From the air, the abode of the Second Clan resembled a giant black snake coiled protectively around the massive smokestack which towered above the land of the Turelim. In the place where the snake’s tail met its head lay the only two gates into the fortress: in the snake’s maw, the way in from the world outside; on the tip of the snake’s tail, the exit to the inner courtyard, a thin strip of ground which separated the building from the smokestack.
Turel had his throne room constructed precisely there, where the building was twice its normal width, in an additional storey elevated over the main body of the fortress; an odd choice, perhaps, given that it meant that it was even darker there than on the ground floor–

On the face of it, the territory of the Turelim Clan appeared to be the antithesis of Avici: where Avici was permeated with a harsh, everlasting radiance, this corner of Nosgoth was equally filled with impenetrable darkness. The only light to pierce the opaque air came, against all common sense, from the ground, from the places where the craggy volcanic rock had cracked and parted to reveal the magma flow beneath. Devoid of light that was not searing fire, Turel’s offspring had evolved to do without the former and to endure the latter: their eyes, useless to them, had weakened, while their hearing had much improved; their thick skin and burly build imparted on them some small resistance to fire. Their final unique feature, Kain recalled, was their proficiency in telekinesis–
Even now, one of the brood stood guard in front of the outer gate to the abode. Kain watched the creature curiously, mindful of the fact that even a hundred years before, some of these wretches had still retained command of their minds; they, alone of all the Clans. He wondered if it would still be so in the case of the guard. In the end, he doubted it: for, although on the face of it, the territory of the Turelim was the antithesis of Avici, in truth it resembled it; and the resemblances ran deep.

Madness stretched over the tenebrous land: the stale madness of the sorcerers of the Circle who had shaped this realm in their unholy experiments with the living forces of Nosgoth; the prolonged agony of my corrupt Empire; the abject surrender and despair of children and subjects abandoned by their father and ruler; and yet more.
Elsewhere, Nosgoth might be healing already; but the heart of darkness stood still, in an ominous stillness which did not in the least resemble a peace.

Kain settled softly on the ground in front of the sentinel vampire, and started to walk towards it; pumices and tuffs gritted under his feet, announcing his presence to the guard. Up close, he could see the Turelim better in the dim red glow of the lava flows: the emaciated form of its immortal body; the overgrown, sensitive ears; the sharp, angular features of its face, perhaps not too dissimilar from his own – after all, the mindless beast could even now claim a kinship with him, a thought which somehow enticed him even as it repulsed him – and, in the end, the blind eyes; and in them, shadows of the vampire’s animal hunger and pain; for of emotion, of rational thought, there was not a trace–
The Turelim attacked: soundlessly, without moving the slightest bit from its post – in fact, without making a single physical move – it attacked: caught by surprise, Kain felt the grip of an invisible noose tighten around him, shackling him to the place where he now stood. Tentatively, he reached to break the bond; but, like all nooses, the more he tried to break free of it, the closer it bound.
Then, he stilled, and calmly awaited the guard’s approach; he knew that the moment the creature struck at him in an attempt to draw his blood, it would be forced to break the telekinetic restraints.

And so it was: the Turelim did, indeed, strike at him; and the strike did not land, because the moment Kain felt the invisible bonds slacken, he moved away from the path of the blow; and at the same time, he raised the Energy shield to protect him from further telekinetic assaults.
The Turelim growled – it was the wild, bestial cry of one who had long lost the gift of expression; then, something struck Kain’s shield, but did not pass through; the sentinel vampire must have attempted to constrain him again. The Turelim growled again, somehow sensing the futility of its efforts–
Kain would not use the Reaver; even so, it was only a quick work with his claws before the Turelim’s prone form lay spread on the ground. He knelt next to the unconscious vampire–
A drop of blood hit the bestial form; a terrible scream soared into the miasmata of pestilential darkness; a soul was released after millennia of bondage, leaving behind only a corpse resting on the jet-black ground.

