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Malphite

For more than two millennia, Shurima dominated the known world—an empire that reigned over countless peoples without challenge, and without threat.
Until the day Icathia fell.
From the moment the Void tore its way into the material realm, the armies of Shurima faced an enemy that could not only lay their grand empire low, but one that seemed to grow stronger the more they fought it. The corruption spread rapidly from Icathia’s ruins, boiling over the land and beneath the oceans, before its hideous tendrils reached the southernmost jungles of Ixtal.
Ne’Zuk of the Ascended Host was an Ixtali elemental mage of colossal power, and almost unrivaled arrogance. He went before the emperor, pledging to create a weapon powerful enough to take the fight to the Void, and eradicate it at the source of its original eruption.
After months of inhuman labor, Ne’Zuk revealed the Monolith—a floating fortress of living stone, maintained by the greatest elemental mages, and its ramparts manned by his fellow Ixtali god-warriors. The size of a city itself, the Monolith glided titanically toward the wastelands of Icathia, the lightning crackling from its magical inhibitors fusing the sands to glass beneath it. Ne’Zuk and his superweapon arrived at their destination, to face once more the howling infinite darkness of the abyssal realm, and the hordes of Voidborn monstrosities it had created.
The battle dragged into weeks. It was violence of a scale and intensity never before witnessed in Runeterra. Sorcery enough to raze entire civilizations, or render whole continents into naught but a memory, was unleashed upon the Void.
The darkness retaliated in kind. Its hideous energies gouged deep wounds into the living stone of the Monolith, whose surfaces became pocked and seared with unnatural malphite—from the Ixtali for “bad stone”—and leaving mineral-like scars. The fortress was pushed to the very limits of its design, struggling to self-repair and reknit its weakened superstructure… but even the incredible magics that held it aloft had a breaking point.
As Ne’Zuk fought to rally his Ascended brethren for one last, desperate charge, the unthinkable happened. Sagging for an instant, the Monolith crashed down to earth, cleaving through the bedrock of Icathia and opening the Void beneath to the skies.
Much of the fortress was lost within that gaping maw, vanishing into the silent nothingness beyond. The rest rained down as great ruins, littering a landscape already blackened by the terrible conflict that had been cut so abruptly short. Only a single Ascended survived—Ne’Zuk hauled himself from the wreckage, choking on the ashes of what was meant to be his grandest triumph, now his greatest folly, and fled for his life.
In defiance of all worldly reason, some disparate fragments of the Monolith endured, still imbued with something like magical life. The far-flung shards struggled to heal, to reform the whole to which they had once belonged. But the Void’s endless hunger leached away at them, rendering them as little more than inert shapes clawing feebly in the dust.
However, against all that had been lost, a single shard remained.
Buried deep beneath the surface, forgotten even by those that dwelt in the abyss, it slowly gathered in strength. It lived, until at last it awakened after uncounted centuries, and realized it was alone.
In all the centuries since that dark day, Malphite, the last shard of the Monolith, has become something of a legend in Runeterra. It has reputedly been sighted everywhere, from Targon to Zaun; heard sometimes as a tectonic roar in the deepest caverns, and sometimes as a quiet voice, humming to itself, that it might still remember the sounds of the world it once knew.
Despite the enormous span of its existence, the overwhelming drive enkindled by Ne’Zuk’s creation of the Monolith has not wavered. Now, Malphite knows it must soon rise to meet the resurgent darkness it once battled, as the Void awakens to threaten all of Runeterra once more.
Roots of a Poisoned Tree

Graham McNeill

Dust hung in veils as Shoorai followed the mechanical-limbed form of Tunnel-Chief Hewlett deeper into the mine shaft. She breathed via a used esophilter, and tried not to imagine how many Zaunite miners had sucked air through it over the years. Sputtering chem-flares strung from timber roof beams dribbled glowing droplets onto their pitted iron helmets as they passed underneath.
“Heed you waz assay on’a square,” grunted Hewlett, looking over his shoulder. “Waz big teem ’staken.”
We heard you were a good assayer, Shoorai translated. But we were sorely mistaken.
Seven years since she’d come to Zaun, but the miner’s strange argot still took her a moment to parse.
“Say ta Ore-seer we no need Piltie assay,” continued Hewlett. “She not savvy wit Zaunrock liken we is. They as done sunk us inna first teem!”
“I assure you, Chief Hewlett, I have delved mines everywhere from Shurima to Zaun,” said Shoorai. “I know this rock as well as you.”
“So you sayin’,” grunted Hewlett, as they entered the gallery chamber at the end of the shaft, “but rock here not be liken you say.”
Dust-smeared miners sat next to chem-drills, pneuma-picks, and crates of hexplosives. Every one of them ought to be attacking the rock in search of the hexite seam she’d promised Baron Grime was here. To see them idle railed against her work ethic.
Hewlett lifted a chem-lamp to illuminate the rock at the end of the chamber. At first, Shoorai wasn’t sure what she was seeing. Zaunite strata was most often crushed sedimentary limestone, interspersed with pockets of metamorphic rock wrought by intense, and not-so-long-ago, heat and pressure.
This was something else entirely…
Shoorai snatched the lamp and walked the length of the gallery. She pulled off her glove and ran her fingertips over the wall. Pitted and warm to the touch, with a curious umber hue—like something she’d expect to find in her native Shurima.
“This makes no sense,” she said. “This wasn’t here yesterday.”
“I try telling ya,” replied Hewlett. “We drill on the yester, jus’ liken you say. Come back on’a first bell and seen this.”
“Whatever this is, the Baron isn’t paying you to sit around doing nothing. Blast through it.”
Hewlett grinned. “So we fix’n to lay out ’splosives, yah?”
“Yes,” agreed Shoorai.
“I WOULDN’T DO THAT IF I WERE YOU.”
The voice boomed from all around them—a shockwave in the air, each word sounding as though it had been formed by grinding tectonic plates.
The miners took to their heels, but Shoorai flattened herself against the side wall of the chamber and pulled her helmet tightly down on her head. The voice sounded like it belonged to something titanic. Cracks spread across the ceiling of the gallery.
She looked up in time to see the pitted rock wall… move.
It shifted, grinding as it reshaped itself. Shoorai watched in amazement as it formed two deep craters that looked like closed eyes, and a projecting crag that could be a nose. Dust poured from a curved and jagged chasm that looked horribly like a vast mouth.
The face filled the wall before her, fully thirty feet across and twice that high.
Azir’s bones! If this is its head, how big is the rest of its body?
The craters of its eyes opened with a grinding sound that reminded her of the time she’d seen that wandering weaver girl perform wonders on the road to Kenethet. Shoorai met the gaze of the colossal face, its eyes a liquid yellow gem-like material.
Quartz, she thought. Not natural to this region.
“THIS ROCK IS INFESTED,” said the voice, and Shoorai pressed her hands against her ears at its deafening volume. “CREATURES MOVE WITHIN IT. BEAUTIFUL IN THEIR OWN WAY, BUT CHAOTIC. YOU SHOULD NOT BREAK THIS ROCK, IT WILL END BADLY FOR YOU.”
The eyes blinked, and pebbles fell from their rocky lids.
“Um, are… are you the mountain spirit or something?” she asked.
The brow of the face creased with a groaning rumble.
“NO. AT LEAST, I DON’T THINK SO. I THINK I WAS PART OF ONE, ONCE. SO MUCH CHAOS IN THIS WORLD, MAKES IT HARD TO REMEMBER EVERYTHING.”
“So what are you?” she asked.
“AH, WHAT INDEED?” it said, and the mine shaft flexed as the face sighed mournfully. “A SHARD OF A GREATER WHOLE. A SERVANT OF ORDER SEEKING PURPOSE. CALL ME… MALPHITE.”
Loose shale cascaded from cracks in the walls of the tunnel, and the timber supports groaned as they were subjected to stresses they were never built to endure. Shoorai didn’t like the look of the split lines on the seam above her head. They were ambitious, eager to race onwards.
“Could you stop moving? I think you’re going to collapse the cave.”
“OH. SORRY.”
“You said the rock was… infested?” asked Shoorai. “With what?”
“THINGS THAT SHOULD NOT BE. CREATURES THAT LIVE ONLY TO CONSUME.”
Shoorai felt her heart race. Growing up in the shadow of lost Icathia, she knew of creatures that matched such a description.
“I know them,” she said. “But they only dwell in the deserts of the southern continent.”
“ONCE, PERHAPS, BUT NOW THEY THREAD THE CRUST OF THE WORLD LIKE THE ROOTS OF A POISONED TREE.”
Shoorai looked uneasily at the ground.
The rock face chuckled, and more shards of stone fell from the roof.
“NOT TO WORRY, I HAVE THEM TRAPPED WITHIN MY BODY. I WILL CRUSH THESE ONES, BUT MORE WILL COME. SO BE WARY OF DELVING TOO DEEP…”
The glow of the creature’s eyes faded as its heavy lids closed and the tunnel began to shake.
“YOU SHOULD GO NOW,” said the rock face.
Hewlett appeared behind Shoorai and took hold of her with his chem-powered arm.
“We gotsta skedaddle, assay,” he said. “We linger, cave be crushin’ us.”
Shoorai nodded, backing away from the gallery. “I’ll tell Baron Grime this seam was played out.”
Hewlett grinned. “Maybe you assay on’a square after all.”
Malzahar

Beneath the glare of the Shuriman sun, there have always been those blessed with the power of foresight. The only son of aging trinket peddlers, Malzahar did not realize his gift until his parents had already succumbed to a wasting sickness, leaving the young, traumatized boy to fend for himself on the city streets of Amakra. He read fortunes in the gutter, for a coin or scraps of bread.

As his auguries proved more and more accurate, his reputation grew. He used his second sight to predict who a curious cameleer might marry, or where throwing daggers would land in games of chance at the bazaar. Soon, he began to receive patrons dressed not in dirtied sandals, but jeweled slippers.

However, for all this, Malzahar could never see his own destiny. His future was hidden.

Increasingly disillusioned with his success, he noted the common disparities of wealth, and witnessed those unhappy with their lives acting out in spiteful violence against one another. It was apparent to him that people were bound up in a never-ending cycle of pain, often of their own making, and no hopeful prophecy seemed able to break it. Malzahar himself soon felt nothing but a sense of emptiness, finally relinquishing his mortal possessions and leaving Amakra for good.

For years, he roamed the land, from the trackless wastes of the lesser sai to the ruins of old Shurima. By distancing himself from others, he was alone with his thoughts at last. He divined not just how callous people could be, but also how corrupt the world might yet become. Feverish visions began to plague his waking hours, along with otherworldly whispers of war and strife, and endless suffering.

He wandered far, until the sands turned to salt. He could not know that he had arrived in Icathia, a lost city ravaged in the wars of a bygone age. There, gazing into the depths of a ragged abyss, Malzahar opened his unsteady mind, desperate for understanding.

And the Void answered.

That would have been the end of any other tale, and yet somehow Malzahar endured. What lay in the darkness below brushed against the soul of the broken seer, only for an instant, and yet its strange and unknowable energies saturated his mind completely.

The lone figure that eventually strode out of Icathia was no longer just a man, but something greater. Malzahar had seen in the abyss an end to all the suffering he had witnessed in his mortal lifetime. He realized the future he had believed hidden from him all this time was in fact a vision of his true calling: to accelerate the world toward inevitable oblivion. He had to return to the people, and spread word of the holy nothingness that would gladly embrace them, the willing and non-believers alike. He would become the herald of the world’s salvation.

Among the nomads of the deep desert, he found his first disciples. Before their astonished eyes, he used his new Void-given powers to rend the very earth itself, summoning chittering, nightmarish creatures to carry away any who dared to deny him. Within a matter of months, strange rumors began to travel with the merchant caravans; rumors of men and women gladly sacrificing themselves to unseen powers, and of powerful quakes opening up the bedrock of Shurima in new fault lines hundreds of miles long.

