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Wilted leaves fall from shivering branches, as a gust of wind blows across the mountain slopes. Yi levitates a few inches above the ground, his eyes closed and hands folded, listening to the morning songs of Bahrl jays. The cool breeze touches his bare face, and tickles his brow.

Releasing a quiet sigh, he descends until his boots touch the dirt. He opens his eyes and smiles. Clear skies are a rare, friendly sight.

Yi dusts off his robe, noticing some loose, fallen hairs. Most are black, with a couple white, like wild silk.

How long has it been? he wonders.

Swinging a twill bag over his shoulder, he continues his hike, leaving behind trees that once swayed with life, but now stand still.

Yi glances down the mountain to see how far he has come. The lands below are soft, fragile—treasures to be protected. He looks forward and resumes climbing. On the path ahead, lilies wither, their coral petals turning a sickly brown.

“Didn’t expect to see anyone up here,” a voice calls out.

He pauses to listen, his hand clutching the ringed sword by his waist.

“You also looking for your herd?” The voice grows closer. “Stupid beasts. They always get caught in this area.”

Yi sees an aging farmer approach, and loosens his grip. She wears a simple kirtle, sewn over with assorted scraps of cloth. He bows as she draws near.

“Bah, save your etiquette for the monks,” she says. “You don’t look like you work the land for a living, ‘cause those blades sure aren’t for cutting weeds. What brings you here?”

“Good day for a hike,” Yi replies, his voice feigning innocence.

“So you’re here to train, huh? Noxus coming back so soon?” she asks with a chuckle.

“Where the sun sets once, it will again.”

The farmer snorts, recognizing the old proverb. It is known by most in the southern provinces. “Well, you let me know when they return. That’ll be the day I sail off this island. But until then, why don’t you put those swords of yours to good use and help a frail, old lady?”

She beckons Yi to follow. He obliges.

They stop next to a wooded area. A baby takin whimpers in agony, its hind legs bound by thick, swollen vines that tighten as the creature struggles.

“That there is Lasa,” the farmer explains. “He’s young and dumb, but he’s more use to me in the field than stuck on this cursed mountain.”

“You think it’s cursed?” Yi asks, kneeling by the beast. He runs a palm over its woolly back, feeling its muscles twitch and spasm.

The farmer crosses her arms. “Well, something un-spiritual happened here,” she replies, nodding her head towards the summit. “And without natural magic, the land demands sustenance, even taking life if it has to. Were it my choice, whatever’s up there oughta be burned.”

Yi fixates on the vines. He did not expect to see them this far down the mountain.

“I’ll see what I can do.” He murmurs, drawing two blades from brass sheaths on his boots. As he edges the steel close to the constriction, the vines seem to cower.

The moment lingers. Beads of sweat prickle Yi’s bare face. He closes his eyes.

“Emai,” he whispers, in the tongue of his ancestors. “Fair.”

The takin leaps free, letting out a gleeful, high-pitched bleat. On the ground, the cut vines dangle like loose skin.

The beast springs downhill, reveling in its freedom as the farmer gives chase. She snatches it up in both hands, and hugs the takin close to her chest.

“Thank you!” she exclaims, not realizing Yi has already continued on his way. She calls after him. “Hey! I forgot to ask. What are you training for? The war is over, you know…”

He does not look back.

Not for me.

After another hour, he reaches the barrens. The carcass of a village lies all around him, invaded by the very same vines.

This is Wuju. This was home.

Yi heads for the burial grounds, stepping past toppled beams and stonework, remnants of houses, schools, shrines—the shattered pieces all blend together. The ruins of his parents’ workshop are lost somewhere among the rubble. There is too much to grieve for, and not enough time.

The graves he visits are arranged in perfect symmetry, with gaps between the mounds for someone to pass through. Someone like Yi.

“Wuju honors your memory.”

He places a hand on every hilt of every sword piercing the earth. These are his memorials to warriors, teachers, and students. He does not skip a single one.

“May your name be remembered.”

“Rest. Find peace in the land.”

His voice soon grows tired.

As the sky becomes painted in shades of orange, three graves remain untouched. The closest is marked by a hammer, its head rusted from the mountain air. Yi pulls a peach out of his bag, setting it beside the mound.

“Master Doran, this is from Wukong. He couldn't make the journey with me, but he wanted me to bring you his favorite fruit. He loves his staff, almost as much as he loves making fun of the helmet you gave me.”

He moves toward the final two mounds, guarded by golden sheaths.

“Emai, the weather is forgiving today. Fair… I hope you are enjoying the warmth.”

Yi grasps his two short swords and slides them into the sheaths adorning his parents’ graves. The fit is perfect. He falls to his knees and bows his head.

“May your wisdom continue to guide me.”

Standing, he reaches into his bag to retrieve his helmet. The afternoon sun catches on its seven lenses, each reflection in a different hue. Holding the helmet close to his heart, he imagines the garden of lilies that once existed here.

That was before the screams. Before acid and poison twisted the land’s magic against itself.

He dons the helmet, and a kaleidoscope of his surroundings fills his view. Hands folded together, he closes his eyes and empties his mind. He thinks about nothing. Nothing at all. His feet lift off the earth, but he is unaware.

Opening his eyes, he sees everything. Death and decay, with little hints of life.

He sees spirits that dwell in the realm beyond his own. The vines here trap them as easily as the poor takin, weakening their essence. He knows any spirit strong enough to break free would have abandoned this accursed place. What remains is corrupted… or soon to be.

Pained, mournful cries haunt the air. Yi used to cry out in pain himself, but that was long ago—back when he thought tears might bring back the dead.

He blinks, and the physical world returns. For a moment, he pretends not to bear its weight upon his shoulders. Then, he blinks again.

The spirits continue to cry out. Yi draws his ringed blade.

He dashes in a blur, sweeping across the grounds like a change in season one realizes only after it has passed. In a flash, he is back where he started, perfectly still, his sword resting in its scabbard.

One by one, the vines crumple. Some spill from collapsed rooftops, others shrivel where they lie.

He sits cross-legged to take it all in. Now the spirits sing with joy, and he knows there is no greater sign of gratitude. As they melt away, the land echoes their bliss. Peach blossoms sprout where the overgrowth had held firm. Stalks of limp bamboo straighten, like students ordered to attention.