There is no cure for death. Only release.
For millennia, I had scorned Ariel’s insight; I had desired no cure for my vampire bloodlust. I had ceased my search for it even as I had doomed the Pillars to their decay.
Yet as only pure could I comprehend fully the extent of the Pillars’ corruption, I could not appreciate the import of Ariel’s words until now, that I carried the cleansing blood in my veins.
I had the means to heal the taint of the Hylden curse and the former madness of my own soul in which the Turelim partook. But I could never turn living beings into vampires; every last legionnaire of the Clans had been raised from the corpses of fallen human warriors through the Hylden soul magic; and for that – for the death that came before the vampiric unlife – there would be no cure; purified, the Turelim’s soul escaped the carcass to which it had been bound.
And so, I need not have shed my blood for this wretch; I might as well have fed its soul to the Wheel with the Reaver.
In the Citadel, the Elder One sought to humiliate me by forcing me to slay his cultists by my own hand; to knowingly provide him fodder; the impossible alternative was to suffer Sava to exist and scheme against me. Now, it seemed, I faced another choice; this time, a dilemma of my own doing, yet one whereof the demon had known before I did; and in which he must delight. For I could release the souls of the Turelim, strengthening him yet again; or I could leave them be; a thorn of corruption to spread its poison in the reviving tissue of Nosgoth.
The land could, indeed, be saved; but her vampires could not.

There was only one vampire in Nosgoth who had never died before the Hylden curse bound his soul forever to his body; and this was the only vampire who could perhaps provide him with some clues to his destiny as the Scion of Balance; with some insight into the intent of the creators of the Pillars; with some understanding of the relationship between the ancient vampires and the creature that had been their god–
The vampire who had not yet showed himself; though by now, he must know he was expected.
The corpse of the Turelim guard lay forgotten; with grim determination, Kain walked the last few steps down the ruins of the ancient road; and thus, entered the stronghold of madness and despair.

The outer foyer was just as he had remembered it: windowless as the whole abode was; dim, filled with the pestiferous gloom of the heavy, joyless air. Everything was fashioned in black, and so, nearly indistinguishable in the muted reddish glow coming through the thin plates of obsidian set into the walls by the floor. To the left were the corridors which led further into the ring-like castle; to the right was the set of stairs which led to Turel’s throne room.

Turel’s chambers were upstairs, but I would not find my son there. He had disappeared from the face of Nosgoth shortly after our last meeting, wherein I had spoken to him of his juniors’ demise.
This, however, did not mean that his throne room would be empty.

He stepped further into the darkness of the antechamber.
And then, bestial forms emerged silently from every corner of the room: from before him – and from behind him; and for a moment, he could not help but wonder at how perfectly silent predators the children of Turel had become in his absence, if even he, another vampire, had not heard a sound–
Like the guard outside, they were all nothing but mere shadows of their proud, former selves; shadows made of the disease of their minds and souls and the starvation of their bodies: for there was no telling what they had fed on for the previous eighty years that Zosha had told him the humans had been free of them; or if they had fed at all. They were all wearing almost nothing; scraps of their onetime armours were fused with their flesh. And again, there was no recognition of their lord and master in their sunken and vacant eyes; but as they all, one by one, caught the odour of his blood-filled body, they rapidly became animated with animal frenzy; some even started to emit utterly uncouth grunts which did not resemble in the slightest speech, human or otherwise.
And then, suddenly, they all simultaneously attacked: and Kain felt a dozen telekinetic assaults strike the shield which he put up a split second before the first blow hit him; and then, it was again the time to kill.
He unsheathed the Reaver; there was no reason to refrain from using it now that he had learnt that his blood could not cure the vampires’ disease; or perhaps, that it cured it all too well–
The Turelim, to give them credit, were worthy opponents, even in their current state; perhaps the noxious influence of the restored Pillar of Conflict lent strength to their rage and to their blows. They pounded him with their claws and their telekinetic powers; now attempting to strangle him, now trying to bring his shield down and beat him down with volleys of projectiles. Some had even, he discovered to his no small amazement, evolved the sort of fire telekinesis that he himself possessed; and when it became obvious to them that he would not sell his blood cheaply, used it ever more frequently–
Projectiles, fiery and otherwise, crossed the chamber in all directions; at times they hit their targets, and at times they did not; and when they did not, at times they chipped pieces off the walls and the heavy balustrade of the staircase. A particularly large explosion tore off the lintel above the entranceway to the stronghold, cutting that way off; another one hit the ceiling, and brought down rubble on top of everyone’s heads–
And so, when the Reaver screamed for the last time and the battle was over, the hall looked very differently from what it had been before; and Kain saw that the some stray bolt must have hit the wall or the ceiling near the door at the top of the stairs; for a heap of rubble was now blocking the entrance to Turel’s chamber.
There was, he knew, a second staircase, at the other end of the ring-like stronghold. He could, perhaps, teleport out of the castle and then enter it through the gate from the inner courtyard; instead, however, he raised his Energy shield yet again, and, Reaver in hand, crossed the threshold of the passage which would lead him ever further into the heart of darkness.

