"The Nightmare" by Henry Fuseli
"Where have you been Niklaus?" Elijah greets his brother.
"What is so important that you've called me here?" Kalus responds.
"We have a situation on our hands," Elijah begins. "Someone has been killing vampires."
"And what do I care? I can't be killed."
Elijah steps toward his younger half-brother, commanding the space between them.
"And yet we frequently find ourselves narrowly escaping death," Elijah reminds his brother. "Don't brush this off so easily, brother. We don't know what it is yet."
Elijah leads him to the site of Darin's murder. The young vampire had been laid out with his arms and legs spread. His entire body is covered in symbols, each of them carved into his skin. The strangest part of the scene is that the dark, ashy veins that indicate a vampire is dead are only visible from his fingertips to biceps.
"Obviously the work of a witch," Klaus observes. "Why do his arms look like that?"
"Since you took so long to get here, I've noticed something else as well. When I called you, the veins only reached the elbow. They're expanding, which tells me that he's still dying."
"That seems painful," Klaus steps toward the body, observing.
"Quite."
"And these symbols," Klaus notes. "They're Viking."