1997 – The Boy
Alaric brought home a boy today. His nephew, he says. Ayaan. Six years old, a year older than Elena, with the voice of a child and the eyes of a man who has lived far too long. He doesn't chatter or play the way other children do — he observes. Quietly. Too quietly.
I brushed his hair back and packed his bag, and he looked at me like I was already his mother. Something in me softened. Elena was taken from me, but perhaps this child has been given in return. Strange how quickly I've grown attached.
---
1998 – Questions
I asked Ayaan tonight, half in jest, half in desperation: "Should a person chase their dream, even if it hurts the ones who love them?"
He didn't hesitate. "Dreams are heavier when you drag others with you. But you'll do it anyway."
I laughed, but the sound died in my throat. How could a six-year-old say something like that? He flips through my research notes like puzzles. Languages that take me months — he deciphers in hours. Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, Hebrew.
He doesn't learn them. He remembers them, like he will not see them again.
Maybe he is right!
---
1999 – Katherine
Katherine Pierce came tonight. I invited her in the house. Foolish, perhaps, but she wouldn't come if I didn't invite her inside the home. That was the deal, and I had to see my ancestor with my own eyes.
Ayaan sat in the corner of the living room, staring, unblinking. He recognized something in her — not just the face, but a weight of memory perhaps. It is odd.
She smirked at me, and then at him. "You love playing mommy, don't you?"
Her hand hovered over one of Ayaan's chalk-drawn Yantras on the floor.
He said, calmly, "That mark is older than you. Fire doesn't care if you're four hundred years old, it still burns."
For a second, her smile cracked. Even I was dumbfounded. This child feared no one, maybe the antics of a child. Fear is still a foreign concept to him who hasn't faced the challenges of life.
Katherine's eyes narrowed at him. Then she turned away, composure regained. But I saw it — she didn't like it, and wanted to refute him, but stopped.
---
2000 – Damon
I sought Damon out. He fed me his blood. I thought I wanted it. Thought I was ready.
He snapped at my neck to finish it all— but the necklace. It flared, made a shrieking noise, and shattered. I survived. Not yet turned.
Damon was furious. He thought I was making fun of him, but I didn't. It took a lot of courage to turn. I had finally made my mind, nothing could change it now, not never.
A day later, he brought me to our house. He wanted to punish the boy who created the necklace. Not by killing him, no — he isn't cruel in that way. But he tried to make me feed on Ayaan to finish my transition
"Drink from your son," he told me, mocking the word, "and you'll never long for this world again."
Ayaan stood between us, small and weak. His eyes staring at mine, he was searching for something deep in my soul. Maybe the mother he lost, for a second time. I felt ashamed, horrible then the time when I left Elena at Gilbert's doorsteps.
Damon pressed at the air-wall—he couldn't get in. Ayaan wouldn't invite. The moment he saw us, he said, "Come inside, Mother!". He knew I needed to be invited back to his life.
The Yantra carved into the wooden frame of the door still repelled me, air was pressing me from all sides, but it wasn't hurtful. It was like being in an invisible embrace. I don't know whether it was just my delusion.
It was worse for Damon, the sudden light sparks burned his skin. He laughed, bitter, intrigued. "What are you, little one?"
He left, but I knew — Damon would never forget this incident.
---
2001 – Frenzy
Alaric begged me to stay. He said he didn't care if I was human or a vampire, he only wanted me. He didn't understand. He couldn't. Damon's sire bond had pulled me away, and whatever bond they shared was unraveling.
I hid the truth of the last night. Hid the feeding and the process of turning. But Ayaan saw through me.
He silently offered me another pendant, said it would help me resist. He didn't say what. I put it away in a box.
Few days later, I came home again—in a blood frenzy.
Ayaan was there to meet me in my bloodiest state. He didn't run. He pressed his hands to my temples as I rushed at him, and the storm inside me quieted. Just for a moment, the hunger for blood stilled like calm lake.
I left that night to never return again, he told me: "My path ends in Mystic Falls. The ley lines will make my magic stronger. If you ever want to meet me, that's where you'll find me. And wear that pendant, don't keep it in a box this time."
He was confident that I would come to him. Maybe, but I wasn't so sure.
I couldn't cry at the goodbye. I couldn't feel anymore. But for the first time since turning, I wished I could.
---
December 2007 — Meeting Again
I stood in the shadows tonight and watched her. Elena. My daughter—16 year old. Laughing on the porch, head tilted toward him like he was the center of her world. I shouldn't have stayed. I shouldn't have looked. But I couldn't stop myself.