Forth and forth he went, through the suffocating, windowless corridors, stuffed with the sluggish air of millennia; and as he went forth, he encountered–
Vampires; but what vampires they were! In the chaos; the corruption; the degeneration of Nosgoth, they were the most chaotic, the most corrupt, the most degenerate of all. He had called them a thorn, and this, in essence, they were: a toxic residue of madness in a healing land. Like lunatics, they prowled the corridors of the citadel, executing menial tasks allotted to them in time out of mind; tasks whose sense was long forgotten and which had in the meantime acquired all the meaningless of a ritual; and perhaps not even that; perhaps these vampires were now merely nothing but trained animals. At one point, he saw one of them attempt to operate an obviously broken stove, and catch fire in the process; and none reacted, and the vampire in question least of all; its skin, he noticed as he killed it, bore all the marks of previous burnings. The animal, it seemed, could not learn even through pain.
And so, he penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness, and encountered these creatures, solitary or in groups; and destroyed them all; ruthless as he had ever been, ruthless as he ever would be; a fine successor, he thought, to the Sarafan; to the Sarafan, to Moebius’ cutthroats, even to these very vampires, who in the very same manner had once treated their seniors of the First Clan.
And when all were dead and his gruesome errand in this place was at last completed, he ascended the second ornate flight of stairs; that which led to Turel’s throne room from the inner entrance hall.

