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Ryze was just a young apprentice when he first learned of the arcane powers that had shaped the world.

His master, a sorcerer named Tyrus of Helia, was a member of an ancient order whose mission had been to gather and protect the most dangerous artifacts in Runeterra. Ryze overheard Tyrus speaking in hushed tones with another mage, discussing something called “World Runes.” When Tyrus noticed his apprentice, he abruptly ended the conversation, tightly clutching the scroll that never left his side.

In spite of the order’s best efforts, knowledge of the Runes began to spread—few could even begin to understand their importance, or the sheer power held within them, and yet all saw them as weapons that could be turned against their rivals. Ryze and Tyrus traveled between the various peoples of Valoran, trying to quell paranoia and encourage restraint. But over time, their missions became increasingly precarious, and Ryze could sense his master’s growing desperation. Finally, in the Noxii territories where Ryze was born, the first cataclysmic blow was struck in what would eventually be known as the Rune Wars.

Two nations were pitted against one another, and tensions were running high. Tyrus pleaded with their leaders in parley at the village of Khom, but he saw this conflict had already escalated beyond his ability to mediate. Fleeing into the hills, he and Ryze bore horrified witness to the destructive power of the World Runes firsthand.

The earth fell away beneath them, the bedrock itself seeming to retch and squeal, while the sky above them recoiled as if mortally wounded. They looked back upon the valley where the rival armies had stood, and beheld insanity—destruction on a scale so massive that it defied all physical sense. The buildings, the people, all were gone, and the ocean, once a day’s journey to the east, now rushed to meet them.

Ryze fell to his knees and stared into the great hole torn in the world. Nothing remained. Not even the village he once called home.

Open warfare soon raged across Runeterra. Ryze felt compelled to join the conflict, to pick a side and lend his magical strength to the cause, but Tyrus stayed his hand. The two of them had to guide others back toward peace, and pray there was anything left of the world by the time it was all over.

Wherever they met those who held the World Runes, Tyrus pleaded for restraint. Many were deeply sobered by the threat of total annihilation—indeed, those who had already suffered most bitterly in the war might have agreed to turn over their Runes to him, and yet none of them wished to be the first to do so.

As time passed and the conflict spread, Ryze noticed his master growing more distant. While Tyrus attended clandestine meetings with great leaders and archmages, he sent his apprentice on errands that seemed of little importance, often for many weeks at a time. Eventually, Ryze decided to confront him and, to his horror, discovered that Tyrus of Helia had secretly come into possession of not one Rune, but two.

Bitter and angry, the older mage insisted that common mortals were like reckless children, toying with powers they did not understand. He would no longer play diplomat to ignorant power-mongers. He had to stop them. Ryze tried to reason with Tyrus, but it was no use—before him stood a flawed man, susceptible to the same temptations as those he decried. The allure of the Runes had left its mark upon him. Where once he desired only peace, now he had the means to bring about the end of all things. Ryze had to act, even if it meant destroying his only true friend and ally in the world.

In an instant, he unleashed all the magic he could muster. A moment later, Tyrus’s corpse lay smoldering on the floor.

Ryze trembled as his mind struggled to process what he had done. If these deadly artifacts could corrupt a mage with the strength and integrity of Tyrus, how was Ryze to handle them? At the same time, he knew he could not entrust them to any other living soul...

Soon, the greatest civilizations all but destroyed one another, ending the war. Ryze now understood the task he had inherited—as long as any World Rune remained unsecured, Runeterra was surely doomed. This knowledge was to become a lonely burden indeed, for ever since that day he has scoured the world in search of the last remaining Runes. He continues to reject the promise of power within each one, choosing instead to bind them in secret locations, far from prying and greedy eyes.

Even with his life abnormally prolonged by the magic he is exposed to, Ryze cannot afford to rest, for rumors of the World Runes have begun to emerge once more, and the peoples of Runeterra seem to have forgotten the price of wielding them.

“I can’t do it.”

The words thickened Kegan’s tongue, and almost crashed against the cage of his teeth, but he forced them past his lips.

“Master. I can’t do it.”

Defeat gave him a chance to catch his breath. Who knew failure could be so exhausting? In that moment, he looked for sympathy in the older man’s eyes—to his disgust, he saw it right there, as bare as the cloudless sky.

When Kegan’s master spoke, it was with the lilting flow of faraway lands. His was an accent rarely carried by these northern winds. “It is not a matter of whether you can,” he said. “Only that you must.”

The older man clicked his fingers. With a purple flash, the bundle of deadwood flared to life; a campfire born in a single moment of willpower.

Kegan turned from the fire and spat into the snow. They were words he’d heard before, and they were as useless now as they always were.

“You make it seem so easy.”

His master shrugged, as if even that half-hearted accusation needed a moment’s thought before replying. “It is simple, perhaps. Not easy. The two aren’t always the same thing.”

“But there has to be another way…” Kegan muttered, unconsciously touching his fingertips to the burn-scars blighting his cheek. Even as he said it, he found himself believing it. It had to be true. It wouldn’t always be like this. It couldn’t always be like this.

“Why?” His master looked at him with unconcealed curiosity in the light of his eyes. “Why must there be another way? Because you continue to fail at this one?”

Kegan grunted. “Answering questions with questions is a coward’s way of speaking.”

His master raised one dark eyebrow. “And there it is. The wisdom of a barbarian who cannot yet read, or count past the number of fingers on his hands.”

The tension faded as the two of them shared a grim smile. They warmed broth, sipping it from ivory cups as their campfire cast them in a flickering amber glow. Above them—above the tundra for hundreds of miles around—the sky rippled with light.

Kegan watched the heavens’ familiar performance, the gauzy radiance caressing the moon and the stars that cradled it. For all that he loathed this land, there was beauty here in abundance, if a man knew where to look.

Sometimes that was as simple as looking up.

“The spirits dance wildly tonight,” he said.

His master tilted his unnatural gaze skyward. “The aurora? That is not the work of spirits—only the action of solar winds on the upper reaches of…”

Kegan stared at him.

His master trailed off, and awkwardly cleared his throat. “Never mind.”

Silence returned to haunt them. Kegan drew the knife from his belt, setting to work on a sliver of unburnt wood. He carved with easy strokes. Hands that had set fires and ended lives now turned to a far more peaceful purpose.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the sorcerer was watching him.

“I want you to breathe in,” the older man said.

The blade still scraped over the bark. “I’m breathing now. I’m always breathing.”

“Please,” his master said, with an edge of impatience, “do not be so obtuse.”

“So what?”

“Obtuse. It means… Well, never mind what it means. I want you to breathe in, and hold it as long as you can.”

“Why?”

His master exhaled something like a sigh.

“Fine,” Kegan agreed, tossing the branch into the fire and sheathing his bone-handled knife once more. “Fine, fine, fine.”

He took a deep breath, swelling the muscles of his chest and shoulders. Silenced as he held his breath, he looked to his master for whatever would come next.

“You do not create the air you breathe,” the sorcerer said. “You draw it inside you, letting it sustain you. You use it as your body requires, and then release it as you exhale. It is never yours. You are just a vessel for it. You breathe in, you breathe out. You are a channel through which air flows.”

Kegan made to release his breath, though his master shook his head.

“No. Not yet. Feel the air in your lungs, Kegan. Feel it pushing at the cage of your body. Feel it straining to escape.”

The young barbarian’s features were flushing red. His eyes asked the question his mouth could not.

“No,” the sorcerer answered. He gestured to Kegan with a discoloured hand. “Keep holding.”

When Kegan’s endurance finally gave out, defiance took over, buying him more time. When even his defiance began to ebb with the pain of his quivering chest, naked stubbornness took control. He glared daggers at his master, trembling with the effort, knowing this was surely a test—knowing he had to prove something, without knowing just what it might be.

Greyness misted the edge of his vision. His pulse was rhythmic thunder in his ears. All the while his master looked on, saying nothing.

Finally, his breath burst back into the chill evening air, and Kegan sagged, gasping, as he recovered. He was a wolf in that moment, a wild animal baring his teeth at the world around him, offering a threat to any that might attack in his moment of weakness.

His master watched this, too.

“I was beginning to wonder if you would actually let yourself pass out,” he murmured.

Kegan grinned, and pounded a fist against his chest, wordlessly proud of how long he’d held out.

“Therein lies the problem,” his master observed, reading his posture. “I told you the air was not yours, yet you are thrilled with yourself for how long you kept it inside you. It is the same with magic. You want it, believing it can be owned. You cling to it, forgetting that you are merely a channel through which it passes. You choke it in your heart, and in your hands. And so the magic is strangled in your grip, because you see it as something to bind to your will. It is not, and never will be. It is like air. You must draw in what exists around you, use it for a moment, then let it free.”

The two of them—student and master, barbarian and sorcerer—fell silent again. The wind howled through the canyons to the south, bringing a keening cry on the breeze.

Kegan eyed the older man suspiciously. “So… why didn’t you just say all that? Why make me hold my breath?”

“I have said all of that before. Several dozen times, in several dozen ways. I hoped a practical element to the lesson might aid your comprehension.”

Kegan snorted, then glared into the fire.

“Master. Something’s been preying on my mind of late.”

The sorcerer chuckled to himself and patted the rolled, bound parchment leashed to his back. “No, Kegan. I am not letting you read this.”

The young tribesman grinned, though his stare was devoid of mirth. “That’s not what I wanted to ask,” he said. “What if I’m not a bad student? What if you’re just a bad teacher?”

His master stared into the flames, his weary eyes reflecting the dancing firelight.

“Sometimes I wonder that myself,” he replied.

“You said something the other day,” the barbarian said as he drew alongside his master. “Something that sounded like a lie.”

The sorcerer turned slightly, his features shadowed by his hood. “I am many things,” said the older man, “and not all of them are virtuous. But I am not a liar.”

Kegan grunted what may or may not have been an apology. “Perhaps not a lie, then. More like… a fable.”

The sorcerer was watching him as they walked. “Go on.”

“That place. That empire. The kingdom you said was destroyed lifetimes ago.”

“Shurima? What of it?”

“You said it lay in a land never touched by frost, or rimed by ice.” Kegan grinned as if sharing a joke. “I’m not as gullible as you believe I am, master.”

The sorcerer found himself dragged out of his bleakness by the barbarian’s curiosity. He switched the burden of his backpack to his other shoulder, unable to hide a small smile.

“That was no lie.” He stopped walking, turning to point southward. “Far, far to the south, many hundreds of days’ walk, and across another ocean, there lies a land where…”

How does one explain the desert to a man that knows only winter? he thought. How does one explain sand to a man that knows nothing but ice?

“…a land where the earth is hot dust, and where snow is utterly unknown. The sun beats down without mercy. Even rain is rare. The ground thirsts for it, day after day.”

Kegan was staring at him again. He had that look in his pale eyes, the one that said he didn’t dare trust what was being told, in case it was some trick to make him look foolish. The sorcerer had seen that look in the eyes of many, in his time—lonely children and fragile adults alike.

“A place that has never felt Anivia’s touch,” Kegan murmured. “But is the world really that large, that a man can walk for so long and still not see its end?”

“It is the truth. There are whole lands elsewhere in the world that are not frozen. In time, you will learn that there are few places as cold as the Freljord.”

The conversation was stilted for the rest of the day’s journey, and when they made camp, there seemed little more to say. Even so, the young barbarian persevered. He looked across the campfire, to where his master sat cross-legged in sullen introspection.

“Shouldn’t you be teaching me something?”

The sorcerer raised an eyebrow. “Should I?”

He always had a look about him that suggested his apprentice was interrupting him just by being alive. They’d been together for a few weeks now. Kegan was growing used to it. The youth dragged his hands through dirty hair, brushing his mother’s ivory trinkets from his face. He muttered something that would, with imagination, pass for an agreement.

When the sorcerer still refused to answer, he pressed harder.

“So, will we get to... wherever it is we’re going, today?”

His master regarded him carefully. “No. We will not reach our destination for several weeks.”

The sorcerer did not seem to be jesting.

“And I have given more thought to the difficulties you suffer in controlling your gifts,” he added, flatly.

Kegan wasn’t sure what to say. Sometimes silence was the only way to avoid looking ignorant or impatient, so he tried that. It seemed to work, for the sorcerer continued.

“You have some talent, true enough. The ability is in your blood. Now you must stop perceiving magic as an adversarial, external force. It need not be harnessed, merely… nudged. I have watched you. When you reach out to wield it, you seek to fashion it to your will. You want control.”

Kegan was getting frustrated now. “But that’s how magic works. That’s what my mother always did. She wanted it to do something, so she made it happen.”

The sorcerer suppressed a wince of irritation. “You don’t need to make magic happen. Magic exists in the world. The raw stuff of creation is all around us. You do not need to clutch it, and bend it to your needs. You can just… encourage it. Direct it along the path you would prefer it to take.”

As he spoke, he moved his hands as if shaping a ball of clay. A faint chime sounded in the empty air, holding to its eternal, perfect note. Misty energies snaked between his fingers, binding to one another in slow lashes. Several of them tendriled out from the sphere to curl around his discolored hands, seething and darkly organic.

“There will always be those that study magic with rigid intent, mapping the ways one can exert their will on the primal forces. And, clumsy as it is, it will work. Slowly, and with limited results. But you don’t need to behave so crudely, Kegan. I am not shaping these energies into a sphere. I’m merely encouraging them to form one. Do you understand?”

“I see,” Kegan admitted, “but that’s not the same as understanding.”

The sorcerer nodded, sharing a small smile. Evidently his apprentice had finally uttered something worthwhile.

“Some men and women, souls of iron discipline or limited imagination, will codify the magical energy that flows between realms. They will manipulate it, and bind it, however they are able. They are looking at sunlight through a crack in the wall, marveling at how it bleeds into their dark chambers. Instead, they could just go outside, and marvel in the blinding light of day.” He sighed pointedly. “Your mother was one such mage, Kegan. Through repetitive ritual and traditional concoctions, she dabbled in minor magics. But all she was doing—all any of them can do with their rituals and talismans and spell books—is create a barrier between themselves and the purer forces at play.”

Kegan watched the sphere ripple and revolve, not bound within the sorcerer’s touch at all; constantly overlapping it, or threatening to roll free.

“Here is the secret, young barbarian.”

Their eyes met in that moment; pale and human, reflected against shimmering and… whatever his master really was.

“I’m listening,” Kegan said, softer than he intended. He’d not wanted to appear ignorant and awed, especially since he knew he was both.

“Magic wants to be used,” said the sorcerer. “It is all around us, emanating from the first fragments of creation. It wants to be wielded. And that is the true challenge on the path we both walk. When you realize what the magic wants, how eager it is… Well, then the difficulty isn’t how to begin wielding it. It’s knowing when to stop.”

The sorcerer opened his hands, gently nudging the sphere of cascading forces towards his apprentice. The barbarian cautiously reached out to welcome it, only for it to burst the moment his fingers grazed its surface. The trails of mist thinned and faded away. The ringing chime grew fainter, then altogether silent.

“You will learn,” the sorcerer promised. “Patience and humility are the hardest lessons, but they are all you will ever need.”

Kegan nodded, though not at once, and not without a sliver of doubt.

The sorcerer didn’t sleep that night. He lay awake, wrapped in a crude blanket of furs, staring up at the aurora undulating across the night sky. On the other side of the banked fire, the barbarian snored.

Doubtlessly dreaming the dreams of the unburdened, thought the sorcerer.

No. That was unfair. Kegan was a brute, yes, but he was a youth roughly hewn from a land of endless hardship. The Freljord bred souls whose instinct was forever focused on survival above all else. Beasts with iron hides and spear-length fangs stalked the wilds. Raiders from rival villages shed blood all along the icy coasts. Their winter had lasted a hundred lifetimes. These people grew in a land where writing and artistry were luxuries; where the reading of books was an unimaginable myth, and lore was told and retold down the generations in whispered stories by weary elders and tribal shamans.

And Kegan, for all his blunt stubbornness, was far from unburdened.

Is it a mistake, bringing him with me? Was this a moment of mercy, or a moment of weakness?

There seemed no answer to that.

I could have left him. As soon as the thought occurred, the rest of it rose unbidden, treacherously swift. And he would not be the first I had abandoned...

The sorcerer looked through the haze of heat that shimmered above the faded fire, and watched the barbarian sleep. The young man’s lip twitched, with an answering flicker of his fingers.

“I should wonder what you dream of, Kegan Rodhe,” the sorcerer whispered. “What ghosts of fading memory reach out to reclaim you?

Night after night, in his dreams, Kegan walked the paths of his past. Before meeting the sorcerer, he had been an exile, wandering the frozen wastes alone, warmed only by his brash refusal to die.

And before that? A brawler. A failed shaman. A son to a distant mother.

He was still young by any standard beyond that of the Freljord, with scarcely the chill of nineteen winters in his bones. He had lived hard, by his wits and the edge of his blade, winning a cut of renown and more than his fair share of indignity.

Night after night, in his dreams, he was a ragged wanderer lost in the howling white storm once more, slowly freezing to death in the snow. He was a healer, scrabbling over loose rocks in the rain, seeking the flashes of color that betrayed rare herbs amid the undergrowth. He was a boy crouched in his mother’s cave, in that place that was a sanctuary from the world but never from her gaze, laden with misgivings.

And night after night, in his dreams, Rygann’s Reach burned again.

He was seven years old when he learned the truth of his blood. His mother crouched before him, turning his face in her hands and looking over the scrapes and bruises marking his skin. He felt an uneasy flicker of surprise, for she rarely touched him.

“Who did this to you?” she asked, and as he was drawing breath to answer her, she spoke over him with words he was far more used to hearing. “What did you do? What did you do wrong, to earn this punishment?”

She moved away before he could reply.

He trembled in the wake of her touch on his skin, unused to the contact, fearing and cherishing that moment of awkward closeness. “Just wrestling, mother. In the village all the boys wrestle. And the girls too.”

She regarded him with a skeptical eye. “You didn’t get those marks from wrestling, Kegan,” she muttered. “I’m not a fool.”

“There was a fight after the wrestling.” He wiped his nose on his ragged sleeve, smearing away a half-dried scab. “Some of the other boys didn’t like me winning. They got angry.”

His mother was a thin woman—frail in a land that devoured the weak. She was old before her time, a victim of unspoken sorrows and the isolation brought about by her talents. Even at seven, Kegan knew all of this.

He was a perceptive child. This was the advantage of having a mage for a mother.

As he looked up at her, framed as she was by the mouth of the cave they called home, he saw a softness in her eyes that was as unfamiliar as the touch on his face had been a moment before. He thought she might sink back to her knees before him and draw him into an embrace, and the thought terrified him as much as he yearned for it.

Instead, her dark eyes frosted over.

“What have I told you about upsetting the other children? You’ll just make our lives even harder if the village hates you, Kegan.”

“But they started it.”

She stopped, half-turned, and looked back down at him. Her expression was as dark and cold as her eyes. The younger gaze lifted to meet hers was pale green, like she so often told him his father’s had been.

“And you started it all the other times. Your temper, Kegan…”

“No, I didn’t,” the boy lied. “Not every time, at least.”

His mother moved further back into the cave, crouching by the firepit, stirring the watery broth of boiled elnük fat that would serve as their dinner for the next three nights. “There’s magic in our blood. In our bones. In our breath. We have to be careful, in ways other people don’t.”

“But—”

“You shouldn’t cause trouble in the village. We already live here on their sufferance. Old Rygann has been good to us, letting us stay here.”

Instinct moved Kegan’s mouth before he had time to think. “We live in a cave in the rocks, far from the village,” he said. “You should stop healing them if they’re so bad to us. We should leave.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Kegan. I heal because I have the power to do it, and we stay because we have to stay.” She nodded to the hillside where the trees were blackened by the night, and silvered by the moon. “We’d die out there, where the woods become ice and snow, all the way to the world’s end. Let them say whatever they want to say. Don’t stir up trouble. Don’t stir up the magic in your blood.”

But the boy stood still at the rim of the cave. “If they say bad things about me, or they fight me… I’ll fight back. I’m not a coward like you.”

This night would become a memory branded forever into his mind because of what came next. For the first time, he didn’t bow his head and promise to obey her. Instead, he clenched his little fists, and narrowed his eyes.

In the silence that stretched between mother and son, he expected a slap—one of her forceless cracks against his cheek that would somehow sting for about an hour afterwards—or maybe yet more weeping. His mother cried a lot, quiet and alone, long into the night when she thought he was asleep.

But this time, there was something new in her eyes. Something fearful.

