{ "StoryName": "Buried in the Dark", "ProjectSummary": "Captured by a coven of witches, Elijah is chained immovably inside a cave as they prepare a spell meant to bury him alive. Freya and Klaus race against the crushing earth to dig him out before it’s too late.", "ProjectURL": ".", "ProjectSummaryURL": ".", "isComplete": 1, "Chapters": [ { "ChapterNumber": 1, "ChapterName": "Buried in the Dark", "ChapterURL": ".", "ChapterSummary": "Captured by a coven of witches, Elijah is chained immovably inside a cave as they prepare a spell meant to bury him alive. Freya and Klaus race against the crushing earth to dig him out before it’s too late.", "ChapterContent": "\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

CHAPTER: Buried in the Dark

Summary: Captured by a coven of witches, Elijah is chained immovably inside a cave as they prepare a spell meant to bury him alive. Freya and Klaus race against the crushing earth to dig him out before it’s too late.

⸻

Elijah came back to consciousness slowly, as though climbing up through cold water. The first sensation was weight—crushing, suffocating weight—wrapped tight around his limbs, his chest, his throat. The second was the bite of cold iron digging deep into his skin wherever he tried, even imperceptibly, to shift. And he did try, instinctively, long before he remembered where he was.

The moment he attempted movement, even the barest twitch of a finger, agony ripped up his arms and across his ribs like serrated wire. His breath caught, the iron collar around his throat yanking tight and holding his head upright in a forced, choking angle.

His eyes snapped open.

A cave. A small one—too small, really, for anything but suffering. Low ceiling. Jagged stone walls. Earth packed thick around broken roots. Faint torchlight flickering in unnatural colors, casting warped shadows that seemed to lean in, eager spectators in his misery.

And chains.

Chains spiderwebbed from every surface, anchored into the rock with carved runes glowing a dull, malignant red. Multiple sets bound each limb—arms pulled up, out, and back in a brutal angle that stretched his shoulders to tearing. His wrists were wrenched high above his head, elbows locked, muscles screaming. His legs were pulled outward in opposite directions, spread so wide it strained bone and tendon. More chains encircled his chest and abdomen, layered so tightly he couldn’t even expand his lungs fully.

Behind him, a stone pillar curved into his spine. The witches had chained him into it—pressed so firmly against the cold rock that each breath felt like a punishment.

He tried to inhale deeply.

He couldn’t.

The collar around his throat tugged, choking off the attempt. His breath stuttered, shallow and insufficient, and panic bloomed sharp and immediate—then he beat it down, the way he always did. With brutal will.

A voice drifted from somewhere in the dimness.

“Ah. The eldest awakens.”

Light footsteps scraped across stone. A woman stepped into view, pale hair braided with bone fragments, black paint spiraling around her eyes like claws reaching toward her temples. She smiled at him with gentle delight—far too gentle for someone who had bound him like this.

“How wonderful,” she murmured, tracing a rune glowing on one of the chains at his abdomen. “It means we won’t have to waste magic to rouse you before the burial.”

His throat tightened further under the collar. Speech was barely an option, but Elijah forced sound through the pressure.

“Whatever… ritual… you have planned—” His words came fractured, clipped by lack of air. “It will fail.”

The witch made a sympathetic noise. “Oh, you brave things always say that. But this spell isn’t meant to kill you. Not entirely.” She leaned in, eyes bright. “It’s meant to keep you gone. Buried alive with no way to reach the surface. No leverage. No strength. No movement. No breath.” Her smile widened. “No escape.”

She flicked her fingers.

Magic surged through the chains.

They tightened.

All at once.

The metal compressed around his limbs like living serpents constricting. Elijah’s body arched involuntarily—not that it could truly move more than a millimeter. The multiple layers of chains pulled in every direction, the pillar digging deeper into his spine. The ones circling his ribs dug inward with crushing force that forced the air from his lungs in a shocked, strangled gasp.

He tried to inhale and got almost nothing. His chest could not expand. His ribs could not shift. Panic flooded him again—ugly, primal—but this time there was no space in his lungs to even gasp with it.

The witch tilted her head. “Good. They need to be tight before we begin layering the next rounds.”

The next rounds?

Elijah’s vision flickered at the edges.

He could not breathe. Not fully. Barely at all.

And yet the chains continued to tighten—incrementally, cruelly—each fraction of pressure another bite into flesh and bone. The iron dug until it felt like it reached nerve endings themselves.

More witches appeared from deeper in the cave—five, then seven, then more. A whole coven. Their combined magic thrummed off the stone walls, a vibrating pressure that worked its way under Elijah’s skin.

“Begin,” the pale-haired witch commanded.

They obeyed.

More chains—new ones—were dragged from carved chests along the wall. Heavy lengths of iron and steel clattered over the floor like the approach of something monstrous. Each chain glowed faintly with the same red runes, humming like a heartbeat.

They started with his arms.