In the years since, Malzahar’s legend has spread even to the northern ports. As followers of “the Prophet” grow in number, nearby settlers are said to experience malefic visions grasping at their hearts, and fear gives rise to superstition—even the hardy villagers of the far wastes now make offerings of livestock to appease the voidling creatures below.

Little do they know, this only helps Malzahar in shepherding the coming of the end.
Maokai

Maokai is a rageful, towering treant who fights the unnatural horrors of the Shadow Isles. He was twisted into a force of vengeance after a magical cataclysm destroyed his home, surviving undeath only through the waters of life infused within his heartwood. Once a peaceful nature spirit, Maokai now furiously battles to banish the scourge of unlife from the Shadow Isles and restore his home to its former beauty.
Long before living memory, a chain of islands erupted from deep beneath the ocean tides as blank slates of rock and clay. With its creation, the nature spirit Maokai was born. He took the form of a treant, with his tall body covered in bark and long limbs resembling branches. Maokai felt the profound loneliness of the land and its potential for teeming growth. He wandered from island to island in search of signs of life, growing ever more forlorn in his solitude.
On a hilly isle covered in soft, rich soil, Maokai sensed a boundless energy radiating from deep beneath the ground. He plunged his great roots downward until they reached a spring of magical, life-giving water and drank deeply. From this potent liquid, he grew hundreds of saplings and planted them across the islands.
Soon the land was shawled with verdant forests, groves of towering virenpine, and tangled woods, all steeped in wondrous magic. Magnificent skytrees with expansive canopies and thickly winding roots covered the isles with lush green foliage. Nature spirits were drawn to the lavish vegetation, and animals reveled in the fertile greenery.
When humans eventually came to the islands, they too thrived in the land’s abundance and formed an enlightened society of scholars devoted to studying the world’s mysteries. Though Maokai was wary of their presence, he saw how they respected the sanctity of the land. Sensing the deep magic within the woods, the humans built their homes in areas not heavily forested, to avoid disturbing any nature spirits. Maokai occasionally revealed himself directly to those he trusted and blessed them with knowledge of the verdant isles, even its greatest gift – the underground spring that could heal mortal wounds.
Centuries passed, and Maokai lived in idyllic contentment until a fleet of soldiers from across the sea beached upon the shores of the isles. Maokai sensed something was terribly wrong. Their grief-maddened king bore the corpse of his queen and in hopes of reviving her, bathed her decayed flesh in the healing waters. Reanimated as a rotting corpse, the queen begged to return to death. The king sought to reverse what he had done, unwittingly casting a terrible curse upon the land.
From leagues away, Maokai felt the first ripples of the disaster that would soon devastate the isles. He sensed a horrific force gathering beneath the soil, and a bitter chill washed over him.
As the ruination spread, Maokai desperately plunged his roots deep into the ground and drank of the healing waters, saturating every fiber of his being with their magic. Before the cursed water reached him, Maokai withdrew his roots, severing all connection to the pool. He howled in rage as the sacred reservoir he had entrusted to men was fully corrupted – the spiraling coils churning underwater until nothing pure remained.
Moments later, the mists surrounding the islands blackened and spread over the land, trapping all living things in an unnatural state between life and death. Maokai watched in helpless agony as all he knew – plants, nature spirits, animals, and humans alike – twisted into wretched shades. His fury grew; the great beauty he had cultivated from tiny saplings fell to ruin in an instant at the careless hand of man.
The enervating mist coiled around Maokai, and he wept as the bright flowers adorning his shoulders crumbled and fell to dust. His body shuddered and contorted into a mass of gnarled roots and tangled branches as the mist leached life from him. But Maokai’s heartwood was saturated with the precious waters of life, saving him from the terrible fate of undeath.
As grotesque wraiths and horrific abominations flooded the land, Maokai was overcome by a host of lifeless men. He struck the spirits with his branchlike limbs in manic violence, realizing the force of his blows could shatter them to dust. Maokai shuddered with revulsion: he had never killed before. He flew at the breathless shapes in a frenzy, but hundreds more overwhelmed him, and eventually he was forced to retreat.
With his home all but decimated and his companions turned to deathless horrors, Maokai was tempted to try and escape the nightmare of the isles. But from deep within his twisted form, he felt the sacred waters giving him life. He had survived the Ruination by carrying the very heart of the islands within him, and he would not abandon his home now. As the Blessed Isles’ first nature spirit, he would remain and fight for the soul of the land.
Though surrounded by endless hosts of malicious foes and darkening mist, Maokai fights with furious vengeance to conquer the evil that plagues the isles. His only pleasure comes from dealing savage violence to the soulless wraiths who roam his land.
Some days, Maokai subdues the mist and its deathless spirits, breaking their hold on a grove of trees or a small thicket. Though new life has not bloomed in such cursed soil for an age, Maokai strives to carve havens, however temporary, free from regret and decay.
So long as Maokai continues to fight, hope remains, for steeped within his heartwood are the uncorrupted waters of life, the last remaining chance of restoring the isles. If the land returns to its joyous state, Maokai, too, will shed his twisted form. The nature spirit brought life to these isles long ago, and he refuses to rest until the isles bloom once more.
Nightbloom

Rayla Heide

The chill wind whips through cracks in my bark with a hollow whistling sound. I shiver. My limbs have long forgotten the warmth of summer.
The towering shapes around me fracture and fall in the gale. The lives within died long ago; now they are my silent companions. Their brittle trunks remain only as empty husks, rough gray sketches of the lush forest that once bloomed here.
A spirit weaves between the trees in front of me, pale and spectral against the night air. A knot tightens in my bark. Normally I would lash my roots through its heart, but today I hold still, trying not to alert the wraith to my presence. I am tired of resisting. That I exist at all is an act of defiance against the curse plaguing these lands.
Its moonlike eyes are vacant. There is nothing alive and vulnerable to fuel its cold bitterness on this isle of death, nothing to be hunted or consumed. The spirit slips between the trees, leaving me to my solitude.
I look across the forest of shadows and my branches waver. My gaze catches – a tiny flame of red growing amid the endless gray. Nestled in a mound of black dirt, the smallest flower bud pushes up from the ground, its petals so bright they burn my eyes.
It is a nightbloom. Long ago, they carpeted the floor of the Blessed Isles, blossoming on the evening of the summer solstice. By morning the flowers wilted, leaving only blackened petals, not to be seen again until the following year. But for one night, they illuminated the forest with blazing crimson, as if the very ground were aflame.
I look around and, for a fleeting moment, hope that if one flower exists there might be others. But there is only the somber gray of these dead isles.
My boughs creak as I take a shaky step forward. I approach the bloom, transfixed, crushing ashen leaves to dust underfoot. My colossal frame towers over its delicate shape. I lean down until my face is inches above the sweet-scented petals. The potent groundwater within my heartwood stirs, awakening in recognition. Life.
The flower’s neck is tilted as if curious. Deep vermillion veins spread across each petal, and its pale green stem is coated with hundreds of silvery, velvet-soft hairs. I could spend eternity basking in its every facet.
Every moment it grows and shifts in subtle ways; its stem pushing ever higher while its petals slowly unfurl. I am enchanted by each movement, however minute. I watch as the bloom spreads to reveal the filaments extending from within, its heady scent flooding my mind with color. For a moment I forget the cold, the hollow wind, and my own bitterness.
A pale light flickers and I flinch. A glowing shape approaches. My bark tingles. Nothing from these bloodless woods is an ally.
The cursed spirit is returning, attracted to the lure of movement. Life is not so still as death.
I flex my limbs in fury, no longer eluding violence. I welcome it.
For one night, a living thing will exist on these barren isles unmarred by corrupt forces.
The spirit glides toward us. She was once human, but is now translucent and bone-white. Her blank expression grows ravenous as she sees the blood-red blossom.
The specter races toward the flower and tries to inhale its fragile life. Before the bloom withers into a lifeless shade, I fling my limbs forward and lash them about the spirit’s legs. She screeches, recoiling as if burned, and I roar. The groundwater within me is anathema to such unnatural beings.
She twists and breaks free of my grasp. I hoist my roots and smash them to the ground. The impact splits the barren topsoil and sends shockwaves through the earth. The reverberations strike the wraith and she reels in agony. I laugh bitterly. As she stirs, I sling my limbs through her form and she dissolves.
Dusky mist rises from the ground, accompanied by a foul stench. As the wind moans, dozens of spirits materialize before me, their garish faces gaping silently at the scene before them. The nightbloom and I grow before the wall of shadows. I will not let them destroy this one pure thing amongst so much darkness.
I throw all my rage into my blows, driving them back with furious strength. I cannot destroy every spirit on the isles, but I can hold them off for a time. A wraith tries to dart past me. I howl as I lift my roots to pierce its heart, and it dissipates into mist.
My strength is draining with so many spirits nearby, but I refuse to concede.
The flower grows brightly beneath the moonlight, oblivious to this battle for its very existence. A single crimson petal falls from its perfect blossom like a drop of blood. The lifecycle of the bloom is near its end, bringing death, and with it, respite. But I do not crave it. I feel I could cleanse the entire island of its scourge in my fury.
The cursed mist has risen above the treeline and swirls in great clouds. An endless host of spirits pours from the fog, mouths agape with ghoulish hunger. I rise to my greatest height and slam my limbs into the ravenous spirits, shattering one after another into dust. Still, more come.
I howl as I stir the air into a crudely twisting spiral, and nourish the storm with my wrath until it expands in a tempestuous whirlwind. I revel in the chaos as the maelstrom surges in a frenzied circle around me and the flower. It blasts the spirits violently back beyond the trees. From within this nightmare, I have carved a sanctuary where life can grow.
I turn to the flower. We are silent together at the eye of the storm, still amidst the madness. A second fiery petal falls from the nightbloom, then another. My energy drains into the maelstrom, but I do not falter and the tempest rages on. With each passing moment, the blossom droops further until it faces the ground. It is perfect in its slow, natural decay. I cannot look away as it gradually loses its crown of flaming petals and wilts completely.
It is dead.
I lower my branches and the maelstrom quiets. Above me, the sky is slate gray - as bright as it ever gets in this grim place. The gloom of the mist encroaches once more and the spirits return. Their faces are blank, no longer sensing the illicit life of the nightbloom, no longer anticipating the joy of a fresh kill.
They retreat into the hollow woods. I whip my roots through a specter as it passes me, scattering its essence into the fading mist. The others edge farther away from me as they return to their gloom.
Though the land appears unchanged, these isles are not the same gray wasteland they were yesterday. The waters of life stir within me and the soil beneath my roots is fertile again.
Though its petals decay into dust, the luminous nightbloom burns fire-bright in my mind, igniting my fury. Just as these islands were born of burning rock, I will cleanse them of their pestilence in a flaming blaze.
I follow the trailing spirits as they slip between hollow trees.
They will pay for their wickedness.
Master Yi

