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Naafiri

In the pitch black Shuriman night, few sounds are as terrifying as the howls of the dune hound. Those who hear their piercing call on the arid wind know to keep a hand on their sword hilt, and their horse well rested, for the ravenous packs that rove these sands will chase whatever game they can find in their desert.

One pack, in particular, is driven by a hunger that is deeper—and more ancient—than that of any mere beast. It is the hunger of a creature who spent ages eating nothing at all.

For centuries, Naafiri remained in a crypt, her spirit bound to an ancient throwing dagger. Unable to move or speak, the weapon lay inert as her soul pondered the past: Naafiri was powerful, having almost led the Darkin. How easily she could have bested any of them in combat to become their rightful ruler... yet how easily she’d been tricked by that awful Aspect, Myisha, and cursed to embody these inanimate steel blades.

Shame and regret consumed her thoughts. If she could get another chance... If she could only find another host. A new vessel.

All she needed was a hand to grip her blade. Just a touch.

At last, the day came when the doors of her tomb burst open. She sensed the sweet relief of a fresh desert wind—her first in ages—and something else... A human presence.

He has come. My host. My sweet, unwitting vessel, thought the Darkin soul.

But the visitor was aware of her magic. He carefully picked up her dagger with metal tongs and placed it onto a thick, lead-lined cloth. Wrapping the blade tightly, he took great care not to touch it and set off across the desert under the late afternoon sun.

Despair overcame Naafiri as she felt the plodding movements of the man’s horse across the sands. Was she doomed to this form, this waking nightmare of impotence, for eternity?

She felt the steps of the horse quickening as sunset approached and sensed the distant howls of the dune hounds carried by the wind.

This was her opportunity.

Without sound or words, the Darkin called out to the beasts, hoping to bring them to this prey—that he might somehow slip. Just a glancing touch of his hand, and the host would be hers. Then she could use him to fulfill the ambitions she had held for so long, and vanquish her regrets.

The hounds appeared, salivating with teeth bared. Naafiri’s captor clung to the wrapped dagger with one arm, keenly aware of what would happen if it came loose. With his other arm, he drew his sword and attempted to defend himself from the pack.

Jaws snapped at the man and his horse from all sides, tearing at them, devouring them piece by piece until nothing remained.

Naafiri felt the world crash into focus as she became overwhelmed by senses. For the first time in ages, she smelled the dry air, which parched her nostrils. The metallic taste of hot blood still coated her mouth. She could see each of the dogs as if from the eyes of a separate packmate.

Confusion set in as she felt her sense of self crumble away. She had become the dune hounds—not one of them, but the entire pack—her shattered consciousness resonating throughout the body of each dog.

It seemed a cruel irony. She had found not one vessel, but dozens, and none of them were useful in her grand ambitions. She resented the hounds—hated their smell, their fleas, and, most of all, their need for companionship.

But, in time, the Darkin’s bitterness subsided as she began to grasp the true nature of her hosts. Though feral, their collective thoughts formed a wisdom all its own. Separately, the dogs would starve. Together, they were an apex predator, feasting on whatever game they fancied. There were no individuals—the pack was the entity that dominated all.

Naafiri realized this concept was not limited to dune hounds. It applied to fish, ants, and humans. It even applied to Darkin.

She thought again of her past: personal grudges and petty agendas tearing the Darkin asunder, which in turn toppled them from their rightful place as the regnant killers of Runeterra.

She knew how to restore them. Now she just needed to find her siblings and share with them the wisdom of the pack.
The Name of the Blade

Ian St. Martin

There is copper in the air.
The tang of fresh blood rises up to me, my back pressed into the shadows while I study her.
As she kills.
She was driven here, a large chamber, decoratively appointed, two exits, but through wide halls and high arched ceilings it was easy enough for me to follow her, and do it in silence. Her pursuers did not, a charging crash of weapons and armor brought to bear against her. To the uninitiated she appears trapped, and a cornered assassin is a dead one, but I know well that her blades are but one of her weapons, and far from her keenest.
I recognize the hidden patterns of her strikes, thought translating seamlessly into action. The subtle movements masked by grander gestures as she adapts to exploit every weakness presented to her. I know the teachings that inform her violence, because they were taught to me as well. Wisdom passed down to only a handful, forging a family of purpose, if not of blood.
It is her birthright, while for me it was earned in darkened alleyways, and the frothing chokes of slit throats. I see her follow the principles of our teachings, and then I see her break them.
Her target appears, and she allows them to see her before the strike comes. There is flourish to the killing. Noise. Arrogance. Wasted energy. Each choice exposes her more, cracking her armor wider, betraying her lineage. My upper lip constricts, desperate to twitch, but I am stone. Succumbing to such weakness would only carry me further from the Edge.
I have seen such ambition before. As a child in the world beneath the empire, I watched the ambitious rise head and shoulders above their fellows, just high enough for all to see them, standing out from the masses. And then I watched the masses butcher them for it.
I learned the sanctuary of shadow quickly, the shield that silence can be, and never forgetting that has kept me alive. I watch her defy them both, blundering to the precipice of failure. And it would not be the first time. I remember—
—the cold of the forest, the glittering frost on the branch where I perched, watching. Waiting for her to appear.
When she did, she was wreathed in the ashen smell of the battle cooling just beyond our view. It clung to her as surely as her failure. There is always a price for failure. That day, for her, I had been made that price.
I planned it all perfectly. I wouldn’t allow myself anything less. The slope of the ground, the strength and direction of the wind whistling through the trees. Her bearing, her garb, her weapons, and her gait. The small, clean blade held in fingers etched with a thousand tiny scars of imperfection. It all passed through my mind, before I was free to unfold. To strike.
There was no sound when I descended. My blade cut air, was interrupted, air again. Blood trailed behind its path, a sluggish bloom of darkest red uncurled into icy air.
My momentum carried me past her, as I planned. I looked back, my mind calm. What trophy would be proof enough? Her blades? A lock of hair? Her eyes?
I turned and saw her standing. She clutched her left eye, blood squirting between fingers, but she didn’t fall. My stomach tightened. A bead of sweat trickled down my ribs, despite the cold. She was supposed to fall after the strike.
The one strike.
She should not be alive. I told her so. The words did not fell her, so I said them again. I screamed them at her.
She answered with the edges of her blades.
We fought, or rather, she fought. She was a blur of red hair and flashing silver, her cuts and slashes propelled by pain, skill, and rage in equal measure. Anger twisted her features, keeping the wound I gave her from closing.
I flowed around her, cold and colorless against her passion. Three times she came close to opening me to the bone, to emptying my lifeblood upon the frosted earth of the forest floor, but emotion betrayed the blows early enough for me to displace myself. The instinct was there, but she did not plan the engagement, and so I kept my blood within me.
I glimpsed an opening, once, where I could have ended her. She would have fallen, for true this time. Nobody would have known of my mistake, nobody but me.
I saw the opening, but I let it pass me by. After my failed strike I would not try a second, and should I have fallen to her, it was deserved. I was now no different than she was.
She watched me as I put my blade away, and she stopped.
She touched her face again, tracing a wound that would never leave her. Breath feathered out from the cold, angry slashes from her nose as she spoke. Her own failure that brought me here loomed over her, and she was resolved to set it right. To atone for it.
I could not bring myself to stand in her way, not anymore. The hypocrisy would be too great. My duty was to return and face judgment, and see what price I had to pay.
Before turning back toward the battlefield, leaving the way she came, she asked me who I was. She did not ask if her father sent me, that much was clear to her—all but the name of the blade he sent.
I did not have an answer for her. My name had never mattered. I told her so, but saw she would not relent. I thought back, remembering the world under the empire then.
Down there, in those final, blood-soaked days before I left it all behind, they called me Talon.
Blood spreads out across the stones from her target, now her kill. I watch her make quick work of the soldiers who remain to challenge her. I imagine myself in the place of the last of them, seeing the openings he does not, before his head rolls from his shoulders and he joins the dead.
For a handful of seconds she admires her work. She is smiling, the pale scar bisecting her left eye flexing. The smile goes cold—does she sense me?—before she disappears down the corridor like smoke.
I wait a moment, two, and then I allow myself to breathe again. Muscles clamped tight for hours loosen a fraction. Only now, with her gone, do I produce the knife.
My fingers are pebbled with a thousand scars, each a single tiny step on my path toward the Edge, that unattainable perfect state I strive for. I spin the knife in a quick, practiced orbit, then again. And again. The blade is clean, the blood that once graced it on that day long since crumbled away, waiting for the day I might be made the price for her failure again.
I call it Katarina.
Nami

A headstrong young vastaya of the seas, Nami uses her mystical Tidecaller staff to reshape the tides and defend her fellow Marai from danger. The first of her kind to leave the ocean and venture onto dry land, Nami faces the unthinkable with grit, determination, and daring mettle.
In the seas to the west of Mount Targon dwells a tribe of vastaya known as the Marai. Long ago, these mermadic creatures discovered a rift in the depths. The rift bore a horrible, creeping darkness which sought to exterminate all forms of life.
At the center of their village, the Marai placed a glowing rock known as a moonstone, which is said to be infused with the celestial magic of the heavens. Its haunting, ethereal light protects the Marai from the creatures that crawl from the abyss. Every hundred years or so, the moonstone’s light begins to dim. At that moment, the tribe chooses their fiercest warrior and bestows upon them the title of Tidecaller.
The Tidecaller must plunge into the icy darkness of the rift, survive the horrors within and retrieve an abyssal pearl. If successful, the Tidecaller rises to shore where a luminous wanderer from Targon’s peak awaits with a moonstone to trade for the pearl. It is an arduous ritual that holds the fate of many in its illusive hands, but the exchange has kept the creatures of the dark contained. In the past, the Marai had sent troops of their most elite warriors to collect the pearl, but they learned the more forces they sent into the rift, the stronger the monsters became, as if it fed on their energy. While an army would be annihilated by the abominations below, a single scout – armed with a legendary Marai staff capable of controlling the tides – could potentially elude the dangers of the deep long enough to escape with the pearl.
Nami had always wanted to be the Tidecaller, but she was impulsive and young. A fierce fighter, she was known amongst the Marai for her stubborn determination, which often got her in trouble. In Nami’s adolescence, the moonstone once again dimmed for the first time in a century. Nami attempted the trial of the Tidecaller. Due to her impulsiveness, however, the elders chose Rasho, a prudent warrior known for his level head in battle, as their Tidecaller.
Rasho dove into the depths of the abyss. A week passed, then another. An entire month the Marai waited for their Tidecaller’s return, but there was no sign of Rasho. No Tidecaller had ever failed to return.
The elders waited and argued while the moonstone grew faint, but Nami knew SOMEONE had to take up the mantle of Tidecaller soon, or all would be lost.
It might as well be her.
Nami grabbed her mother’s bathystaff and plunged into the abyss. After several days, she returned with the pearl, the fallen Tidecaller’s staff, and a look of quiet horror in her eyes. Though furious at her impertinence, the village elders nonetheless admired Nami’s bravery and officially designated her Tidecaller. Nami ascended to the surface and rode the tide to shore to meet the landwalker.
The stonebearer, however, was nowhere to be found. Instead, an elderly woman waited on the beach.
The woman, whose grandparents bore witness to the last Tidecaller exchange, explained that there was no moonstone. The Aspect of the Moon was the only being who could conjure a moonstone, but she had fled Targon.
Nami was unwilling to accept this. She vowed to find the Aspect and retrieve the moonstone. The lives of her people depended on it.
Using the power of the mystical Tidecaller staff to summon a perpetual pool of moving water beneath her fins, Nami took to land to continue her quest.
Determined, the Tidecaller swam into a brand new world.
First Steps