A fleeting smile softens Yi’s face. He removes his helmet and digs into his bag, shuffling past the other items he brought for the journey. Fruits, nuts… char, flint. Things for himself, and things to cleanse the land for good.

Not now. Not yet.

He retrieves a thin reed pen, and a crinkled scroll. The page is covered in marks.

Yi adds a few strokes by today. Below them are more words.

30 days between clearings.

He knows, soon enough, he will need to grant the farmer her wish, and send his home off in flames.

But not now. Not yet.

That old, familiar smell hit her first. Hay, strawberries, and sturdy wood. The courtyard of the Argentine Inn had a particular waft to it that brought the ache of memories long past: a hundred concerts, a thousand faces lit by lantern light, and—most painful of all—a time when things were simpler and happier in Demacia.

But these days, that version of her home country felt distant. Worlds away. When she first spotted her old friend Etra emerging from the doorway of the inn, her breath hitched—maybe this, too, was different. But Etra’s eyes went wide. She shrieked with joy, and as she ran forward to wrap Sona up in her arms, Sona breathed a little sigh of relief. Some things didn’t change after all.

“You got my letter!” Etra said, and squeezed her tight.

Sona nodded. As Etra released her, she stood back to get a good look, still clasping Sona’s hands. “Someone’s been traveling,” she said, impressed. As if noticing Sona was on edge, Etra paused, released her hands, and slipped into the rough sign language they’d forged over a lifetime. All is well?

It was a relief to be able to sign back. To be understood by someone who loved her. Yes, of course, Sona responded, whether it was true or not. Missed you terribly, though. She held her hands a little lower. Didn’t want passersby to see the sharp gestures, the twitching fingers, and draw the wrong conclusions.

How long will you stay this time?

As long as I can, Sona signed. You know I never could refuse an empty stage.

Etra grinned. Excellent.

There was no audience around sunset, when Sona struck her first chord, but the first few folks trickled in right away. She was standing front and center in the Argentine’s “concert hall”—a converted barn with a bit of raised wood at the front to make a stage. Some of the people she could see were familiar faces. They brought their evening plans with them: wine by the flagon, cheese in its cloth.

As they settled into their familiar rhythm, the crowd swelled. Wagons were pulled up beyond the open door of the stage hall now, horses tied to posts. Some of the men had started to sing along loudly. They were drunk faster than usual. Sona smirked over at Etra, and she signed back with one hand: They missed you, too.

Things were tense for folks right now. They’d just lost their king and seen their country turn on itself in a single bloody year.

As if to punctuate Sona’s thoughts, four figures slipped into the back row of the audience, hoods pulled loose over their faces. Dark blue fabric. Not terribly suspicious on its own, but…

One of them tilted their head up at Sona, and she saw the hint of a gold mask glinting in the light.

Mageseekers.

Sona’s stomach lurched. She heard the slightest hitch in Etra’s voice, too, but neither of them dared look at each other right now.

The only answer was to keep performing, keep singing, and—hopefully—keep up appearances. The next song in the set was a solo. Etra and Cal slipped backstage.

This was the moment the crowd had really come to hear, and there were small murmurs and comfortable rustles in the audience as people settled in. There was no name for the piece, but they all knew it regardless. It was Sona’s own creation, and she relaxed into it. Her fingers brushed the strings, the air teemed with silence—and then, with a pick of a single note, they were off.

Her fingers danced like fireflies. The song flowed, built, faded, built again.

But then something evolved in the music. There were additional layers to it, notes that should have been impossible to play simultaneously. Sona looked up and saw only smiles and closed eyes. The audience had become enamored, absorbed.

It was time. The etwahl had awoken. Long, twisting illusions rose up from the strings, stretching and snapping as the very air hummed. To her, they were brilliant—a language she and the instrument alone shared. No one else could see them.

The etwahl had chosen someone. An old woman in the back of the room was thinking of her husband, a farmer, and the instrument had become throaty with the full warmth and bass of his voice. Sona could almost hear him talk. And in the shapes that rapidly shifted before her, she saw the outline of his weathered face, the way his cheeks crinkled when he smiled. But the outline morphed… the fuzzy curve of a sleeping figure. He had fallen ill and passed a month ago. A hard harvest without him, no doubt.

The etwahl hummed something private to Sona then: the last rasping song the man had ever sung to his wife. The notes hung in the air. She took the snatched phrases of the melody and, without even having to pause, she wove it back into the song, building around it. When she glanced up, Sona saw the widow’s eyebrows raised with recognition, tears trailing down the woman’s cheeks.

Sona slipped music into the woman’s heart. Music to warm her. Music to soothe her. Music to give her strength to face the year ahead.

The music had reached crescendo now. She and the etwahl were deep in conversation. The shapes had expanded, brilliant and ever-moving, an aurora stretching across the hall…

A shout shattered the song. She halted, frozen. But the shapes still drifted, no longer a secret between her and the instrument.

She’d lost control.

The mageseekers in the back had risen, making their way down the center aisle. They were coming for her. Some threw their hoods back now. The rest of the audience was still transfixed, unseeing. They hadn’t yet registered what was happening. Sona took two steps back, toward the archway that led out the back of the barn.

“Stop!” one of the mageseekers cried. They were undeniably here for her. She bolted, hefting her skirts in one hand. The etwahl shuddered, broke free of its stand, and drifted after her through the air. Why hide it anymore?

She emerged out back and into the darkness. There was an alley back there—she could flee into the woods before they spotted her. But as she reached the end of the alley, two seekers stepped into her path. She pulled up short and turned around. Maybe… No. Three more blocked her way back to the inn’s door. She was trapped.

“If you don’t resist…” one of them started, but she saw the flash of Demacian steel in his hand and she heard nothing else. Behind her, footsteps. They were closing in.

She backed up against the wall of the inn, all five of them now standing in front of her.

She laid her fingers on the etwahl. I hope Etra ran, she thought.

The etwahl glowed. She struck a violent burst of music. The chord shot forth from her and slammed into the seekers. The air was charged gold, sickeningly radiant. They turned away from her. She heard their groans, their broken screams, and knew it was over.

