Henry I. Matthews

Henry Isaac Matthews is the main protagonist of Midnight Soldiers: Darkstalkers' Return alongside his sentient cursed sword, Nightbane.

Early Life & Starting His Career
Henry's birth is unknown to him. All that he knows is that he was raised by a young couple from Honolulu, Hawaii, who adopted him when no one else would. Having lived in Honolulu for his entire life, he finally decided to move out of the city at age 21 when he moved to Chicago, Illinois. It was here where he first took a job as a rookie security guard in a museum.

Strange Happenings
One night, when he was given the night shift, he heard a mysterious whisper coming from the Medieval section. A claymore displayed in a glass case began to glow when Henry approached it, but when Henry got too close, the sword created a brilliant flash of light, seemingly awakening him from his sleep. Believing that he had been sleeping on the job, Henry soon discovered that his job was in danger due to a priceless gemstone being stolen under his watch. Given one final chance to redeem himself, Henry goes to a local nightclub, where he meets a beautiful Scottish woman who seemed to be attracted to him. When she asked him about his career, he mentioned the dream he had the night he had the night shift, which got her very interested in the museum he worked at, telling Henry that she wished to go there one day.

The Adventure Begins...
A day later, Henry was once again given the night shift, and once again, he heard whispers, this time accompanied by footsteps. Believing that someone broke into the museum, Henry quickly went to work to try and capture the burglars. However, when he found them in the Medieval section, the burglars turned out to be anything but human. Finding the creatures to be too creepy to comprehend, Henry quickly broke the glass surrounding the claymore and grabbed the sword's hilt, unsure of what the creatures could do. As one of the creatures attacked Henry, he lunged at it, stabbing the creature in the gut. This caused the claymore to gain a more demonic appearance. Realizing that the blade was hurting the creatures now, he swung at them until all three of the creatures were dead. A portal appeared underneath of Henry, sending him into the demon world right when a mysterious bat-winged woman arrived. Shortly after waking up from his fall, Henry saw that the sword he was using earlier was floating above him, and the sword's demonic eyes were peering at him, fixated on Henry. The mysterious sword, introducing itself in an older form of English that Henry didn't understand, eventually adjusted his language to speak a form of English that Henry would understand. After having been told by the sentient sword that Henry is now duty-bound to it, and not knowing who to trust, Henry chooses to wield the sword and gave it a name he thought was cool: Nightbane. With his new sword in hand, he sought a way to the human world, which would be a lot harder to find then it appeared to be.

Getting Back.........Home?
When the demons first laid eyes on Henry, they were curious as to how a human could have such strange demonic power coming from him. Sensing how powerful and dangerous Nightbane was, the demons ran into their homes in fear as guards came to take Henry and his sword away. It would take some time, but Henry would eventually find a suspicious-looking female demon, who unintentionally led Henry away from the guards as Henry followed her through a portal. But when Henry got back to his home world, he couldn't believe what he had seen. His entire world looked like it had undergone a drastic change. Men, women and children were hiding in ruined homes. The corpses of the young and old lay in the streets to rot as all sorts of animals ate their bodies. And much to Henry's shock and horror, demons patrolled the streets looking for flesh to devour. After finding out that he had been gone for a total of twelve hours, Henry was shocked even more to see that all of this damage was caused in such a short amount of time.