LoL Universe Indexing and Search

Fascinated by the world of existence and eager to create one for herself, Bel’Veth is like a dark cancer that has metastasized within the heart of the Void, through which all of Runeterra will be consumed and rebuilt in her own twisted image. She hungers for new experiences, memories, and concepts in vast amounts, devouring whole cities and their populations before repurposing the information into a sprawling alien landscape known as the Lavender Sea. Yet even the Void is not safe from her voracity as she spreads within it like a primordial ocean, forcing all before her to submit to her world of want... or be destroyed.

Though Bel’Veth is new to Runeterra, her birth is untold millennia in the making—the end result of an allergic reaction between the Void and a nascent reality. The once-pristine dimension of peaceful nothingness was irrevocably shattered when existence came into being, and forcefully individualized Void entities lashed out for eons in an attempt to defend themselves from the shock and pain. Erasing everything they consumed, they were named by virtue of what they left behind—a void. But the beings within were changed each time they touched the world, mutating from their once-perfect forms into hedonistic, violent animals.

So too did the Void change with them. After every battle, every incursion, something more sinister grew deep within a hidden womb inside the darkest recesses of the Voidborn tunnels... Buildings, sunlight, proto-humanoid limbs reaching toward nothing... A jigsaw puzzle where none of the pieces fit... The Void had taken a new, hideous shape. In time, fueled both by humans opening rifts for war and the Watchers attempting to invade the Freljord, this blasphemous pocket of un-creation grew to embrace the opposites of the Old Void: desire, want, and need.

Soon enough, it craved a leader. Someone—or something—who could write a horrific new chapter in the worlds above and below. A leader who could interface with these “humans,” tell them of what was to come, and harvest their emotions and memories as they fought a bitter, fruitless war until the last fires of civilization died and a new era spawned.

This leader is Bel’Veth. A terrifying empress born from the combined memories, experiences, and emotions of an entire devoured port city and its outlying ocean—Bel’Veth’s mind contains millions of years of perfectly preserved knowledge, giving her near-omniscience as she prepares to destroy both Runeterra and the domain of her progenitors, the Watchers.

To those lucky enough to be of strategic value to her, she does not lie, ask questions, nor obfuscate the truth—she simply states the nature of things, for with victory all but assured thanks to the very nature of the Void itself, there is no need to say anything more. And to those who displease her, they will find her human form to be merely adaptational—nerve endings, muscles, and eyestalks—as she unfurls her titanic wings to reveal her true, monstrous figure.

Ironically, the ancient Shurimans had a word for such a concept. Loosely translated to “God of Oblivion,” it was a tribal myth of a remorseless deity who would erase all things without hatred, replacing them with itself. They named the city of Belveth after it, though the true meaning was lost after many hundreds of years.

Lost to all, perhaps, save for the creature that city has become.

To truly understand the horror that is Vel’Koz, one must first know of the Watchers, and how they were blinded to the mortal realm.

Beyond the material plane, outside and somehow below it, lies the unknowable abyss. It is the realm of the Void, where no mortal or immortal creature may ever walk. It is not necessary to know how such a place ever came to be, nor why—only that it did. The Void is eternal. The Void consumes all.

In that place, in the cold, endless dark, all is equal and empty. For timeless eons, there was purity in that fact. There was peace, if such a term could have any meaning there.

Then, something changed. Not in the Void realm, but elsewhere. It was existence, it was... something, where before there had been nothing, and its mere presence scraped against the vast, cold, formless entities that drifted in the blackness. Before this, they had not even been fully aware of their own sentience, and yet now they knew that they could not tolerate the presence of this other place; this other-realm of mercurial, overwhelming creation.

The entities watched. They scrutinized.

And soon enough, the Watchers found themselves being scrutinized in return. The tiny, mortal minds that reached out to them were insignificant, little more than fleeting motes of light at the very edges of the abyss. Yet, in them, the Watchers saw a chance to invade the material realm, to destroy it, to silence the intolerable pulsing of reality beyond the Void.

The boldest of them tore open the veil and hurled themselves upward, only to be horribly disoriented by the sudden shift between the abyss and the corporeal, linear nature of reality. In an instant, there was time, and heat, and pain...

Then there was only cold. The way was shut, and dozens of the Watchers were trapped in the liminal space between two realms, frozen in the moment of transition.

Those that remained in the Void recoiled. They had no concept of what had happened, yet they knew they had been betrayed.

And so, they adapted.

Reaching into the material realm, the Watchers took from the crude matter that comprised it, shaping, corrupting and imbuing it with consciousness. These constructs were the first of the Voidborn, and would be their masters’ eyes and ears, sent forth into the nightmare of existence to watch, listen, and learn.

Among them, one stands apart. As perhaps the oldest surviving Voidborn, certainly existing the longest outside of the abyss, he has been known by countless names to those unfortunate enough to encounter him. Thousands of years before Icathia unleashed the Void in battle, the primitive cultures of Shurima feared the devil Vel’Koz, who crept forth from the underworld to steal the dreams of wiser men. Though his name has no literal translation in the modern tongue, it equates roughly as “to understand by unmaking.”

His insatiable hunger for knowledge has led Vel’Koz across the world, to its highest peaks and darkest depths. Cunning and methodical, he has quietly watched entire civilizations rise, stagnate and decay, spent centuries combing the ocean floor for its secrets, even scrying the movements of the stars in the heavens above him.

He carries all of this knowledge back to the great rifts in the fabric of Runeterra—so that the Watchers might know what he knows—and will annihilate, without hesitation, any mortal who stands in his path.

For the Void is eternal, and it will consume us all.

There is a place between dimensions, between worlds. To some it is known as the Outside, to others it is the Unknown. To those that truly know, however, it is called the Void. Despite its name, the Void is not an empty place, but rather the home of unspeakable things - horrors not meant for minds of men. Cho'Gath is a creature born of the Void, a thing whose true nature is so awful most will not speak its name. Its fellows have been poking at the walls that divide dimensions for a crack, a way into Runeterra, where they can visit their own personal paradise of horror upon the world. They are called the Voidborn, creatures so ancient and terrible that they have been removed from history altogether. It is rumored that the Voidborn command vast armies of unspeakable creatures on other worlds, that they were once driven from Runeterra by powerful magic lost to antiquity.

If such tales are true, then the rumors that follow must be equally true - that one day, the Voidborn will return. Even now, something dark stirs in Icathia. Cho'Gath, an alien creature of malice and violence, causes all but the most stalwart to cringe in fear. Cho'Gath even appears to feed on its predations, growing and swelling as it gorges itself. Worse yet, the creature is intelligent, perhaps greatly so, hinting at the sentient horror of the Void.

In a time long forgotten, before the sands birthed and then swallowed Shurima, beings of old magic freely walked Runeterra. The borders between the mortal realm and what lay beyond it were hotly contested.

Into this dangerous and volatile age, Lissandra and her sisters, Serylda and Avarosa, were born. Each sought to harness the powers at war, and each paid a terrible price. Attempting to command the heavens above them, Serylda lost her voice to the first twilight. Avarosa faced the twisting dark beneath the world, and was deafened by its emptiness, waiting to consume all creation.

It was Lissandra who stood against the wild magic of the mortal world itself. For this defiance, the savage claws of a primal god raked across her eyes, blinding her.

