Prologue

A young girl sits motionless upon the tattered rooftops of the once mighty Kyoto as rain falls like sheets of silver tears from the saddened sky above. She sleeps awake in a reality of her own design, fully aware of every detail around her and yet, she is sure of nothing. The cold, dark years of her existence long since extinguished, she lives in a world free of time, like a dream she can never awaken from. The cold northern wind whips violently around her slender shoulders, its rough touch matting her silky black hair. Alone she sits, alone she has lived and alone she will die.

Raw and decisive, her soul laid bare for all to see, she sits.

At first glance her face bears no emotion but deep within her jade filled eyes she harbours a rooted sorrow from which she can never be freed. Thrown aside and expelled by human society she pays heed to no one.

She is everything and yet, she is nothing, neither ying nor yang. She is the air, which drives you, the earth that feeds you. She is your life, your death and all that lies between. She is the very essence of every emotion you have ever felt and she. is watching you.

She has smiled down upon your every triumph and forgiven your every mistake and yet she loathes everything you stand for, your sadistic desire to cause pain, the pleasure you take in watching others fail as you pass them by, a smirk smeared across your arrogant face barely able to contain the joy brimming within you, head held high above the shit and the slurry of failure your pace quickened so as not to taste its stench. She knows, and she has wept for what has become of you.

After all she was present at the very birth of all mankind, an impure race forged within the crucible of paradise. Ordained with the task of guiding these curious beasts she poured her heart and soul into the moulding of their delicate flesh and filled their empty vessels with all her kindness. She watched them grow, she watched them thrive, she perceived their very evolution, and she stood watch, teary eyed as they butchered and destroyed one another.

But then she is more comparable to the human race than they would like to imagine. She is the last known original Vampire and thus remains as youthful and fair as she appeared an age ago.

As she stares out across the wide, desolate planes that stretch for miles in all directions she mourns for the word that she is destined to roam.

An environment so unbelievably harsh, it has lead the human race into a new age of evolution, a new age of disease and suffering. An age in which the definition of 'Human' has become. confused, and now many adaptations of what could have originated as man, roam the cursed lands of Neo Earth, each perfectly attuned to their respective environments.

But, for every success in evolution there are also numerous failures, such failures have spawned a race of exiled mutants who live every moment of their pathetic lives in a state of constant pain and suffering. Forced to exist in the most inhospitable of all environments, they are hunted by humans for sport and most do not survive to adulthood. Their foul, decaying frames litter every inch of this already soiled earth, their putrid stench seeping into the atmosphere like poison.

She recalls a time, long before the great war of immense beauty and lush greenery, way back when the air was clean and the rain clear. Now few things grow in the deserts and dusty rock plains that cover the face of Neo earth. In a land where only chaos and fear prosper she sits engulfed in the memories of a world that died long before the recollection of any mans' timeworn scriptures.

But, as with all the worlds of the Infinite, there are those whom will never forget. Those who know see and understand all. Those who stalk the night, who crawl amidst the shadows deep within the fiery bowels of Tazar. There, lies one beast to rule them all. A beast so brutal, so cruel by design, it must remain eternally bound to the agonizing pits of the eternal flame.

Legend has it that this savage beast was long ago the purest and most beautiful of all elder Gods, a heavenly being whose blood was boiled, whose flesh was burnt and whose mind was torn by your kind's hate.

A vein of lightning splits the heavens to the north, illuminating the ruins of a once great temple high up in the snowy mountains of Matsuura. The young girl slowly raises her head to watch the last stars as they twinkle and fade before disappearing completely behind sheets of wispy storm clouds. Rain streams down her face and soaks into her clothes as she rises to her feet and steps carefully towards the edge of the rooftop. For a brief moment she hesitates. Matsuura is not the most inviting of places, but deep inside she knows that a great struggle will soon be held there within its great walls.

"He may be our only hope," she whispers before gracefully leaping to the ground and disappearing into the dark and unforgiving night.