A new voice was added to the multitude of those whispering to me, a new signer in the choir of the dead.

I had beaten Sabre…. But now I was not sure the victory was worth it.

"How many does that make now Raziel?" I asked, sliding down to one knee. "How many people do you think are cursing me from beyond the grave?

"Countless." He replied as his projected form manifested next to me, refusing to sugar-coat the answer. "But do not forget how far you have already come. Now is not the time for this conversation."

"Whoever imagined a Vampire could grow tired of killing?" I asked out load. The blood hunger was gone, but still I was required to take lives.

It was something that had not once before bothered me, but now I had stopped to look back at the path I had been treading, I found it smeared with blood.

And many of those whose blood had been spilled were faceless strangers to me, whose names I would never know.

But Raziel was right.

Many more would be added to the nameless list unless I did what I came here to do. I stared glanced up and the ruins of the Pillar of Balance lay there before me.

I could sense the anticipation in all nine of them. They were a mere stones throw away from being restored.

Gathering whatever will I could muster I stepped over Sabre's body and advanced over towards the Pillar with which I was soon to be bound.

I was a pure and uncorrupted Guardian, a Vampire removed from the curse.

I was the perfect candidate for selection.

The Pillar would have no choice but to accept me.

Gently, I reached out and placed my hand against the surface of the cracked grey marble.

My soul was the token, the gift from the pillar given to me at my birth, the item that marked me as a Guardian.

I let it hover between my own body and the pillar, acted as a intermediary between the two.

The Pillar did not respond. .

Or it couldn't at least. It was trying to, but something was preventing it from connecting with me.

I tried again and once more nothing happened. The pillar remained in its compromised state.

What had I missed? Why wasn't it working?

A low pitch laugh erupted across the sky and I glanced up, feeling a presence around us; magnified in this one place.

The Eyes of the Elder were on me.

"You forget so easily Kain." My enemy laughed at me. "Do you not recall you already learned how these Pillars work? They can only be whole and pure once they have a prisoner to bind in the demon dimension and you assisted in releasing the Hylden from that very abyss."

I growled.

He was right.

The seer had already explained that the Pillars needed a sacrifice. They would only perform their function of healing the land if they had a victim to place inside that hellish realm.

That had been their double bladed function since the end of the ancient war.

I would never be able to heal Nosgoth as long as Hylden remained here.

But perhaps that was too hasty a statement. The Pillars held the Hylden inside the demon realm for so long because that had been what the ancients had demanded of them.

The sacrifice this time did not have to specifically be their race. It could be anything with the equivalent life force of a race.

Then it struck me. The simplistically of the idea, suddenly flung into my mind by destinies hand left me awe struck.

In that instant my course my path would take was crystal clear.

I glanced back at Raziel. The expression on his face showed that he was thinking along similar lines.

"Would that work?" He asked.

"I do not see any reason to the contrary." Thoughts raced through my head, desperately searching for something. Anything to make it possible. I found nothing to stop it from being so and more than enough evidence to suggest that the task could be accomplished. "We have not much time." I spread my wings and took to the air.

I traveled as quickly as I could, sliding through the clouds as I soured north.

A short distance away from the pillars was an ancient entrance that lead down into the Earth. It was known to the humans was the 'Underworld-Passage.' None of their kind had ever been able to open it.

Nor would they ever been able to. It was an entrance crafted by Ancient vampire and would open only for their species.

I final task I needed to accomplish could not be done at the base of the Pillars, that I was certain of. Raziel had shown my, through his memories, the place I needed to be.

"Something is amiss here." Raziel told me, glancing up at the sky. It had darkened considerably, as if a storm was imminent. There was something more to it, a build up of energy that was about to be released.

Something was wrong.

The stone doors have buried by rubble were easily dislodged and I advanced into the stone corridor beyond.

"Come Kain, I am waiting for you. Come… come down to the depths" The voice of the Elder laughed as I descended below the earth, passing through into the place deemed as the 'underworld'.

This maze of caves and tunnels lead down, passing under the ground and through darkness. Shades, the minions of the Elder inhabited this place. Formless creatures made completely out of shadows.

Here they thrived and once they had me in their domain, they attacked with full force.

The Reaver ached up, carving them as if they were flesh and bone. Soon they were in retreat as I chased them further and further into the bowls of the earth.

Here, in this place; the borders between the Physical Realm and the Spectral realm were blurred. Crossing over from the realm in which spirits are bond came ravenous hunters, Slugah and Reapers; soul devouring wraiths. Life forms that had forced to evolve op their current state either to serve the Elder, or to out compete him for the energy of the spirits.

I must have traveled quiet a distance under the ground before I finally came to the place I needed to be.

"Why the delay Kain? I grow impatient. This end is one neither of us can avoid so let us put it behind us now." The voice told me as I reached the chamber underneath the pillars, the murals depicting the affliction of the ancients now all by completely destroyed by time.

The water surrounding the small island in the centre through which lanced the cracked grey pillars was gone. Tentacles were wrapped through the entire chamber, all feeding up from a cracked hole in the bottom. The roots of the pillars were flying through that into a large chamber directly below.

Gently I glided down through this whole and came to rest on a stone ledge. A long row of stone stairs carved into the rock itself lead down to… I stopped and stared.

