"Okay, what the hell was that?" Damon demanded, pacing behind his drink cart. "You're telling me, one minute we're dealing with fanatic vampires, the next, Elijah's doing his terminator impression and just... leaves?"
"He said he had preparations to make," Stefan replied, though his own unease was evident in his restless movements around the boarding house living room.
"Right, because that's not ominous at all," Damon poured himself another bourbon. "The noble Original, who apparently moonlights as vampire royalty, just happens to save you and disappears with some cryptic message about 'preparations.'"
Elena sat huddled on the couch, her mind still replaying the violence at the Grill. "Did you see how they looked at him? Not just fear, but... reverence. Even while he was killing them."
"Prince Elijah," Alexander quoted softly from his position by the window. He hadn't moved since they arrived, his eyes fixed on the shadows that seemed to dance more deliberately now. "That's what they called him. Wonder what other titles we don't know about."
"Speaking of things we don't know," Stefan turned to Elena, "wasn't Bonnie supposed to meet us here? After talking to her ancestors?"
"Knowing Judgy, she's probably arguing with a hundred dead witches about proper ghost etiquette," Damon smirked, but his attempt at humor fell flat as Bonnie entered the room.
She carried a grimoire that seemed to pulse with its own heartbeat, its pages emanating an energy that made everyone's supernatural senses tingle.
"My ancestors agreed to help," Bonnie announced, her expression grim but determined. "But they have conditions."
"Of course they do," Damon drawled, downing his bourbon. "Let me guess - they want us to dance naked under the full moon while chanting their names backwards?"
"They want to show us what we're really up against," Bonnie shot back, setting up candles around the room. "Not just stories or secondhand accounts. They want us to see him. To understand exactly what kind of power we're dealing with."
"Because that worked out so well for Katherine," Stefan said quietly. "Have you seen what just remembering him does to her?"
"That's why we need both her and Alexander," Bonnie explained, her hands steady as she arranged the grimoire. "Nature created Alexander as his echo, his shadow. That makes him a sort of... blind spot in Vali's defenses. The mark can't fully detect magic worked through him."
"And you need me because?" Katherine's voice drifted from the doorway, making Elena jump. She looked better than she had in the tomb, though fear still lingered in her eyes.
"Because you have the strongest emotional connection to him," Bonnie replied. "You carry his mark, his power. You've experienced what he truly is firsthand."
Katherine's laugh was sharp, brittle. "Oh, is that what you think? That I have some special insight? Honey, I spent five hundred years thinking I was clever, thinking I was running. You know the story of Sun Wukong?
The Monkey King who thought he could escape Buddha's palm, jumping and leaping, crossing what he thought were worlds, only to find he never left Buddha's hand?" Her smile was bitter. "That's what it's like with him. No matter how far you run, how clever you think you are... you're just dancing in his palm."
"And yet here you are," Bonnie challenged, "willing to help Elijah oppose him."
"Oppose him?" Katherine's eyes widened with genuine disbelief. "Is that what you think we're doing? That anyone can truly..." she shook her head. "You still don't understand what he is."
"Then help us understand," Elena spoke up. "If we're really as blind as you say, then show us."
Katherine's hand went to the scar on her neck - the mark he'd left that still pulsed with crimson energy. "You want to see? Fine. But remember this moment. Remember that I warned you what happens to those who try to peek behind the curtain without his permission."
Alexander finally moved from the window, though his steps were hesitant. "And what exactly am I supposed to do? Just stand there being his... echo?"
"Just be," Bonnie replied simply, her hands steady as she arranged the herbs. "Your presence alone will be enough."
The shadows in the corners seemed to pulse as silence fell over the room. Everyone felt the weight of what they were considering - trying to witness power that even nature itself had failed to fully replicate.
"Fine," Katherine finally said, moving to sit in the circle Bonnie had created. "But when this goes horribly wrong - and it will - just remember: like Sun Wukong, you asked for this enlightenment."
"Fine," Katherine said, moving to sit in the circle Bonnie had created. "But when this goes horribly wrong - and it will - just remember: like Sun Wukong, you asked for this enlightenment."
Bonnie began arranging the candles in a specific pattern, her movements precise. The grimoire's pages turned on their own, settling on text that seemed to writhe on the page.
"Everyone else needs to stay back," she warned, looking at Elena, Stefan, and Damon. "What we're about to do... it's not meant for direct observation. You'll see what we see, but through a kind of filter. Otherwise..."
"Otherwise our minds might break trying to comprehend it directly," Stefan finished grimly. "Like looking at the sun through water instead of staring straight at it."
"Poetic," Damon muttered, but he moved back, pulling Elena with him. "Just try not to turn anyone's brain to soup, Judgy."
