The air was thick and cold, heavy with danger. Stefan watched, his vampire heart a frozen drum in his chest.Before him,Leo held Damon with one hand. Damon's legs dangled, his hands clawing uselessly at the iron grip around his throat.
He's going to kill him, Stefan thought, a stark terror cutting through him. This boy lost his parents. He must think Damon had something to do with it.
Centuries of frustration and anger with his brother meant nothing at this moment. All Stefan saw was a family about to be destroyed.
"Leo, stop!" Stefan's voice was sharp, cutting through the night. He took a step forward, his hands open, his green eyes wide with a desperate sincerity. "Look at me. Please."
Leo's dark eyes, cold as the sky above, shifted to him. Damon made a wet, gurgling sound.
"I don't know what you think he did," Stefan said, his words rushing out, calm but urgent. "And I won't defend the terrible things he has done. He's a killer. I know that better than anyone." He took another step, closing the distance, his gaze locked on Leo's. "But if you do this… if you kill him in cold blood, for revenge or for justice or for any reason at all… then look at your hand. Look at what you're holding."
Stefan's voice dropped, becoming soft, almost gentle, but every syllable was a carefully placed blade.
"You'll be holding the proof that he didn't just take your family from you," Stefan whispered, his eyes blazing with painful truth. "You'll be holding the proof that he took you, too. He'll have turned you into exactly what he is. Another monster in the dark, who solves things with violence. Is that what your parents would have wanted? For you to become the very thing that hurt them?"
Stefan saw it—a flicker in Leo's eyes. A minute crack in the cold certainty. It was the barest hint of doubt, but it was enough.
"Don't let his evil become yours," Stefan pleaded, his final, quiet words hanging in the air. "Please. Put him down. Not for him. For the person you still are, right now, before it's too late."
Damon's struggles had weakened. His furious, glazed eyes were fixed on Stefan, full of rage and something else—a shocked understanding. Leo's face was a mask, but the tension in his jaw had tightened, wrestling with the moral trap Stefan had just laid.
For a long, silent second, no one moved. The only sound was Damon's choked breathing.
Then, Leo's hand, which was wrapped around Damon's throat, suddenly moved. It was a quick, sharp turn of his wrist and a tight squeeze of his fingers, all at once.
A sharp CRACK cut through the quiet of the night. It was a clean, terrible sound—the sound of something solid and important breaking under pure force.
All the fight instantly went out of Damon's body. Every muscle, from his struggling legs to his clawing hands, went slack at the exact same moment. He was no longer a person trying to escape; he was just a dead weight.
Leo simply opened his fingers and let go.
Damon dropped. He collapsed straight down, hitting the gravel in a loose, boneless heap. His head landed at a horrible angle. His neck was bent sharply to the side in a way that necks are not meant to bend, making his whole posture look wrong and broken.He wasn't dead, but he was utterly broken, paralyzed.
Leo finally looked away from Damon, his eyes meeting Stefan's again. The brief doubt was gone, replaced by a clear, unsettling calm. He had chosen a third path—not release, not death, but decisive control.
Stefan stared at Damon's motionless form, and for one single second, a powerful feeling of relief washed through him. His brother was alive. That was the only thing that mattered. The fear that had frozen him began to melt away.
But in the very next instant, before that relief could even settle, a colder, sharper feeling stabbed through it. The danger wasn't over. He had forgotten where he was and who he was with.
Then, everything happened too fast to see.
The world in front of Stefan became a streaky blur of darkness and light. There was no warning, no movement he could track. One moment he was standing on the gravel, staring. The next, an unbelievable force smashed directly into his stomach.
It felt like being hit by a car. The impact was so hard and so sudden it didn't even feel like pain at first—just a shocking, overwhelming pressure that emptied his lungs completely. The force of Leo's kick didn't just knock the wind out of him; it lifted his entire body off the ground.
He was airborne. His feet left the gravel, and he flew backward, powerless to stop himself.He was like a ragdoll thrown by a giant.
His back slammed into the hard, wooden planks of the porch. The sound was a loud, ugly THUD that echoed in his own bones. Every bit of air that had been forced from his lungs by the kick was now driven out again by the crash.
Before the agony could fully register, Leo was there. A hand fisted in his collar, yanking him up like a child's doll until they were eye to eye. Stefan's vision swam, but he could see the cold, analytical look on Leo's face, not rage, but something worse—dispassionate calculation.
"You're correct about one thing, Stefan," Leo said, his voice a low, intimate murmur that slithered into Stefan's ears. "I can't kill him. My hands are still… clean." He tilted his head, as if sharing a secret."To die is to be given a gift. It is freedom from pain, from consequence. It is a kindness." He paused, letting the idea settle. "So, why would I ever offer such a kindness to him?"
He pulled Stefan closer until their faces were only inches apart. His eyes were dark, and in them was a kindness that felt completely wrong and frightening. "I am going to let him live, Stefan. I am going to give him an extremely long life. But I will take away everything that makes life worth having. I will remove every single thing he enjoys, every bit of his strength, and every piece of his pride. The hundreds of years in front of him will feel like he is constantly falling down a deep, dark hole where he can never see the bottom or find a way out." Leo smiled. It looked almost gentle, but it was full of cruelty. "And you will be right here, watching it all happen. You will see exactly what your decision to show mercy has earned for him."
As he spoke those terrible words,Stefan watched in growing horror as the boy's face began to change. It started at the corners of his eyes. The skin there darkened, turning a deep grayish-brown, like wet soil drying in the sun. Then, fine lines appeared in that darkened skin. They spread quickly, branching out like a web of tiny cracks across his temples and the bridge of his nose, making his skin look brittle and old.
Before Stefan could process that, a new color began to seep out from under those cracks. It was a deep, ugly red. It wasn't a blush of embarrassment or heat. It was a solid, bloody color that spread outward, covering his cheeks, his forehead, his entire face. It looked less like skin changing color and more like his real face—a raw, red layer—was pushing up from underneath and breaking through a pale shell that was shattering apart.
Finally, his eyes changed.They seemed to swallow all the light around them. The warm brown color vanished completely, replaced by a black so pure and deep it had no detail. There was no iris, no white, no shine. They were just two flat, dark holes in that red, cracked face. Looking into them felt like looking into a space with no bottom and no hope. They weren't human eyes anymore. They were the eyes of something that promised only emptiness and dread.
A wave of pure terror hit Stefan—a kind of fear that was deeper and more basic than anything he had ever felt, even as a vampire. This wasn't fear of a stronger predator. This was the raw, animal fear of facing something that was not just dangerous, but deeply, profoundly wrong.
Without thinking, acting on an instinct to survive that was older than his vampirism, he threw his hands up and shoved them hard against Leo's chest. It wasn't a punch; it was a frantic, desperate push, using every ounce of strength he had, fueled only by the need to get away.
The force broke Leo's grip on his collar. As soon as he was free, Stefan scrambled backward. He didn't stand up. He pushed himself along the ground with his hands and feet, his body hunched and crablike, moving as fast as he could. The rough, weathered wood of the porch planks scraped against his palms and tore at his clothes, but he didn't care. He ignored the sharp, hot pain that flared in his ribs from where Leo had kicked him. That pain was a distant, unimportant signal compared to the screaming need in his brain to put distance between himself and the monstrous thing in front of him.
He tried to speak. The word "You…" finally choked its way out of his throat, but his voice was barely a whisper, shaking so badly it almost broke apart. He was gasping, struggling to pull in enough air to make sound. His mind was reeling, unable to find the right question, but the most basic one forced its way out. "What… what are you?" he managed, each word trembling with a mix of terror and utter confusion.
***
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