Though each sister had lost a part of themselves, it was on the frozen fields of Lissandra’s many battles that they were able to unite and prevail. Together, they were unstoppable… but even a bond of blood could only weather so much.

With her sight taken, Lissandra chose instead to walk in dreams. As she navigated the fitful visions of those around her, she realized only she could see the darkness below for what it was: the lingering abyss promised not only an ending, but infinity. It was death, both dangerous and full of potential. Unknown to her sisters, Lissandra struck a deal on their behalf with the god-like entities she had communed with—the Watchers would grant them near-immortality in exchange for preparing Runeterra for the coming of the Void.

The three sisters and their most powerful followers were named Iceborn. Those with this ability to withstand the worst of the numbing frost would be spared until the very end.

However, Lissandra’s sisters grew displeased. Avarosa argued that the only thing worse than death was servitude. Even Serylda bristled against what would become of the world they had fought so hard for. Caught in the middle, Lissandra tried to soothe her sisters’ concerns while appealing to the Watchers for more time, but the unknowable nothingness cared not for such platitudes.

The Void erupted into the mortal world in the far north, and with it, Lissandra’s hidden allegiance to the Watchers became undeniable. In that moment, her only choices were to let all the world be consumed, or to give up what she cared for most—Lissandra sacrificed her sisters and the allies they had gathered, entombing the Watchers beneath a glacial barrier of magical ice that could never be melted.

Lissandra soon discovered that even this elemental power was not enough. The monstrous beings she had frozen were merely slumbering, slowly tainting the True Ice around them into something darker. Now, they wandered through Lissandra’s dreams as easily as she had theirs, and always she would wake, terrified, professing her loyalty to the chilling eternity they promised.

Ever the survivor, she gathered her remaining followers to venerate her and her departed sisters. If True Ice would delay the inevitable end of all things, then they had to gather as much of it as they could find, and scour the frozen lands for any of Iceborn descent to join their cause.

Lissandra and the first among her Frostguard did everything in their power to rewrite history, seizing all records of what had truly happened… and yet, rumors and prophecies persisted in myth and song. It was whispered that Avarosa and Serylda would one day return to unite the disparate tribes, and so Lissandra had any who were hailed as their reincarnations quietly killed. Even she retreated into the shadows, periodically renewing herself with the powers she had been gifted.

Like the threat that lies trapped beneath the ice, Lissandra has never been able to completely control her sisters’ legends. Whether from guilt or arrogance, her failure to eradicate their legacy has manifested once more in two powerful Iceborn—one an idealist, the other a conqueror—and now, between them, they lead many tribes within the Freljord.

Lissandra watches them carefully, seeking any opportunity to pit them against one another, all the while redoubling her own efforts to lock away the terrible secrets she has buried deep under her citadel.

And she must hurry, for the ice is beginning to melt.

Kai’Sa peers out from the mouth of the tunnel and feels like she’s standing at the edge of the world.

A chasm, so deep that sunlight doesn’t hit the bottom. Surrounding it are the openings of dozens of other tunnels. All are carved into rock that sits deep below the surface, now exposed and crumbling.

Once, this had been home to a vast colony of Void creatures. These had been their burrows, formed with the randomness of unmade matter. Sharp corners, dead ends, coils upon coils... all constructed without a plan beyond “eat the world.” That is the Void—mindless organic machines, driven by instinct to fight and consume and unmake with no thought beyond the present. She’s killed enough to know there is nothing deeper to the creatures than that.

But the tunnel Kai’Sa stands in is different. It is not random unmaking. It is practically a straight line running north, one she’d followed for nearly four days. This tunnel, this passage, was made with intention. With a goal. It doesn’t make sense...

Kai’Sa would make it make sense, starting with where this passage led.

So far, it has led to this chasm.

Kai’Sa eyes the openings on the opposite side. Hard to tell how deep any of them go. But she would bet her second skin that one of them is a piece of the same passage she stands in now.

She rolls her shoulders. Her living armor wakes, pulling its flesh tightly against her own. It has been her only constant, growing with her from the time she was a little girl. It had been one of the voidling beasts that killed her family, her village. Covered in its carapace, Kai’Sa would always be seen as a monster. But without it, she could not keep the world safe from the Void.

Without it, she would be nothing.

The scaly pods at her shoulders flex, and the embedded crystals illuminate as she selects her first target. The heat from the crystals spawns a plasma missile; she launches it down the mouth of a tunnel deep below the surface. It takes six seconds to cross the chasm. Massive. Another second, and the missile hits a curve. Nope. Not what she’s looking for.

From here, it’s point and shoot, over and over. Most missiles hit something a second or two in. But Kai’Sa is nothing if not patient. She will go at this as long as it takes.

She finds the tunnel she’s looking for just as the sun begins to set. She waits for her missile to cross the chasm, then starts the count. One. Two. Three.

Four. Five. Six. This is it. This one’s the other end of the passage.

Grinning, she fires a barrage around the opening to mark it. Her earlier missile is still going... until she hears the horrible screech from whatever it struck.

She turns her shoulder pods inward, pressing them together to hide their light. She waits silently for her prey to show itself.

Another screech. A voidling creature emerges from the other side of the passage. Kai’Sa has spent years fighting and observing and cataloging voidlings. This is not one she’s seen before. The creature’s smooth, rounded body, injured from her missile, deforms as it opens its long lower jaw. Its mouth is filled with translucent needle-like teeth jutting out at dangerous angles. Its sides expand and contract like it’s breathing.

Or taking in scent, she thinks as it turns. No eyes, but it can still find me. She takes aim as the sun dips below the horizon. The voidling begins... to glow. Something—a tongue?—emerges from its mouth and emits a soft bluish light, looking like the hanging lamps in humans’ mines. Haven’t seen a voidling do that before. She notices that its injury is glowing, too.

Guess I’ll call it a Lamplight. She lets a missile fly. The Lamplight’s posture changes. It lets out a high, sustained shriek and dodges Kai’Sa’s blast. Dammit. Kai’Sa lines up another shot.

The entire tunnel behind it blooms with blue light. Hundreds of Lamplights join the first, mouths open, tongues raised and glowing. Kai’Sa forces herself to breathe slowly. She’s fought worse odds. All in one spot. Excellent. Kai’Sa unleashes a barrage, hoping to take out all the voidlings at once.

In the time it takes the missiles to cross, the voidlings spill out like dust, clinging to the walls of the chasm as the barrage whistles past them harmlessly.

What...

Led by the injured Lamplight, they move as one. Toward Kai’Sa.

... the hell?

She raises her hands and fires rapidly at the swarm. She hits a few, but not enough to make a dent in their numbers. And they are already a quarter of the way to her. Kai’Sa looks around wildly. Not many options. Fight from her current location. Run back down the passage. Take her chances and dive down. Try to climb, fight them from the surface.

She glances above, then at the swarm. They’re halfway around. Climb. Kai’Sa shoots into rock four times in a zigzag—one for each of her hands to grip and her feet to balance. Pulling herself up, she begins the climb.

Shoot, grab, pull. Shoot, grab, pull. As fast as she can, Kai’Sa makes her path. Her shoulder pods shoot at the swarm. They’re near, but Kai’Sa’s pace is good. She’s more than halfway to the—

And her hand hits sand.