Nobody believed the girl. Even after they’d clothed her and calmed her down enough to speak in complete sentences, nothing she’d said made any sense.
The villagers had seen their fair share of otherworldly things – living at the foot of Mount Targon made this an inevitability – but the child’s story didn’t add up.
She’d described some sort of otherworldly humanoid who had risen from the sea that bordered their village. It sounded like a wanderer: one of the lost, confused celestial creatures who sometimes ventured from Targon’s summit. No one had ever heard of a celestial appearing from the ocean, though. More likely, the young girl was playing games.
But when a woman with crimson eyes swam into their village, held aloft by a pool of water that ebbed and flowed at her command, the villagers realized it was no game.
“Hello,” the stranger said. “I am Nami. I am a Marai, a creature of the blue. I mean you no harm.”
The villagers stared at her, mouths agape. Perhaps they were taken aback by her appearance. That would make sense, considering how unusual they looked to Nami’s eyes: flesh without scales and two backward arms where fins ought to be.
Though they weren’t much in the way of conversation, Nami did have their attention.
“I seek the Aspect of the Moon, for the Aspect has something my people require. Without it, they, and possibly all the world, will succumb to a hungry and merciless darkness.”
The villagers continued to stare at Nami, slack-jawed and mute. Only a sleepy, four-legged beast went unfazed by the appearance of the mermadic creature in the village, as it carried on pulling mouthfuls of dried grass from a wheeled cart and smacking its slobbery gums.
Nami stood in the silence, tapping her staff awkwardly.
“So, if anybody knows where the Aspect is, that would be, erm.” She sniffed, eager to create any noise to break the endless hush that had fallen over the crowd. “Most helpful. To me.”
It was as if the villagers had been frozen in place it was so quiet. Nami looked around the village and saw small, fluttering lights all around. Anchored to small pillars of wax or large, wooden sticks, the lights indeed seemed to be alive, but not sentient. They fluttered in the breeze and crackled with energy.
“What do you call that?” Nami asked, pointing at the light. “It’s lovely.”
An old man in golden robes stepped forward – the people of the oversky insisted on covering themselves, for reasons Nami couldn’t immediately understand – flanked by two sentinels. From the many layers of draped fabric, Nami deduced he must be some type of elder. Or perhaps he was just cold.
“You seek the moon?” he asked. “Is she your friend, or your foe?”
Nami narrowed her eyes. The man’s lip quivered with silent rage. The moon’s Aspect was clearly important to him – but in what way? Did he worship and wish to protect it, or did he consider it an enemy?
Nami weighed the options. Surely, she thought, no one would be so unwise as to make an enemy of the moon itself. She replied:
“Friend, of cour–”
“–HERETIC!” the elder shouted.
“–Fiend! I said fiend! You misheard me!” Nami shouted, but her pleas went unheard as the sentinels shouted orders. Many of the village’s people grabbed their weapons, dipping their spears into round containers of fluid and sparking them alight.
Nami stared at the tips of the spears now flickering with orange light spirits. Their dance was mesmerizing, but radiated heat. Nami suspected touching one would be incredibly unpleasant.
“You will leave this village at once! You spread FEAR and DECEIT, and we will have none of it!” the elder demanded.
Nami stared at them for a moment, her face hard. This was it – her first test as a landwalker. She knew, that if need be, she could defend herself against everyone in this village.
But that wouldn’t get her what she needed.
“I am scared,” she said.
The elder smiled. Nami did her best to ignore it.
“Not of you, mind. I’ve looked into the hungry, hateful maw of darkness and thought I would never feel joy again. Your spears can’t compare to that,” she said.
“And so, I’m not going to leave. Not while my people are still in danger,” she said. She moved forward and planted her staff in the ground.
She moved with such confidence and fearlessness the villagers were taken aback – physically, in one unfortunate case.
A young villager stumbled backward, his spear of heat skittering out of his hands, landing beneath the cart of dried grass. The dancing heat spirit grew taller. It licked the grass, spreading its own energy to the pile of dry hay. Within moments, the entire cart was ablaze with the hot, volatile energy.
The grazing beast brayed in terror and turned away from the blaze. It kicked its muscular legs in confusion, knocking the cart onto its side, launching the burning grass into the air.
The wisps of heat landed on the village’s thatched roofs and spread rapidly, consuming everything in its path with a voracious appetite.
The villagers scrambled to fetch bucketfuls of water from a nearby well. Nami watched in frightened fascination as they hurled the liquid at the hungry spirits. For a moment, their efforts seemed to beat back the spirits’ rage, transforming the flickering glow into a horrible cloud of hissing air that, unlike the rest of the air in the oversky, seemed to expand with weight and form. The hissing smoke swirled as the spirits drank up the water and danced on along the rooftops, turning the blue night orange.
“More water!” the villagers yelled. “Quickly!”
I can help with that, Nami thought.
Nami raised her Tidecaller staff, her knuckles tight.
Focusing her thoughts, the seawater lapping the village’s shore began to collect and vibrate.
Nami tightened her grip and closed her eyes, pulling back her staff to draw the seawater toward her.
The ocean roared. It stretched itself into the air high above the village, a sheer wall of tidal ferocity hovering at the ready. The people screamed.
Nami thrust her staff forward, pointing its headpiece toward the dancing heat.
“Please move,” she shouted to the villagers.
They did.
The wave crashed forward as if to drown the entire village. Just before hitting the ground, the water twirled and twisted into an enormous, turbulent tentacle. It snaked through the air, sniffing out the ravenous trails of heat and rage.
The tendril of ocean water encircled the angry light, coiling around it like a serpent, constricting and squeezing the brightness in a suffocating collapse. With one last smoky gasp, the spirits fizzled, their glow replaced with the quiet blue of night.
Nami exhaled, loosening her grip on the staff. The tentacle of water lost its shape in an instant, and splashed to the ground to the startled delight of onlookers.
The elder and his sentinels dropped their buckets. They turned to Nami, the rage they’d carried moments before now but a memory. They looked upon their visitor with new eyes.
“Ionia,” the elder said.
“What?”
“The moon, look for her Aspect there – it’s a continent. That way,” he said, pointing out toward the sea in the direction Nami’s staff tugged her.
Of course. The moon and the tide were as brother and sister. Wherever the moon went, the Tidecaller staff would be drawn.
“Oh!” Nami exclaimed, her heart flush with hope. “That is – yes. Thank you. Sorry about the, er...,” she said, waving her hand noncommittally at the drenched, dripping village. “Anyway. Thank you.”
Nami raised her staff and a wave reared up from the shore wrapping her in a cocoon of water and carrying her back toward the ocean. The elder called after her.
“Fire!” he shouted.
“What?” Nami asked.
“The lights on our torches, our spears. It’s called fire. It keeps us safe, but it can be...irrational, sometimes.”
“Fire,” Nami said, smiling. “I like it.”
And with that, the Tidecaller returned to the oceans, headed for parts unknown.
Nasus

Nasus’ brilliance was recognized long before he was chosen to join the ranks of the Ascended. A voracious student, he memorized and critiqued the greatest works of Shuriman history and philosophy before he was ten.
However, his passion was not shared by his younger brother Renekton, who tended to bore quickly, and fight with other local children instead. Nonetheless, the brothers were close, and Nasus kept an eye on Renekton, ensuring he didn’t get into too much trouble.
When he came of age, Nasus was welcomed into the prestigious and exclusive Collegium of the Sun. He had the best teachers in the empire, and developed a keen understanding of military strategy and logistics, eventually becoming the youngest general in history. While a competent soldier, his genius lay not in fighting battles, but in planning them.
A deeply empathetic man, Nasus took his responsibilities seriously, always ensuring his soldiers were well provisioned, paid on time, and treated fairly. He guided the emperor’s mortal armies to countless victories, and was respected by all who served beneath him. Sure enough, his brother Renekton also entered military service, and rose through the ranks as a trusted and capable warrior under Nasus’ command.
But despite his triumphs and accolades, Nasus did not enjoy war. He understood its importance—for now, at least—in the empire’s rapid expansion, yet firmly believed his greatest contribution to Shurima was the knowledge they could gather and preserve in the wake of each conquest. At his urging, all the books, scrolls, and teachings of the cultures they defeated were added to libraries and repositories throughout the empire, to bring wisdom and enlightenment to generations still to come.
After decades of dutiful service, Nasus was cruelly struck by a terrible wasting sickness, and his physician solemnly declared that the general would be dead within a week.
The people of Shurima were bereft, for Nasus was their brightest star and beloved by all. The emperor himself pleaded with Setaka of the Ascended Host for the great man’s deeds to be weighed before the Sun Disc.
After a day and night, Setaka’s emissaries confirmed that Nasus would be blessed with Ascension. He would have to undergo the rituals at once, despite his infirmity.
Renekton, now a warleader in his own right, raced home to be with his brother. He was shocked to find Nasus’ flesh wasted away, his bones fragile as glass. So weak was he that, as Sun Disc’s golden radiance streamed over the dais, Nasus was unable to climb the final steps into its light.
Renekton’s love for his brother was stronger than any sense of self-preservation. He carried the weakly protesting Nasus onto the dais, and would willingly accept oblivion.
However, Renekton was not destroyed as expected. When the light faded, not one but two god-warriors emerged—both brothers had not only survived, but flourished. Nasus stood as a towering, jackal-headed avatar of wisdom and strength, while Renekton was a muscled behemoth in the likeness of a crocodile.
Nasus had been gifted powers far beyond mortal understanding. The greatest boon of his Ascension was the countless lifetimes he could now spend in study and contemplation... though this would also eventually come to be his greatest curse.
But he was more immediately concerned by the increased savagery he saw within Renekton. At the siege of Nashramae, finally bringing the city under Shuriman rule, Nasus learned that his brother had razed the grand library and massacred all who stood against him. This was the closest the brothers ever came to bloodshed, facing one another in the rubble, weapons drawn. Only under Nasus’ stern, disappointed gaze did Renekton’s bloodlust dwindle, and he turned away in shame.
War with the rebel state of Icathia changed many of the Ascended. The horrors they witnessed left them hollow, and quicker to anger. Nasus undertook centuries of solitary study as he tried to comprehend what had happened to his immortal brethren, and what it could mean for the future.
When the Ascension of Emperor Azir went terribly wrong, Nasus and Renekton were both far from the capital, and returned with all haste... but they were too late. Over the bodies of countless Shuriman dead, they fought Xerath—that twisted, malevolent being of pure energy who had betrayed Azir—yet were unable to slay him. Filled with rage, and perhaps seeking to atone for Nashramae, Renekton wrestled Xerath into the Tomb of the Emperors beneath the city, bidding Nasus seal them in.
Nasus refused, desperate to find any other way, but there was none. With a heavy heart, he committed Xerath and his brother to the fathomless darkness for all eternity.
Drained of its power by Xerath’s sorcery, the Sun Disc fell, and every remaining god-warrior felt its loss in their immortal heart. The divine waters flowing from the city’s oasis ran dry, bringing death and famine to all Shurima. For a time, the other Ascended tried to hold the fractured empire together, before their countless rivalries led them to fight among themselves. Withdrawing entirely, Nasus bore a heavy burden of guilt, stalking the empty ruins that were slowly being swallowed by the desert, and lamenting everything that had been lost.
Centuries passed, and Nasus all but forgot his former life and purpose... until the moment when the Tomb of the Emperors was rediscovered by mortals, and its seal broken. He did not know how, but he knew Xerath was free.
Ancient vigor reawakened in Nasus, and yet even he was stunned to see Azir reborn, and the Sun Disc raised once more from the sands. Though Xerath was still a grave threat, Nasus knew the new god-emperor would have great need of guidance and counsel in the years ahead.
And hope stirred within him for the first time in millennia. Did he dare believe he might also be reunited with his beloved brother, Renekton?
Ouroboros