And then he turned his head — Ayaan. His eyes went straight to the tree line where I stood, as if he had felt me land the second my feet touched the soil beside his garage. He didn't call out. He just waited. He always knew.
Later, when I faced him, I told him the truth that Elena is her daughter. I had to. I told him, she hasn't yet understood him: "You won't be able to keep her if you keep hiding from her. Secrets destroy, no matter how careful you are." I didn't admit that I wanted to know those secrets too .
That I wanted him to trust me with the things he never said out loud. It wasn't only Elena or her, even bonny, her grand-mother and a lot of people in the town had seen him lose his smile little by little.
Everyone noticed his steps getting heavier as days passed, his breath turning turbid, and his skin turning pale. But, no one had the courage to tell him to stop yet. Because no matter how his body weakened or his steps faltered, his eyes were always the same—Dedicated and Confident.
He had always been like that. Even when he gave me the necklace that year, even when I had betrayed his trust in me.
memory::
At the little table in the kitchen, late into nights when even Alaric slept. I saw him bending over the faint lamplight — a small boy with fingers steadier than mine, copying lines from his grandmother's shastra as if he'd read them a thousand times. He braided a thin cord of black thread, set into it a slab of amber and a scrap of lapis, and etched a tiny Yantra across the back with a needle so fine it sang. He murmured syllables under his breath — not childish chants but something older, a slow counting-out in Sanskrit that seemed to arrange the air itself.
When he threaded it around my throat the first time, the world steadied. The hunger did not vanish; it settled into a shape I could live with. The compulsion loosened — not gone, but strangled by something warm and unyielding at my chest. For seven years that little thing kept me sane. It gave me a margin of choice where before there had been none. It let me refuse the blood when I wanted to refuse. It even let me resist Damon or Catherine's sire pull on the nights they tried.
That night before I left, he was embarrassed when I thanked him, like a child hearing an adult praise simple homework. Then he grew serious and said something I have never forgotten: the Yantra is not infinite. "This will hold you," he told me, "but only as long as I keep its lines fed. There will be a time in the future when its strength will fall — by more than half. When that happens, the hunger will come through sharper than before. You cannot rely on it alone."
He did not explain the mechanics much further. He didn't have to. I felt it in the pendant's cool weight against my skin: a tether made of his care, and a warning that even care can thin when stretched.
memory:: end
For more than seven years, I have never stopped my search for history. I have studied and traveled across the breadth of the continent, gone through archives, listened to whispers in forgotten ruins.
I know now what his Yantras mean — the legacy of a SaptaRishi, stretching back more than ten thousand years. The weight of any magic that old is not something a child can bear, but he has somehow found a way to wield this strong power of nature.
His strength to weal this power comes from his blood; and, spirit. Especially his spirit—unusually strong. He can naturally resist Compulsion from a Vampire of Katherine's age. He was born with it. I suspect that his spirit is even stronger than a 1000 year old vampire.
But now it seems, that strength isn't infinite. He is getting weak. The load of magic is too much for his soul and body. He is barely over 16 year old now.
He is channeling the bloodline of Hunters of Saltzman (Germany), the Witches of Bennett (Salem), and the "Prana" of SaptaRishi (India). I don't know how he does it or why, the pain of the imbalance of three bloodlines must be unimaginable; but the prize is also steep. If he is able to successfully balance these three powers—not only suppress—he will be stronger than anyone.
But not now, I can feel the effect of the necklace weakening every week. It started few weeks back. My instinct for blood is suddenly sharpened and the blood lust came unprovoked. This necklace was the one that brought me back—like he said—to Mystic Falls, to find him, my son.
He would not seek mine or anyone's help. I have observed him from when he was 5 year old to almost 10, when I left. This son of mine is too proud and stubbornly so. Sometimes I can't help but wonder whether he really is my blood because of it.
He has never lacked power before. He has Yantras to defend and to strike. If an enemy beyond his reach came for him, he would die with them, but never lose completely. I knew that much from my research on Yantras.
So what is he afraid of? Why does he always seem as if time is running out for him?
When I asked, if what he was doing would be dangerous, he only said: "It isn't about danger. It never was. It's about weakness. I do this because I am weak. And If I fail, it will be because I was too weak."
I didn't believe him. Not for a moment. He isn't weak. He's stronger than anyone I've ever known. And that is what is terrifying about all of it, what is it that he is afraid of! How big of a burden he must be bearing alone.
His last words still haunt me, "When you see me again, if I am no longer myself… the world will already be burning. And when that moment comes, let it be your hands, Isobel — not theirs. I would rather end as your son than live as their prey."
—Isobel