They were dancing, all of them. They cut an eerie sight to anyone who might see: contorted, twisting figures bent against their will like puppets being made to perform. It was painful, she knew that much. But she had to make them hurt. She had to make pain the only thing they could remember. That way, they couldn’t remember Etra. They couldn’t come after her.

“For pity’s sake, mercy!”

“Ungh… My arm—”

At first they begged her to stop, but after a moment even that died away and there was nothing but gurgling, the shuffle of footsteps, the creaking and snapping of joints. I didn’t want to hurt you, she thought. I never do. But you… You’re the reason home isn’t home anymore.

One last beat. One final encore. She strummed. The chord reached them, deep violet. They dropped to the floor instantly like discarded toys, unconscious and forgetful.

And Sona disappeared into the silence of the woods.

A brilliant yet eccentric yordle scientist, Professor Cecil B. Heimerdinger is lauded as one of the most innovative minds and esteemed inventors Piltover has ever seen. Relentless in his work to the point of neurotic obsession, he is fascinated by mysteries that have confounded his contemporaries for decades, and thrives on answering the universe’s most impenetrable questions. Though his theories often appear opaque and esoteric, Heimerdinger believes knowledge should be shared, and is devoted to teaching all who desire it.

The knife-edge of the plow cut through the rough topsoil, turning the underbelly of winter toward the spring sky. Riven walked the small field behind the ox-driven rig, her focus caught between steadying the wide set handles and the foreign words she clumsily held in her mouth.

“Emai. Fair. Svasa. Anar.”

Each step filled the air with the loamy scent of newly awakened earth. Riven gripped the wood tightly as she walked. Over the last few days the coarse handles had roused dormant calluses and fleeting memories.

Riven bit her lip, shaking off the thought, continuing with the work at hand. “Mother. Father. Sister. Brother.”

The thin-ribbed ox flicked an ear as it pulled, the plow kicking up clots and small rocks. They struck Riven, but she paid them no mind. She wore a rough woven shirt, the dirt-speckled sleeves rolled into thick bands. Pants of the same material had been dyed an earthen yellow. Their cuffed edges would now be too short on the man they had been made for, but on her, they brushed her bare ankles and the tops of her simple, mud-caked shoes.

“Emai. Fair. Svasa. Anar.” Riven continued the mantra, memorizing the words. “Erzai, son. Dyeda…”

Without slowing her pace she wiped a strand of sweat soaked hair from her eyebrow with her sleeve. Her arms were well muscled and still easily held the plow one-handed. The farmer had gone up to the house for a skin of water and their lunch. The old man said she could stop and wait on the threshold of the shaded forest that bordered the tract, but Riven had insisted on finishing.

A fresh breeze caught the damp at the back of her neck, and she looked around. The Noxian Empire had tried bending Ionia to its will. When Ionia wouldn’t kneel, Noxus had tried to break it. Riven continued her meditative pace behind the plow. For all the Empire’s strength, spring would still come to this land. It had been more than a year since Noxus had been driven out, and the grays and browns of rain and mud were finally giving way to shoots of green. The air itself seemed to hold new beginnings. Hope. Riven sighed as her hair’s bluntly cut edges brushed her chin.

“Dyeda. daughter,” she began her invocation again, determined. She gripped the wooden handles again with both hands. “Emai. Fair.”

“That's fa-ir,” a voice called out from the shadows of the forest.

Riven stopped suddenly. The plow handles lurched in her hands as the bony ox was brought up short by the leather reins. The plow kicked hard into a tough clod of dirt and gave a metal twang as a stone caught on the cutting edge.

The voice did not belong to the old man.

Riven tried to ease her breathing by exhaling slowly through her lips. There was one voice, but there could be more coming for her. She fought the years of training that urged her to take a defensive stance. Instead she stilled her body, facing the plow and beast before her. Riven felt too light. She held on tightly now to the plow’s wooden handles. There should have been a weight that anchored her, grounded her, at her side. Instead, she could hardly feel the small field knife on her right hip. The short, hooked blade was good for cutting dew apples and stubborn vegetation, nothing more.

“The word is fa-ir.”

The speaker revealed himself at the edge of the field, where the farmland met a band of thick amber pines.

“There is a break in the middle,” the man said, stepping forward. A wild mane of dark hair was pulled back off his face. A woven mantle was tucked around his shoulders. Riven noticed that it did not completely cover the metal pauldron on his left shoulder, nor the unsheathed blade at his side. He was of a warrior class, but did not serve one house or precinct. He was a wanderer.

Dangerous, she decided.

“Fa-ir,” he pronounced again.

Riven did not speak, not for lack of words, but because of the accent she knew they would carry. She moved around the plow, putting it between her and the well-spoken stranger. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and bent to examine the plow’s blade, feigning interest in the stone she had struck. Meant to cut through sod and clay, the blade would be more useful than the field knife. She had watched the old man fix it to the wooden body that morning and knew how to release it.

“I don’t remember seeing you in the village when I was here last, but I have been away awhile,” the man said. His voice held the indifferent roughness of a long time lived on the road.

The ever present insect hum became louder as Riven refused to fill the silence between them.

“I’ve heard that the magistrates are being called to hear new evidence in the case of Elder Souma’s death,” the man continued.

Riven ignored him and patted the patient ox. She ran her fingers along the leather straps as someone who was familiar with the trappings of horses and farm animals, batting away a gnat from the ox’s big, dark eyes.

“Then again, if you are new to this land, perhaps you know little of the murder.”

She looked up at the word, meeting the stranger’s gaze, the innocent beast between them. A scar stretched across the bridge of the man’s nose. Riven wondered if the one who left that mark still lived. There was hardness in the stranger’s eyes, but under that, curiosity. Riven felt the ground tremble through the soles of her thin leather shoes. There was a sound like rolling thunder, but there were no clouds in the sky.

“Someone’s coming,” the man said with a smile.

Riven looked over her shoulder at the hill that led to the old man’s farmhouse. Six armed riders crested the little ridge and marched their mounts down to the small harrowed field.

“There she is,” one of them said. His accent was thick, and Riven struggled to parse the nuance of language she had been trying so hard to learn.

“But... is she alone?” another asked, squinting at the shadows between the trees.