Here at last, I beheld the very heart of my true enemy.

"Welcome vampire, you took your time getting here." Descending down the stone stairs, I looked up at the gigantic underground cavern.

A canyon concealed within the depths of Nosgoth, a crack in the earth that could very well lead down to its very core. It was so wide across I could not even see the far end. The rocks beneath my feet were covered in a green, slime like moss one might expect to find in a rock pool.

I was aware of dozens, no, hundreds of neon blue eyes staring at me from the shadow, each on attached to slithering tentacles that clung to the walls like the limbs of an octopus. Jutting out over the dark never ending abyss into the depths of the earth was a catwalk made of stone.

It led up to a large rock platform with a polished flat surface. Lancing down from the ceiling were the roots of the Pillars themselves just like in the chamber above.

Each one falling into position on the platform just as at the base of the Pillars. Slimy green tentacles snaked up from the darkness below, wrapping around the pillars like vines; clinging to the cracked grey marble refusing to let go.

"So, this is the heart of the Underworld?" I asked out load, approaching the platform and glaring around at the chamber around me.

"The 'Underworld' refers to many perceptions Kain." Was the reply that echoed around the cavern. I tried to determine in which direction it was coming from but the echoes refused to give a point of origin. "Some believe it to be the Spectral Realm, others think of it as a fiery pit where sinners are damned for eternity, while another perceives as an endless maze of tunnels and caverns underneath Nosgoth.

But it truth, the name refers to all these aspects and more.

I AM the Underworld!" All the eyes there were watching me opened wide; their soft blue glow illuminating the cavern.

I watched as dozens of souls began to spiral down from the top of the pillars down towards the canyon floor. Swirling as if caught in a whirlpool they were all dragged down, deeper and deeper before vanishing completely into the darkness.

Human, vampire and Hylden souls alike, all crying out in agony as they were sucked dry of their energy; every ounce of it siphoned off to feed the spore like mass that clung to the walls of this chamber like a plant.

"And this is where I spin the wheel." Finally, the canyon wall directly ahead of me began sliding apart. Pieces of dust undisturbed for centuries started falling, crumbling down as the pieces of the wall slid aside. Suddenly I realized that it was not a wall, by the lid of a colossal eye.

Larger than anything I had ever behold before; The Elder's main eye glared down at me.

"Tell me, why did you let me get this far?" I asked. "Given what kind of force you can command. I'm guessing if you really wanted to, you could have kept me out of this chamber." The massive eye blinked once. "You must know what I intend on doing."

"An admittedly bold move Kain, but ultimately quite futile." He replied. "You intend on banishing ME. Making ME the sacrifice the Pillars require in order to regenerate." The Elder chuckled deeply. "Clever Kain, but you forget that in order to banish someone you need to know their name.

Only once a name is uttered can the Pillars determine what to banish and what to leave alone." The eye seemed to lean forward to stare down at me. "And not even the ancient vampires knew MY real name."

My fingers tightened around the hilt of the Reaver. "I let you get this far because I want you to stand on the brink of victory and despair as you loose everything and I wanted to see you myself when that happened.

Curing your kind of the Hylden's affliction was a mistake." He carried on. "Now they are more vulnerable than ever. I will be able to destroy them all within a single day." I managed a smile in response.

"If that is so, then why were you so insistent before that we remained cursed?" He jabbed the tip of the Reaver towards him. "Perhaps you knew something about my species that we ourselves did not."

"You are too narrow-minded, Kain, to appreciate the subtly of my divine plans." The Elder replied, all the eyes expect the largest blinking in unison.

"Oh, I don't think I am." He stepped forward and lowered the sword. "If the vampires became mortal again, we would simply die eventually by old age and be far more vulnerable to human weapons then before." I stared back into that giant eye. "But if we had, then you would no longer have a scapegoat which you could rally the humans against." The large raven black pupil in the centre of the blue eye narrowed to a near vertical silt. "They would not fear us anymore and so your precious Sarafan would have nothing with which to justify their draconian rule."

"You're certainly perceptive Kain, I'll give you that." The elder rasped.

"But it goes beyond that doesn't it?" I carried on with a widening smile. "When the vampire Oracles foretold the coming of the Scion of Balance, you saw more in the vision than they did.

You saw signs, road markers and pointers that predicted that eventually you would loose your control and perhaps even your life.

The curing of the vampires was one of those signs and so, desperate to prevent the prophecy from coming true, you did everything in your power to ensure that we either remained cursed or became extinct."

Raziel's projected form manifested itself next to me again. He stared up at the Elder defiantly.

"But now it's over, master. The vampires are their own race once more and your Sarafan armies have been crushed."

The Elder chuckled lightly in response.

Something suddenly felt very wrong. The air around us changed pitch as if something monumental to existence itself had been altered. Everything just seemed wrong… a sensation I could not explain.

"Sabre and his Sarafan Druids have already served their purpose by creating death on a large enough scale, providing me with enough souls to begin my new Genesis." Even as that ominous statement was being said, the ground beneath my feet suddenly began to tremble. Dust and small fragments of rock started to fall from the ceiling, scattering down all around as they were jarred loose by the earthquake.

"What is happening?" Raziel demanded.

"The beginning….of the end."