England, 1620
Aleksandr stood at the prow of the galleon, cloak whipping in the brine-laced wind. The cold spray of the Atlantic did not bite him as it did the mortal settlers huddled below deck. He stared at the horizon — endless gray, the promise of an untamed continent beyond.
Kol lounged against the mainmast, boots braced, eyes glittering with mischief. "Are we really following the Puritans across an ocean for a swamp, brother?"
Aleksandr did not turn. "Not for the swamp. For the magic that sleeps beneath it."
Kol snorted. "You and your prophecies. You'd think after five hundred years you'd get bored of witches and their riddles."
Aleksandr's lips curved, but there was no warmth in it. "When you are king, you cannot afford to be bored."
Kol eyed him sidelong. "King of what? Muddy villages and tobacco fields?"
Aleksandr's gaze cut through the mist. "King of everything. This new land is raw. The witches here are fractured. They have no covens like the Old World. No church to hunt them yet. I will give them a home. Our home."
Kol grinned, fangs peeking. "And if they refuse?"
Aleksandr's Stigma flared, crimson runes flickering across his iris. "Then I burn the roots and plant my own."
Mystic Falls, 1650
The village was nothing more than a scattering of cabins and cleared fields then — a place so small it might be swallowed by the endless forest overnight. But to Aleksandr, standing at the edge of the clearing where a ring of stones hummed with ley line power, it was more precious than any palace in Florence.
He knelt, pressing his palm to the earth. The runes crawled down his arm, sinking into the soil.
Rebekah's laughter drifted through the trees. She approached, trailing her skirts through the snow. "You look like a monk praying to dirt."
Aleksandr lifted his head, a rare spark of true feeling in his cold eyes. "This place will keep us alive, Bekah."
She frowned, brushing snow from his hair. "I don't understand."
Aleksandr's voice softened. "This land listens. The witches here — they are tied to the earth. If I can bind our family's blood to these veins, it will feed us. Shelter us. Even if our enemies hunt us across oceans."
Rebekah sat beside him, her blonde hair glowing in the moonlight. "You always have a plan, don't you, big brother?"
His smile, this time, was real. "I will always have a plan. For you."
In the hidden heart of the woods, a circle of hooded witches knelt around Aleksandr. Their leader, a woman whose face was a mask of white ash and river clay, raised her hands to the sky.
"You ask for our fealty," she rasped. "Why should the First People serve the wolf who became demon?"
Aleksandr's eyes glowed with the Stigma's power. "Because the demons who come after me will not ask. They will take. And I will stand between you and them."
She hissed, testing him. "And if you betray us?"
He leaned down, breath cold as death against her cheek. "Then you may burn me from the earth yourselves."
The witches shivered as his rune-marked palm pressed to theirs — forging a pact older than the New World's maps. Blood for magic. Shelter for loyalty. A covenant to last centuries.
A distant farmhouse, 1692
Bonfires flickered in the snow. Another purge, another witch hunt. Mortals with pitchforks and scripture in their trembling hands.
Aleksandr watched from the shadows as one of his witches, no older than fifteen, was dragged screaming to the stake.
Rebekah touched his arm. "Are we just going to let them—?"
Aleksandr stepped forward. No hesitation. No roar of fury — just the cold efficiency of an ancient predator.
By dawn, the farmhouse was a tomb of broken throats and blood-smeared floors. Not a soul escaped to spread the tale.
He stood in the ashes, Rebekah at his side, and gave the survivors — the ones loyal to him — new names, new lands deeper into the frontier. The serpent would coil tighter around Mystic Falls.
No witch would ever burn on his soil again.
1702
To my loyal sons and daughters of the Ættar —
You are to spread your roots further west. Seed the settlements, guide the covens, bind the wolf bloodlines to our cause. Each generation will whisper my name as legend — the eldest, the serpent, the shadow king. They may fear me, but they will never dare strike.
When the blood calls us home, Mystic Falls will not be a village. It will be our throne.
— A.M.
London, 1750
Klaus leaned over a map of the colonies, his clawed finger tapping the dot that marked Mystic Falls. "All this time, brother, and you still cling to that patch of forest?"
Aleksandr's smile was razor-sharp. "That patch of forest will be the heart that feeds us for eternity."
Klaus bared his teeth in amusement. "And what of the doppelgängers? The witches? The hunters who will come for us again and again?"
Aleksandr rolled the map closed with a flick of his wrist. "Then let them come."
He rose, cloak swirling, the Alpha Stigma burning bright behind his eyes — a promise that the world, no matter how it changed, would always bend back to the serpent's coil.
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