Circa 2000 BC, Sumerian sorceress Aamshed was coerced by vampire-lord Varnae to create the Ritual of Ascendance, which could - after a three day weakened chrysalis period - transform a vampire-lord to shed its humanity and becoming demonic and virtually invulnerable; the final phase required a merging with a living female and produced a new race of sunlight-immune vampires. Aamshed thwarted Varnae with two special limitations: The ritual could only be performed every 2000 years and must occur on the soil of the vampire's original burial. Varnae, native to long-sunken Atlantis, was unable to perform the Ritual, and a later attempt to raise Atlantis failed as well. Knowing subsequent vampire-lords might not be similarly thwarted, Aamshed established a back-up plan: she created a mystic lodestone to gather the souls of all those slain by vampires and meditated to maintain her survival for millennia until the next Ritual. Aamshed's original texts were lost over time, and copies would mistake the Ritual's details. In the 21st century, vampire-lord Dracula prepared to perform the Ritual in his Transylvania Castle by the Carpathian Mountains. Submerging her true identity and posing as Divinity Drake, an alleged vampirologist and "half-breed" descendant of Dracula, she joined Noah van Helsing's vampire hunters (Benjamin Alomi, Blade, Enzo Ferrara, Lucas Telling-Stone, Michiko Watanabe) as they attempted to stop Dracula. Ultimately, all others but Blade perished, and Divinity fell under Dracula's control and served as the female needed to complete his transformation. Upon merging. however, Aamshed's persona resurfaced, and she released the 6000 souls she had gathered, temporarily destroying Dracula, and apparently herself as well.