Ryan Verniere

Nasus walked at night, unwilling to face the sun. The boy followed in his wake.
How long had he been there?
Those mortals who caught a glimpse of the monstrous vagabond always ran, all save the boy. Together, they wove a path through the bygone tapestry of Shurima. Self-imposed isolation chipped at Nasus’s consciousness. The desert wind howled around their malnourished frames.
“Nasus, look, above the dune sea,” said the child.
Stars guided the pair’s sojourn across the desiccated expanse. The old jackal no longer wore the armor of the Ascended. The golden monuments lay buried with the past. Now a hermit dressed in tattered fabric, Nasus scratched at his matted fur before slowly raising his head to observe the night sky.
“The Piper,” said Nasus, his voice low and graveled. “The season will change soon.”
Nasus put a hand on the boy’s tiny shoulder and looked down into his sunburnt face. There, he saw the soft lines and curves of Shuriman lineage, worn ragged by travel.
When did it become your place to worry? Soon we will find you a home. Wandering between the ruins of an extinguished empire is no life for a child.
This was the nature of the universe. Brief moments unfolded into the endless cycles of existence. The heady philosophy weighed upon him, but it was more than just another stone in his endless tally of self-imposed guilt. In truth, the boy would inevitably be changed if he was allowed to follow. Remorse darkened Nasus’s brow like a thunderhead. Their companionship sated something deep within the ancient hero.
“We can reach Astrologer’s Tower before dawn. But we’ll have to climb,” said the boy.
****
The tower was close. Nasus pulled himself up the cliff face hand over hand, the climb memorized to such perfection that he took great liberties with each handhold, tempting death. The boy clambered up by his side, his agile form utilizing every nook and cranny offered by the blemished rock.
What would happen to this innocent if I gave in to death? The thought troubled Nasus.
Wisps of fog rolled through the crags of the upper cliffs, each threading the narrow rocks like tiny mountain paths. The boy scurried over the top first. Nasus followed.
In the distance, metal clanged against stone, and voices could be heard through the haze — they spoke in a familiar dialect. Nasus was shaken from his reverie.
The well at Astrologer’s Tower occasionally attracted nomads, but never this close to the equinox. The boy stood perfectly still, his fear palpable.
“Where are the fires?” asked the boy.
A horse’s whinny pierced the night.
“Who goes there?” asked the boy. The words rolled through the darkness.
A lantern sparked to life, illuminating a band of riders. Mercenaries. Raiders.
The jackal’s eyes snapped wide.
He saw seven of them. Their curved blades remained sheathed, but the look in their eyes spoke of martial training and guile.
“Where is the caretaker?” asked Nasus.
“He and his wife are asleep. The cool evening prompted them to retire early,” replied one of the riders.
“Old jackal, my name is Malouf,” said another rider. “We have been sent by the Emperor.”
Nasus stepped forward, betraying the briefest hint of anger.
“Does he seek acknowledgement? Then let me give it. There is no emperor in this fallen age,” said Nasus.
The boy stepped forward defiantly. The dark messengers backed away from the lantern. Long shadows obscured defensive stances.
“Deliver your message and leave,” said the child.
Malouf dismounted and stepped forward. He reached a calloused hand into the folds of his shirt and produced a dark amulet bound to a thick, black chain. The geometry of the metal sparked recollections of magic and destruction in Nasus’s mind.
“Emperor Xerath sends offerings. We are to be your servants. He welcomes you to his new capital at Nerimazeth.”
The mercenary’s words fell on Nasus like a hammer on glass.
The boy promptly knelt and snatched up a weighty rock.
“Die!” cried the boy.
“Take him!” said Malouf.
With a heave, the boy hurled the rock through the air, its perfect arc threatening to shatter mercenary bone on impact.
“Renekton, no!” roared Nasus.
The riders abandoned their half-hearted deception. Nasus knew then that the caretaker and his wife were dead. Xerath’s greeting would come in the form of cold steel. Truth began to eclipse illusion.
Nasus reached for the boy. The child tore into shadows of memory that dissipated across the starlit ground.
“Goodbye, brother,” whispered Nasus.
Xerath’s emissaries fanned out, their horses bucking and snorting. The Ascended was flanked on three sides. Malouf did not hesitate, drawing his blade and piercing Nasus’s side with it. Pain rippled through the ancient curator’s body. The rider attempted to withdraw his weapon, but it wouldn’t budge. A clawed hand gripped the blade, keeping it agonizingly buried within Ascended flesh.
“You should have left me to my ghosts,” said Nasus.
Nasus tore Malouf’s sword from his hand, shattering fingers and tearing ligaments.
The demigod pounced on his attacker. Malouf’s body cracked under the jackal’s enormous weight.
Nasus leapt to the next rider, pulling him from his saddle; two strikes ruptured organs and stole the wind from his lungs. His broken form spun off into the sand, a ruined mass of agony. His horse reared and fled into the desert.
“He’s mad!” said one of the riders.
“Not any longer,” said Nasus, approaching the mercenary leader.
A strange fragrance filled the air. Dead flowers spinning on lavender colored threads followed in his wake. Malouf twisted on the ground, the broken fingers of his right hand withered, skin sagging like wet parchment. The barrel of his chest caved in on itself like a rotting spine fruit.
White-knuckled panic overtook the remaining mercenaries. They struggled to keep their mounts under control, if only to retreat. Malouf’s body lay abandoned in the sand.
Nasus turned east toward the ruins of Nerimazeth.
“Tell your ‘emperor’ his cycle nears its end.”
Nautilus

To understand the legend of Nautilus, one must first know the man—for even the tallest of tavern tales agree, he was indeed a man.
Though the waves have washed away the name he was born with, most remember Nautilus as no mere sailor, but as a salvage diver. Just beyond the southernmost reach of the Blue Flame Isles lies a graveyard of ships, rumored lost while searching for a blessed land, looking to trade wealth for immortality. On a fair day, their glittering holds beckon from beneath the surface. Many crews sought divers to collect the lost fortune, and none could match the skill of the quick-sinking hulk of solid muscle that was Nautilus.
With lungs that could steal the air from a galleon’s sails, Nautilus preferred to freedive. Always bringing up plenty of gold or jewels for the crew, the man demanded no special wages—he asked only that the captain toss a coin overboard as they set out, honoring and appeasing the vast ocean. A sailor’s superstition to be sure, but many a sea-fearing crew made such offerings to ensure a safe return.
Years of salvage depleted the easy treasure, each haul becoming less and less, until one day Nautilus’s crew learned that their ship and working papers had been bought out from under them.
The dawn was scarlet the morning the new captain came aboard. Hailing from a foreign port, he brought with him a giant suit of brass and iron. He zeroed in on Nautilus; indeed, he had purchased the command because of Nautilus. It was clear the captain was obsessed with a specific wreck, one shrouded in darkness even on a fair day. The diving armor could withstand the pressures of the ocean floor far longer than any man, long enough to collect what was hidden in the abnormal murk.
The crew agreed working was better than starving, and Nautilus found himself being bolted into the suit, the wooden deck groaning under the load. Panic rose in his throat when he realized that they had nothing to pay the tithe. The foreign captain laughed as Nautilus was lowered into the water. He assured the crew that whatever the Bearded Lady was protecting would make them all rich beyond their wildest dreams. When Nautilus returned to the surface, they would make their silly sacrifice.
As Nautilus sank, the light above dimmed, and all grew quiet, the man’s own breath the only sound echoing in the iron suit. Then something reached out from the depths. He was being pulled down, and for the first time Nautilus felt liquid fear wrap itself around his heart. It was not treasure his captain sought, but some slumbering, eldritch power.
Nautilus grabbed the anchor chain, his last connection to the world above, and hauled himself up even as the thing below sought to drag him down. But the weight was too much. Just as his giant metal fingers were about to breach the surface, the chain snapped. Nautilus screamed within the suit, but none could hear him. He tumbled back into the inky maelstrom, clutching the sinking anchor in desperation. Dark tendrils enveloped him, and he could only watch as the dimming outline of his ship faded away. Then everything went black.
When Nautilus awoke on the ocean floor, he was something… different. The darkness could no longer hurt him. The great metal suit had become a seamless shell around him, concealing the bond that the primordial power had made with his spirit. Trapped in the sunless depths, he could remember only one thing—the new captain’s broken promise.
Nautilus vowed, there and then, that all would pay the ocean’s tithe. He would see to it himself.
Driven ever forward by this thought, he trudged toward the shore. But by the time he reached Bilgewater, years had passed, and he could find no traces of his captain or crew. There was no life to which he could return, no revenge he could take. Instead he returned to the sea, allowing his anger to surface on the greedy, gutting their ships with his mighty anchor.
Sometimes, in the tumble of waves, distant memories of who he was push up above the waterline… but always the man who is Nautilus stays drowned just below the surface.
The Ophidian

Anthony Reynolds

No, no, that seat’s not taken. Pull up a chair, and sink a few, friend... Though that might be a poor turn o’ phrase, given my history. Heh.
Aye, I’ve seen a few shipwrecks. Been in one me self, as it goes, back when I was young like you. Her name was the Ophidian, that ship, pulled down beneath the Jagged Straits. I was the only survivor too, mind. Maybe you buys me a drink, and I’ll tell ye about it.
This? No, this coin’s not for spending, friend. That’s my lucky Kraken, for to pay the Tithe.
The Tithe. Ye know the Tithe. Everyone knows about the Tithe. “Pay the Tithe, or face the ocean’s wrath.”
Oh, by the Bearded Lady... Then you never heard o’ Nautilus, either? The Titan of the Depths?
Barkeep! Pour us a round, barkeep, there’s a good lass. This is a tale that needs an ale, as they say... and my friend here’s buyin’.
Ahh, that’s the good stuff, that is.
‘Twas almost thirty years back, now, returning from a hunt. I was a harpooner, finest shot in the Slaughter Fleets. We’d caught ourselves an axe-fin leviathanaye, one o’ them big, mean boggersand we was haulin’ the beast back to port. It were just before dawn. Bilgewater’s city lights flickered in the distance, beckonin’ us in. There were razorfish and berserker sharks following close by, ‘cos the axe-fin was oozing into the water, see.
And our captain... Well, none of us much cared for him. Untrustworthy sort. He swears blind he paid the Tithe ‘afore we left. “A single gold Kraken,” he said, “for ‘tis all I have to give.”
But none of us seen him throw it over the side, now did we. So, naturally we was suspicious, ‘cos we knew he was a tight-fisted old wharf rat. But on we sailed anyway.
And that was when the Titan hit us.
Without warning, this bloody great anchor comes at us from below. Smashed clean through the keel, up through the main deck. Caught us tight, and started pullin’ us down... Oh, it was chaos, friend. Sailors thrown overboard. The waters churnin’, scavengers feedin’. I grabs the captain, screamin’ at him, “You’re a liar! This is the Lady’s punishment for those as don’t pay!”
The ship was going down fast. But then the planking gave way, didn’ it, and the anchor slid back into the depths. If it had ended then, more of us might’ve got away.
But it weren’t over. Nautilus weren’t done wi’ us yet.
The ship tipped to starboard, right-sudden. It was the weight of the Titan himself, hauling up onto the deck. Perhaps once it’d been a man, but it weren’t no man I saw that night, risin’ from the waves. I has our captain by the throat. “This is your doing!” I roared, as I chokes the bastard, his eyes wide. He can see Nautilus is comin’ for us...
So I shoves the captain away, down the slanted deck, and this thing catches him in one hand, if you can believe it! It was so big, the fingers closed completely around ‘is bodyand the captain weren’t a small man by any stretch.
“There’s your Tithe!” I yells, and jumped overboard.
I dunno how long I was in the water. Must’ve only been seconds, but it felt like an age. But the sea scavengers didn’t get me, Mother Serpent be praised. Pulled myself up onto one of them stone pinnacles, out there in the Straits, an’ I watched the Ophidian sink.
Nautilus still held the captain, squirmin’ and wrigglin’ like a stuck worm, but there were no escapin’ that grasp. The Titan was just standing there, motionless as a statue. I watched them go down, down into the darkness.
Why spare me? Don’t rightly know. Perhaps I was the only one to make an offering. Or maybe Nautilus wanted someone left alive, to tell the tale. But on the darkest Bilgewater nights, when the murder-fogs roll in, ye might hear ‘im wading out from the shallows, slow and steady like, draggin’ that accursed anchor in his wake...
Want my advice, friend? Keep a coin in your pocket, and always pay the Tithe. And don’t trust no captain who says he’s done it, ‘less you seen it for yourself.
After all, ye might not be so lucky as me.
Neeko

