Kain lay in the concealing shadows, hand clutched to his chest and his breathing harsh and quick. The attack of weakness had been a bad one, provoked perhaps by the trial of crossing over. It was subsiding now however and he was beginning to feel the biting cold of the snow around him once more.
When he felt up to it he pulled himself up to his feet, using the pine tree he had been leaning against as a crutch. His body felt shaky as if it would give out on him again at any moment. He needed to feed to restore lost energies.
There was nothing about him but unsettled wilderness, tall mountain passes lined with spruce and pine and ankle deep in thick winter snow. There was no sign or sense of Raziel anywhere no matter how hard he looked.
He still had the Nexus Stone and despite it being such a nagging reminder of that he would rather forget he felt that he could not simply throw it away. He held onto it, attaching it to the gauntlet on his right arm. It would stay out of his way until the need for its power arrived.
With no way to tell where or when he was, the vampire had no choice but to slough on and hope he discovered a supply of warm blood soon.
Fortunately that hope proved fruitful for as the stars came out at the beginning of night, their twinkling lights poking through the thick cloud cover, he came across a half submerged cobblestone road.
Kneeling to examine it, Kain deduced that while it wasn’t a very well travelled route there were enough fairly recent hoof prints and wagon tracks going back and forth to be promising. Most of the tracks were tracing northward along the road and so Kain followed, using the brush on the roadside as cover so as not to be seen from a distance. He would have used his wolf form to cover more ground but he did not want to provoke another attack of painful weakness until he had a fit supply of blood to buffer against it.
It was perhaps about midnight when he topped a rise and spotted the settlement. As he did, time seemed to freeze in place for him and lock the picture of that town in his mind. He had seen it before a long time ago, but by now the memory of it was even more vague then a dream. At times he could almost believe he had never been here, that his life in this place had been put a dream and he had always been the vampire, Kain, overlord of Nosgoth. But this picture now frozen in his mind was a torturing reminder. 
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“Here again was fate’s cruel joke with its annoyingly acute punch line ready to jab.”
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Even in the dim starlight he knew the place. The settlement was greatly reduced from when he had known it, having suffered a pestilence that cut the population in half and reduced the numbers of the peasants to such lows there had been no one to tend the fields. As such a once prosperous mountain colony had collapsed into stagnant decay.
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“I had returned inadvertently to the seat of power of my human life, the walled town of Coorhagen.”
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Coorhagen… even the name sounded alien in his mind now. Kain could almost feel the memories of his human life, long since forgotten and drowned, beginning to float to the surface of his awareness like bloated corpses on a river. Had it been so long since he left here? Thousands of years, eons had past for him. He had seen Nosgoth conquered, burned and then left to rot and never once had he even considered coming back to see what happened to the town in which he had been raised.
He had sent Rahab to conquer this region without a second thought.
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“I had lived almost my whole human existence in this place never knowing of the greater destiny that awaited me.”
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Regardless of how unsettling the prospect of entering this reminder of a life best forgotten would be, there was smoke rising from a few chimneys and that meant people still lived here. He needed the blood to survive and that took precedence of his personal feelings. With a grimace of distaste he made towards the town’s shabby outer wall.
Coorhagen was almost in a state of collapse now and as the vampire drew nearer he could see that many of the buildings were patched, tiled roofs replaced with someone thatch. The wall was now hard to scale and Kain vaulted over it and landed with a thump on the other side, sliding quickly into the darkness behind a building. The faint starlight barley illuminated the town.
With night upon them, Kain thought that all he had to do was find a house with a sizable number of people living in it and indulge himself with a small massacre. That should replace his failing energies and then he could move on, perhaps in the same night. That would suit him immensely.
Unfortunately the vampire had to revise those plans as he came out into an alleyway, passing down it to the entrance of the town square. He froze then, looking out at the large central townhouse directly across it from him. It was familiar enough to cause him to stop but what really caught his attention were the two banners hanging from the upper floor windows. Red with a black symbol etched into it, a cross with an arch claw like top. An Ankh. Seeing it he scowled for the imagery was familiar enough.
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“And now I knew for certain what era I was in.”
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As if for added confirmation, the door to the town house opened and two men in polished steel armour stepped out. Kain slunk back into the shadows to watch them. They were dressed all in armour only lacking a helmet, a face guard coming up to cover their face to their nose. Loin clothes hung from their belts, purple with that same black broken ankh etched into it.