An apparition awaited him there, in the darkness of the chamber; an apparition which could have been Janos Audron – and again, it could very well have not been him. It was only when the being spoke that Kain knew for sure that he was at last in the presence of the ancient vampire; for though Janos’ shape was different, his voice had stayed exactly the same as it had been when Kain had met him previously, millennia ago.
“Greetings, Kain. You have tarried much in coming here,” the creature said; and there was more than the slightest hint of reproach in its voice. Then, it added, “But at last you have come.”
“I had to take the long way,” Kain replied. “Besides, you had the advantage of me, Janos: I had to search for you,while you knew where to find me all along.”
The unspoken question hung in the air; but Janos – the creature that must have been Janos – ignored it. Instead, he said simply, “You have changed much, Kain.”
Something of Kain’s thoughts must have reflected on his face, because the Audron continued, in an oddly impassive, unconcerned voice, “So have I: the Hylden’s words came true–”
If it were possible for any living being – a vampire – to be constantly on fire; to burn eternally and neither feel pain nor be by the flames consumed – the appearance of such a creature could perhaps approximate what Kain was facing now. In the darkness of the room – in the darkness of this whole place – Janos stood out in sharp relief: a living torch, from the top of his head to the tips of his wings to the tips of his talons, a fiery shape which only barely resembled the vampire whom it had once been.
Janos was wearing the Wraith Armour, just as Kain had suspected; but the flames from the uncovered parts of his body leapt over the breastplate, obscuring the shadow of the armour with their light; the shadow and the irregular shape on it: the shape that could only be the Nexus Stone. A scabbard, enveloped by thin threads of flame, hung suspended at the vampire’s waist; and Kain knew without looking that it concealed the Flame Sword; a fitting blade for such a creature.
Perhaps the only fixed feature in this mutable, fiery shape was Janos’ eyes – but even they were now changed: instead of the vampiric yellow, they were the colour of copper and molten gold–
“– And so has the land,” the vampire finished. “It reminds me,” he shuddered lightly: a ripple moved through the fiery body – “of the other place. You have killed my firstborn.” This disjointed statement was definitely not a question.
“You have imprisoned mine for eternity in this sword,” Kain retorted, taking the Reaver off his back. For all he knew, the veracity of this statement may have well been wanting; but for what it lacked in accuracy, he would make up with conviction.
Janos’ eyes lit up at the sight of the blade. “The Reaver! But– Raziel– your son–” For a moment, there was silence as the vampire digested the news.
Soon enough, however, the flames in Janos’ eyes died out. “But you are wrong, Kain,” he said impassively; as though having assimilated the revelation, he had deemed it unimportant and unworthy of his further attention, “It was not my doing, but,” a grimace twisted the fires of his face, “the Hylden’s.”
Janos’ indifference to news of Raziel surprised Kain; but another part of his mind was already taking up the new information. “The Hylden’s?” he repeated; but there was, after all, only one Hylden who could possibly fit this picture. “Maat’s?”
At this, Janos laughed. “I see that you are familiar with the story of the Traitor,” he said. “Yes. On our God’s orders, she was allowed to escape, to enchant the blade with her heretical– her sacrilegious soul magic which she thought would benefit the defender of her kind. She was mistaken, of course: both on that and on the reality of her escape. Vorador killed her when she was no longer useful; and you, I gather, used the weapon to defeat and imprison her champion.” The flames of Janos’ face reshaped themselves as the vampire added coldly, “Good. With Raziel within the blade, the Hylden have lost, even if they do not know it yet.”
Though he was careful not to show any of it, this speech more than surprised Kain. And more than by the Audron’s ignorance: for the ancient vampire apparently knew nothing either of Vorador and Maat’s long later history; or, much more importantly, of the murals hidden within the Spirit Forge – the murals which unanimously proclaimed that it was not the vampire champion who were to battle the Hylden champion, but rather the Scion of Balance who were to fight and defeat them both – and so, Raziel had been as much the vampire’s hero as the Hylden’s–
(Though, he thought suddenly, only the least charitable of souls could call what had in fact happened Raziel’s defeat–)
In short: more than by Janos’ ignorance of all these facts; more than by the sudden certainty that he would not receive his answers here; that Janos knew no more of the destiny of the Scion of Balance than Maat had; that he was as misguided, as lost in an erroneous interpretation of the prophecies, as all others, Hylden or vampire, had been–
(And yet, he thought, someone must have created the murals in the Spirit Forge. Someone must have known, must have seen, that it would be neither the vampire champion nor the Hylden one who would be the Scion–)
More than by all that, Kain was stunned by the ancient vampire’s callous rejection of Raziel. He knew that his lieutenant– his son– in the end, his ally and his partner– had felt an inordinate affection for Janos, having borne the brunt of it when Raziel set himself on reviving the vampire; and he had automatically, and perhaps erroneously, assumed that the fondness was mutual–
And yet, perhaps he should not be so astonished: were he to be in Janos’ place, and knowing only what Janos knew, his reaction would, of course, be identical. Still–
Still.
“Yes. The Hylden,” he said at last. “Tell me, Janos. How did you escape them?”
The vampire did not respond, as though he had not heard the question; instead, he turned, and walked a few steps towards the left wall, the one which gave onto the smokestack. This, as Kain noted only now, his attention fully occupied by Janos before, had a large hole in it; as if blasted telekinetically by Turel in some odd, mad bid to escape–
“Fly with me, Kain,” he said wistfully. “It has been so long since I last flew with another.”
He agreed: for the moment, what else was there to do?