Bonnie took Alexander's and Katherine's hands, completing the circle. The candles ignited without being lit, their flames burning an unnatural blue. The shadows in the room began to move with purpose, gathering around them like curious spectators.
"Whatever you see," Bonnie warned, her voice taking on an otherworldly echo as her ancestors' power flowed through her, "don't let go. Don't try to look away. And most importantly..." she met Katherine's knowing gaze, "don't try to hide from it."
The room began to fade around them, reality peeling away like layers of old paint. Through Katherine's connection and Alexander's nature as a blind spot, they began to fall into memories that weren't their own - glimpses of power that nature itself had failed to contain.
The world dissolved into darkness, then reformed into something else entirely. They found themselves standing in what appeared to be an ancient forest, but something was wrong with the scene - as if reality itself didn't quite fit properly here.
"England, 1492," Katherine's voice echoed strangely in this memory-space. "The first time I truly understood what he was."
Through the trees, they saw a younger Katherine running, her period dress torn, her breathing frantic. But she wasn't running from something - she was running toward something. Screams echoed through the forest, drawing her forward like a moth to flame.
"I thought I was being clever," present-Katherine narrated, her voice bitter. "Following the chaos, thinking I could learn about my pursuers. I didn't understand I was being led."
The scene shifted as memory-Katherine reached a clearing. What they saw there made Elena grab Stefan's arm, made Damon take an involuntary step back.
Bodies lay scattered across the ground, but they weren't dead - not exactly. They were empty, their eyes staring at nothing, their mouths frozen in eternal screams. Standing among them was a figure that seemed to bend reality around itself.
"Don't look directly at him," Katherine warned sharply. "Even through time, even through Alexander's protection - you're not ready for that yet. Watch what he does. That's important enough."
The scene expanded beyond memory-Katherine's perspective, showing them things she never saw.
In the trees surrounding the clearing, shadows moved with purpose - not just darkness, but something alive, something hunting. Witches lay hidden in those shadows, their hands weaving spells meant to trap and bind.
"I didn't know about them then," present-Katherine whispered. "The Bennett coven that thought they could challenge him. I was just their unknowing bait."
They watched as the witches began their spell, power building like a storm about to break. But something was wrong. The shadows around them weren't retreating from their light - they were gathering, watching, waiting.
Memory-Katherine stood frozen at the edge of the clearing as Vali turned to her. Even viewing him indirectly, through Alexander's protection and time's distance, his presence made reality feel thin, fragile.
"The witches thought they were so clever," present-Katherine's voice shook slightly. "They didn't realize he'd been orchestrating everything for months. Every death, every 'coincidental' meeting, every whispered rumor that led them there..."
The witches sprang their trap. Power erupted from the earth itself, binding circles appearing in blazing light. For a moment, it seemed to work. Then...
"Don't look away," Katherine commanded as the scene began to shift. "You wanted to see his power? Watch what happens when someone truly angers him."
The shadows didn't just move - they came alive. Not as simple darkness, but as something ancient and vast wearing darkness like a cloak. The witches' binding circles shattered, but not from force. They simply... ceased to exist, as if that part of reality had been selectively erased.
"Look at the trees," Bonnie gasped, her grip on Alexander and Katherine tightening.
The forest around them was changing. Not dying, not burning, but transforming into something else.
The trees twisted into impossible shapes, their branches reaching like grasping hands, their bark rippling like water. Nature itself seemed to recoil from what was happening in that clearing.
Memory-Katherine tried to run, but her legs wouldn't move. Not from magic or force, but from sheer instinctive terror. They watched as Vali turned to the hidden witches, and though they still couldn't look directly at him, they saw what happened next.
The shadows reached for the witches, but they didn't just kill them. Each one's essence was slowly, methodically, pulled apart. Not their bodies - those remained intact, perfect even. But something else, something fundamental, was being systematically dismantled.
"He wasn't just killing them," present-Katherine explained, her voice hollow. "He was making an example. Making sure every witch on the Other Side would see exactly what happens when they try to bind something beyond their comprehension."
"The trees," Alexander suddenly said, understanding dawning in his voice. "They're not just twisting. They're recording. He transformed them into... witnesses."
Indeed, the twisted trees had faces now - hundreds of them.
The faces in the them weren't just watching - they were screaming. Silent, endless screams carved into living wood, their features twisting in eternal agony. Each one captured a different moment of horror, a different aspect of what they were witnessing.
"He wanted them to see," Katherine whispered, her voice cracking. "Not just the witches there, but every spirit, every being that might ever think to challenge him. Look at what he's doing to the world itself."
The air had begun to bleed. Not blood, but something more fundamental - as if the basic fabric of existence was tearing open. Through these wounds, they caught glimpses of things that shouldn't exist - realms of pure darkness where abstract concepts took physical form, places where physics broke down into screaming chaos.
