CHAPTER 3: INTERROGATION AND INSTINCT
Alaric's office felt like a confession booth designed by someone with questionable priorities. Shelves of forbidden grimoires climbed the walls like literary ivy, their leather spines worn smooth by centuries of desperate scholars. A collection of crossbows dominated one corner—everything from medieval arbalests to modern compound weapons that hummed with supernatural awareness. The centerpiece was Alaric's desk, mahogany scarred by years of supernatural crises, topped with stacks of papers and a coffee mug that declared him the "World's Okayest Headmaster" in Comic Sans font.
Alen settled into the chair across from his father and prepared to lie.
The morning's demonstration replayed in his mind—thirty feet of impossible distance bridged by magic that shouldn't exist, Hope's corrupted energy flowing into him like water finding its level. He could still feel traces of the Hollow's influence crawling beneath his skin, alien and patient and wrong.
I siphoned from the thing that's been terrorizing her for months, he realized with growing unease. And it felt... natural.
"Son." Alaric's voice carried the weight of parental concern and professional curiosity in equal measure. "Ranged siphoning isn't documented anywhere in the literature. Your mother's worried. I'm worried. Where did this come from?"
The truth was impossible: I died in another world and a cosmic entity gave me powers to rewrite your story. The Entity's curse would scramble those words before they left his throat anyway. Which left him with fragments of truth wrapped in layers of necessary deception.
"I've been researching," Alen said, meeting his father's gaze directly. "In the restricted section. Testing theories about how siphoning actually works at the fundamental level."
Alaric's eyebrows rose. "The restricted section is warded. Students need permission to access—"
"I'm very persuasive." The words came out with more confidence than Alen felt. "And technically, I am a Saltzman. Family name carries weight around here."
A long moment of silence stretched between them. Alen could see his father processing—the man who'd raised him from birth weighing that against the son who'd just demonstrated impossible abilities with casual ease.
"You're hiding something," Alaric said finally. His voice remained gentle, but there was steel underneath. "I can see it in your eyes. Whatever's going on, whatever's driving this sudden... evolution... you can tell me. When you're ready, I'm here."
Guilt twisted in Alen's chest. This man had loved him, raised him, worried about him for eighteen years. And now that love was directed at someone who'd inherited those memories without earning them.
I'm not your son, he thought. Your real son died the moment I took his place. I'm just the thing wearing his face.
But that was a truth that would destroy them both.
"I know, Dad," he said instead. "I just... I need to prove I can handle this first. Prove I'm not the scared kid who let Klaus Mikaelson intimidate him into running away."
Understanding flickered in Alaric's expression. Hope. Of course it came back to Hope.
"Alen, what happened between you and Hope three years ago—"
"Isn't something I can fix with explanations." Alen stood, restless energy driving him toward the window. Outside, students moved between buildings with the casual confidence of the magically gifted. "I need to be stronger. Better. Someone who can actually protect the people I care about instead of abandoning them when things get complicated."
"And this new ability is part of that?"
"It's a start."
Alaric studied him for a long moment. "Show me."
The request was quiet but carried the authority of both father and headmaster. Alen turned from the window, seeing genuine curiosity mixed with concern in the older man's expression.
"Show you what?"
"How far this evolution has progressed. I want to understand what we're dealing with."
Alaric moved to his desk phone and pressed a speed dial button. "Dorian? Could you bring a practice dummy to my office? The spelled ones from the advanced combat class."
Five minutes later, Dorian Williams arrived with a training mannequin that looked like it had seen better decades. The practice dummy was humanoid in shape but clearly artificial—canvas and wood reinforced with steel, covered in a network of carved runes that glowed faintly with contained magic.
"Standard combat dummy," Dorian explained, setting it in the center of the office. "Reinforced with protection spells, impact absorption, and basic threat simulation. Nothing fancy, but it'll give you something to work with."
Alen approached the dummy and placed his hands on its shoulders. The magic flowing through it was complex—layered spells woven together like a musical harmony. Protection charms hummed alongside durability enchantments, with threads of kinetic absorption magic woven throughout.