One witch slung an additional chain over Elijah’s right arm, layering it atop the first. Then another. Then a third. The metal piled until it formed a thick sheath around the limb, weighing down the joint, tightening the already excruciating stretch. Elijah tried to tense, to brace for pain—instinct fighting logic—but even that was denied. His muscles had no space to contract.

His body remained a statue forced into a position designed strictly for torment.

They repeated the process on his left arm. Heavy chain after chain dragged over bare skin already rubbed raw. Each new weight compressed the ones beneath it, squeezing his arms into the pillar and pulling them further outward, until it felt like the sockets would rip free.

His breath trembled in shallow, panicked sips. Not enough. Not nearly enough.

Then came more chains across his torso.

They looped thick iron bands around him—multiple layers that overlapped and crossed and pinned him even deeper into the stone. Metal scraped metal as they tightened each one, locking them so snugly that Elijah felt the bruise-deep pressure sinking into organs, bones, everything.

His chest could not rise at all now. Only the uppermost part of his lungs could take in the smallest wisp of air, and even that was a battle.

When they moved to his neck, Elijah’s eyes darkened with fury. The existing collar was already compressing his throat, holding his head rigidly upright like a mounted trophy. But they added more—coiling chains around his neck like garrotes, each one pulled snug until he saw blinding sparks behind his eyes.

Still not enough for them.

They added layers around his legs—thick, dragging lengths that wrapped thigh, knee, ankle, pulling him outward until agony streaked through tendons like lightning.

He could no longer feel where each chain ended or began. He was encased. Buried already, in metal.

And he could not move.

Not an inch. Not even to struggle.

The pale-haired witch stepped back, admiring her work.

“Perfect. He is immobilized beyond any hope of breaking free, even for an Original.”

She lifted her hands.

The others formed a circle.

Magic swelled—not bright, but heavy, thickening the air itself until the cave felt like a lung being filled, preparing to exhale something catastrophic.

The pale witch smiled at Elijah—almost affectionately.

“Goodbye, Elijah Mikaelson.”

Her palms slammed onto the ground.

The earth answered.

The cave shuddered violently, dust raining from the ceiling in gritty bursts. The floor cracked open near the entrance, soil churning upward like a rising wave. Debris lifted on currents of magic as though gravity no longer applied.

Elijah stared, eyes wide, chest burning from lack of breath.

They were going to bury him alive.

The earth surged.

Soil and rocks and broken roots poured inward, filling the cave from the edges. The witches stepped back, letting the spell work, watching with a collective, reverent quiet as the ground swallowed the space whole.

It hit Elijah’s feet first—cold, crushing weight piling up and spreading across his legs. It climbed fast, faster than he could have imagined, up to his knees, hips, chest, stacking thick around him until he was entombed in dirt with only his head still exposed.

He couldn’t expand his lungs. Couldn’t draw a deep breath even before the soil pressed into him. Now the pressure doubled, tripled, squeezing in from every direction.

The earth kept rising.

Up his throat.

To his jaw.

Then—

Over his mouth.

His nose.

His eyes.

Darkness consumed him.

And above that darkness—far away, through layers of rock and magic—voices yelled his name.

Freya’s voice.

Klaus’s roar.

The witches vanished from the surface moments later, their spell complete.

And Elijah, buried alive under crushing soil, chains, and stone, could do nothing but cling to consciousness and the faint hope that his siblings would reach him before the earth stole his final breath.

The first shovel of earth explodes upward under Klaus’s hands.

Not a shovel. His claws.

The forest is wrong here, and he feels it before Freya even speaks the words. The energy is thick and stagnant, as if the soil has been holding its breath. The trees curve away from a seemingly innocuous slope of ground, their roots twisted into defensive shapes.

“Elijah is beneath us,” Freya says, voice tight, eyes still glowing faintly from the scrying. Sweat beads at her temple. “Deep. Too deep. Bound. They’ve… sealed him.”

Klaus doesn’t respond. There’s no room in him for words. There is only a roar, trapped in his chest, and a feral terror clawing at his insides.

He drops to his knees and tears into the earth.

Dirt flies in wild arcs. His fingers shift to claws, nails lengthening, tips already stained dark with soil. He digs like something rabid, like a beast that has scented blood.

“Klaus—” Freya grabs his shoulder. “Wait—there are wards—”

The ground answers his touch with a violent crackle of magic. Sigils buried under the top layer of soil flare to life, invisible threads of power wrapping around his arms and surging into his chest. For a human, it would be like being hit by electricity. For Klaus, it is like being speared from the inside.

Pain detonates along his nerves. His hands seize. He snarls, forced back on his heels, teeth bared.

Freya yanks him away, whispering a rapid string of words under her breath. Her fingers blaze silver as she slams her palm into the ground. The spell net meets her power with a shriek like metal scraping glass. For a moment, the air is filled with the scent of scorched earth and something older—like burned marrow.

“They wove a containment lattice,” Freya grits out, eyes narrowing as she fights it. “Layered. Designed to trap power, block access. They didn’t just want him buried, they wanted him erased.”

