You know, fire is said to be one of the deadliest things to have ever existed. Thank you Prometheus for that gift to humanity, it heals, illuminates, makes the world a brighter place to exist in. It is the spark of life itself and it is also a dreadful thing. The forest of Mystic Falls was no longer a place of life. For a two-mile radius surrounding the impact zone, the geography had been rewritten in a language of fire and fused silica.
The shockwave from Michael's Sol Invictus hadn't just knocked down trees, oh no, no, no it had disintegrated them all. Where ancient oaks once stood, there were now only "shadow-brands" with scorched outlines on the ground where the wood had vaporized before it could even fall. The ground itself had been cooked into a smooth bowl of black glass, still glowing with a dull, subterranean red heat.
But the most gruesome testament to Michael's true power lay in the remains of Klaus's hybrid army back at the mansion.
A dozen hybrids had been stationed as a perimeter guard around the mansion of their master, supernatural soldiers who believed their new found immortality made them gods among men. When the light hit, that belief was erased in a microsecond.
The First Circle of the blast, those closest to the blast didn't even have time to scream or wonder what was happening. They had heard titanic explosions coming from the forest and blasts of light but not like this. The sheer, unadulterated thermal energy didn't just burn their skin; it bypassed the physicality of their existence. Because Michael's fire was birthed from the soul of a Hellhound, it acted as a universal solvent for supernatural essence. These hybrids were vaporized instantly. Their bodies didn't leave behind charred bones; they left behind shimmering, greyish stains on the floor and the literal ash of their souls.
The Second Circle which was further out, fared little better. One hybrid, a man who had once been a ruthless biker in Tennessee, was granted a fate most would consider as hell, he could be seen fused to the remains of a stone gatepost. The heat had been so intense it had melted his daylight ring into his bone, and then melted the bone into the stone. He wasn't dead in the traditional sense; his vampire healing was trying to knit together flesh that was now part of the mineral structure of the earth. He was a living statue of agony, his eyes turned to milky glass and his mouth locked in a silent permanent wail before he finally gave up and died.
The air above around the mansion was heated up and filled with a thick, strange, shimmering particulate of a fine, crystalline powder. If Michael was here to see it he would classify it as the "essence" the magical residue of vampires and werewolves stripped of their form. It fell like a macabre snow, coating the scorched earth in a layer of silver-grey.
A few survivors, those who were lucky to have survived by running away crawled at the edges of the second circle. Their clothes had been burned away, their skin replaced by raw, weeping muscle that struggled to regenerate under the lingering "hell-heat." One female hybrid tried to stand, her hands clawing at the superheated air, but her lungs had been seared shut by the initial intake of the heat-storm. She collapsed with her body turning to embers from the inside out as the lingering Hellhound energy consumed what was left of her sire-bond.
From the distance, the Mikaelson Manor stood as a dark silhouette against the dying orange glow of the horizon. It had been shielded by the boundary spell, but the force of the blast had still cracked its foundation and blown every window inward.
The forest was silent, there were no crickets, no owls and only superheated wind. Only the sound of the cooling floor cracking like a thousand tiny mirrors breaking at once could be heard.
Then, a hand glowing with the low, steady thrum of a cooling forge reached up from the center of the glass pit.
Michael climbed out of the crater, his feet crunching on the remains of nature around him. He looked at the wasteland he had created, the "ash-snow" landing on his bare, lava-cracked shoulders. He didn't look horrified. Instead he gave a quiet sigh with a look of regret. This was the reason why he never went all out, tge damages and the amount of death would be catastrophic. He was aware he was akin to a natural disaster walking about and because of that he'd promised not to ever use this amount of his power likely unless it was truly necessary. He reached out and caught a flake of the soul-ash, watching it dissolve against his thumb.
"My apologies, may you all find your versions of peace in the afterlife. At least you wouldn't be bound to the other side" Michael murmured, his voice echoing in the dead silence, "I'll have to work on the spread of the Sol invictus."
He turned his gaze toward the manor. The dinner party wasn't over yet, and he still had siblings he'd like to turn into orphans, not that they'd mind of course.
—————
The departure of Michael and the Wendigo had been a violent expulsion of air and stone, leaving a vacuum of sound that the Banshee promptly filled with her final, agonizing note. As the two monsters vanished into the dark canopy of the forest and miles away from them, the exquisite woman standing by the shattered remains of the grand piano finally eased her posture. Her throat ceased its frantic vibration, and her jaw began to click back into place.
