Grief hung over the Mikaelson home like a shroud. The loss of Henrik was a wound that would not close, each day reopening with the memory of his laughter, the echo of his absence. Esther sat by the hearth, her eyes hollow, her hands trembling as she clutched a lock of her youngest son's hair.
Mikael's rage was relentless. "We are not leaving," he declared, voice hard as iron. "We will not run from beasts. We will become stronger. We will survive."
Esther's heart ached with the weight of her husband's words. She had already lost Freya to Dahlia's bargain, and now Henrik to the werewolves. She could not bear to lose another child. Desperation drove her to the forbidden—magic older than the trees, whispered about only in the darkest corners of the world.
She sought her friend Ayana, a wise witch, for counsel. Ayana warned her, "Nature will not be defied without consequence. The spirits will punish such arrogance." But Esther's resolve was unbreakable.
That night, beneath the pale gaze of the moon, Esther gathered her family in secret. She called upon the sun for life, the white oak for immortality, and the blood of the doppelgänger, Tatia, for power. She mixed her enchanted blood with wine and bade her husband and children—Finn, Elijah, Niklaus, Kol, and Rebekah—to drink.
Mikael, ever the warrior, was the first to obey. "We will be stronger than the wolves," he vowed. "Nothing will threaten us again."
One by one, Esther drove Mikael's sword through their hearts. The pain was brief, the darkness absolute. When they awoke, the world was changed.
They were in transition—neither living nor dead, their senses sharpened, their hunger overwhelming. On Mikael's command, they fed on the blood of a village girl, the taste of her life sealing their fate123.
The transformation was complete. The Mikaelsons became the first vampires: immortal, powerful, and cursed. Sunlight seared their skin, vervain burned their veins, and the white oak—the source of their immortality—became their only weakness34
.
But nature, in its wisdom, demanded balance. The Mikaelsons' new existence came with a terrible price: a ceaseless thirst for blood, an aversion to the sun, and a vulnerability to the wood that had granted them eternal life. They were no longer human; they were something new, something the world had never seen.
As the family grappled with their new reality, Esther watched in silence, her heart torn between relief and regret. She had saved her children, but at what cost?
In the shadows beyond their home, the world shifted. A tremor ran through the magical ley lines, a warning that something unnatural had taken root. The age of the Originals had begun, and with it, the world would never be the same.