In Ionia’s central province of Bahrl, a mountain settlement once stood, hidden away in its serene beauty. Here, in the village of Wuju, the boy Yi grew up learning the ways of the sword, chasing a dream that later turned to tragedy.
Like most children, he admired those who wore silk robes and carried blades with poems to their name. His parents being swordsmiths, Yi made a strong impression on the local warriors who frequented their workshop. He spent his mornings in the garden, sparring with his mother, and his nights reciting poetry to his father by candlelight. When it came time for Yi to study under Wuju’s masters, his parents could not have been prouder.
Carrying his talent and discipline over to his training, he surpassed every expectation. Soon, the whole village knew of the “Young Master” Yi.
Still, the humble student wondered about the rest of Ionia. From atop the tallest pagodas, he spotted faraway towns no one else ever mentioned, but when he sought to journey down the mountain with blade in hand, his mentors forbade him. Wuju was founded by those believing their swordsmanship to be too precious to share, too sacred to draw blood—so for centuries, it flourished in isolation, with no outsiders knowing its true nature.
All this changed the day Yi saw vast plumes of smoke rising above the distant towns. Noxian warbands had invaded from the coast, conquering settlement after settlement in waves that washed the provinces red. Choosing the people of Ionia over Wuju’s hallowed tradition, Yi ventured down to help defend the First Lands. To astonished eyes, he swept across the front lines in a blur, routing the enemy with blinding swordplay never before seen by outsiders.
Word of the one-man army spread far and wide, like mist in the mountains. Inspired by his courage, even his fellow disciples joined the fight, and together they journeyed to Navori where the greater war was raging.
The Noxian commanders saw in Wuju a threat that could not be ignored. They scouted the origin of these peerless warriors, and elected to strike at their home without mercy. In a single night, the entire village was destroyed, its people and culture obliterated by chemical fire that no steel could hold back.
After the war finally ended, Yi returned as the only surviving disciple, to find nothing but ruins. The very magic of the land had been defiled, and everyone he had known and loved was no more. Slain in spirit, if not in body, Yi became the attack’s final casualty. With no other practitioners of Wuju left alive, he realized the title of master was his to bear alone.
Grief-stricken, he chose seclusion, training obsessively to bury the guilt of his survival, but the wisdom of bygone masters seemed to fade with the haze of time. He began to doubt if one man could preserve an entire heritage… until he encountered the least expected of individuals.
A curious, monkey-like vastaya challenged him to a duel. Reluctantly, Master Yi entertained the creature’s demands, defeating him with ease. But the vastaya refused to give up, returning day after day with increasingly clever tricks that forced Yi to react and improvise. For the first time in years, Yi felt the spirit of Wuju once more.
The two clashed for weeks, until the bruised stranger finally knelt on the ground and introduced himself as Kong, of the Shimon tribe. He begged to learn from Yi, who saw in this reckless but determined fighter the makings of a new disciple. Through teaching, Yi found his purpose restored. He would pass on the ways of Wuju, and gifted his pupil an enchanted staff and an honorific as a sign of this vow—from that day onward, Kong was known as Wukong.
Together, they now travel the First Lands, as Yi seeks to honor the legacy of his lost home, allowing him to fully embody the “master” in his name.
Homecoming

Michael Luo

Wilted leaves fall from shivering branches, as a gust of wind blows across the mountain slopes. Yi levitates a few inches above the ground, his eyes closed and hands folded, listening to the morning songs of Bahrl jays. The cool breeze touches his bare face, and tickles his brow.
Releasing a quiet sigh, he descends until his boots touch the dirt. He opens his eyes and smiles. Clear skies are a rare, friendly sight.
Yi dusts off his robe, noticing some loose, fallen hairs. Most are black, with a couple white, like wild silk.
How long has it been? he wonders.
Swinging a twill bag over his shoulder, he continues his hike, leaving behind trees that once swayed with life, but now stand still.

Yi glances down the mountain to see how far he has come. The lands below are soft, fragile—treasures to be protected. He looks forward and resumes climbing. On the path ahead, lilies wither, their coral petals turning a sickly brown.
“Didn’t expect to see anyone up here,” a voice calls out.
He pauses to listen, his hand clutching the ringed sword by his waist.
“You also looking for your herd?” The voice grows closer. “Stupid beasts. They always get caught in this area.”
Yi sees an aging farmer approach, and loosens his grip. She wears a simple kirtle, sewn over with assorted scraps of cloth. He bows as she draws near.
“Bah, save your etiquette for the monks,” she says. “You don’t look like you work the land for a living, ‘cause those blades sure aren’t for cutting weeds. What brings you here?”
“Good day for a hike,” Yi replies, his voice feigning innocence.
“So you’re here to train, huh? Noxus coming back so soon?” she asks with a chuckle.
“Where the sun sets once, it will again.”
The farmer snorts, recognizing the old proverb. It is known by most in the southern provinces. “Well, you let me know when they return. That’ll be the day I sail off this island. But until then, why don’t you put those swords of yours to good use and help a frail, old lady?”
She beckons Yi to follow. He obliges.
They stop next to a wooded area. A baby takin whimpers in agony, its hind legs bound by thick, swollen vines that tighten as the creature struggles.
“That there is Lasa,” the farmer explains. “He’s young and dumb, but he’s more use to me in the field than stuck on this cursed mountain.”
“You think it’s cursed?” Yi asks, kneeling by the beast. He runs a palm over its woolly back, feeling its muscles twitch and spasm.
The farmer crosses her arms. “Well, something un-spiritual happened here,” she replies, nodding her head towards the summit. “And without natural magic, the land demands sustenance, even taking life if it has to. Were it my choice, whatever’s up there oughta be burned.”
Yi fixates on the vines. He did not expect to see them this far down the mountain.
“I’ll see what I can do.” He murmurs, drawing two blades from brass sheaths on his boots. As he edges the steel close to the constriction, the vines seem to cower.
The moment lingers. Beads of sweat prickle Yi’s bare face. He closes his eyes.
“Emai,” he whispers, in the tongue of his ancestors. “Fair.”
The takin leaps free, letting out a gleeful, high-pitched bleat. On the ground, the cut vines dangle like loose skin.
The beast springs downhill, reveling in its freedom as the farmer gives chase. She snatches it up in both hands, and hugs the takin close to her chest.
“Thank you!” she exclaims, not realizing Yi has already continued on his way. She calls after him. “Hey! I forgot to ask. What are you training for? The war is over, you know…”
He does not look back.
Not for me.

After another hour, he reaches the barrens. The carcass of a village lies all around him, invaded by the very same vines.
This is Wuju. This was home.
Yi heads for the burial grounds, stepping past toppled beams and stonework, remnants of houses, schools, shrines—the shattered pieces all blend together. The ruins of his parents’ workshop are lost somewhere among the rubble. There is too much to grieve for, and not enough time.
The graves he visits are arranged in perfect symmetry, with gaps between the mounds for someone to pass through. Someone like Yi.
“Wuju honors your memory.”
He places a hand on every hilt of every sword piercing the earth. These are his memorials to warriors, teachers, and students. He does not skip a single one.
“May your name be remembered.”
“Rest. Find peace in the land.”
His voice soon grows tired.
As the sky becomes painted in shades of orange, three graves remain untouched. The closest is marked by a hammer, its head rusted from the mountain air. Yi pulls a peach out of his bag, setting it beside the mound.
“Master Doran, this is from Wukong. He couldn't make the journey with me, but he wanted me to bring you his favorite fruit. He loves his staff, almost as much as he loves making fun of the helmet you gave me.”
He moves toward the final two mounds, guarded by golden sheaths.
“Emai, the weather is forgiving today. Fair… I hope you are enjoying the warmth.”
Yi grasps his two short swords and slides them into the sheaths adorning his parents’ graves. The fit is perfect. He falls to his knees and bows his head.
“May your wisdom continue to guide me.”
Standing, he reaches into his bag to retrieve his helmet. The afternoon sun catches on its seven lenses, each reflection in a different hue. Holding the helmet close to his heart, he imagines the garden of lilies that once existed here.
That was before the screams. Before acid and poison twisted the land’s magic against itself.
He dons the helmet, and a kaleidoscope of his surroundings fills his view. Hands folded together, he closes his eyes and empties his mind. He thinks about nothing. Nothing at all. His feet lift off the earth, but he is unaware.
Opening his eyes, he sees everything. Death and decay, with little hints of life.
He sees spirits that dwell in the realm beyond his own. The vines here trap them as easily as the poor takin, weakening their essence. He knows any spirit strong enough to break free would have abandoned this accursed place. What remains is corrupted… or soon to be.
Pained, mournful cries haunt the air. Yi used to cry out in pain himself, but that was long ago—back when he thought tears might bring back the dead.
He blinks, and the physical world returns. For a moment, he pretends not to bear its weight upon his shoulders. Then, he blinks again.
The spirits continue to cry out. Yi draws his ringed blade.
He dashes in a blur, sweeping across the grounds like a change in season one realizes only after it has passed. In a flash, he is back where he started, perfectly still, his sword resting in its scabbard.
One by one, the vines crumple. Some spill from collapsed rooftops, others shrivel where they lie.
He sits cross-legged to take it all in. Now the spirits sing with joy, and he knows there is no greater sign of gratitude. As they melt away, the land echoes their bliss. Peach blossoms sprout where the overgrowth had held firm. Stalks of limp bamboo straighten, like students ordered to attention.
A fleeting smile softens Yi’s face. He removes his helmet and digs into his bag, shuffling past the other items he brought for the journey. Fruits, nuts… char, flint. Things for himself, and things to cleanse the land for good.
Not now. Not yet.
He retrieves a thin reed pen, and a crinkled scroll. The page is covered in marks.
60
54
41
Yi adds a few strokes by today. Below them are more words.
30 days between clearings.
He knows, soon enough, he will need to grant the farmer her wish, and send his home off in flames.
But not now. Not yet.
Mundos Medikul Jernel

Mundo

Portions of this text have been transcribed for legibility and edited for grammar by John O'Bryan.
Day 283
Deer Dieree: No pashents today. But that’s OKay. Evry bizness has downs. I am fine withh it. In fact it is good becuz it means pepul in Zaun are healfy! No patients is good noos for the peeple, I always say.

Day 301
Still no pashunts. But tooday I wint outsid and yelld at ppl HOO NEED A DOCOTOR? They runned away. They runned fast, so they must not b sick. It is fine. In fact it is good! I will wayt more. Wait untel they r sik. Ooh, ther wuz a gud thing that happen—me found nurs to hire! Her liv in alley behind da hospittl. Mundo xcited to hav help!!

Day 30-Hundred-somethin
Aggh! Stil No Pashunts! Wear r they all? It not possibul they all healfy. Mundo think they avoid goin to doktur! Mabbe me go find them? Mundo to da reskue!

Day 304
I hav a pahent! The firstest in a long time. He is fancee! Waring a suut an glassissss. Came in to say him wants to turn this hospital inntu a kem-fak-tow-ree. I tol him he sound krayzee. Putt him in Mundos old room. Da one wif da pads. Gud place for screemin. He be happee in ther for now.

Day 305
Bad noos. My payshint is detererorayding. Him thinks he wurks fur da chem bearen. Wont eat and wont stop skreemin. Him keep yellin “Yooll be sorry Doktur Mundo!” Mundo tol him me AM sorry becuz he krayze but Mundo will git him bettr. Dis mite take a wile.

Day 306
Tooday i use a wunderfuhl treetmint on da pashent. No wut it is? Elektristee! I putted it in his brane wif wires. He skreemd becuz that is da sownd peepul make when yuu cure them. Gettin bettr sumtimes hurt. Mundo happee to see progresses!

Day 30-Blundred-&
wow da pashint is lowd! Evreeday he skreem LEMEE OWT LEMEE OWT but wut can I do? Put him owt on da street? He Krazee and danjerous! Moar lekristee and mabee surguree? I dunnno. Wish me luk dieree!!

Day %5#
Mundo am runnnn out uf opshuns. Da lektristee dont werk no moar. Payshent still krazee as a chem-bat. Me wint for a walk owtside to kleer me head tooday. Mundo found nurs an askd her opinyun. Me tol her da lectristee dont werk on da pashent anymor. She sed me need too operat. Then her hissd an ran up a fense. Dat is medikul kunsensis then. Tomorrrro i operat! It gunna go good!

Day 2,22,0172
I think da payshint is bettur! I purformd what wee dokturs call a brane labotmee. (Das whare yuu chop up da brane) Payshent is no longr skreemn! Hurray fur sciens! Now kums his recuvry. It will be long an ardyoouss. But he shud pul throo!

DAY 0.19
Payshint did not pul throo. at leest i don fink so. he haz bin vary still fur a week now. If he dont muuve todaae me hav to put him in garbij. Dis onlee part of job Mundo hate!! Why kant we sayv them all? Sciens still hav so far to go! At leest pashent not suffr no moar.

