At the dawn of the Empire, when the land had been divided between the Clans, at the command of the Lords of Nosgoth a magnificent road, paved with granite and sandstone, had been built by human slaves. The Imperial Road led from the Sanctuary of the Clans northwest, parallel to the shores of the Lake of the Dead; then, it split; the western path led to what previously had been Vasserbunde, and now the land of the Melchiahim; the eastern one led to the frigid Ash Village; and thereafter, to the lands of the Turelim Clan. Southwards and eastwards, the Road stretched from the Sanctuary to the once-fertile grounds on the shores of the Great South Lake where the Zephonim lived.
The road from the Zephonim lands north to the territories of Turel had never been constructed. Not for want of time or resources, or even appropriate land – though the ground of the lands to the east of the Lake of the Dead, little more than swamps and quagmires, was not suited to carry the weight of the heavy granite; but at the God-Emperor’s own behest; for that was his own domain, and Avernus, his usual refuge for the times when he found the insubstantial bickering between the Clans too tedious to bear.
After Raziel’s execution; after the Clans had scattered to the corners of Nosgoth, their leaders fearful of following their senior in his horrible death when their own time to evolve had come; after each Clan in turn had forsworn its loyalty to their ultimate Lord, electing to follow its own path to corruption, and all contact between the Clans had ceased – then, the Imperial Road fell into disuse; there was no one to maintain it, and over the centuries that were to pass, it would become a ruin, as degenerate as the rest of the Empire in its fall. Earthquakes soon shattered the massive pavestones; plants grew freely in the gaps between them, where previously not even the blade of a knife could enter; landslides closed off large parts of the road, and rendered others nearly impossible to traverse for all the rubble accumulated; finally, the renegade humans who had raised their Citadel in the northwest of the realm barricaded the way with stone, brick, and water in an effort to bar the vampires in the south and the east from trespassing into the territory they soon came to consider their own.
Now, however, the way north was open again.

The old way north had been cleared, undoubtedly for the convenience of the Hylden troops in their march to conquer all of Nosgoth; apparently, it had served equally well for the hasty retreat of the fortunate few who had survived the defeat of their legions at the Pillars.

He stopped for a moment, eyeing the telltale traces of a recent flight scattered before his eyes – pieces of equipment, too heavy to carry when speed had been of importance; puddles of blood from the wounds that no one had found the time to dress; the body of a soldier who could continue to run no more, and had been left behind by his comrades, who had not even spared a moment to administer to him the blow of mercy. It was then that he heard the voices; someone was approaching. He flew up to a rocky outcropping which jutted out above the path; from there, unseen to those below him, he listened to their conversation.
“Almost there.”
“I’m not sure if I want to know what waits at the end. Did you see how scared the survivors were?”
“Demons breaking loose… And now – this. The Pillars, risen again!”
The three scouts had already passed him; for a moment, he considered letting the Hylden go, if only to see their faces when the cowards confronted the mammoth demons; in any case, there was no danger that they would discover anything at the Pillars. In the end, however, he remained true to the creed he had set for himself millennia ago: no enemy would escape his hands unharmed. Ever.
He did not fly down to meet his foes; instead, through the Reaver he created a powerful updraft that brought them up to his level, and then jumped in between the astounded creatures. The Hylden were all dead before their bodies met the ground again.

Given how little time had passed since I had left the ruins of the Sanctuary of the Clans, the encampment from which these Hylden spies hailed must lay somewhere equally close. The matter invited further investigation; the potential gains of infiltrating a Hylden compound far outweighed the elusive benefits which I hoped to reap from my journey to the human settlement.

He followed the road north, through the canyons, the caves, and the tunnels burrowed by the slaves in the times now long past; at last, as he was about to leave the last cave into an open clearing, he found the tunnel mouth closed off by a Ward Gate; another gate, of wrought steel, was behind it. Faced with the green shimmer of the Glyph energy, he was forced to draw back again –

Beyond these closed gates must have lain the Hylden compound. Apparently, my enemies’ hold over this part of Nosgoth was still insecure; no doubt, the demon rebellion, still fresh in the memory of the scouts whom I had just encountered, accounted for this caution.

