𝐊𝐀𝐋𝐎𝐏𝐒𝐈𝐀

𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐦 . XXVIII .

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𝓥enturing into the Lafayette once more left a sour taste in the vampires mouth, Kol felt the need to protest but whatever was now imbued upon Evelyn's skin was of the utmost importance to resolve; even if that meant crossing paths with the harvest witches once more. He'd almost failed her once before and he wasn't intending on doing so again as she'd done her best ever since they met to ensure his ongoing existence. So if he needed to walk through hell by her side to solve this mystery then he'd do so without complaint or question. 

It was unnerving to say the least, the not knowing. He'd spent the hours that she'd been healing from her almost fatal ordeal scouring the pages of old grimoires and history books in search of what these markings were. They weren't anything that he'd crossed before and his inconsistent entanglement with witches over the last millennia had played its part in influencing many practices across the world. The frustration that bubbled within him as there remained no answer recorded was too much for him to bare. He quite often found his gaze returning to Evelyn, watching as she recovered from injuries sustained from her connection to him. He was never one to truly dwell on guilt, but when it came to her.. the guilt was unfaltering. 

So at her suggestion to return to the very witches who had left them to the mercy of the Hollow, he couldn't help but feel this would end badly. He didn't want to be right about this, so when Evelyn word's came to an abrupt stop he couldn't help but feel his heart sink. He turned his head towards her, just in time to see as she began to topple forward. Kol's reflexes kicked in instinctively, catching her in his arms before she could hit the ground. He knelt down on the ground, turning her in his arms to face him. A hand quickly moving over to her neck, feeling her pulse beating strong beneath his fingers. Thank god. He snapped his head back up towards the harvest girls, gritting his teeth in anger. "What did you do to her?" He roars, his grip upon the witch tightening as his darkened gaze looked between Amy and Jessica. 

"Do not intervene" Jessica retorted quickly, both witches hands held out to either side of themselves. It had to be some sort of connection or projection they were creating with Evelyn and what he assumed was the ancestors. He remembered venturing into that place and when you are not a friend to those ancestors it can be a chilling experience.

Kol tried to steady himself, focus remaining of the LaRue witch's face. Silently praying that she was okay. But once again, he was helpless in helping her. All he could do, was wait.

• • • • • • •

As the harvest girls pulled Evelyn from her body it felt like her consciousness had been pulled from her own body and thrust into a new world, as if she had been swept away by a powerful current but her body was left behind within the Lafayette. The sensations were both strange and terrifying, she didn't know what awaited her. She was overcome with a sense of displacement and disorientation, as she became aware that she was no longer in her own world, but had been thrust into a new one. Into the ancestral plane. 

Evelyn stepped forward, her breath shallow as the world around her shifted. The air grew thick, charged with a hum that vibrated in her bones. It was not the kind of place one simply came and went within; the Ancestral Plane folded around her like a living thing, a sentient tide dragging her into its depths. The moment she crossed the unseen threshold, the fabric of reality thinned, and the city she had known peeled away like parchment set to flame. Revealing a skeleton of the very city that she'd been born in, nurtured within.

The sky was a bruised violet, neither dawn nor dusk, an eternal twilight suffused with an eerie luminescence that had no discernible source. Beneath her feet, the earth pulsed, warm, ancient, alive. The pavement here was not mere stone; it was steeped in the magic of those who had come before, their whispers curling through the heavy air like threads of smoke. Each step she took felt heavier, as though the weight of countless souls pressed against her shoulders.