These men were Sarafan Knights. Not the crusaders who had butchered countless vampires before culminating their genocide with the murder of Janos Audron but the second order, born from the ashes of Moebius’ mercenary army and recruited into a new brotherhood.
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“I could not tell precisely when but I was clearly enduring the laughable reign of the Second Sarafan order, the fascist pretenders of the earlier order of knights. Mere puppets of the Hylden General.”
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Then he had emerged in some time after the fall of the Pillars but before the end of the Sarafan lord.
After his first army, sired by Vorador, had fallen before the gates of the capital city of Meridian these pseudo Sarafan had capitalized on their victory and expanded their control to all regions of Nosgoth.
Evidentially their avaricious need for control was so great they felt the need for a presence even in this secluded town whose glory days had long since been forgotten.
Another man in armour came out to join the first two. He was a head and shoulders larger then them and had far more elaborate armour, with bigger Pauldrons and large bracers across his forearms. He carried his weapon in his hand, a curved blade that arched across a meter long handle.
They spoke but Kain could not quite make out what they were saying, then one of them lifted a wooden torch from a hook on his belt and lit it from another which burned outside the townhouse. With the illuminating torch they set off across the square into another side street.
None of them appeared to have the tell tale runes on their armour that would mean they were gifted with Glyph technology, that glowed whenever vampires came near. Most likely this backwater outpost was not worth the trouble to send any of those kinds of resources.
Kain smiled to himself. These pseudo Sarafan had done the people of Coorhagen an unwitting service. By their presence the vampire would not have to massacre peasants with whom he had no quarrel.
Scaling the nearby building the vampire pulled himself up onto the rooftops and followed the Sarafan guards, keeping low to avoid having himself silhouetted against the sky. These three Sarafan would not be the only soldiers their government had in the town and Kain wanted to hunt them quickly and quietly.
A mangy dog came out from another alleyway to bark at the three men. One of them picked up a stone from the street and threw it at the animal. It retreated back into the shadows with a loud yelp. Another of them laughed and they carried on.
Kain stalked them, patiently waiting.
Then when their unsuspecting patrol turned to enter a side street, Kain took his chance. He leapt from the building, relying on gravity to speed his decent. It made his first blow fatal, talons driving rough armour and into the chest of one of three Sarafan. The man gurgled in surprise and pain but shuddered and grew still as the vampire spread his talons wide, sliding into his heart.
Kain wasted no time, opening his mouth wide and summoning the dying humans blood to him. The injury boiled as if being set on fire and the blood seemed to jump out from it, surging through the air to Kain’s waiting lips. Its warm glow filled him as it flowed down his throat and he could feel strength returning to his body.
“Vampire!” One of the others exclaimed, drawing his blade. The other lifted his massive axe blade to strike as well. Still feeding, Kain gestured with a free hand and sent a bolt of telekinetic force at the largest of them. It sent him sprawling across the street, his weapon clattering away.
The smaller darted in with sword held low, perhaps attempting to slash him across the waist. Kain spun and used his comrades dead body as a meat shield, the stab intended for him sinking into the corpse. The vampire kicked the body forward, slamming it into the Sarafan’s and sending both of them tumbling to the ground.
The third with the large axe had managed to regain his feet and he had reclaimed his weapon. Kain darted in for him before the man could have a chance to react, reaching forward as he can to paralyse the human with his telekinesis.
Before, when he had taken part in the Cabal’s guerrilla war against the Sarafan occupation, such men had proven a challenge for him. But that was before eons of dark evolution and had put him so far above humans in terms of raw physical strength.
He slammed a fist into the man’s face, knocking him backwards and off balance. Then he grabbed his arm and pulled him close, fangs puncturing the skin and drawing out yet more nurturing blood. He drank deeply and fast, his body desperately drawing on the strength it needed. The Sarafan tried to struggle but Kain held fast, drinking more and more until the body finally went limp.
The vampire dropped the corpse and turned, blood coating his lips, to face the last of them. Logically, the only option for the human would have been flight but clearly the Sarafan was enraged. Blind with anger he charged again with his sword held above his head ready for a killing blow.
With ease Kain sidestepped the clumsy lunge and raked the man across the neck with his talons as he raced past. He felt them bite through skin muscle and bone, revering the wind pipe with one swipe. The man staggered past dropping his sword and clutching at his throat with blood seeping out from behind his fingers.