“You are your father’s son.” The words were calm and measured, and somehow all the worse for it. “His eyes, always looking at me. His crime, always there to remind me. And now his words, his spite, thrown in my face.”

The boy gazed up at her in awed, childish fury. “Is that why you hate me?”

She hesitated before answering, and that meant more than any answer ever could. It was that hesitation he never forgot, even years later, long after her skinny bones were naught but ash and dust on a cooling funeral pyre.

He was thirteen when he first saw Zvanna. She came to Rygann’s Reach with two dozen others, the survivors of a nomadic clan that had dwindled in the wilds over the course of a generation. Rather than take to raiding like so many others, they settled in the Reach, bringing fresh blood, skills, and spears to the people of the prosperous fishing village.

Kegan met her one day in the half-light of the setting sun. He was picking heather and herbs in the southern hills, stripping the stems of thorns before stuffing them into his stag-hide satchel. It was a slow task when done right, and Kegan’s fingers were pin-pricked in a hundred places from his haste.

At one point he looked up, and there she was.

He stopped working. He rose to his feet, brushing dirt from his sore hands, with no idea how curiosity and surprise looked like suspicion on his otherwise fine features. You would be handsome, his mother had once said, if you could stop glaring at the world as if you want to avenge yourself upon it.

“Who are you?” he asked.

She flinched at the question, and even to his own ears he sounded abrupt.

“I mean, you’re one of the newcomers. I know that. What’s your name? What are you doing out here? Are you lost?”

The questions rained on the girl like flung stones. She was older than him, though by no more than a year or two. Willowy, wide-eyed, practically drowning in her heavy furs, she stared back at him as she spoke. She had the voice of a mouse.

“Are you the healer’s boy?”

He smiled, showing all teeth and no humour. For the first time in years, he felt the ache of knowing that they talked ill of him in the village. Here was someone new to his world, and it was someone who had already heard a hundred dark things about him.

“Kegan,” he replied. He swallowed, and sought to soften his words. “Yes, I’m the healer’s boy,” he added with a nod. “Who are you?”

“Zvanna. Can you come? My father is sick.”

Kegan’s heart sank. He found himself pitching his voice lower, as if she were a grazing beast he didn’t want to frighten away.

“I’m not a healer. Not like my mother.” The confession was like having a tooth pulled. “I just help her.”

“She’s on her way to the village,” the girl said. “She told me to find you. You have the herbs she needs.”

Kegan cursed as he buckled his bag into place. He started towards her, moving lightly over the dark earth and scree. “I’ll come now. Who’s your father? What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s a sailmaker,” Zvanna replied, leading the way back to the Reach. “He can’t eat or drink. His stomach hurts.”

“My mother will know what to do.” Kegan spoke in the tones of absolute confidence as he followed her across the hillside, descending towards the village. Inwardly, he felt a stab every time she glanced back at him, and he wondered just what she’d heard from the other children of the village.

He didn’t have to wonder for long. She spoke gently, without judgement.

“Old Rygann said you’re a raider’s son. A reaver-bastard.”

Gloom was taking hold around them with the setting of the sun. Kegan showed no emotion at all. “Old Rygann said the truth.”

“Does that really make you bad luck? Like the legends say?”

“Depends which legends you believe…” Kegan considered that a cunning enough answer, but she twisted it back at him a moment later.

“Which legends do you believe?” she asked, looking over her shoulder. He met her eyes in the twilight, and felt the force of her gentle gaze like an axe to the gut.

None of them, he thought. They’re all fears held by foolish men and women, afraid of true magic.

“I don’t know,” he said.

She had no response for that. She did, however, have another question.

“If your mother is a healer, why aren’t you?”

Because the magic doesn’t work for me, he almost said aloud, but thought better of it. “Because I want to be a warrior.”

Zvanna kept ahead of him, her tread light across the icy rocks. “But there are no warriors here. Only hunters.”

“Well. I want to be a warrior.”

“People need healers more than warriors,” she pointed out.

“Oh?” Kegan spat into the undergrowth. “Then why do shamans have no friends?”

He knew the answer to that. He’d heard it enough. People are frightened of me, his mother always said.

But Zvanna had a different answer.

“If you help my father, I’ll be your friend.”

He was sixteen when he broke Erach’s jaw. Sixteen, and already possessing a man’s size and muscle. Sixteen, and all too familiar when it came to proving a point with his fists. His mother warned him about it, time and again, and now Zvanna did the same.

“Your temper, Kegan…” she would say, in the same tone as his mother.

In his sixteenth year, the solstice celebration was a riotous affair, a louder and brighter celebration than usual with the arrival of a merchant caravan and three string musicians from Valar’s Hollow, far to the south-west. Oathings were made by the shore, and promises of eternal love spoken ardently, foolishly, and frequently. Young warriors fire-danced to impress the unwed locals watching from the sides. Hearts were broken and mended, grudges forged and settled. Fights broke out over betrothals, over property, over matters of honour. The abundance of drink only added to the atmosphere of revelry.

Many were the regrets that came with the pale, winter’s dawn, when the clarity of the unmelting snows returned through fading hangovers.

But the fight between Kegan and Erach was like no other.

Bathed in sweat from the fire-dance, Kegan looked for Zvanna by the shoreline. Had she seen him perform? Had she watched him leave the other young men of the village panting, unable to keep up with his wild leaps?

His mother was a stick-thin wraith in her sealskin cloak. Her hair was ragged, with the trinkets and talismans of bone tied into the unwashed strands resting against her cheeks. She gripped his wrist. The solstice was one of the few nights their presence was tolerated in the village, and his mother had made the journey with him.

“Where’s Zvanna?” he asked her.

“Kegan,” she warned him as she held his wrist. “I want you to be calm.”

The heat of the flames and the sweat on his skin no longer existed. His blood was frost. His bones were ice.

“Where’s Zvanna?” he asked again, this time in a growl.

His mother started to explain, but he didn’t need her to. Somehow, he knew. Perhaps it was nothing more than a flash of intuition through his dawning temper. Or perhaps it was—as the sorcerer would later say—a flicker of insight from his latent magical gifts.

Whatever the truth, he shoved his mother aside. He went down to the waves where young couples stood with their families, garlanded by winter flowers, swearing oaths to stay loyal and loving for the rest of their lives.

Murmurs started up as he drew near. He ignored them. They became objections as he forced his way through the crowd, and he ignored those, too.

He wasn’t too late. That was what mattered. There was still time.

“Zvanna!”

All eyes turned to him, though hers was the only gaze that mattered. He saw the joy die in her eyes as she recognised the look upon his face. The crown of white winter blossoms was at odds with her black hair. He wanted to rip it from her head.

The young man at her side moved protectively in front of her, but she eased him aside to confront Kegan herself.

“Don’t do this, Kegan. My father arranged it. I could have refused, if I wanted to. Please don’t do this. Not now.”

“But you’re mine.”

He reached for her hand. She wasn’t fast enough to draw away—that, or she knew it would spark him further if she tried.

“I’m not yours,” she said softly. They stood in the center of the crowd, as if they were the ones about to be bound together in the sight of the gods. “I’m not anyone’s. But I’m accepting Malvir’s pledge.”

Kegan could have dealt with it, if that was all it had been. The embarrassment meant nothing to him, for what was a fleeting, adolescent humiliation to one that had endured nothing but shame for most of his life? He could’ve walked away right then, or even—against every desire and prayer—stayed in the crowd and lied his way through the laughter and the cheers and the blessings.

He would’ve done that for her. Not easily, no, but willingly. Anything for Zvanna.

He was already releasing her, readying a false smile and drawing breath to apologise, when the hand slammed down on his shoulder.

“Leave her alone, boy.”

Old Rygann’s voice, cracked with age, cut through the silence. This was a man, the founder of the settlement, who looked like he’d been old when the world was still young. He was at least seventy, likely closer to eighty, and though it wasn’t his hand holding Kegan back, he directed the men that surrounded the healer’s son now.

“You get out of here, reaver-bastard, before you bring yet more misfortune down on all of us.”

The hand tried to haul him back, but Kegan stood firm. He was not a boy. He had a man’s strength now.

“Don’t touch me,” he said through clenched teeth. Whatever was on his face caused Zvanna to back away. Other hands joined the first, dragging him away from her, making him stumble.

And, as always, instinct was there to catch him. He turned, he roared, and he swung at the closest of the men hauling him away.

Zvanna’s father went down in a boneless heap, his jaw shattered.

Kegan walked away. Others in the crowd cried out or hurled insults, but none sought to bar his passage, or come after him. There was satisfaction in that. Vindication, even.

He cuffed at the corners of his eyes on the way home, refusing to cry, and unpleasantly soothed by the sweet pain in his throbbing knuckles.

He was nineteen when he burned his mother on her funeral pyre, and spread her ashes along the hillside overlooking Rygann’s Reach the following morning. He knew he would have to have to bear the burden alone, despite all his mother had done for the village. For all that they had feared her, they’d needed her and valued her

And yet here he was, casting her remains to the bitter winds with a prayer to the Seal Sister, alone but for his thoughts.

He imagined them in the village, and if they acknowledged his mother’s death at all it was with a selfish eye to their own suffering. They’d be worried now, with the healer gone. They couldn’t rely on her son to step up, after all. The hereditary chain had been broken when his raiding father had sired him, pouring misfortune into a mage’s blood.

Right now, those people would all be bleating their useless sentiments about his mother, maybe even convincing themselves that a few kind words uttered far too late severed them from the guilt and responsibility of how they had treated her in life. Far more likely, they were quietly celebrating the passing of a shadow from their lives.

Superstitious animals, all of them.

Only three of them came out from the village at all, and they hadn’t made the journey to say their farewells. Zvanna approached him after the lonely ceremony was over—but her son, with the same black hair as his mother, refused to come near Kegan. The boy, now almost three, stayed at his father’s side a short distance away.

“The little one is scared of me,” Kegan observed without rancor.

Zvanna hesitated, just as Kegan’s mother had once hesitated, setting the truth in his mind. “He’s heard stories,” she admitted.

“I’m sure he has.” He tried to keep his tone neutral. “What do you want?”

She kissed his cheek. “I’m sorry for your loss, Kegan. She was a kind soul.”

Kind wasn’t a word he connected with his mother, but now was hardly to the time to argue. “Yes,” he said. “She was. But what did you really come to say? We were friends once. I can tell when you’re holding something back.”

She didn’t smile as she replied. “Old Rygann… He’s going to ask you to leave.”

Kegan scratched his chin. He was too weary that day to feel anything, least of all surprise. He didn’t need to ask why Rygann had come to that decision. There was still one shadow darkening the edge of the settlement. One last shadow that would finally fade away.

“So the bad-omened boy can’t lurk nearby, now his mother’s dead,” he spat onto the ashy earth. “At least she was useful, right? She was the one with the magic.”

“I’m sorry, Kegan.”

For a brief time, together on the hillside, things were just as they had been a few short years ago. She leeched the angry heat from his heart just by being near, and he breathed in the cold air, defying every urge to reach out for her.

“You should go,” he muttered, and nodded towards Malvir and the young boy. “Your family is waiting.”

“Where will you go?” she asked. She drew her furs tighter around herself. “What will you do?”

His mother’s words echoed down the years. We’d die out there, where the woods become ice and snow, all the way to the world’s end...

“I’ll find my father,” he replied.

She looked at him, troubled. He could see the doubt in her eyes, and worse, the fear. The fear that he might be serious.

“You don’t mean that, Kegan. You don’t even know who your father’s people are, or where they hailed from, or… or anything. How would you ever hope to find him?”

“I’ll try, at least.”

Kegan resisted the urge to spit again. Even an impossible ambition sounded better than I don’t know what I’ll do, Zvanna. I’ll probably die alone on the ice.

She was drawing breath to fight him on it, even after all these years of little more than silence, but he hushed her with a shake of his head. “I’ll come see you before I leave. We’ll talk then. I’ll be down in the village tomorrow, for supplies. I’ll need things for my journey.”

Zvanna hesitated again, and he knew. Kegan knew it as if the ancestor-spirits had whispered it to him on the wind.

“Old Rygann has forbidden it,” he sighed. The words weren’t a question, or even a guess. “I’m not allowed down into the Reach. Not even to trade before I go.”

She pressed a small satchel against his chest, and that confirmed it. He could guess what would be in there: dried foodstuffs, and whatever meager provisions her young family could spare. The ferocity of unfamiliar gratitude left him shaking and almost—almost—accepting the gift.

But he handed it back to her.

“I’ll be fine,” he promised her. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

That night, he went into Rygann’s Reach alone.

He carried a week’s worth of supplies in his pack, an ivory spear in his hand, and his hair was woven with his mother’s bone charms. He looked as much a mendicant shaman as she ever had, though he carried himself with a warrior’s bulk, and moved with a hunter’s grace.

Dawn was still three hours distant. Here, in the stillest part of the night, Kegan stalked with exaggerated care, moving between the earthwork huts of the families that had rejected him and his mother for all of his short, harsh life. He felt no malice toward them, not anymore—the old anger was reduced to embers, alive but banked, burning low. If he felt anything more, it was a deep-grained and exhausted sense of pity. They were simple. They were slaves to their misjudgements.

No, his true hatred was reserved for one soul above all others.

Old Rygann’s longhouse sat proudly in the settlement’s heart. Kegan drew near, avoiding the indifferent gazes of the watchmen by staying in the shadows cast by the descending moon. Theirs was a dreary duty, and they treated it with all the informality one would expect. Why should they expect any trouble from the naked tundra, or the bare ocean? No raiders had landed at Rygann’s Reach for a long time, after all.

Kegan ghosted inside.

Old Rygann awoke to find a shadow crouched at the foot of his bed. In the shadow’s pale eyes were slivers of reflected moonlight, and in the shadow’s hands was an ivory knife—a ritual dagger last carried by Krezia Rodhe, the witch that had died only days before. It was a blade that had been used, so it was said, for blood sacrifices.

The shadow smiled, and spoke in a low, feral whisper.

“If you make a single sound without my permission, old man, you die.”

In the light-starved gloom, Rygann could have passed for a hundred years old. His sinuses stung from the reek of lantern oil, and the animal spice of the intruder’s sweat. He nodded in helpless obedience.

The shadow leaned forward, and the reaver-bastard Kegan’s face leered, coldly amused, from the darkness.

“I’m going to tell you something, old man. And you will listen to me, if for no other reason that it lets you live a little longer.”

The dagger, carved from a drüvask tooth, glinted in the half-dark. Kegan rested the tip, carved to a puncturing point, on the man’s saggy throat.

“Nod if you understand.”

Rygann nodded, wisely mute.

“Good.” Kegan kept the knife in place. His eyes were liquid with hatred, his teeth almost trembling with the force of his anger. He was a creature on the edge of savagery, held back only by tattered shreds of humanity.

Rygann swallowed hard, saying nothing. He was shaking himself, for far different reasons.

“You killed my mother,” Kegan growled. “It wasn’t the disease that ate her away from within. It was you. You killed her, day by day, with your mistrust and your ingratitude. You killed her by exiling her to the cold comfort of that cave. You killed her by banishing her on the whims of your stupid superstition.”

The blade rested on the old man’s cheek, ready to saw through the flesh.

“And now you’re killing me,” Kegan added softly. “It wasn’t enough to shame me for the sin of my father’s blood, and curse me for being bad luck. It wasn’t enough to kick a child out of your precious village, over and over, and teach me nothing except how to hate others. Now, while the embers of my mother’s funeral pyre are still warm, you want to damn me to wander the wasteland, to die.”

And then the dagger was gone.

The intruder slipped from the bed, edging back across the room. Kegan’s smile became a grin, scarcely illuminated by the shuttered lantern he held up from the bedchamber’s table.

“That’s all I came to say. I want you to think about those words when I’m gone. I want you to think of the boy you helped to raise by throwing him and his mother out into the cold.”

Rygann didn’t know how to respond, or if the healer’s son even desired a reply. He stayed silent out of a healthy blend of wisdom and fear, breathing in the earthy, oily scent that filled the room.

Kegan unshuttered the lantern, and a sudden amber glow spread across the room. Patches of resinous wetness marked the floorboards, the walls, the shelves, even the bedsheets. The intruder had done his work well—in silence—before waking his prey.

“W-wait,” the old man stammered, breathless with dawning panic. “Wait—”

“No, I have a journey to make,” Kegan said, almost conversationally, “and I should warm my hands before I go. Goodbye, Rygann.”

“Wait! Please!”

But Kegan didn’t wait. He was backing away towards the door, and tossed the lantern like a parting gift. It smashed on the rough floorboards of the bedchamber.

The world ignited, and Kegan laughed even as the flames licked at his own flesh.

Fire is like a living thing, rapacious and ravenous. It has its own hunger, its own whims, and—like fate—its own vile sense of humor. It leapt in caressing licks, as sparks that were carried by the Freljord’s hateful wind, dancing across nearby rooftops. Everywhere that it touched, it bit down and devoured.

Kegan cut north, heading through the forested lowlands, blind to the devastation in his wake. He had more pressing matters than waiting to see if Old Rygann’s hall would burn all the way to the ground. He had the seared ruin of his face to deal with; a screaming, searing wash of pain bathing the left side of his features, soothed only by pressing his flesh into the snowy earth.

Not for the first time, he wondered if there might not be something to all the talk of the ill-fortune in his blood.

By the time he reached high enough ground to turn back and witness the results of his handiwork, the sun was rising above the ocean, and the fire had long since been reduced down to a pall of thick smoke, curling and thinning in the mercy of the morning winds. He held a palmful of ice against his burned cheek, hoping to see Rygann’s hall as a charred, black heart in the center of the village.

What he saw instead stopped his breath. Mute with horror, scarred by carelessness, and staggering in an awkward run, the betrayer made his way back to the scene of his betrayal.

At first, no one marked his return. The survivors wandered among the charred skeletons of their homes, where all they owned was now gone. He was just one more silhouette in the smoky haze, one more scarred face among those that still lived.

He found Zvanna outside the blackened remains of her hut. She’d been laid carefully on the earth with her son and husband, the three of them silent and still beneath the same sooty blanket. Kegan crouched beside them for an unknown time, his skull empty of thought, his body empty of strength. Perhaps he wept. He wasn’t sure—not then, and not after—though he felt the sting of salt upon his wounded cheek.

He could only remember two things for certain, in his time at her side. The first was the sight of the family’s faces when he pulled the sheet back, to be certain it was them. When he had his answer, he covered them again.

The second was resting his ungloved hands on the filthy shroud, pleading for his mother’s old magic to work through him. He achieved no more in that moment than he ever had, when seeking to draw upon his supposed gifts.

They stayed dead. He stayed broken.

Some time later, of course, the others came for him. Kegan stayed on his knees by Zvanna’s side as they threw insults and blame, as they bleated about hexes and sacred misfortune, and cursed the day he’d been born. Kegan let it wash over him. It was nothing against the emptiness in his chest and the acid ache of his face.

The survivors had no idea. They blamed him out of mournful superstition because there was no one else to blame, little knowing the true harm he’d done to them all. They blamed his blood when they should have blamed his deeds.

Kegan left the razed village without looking back. He walked out into the wilderness, just as he had planned, though the anticipated sense of exultation was now nothing but ashes in his mouth.

What followed were the weeks of wandering. Kegan made his way inland, following game spoor and trade-trails, with no destination in mind and no knowledge of what settlements lay where. The only places he knew well were isolated glades and mountainsides with harvestable herbs his mother had used in her medicinal concoctions. Even the closest settlement, Valar’s Hollow, was weeks away, and likely to be the new home of any survivors from Rygann’s Reach. If Kegan found his way there, he doubted the welcome would be warm. Far likelier, it would be fatal.

He hunted when he could, though he lacked a true hunter’s skills. Once he gorged on the half-cooked carcass of a rabbit, only to throw the mess back up hours later when his belly rebelled.

The days bled into weeks, and the weeks into a month, and more, as the skies stayed dark and the weather turned foul. He saw no other tribespeople. He saw no sign of nearby settlements. He spent hours in a snowblind daze, and others in a frost-mad trance. Day after day he encountered nothing but the icy indifference of his homeland—the Freljord cared nothing for whether he lived or died by its howling breath. Nowhere else in the world could teach such a brutal lesson in a man’s insignificance.

Fortune, or perhaps a cruel twist of fate, led him to a cave formed from the same pale rock as his mother’s sanctuary. Emaciated, weakened from exposure, scarred by his own fire, Kegan Rodhe lay down on the cold rock, feeling his skin freeze to the stone. He would lie here and wait for the latest blizzard to die down, or he would lie here and wait to die. Whichever came first.

