"Peace? Forgiveness?" T'kral demanded. He stamped the blunt end of his scythe down on the ground and its ring was like the smack of a gavel. "You have gone soft. You know nothing of the horrors our people have had to endure in that rank abyss." He stepped forward angrily. "Forgiveness U'mon? For the vampires? Out of the question!"

"They have suffered just as much as we have." The seer argued. "And the ancients, the ones who put the mass majority of our kind in that terrible place have been dead for centuries." She gestured to the near comatose body of William.

The fledgling had evolved; a resulting of the taxing effort of opening the gate to the Demon Dimension. His skin was blue and his fingers and toes had changed to mirror those of the ancient vampires; his eyes transmuted to pure gold in colour.

"What crime has this generation of vampires committed on our people?" She asked. "This one even saved our kind… let us free after so long… does he deserve death for that act?

Or has his fate been determined by actions taken by his ancestors? Actions he had no say over?"

"You make a pretty argument my sister, but you forget that revenge has been the only thing that has kept our people alive. Without our need to get back at these creatures we would have never survived the demons, never mind tamed them. Do you expect us to put it aside so easily?"

"Do you not know the affects of the madness when you feel them?" The seer demanded. "Your judgement is being skewered by the long term affects of exposure to that place. You can not see clearly."

"I see well enough!" T'kral stated coldly, turning to face William with his scythe in hand. "I see my enemy. I see who must die!"

The Hylden swung his weapon down, the blade threatening to stab William through the back of the chest. The seer grabbed a hold of one end of the weapon, just stopping the curved blade before it struck home.

"This is not the way my brother. We can end this hate. We can end this pain. We can save both Hylden and Vampire here and now." She told him.

Angrily, T'kral whipped his weapon back and out of his grasp.

"Why?" He demanded. "Tell me why!"

The seer sighed out load and then looked at her deformed brother.

"Do you remember when we we're young? When we went swimming in the streams outside our settlement?" The muscle beneath T'kral's left eye seemed to twitch. "You had hair then and more muscle. You were kind, gentle…a poet and bard, not a murderer."

T'kral blinked once and swallowed hard as if holding back emotion.

"We can go back to that. You can be that innocent soul again. All our people can have their true souls back.

We don't have to wait for the affects to reverse themselves. We can restore ourselves, right here… right now."

T'kral stared his sister right in the face, his dried cracked lips pressed hard together and his fingers clenching around his scythe staff.

"You…. You have… peeked my interest U'mon." He admitted. "There is nothing I would like more, including the destruction of the vampires, than to return to those days.

If you can truly do this… then indulge me."

The seer managed a faint smile. She was right. Her brother was still somewhere in there, in amidst the insane and almost feral instincts he had taken during his imprisonment.

"All members of a race half a telepathic connection." She explained. "All humans have it. All vampires have it and of course… we Hylden have it." She stepped aside and gestured for T'kral to follow her. "The vampires can tap into this connection through their 'Whisper' technique as can some humans. It is this connection that will allow our people's sanity to return."

"How?" T'kral asked sounding a little impatient.

The seer widened her smile and looked down at the other fledgling vampire Sally.

"Me?" Sally asked suddenly noticing she was being stared at.

"Your dark gift is the gift of healing. You can heal deep emotional wounds of others with your mind." The Seer explained. "If you use your mind you can give back my people they're sanity." She took Sally's hand. "The war between Vampire and Hylden would finally be over."

Sally looked a little taken aback. Had this been what the vision she had received at Midgard meant?

She felt a reassuring hand on her shoulder. Archon stood there, the knife wound on his shoulder bandaged up.

"This is your task. This is something only you can do." He told her, a great deal of confidence in his voice. "Hate has to end. It has to end if Nosgoth is ever to be healed." He looked her right in the eyes. "I once gild through the cold nothingness that is the Spectral Realm, consuming any soul that escaped the Wheel of Fate and channelling their energy back to the master.