Klaus’s chest heaves, rage barely leashed. “Break it.”

“I am trying.” Her hand shakes. “Give me a moment.”

A moment.

They don’t have moments. Every second is another breath Elijah may not be able to take.

Under the ground, beneath the choke of soil and stone and iron, Elijah’s world has shrunk to pressure and darkness and sound.

The sound of his own heartbeat—sluggish, uneven. The sound of dirt settling around him in tiny, grinding shifts. The faint echo of his siblings’ voices from… somewhere. He doesn’t know how far. It could be inches; it could be miles.

The chains don’t let him move. The soil doesn’t let him breathe.

His lungs are burning. Supernatural endurance means the agony lasts longer, that his body hangs in the balance between needing air and refusing to shut down just yet. Each almost-breath is a razor dragged along the inside of his chest. The multiple layers of chain around his ribs and abdomen feel welded to bone, each link an anchor dragging him further into suffocation.

He tries to force his lungs to fill, to draw air through packed soil. The attempt brings only a faint, gritty sting as dust scrapes along his nostrils and throat. No air. No relief.

His vision, already stolen by darkness, begins to flicker in another way—the world going distant inside his own mind, sound muffling, awareness fraying at the edges.

No.

He clings to consciousness with stubbornness that borders on madness. He has survived a thousand things. Daggers through the heart. The brink of rot and decay. Still, this feels different. This feels like being smothered slowly while completely immobilized, as if the earth itself has been weaponized specifically against him.

He can’t move his fingers. Can’t jerk a shoulder. Can’t kick against anything.

He is a statue buried alive.

From far above, through layers of weight and spellwork, something cracks.

A faint, distant thunder, muted by soil.

Freya’s spell.

Klaus.

He focuses on that, digs his mind into the possibility like a lifeline. Tries to pull himself toward it.

Another moment, and he’ll—

Blackness surges up, swallowing thought mid-sentence.

Above, Freya is snarling her own incantation through clenched teeth, fingers sunk knuckle-deep into the earth. Runes surge up around her, pale light countering the faint red lines that spiderweb under the surface.

“I need you to stop thinking and let me work,” she snaps at Klaus without looking up, voice hoarse. “Do you want to trigger their kill-switch?”

“Do you see a body yet?” Klaus growls, every word a barely controlled vibration. “Then no, I don’t give a damn about their precautions. I will tear this forest apart—”

“If you break the lattice wrong, it will collapse the soil inward,” Freya chokes out, nearly shouting over the magical feedback shrieking in the air. “He’s already crushed under it. If it compacts any further, it will finish what they started.”

Klaus stills, breathing hard.

That image—Elijah’s ribs cracking, his lungs compressed into uselessness, his bones grinding under tons of earth—is enough to force him back half a step.

“Fine,” he says, the word bitten off. “Tell me where to dig.”

Freya’s hands tremble as she twists her fingers through invisible lines of force, weaving her power around and into the lattice, not to shatter it but to unhook its locks one at a time.

They fight her.

Every point she touches stings. Every node spits back ugly echoes, as if the witches are still laughing through their spell.

“They bound him to anchor points in the cave,” she mutters. “Chains tied to runes in the stone. The burial spell is keyed into those same anchors. I can release… some pressure, but if I break it completely, their ward collapses.”

“And buries him further,” Klaus says, jaw flexing, imagination painting picture after picture of his brother suffocating below.

“Exactly.” Her eyes flash brighter. The soil around them spasms, a visible ripple shuddering through it like a living thing trying to shrug them off.

Freya barks a word, hammered in old power. The ripple freezes.

“I can create a channel,” she says quickly. “A path down. Narrow, controlled. But Klaus—” Her gaze snaps to him, naked fear in the blue. “He is deep. And the chains… the spell keeping them tight… I can feel it. They’ve designed it so even if he survives the burial, he cannot break free on his own.”

Klaus bares his teeth. “Then he won’t be on his own.”

He drops to his knees beside her again. “Make your channel, sister. I’ll do the rest.”

She hesitates only a heartbeat before nodding.

“Move with me. If the earth shifts too much, we both die down there with him.”

He almost smiles; it comes out more like an animal baring its fangs. “You think that frightens me?”

Freya doesn’t answer. She presses both palms flat to the ground, chanting now in a low, steady rhythm. The words are old, predating human language, a sequence of sounds that hook themselves into the world and pry space where there was none.

The earth directly beneath them begins to sink—not in a chaotic collapse, but in a controlled, spiraling descent, as if invisible hands are scooping out a narrow shaft, compressing the displaced soil to the sides.

A hole opens.

Dark, tight.

“Go,” Freya says, breath catching. “I’ll hold the channel stable. Don’t deviate. And Klaus—if you see runes, do not touch them unless I say you can.”

Klaus doesn’t waste time with a response. He drops into the hole, hands and boots catching on the rough, rapidly forming wall. The descent is steep, close enough that his shoulders brush the sides. Soil grinds against his clothes and skin. Roots claw at him. Dust chokes the air.

