Mystic Falls, 2012 — A few weeks after Elena chose Damon

The house had never felt more like a tomb.

It was still beautiful, sure. Immaculate, even. Every antique polished, every curtain drawn just enough to let the soft light of early evening cast a golden haze over the wood floors. The fireplace cracked faintly in the distance. A breeze drifted through an open window, stirring the curtains like ghosts passing through.

But for all its warmth and polish, the Salvatore house felt cold. Unlived in. Hollow.

Maybe it was him.

Maybe he was the one who was hollow now.

Stefan sat alone in the parlor, curled slightly in the corner of the worn leather couch, an untouched glass of bourbon resting on his knee. His posture was almost casual, almost relaxed — but nothing about him was still. His foot tapped. His fingers twitched. His jaw clenched and unclenched like clockwork.

He hadn’t spoken to anyone in two days.

Caroline had texted. Damon had knocked once and left. Even Bonnie had checked in with a vague, gentle “hope you’re okay” message.

He wasn’t.

But he didn’t know how to say that.

It had been weeks since Elena told him.

She’d chosen Damon.

There was no dramatic fight. No tearful breakdown. No slammed doors.

Just soft words, carefully chosen. Her voice barely above a whisper as she looked down at her hands, unable to meet his eyes.

“I’m sorry, Stefan,” she’d said, “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

He’d nodded. What else could he do?

She had kissed his cheek.

And then she walked away.

People thought the worst part of heartbreak was the moment it happened — the pain of the actual goodbye.

But that wasn’t true.

The worst part came after. In the quiet.

It came in the mornings when her absence hit like a punch to the ribs. In the phantom smell of her shampoo in the hallway. In the way his hand still hovered over his phone late at night, wanting to text her something small and pointless — a memory, a joke, a song she used to hum — before remembering he didn’t have that right anymore.

She had chosen Damon.

And maybe... maybe she should have. Stefan knew his brother could give her something he never could: fire, chaos, passion.

Stefan had always been the safe option. The steady one. The fixer. The guilt-ridden shadow.

And God, he hated himself for being bitter. For aching when he promised her he’d be okay. For waking up each day wondering what he’d done wrong, or worse — wondering if he’d done everything right and it still hadn’t been enough.

Was it the ripper in him she couldn’t forgive?

Or was it the quiet sadness she couldn’t live with?

The glass trembled slightly in his hand. He took a slow sip of the bourbon, but the taste was hollow now — just routine. Something to do with his hands. Something that numbed the edges.

He leaned back and stared up at the ceiling, the light from the fire flickering across the plaster. The house creaked. A log cracked in the hearth. And outside, the wind whispered through the trees.

Everything was calm.

And yet, everything inside him was breaking.

He’d loved her.

Not in the way people tossed that word around like it meant something simple. He’d loved Elena with every scar he carried. With every century of darkness behind him. With every part of himself he thought no one could ever want.

She had pulled him back. Brought light into his world when all he’d known was blood and guilt.

He would have bled for her.

He had.

And now?

He was just… here.

Watching the fire burn down. Counting the ways she had slipped through his fingers.

The dreams had started a few nights ago.

At first, he didn’t pay them much attention. Just vague flickers — shadows of someone standing too close, the sound of jazz echoing down a hallway, the flicker of candlelight.

But they grew stronger.

More vivid.

Last night, he’d woken gasping, heart racing, with the echo of a man’s voice in his head.

“You won’t remember this, love.”

He didn’t know who the voice belonged to. But it had sent a chill down his spine.

The strange part wasn’t just the dreams themselves. It was how familiar they felt. How his body responded like it remembered — even when his mind insisted he didn’t.

A hand brushing over his jaw. Laughter that made his chest ache. A presence — steady, dark, magnetic.

Always just out of reach.

And always ending with that voice.

“You won’t remember this, love.”

As if someone had taken something from him — something important.

The thought unsettled him. Stefan didn’t forget things. Not like this. He remembered faces from a century ago. Voices. Deaths. Every drop of blood he ever spilled.

So what could possibly be hidden behind that fog in his head?

Who had he forgotten?

His phone buzzed on the coffee table.

He ignored it at first.

When it buzzed again, he sighed and reached for it with a frown.

Text from Caroline.

Just a heads-up… Klaus is back.

Stefan stared at the screen for a long time, thumb hovering above the reply icon.

Klaus.

His name alone was enough to make Stefan’s throat tighten.

Not with fear.

But with something he couldn’t name.

He clenched his jaw, then stood too quickly. The bourbon sloshed over the rim of the glass. His hand shook.

Klaus.

The Original hybrid. The chaos that had haunted their lives for years. The manipulative, destructive monster who had used him, broken him, drawn out the worst in him — and then walked away like it meant nothing.

Stefan hated him.

He should hate him.

Klaus had treated him like a project. A toy. An experiment in bloodlust. He’d unleashed the Ripper and then had the nerve to admire it.

And yet…

There was something else.

A pull he didn’t understand. A sharp, inexplicable pain beneath his ribs that flared up the second he saw that name on the screen.

“You won’t remember this, love.”

The voice rang through his mind again — louder now. Clearer.

His knees buckled slightly. He gripped the edge of the couch, breath caught in his throat.

What the hell was this?

Memories?

Hallucinations?

Guilt?

Was it Klaus’s voice?

No. It couldn’t be.

And yet…

A thousand half-formed images flashed through his mind: Klaus laughing over a gramophone, Klaus pouring bourbon into a crystal glass, Klaus watching him with an expression that looked almost — almost — like affection.

A whisper of a dance. A glance in a hallway. A stolen moment pressed between decades.

He dropped the glass.

It shattered at his feet, bourbon soaking into the rug.

Blood trickled from his palm where the glass had cut him.

He didn’t notice.

The room around him felt like it had changed. The air was thicker. The fire had died down.

Stefan stood in the center of it all, frozen, breathing shallowly.

Something was wrong with him.

He knew that.

But somewhere, deep in the quiet part of him, a memory stirred.

A feeling of warmth.

Of being wanted.

Not pitied. Not needed for protection. Not used.

Wanted.

And it was attached to a voice he couldn’t place — or wouldn’t let himself remember.

“You won’t remember this, love.”

The words clung to him like smoke.

And he wondered, for the first time:

What if he hadn’t been alone all those years?

What if someone had made sure he forgot?

End of Chapter One