Memory-Katherine had fallen to her knees, blood trickling from her eyes as her mind struggled to process what she was seeing. But present-Katherine forced them to keep watching.
"See how the shadows move?" she pointed with a trembling hand. "They're not just darkness. They're... pieces of something. Something vast that he's letting slip through."
The shadows had indeed changed. They writhed across the ground like living things, but wrong - geometrically impossible shapes that hurt to look at, patterns that suggested something massive was pushing against reality from outside.
The witches weren't dying anymore. Death would have been mercy. Instead, they hung suspended in the air, their bodies intact but their souls... their souls were being systematically unraveled.
Each thread of their essence pulled apart with surgical precision, examined, and then...
"He's not destroying them," Bonnie realized, horror creeping into her voice. "He's... studying them. Learning how they're put together so he can..."
"So he can do it better next time," Katherine finished. "Everything is a lesson to him. Every death, every soul, every moment of terror - just another experiment in understanding the architecture of existence itself."
The faces in the trees kept screaming their silent screams, and now they could see that the faces weren't just recordings - they were prisons. Each one held a piece of a soul, trapped in eternal witness, forced to experience this moment forever.
The scene shifted, reality bending as Vali turned his attention back to memory-Katherine. The air itself seemed to crystallize around her, trapping her in a moment of perfect, pristine terror.
"This is where he marked me," present-Katherine's voice shook. "But watch carefully. Watch what happens to time itself."
They saw it then - how the moment stretched, how seconds became hours became eternities. Memory-Katherine's scream hung in the air, drawn out so long it became almost musical. But the horror wasn't in the duration - it was in the precision.
"He didn't just mark me," Katherine explained, her hand going to her scar. "He wrote something into my very essence. Look at how reality... fragments."
The air around memory-Katherine cracked like glass, showing glimpses of other moments - past, future, possibilities.
Through these cracks, they saw hundreds of Katherinas, each one running, each one thinking they were free, each one perfectly positioned exactly where he wanted them.
"The mark isn't just a brand," Bonnie whispered, her witch's senses overwhelmed. "It's a... a revelation. A set of revelations that show all the possible paths she can take, that he'll know exactly which taken no matter what... He has written it into the fundamental nature of..."
The scene shattered, another took its place, but this time it felt different - deeper, older. This wasn't Katherine's memory. The very act of witnessing it made the world look as if it was weeping.
"I... I don't know this one," Katherine whispered, her usual confidence cracking. "This isn't something I've..."
They stood in what had once been Constantinople - a city of impossible grandeur, where East met West in architecture that defied human limitation. But something was terribly wrong. The air itself burned with unnatural energy, and the sky...
The sky wasn't just burning - it was being consumed by smokeless fire that took shapes that shouldn't exist. Geometries that made the mind recoil, patterns that suggested something vast and ancient was pushing against the barriers of reality itself.
Atop the highest tower stood Iblis - Satan himself - the fallen angel who had refused to bow to Adam.
His true form was impossible to look at directly - a being of pure smokeless fire that shifted between shapes that burned sight. Wings made of sin rather than simple matter spread across the burning sky, each feather a different kind of monstrosity.
"The Deceiver," Bonnie breathed, ancestral knowledge flowing through her. "The lord of djinn who thought he could turn the King's domain against him."
They watched in horror as Satan's corrupted army swept through the streets. These weren't just soldiers - they were abominations. Mortals whose bodies had been twisted inside out, their organs replaced with burning light.
Vampires driven mad by infernal power, their faces melting and reforming in endless cycles. Djinn who had forsaken their nature to become things that existed between moments of time.
The city itself seemed to scream as they passed, reality bending and breaking under their corrupt touch. Buildings bled actual blood, streets twisted into möbius strips, and the air itself began to crystallize into shapes that suggested meanings too horrible to comprehend.
Then they saw him. His face enraged, yet cold, full of majesty, and grandeur.
Vali formed a specific hand sign, his voice carrying across the burning city like thunder:
"Domain Expansion: Malevolent Shrine."
The shadows around him didn't just move - they transformed. Reality folded inward, creating a structure that shouldn't exist.
A shrine made of darkness and crimson light began to spread across the city, its architecture an impossible marriage of beauty and horror. Pillars of shadow rose like teeth from the earth, each one carved with faces frozen in eternal screams.
Iblis's laughter echoed across the city - a sound that made blood crystallize and souls shudder. "You think your parlor tricks can match my power?" His voice distorted the world itself, each word burning. "I, who refused to obey the Will of God? I, who-"
He never finished. The shrine's expansion wasn't just destruction - it was methodical annihilation. Buildings, people, the very ground itself - all of it was systematically dissected by blades of shadow that cut through dimensions themselves.