She shoots again. There’s nothing for her missile to pierce. It blows through the sand, and more seeps down to fill in the empty spot. There’s nothing to grab. Can she jump the rest of the way? Jaw clenched, Kai’Sa turns toward the monsters. If she’s going to die, she’ll take as many of them with her as she can.

Suddenly, the wall around the voidlings cracks.

And crumbles.

Hundreds of Lamplights drop with the falling stone, their light swallowed by the darkness of the chasm. Only three of them still rush toward Kai’Sa. That’s a number she can handle. They’re close enough that she can see barbs on their tongues.

Three shots fire. Two Lamplights fall. One left.

It smacks its thorny tongue against Kai’Sa’s ribcage. Her ribs crack beneath her armor as she slams against the rock. She struggles to take a breath while the suit repairs over her injury. Gripping the wall with her left hand, she grabs the creature’s tongue just below the barbs with her right. Violet power surges. The Lamplight’s tongue melts around her hand. Screaming, it backs away. Kai’Sa takes aim.

This time, she doesn’t miss.

Okay. Kai’Sa breathes. Okay. Next step. She’ll have to find a way to the surface.

That’s when she notices the stone cube sticking out from the sand.

That wasn’t there before. Kai’Sa reaches out and grabs—it is exactly the right size for her hand. She tests part of her weight on it. It holds. Curious, she leans to one side and looks farther up. Jutting out every armspan or so is another one of these stone cubes. She’ll question this turn of good luck later.

Kai’Sa scrambles up, one cube at a time, until she’s out. Looking around in the moonlight, she sees no landmarks, just dunes and rocky cliffs. A sand storm kicks up in the distance. She glances down into the chasm. If she squints, she can almost make out a glow...

The wind gets loud. Storm’s approaching fast. She turns to face it. At the center of the storm is...

A girl?

The ground explodes under Kai’Sa’s feet. She hurtles through the air toward the storm, an arm in front of her broken ribs. She shifts position mid-air, her shoulder pods folding in front of her like a battering ram. If Kai’Sa’s attacker wants to bring her closer, that’s their mistake.

Something wraps around her shoulder pods and wrists, pulling her down, slamming her to the ground. Her ribs feel like they’re on fire, and her helm cracks where her head meets the earth.

She gets to her feet and forces her wrists apart. A red scarf, studded with stones, falls away. With a guttural yell, she sets her hands alight.

She’s stopped by the look of surprise and horror on the girl’s face. Even all these years later, she is still taken aback when someone looks at her and sees only a monster.

Push past it, Kai’Sa. She brings her hands up again, ready to attack...

“You’re human?”

Kai’Sa realizes she’s looking at the girl through the crack in her helm. Oh.

“You... see me?” It doesn’t matter. Humans are always afraid of her, whether or not they know she is one of them. But the girl’s expression gives Kai’Sa a foolish hope. Maybe this time could be different. Cautiously, Kai’Sa lets the helm pull away from her head, revealing the rest of her true face.

The girl drops to her knees, and Kai’Sa’s breath catches in her throat. “I am so sorry,” the girl says. “I thought you were—”

“A monster?”

“Well, yeah.” The girl gestures toward the chasm. “People tend not to survive long in these collapses.” She gazes at Kai’Sa’s second skin. “And you don’t... look human? At first glance.”

The girl is not as young as she’d thought; she must be around her own age, or older. Kai’Sa stares as the scarf lifts from the ground by its stony ends. “The stones,” she says quietly. “You control the stones.” The girl nods as the scarf wraps itself around her neck as though by magic. “You made those cubes come out of the sand.”

The girl shrugs, smiling. “I could feel someone was down there with those monsters. So I tried to help.” Her smile slips. “It’s all I’ve been doing for weeks now. Months? Hard to keep track.”

Kai’Sa blinks, eyes suddenly stinging. Someone else is fighting the Void, she realizes. Not the same way I am, but... “Who are you?”

The smile returns. “My name is Taliyah.”

The tents, cobbled from scraps of fabric and solid slabs of rock, look like Taliyah’s work. A group of thirty or forty, mostly children and elders, surround a large firepit at the center of the camp. The way they look at her—silently, with wide eyes and hunched shoulders—is horribly familiar.

Fear. Kai’Sa doesn’t meet anyone’s gaze. It’s for their comfort. But really, it’s for her own.

Taliyah’s arms are open wide as she introduces Kai’Sa, diving into a dramatic retelling of their meeting. The only movement in the crowd is the flickering of flames. Stillness, and silence, is their only response as Taliyah finishes her tale.

“I don’t have to stay,” Kai’Sa mumbles.

Taliyah shakes her head. “You’re injured. I can’t send you back out there when you haven’t eaten or rested. I won’t.”

A child half her height, a red cowl wrapped around his shoulders, stands. “You sure she’s human?” He squints. “Maybe it’s just some kinda disguise.” He almost falls backward from the force of two older girls pulling him down into his seat.

Taliyah laughs. “Have you seen a Void monster that can smile, Samir?” she retorts. “I haven’t.”

Everyone looks at Kai’Sa expectantly. She does her best approximation of a smile, close-lipped so as not to look too aggressive. It doesn’t seem to scare the children. A victory.

The boy, Samir, stands again. “Fair enough,” he says as he walks toward Kai’Sa. He offers her a half-eaten piece of meat on a stick. “Want the rest of my sandsnake?”

Everyone else seems to breathe easier as Kai’Sa accepts the food. She rips the meat from the stick and swallows without chewing, her suit purring in relief. Zaifa, one of the older girls with jade beaded through her hair, offers her more. This time, Kai’Sa slows down enough to appreciate the flavoring of cinnamon, sour lemon, and smoky ul-tawaat berries.

The taste brings back old memories, of life with her parents, of her father cooking over an open flame while her mother ground the ul-tawaat with her pestle...

Kai’Sa shakes her head to clear her mind—no good can come from dwelling in those memories. She really doesn’t need the rest, and she’s already eaten enough for her ribs to start healing.

But the camp has already started to relax, with people chatting over their own meals. Some have even turned their back to her. A show of trust. And the hope in Taliyah’s eyes is unmistakable. Please stay, they seem to say. Don’t leave us yet.

“I’ll stay awhile,” she concedes. “To heal.”

The passage will still be there tomorrow.

They are dead. Killed by the Void, as my own family was. Kai’Sa does not say what she is thinking.

Some of the elders speak of the sun-blessed Ascended warriors. Others tell the story of the last emperor, and the chaos that followed his death. Zaifa describes the darkness that infected the Ascended and drove them to madness and evil. None are believable, but Kai’Sa listens intently.

The story told by Kadira, an older girl with rocky arm braces, is by far the most outlandish. She talks of a place called Xolan, across the Sai Kahleek, that has been magically protected for millennia. “It is said to be a paradise,” she sighs. “With libraries, and gardens, and water that flows as far as the eye can see. And everyone is safe, without fear.”

Kai’Sa does not realize that she has scoffed until Kadira and the children look at her. “No place is safe from the Void,” Kai’Sa says. “Especially so close to the Sai Kahleek. It’s a myth.”

“It’s real,” Kadira insists. “Where do you think we’re all headed?”

