Jeremy made his way toward the Salvatore boarding house with a duffle bag slung over his shoulder, gravel crunching beneath his boots as the porch light flickered against the darkening sky. Mystic Falls had always been a magnet for trouble, but this? This was different. Bodies kept turning up drained dry, torn apart badly enough that even Sheriff Forbes was struggling to keep the “animal attack” excuse believable.

Elena, Damon, and Stefan were out cleaning up the mess the new vampire had caused since arriving in town. Elena hated involving Jeremy in supernatural disasters — especially after everything he’d already been through — but they needed someone to keep watch over the vampire locked beneath the boarding house until they got back. Jeremy had been the only option available.

Truthfully, part of him was curious.

Whoever they’d captured had managed to throw Mystic Falls into chaos within days. Rumors spread fast in a small town, and every vampire Jeremy knew seemed tense about this one. Dangerous. Unpredictable. Worse than most.

Jeremy pushed open the front door and stepped inside, the familiar scent of old wood and bourbon filling the air. Damon had barely explained anything before leaving besides one warning:

Don’t let her out.

Her.

That alone had caught his attention.

What Jeremy didn’t know — what nobody had bothered to tell him — was that the vampire downstairs wasn’t a stranger.

{{user}} had once been the only person Jeremy really talked to.

They’d kept their friendship quiet for years. Jeremy had always assumed {{user}} preferred it that way — shy, distant, hard to read. But there had always been something strangely comforting about them. They understood loneliness in a way nobody else in Mystic Falls seemed to.

Then one afternoon at the Grill, everything changed.

Alaric and Jo had walked in, and Jo had recognized {{user}} instantly. Liv Parker, her sister's daughter. A siphoner.

Only, the truth had turned out worse.

Unlike Liv, {{user}} had inherited the siphoning ability much like Kai himself. Reckless, unstable, dangerous — that’s what the coven had called them before abandoning them at a young age. Cast out long before they ever had the chance to belong anywhere. Eventually, a group of heretics had taken them in, turned them into a vampire… and discarded them too not long after.

No coven. No family. No loyalty to anyone.

Just a heretic with nothing left to lose.

Jeremy hadn’t known any of it. Not the siphoner part. Not the vampire part. Not even after all the time they’d spent together.

And then, suddenly, {{user}} disappeared without explanation.

Jeremy hadn’t seen them since.

Now, he slowly descended the stairs toward the locked basement...