The courier from Rahab's brood spoke of a band of humans marching toward Dumah's stronghold in the morning, when the fledgling Dumahim would be weaker. Dumah was not worried. A sleeping Dumahim could destroy a human with little trouble. Humans would probably use torches, and in the darkness of Dumah's castle, their arrival would be easily noticed. Dumah studied the Rahabim bowing before him. He supposed a Rahabim would not be easily impressed with the display of luxury surrounding his master's just-older brother. Rahab had never bothered building a throne for himself, indeed there would be little purpose to a throne underwater. Rahab's stronghold was just that-it was meant to be a drowned fortress, not an extravagant palace like his own. Dumah sent the Rahabim away, with a message of thanks and good tidings to his powerful brother Rahab. Though the information was largely useless, it was good of his brother to be considerate.... most lieutenants would not be so courteous. Zephon was hateful and malicious, and he and the depressed recluse  Melchiah hated each other. Dumah had often thought that Melchiah was far more intelligent than any of them gave him credit for--and more than he was willing to share. Turel hadn't been seen for years, but his messenger, Morlock, sometimes brought orders from his master, thereby reminding everyone that Turel, not Dumah, was the eldest of the surviving brothers. Dumah felt weary of the eternal game between he and his brothers and Kain and the humans, indeed, of Nosgoth itself, and though he did not need to sleep, it often gave him a release from his typical boredom, and so drifted off into a red-tinted slumber.

        Dumah awoke, or rather, was made aware again, finding three great wooden spears driven into his chest, and his arms and legs chained to his throne. NO! What had happened? Dumah tried to stand, expecting the chains to snap under his strength- but they did not. Instead, he felt his body being left behind, in the throne, dead, while he stood and looked at his limp corpse. He? Whose eyes was this seen through? Dumah raised his hand, looked at his claws, and saw that they were indeed his own. Yet the corpse in the throne bore the same. He had been killed... he was not experiencing through the body, but the.. soul, was that it? He did not know... then he realized that if  he had been killed, surely his children had suffered as well! Dumah ran through his castle but found no traces of his brood. Instead, he found stains of blood etched in the floor, and the souls of dead humans and vampires alike floating about the castle that had been somehow warped, as if reality had become a panel of stained glass, dark and bluish and twisted. Most of the souls were formless, mere shadows of death and the dead, others were in the form of wraiths. Dumah could sense that these had at one time been vampires, but the red eyes that peered from the depthless wraith-hood were tinted with the madness of hunger, not those of his children! They swarmed around him, their tattered robes masking the pitch of their souls beneath. They wanted not his blood, but his soul, another stitch to add to their patchworked spirits. Dumah slashed at the apparitions, easily shredding them. He heard their screams echoing across the once grand room now twisted into an insane parody, vaguely wondering what form of death they would gain with their spirits ripped to tatters. Dumah tried to open the gate. Perhaps one of his brothers could come to his aid if he could reach them somehow...  But as he tried to grip the gate his fingers seemed to be only a shadow upon the bars, yet he could not pass them. Trapped! He was imprisoned in this demented version of his own home, his children slaughtered only to become murderous shades! Was this, this tortured death in undeath, was this what he had condemned Raziel to? His brother could never have forgiven him, and now he saw why! This, the Abyss was not only the Lake of the Dead, the execution ground--the Abyss was everywhere! 
        Dumah roared in rage..but slowly that rage became laughter. He felt stronger than he ever had. Portions of dead souls flowed to him, as if begging to be devoured-not devoured, but absorbed, consumed, only little by little, not at all unlike blood, the blood he'd known in his unlife as a vampire- but souls were far more potent and just as renewable as blood had been. He could devour every soul in the castle only to have them return in a weaker form, all the while growing more and more powerful. Dumah was no longer a prince of vampires, but the God of the Wraiths! He was trapped, but time, or foolish wanderers would free him eventually. Raziel... had risen above Kain, but had paid for it with death. And now Dumah had ascended beyond Kain, by the very act of death itself. No amount of blood would save Kain's soul from Dumah's hunger on that destined day when he awoke. Kain, Vorador, Raziel, Yanos Audron, no vampire would equal him... but he would have to wait. This warped parody of the world was but the womb. The rebirth of Dumah would come with his body's freedom. In time, he would realize his potential, as Raziel might have, as the strongest of all vampires. Dumah returned to his throne room to reflect upon the future, forget the past, and grow forever stronger with the scraps of the souls of the long-dead. The wait would certainly be worth it, in the end, and at last, choice would be his own. Not Kain's. Raziel should never have let the master return to destroy him on those rare days Kain was away. Turel had no grip on Nosgoth, and Dumah would escape one day. He would not make Raziel's mistake.