A quick breeze wrapped around the plow and Riven, sliding back into the shadows of the forest. Riven looked to where the stranger once stood, but he was gone, and the approaching riders left no time to wonder.

“A ghost maybe,” the leader said laughing at his man. “Someone she cut down coming back for revenge.”

The riders spurred their horses into a trot, circling Riven and crushing the even trenches she had dug that morning. The leader carried a rigid bundle wrapped in cloth over the back of his mount. Riven’s eyes followed that horse as the others moved around her, their hooves compacting the loose earth back into cold, hard clay.

She gave the plow blade a final glance. Two riders carried crossbows. She would be taken down before she reached even one of them. Her fingers itched to touch the potential weapon, but her mind begged them to be still.

Tightness quickened in her muscles. A body long trained to fight would not surrender so easily to peace. A deafening rush of blood began to pound in her ears. You will die, it roared, but so will they.

Riven’s fingers began to reach for the plow blade.

“Leave her be!” The voice of the farmer’s wife was strong from calling in errant cows and it rang out over the field, breaking Riven from her self-destructive urge. “Asa, hurry. You must do something.”

The riders halted their circles around Riven as the farmer and his wife crested the hill. Riven bit hard on the inside of her cheek. The sharp pain centered her, quelling her urge to fight. She would not spill Ionian blood in their field.

“I told you to stay in your home until we were done,” the leader said to them.

The old man, Asa, hobbled through the uneven dirt. “She’s done nothing wrong. I was the one who brought it,” he said gesturing toward the wrapped bundle. “I will answer for it.”

“Master Konte. O-fa,” the leader said. A patronizing smile tugged at the corners of his thin lips. “You know what she is. She has committed many wrongs. If I had my way, she would be cut down where she stands,” He looked Riven over, then wrinkled his nose in annoyance. “Unfortunately, old man, you can say your piece at the hearing.”

While the leader spoke Riven’s feet had sunk into the moist earth, momentarily holding her fast. The feeling of being mired, pulled down, overwhelmed her. Her pulse quickened to a shallow beat and a cold sweat slipped between her shoulders as she struggled to pull free. Her mind was enveloped by a different time, a different field. There the horses snorted, their hooves trampling blood-soaked dirt.

Riven shut her eyes before more remembered horrors could bury her. She inhaled deeply. A spring rain floods this ground, not the dead, she told herself. When I open my eyes, there will be only the living.

When she opened her eyes, the field was a field, freshly turned, and not an open grave. The leader of the riders dismounted and approached her. In his hand he held a pair of shackles, swirls of Ionian metal far more beautiful than anything that would have chained criminals in her own homeland.

“You cannot escape your past, Noxian dog,” the leader said with a quiet triumph.

Riven looked up from plow blade to the old couple. The lines on their faces already carried so much pain. She would not bring them more. She could not. Riven tried to hold onto the image, the two of them leaning into one another, each holding the other up. It was a moment of fragile defiance before they knew something would be taken. When the old man wiped a sleeve across his wet cheek, she had to turn away.

Riven shoved her wrists toward the leader of the riders. She met his smug grin with a cold stare and let the steel close over her skin.

“Do not worry, dyeda,” the farmer’s wife called out. Riven could hear the taut hope in her voice. It was too much. Too much hope. The wind carried the strained words and the smell of freshly turned earth, even as Riven was led farther and farther away. “Dyeda,” it whispered. “We will tell them what you are.”

“Dyeda,” Riven whispered back. “Daughter.”

For two days after the girl surrendered, there had been nothing for Shava Konte to do but help her husband slowly repair the trampled furrows and plant the field. It was a task made easier by the girl’s labors, and yet, if their sons still lived, it was one she and Asa should not have had to do at all.

On the cold morning of the tribunal, knowing it would take more time for their older bones to walk the long road into town, the couple left before dawn to reach the village council hall.

“They know she is Noxian.”

“You worry too much,” Shava said, clucking her tongue for good measure. Realizing her tone was more fit for calming chickens than her husband, she gave him a hopeful smile.

“Noxian. That is all they need to proclaim guilt.” Asa mumbled his thought into the homespun wool wrapped around his neck.

Shava, who had spent the better part of her lifetime coaxing stubborn animals into the butcher’s pen, stopped short, turning to face her husband.

“They do not know her like we know her,” she said, stabbing one of her fingers to his chest, exasperation escaping through her hands. “That is why you are to speak on her behalf, you old goat.”

Asa knew his wife, and knew further argument would not change her mind. Instead he nodded his head softly. Shava gave a dissatisfied harumph and turned back to the road, marching in silence to the town center. The council hall that was beginning to fill. Seeing the crowd, she hurried into the narrow space between the benches of the council hall to find a seat closer to the front... and unceremoniously tripped over a sleeping man’s leg.

As the old woman fell forward with a weak yelp, a groan escaped from the sleeping man. Like a lightning blade, his hand snapped forward, his grip like steel, catching the old woman by the arm before she fell to the stone floor.

“You must watch your step, O-ma,” the stranger whispered deferentially, drink still heavy on his breath, but slurring none of his words. He withdrew his hand as soon as the old woman was back on her feet.

The old woman looked down her nose at the unlikely savior, her eyes narrowing. Under her scrutiny, the man receded further into the shadows of the mantle wrapped around his shoulders and face; the ghost of a scar across his strong nose disappeared into the darkness.

“The council hall is nowhere to recover from a night of misdeeds, young man.” Shava righted her robes, the disdain evident in the tip of her chin. “A woman’s life is to be decided today. Be gone before you are asked to concede your own wrongdoings before the magistrates.”

“Shava.” The old man had caught up and put a hand on his wife’s arm. “You must keep your temper in check if we are to offer our assistance today. He meant no injury. Leave him be.”

The hooded stranger offered two fingers up in peaceful supplication, but kept his face hidden. “You strike to the heart of the matter, O-ma,” he offered, humor creeping into his voice.

Shava moved on, carrying her indignation like a delicate gift. The old man tipped his head as he passed.

“Do not judge her quickly, my boy. She worries that an innocent soul will be found guilty before the truth is known.”

The hooded man grunted in acknowledgement as the old man moved on. “On that we are of the same mind, O-fa.”

The old man glanced back at the strange, hushed words. The seat was empty, save the ghost of a breeze that rustled the robes of a nearby couple deep in conversation. The hooded stranger was already receding into the far shadows of the council hall.