Without another word, Kai’Sa stands and leaves the storytellers to their tales.

She finds Taliyah leaning against one of the tents, deep in conversation with Zaifa and Samir, lit more by moonlight than by firelight. Zaifa traces her finger across an open scroll.

“You aren’t actually searching out this Xolan.” Kai’Sa doesn’t frame it as a question. “You’d be putting yourselves in real danger, crossing the Sai Kahleek over a fantasy.”

Taliyah exchanges a look with Zaifa, who hands Kai’Sa the scroll—a map of eastern Shurima. She points to a dot to the north of the Sai Kahleek. Xolan. North. The same direction as the passage. Kai’Sa frowns.

“It’s the best chance we have of finding safety for these people,” Taliyah explains. “Their homes have been destroyed, their families... separated. They need hope that things will be okay.”

“False hope helps no one. When it comes to the Void, the only thing you can do is run and hope you’re fast.”

Taliyah shakes her head. “If we go around the sai, we’ll run out of food. Stay where we are, we run out of food. Go back, and all we’ll find are the towns that fell. Where else do we run?”

Kai’Sa stares at Taliyah. “Do you know what lives in the Sai Kahleek? What hunts there?”

“The xer’sai. We’ve all heard the stories.”

“No. Xolan is a story,” Kai’Sa says. “The xer’sai are real. I’ve fought them before, many at a time. This is their nest. Trying to cross it is a death sentence.”

“I’ve fought Void creatures too. Or did you forget that I saved you?”

“Those weren’t xer’sai.”

“Whatever they were, I defeated them when you couldn’t.” Kai’Sa can see determination in the set of Taliyah’s jaw. “If Xolan is our only hope, then that’s where I’m going to lead everyone.”

“Besides, we’ve got a plan,” Samir says, excited. “Taliyah’s going to build a bridge or wall or something over the sand, and we’ll take people across together.”

He can’t be that much older than I was when the Void took me. Aloud, she asks, “What, can you move stone too?”

“I’m the best rock hopper you’ve ever met,” Samir says with a confident grin. “None of those monsters can move as fast as my sandboard. And if they try?” He mimes a blast from the ground. “Taliyah drives ’em back with some rock-splosions.”

“You sound like a child,” Kai’Sa spits. Samir’s smile drops. “The children of Rek’Sai... all they do is devour. Anything that gets in their way? Gone.” She leans in close. “When they hear you, they hunt you. They don’t stop until their teeth close around your bones.”

“You’re scaring him,” Zaifa accuses as she puts a steadying hand on Samir’s shoulder.

“Good. He should be.”

“So come with us,” Taliyah says confidently. “You can help keep everyone safe.”

“No. Because you’re not going.” Kai’Sa points to Samir. “You are not putting these children in that kind of danger. They’ll die. Make your way around the sai. Take as many as you can. Leave the slowest behind, use their rations to—”

“We won’t!” Samir stands toe to toe with Kai’Sa, glaring up at her. “Taliyah will protect us. I will protect us.” He puffs out his chest. “I’m going to help these people, and they’re all going to make it across because... because each of their lives means something.” He stomps back toward the firepit, with Zaifa chasing after him.

“It’s your only chance,” Kai’Sa says quietly. “Otherwise, you’re condemning them all to death.”

“No.” Taliyah steps in front of Kai’Sa, refusing to let her look away. “Our world is a tapestry, and every life is a thread of a different color. Each one makes the whole more beautiful.”

Ugh. Metaphors. “Then the Void is a flame,” Kai’Sa replies. “It unmakes everything it touches. If your tapestry catches fire, the entire thing will burn... unless you cut the smoldering threads away. Then you still save most of it.”

“You’re wrong. Any threads that drop make it all unstable, easy to unravel.” Sunlight appears at the horizon, and Taliyah’s eyes flash gold. “I’m not willing to let any of them go.”

Taliyah collapses the stone structures back into the earth, leaving little sign that they were ever there. Kai’Sa watches and nibbles at her bread, trying to make it last.

“I don’t suppose you’ve changed your mind,” Taliyah says, “and decided to join us.” Kai’Sa sees the sheen of sweat on the girl’s brow. This exhausts her more than she lets on.

“No. I have somewhere else to go.” She sighs. “And you haven’t changed yours.”

Taliyah shrugs. “I have somewhere to go, too.” She turns back to her work. “I’m disappointed. You know what you’re doing with these Void monsters. You could help these people.”

The best way I can help is to figure out what made that Void passage. It was made with a purpose in mind... and that scares me. But she doesn’t say that. Instead, she says, “I hope you can help them yourself.”

Except it feels lonely now. Kai’Sa wonders if she shouldn’t have spent so much time with Taliyah. She’s been alone for more than half her life, just her and the Void monsters that dwell below the surface world. She didn’t realize how good it would feel to be a person again.

Alone with her thoughts, she hardly notices the time pass. Soon, she sees older tunnels, enormous holes punctuating the passage walls and leading elsewhere. Xer’sai tunnels. I’m below the Sai Kahleek. But she still doesn’t see or hear any xer’sai.

She spots a bluish glow down one of the tunnels. Quietly, and with as little motion as possible, Kai’Sa peers down the opening into the darkness.

She sees a few smaller xer’sai of a kind that she has encountered and named before. A group of Callers, reedy bipedal creatures with four prehensile jaw-talons, chirp softly to one another. Their shrieks can cut through the desert, alerting others to the presence of fresh prey. Spiky hatchlings, already larger than the Callers and due to grow much larger still, stand beside them. Together, they encircle dozens of Lamplights.

One of them has a glowing blue mark like a burn on the side of its body. That’s the one I shot, Kai’Sa realizes in horror. Taliyah’s attack didn’t kill it. It might not have killed any of them...

As she watches, one of the hatchlings stalks over to the marked creature. It extends its tongue and touches it to the hatchling’s horn.

A soft blue light engulfs the hatchling. It glows.

The sudden chattering of Callers drowns out Kai’Sa’s gasp. What are they doing? Her heart beats in her throat as more hatchlings and Callers go toward the Lamplights to receive their own glow. Are they making the xer’sai more powerful? She shakes her head to clear her thoughts, and takes aim at the marked creature.

Whatever it is, I’m going to stop them.

That’s when a loud boom shakes the earth.

An enormous xer’sai Dunebreaker cuts through the stone wall with the bladed horn above its eight eyes. The talons along its jaw scratch into the rock, leaving deep gashes. Every step shakes the ground to drive fear into its prey. It hisses, swiping its horn at the Lamplights. It slices three of them at once, their deflated bodies leaking bright blood.

The Dunebreaker doesn’t like what the Lamplights are doing.

The Lamplights screech and flee toward the passage—toward Kai’Sa. She feels the familiar rush of power as she and her suit become invisible just in time for the Lamplights, then the Dunebreaker, to rush northward past her. The Dunebreaker’s horn rips a deep gash through the top of the passage. It bows inward.

The passage is going to collapse.

She dashes ahead, trying to keep up with the massive xer’sai while it can’t see her. I need to know where this leads. I have to understand.

But then, from somewhere behind her... Screams. Human screams.

Kai’Sa drops her invisibility and dashes up toward the surface before everything crumbles beneath her. She blinks as her helm readjusts to the sunlight. The dust clouds make it hard to see, and the crash of rockfall pierces her ears, but she can still hear the sounds of panic. She runs toward them.