She turned with a vacant gaze back toward the occupants of the room. The scene was one of absolute domestic ruin. Elena, Jeremy, Alaric, Meredith, and Liz Forbes, along with Bonnie, lay scattered across the cold marble floor like broken dolls discarded by a petulant child. The sonic frequency had been a physical assault on their human physiology; their brains had simply triggered a total shutdown to prevent permanent hemorrhaging. Though they remained alive, their breathing had taken on a deep, shallow heave, their bodies trapped in a state of profound unconsciousness.
Near the threshold of the foyer, Caroline and Tyler fared little better. The initial sonic blast had caught them as they attempted to flee, throwing them like ragdolls to the very edge of the room. Tyler lay slumped against the base of a fluted column, blood leaking profusely from his ears, his werewolf resilience the only thing keeping him from death.
The room, however, was still too crowded for Esther's liking.
Elijah, Klaus, and Rebekah had managed to claw their way back to their knees, though the effort looked gargantuan. They remained pinned by Esther's magic, the spell she used had turned their thousand-year-old blood into liquid lead, making every heartbeat a labor of agony. They watched through a haze of pain and disbelief as Kol or rather, the physical shell of their brother now acting as a puppet for their mother strolled through the wreckage with a sickeningly graceful gait.
"The humans are so fragile," Esther remarked through Kol's mouth.
She paused, looking down at the unconscious humans with a gaze of pure apathy. A flicker of a thought passed through her borrowed mind: 'How pitiful.' She had once sought to protect these creatures, but now they were nothing more than obstacles. The collateral cannot be avoided, it would seem. She let out a long, weary sigh through Kol's lungs and came to a stop beside the prone forms of Sheriff Forbes and Alaric Saltzman. She looked at them not as people, but as debris.
"But these others," she murmured, her gaze, Kol's eyes shifting toward Damon, Anna and Stefan who had managed to stay conscious through the Banshee's scream. "These are just... clutter."
With a casual, almost bored flick of Kol's wrist, a sound like a dozen dry branches breaking in a winter wind filled the ballroom.
CRACK.
The necks of every remaining conscious guest snapped in perfect, gruesome unison. Damon, Anna, Caroline and Stefan dropped instantly. The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by the ragged breathing of the three pinned siblings.
"There," Esther-in-Kol whispered. A soft, terrifying smile stretched Kol's handsome features into something unrecognizable. "Now we can have a proper family meeting. Without the... extras."
She walked toward the center of the room, her boots clicking softly on the marble until she stood directly over Klaus. With a slow, deliberate movement, she reached out a hand and began stroking his hair. The gesture was filled with a maternal tenderness so misplaced in this house of death that it made Klaus recoil in a sudden, violent spasm of pain.
"Niklaus," she cooed, her fingers trailing through his hair with a gentleness that felt like a razor's edge. "My bravest, most broken boy. You always were the loudest to cry out for attention. Look at what you've built in my absence. A house of cards, built on a foundation of blood and a desperate, pathetic need to not be alone. You even went so far as to breed new species of abominations, dragging the world further into the dark just so you could have a pack to lead."
She sighed, a sound of profound disappointment that vibrated through Kol's vocal cords. "I am so disappointed, Niklaus. To see my little boy corrupted to this point... you are the very reason the witches on the Other Side punished me so. They made me feel every scream you caused. They held me accountable for your every sin." She paused, her expression shifting as a serene, terrifying smile took hold of Kol's face. "But I forgive you. After all, I made you what you are. I know it must have been hard on you, carrying that darkness alone. But do not worry... I will rectify it. I will rectify it all."
"Kill... me..." Klaus rasped. The sound was a jagged tear in the silence. His fangs were bared in a snarl, his gums bleeding from the effort to shift his jaw, but he couldn't lift his head an inch from the cold marble. "Just... do it... you coward."
"In time, my son," Esther replied, her voice dropping to a low, melodic purr that was utterly at odds with the carnage in the room. "But first, you must understand why this is necessary. You think Michael is your savior? You think the fire he brings is a gift?"
She turned Kol's head toward the shattered windows. On the horizon, the night sky was pulsing. Bright flashes of violet and orange light ignited the clouds over and over again, the rhythmic, violent signatures of the Wendigo keeping the Hellhound locked in a stalemate of pure destruction.
"How?" Rebekah choked out, her voice trembling with a mixture of grief and fury. "How did you get to him? To use your own son... to turn Kol into nothing but a puppet..."
"I found him on the outskirts of town," Esther-in-Kol . "He was gorging himself on the blood of the innocent, lost to his hunger as he always is. All it took was a little spell, a momentary lapse in his guard, and voila. I had him on his knees, ready to faithfully serve his mother. It's a shame Finn isn't here as well; he was always the only one of you who truly understood the weight of your existence."