The magistrates, their smooth vestments settling behind them as they took their place at the head table, looked out at the crowded hall. The noise in the great room dropped to an uneven silence. One of the three, a tall, slim woman with a falcon nose, stood solemnly.
“This tribunal has been called to take in new attestations in the matter of Elder Souma’s death.”

A hum of murmurs, like a hundred locusts, began to build from somewhere in the middle of the crush of people. Some had heard of the new evidence the judge spoke, but most had gathered at the rumor there was a Noxian in their midst. But rumors didn’t change what they all knew: Elder Souma’s death was no mystery. The wind technique, the magic that scoured his meditation hall was all the evidence that was necessary. Only one besides Souma himself could have executed such a maneuver.

A wound, unevenly healed, opened. The hive mind of the crowd coalesced in a moment of communal pain. If the elder had not fallen, they shouted to each other, the village would not have taken such heavy casualties. Shortly after the murder, half of a Noxian warband had slaughtered many on the way to Navori. So many sons and daughters had been lost in the Noxian engagement, an engagement that swelled in the distressing imbalance of Souma’s death. Worse yet, the village laid the blame on one of their own.

The thrum found a clear voice.

“We already know who murdered Elder Souma,” Shava spoke through weathered lips. “It was that traitor, Yasuo.”

The crowd nodded and a biting agreement rippled through the mob.

“Who knew Elder Souma’s wind techniques? Yasuo!” Shava added. “And now Yone has not returned from the pursuit of his unforgivable brother. Most likely the coward is responsible for that as well.”

The crowd’s gnashing grew again, this time crying out for Yasuo's blood. Shava settled more easily on the bench, satisfied that the question of guilt had been pointed back at the correct person.

The falcon-nosed judge came from a long line of woodweavers, ones famed for being able to untwist and straighten even the heaviest burls. She lifted a perfectly round sphere of hard worn chestnut and brought it down definitively against its jet-black cradle. The sharp sound wrenched the crowd into silence and order returned to the hall.

“This court seeks knowledge and enlightenment about the facts of Elder Souma’s death,” the judge said. “Do you wish to stand in way of enlightenment, Mistress…?”

The old woman looked to her husband and felt heat rise in the skin of her cheeks. “Konte. Shava Konte,” she said much less boldly. She dipped her head. The old man on the stool watched her and mopped the sheen of sweat from his own balding crown.

“As I was saying, we are here to take in new evidence.” The falcon judge looked out at the crowd for any other stubborn burls and nodded to the bailiff, Melker. “Please bring her in.”

The light is dying.

Above me, the sky fades to black as the sun sinks beneath the horizon, leaving ripples of dappled red trailing above it, the last warm echoes of the day. There is red trailing from me, too, from my armor, my sword. The last warm echoes of the lives I’ve taken today. In the first days I would work in the aftermath to cleanse myself of it, to wash and scour the blood and death away, but was never truly able to. After a time, I stopped trying.

I hear the swish of a crimson cloak as someone drops into the bulwark beside me. From the corner of my eye I see the markings of rank.

“Captain,” I say, beginning to stand.

“Please,” she waves me back. I forget that I lead my warriors now, that she and I are equals, but it feels false. She is nobility, I am an orphan sword.

I know her, the cavalry officer we’ve been escorting into the hills, some attempt to break the stalemate bleeding us white. Proud, skilled, furious. As though the eyes of our empire watch her every move. She considers me for a second. “You look like you need rest.”

I glance up. “They use bombs that mimic the sound of children screaming to rob us of our sleep, or they come by night to slit our throats, with only the stars to bear witness.”

The captain’s eyes trail off, in thought. “I heard an officer from the Ninth cohort, saying that they can kill you through dreams.”

“Dreams?” I ask.

She nods.

I exhale. “What do you do if they kill you in a dream?”

She shrugs, and offers me a tired grin. “Try not to remember it, I suppose.”

I hear no beast nearby, and know this one is never far from hers. “Where is your mount?”

Her face darkens. “That ground we took last week… Their witch…”

I swallow, closing my eyes for a moment to block the memory.

“Before she died,” she continues. “The witch whispered something to my steed, probably meant for me. A wasting disease. This morning he could not stand.”

“I’m sorry.”

“He was suffering, so I eased it.” She looks at me. “Are you suffering?”

I meet her gaze, and she chuckles softly.

“Relax, the empire needs you. I refer to that.”

She inclines her chin toward my sword, its massive blade sunk into the earth beside me, still trailing red.

“That blade is a gift,” she says, her words cautious. “I have seen you wield it with skill, but time can so often make a gift into a burden. You have been so strong through all this. If the burden you bear has become too heavy, I would carry it for you.”

“No.” My hand reflexively goes to it, its terrible weight reassuring. “This thing I carry is mine. I would wish it on no one else. Even as it breaks me.”

In silence she studies me, her eyes cold for a moment, before she smiles. “I meant no shame upon you—as I said, we need you. We have shed blood together here, and that act makes us sisters.”

A child’s scream slices open the early night. It hangs, gouging the air with unnatural length. Sleep seems like a thing from another life, impossible here.

“This truly is a horrible place. Together, we’ll make it better.” She rises, and presses a fist to her chest. “For Darkwill.”

“For Darkwill,” I return the salute. “Thank you, captain.”

She shakes her head. “You can call me Marit.”

Riven blinked sweat from her eyes. The sting brought her out of the memory, and back to the calm of the field. Her senses adjusted to now, the rich smell of earth and crops ready for harvest, the crisp spice on the air as the leaves turned crimson, the heat of the sun on her skin.

She walked between the rows of the crop, sunlight peeking in golden bars through broad leaves and stalks. For a moment Riven was a child again, growing up tending the fields, though the barley she grew in her youth didn’t rise up past her head, or shimmer with the traceries of magic that suffused every part of the First Lands. Every few paces there would be a gap, the light flooding in to highlight a patch that had been harvested in stark relief, the prize portions of the crop that had already been taken to market. She paused each time, standing in the sun, allowing its heat to wash over her, as her insides twisted.

The sun had reached its zenith, the hottest part of the day. Riven drew a forearm across her brow, and tried to clear a parched throat. Her thoughts turned to water.