I was chosen to be his candidate for the Pillar of the Mind and given a human body. But even before that I knew I was not the one. I, like many of the masters Archon hunters, have swallowed the souls and felt their hate. Hate he inspired, hate he reveals in, hate that he feeds upon.

We can stand it no longer. End it… please."

Sally just swallowed hard before standing up, facing the Hylden male; whose glowing green eyes bore into her almost like hot coals.

"Do you not trust me brother?" The seer asked him.

Conflicting emotions were clear in the occasional twitching of his facial muscles.

"Just do it." He remarked angrily. Sally slowly reached within herself, calling upon the dark gift she had only so recently acquired.

She gasped.

She could sense the hate.

It was like incredibly bitter taste at the back of the throat only intensified. But it was causing so much pain. The Hylden race were in pain. Incredible pain. The hate was hurting them but the insanity caused by being so long in the demon dimension had made them blind to it.

It was clouding their judgement not just on their opinion on any other race then themselves, but on every decision they made.

She could sense them even now in their battle against the demons following them back. Their tactics were simply blind aggression, no strategy or tactics. The demons were tearing them apart in that mindset.

"I… I don't know if I can." She admitted to herself out load.

"Yes you can." A voice through the Whisper told her.

"Ewoden?" She asked with widening eyes.

"Yes… I'm here."

Miles away in Willendorf, half collapsed in exhaustion, Ewoden stood on a shadowy battlement watching the city slow consume itself as the revolution continued. Now that he had past his trail and officially become the Guardian for the Pillar of Nature, he found that he could easily use the Whisper despite the magic's the Sarafan employed around the city to prevent such communication.

"I know what misery hate can cause, on both sides. It has to end." He told her, keeping out of the light of the full moon. "I know you can do it."

"We both do." Archon added; ease dropping on the conversation telepathically.

Taking a deep breath, Sally relaxed her mind and then gently reached out with it and brushed her awareness against T'kral's.

The immediate affects were stunning.

T'kral gagged, stumbling forward several steps with wide eyes and mouth hung open. He was shaking violently and tilting his head back he screamed out load; clutching each side of his head.

"It's working!" The Seer declared. "Don't stop, keeping going!"

Sally did just that. Instead of a simply brush with her mind, she gathered her mental strength and struck hard against the insanity she could feel inside the Hylden male.

Like a great seal cracking, the affect spread through T'kral to the other Hylden' even those still emerging from the demon dimension. They felt the presence inside their minds, hacking away at their driving force; the insanity that kept them going. They cried out, clutching their heads and screaming.

"My mind!" Py'tor cried out, despite his large size crashing to his knees. "Who is that in my mind?!"

"Get out!!! GET OUT!!" Head of House Aer, G'tor was rolling around on the wet ground like an infant. His clansmen were just the same, writhing on the ground clutching their heads; but it was not pain they were feeling; only an instruction that felt them unable to think or feel.

Y'alp managed a few staggering steps before she collapsed onto her knees, unable to bear the intrusion; feeling the layers of her mind being stripped away bit by bit.

"What is this?" The Black Fire demon asked, watching the Hylden on the battlefield before him struggle like newborns. Even the other demons appeared confused, taking surprised steps back.

"I do not understand… what is happening?" A thunder demon asked in a raspy voice. A poison demon stepped forward and gave the Hylden nearest to him a nudge with the end of his mantis like claw. The Hylden did not respond at all. The male specimen just kept writhing there, clutching at his head.

"They are comatose." He told his fellow monsters, making a conclusion. Their Black Fire demon leader glanced back over his wide shoulder towards the still open gate. The Hylden coming through were toppling instantly over each other, unable to even keep their footing.

"They are defenceless now. We should strike them down!" A regular fire demon declared.

"There is no honour in that!" Another told it, gripping it hard on the shoulder.

"Honour?" The first replied. "Who is interested in that?" The monstrous beast stepped forward and reached down, preparing to grab up some of the Hylden.

"No you idiot don't!" Their leader declared too late. As soon as the demon took hold of a single Hylden, the mental healing affect that Sally was sending following through them spread into the demon and through him; to the others.