DAY ^*∞∞∞
Me saw nurs agin tooday. Her was eeting out of trash can. Her eet old pashints hand! Mundo tol her dis unprofeshinul! Me say sorry dis not workng out but me rite her good recomindashun lettur. Her hissd and ran up fense agin! Why so hard to find gud help? Me run respektabul practis. Me kare abowt pashints. Is it unreesunabl to xpeckt same frum implowees? Mundo not tink so. Sum day me find nurs hoo kares as much as Mundo. Sum day.
Mel

Mother,
A soldier gave me the gift of your mask today.

Mindlessly, I traced the cracks, taking in every dent, every scar from the countless battles where you emerged victorious—and the one battle you did not.
Only now, as our ship crosses the waters to Noxus, has reality begun to set in. You are gone, again. But this time, I can no longer hope for your return.
I know you wouldn't want me to dwell on this. You'd tell me to be proud—I finally became “the Wolf” you so desperately desired. Still, I wonder, did I become what you hoped for? Or just what you needed me to be?
So much has changed, and yet part of me is as lost as I was over ten years ago. When I think back on it, the air of cousin Jago's greeting when I first arrived in Piltover—it reeked of pity. You'd made it clear that I was being delivered, handed off, and that you wouldn't be coming back for me. Even so, for years, I would fall asleep longing for you as any daughter longs for her mother—despite everything you'd done. Every morning, I awoke to the emptiness you left behind. I've spent my life trying to fill that emptiness, to prove myself worthy of my own mother's love.
I have lived the only way I know how—as the Fox, swift and cunning. I earned the Council's trust, and nearly had Piltover in the palm of my hand. If only you had trusted me, Mother. I wouldn't be left with this mess. ~~I wouldn't have had to~~
No. It's not that simple.
I know now you were trying to protect me, in your own way. I never could have imagined such magic lay dormant within me, but there are many things about my past I hadn't considered before your passing. Truthfully, it is overwhelming—and all the more reason I wish I could have fought at your side. I cannot begin to imagine what you must have felt, being hunted by the Black Rose for all those years. But I do know that if you were ever afraid, it wasn't for yourself. It was for Kino, and for me. And in the end, I was your undoing. Perhaps you knew all along that I was the one to fear.
I'm sorry, Mother, but I don't regret protecting my city. With strength, comes sacrifice—isn't that what you always said? Your creed, your excuse for everything. Did you ever care what it did to me? To us? Was it worth it? I'm the one left bearing the cost of it all.
You kept so much hidden from me. The truth about my father. Kino's murderer. And, perhaps most pressing of all, this vendetta the Black Rose had against you—that now entangles me. I imagine these merely scratch the surface of your lies, and those of this “Deceiver.”
I plan to uncover everything you've kept from me.
It pains me that these words will never reach you, but I hope you're watching from Volrachnun. I will cast this letter overboard, so it may be drawn into the depths and become one with the waters off Rokrund's shores, where you once defeated death itself.
I'm soon to arrive as an outsider in the land where I was born. Our own guards do not truly see me as a Medarda, even if the distrust within their hearts dares not escape their lips. A nation that prizes strength, yet thrives on bloodshed, is not one I can proudly call my own—and I will not stand idly by as the chaos continues. You taught me how to survive, Mother. I taught myself how to live. And while you pushed me to embrace the Wolf, I will never abandon the ways of the Fox.
It may not be in the way you intended… but I'm coming home, Mother.
And I will make a difference here.
Until my heart no longer beats,
Your daughter, Mel
Milio

Milio's story began generations ago with his grandmother, Lupé, and her twin sister, Luné—two elemental masters who wove their respective earth and fire axioms together to overcome the Vidalion’s trials and join the Yun Tal. But after Luné was caught plotting against the Yun Tal, both sisters were convicted of her crime and punished as twins. Lupé was banished to the farthest reaches of Ixtal and Luné all but vanished, taking with her the last of Lupé's trust.

By the time Milio was born, his family had done all they could to make the best of their new lives. He knew only love and laughter, and to him, life in the village was paradise—what more could they ever need?

When Milio was old enough, Lupé tried to teach her grandson the axiomata. Where the rest of her family had failed her, Milio showed promise and took to the elements naturally, but struggled to grasp the rules and rigidity of the discipline. Disappointed, Lupé gave up hope, abandoning Milio's teachings.

Milio, however, continued to learn on his own. Away from the guidance of his grandmother, he abandoned the restrictions she had tried to impose on him. Studying nature itself, he intuited his own set of rules and eventually mastered fire—the one axiom his grandmother wouldn't teach him.

But something bothered Milio about fire. Did it have to be so destructive, especially when he saw the potential for it to do more?

The answer revealed itself one night while Milio was chasing the glow of summer fireflies. They led him to one of the village’s hunters who was injured and unable to move. Milio tried to keep her stable with his fire axiom, but it wasn't enough. Knowing the village healer was too far, he tried desperately to adapt the axiom into a force that could heal.

As he placed his hands on the hunter's stomach to support her wound, he felt a flicker of warmth.. It was so familiar and soothing, like he was touching her soul. Her inner flame. Then Milio began to feel that same flame within himself. He could feel it within the trees, within the leaves—as if each part of the jungle was coming to life like a cozy bonfire.

Focusing all of his energy into that feeling, he used what nature had taught him to manifest that fire. What emerged was a creature—small and timid with wide, friendly eyes. Milio placed it on the hunter's wound and felt the creature—his inner flame—heal her from the inside out.

That night, he’d discovered an entirely new axiom, which he affectionately named “soothing fire.”

Milio ran home to show his family what he'd done. Before their eyes, he manifested another soothing flame that danced happily in the palm of his hand—his "fuemigo"—and his family celebrated.

Grandmother Lupé, however, was unsettled by this achievement.

Seeing Milio’s mastery of the axiomata at such a young age, Lupé knew that her grandson had done what the rest of her family failed to do. With his abilities, he could finally end their exile and restore them to their rightful place among Ixtal's ruling caste. However, she was troubled by his fascination with fire and how his burgeoning skills went against the traditional teachings of the axiomata.

Despite this, Lupé threw everything into her last chance at redemption. Milio became her sole focus as she nurtured and shaped his abilities, preparing him to leave home, travel to Ixaocan, and finally free her from the burden of her sister's failures. Milio felt this weight upon his shoulders, and the thought of leaving home on his own terrified him. But because Milio loved his family more than anything, he would find the courage if it meant ensuring their happiness.

In preparation for the journey, he and his grandmother fashioned a special backpack that Milio called his "furnasita," inside of which he could keep his ever-burning fuemigo. Then, with a heavy heart and a wide smile, Milio—at only twelve years old—left his village behind, outfitted with only his trusty furnasita and some new clothes made by his family.

He traveled the entirety of Ixtal, forging his way through the jungle, camping underneath the stars, and making friends along the way, all while sending frequent letters home that detailed his exciting adventures. After a long journey, Milio finally made it to Ixaocan, where he's since begun his training to challenge the Vidalion.

"The boy with the soothing flames" has caught the eye of more than a few—including Luné, currently imprisoned beneath the city and biding her time. Even Milio notices the whispering that accompanies him around the city, but his focus is on joining the Yun Tal and making his family proud.
Milio's Super-Special Adventure Reports

Elyse Lemoine

Greetings, family! It is I, Milio, with my first official Adventure Report!

I can't believe it's been three whole days since I left home. I made it safely to my first village and I'm ready to sleep in a REAL bed tonight. No more jungle floor! I can smell dinner too, mmm... (But your cooking is way better, Mamá! Yours too, Meli!)

When I got to the village, your letters were waiting for me! I miss you all SO MUCH. How's Cousin Javi? Is Tomasin helping Papá with the farm? How are the animals doing? Cousin Jaime, I can't believe your and Xalvadora's baby is coming soon! How is she doing? Tell me everything! Also, Luca, you're not allowed to get married until I get home, okay? (Say hi to Cedro for me!)

ANYWAY, I bet you're all wondering about my journey. Well, guess what? Your favorite Milio has become super tough and rugged camping under the stars, hehe. The jungle isn't as scary as it looks, especially when I have my fuemigos to keep me warm at night. Plus, now I don't have to share my bedroom anymore!

The fuemigos are doing really well! My furnasita is keeping them nice and cozy, and they've done so much good work, lighting my path and even healing little jungle critters. (I helped too, of course!) Omele Lupé, I've been practicing my axiom every day and I'm getting stronger, just like you told me. The Vidalion won't stand a chance!

This is the farthest I've ever been from home... but every day has been new and exciting! I'm doing REEEEEEALLY well too, by the way. I already made three new friends in the village, and we're eating together tonight!

Speaking of, I gotta go eat. My fuemigos and I are STAAAAARVING. I'm leaving again tomorrow morning, but I'll write you as soon as I reach the next village.

Love you all! My next letter is coming soon!

The Tough and Rugged Milio

Hi, family! It's Milio again, safe in the next village and ready to tell you all about my newest adventures!

Thank you all for your letters. I wish I could write more often... Maybe I could train one of my fuemigos to deliver my letters for me? Can they even travel that far? Let's find out!

I'm back! They can't...

So Cousin Isabella was injured? How's she doing? I bet she'll be back on her feet in no time with one of Cousin Junot's poultices. Auntie Alba, I wish I could hear your new songs! I bet the whole village loved them.

OH, you'll never guess who I met today! Okay, so picture this: I was wandering through the jungle when I saw an injured kitten. It was so cute and soft and fluffy, and it needed my help, so my fuemigos and I jumped into action and healed it! I got so many cuddles, and it was purring SOOOO much. We were napping in a sun spot when Nidalee found us!

You remember the stories about the "Kashdaji Queen," right? About how she's half-woman, half-cat, and half-ghost? How she stalks the jungle at night, waiting to pounce on kids out past their bedtime? Well, her real name is Nidalee, and she's the best EVER. Definitely not a scary ghost who eats kids! Actually, she doesn't even like people that much. But she CAN turn into a cat! Isn't that amazing?

Omele Lupé, I think you’d really like her. She's super strong, just like you!

She didn't really like me at first, but I won her over. So she let me travel with her pack for a little bit, because I helped one of their kittens! (She taught me they're called "pakiti," and the Kashdaji are actually called "pakaa.") It was really fun getting to travel with Nidalee and her pack.

We're kinda like a pack, right? We might not be pakaa, but we have each other. It would be fun if we were traveling together, too. Also, cuddle puddles!

I hope I see Nidalee again. If you ever see her, say hi for me! She might SEEM distant at first, but she's actually super sweet, hehe.

Time for me to go! The village is having a bonfire tonight and I wanna check it out.

Love you all!

Milio, the Honorary Pakaa

Hi, family, it's Milio again! I miss you all a ton... You miss me too, right?

I'm so glad I got your letters. Hearing what you've all been up to makes me REALLY happy, almost like you're traveling with me! And it gives me something to look forward to when I reach each stop on my way to Ixaocan.

I definitely needed them today... When I got to the village last night, there was a lot going on. A bunch of people were hurt pretty bad. Luckily, me and my fuemigos were there to help! But... one person didn't make it.

His family told me there wasn't anything I could have done. That I did SO much and made his last moments warm, but...

I should have been able to save him.

I guess it was pretty amazing helping everyone and showing them just how comfy and cozy fire can be. My fuemigos love being in the spotlight, too! And I helped a lot of people... ~~But, I dunno...~~

OH, Cousin Jaime, Xalvadora, I read about your baby! I'm so happy for you!!! I wish I could be there to meet her. Tell her all about Uncle Milio, okay? And give her a bajillion kisses and cuddles for me until I get home!

Omele Lupé, I'm sorry. Next time, I'll do better. I promise.

I'm gonna go now! I wanna check on everyone before I leave.

Love you all!

Milio

Co-'om se-henna, family!

"Milio, what does that mean?" Good question! It means "smile forever." I learned it from a new friend, hehe. (I'll tell you more soon!)

It's been FOREVER since my last letter! My fuemigos and I are marching on, meeting so many new people and seeing so many new things.