Neeko was born on a remote and largely unknown island, far to the east, where the last members of an ancient vastayan tribe remained isolated from the rest of the world. They were called the Oovi-Kat, and could trace their lineage generation by generation back to the legendary Vastayashai’rei—the ancestors of all vastaya.
The Oovi-Kat were peaceful beings, of unrivaled potential. Their harmonious society blended seamlessly with the spirit realm, so that their sho’ma—their spiritual essence—could intermingle with other beings through mere proximity, and even help them mimic other physical forms. No secrets existed between the Oovi-Kat, but few were as curious, resilient, or energetic as young Neeko.
She developed a fondness for games, hiding trinkets and thoughts to see if others could find them. Her inquisitive nature knew no bounds, and she was pure and innocent in her charmed existence.
But it was not to last. Cataclysm loomed on the horizon.
Thanks to the quick thinking and self-sacrifice of the Oovi-Kat elders, Neeko escaped the death of her homeland. She clumsily took the form of a bird, and fled the smoldering destruction, feeling the screams of her people fading into the ethereal gulf between realms.
Days later, desperate and exhausted, Neeko plummeted into the sea. She clung to driftwood, entirely at the mercy of the currents, until an odd silhouette rose into view. She could hear voices carrying over the waves, and so she swam toward the strange structure.
With the last of her strength, she crept aboard what turned out to be a mercantile vessel destined for Harelport. Neeko rested where she could, calling out into the spirit realm for her lost tribe. She felt only scattered, sad echoes in response, and images of towering, dead trees that lay somewhere over a fragile horizon…
When Neeko emerged from the ship into the city, it was a strange and unfamiliar new world. All her senses tingled. Many a creature, even another Oovi-Kat, might be afraid in that situation—but not Neeko. The society bustled with unique personalities, strangers with a vast array of motives and shapes. This was a place of countless stories and experiences, and it entranced her completely.
Before she could get far, she was spotted by a vastayan sailor named Krete. Neeko could not understand all his words, but he demanded to know which tribe she belonged to. Neeko reached out with her sho’ma, mimicking his face and expression to make her peaceful intentions understood, but Krete did not seem to like this at all. Overwhelmed by his darkening thoughts, Neeko fled into the crowd, altering her shape many times until she escaped.
Surrounded by lush, tropical greenery in the hinterlands beyond Harelport, Neeko grappled with her recent experiences. She simply could not understand how anyone might rely solely on words as their singular form of communication. It seemed so… limiting?
Seeking solace, she took on the shape of the sleek jungle cats she encountered among the trees, and tried to run with them. Neeko loved being fast and agile, and their bright, keen eyes reminded her of home—until, quite unexpectedly, the leader transformed into a beautiful, strong, dark-haired woman. After a tense standoff, she introduced herself as Nidalee, and reluctantly accepted Neeko into the group.
Neeko hesitated to entrust the truths of the Oovi-Kat to others, but she felt a deep kinship with Nidalee, because she suspected this bestial huntress might share some forgotten connection with the vastayan race. Their friendship blossomed, and for many months they roamed the wilds together.
But the towns and cities, with all their flaws, still called to Neeko. Her ancestors came to her in dreams, showing her the pale branches of those dead trees, over and over. The trees needed color, to bloom again—of that much, Neeko was certain. She asked her friend to join her on this new journey, but Nidalee could not be persuaded.
Crestfallen, but determined, Neeko set out alone.
Her old life among the Oovi-Kat may be lost forever, but Neeko envisions a magical future—a larger tribe of like-hearted vastaya, yordles, humans, and whatever other creatures might share her dream. As far as she is concerned, everyone has the potential to find a place in her new tribe. She has pledged to seek these souls out, to befriend them, and defend their sho’ma with her life.
To know Neeko is to love Neeko, and to love Neeko is to be Neeko.
The Monster of Kalduga Outpost

Matt Dunn

Neeko was familiar with the shapes of humans, and while they had their quirks—socks for instance… why?—they never struck her as particularly strange. Not until the outpost at Kalduga.
The ugly compound was carved into the cliffs near the outskirts of the jungle by a tribe of humans called “Noxians”. They had inhabited the outpost for a while, it seemed, based on how irritable yet comfortable they seemed performing their daily routines.
Neeko wondered… were they friendly? Did they enjoy cheese breads? There were other questions, too, but these were at the top of her mind when she decided to see for herself.
Under the cover of night, she slinked in and out of shadows until she reached the gate. A single guard stood watch. This was not a problem at all. Neeko loved disguises! Adopting another entity’s shape meant sharing their sho’ma—a complex web of emotions and recent memories.
She reached out with her own sho’ma, feeling for the outer boundary of the guard’s aura, which extended far beyond her body. When her spirit met the guard’s, a name floated to the surface of Neeko’s mind: Ewaii. From across the desert. A flavor-color came next. Burnt-orange bitterness over her lost home still graced Ewaii’s mind, and the blue-salt resentment about her station: the backwater-nowhere outpost with no strategic value, but try telling the commander that. This Ewaii had dark skin and beautiful oval eyes. She was strong, but few took her seriously since she was a “mud-heel”—a simple soldier. Fascinated, Neeko shed her natural, chameleon-like appearance for Ewaii’s shape.
Neeko’s skin swirled as her body morphed. It tickled her, but dizzied Ewaii. She used the guard’s disorientation to slip beyond the gates and into the quiet corridors of the outpost, firmly incognito.
“Ewaii!” a shrill voice cried. “Get back to your post!” The rotund man, his belly poking out from under his breastplate, seemed startled. In the crook of his elbow were several toasted taffa roots and two loaves of crusty bread.
“I heard noises.” Neeko put on her best impression of Ewaii’s voice.
“It’s probably bloody furtails. Better hunt them down. Then we can enjoy some furtail pie.”
“Not furtails!” Neeko did not want to eat those curious, funny little creatures.
“Are you saying there’s an intruder?” The man’s eyes widened.
Neeko did not know the meaning of this word. So she shrugged and nodded yes. This gesture, she figured, could surely lead to little trouble.
“Wilderfolk,” he said. “Could be a scouting party. What are you doing here? Raise the alarm!”
“Where is… alarm?”
“Have you lost your brain, Ewaii? I’ll do it. See the physician when this is over.”
With that, the heavy man scurried off, cramming his snacks into his pocket. But before he was gone, Neeko mingled her spirit’s motes with his, borrowing his shape, shedding Ewaii for this, this… Yubbers?
“Yubbers!” Neeko-as-Yubbers said out loud. That was a fun name to say. Yubbers did not like to be near the frontlines of war, so Kalduga was a quiet and welcome assignment. His strength was in corresponding with the empire. He was now scared—a rubbery, ashy yellow—at the thought of an attack by the wilderfolk. Neeko liked this man, but not the feeling of the masculine sho’ma. Too… not Neeko. Most importantly, she felt Yubbers’ shock of running into another soldier after he had raided the larder. Food was nearby.
As she headed down a hallway filled with doors, behind one of which must be the larder, Neeko heard a commotion out in the main yard. Loud voices shouting. She dashed to the nearest window and peered outside. Real-Yubbers was shouting at Real-Ewaii. Uh-oh.
BOOO-ONG! BOOOOOOOO-ONG! The sound of very loud bells startled Neeko-as-Yubbers.
Every door in the hallway burst open. Several half-dressed Noxians charged out, their eyes blinking away sleep. She tried to avoid the stampede, but was swept along, away from the larder. Neeko-as-Yubbers found herself pushed out into the yard with about a dozen armed soldiers.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Ewaii’s face was stressed and defiant. “I’ve been standing guard all night long!”
“You were in the barracks,” said Yubbers, flanked by two soldiers. “Take this deserter to the brig.” He pointed to Ewaii.
Then it happened. Yubbers saw Neeko-as-Yubbers.
Before Yubbers and other soldiers deduced whether their double vision was the byproduct of the late hour or not, Neeko disappeared into the fog of another person.
This time, it was a warrior named Seda. She was a killing machine, so vicious! Spicy pink! Seda had rushed to the yard so fast she neglected boots. This was fine by Seda—and Neeko—as both liked going barefoot. It reminded Seda of the sun-scorched province where she was born. Agile. Silent…
Just as Neeko was thinking she could enjoy being Seda, Real-Seda leapt at her doppelganger.
The two Sedas wrestled in a ruckus of soldiers, fighting and pulling at each other. When the commotion settled, only one Seda remained. Of course, it was the real Seda, but Yubbers had her placed in chains. Seda pointed out that two Yubbers had been seen and he, too, was placed in chains. Then Ewaii.
This continued for a while. Chains went on. Chains came off. Nobody was sure who was who, and who was not who, and who was lying about not being who they were when they were really someone else. Even the outpost commander seemed uncertain what the source of all the trouble was, and Neeko didn’t take his shape at all! This fact came to light and only fueled more suspicion. Was the commander secretly harboring some monster?
The one thought that everyone shared, Neeko had learned from being everyone, was that no one liked the commander. He was too secretive, and weak-willed. He had lost an important battle and been demoted to, as Ewaii put it, this “backwater-nowhere outpost with no strategic value.” Everyone turned on the commander, and he was the first to die.
The mess only got messier from there. Soldiers screamed and fought and pointed blame. Some believed they were ensorcelled by a soul-eating demon. One veteran ranger told a harrowing tale of a jungle plant-monster that replaced people with mindless copies of themselves, with vines for veins.
Amidst accusations, elaborate quizzes of miniscule facts from times shared in training, and shouts of “Traitor!” Neeko tried to calm the troops.
“What if,” Neeko-as-a-cook-named-Thomsy said, “it is no monster? It is someone who is nice, lost, and a little scared, but just wants to make friends and eat cheese breads and be happy? Yes?”
Everyone in the Kalduga outpost knew at once this was the imposter. Swords came out and the stabbing began. By dawn, only four soldiers remained alive. They stared hollow-eyed at the blood pooled under the commander’s dead body, and at each other. Neeko watched them from the safety of the larder.
“The commander did not want us to abandon the outpost,” Seda said. She knelt down by the body and blessed him with a gesture of her people. “Exile or execution is our future.”
A moment of solemn silence passed through like a haunted, foul wind, despite the floral notes of taffa flowers blooming somewhere nearby.
Yubbers straightened up. “We’ll send a messenger bat to command. ‘The wilderfolk have overrun Kalduga. We do not expect to survive, but we will die for the glory of Noxus.’ Then we abandon the outpost. Leave the bodies where they lay. Seda, you go north. Gurnek will go east. Ewaii west. I’ll head south. If any one crosses paths with another, it is a duel to the death, for one of you—”
Ewaii shot a wary glance at Yubbers. “Or you.”
“—is the beast in disguise.”
The soldiers left an hour later. They did not look back at their abandoned post, or each other, as they went their separate ways, unsure of who was really who.
Humans were indeed strange creatures, Neeko thought.
Nidalee

Far, far from the harsh deserts of the Great Sai, over savanna plains and mountain steppes, lie the great jungles on the border of Ixtal and Shurima. Swathed in mystery, they are home to wild, fantastical beasts, and dense forests blooming with life. But while there is overwhelming beauty to be found there, danger and death lurk nearby in equal measure.

No one knows how Nidalee—in the form of a cub—came to be alone in the heart of the jungle, but it was her cries echoing through the trees that captured the attention of the jungle's fiercest cats: the pakaa.

A mother, roaming with her cubs, approached Nidalee. Perhaps it was her scent, or a mother’s intuition, that led the great cat to accept this strange kit without hesitation, half-leading, half-dragging her back to their den.

Nidalee was raised in the company of the pakaa, who treated her as one of their own—a creature of the jungle. She grew up playing alongside the other cubs, learning to hunt with tooth and claw and to stalk the jungles for her prey. She grew into her role as a member of the pack and as a capable huntress.