He hears Freya’s voice above, growing more distant and strained, holding the shaft from collapsing.

Below, the darkness thickens until even his heightened senses are fighting for clarity. He digs his fingers into the wall, letting his weight drag him faster, trusting his reflexes.

He can smell Elijah now.

Blood. Old blood, dried and iron-heavy. The faint, sharp tang of magic burned into flesh. And beneath it, subtle but unmistakable, the scent of his brother—held in stasis by earth, metal, and pain.

The mix twists something savage inside Klaus.

“Hold, Freya,” he mutters under his breath, more prayer than order. “Just a bit further—”

The shaft angles sharply, pinning him briefly between rough earth and rock. He grunts, wedges himself through. The soil here is denser, more compact. He can feel the spell-layer, a subtle hum pressing against his skin.

“There’s a secondary barrier,” Freya’s voice echoes down the shaft, thinner now. “You’re nearing the cave. I’m going to prise it open a fraction. Brace yourself; it may lash out.”

Klaus curls his hands into the dirt and waits.

The air ahead crackles. A thin line of crimson light appears, jagged in the dark—a seam in reality itself. Freya mutters something above; the seam widens with a shriek like tearing bone.

Power slams into him, hot and vicious, clawing at his veins. Klaus snarls, fangs flashing, as the magic tries to keep him out, to strip him to atoms.

He forces his way through.

On the other side, the cave opens around him—a small, compressed space now mostly filled with earth. The ward has kept a pocket barely big enough for what remains visible.

Elijah’s face.

The rest of him is buried.

Klaus freezes.

For a heartbeat, brotherly rage gives way to something far more fragile: pure horror.

Elijah’s head is tilted back, neck at an unnatural angle, held up by chains so tightly layered they look like a single thick collar fused to his throat. His skin is gray-pale under the smear of dirt and dried blood. Soil clings in gritty streaks along his jaw and hairline. His eyes are closed, lashes dusted with earth.

Only the very top of his chest shows, and even that is packed flush with soil and chains.

He looks… small. Smaller than Klaus has ever seen him.

“Freya,” Klaus says, voice roughened. “I see him.”

“Is he—?” She doesn’t finish.

Klaus drops down, boots sinking immediately into compacted earth. The pressure of soil against his calves tells him how tightly Elijah is encased.

He leans in, mud cracking under his knees, hand hovering over Elijah’s face before he dares touch.

Elijah doesn’t move.

“Klaus?” Freya’s voice shakes.

He presses two fingers to Elijah’s neck, searching through layers of cold metal and colder skin.

For a moment he feels nothing.

A second stretches out, thin and unbearable.

Then—

There. The faintest flutter. A heartbeat, slow and sluggish, like something beating from very far away.

Relief slams into Klaus so hard his vision blurs with it. He exhales shakily, eyes closing briefly.

“He lives,” he says. “Barely. He’s—Jesus, Freya, they’ve wrapped him in so much iron he can’t even bloody breathe.”

Freya lets out a strained laugh that’s half-sob from above, but the magic in the shaft wavers dangerously.

“Do not distract me,” she gasps. “I’ve got the channel held and the pressure dampened, but if I lose focus, all the earth we displaced will try to reclaim the space he’s in and—”

“Crush him.” Klaus’s jaw tightens. “Understood. Hold it. I’ll get him out.”

He turns back to Elijah, eyes tracking every visible inch, cataloguing the injury he can see and the far worse he can’t.

Chains around the neck, layered so thickly the individual links blur. A network around the shoulders and chest, barely visible beneath the rim of the soil but tight enough that Klaus can see the indentations in the faint exposed skin. Elijah’s lips are parted just slightly, as if his body is still trying, on some instinctive level, to drag in air it can’t have.

Klaus digs his fingers into the soil around Elijah’s mouth and nose, scooping it away gently but quickly. The earth is packed hard; it takes both strength and care not to send clumps collapsing inward.

“Elijah,” he murmurs as he works, voice low, almost conversational through teeth set in concentration. “I am not amused, brother. You look like something someone tried to plant.”

He clears Elijah’s lips, his nose, brushing dirt away. Elijah doesn’t respond. His lashes don’t even twitch.

More soil comes free, falling in clods to the limited floor space. Klaus scoops it away from Elijah’s face, pushing it behind him. The cave feels more claustrophobic with every handful removed, as if the walls themselves are bending inward.

Freya’s power hums sharply above, straining.

“Klaus,” she warns, voice thinner than before. “Do not dig indiscriminately. The more you remove, the more weight the lattice has to redistribute. I’m… I’m juggling a spell the size of a house on my shoulders.”

“You always wanted to show off,” Klaus mutters. “Consider this your grand performance.”

His fingers reach the topmost layer of chains circling Elijah’s chest.

Here, the cruelty of the witches’ work is undeniable.

The chains are not simply coiled—they are woven, threaded over and under each other, locked into the stone pillar behind in intricate patterns. Each link bears a rune, crawling like an infection, pulsing with a dull, sickly light.

