Sorrow is the unwanted scion of the family of tormentors that are the emotions that come with mourning. It nails the suffering ones as if mercilessly crucifying them, it is the spikes that keep them from escaping their never-ending torture. It eats and eats, devours with insatiable hunger until there is nothing left but the vestiges of grief.

They say 'hope' is a thing with feathers, but Cain has always thought it was but a cruel mirage, a wishful lie, just like the perpetually chased perfection. He has never been what people would call optimistic — he would rather advocate for realism. The one exception to this self-imposed rule of his would be the otherworldly sixth sense that would sporadically wash over him like a waking bucket of cold water in the early morning, a feeling that would listen to no reason and one which, despite its very own nature, he had learnt to trust. It was unsettling, how he would frequently know the outcome of a situation. Oh, no, not like a visual and concrete thing, but like a feeling of déjà vu that always managed to leave him off-balance.

Whilst sorrow may be from a family of tormentors, happiness is from the family of false illusions. Blissful you may be, until one fateful day life and reality ally with each other and come knocking at your door, making everything crumble down, and thus destroying all you hold dear and thought would forever be there to stay. Cain has always thought of happiness as an ephemeral luxury, like momentary ambrosia — sweet as honey, just as enjoyable, but unattainable, for it was the food of the gods.

Cain's visions had always been limited to the present and the immediate future, but that changed once he started having visions of the past and distant future too, by means of grim-tinted glasses that only let the dark through.

The first time he consciously had a vision, it had been that one time when they were 4 years old and playing outside in the backyard, as carefree as little kids often are at their age, when a sudden shudder violently made its way up his spine — it made him feel dread like no other. It was telling him his sister and he were in imminent danger.

(A middle-aged man who wore nothing but hate on his face, an insatiable monster who did not deserve to live as long as he had.)

His younger twin, Elena, momentarily stopped her attempts to climb a tree and shot him a worried, yet curious look. She did not have a sense as keen as he had, but whenever the weird feeling came to haunt him, she somehow always knew.

"Lena, we should go back inside." He whispered to her, voice filled with poorly concealed apprehension, brows pinched and gaze unfocused, as if he was not entirely present. Elena for her part, knowing her brother would never intentionally stir her wrong, simply did as told and decided not to question him just yet. She could ask about it after the feeling passed. He ushered them to the first floor, where their younger 2-year-old brother Jeremy was blissfully having his early afternoon nap in his crib. It was not until three hours later that Cain deemed it safe enough to let their guard down. Lucky for him because he would not have known what to answer, his sister would not remember to ask him about the jarring occurrence until many years later.

As fortune may have it, however, in time Elena remembered, so when she did, she tried to pry off him whatever he may know. She wanted answers, damn it, curiosity had her in a chokehold.

"The Original Hunter had come for you, but the Bennett line kept to their oath and protected you, as it was the accord."

Not even Cain understood everything he said entirely, not at the time, but he did know it may have been related to the supernatural world. Elena's comprehension went just as far as his' did, —which means, not too far—, but she knew better than to doubt him. She too came to know about the supernatural eventually, when they turned 13. Though Cain already had his suspicions, thanks to reading his ancestor's journals.

Taking full advantage of their father being away for work, they had gone snooping around their father's study, Jeremy trailing after Cain, and saw a short stack of documents on the desk. They were nothing relevant, but when eyeing them, Elena saw the hint of a hole where there should be none. That is how they discovered the false bottom drawer where Grayson Gilbert hid his subject's information files. Cain gripped one side of his head when white suddenly filled his vision, blinding him.

(A couple of men in the midst of a burning building, one leaving the other behind. His father and colleagues were talking about 'subject 0260513', about some research, about how they had to find a way to defend humans from the monsters ready to pounce on them.)

And so he knew: he had to end it.

A couple of months before the twins' fourteenth birthday saw them rescuing the mysterious 0260513 from the facility and dismantling the unethical supernatural clinic they uncovered their father had been running ever since finishing university. This won them an unconditional vampire friend, by the noble name of Lorenzo St. John.

Lorenzo —"Enzo" to my friends, which you certainly are, being my saviours— St. John turned out to be a war veteran, captured not too long after being outed as a vampire, and kept prisoner and test subject for a secret society for the better part of half a century. He had already been loyal back when he was human, and it only became even more accentuated after being turned. It was a no-brainer that he took their saving him so seriously, despite the numerous protests from their parte about how they just did what was right.

Thus, their little group of supernaturally-aware people officially gained a new member. From them on, it would be Cain, Elena and Jeremy, then Enzo, promptly followed not even two days later by Bonnie and Caroline once they got them in the know, much to Bonnie's grandmother's consternation.

Everything would change when vampires came back to town, and for that, both Cain and Elena would be ready — he would make sure of that.