Even so, at times Nidalee began to lose control of her own body. Without warning, her paws would change to strange hairless hands and feet, her sharp fangs to blunted teeth. Occasionally she would stumble from the den, delirious with fever, her body caught in a state of half-transformation as she followed the hazy silhouettes of two strange figures—they whispered after her, their voices jumbled but sweet. They brought Nidalee a sense of comfort and warmth, even though her feline family had taught her to be wary of outsiders.

And with good cause.

It was at the height of the summer rains when she first encountered the Kiilash. These vastayan hunters ranged into the forests every season in search of prestigious kills and trophies to show their prowess. Nidalee's mother tried to chase them away, but fell, wounded by their blades and spears.

But before the Kiilash could finish the aging wildcat, Nidalee lunged from the undergrowth, howling with grief and rage. As she tore into them with razor sharp claws and fangs, they rounded on her with even stronger weapons.

But something had changed.

She felt the spirit of another heritage, long forgotten, rise up within her. Transforming from pakaa to something resembling a human, she grabbed a hunter's lunging weapons with cat-like reflexes and nimble fingers and turned it upon her enemies. The Kiilash growled and hissed at this sight, and to her surprise Nidalee found she understood some of their speech.

They cursed her, invoking the name of their Vastayashai'rei ancestors as they retreated from the fight, empty-handed.

Hurling the spear aside, Nidalee held her dying mother close. Her siblings approached, wary of her new form but comforted by her familiar scent. With the passing of their mother they came to accept this shapechanger as their new leader—from that day forth, she vowed to defend her adopted home against any who would seek to plunder it.

Over time, she learned to better control her powers, eventually shifting between both forms with ease. She also became more adept with her new form, learning to take advantage of her surroundings while building traps and weapons unknown to the pakaa, crafting healing salves from honeyfruit, and utilizing seeds and flowers to protect and illuminate her territory. And in the back of her mind, she wondered whether she was the only one of the pakaa who could change their shape.

Perhaps it was a yearning to find others of her kind that led her to the chameleon-like wanderer Neeko, and the two became inseparable for a time. Nidalee delighted in mentoring her inquisitive new companion, and they reveled in exploring the jungle's numerous wonders together, before Neeko eventually departed to follow her own destiny beyond Shurima's shores.

Even now, the dense forests remain the last truly untamed wilderness in the known world, and something of an enigma even to Nidalee. Still, in rare, quiet moments, the huntress finds herself dwelling on her own origins—and her encounter with the Kiilash—and whether she will learn the truth behind any of it…
Human Blood

Meaghan Bowe

A loud crack. The stench of grease, smoke, and powder.
These sounds and smells did not belong to the forest.
The huntress bounded towards the sound, spear at the ready. She followed the acrid scent through the maze of trunks and thick underbrush.
Before long, she came upon a familiar place—a small clearing by an embankment. This was a quiet place teeming with life, split by a shallow stream of fast-running water. The fish were so plentiful, even a cub could catch them with clumsy paws. The calm air was rent by the howls of something, or someone, in great pain.
Nidalee chose a spot behind a thick tree at the stream’s edge, careful to conceal her spear behind its trunk. Just across the river knelt a vastayan male with reptilian features. He clutched at his shoulder, and though he moaned in pain, his eyes were wild with rage. The huntress saw his long tail was caught in a trap. Huge metal teeth had bitten into his scaly flesh.
A human holding a long, ugly weapon loomed over the vastaya. Nidalee stared at the dead, shining wood wrapped around the metal barrel. She had seen these things before. They fired lethal seeds that could easily pierce a target, and these seeds traveled too fast for her eyes to follow.
She stepped out from behind the tree, purposefully crunching dead leaves underfoot. The man turned his head in her direction, but kept his weapon aimed at the wounded vastaya. He could not see her spear.
“My, my. What have we here?” The human looked her up and down, his eyes hungry. “Are you lost, love?”
The huntress knew how to handle his kind. Humans were so often disarmed by her appearance—their eyes saw only the softness of her features. She remained expressionless, carefully gauging the distance between them and adjusting her grip on the spear. Her eyes rested on the weapon in his hands.
He smirked at the wild woman, taking her stillness for fear. “Never seen one of these before? Come have a look. I won’t hurt you,” the man coaxed. He turned away from his prey to hold out his weapon.
As soon as it was pointed away from the vastaya, Nidalee whirled out from behind the tree. She hurled her spear at the human’s torso and dove across the river, enveloping herself in a fierce, feral magic. In a flash, her features shifted—nails hardened into harsh points, skin sprouted flaxen fur, and bones bent into a slender shape.
The man dodged too slowly. The spear cut through the flesh of his upper arm and knocked him onto his back. Nidalee landed on top of him in the lithe form of a cougar, each sharp claw piercing through his thin clothing. She pressed her front paw down on his fresh wound, earning a howl of pain.
The cougar crouched over the man, opening her jaws wide and bringing her sharp teeth against his throat. The human shrieked as Nidalee bit slowly into his neck, just deep enough to draw blood, but not to kill. After a few moments, she released the man’s throat and brought her face into his view, baring her bloodied teeth at him.
Another gust of magic swirled around her, and again she took the form of a woman, her sharp teeth somehow no less menacing. Still crouched over him, she looked down at him through bright, emerald eyes.
“You will leave, or you will die. Understand?”
The huntress did not wait for an answer. She tore a piece of fabric from the man’s shirt, and approached the wounded vastaya. Within seconds, she disarmed the trap around his tail. The moment he was freed, he lunged for the human.
Nidalee grabbed the vastaya’s arm, holding him back. The man, who had been frozen in fear, saw his chance to flee, and hurriedly crawled from sight.
The reptilian wrested his arm from Nidalee’s grip, sputtering and cursing in a language she did not recognize. Then, in a familiar tongue, he demanded, “Why did you let it go?”
Nidalee pointed to where the human had fled, indicating spots of bright red blood. “We will follow him. If there are others, he will lead us to them. If they do not leave, they will die together.”
The vastaya did not look satisfied, but said nothing. Nidalee knelt by the river and washed the cloth she had torn from the man.
“You called it… human.” He spoke with a strange lisp. His mouth was very wide, and his forked tongue flicked out between words.
Nidalee wrapped the damp, clean fabric around his shoulder. “Yes.”
“You are not human?”
“No. I am like you.”
“There is no vastaya like you. You are human.”
Nidalee pulled the fabric tightly around his shoulder, causing him to hiss in pain. She managed to conceal her smile by using her teeth to secure the knot.
“I am called Nidalee. You?”
“Kuulcan.”
“Kuulcan. Tonight, my family hunts. You will join us.”
The vastaya stretched his arm, testing the bandage. It was tight, but did not hinder his movement. He looked up at the huntress, who stood above him with her arms crossed.
Kuulcan nodded.

Percy sat by the fire, his face flushed a deep red—partly because of the adrenaline, partly because of the beer, but mostly because of the embarrassment. He had told his three companions of the wild woman, and they hadn’t stopped laughing. One of them took it upon himself to prance about the fire with his guitar and sing a lewd prayer to the “Queen of the Jungle” while the other two guffawed and danced.
“Keep it down, you damned idiots,” he pleaded, earning an even louder roar of laughter. “She might hear us.”
Tired of the taunting and full of far too much ale, Percy snuck away from his fellow trappers to answer the call of nature. The wound still hurt something fierce, and no amount of drinking could chase away the feeling of her teeth on his throat.
As he refastened his belt, he realized the singing and laughing had stopped. The wind itself had stopped blowing. He could hear no rustling leaves or swaying branches.
Beyond the dim light of their low fire, their camp was surrounded by total darkness. Far ahead past the edge of the camp, something glinted in the shadows. Percy rubbed his eyes and squinted, struggling to see anything in the dark.
All at once, the undergrowth began to heave and creak. The leaves of every fern and tree shook with movement. Countless pairs of eyes opened before him in the darkness, and a chorus of growls and feline hisses deafened him.
Percy recognized the emerald eyes nearest to him. There was no trace of humanity left in them now. The eyes blinked and disappeared, and a voice snarled in his ear.
“You were warned.”
He did not manage to scream before the sharp teeth closed around his throat—and this time they did not stop when they drew blood.
Nilah

A confident and joyful woman who always wears an eerie smile, Nilah’s sudden arrival in Bilgewater has sent the city into an uproar. Her duels with rampaging sea serpents defy the limits of human ability: Racing across the surface of the open ocean with a whip-blade formed from glittering, prismatic water, she scales the great beasts before dramatically slaying them, pausing only to thank her “worthy enemies” for their efforts. Any threat taller than a house is guaranteed to draw her into combat, and the deadlier and physically larger that threat is, the more determined she becomes to challenge and destroy it.

Her strength and origins are shrouded in mystery. Yet the truth, known only to Nilah, is that she once had a different name and lived a very different life.

The precocious child of a large Kathkani family, the girl who would become Nilah was not a warrior at all—rather, she was a lanky bookworm with an interest in myths and legends. Kathkan had known relative peace since its neighbor Camavor’s collapse almost a thousand years prior, and had no further need for great warriors or storied heroes. Or, at least, that’s what Nilah believed.

Wishing the age of heroes had never ended, she collected and obsessed over colorful tales of old—epics of great beasts and shining warriors who clashed beneath the eyes of the gods, back when the world was young and humanity’s enemies were a thousandfold. She read of the mad king Viego and his tragic fall, the genesis of the first dragons, and the foundation of the universe in the Kathkan tradition. Nilah memorized each in turn, knowing in her heart that their color and magic were more than simple fiction.

One story, in particular, was her favorite: The Cycle of Ashlesh.

It spoke of the fantastical Lord of Joy, Ashlesh: A many-limbed beast who menaced the world along with its nine ferocious siblings. Hungering for primal joy, Ashlesh attempted to consume the realm of the gods—but the gods struck the monster down, trapping it deep below the earth in an endless, shimmering lake within the seventh layer of the underworld. There it would be guarded by a mythical order of heroes.

An order of heroes that, after unraveling the story’s many riddles, Nilah realized was beneath her very feet in the heart of the Kathkani capital. Overcome with excitement, she struck out to find this hidden order—to learn its secrets and perhaps even stand among the heroes as an equal...

And then she was gone. All knowledge of the girl she was—her face, her voice, her true name—was erased from living memory. Records curled and evaporated, writing vanished from walls and texts, and words failed on the tongues of her friends and family. It was as though Nilah had never been born at all.

The woman who resurfaced ten years later was a stranger to her homeland, unbound from the world she knew, yet possessed of a strange smile and an unending, ceaseless joy. Whatever happened to her during her long absence, she would not say. Perhaps she met the mythical order after all, and they trained her in the arts of magic and war. Perhaps she stood face to face with the primordial demon Ashlesh, battling it in the apocryphal darkness for a decade before finally emerging triumphant. Perhaps this wasn’t the girl at all, but a pretender wearing her flesh... Or maybe the truth was somewhere in between. Whoever or whatever she was, she began calling herself “Nilah,” the name of the legendary river of fate.

And then her work began.

Possessed of wiry, acrobatic strength, and wielding a liquid blade of incalculable might, she embarked on a conquest of the greatest threats of ancient myth: Grandmother Viper, the invincible progenitor of all Camavoran dragons; Imago, demon of change and scourge of the Carnelian Valley; the mad demigod Nabavelicus, perpetrator of countless atrocities.

Each new foe rises against Nilah in challenge, and each is snuffed out in a ferocious battle of color and fury, dazzling all witnesses.

Nilah's own legend grows with every victory. And with it, an epic tale has begun to take shape, following her journey through strange lands near and far. At her side is the power of Ashlesh itself, which Nilah wields against other evils that might one day threaten the safety of Kathkan. In her heart is the memory of what she has lost, and the knowledge of what is to come, driving her to face greater and greater opponents wherever they might be found.

Whatever happened to that lanky girl who was buried in books, Nilah now faces her future with unbridled bliss. Her mere presence inspires others to fight alongside her, while her deeds ensure that people remember the hero she has become, even if they cannot remember the woman she once was.