But on that night, he met the man who would become his teacher. His master.

The figure melted out of the storm in a weary trudge, with his shoulders hunched and head down. His beard was shaggy, and grey not with age but from the bite of the frosty winds. His features were gaunt beneath his hood, and his eyes shimmered with an unnatural iridescence. Strangest of all was the man’s skin, mottled and tattooed—in the storm’s light, with each crash of lightning, the flesh looked as though it were darkening to blue.

Later, by firelight, it was far more clearly paling to violet.

As meetings fated by destiny went, it was too anticlimactic for any bard’s tale, or saga of old. No arcane declarations were made, and no binding pacts were sworn. The newcomer had merely stood at the mouth of the cave, turning a suspicious eye on the human wreckage lying before him.

“What,” the sorcerer muttered, “do we have here?”

Kegan drifted in and out of consciousness, as well as his senses. When he finally managed to summon words, he accused the older man of being a spirit, or an illusion.

In answer, the sorcerer crouched beside him, offering a hand.

Warmth spread through Kegan from his touch, in a rush of tingling… life. It was not the sting of flame, yet the relief it brought was so fierce that it almost broke him.

“I am neither a phantom nor a fiction,” the newcomer had said. “My name is Ryze. And you, dear miserable creature… Who are you?”

Kegan woke well after dawn, thumbing the grit from his eyes. It didn’t surprise him to see that his master was already up, sitting cross-legged and with his eyes closed. He was meditating, the barbarian knew, though he couldn’t understand the point of sitting still for an hour a day. What was it supposed to accomplish? It seemed a strange suspension between sleeping and being awake, to no obvious purpose...

“Good morning,” the sorcerer said, without opening his eyes. “You did not sleep well,” he added. As so often, it was a statement and not a question.

Kegan emptied one nostril into the ashes of the campfire, and grunted. “Why do I feel like you’re watching me, even when your eyes are closed?”

“Because you’re uneasy around others. It makes you doubt their intentions.”

Kegan grunted again. “There’s nothing wrong with a little healthy suspicion.”

Ryze chuckled, remaining motionless in his meditative pose.

Kegan bristled at that. “What’s so funny?”

“I hear myself in your words, sometimes. The way you turn mistrust into a virtue is especially familiar to me. I can’t say I blame you, given all you have endured.”

Kegan stared at him. Can he read my mind? Does he see my dreams...?

The sorcerer made no response. Not even a twitch.

The young barbarian rose, stretching out the night’s soreness with a delicious crackle of sinew. “Nnh. Do you want me to heat the last of the broth, to break our fast?”

“Decent of you, Kegan. Will you gather firewood, or use your gifts?”

The question was loaded, bordering on condescending, and it took no small effort for Kegan to avoid the bait. “Firewood. I’ll try the magic again later.”

Another chuckle. Another maddening chuckle. “As you wish,” Ryze replied.

Kegan took his time finding enough fallen deadwood. His skull was awhirl with echoes of their conversations these last few weeks. Something was nagging at the back of his brain, something that made the healing burn scars itch across his face. It was only when he returned to their makeshift camp, and dumped the armful of broken branches, that he realized what it was.

“Master.”

The sorcerer didn’t move, but the air seemed to change around them both. It became sharper, somehow—maybe a touch cooler, charged with some unseen force.

“Yes?”

Kegan cleared his throat, fighting for the right way to say it. “When you spoke of magic yesterday, you mentioned… You mentioned the stuff of creation.”

Ryze remained motionless, but for his sorcery-darkened lips. “I did, yes. Go on.”

Kegan took a breath, struggling with the immensity of what he wanted to say. “Well. Water comes from rain, ice, and the sea. Fire comes from sparks and tinder, or from lightning striking the forest. And those trees that make up the forest, they come from seeds.”

“All true, to some degree. And surprisingly poetic for this hour of the morning. What is the conclusion of this thesis?”

“This what?”

The older man smiled, not unkindly. “What are you trying to say, Kegan?”

“Just that everything comes from somewhere. Everything has… a birth. A source. Is it the same for magic? Does it have a source in the world?”

Ryze didn’t answer at once. His stillness, to Kegan’s eyes, seemed suddenly a thing of restraint, rather than serenity.

“That is an intelligent question, my friend. There is a purity to your barbaric way of thinking, and I commend you for that line of thought. But it is not a discussion you and I are ready to have.”

The barbarian clenched his teeth, swallowing his temper. Finally he’d asked something worthy of an answer, and his master denied it to him. “But I was thinking… If you controlled the rain, you could make new rivers. If you had a thousand seeds, you could plant a new forest. If you have iron, you can forge an axe. What if you could control the source of magic? You wouldn’t need to guide it or nudge it. You could command it, after all.”

Ryze opened his eyes.

His gaze was colder than any Freljordian wind. There was mercy in those eyes, and admiration, but beneath both of those was a knifing, sickly hint of fear.

You’re afraid, Kegan thought, and his skin crawled at the very idea.

He didn’t know why. He couldn’t guess what it was about his words would inspire that stern, cold dread in his master’s soul. But Kegan knew what fear looked like, in the eyes of others. He’d seen it all his life.

“Not yet,” Ryze murmured. “When you are ready, we will speak of this. But not yet.”

Kegan Rodhe nodded, agreeing without understanding, intrigued by the unease in his master’s stare. Fear was a weakness, after all, and weaknesses had to be faced.

And conquered.

Ryze would have been cold if his body wasn’t simmering with nervous energy. With all that weighed on him that day, the harsh Freljordian elements scarcely seemed to have an effect. Neither was he daunted by the distant howl of a hungry ice troll. He had come to do a job. Not one he relished, but one that had to be done, and one he could no longer avoid.

As he approached the gates, he could hear the rustling of fur cloaks over pine timber as the warriors of the tribe rushed to inspect him. In seconds, their spears were poised atop the gate, ready to kill, should he prove unwelcome.

“I’ve come to see Yago,” said Ryze, pulling back the hood of his cloak just enough to reveal his violet skin. “It’s urgent.”

The stoic faces of the warriors atop the fence flashed with surprise at the sight of the Rune Mage. They climbed down and worked in unison to open the heavy hardwood gates, which seemed to croak apprehensively at the sight of the interloper. This was not a place that saw many visitors, and those it did see usually ended up on pikes as a deterrent to others. Ryze, on the other hand, had a reputation that granted him access to even the most hostile regions of Runeterra—

—For a few minutes, anyway, if no problems arise, he thought.

His face betrayed none of those uncertainties as he walked between the columns of fierce, wind-chapped faces that seemed to judge him, looking for any reason to try him. A young boy, no more than five, gaped at Ryze, bravely leaving his grandmother’s side for a closer look.

“Are you a warlock?” asked the boy.

“Something like that,” replied Ryze, barely glancing at the boy as he continued his stride.

He found the path that led toward the rear of the fortification. To his surprise, the village had hardly changed since he had last seen it, many years before. He made his way to an unmistakable structure of domed crystalline ice, its brilliant azure hue standing out among the dull surroundings of wood and earth.

He was always a wise man. Maybe he’ll cooperate, thought Ryze as he entered the temple, steeling himself for whatever lay in wait.

Inside, an old frost mage was pouring wine into a dish on an altar. He turned to see Ryze approaching, and seemed to judge him silently. Ryze felt his heart sink in dread. After a moment, the man smiled, and embraced Ryze like a long-lost brother.

“You look thin,” said the mage. “You should eat something.”

“You shouldn’t,” replied Ryze, nodding to Yago’s slightly sagging paunch.

The two friends laughed long and easily, as if they had never been apart. Ryze slowly felt his guard begin to drop. There were very few people in the world he would call friend, and it did his soul good to talk to one. He and Yago spent the next hour reminiscing, eating, and catching up. Ryze had forgotten how good it felt to converse with another human being. He could easily stay a fortnight with Yago, drinking wine and sharing tales of triumph and loss.

“What brings you so deep into the Freljord?” asked Yago at last.

The question jolted Ryze back to reality. He quickly recalled the words he’d carefully prepared for this point in the conversation. He told a story of his days in Shurima. He’d gone to investigate a tribe of nomads that had swelled in wealth and land, to the size of a small kingdom, almost overnight. On closer inspection, Ryze found a World Rune in their possession. They resisted, and…

Ryze lowered his tone to suit the silence of the room. He explained that sometimes awful things must be done for the world to remain intact. Sometimes those awful things are better than the horrible cataclysm that would otherwise unfold.

“They must be kept safe,” said Ryze, finally coming to his point. “All of them.”

Yago nodded grimly, and the warmth that had been rekindled between the two friends instantly evaporated.

“You would take it from us, knowing it is all that keeps the trolls away?” asked Yago.

“You knew this would come,” said Ryze, offering no solution. “You’ve known for years.”

“Give us more time. In the spring, we will head south. What chance do we have in winter?”

“You’ve said those words before,” Ryze said coldly.

To his surprise, Yago took him by the hands, making a gentle plea.

“There are many children among us. And three of our women are swollen with child. You would doom us all?” asked Yago desperately.

“How many are in this village?” asked Ryze.

“Ninety-two,” replied Yago.

“And how many are in the world?”

Yago fell silent.

“It can wait no longer. Dark forces gather to take it. It leaves with me today,” Ryze demanded.

“You would use it for yourself,” accused Yago, erupting in a jealous rage.

Ryze looked into Yago’s face to see that it had been transfigured into a scowling visage—that of a fiend, no longer recognizable as the man Ryze once had once known. Ryze started to explain that he had learned long ago not to use the Runes, that doing so would always come with too high a price. But he could tell this madman before him was not one to be reasoned with.

Suddenly, Ryze felt a severe pain, and found himself writhing on the floor, saliva dripping from his mouth. He looked up to see Yago in a casting stance, his fingers crackling with power that no mortal being should possess. Coming to his senses, Ryze rooted the frost mage in place with a ring of arcane power, giving himself just enough time to get to his feet.

Ryze and Yago circled each other, clashing with powers the world had not seen in ages. Yago seared Ryze’s flesh with what felt like the power of twenty suns. Ryze countered with a potent series of arcane bursts. After what seemed like hours, the combined power of their attacks breached the walls of the temple, and brought the thick ice dome crumbling down upon them.

Badly wounded, Ryze dug himself out of the rubble and got to his knees. He saw a blurred image of Yago, battered, and fumbling to open a lockbox that he’d dug out of the debris. Ryze could tell by the lust in his eyes what he was reaching for, and what would surely happen once he had it.

With his magic energy drained, Ryze leapt on the back of his old friend and began to garrote him with the belt from his own robe. He felt nothing; the man who he had loved deeply just minutes ago was now merely a task in need of completion. Yago struggled mightily, his legs flailing, searching for a foothold. Then he fell dead.

Ryze pulled a key from Yago’s necklace and unlocked the box. He removed the World Rune, its otherworldly pulse beating with a warm orange glow. Wrapping the Rune in a scrap of his dead comrade’s robe, he gingerly placed it in his satchel and hobbled out of the temple, breathing a mournful sigh at the loss of another friend.

The Rune Mage limped toward the village gate, past the same wind-chapped faces that had watched him arrive. He looked askance at them, expecting an attack, but the villagers made no move to stop him. These were no longer fierce defenders; these were people who looked stunned to be facing their own end. They looked at Ryze with big, helpless eyes.

“What are we to do?” asked the grandmother, with the young boy still clutching her furs.

“I’d leave,” said Ryze.

He knew if they stayed, the trolls would descend on the village come nightfall, leaving none alive. And outside the village, worse dangers lurked.

“Can’t we come with you?” called the young boy.

Ryze paused. Part of him—a vestige of irrational compassion deep within—screamed, Take them. Protect them. Forget about the rest of the world.

But he knew he couldn’t. Ryze trudged into the deep Freljordian snow, choosing not to look back at the faces of those he was leaving. For these were the faces of the dead, and his business was with those who could still be saved.

Magga was about to die for the fourteenth time. She had bitten into a rotten apple–yet again. Its putrid flesh had, as always, infected her with carrionshade. The actress went through the motions of stumbling to her death while shouting her final words for all to hear.

“Oh, but how wondrous a dream is life? Only now—too late!—do I wake to see its myriad of splendors,” she bemoaned.

With a puff of smoke and glittering powder, Kindred made a grand entrance upon the stage. As per tradition, they were played by one actor, his head covered by two opposing masks. He approached Magga, the white mask of the Lamb facing her.

“Hark! Do I hear a plea for my keenest arrow? Come, child, let the warmth of your heart fade into the cold embrace of oblivion.”

Magga refused, as she had thirteen times before. Any nuance in her performance was buried beneath the ear-splitting delivery of her scream. On cue, Lamb spun around, revealing the second mask–that of the Wolf.

“There is naught ye can do to stave off thine end,” growled Wolf.

“I am but a poor young maiden! Please, let my piteous cry fall on all four of thine ears.”

The audience seemed enraptured by the unfolding dramatics of the Orphellum Mechanicals. With the twin threats of plague and war on the tongues of those in neighboring protectorates, death dramas were all the rage.

Denji, the actor portraying both Lamb and Wolf, descended upon the young actress, awkwardly baring wooden fangs. Magga offered her neck. At the threat of Wolf’s bite, she triggered the device sewn into her blouse’s collar. Ribbons of red fabric unspooled to the delighted pips and yelps of the audience. They’d gotten what they paid for.

By the time the Mechanicals had staggered back to their wagon and set off in the direction of Needlebrook, there were no stars to be seen. Instead, a veil of clouds stretched across the night sky.

Needlebrook always delivered a good audience, Illusian, the company’s owner and sole dramaturg, explained once more. He staggered around, drunk on his own accolades—as well as the wine Parr had grifted from the locals.

The night wore on, and the troupe had descended into bickering. Tria and Denji lambasted their playwright over the quality of his plots, which fell into a predictable structure: tragedy strikes maiden, death finds maiden, death takes maiden. Illusian argued that complicated plots detracted from a good death scene.

Magga, the youngest of the bunch, agreed with Tria and Denji’s diagnosis, but kept her mouth shut. Had she not stowed away in the wandering troupe’s wagon, she would certainly be somewhere far more miserable. Luckily for her, the Mechanicals had recently lost several actors due to Illusian’s insistence on complete artistic control. Because of his attitude—and obvious mediocrity—they were facing a drought of fresh faces. And so, the Orphellum Mechanicals agreed to contract Magga to die in all their dramatics for the foreseeable future. For which she had been grateful.

Illusian was still smarting from Denji and Tria’s words when he motioned to Parr, their wagoner, to stop and make camp. The inebriated auteur set out his bedroll in pride of place next to the wagon. He then threw the rest of the bedding into the long grass nearby.

“Ungrateful players can sleep in the wilds,” Illusian spat, “where they shall hopefully find their manners.”

The rest of the troupe built a fire and swapped stories. Denji and Tria had fallen asleep in each other’s arms while whispering potential names for their unborn child into each other’s ears. They had nattered on about the day the traveling company would stop in Jandelle, a town so perfect and peaceful they would set aside their vagabond ways to raise their child.

Magga moved closer to the crackling fire so its pops and whistles would drown out the irksome affections of her traveling companions.

But sleep never came. Instead, Magga tossed and turned, thinking about the looks on the audience’s faces as the coiled spurts of blood unfurled from her neckline. A pretty maiden struck dead by her own naïveté was all the theatrical pomp Illusian could muster, but the crowd lusted after the gruesome façade.

Eventually, she left her bedroll and set out into the woods to soothe her unsettled mind.

In the dead of night, Magga came upon a low grassy mound with slabs of standing stone at its base. Although she could not read the inscriptions, her fingers traced the familiar etching of Kindred’s twin masks. This was a place of the dead, a burial site built long ago.

She felt a chill on the back of her neck that compelled her to look up. She was not alone. Magga immediately understood what she saw, for she’d encountered a crude impersonation of them night after night. But poor Denji couldn’t begin to instill the dread washing over Magga. Before her, perched on a weathered barrow-archway, was Lamb herself, flanked by her ever-faithful counterpart, Wolf.

“I hear a beating heart!” said Wolf, his black eyes twinkling with delight. “May I have it?”

“Perhaps,” replied Lamb. “I sense she is afraid. Speak, beautiful one. Tell us your name.”

“I-I would have yours first,” stammered Magga, stepping backward. Her slow escape was halted by the speedy Wolf, who materialized unsettlingly close behind her.

He spoke directly in her ear. “We have many names.”

“In the West, I am Ina to his Ani,” said Lamb. “In the East, Farya to his Wolyo. But we are Kindred everywhere. I am always Lamb to Wolf, and he is always Wolf to Lamb.”

Wolf reared up and sniffed at the air.

“She is playing a boring game,” said Wolf. “Let us play a new game, one of chasing and running and biting.”

“She is not playing, dear Wolf,” said the Lamb. “She is frightened and has lost her own name. It hides behind her lips, afraid to come out. Worry not, dear child, I have found your name. We know it as you know us, Magga.”

“P-please,” Magga stammered. “Tonight is not a very good night for—”

Wolf’s great pink tongue lolled out of the side of his mouth, and he proceeded to cackle.

“All nights are good nights for pouncing,” said Wolf, laughing.

“All days are, too,” Lamb said. “With light comes a clear shot.”

“There is no moon tonight!” cried Magga. She used what Illusian had taught her—to gesture grand, so those in the back could see her movements. “It is hidden by a blanket of clouds, tucked away from my eyes and yours. Without the moon, what would be the last thing I would see?”

“We see the moon,” replied Lamb, as she caressed her fabled bow. “It is always there.”

“There are no stars!” said Magga, trying again, this time gesturing smaller and speaking quieter. “No menagerie of twinkling diamonds, glittering in the midnight hue. What more beautiful view could one hope for whence one meets Lamb and Wolf?”

“This Magga-thing is playing a new game,” growled Wolf. “It is called ‘stalling.’”

Wolf stopped moving and cocked his head to the side. He turned his sideways snout toward Magga before speaking. “Can we play ‘Chasing the Magga-Thing and Bite Her to Bits?’?” Wolf clacked his fangs together loudly for effect.

“Let us ask her,” said Lamb. “Magga! Do you prefer Wolf’s chase, or my arrow?”

Magga was trembling now. Her eyes raced to take in every last detail of the world around her. It wasn’t such a bad place to depart. There was grass. There were trees. There was the ancient archway. There was stillness to the air.

“I would prefer Lamb’s arrow,” she said, looking at the rough crusts of bark on the trees. “I’ll imagine myself climbing to the highest boughs, like when I was a child. Only this time, I will never stop climbing. Is that what it is like to go with you?”

“No,” said Lamb, “though it is a nice thought. Fear not, little maiden, we are just having our fun. You have come to us tonight; we have not come for you.”

“I cannot chase Magga-thing,” said Wolf, with a hint of disappointment in his voice. “But there are other things nearby. Other things ripe for the chasing and the biting. Hurry, Lamb. I am hungry.”

“For now, know that your theatrics have pleased us, and we will watch them until the day we meet again.”

Wolf passed over Magga and disappeared into the woods. The shadowy beast snaked away through fields of tall grass. Magga looked back toward the weathered barrow. Lamb was gone.

The actress fled.

When Magga returned to the encampment, she found it in utter ruin. The wagon she had only just begun to call home had been ransacked and reduced to a smoldering husk. Bits of clothing and ruined props lay strewn across the campsite.

She found Denji’s body near where he’d slept. He had died protecting Tria, whose corpse lay behind him. Judging from the trails of blood, their deaths had not been slow. They had dragged themselves toward each other, their fingers entwined in one last caress before death.

Magga noticed that Illusian had managed to kill two of the bandits before being burnt to a crisp along with Parr in the wagon.

The only thing that remained untouched were Denji’s Lamb and Wolf masks. Magga picked them up and held them in her hands. She placed the Lamb mask over her own eyes and heard the voice of Wolf.

“Chase the Magga-thing.”

The maiden ran the distance to Needlebrook, never once looking back.

The Golden Round was filled to the brim with a sea of twinkling eyes, all glittering in excitement at the velvet curtain. The king sat in the theater with the queen and their advisers, all eagerly awaiting the onset of the dramatics. Everyone hushed as the black curtain lifted to reveal the actors.

Magga sat in a quiet dressing room under the stage. She heard the crowd fall silent as she studied herself in the mirror. The luster of youth had faded from her eyes years ago, and left her with a long shock of silver running through her hair.

“Madame!” said the stagehand. “You’re not in costume yet.”

“No, child,” Magga said, “I only dress at the last moment.”