Ahead of her, she sees the crevasse that formed where the Dunebreaker’s horn tore through the ceiling of the passage. A stone platform is dangling over the edge, though most of it remains on the sand, refusing to fall into the fissure. The people standing atop the platform are screaming, but a lone figure remains calm. Taliyah. Her stone bridge. She’s the only thing keeping it up. Her arms shake from the strain, but slowly, she lifts the front of the platform back toward the surface.

A child’s shout comes from below. Someone fell into the passage.

Kai’Sa sprints toward Taliyah. “You need to get back!” she shouts as the bridge rises. “The whole thing is going to collapse beneath you all if you don’t move!”

“Samir’s down there!” Taliyah screams as the bridge finally makes it to the surface, settling onto the ground with a thud. “I’m not going to leave him!”

She lets out a strangled yell and pushes against air with one hand. The bridge groans as it scrapes away from her, pushing it a good distance away from the collapse. Then she dives into the crevasse.

Kai’Sa stares over the edge. She’s going to die down there if I don’t help her.

Kadira and Zaifa come running from the bridge. Kai’Sa fires at their feet.

“What are you doing?!” Kadira shouts, jumping back.

“That huge xer’sai could turn back any minute,” Kai’Sa says. “Get the others out of here.”

“We’re not going anywhere until we know Taliyah and Samir are safe,” Zaifa says with clenched fists. “We can help you.”

I don’t have time for this, Kai’Sa thinks as her shoulder pods unfold, crystals crackling with power. If I kill these two, the others will run.

Kadira and Zaifa join hands, but they do not move. Kai’Sa remembers the stories they told around the firepit. The food they shared with her. Their fear of her, and how it left them over the course of the night.

... I don’t want to hurt them. “I’ll go down and help them. Please, go back to the others. They need someone to be strong for them.”

“Fine. But you have to bring them both back,” Zaifa spits out as she and Kadira run back toward the bridge.

I will. I promise. Without glancing back, Kai’Sa leaps into the growing hollow below.

Her feet hit the bottom hard enough to snap any normal person’s bones. In the distance, she sees glowing voidlings—not just the Lamplights, but the hatchlings and Callers they’ve converted—surrounding a smooth stone dome. That must be where Taliyah and Samir are.

She hears a subtle shift in the rumbling sound from afar. The Dunebreaker’s turned around, she realizes. If it’s after the Lamplights... it’ll be coming right back here.

Kai’Sa digs deep into the power of her living armor. Her wrists are surrounded by violet light, until they’re not. Invisible again.

She fires on the Callers. All five die without making a sound. The hatchlings turn, looking for the source of the attack. Only the blind Lamplights, tasting the air, can sense her. Before they can pinpoint her, she’s already taken out the hatchlings.

Now she’s in trouble. Dozens of Lamplights rush toward her. She fades back into visibility and dashes away as fast as she can.

They’re on her in a matter of seconds. She fires wildly, but only a few of them drop. One catches her by the ankle, slicing through her suit with the barbs on its tongue. She falls as she attempts to dodge more attacks. But they slice at her from all sides, faster than her suit can knit itself back together. Blood drips from her arms, her legs, her cheek. She tastes the tang of copper as it runs over her lips...

And then something explodes from beneath. The Lamplights are propelled back and away.

They pause, confused. Kai’Sa looks beyond them. Taliyah’s head pokes through the top of the dome. She’s shouting something. Kai’Sa’s helm reforms, and she hears Taliyah shout, “Come toward me!”

Kai’Sa crouches. “Give me a running start!”

The earth explodes beneath her, propelling her through the air, over the voidlings and toward Taliyah. She lands on her good ankle, and tries to sprint—she can’t. So she dips back into her suit’s power, letting it drain her reserves of energy to speed the healing of her ankle. She can’t run for long.

But she’ll try to make it count.

As the monsters get closer, Taliyah propels Kai’Sa toward her again. The ground she lands on is different, with sharp bumps dotting the earth. Kai’Sa runs over them, trying to get the Lamplights to follow her rather than go toward Taliyah. The one in front bears her mark, and gets close enough to reach for her again...

An explosion tears it to pieces, staining the earth with glowing blood. Kai’Sa stops in shock.

“Keep running!” Taliyah shouts. “That’s what triggers the explosions!”

So she does, circling around Taliyah.

A few Lamplights get too close. Taliyah’s “rock-splosions” tear through them. The others seem to learn, slowing down, but they become a target for Kai’Sa’s missiles.

It doesn’t take long to thin their ranks. But the rumbling grows louder as the Dunebreaker bores its way back. We don’t have much time.

There’s only a handful left. Kai’Sa stands near the dome, exhausted, and fires the last missiles she has the energy to make. Slowed by the minefield, each voidling takes the hit.

Grinning, she turns to Taliyah. The girl is pale, coughing from the dust in the air. Her arm is around a frightened Samir’s shoulders, as he struggles to keep her upright.

“I can’t...” Taliyah pants. “The ground... It’s unstable. Can’t keep holding it up...”

Kai’Sa takes Taliyah in her arms. She beckons for Samir to cling to her back, then runs toward the walls of the hollow. I’m at my limit. I don’t know if I can make it up to the surface like this.

Suddenly, Taliyah twists out of Kai’Sa’s grip and leaps, summoning a rising platform beneath her feet. She pulls Kai’Sa toward her and propels them all upward. Her strength gives out just short of the surface. Kai’Sa and Taliyah grab the ridge and do their best to hold on...

A dozen hands reach down, covered in dirt and dust. Is this real? Kai’Sa wonders as she stretches up toward them. Two hands pull her up. It is. She looks up, recognizing some of the faces from Taliyah’s camp. One of the hands around her wrists belongs to Kadira. I’m being rescued.

“Zaifa!” Taliyah cries once they’re all on solid ground again. “Kadira! You came back for us!”

“And brought help.” Kai’Sa nods at them both. “Smart. Thank you.”

Below, the Dunebreaker bursts back into the hollow. Kai’Sa holds a finger to her lips and mouths don’t move. Dunebreakers can only sense things they can hear or feel or see moving. If we stay still and quiet, we’ll live.

The creature prods the deflated bodies of the Lamplights with its horn. It shuffles around, finding the corpses of the glowing Callers and hatchlings.

Satisfied that its enemies are dead, it burrows back through the rock and down into the earth.

Kai’Sa waits until they can’t hear it anymore before she lets anyone move. Then Taliyah, exhausted and pale, lifts another bridge of stone from the ground and takes them all back toward the others. A drained Kai’Sa and an only somewhat humbled Samir bring up the rear.

“I would have made it back up on my own,” Samir says with a tired grin at Kai’Sa. “But it was nice of you to come help. What with me slowing everyone down and all.”

Kai’Sa gives the kid a sidelong glance, and can’t help but smile. “Couldn’t sit back and lose the best rock hopper I’ve ever met, could I?”

Kai’Sa lies beyond the light, not willing to let on how sore her body still is. Better to rest than to eat, she thinks miserably, the scent of charred cabbage floating toward her.

Taliyah sits and silently offers Kai’Sa a bowl full of cabbage and millet. Kai’Sa pushes it away.