Facing the mythological villains of Runeterra with unerring glee, she will challenge the end itself if it means she can protect those who cannot protect themselves.
An Intimate Evening at Oyster Bill’s

Jared Rosen

You will know joy

You will be a hero

And you will pass into legend as all great heroes do

The only price I ask for such treasures

Is you

—The Cycle of Ashlesh: Chapter Ten, Verse Seven

Bilgewater isn’t particularly known for its cuisine, which makes Oyster Bill’s Oyster Bar an interesting conundrum. Located in one of the city’s poorer pockets, the establishment gained an impressive reputation over the years with the entire venture held aloft by “local celebrity” and proprietor Oyster Bill.

Along with the oyster-man’s love of seafood and exaggerated stories, he also enjoys renting an extra room above the restaurant to various drifters and vagabonds. One such person being his most recent guest: an ascetic warrior with few belongings and an unceasing ear-to-ear smile—who just kicked Malcolm Graves horizontally through the dining-room wall.

“I didn’t even do anything!” Graves moans, shifting his toothpick to the other side of his mouth. “You want one of the other ones. Senna maybe. Or Rango.”

“Your lack of foresight now threatens millions of innocents, Malcolm Graves,” replies a cheery-sounding voice in an unfamiliar accent. “I have questions about the little present you left on my shores. Viego of Camavor.”

The voice’s owner moves purposefully through the cloud of dust and debris, her liquid whip-blade suspended in a glittering arc around her. Each step illuminates the dingy restaurant as brilliant indigos and golds cast strange, dancing shadows over everything. Messy black hair frames a thin face and violet eyes, all underlined by an oddly exuberant expression, while at her side rests a glowing sphere held by two hands cast from a foreign metal. This is Nilah, and Graves has been trying to avoid her for weeks.

It hasn’t gone well.

Nilah arrived in Bilgewater seemingly overnight, and her presence immediately raised eyebrows across the city. From her odd habit of reciting various textual passages throughout the day—always while making complicated gestures with her palms—to her strange, seven-hand-motif armor, forged from a pearlescent metal no one recognized. Or her insistence that she hailed from Kathkan, even though the last full-blooded Kathkani hadn’t stepped foot on Valoran soil in over seven hundred years.

Then she started killing sea serpents—forty, fifty, sixty fathoms long. When any ship was threatened, Nilah rushed down to the docks and soared across the surface of the sea with a wide, calm smile, her wiry frame launching itself toward the writhing necks of her foes. As word spread about her, she began to ask the port’s grateful sailors if they knew anything about a so-called order of sentinels... and that was when Graves started running.

Now that Nilah’s found him, she doesn’t seem happy.

Or rather, she isn’t acting happy. She seems disconcertingly cheerful with her pleasant grin that never breaks and her demeanor and voice that stay locked in unnatural positivity at all hours of every day. It’s this peculiarity that makes most people unable to read her intentions—besides her pathological need to fight very big things—and that makes conversations with the woman hard to navigate.

“Don’t know nothing about Viego,” Graves lies, sifting through the rubble for his gun.

“I believe it was you who sealed him in Alovedra, am I correct?” Nilah smiles cheerfully, taking another two steps forward. Her legs move in a curious, artful pattern, like a coiled snake about to strike. “Don’t lie. You are man-sized. Killing you would be very easy for me.”

“Not that easy,” Graves snorts, New Destiny finally in hand. Savoring the moment to turn the tables, he fires three rounds directly into Nilah’s torso. Or, at least, he thinks he does. The bullets seem to move around her... Or maybe she moves around them. It’s like firing his gun into deep water—a thought Graves finds inexplicably unsettling.

Nilah’s wide smile twitches at the sides of her mouth. Unbeknownst to Graves, she is unable to feel anger, or any emotion beyond a radiant joyfulness—but she knows she would want to right now, were it possible. She whips the gun out of his hands and knocks it to the far side of the restaurant before bisecting a metal table next to his head with a brutal second strike of her whip-blade. For a brief moment, Graves swears he sees phantasmal blue hands in the air around Nilah... but maybe this is his imagination. He’s been getting hit in the head a lot lately.

“An interesting armament,” Nilah muses. “I imagine it works well against lesser opponents.”

“So what does that make you?” seethes Graves.

But Nilah doesn’t answer. Instead, she sheathes her weapon within the sphere, offering a brief recitation under her breath that Graves can’t quite make out. “My apologies. Based on your fighting style, you're not the sentinel I’m looking for.”

“Sweet Tommy Kench, ain’t you supposed to be some kinda hero?” Graves yells, sitting up among wood fragments and twisted metal. “I’m a hero too, when viewed in a certain light! So lay off, will ya?”

Graves exhales. “Damn... Nice magic, though. I gotta respect it.”

Nilah offers another recitation, her hands shifting as she mouths the words beneath her breath, smiling ominously in the dark. “Thank you, Malcolm Graves. I gave much to wield it.”

“I would prefer if you’d call me ‘Graves.’”
“I wouldn’t,” replies Nilah. “There is great power in a true name, Malcolm Graves. Remember that.”

"If you say so." Graves looks behind Nilah. "You folks in the back hear that, or should we speak up?"

Right on cue, a voice rings out from the street. “We’re here for the serpent slayer!”

Nilah turns to face a half-dozen mercenaries peeking through the hole she’d ripped in the wall. Her eyes drift past the men to a massive, pale something shifting on the planks behind them... and her heart skips a beat. She is often followed by disgruntled killers, but she hasn’t seen one of these before.

“I am she,” Nilah replies, her attention fixed on the creature. “What do you want, exactly?”

“You’re losing our bosses a lot of money. Think you can just flood the market with serpent catch? We own those docks and those ships, and as of now, we own you!”

“What is that creature?” Nilah asks Graves, ignoring the mercenaries.

“Deep eater,” mutters Graves. “They chow down on anchor graves that sink to the seafloor. Gives ‘em a taste for people. Mean and real dumb, so these idiots drag ‘em up and sic ‘em on marks they don’t like.”

Nilah’s eyes flash with excitement. “How big do they get?”

“I’unno. Ten, fifteen oars? That one looks pretty big.”

“Interesting,” she whispers. “An enemy of worth.”

“Hey!” shouts a mercenary. “When I’m talking, you listen or you die. Understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes, I believe I do,” replies Nilah, dipping her hand into the sphere at her side. “I am Nilah of the Seventh Layer. May our battle sing across history.”

Nilah whips her blade outward, its glimmering water forming two sharpened prongs that dance through the air with ghostly radiance. Whatever the mercenaries were expecting, it wasn’t this, and they mutter nervously as the weapon shifts and expands.

They don’t know it, but none of them will leave this encounter alive. The Seventh Layer is not simply a title, but a mythical order steeled to face opponents of unimaginable power and scale. Self-trained killers are merely pebbles on the road to true challenge, and tonight, this so-called “deep eater” is the only foe of worth—a massive isopod with sickly, flesh-colored plates and a mean-looking maw of bloody teeth.

From the depths of Nilah’s being, a hungry joy begins to swell.

What happens next is a blur. Nilah bounds across the room with frightening speed, cutting through her unassuming opponents while wearing that same cheerful, unmoving smile. Each strike of her blade connects with the force of a towering ocean wave, yet the dancing water is sharp as polished stone. Nilah glides between blows, beautiful and deadly, as her enemies are blasted apart.

In seconds, all that’s left is the deep eater. Considering that the words “ten oars” had suggested a beast of much larger proportions, this one isn’t too bad—about the size of a covered wagon. Not the most exciting opponent Nilah’s ever faced, but here in Bilgewater, it was something that would get people talking. They’d remember this victory, and that was all that mattered.

Nilah leaps onto its back, her formless blade flickering in the night air. “Beast of the deep! May you find Joy!” she sings, and she slices the monster clean in half.

“So, what exactly are ya lookin’ fer the sentinels for?” asks Graves, consigned to either having this conversation or being cut into little pieces. “We disbanded, mostly. And I pawned all my stuff, so you’re not getting those magic rocks or whatever.”

“Viego of Camavor will free himself someday,” Nilah replies, her smile now kind. Friendly, even. “The magic binding him is Helian, and it is weakening over time. My people are in unimaginable danger.”

“Hey, we beat him once,” replies Graves. “He’s strong, but we can probably do it again.”

“He is not the true threat, Malcolm Graves,” says Nilah. “His ruinations write new magic into the world... an act that drives demonkind berserk. Enough to stir their primeval forebears.

“Ten lords, long forgotten,” she continues, tapping the sphere at her side, “who must never be allowed to wake.”

“Demons, huh?” says Graves. “You’re not a demon, are ya?”

“No,” Nilah laughs. “Not entirely.”

The ascetic performs another hand gesture, reciting something under her breath. As she speaks, Graves gazes at her sphere of prismatic liquid, which seems to draw him in. An unconscious smile curls at the edge of his lips as high-pitched, whispering laughter rings in his ears. It seems like the metal hands are almost... offering it up to him.

“Don’t look too closely,” Nilah warns, and Graves snaps back to attention. “The beast is always hungry.”

Nilah claps her hands on her hips. “Ah, but the hour is late, and I fear you have no further answers to give me. I will retire to my room,” she says matter-of-factly, walking past a confused Graves as she circles the damaged dining room and climbs the restaurant stairwell. “If you encounter any monstrosities of note, come find me so I can slay them. If you encounter Oyster Bill, tell him that I apologize for tonight’s damage.

“It is good to meet a fellow hero, Malcolm Graves.”

A door closes upstairs, and the woman is gone.

Graves flicks his broken toothpick to the ground, bitten through in all the excitement. He reaches for a replacement but finds none, so instead gazes quietly out onto the street where six dead bodies and two halves of a giant marine louse are scattered.

“The sentinels ruined my life,” he says to no one in particular.

“Neat lady, though.”
Nocturne

While all magic can be dangerous and unpredictable, there are some forms or disciplines that even the most skilled mages and sorcerers will shun, and with good reason. For centuries, the practice of “shadow magic” was all but forbidden across Runeterra, for fear of reawakening the horrors it once unleashed upon the world.
The greatest of those horrors has a name, and its name is Nocturne.
Towards the end of the Rune Wars, desperate for victory, cabals of warrior-mages sought any advantage they could find over their foes. Although no record names the first of them to cast off their flesh and enter the spirit realm, it is known that they came to stalk one another not only on the battlefield, but in landscapes shaped by their own subconscious thoughts and emotions. Unconstrained by the laws of physical reality, they fought in ways that more mundane minds could scarcely comprehend, even conjuring subtle, etheric assassins to do their bidding. Shadow mages seemed particularly skilled at such things—and so it was, for a time, that they came to dominate the spirit realm, casting it into twilight.
The thoughts of mortals everywhere were touched by this darkness. It sapped their morale and infected their dreams, with nameless fears hounding them day and night, driving some to commit ever more horrendous acts against their own kin.
No one can say for certain whether all this suffering created Nocturne from nothing, or if it merely corrupted a lesser assassin-construct into something more willful and deadly, but the shadowy creature that resulted was one of insubstantial form and fathomless dread. Nocturne understood nothing of kindness, honor, or nobility—it was terror made manifest, with none of the restraint necessary to control itself.
This demonic creature howled within the spirit realm, and set upon those foolish, errant mages who had given it life, thrashing in desperation for an end to its own suffering. It was in pain, and that pain made it cruel, but it quickly acquired a taste for mortal fear. Time has little meaning in that other place, but Nocturne dragged out each and every pursuit for as long as possible, savoring the prey’s anguish before cutting their life’s silvery thread in an instant. Soon enough, there were none left who dared to enter Nocturne’s domain.
Would the outcome of the Rune Wars have been different if the demon had not played its part beyond the veil? It is difficult to say for certain, but afterwards, what little remained of the lore of shadow magic was hidden away, and its practice carried the sentence of death in many lands.
Trapped in the spirit realm, and with precious few intruders to sustain it, Nocturne began to starve. The only thing close to the delectable feasts of fear it had once tasted was when mortal minds unknowingly drifted through the ether in the hours of sleep. Drawn on currents of magic to where the two realms divide—and where peaceful dreams can easily become night terrors—Nocturne found a way to manifest itself into the waking world.
Existing now as a shade, eyes burning with cold light, Nocturne has become a sinister reflection of the most primal fears of the many peoples of Runeterra. From the bustling cities to the desolate plains, from the mightiest king to the lowliest peasant, the demon is drawn to any weakness of spirit it can twist into mortal terror, and everlasting darkness.
The Shadow Door