“It is the last moment,” said the young stagehand, holding the two final pieces of Magga’s costume: the same Lamb and Wolf masks from her days with the Orphellum Mechanicals.

“May your performance be blessed tonight,” the stagehand said.

Magga prepared to leave for the stage. She slipped the masks over her head. The old chill from the dark barrow crept down her spine. She welcomed it—as always.

She enthralled the audience as she glided onto the stage, embodying Lamb’s graceful movements. She thrilled the crowd with her rendition of Wolf’s playful savagery. She, as the twin deaths personified, eased the suffering of her fellow actors, or ripped it from their throats, until the crowd stood on its feet and erupted in thunderous applause.

It was true. All audiences loved a good death, and they loved Magga’s more than any other.

Even the king and queen were on their feet in praise of her work.

But Magga heard no applause and saw no ovations. She didn’t feel the stage beneath her feet, nor the hands of her fellow mummers in hers as they bowed low. All she felt was a sharp pain in her chest.

When Magga looked out over the audience, every single face was either a lamb or a wolf.

Xerath is an Ascended Magus of ancient Shurima, a being of arcane energy writhing in the broken shards of a magical sarcophagus. For millennia, he was trapped beneath the desert sands, but the rise of Shurima freed him from his ancient prison. Driven insane with power, he now seeks to take what he believes is rightfully his and replace the upstart civilizations of the world with one fashioned in his image.

The boy who would eventually be called Xerath was born a nameless slave in Shurima thousands of years ago. He was the son of captured scholars, with only the prospect of endless servitude ahead. His mother taught him letters and numbers, while his father told him tales from history in the hopes that such skills might allow him a better life. The boy vowed he would not end up bent-backed and whipped like every other slave.

When the boy’s father was crippled during the excavations for the foundations of a monument to the Emperor’s favorite horse, he was left to die at the site of the accident. Fearing her son would suffer a similar fate, the boy’s mother begged an esteemed tomb architect to take him on as an apprentice. Though at first reluctant, the architect was impressed with the boy’s eye for detail and innate understanding of mathematics and language, and accepted. The boy never saw his mother again.

He was a swift learner and his master dispatched him on errands to the Great Library of Nasus to retrieve specific texts and plans on an almost daily basis. On one trip, the boy met Azir, the least-favored son of the emperor. Azir was struggling to read a difficult passage in an ancient text, and, despite knowing that to talk to royalty was to invite death, the boy paused to help the young prince with its complex grammar. In that moment, a tentative friendship was established, and over the coming months that friendship only grew stronger.

Though slaves were forbidden names, Azir gave one to the boy. He named him Xerath, which means ‘one who shares,’ though that name was only ever spoken between the two boys. Azir saw to it that Xerath was appointed to his household’s slaves, and made him his personal attendant. Their shared love of knowledge saw them devour texts from the library and become as close as brothers. Xerath was Azir’s constant companion, learning all he could from this new proximity to culture, power and knowledge, finally daring to dream that Azir might one day free him.

On the annual tour of the emperor’s dominion, assassins struck the royal caravan as it spent the night at a well-known oasis. Xerath saved Azir from an assassin’s blade, but Azir’s brothers were all slain, leaving the young prince a heartbeat away from Shurima’s throne. As a slave, Xerath could expect no reward for his deed, but Azir promised that one day they would be as brothers.

In the wake of the assassination attempt, Shurima endured years of horror and fear of the emperor’s retribution. Xerath knew enough of history and the workings of the Shuriman court to understand that Azir’s life hung by the slenderest of threads. That he was heir to the throne meant nothing, for the emperor hated Azir for living while his more beloved sons had died. Of more immediate danger, the emperor’s wife was still young enough to bear other children, and thus far she had borne many healthy sons. The odds were good that she would produce another male heir for her husband, and as soon as she did, Azir’s life was forfeit.

Though Azir was a scholar at heart, Xerath persuaded him that to survive, he must also learn to fight. This Azir did, and in return the young heir elevated Xerath, insisting he continue his education. Both youths excelled, and Xerath proved to be an exceptionally gifted pupil, one who took to the pursuit of knowledge with gusto. Xerath became Azir’s confidant and right hand man, a position unheard of for a mere slave. This position gave him great - and some said, undue - influence over the young prince, who came to rely on Xerath’s judgement more each day.

Xerath bent his every effort into seeking out knowledge wherever he could find it, no matter the cost, no matter its source. He unlocked long-sealed libraries, delved into forgotten vaults and consulted with mystics entombed deep beneath the sands; all to further his knowledge and ambition, both of which grew with unchecked rapidity. Whenever the whispers around court that spoke of his delving into unsavory places grew too loud to ignore, he would find cunning means to silence them. That Azir never mentioned these whispers was, to Xerath, tacit approval of how he was keeping his emperor safe.

Years passed, and Xerath took ever darker steps to keep the emperor’s wife from carrying a child to term, using his nascent magical abilities to corrupt every infant in the womb. Without rivals to the throne, Azir would be safe. When rumors of a curse arose, Xerath ensured they were never spoken again, and oft-times those who had voiced such suspicions vanished without trace. By now, Xerath’s desire to escape his roots as a slave had become a burning ambition to achieve power of his own, though he justified every murderous act by telling himself he was doing it to keep his friend alive.

Despite Xerath’s best efforts to thwart the queen’s midwives, a new prince of Shurima was brought into the world, but on the night of his birth, Xerath used his growing magical powers to summon the elemental spirits of the deep desert and craft a terrible storm. Xerath brought bolt after bolt of lightning down upon the queen’s chambers, reducing it to burning rubble and killing the queen and her newborn son. The emperor rushed to his queen’s chambers, only to be confronted by Xerath, his hands ablaze with arcane power. The emperor’s guards attacked, but Xerath burned them and the emperor to cindered skeletons. Xerath ensured that the mages of a conquered territory were blamed for these deaths, and Azir’s first act upon taking the throne was to lead a brutal campaign of retribution against its people.

Azir was crowned emperor of Shurima with Xerath at his side, the boy who had once been a nameless slave. Xerath had long dreamed of this moment, and expected Azir to end slavery in Shurima before finally naming him brother. Azir did none of these things, continuing to expand his empire’s borders and deflecting Xerath’s overtures regarding the end of slavery. To Xerath, this was further proof of Shurima’s moral bankruptcy, and he raged at Azir’s breaking of his promise. Azir’s face was thunderous as he reminded Xerath that he was a slave and should remember his place. Something once noble died in Xerath that day, but he bowed in supplication, outwardly accepting Azir’s decision. As Azir continued his campaigns of conquest, Xerath remained at his side, but his every action was carefully designed to increase his influence over a realm he now planned to take for himself. To steal an empire was no small thing, and Xerath knew he needed more power.

The famous legend of Renekton’s Ascension revealed that a mortal did not have to be chosen by the Sun Priests, that anyone could rise up. So Xerath plotted to steal the power of Ascension. No slave could ever stand upon the sun disc, so Xerath fed the Emperor’s vanity, inflating his ego and filling his head with impossible visions of a world-spanning empire. But such a dream would only be possible if Azir could Ascend as the greatest heroes of Shurima had before. In time Xerath’s perseverance paid off, and Azir announced he would undertake the Ascension ritual, that he had earned the right to stand alongside Nasus and Renekton as an Ascended being. The Sun Priests protested, but such was Azir’s hubris that he ordered them to comply on pain of torture and death.

The Day of Ascension arrived and Azir marched toward the Dais of Ascension with Xerath at his side. Nasus and Renekton were absent from the day’s events, for Xerath had arranged a distraction for them by weakening the seal on a magical sarcophagus containing a beast of living fire. When that creature finally broke its bindings, Renekton and Nasus were the only warriors capable of defeating it. Thus Xerath had stripped Azir of the only two beings who might save him from what was to come.

Azir stood beneath the sun disc and in the final moment before the priests began the ritual, events took a turn Xerath had not anticipated. The emperor turned to Xerath and told him that he was now a free man. He and all Shurima’s slaves were now released from their bonds of servitude. He embraced Xerath before naming him his eternal brother. Xerath was stunned. He had been given everything he desired, but the success of his plans hinged upon Azir’s death and nothing was going to dissuade him from acting. Too many pieces were in motion and Xerath had already sacrificed too much to turn back now – no matter how much that part of him wanted to. The emperor’s words pierced the bitterness enclosing Xerath’s heart, but came decades too late. Unaware of his peril, Azir turned as the priests began the ritual and brought down the awesome power of the sun.

With a roar of anger and grief combined, Xerath blasted Azir from his place on the dais, watching through tears as his former friend burned to ash. Xerath took Azir’s place and the light of the sun filled him, reshaping his flesh into that of an Ascended being. But the power of the ritual was not his to take, and the consequences of his betrayal of Azir were devastating. The unbound power of the sun all but destroyed Shurima, sundering its temples and bringing ruination upon the city. Azir’s people were consumed in a terrifying conflagration as the desert rose up to claim the city. The sun disc fell and an empire built by generations of emperors was undone in a single day.

Even as the city burned, Xerath held the sun priests in the grip of his magic, preventing them from ending the ritual. The energies filling him were immense, alloying with his dark sorcery to create a being of incredible power. As he drew ever more of the sun’s power into his body, his mortal flesh was consumed and remade as a glowing vortex of arcane power.

With Xerath’s treachery revealed, Renekton and Nasus rushed to the epicenter of the magical storm destroying the city. They bore with them the magical sarcophagus that had imprisoned the spirit of eternal fire. The Ascended brothers fought their way to the Dais of Ascension just as Xerath fell from the deadly radiance engulfing the city. Before the newly-Ascended Magus could react, they hurled his crackling body within the sarcophagus and sealed it once more with blessed chains and powerful sigils of binding.

But it was not enough. Xerath’s power had been great as a mortal, and that power - combined with the gift of Ascension - made him all but invincible. He shattered the sarcophagus, though its shards and chains remained bound to him. Renekton and Nasus hurled themselves at Xerath, but such was his newfound strength that he fought them both to a standstill. The battle raged throughout the collapsing city, destroying what had not already sunk beneath the sands. The brothers were able to drag Xerath toward the Tomb of Emperors, the greatest mausoleum of Shurima, a vault whose locks and wards were impossible to break and which answered only to the blood of emperors. Renekton wrestled Xerath within and called upon Nasus to seal the vault behind them. Nasus did so with heavy heart, knowing it was the only way to prevent Xerath’s escape. Renekton and Xerath fell into eternal darkness, and there they remained, locked in an endless battle as the once-great civilization of Shurima collapsed.

Uncounted centuries passed and, in time, even Renekton’s mighty strength waned, leaving him vulnerable to Xerath’s influence. With poisoned lies and illusions, Xerath twisted Renekton’s mind, filling him with misplaced bitterness toward Nasus, the faithless brother who had - in Xerath’s fictive narrative - abandoned him so long ago.

When the Tomb of Emperors was finally discovered beneath the desert and broken open by Sivir and Cassiopeia, both Xerath and Renekton were freed in an explosion of sand and rubble. Sensing his brother still lived, Renekton charged from the ruins, his distorted mind leaving him little better than a savage beast. After an age lost to legend, Shurima was reborn, and as it rose majestically from the desert, Xerath felt another soul return to life beneath the sand, one he had thought long dead. Azir was also newly resurrected as one of the Ascended, and Xerath knew there could be no peace for either of them while the other yet lived.

Xerath sought the heart of the desert to regain his strength and understand how the world had changed in the millennia since his imprisonment. His stolen power grew with every passing moment, and he beheld a world ripe for conquest, a world brimming with mortals ready to worship at the feet of a new and terrible god.

Yet for all his newfound power, however far he has come from that nameless slave boy, a part of Xerath knows he is still in chains.

Thorva, Sister of Frost, hauled on her reins, dragging her hulking drüvask to a halt alongside Scarmother Vrynna of the Winter’s Claw. The shaggy-furred beast snorted in protest, hot breath steaming the air.

“Hush, Ice-Tooth,” Thorva said. The bone charms and totems wrapped around her wrist rattled as she patted her ill-tempered mount.

A bone-chilling wind whipped across the desolate landscape, yet alone among the raiding party, Thorva did not wear heavy furs and leathers. Her arms, tattooed with swirling indigo ink, were bare to the elements, but she gave no indication of discomfort, for the cold had long relinquished its claim on her.

The imposing figure of Scarmother Vrynna sat astride another drüvask boar, a tusked behemoth even larger than the one Thorva rode. It snarled and stamped one massive, cloven hoof, eyeing Thorva balefully. A sharp kick from Vrynna silenced it.

The scarmother was a ruthless veteran, her victories many and bloody, but Thorva refused to be overawed. Her name was not yet known across the Freljord like the scarmother’s, but she was a shamanka, one who dreamed the will of the gods, and even the most powerful matriarchs in the Freljord were wise to respect the old faith.

The rest of the Winter’s Claw raiding party had reined in, awaiting their scarmother and shamanka. They’d been traveling at pace for much of the day, heading east, deep into Avarosan territory. This was their first stoppage in hours, and they took the opportunity to slide from their saddles, stretching their backs and shaking out numb legs.

The wind picked up, whipping Thorva with snow and ice.

“A storm is coming in,” she said.

Vrynna, her face riven with old scars, did not reply, and continued to stare southward. Vrynna’s right eye was clouded and blind, and there was a streak of white in her dark hair—whatever had caused her wounds had certainly left its mark. Among the Winter’s Claw, such scars were a source of pride and reverence—the mark of a survivor.

“You see something?” asked Thorva.

Vrynna nodded, and continued staring into the distance.

Thorva narrowed her gaze, but could see little through the worsening weather.

“I see nothing.”

“You have two good eyes, yet you are more blind than I am, girl,” snapped Vrynna.

Frost formed around Thorva’s knuckles as her hands clenched, and her irises turned ice-blue. Nevertheless, she reined in her anger, forcing herself to take a deep breath.

It was clear Scarmother Vrynna, like most of the Winter’s Claw, had little time for her or her beliefs. It likely didn’t help that Thorva had chosen to join this raiding party uninvited. No doubt she thought the shamanka joining them may distract those more inclined to superstition, undermining their purpose and her authority.

In truth, a vague but compelling instinct had urged Thorva to join the raid, despite the scarmother’s initial protests, and she had long ago learned to trust such impulses as a gift. The gods wanted her here, but for what purpose, she knew not.

“There, a mile to the south,” pointed Vrynna. “Near that rocky outcrop. See?”

Thorva nodded, finally. A lone figure could just be made out, little more than a shadow against the snow. How Vrynna had spotted it in the first place was beyond her. Thorva frowned as she felt an itching sensation prickle the back of her neck. There was something strange about whoever this was…

The wind billowed, and the figure was obscured once more, yet the persistent unease Thorva felt remained.

“An Avarosan scout?”

“No,” said Vrynna, shaking her head. “They are trudging straight through a deepening drift. Not even a child of the Freljord would make a mistake like that.”

“An outsider, then. But this far north?”

Scarmother Vrynna shrugged. “The Avarosans do not follow the old ways. They trade with southerners rather than simply taking from them. Perhaps this is one of those traders that has lost their way.”

Vrynna spat, dismissively, and hauled her drüvask around to continue on. The other warriors followed her cue, turning the heavy, tusked heads of their own mounts back along the ridgeline, to the east. Only Thorva remained, staring intently into the storm.

“They might have seen us. If they carry word of our presence, the Avarosans will be ready for us.”

“That fool won’t be telling anything to anyone, except perhaps whatever gods they worship in the Beyond,” Vrynna declared. “This storm is worsening. They will be dead by nightfall. Come, we have lingered long enough.”

Still, there was something that bothered Thorva, and she remained on the edge of the ridge, looking back toward the lone outsider, though she could see barely more than a dozen paces now, at best. Was this why she had been brought here?

“Girl!” snapped Vrynna. “Are you coming?”

Thorva looked at Vrynna, then back south.

“No.”

With a nudge, Thorva directed her drüvask boar down the side of the ridge, allowing herself a satisfied smile as she heard Vrynna curse behind her.

“We go after her, yes?”

It was Brokvar Ironfist who spoke, the massive Iceborn warrior who had been her champion and sometime lover for almost a decade.

“The gods will bring ruin upon our tribe if anything happens to her,” Brokvar added.

If forced to pick just one person in the Freljord to fight at her side, Vrynna would choose Brokvar. Half a head taller than the next biggest warrior under her command, he was strong enough to lift a drüvask off the ground, and utterly dependable. He lived to fight—and he did it well—and he carried the broadsword Winter’s-Wail.

That blade was legend among the Winter’s Claw, and had been passed down between Iceborn for centuries. A shard of unmelting True Ice was embedded in the hilt of Winter’s-Wail, and crackling hoarfrost coated its edge. Anyone who wasn’t an Iceborn who tried to grasp it—Vrynna included—would suffer great pain, even death.

If he had one flaw, it was his superstition. He saw portents and prophecy in everything from the flight patterns of ravens to the splatter of blood in the snow, and much to her distaste, he practically worshipped the ground where the self-righteous shamanka walked. Worse, it seemed as if his overt reverence had rubbed off on the other warriors under her command. She saw several of them nodding agreement, and muttering under their breath.

Against her better judgment, Vrynna signaled, and the raiding party swung around, to follow the Sister of Frost.

Scarmother Vrynna was right about one thing: whoever the lone outsider was, they had less understanding of the Freljord than a child.

Watching their exhausted progress through the deep snow, Thorva knew they would be dead within the hour if she simply turned and rode away. In truth, it was a minor miracle they had made it this far, for they were plainly ill-prepared for the harshness of the tundra, and lacked even the most basic understanding of navigating it safely.

As she came closer, unaffected by the bitter wind whipping across the desolate landscape, she saw them stumble. Time and again the outsider struggled vainly back to their feet, but it was obvious their strength was all but spent.

The outsider seemed oblivious to Thorva’s approach. She was closing the distance from outside the periphery of their vision—coming at them from the flank, and slightly behind them—but not once did they turn.

Thorva scanned her surroundings. If there were any rimefangs or other beasts stalking this outsider, now would be the time to strike. Seeing nothing, she pushed on.

She was close enough now to make out more of the outlander’s appearance. It was a man, she saw now, garbed in leathers and furs, though he did not wear them in the Freljordian manner. Foolishly, he carried no spear, axe, sword, or bow. Thorva shook her head. In the Winter’s Claw, from the time one could walk, they were never without a blade. She herself had other more arcane weapons at her disposal, yet even she had three blades on her at all times.

Stranger still, the outsider dragged a pair of chains behind him, affixed to giant manacles of curious design clamped around his wrists…

It was far too late now, but Sylas of Dregbourne realized he had grossly underestimated the sheer, overwhelming hostility of the Freljordian landscape. He understood there was great magical power here, in the north—and now he was here, he could practically feel it in his bones—but it seemed now that it had been a mistake to come here.

A dozen hand-picked mages had set out with him into the frozen north, but each had fallen, one after another, claimed by blizzards, hidden ravines, and savage beasts. He thought the main threat would have come from the barbarian Freljordians themselves, but so far he had not seen a single living soul in the weeks of travel.

How anyone could live out here was beyond him.

He thought they had prepared well, layering themselves in furs and wool, and loading up the heavy, furred oxen with food, firewood, weapons, and coin to barter with; coin liberated from the coffers and chests of the tax-collectors and nobility of his homeland of Demacia.

Not even the oxen had survived this far, though, and now Sylas walked alone.

Sheer force of will and the burning desire to see the monarchy and noble houses of Demacia fall drove him on.

Already he had fomented considerable resistance within the boundaries of Demacia itself. He’d lit the fires of rebellion, but had realized he needed more fuel to see it truly burn. In his cell in Demacia he had consumed every book, chronicle, and tome he was able to get a hold of, and in several of them there had been references of the great and terrible sorcery and ancient magic far to the north. That was the power he needed. Even now, facing death, he believed the power he sought was close…

Nevertheless, not even his stubbornness was enough to overcome the relentless cold. His hands and toes were already turning black and had long gone numb, and a heavy lethargy hung upon him like a weight, dragging him down.

He thought he had seen a column of riders upon a distant ridge some time back, but he was not sure if that was real, or some fevered delusion brought on by exhaustion and the freezing temperature.

To stop was to die, though, he knew that well enough. He would find this power in the north, or he would be damned.

And so he slogged on, one foot in front of the other… but he made it only a dozen more steps before he fell face-first into the snow, and lay still.

Thorva shook her head as she saw the outsider fall, and urged Ice-Tooth forward. The man didn’t make any move to get up this time. For all she knew, he was dead, finally claimed by the unrelenting elements that she herself no longer felt.