He began to siphon.
The magic flowed into him, and with it came understanding. Not the analytical comprehension of a student studying spell theory, but the intuitive grasp of someone who could see the underlying mathematics of reality itself.
It's all patterns, he realized as the magic settled into his personal reserves. Spells are just... grammar. Syntax. Language written in energy and intention.
The siphoning was complete, leaving the dummy mundane and powerless. But Alen barely noticed. His mind was racing, seeing possibilities that shouldn't exist.
Fire magic created heat through rapid molecular vibration. Ice magic slowed those same vibrations to crystalline stillness. But what if you combined them? Not side by side, but occupying the same space? What if you created flames that burned cold, ice that generated heat?
His hands moved without conscious direction, shaping the absorbed magic according to principles he understood without learning. The spell took form in his mind first—contradictory elements woven together in ways that defied conventional understanding.
"Alen?" Alaric's voice seemed to come from very far away. "What are you doing?"
The magic exploded from his hands in a wave of impossible blue fire. Flames that burned with the light and heat of a forge but felt cold as winter air cascaded over the practice dummy. Ice crystals formed wherever the fire touched, but instead of extinguishing the flames, they fed them. The dummy became a sculpture of frozen fire, encased in ice that somehow burned.
The spell held for thirty seconds before finally guttering out, leaving the dummy encased in a shell of normal ice that began melting immediately in the office's warmth.
Alen staggered, hands trembling with exhaustion and exhilaration in equal measure. He'd just crafted a spell that violated basic magical theory, and it had felt as natural as breathing.
Dorian's mouth hung open. "That's... that spell doesn't exist."
"It does now," Alen said, voice barely above a whisper.
Alaric moved to examine the dummy, running his fingers over the rapidly melting ice. "The thermal readings are impossible. The ice was sub-zero, but the flames were burning at over a thousand degrees. In the same space. Simultaneously."
I just wrote a new law of magical physics, Alen thought, equal parts terrified and amazed. Without training, without study, without even understanding what I was doing. I just... knew.
The implications were staggering. If he could craft spells intuitively, if magic responded to his will rather than requiring academic understanding, then the limits weren't his power—they were his imagination.
And his imagination had been shaped by watching a television show about vampires and witches and the cosmic forces that threatened to destroy them all.
"How?" Dorian asked, circling the dummy like it might explode. "The fundamental forces involved are contradictory. The spell should have torn itself apart."
Alen shook his head. "I don't know. I just... felt it. Like the magic wanted to work that way."
Alaric's phone rang, interrupting the increasingly surreal conversation. He glanced at the caller ID and his expression softened.
"Caroline," he said, answering on speaker. "Perfect timing."
"Ric? You sound weird. Is everything okay?" Caroline's voice filled the office, warm and musical with the faint Southern lilt that strengthened when she was emotional. "I got your text about Alen's demonstration. You said it was impossible?"
Alen's heart clenched at the genuine concern in her voice. This was his mother—not biologically, but in every way that mattered. The woman who'd sung him to sleep as a child, who'd worried through every fever and celebrated every accomplishment. The woman who was traveling the world trying to secure funding for supernatural education because she believed children like him deserved a safe place to learn.
And she had no idea she was talking to a stranger wearing her son's face.
"I'm okay, Mom," he said, moving closer to the phone. "I promise. I've just been pushing myself. Wanted to make you proud."
"Oh, baby." Caroline's voice cracked slightly. "You always make me proud. Always. But I need you to be safe more than I need you to be powerful, okay? I can't—" She stopped, collecting herself. "I can't lose anyone else."
Stefan. She was thinking about Stefan Salvatore, the love she'd lost to heroism and sacrifice. The man whose ashes sat in an urn in Caroline's bedroom, whose death had driven her to throw herself into work rather than face the emptiness at home.
The resurrection coin in Alen's pocket seemed to pulse with warmth, reminding him of its presence. One coin. One perfect resurrection. One chance to bring back the man who'd completed Caroline's world.