First, did you know there's a lady made of PLANTS in the jungle? I heard a lot of whispers about her in the last village, but I thought it was just scary stories for babies or something. Boy, was I wrong!

I actually saw her one night! She was covered in petals and vines and leaves and everything! But her little seed friends looked really sharp... Don't worry, Mamá, Papá, I didn't go say hi. But I kinda wish I had...

Also, I saw a mountain? Or at least a giant, moving rock! I noticed it through the trees and I was so confused, because it wasn't on my trusty map, so I went to investigate. And it seemed like a normal rock-mountain until I noticed... it had a FACE! And it was... moving? I reeeeeeally wanted to say hi, but I think it would’ve stepped on me if I’d tried. Next time!

I made a new best friend, too. Her name is Neeko! She's so cute and nice and can shapeshift! She tried to play a prank on me by turning into ME, but my fuemigos knew it was a trick. I'm so proud of them.

So yeah, Neeko smelled Nidalee's pakaa on me and wanted to investigate. (Apparently they're super-duper close!) (Also, Mamá, Papá, I PROMISE I shower every night. Well, most nights...)

I learned a lot from Neeko, like how to say a bunch of new things and how she's trying to form a tribe for anyone who needs a home. I wish I could help her, but I gotta join the Yun Tal, first. Maybe one day?

I've been traveling through Ixtal for so long now. It feels like I never run out of new things to see. Every day is fun and different, even if the jungle floor still isn't all that comfortable, hehe.

Anyway, me and my fuemigos are pooped. It's so late here... What time is it for you? How's my new niece? (I can't believe I'm not the baby of the family anymore!) Tell Tomasin that she better be talking to the animals every night. They sleep better after you read them a bedtime story.

Omele Lupé, I'm almost at Ixaocan! I'm training every day so I can face the Vidalion and make you proud.

Also, I'm doing okay, I promise. I'm big and strong, so you don't need to worry about me.

Love you all!

Your Best Friend, Milio

Greetings from Ixaocan, family!

Can you believe I finally made it? I was starting to think I'd be traveling through the jungle FOREVER. Is it weird I kinda miss it?

There's so much to tell you! But now that I can write to you every day, I'll send even more letters about what I’m up to in the capital. (Still no luck with my fuemigo delivery service... but more about that some other time.)

The capital is HUGE. Omele Lupé, I can't believe you used to live here! I've already gotten lost a couple times... oops. Everything is ginormous, and there are a ton of people. I've seen so many things and learned a bunch of new ways to use the axiomata, too!

At first, I was worried about finding a place to stay, but a super kind family took me in! They're earth elementalists and use the axiomata to make ceramics. Isn't that amazing? They're letting me stay in their spare room for free as long as I help them with chores in their ceramics shop. Good thing I’ve got lots of practice helping people!

Even though Ixaocan is so different from our cozy village, there are some things that remind me of home, too. All the people in my neighborhood are really friendly and welcoming. Almost like a family! And there's a daily market nearby with food that tastes almost like Mamá’s! Almost.

I keep getting this weird feeling in the pit of my stomach, though. Kind of like when I was back with the pakiti, and they were all play-hunting and tracking me through the forest, but I feel it... here? I mean, it's probably just me getting used to my new life, right?

Anyway, I'll be facing the Vidalion any day now! Until then, I'm gonna keep training and exploring.

Wish me luck!

Love you all!

Milio, the Vidalion's Next Challenger
Miss Fortune

Like most who rise to notoriety in the twisting, salt-crusted labyrinth of Bilgewater, Sarah Fortune has no shortage of blood on her hands…
Beloved daughter of the renowned gun-dame Abigale Fortune, Sarah spent much of her happy childhood in the forge of their island settlement just off the coast—learning to file wheel locks, set trigger pulls, and even cast batches of custom pistol shot. Her mother’s skill in crafting firearms was legendary, and her bespoke handguns were to be found in the collections of many a wealthy merchant captain.
But oft-times, they were coveted by those with more meager means, and darker hearts.
One such individual was an up-and-coming Bilgewater reaver, known to his crew as Gangplank. Cocksure and certain of his power, he demanded a pair of Fortune pistols the like of which no other man could hope to possess. A reluctant deal was struck, and a year later to the day, Gangplank returned. With no intention of paying for the work, he had masked his face with a grimy scarf. He was there to take the guns by force.
Abigale had crafted two masterpieces, twin hand cannons of exquisite workmanship and pinpoint lethality—indeed, she declared, too fine for the likes of him. She could see the brutish thug that Gangplank had become. Enraged, he seized the pistols and gunned her down with her own creations before turning them on her husband, and young Sarah too. Then, out of nothing but spite, he set the workshop ablaze and smashed both pistols on the cobblestones, to wipe the Fortune legacy from the face of Runeterra completely.
Sarah awoke to agony. Her wounds were grave, but she managed to crawl from the burning ruins with the remains of the two pistols clutched to her chest. In time, her body healed, but waking nightmares and night terrors would torment her for many years to come.
Even so, she endured. She was determined to have vengeance. She rebuilt her mother’s pistols, and learned all she could of the masked murderer who had since declared himself the new reaver king of Bilgewater, and forced even the most influential ship captains to honor his claim.
No matter. When Sarah faced him again, she would be ready.
Taking a ship to Bilgewater Bay, she killed her first man within minutes of setting foot on the crooked timbers of the quayside—a drunken pirate with a gallon of Myron’s Dark in his belly, and a price on his head. Sarah dragged his corpse to the bounty board officials, before tearing off a dozen more warrants and heading off into the city.
Within a week, every one of them was settled, and those with the misfortune to be hunted by Sarah were either dead or in chains. She quickly earned a reputation in the taverns and gambling dens, becoming known only as “Miss Fortune”. Gangplank would never see her coming. What was one more bounty hunter on the streets of his city?
In the years that followed, tales of Miss Fortune’s exploits spread far and wide, each more fanciful than the last. She drowned the leader of the Silk-Knife Corsairs in a barrel of her own stolen rum. She took the Syren from a captain who learned the hard way what it meant to slip a hand where it wasn’t wanted. She tracked the insane Doxy-Ripper to his lair in the belly of a half-dismembered leviathan down on the slaughter docks, and shot him in the back as he fled.
In spite of all this, Gangplank was far too powerful to confront openly, with the fierce Jagged Hooks crew always at his side—but Miss Fortune knew just killing him would never be enough. Only his abject humiliation, and the burning to ash of all he had stolen, would satisfy the girl who had died on the floor of her mother’s workshop.
And so, little by little, she began to surround herself with a small but loyal cadre of allies that would eventually help her lay her demons to rest.
Miss Fortune risked everything to make her move against Gangplank. Plots within plots saw his ship, the Dead Pool, blown to flaming wreckage in the harbor, and the tyrannical reaver king overthrown. Best of all, everyone in Bilgewater saw him fall. It was everything Sarah could have hoped for, exactly as she’d planned.
And it was over in moments.
With Gangplank gone, the other rival captains quickly descended into fighting amongst themselves for control of the city. What little semblance of law there had been was gone in an instant, with countless innocent civilians caught between the warring crews. Reluctantly, Miss Fortune stepped up—as captain of the Syren, and backed by her own people, she brokered an uneasy truce that has somehow held to this day.
But little is ever really permanent in the port city, and Captain Fortune still finds herself having to impose her own brand of order on every reaver, ganglord, and distant threat that comes her way.
The real battle for Bilgewater has only just begun.
Down Among The Dead Men

Bilgewater’s White Wharf had earned its name thanks to the layer of bird waste covering it from end to end, which was only to be expected at a resting place for the dead. Folk here didn’t bury corpses; they returned them to the sea. A grave of the sunken dead hung suspended in the cold depths, marked by hundreds of bobbing grave-buoys. Some were merely name posts, while others were elaborate tomb markers carved to resemble rearing krakens or buxom sea wenches.
Miss Fortune sat on an empty crate of Rapture Rum at the end of the wharf, legs crossed and a noxious cheroot dangling from her bottom lip. In one hand, she held a length of breathing tube connected to a half-submerged coffin floating low in the water. In the other, she grasped a length of frayed rope running through a rusted pulley block and tied to the coffin lid. Both her pistols were holstered within easy reach.
Moonlight cast a weak glow through the mist rolling in from the sea, staining the water’s scummed surface tobacco yellow. Cawing carrion gulls lined every swaybacked roof on the quayside, which was always a good omen. They knew better than any the signs of fresh pickings.
“About time,” she whispered, as a shaven-headed man in a drake-scale frock coat emerged from the narrow, debris-choked alley. A pack of needle-toothed wharf-rats stalked him, hoping he was drunk and might pass out to become easy meat. The man’s name was Jakmunt Zyglos, one of the Painted Brothers. Any corsair worth his salt had tattoos, but every inch of Zyglos was inked with clawed serpents, lovers’ names, and a record of every boat he’d sunk, every man he’d murdered. His skin was as good a confession as any she’d known.
He marched purposefully along the wharf, but his eyes darting warily from side to side gave the lie to his confidence. His hand gripped a long cutlass with a shark-toothed edge that hung low on his hip. He too boasted a firearm, a stubby carbine with glassy pipes running the length of its barrel.
“Where is he?” demanded Zyglos. “You said you’d bring him.”
“That a Piltover hex-carbine?” she asked, ignoring his question.
“Answer me, damn you!”
“You first,” said Miss Fortune, letting some rope out through the pulley and allowing the coffin to sink a little more. “After all, I’m not sure how long this breathing tube is, and you wouldn’t want your brother to go without air, would you?”
Zyglos took a breath, and she saw the tension go out of him.
“Yes, damn you, it’s from Piltover,” he said, drawing the weapon and holding it out by the trigger guard.
“Pricy,” said Miss Fortune.
“I guess you’d know,” he sneered.
She let out even more rope. Bubbles of air escaped the now fully submerged coffin. Zyglos held up his hands, instantly contrite.
“Alright! Alright!” he pleaded. “It’s yours. Pull him up. Please.”
“You’ll come quietly?”
Zyglos gave a bark of fatalistic laughter.
“What choice do I have?” he asked. “You sank my ships and killed all my men. You’ve sent my kin to the poorhouse or the gaol, and for what? A stolen hex-gun? A bounty?”
“A little of both and then some?”
“So how much am I worth to you, bitch?”
“Coin? Five hundred silver serpents.”
“All this mayhem for a lousy five hundred serpents?”
“It’s not the money that’s got you killed. It’s the fact that you’re one of Gangplank’s sworn men,” said Miss Fortune. “That’s why I want you dead.”
“Dead? Wait, the warrant says alive!”
“True, but I’ve never been very good at following instructions,” said Miss Fortune, releasing the rope and the breathing tube. The coffin plunged into the darkness of the sunken dead, trailing a froth of frantic bubbles. Zyglos screamed his brother’s name and ran at her, drawing his serrated sword. She let him get within spitting distance before drawing her pistols and blasting him with both barrels, one through the eye, one in the heart.
Miss Fortune spat her cheroot into the sea and blew the smoke from each muzzle.
“Self defense,” she said with a smile, rehearsing her lie for the bounty pursers. “Crazy fool came at me with that fang-sword of his. I didn’t have a choice.”
Miss Fortune bent to retrieve the fallen hex-carbine. She turned the weapon over in her hands. Too light for her tastes, but artfully made and absurdly lethal. The ghost of a smile twitched the corner of her mouth as she thought back to the warmth of the old workshop, the smell of gun oil, and the touch of her mother’s hand on her shoulder. Miss Fortune sighed and shook off the memory before it turned sour. She threw the pistol out over the water, sending it down to the dead. The sea demanded its due, after all, and she’d not lied; the weapon was worth a small fortune.
She stood and strolled back into Bilgewater. She knew she ought to throw Zyglos’s corpse into the water too, but the wharf-rats and the carrion gulls had to eat, didn’t they?
And fresh meat was a rare delicacy on the White Wharf.
Wukong