For a moment, he considered retracing his steps back to the other entrance of the cave, and then flying over the barred door; in the end, however, he opted to take a different path.
He did go back, but only several steps – only until he arrived by a heap of stones, all amassed in one corner of the cave. He shot a telekinetic projectile at the pile; then another. The stones fell down, revealing a gap; an entrance. One far too small an opening for him, in his current state; indeed, one too small for the majority of bipedal beings, unless one were willing to crawl. However, unlike the majority of bipedal beings, he was not bound to his current shape.
He concentrated; his form changed, distorted; and a moment later, a large grey wolf was running down the dark path which at first led deep underground, and then was nearly level. Here, the ground of the passage was littered with bones; they crunched under the wolf’s paws.
Finally, he found himself at the bottom of a deep, vertical well, just as narrow in radius in circumference as previously the passage was; but at least he could stand in this place. He shifted back to his usual form –
There would be a metal grate at the top, slightly loose, he knew; and one of the walls – or perhaps all – would have just enough purchase for him to climb…
He emerged precisely where he had expected: in one of the cages in the dungeon of the former abode of the Razielim Clan. He smiled grimly to himself as he passed as mist through the bars of the cage: Raziel’s trap, faux way of escape for his prisoners had delivered him unerringly into his castle – where, as he suspected, the Hylden corps now resided.

His assumption was proven correct soon after he had left the dungeon. As he walked down the corridors of the stronghold, once richly adorned in opulent red and gilt with gold; now but a shadow of their former glory – while the once luxurious tapestries on the walls were now oft but tatters, many a stone ornament was broken into pieces – he at times came across the enemy warriors, ambling about in twos or threes, conversing on a multitude of meaningless topics. These, he quickly dispatched, before they had the time to voice an alarm; captives such as these – mere soldiers, who more probably than not knew but little of their masters’ plans – would be of little use to him; the better use he found for them was as fodder for his blade, practice material on which to hone his fencing skills. (The wings had shifted his centre of gravity, and he found it oddly irksome to have to familiarise with fighting in this Changed body after millennia of perfecting his coordination; still, it would not do to lose balance in a major confrontation.) It was the commander of this post for whom he was searching; and he had strong suspicions where he would find him.

Though I had not seen the inside of this edifice for centuries, I knew it well. In these very halls, another gruesome act of Nosgoth’s history had once played out – and, regardless of the passage of time, all the marks were still here, visible to the eye of the one who had once witnessed it all.
Here, in the erstwhile abode of Raziel’s clan, fratricidal bloodbath once took place as vampires fought vampires; the children of Raziel fought the children of my other Lieutenants. The first, loyal to their master with a constancy that transcended his death, and would last till their own end; the others, equally loyal to my own command; all caught in an inescapable web of preordained fates, forced to clash for no other reason than that of the bloody sacrifice which history demanded. For as I had bidden Raziel to his death, it was clear to all that his Clan should follow; that the other Clans should be its executioners; and I, again the one to give the order. And that order, I did give; for even I was then a pawn in another’s game, and forced to comply with history’s commands.

“Their outer perimeter has been breached, yet you dare tell me I am ordered to remain here!”
“My Lady, the Pillars –”
As he suspected, he found the Hylden whom he sought in what had once been Raziel’s war room. The commander was a gruesome creature – he had only seen one so warped when he had faced the true form of the Hylden general; the honorific he had just heard was veritably the only clue he had that she was a female of the species. Surrounded by her aides-de-camp, she appeared to be in the middle of a heated discussion with what appeared to be a messenger from another captain.
As he kicked the heavy door in, however, all differences in opinion seemed at once forgotten as everyone turned to see who the intruder was. For the shortest of moments, everything was silent, as he claimed the complete attention of everyone in the room; eventually, the leader spoke in disbelief.
“A vampire? Here?” The Glyphs on her armour glowed with bright poisonous green. It was all she managed to say; for in this moment, the fight started.
Chaos soon reigned; magic was unleashed copiously on both sides. He used his powers of Dimension to teleport himself around the room to strike at several of his enemies before they prepared for him; the Hylden captain unleashed a volley of powerful Glyph-magic spells, which burned the skin of the vampire lord as fire and water. One of the commander’s aides had managed to escape and returned with reinforcements; soon, a steady barrage of Hylden warriors poured through the wide opening left by the destroyed door. These common grunts would not have lasted long against him, if at this point the Hylden captain had not cast another spell –
His enemies appeared to gain speed, moving swiftly, on par with his own pace; suddenly, he found himself defending from blows from all directions rather than dealing them out. The sorceress must have manipulated time itself, hasting his foes – or perhaps slowing him; to compensate, he spelled the creation of several of his Mind effigies. This proved an unexpectedly effective strategy; the projections absorbed the next torrent of the captain’s toxic projectiles. Seeing this, he spelled the creation of a few more; unfortunately, at this moment his was sorely reminded of his detrimental link with the Pillars – this had been the last spell he would be able to cast in some time.
As soon as he saw that that the sorceress’ spell ended, and that the spell-warped time reverted to its natural pace, he leapt over the heads of the soldiers in the direction of the captain. Once in the air, however, he saw that she had thrown a telekinetic projectile straight at him; he tried to dodge it, turning briefly into mist, but it still singed his right wing. He leapt again, and this time did manage to land close enough to her to hit her with the Reaver; but the Glyph shield she had apparently cast in the meantime stopped the blow. Waiting for the moment in which the commander would no longer be able to maintain her shield, he started to wade through the waves of soldiers again; whilst he fought them, the sorceress captain slowed his time again – and then again; periodically, she sent towards him waves of spells and projectiles, which, little by little, he was once more mastering to dodge.
The end of the annoyingly prolonged fight, when it came, was almost a disappointment – the captain was clearly a sorceress, and no fighter; once her magic powers ran out, with her soldiers all dead, she found herself helpless. At his mercy, one would say, had it existed in the first place.
Holding the Hylden at swordpoint, he said, “After I defeated the architect of your breed’s previous futile invasion on my land, I made him a vow –”
She interrupted him, sudden recognition, and then fear, evident in both her voice and eyes, “And you have kept it. You were waiting for us. Maat’ash’Eirene was right –”
Even he did not have a chance to move; mesmerised, he could but watch as she threw herself on the blade of the sword; the Reaver screamed and devoured her soul.