No wonder Elijah couldn’t so much as flex a muscle. The metal isn’t just physical; it’s metaphysical, anchoring his strength, his speed, his will.

Klaus curls his hands around the nearest length.

It burns.

Magic leaps from the chain into him, biting deep. His fingers smoke slightly, skin splitting open with angry hisses.

He doesn’t let go.

He rips.

The chain resists, turning rigid, its runes flaring, shrieking in protest. Klaus snarls back at it, eyes glowing amber, fangs bared as he drags every ounce of hybrid strength through his frail-looking hands.

With a sound like bone snapping, the length gives.

For an instant, the entire lattice shudders. Soil groans around them. Elijah’s body flinches minutely against the pillar, a nearly imperceptible shift that nevertheless feels seismic.

“Careful!” Freya’s shout snaps down the channel. The walls tremble under the strain of adjusting weight. “You can’t just tear them at random—they’re load-bearing components of the spell. You shift too many at once, the earth will—”

“Then tell me which ones,” Klaus snarls. “I am not going to mince through this damned tangle like a seamstress while he suffocates.”

Freya sucks in a ragged breath above, the magic flaring as she alters her hold, extending her senses through Klaus into the cave.

“I see them,” she says after a heartbeat, voice strained. “The chains around his chest are also anchoring the burial spell. But the ones across his arms and legs—those are mostly restraint and suppression. Start with the outer layers away from his ribcage. If we relieve some of the binding, his body can at least try to expand the tiny space it has.”

That is enough of a plan.

Klaus shifts, driving his hands deeper into the soil to uncover Elijah’s right arm. It takes effort; the limb is buried under compacted dirt, then wrapped in multiple layered chains. As he scrapes earth away, his fingertips repeatedly brush cold metal, then skin—raw-feeling, swollen around the pressure.

“Elijah,” he mutters again, a rough recitation to anchor himself. “Stay with me. You hear me? You are not allowed to make me talk nicely about you over a grave. It would be humiliating for us both.”

He exposes enough of the arm to see the horror properly. The limb is encased nearly from shoulder to wrist in overlapping chains, compressing muscle and bone. There’s dried blood where the metal has dug grooves.

Freya guides him, her voice a thread.

“The outermost. The one with the slanted rune—it’s a reinforcing band. Break that first. Then the one beneath with the circle and cross—it’s a locking ring.”

Klaus obeys, wrapping torn hands around the correct lengths and wrenching. The magic protests, searing his flesh, trying to crawl up his arms like poison. He grits his teeth, letting the pain fuel his fury.

One chain snaps. Then another.

With each break, the earth around Elijah’s arm shifts microscopically, as if exhaling. Klaus forces more soil away, creates a narrow pocket of space around the limb.

His brother’s fingers remain limp. Klaus wants them to twitch, to curl, to do anything that proves Elijah is still fighting down here with him, but they don’t.

He repeats the process on the other arm. Chains resist. Magic bites. His own skin splits and knits and splits again under the onslaught. He doesn’t care.

Freya’s spellwork is a constant pressure, a humming halo around them as she keeps the earth suspended, the burial spell half-disarmed and half-cooperative under her manipulation.

“She’s clever,” Freya mutters at one point, voice flickering with grudging respect despite everything. “The witch who designed this. She thought of every contingency. If he breaks one set of chains, others tighten. If he forces a breath, the spell constricts his ribs. They wanted him conscious for as much of it as possible.”

Klaus’s vision edges red. “And when I find her, I will take my time with every bone in her body.”

He exposes more of Elijah’s torso as he works, revealing layer after layer of metal and bruised flesh. Deep, ugly purple marks spread across Elijah’s ribs where the chains have dug in. In some places, the skin has split, narrow cuts lining up perfectly with the edges of the links.

He can see no rise and fall of breath.

“Klaus.” Freya again. Softer this time. “His heartbeat is faltering. I can feel it through the spell. You need to loosen his chest. Now.”

“Then guide me,” he growls. “Or get down here and do it yourself.”

“I can’t leave the channel. If I move, the spell will try to slam shut.” Her voice thickens. “You have to trust me. We have one shot at this, and if we get the sequence wrong—”

“Then he dies,” Klaus finishes, because the word is already hanging between them.

“Yes.”

Silence presses in, broken only by the distant keening of energy and the faint, labored drum of Elijah’s heart.

“Tell me what to break,” Klaus says.

Freya reaches with her power, tracing along the chains around Elijah’s chest, mapping the web in her mind.

“There,” she whispers. “Start with the third band from the top. The one with three runes in a row, like—like claw marks. That one is cinching his sternum. When you break it, the others will tighten briefly, then recalibrate. You must immediately snap the one crossing diagonally beneath it; it’s the compensator. If you don’t, all the pressure will crash down on his heart.”

“Ready when you are.”

“On my word… three, two, one—now.”

Klaus wrenches the first chain with brutal precision. It resists, magic flaring hot enough to burst blisters across his hands, but his rage is an inexhaustible well. The metal gives with a jagged crack.