Ian St Martin

“Tell me another story.”
“Now now, Abel,” Celwyn said, setting the storybook down on a table and drawing the blanket snug around his son’s shoulders. “That’s two stories already. Now it’s time for sleep.”
“But,” whispered the boy, pulling the covers up beneath his eyes, “what if the monsters get me?”
Celwyn smiled. He half chided himself for telling his son the tales, a collection of old Valoran fables replete with courageous heroes triumphing over evil sorcerers and monstrous beasts. They were from a storybook Celwyn’s own father had read to him when he was young—though maybe not as young as Abel.
The last story he had read, The Shadow Door, had been Celwyn’s favorite as a child, where a young squire wins the day against a foul king seeking to cloak the whole world in shadow. It had scared him silly, Celwyn remembered fondly. Perhaps he should have waited a little longer before reading it to his own son.
“That was just a story,” said Celwyn, sitting down lightly at the edge of Abel’s bed. “Even if you have a bad dream, those monsters from the story can never hurt you, alright? It’s all make-believe. They aren’t real.”
He leaned down to kiss Abel’s forehead, but the boy shrank back from him.
“What?” chuckled Celwyn. “Too old for a kiss?”
His chuckle died as Abel kept sinking into the bed.
A chill ran up Celwyn’s spine as his son sank lower and lower, as though a pit had opened up beneath the mattress. Abel cried out as the blanket wound tight around his body. It began to glisten, becoming slick and wet as it morphed into a red, spotted tongue.
Celwyn snapped free from the shock that had rooted him in place. He reached out for his son, struggling to get hold of Abel and pull him out.
But the tongue only wound tighter, sliding deeper down.
The edges of the bed splintered with a sharp crack. Jagged spars of wood rose, turning sharp and yellow as they calcified into fangs. The entire frame was transforming into a gigantic, hideous maw, poised to devour Celwyn’s son whole.
“Abel!” he cried, staggering as he began to retch. Coils of dark mist feathered from his nose and lips, rising to swirl above the changing bed like a gathering storm.
The maw flexed, yawning wide as it released a deafening, blood-curdling scream. It was neither the roar of a great predator nor the howl of a beast gathering its kin for the hunt. It sounded to Celwyn like a birthing cry… almost as if it were in agony.
“Papa!” Abel screamed, before he vanished from sight.
The jaws snapped shut.

Celwyn bolted upright, gasping, drawing in great lungfuls of air as he ran his hand down a face sheened in cold sweat. His eyes flitted around, seeing nothing in his lightless room. It was the middle of the night in Piltover, and the lamps of the city streets below were barely visible through the curtains of his window.
After a few moments, his heart stopped pounding, and his thoughts began to calm. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a nightmare, nor could he recall one as vivid and real as this one had been.
His mind went to his son. He should get out of bed, just for a quiet moment, to check on Abel. To see if he was—
“Papa?”
Celwyn started at the sound of the voice. His eyes had slowly adjusted to the dark, enough to only now see the small shape of his son, standing at the foot of the bed.
“Abel?” Celwyn blinked. “Abel, what are you—”
“Why?” asked the boy.
Celwyn frowned. “What are you doing up? Are you alright?”
“Why did you have that dream, Papa?”
“What?” Celwyn asked, any trace of sleep gone from his mind.
“Why would you do it?” Abel said again, his voice taking on a pleading edge. Celwyn could only see the silhouette of his son’s face with the curtains drawn… but he didn’t remember drawing them. “Don’t you know that’s what feeds him?”
Celwyn suddenly felt very cold. He looked up over Abel’s head, seeing the tall shadow that he cast over the wall.
A shadow that was not of his son.
Abel shivered, and his silhouette melded into the shadow on the wall. In a moment the image of the boy was gone, fading rapidly to nothing in the growing darkness. Celwyn reached out to him, and watched a thin tendril of dark mist sigh out through Abel’s lips, just as it had in his dream.
With a wet, burbling hiss, the shadow began to tear itself loose from the wall. Sheer terror seized Celwyn as he watched a creature emerge. It was like a living shadow, roughly human in form, its body tapering down beneath the torso like the tip of a blade. The monster rippled and wavered, as though Celwyn were viewing it beneath dark waters, with a pair of cold, staring eyes boring back into him, through to his very soul.
Adrenaline flooded Celwyn, the animal response of flight surging through every fiber of his being. But try as he might, no matter how his body demanded it, his mind betrayed him. He was paralyzed, incapable of being anything more than a witness to something he had believed only existed in old fables read by fathers to their sons.
A monster. One that was real.
The creature’s jaws parted a fraction, revealing long, crooked teeth. Then it spoke to him, somehow repeating Celwyn’s panicked thoughts back to him with his own voice.
“What are you?” it rasped. “Where did you come from?”
It surged closer, hovering over him. Drops of midnight fell from its form, bleeding away to nothing like ink in the ocean. The monster’s arms elongated, their ends twisting and flattening into broad, wicked blades that hooked over its claws.
Celwyn blanched, unable to look away from the nightmare creature as it bent down, bringing its horrifying visage directly level with his.
It whispered a single word to Celwyn, before it buried its blades in his heart. An answer to his questions, spoken softly with the voice of a drowning man sinking into the darkest depths.
“You.”

Dawn came, ushering in the bustle and noise of the thriving merchant city. Sunlight bathed the metropolis, shining from every window, including that of Celwyn’s bedroom.
A voice came from the other side of the door, accompanied by the soft knock of a child’s tiny hand. “Papa?” The knob turned slowly, Abel cracking the door just enough for a peek. “It’s morning!”
The boy entered his father’s room, and the shadows withdrew as he opened the door wider. They slid back from the morning light, but somehow slower, more reluctantly than usual.
“Papa? Where are you?” called Abel, fear creeping into his voice as he looked around the room.
There was no sign of his father, or of anyone else in the gloom. And yet, the boy could not shake the idea that something, crowded into the darkest corner of the room, was watching him.
Abel coughed, not noticing the tiny wisp of mist that followed, before turning back toward the hall and closing the door behind him.
Nunu & Willump

One of the Notai, a nomadic tribe that long traveled the Freljord, Nunu learned from his mother, Layka, that behind every thing is a story. Together, they gathered tales that Layka turned into songs. For Nunu, nothing was better than journeying from village to village, hearing his mother sing of ancient heroes. With music and dance, the Notai brought one last celebration to everyone they met, as each winter’s chill set in.

Riding the wave of frost spilling from Anivia’s wings, his heart beating the rhythm of a jubilant song, Nunu’s world was full of possibility.

On his fifth nameday, Layka gave Nunu a special gift: a flute, so he could learn to play her melodies himself. In the safety of their cart, the two bundled together and followed the knotted string that served as Layka’s heart-song, recording everywhere they’d been together, as the years came and went.

When the caravan was attacked by raiders, Nunu was separated from his mother. Though he was dragged to safety by the surviving Notai, he was left to wonder what had happened to Layka, waiting to hear her songs on the wind…

Snow fell. Weeks passed.

Nunu missed his mother desperately, but the Notai assured him no child could safely search for her. They weren’t even impressed when he showed them the flute he now called Svellsongur—the name of a mighty blade existing only in his imagination.

Nunu spent more and more time alone, escaping into his mother’s songs—the legends and heroes of old. He yearned to be one of these heroes, perhaps even a great warrior like the Frostguard, who could have saved his mother. He even met their leader, Lissandra, who asked countless questions about his mother’s stories, always seeking information about one particular song.

No one believed he could be a hero, not even the other Notai children, who teased him for his flute when they now had daggers. But Nunu knew the songs in his heart, and one night, he realized how he could prove himself and persuade the others to help to find his mother.

From the tribe’s fearful whispers, he’d learned of a fierce monster that killed all who sought its power, thwarting the local hunters who were sent each year, never to return. There was a song that Nunu’s mother sang… one that he now couldn’t seem to stop singing to himself.

Suddenly, Nunu understood what he had to do. He could name the beast. It would answer his challenge, and feel the wrath of Svellsongur!

Using his flute to tame a herd of elkyr, Nunu snuck out into the snow. One lonely child traveled to face a monster, finally living out a legend that not even he could imagine.

An ancient and noble race that once ruled over the mountains of the Freljord, the yeti civilization was destroyed in a cataclysm of ice. Forced to watch his brethren descending into savagery after being stripped of their magic, one yeti swore to protect what remained of their power—a gem that swirled with the frozen dreams of any mortal mind nearby.

As the last magical yeti, the guardian was also shaped by perception. Though he had been chosen to safeguard the magic until it would be needed again, he could find no worthy vessel. The men who intruded upon his ruined home had only malice in their hearts… and so a monster greeted them with fang and claw.

But the guardian knew he was forgetting something. His name… and the names of those he had loved...

Once, there had been song.

That all changed when a young boy stumbled into the ruins. After centuries of unbroken vigil, the monster was prepared to end the boy’s life, snarling as he sensed the human approach.

Unexpectedly, the gem brought forth images of heroes slaying dragons and beheading ancient serpents from the boy’s mind. The child roared, drawing his flute like a fearsome sword. But the blow never came, for even as the boy saw visions of heroes swirling around him, he realized the deeper truths of the songs his mother sang…

When he looked at the guardian, he didn’t see a monster. He saw someone who needed a friend.

Still enraged, the yeti did not expect the first snowball to the face. Or the second. Snowball fight! In anger, then shock, then joy, the guardian joined in, shaped not by fear, but by a child’s imagination. He was growing furrier and friendlier. His growl was becoming a laugh.

Until the beast accidentally broke the boy’s flute.

As the child began to cry, the guardian felt a kindred grief take shape around the gem. For centuries, he had looked into it and seen the end of his people—the threat they had buried, betrayal by the blind one—and now, instead, he saw a caravan burning. He heard a voice on the wind. He sensed something else within the boy, something he had never felt from a human, not even the three sisters who had come to him long ago. It was love, fighting back despair.

In that moment, the guardian knew the Freljord’s only hope lay in the power already within this child. The magic he’d been guarding was a tool; what truly mattered was the heart that would shape it. With a gesture, the magic passed from the gem into the boy, giving him the ability to make his imagination real. To repair his flute, freezing it in dreams that hardened into True Ice.

To imagine a best friend named “Willump.”

Escaping into the Freljordian plains, Nunu’s heart and Willump’s strength now enable the pair to do what they never could alone: to have an adventure! Following the songs of Nunu’s mother, they snowball wildly from one place to the next, holding onto the hope that she is still out there, somewhere.

