Lazarus

When Jesus called Lazarus a friend, the heavenly preacher's apostles did not know him as evil. They did not see the extent of what evils Lazarus had done, nor how such a prophet's good graces could encompass such a man. They knew him only as good, by association with the prophet of the Shining City.

Really, he was a bastard.

— Asher

Born to a small cult, Lazarus knew only a sheltered life. The people he knew guarded a relic. The 'Blood of Abel'. The vial glowed crimson and all knew the angels would one day come for it. Till then, this small cult decided they would protect it, hoping to please their angelic overlords.
Lazarus however, grew weary and restless in this forced isolation. The sands of the middle east displeased him. The ruins he lived within hinted at greater beings than a vial of blood and some angels who had yet to show. Worse yet, not only did the young man's heart become full of wanderlust. His sould darkened and his mind wandered to the power reserved for angelic hands.
More and more he accepted guard duties that brought him closer to the vial. With every day he spent more time gazing upon the crimson blood within. Till, one day, not even seeing it was enough. Envy and green had rooted themselves too far into his heart, coring out his spiritual being like worms the apple.
One eve, when the wandering, hunting part of the tribe returned with food and drink for all, Lazarus struck. As women lay with their men, as children slept softly, and as wine and the late hour of festivities tucked all in bed soundly, Lazarus prowled the halls with sword in hand.
No alarm was raised, none of his tribe knew his betrayal but the few who were roused as the blade sunk into their hearts.
But it wasn't enough. Each kill awakened wrath and an evil, dark desire to do something 'new'. And so Lazarus found his way to the chamber where the Blood of Abel was kept. His sword dulled and awash in life essence, his robes covered in gore, a gristle of sticky blood between sandal and foot. His hands were stained crimson, bits of throat in his teeth. Eyes seeing naught but the red adorning his frame.
His entire clan lay in their beds and at their posts. Butchered, strangled, and broken. It was nearing daybreak when Lazarus found himself before his prize. Seizing the bottle, and almost as if by fate, the slick blood and sweat of his hands caused it to almost fall and smash amidst the stone.
However Lazarus saved the delicate vial, brought it to his lips, and drank his fill.
It would be days before he realized the blood gave him new vitality, strength, and filled his body with the sense of possibility.
It would be decades before he realized the Blood of Abel gave him youth.
It would be centuries before he realized he was immortal.
But it was only days before he killed again.

And so it was, when the tombstone was rolled back, Lazarus had been dead for "three days". In reality, he had been dead for two and interred for three.

Lazarus' ever-present attempts to steal money and power over others earned him an inglorious, and painful death. For his debts and misdemeanors against the romans, he was beset by knives. Interred alive, bleeding to death in a cave as the stagnant air slowly filtered through his lungs till nothing was left, he felt nothing but a burning hatred.

In his words: "Bleeding out, suffocating, and all in the dark so that the only passage of time was measured in the burning in your lungs as there was less air with each gasp. That is an unpleasant end. It's a shame the legionaires who did that to me couldn't last more than a single night under my blade."

— Asher, remembering his 'friend'

Centuries passed. Lazarus traveled the ancient world. Eventually he refined himself into a master of manipulation. He spoke fluently, well versed in niceties and charm, and learned to play people like a violin. But one day, a new all consuming desire came to him.
Romours filtered in on the stale wind of drunkards, on the hissed whispers of rumormongers, on the lips of storytellers and their children charges. The Blood of Cain was out there, in a temple. Waiting to be found and to bestow many a gift upon whoever found it. The rumors proved all the more intriguing because war had gripped the holy land. Men of iron and zeal had come from the northwest, and men of sand rose to fight them.
The promise of more power compelled Lazarus. Consumed by an all encompassing greed, he began to search, inadvertently paralleling a dwindling group of knights and a monk in search of the very same artifact.
However, he lost out. The group of knights had all deserted the monk in his quest. All but one. And having found the temple, long since trapped an abandoned, they were the first to it. Lazarus for his part, arrived shortly after them. Long since realizing his disadvantage and following them with the sole intent of stealing it from their corpses.
Working his way through the empty halls with sprung and disarmed traps, Lazarus came upon a scene of battle. A slain demon covered in mouths and teeth, the tattered, empty robes of a monk, blood adorning the walls, and a pool of blood right against the pedestal upon which the vial of precious Cainite Crimson had lain. And Lazarus raged and cried in anguish at his lost quarry as he saw the smashed remains of the vial amidst the sands and blood of the vault's floor.

"Lazarus couldn't have known that the young crusader, brought in the night by an angel to a village several miles away, had the blood. He was being nursed to health by the people of the village despite knowing not their language. And while he did not have the vial of blood on his person, he had it in his very veins.

In time, this young crusader found the same long life as Lazarus and even greater strength. However Cain's blood brought with it no safety from the ravages of time. This young crusader grew grizzled with age. Over the next millenia anyway.

As for Lazarus, he pulled himself back together. He continued killing people. And one day, he and the crusader met. Tied at the hip by destiny as they were. And for centuries they were friends, till Lazarus' dark impulses shown through the mask and the old crusader tried to kill his blood brother. Since then… well it's been a bit of an antagonistic relationship really.

— Asher, Harbinger of Cain