Elijah’s body jerks minutely.

The remaining chains slam inward in response, struggling to hold their configuration. Freya yells, wordless, as she redirects the spell’s momentum, her magic clashing with the witches’ in a violent clash that makes the cave vibrate.

“Second!” she gasps.

Klaus is already on it. His fingers close on the diagonal band, muscles coiling. He tears.

This time, the break is accompanied by a deep, shuddering groan from the earth itself. Soil above them shifts in a slow-motion landslide that doesn’t quite fall. Freya screams a word that sounds like tearing metal, her voice raw.

The pressure around Elijah’s torso flickers.

For the first time since the chains began their slow torture, there is a fractional give.

It’s not much. Barely anything at all.

But it’s enough that when Klaus leans in, hand hovering over Elijah’s chest, he feels the faintest, shallowest of expansions.

“Again,” Freya pants. “The next binding ring. We can’t remove them all—only enough that his lungs have room to restart. His body will handle the rest when he’s free of the soil.”

They move like that for what feels like forever. Klaus snapping selected chains, Freya directing him through the deadly puzzle, both of them balancing on the edge of catastrophic collapse.

Each success yields millimeters of space.

Each wrong move would mean the earth completing what the witches began.

At last, Klaus has enough of Elijah’s upper body freed that he can wedge an arm behind his brother’s shoulders, fingers sinking between metal and stone pillar.

The contact is jarring.

Elijah’s body is cold. Not the full, empty cold of permanent death, but the eerie chill of someone held in a liminal state for too long, starved of breath and movement. His muscles are rigid from sustained compression. Every touch must hurt, even unconscious.

“Elijah,” Klaus murmurs, close to his ear. “If you can hear me, I need you to do something terribly out of character and cooperate. When I pull, you do not resist me. You do not tell me to be careful. You simply let me drag you out of your prematurely dug grave. Understood?”

No response.

Klaus exhales a rough, humorless huff. “I’m taking that as consent.”

Freya steadies the earth as Klaus digs his other hand down, freeing more soil from around Elijah’s sides, enough to create a narrow channel his body can move into. The lower half is still encased, but if Klaus can dislodge his torso and head, the rest will follow as the soil loosens.

“On three,” Freya says softly. “I’ll relax the pressure along his back. The spell will think he’s shifting slightly and attempt to compensate. That’s when you pull. Hard. You may break things.”

“He’s already half-broken,” Klaus says, voice tight. “I’ll fix what I can later.”

She counts.

On three, her power shifts. The magic around the pillar slackens for a heartbeat, confused by the false signal.

Klaus wrenches.

Elijah’s body tears forward, chains shrieking as they scrape over the stone. Some break, others drag, biting new lines into his skin. Dirt avalanches from around him, filling the spaces his body vacates. For a terrifying moment, the cave shudders, soil raining down from above in thick clumps.

Freya’s scream is entirely inside her head now as she throws everything she has into reinforcing the shaft and holding back the landslide.

Klaus doesn’t let go.

He drags Elijah’s upper body free, yanking him forward until his head lolls against Klaus’s shoulder, hair spilling gritty and cold against his neck. The lower half remains trapped, legs still pinned, chains still welded to earth and stone, but Elijah’s chest is at least no longer pressed flat to the pillar.

Klaus angles him slightly, using his own body to prop him in a position where gravity helps instead of suffocates.

“Elijah.” He slaps lightly at his brother’s cheek, not out of cruelty but sheer necessity. “Come on. Breath. Now.”

Nothing.

His heartbeat stutters, a misfiring rhythm.

Panic, hot and blinding, claws at Klaus’s throat.

He clamps one hand over Elijah’s ribcage, fingers digging between the remaining bands of chain. He can feel the minute, hesitant attempt of Elijah’s lungs to draw in air against compacted tissue and lingering pressure.

“Freya. I need more space.”

“I can’t loosen the soil further without risking—”

“Then strip the last constrictor ring,” he snarls. “The one just below his heart.”

“That ring is tied directly into the central anchor. If I take it out, the spell will collapse. Everything will fall.”

“Then take it and hold the collapse off as long as you can.” Klaus’s eyes blaze. “We are past caution. He is slipping.”

A pause. A strained breath.

“Fine,” Freya whispers. “On my mark, break it. Then get him out. Do you understand me, Niklaus? You run with him. Don’t look back. When the soil comes down, it will not care that you’re Original.”

“Understood.”

She begins to chant.

Klaus positions his hand, fingers already closing around the chosen chain, feeling the fevered thrum of the spell through it. Elijah’s limp weight is heavy against him—a constant reminder of exactly what is at stake.

The final word of Freya’s spell drops like a stone.

“Now!”

Klaus tears.

The chain fights like a living snake, magic screaming through his arms, trying to twist away, but he holds it and rips. It snaps with a sound that is not just physical but metaphysical, the central line of the burial spell severed.

The world goes mad.

Above, the earth roars.