Once she was close, Thorva slid from the saddle, sinking almost to her knees as she landed. She approached the face-down man warily, crunching through the snow.

Again she looked at his bonds, curiously.

If he was an escaped prisoner, where had he escaped from?

While the Winter’s Claw did not take prisoners, they did on occasion take thralls—though one that could not be tamed or beaten into service was just another mouth to feed. Thorva didn’t think even the Avarosans would chain someone in this manner. Could he have escaped from the southlands, over the distant mountains?

Grasping her staff in both hands, she prodded him. Getting no reaction, Thorva drove the base of her staff into the snow underneath the outsider, and tried to lever him onto his front. It was a difficult task, for the immense manacles the man wore covered most of his forearms and were incredibly heavy. Grunting with the effort, she finally managed to turn him over.

He flopped over lifelessly, and his furred hood fell back. His eyes were closed and sunken, and his lips tinged blue. Frost had formed on his brows, lashes, and his unshaven cheeks, and his dark hair, tied back in a loose ponytail, was similarly icy.

Thorva allowed her gaze to be drawn to the shackles around his wrists. The Sister of Frost had traveled widely, the duties of her faith taking her to many different tribes over the years, yet these restraints, made of some unknown pale stone, were unlike anything she had seen before. There was something deeply unsettling about them. It was vaguely uncomfortable even to look upon the chains, and they had clearly been made in such a manner that they were never intended to be removed. What had this stranger done to warrant having such things around his wrists? It must have been a terrible crime, she decided.

Kneeling in the snow at his side, Thorva tried to fathom why she had been guided here. The gods had clearly brought her here—just as they had directed her in the past—but why? The man was still unconscious, if not yet dead. Had she been brought here to save him? Or was it what he brought with him that was important?

Thorva’s gaze returned to the stranger’s bonds. Making her decision, she reached toward one of them.

Before she had even touched the pale stone, her fingertips began to tingle.

The man’s eyes snapped suddenly open.

Thorva jerked back in shock, but she was too slow. The man tore off one of his gloves and grabbed her by the arm, and even as Thorva tried to summon her gods-given power, she felt it ripped out of her, forcibly drained from the core of her being. Her body was stricken with a sudden, incapacitating coldness—a sensation she had not felt in years—and she fell, unable to breathe, unable to move, unable to do anything.

As the cold took her, she dimly registered color returning to the stranger’s face, as if he were suddenly being warmed by a hearth.

A hint of a smile curled his lips.

“Thank you,” he said.

Then he released his grip, and Thorva fell back into the snow with a gasp, empty, and drained.

Vrynna cursed as she saw the shamanka fall, and kicked her drüvask forward.

“With me!” she roared, and the rest of the raiding party lurched into motion. The ground shook beneath their thundering charge, the sound akin to an avalanche.

The outsider was kneeling alongside the Sister of Frost as the Winter’s Claw powered through the snow toward him. Curiously, she saw the man shrug off his fur coat and drape it over the fallen shamanka, the gesture almost tender.

He stood to face the earth-shaking approach of the Winter’s Claw, dragging his chains behind him. Vrynna tightened her grip on her spear.

Seeing the force bearing down on him, the stranger backed away from the fallen shamanka, who lay unmoving and pale upon the snow. He held his hands up to show he bore no weapon, but that didn’t matter to Vrynna. She had killed unarmed enemies in the past.

Without having to give the signal, Vrynna’s warriors fanned out wide to encircle him, cutting off any chance of escape. Wisely, he didn’t try to run. After all, there was nowhere to run to.

He turned on the spot, like the weakest of the herd, isolated by wolves. His gaze darted between the Freljordians arrayed against him. He was wary, yet he showed no sign of fear, which Vrynna could respect, at least.

Having taken off his coat, the outsider’s muscular arms were bare to the elements, but he appeared not to feel the cold at all.

Curious, thought Vrynna.

He was a tall man but he was hunched slightly, the weight of the massive shackles bound to his arms clearly pulling on him.

“See to the Sister,” she ordered, not taking her eyes off the stranger.

The stranger faced her, as one of the raiders slid from his saddle and moved to the shamanka’s side.

“I am Vrynna,” she declared. “Scarmother of the Winter’s Claw. Shieldbreaker. Woebringer. I am the Drüvask’s Howl. Who are you, and why are you here?”

The man cocked his head to one side, responding in a tongue she could not comprehend. Vrynna cursed.

“You don’t understand me, do you?”

Again the man gave her a quizzical look.

“Sylas,” he replied, tapping his chest.

“Sylas?” Vrynna repeated. “That’s your name, Sylas?”

The man simply repeated the word, tapping his chest again, and giving her a rakish smile.

The scarmother muttered under her breath. She glanced over to the shamanka, lying lifeless and pale upon the snow. One of Vrynna’s warriors knelt over Thorva, lowering his head to her chest to see if she was breathing.

“Is she dead?” she called.

“She’s half frozen, but she lives,” came the reply. “At least for now.”

The Freljordian warriors muttered under their breaths. Half frozen? It was known that the Sister of Frost was inured to the cold, claimed to be a gift of the old gods… but now she was freezing, and this stranger to the Freljord, Sylas, stood before them, his skin bare?

Vrynna frowned, considering her options. She didn’t put much faith in anything but steel, fire, and blood, but she knew her warriors—particularly Brokvar—would likely see this as some kind of omen.

“This is a waste of time,” she muttered.

Making her decision, she tightened her grip on her spear,and nudged her mount forward. The man, Sylas, raised a hand and yelled something in his weak, southerner’s tongue, but she ignored him. She would kill this fool, and be on her way.

“Let me do it,” growled Brokvar, riding at the scarmother’s side.

Vrynna’s brow raised.

“He did this to the revered sister,” Brokvar answered her silent question, stabbing a meaty finger toward the fallen shamanka. “It would be my honor to punish him, beneath the eyes of the gods.”

The outsider looked between Vrynna and Brokvar. Did he have any understanding that his fate was about to be determined?

Vrynna shrugged. “He’s yours.”

Brokvar dropped off his mount, rose to his full, towering height. The man, Sylas, was not small, but Brokvar made him look it. The Iceborn unsheathed Winter’s-Wail from the scabbard across his back, and began to walk grimly toward the outsider.

The last time Thorva had truly felt the cold had been when she was a child, not even six winters of age.

She had chased a snow hare out onto a frozen lake, laughing as she went. She had not realized the ice beneath her was so thin until the awful cracking sound, right before it gave way. With a strangled cry, she plunged into the icy, black depths. Such was the shocking suddenness of the bone-chilling cold that all the air was driven from her lungs, and her limbs instantly seized up, stiffening in agonizing cramps.

She’d been dead for long minutes before she was finally hauled out from under the ice and the tribe’s shaman breathed life back into her. She first manifested her gods-given power that night.

“Sometimes, when a person is brought back from the Realm Beyond, they return changed,” the shaman explained, shrugging. “The gods, in their inscrutable wisdom, have blessed you.”

In the days that followed, she had found herself impervious to cold, able to walk through freezing blizzards bare-skinned, with no ill effect.

Now, once again she was that scared little girl she’d been, sinking slowly as the hole in the ice above got further and further away… only this time she was staring up at the sky, unblinking.

Numb and breathless, Thorva lay on the ground, hearing nothing, feeling nothing. The cold infused her. It was her.

Was this the reason she had been brought here? To give her life to the outsider, that he may fulfill whatever it was the gods had decreed?

Nevertheless, an ineffable fear slowed her descent into oblivion.

Even if it were the gods’ will for her to die in the outsider’s place, Thorva knew in her heart that Vrynna would not let him live… and so, she began to fight back toward the surface.

Brokvar Ironfist went straight for the killing blow, charging forward, Winter’s-Wail hissing through the air and trailing icy fog in its wake.

That blow would have split an ice-troll in half had it landed, but the outsider was surprisingly quick given he was weighed down by restraints. He darted back from the lethal strike and whipped his chains around in a whirling arc. They swung passed Brokvar’s face, barely missing the Iceborn warrior as he snarled in fury.

Still, he didn’t reel back, as perhaps the outsider had expected. He was as tough as the mountains and was exceptionally fast for such a big man. He lashed out, striking his opponent across the side of the head with a powerful backhand punch, and Vrynna winced as the smaller man was sent flying.

The outsider struggled to pick himself off the ground as the Iceborn stalked toward him, but finally regained his footing. In truth, Vrynna was impressed that he was able to get up at all. Still, he merely prolonged the inevitable outcome.

His face set in grim resolve, Brokvar closed in for the kill.

Sylas’ gaze narrowed as he focused on the barbarian’s weapon.

The pale ice shard in its hilt was glowing brightly, and crackling hoarfrost covered the blade.

The magic that chunk of ice exuded was unlike anything Sylas had encountered before. It was primal, dangerous, and enfettered. Sylas could feel it on his skin, a frisson of power that was almost intoxicating.

The woman’s power had revived him, driving the cold from his limbs and the blackness from his fingers, but this was a power far older. If he could just get his hands on it…

With a roar, Sylas stepped forward to meet the Freljordian.

The outsider lashed at Brokvar, swinging his chains around in a flurry of arcs. The Iceborn was struck across his head, one chain from each side. The heavy links whipped around, and with a wrench, the Iceborn’s helmet was torn off.

Brokvar shook his long hair loose, spat blood into the snow, and continued his advance.

The chains came around at him again, but the massive warrior was ready this time. He avoided the first of the strikes, before stepping forward and lifting one arm, letting the chain whip around his massive forearm. Then he grabbed the metal links in his vice-like grip, and yanked the smaller man toward him, straight into a swinging elbow.

The blow crumpled the man, and he fell at Brokvar’s feet. The Iceborn towered over him, Winter’s-Wail raised to deliver the killing blow.

“Wait! Do not kill him!” came a shout, and Brokvar paused.

Vrynna whipped her head around, scowling, to see the Sister of Frost, Thorva, rising unsteadily to her feet. She was deathly pale, and her lips blue, but she stomped forward, leaning heavily on her staff of office.

“What madness is this?” Vrynna snarled.

“Not madness,” Thorva said, leaning heavily upon her staff of office. “It is the will of the gods.”

The giant barbarian was momentarily distracted, a look of confusion on his brutish face, and Sylas saw his chance.

Rising to a knee, he lashed out with one of his chains. It whipped around the blade of his opponent, and with a sharp tug, he tore it from the man’s grasp.

It landed in the snow nearby, and Sylas leapt upon it, eagerly.

Grinning, he picked up the broadsword… and agony seared through him.

Vrynna shook her head at the fool. Only an Iceborn could hold a True Ice weapon. For anyone else, it was a death sentence.

The outsider released Winter’s-Wail, roaring as the cold shot up his arm. He dropped to his knees, clutching his arm, even as it began to freeze. The killing power of the True Ice began at his hand, but was steadily working its way down his arm, toward his heart.

“The gods wanted this?” Vrynna scoffed, gesturing at the outsider.

The shamanka scowled, but said nothing.

“But then, the gods are nothing if not fickle and cruel,” added Vrynna, shrugging. “Perhaps they simply wanted him to suffer?”

Brokvar retrieved Winter’s-Wail, hefting it without harm. The outsider stared up at him, anguish and confusion written upon his face as the lethal power of the True Ice consumed him.

“Put him out of his misery,” ordered Vrynna.

Brokvar’s iron gaze shifted to the shamanka, looking for her approval. Anger surged within Vrynna.

“If the gods want him saved, then they can intervene,” she snapped.

Thorva served and venerated the old gods of the Freljord, but she did not claim to know their will. Nor had she often witnessed them intervene directly in mortal matters.

And yet, it seemed impossible that what happened next was purely coincidental.

The outsider was lying on the snowpack, shivering and convulsing. The True Ice had almost claimed him, but he continued to fight it, reaching out one shuddering hand toward the Iceborn warrior.

Thorva knew what the Demacian was capable of, how he had siphoned her power with but one brief touch. She could have warned the Iceborn veteran… but she did not.

Sylas was dying, but even in death his will to keep fighting was strong.

In desperation, he reached out toward the towering barbarian looming above him. He grabbed hold of the warrior’s boot, but the barbarian kicked his clawing hand away.

The bearded giant looked down at him piteously, as one would a wretched dog in the street. It was the same way the nobility looked down on the lesser-born in Demacia, and Sylas’ anger surged.

That anger fueled him, and with a last burst of his dying strength, he sprang off the ground and grasped the Freljordian giant around the throat. Ancient, raw, elemental magic instantly began to infuse him.

Sylas may have been unable to grasp the Freljordian ice-weapon, but he could still draw from its power… using the barbarian’s flesh as its conduit.

It took no more than a moment.

The barbarian staggered back, unsure what had just happened. Sylas smiled, and his eyes began to glow with icy-pale light.

He turned his attention to his frozen arm, holding it before him. With a surge of his newfound power, he made the ice reverse its direction. It crept back down his arm, and then was gone, leaving his flesh unharmed.

Then he turned his attention to the warrior standing aghast before him.

“Now then,” he said. “Where were we?”

Brokvar stepped back away from the outsider, gaping in wonder.

“What is he?” snarled Vrynna. “Iceborn?”

“No,” Thorva interjected, eyes blazing with faith. “He is something else…”

Vrynna had seen enough. In one smooth, well-practiced motion she reversed her grip on her spear, and standing in the saddle, hurled it at the stranger, putting all her might and weight behind it.

It hurtled straight toward him, but the man thrust a hand out, fingers splayed, and the ground before him erupted. Amid a grinding series of cracks, a protective wall of towering ice-spikes surged up from below. Vrynna’s spear slammed deep into the ice, but could not penetrate it. It was left shuddering in place, embedded a solid foot into the barrier, and leaving the outsider completely unharmed.

Vrynna gaped at the magical barrier, even as it collapsed a moment later, falling as quickly as it had appeared.

The outsider stood revealed, laughing and looking in wonder at his hands, now rimmed with frost and radiating pale blue light, like the underside of an iceberg. He looked up at Vrynna, frozen fog emanating from his eyes, and began to gather the primal, frozen power within him once more. A spinning orb of magic, like a self-contained blizzard, began to form between his hands.

The Winter’s Claw fingered their weapons uneasily, unsure of themselves in the face of what was clearly Freljordian magic.

Thorva called out something then, though the words made no sense to Vrynna. She glanced at the shamanka in surprise.

She spoke the outsider’s tongue?

There was much about the Sister of Frost that she did not know, it seemed, and her distrust deepened.

The shamanka and the stranger spoke for a time, while Vrynna watched on, gritting her teeth.

“What does the outsider say?” she snapped, finally losing patience.

“He says we share a common enemy,” Thorva explained. “He says we can help each other.”

Vrynna frowned. “Who? The Avarosans? We raid them, as we always have, but we are not at war.”

“I believe he means his own people. The Demacians, across the mountains.”

“He is a traitor, then?” Vrynna said, “Why would we trust one who would betray his own?”

“The mother of scars would know how you would aid our tribe,” Thorva said, addressing the outsider in his own tongue. “Make your offer, else your soul will journey to the Beyond, here and now.”

Sylas gave his answer, speaking directly to Vrynna. Thorva watched him carefully as he spoke, asking several times for clarifications of words she did not immediately understand.

“He says he knows hidden paths into his homelands, paths known only to him,” said Thorva. “He speaks of the vast riches there, waiting to be claimed. Fields untouched by snow and filled with fat cattle, streets that flow with gold and silver.”

The warriors of the Winter’s Claw smiled and laughed among themselves at her words, and even Vrynna’s eyes lit up. They lived a harsh existence, making the promise of easy pickings a tempting one.

But still some doubt lingered.

“How do we know he would not lead us into a trap?” challenged Vrynna. “We cannot trust him. Better to kill him, here and now, and not be led astray by his golden tongue.”

“He…” Thorva began, picking her lie carefully. “He says he had a vision. A dream that came to him, of three Freljordian sisters. It was they who urged him to come here.”

“The Three!” breathed Brokvar in reverence. “He speaks of Avarosa, Serylda, and Lissandra!”

The other Winter’s Claw warriors murmured in surprise and awe, many of them touching holy totems hanging around their necks.

The Three Sisters were legends, the greatest and most honored warriors of the Freljord. They were the first of the Iceborn, and had lived in the age of heroes, long ago. Across much of the frozen north, they had come to be regarded as chosen ones, and many invoked their wisdom in times of strife, or begged their favor before battle.

Vrynna glared, regarding Thorva sourly. Did the scarmother suspect her lie?

Seeing Brokvar’s rapturous wonder spread through the other gathered warriors, however, she realized it didn’t matter. Thorva had known Vrynna’s Iceborn champion would latch on to those words. That they would inspire his awe and his faith, and that his influence among the other warriors was strong. They would never allow the outsider to be killed out of hand now, no matter what order Vrynna gave.

She allowed herself a slight smile of victory, though she was careful not to let Vrynna see it as she considered the outsider.

It was the gods’ will that this one lived, Thorva felt certain of it. She felt no guilt for lying to ensure that happened.

“He must prove himself before we would even consider trusting him.”

“A wise move, scarmother,” nodded Thorva. “What do you suggest?”

“He will come with us on our raid,” declared Vrynna. “If he fights well, and makes a good account of himself, then perhaps we will hear more of what he proposes. More about these hidden paths into Demacia. But he will be your responsibility. It will be up to you to control him, and if he turns on us, it will be on your head.”

Thorva nodded, and turned to the outsider.

“Fight with us. Prove to the mother of scars your worth,” she said. “Fight strong and you may live to have your alliance.”

Those final words elicited a broad smile from the outsider.

Thorva appraised him, giving him a look from head to toe. He was handsome for a southerner. A little lean for her tastes, but he was clever, and there was power in him.

She leveled a finger at him.

“But never touch me again,” she warned.

The outsider smiled wryly.

“Not without your permission,” he replied, and Thorva turned away so he did not see her smile.

“What does he say?” demanded Vrynna.

“He agrees to your terms, scarmother,” called Thorva.

“Good. Then let us move,” said Vrynna. “We raid.”

As a child, Yasuo often believed what the others in his village said of him: on the best days, his very existence was an error in judgement; on the worst, he was a mistake that could never be undone.

Like most pain, there was some truth to it. His mother was a widow already raising a young son, when the man who would be Yasuo’s father blew into her life like an autumn wind. And, just like that lonely season, he was gone again before the blanket of Ionian winter settled over the small family.

Even though Yasuo’s older half-brother, Yone, was everything Yasuo was not—respectful, cautious, conscientious—the two were inseparable. When other children teased Yasuo, Yone was there to defend him. But what Yasuo lacked in patience, he made up for in determination. When Yone began his apprenticeship at the village’s renowned sword school, a young Yasuo followed, waiting outside in monsoon rain, until the teachers relented and opened the gates.

Much to the annoyance of his new peers, Yasuo showed natural talent, and became the only student to catch the attention of Elder Souma, last master of the legendary wind technique. The old man saw Yasuo’s potential, but the impulsive pupil refused his tutelage, remaining unbridled like a whirlwind. Yone pleaded with his brother to set aside his arrogance, gifting him a maple seed, the school’s highest lesson in humility. The next morning, Yasuo accepted the position as Souma’s apprentice, and personal bodyguard.

When word of the Noxian invasion reached the school, some were inspired by the great stand that had been taken at the Placidium of Navori, and soon the village was bled of the able bodied. Yasuo longed to add his sword to the cause, but even as his classmates and brother left to fight, he was ordered to remain and protect the elders.

The invasion became a war. Finally, one rain-slicked night, the drums of a Noxian march could be heard in the next valley over. Yasuo abandoned his post, foolishly believing he could turn the tide.

But he found no battle—only a raw grave for hundreds of Noxian and Ionian corpses. Something terrible and unnatural had happened here, something that no single blade could have stopped. The land itself seemed tainted by it.

Sobered, Yasuo returned to the school the next day, only to be surrounded by the remaining students, their swords drawn. Elder Souma was dead, and Yasuo found himself accused not only of dereliction, but of murder. He realized the true killer would go unpunished if he did not act quickly, so he fought his way free, though he knew this would all but confirm his apparent guilt.

Now a fugitive in war-torn Ionia, Yasuo sought any clue that might lead him to the murderer. All the while, he was hunted by his former allies, continually forced to fight or die. This was a price he was willing to pay, until he was tracked down by the one he dreaded most—his own brother, Yone.

Bound by honor, they circled each other. When their swords finally met, Yasuo’s wind magic overcame Yone’s dual blades, and with a single flash of steel, the outcast cut his brother down.

