The silver casket scraped across the concrete floor, a harsh, grating sound that filled the empty warehouse. Stefan dragged it one-handed, his expression one of mild amusement, as Marcel's muffled screams and frantic pounding echoed from within. It was like listening to a trapped animal.
He was almost to the large freight exit when the shadows at the far end of the warehouse shifted. Not with the lazy drift of dust motes, but with a purposeful, solid presence.
Four figures stepped into the dim light.
Stefan stopped, his smirk widening. "Well, well. Look what the cat dragged out of the crypt."
Lexi stood front and center, her arms crossed, her face a mask of cold satisfaction. Kai lingered just behind her shoulder, practically vibrating with anticipatory glee. But it was the two men flanking them that made Stefan's eyebrows rise.
They were no longer the desiccated corpses from the cellar. Fed with potent blood, their bodies had healed, flesh and muscle returning to their powerful frames. But their eyes… their eyes held the lingering shadows of decades of conscious, starved darkness. Erik and Alex.
Erik, the larger of the two, had the rigid posture and cold gaze of a soldier. Alex, though slightly leaner, burned with a quiet, focused intensity. They both looked at the silver casket as if it were a long-lost treasure.
"Oh, the dead guys," Stefan said cheerfully. "The ones who pretended to stay dead. I heard you three had a title back in the day. The Trinity." He gestured with his head toward the still-pounding casket. "And yet, this one here betrayed you both. Funny how that works."
Erik's eyes, pale and icy, shifted from the casket to Stefan. "Let us handle him."
It wasn't a request. It was a statement of fact, delivered with the quiet authority of someone who had once helped rule a city.
Stefan's grin was immediate. The allure of watching someone enact a long-awaited revenge was a vice he deeply appreciated. "By all means. Be my guests." He released the chain, letting the casket drop with a heavy, final clang onto the concrete.
He fished in his pocket and tossed a small, ornate key toward Erik, who caught it without looking. "The boss's orders, though. When you're done… and I sincerely hope you take your time… you bury him. Alive. In that." He jerked a thumb at the casket. "Deep. Viktor's words."
Lexi's cold smile didn't reach her eyes. "We'll see to it."
Stefan gave a mock salute and melted back into the shadows, leaving the four of them alone with their prize.
The warehouse fell silent, save for the desperate, scraping sounds from inside the box.
Erik walked forward, the key cold in his hand. He didn't hurry. Each step was deliberate, a predator approaching a trap it had waited decades to spring. Alex moved beside him, a mirror of silent fury.
Erik slid the key into the lock. The clicking sound was deafening in the quiet. The pounding from inside stopped, replaced by a tense, waiting silence.
He threw the lid open.
Marcel was inside, curled slightly, his eyes wide and wild with a mixture of terror and defiance. He saw Erik and Alex looming over him, and for a moment, he was just the boy they had taken in, facing the brothers he had betrayed.
"Erik… Alex…" he breathed, the words barely a whisper.
Erik said nothing. His hand shot out, a blur of motion, and seized Marcel by the throat. He hauled him out of the casket as if he weighed nothing and threw him across the room.
Marcel hit the concrete wall with a sickening crunch, slumping to the floor. He tried to push himself up, his healing factor already mending broken bones, but a boot came down on his back, pinning him. He looked up to see Alex standing over him.
"You used silver chains," Alex said, his voice low and dangerously calm. "An underhanded trick. You knew you couldn't beat us in a straight fight. So you ambushed us. Poisoned us. Then you left us in the dark."
Erik walked over, his footsteps echoing. "We heard everything, Marcel. Every day. The city above us. Your footsteps. The parties. The reign you built on our graves." He crouched down, his face close to Marcel's. "We felt every second. We were aware for all of it."
Marcel struggled, but Alex's foot was like a mountain. "I had to! You were going to bring them back! You would have destroyed everything!"
"It wasn't your choice to make!" Erik's voice cracked through the air like a whip. He was the one trained by Mikael, and the old vampire's brutal efficiency was in every line of his body. He grabbed Marcel's arm, twisted it until the bone snapped with a dry, sickening pop.
Marcel screamed.
"That," Erik said calmly, "is for the first decade."
Alex leaned down, his voice a venomous whisper. "You thought you were a king. But kings don't fear their own brothers." He drove his knee into Marcel's side, feeling the ribs cave in.
What followed was not a frenzied beating. It was a methodical, calculated dismantling. It was vengeance, cold and precise. Erik, the strategist, broke bones with clinical efficiency, each snap and crack a measured payment for a year of agony. Alex, the one who felt things more deeply, inflicted the sharper, more personal pains—a fist to the throat that stole his voice, fingers that clawed deep grooves into his face, refusing to heal.
They didn't speak. There was nothing left to say. The only sounds were the impacts of fists and feet on flesh, the splintering of bone, and Marcel's ragged, choked cries.
Lexi and Kai watched from a few feet away. Lexi's expression was grim, her arms still crossed, a silent witness to the justice she had demanded. Kai, however, looked like a man at the opera, his head tilted, appreciating the brutal artistry on display.
After what felt like an eternity, but was only a few minutes, Marcel lay broken in a pool of his own blood, his body a map of purple bruises and grotesque angles, healing only to be broken again. He was conscious, his vampire biology a curse that kept him awake for every second of the torment.
Erik finally stood up, breathing evenly, not a hair out of place. He looked down at the ruined form at his feet.
"Enough," he said, his voice flat. "The message is received."
Alex delivered one final, savage kick to Marcel's head, a blinding flash of white pain that made the world swim. "That's for thinking you were ever our equal."
Together, Erik and Alex picked up Marcel's limp, twitching body. There was no ceremony, no final words. They carried him to the open silver casket and threw him inside. He landed in a heap, too broken to even struggle.
Erik picked up the heavy lid.
For a single, fleeting moment, his eyes met Marcel's. There was no hatred there anymore. Just a vast, empty disappointment. Then he slammed the lid shut.
The lock clicked.
The sound was final. It was the end of an era.
The four of them stood around the casket, the only sound the faint, desperate scratching from within, a sound that grew fainter and fainter as they began to drag it away, into the deep, waiting earth.