Within Ionia’s magical forests dwells a tribe of vastaya known as the Shimon. A cautious people, they see life as an evolutionary climb to wisdom—upon death, they believe they become stones, returning to the soil to begin the climb of life anew.
Impulsive, clever, and easily bored, young Kong never had much in common with other Shimon. For countless years, they endured his pranks… until the day he arrived in a panic, insisting that a great elemental dragon was coming to burn their woodland home.
But Kong only chuckled as his tribe began to flee. Realizing he had fooled them, and with their patience finally at an end, the Shimon named him outcast. Kong, for his part, was ambivalent. He would seek out people with a better sense of humor.
Living as something of a charlatan, he proclaimed himself “the Monkey King” and often challenged mortals to duels, or games of cunning. He claimed to be undefeated—until he crossed a Noxian headsman in the hinterlands of Zhyun. The Noxian and his comrades chased the Monkey King deep into the wilderness, where he hid, only emerging again after the invaders left the shores of the First Lands for good.
And in time, Kong saw the brutality Noxus had inflicted upon his homeland.
He set out to meet the fabled combat-masters of Wuju, but found that their village had been annihilated. The only living soul was a man sitting quietly among the ruins, so Kong challenged him to a good-natured fight. In a single motion, the man stood, knocked the vastaya down, then resumed his meditation.
For weeks, Kong returned again and again, determined to defeat this dour man—but the Monkey King was always outmaneuvered, no matter if he approached from behind, above, or below. The warrior could sense whenever Kong was about to attack, even when the vastaya tried to distract him with hilarious jokes, and he somehow knew not to drink his tea when Kong laced it with stupefying spirits.
Eventually, the Monkey King knelt before the man and begged to learn his ways. Kong wanted to be the greatest warrior, but he also sought something more. He just couldn’t quite put it into words.
The man saw Kong’s humility, and knew the vastaya was ready. He introduced himself as Yi, the last master of Wuju, and agreed to train Kong in its virtues of discipline and patience. He could help channel Kong’s recklessness and impulsiveness into a lethally swift and surprising fighting style.
The two grew to respect each other, yet Yi refused to speak much of his past, or why he would not leave the ruined village. Kong made a proposition. The two would engage in a friendly sparring bout. If Kong won, Yi had to reveal why he’d stopped fighting. If Yi prevailed, Kong wouldn’t speak for four full seasons.
Yi eagerly accepted.
When Kong had first arrived at Wuju, he crept through a field of smokepoppies, and he lured his master back there now. Each time Yi attacked, the agitated flowers would burst around him—until finally he struck out through the growing haze at what he believed was Kong, but instead hit a straw decoy. Kong seized his opportunity, and grappled Yi to the ground.
Finally, Yi told Kong the truth. He and his fellow disciples had gone to defend Ionia during the war, bringing the wrath of Noxus down upon Wuju in turn. He blamed himself for the death of every last villager, and watched over the ruins as penance.
This, Kong realized, was what he sought. Although his tribe had cast him out, he wanted to defend the Shimon, who had sheltered him for so long, and set him on the path to wisdom and enlightenment. Proud of his student, Yi also felt a renewed sense of purpose—he granted Kong an enchanted staff, crafted by the legendary weaponsmith Doran, and a new honorific, reserved only for the brightest students of Wuju.
From that day forward, he was known as Wukong.
Though the war is long over, Noxus’ influence continues to defile Ionia. Roads have been carved through the ancient forests, self-styled “tax collectors” hound peaceful folk who have nothing left to give, and the great festivals of renewal have been slowly declining, year after year.
But the great warriors Wukong and Master Yi are ready. Side by side, they roam the First Lands, resolved to combat injustice and hatred wherever they find it.
Fast and Dumb

Anthony Burch

Fast and dumb, or slow and smart?
That’s what Yi always asks me. Well, I say “asks,” but it’s not really a question. Not up for discussion. Not really. You can be impulsive and quick and improvisational and have fun... or you can do things Yi’s way. The right way. Slow. Patient. Strategic. With a gruff, determined expression on his face, like he stepped in crap. Because he did. Because I shoved some inside his boot, thinking he’d find it funny.
He didn’t.
(I did, though, so it all kinda worked out in the end.)
The really irritating thing, though: he’s usually right. Through the years we’ve trained together, I’ve beaten him in combat something like...twelve times? Versus the hundreds of times he’s walloped me. And every time – every single time I ate a mouthful of dirt – I knew it was because I’d gotten impatient. Took a swing I wasn’t sure would land. Lunged for an opening that ended up being a trap.
And I’m not being humble. I’m good. Really good. Yi, humorless as he is, just happens to be one of the best warriors I’ve ever met. It’s not like the guy is slow, either: he’s fast. Faster than anyone I’ve ever seen. As in: he unsheathes his blade, then there’s a blur, then three guys are bleeding on the ground. That fast.
So when he tells me to choose slow and smart over fast and dumb, I try to listen most of the time.
Keyword being “try.”
And “most of the time.”
We were wandering through a forest of man-high mushrooms when we heard the shouting.
In addition to cutting off the punchline of an incredible joke I’d been telling, Yi made me dive into the thick of a thistleshrub to avoid detection.
There were six of them. Five bandits and their rope-bound captive, an elderly farmer with anxious eyes.
I felt this situation called for a liberal application of hitting people in the head with my staff, but Yi held me back. He put a finger to his lips, then pointed at his eyes. Observe. Strategize. Fast and dumb, or slow and smart?
I sighed and looked over the group with a discerning eye.
Raggedy clothes hung off their hunched backs, taut with stress. They seemed to take far better care of their blades than themselves. Their eyes scanned their surroundings as they marched, on the lookout for any potential ambush. One shoved a gag into the old farmer’s mouth, presumably to stop the shouting we’d just heard.
Bandits.
The old farmer collapsed to the ground. The tumble was intentional; anyone could tell that. His captors certainly did.
The leader stopped and faced the old man. “Well, that tears it,” he said. “You’re old, my friend, but you’re not that old. Falling over every few hundred steps to stall for time? Give yourself a second to think about how you’re gonna get out of this? That’s an old trick. Older than you.”
He squatted to the farmer’s level.
“You don’t really have a chestful of precious stones at home, do you?”
The old man stared at the bandit, terror slowly replacing itself with resignation.
He shook his head.
“That’s a shame,” the bandit said, a genial smile on his face. The kind of smile that usually leads to somebody pulling out a dagger.
“I’m gonna go save him now,” I whispered to Yi.
Yi shook his head as hard as he could without rattling his goggles. I didn’t have to ask why. He likely wanted one of us to sneak around them and attack from the other side of the pass, trapping them in a pincer. Or something equally cunning and time-consuming. Slow and smart.
Yi’s big problem – apart from not finding me funny, and the fact that his goggles make him look like a man-sized bug – is that he spent the last handful of years sitting alone in a field of flowers. His patience is infinite. He thinks everything can be thought through. Planned for.
Still, Yi had said to go slow. We’d try it his way. I nodded at him, then at the path behind the thugs. You get behind them. I’ll attack on your signal.
Yi circled back through the brush. He darted to the other side of the trail, too quick to notice, even if they had been looking in his direction. Classic ambush setup: he’d get their attention, and while their backs were turned, I’d hit them from my side of the path.
That’s when the lead bandit pulled a blade out of his right pocket. A small little thing, not good for much more than peeling fruit. Or slicing the throat of a tired old farmer.
I couldn’t see Yi in the brush on the other side of the road, but I knew he couldn’t see the blade. He didn’t know what was about to happen.
They were about to kill the old man, no matter how safe Yi wanted to play it. We had no time to go slow.
Thankfully, I had a secret weapon up my sleeve: I’m really, really, really good at fighting.
The leader grabbed the old man’s scalp and put a knife to his throat. I leapt out of the brush, staff held high, and smacked the blade out of his hand. Then we got to my favorite part.
Whenever I get the drop on somebody, I usually get about a two to three second window as they try to make sense of me. Most people have never seen a vastaya, much less a Shimon. They stand there slack-jawed, which typically gives me a chance to hit ‘em before they realize what’s going on.
I drove my knee into the lead bandit's chin, and his teeth clacked together so hard, even I winced at the sound.
“Stay where you are, Yi!” I shouted into the bush where he waited, unseen. “I got this.”
That’s when a knife hit me in the shoulder.
Apparently, one of those jerks had been wearing a bandolier of throwing daggers across his chest, and I hadn’t noticed. I tried not to imagine Yi smirking to himself.
“Still ‘got this,’ do you?,” he yelled from the brush. Likely staying out of the fight just long enough for me to get my teeth kicked in, so he could leap in, save me, and shout that he told me to slow down.
“Completely!” I shouted as I tossed a handful of smokepoppies to the ground. (I always keep a few on me. They’re useful in combat, and even more useful for irritating Yi when I’m bored.)
Then I beat the hell outta the rest of them. I won’t trouble you with the details–
–Wait, yes I will, because they’re great.
I held my staff out and twirled around, aiming high so as to avoid the prone old man. My arms shuddered with every impact of wood against skull. I dodged blows, parried strikes, and only got punched in the face, like, twice.
By the time the smoke cleared, I was the only one still standing. Well, me and the old man, once I got him to his feet.
Yi stepped out of the brush, sighing.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “What are you sighing for? I saved the grungy old man–”
“–Hey!” the old man said.
“And my shoulder will probably heal in a couple of days. Ow,” I said, touching the wound. “What’s disappointed you this time?”
Yi cut the man’s bindings. “I’m not disappointed,” Yi said. “I’m irritated.”
“Why?”
“I don’t like admitting I’m wrong. You were impatient, reckless, and you absolutely made the right call.”
I smiled.
“Fast and dumb.”
He patted me on my non-bleeding shoulder.
“Fast and dumb,” he said.
Mordekaiser

In a previous epoch, the fierce warlord Sahn-Uzal rampaged across the northern wildlands. Driven by dark faith, he crushed every tribe and settlement in his path, forging an empire in blood and death. As his mortal life neared its end, he took great satisfaction in knowing he had doubtless earned a seat at the gods’ table, in the glorious Hall of Bones, for all eternity.
Yet, when he died, he found no halls or glory awaiting him. Instead, Sahn-Uzal stood in an empty, gray wasteland, shrouded by ethereal fog and plagued by discordant whispers. Occasionally, other lost souls drifted nearby—little more than ghostly shapes, wandering their own personal oblivion.
Anger consumed Sahn-Uzal. Had his faith been false? Or was his domination of the world simply not enough to grant him the immortality he craved? Surely this emptiness could not be all there was… yet there seemed no end to it. He watched as the lesser spirits slowly faded into the fog, unmade and lost to time.
But Sahn-Uzal refused to fade.
His will, tempered by rage and torment, held him together. Over time, the unknowable, disembodied whispering in that place crystalized into words he could almost comprehend—this, he learned, was Ochnun, a profane tongue unspoken by any among the living. Slowly, a deceitful plan began to form in what was left of Sahn-Uzal’s mind. He began to whisper temptations across the veil between realms, promising his indomitable strength to any who dared listen.
And, sure enough, the day came when a coven of sorcerers resolved to bring Sahn-Uzal back from the dead. Lacking any flesh or bone, he spurred them to make him stronger than any mortal, binding his spirit-form in dark metal plates wrought in the likeness of his old armor. So he rose, a hulking revenant of iron and hate.
These power-hungry sorcerers had hoped to use him as a weapon in their trivial wars. Instead, he slew them where they stood, their weapons and magic useless against him.
In desperation, they screamed out his name to bind him—but to no avail, for Sahn-Uzal was no more.
With an ethereal rumble, he spoke his spirit-name in Ochnun: Mordekaiser.
Thus began his second conquest of the mortal realm. As before, his ambitions were great, only now empowered by necromantic sorceries he could never have previously imagined. From the fearful, dissipating souls of the sorcerers, Mordekaiser forged a weapon fit for an emperor of death—his brutal mace, Nightfall—and seized control of the army they had raised.
To his foes, it seemed he cared only for massacre and destruction. Entire generations perished under his relentless campaigns.
However, there was far more to Mordekaiser’s plan. He raised the Immortal Bastion at the center of his empire; while most assumed it was merely a seat of power, some came to know the secrets it held. Mordekaiser hungered for all the forbidden knowledge of spirits and death, and a true understanding of the realm… or realms… beyond.
Such tyranny could only bring him enemies. The Iron Revenant was defeated, surprisingly, by an alliance of the Noxii tribes, and betrayal from within his own inner circle. This hidden cabal managed to sever the anchors of his soul from his armor, and sealed the empty iron shell away in a secret place.
And so, Mordekaiser was cast out of the material realm. However, unbeknownst to anyone, he had planned for this—indeed, it was a pivotal part of his design. Domination and deceit had carried him far, but he knew that a destiny far grander than the Hall of Bones awaited him.
There, in the once empty wasteland, all those who had died under his latest reign were waiting. Perverted by dark sorcery, their spirits would never fade. The strongest became his devout, eternal army, bound to his will… but even the weak were given purpose.
From the subtle matter of their souls, Mordekaiser would forge a new empire. They would be the building blocks and mortar of his Afterworld.
Centuries have passed on Runeterra, and another empire has arisen around the Immortal Bastion. Mordekaiser’s name is still whispered in fear and awe by those who study the old histories, and remembered unkindly by the few ancient souls who knew him. For them, the greatest terror would be for Mordekaiser to find his own way to return permanently.
It is something they pray will not come to pass, for they know of no way to stop him.
The Final Reign

