Erlik Khan is the ruler of the Khakas underworld, judge and keeper of the dead, and one of the central figures of the pantheon. Though dreaded as the source of sickness and death and commander of the malevolent körmös spirits, he is not a defeated adversary but a necessary pole of a dualism of equilibrium: brother of the creator Ülgen, he animates with a soul the clay body the creator has shaped, and Khakas shamans addressed him in prayer as lord, father and creator of the human soul. He resides in the deepest underworld, in tradition a palace of dark metal on the bank of a river fed by human tears.