He begged forgiveness, but Yone’s dying words were of the wind techniques responsible for Elder Souma’s death, and that his brother was the only one who could have known them. Then he fell silent, passing on before he could grant any absolution.

Without master or brother, Yasuo roamed the mountains distraught, drinking away the pain of war and loss, a sword without a sheath. There in the snow, he met Taliyah, a young Shuriman stone mage who had fled the Noxian military. In her, Yasuo saw an unlikely student, and in himself, an even more unlikely teacher. He trained her in the ways of elemental magic, wind shaping stone, embracing at last the teachings of Elder Souma.

Their world changed with rumors of a risen Shuriman god-emperor. Yasuo and Taliyah parted ways, though he gifted her the treasured maple seed, its lesson now learned. As she returned to her native desert sands, Yasuo set out for his own village, determined to put right his mistakes and find his old master’s true killer.

Within the stone walls of the council hall, Elder Souma’s death was revealed to have been an accident, one brought about by the Noxian exile known as Riven—and one for which she felt deep remorse. Even so, Yasuo still could not absolve himself of the choice he had made to abandon his master or, worse yet, how that choice had ultimately led to Yone’s death.

Yasuo eventually journeyed to the spirit blossom festival in Weh’le, though he held little hope that its healing rituals would ease his heart. It was there he encountered a demonic creature that sought to devour him, an azakana that fed on his pain and regret.

Yet a masked intruder intervened, striking down the creature with righteous fury, and Yasuo realized he knew this man—it was Yone.

Fully expecting his brother to take vengeance, Yasuo was surprised when Yone let him go with little more than a bitter blessing.

With nothing left for him in the First Lands, Yasuo has embarked on a new adventure, though he knows not where it will lead, his sense of guilt the only thing weighing down the free wind.

She cannot breathe.

Her eyes are open, but there is nothing but a heavy, suffocating blackness. It crushes down on her. Her breath smothering. She draws in a slow, rasping breath. It fills her nose with the scents of blood and offal, a slaughterhouse stink. There is something else too, something thin, caustic, and sharp, coiling its way toward her lungs.

The weight around her shifts. She hears something heavy tumble away, the muffled sound of lifeless limbs slapping into mud. The darkness wanes in patches, giving texture to her prison. Bloodied rags. Shattered plate. Cold, abused flesh.

Bodies. She is buried under bodies.

The urge to fight, to escape and survive, rises all-consuming. Adrenaline rushes through exhausted veins. She struggles, wrenching from side to side to force a cavity between herself and the mass. She sees a hairline crack, the faintest trickle of light spilling in. Hope feeds her frenzy. She scratches and claws. Eyesight blurring, rasping breath as she tears the gap wider.

Her hand punches free. Cold air floods in, gulping it into her lungs, but that toxic, bitter something comes with it again. She gags as it coats her tongue, spilling down her throat. She pushes out an arm, beginning to haul herself out.

Her head and arm are free. Gasping for breath but her lungs are twin lanterns ablaze. She can see the ground churned to mire, patches of it burning azure and silver, strewn with the dead. A felled tree’s trunk reaches out for its lost branches, the leaves screaming in tongues. The battle is over.

She glimpses shapes wandering through pale, boiling fog. Creatures gather in the aftermath, wicked birds and gaunt dogs. The dead are carrion now. The vanquished, food.

There is a body just ahead of her, the one she had heard fall away from atop the mound. A boy sprawled out on the ground, his armor broken open, the protection it once offered him gone.

A dog feeds. The boy shudders like a marionette from the roving muzzle. She tries to shout, to drive the beast away, but razors line her throat. The fog covers everything in its acrid and corrosive touch. The boy’s head lolls to the side, the eyes meeting hers glazed over and lifeless.

Then he blinks.

Arrel sat up, placing her hands against the ground to stop her head from spinning. The smell of wet earth and grass asserted themselves over the blood and sour air of the dream. Rainwater trickled down through gaps in the tent over her head.

She looked to her side and found Second sitting there, watching Arrel intently with her helm in his jaws. She stared at the drakehound for a moment, blinking away the afterimages of a starving beast’s maw lined with gore. She gestured, and he padded closer, releasing the helmet into her hands as the flap to the tent was pulled open a fraction.

“Mistress,” came a familiar voice from outside. “It’s time.”

Arrel replaced the helm, taking a slow, rasping breath and ignoring the pain it stitched down into her lungs before standing up. The damp fabric of her bedroll squelched beneath her feet as she stooped to leave her tent and stepped out into the rain. First trailed behind the tracker, joining the other three of the pack that waited outside as they followed obediently in her wake.

Erath stepped back from the tent, eyeing Arrel carefully. Hers had not been a silent sleep, and they had been getting worse since they had left Fae’lor.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“Strike the tent,” the tracker replied. Arrel looked out across a small clearing in the wooded hills they had chosen to make camp, shrouded in a gentle rain that glittered and shone with every color of the rainbow. Some of the drops struck the ground as rain should, others winked in the air like tiny stars, dissolving in a mote of light with the soft chime of a distant bell.

She hated Ionia, and it pursued Arrel even into her dreams. She could swear, grasping back at the images, that Riven’s body was among the dead. It would have been so much simpler, if that were true.

Arrel looked back over her shoulder at Erath. “Has she kept the scent?”

The blade squire nodded once. “The runesmith’s blade still sings to her.”

“Then I’ll range ahead,” said Arrel, already walking.

“No need,” said Erath. “Teneff and I found a village up nearby, we aim to stop there for supplies.”

Arrel grunted, fists clenching as she came to a halt. “We ought to avoid them. We are not welcome here.”

“Our provisions are growing scarce,” said Erath. “Teneff and I will go alone. She thinks Marit, Henrietta, and your hounds will attract attention we don’t desire. We shall return quickly and then be on our path again.”

After a few moments, Arrel gave a nod.

Erath did not know the name of the village. Like so much of Ionia, he simply assumed it would be something unknowably poetic, like a secret whispered between friends he could neither hear nor understand.

He had thought the rain would make it easier to conceal themselves. The group of them had discarded as much Noxian gear as possible when they left Fae’lor, to avoid notice of both the locals and the empire as they conducted their mission, but they were still strangers in a strange land. As he followed Teneff down the muddy thoroughfare of the village, Erath felt every pair of eyes on him, dissuading him of any pretense of camouflage.

“Stay close to me,” said Teneff, her gruff tones affecting a calm Erath attempted to adopt, though he didn’t feel it. Both of them were armed, but that was not unusual for anyone in Navori. Though Erath was beginning to come to the realization that not every weapon was one that he could see.

“Hold on,” whispered Teneff, and the pair faded back to lean against the wall of a tea house. There was a scuffle developing ahead, a handful of warriors edged in red surrounding an Ionian elder. A small crowd of onlookers was gathering.

“What are they doing here?” said Erath, his eyes locked to the Noxian soldiers.

“We have an outpost not far to the south,” said Teneff quietly. “This might just be a patrol, or a reprisal sweep if we got hit in the night by a Brotherhood raid.”

The pair moved closer, skirting around the periphery of the people who were watching the confrontation. Erath tugged his hood down further over his head, his fingers brushing against the bone pendant around his neck, then down to check the short blade at his belt. They stopped once they came close enough for the shouting to become words.

“I come from festival,” the old man was trying to explain, his lips fighting to pronounce the Va-Noxian. “In Weh’le.”

“Weh’le,” repeated the lead soldier. “That’s pretty far.” He eyed a paper-wrapped bundle the old man held.

“T-tea.” The Ionian clutched the parcel to his chest protectively. “This tea, this blossom tea.”

The soldier’s eyes narrowed. “All the way to Weh’le and back, for tea?”

“I’ve heard of that festival,” remarked another of the Noxians. “It’s their death feast.”

“Celebrating war heroes?” The lead Noxian took a step closer to the man. “Reminisce a little, dig up some old hurts—people can get crazy ideas in their heads doing that.”

“Like setting fire to a stockade last night,” offered another soldier.

“Nothing like that,” said the Ionian. Suddenly the packet he carried glimmered with a faint blue light. The Noxians sprang into combat postures, leveling their blades at the Ionian.

“That is magic,” barked the lead soldier. “That is a weapon!”

“No! This, this,” the old man struggled to find the words. “Ezari! Ezari, my… son. My wife, too old to go. I bring back for her, to see him.”

“More lies,” snarled a Noxian.

“Yeah, yeah, just like before,” another soldier hissed, her eyes glazed over with the scars of a hateful memory. “You all make nice, wait ’til our backs are turned before you whisper some curse and then boom! Boyod bursts into flame, Iddy’s legs gone, my friend Kron’s heart turned to salt in his chest! That’s what you do!”

“This is getting ugly,” murmured Erath. “What should we do?”

“Nothing,” answered Teneff, still brutally calm. “Not our fight.”

“Surrender the weapon,” snarled the lead Noxian, the haft of his axe creaking in his grip.

“Is no weapon,” the elder pleaded. He looked to the crowd, but their eyes were fixed on the blades carried by a dozen Noxian soldiers, and they did nothing to help him.

“You heard him,” barked another soldier. She advanced, snatching at the parcel. The two struggled over it, and Erath heard the sound of paper tearing.

The Ionian cried out, wordless anguish spilling from his lips as the tea scattered across the ground. He tried to save a measure of it, but the rain was already sweeping it from him.

“Ezari…” croaked the old man as he sank to his knees, watching the tea disintegrate into the mud. Every raindrop that struck the powdered leaves elicited a pulse of radiant blue, each successive one growing fainter and fainter until it finally washed away.

“Try something,” said the lead soldier to the crowd as the Noxians joined ranks and began to edge their way back. “Please. I’ll burn all this to ashes.”

“Xiir!” the Ionian shrieked, his face turned up into the rain. “Xiir!”

Erath felt a hand grip his shoulder.

“We are leaving,” said Teneff, not taking her eyes from the soldiers as they marched the opposite way.

“Do you see those Ionians?” said Erath. “Our comrades won’t make it out of this town alive.”

“Not our fight,” Teneff said again. “You can sympathize for them on an empty stomach, blade squire. Now we’ll have to make due on the trail.”

“That word he was screaming,” said Erath, looking back over his shoulder as he followed after Teneff. “What does it mean?”

“Xiir,” Teneff repeated. “It is a curse that they use for those of us that come from ‘the Captive Lands’. It means locust.”

Tifalenji was waiting for them just outside of the village. The runesmith’s sword was drawn, and faint traceries of emerald light ghosted across the surface of the blade.

“What was all that?” she asked.

“Our outpost near here got hit last night,” said Teneff. “Probably the Navori Brotherhood. Looks like the warleader there sent out troops to track down leads, or just cause trouble for the locals.”

The runesmith absorbed her words for a moment. “Were you seen?”

“No,” Teneff replied. “And from reading the town, it didn’t seem wise to linger and seek out barter.”

“There speaks wisdom,” Tifalenji nodded. “Let us be off then.”

Erath accepted the reins for Talz, the group’s hulking basilisk, from the runesmith. Patting the side of the creature, he glimpsed Arrel and her drakehounds. The tracker looked haggard to him, but he had learned better than to pry.

“Where is Marit?” asked Teneff.

“She said that waiting for you all was boring, so she rode ahead,” said Tifalenji.

For a while they walked in silence, trudging through the ankle-deep mud and shimmering rain. Erath thought back to the village and the sequence of events that had unfolded. The anger, hatred, and fear he had seen on the faces of the Noxian soldiers. His hand strayed to the bone pendant around his neck.

“Teneff?”

The veteran looked back at him. “What’s on your mind?”

“It’s just, those villagers, all the Ionians. How can we convince them to join the empire like that?”

Teneff’s aspect darkened. She stopped, allowing Erath to catch up to her. “Do not judge your fellow Noxians, boy, until you have endured what they have endured, and seen what they have seen.”

Erath looked at Teneff.

“Each of them came here to bring the promise of the empire to those who they would call brethren,” she continued, “just as we did across Valoran, and in Shurima. This land is… different. It lays a great challenge upon the soul of every soldier in service to Noxus. We all strive to enlighten these people, to draw them to us and enrich us all by doing so, but it is not always a simple thing. Ionia is very much not a simple thing.”

“So much is different here,” Erath agreed. “Do Ionians really turn into flowers when they die?”

Tifalenji grunted. “A spirit blossom. The souls of the dead inhabit them, and when they bloom they call out to the living, if what I have been told is true.”

“That holds with what I know,” said Teneff.

“Is it only Ionians who inhabit the blossoms?” Erath asked Teneff.

“I know not, why?”

Erath reached under his jerkin, and took his pendant off. “During the war, all the fighters in our tribe came here. For years we heard nothing, until one day a woman came with this.” He held out the sliver of bone in his hands, lifting it up to show Teneff. “This is all that she said is left of my father. I wonder, could he be in one of the blossoms? Is his spirit still here, and could I find him?”

“Even if there were,” Tifalenji interjected, “we have no time for such fancies. I need you focused now. Remember why you are here, blade squire. The purpose each of us is bound to carry out. Put all else from your mind.”

Erath lowered his head. Unlike Tifalenji and the huntresses, his own purpose here felt elusive, a hard thing to balance against something as absolute as desertion. He dragged a thumb over the surface of the pendant. “Yes, mistress.”

Teneff looked back over her shoulder. “If your father died here, then he died a hero for Noxus. That is all that matters.”

Erath nodded, slowly slipping the cord and the pendant back around his neck.

Does the rain here ever stop?

Erath hauled one foot out of the mud, fighting to keep the mire from sucking the boot off him and only partially succeeding. Bouncing on one foot, he reached down to tug his boot up, shivering and at complete odds with the world surrounding him.

The shimmering color of the rainfall made everything like a dream in a wavering, queasy way. He heard creatures make calls from the branches of trees the color of summer sunsets, sounds that didn’t seem like they could come from an animal. Maybe it was the trees themselves that were calling, as their leaves waxed and waned from orange to indigo.

It was all so unreal.

The only thing that felt truly real to Erath at that moment was the grumbling of an empty stomach. He wished they had managed to barter with the villagers before the soldiers had rendered their chance impossible. The whole scene had sat wrong with him, scattering his mind with jagged, uncomfortable thoughts. Is that how war was fought here? Was that how his father had fought it?

Erath’s boots struck hard ground, and he breathed out a moment’s relief at the prospect of being free of the mud. He stretched the muscles in his arms as he led Talz forward across the stretch of pale stone ahead of them.

As he walked, Erath took notice of the ground, seeing subtle shapes and lines that were somehow familiar to him. There was something intentional about the rock beneath his feet. An artfulness, even. His eyes grew wide.

They were walking across a pair of cupped hands rendered from stone, half buried in the earth. Much of them was hidden beneath the surface, but the palms alone were wide enough to span a courtyard. Erath wondered about the size of the person they would be connected to, and where they might have come from.

“I would like to know how anyone could make such a thing,” said Erath.

“I’m rather more keen to know who could have destroyed it,” replied Tifalenji, her face stern as her gaze drifted over the scars and fissures where immense fingers had once been. “Or what.”

“Hold,” Arrel warned, a low guttural chorus of snarls issuing from her hounds.

She pointed.

There was something lying in the center of the hands. It was a small shape, mewling softly in the rain. Erath pawed water from his eyes, squinting as he went nearer to it. Every time he blinked it was a different color.

“Careful,” said the runesmith. Her eyes were on their surroundings, wary as she slowly drew her sword in a low rasp of steel.

Curiosity pulled Erath forward. The creature was small, a little less than the length of his falchion’s blade. He glimpsed both feathers and scales, short coiling fronds that grasped feebly at the air and raised nubs that might one day sprout what appeared to be wings. The blade squire knelt, finding himself saying the same phrase he had repeated again and again ever since he had first set foot in Ionia.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” murmured Erath. He reached toward the creature. “Hey, little one. You hungry?”

“No, no, no,” breathed Teneff, her eyes darting to and fro like the runesmith’s. “No, no, no.”

Erath blinked. “But, what if it’s hurt? This is just a baby.”

“Exactly,” Teneff agreed. Erath heard the links of her chain unravel from her arm. “Where do you think the mother is, then?”

Something detached from the trees beside them. The already chilly air grew colder. Erath’s breath caught in his throat as a massive form revealed itself, and the rain began to fall upward.

Like the tiny, helpless thing they had found it was part bird, part beast, and part sea creature. Grown to its full size, though, every facet was heightened to a fully monstrous extent. The baby’s grasping fronds were, on the “mother”, tentacles thick as a man’s arm, the subtle bumps razored talons. Half its form seemed to ripple in and out of solidity, as though it existed only partially in the same reality that Erath did.

A deafening shriek slashed out from the forest of teeth and eyes that could have counted as the thing’s face. Erath cried out in pain, clamping his hands over his ears. The creature beat the rows of multicolored wings upon its back, buffeting Erath away from its progeny.

“Back!” Teneff roared, not to the creature but to Erath. “Keep Talz safe!”

Erath’s falchion was drawn but he did as she said, watching as Teneff spun her chain until it blurred into a blackened spiked arc. Arrel had ghosted behind the thing, her hounds slavering as they waited for her to unleash them. Tifalenji was chanting an uncanny litany that drew blood from her nose as her blade shuddered with emerald light.

The beast screamed again, and was attacked from three sides.

Arrel made a sharp series of hand gestures, and her hounds leapt upon the creature. Fangs and claws tore into its rippling hide. It writhed, twisting and undulating as it fought to shake them loose. The pack was hurled to the ground, but Third came away with a wing in his jaws.

“Fr-ah deh-AHK!” Tifalenji bellowed, her blade trailing a constellation of burning jade as she swung. A pair of tentacles came free in a welter of incandescent blue blood, blurring into smears of dirty light before vanishing with a snap of air pressure. The oozing stumps twitched for a moment before sprouting, each appendage lost replaced by three new ones that formed like the branching limbs of a tree.

Teneff charged. The beast wailed, lashing at her advance and raking the heavy pauldron on her left shoulder with its talons. She dipped her head behind the armor plating as a shower of sparks danced over her. She let loose her chain in a whirl of snapping links and it crashed against its flesh, but was quickly overwhelmed by slithering tentacles. The serpentine appendages pulled, seeking to yank Teneff off her feet, but she dug in her heels and held fast. She spun the short blade in her other hand, driving it into the creature’s flank again and again until the stone became slick with gore.

The beast beat its wings, sending Teneff flying back. Her chain, still embedded in the creature’s side, snapped taut, wrenching her shoulder at an unnatural angle. With a bellow of pain she released her hold on its barbed links, hurtling backward to crash against the stone.

Erath sprang toward Teneff, but was warded off by her outstretched hand. She glared back at him, her face a mask of blood from a gash across her forehead. Tifalenji launched herself at the monster, another incantation flowing from her lips, but she was smashed from the air by a clutch of tentacles.

Every fiber of Erath’s being screamed at him to move, to do something. He shot Talz a glance, and set his jaw. It was time to pull his weight.

Scrambling up the side of the basilisk, Erath took a tight hold of the reins and drove his heels into Talz’s flanks. The beast lumbered forward with a throaty grunt. Erath rode forward, placing himself between the creature and Teneff. A tentacle flicked at his face and he brought up his falchion in a blur of steel, slicing it away.

Blood pounded in Erath’s ears as he deflected another slashing limb, making ready to charge. He pushed forward, slicing into a swarm of tentacles assailing him.

“Stay clear of my manservant, beast!” came a voice from behind the creature.

The sleek, agile silhouette of Lady Henrietta appeared from between the trees. The reptilian steed dashed forward, eager to coat her jewelry in a fresh kill. Seated upon her back, the masked figure of Marit laughed in equal eagerness, the blade of her glaive singing as it cut the air.

With another piercing shriek the creature whirled around to face Marit in a disjointed, boneless spin.

“Yes, that’s the spirit!” She flung out her glaive until she gripped the very end of it. She leaned back, spinning the spear in a wide arc before swinging it in closer. The blade slashed upward alongside the beast, shearing away an entire shoal of tentacles and two wings. The creature recoiled, and Marit hopped up to stand in a crouch on Henrietta’s saddle. Using her weapon for balance, she leapt up into the air before landing on the monster’s back.

Clutching at a tentacle with her free hand, Marit scrambled up atop the beast as it bucked and rolled in a frenzied attempt to dislodge her. With a battle cry she plunged the tip of her glaive down into the base of the monster’s skull, and answered the steaming jets of glowing blood that splashed her with a sharp twist. The creature’s ear-splitting hiss was cut abruptly short as its limbs went slack and it toppled heavily to the ground. The rain fell normally again.

