The Originals: Forgotten Pact

📖 Chapter 1 - Letter from the Past

"We bury what we fear.
But some things do not stay dead."
- Klaus Mikaelson (unpublished letter, 1862)

I didn't return for closure.
I came back because I ran out of reasons not to.

You'd think ancestral homes would feel warm. Nostalgic. Full of flickering memories, pressed flowers between books, maybe a broken music box singing softly in the corner.

Not this place.

The Mikaelson estate greeted me like a grudge. It stood beneath a sky choked with gray clouds, windows like hollow eyes watching from above. It hadn't changed. Time here was a myth.

Inside, dust floated like ghosts pretending not to stare. The scent - dried roses, mold, and something distinctly... wrong - greeted me like an old friend you regret friending on Facebook.

And then came the sound.
Soft, deliberate.
A floorboard creaking in the attic, long after I'd stopped moving.

Lovely. Just what I needed. A haunted house with an attitude.

I climbed the stairs, fully expecting a dramatic gust of wind to knock me over or perhaps an ethereal voice whispering "turn back".

No such luck. The attic was too quiet - unnervingly so. You know that silence that isn't empty, but full? Like something is holding its breath?

That.

Among broken dolls, claw-marked furniture, and a mirror that definitely showed something behind me that wasn't there when I turned around - I found it.

A trunk.
Carved with ancient Norse runes, humming softly under my fingertips like it remembered every secret it held - and hated them all.

It opened easily. Too easily.

Inside, wrapped in parchment that looked uncomfortably like skin - and let's not ask questions we don't want answers to - was a letter.

To my future blood,
You think you are ready. You are not.
The Blood Pact was not a mistake. It was a necessity.
We were hunted - not by men, but by time itself.
And time... has teeth.

If you have opened this, it means the cycle has begun again.
You must find the other half.
Before they do.

No signature.
But I knew the handwriting. Klaus. Always dramatic. Always vague. Probably scribbled this down between murdering warlocks and brooding on rooftops.

Along with the letter was a map.
But not of New Orleans. Not Mystic Falls. Not even Earth, as far as I could tell.
The symbols were ancient. The paper smelled faintly of ash and crushed rosemary.

In the center, one word, scorched into the parchment:

"Oravell."

Never heard of it. I whispered it aloud.

Big mistake.

The chandelier above me shivered. A painting fell from the wall and shattered, revealing... another wall. Because of course it did.

But the real surprise?
Something in the shadows moved.

I ran. Like any rational horror protagonist who actually wants to survive chapter two.

Downstairs, the library still reeked of bourbon, dust, and Mikaelson arrogance. I tore through the old books, looking for anything - a clue, a warning, a "Do Not Summon Ancient Vampire Gods" sticky note. No such luck.

Instead, I found a second letter.
Older.
Worn.
Written in Icelandic runes identical to the ones tattooed along Freya's back.

Translated roughly:

Seven rise when three fall.
Blood awakens what silence has kept.
The pact is bone, not ink.

My spine did not like that sentence.

I didn't sleep that night.
I lay on the floor of the great hall, watching shadows crawl across the ceiling in patterns that made less sense the longer I stared. I began to wonder if the house was breathing.
Then I realized - it was.

At exactly midnight, there was a knock at the door.

Who the hell knocks on a haunted mansion's door?

I opened it.
No one.

But on the step:
A candle. Still burning.
And a note tied to it with red thread.

You've been chosen.
Tell no one.
Or we'll silence them first.

My first instinct was to run.
My second was to scream.
My third was to light the candle, sit in the center of the hallway, and mutter to no one in particular,
"Well, this is fine. Definitely not the start of a horror movie."

💜 This is not a story. This is a warning.
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