Feeling the extra burden, Sally gagged out and collapsed to her knees; tears wheeling up in her eyes.

"What… what is wrong?" Ewoden demanded, feeling her distress over the Whisper.

"The demons have come into contact with the Hylden." Archon replied, trying to help Sally up. "She's trying to heal both the Hylden and the Demons at the same time." He shook her back to some sort of awareness. "You can't heal that many. The demons have never been sane. You can not give them back something they have never had!"

"No…" She muttered. "I can do it. I can stop all this misery. I just… I just need the strength."

"Then take mine." Ewoden told her, reaching across the link and sending her his own spiritual power.

William said nothing. He simply sent her his own strength without any prompting and miles away, sensing the need to do so; Janos did the same. Their collective power following through her no, Sally recovered and then came at the insane minds of Hylden and demon alike.

"AGGH! No!" The Black fire demon cried out, collapsing backwards, barely supporting itself by a hand. "Get out of my mind! GET OUT!" As the demons and Hylden poured out of the gate, they stumbled over each other along into a giant pile.

"Too many… too many!" Sally hissed but kept on going anyway.

At that moment, across Nosgoth, the waters of the Lake of Tears swirled as if gripped in the midst of a storm. Light shone from the bottom of the lake before an object burst out of the waves and soured high into the air.

Instantly Sally felt strength unlike anything she had left before suddenly fill her, and even those sending her their own strength felt this sudden presence as well.

"Who…" Ewoden began in surprise.

"You know me." A powerful voice stated over the Whisper. William looked up sharply in alarm.

"Kain?"

The being floating about the waters of the lake was no quiet the ancient vampire who had come back from the future, nor the near fledgling vampire who had attempted to conquer Nosgoth. His skin was neither green nor white. Now it was a very pale sky blue. The demonic horns along the forehead were gone, leaving it smooth and round. His snow white hair fluttered back behind him, in-between two spread jet black wings lined with soft feathers.

In one hand he grasped the Reaver sword, blazing elemental power running down its curved blade and in the other he held the secondary container within which was the cure for the vampire race.

"I am the Scion of Balance." Kain stated, opening his golden eyes. "Take my strength. End this pain."

Armed with such accumulated mental power, Sally swept her healing gift over the minds in her grasp like a purifying tide swept clean a beach.

T'kral was first, the green glow in his eyes dying away and even parts of his body thickening as his skeletal like appearance fattened out with more muscle. Grasping out load, he blinked once before taking a deep breath.

The other Hylden all followed, one by one in a fast chain reaction they all looked up at the sky with sudden new wonder in their eyes.

"I…. I feel like I've just woken up from a nightmare." Py'tor groaned, hoisting himself up to a sitting position.

"I think we all have." Y'alp told him, looking down at her withered hands that in time would heal.

The demons, having never been sane, took a little longer but they succumbed none the less. The feral like minds faded one after the other and they took stirred as if waking from a dream.

"What… I… I do not…" The black fire demon began sitting back up.

"William." Kain announced. "Close the gate."

William nodded once and reached out from the top of the tower, closing his fingers together to form a tight fist. The rift in the ground groaned loudly once before it began to slid shut, the gates metallic covering coming together before clamping shut with a loud clanking that shook the ground for miles around.

"It… it is done." The Seer stated with tears in her eyes as her brother looked upon her.

"U'mon?" He asked her. "Why… why do I feel so tired all of a sudden?" He seemed barely able to keep himself on his feet and collapsed down to a sit. He was quickly followed by Sally, exhausted by the task of healing so many minds.

"You… you just need a nap." She told him lovingly.

Kain nodded once in approval.

Much had been accomplished and final victory, a chance to end the eternal bloodshed of Nosgoth forever was nearly within their grasp. Only one thing was left to do. He glanced down at the container with the cure for vampirism trapped within.

Only Vorador knew enough about this kind of Hylden technology and Kain was not compelled to ask the recently purified Hylden themselves.

Glancing towards the North, Kain spread his wings before souring forth; hoping he would not arrive too late.