“You’re not hungry?” Taliyah asks.

“I’m angry.”

Taliyah looks surprised. “Why?”

“You should have listened to me,” Kai’Sa says bitterly. “Instead? You couldn’t protect your people—those voidlings you thought you killed were the ones attacking us. You almost lost everyone. If I hadn’t been there, you would have.” She sees the regret in the twist of Taliyah’s lips, the set of her jaw. “And when they needed you most, you abandoned them. You left them all to die so you could try to maybe save one person.”

Taliyah is quiet for a moment. “Not that I’m not grateful, but... you know you did the same thing when you came down to help me, right?”

Kai’Sa doesn’t know how to respond to that.

“Don’t go toward Xolan,” Kai’Sa says after a few moments of awkward silence. “The Void passage that collapsed, the one I’ve been following, was directly below your route there. I’m pretty sure that Xolan is where it leads. That means the Void already has it.”

Taliyah nods, her shoulders slumping. “I’ll tell them they need to find another place.”

“They? What about you?”

“Well. I’m going to Xolan.”

“Taliyah—”

“That’s where you’re going, right?” Taliyah sighs. “I thought I could protect these people. Get them to safety. But you were right—there is no safe place. So... we’ll have to make one.”

“Uh. What do you mean?”

“If the Void is in Xolan... then we take it back! Make it safe enough to lead everyone to it... and try to help whoever is already there.” Taliyah sounds so optimistic.

“If the Void has taken the town... there’s not going to be anyone left to save.”

“We can’t know that from here. Even if there’s one person who needs our help, that will be worth it to me.” Taliyah steps forward and takes Kai’Sa’s hands in her own. They feel warm and calloused, even through Kai’Sa’s second skin. “I can’t do it without you, Kai’Sa. I didn’t kill those Lamplights on my own... but I was able to when you were there with me. Let’s find this place together.”

If she had been there when my home fell to the Void... maybe I could have been something different. Kai’Sa looks at the hope in Taliyah’s eyes, the strength in it. But I am who I am. The world needs me like this. So does she. I’ve seen what we can do together. I think I need her, too.

So does whoever might still be alive in Xolan.

Kai’Sa takes a bite of the charred cabbage and nods. “Fine. Another thread for the tapestry.”

“Be safe and be well,” Taliyah had said, hugging her tightly. “The blessings of the Great Weaver upon you all.”

Now, they are out of sight. She turns back to Kai’Sa, her only companion for the next leg of this journey. I know she’s happy to have the company, Taliyah thinks with a secret smile. Even if she won’t admit it.

Together they set out across the Sai Kahleek on a floating stone bridge, their destinies momentarily woven into one.

Saijax Cail-Rynx Icath’un grew up in Icathia, a satrapy of the Shuriman empire. Ever since he was a boy, his father told him of when their home was a proud, independent nation, before it was ground under the heel of Shuriman oppression. He told him of the Kohari, heroes who protected Icathia and its Mage King. The Mage King had resisted Shurima’s conquest, but when he died in battle, his Kohari protectors followed him, committing ritual suicide. The Shuriman emperor displayed the Kohari’s decaying bodies for all to see, and the Mage King himself was impaled above the city gates, his bones left to molder.

Saijax’s father had witnessed this cruel act, and over time he passed down to his son the burning resentment that was growing in every Icathian heart. Even so, Saijax committed himself to the study of arms, learning from Shurima’s weapons masters as well as his own clan’s elders.

After many centuries of Shuriman rule, a massive earthquake struck the coastal province of Saabera. The destruction revealed something hidden deep beneath the earth, something dark and of great power—perhaps strong enough even to overcome Shurima’s god-like Ascended warriors. Saijax was entrusted with protecting the Icathian mages who encountered this discovery… which the guards just barely contained with brazier-staves that blazed with conjured elemental fire. Disturbed, he escorted the mages to the governing council so they could tell of what they’d learned.

They called this power the Void.

Immediately the council recognized its potential, but Saijax saw the doom the Void portended. As a master of weaponry, he knew the danger of using a weapon they could neither fully understand nor safely harness. He regretted that he didn’t kill the mages as they rode from Saabera. He would regret it even more in the days to come.

Confident that the Void could defeat their Shuriman overlords, the council crowned a new Mage King. The Kohari were rebuilt, with Saijax among the first to join their ranks. They triumphed in early engagements, and Saijax even killed one of the vaunted Ascended in battle, watching with pride as its corpse was paraded around the liberated city of Bai-Zhek.

When the Ascended Host approached Icathia, Saijax and his brethren assembled on the front lines. As the two armies churned the earth beneath them into crimson loam, Icathia’s mages and priests deemed the time had come to unleash the Void.

Ruin swept over the land, as Icathians, Shurimans, and even Ascended were unraveled from existence. The city’s walls collapsed as the Void swallowed thousands into cold, silent oblivion.

In moments, Icathia was lost.

Saijax rode to the ruined crater where the Void had been summoned, determined to fall upon his sword like the Kohari of old. But before he could take his life, he saw among the devastation a discarded brazier-stave that he recognized from Saabera—it still blazed with elemental fire that harmed the Void. This flame kindled a spark in Saijax’s heart. He took up the stave and left behind the ruins of his homeland, tending to this “last light of Icathia”, and the hope it represented.

Grieving and ashamed, Saijax Cail-Rynx Kohari Icath’un forsook his old name, and from that day was known only as Jax.

He became a wanderer, traveling across the known world and to places beyond any map. As he bore the elemental fire, Jax’s life extended beyond even the expectations of his long-lived people. Yet the farther he went from Icathia, the lower the flame burned, until it threatened to gutter out once and for all. Jax understood with grim resolution that he couldn’t run from his past. He had a duty to return, and fight. The advance of the Void had been halted by the last surviving Ascended, but its singular threat endured.

For centuries since, Jax has roamed, a vagabond warrior searching for those strong enough to rebuild the Kohari. Though he has fought countless times against beings of great skill, courage, and power, none have yet convinced him that they can march against the coming darkness. The fall of Icathia has plagued Jax with doubt, but one thing remains certain: when the final battle comes, Jax will stand against the Void.

Even if he has to face it alone.

For more than two millennia, Shurima dominated the known world—an empire that reigned over countless peoples without challenge, and without threat.

Until the day Icathia fell.

From the moment the Void tore its way into the material realm, the armies of Shurima faced an enemy that could not only lay their grand empire low, but one that seemed to grow stronger the more they fought it. The corruption spread rapidly from Icathia’s ruins, boiling over the land and beneath the oceans, before its hideous tendrils reached the southernmost jungles of Ixtal.

Ne’Zuk of the Ascended Host was an Ixtali elemental mage of colossal power, and almost unrivaled arrogance. He went before the emperor, pledging to create a weapon powerful enough to take the fight to the Void, and eradicate it at the source of its original eruption.

After months of inhuman labor, Ne’Zuk revealed the Monolith—a floating fortress of living stone, maintained by the greatest elemental mages, and its ramparts manned by his fellow Ixtali god-warriors. The size of a city itself, the Monolith glided titanically toward the wastelands of Icathia, the lightning crackling from its magical inhibitors fusing the sands to glass beneath it. Ne’Zuk and his superweapon arrived at their destination, to face once more the howling infinite darkness of the abyssal realm, and the hordes of Voidborn monstrosities it had created.

