurt him. Just let me take her, and we will leave." Anna said as she stepped forward. I could see desperation etched into her face.
I studied her, my face was unreadable. Then my gaze slid to the boy, and now for once I see him clearly under the moonlight. For a moment, the world tilted.
Jeremy's eyes wide and afraid. They were the same shade of brown as another boy's I had once known. The same hesitant innocence. The same stubborness in the set of his jaw.
Daniel. My little brother.
For a heartbeat, centuries fell away. I saw his face again. It was pale beneath the flickering firelight. His small hand slipping from mine. His voice calling for me as he runs happily in an open field near our old house
The weight of that memory nearly broke the stillness in me. Stefan, standing beside me, noticed. I felt his eyes on me. I felt the question forming on his tongue, but I pushed the weakness down before it could surface.
"You can enter, Anna. But only you." I said and my voice, when it came, was steady.
"You can't be serious! You are letting her go in?" Stefan's voice rose, sharp.
"It's fine. Let her go." I said not looking at him. Anna nodded at me as she whisper thank you, before she went down the path to the tomb. Little did she know, she will not be able to come out with her mother. She will be trapped in there with the rest.
"I will let the boy go when Anna comes back with her mother." Noah tightened his grip on Jeremy. In an instant, I was beside Noah. My hand closed around his throat. The crack of his neck echoed through the clearing like a gunshot. Jeremy fell forward, and I caught him before he hit the ground.
His heartbeat fluttered against my arm, too human, too fragile. I looked down at him, at Daniel's eyes mirrored in his and for a moment, my control wavered.
Not here, I told myself. Not now.
"Somnum." I whispered and Jeremy's body went still. His breathing deepened as he slipped into unconsciousness. Behind me, Stefan's voice broke the silence.
"What did you do?" He asked. I turned, meeting his wide and panicked eyes.
"He's fine." I said gently.
"He will wake in a few hours." I handed Jeremy to him carefully.
"Keep him safe. And burn Noah before he wakes." I said and Stefan hesitated. His fingers brushing mine as he took the boy. There was confusion in his gaze, and something else that I couldn't read.
"Why did you-" He began but I cut him off with a quiet shake of my head.
"Because, some things are not meant to repeat." I said softly. He didn't understand what I meant. Not yet. But he would.
As he carried Jeremy away, I stood there, alone again beneath the whispering trees. The tomb still waited below, yawning open like a wound that would never heal.
And for the first time in centuries, I felt the faint tremor of something I thought long dead.
Fear.
Not of what was inside the tomb.
But of what I was in the past.
I have a feeling that the past is slowly catching up on me.