But Willump knows that with magic and dreams come responsibility. One day the games will end, as the dark ice at the heart of the Freljord thaws, and thaws…
Stone Cold

David Slagle

I wake up suddenly, like a story that starts in the middle of the action.
The song. I heard it!
“Willump!” I shout. “I heard the song again! Wake up!”
I shove aside the snow that serves as our blanket and look my flufferific friend in the face. His whiskers are twitching like they can feel my dream slowly fading. He growls, and his breath swirls into all kindsa shapes. But even though he’s old and has hair in his earholes, still, he’s my best friend! I laugh as his beard tickles my nose.
Nothing like a magical yeti to bring me back to reality!
Willump rolls over and starts scratching his grumbling belly. “You’re always thinking about food,” I laugh again. Laughing feels good, it helps me remember.
My mom…
We’ve been following her song across the Freljord—my mom’s heart-song. Everywhere we’ve ever been, she made a verse, and if I could only remember what each place was, I could find my way back to her. I could save her, like a hero in her stories!
But I can only remember parts of the song when I’m not trying, and sometimes… it’s like my mom is out there, singing.
Like that! Did you hear that?!
“It’s coming from that village,” I bellow, pointing towards a patch of darkness beneath a frozen waterfall. Something inside me knows that’s where the song came from. “Sword first, Willump, I’ll cut through the wind!”
I shiver as we enter the clearing a few moments later, though I’m surrounded by scrazzly fur. Even this close, the village is mostly shadows. There are no people—if there were, I’d know, ‘cause it’s so cold I’d see their breath. “What is this place?” I ask.
Willump growls wisely.
“‘Naljaäg’? That can’t be its name. How would anyone know how to spell that?” Then Willump grumbles that it’s the yeti word for “stone.”
The buildings are stones heaped really high, the pathways are stones, too. Stones. Got it. So… it’s not weird that the flowers are carved out of stone, right? And those furs, hanging over a door. And that old rope! At least, it would be rope if it wasn’t hard and gray.
“Is everything around here stones?” I ask. It’s not fair—in the stories, stones at least have runes carved into them or something.
I’m starting to wonder why the song led me here, when finally I see a person, their back turned beneath an archway!
“My name is Nunu, and I’m here to help!” I yell, and I pull at the person’s shoulder—but when they topple into the light with a dull thwunk, I immediately realize… they’re stone, too!
And…
Beyond the archway are all the missing people from the village, huddled together like statues. There’s one who looks like a warrior, now dull and gray. There’s a farmer and his wife, holding each other tightly, like they were carved from one slab. A little girl, a pebble beside them.
It’s a curse. A real one.
“Willump,” I say. “We gotta do something!”
That’s the thing about mom’s songs. My favorites were always tales of heroes, more than a match for any curse. With the lessons I learned, we can save these people, right? I have to believe, otherwise… how am I gonna save her?
I remember one song, a myth about how Avarosa healed the turtle that carries the sea, by giving it a big kiss! But I don’t want my first kiss to be a statue. I make Willump kiss ’em just in case, and watch as the stone gets stuck to his fur.
I try saying the prayers Lissandra taught me, just in case. I make a dragon out of snow to scare the curse away, like Anivia did to fight the southern army! I even try pulling the sun closer, like how Braum thawed his village in the song my mom sang. But the sun’s too far.
Braum must have really long arms.
Willump tries to comfort me. He says some curses can’t be fought. Sometimes, heroes don’t win. But I remember what matters. I can feel it, even though my mom is missing, our caravan buried in snow. The feeling of being loved.
That’s what this village deserves!
“If we can’t help these people,” I tell Willump, “then we’re gonna help these statues!”
I smile and reach for my flute. I mean, my sword! Svellsongur!
Hero time, hah!
I can smell the curse. A hateful stench, like troll. It has the weight of centuries; weight that could grind the years this child has left down to mere days. Here is where even heroes of song would question how they could fight, blades powerless against ancient magic.
But Nunu is no mere hero. He is something better.
He is a boy!
He whoops, and calls my attention to the frozen waterfall above us. We are close enough now that we can see them, nestled atop stillness. Krugs. Stone creatures animated by magic, more than at home living above a village such as this one.
Their nest has dammed the waters’ flow, holding back the Freljord’s lifeblood. I taste a hint of Nunu’s intentions.
It tastes like krugs. Delicious.
“Hey, stoney crabs! You took something from those statues!” Nunu yells, and hops onto my back without losing a beat, for the music is in his heart.
The magic is his now. Swept up in his imagination, snow forms before us, gradually taking shape into a mighty snowball! I laugh as we ramble wildly, our merry burden growing so large that beneath us the village trembles, buildings stretching themselves awake. And still the snowball grows larger. The krugs make only a tiny chitter as we leap into the air to the top of the waterfall, blotting out the sun.
The Freljord goes white, the dam embraced by snow even as it’s torn apart.
And then, the earth roars.
Icicles crack like bones made brittle by winter. The roar grows louder as the river coughs and clears dust from its throat, water tumbling into the village below.
“Did you see that, Willump?!” Nunu asks. But my eyes are already closed.
I can feel a magic more powerful than the curse welling up to fill the village, casting shivers through my fur and bringing warmth to a world that is cold. It is the only magic that can save the Freljord. Even the frozen dreams of my people, coveted by the Frostguard, pale in comparison to this magic, held in abundance by a child.
Hope.
His arms are around me now, and I hug him back with all four limbs, looking away so he does not see the snowflakes falling from my eyes.
The curse has not lifted. But still, life has returned. And as it spreads, stone flowers washing away to make room for living ones, what curse could stand in its way? No evil can last, if life embraces joy, and refuses to hide…
I reach onto the ground and pick up a chunk of ice, crushing it to snow between my paws.
“Hey!” Nunu yells as I hit him in the face with a snowball, trailing the magic that swirls in his heart.
As we play, the wind whips through the flute on Nunu’s back, casting up stray notes. Then I finally hear it, too.
Her song.
Where waters
Once roared,
Winds whisper
To stone.
In shadow,
Naljaäg lies.
Silence sings.
Hope survives.
Olaf

Most men would say that death is a thing to be feared; none of those men would be Olaf. The Berserker lives only for the roar of a battle cry and the clash of steel. Spurred on by his hunger for glory and the looming curse of a forgettable death, Olaf throws himself into every fight with reckless abandon. Surrendering to the bloodlust deep within his being, Olaf is only truly alive when grappling with the jaws of death.

The coastal peninsula of Lokfar is among the most brutal places in the Freljord. There, rage is the only fire to warm frozen bones, blood is the only liquid that flows freely, and there is no worse fate than to grow old, frail, and forgotten. Olaf was a warrior of Lokfar with no shortage of glories and no hesitation to share them. While boasting one evening with his clansmen over the burning embers of a razed village, one of the elder warriors grew tired of Olaf's bluster. The old fighter goaded Olaf to read the omens and see if Olaf's fortunes matched his gloating. Emboldened by the challenge, Olaf mocked the aged raider's envy and tossed the knuckle bones of a long-dead beast to predict the heights of glory he'd achieve in death. All mirth left the gathering as the clansmen read the portents: the bones spoke of a long life and a quiet passing.

Infuriated, Olaf stormed into the night determined to prove the prediction false by finding and slaughtering Lokfar's feared frost serpent. The monster had consumed thousands, man and ship alike, in its long lifetime and to die in battle with it would be a fitting end for any warrior. As Olaf hurled himself into the blackness of its maw, he fell deeper into the blackness of his mind. When the shock of freezing water roused him from the dark, there was only the butchered carcass of the beast afloat beside him. Thwarted but not defeated, Olaf set out to hunt down every legendary creature with claws and fangs, hoping that the next battle would be his last. Each time he charged headlong toward his coveted death, only to be spared by the frenzy that washed over him while on its brink.

Olaf concluded that no mere beast could grant him a warrior's death. His solution was to take on the most fearsome tribe in the Freljord: the Winter's Claw. Sejuani appeared amused by Olaf's challenge to her warband, but his audacity would earn him no mercy. She ordered the charge and sent scores of her warriors to overwhelm Olaf. One by one, they fell until he lost himself in the bloodlust once again, effortlessly cutting a path to the leader of the Winter's Claw. The clash between Olaf and Sejuani rocked the glaciers with its force, and though he seemed unstoppable, Sejuani battled the berserker to a standstill. As they stood deadlocked, Sejuani's glare penetrated Olaf's berserker haze in a way no weapon ever could. His frenzy abated long enough for her to make him an offer: Sejuani swore that she would find Olaf his glorious death if he would lend his axe to her campaign of conquest. In that moment, Olaf vowed he would carve his legacy into the Freljord itself.
Orianna

Nestled among the eclectic storefronts of Piltover sat the workshop of the renowned artificer Corin Reveck. Famous for his masterful craft in artificial limbs, Corin’s intricate brass designs made the prosthetics both breathtakingly beautiful and often superior to the originals. His daughter, Orianna, served as his apprentice—friendly and inquisitive, she was a natural fit to run the shop, and blossomed into a capable artisan in her own right.
Orianna had an adventurous spirit, but her father, fearing for her safety, never allowed her to venture beyond their neighborhood. Instead, he took her to the theater, where dancers, through leaps and pirouettes, told stories of distant lands. Orianna dreamed of visiting these strange and marvelous places, and would scurry home to build clockwork dancers of her own.
News of disaster in the undercity of Zaun made its way to their shop. An explosion had ruptured a chemical line, venting clouds of poisonous gas. Orianna insisted they help the victims, but Corin forbade it. Zaun was far too dangerous.
So, with as many supplies as she could carry, Orianna snuck away in the night and rode the hexdraulic descender into the depths.
The devastation was overwhelming. Debris still filled the streets, and Zaunites walked through the toxic haze, faces covered with little more than oily rags. Night after night, Orianna repaired respirators and installed esophilters. She even gave her own mask to a child who could scarcely breathe.
Her father was furious, but soon after her return, Orianna fell gravely ill. Her lungs were ravaged past all hope of recovery. Refusing to accept this, Corin threw himself into his most ambitious project yet: a fully functional set of artificial lungs.
After weeks of sleepless nights, he completed his desperate task and carried out the surgery himself. To keep her from ever venturing too far again, the lungs were wound with a special key Corin kept in his safe.
Orianna returned to work, and yet the poison continued to spread throughout her body. Father and daughter worked feverishly to develop new implants and prosthetics, replacing each of her organs as they failed. Piece by piece, Orianna's body was transformed from mortal to mechanical until only her healthy heart remained. This long—and expensive—process cost Corin his fortune, forcing him to relocate their business to Zaun… but he saved his daughter's life. And, for a time, they were happy.
Gradually, Orianna began to feel disconnected from who she had been before. Old memories felt like stories. Even her creativity began to fade, and her beloved clockwork dancers became more like masterfully tuned mechanisms than works of art.
But, even as time seemed to stand still for Orianna, it marched onward for her father.
Long, lean years brought Corin agonizing chest spasms that meant he could no longer work, and Orianna was forced to provide for him. She'd become profoundly adept at crafting her figurines, even if she took only distant pleasure in recalling what once inspired their creation. The miniature dancers brought in good coin and barter, but never enough to afford the one thing she believed could save her father. For that, she turned to a local chem-baron.
Orianna never asked how the man came by a hextech crystal. She simply paid what he asked. Even so, before she could use it, the chem-baron returned demanding a second payment. Then a third. When the money ran out, Orianna knew his next visit would end in violence. She looked to the crystal device, still incomplete, too unrefined and powerful for a human body. She saw the logical solution—she didn't need her human heart anymore, and Corin needed a heart no one could ever take from him.
She spent weeks in preparation, building a clockwork orb—integrating it into her own mechanisms, readying it to house the crystal so she could defend herself in the journey ahead. Slipping her father a sleeping draught, she commenced the surgery.
Corin became one with the last remnant of the daughter he had known and loved. She listened to his steady heartbeat through the night, the quiet hum of hextech in the beautifully intricate ball by her side. Only then did she realize she had shed the last of her humanity—but she felt no fear or remorse, merely acceptance. She had become something entirely new, a lady of clockwork, and she needed to find where in the world's vast machine she might fit.
At dawn, she collected the key that wound her lungs, a single pulse from her ball welding it firmly to her back. Then she left for good.
Corin woke to find his workshop filled with hundreds of figurines. But among them was one he vowed never to sell: pirouetting to an endless ballet, a golden dancer that needed no key.

All stories

Naafiri

The Name of the Blade

Nami

First Steps

Nasus

Ouroboros

Nautilus

The Ophidian

Neeko

The Monster of Kalduga Outpost

Nidalee

Human Blood

Nilah

An Intimate Evening at Oyster Bill’s

Nocturne

The Shadow Door

Nunu & Willump

Stone Cold

Olaf

Orianna