Emerging from between the stalks, she found Asa, his eyes kind as he waited for her with a skin in his hands. Riven had been distant from her adoptive father since they had returned from the market, wanting to give him his privacy to think, to feel.

To bury his wife.

“Soup will be ready soon,” he said. Then he looked down. “I think I made too much again. I forgot.”

Riven’s eyes darted to the shrine they had built for Shava Konte, the closest thing she had ever had to a mother. “Forgive me, fair.”

“For what?” Asa tilted his head, regarding her.

“I should have gone alone to market,” Riven continued. “You weren’t here when—”

“It is not upon your shoulders that the weight of the world be laid,” Asa shook his head slowly. “Nor the path that the stars turn in the heavens, or the dance that happens across the veil. Their accordances are great, they are beyond our influence.”

“Yet I still feel guilt.”

“Our responsibility rests upon our own actions, the choices made by our hearts.” Asa offered Riven the skin of water. “I know your heart, dyeda. It is pure.”

“Not all of it,” Riven took the skin, but her gaze lingered over the shrine. “I miss her, fair.”

“As do I,” Asa stood at her side. “Yet I do not grieve my beloved Shava, because she is not lost to us. She was at peace when we found her. No pain, and the fortune of passing in her sleep. I treasure her, as someone certain that when the blossoms return next, I will see her again.”

Riven felt a tear slide down her cheek. “Do you think her blossom will be hard to find?”

“My wife?” Asa smiled broadly. “I don’t believe a single blossom can contain her spirit. That woman, she will be an orchard.”

Riven smiled, looking up at Asa but finding the joy had vanished from his face. She turned, following where he stared transfixed upon a small group of figures that had appeared in the distance.

Her blood went cold. Her heart was stilled by an utter certainty within her, an inevitability she could no longer hope to hide from. The smell of a campfire welled in Riven’s nose, the words of the mender they had met upon the road echoing sharply in her mind.

“Fair,” said Riven, her hands clenching into fists. “Hide.”

“Farming,” Marit sighed. “Really.”

Erath followed the huntresses as they looked out across the stretch of land ahead of them. Great columns of natural stone lined the east, like the broken ribs of a long-dead god left exposed. To the west was forest, hued in a thousand shades of crimson, and nestled in between, a humble solitary farmstead.

“Perhaps the war truly did break her,” said Tifalenji. Her blade’s hum had become a full-throated song as they traveled from the bleached site of the chemical attack. Now, here, it was felt rather than heard, a sensation that shivered the bones and caused gums to ache. “She seeks to grow and create, some kind of attempt to assuage her past.”

“She grows crops, nourishing them, and then she harvests them. Cuts them away and sells them,” Marit snorted. “I’m sure a poet could do something with that.”

“Remember,” grumbled Arrel, reaching down to scratch First’s scalp. “We want her alive.”

“Alive,” echoed Marit. “Such a malleable term. How many limbs is ‘alive’?”

“Marit…” warned Teneff.

“She betrayed us.” Marit glared down from atop Lady Henrietta. “Not the army, not even Noxus, us. No mercy for deserters and traitors. Or have you forgotten that?”

Teneff met her gaze. “I haven’t forgotten. But we walk into this clear-headed, and we walk out back to the empire with her in chains. Understand?”

Erath listened, reaching for Talz and patting the basilisk’s flank. He was outside of their conversation but still he felt a part of it, especially Marit’s barb about deserters. Rather than anger at her, though, after all that had happened, he found himself agreeing with her. His father’s betrayal was still lodged tightly in his chest, jagged and insistent.

Teneff lingered back a few steps, allowing Erath to catch up to her.

“I doubt she will come peaceably—there will almost certainly be a confrontation,” said the warrior, hefting the chains wound around her forearm.

“You sound excited at the prospect,” Erath replied.

Teneff gave a wry smile. “Just be prepared. Simply do as you did before, you acquitted yourself well in the last battle.”

“Was I supposed to sulk and be maudlin at the prospect of taking an enemy’s life?” Erath scoffed. “What am I, some Demacian girl?”

As one, the women turned around and stared at him.

“What?” Erath looked at each of them. “I said Demacian.” They turned back around.

Arrel glanced at Tifalenji, scowling at the noise rippling from her sword. “Is that still necessary?”

“No.” The runesmith grinned. She ran a hand over her rune-etched blade, and the sound ceased. “We require the scent no longer. I can feel it myself, for the quarry is now in sight.”

The Noxians advanced upon the farm. Erath heard the huntresses mutter amongst themselves, the subdued talk of tactics on the march to war. Where they would stand, angles and landmarks, who would do what if the need for bloodletting arose, all discussed in a bored, almost horrifically calm manner. All the while their hands tightened over their weapons.

The huntresses spoke as though they were laying siege to a fortress, or meeting an entire army in the field. They were wary of Riven, mindful of the devastation she was capable of, filling Erath’s head with a vision of a ruthless warrior queen wielding an enchanted sword, drenched in the blood of the slain enemies strewn around her.

It was a vision that he found hard to reconcile with the lonely farm they were approaching. There was serenity here, a pocket of calm tucked away from the grandeur and chaos Erath had encountered in Ionia along the way. He considered for a moment if it was the reality that his journey had reached its destination that was really jarring. He thought back to the Immortal Bastion, staring up at its towers what felt like a lifetime ago.

Whoever that Erath had been, the one here now was ready to do his duty to the empire, and bring this traitor to justice.

Talz grumbled, making a deep choking sound. Frowning, Erath peeled back the creature’s gums, searching around and finally drawing his arm out, clutching a spittle-slick chicken bone.

“When did you have chicken?” he murmured.

Talz grunted. Erath stared at the beast for a moment. “Come on,” he said, giving a tug on the basilisk’s reins before flinging the bone away.

A rough dirt road led to the farm. Erath studied the land as they approached, a house in the same woven, organic style inherent to Ionia, a barn big enough for an ox or two, a small plot with rows of grain, some patches of it already cut down and harvested. He made himself think like the huntresses did, like his training had taught him. Where could an ambush lie? Where was the best open ground for a fight, and where could we fall back to if that fight turned bad?