Two pairs of massive wings – one black as the eternal night around them, the other brilliant with the hellfire of Avici – stirred the stale, noxious air as the two vampires flew up the height of the smokestack; and then over it, through the smoke it was spewing out. Janos was not satisfied until after they had crossed the layer of the putrid fumes: but then, suddenly, he stopped mid-flight. And for all it looked like, he actually alit on the smoke: no longer flying, but standing on it, as if it were solid ground–
“I see that you are bringing the Hylden to Nosgoth. That is good,” he said, touching the Nexus Stone affixed to his breast.
Kain started again on hearing this; but this time, the surprise soon passed as Janos finished, “They are much weakened now, and unsuspecting of us. When we strike, we shall destroy them easily, once and for all.”
That Janos had apparently made a decision in the name of them both suddenly irritated Kain. “I have no intention to destroy the Hylden,” he replied, purposefully folding his wings to repeat the older vampire’s earlier trick. It turned to be much easier than it had looked.
“No?” Janos asked, looking at him sceptically.
Kain considered the matter. “No,” he replied at last. “Like the humans, they have proven willing to serve me.”
“Ah, the humans!” Janos suddenly became agitated; and given his former calm, the contrast was all the more striking as he asked, impassionedly–
“And do you intend to make them equal to us as well? Them, amongst whom we should walk as gods?”
“I have been a god. It grew boring quickly,” Kain replied curtly.
Janos was clearly disappointed by his answer. “And so, you are bent on empowering the ignorant. The undeserving.”
Kain snorted; for some reason, the older vampire seemed himself bent on treating him as a fledgling yet to be taught the fundamental facts of existence. It was as if Janos, despite all his assertions to the contrary, failed to notice that he was no longer talking to Kain’s younger self–
“At least, they were not the ones who chose ignorance over knowledge,” he said. “If the vampires had not declared that the Hylden be unspoken, they would not have managed to surprise me by their return–” He decided not to breach the topic of the Elder One just yet.
A ripple passed through the fiery face; then, Janos turned his eyes away from him, saying, “We had our reasons.”
“Reasons?” Kain demanded. “What reasons were there for a behaviour against all reason?”
Janos started to speak, “Le coeur a ses raisons–”
“–que la raison ne connaît point,” Kain finished. The heart has its reasons which reason knows not. An old adage; and perhaps true – especially when one thought of this dark, impenetrable, pitiless heart – but one which, as all old adages, did not say anything. “What else do you have to say, Janos?”
“In part,” the old vampire continued, unruffled by the interruption, “this must have been, of course, because we did not expect the Binding to be disrupted so soon... It must have failed after the Sarafan–” He shuddered again, and Kain knew what memory evoked this reaction: that Janos was now reliving the moment when the warrior-priests had taken his heart– “It must have taken time before the Pillars accepted the human-born vampires as their new masters–”
“Still,” he finished suddenly, “even Vorador and his kin had been better than the miserable wretches I encountered here. I hope that the Wheel accepts them; I must thank you for releasing them, Kain. Our God will be pleased.”
“Your God, Janos–” Kain strained to keep composure; this conversation was taking a decidedly wrong turn; or perhaps it had taken a wrong turn long before; perhaps even the moment it had started – “is nothing but a parasitic fraud.”
Janos looked at him calmly. “Yes. He said that you would be telling me this.”
“I have proof.”
“And this. But, Kain, at last – at long last, I have heard His voice. He has spoken to me; He has forgiven me; and He has brought me release from the land of exile. What proof can you give me that will nullify these truths?”
Flames danced in the copper-and-gold eyes of the apparition before him; hellish glow enveloped it like an affectionate parent would cradle a child; and, not for the first time during this talk, Kain wondered if the madness of Avici had touched only Janos’ body; if, at some level, the madness of the heart of darkness did not resonate with some darkness deep within the Audron’s soul.

