The bells of Rouen tolled at dusk, a cold, mournful song that drifted through the foggy streets. Beneath the shadows of its half-built cathedral, Aleksandr watched from the belfry, black cloak blending into the stone. Centuries had passed since the family fled the frozen fjord, but the pattern never changed: they arrived in secret, took what they needed, buried the bodies, and vanished before suspicion could root too deep.
Except Aleksandr never left with empty hands.
He'd learned to harvest more than blood. Secrets. Loyalties. Tithes of coin and power from trembling dukes and desperate kings who turned to monsters when God's mercy failed them.
Rebekah leaned over the bell's rim beside him, hair glinting like pale gold. She was more beautiful now than she had ever been mortal — an immortal siren who wrapped noble sons around her finger before draining them dry.
"It's dreary here," she sighed. "All this gloom and rot. Could we not go somewhere warmer? I hear of a sun-soaked city in the south — Venice, they call it."
Aleksandr's eyes flickered toward the distant rooftops. "Soon. But there's business here first."
"Business." She rolled her eyes, but he caught the faint worry hidden behind her pout. "Is it Father?"
"Not tonight." He turned, brushing his thumb over her jaw. The centuries had not dulled her sweetness. Of them all, she alone still looked at him as Aleks, the brother who held her when thunder shook the earth. He would break the world before letting it tarnish her.
She leaned into his touch, then paused — her nose wrinkled delicately. "Kol's hunting again, isn't he?"
Aleksandr smiled faintly. "Let him. He's a distraction. The real danger tonight is below."
He left her in the tower and drifted down through the nave like a phantom. Mortals had long since fled the cathedral's unfinished bones, leaving only echoes and the steady drip of rain through the cracked roof. But Aleksandr felt the weave of magic waiting for him — bright threads tangling at the altar, alive with a power that felt almost familiar.
A circle of witches — seven this time — stood in a ring of chalk and salt. Their leader was an old woman wrapped in shawls of crimson and black, bones sharp beneath her papery skin. Her eyes snapped to Aleksandr the moment he stepped into the candlelight.
"Eldest," she rasped in French laced with something older. "We have waited long for you."
Aleksandr arched an eyebrow. "Then you've wasted your years. You should have run."
She cackled, a sound like dry reeds snapping. "There is nowhere you do not cast your shadow. So we stand here to greet it — to bind it, if we must."
He let the Alpha Stigma flicker to life behind his eyes — twin crimson spirals coiling over his pupils. The youngest witch flinched so violently she tripped backward into the salt. Bad move.
Aleksandr's hand darted out — runes bloomed across his palm. The circle shattered like glass. With a flick, the young witch dropped to her knees, screaming as her magic unraveled into Aleksandr's waiting veins.
The old crone hissed, her arms rising in a weave of desperate protection. "You think yourself a god — but you are only a beast wearing a crown."
Aleksandr stepped over the salt line. "And yet here you stand, begging the beast for mercy."
When dawn broke, the witches lay in neat rows — their magic stripped and buried inside the Stigma's infinite script. Aleksandr lit a single candle for them before he left, more out of habit than regret. In time, their coven's remains would wither — and the few survivors would crawl to the Ættar for protection, binding themselves to him like the rest.
He emerged into the gray dawn, boots splashed with ash. There, leaning against a carriage wheel with blood on his cuffs, was Niklaus.
"Brother," Klaus drawled. His hair was longer now — curling behind his ears in golden tangles. His eyes, though — they flickered yellow in the dawn light, like an ember struggling to catch flame. "I see you've been busy."
Aleksandr regarded him evenly. "Should you not be running from Father?"
"Shouldn't we?" Klaus's grin was wide but brittle. "He hunts me like an animal. Like something… unnatural."
Aleksandr let the silence stretch. Then he stepped close — close enough to feel the roil of wild magic beneath Klaus's skin.
"You are what you are, Niklaus. Father's hatred will not change that."
Klaus's smile cracked. "What am I, then?"
"More," Aleksandr said softly. "A wolf. A vampire. Something neither could ever tame."
Klaus's hands shook — whether from fear or hunger, Aleksandr could not tell. So he placed his palm against Klaus's heart — the Alpha Stigma flared, tasting the hybrid magic that still slumbered there, tangled with Esther's bindings.
"I could break it for you," Aleksandr murmured.
Klaus's eyes snapped wide. "Break what?"
"The leash. The curse she wove around your heart. I could let the wolf rise — make you whole."
For a heartbeat, Klaus looked like the boy he once was — desperate, starved for approval. But then suspicion clouded his gaze. "And what price would my beloved brother demand in return?"
Aleksandr smiled faintly. "Only your loyalty. Forever."
They parted with nothing spoken — but the seed was planted. One day, Klaus would crawl back. He always did.
Paris, 1242
In the great hall of a half-built fortress that would one day become the Louvre, Aleksandr sat with nobles who whispered prayers into their wine before meeting his eyes. The Ættar spread through the court like smoke, masked as merchants, scribes, and confessors. They tracked every shipment of gold, every peasant revolt, every rumor of witchcraft. Every lever that might move a kingdom fell under Aleksandr's calm hand.
Rebekah drifted between the feasting tables like a ghost — spinning laughter and smiles in her wake. To the nobles, she was a foreign beauty in midnight silk. To the Ættar, she was the living heart of their master's power. No man who tried to claim her lived to see another dawn.
Kol — ever restless — played at duels in the courtyard, the clang of steel ringing beneath the winter sky. He left bodies in the moat more often than not. Finn lingered in a corner like a wraith, half-lost to his own despair.
And Klaus — Klaus brooded in the shadows behind Aleksandr's throne, the wolf at his door but never yet unleashed.
One night, Rebekah curled herself at Aleksandr's side in the high tower chamber. Candlelight flickered over the old Norse runes he'd etched into the walls, binding the room into his protective wards.
She watched him trace the script on his forearm — the Alpha Stigma's runes shimmering like stars under his skin.
"You never stop," she whispered. "Plotting. Binding. Twisting the world around you."
Aleksandr didn't look up. "It's survival."
"It's lonely."
That made him pause. He set down the quill, reaching for her. She let him draw her into his lap, her hair spilling like gold over his shoulder. He pressed a kiss to her temple — a promise he would never break.
"I do this for you," he murmured. "For us."
She traced her fingers over the Stigma, unafraid though it pulsed like a living brand. "And when there's nothing left to take?"
Aleksandr's smile was a blade in the candlelight. "Then we will be all that remains."
Far below, in the catacombs beneath Paris, the Ættar gathered. They wore hoods now — silks when they needed to play at priests, mail when they needed to cut down dissent. Some were witches bound to him by blood oaths. Some were humans who worshipped him as the old Norse once did — an immortal king whose hand could shape magic itself.
In the dark, they chanted a name that was not yet written in any history book.
Aleksandr Mikaelson. Eldest of the Originals. Shadow of the Wolf.
And above them all, in his candlelit tower, the first vampire king traced the lines of the Alpha Stigma, rewriting the world one rune at a time.
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