Turning, Kain almost causally drew the blood from the wound telekinetically summoning it to his lips. The human strained to breath, his face going more and paler before finally he collapsed to his knees. Then he toppled over and didn’t get up again.  
Kain wiped his lips with the back of his hand, flexing himself and straining, feeling energy and power course through him once more.
He disposed of the bodies easily enough, dragging them back into the alleyways and hiding them under piled garbage. It would not take the occupying force long to find the bodies but it would allow Kain enough time to make his way out from here before their garrison was roused.
The night was moving on and so did Kain, moving toward the far edge of Coorhagen’s wall. He did not want to stay in town any longer then it had been necessary.
Unfortunately as he past by a street entrance, he turned and looked down it and froze. He froze because his mind made him, body locking into rigidly and everything around him seemed to crystallize and lock itself permanently in his memory. Past and present flowed together, meshing so perfectly what nothing he could ever do would remove this image from his perception. It would remain there forever now until the inevitable end of days.
The house he was looking at was physically no different from any of the other town houses in the settlement. It was fairly large three story building with large windows and a green front door, now tarnished with age. Above the frame of the door was a lion’s crest, the mark of those loyal to the kingdom of Willendorf.
Kain began slowly towards it and each step he took was like a step back through time, back through eons of experience, back through centuries of imperial rule, back through decades of strife and conquest to the simple years of learning basic mathematics at his fathers table.
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“To my surprise the very house where I have lived were still there, standing tall while the buildings around it crumbled.”
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He reached the door and stood for a long moment simply staring it with a haunted expression on his face. In this moment, that simple tarnished green door was more ominous a barrier then the Chronoplast portal itself.
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“Peculiarly I felt as if it were inviting me in. I don’t know what compulsion made me venture inside. Perhaps some vestigial human sentiment that made me curious to see the place of my birth.”
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The door wasn’t locked. He pushed it open and looked into the hallway beyond. Once more past and present overlapped and found himself almost seeing padded eastern carpets and thick candles hanging from the chandeliers when all there really was left was rotted floorboards and rusty metal.
As if drawn in by some siren song, Kain walked slowly into the house passing by doors that lead into rooms where he seemed to recall had been larger; or perhaps he was merely looking at them through a child’s perspective.
The layout of each room stung his mind, prodding more of the corpse memories to float to the surface to nag him with their presence. All furniture had been removed, all carpets torn up and the hand printed wallpaper faded and torn. The house had been abandoned and left to scavengers and the elements.
But it wasn’t completely empty.
At the back of the house near the bottom of the stairs that lead up to the second story was a portrait, still hung on the wall. Its brass frame was tarnished with age and the painting colours were turning grey and covered by a thick layer of dust. Kain stared up all past that at the face staring back at him.
In some weird face it was like looking into a mirror.
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“Here I was confronted with an image of my past, a past I had all but forgotten.”
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His face human bore only a slight resemblance to his present one. He had kept the high cheek bones and chin but, he was ruefully forced to admit, in his human life he had not been very athletic and had a far fatter face as a result.
Also his hairline had been receding, leaving him with a very pronounced windows peek. He had kept that partial baldness although his receded hairline was partially hidden by the crest of horns above his brow. He smiled whimsically at the thought of vampirism saving him from male pattern baldness.
So his human family had not just written him off as lost and then forgotten about him, they had remembered him and then kept this picture to remind them that he had once been one of them.
Kain wondered if they would have kept this flattering reminder had they know their prodigy had become not only a vampire but the soon to be Emperor of vampires? Probably not.
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“It was sobering to see my human face and remember who I had once been.”
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Slowly his eyes turned to look up the stairs and there his gaze fixed on another painting on the wall just above. It was more well kept them his own portrait, the colours not quite so diminished nor as much dust on the frame. As such he could tell who it once with one glance and it made his body go rigid.
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“And perhaps even more sobering to see her face.”
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She was so like his human portrait, with high cheek bones but her face was rounder and framed by long black hair tied back behind her ears. Her eyes were large and pale, a sign of the blindness which had affected her skin birth.
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“I felt a momentary pang of shame for forgetting her, her name and face recalled to me only by this reminder.”
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He ascended the stairs and looked up at the picture, for that one moment the persona of Kain the disruptor falling away, revealing the little boy who had walked around the house in awe at the blind woman.
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“Ester, my elder sister.”