Game Story
The game begins by retelling the final battle with Kain in the original Soul Reaver: Raziel confronts Kain in the Chronoplast time machine, and the two enter a portal through time to emerge thirty years before the events of Blood Omen. Moebius the Timestreamer tells Raziel that Kain is at the Pillars of Nosgoth, and Raziel goes and confronts him. Kain reveals he has plans to transform history to avert the consequences of his decision, when his past self refused to sacrifice himself to restore Nosgoth and doomed the land to eternal decay. Kain vanishes, and Raziel continues northward and finds the vampire Vorador, who hints at a profound secret that the deceased vampire Janos Audron once knew. Deciding to speak with Janos, Raziel returns to the Sarafan stronghold where he again meets Kain, who tells Raziel the Soul Reaver is the only way history can be changed, as he did so when battling William the Just with a future incarnation of the Reaver in Blood Omen. Kain hands Raziel the material Soul Reaver, and the spectral Soul Reaver Raziel has coils around it. Raziel is faced with a dilemma: kill Kain and submit to fate, or establish his free will by refusing. Raziel avoids dealing the death blow, changing time again before Kain vanishes. Raziel finds Moebius in his timestreaming chamber and forces him to send him to the past before the vampire purge of the Sarafan Order, but Moebius tricks him.

Raziel finds himself in the future, approximately a century after Kain's refusal at the Pillars, where demons have overrun Nosgoth. Raziel enters the ruined mountain home of Janos Audron, where Kain warns that dark forces are mustering against both of them. Raziel continues to a Reaver forge, where he finds murals depicting a war between two ancient races, one of which possessed wings and championed the Soul Reaver as a holy relic. These beings eventually became the first vampires following a curse from their enemies. Using the empowered Reaver, Raziel finds another timestreaming device and finally arrives during the time of Janos Audron. Raziel enters Janos' restored retreat and creates a path to Janos' mountain-top inner sanctum. There, Janos reveals himself as the guardian of the Reaver, a vampire weapon that drains the blood of its victims which Raziel is inexplicably drawn to. Suddenly, Sarafan storm the retreat, and Janos teleports Raziel away to sacrifice himself to save him. Raziel returns to save Janos, only to see his human self cut out Janos' heart. The Sarafan leave as the retreat collapses, and Raziel swears vengeance as Janos dies urging him to reclaim the Reaver the Sarafan have taken. Raziel pursues the Sarafan to their stronghold and finds five of his vampire brothers, also Sarafan. Moebius appears and uses his staff to nullify Raziel's spectral Soul Reaver, forcing him to take up the material Reaver.

Raziel uses the Reaver to kill his brothers and eventually impales his Sarafan self with the Reaver. Afterwards, the spectral Soul Reaver coils around the material Reaver, and the two attack Raziel and begin to drain his energy. Raziel then realizes his destiny - to become the soul-devouring entity in the blade that transforms it into a soul-stealing weapon, and thus be stuck in a time loop. Suddenly, Kain emerges from the shadows and draws the Reaver from Raziel, separating the two blades and stopping Raziel from being drawn into them. This event changes Nosgoth's history for the worse, and Kain, possessing new memories created by the altered timeline, frantically tries to tell the weakened Raziel that Janos Audron must stay dead. As Raziel dematerializes and enters the spectral realm, he finds the spectral Soul Reaver still bound to him, and realizes Kain has not changed his destiny, but merely postponed it. This ending leads into the events of Legacy of Kain: Defiance.