𝕊𝕎𝔼𝔼𝕋 ℂℝ𝔼𝔸𝕋𝕌ℝ𝔼 - ᴛʜᴇ ᴍɪᴋᴀᴇʟꜱᴏɴꜱ

⁰ 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞

Alex's life was...a mess. To put it simply.

She had never known permanence, not really. Home was a fleeting concept, a thing that existed in passing rather than in practice. From the moment she was old enough to walk, her world had been an ever-changing blur of cities and suitcases. First, it was Portland. Then San Francisco. Then Houston. Then New Orleans. And on and on. Sometimes, she wondered if she even had roots or if she was just meant to drift forever, a leaf caught in a wind that never let her settle.

Her mother, Ayla, had called it an adventure. Alex just thought it sucked.

By the time they settled in Chicago, Alex was nine, and for the first time, her mother declared they were staying. Not forever, but long enough. Long enough to teach Alex and her sister, Kaiah, how to control what simmered beneath their skin. The lessons weren't structured—Ayla wasn't the type to follow a syllabus—but they were intense, stretching deep into the night, the apartment thick with the scent of burning herbs, the soft flicker of candlelight casting shadows against the walls. Ayla had a way of watching them that made Alex feel exposed, like her mother could see straight through her. Kaiah needs restraint, she'd say. And you, Alex? You need indulgence.

That was the problem. Kaiah never hesitated to pull from the well of magic inside her, but Alex? Alex barely dipped her fingers in. A siphoner's power wasn't theirs to wield freely—it was taken, drawn, stolen from outside sources. Magic borrowed, magic claimed. Even at nine, Alex had hesitated. She never wanted to take too much, never wanted to pull more than she needed. Maybe it was caution. Maybe it was fear. Maybe it was something she couldn't name.

She never got the chance to figure it out, though.

She was thirteen when she learned what loss really was. The kind of loss that left you hollowed out, stripped bare, wondering if the person you loved had ever truly existed or if they had just been a dream you'd woken up from too soon. One moment, her mother was there—laughing, teaching, living. And then, she wasn't.

Kaiah cried for weeks. Alex didn't.

She just...stopped feeling.

It was like something inside her had been snuffed out, like a switch had flipped and all that remained was static. At night, she would lie awake, eyes burning as she stared at the ceiling until the darkness turned to dawn. And on the worst nights, Kaiah would slip into her bed, curling up beside her like they had when they were younger, her fingers absentmindedly twisting the chain of the necklace their mother had given her. And some nights, Alex would clutch the worn leather bracelet she'd had since she was a baby—the only thing her father had ever given her—and wonder if she would ever feel normal again.

After Ayla's death, they left Chicago behind, another city added to the ever-growing list, and moved to Mystic Falls to live with their uncle, Ethan. He also had magic, just like their mother. A guardian, whether he wanted to be or not. He took them in without hesitation, filling the silence of their grief with steady hands and warm meals, and lessons in magic that were far different from their mother's. Unlike Ayla, Ethan believed in control. Precision. Discipline.

"You can't ignore what you are, Alex," he told her one evening, his voice low, steady, as they sat in the garden behind his house, the scent of candle smoke curling through the air. "Siphoners don't just have magic. You take it. If you don't learn how to wield that, someone else will use it against you."