The Noxians collected themselves, joining together in a loose circle around the dead creature. Erath climbed down from Talz’s back, still wary of sheathing his blade as he imagined the beast rising once more.

Marit ripped her glaive loose with a grunt muffled by her leather mask. “I believe I am beginning to grow a touch weary of being your personal savior, runesmith.”

“That creature,” said Tifalenji. “It came from the other realm.”

“Indeed?” Marit raised an eyebrow. “Well, whatever part of it that is in this realm is dead.”

The runesmith looked up at the rider. “When all this is finished, I shall craft you a weapon as savage as your spirit.”

Marit matched her gaze. “I may just hold you to that.”

“Well met, Marit,” Teneff dipped her head.

“Yes,” Erath nodded hastily. “Thank you.”

Arrel said nothing.

“Of course,” Marit’s eyes smiled, and she gave a theatrical bow. “I’ll be damned if I have to endure any more of this adventure without the hired help.” She glanced back at the monster’s corpse. “Do you think this thing is good eating, or bursting with some ghastly poison?”

“You want to try it?” scoffed Arrel. “Be our guest. Only fair as it is your kill, after all.”

“I see,” Marit tilted her head. “What about the little one?”

The Noxians all turned their attention to the smaller creature. Raising its head, the tiny monster trilled. It shivered for a moment before bursting into a cloud of snowflakes, which each then became a sound, and then nothing.

Erath stared at the now empty space, releasing a breath slowly through his nose. “Someone tell me again, why do we want this place?”

“The veil is thin here,” said Tifalenji, cuffing the trickle of blood from her upper lip as she sheathed her sword. “This land teems with the bizarre. Ignore it.”

“This land is nothing but bizarre,” Erath muttered.

Marit stepped gingerly onto the skull of the dead creature, snapping her fingers to draw Henrietta close. Sinking her glaive into the earth, she pushed down on the end of the haft, using it like a vault to swing herself over onto the saddle once more.

“How long have you been up in that saddle, eh?” teased Teneff. “Why don’t you give Lady Henrietta a rest?”

Marit scoffed. “I’m not touching Ionia any more than is absolutely necessary, thank you.”

“Sounds like an awful long time to hold one’s piss,” Teneff grinned.

“Hmm, well I’ve some jars stashed away here somewhere, if you’re in need of a fresh batch?” Marit began to rummage through her saddle pouches. Erath’s shoulders shook as he stifled a laugh.

“Can we not?” asked Tifalenji, looking at both women in exasperation.

Teneff shook her head. “You are no fun, runesmith.”

“No fun at all,” echoed Marit. She looked to Erath, eyes narrowing into slits of cruel slyness.

“Now, manservant, I don’t completely hate you yet, so whilst we are on the subject, a word of warning as you care for Lady Henrietta. Her urine is highly acidic, so no matter how desperate and overcome with thirst you might find yourself on our travels, you must look elsewhere, understand?”

“Why?” Erath chuckled. “Is that what happened to your face?”

Marit visibly tensed. Her eyes flashed wide for an instant, fingers digging into the haft of her glaive. “No,” she said coldly, winding Henrietta’s reins around her free hand and riding off without another word.

The color drained from Erath’s face. “I—”

“Let it be,” Teneff shook her head. “Just bide back a distance from her for a while.”

Erath’s heart sank as he dragged himself back to Talz. After all this time, he had felt the faintest idea of being part of the group, of belonging. Now he felt it spill out between his fingers, like the elder Ionian’s tea.

He had been so close, and he ruined it.

The next week’s trek had been calm, or at least as calm as the wilds of Ionia could be to an outsider. The rains had ceased, and Erath savored marching over dry land for a change. The absence of bone-deep cold and the other miseries brought to a soldier by mud allowed him to truly see the natural splendour of Ionia in all its wondrous, breathtaking glory.

Everything was in subtle motion, from the dancing of the birds to the gentle sway of the multicolored trees. Even the chase between the predator and its prey, glimpsed for only an instant at a time in the spaces between the trees, unfolded in a sort of graceful harmony. It was as though they were all moving in concert to some silent melody that was just beyond Erath’s ability to experience, a wider world he inhabited, but couldn’t see.

They had been proceeding along the course of an immense river ever since they made landfall on Navori, never straying out of sight from its banks for too long. Not only had it served as a source of food and fresh water, but as a guide deeper into the interior, as the huntresses followed the eerie song that radiated from Tifalenji’s blade.

“Night soon,” said Teneff, glancing over at the runesmith.

Tifalenji’s eyes darted up at the swollen silver crescent of the moon, barely visible in the reddening sky. Erath thought he saw a moment of frustration flash across her features, before they become impassive and unreadable once more. “We’ll stop here, then.” She looked at Erath. “Make camp.”

“Second,” murmured Arrel. The hound presented himself. “Find Marit, bring her back.”

Second chuffed and turned, sprinting away into the deepening dusk. Marit had ridden ahead of the group since the incident after killing the creature, the thought sending a twist of regret in Erath’s gut.

“I’ll go get some wood for a fire,” said Erath, drawing a hatchet from where it hung off Talz’s back.

“Take care in how you do,” warned Teneff. “The trees here are alive.”

Erath frowned. “Aren’t all trees alive?”

“She means they’ll-kill-you alive,” said Arrel.

Erath’s frown deepened.

Night had fully descended, wrapping the world in a blanket of twinkling black velvet, by the time Erath had collected enough firewood. After the battle against the creature, he had opted to collect scattered branches from the ground rather than chop a fresh one loose and risk awakening some vicious animus within the tree that would seek one of his limbs to balance the scales.

He returned to the campsite and made a fire. Once he was satisfied the embers were growing into a healthy flame, he slung a cooking pot and weighted net over his shoulder and made for the river. After checking how light their provision sacks had become, he hoped to return to camp with a fish.

The minutes stretched by as he crouched on the river bank, staring into its glassy black surface. His pulse quickened as he saw motion in the water, and he flung out the net, cinching it tight and hauling it back onto land. The net wriggled and leapt with a captive carp.

Breathing out a sigh of relieved triumph, Erath filled the pot with clear river water and dropped the carp inside.

He walked back to camp, his step much lighter than when he had set off as he thanked the fish for its devoted service to the Noxian empire.

“It’s ready,” said Erath as he portioned the soup out in each warrior’s tin cup. He was careful to drag the ladle across the bottom of the pot every time. When he had handed out the last cup he poured what was left for himself, and took a seat near the fire.

For a while no one spoke, each of them content to enjoy the comforts of a hot meal and the crackling warmth of the fire. Erath was no exception, happy to fill his belly and give rest to sore feet and tired muscles.

For that brief span of time, nothing else mattered.

Each of the Noxians did their best to attempt some relaxation. Arrel was surrounded by her hounds, carefully inspecting their claws and teeth. Tifalenji had walked a short distance away, sitting cross legged beneath the light of the moon as she chanted and wrapped her levitating blade in magic. Teneff had taken out a battered pipe, slowly breathing out quivering rings of blue-grey smoke that crackled in the firelight.

“You still use that thing, Ten?” Marit looked down from where she lounged atop Lady Henrietta’s back. “You do know that stuff will kill you.”

Teneff shook her head. “This won’t be what kills me. Besides, I’m not allowing myself to die until this business is done.”

Erath felt everyone’s thoughts coalesce, and cleared his throat. Teneff looked at him.

“This person we’ve been sent to find,” said Erath.

“Riven,” said Arrel softly.

“You all knew her?”

Tifalenji allowed her sword to drop into her hands. “Only by reputation.”

“I shed blood alongside her, when first we came to these shores,” said Teneff, staring into the flames. “Tough little thing, you wouldn’t guess it by looking at her but she could haul a pair of legionaries down to her level, each by an ear. That sword of hers, took incredible strength to even lift it.”

“Let alone the dancing she could do,” added Marit.

Erath noticed the runesmith out of the corner of his eye, regarding Teneff carefully at the mention of the blade. The uncomfortable thought rose in his mind of how little he truly knew about Tifalenji, and how thoroughly his life depended on her now.

“She was quiet at first,” said Marit, “mostly kept to herself.”

“But stand together in the line with someone,” continued Teneff, “forge that bond with iron and blood…”

“You become sisters,” Arrel finished.

Silence descended, the three huntresses lost amidst their thoughts.

“Why did she stay here?” said Marit, a thin edge creeping into the words. “All these years, everything that’s happened. Why did she betray us?”

“We don’t know what happened,” said Teneff.

Marit snorted. “Don’t play the imbecile, Ten. It does not suit you.”

“You think I don’t seek to bring her to account?” Teneff stood and rounded on Marit. “Why else am I here?”

“Years, she’s been here,” Marit replied, unmoving. “Years. Every opportunity to report back, and she didn’t. She is a deserter, and theirs is a weakness we cannot abide. A treachery we cannot forgive. We are here to seek vengeance.”

“Don’t call it vengeance,” said Arrel. “This will be justice.”

“Call it whatever you wish,” Marit replied. “Riven made her choice, and we are the consequence.”

Erath tried to sleep, but despite his exhaustion it eluded him. He had seen the power the huntresses wielded when they worked together. Who was this person who was able to divide them without even being there? Who was Riven, who had left such a mark on each of them?

The questions swirled around his head, though they slowly began to sink down beneath a promise of rest, before it was shattered by a voice.

“Up!”

Erath stirred. It was Teneff, standing watch.

“Get up!” she bellowed again, clanging her short sword against her armor. “The river is flooding!”

The Noxians scrambled to their feet. Erath turned to look at the riverbank, and his blood ran cold.

Something had roiled the current, transforming it from a peaceful flow into a riot of churning rapids. Erath saw human faces take shape in the foaming walls of rushing water, boiling into being and mouthing silent, enraged curses before dissolving back. All the while it rose toward them, devouring the bank inch by inch.

The river wasn’t flooding. It was alive.

“Get to the treeline!” barked Tifalenji.

Teneff was already running. Marit had only to spin into a riding position on Lady Henrietta before they were darting for the trees. Erath’s first thought was Talz.

He hurried to the basilisk, taking hold of whatever he could from the camp as the ground beneath him turned to a marshy quagmire. Water rushed over his boots as he reached the massive reptile. He looked back just in time to see another great swell smash down over Arrel.

And it looked like it had hands.

Prying out the stakes rooting Talz in place, Erath started climbing onto his back before the basilisk charged. Erath clung to the straps and rigging on the beast’s flank for dear life as the water surged after them. He hauled himself up, his legs swinging free, head ducking as equipment, tools and what remained of their food supply tore loose.

They made it to the trees, and Erath climbed as the water battered them. Talz clawed himself up to his hind legs to keep his head above the surface, each fresh surge crashing higher up his back and neck. Erath looked back. Teneff and Marit were clear, but Arrel and her hounds were caught in the swamp their camp had become, slowly being sucked back into the river.

Erath braced as another swell struck him like a hail of stones. The tree next to him sagged, nearly snapping from its trunk. He looked from the tree to back at Arrel, and dropped down into water that reached his waist.

Grabbing the hatchet from Talz, he swung, chopping into the wet bark of the ailing tree. He swore he heard some mournful note rasp from its leaves as it finally broke, smashing down at an angle toward the river. Erath watched a cluster of shapes approach it.

Arrel’s hounds. They were paddling in a circle around her, dragging her up onto the tree. But there were only three of them.

The waters began to recede as the first light of day broke through the foliage in bars of copper and gold. They glittered across the water. A horrific sound, like a dirge being played by a drowning man, filled the air as the tide slid back into the river.

Marit galloped back, and Teneff climbed down, all of them converging on Arrel and the fallen tree. She had followed the bank, scanning the becalmed waters with her pack.

“Second!” she called, pausing. “Second…”

“He was carried beneath the water, Arrel,” said Teneff. She laid a tentative hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

Arrel’s hand shook. She balled them into fists and set her jaw into a hard line.

“We’re wasting time here,” the tracker croaked, shrugging off Teneff’s hand. She stood, sharply gesturing to bring the other hounds from their somber watch on the riverbank. Fourth lingered a second longer than the others, but a glare from Arrel brought him trotting to her.

Erath flinched as the sunlight faded. He held out his hand, feeling heavy drops as they struck his palm. Their short reprieve from the rain was over.

Within minutes the sun was gone, hidden behind heavy black stormclouds. The rain was joined by howling gales, whipping the downpour into twisting sheets of freezing water. The cold sliced through Erath to the bone. He could barely see an arm’s length in front of his face. It even forced Marit to dismount from Lady Henrietta.

Tifalenji held her sword aloft. With a whisper, the blade burst with emerald flame, forcing back the storm’s blinding winds a fraction. Teneff retrieved a length of rope from Talz, looping it around each of their waists to bind them together.

Leaning into the wind and lashing rain, the Noxians wandered forward behind Tifalenji, a tiny capsule of green light in the maelstrom. Time blurred for Erath as he trudged on. He couldn’t tell if it had been minutes or hours before Tifalenji spoke up.

“We have to stop,” she roared over the wind.

“Look!” Marit pointed with her glaive. “There’s light up ahead!”

Erath could make out the faintest cluster of lights, like a constellation in the heavens.

“This is wild country,” warned Teneff. “It could be bandits, or a Brotherhood camp for all we know.”

“Then we kill them all,” hissed Marit. “The rune-witch is right. We have no supplies, and if we do not take shelter, this storm will end us.”

Teneff spat out a mouthful of rainwater, and nodded. Together they fought the storm, putting one foot ahead of the other, until they reached the lights.

The trees overhead formed an overhang, absorbing the worst of the storm. A village materialized before them, small and isolated amidst the woods. It looked like an extension of the forest itself, the tall, thin dwellings appearing woven and sculpted. They could just see them over a wall of intertwined branches barring their way, as though the land itself had formed a stockade. The branches shuddered, peeling apart enough to create a small passage.

A dozen men and women stepped through the opening. They wore hand-spun robes, faces hidden behind hoods raised against the storm. The huntresses noted the axes and swords in their hands, the broad slab-like blades chipped and worn. The battered remnants of armor plating they were clad in.

The huntresses formed a line, with Erath and Talz behind them.

“Those are Noxian weapons,” said Teneff.

“And those are Noxians carrying them,” added Arrel.

As one they sank into battle postures. Arrel’s hounds snarled.

“Lower your weapons,” said the lead villager in perfect Va-Noxian. He pulled back his hood to reveal a scarred face, his dark hair and beard shot through with streaks of silver. “We don’t want a fight.”

“Well, you are deserters,” sneered Marit. She spat upon the ground.

“Remember what’s behind us,” Teneff grumbled under her breath.

“Realize what’s in front of us!” Marit snapped.

“Stop!” Erath pushed his way between the huntresses. There was something about the man, hearing his voice. He stepped forth with trembling hands. He regarded the lead Noxian with wide eyes.

A single tear descended the curve of his cheek.

“Father?”

The man led Erath out of the storm into one of the huts, passing onlookers, Noxian and Ionian alike, their faces expressing a spectrum of shock and anger to fear. Erath followed him, as though in a trance, struggling to believe that this was Jobin, his father.

Alive.

“You look like you’ve missed a meal or two,” said Jobin. The two sat down around a fire pit. Jobin opened a steaming pot, scooping out a measure of rice into a pair of wooden bowls and handing Erath one. “My son, what are you doing here?”

They talked, of Erath’s journey, of home. He omitted much, careful as he spoke with a man he thought was dead.

When they were done, Jobin’s eyes gleamed in the firelight. “Look at you. You’re a man now. My little enhasyi.” He paused. “How is your mother?”

“Still mourning you,” Erath said, trying to keep the bitterness from his voice. He removed the bone pendant from his neck. “Who even is this?”

“Me,” Jobin raised a hand, showing where one finger ended in a stump. “A sacrifice we all sent back, that we hoped might bring you peace.”

“Peace,” Erath exhaled the word.

After weeks traversing a realm of wild magic, of illusion and the uncanny, he had to ask the obvious question.

“Are you real?”

Jobin leaned forward. “What?”

“Are you real?” Erath said again. “Or a spell to make it appear my father is not truly dead? If it is deception I would thank you, I truly would, for all that the alternative would mean.”

For a few moments, neither spoke. The silence stretched.

“The world used to be so small,” said Jobin, finally. “You never knew it. We tended our herds, we traded with our neighbors, we raised families. We had simple lives and we were happy. Then the empire came, and our little world became so much bigger, and so much darker.”

He glanced out the door of the hut. “Being here, seeing this place, it brought me back to that.”

“And that was worth treachery?” asked Erath.

“Against what?” Jobin looked back at him. “Against some distant ruler I would never meet, pushing markers across maps? Those markers are people, Erath. Noxian people, Ionian people. We should have never begun this war.”

“But we are stronger together,” Erath insisted. “Noxus didn’t put us in chains, it set us free. No more herds growing thinner every year, no more raids from those same neighbors. And we can do the same here. You’ve been gone a long time, it isn’t the Noxus you remember. We’ve truly become part of something greater.”

“I don’t believe much has changed,” Jobin shook his head. “We came here believing what you believe, that this place needed Noxus. ’Rath, I don’t think they need our help, and they don’t need our rule, but we can coexist. I didn’t have to kill them, to become family. Once I understood that, I knew I couldn’t return.”

Erath processed his father’s words, and hung his head. “Everything you taught me was a lie.”

“I’m sorry, my son.” Jobin laid a hand on Erath’s shoulder. “I was deceived myself by it. But there is always time for something different. Something better. There is a place for you, here.”

“A lie,” Erath repeated. Slowly, he looked up. “So why should I believe you now?”

Jobin visibly sagged. “My son…”

“No,” Erath’s eyes were hard. “You don’t get to do that. You lost a finger, I lost you! And now you sit there and preach, as you hide in the woods? We had an excuse before we joined the empire, of being blind to the wider world. We don’t have that ignorance anymore. Now you are either working to unite the world, to make it better, or you’re running.”

Erath stood.

“I’m not running.”

Erath and Jobin emerged from the hut. The blade squire looked up, seeing the clouds thinning through the canopy of the trees. The rain had slackened as well.

“Think upon what I’ve said, my son,” said Jobin.

“I have,” Erath replied, stepping away to stand beside the huntresses.

Jobin swallowed, and cleared his throat. “We have offered you shelter. Now that the storm is passing, we will offer you a portion of our harvest. We ask in return only that you leave us in peace, and forget you ever found this place.”

Teneff eyed the runesmith. She tilted her head, and the huntresses stepped back to confer amongst themselves.

“The only question worth asking,” said Marit, “is if we kill them all.”

“His father is among them,” Teneff nodded toward Erath.

“His father is a traitor,” Marit replied.

“He isn’t the only one,” said Arrel. “Close to half of this village are Noxian… or were.”

“Scared of getting your hounds dirty?” Marit ran a finger down the edge of her glaive.

“Slaughtering cowards and villagers finds us Riven how?” the tracker retorted.

Erath looked to Tifalenji. The runesmith held the lives of these villagers—the life of his father—in her hands. For the life of him, Erath couldn’t decide what he wanted her to say, and that more than anything turned his heart to a lead weight in his chest. The huntresses studied her too, trying to parse her impassive features for her judgment.

Teneff rested a hand on her chain. “What’s it to be, then?”

“We move on,” Tifalenji stated. “Our task is to find one deserter, and these are not her.” She eyed Marit. “It is not a discussion.”

“As you wish,” she shrugged, walking back to her mount. Tifalenji looked sternly upon Erath.

“Were the circumstances different, I would not condone leaving them here alive.”

“I understand,” Erath replied.

“Now make haste,” ordered Tifalenji. “Time is against us, and you know what lies ahead.”

The huntresses gathered and began the march out of the village. Erath spared a final look back as they passed through the unfolding stockade, then touched Teneff’s arm. “What lies ahead?”

Her face turned grim, and her eyes distant. “The place where all this started.”

They marched in silence, though troubled thoughts made it feel as though Erath were pushing his way through a crowd. He couldn’t reconcile the man who raised him with the one he discovered living in that village. A son is raised in the image of his father, but does he end up the same person?

The bone pendant around his neck grated against his chest.

The landscape changed, growing more arid and dry, as did the dispositions of the huntresses. Postures stiffened, reflexes had them twitching at the slightest sound, and all three had their weapons drawn, clutched in white-knuckle grips. Erath could smell a faintly acrid tang in the air.

The Noxians crested a hill, and witnessed a dusty expanse of dessicated plains ahead. A marker was erected at the border to the plain, little more than a stone totem marked with Ionian script. He could not decipher it, but the meaning behind it was clear to Erath.

It was a warning, to stay away.