Perhaps taking Kain’s momentary silence for lack of argument, Janos resumed his talk–
“He has told me to await you here– to lead you to those bastards of your soul which must be put down before the land can be restored. And now, we shall destroy the dissenters as you have destroyed the sinners; and then, we will finish the deed and be ourselves reborn–”
At last, Kain thought, the mystery of Janos’ long silence was explained; and what a mundane explanation this was: the Elder One simply wanted to delay this meeting as long as possible; to have him – let him, for never it be told that the task was to him a repugnant one – slay as many as possible, Hylden, human or vampire, before he realised that with every kill, he was making his enemy stronger. And, once he realised this; once, for the very first time in his vampiric existence, he found a very good reason not to kill, the Elder had forced him to confront those that he must destroy: first Sava, and now the Turelim–
Amplifying the death toll and satisfying the unending hunger: it was all there ever was to it. And yet, like a fool, he had fallen straight into this, after all rather vulgar, trap; had followed his nature of a killer to the only conclusion, the only solution, it had offered.
Yet this was a matter for another time; for now, another issue was more pressing: for, perhaps for the first time during this conversation, he found a way to turn Janos’ words against him, to appeal to the Audron with his own arguments–
“Reborn?” he asked, “As humans? The ignorant? The undeserving? You said that yourself, Janos: to them, we should be as gods. You chide me for making them our equals; yet you would become one of them yourself?”
For a moment, he thought that this appeal to Janos’ sentiments worked; something akin to a shadow of a doubt twisted the fiery face; but then, the grimace disappeared, and the face became smooth and peaceful again; set in the unwavering affirmation of the true believer.
“No,” the Audron whispered, “No. What penitent would I be if I let myself doubt so easily – if I rejected the just punishment? And you–” the ardent eyes suddenly bore into Kain, and, for all the millennia of his experience and for all his might, the Scion of Balance had to force himself not to take a step back under the force of this fierce gaze – “You. If you refuse your destiny; if you would not fulfil your duty – then you are no vampire; no saviour; and the Reaver is not your due. Return it this instant, heretic–”
Heretic. It was distressing – no, it was infuriating – to see the ancient vampire reduced to this level: to the level of a human whose life had been so much shorter; who was so less experienced, so less wise in the ways of existence. And yet, for all of Janos’ feeling of superiority, in the end, his epithet of choice was the same as Sava’s; in the end, he was just as willing to delude himself–
“And who are you to decide who or what I am, Janos?” Kain growled. “I have earned the Reaver with my blood and my firstborn’s sacrifice. No; I shall keep it.”
“Then,” the ancient vampire replied sadly, soaring into the night air, “you leave me no choice, Kain.”

They fought; above the smoke layer, and below it, and inside it; but never for a moment, Kain noticed, did Janos leave the ring of the Turelim citadel; never for a moment did he leave the heart of darkness; though certainly he could; he could teleport to anywhere in Nosgoth, and leave Kain to seek him out again, for days, years or millennia, if he only so wished–
But he did not; not even after Kain had hurt him much; it was as if the Audron did not want to leave this place; as if he were bound, by his will and his desire, to it and to its corruption; as if its insanity gave strength to his own madness–
And so, they fought: fought with steel against steel, the Soul Reaver against the Flame Sword, in a grotesque parody of all the ancient prophecies which had always presented one of the clashing heroes possessed of the former, and the other, the latter; and they fought with magic against magic, the magic of a puissant Audron of the ancient vampires against the magic of the Scion of Balance and the seven restored Pillars–
In Avernus, Maat’ash’Eirene had told Kain that as the Hylden were like Earth and Water, vampires were like Air and Fire. And that, perhaps, was more than a graceful metaphor: because it was with Air and Fire that Janos now fought. Powerful tornadoes tore through the stale, opaque air, upsetting that which had not been moved for centuries; fire bolts and walls spread through the smoke, illuminating briefly the eternal darkness.
And from the deepest, darkest shadows around them, Janos called to his aid the odd, shadowy creatures which Kain had so often fought in the past of Nosgoth–
Kain also gave Janos his due: to Janos’ tornadoes, he replied sending out his Air shock wave; to Janos’ attempts to set him on fire, he ignored or answered in kind (achieving the same result with both methods: the fires in which Janos burned protected him from any other fire). The telekinetic bolts Janos sent towards him, he half-suffered, half-caught on the Energy shield he raised time after time; the shades, he set one upon another with the Hate spell of Conflict–
Still, in the end, the two of them would be no more than evenly matched – because even the Reaver was not as useful as it should be, with the peculiar magic of the Nexus Stone guarding Janos against it – but for one power.
Janos could not affect time.

