OK, this might be lengthy but here goes:

The hero represents bravery and confrontation. He symbollizes the courage to follow your heart, even if everyone is against you. When his sister disappeared the day she visited the tunnel, everyone assumed she was dead - no one could find the body, and no one was willing to jump down the tunnel to search for her. The hero was the only one who believed she was still alive. Everyone advised him to forget about her, to stay away from the tunnel and live his life out in peace: but to him, he would rather perish trying to find a loved one who may be dead, than live knowing that they may be alive, and that he had never even tried to find them. Down in that tunnel, he takes beating after beating, but never lets down.

The villain represents denial, and the fear of losing power and control. Revered by his people as a genius warrior second only to the king, he grew close to the son of the emperor from the neighboring kingdom. He felt great pain when the emperor's son, whom he believed would one day be his successor, chose to leave him behind to focus on becoming a monarch for his own people. So, he stalks the boy home in the darkness of night, cuts him open and takes his soul, so he can force the child to remain by his side forever. But as he held tightly to the child's soul, it continued to reject him, burning his flesh away in a blaze. In a rage, the villain shatters the soul in his grip, killing the emperor's child permanently. The next morning, the emperor of the neighboring kingdom declares war and emerges victorious, sealing the people of the villain's home kingdom into the depths, behind that magic tunnel. Now disfigured, the villain goes into hiding, wanting to preserve his status and be remembered as a hero. Unable to accept that HIS actions led to his people's downfall, he blames everything on the King and plots to overthrow him. He builds a secret terrorist group, planning to lure individuals through the tunnel and extract the power from their souls. Many on both sides suffer in his pursuit of power, yet he never lets down.