Michael Yichao

A raised fist. A surge of necromantic power. Before him, the final spire of the final tower takes form, inky smoke coalescing into black iron. Mordekaiser gazes upon his domain with dark pride.
Mitna Rachnun, his Afterworld, is complete.
Once, he stood in this very place, a mortal soul faced with the emptiness of oblivion. Now, a kingdom stretches before him, forged through his works.
He strides down the path toward his fortress, reveling in the satisfaction of his work. Each stone underfoot, his doing. The battlements and ramparts, all shaped from cruel magic and iron will.
Where there was nothing, Mordekaiser forged his own reality—a realm where all souls will soon dwell in eternity, never to fade.

Sahn-Uzal blinked and looked around. Uncertain, his mind blank.
I am dead.
The thought flitted by, a whisper on the wind. As the truth of it sank in, for just a moment, a fleeting sadness flooded his heart. Then laughter welled up, a rumble from his gut that washed over his entire body, overflowed from his chest, and poured out in a rumbling cascade.
Good.
Sahn-Uzal scanned the distance for the grand gateway of souls that would lead to the famed Hall of Bones. Searched for the attendants who would carry him triumphant into the eternal. Savored his growing excitement to meet the great conquerors who came before him.
Yet there was nothing but fog, as far as he could see.
Sahn-Uzal took a step forward—then looked down, surprised. Fine sand—a coarse grit—shifted underfoot. In the distance, discordant voices rustled, too quiet to make out the words.
This makes no sense.
He struck out across the wasteland, determined to find the truth.
Time passed, untold.
Confusion melted into disbelief. Disbelief kindled anger. Anger flared into fury.
Nothing.
There is nothing.
The dessicated sands extended endlessly. The relentless voices whispered on, a maddening itch in the back of his mind. The fog never abated, an eternal haze that hovered, a shroud over all.
Had the priests lied? Or were they false prophets, prattling fools proclaiming hollow superstitions? Or had the ancestors made a grotesque error of judgement, and not welcomed him into the great halls?
These questions gnawed at him, at first. But they did not matter. Sahn-Uzal realized that now. Nothing mattered but the present, pressing truth—there was nothing here. A vast emptiness, devoid of reward. Devoid of promise.
As this truth percolated through him, the shadow of despair stalked Sahn-Uzal, hungry to consume him.
But he was Sahn-Uzal. Conqueror of the wildlands. Master of the tribes. He had built an empire where there was none. In life, he had overcome all odds and conquered despair through will and ambition. Death would be no different.
If death does not hold the kingdoms I was promised… I will forge them myself.

Mordekaiser walks beneath the inner portcullis, fashioned after that of the Immortal Bastion, his mortal seat of power. He walks through the entryway and into the great hall.
Before him, his throne looms.
All around, in constant cacophony, the endless wailing of souls rises and falls, an unholy chorus of anguish. Yet Mordekaiser does not hear them—or rather, hears them as one might hear the clang of metal in a war camp, or the sound of boots on gravel during a forced march—common sounds, unnoteworthy in their banality.
After all, the worthy souls stand at attention along the hall, and none of them dare speak.
All is as it should be.
Mordekaiser steps toward his throne.

The arcane tome floated above the pedestal, serene and untouched. A strange contrast to all of the blood spilled around it.
The last surviving mage raised a feeble hand, blood trickling from his brow. Small licks of fire danced between his fingers—a final spell, one last, desperate attempt.
Mordekaiser spoke, bemused. “Such magics would consume you, mortal. And your precious book as well.”
The mage spat his words. “I don’t matter. Nothing matters but stopping you from obtaining it.”
A gout of fire, burning blue with heat, burst from the mage’s hands. It engulfed the Iron Revenant towering above him. Scorching energy raced up the arms of the mage, the backlash of the spell splitting his own flesh. Still, the mage pressed on, teeth cracking as he gritted them defiantly.
Mordekaiser stepped forward, a spirit encased in a suit of dark iron armor, shielding the tome from the flames. In his hands, Nightfall, his infamous mace, pulsed an ephemeral green. The heat from the fire cracked the stone and melted the flesh of the other, already dead mages. But Mordekaiser stood stoic against the onslaught.
Finally spent, his body broken, the mage collapsed to his knees, his ragged breath resolving in a whispered prayer for his power to be enough.
If Mordekaiser still had a body of flesh, he would have smiled. “Lacking in conviction.”
The mage stifled a sob as Mordekaiser approached. He squinted up at the specter and spoke through a throat dry and cracked.
“You will not find what you seek! A brutish monster could never understand the secrets of the Tome of Spirits and—”
A swing of the mace. A satisfying crash.
Another surge of blood joined the sticky pools coagulating in the room. Another broken mage—the thirteenth—fell still on the floor.
Mordekaiser laughed.
“You mistake brutality for ignorance.”
He gazed around the room at the corpses and whispered a verse in the unspoken tongue of the dead.
Pitiful struggle
Freed from flesh
You are all mine
He tapped Nightfall on the ground. It glowed brighter, almost seemed to breathe—as thirteen points of light rose from the broken bodies, then sank into the earth.
Mordekaiser turned his attention back to the book, still floating in its place, ahum with spirit magic. Another piece of knowledge for his plans. Another treasure in his conquest.
He stepped forward to collect his prize.

The throne looms before him. Its back of sheer iron pillars extends upward and tapers to vicious points. Ochnun script, angular and sharp, runs around the throne’s dais. The everpresent whispering is almost a roar here, incessant and desperate. Mordekaiser rests a hand on the armrest, taking pride in his work. This piece subsumed more souls in its creation than any other single part in his fortress. The wails emanating from it are music to him.
With a thought, Mordekaiser calls Nightfall to his hands. With a swing, he obliterates the throne.
A squall of a hundred souls echoes in the great hall as they are released from the throne, dissipating into oblivion. Mordekaiser watches them vanish with grim satisfaction.
Thrones are for mortals encumbered by flesh and human exhaustion. He… is now far more.
He steps atop the twisted iron and looks back across his great hall. His generals, souls that were worthy to die at his own hand when he last walked the physical realm, stand at attention. None so much as flinch in response. None will move without his direct command.
Now, his kingdom is truly ready.
Mordekaiser strides out of the great hall, toward the heart of his fortress, the centerpiece of his power and his machinations. Toward the relic that ties Mitna Rachnun to the mortal realm. Toward the place that gives the secret heart of the Immortal Bastion its true purpose.
In his first life, he thought himself a great conqueror, befitting the eternal halls of his faith. How small, how petty, how mortal his ambitions were then! But where others accepted death as the end, he used it forge the beginning of his true conquest. And now… he can hear and understand every whisper of this realm with stark clarity. Now, the magic of death itself courses through him. Now, he holds the arcane secrets gathered over a second lifetime, wrested from the hidden and unknown places of the world. Few other beings can claim the mastery of spirit, death, and mortal magics that he holds. He will wield them to shape all realms to his iron will.
The time has come to return to the world of the living. All the souls of Runeterra await.
Mordekaiser raises Nightfall in one hand.
And so, his final reign begins.
Morgana

Whether through destiny or circumstance, Morgana and her sister were born to a world in conflict. The cataclysmic Rune Wars had ripped through most of Valoran and Shurima, and seemed poised to engulf even the peaks of Targon. Morgana’s parents, Mihira and Kilam, knew the legends of the great mountain granting divine power—they saw no other choice than to attempt the long and perilous journey, if their tribe was to be saved.
Even when they learned Mihira was with child, they could not turn back. Finally, where Runeterra touches the stars, Kilam watched in wonder and fear as Mihira was chosen to embody the Aspect of Justice.
The couple returned not only with the salvation they sought, but twin daughters—Morgana and Kayle. However, the celestial power that claimed Mihira began to overshadow her mortal personality and affections. She would often push the girls into their father’s arms, abandoning them to answer battle’s call.
For many months, uncertainty gnawed at Kilam. The wars still raged on countless fronts, and his beloved wife was slipping away. Fearing for his daughters’ safety, he waited for Mihira to leave once more, then fled Targon with them both.
Though their destination did not yet have a name, it would become known as a haven from magic and persecution: the kingdom of Demacia.
There the twins grew different as day and night. While Kayle studied the settlement’s growing set of laws, dark-haired Morgana became troubled by their distrust of new arrivals. Knowing what it was to be a refugee, she wandered the wilds, talking to wayward mages and others cast out for the dangers they might bring. At home, she felt her father’s heartbreak at leaving Mihira behind, and grew bitter at her mother for causing such pain.
Morgana’s fears that she and Kayle might carry some remnant of the Aspect’s power were eventually confirmed, when a great blade wreathed in shadow and starfire fell from the heavens. As it pierced the ground, splitting in two, feathered wings burst from the girls’ shoulders. Their father wept at the sight of them each taking up half of the weapon, and turned away even as Morgana reached out to comfort him.
While Kayle embraced their new calling, rallying an order of judicators to enforce the laws, Morgana resented her gifts… until the night their settlement was raided. Kilam found himself surrounded as the fighting spread. In that moment, Morgana rushed to shield him, burning his attackers to ash. Together, the sisters saved countless lives, and were hailed as the Winged Protectors of Demacia.
But Kayle grew more extreme in her ideologies, and Morgana increasingly found herself pleading the case of those who wanted to atone for their crimes. An accord was struck between the sisters and their mortal devotees—though it was uneasy, and did not last. Kayle’s most ardent disciple, Ronas, came to arrest Morgana herself. Attempting to protect her penitent followers, she shackled him with dark flame until he fell to the floor, dead.
Divine fire lit the city from above as Kayle swore to bring Ronas’ killer to justice, and Morgana met her sister in the skies.
They raised their blades, each matching the other with arcs of blinding light and burning darkness that lashed down at the buildings beneath them. It seemed certain that one of them would win… but Morgana faltered when she heard their father’s anguished voice. Kilam lay in the rubble, mortally wounded. Howling with grief, Morgana hurled her half of their mother’s sword at Kayle, and plunged to the surface like a meteorite.
She cradled her father, cursing their inheritance for the destruction around them. Kayle landed, dumbstruck, and Morgana demanded to know if the smiting of wicked mortals included Kilam, whose crime was stealing them away from their mother. Kayle gave no answer, but soared into the heavens without looking back.
Morgana’s wings became an inescapable reminder of her pain. She tried to cut them from her flesh, but could find no blade strong enough. Instead, she bound them with iron chains, resolving instead to walk the world of mortals.
Over the centuries, her tale fell into myth, and the name Morgana was all but forgotten. To this day, the people of Demacia venerate “the Winged Protector,” but recall only the glory and truth of one sister, while Morgana’s dark outbursts and belief in personal redemption became the mysteries of “the Veiled One.”
Through all of this, she still refuses to abandon those who would seek her aid. Bitter, betrayed, she bides her time in the kingdom’s shadows, knowing with certainty that Kayle’s light will someday return to Runeterra, and all will face her judgment.
As magic begins to rise again, Morgana sees that dawn is nearly upon them.
Prayer to a Crumbling Shrine