They found an old man sitting by the marker. Quietly he hummed to himself, flicking a necklace of chimes he wore looped around his shoulders. His eyes grew wide as the Noxians approached, and using a cane for support, he slowly pushed himself to his feet.

“Travelers,” he raised a hand. “I have no part in any quarrel, and serve no master. I keep vigil here, at the threshold of a terrible place, to ward off those who might seek to cross.”

The huntresses were silent. Erath had never seen such tension radiating from them. Tifalenji stepped forward.

“We wish no harm to you, gatekeeper,” she said. “But do not seek to bar our passage.”

“I beg you,” the Ionian clasped his tiny hands together, “go no further. You cannot imagine the pain that occurred here.”

“We don’t have to,” answered Teneff, as she walked past.

Erath followed, passing the dejected Ionian by. “I will sing for you,” said the gatekeeper. “For your pain.”

The first step onto the dusty plain, and Erath felt like he had been transported somewhere alien, even for Ionia. It was absolutely devoid of life. The ground had a sickly, greenish tint, and the air was sour, stinging his nose and throat. His eyes and lips tingled.

A profound sense of loss emanated from the earth like a haze, stabbing into Erath.

Teneff stopped, slowly taking in the landscape.

“This is where it happened.”

“It was here,” breathed Tifalenji, the runes along her blade pulsing. She blinked. “She was here.”

“We had been fighting for years,” said Teneff. “Everything ground to a stalemate. They said they had a way to break through, brought us some mad Zaunite and his concoction.”

“Chemical fire,” Arrel murmured.

“Something so caustic it would strip the life out of anything it touched,” said Marit. “We were safeguarding the payload, moving it up to the line, when it all went wrong.”

Erath looked from one huntress to the next as their words flowed over each other.

“We were ambushed…”

“…so many of them…”

“Riven called out for support…”

“They couldn’t have known where we were.”

“They fired—”

“—and the jars ignited.”

Marit reached behind her head, undoing the clasps that kept her mask in place. The straps slackened, came loose, and Erath swallowed.

Her entire face and skull was a mass of hairless, glossy red scar tissue. Erath had seen things killed by burns, the way the flesh looked afterward, but this was different. Black veins threaded the tissue like cobwebs. Erath could not fathom what pain she must endure, even now.

Only her eyes remained unscathed. She looked at Erath, holding his gaze in cold silence.

Arrel removed her own helm. Erath glimpsed wounds around her lips and neck. The tracker hacked and spat a gobbet of blood phlegm.

She must have breathed it in, Erath realized.

“It was chaos,” said Teneff. “Comrades, enemies, boiling away, screaming themselves dead. I never saw Riven again. I believed that she died here, like all the rest.” She looked at Erath. “Do you understand? If we can find her, the thought that we can make something good from all this—”

Then she stopped, her eyes on the horizon. Erath looked, seeing a group of figures appear on the hill. They were Ionian, clad in lightweight armor and festooned with blades of all kinds. Their faces were hidden behind masks and hoods the color of dark iron.

“Calm is the ocean before the storm,” shouted one of the Ionians. “Stand to account, xiir! If any are to control this land, it will be us.”

“Navori Brotherhood,” Teneff bared her teeth, speaking the words like a curse.

“Full warparty,” said Marit, her voice calm and level despite an edge for the violence sure to come.

“The village you stole from,” said the Brotherhood warrior, spreading his arms wide. “They were all so eager to speak of you. To help us fulfill our promise.”

Erath’s blood ran cold.

“We should have killed them,” Marit snarled, rage twisting the ruin of her face as she pulled her mask back on. A light rain began to fall from the iron-gray sky.

“This forsaken rain,” hissed Arrel.

The Brotherhood warrior took a step down the hill. “We promised to find you, the xiir, wherever you might be in the First Lands. We promised to hunt you, stalk you, to cleanse our homeland of those who have destroyed the balance between the twin realms.”

The Ionians roared, raising weapons, many of which coursed and shivered with magic.

“We make these promises to all those you have taken before their time, those whose limbs you have taken, whose peaceful dreams you have stolen and replaced with terror and broken memory. These promises we will keep, so long as our hearts beat life within us!”

A dozen warriors descended the hill, coming within a handful of paces of the Noxians with weapons ready.

“Tell me,” said the Ionian. “What will you promise?”

Teneff breathed, slowly shut her eyes and opened them. “I promise… to make this hurt.”

“You promise blood, then,” the warrior smiled beneath his hood. “We accept.”

Teneff roared, hurling her hooked chain. It struck one of the Brotherhood in the temple. The force of the blow smashed him to the ground. Teneff stomped on his chest, tearing the hook free in a spray of blood. More flecked from the hook as she spun it again.

Arrel flung out her hand and her hounds attacked. First tackled one of them, clamping down around the woman’s neck. The drakehound shook savagely, wrenching her body back and forth until she went limp, then moved on to another.

The two groups closed into melee. Tifalenji thrust her sword into an Ionian’s midsection. She spat a curse and the blade ignited, setting the man ablaze with screaming jade flame. Marit strafed through their midst. Her glaive was a blur, never ceasing as it cut, stabbed and slashed in tandem with Lady Henrietta’s snapping jaws.

Erath watched the opening strikes. This place had awakened something in them, unleashed a rage that they had crushed down deep within themselves for years. The runesmith had waded in, knowing the only way to achieve her goal was to eliminate the Ionians in her way. Talz’s reins slipped from his hand, replaced by his falchion.

Teneff locked blades with the Brotherhood leader, their faces inches apart.

“This ground pains you,” he taunted. “The xiir you lost, would you like to see them again?”

As if on command, a young Ionian who had remained halfway down the hill began to sing. It was a lilting, haunting melody, a tune that no living thing should be able to make. It stilled the Noxians for an instant, the absolute wrongness of it.

Erath’s footing slipped as the earth shook. Tiny things appeared up from the ground, like seedlings but pulsing with a sickly, intermittent unlight. Erath realized after a moment that they were fingers.

Soon hands emerged, arms bursting through the soil. Insubstantial silhouettes of ragged men and women clawed their way up from below, dressed in incorporeal rags of Noxian garb, all radiating the same cold spectral darkness.

“The dead here are not at peace,” hissed the Ionian, grappling with Teneff.

“Madness,” Teneff snarled.

The Brotherhood warrior leapt back, drawing a blade. “And you will join them!”

The youth continued to sing, and more pale phantoms clawed their way up from the earth. Erath found himself surrounded, and slashed out in a wide arc. The spirits boiled away at his blade’s touch, only to resolve like a sickened wind. He struck again, carving an opening to see the wider battle.

The Brotherhood numbers were thinning from the fury of the huntresses, but the dead were massing, dredged back into being by that hellish melody. Erath recoiled, sensing that even these Ionian’s kin would condemn the evil they were unleashing. They had but moments until they were overwhelmed, and it had to be stopped.

He made for the hill. A Brotherhood warrior leapt in his path, wielding a pair of long daggers. Shouting an Ionian curse, he lunged at Erath. The blade squire parried the first dagger going low for his gut, but saw the flash of the second seeking his throat. He backpedaled, losing his balance and falling to the ground.

The Ionian dived atop him. His mask slipped free, revealing a young determined face trying to drive one of the daggers into Erath’s chest. His falchion had slipped from his grasp in the fall. He fought the man, gripping his wrists as the dagger’s tip pierced his flesh. With a roar of pain and anger, Erath rolled, reversing the positions as he drew his knife.

Erath dropped his weight down, driving the knife into the Ionian’s gut. Grunting, he twisted it sharply, and felt the strength leave the Ionian’s grip. Tugging the blade free he collected his falchion and stepped over the dying man.

Rain and blood turned the ground to mire. Erath ran, weaving between clashes of blades and the moaning hordes of lost Noxians reaching for him. Their touch numbed his flesh, as though they were filling his veins with ice water. He gasped for breath as his side was raked by translucent claws.

The singer’s eyes were closed, the lids twitching as he wept blood. Trickles of ruby issued from his nose, ears, and lips as he stood transfixed and dirged. He didn’t see Erath coming. The blade squire surged forward, pushing against cold, grasping hands. He was bent double, crying out in agony as one climbed on top of him. He thrust himself upright, throwing the ghoul back. Breathless, his vision narrowing like a collapsing tunnel, he charged forward and with the last of his strength brought his blade down.

The Ionian’s song fell silent as he collapsed, his lifeblood emptying out from where Erath’s blade had split him from collar to sternum. The phantoms shrieked, their forms elongating as they were drawn violently back down into the earth. Within moments, all that remained of them was a pale, sickly fog, and the echoing cries of the unquiet dead.

Erath turned, stumbling like a drunkard as he returned to the fight still raging below. The Navori Brotherhood warparty was down to their final warriors. They had clearly chosen to die rather than flee, save for one. Arrel’s hounds ran him down, and tore him apart. Lady Henrietta feasted, her jewelry stained crimson. Blood sizzled and snapped where it touched the runes of Tifalenji’s blade.

Erath arrived in time to see Teneff with the leader of the warriors. She had encircled his neck with her chain and drove his face into the quagmire, a boot on his back as she watched him suffocate.

All of them bled from a dozen wounds. Teneff looked up at Erath as he approached. She stood up straight sharply, snapping the Ionian’s neck, and stumbled back. She sank to one knee, overcome by the bone-deep exhaustion of prolonged fighting hand to hand.

Erath looked down. The earth fizzed and fumed wherever blood had seeped into it. His skin burned from the dust, already reddened and peeling.

“Insanity,” snapped Marit, flinging blood from her glaive. “Ionians claim to revere the dead, and yet do this?”

“We aren’t their dead,” murmured Arrel. “Even still…”

“Insanity,” Marit repeated.

“We can’t stay here,” panted Tifalenji. “The toxin is still in the ground. And who knows what further ruin their necromancy has wrought.” She stood beside Teneff.

“I had almost hoped to see Riven among them,” she said, looking up at the runesmith. “I had wished that you were wrong.”

The runesmith offered her hand. “I am not.”

After a moment, Teneff took it.

For once the rain was a blessing. Cool and cleansing, it washed the blood and poisoned earth from their bodies as they left the site of the chemical attack behind. They could all see the runesmith’s sword was shining now, humming to her.

“She’s close,” Tifalenji whispered, eyes locked to the runes. “So very close.”

She nodded to Marit and Arrel, and the two began ranging ahead.

Erath felt his chest as they walked. Gingerly avoiding his dagger wound, he pulled his pendant out from under his jerkin, rubbing a thumb slowly over its surface. “He gave us up. My father gave us up.”

“He may have been coerced,” said Teneff. After a while she shook her head. “It doesn’t really matter.”

“I was only a child. They told me that he died, he’s gone, he’s never coming back, I’ll never see him again. Then I do see him, and everything I knew about him was a lie.” He looked at Teneff, taking a shaking breath. “What do I do with that?”

Teneff reflected for a moment. “You can let him go.”

Erath cuffed away a tear. “How does that help, after everything?

“It’s not about helping everything.” She gripped his shoulder. “Just you. So long as Noxus endures, you will always have a family, Erath.”

Erath paused. He let the words and memories of the past days wash over him. Exhaling, he pulled at the pendant until the cord around his neck snapped. He stared down at it, and slowly tilted his palm until the sliver of bone fell to the ground.

Without looking back he jogged off to catch up to the others, as the pendant quickly vanished beneath the earth.

From an early age, Lucian wanted nothing more than to be like his father, Urias, who was a member of the ancient order of the Sentinels of Light. While Lucian remained home in Demacia, Urias ranged far and wide, protecting the living from the wraiths of the Black Mist.

Urias would regale Lucian with tales of his adventures, where courage and ingenuity carried the day. Lucian hung on every word, picturing himself saving the people of Runeterra at his father’s side. But Urias did not want his son to follow in his footsteps, hoping to keep his family safe from the dangerous life he had chosen.

Lucian waited for the day he would become Urias’ apprentice, but it never came.

Instead, Lucian stayed in Demacia, where he found himself increasingly at odds with the kingdom’s culture. It especially rankled him that Demacia would exile peaceful mages to the hinterlands. Lucian found fulfillment in safeguarding the banished on their perilous journey. Where his countrymen saw only outlaws, reducing the world to good or evil, Lucian looked closer, and saw people in need of help.

After returning home from one such journey, Lucian found a stranger waiting at his door. She introduced herself as Senna, a Sentinel of Light. Cradling Urias’ relic pistol in her hands, Senna explained that Lucian’s father had died, falling in battle against the the long-dead wraiths of the Black Mist.

Senna had been Urias’ apprentice, fighting at his side for years.

Lucian reeled in shock—not only was his father dead, but before him stood a woman who had lived the life he had wanted for so long. As Senna made to take her leave, Lucian stopped her at the door, insisting he join her. He knew what came next—the vigil for lost Sentinels. Senna reluctantly allowed Lucian to accompany her.

Along the way, the two traded stories of their time with Urias, Senna comforting Lucian with her plainspoken wisdom, and Lucian easing her pain with fond remembrances. They arrived at Urias’ birthplace, far away from Demacian lands. There, they held the vigil for lost Sentinels.

As they prepared to depart, dark clouds rolled in over the coast, and wraiths manifested from the foulness, attacking them. Where Lucian was horrified, Senna drew her weapons with a grim familiarity—this was her curse. Since she was a child, tendrils of the Black Mist had stalked her wherever she went, unleashing its horror should she tarry anywhere for too long.

As Senna fought one of the creatures, it clawed Urias’ pistol from her grip. Lucian retrieved it, sensing his fate opening up before him. The blazing sorrow in his heart manifested in a bolt of light that blasted from the pistol, distracting the wraith so Senna could banish it. Senna fought off the remaining spirits before the pair left, the Mist ever on her trail.

Never before had one of the uninitiated fired a Sentinel’s relic weapon. For the first time, Lucian had shown Senna his potential to join the order.

Eventually, Senna entrusted Lucian with his father’s pistol, and instructed him in the tactics and doctrines of the Sentinels. He proved himself worthy of the lessons. A bond slowly formed between them, Lucian’s warmth and charm the perfect balance to Senna’s discipline and unbreakable resolve.

Lucian and Senna battled the myriad evils that ushered forth from the Black Mist, and their reliance upon each other blossomed into love. The closer Lucian grew to Senna, the more he witnessed the curse she bore. Each conflict hardened him, splitting the world apart into light and shadow, good and evil. Lucian’s urge to heal Senna became a crusade he pursued with reckless zeal.

Scouring a forgotten vault for a cure, the two Sentinels were attacked by the monstrous wraith Thresh. The ghoulish Chain Warden was a dangerous foe, and when Senna called to withdraw and regroup, Lucian refused to turn back. Throwing himself blindly into the attack, Lucian realized his mistake as Thresh gained the upper hand. Senna stepped into Thresh’s path, imploring Lucian to run.

As the dust settled, Senna lay dead before him, her soul claimed by Thresh’s eldritch lantern.

Senna’s sacrifice was nearly Lucian’s undoing. For years, he stalked Runeterra, a husk of the man he once was, his former warmth replaced with anger and bitterness. Wielding both his pistol and Senna’s, Lucian hunted Thresh in the hope of destroying the lantern and granting oblivion to his captive love. On the day that battle finally came, Lucian shattered the lantern—but instead of finding her eternal rest, Senna reemerged.

Lucian and Senna’s love is a bond even death could not sever. As Lucian struggles to grasp Senna’s altered form, he is forced to confront his own. Lucian now fights to return to his former self, while grappling with the reality that the dark forces he hates are all that keep Senna with him.

While Senna has returned with knowledge of a new mission, Lucian remains obsessed with exacting vengeance from Thresh, as he is certain the Chain Warden’s machinations have only begun.

Am I a god?

He no longer knows. Once, perhaps, when the sun disc gleamed like gold atop the great Palace of Ten Thousand Pillars. He remembers carrying a withered ancient in his arms, and them both borne into the sky by the sun’s radiance. All his hurts and pain were washed away as the light remade him. If this memory is his, then was he once mortal? He thinks so, but cannot remember. His thoughts are a cloud of duneflies, myriad shattered memories buzzing angrily in his elongated skull.

What is real? What am I now?

This place, this cave under the sands. Is it real? He believes so, but he is no longer sure he can trust his senses. For as long as he can remember, he knew only darkness; awful, unending darkness that clung to him like a shroud. But then the darkness broke apart and he was hurled back into the light. He remembers clawing his way through the sand as the earth buckled and heaved, the living rock grinding as something long buried and all but forgotten heaved itself to the surface once again.

Towering statues erupted from beneath the sand, vast and terrible in their aspect. Armored warriors with demonic heads loomed over him, ancient gods of a long dead culture. Bellicose phantoms rose from the sand and he fled their wrath, escaping the rising city as light blazed and the moons and stars wheeled overhead. He remembers staggering through the desert, his mind afire with visions of blood and betrayal, of titanic palaces and golden temples brought down in the blink of an eye. Centuries of progress undone for the sake of one man’s vanity and pride. Was it his? He does not know, but fears it might have been.

The light that once remade his flesh now pains him. It burned him raw and seared his soul as he wandered the desert, lost and alone, tormented by a hatred he did not understand. He has taken refuge from its unforgiving light, but even here, squatting and weeping in this dripping cave, the Whisperer has found him. The shadow on the walls slithers around him; always muttering, always conspiring to feed his bitterness. He presses long, gnarled hands that end in vicious, ebon talons to his temples, but he cannot shut his constant companion in the darkness out. He never could.

The Whisperer tells tales of his shame and guilt. It speaks of the thousands who died because of him, who never had the chance to live thanks to his failure. A part of him believes these to be honeyed falsehoods, twisted fictions told often enough that he can no longer sift truth from lies. The Whisperer reminds him of the light being shut away, showing him the jackal-face of his betrayer looking down as he condemned him to the abyssal dark for all eternity. Tears gather at the corners of his cataracted eyes and he angrily wipes them away. The Whisperer knows every secret path into his mind, twisting every certainty he once clung to, every virtue that made him the hero revered as a god throughout...Shurima!

That name has meaning to him, but it fades like a shimmering mirage, remaining bound within the prison of his mind by chains of madness. His eyes, once so clear-sighted and piercing, are misted with the eons he spent in the endless dark. His skin was as tough as armored bronze, but is now dull and cracked, dust spilling from his many wounds like sand from an executioner’s hourglass. Perhaps he is dying. He thinks he might be, but the thought does not trouble him overmuch. He has lived an age and suffered too long to fear extinction.

Worse, he is no longer sure he can die. He looks at the weapon before him, a crescent bladed axe without a handle. It belonged to a warrior king of Icathia, but a fleeting memory of breaking its haft as he had broken its bearer’s army returns to him. He remembers remaking it, but not why. Perhaps he will use it to slice open his ridged throat and see what happens. Will blood or dust flow? No, he will not die here. Not yet. The Whisperer tells him fate has another role for him. He has blood yet to spill, a thirst for vengeance yet to slake. The jackal-face of the one who condemned him to darkness floats in his mind, and each time he sees it, the hatred carved on his heart boils to the surface.

He looks up at the cave walls as the shadows part, revealing the crude daubings of mortals. Ancient, flaking images, so faded as to be almost invisible, depict the desert city in all its glory. Rivers of cold, clear water flow in its pillared thoroughfares and the life-giving rays of the sun bring forth wondrous greenery from a newly fertile landscape. He sees a king in a hawk-headed helm atop a towering palace and a dark-robed figure at his side. Beneath them are two giants in armor wrought for war, one a hulking, crocodilian beast armed with a crescent-bladed axe, the other a jackal-headed warrior-scholar. In the reptilian form, he recognizes a mortal’s awed representation of his ascended incarnation. He turns his gaze upon the remaining warrior. Time has all but erased the angular script beneath the faded image, but enough is still legible for him to make out his betrayer’s name.

“Nasus…” he says. “Brother…”

And with the source of his torment named, his own identity is revealed like the sun emerging from behind a stormcloud.

“I am Renekton,” he hisses through hooked teeth. “The Butcher of the Sands.”

He lifts his crescent blade and rises to his full height as the dust of ages falls away from his armored form. Old wounds seal, broken skin knits afresh and color returns to his supple, jade crocodilian skin as purpose fills him. Once the sun remade him, but now darkness is his ally. Strength surges through his monstrously powerful body, muscles swelling and eyes burning red with hatred for Nasus. He hears the Whisperer speak once again, but he no longer heeds its voice. He clenches a clawed fist and touches the tip of his blade to the image of the jackal-headed warrior.

“You left me alone in the darkness, brother,” he says. “You will die for that betrayal.”