The compressed soil on all sides surges inward, eager to reclaim the space, collapsing toward the cave in a deadly rush. The shaft Freya held begins to crumple, walls buckling.

Freya throws herself into the breach, arms wide, magic flaring blindingly as she tries to slow the inevitable. The strain hits her like an avalanche; she chokes on blood as every nerve feels like it’s being peeled.

Below, the cave starts to disintegrate. Dirt pours in from cracks in the ceiling and walls, clumps raining around Klaus and Elijah, some slamming into Klaus’s back with enough force to bruise even him.

“We’re out of time,” Freya’s voice slams into his mind rather than ears now. “Go!”

Klaus doesn’t argue.

He hauls Elijah up, snapping the last few chains with the momentum of their movement. Metal cuts deeper into Elijah’s legs as bands break; Klaus hears, rather than sees, the faint crunch of something in his brother’s ankle or knee as they drag free of the earth.

Elijah doesn’t make a sound.

Klaus slings him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, one arm hooking around the back of his thighs, the other bracing his torso. Elijah hangs limp, head lolling against Klaus’s back, chains still clinking faintly around his body.

Then Klaus runs.

The shaft is more narrow now, its walls shaking as soil pushes against Freya’s weakening hold. Dirt sloughs off in small avalanches, making the space tighter with every heartbeat. Klaus has to twist his body, angling Elijah’s limbs to avoid them catching on jagged roots and rock.

Every step is fought for. Every foot of distance gained is snatched from the jaws of collapse.

Above, Freya is on her knees, hands smashed into the ground so hard her skin has split. Blood mixes with dirt, her magic fraying at the edges. The burial spell presses against her like a tidal wave, furious at being dismantled, desperate to snap back into place.

She breathes in ragged, shallow gasps.

“Come on, Nik,” she whispers to herself, voice barely audible. “Hurry, hurry, hurry…”

Below, Klaus’s muscles scream. Not from weakness—he doesn’t have that luxury—but from the raw, overextended strain of sprinting vertically through a disintegrating tunnel with the dead weight of another immortal slung over him.

The walls squeeze closer. In one section, a chunk of soil drops directly in front of him, blocking the shaft almost completely. He doesn’t slow. He slams into it shoulder-first, forcing it aside with a roar, feeling the earth give just enough under combined brute strength and Freya’s desperate modulation.

The air grows marginally clearer.

Light—faint, grayish—seeps down from above.

He’s close.

Behind him, the tunnel collapses in earnest, a deep, grinding avalanche devouring the space they’ve just fled. He can feel the vibration climbing up through his feet.

“Freya!” he shouts.

“Here,” she rasps.

The last stretch is less a climb and more a burst, Klaus launching himself upward and out of the narrowing shaft in a cascade of dirt and roots. He hits the surface in a spray of soil, Elijah still slung over his shoulder.

The moment they clear, Freya releases the spell.

The ground behind them caves in completely, the shaft imploding, soil slamming down to fill the vacated space. For a second, the world is a storm of dust and the thunder of earth resettling.

Klaus lands hard on his knees, Elijah’s body rolling off his shoulder onto the forest floor. The motion is far from gentle, but they have left the crushing confines; here, the open air can hurt as much as it wants—as long as it exists.

Silence follows, heavy but for the crackle of residual magic.

Klaus is already leaning over Elijah, hands moving with frantic efficiency. He tears away remaining chains, twisting and snapping links like they’re decorative jewelry. Each removal exposes more of the damage.

Elijah’s chest is a map of dark bruises and angry, deep indentations where the metal dug in. In some places, his ribs seem uneven, sunken as if compressed. His arms are mottled with nearly-circular marks, and his legs bear the same, with the added twisted angle of one knee that makes Klaus grind his teeth.

But none of that matters if he does not breathe.

Freya crawls to Elijah’s other side, panting. Her face is ashen, veins faintly dark from magical strain.

“How bad?” she asks quietly.

Klaus presses his ear to Elijah’s chest.

The heartbeat is there. Barely.

The breath… is not.

“He’s not pulling air,” Klaus says, and suddenly his voice is not the snarl of a monster but something raw, stripped down to its core. “His lungs—those chains—damn it, they may have crushed—”

“Move.” Freya’s tone leaves no room for argument.

He shifts, and she immediately places a hand flat over Elijah’s sternum, the other over his throat. Her eyes slip closed.

“His body is trying,” she murmurs, voice distant. “The reflex is there. But everything is… locked. The trauma. The spell remnant. The muscles can’t expand far enough.”

“Fix it,” Klaus demands.

She doesn’t snap back at him this time.

Instead, she nods, brows knitting. She draws in a careful breath, then pushes power through her palms, a gentle but insistent wave directed into Elijah’s chest and throat. Magic snakes along fractured lines, soothing some, jarring others.

Elijah’s body jerks faintly.

“Come on,” Freya whispers, the sound more plea than incantation. “You are too stubborn to suffocate in a grave you didn’t dig yourself.”