The battle dragged into weeks. It was violence of a scale and intensity never before witnessed in Runeterra. Sorcery enough to raze entire civilizations, or render whole continents into naught but a memory, was unleashed upon the Void.

The darkness retaliated in kind. Its hideous energies gouged deep wounds into the living stone of the Monolith, whose surfaces became pocked and seared with unnatural malphite—from the Ixtali for “bad stone”—and leaving mineral-like scars. The fortress was pushed to the very limits of its design, struggling to self-repair and reknit its weakened superstructure… but even the incredible magics that held it aloft had a breaking point.

As Ne’Zuk fought to rally his Ascended brethren for one last, desperate charge, the unthinkable happened. Sagging for an instant, the Monolith crashed down to earth, cleaving through the bedrock of Icathia and opening the Void beneath to the skies.

Much of the fortress was lost within that gaping maw, vanishing into the silent nothingness beyond. The rest rained down as great ruins, littering a landscape already blackened by the terrible conflict that had been cut so abruptly short. Only a single Ascended survived—Ne’Zuk hauled himself from the wreckage, choking on the ashes of what was meant to be his grandest triumph, now his greatest folly, and fled for his life.

In defiance of all worldly reason, some disparate fragments of the Monolith endured, still imbued with something like magical life. The far-flung shards struggled to heal, to reform the whole to which they had once belonged. But the Void’s endless hunger leached away at them, rendering them as little more than inert shapes clawing feebly in the dust.

However, against all that had been lost, a single shard remained.

Buried deep beneath the surface, forgotten even by those that dwelt in the abyss, it slowly gathered in strength. It lived, until at last it awakened after uncounted centuries, and realized it was alone.

In all the centuries since that dark day, Malphite, the last shard of the Monolith, has become something of a legend in Runeterra. It has reputedly been sighted everywhere, from Targon to Zaun; heard sometimes as a tectonic roar in the deepest caverns, and sometimes as a quiet voice, humming to itself, that it might still remember the sounds of the world it once knew.

Despite the enormous span of its existence, the overwhelming drive enkindled by Ne’Zuk’s creation of the Monolith has not wavered. Now, Malphite knows it must soon rise to meet the resurgent darkness it once battled, as the Void awakens to threaten all of Runeterra once more.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the fearless hunter of the Void known as Kai’Sa is how unremarkably her life began. She did not descend from tribal warriors hardened by generations of battle, nor was she summoned from distant lands to fight the unknowable menace lurking beneath Shurima. Rather, she was just an ordinary girl, born to loving parents who called the unforgiving southern deserts their home. This was where she would spend her days playing with friends, and her nights dreaming about her place in the world.

In her tenth summer, the young girl Kaisa’s destiny would be changed forever. Had she been older, she might have noticed more of the unusual events that had begun to unfold in the villages—every day, her mother urged her stay home, for fear of strangers wandering the land, demanding tribute to dark powers below. Kaisa and her friends did not believe it, until one evening they came upon a pen of sacrificial goats bought from nomad herdsmen. Using the knife her father had given her on her eighth birthday, she cut their tethers and set the animals free into a nearby canyon. It seemed like a harmless prank, until the unthinkable happened. The ground began to quake, flashes of light scorched the sky, and the children ran for their lives.

The Void had been awakened. A great rift split the bedrock, swallowing up Kaisa’s village and everyone in it, leaving nothing behind but sand pierced with twisted columns as black as night.

Kaisa regained consciousness to find herself trapped underground. She was filled with crippling fear, but there was still hope; she could hear the faint cries of other survivors. They called out to each other feebly, repeating their names one by one like a mantra. Sadly, by the third day, hers was the only voice left. Her friends and family were all gone. She was alone in the darkness.

It was only when all seemed lost that she saw the light.

She followed it down.

Along the way, she found meager sustenance. Amid the debris left by the collapse were ragged waterskins, rotting peaches—anything to keep starvation at bay. But, eventually, Kaisa’s hunger was replaced by fear once again. She found herself in a vast cavern, illuminated by an otherworldly purplish glow, and she could see she was no longer alone.

Skittering creatures swarmed in the depths. The first that came for Kaisa was no bigger than her, and she clutched her knife in both hands, ready to defend herself. The voidling horror knocked her to the ground, but she drove the blade into its pulsing heart, and the two of them tumbled deeper into the abyss.

The creature was seemingly dead, but its unnatural skin had taken hold upon the flesh of her arm. The dark shell tingled, but was hard as steel to the touch. In a panic, Kaisa broke her knife trying to remove it. But when the larger beasts came, she used it as a shield to make her escape.

Soon enough, she realized the shell was becoming part of her. As her daily struggle to survive drew out into years, this second skin grew with her, and so too did her resolve.

Now she had more than hope, she had a plan. Fight hard. Stay alive. Find a way back.

She was transformed, from frightened girl to fearless survivor, from prey to predator. For almost a decade, she has lived between two worlds in an attempt to keep them apart—the Void hungers to consume not only the scattered villages of Shurima, but the whole of Runeterra. She will not allow that to happen.

Though she has slain countless Void-constructs, she understands that many of the people she protects would see her as a monster herself. Indeed, her name has begun to pass into legend, an echo of the ancient horrors of doomed Icathia.

No longer Kaisa… but Kai’Sa.

The darkin are thrice-cursed—once by the ancient enemy they faced, again by the fall of their glorious empire, and finally by the betrayal that has damned them for all eternity.

When the rebels of Icathia foolishly unleashed the Void in battle, Shurima’s defense was led, as ever, by the legendary Ascended. Imbued with the power of the Sun Disc, these “god-warriors” towered over mortal soldiers, wielding magic and blade with equal ease, and eventually they were victorious. Even so, the horrors of the war took a heavy toll, and those who lived to remember it were perhaps never quite as they once were.

Centuries later, with the loss of mighty Azir at the very moment of his own Ascension, Shurima fell. Although apparently immortal, the god-warriors had been born human—gradually, with no emperor to lead them, many of the surviving Ascended began to falter in purpose as their older, petty ambitions resurfaced. They taught themselves forbidden sorceries, and came to view themselves as the rightful inheritors of the world. The scattered mortal populace named these new tyrants darkin, a whispered curse translating roughly in the old tongue as “the fallen.”

But even the darkin could not escape the sickness of soul that had come from fighting against the Void for so long. After centuries of uneasy alliance, they inevitably turned against one another—and so began the Great Darkin War.

This conflict spread from Shurima to Valoran, and beyond. The renegade god-warriors and the armies they raised were unstoppable, and entire nations were crushed between them. It seemed as though this would be the end of all things… until, unexpectedly, the mages of Runeterra learned how to contain the remaining darkin. Through secrecy and cunning artifice, the physical forms of the Ascended could be merged with the celestial power in their hearts, and all of it bound within the weapons they bore. With their leaders imprisoned forever, the rampaging hordes were broken and slain.

These darkin weapons were hidden, many of them carefully guarded by the mortal civilizations that grew in the aftermath—for it was clear that such power could be locked away, but never destroyed.

And, should such power fall into the wrong hands, the darkin will surely rise once more.

