Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain

The human nobleman Kain is ambushed and killed by hired assassins. The necromancer Mortanius offers him the chance to take revenge — Kain accepts without thinking through the cost, and wakes as a vampire. He kills the assassins, then learns from Mortanius that they were tools, not the cause. Seeking the truth and a cure to his new condition, Kain travels to the Pillars of Nosgoth, where the spirit Ariel tells him the Circle of Nine must be destroyed. He methodically hunts each member. A war against the Legions of the Nemesis interrupts his mission and forces him to use a time-streaming device to escape — landing fifty years in the past, where he kills the young King William the Just to create a paradox that erases the Legions. Returning to the present, he finds his intervention sparked a crusade that has nearly wiped out all vampires, including Vorador, who is publicly executed. Kain kills Moebius the Time Streamer, who manipulated everything from the beginning. At the Pillars, he learns the full truth: Mortanius, corrupted by a Dark Entity, killed Ariel and created Kain specifically to destroy the Circle. The Entity is defeated. One Pillar remains unrestored — because Kain himself is its guardian, Ariel's unwitting successor. The cure he sought is his own death. Players choose: sacrifice Kain to heal Nosgoth, or refuse sacrifice and condemn the world — the latter is considered the canonical path into the rest of the series.