Erath saw no ambush, no band of farmers armed with whatever they had to protect their land. Only a woman, standing alone in muddy clothes at the end of the road.

The huntresses stopped a short distance from her, eyeing her carefully.

“Who is that?” Erath asked.

Teneff took a slow breath. “That is Riven.”

Erath blinked. “That’s her?”

“That is her,” replied Arrel.

He looked closer. “She’s not what I imagined.”

“Appearances aren’t everything, manservant,” said Marit. “You look like an idiot, for example.” She mulled her words for a second. “Perhaps that is a bad example.”

“Where is it?”

All eyes turned to Tifalenji.

“What?” asked Teneff.

“Her blade,” the runesmith said through gritted teeth. “I sense it, not in one place but in many. Something is wrong.”

“Well she isn’t wielding it,” said Marit. “That is surprising. Maybe she’s beaten it into a plowshare.”

Tifalenji glared at Marit. The rider chuckled, though there was no mirth in it.

“I know, I hope not either.”

For a few moments, nobody said anything. Riven stood before the door to her farmhouse, the huntresses arrayed before her. Erath stayed a pace behind with Talz, peering between the women to see what was happening.

The silence stretched, untenable, and finally broke.

“Hello, sister,” called Teneff.

“Teneff.” Riven’s voice was low, almost soft but with an edge of sadness. Erath detected no rage in it, no fear, only pain. Anguish coated the speaking of her former comrade’s name. Riven’s eyes flicked quickly to the other Noxians, taking each of them in before settling on the tracker and her hounds. “Arrel. Pups have grown.”

Arrel inclined her head.

“So she does remember the life she cast aside,” Marit exclaimed, looking to the other huntresses, then back at Riven. “The ones she betrayed.”

Surprise flickered over Riven’s features at hearing the masked woman’s voice. “Marit?”

“Scars and all,” the rider sneered. Lady Henrietta hissed. “Surely you must have known this day would come.”

Riven let out a breath. “It was a matter of time, I suppose.”

Teneff took a step forward. “And now, that time is here. You are alone?”

“Yes,” she answered.

Arrel’s eyes narrowed. “Should we believe you?”

“There was another,” Riven gestured to a death shrine beside the farmhouse door. Erath could see it was newly made. “She passed, now it’s only me.” Her eyes grew hard. “What do you want?”

“You, Riven,” said Marit, leaning down from the saddle. “We have come for you.”

Erath could see Riven visibly tense. The bands of lean muscle in her arms twitched, fingers tightening around the grip of a sword she wasn’t holding. The blade squire’s hand dropped to rest on the pommel of his sheathed falchion.

“Do you plan on giving us any trouble, sister?” Teneff allowed the barbed chain in his hand to slacken, the heavy iron hook striking the ground with a thud. “Remembering who you really are?”

“I’m not that person anymore,” Riven said quietly. “That is all far behind me.”

“Not far enough,” said Arrel.

Silence held for a handful of heartbeats, radiating with tension. Erath looked between the huntresses and Riven, waiting for either of them to make the first move, for the traitor’s blade to magically manifest in her hand and furious combat to begin.

“Well,” said Marit, surprising Erath by swinging her leg over and dismounting from Lady Henrietta, handing him the reins. “Are you going to be a polite host and invite us in? We have so much catching up to do.”

Riven was still for a moment, before she stepped back beside the open door, gesturing inside. “Please.”

The huntresses stepped over the threshold and into the farmhouse, each setting their weapons down beside the door. “Stay,” Arrel bade her hounds, and the trio huffed and whined before sitting on either side of the entrance. Erath made to follow them, only to find Tifalenji’s hand on his arm.

“Not you,” the runesmith murmured, her fingers digging into his flesh. Her brow was furrowed, her eyes darted about. Erath noticed her head tilt slightly, as though she were straining to hear a sound just beyond earshot. “You will come with me.”

Riven watched as the huntresses seated themselves at the table, the three of them together on one side. Waves of emotion rolled out of them, crashing against her in a storm of alarm, dread—and in some small corner of her, relief.

These were the women she served beside, the sisters she made in fire and blood. The essence of them was clear to her, but each had changed, overlaid with scars she never saw inflicted. Riven knew that she had changed as well, the span of the table a rift yawning between them. They were almost like strangers, wearing masks of the comrades she used to know.

Marit was literally wearing a mask. She caught Riven staring at it.

“Oh, this?” The rider reached back, undoing the clasps behind her head. She pulled the mask free, and Riven’s heart sank at the sight.

“What’s the matter, sister?” Marit leaned forward. “Don’t remember what happened? The fire, the screams? You were there, after all.”

Riven’s eyes stung. “What happened to you, Marit?”

“I survived.” Marit’s ruined visage twisted in a cruel lipless grin. “Hmm, perhaps if you had stuck around, you would know.”

Riven looked away. “I thought you all were dead.” The words were genuine, until this day they had been fact to her, now she couldn’t tell if she was uttering them to convince the huntresses, or herself.

“We aren’t,” croaked Arrel, clearing her throat painfully. “How hard did you look?”

“It all happened so quickly,” said Riven, lost in the memory. “Emystan, when she fired on us—”

“Do not speak that name to me,” snarled Teneff. Marit shot the warrior a glance. Teneff rose. “And do not seek to cast blame upon others. You ran.”

“What do you remember,” said Arrel, coughing wetly, “of that day?”

Riven closed her eyes. Broken images flashed across her mind, her ears swelling with fire and screams. Her nose stung from burnt flesh and poison. Agony, pressure, fingers clawing at her boots, begging her to save them. But she couldn’t.

“Little,” Riven finally replied. “Fragments, here and there. I don’t know how I lived, something with my sword.”

“You do look quite unscathed,” said Marit.

“I am not,” Riven said firmly. “I have my scars.”

“We all do,” said Teneff. She locked her withering gaze upon Riven. “Why did you run?”

Erath followed close behind Tifalenji, the runesmith moving as though in a trance. Sweat trickled down Tifalenji’s face as she walked, eyes closed, the tip of her sword flicking and waving in the air as its runes glimmered and pulsed. Erath spared a glance back at the farmhouse, wondering what was happening inside, and nearly collided with Tifalenji as she came to a halt outside the barn.

“In here,” she murmured. “Something.”