But first, he needed more coins. And for that, he needed to find villains worth harvesting.
"I'll be careful," he promised, hating how easily the lie came. "I just... I want to be someone you can count on. Someone who doesn't run away when things get hard."
"You've never run away from anything that mattered," Caroline said firmly. "And if you think for one second that I'm not proud of the young man you've become, then we need to have a much longer conversation when I get home."
Warmth spread through Alen's chest—love that belonged to someone else but felt real nonetheless. "When are you coming home?"
"Two weeks, maybe three. I'm finalizing agreements with the European supernatural education consortium. After that, I'm yours for at least a month. We'll catch up properly."
"I'd like that."
"Good. Now let me talk to your father again. And Alen? Whatever this new ability is, don't let it change who you are at your core. Power is just a tool. It's how you use it that defines you."
If only she knew what tools he was planning to use.
Alaric took the phone off speaker and moved to the far corner of his office, voice dropping to a murmur as he reassured Caroline that their son was safe, healthy, and not in immediate danger of magical explosion.
Dorian continued studying the dummy, occasionally poking the remaining ice with the tip of his pen. "I've never seen anything like this," he said to Alen. "The spell construct defies basic magical theory. It's like you convinced fire and ice to coexist peacefully."
"Maybe that's what happened," Alen said. "Maybe I just asked nicely."
It was meant as a joke, but Dorian's expression grew thoughtful. "Actually... that's not entirely impossible. Magic responds to will and intention. If your will was strong enough, your understanding deep enough, you might be able to impose harmony where nature suggests conflict."
Alaric finished his call and returned to them, his expression a mixture of concern and paternal pride. "Your mother wants weekly check-ins. Daily if you demonstrate any more impossible spells."
"I can live with that."
"Good. Because I want answers, son. Real ones. This level of magical innovation doesn't happen overnight, and it doesn't happen by accident." Alaric's voice carried the gentle authority that had made him an effective teacher and headmaster. "I'm not going to push you for explanations you're not ready to give. But I need to know you're thinking about the implications of what you can do."
Alen nodded. "I am. Every day."
More than Alaric could possibly imagine.
"Alright. You're dismissed. But Alen?" His father's voice stopped him at the door. "Whatever drove you to push your limits this hard... just remember that strength without wisdom is dangerous. And wisdom usually comes from accepting help when it's offered."
"I'll remember."
Alen stepped into the hallway and immediately spotted Hope leaning against the wall twenty feet away. Her posture was casual, but her eyes held the focused intensity of someone who'd been listening at doors.
Their gazes met across the distance. For a moment, neither moved. Then Hope straightened and began walking away—not quickly, not with any obvious urgency, but with the deliberate pace of someone who expected to be followed.
She wants to talk, Alen realized. After three years of silence, she's finally ready to have the conversation we should have had when everything fell apart.
His pulse quickened. This was dangerous territory—Hope was perceptive, and the Hollow would make her suspicious of any emotional manipulation. But it was also necessary. If he was going to help her, if he was going to find a way to neutralize the ancient evil living in her chest, he needed her to trust him.
And trust, he was learning, was something that had to be rebuilt one careful conversation at a time.
Alen followed her into the gathering dusk, toward whatever reckoning awaited them both.
Author's Note / Promotion:
Your Reviews and Power Stones are the best way to show support. They help me know what you're enjoying and bring in new readers!
Can't wait for the next chapter of [The Originals/Legacies Im A Saltzman]?
You don't have to. Get instant access to more content by supporting me on Patreon. I have three options so you can pick how far ahead you want to be:
🪙 Silver Tier ($6): Read 10 chapters ahead of the public site.
👑 Gold Tier ($9): Get 15-20 chapters ahead of the public site.
💎 Platinum Tier ($15): The ultimate experience. Get new chapters the second I finish them (20+ chapters ahead!). No waiting for weekly drops, just pure, instant access.
Your support helps me write more .
👉 Find it all at patreon.com/fanficwriter1