She straightened Kol's posture, smoothed the silk of his lapel, and looked at the three of them with a chilling finality. "We should begin then."
Elijah's eyes were fixed on her, burning with a silent, desperate question. Esther didn't wait for him to find the breath to ask for it.
"I am doing this for the betterment of this world, Elijah," she said firmly.
"Betterment?" Elijah struggled against the leaden weight in his veins, his voice breaking out as a strained whisper. "You want to use us... to unlock a seal... to unleash untold horrors back onto this world. You call the return of those monsters betterment?"
"It is the natural order," Esther retorted, her voice rising with the fervor of what Elijah could only classify as a zealot. "That is how the world was originally, before the balance was tipped, you vampires are the anomaly, Elijah. Not them."
"You're insane," Klaus spat, his voice regaining a sliver of its usual venom. "You've spent a thousand years in a cage and now you want to burn the world down just to spite us!"
"I want to cleanse the world!" Esther shouted back, the power of her conviction rattling the remaining glass in the chandeliers. "You have had your time! You have bled this earth dry for ten centuries!"
"You will never succeed," Elijah wheezed, his gaze shifting toward the flashes on the horizon. "As long as Michael is alive... as long as he stands... your 'natural order' will never take root. He is the friction you cannot overcome."
Suddenly they heard a jarring sound, a cold, ethereal resonance that felt like ice water in their ears. "It is only a matter of time," the banshee said, face turned toward the forest. "It is only a matter of time before they finally get rid of that opposition. My Lord will emerge as the victor. And when the order of the world of old comes again... not Michael, and certainly not you, will be able to stand in the way."
She stepped forward, her presence suddenly looming larger than the room itself. "My Lord will be the Lord of you all. The Lord of the Living, the Dead, and everything that has been forgotten."
Elijah stared up at his mother, his face became a mask of dignified grief, "This is not justice, Mother. This is madness. You speak of the 'natural order,' but you seek to restore a world of chaos and primeval hunger. You have traded your maternal love for the whispers of a demon, and in doing so, you have become more of a monster than any of the children you seek to destroy."
"You have always been so eloquent in your delusions, Elijah," Esther-in-Kol replied, her voice sounding cold to him.
"You're a hypocrite!" Rebekah cried out, her voice cracking as she struggled against the magical paralysis. "You talk of cleansing, but you're using the blood of the very 'abominations' you hate to do your dirty work. You're just as cursed as we are!"
"Worse," Klaus spat, his eyes burning with gold. "At least we don't pretend our murders are an act of mercy. You're just a pathetic ghost playing god with lives you no longer understand."
Esther opened Kol's mouth to deliver a scathing retort, but the words died in his throat.
The entire room was suddenly washed in a blinding, flash of white light, a light so intense it bleached the color from the walls and turned the shadows into ink. A heartbeat later, a low-frequency rumble arrived, a sound so deep it wasn't heard as much as felt in the marrow. The manor groaned; the floorboards shivered, and the grand chandelier above them swung violently, shedding crystal shards like frozen tears onto the marble floor.
The sky through the shattered window-frames was no longer dark. It was a terrifying, brilliant white, as if a second sun had been born in the heart of the woods.
Elijah's eyes tracked the brilliance, his mind reeling. 'What in the name of God was that?'
Then came the heat.
Even with the boundary spell acting as a magical heat sink, the very air in the room became superheated. Their vampire skin, usually cool to the touch, felt instantly dry and raw. The moisture in the air evaporated in a hiss, and the smell of scorched stone wafted in from the exterior.
Esther's borrowed eyes widened, the iridescent sheen in Kol's pupils flickering as she stared at the horizon. "This... this is what he truly is?" she whispered, her voice trembling with a rare thread of genuine shock. "That much power? A sun in a shroud of flesh."
She shook her head, her face hardening again. "He is more of a monster than even I imagined. But even a star can be extinguished. Against the Lord of Hell and the tide of the old world, even this will not be enough."
She looked back down at her children, her expression resetting into the rigid, terrifying mask of a zealot.
"I am not here to punish you, my children," she repeated, her voice rising above the distant roar of the firestorm. "I am here to save you from the eternity that awaits you. Better to die by my hand, here in the light of the moon, than to be consumed by the fires of the pit that he carries within him. I am giving you a clean end."
Rebekah let out a choked sob, her face pressed against the cold, vibrating marble. "Mother... please... don't do this. I don't want to die like this."
"Hush, Rebekah," Esther whispered, moving toward the center of the three siblings. She raised Kol's hands, "The ritual has already begun and the blood has been called."