The screams weren't just sounds - they were concepts given voice, each one perfectly preserved in the endless archive of horror that the shrine represented.
"Look at the precision," Alexander noted, his voice clinical despite the overwhelming terror around them. "The shrine isn't touching any of the Originals as they flee. Perfect control even while he unmakes an entire city. I doubt he even needs to do anything to start this, it all feels like a show..."
They watched as Satan's army tried to fight back. Djinn unleashed their smokeless fire, corrupted vampires threw themselves at the advancing shadows, mortal wizards attempted spells of binding and banishment.
But the shrine didn't just destroy them - it analyzed them, catalogued them, added their essence to its ever-growing collection of perfect moments of horror.
Satan himself tried to escape, his form shifting between a thousand terrible shapes, each one more impossible than the last. His wings of sinful flames burned against the encroaching darkness, but even he couldn't escape the shrine's inexorable advance.
The fallen angel's wings burned against the shrine's advance. The city shook as Satan's power clashed with the shrine's shadows, buildings crumbling under the force of their battle.
Satan screamed one of genuine pain as the shrine's blades caught him. The shadows cut through his smokeless fire like it was paper, methodically dissecting his power.
With a final explosion of infernal energy that leveled what remained of the surrounding district, Satan tore free. His form was wounded, parts of his fire dimmed to barely flickering embers, but he escaped.
The cost was visible - where once he had been pure majesty and terror, now his flame sputtered like a damaged torch, parts of his power simply... gone.
The vision shifted again, reality reassembling itself around them. They were back in the Salvatore boarding house, but something had changed. The shadows in the room moved differently now, as if they'd learned to watch more carefully.
Katherine was shaking, blood trickling from her nose. "Now you understand," she whispered. "Why running was pointless. Why fighting is..."
"Impossible?" Elena suggested, her voice trembling.
"No," Katherine laughed hollowly. "Nothing so simple as impossible. What we just saw... that wasn't even him truly trying. That was him putting on a show."
"A show?" Damon's usual sarcasm had completely vanished. "He unmade an entire city. He made Satan himself retreat."
"And he did it with style," Katherine's smile was bitter. "Perfect precision, beautiful devastation. Because that's what he does - turns destruction into art. Makes horror into something... elegant."
Alexander hadn't moved from the circle, his eyes fixed on something only he could see. "The shrine," he said quietly. "It wasn't just destruction. It was... analysis. Every death, every moment of terror, perfectly preserved and studied."
"Like a scientist examining specimens," Stefan realized. "But on a scale that..."
"That shouldn't be possible," Bonnie finished, her voice shaking as her ancestors' power faded. "The amount of control required to create something like that, to maintain it while fighting..."
"And that was centuries ago," Katherine added. "Imagine what he can do now."
The shadows in the room seemed to pulse in agreement, and suddenly everyone was very aware of how exposed they felt. Even through Alexander's protection, even through time's distance, they'd glimpsed something beyond comprehension.
"Still think Elijah's plan will work?" Katherine asked softly. "Still think you can trap something that treats reality itself like clay to be molded?"
Before anyone could respond, every light in the boarding house exploded simultaneously. In the perfect darkness that followed, they all saw it - crimson light pulsing through the shadows like veins in a vast, living thing.
"He knows," Bonnie whispered. "He knows we looked."
Katherine's laugh held an edge of hysteria. "Of course he knows. He probably wanted us to see. Another perfect lesson in futility, another masterpiece of despair."
"Then why..." Elena started, but Katherine cut her off.
"Why show us? Why let us witness?" Her smile was terrible in the darkness. "Because that's what he does. He shows you exactly what he is, exactly what he's capable of, and then..." she touched her scar, which now pulsed with crimson light, "he lets you live with that knowledge."
The shadows began to retreat, leaving them in normal darkness, but everyone knew something had changed. They'd looked behind the curtain, seen power that shouldn't exist, and now...
Now they had to live with that understanding.
"We should..." Stefan began, but stopped as Alexander suddenly gasped.
The youngest Salvatore was staring at his reflection in the window, but it wasn't moving with him. Instead, it watched them with black eyes and a smile that didn't belong on Alexander's face.
"He's here," Katherine whispered, curling in on herself. "He's been here all along, watching through his echo, through his perfect mirror..."
The reflection's smile widened, and suddenly every reflective surface in the room showed the same thing - Alexander's face with those terrible black eyes, watching them with patient amusement as the walls themselves began to bleed.
"Run," Katherine suggested softly. "Or don't. In the end, it won't matter. Like Sun Wukong, we're all just dancing in his palm."
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(Author note: Hello everyone! I hope you all liked this chapter.
Do tell how you found it.
Vali likes being dramatic, even in terrible situations, he has his fun.
So yeah, please comment and review,
And I hope to see you all later,
Bye!)