In the slowed time, Kain caught Janos, by that time already much weakened by the fight, in the kinetic shackles, and carefully manoeuvred the ancient vampire onto the top of the smokestack.
He could easily destroy Janos now; rip the Nexus Stone off the vampire’s breast, and feed his soul to the Reaver, sending it straight to the Wheel. He even suspected that Janos would not have much against it–
Moreover: essentially, the vampire was a useless, and even awkward, burden to him now: it was obvious that he knew less than Kain himself about the prophecies; as equally obvious as that, while the humans and the Hylden might be willing to serve Kain, Janos would never do so: at most, he would accept Kain as an equal; it was the same issue which eventually drove Kain to destroy Vorador–
Nevertheless.
Holding the fiery creature with one hand – more steadying it than restraining it, really – he was about to draw his blood with the claws of the other one, when another thought suddenly struck him–
Raziel had not needed blood to Change him, had he?
Perhaps all that was needed was his presence and his willingness to Change another.
Perhaps it was finally the time to stop thinking in terms of blood; to be something else than kin to one of the sad creatures he had destroyed in the land below.

Spellbound, Kain watched as the fires of Avici slowly extinguished and gave way to a familiar, blue-skinned, black-feathered figure; and suddenly, he recalled that this was not the first such transformation Janos had sustained; that once, a long time ago, he had been nothing but a caged beast; and yet, he had recovered.
The copper-and-gold eyes were the last to go; but, at last, they too gave way to the familiar yellow–
And then, a sudden change came over Janos’ features: a change anything approaching which even Kain had never seen before. It was fascinating: it was as though a veil had been rent. On the Audron’s face, he saw the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror; of an intense and hopeless despair. There was no telling what terrible visions the Nexus Stone sent to him during that supreme moment of complete knowledge; but then Janos cried in a whisper – cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath:
“The horror! The horror!”
He took a few steps, each of them wobbly and unsteady like a newborn’s; the Flame Sword dropped out of his weakened hand – and fell all the way down to the earth, far below. Then, Janos suddenly looked at Kain, with a strangely sharp, alarmed gaze, and said:
“Kain– We must wake– We must tell the truth–”
“Tell?”Kain pressed, “Tell whom? Janos!”
“The others–”
But Janos did not finish; because at that moment, a powerful lightning discharge tore through the air – and struck the smokestack, ripping the whole structure into shreds in a massive explosion. Apparently, the energies they had both released during their fight had stirred enough the great masses of air and smoke–
When the bolt struck, Kain was already in the air, having escaped at almost the last moment; but Janos, weakened by the fight and disoriented by the sudden revelation, had not moved in time. His body, bloodied and battered, lay on the black, cracked ground below when the smoke from the explosion subsided; but that was nothing to the old vampire, of course; his body had suffered worse– much worse–
Except that now, of course, the Hylden curse no longer bound Janos’ soul to his body.

And so it was that, when the Scion of Balance held his final council with the last of the proud Audrons of the vampire kind, naught a word was spoken; not even the words of farewell; for there was no time for that, not even for a farewell; all there was, was the sharp spike of pain in Kain’s mind; and the few disjointed Whispered words:
“...under...ruins...oblivion...”
And then, end; and a great nothingness.
And the Wheel claimed another soul.

Kain stood over the body, still trying to make sense of what had happened; of how his long search for Janos had been brought to an abrupt, unexpected conclusion; of Janos’ madness, healing and final epiphany; of how feats of his own will could have been so easily nullified by something so random, so trivial – so pedestrian – as a mere phenomenon of nature; finally, of Janos’ cryptic advice–
–when something heavy fell on his arm, melting his skin in the place where it hit and almost making him hiss out in pain. He looked away from the body; and for the first time saw and heard what was happening around him.
The bolt which had struck the smokestack had been only the first of many; now, all around him, the whole sky, as far as the horizon, was repeatedly illuminated by flashes of lightning. Rain was starting to fall in large, heavy, cold, ash-filled, acidic droplets; it was one of those that had hit him and broke him out of his reverie.
And this, he knew, would be no ordinary rain, the likes of which he had learnt to resist long before; no ordinary storm. The fight; the disruption of the stale, congealed order here, in this place, in the heart of darkness, had set off a chain reaction; and now, repercussions would echo throughout whole Nosgoth–
He tore off the Nexus Stone from the shadow of the Wraith Armour on Janos’ body; because, even if he did not know how to use its powers in full, he knew one who well could; and then, with a heavy – no, not with a heavy heart; for, after all, he had no heart, as best he knew; the only heart he had ever had had belonged to the one who now lay lifeless on the ground – he sought to escape the heart of darkness with a word and a spell:
“Sanctuary.”