Through her death, the Hylden captain deprived me of any potentially valuable information which she might have possessed – save for that one name: Maat’ash’Eirene. Who was it, who apparently knew in detail what had transpired during my confrontation with the Sarafan Lord at the entrance to the Hylden Gate, millennia ago? I knew not; but I would find out.

Unceremoniously, he threw the carcass off the blade; afterwards, he wiped the crimson flower of blood off of it with a piece of cloth he had torn off the remains of a nearby curtain. He then stepped up to the window through which dim light entered, illuminating the chamber; and in it, the fair pile of bodies that had amounted near the entrance. The windowpane was broken; only shards of glass remained set in the leaden frame. Perhaps it had been shattered on this very day, by a stray bolt of energy, or a body which hit it while falling; perhaps it had simply not yet been fixed after the previous time…

From this very window, I once watched as the few Razielim who had let themselves be captured alive were burnt at stake in the main courtyard of the castle. Defiant till the end; they had taken after their sire.
I then asked myself, as I witnessed their ashes scatter on the wind, and become nothing – if the fate of Raziel’s children had been worse, or better, than their executioners’ oncoming demise… The vampires of the other Clans would slowly descend into the madness and oblivion of eternal coma; the Razielim were at least afforded the honour and the chance of a death in fighting. They used it well, felling many foes; that they fell in turn was no fault of theirs; only their destiny. In the cosmic game of chance and destiny, they had been only – collateral damage.
When my own time came, I hoped to have better odds myself than my children had – if not stacked in my favour, then at least not against me; I have long worked to even out the chances in that fight.
For, however much they tried, the Hylden’s machinations were nothing next to the schemes of my supreme adversary; the one who sought to control the destiny of every single being in this land. And succeeded.
Almost.

He searched through the chamber, but found nothing which could be of help to him; only from the remains of the Hylden commander did he gather a most curious object: a multifaceted jewel, each of its sides a different colour. This seemed to have no immediate use; rather, it appeared to be a piece of a larger artefact; considering its bearer, possibly an important one. He retained it; expecting no further findings, he decided to leave the chamber and the building. As mist, he passed through the window; then, he leaped down to the courtyard.
Once there, he looked around. Behind his back, Raziel’s symbol still adorned the wall, left unspoilt for some obscure reason. But the Razielim banners were all gone, replaced by ones he assumed bore the Hylden captain’s marks. These were slowly fluttering on the gentle breeze; apart from them, though, nothing moved in the courtyard. No one was coming his way; the abode was once again empty, devoid of all life.

In the middle of the courtyard I stood, thinking of this and the multitude of other losses I had been forced to suffer to arrive at the here and now. Raziel’s was only the last of them, though it had singularly hurt me; for, over time, I had begun to consider him not a servant, a necessary sacrifice, or a wayward child – but a partner; perhaps my only true ally.
And I had to ask myself – even if I justified Raziel’s hope in me; even if I felled all my foes and managed to restore Nosgoth – whom would I rule, if all vampire had fallen long before? How had the beings who had provided for my coming planned to return?
But time for such questions would yet come; for now, I had quite a different goal. It appeared that I was not the only one who sought entry to the human Citadel. There was something which the Hylden wanted there; whatever that was, I would reach it first.
And I should make haste: the Citadel’s outer perimeter had been breached.

He walked out to the outer courtyard; there, he found a niche filled with the stagnant energy which would serve him to replenish his strength, and, more important, the relays which controlled the gates of the compound. Leaving behind the carnage of a full Hylden squad mercilessly slaughtered, he once again took to the path north.