Rayla Heide

Rin stubbed his toe on a root and stumbled, catching himself before he lost his balance. A few paces in front of him, his great aunt looked back.
“Need my old bones to slow down for you? Ho ha!” she chuckled.
“No,” he murmured to his shoes. His great aunt Peria was snow-haired and stooped with age, though she was still a few inches taller than Rin. He wished he could be as tall as his horrible brother—he would have towered over both of them if he was there.
Rin had never been in this part of the woods before. The pine trees grew closer together, so much that the light of the noonday sun had diminished to a glimmer amongst the shadows.
Aunt Peria stopped ahead. At first, he thought she stood in front of a mossy boulder, but as he caught up he saw the remains of a stone figure, eroded by time. Rin fiddled with the rocks in his pocket.
“Aha! Do you know who this is?” asked Aunt Peria.
“Uh, some old noble from the city?” said Rin.
“Oh no!” said Aunt Peria cheerfully. “To many, she was no more than shadow and myth. A figure known as the Veiled One.”
Aunt Peria lifted her lantern up toward the figure. The statue’s left arm was missing from the shoulder, but her right palm was open, as if inviting them forward. Upon her head was what must have once been a delicate stone shroud, now coated in vines. Feathered stubs rose from her shoulders, broken and weathered. Rin could see that part of her face had crumbled garishly, and he shivered. The unbroken half of her face was not much better—her remaining eye was marked with stains, and her expression was spiteful, as if she was about to spit out sour milk.
“Don’t like her?” Aunt Peria said, amused. “You are not the only one. She is not the most beloved. But she knows all about revenge.”
Rin’s eyes widened. He thought he’d been so careful.
“Yes, yes, I heard the rocks clacking around your pocket,” said Aunt Peria. “I know you’re planning to get back at your brother. He didn’t mean to hurt you, you know.”
“He hit me in the eye with the blunt of his axe!” Rin cried. “What do you think he meant to do? Shouldn’t he be the one who gets a lesson?”
“He was showing you where to chop wood. You know he would never hurt you on purpose,” said Aunt Peria.
“He deserves his own black eye!”
“And if you gave him one, what lesson do you think he would learn from that, hmm?”
Rin did not think Aunt Peria would much like his response, so he stayed silent.
“No answer? A story, then,” said Aunt Peria. “Now, listen!”
Rin sat himself down in front of the statue. With a sigh, he leaned his head against his hand.
“Long ago, in the deepest, darkest woods, where the trees grew together so tightly no sign of the sky or stars was visible, the Veiled One lived, far away from any settlement. Though few spoke with her, it was believed that she was older than dawn, sharper and wiser than any in the land. Those with disputes they could not solve themselves would come to her for final judgment, to seek wisdom, absolution—and occasionally, punishment. But they did so with caution, for it was also known that her lessons could be severe.
“One day, a Cleric and his Pupil entered the woods to find the Veiled One, for the Pupil had erred. The Pupil had acted in anger against his elder, striking him with a censer. Smouldering incense had scarred the Cleric’s face with a grotesque burn. The Pupil knew he done wrong and wanted to repent.
“The two had journeyed a day and a night before they found the Veiled One.
“They entered a cavern illuminated by candles. Water dripped from the ceiling, and strange potions lined the walls. It stank of gravesoil and moss. Dozens of raven-black feathers littered the floor.
“A figure silently emerged from the shadows to meet them—the Veiled One. A black shroud hid most of her features from sight, but her eerily violet eyes shone through. Her feet were bare on the cold stone floor. As the Pupil told his tale, she gazed at him with an unbroken stare.
“‘I see that your actions were no accident,’ spoke the Veiled One at last. Her voice, though rarely heard, was barbed like a thornbush. ‘You acted with purpose and certainty. And yet, now you feel much pain at having hurt your master.’
“‘Aye, I wish to atone for my sins so that I may rid myself of this guilt,’ he said.
“‘Guilt can teach many things to a heart humbled by intent. Why did you strike your master?’ she asked.
“‘It was an act of anger. I was wrong,’ said the Pupil.
“‘Perhaps. What caused your anger?’ asked the Veiled One.
“The Pupil looked to his Cleric, and cast his eyes down.
“‘In my foolishness, I sought to end his lesson to another student,’ said the Pupil.
“‘And what was that lesson?’
“Before the Pupil could answer, the Cleric interrupted.
“‘My students require instruction in myriad ways,’ he said. ‘I teach them manners, patience, and restraint. If I must, I will use the lash. I do not enjoy it—these lessons are my sacred duty.’
“The Veiled One peered at the Cleric. Behind the shroud, her eyes seemed to bore into him.
“‘But you do enjoy them,’ she said.
“‘I beg—’
“‘Tell me, scarred master, are your lessons truly for the good of your students? Or do you punish them to relish their suffering?’ said the Veiled One.
“‘No,’ the Pupil interrupted. ‘He can’t have, he cares about us—’
“The Cleric raised his hand and struck the boy.
“‘I don’t need your lying breath to defend me,’ spat the Cleric, his scarred face vivid with anger.
“The Veiled One opened her palm and chained the Cleric to her with dark fire. The bindings glimmered with immaterial violet light, but the Cleric could not break them as he struggled.
“‘You came to me for another’s punishment,’ she hissed. ‘But you ignore your own sins. Your sick pride swells as they come back to you, Cleric. Since you refuse to look yourself, I will make you feel the pain you caused.’
“Through the chains that bound them, the Veiled One forced him to endure all the shame, suffering, and loneliness he had inflicted on his pupils. For an instant, the Cleric’s heart stopped, as a great weight he had never known constricted his very soul. He fell to his knees, fixed in place by bitter torment, as shadowed flames licked his flesh.
“‘Stop, please stop!’ the student cried. ‘Please, punish me in his place. He has suffered enough!’
“‘You defend him, even now,’ said the Veiled One. ‘The wretch has much to learn ere death's mercy lays claim. He alone must feel the pain he caused so he may never hurt another. You came here seeking understanding—its burden is now yours to bear.’
“The Pupil did not show his face at his cloister for many days. But when hunger and fatigue overcame him, he finally forgot his fear of his master’s lash. Upon his return, he found the Cleric a different man. Where his elder had been cruel and uncaring, he was patient and gentle. For though the burn on his face had not yet healed, the Veiled One’s lesson had cut far deeper.”
Aunt Peria set her lantern at the base of the statue. Half her stone-gray face was lost to darkness, with flickering shadows running down her shroud like tears.
“Be careful, Rin, when wishing for punishment. Can you teach a lesson that will make your brother a better person? Even if he did hit you on purpose, there is no sense in you punishing him selfishly.”
Rin felt the rocks in his pocket.
“I guess my brother did say he was sorry. After I fell down from getting hit in the eye,” he said. He begrudgingly dropped the rocks to the forest floor.
“Wonderful! Let us give thanks to the Veiled One.”
Aunt Peria opened her lantern and blew the candle out.
“Remember—revenge is an act of pride, but teaching is selfless,” she said. “In case you forget, I’ll be watching you! Ha! And the Veiled One might be, too!”
Rin watched the smoke curl and unfold around the statue’s empty stone eye, shrouding the figure in shadow. When he looked back, Aunt Peria had set off through the trees, back toward the village. Rin hurried to catch up.
The Mountain

Mount Targon is the mightiest peak in Runeterra, a towering mountain of sun-baked rock amid a range of summits unmatched in scale anywhere else in the world. Located far from civilization, Mount Targon is utterly remote and all but impossible to reach save by the most determined seeker.

Many legends cling to Mount Targon, ranging from tales of blazing warriors imbued with incredible powers falling from the sky to battle monsters, to fantastical tales of gods and their celestial abodes crashing down to form the mountain. Some legends even go so far as to claim the Mountain itself is a sleeping titan of antiquity.

Like any place of myth, Mount Targon is a beacon to dreamers, madmen and questors of adventure. Those who survive the arduous journey to the foot of the titanic mountain are welcomed as fellow pilgrims by the scattered, tribal communities that have set up nomadic camps around its base.

Here the weary traveller learns of the tribes, such as the Rakkor, who have endured the harsh climate and unforgiving lands around the mountain for millennia. These people are united in their belief that living in the shadow of these cyclopean structures of monumental scale is a true calling of mysterious powers. The origin and purpose of these structures - if such things ever had one - remain a mystery, for mortals can never truly know the minds of the structures’ lost creators. Many faiths find root around the mountain, but all are beholden to the Solari, a sun-worshipping faith whose tenets dominate the land. The Solari high temple sits on the eastern slope of the mountain, reachable only by crossing swaying rope bridges over abyssal canyons, climbing winding stairs weathered into the living rock and traversing whisper-thin ledges cut upon sheer cliffs carved with ancient symbols and vast effigies.

Some brave souls attempt to scale the impossible mountain, perhaps seeking wisdom or enlightenment, perhaps chasing glory or some soul-deep yearning to see its summit. The dwellers at the peak’s base cheer as these brave souls begin their ascent, knowing the mountain will find the vast majority of them unworthy. And to be judged unworthy by Mount Targon is to die.

The mountain’s sheer flanks and the treacherous conditions of its high slopes make it incredibly difficult to climb. Its rocks are littered with the contorted bodies of those who have made the attempt and failed. The ascent is all but impossible, a grueling test of every facet of a climber’s strength, character, resolve, willpower and determination. Some climbers ascend for weeks or months, others for only a day, for the mountain is inconstant and ever-changing. And even for those hardy few who somehow survive to reach the top, the testing is not over. Some who claw their way to the summit do so only to find it utterly empty, an abandoned expanse of ruins and faded carvings beyond human understanding. For unknowable reasons, the mountain has found the climber’s soul lacking.

For a handful of others, however, the summit is said to be veiled in a cascade of shimmering light, through which wonders and far-distant vistas can be glimpsed, the bewildering, tantalizing visions of a mythical domain beyond. Despite attaining their goal of reaching the summit, most fail this last test, turning away in fear from this inhuman realm. Of the rare few who press on, most never return, while others may reappear minutes, years or even centuries later.

Only one thing is certain - those who return are changed beyond all recognition.
The sky around Mount Targon shimmers with celestial bodies; the sun and moons, but also constellations, planets, fiery comets that streak the darkness, and auspicious arrangements of stars. The people living at the mountain’s base believe these to be aspects of long-vanished stellar beings, creatures powerful and ancient on a scale beyond human comprehension. Some believe the power of these Aspects sometimes come down the mountain within the lambent bodies of those climbers found worthy. Such an occurrence is unimaginably rare and amazing tales of their exploits form around such individuals, who only ever appear once every few generations.
It is incredibly unusual for more than a single Aspect to walk the earth of Runeterra at any given time, so the tales of several Aspects manifesting has spread a pall of fear and uncertainty around the mountain. For what threat might be arising that requires the power of so many powerful beings to fight?

All stories

Malphite

Roots of a Poisoned Tree

Malzahar

Maokai

Nightbloom

Master Yi

Homecoming

Mundos Medikul Jernel

Mel

Milio

Milio's Super-Special Adventure Reports

Miss Fortune

Down Among The Dead Men

Wukong

Fast and Dumb

Mordekaiser

The Final Reign

Morgana

Prayer to a Crumbling Shrine

The Mountain