Vengeance Sated

En route to the place of his death, Kain encountered his one-time assassins traveling through the forest. Bewildered by the dead man's reappearance, the bandits attacked nonetheless but quickly fell to his newfound power. Sating his new hunger by feasting upon their blood, Kain reflected with sadistic pleasure upon their pitiful attempts at killing him a second time. His vengeance fulfilled, he waited to die again...But death did not come. It was then that he heard the voice of Mortanius echoing within his mind. The sorceror told him that while his revenge had been taken, he was not yet free to be released by death and must journey to the corrupted Pillars.

Upon reaching the Pillars, he encountered the trapped spirit of Ariel. Initially hostile toward this specter, his worries were relieved as she spoke of her former role as Balance Guardian, the horrible fate that had befallen the Circle of Nine, and of the cure to Kain's new curse. The only way to be released from his vampiric unlife was to hunt down the treacherous members of the Circle and put an end to their poisoning of the world. This service was the cost of his bloody reprisal.