Meir follows a crowd of cultists out of the prophet’s tent city, and down into a low valley at the edge of the desert. He is unsure if this was the right decision; beyond the outcropping of rock where tonight’s sermon will be held is a… he’s not sure how to describe it other than hole, descending deep beneath the Shuriman sands and into an emptiness that is both growing and alive.

Throughout the day, these cultists throw livestock into the hole. They throw each other into the hole. Sometimes they throw themselves into the hole.

And, from what Meir is told, the hole responds by growing steadily larger, so more cultists can throw more animals and more people down into it, and it can keep growing, and the awful pattern can repeat itself until the hole is so large that something big falls in. A city, maybe.

“Like Nashramae,” he mutters—though even if the entire state toppled in, ports and all, it would barely graze the sides.

He caught a glimpse of the hole earlier. It’s too big to be real, and yet...

No one knows this is here, thinks Meir, but he’s smart enough to keep this to himself.

He cannot risk these people turning on him, although he uses the word ‘people’ lightly. Some of them have a deep lavender glint behind the eyes that seems to spread over their faces in veiny, twisting patterns, and they mutter constantly about Icathia... or something called the Void.

He cannot go back home. He’s not even sure if his home still exists. Yet he cannot flee anywhere but further south, where the land turns grey and things named after old storybook monsters squirm across the rocks.

Meir must keep running. If he stops, Noxus will find him—and because he struck an officer, they will kill him.

“Have you come to see the prophet?” one man asks him, as the crowds shuffle into an open area similar to a theater stage. His skin shifts sickeningly beneath a tattered cloak. Meir sees some of the man’s teeth moving inside his mouth.

“Yes,” Meir replies, knowing the cultists won’t let him through without hearing one of their sermons.

The man laughs. “You are new! New to the nameless city, like many others. Some seek the prophet. Others seek nothing. It is all the same.” He motions to his face, which glows faintly in the night air. “Do not be worried, my friend. Soon, soon, you will understand. The prophet will show you.”

The evening stars, black and yawning and somehow closer than before, wink ominously above the crowd’s makeshift lanterns. Beyond this light there is the desert. Beyond that is the hole.

And on the other side of the hole? Freedom. Meir can almost taste it.

Shurima is being swallowed up from three sides: in the north, Noxus spreads along the coast like a cancer, claiming everything from vast city-states to farming settlements of a dozen souls. In the ancient capital, the long-dead, now supposedly-living-again Emperor Azir is said to prepare for an inevitable war. And in the southeast... well…

This is the southeast. These people are eating it.

There has to be something beyond the hole. Down along the grey, lifeless coast, at the southernmost tip of the Icathian peninsula. A smuggler’s port, or maybe a stopoff for fishing ships from Bilgewater? Meir could catch a boat, start over again in the Serpent Isles, and then—

“Stop thinking,” threatens the broken-faced man. Meir looks up and sees a dozen pairs of shattered, glowing eyes looking back at him. “Your thoughts are loud. Be silent.”

The man points to the outcropping, now the pulpit of an emaciated figure.

“Malzahar has come.”

The prophet is covered in scarves and cloaks crudely marked with the symbols of old Icathia. His feet are bare; his hands seemingly frozen in a rigormortis grip, as though he were trying to fend off some kind of monstrous creature. His face is obscured by a long violet wrap, and his head...

Meir feels something like a drill being driven into his brain. He had looked for maybe a half-second into the prophet’s face, and seen within his forehead something... shifting? No, that can’t be right. Malzahar's entire skull was thin, fleshy webbing, with something... horrible inside. A light within a light, pulsating outward. Spreading. Hungry.

“My children,” says Malzahar, though his voice is not a voice at all. It’s a projection inside of Meir’s thoughts, an extension of the prophet's un-light that is slick, glistening, and wrong.

Meir has to get out of here, but he can’t run. The cultists are packed in too tightly, and he’d never make it around the great hole before they caught him, and tossed him down.

“Tonight is a night of confession.”

Now it’s too late. Malzahar sees Meir; Meir is not sure how, but amid the crowd of hundreds the prophet’s gaze rips through him, holding his body in place. Meir cannot even let out a whimper.

“Ah, a newcomer,” says Malzahar. “Then let this be your awakening.”

There are flashes within Meir’s mind. An enormous shape, looming behind the prophet and filling the entire night sky. Buildings... or something like buildings, but inverted and crooked beneath a vast, unnatural ocean. Thousands of voracious creatures swimming in schools so large they block even the dappled light from the not-sun, creating their own currents in the not-water.

And... a name...

A name that dances across the grooves of his brain like an acrobat, elusive but on the edge of realization.

“Believers,” Malzahar continues. “I have always told you that the end is certain. The Void will come, and wash away the world and all its miseries. And with it, each and every one of you.”

Meir’s mind is ripping itself apart. Thoughts snap in and out so quickly he can barely track what he’s experiencing. Wings. Spiders the size of wolves. A figure floating beneath Shurima, a confrontation. He sees Noxus consumed by an impossible wave of creatures, the Immortal Bastion cracking grotesquely before falling into their mass. Ice breaking, things tumbling upwards and out.

He sees Malzahar again, shadowed by a shape too large, why is it so large, why is she—

...She?

“But we are all changed by our experiences, are we not? I watched my parents die in Amakra. Waste away to illness. Yet they are not gone. Their memories serve a purpose, and the imprint they left on me made me what I am, and what I am made you.”

The shape looms larger. It’s not physical, no, but Meir’s mind holds desperately onto anything it can, something to anchor itself and escape the prophet’s suffocating weight.

“The Void has tasted these memories. And it wants more.”

The cultists throw their arms upwards, and the stars wink closer than ever before. Meir must hold on. Freedom is just beyond the chasm, he tries to think.

But the words drain from his mind.

Before him, before them all, is Malzahar. There is nothing else.

“The Void has embraced a new form. A new... possibility. I once saw the world end in the absence of light and darkness, the totality of nothing. And that was wrong. So tonight, to you, to all my children, I confess—the Void has spoken. And now, beneath her sea of lavender, she wants. You, your memories, your experiences, existence. She wants everything.”

Meir only begins to run when the ground gives way under his feet. The chasm’s sudden expansion swallows them all—the tent city, the cultists, everything—as Malzahar floats above, watching them all pour down into the throbbing, animated nothing.

“And,” the prophet concludes, “she will have it.”

Some of the cultists freeze midair, darkly luminous corals bursting from their skin before they are sucked into the undulating walls of the hole. More are torn limb from limb by fast moving schools of strange, iridescent fish. Others loose a scream before vanishing completely, as though suddenly erased.

Meir’s memories, like the stars above, wink out one by one as he falls faster and faster. The Noxian invasion, his hand striking an officer, his family, his friends, his childhood, his dreams. He drifts down beneath the lavender sea, past strange, inverted buildings jutting awkwardly from the light-dappled nothingness beyond the Void’s hideous living sky, and he catches a glimpse of something massive on the verge of being born.

As his memories fade, the shape seems to move, responding to this new source of sustenance—growing stronger as Meir, the cultists, the animals, the tents, as they all fade away, erased utterly from the gentle shores of reality, repurposed into something terrible and new.

A man once named Meir closes his eyes, emptied of all things.

He touches the bottom of the Void.

And then he is gone.