She pushes again, firmer this time, aiming to force the locked muscles in his diaphragm to loosen, to remember.

Klaus grips Elijah’s hand, fingers threading through his brother’s dirt-caked ones. For one horrible moment, he imagines those fingers never curling back.

Then Elijah spasms.

His chest lurches, muscles snapping into a distorted version of motion. A wet, torn sound spills from his throat—half-gasp, half-choke—as air claws its way into starved lungs.

It’s not much. It sounds like agony.

It is the most beautiful thing Klaus has heard in days.

“Again,” Freya urges.

She pulses magic once more. Elijah’s chest rises a fraction more this time, then collapses, the breath rattling as it escapes. He coughs weakly—if the shallow, convulsive hitch can be called that—specks of dark, clotted blood appearing at the corner of his mouth.

“It’s working,” she says. “The more he breathes, the more his body will fight for it. We just needed to break the lock.”

“Elijah,” Klaus says, leaning closer, grip tightening around his hand. “If you insist on dramatic entrances, could you at least open your eyes for this one? I’ve risked looking sincere; I’d hate for it to go unappreciated.”

Elijah’s lashes flutter.

Slowly, with visible effort, his eyes drag open.

The world above him is a blur of gray sky and canopy, the harsh outline of Klaus’s face hovering over his, smeared with dirt and something like fear, and Freya’s pale, exhausted features beside him.

Sound stutters back in—his own ragged breathing, the faint rustle of leaves, Klaus’s heartbeat thrumming too fast, like a drum out of rhythm.

He tries to speak.

What emerges is a ragged rasp that hurts both coming and going.

“Y… you look… terrible,” he manages, each word scraped raw.

Klaus barks out something like a laugh, halfway between relief and fury.

“Apologies,” he says, voice rough. “Not all of us had the luxury of a spa day underground.”

Elijah attempts a faint, pained huff that might be a laugh if it didn’t twist into another shallow cough. The movement sends spikes of pain through his ribs, his back, his neck. Every inch of him feels like a bruise wrapped in barbed wire.

He closes his eyes briefly as a wave of dizziness washes over him.

“Stay awake,” Freya orders gently, fingers still splayed over his chest, monitoring the stuttering breaths. “You’ve been immobilized and half-suffocated. If you pass out now, your body might decide it’s easier not to wake again.”

Elijah exhales slowly, the air shuddering. “I will… take that under advisement.”

His voice is barely above a whisper.

Klaus’s hand tightens around his. “We had to break some things to get you out,” he says, as if Elijah can’t already feel it. “Ribs. Possibly a leg. Your dignity, certainly. I’ll see to the rest once Freya finishes undoing their mess.”

Elijah opens his eyes again, focusing with effort on Klaus’s face. There’s something in his gaze—gratitude, irritation, fondness—muted by exhaustion but unmistakable.

“You took… your time,” he murmurs, because if he cannot move, he can at least still wield words.

Klaus huffs. “Next time, I’ll let the witches keep you as an ornament.”

Freya glances between them, the corner of her mouth twitching despite the heaviness in her eyes.

“Don’t worry,” she says tiredly. “If they ever try this again, I know exactly how to unravel their spell faster. And I will take great pleasure in returning the favor.”

Elijah shifts minutely, a flicker of old composure trying to resurface under the layers of agony.

“I cannot… overstate,” he says slowly, voice still fractured, “how deeply I hope… there won’t be a next time.”

“That makes three of us,” Freya answers softly.

Klaus squeezes his hand again, grounding, solid.

“Rest,” he says quietly, the fury still there but no longer aimed at Elijah. “You’re safe. No more earth. No more chains.”

Elijah lets his gaze drift up to the canopy again. The open sky is a smear of light through leaves, but it feels immense after the crushing weight of the cave.

He feels every bruise, every fractured bone, every ragged breath.

He also feels his siblings on either side of him—Freya’s magic like a shield still humming faintly over his chest, Klaus’s grip iron-strong around his hand.

The witches had tried to bury him so thoroughly he would never surface again.

They had not accounted for what it meant to be a Mikaelson, or for the simple, stubborn fact that his family does not let go.

He exhales, the breath thin but real.

“Very well,” he whispers, eyelids drooping as his body finally begins to accept a different kind of stillness—one not enforced by chains or earth. “Just… do not leave me alone with Niklaus. I suspect he will gloat.”

“I’m right here, you know,” Klaus mutters.

“So am I,” Freya adds, rolling her eyes. “Go to sleep, Elijah. For once, we’ll watch over you.”

He doesn’t argue.

The darkness that takes him now is not the smothering suffocation of the cave, but something gentler. It brings pain with it, yes, but not terror. Not chains digging into bone.

He lets it come, anchored by the weight of Klaus’s hand and the whisper of Freya’s magic, knowing that when he wakes, the world will still be above him—not crushing him from all sides.

And somewhere deep underground, beneath the resettled soil, shattered runes and broken chains lie buried in the dark—a failed cage for an Original who refused to stay gone.

\n\n" } ] }