Erath’s curiosity peaked. They had succeeded in tracking the traitor down by following the runic magic infused within her sword, so it had to be here somewhere, hidden away. After witnessing what Tifalenji was able to do with her own weapon, the blade squire was eager to see such a powerful relic first hand.

The barn was small, occupied only by a thin-ribbed ox munching contentedly on straw in a stall. Erath thought back to Talz and Lady Henrietta where he had hitched them outside, happy he had not chosen to house them here. Talz was far too big, and likely to bring the structure down, while Lady Henrietta would have taken an interest in the ox… and it was a lot of work to clean all that jewelry.

The tip of Tifalenji’s sword stopped abruptly over a heap of straw. “There,” she breathed, stooping down. “A pox on her life, to keep a blade like hers in a place like this.”

Tifalenji dug, her fingers clawing away at heaps of straw and dried grass. Finally she held her blade over it, whispering a sharp string of syllables that boiled the chaff away, revealing a flat piece of metal, about the size of Erath’s fist. He could make out a portion of a rune, etched into the dark material, cut off by the edge of the fragment where it appeared to have been shattered from the whole.

“No,” Tifalenji’s breath caught in her throat as she touched it. “No, no, no…”

Erath took a step back, feeling the runesmith’s rage rolling off her like a heat haze. “Is that part of the sword? How could something of such power be broken?”

“She did it.” A tear streaked down Tifalenji’s face as her fingers closed over the shard. “She actually did it.”

Erath looked back at the farmhouse, thinking of the deserter inside with the huntresses. What had happened to this woman?

Tifalenji bolted upright and rounded on Erath in a single swift motion, her eyes smoldering. “There are more pieces like this,” she hissed. “I can feel them, and you and I are going to find them. Every single one.”

Riven ladled soup into bowls, placing one in front of each of the huntresses before filling one for herself.

“You certainly made a lot,” Marit remarked, glancing at the large pot simmering over the fire. “You must have quite the appetite, Riv.”

Riven swallowed a spoonful of broth. “I eat some of it fresh. The rest can sit over the fire for a week or so.”

Marit stirred the contents of her bowl. “How quaint.”

“You didn’t answer me,” Teneff pressed, her food untouched. “Tell me why you abandoned everything you had pledged your life to. You owe us that much.”

Riven stopped eating, placing her spoon on the table. “I was an orphan. Father died fighting far from home, I was never told where. Mother died having me. When Noxus called, I leapt at the chance—not for adventure, or a desire to spill blood.” She looked at the huntresses. “For family. For a chance to finally feel like I belonged somewhere. That changed that day in Navori, when the rain caught fire set by those we called ally.”

Riven took a breath, fighting to keep the memory from resurfacing. “We didn’t mean anything to them. We never did.”

“Noxus is not the same empire that you abandoned,” said Teneff. “It has evolved. Changed. Darkwill is dead, the nobility torn down.”

Riven noticed Marit’s eyes narrow, her mask of scar tissue twitch involuntarily.

“The empire is now a place where any with the strength to thrive can do so,” Teneff continued. “Where we all work as one to bring the same freedom and meaning to everywhere the sun touches.”

Riven considered her words. “If this new Noxus is some different place, then why does it still care about me?”

“We care about you,” said Arrel.

“We all thought you were dead,” added Marit. “A fallen hero. And instead we had to learn from others that you not only are alive, but have turned your back on those who would have died for you.”

“I met a mender here,” said Riven. “A healer of broken things, pottery, stone. She would sing to them, play charms, help guide the edges back to one another to become one again. She told me the spirits within all things want to be whole, but I don’t know if I believe that. I believe, sometimes, that which is broken cannot be pieced back together. It can’t go back. It is irreparable, and that is how it should stay. How it must stay.”

As Tifalenji roved around the farm, murmuring to herself as she hunted for more fragments, Erath approached the door to the cellar on her instructions. He stopped beside the death shrine that had been recently built, studying the graceful architecture of the small structure.

For a moment he thought to search it for a fragment, but found himself unwilling to risk desecrating the shrine. Tifalenji had found other shards of the blade, mourning each discovery like the body of a dear friend. If she detected one within the shrine, Erath had no doubt the runesmith would not share his misgivings.

Erath had heard nothing from within the farmhouse. No shouts, no sounds of violence. He was intensely curious to know what was happening inside, where the huntresses would find the answers that had driven them across Ionia to find Riven, but knew well enough he was not welcome there. What occurred within those walls was between the four sisters, and nobody else.

Yet Erath could not help but wonder how long it would stay that way.

Squatting down, he took hold of the cellar door and swung it up and open. Cool, moist air wafted up toward him, revealing a set of rough stone steps leading down into the gloom. Peering into the dark, Erath wished he had his own runeblade, for no other reason than to light the way.

Instead, he relied on more traditional methods, walking over to Talz. After checking both his and Lady Henrietta’s hitchings, making sure both strong creatures would be unable to break loose and cause him even more trouble, Erath used the materials borne on the basilisk’s back to fashion himself a small torch.

Now able to see, he descended the cellar steps. He played the light of his torch in front of him, only able to clearly determine what existed inside its flickering glow. The vague impressions of stacks of sackcloth, shelves lined with sealed jars made of clay and stone, farmer’s tools.

Erath heard a noise—a short, sharp rustle in the dark.

Immediately his knife was in his hand. The cellar was cramped, the quarters too tight for his falchion. He froze, straining his hearing, and slowly moved his torch around him.

The light granted shape and texture wherever Erath brought it. He focused on the location of the sound, his breathing low and even, as steady as his grip on his knife. Then he came to an abrupt halt, as he discovered the light of the torch glittering back in a pair of wide, frightened eyes.

It was no runic blade fragment. It was a man.

“Do you think we will accept that?” Marit had still not touched her food, her mind on anything but her appetite. “After what we endured to find you, the blood we spilled? You think we will just turn around and leave you be, like nothing ever happened?”

“Much has happened,” Riven slowly shook her head. “Too much. Go back and tell them I’m dead. There is truth enough in that, the Riven you knew is dead. I’m someone else, someone broken who this land still holds to account.”

“That is a lie,” rasped Arrel. “We are the ones who hold you to account.”

“It is your life here that is the lie, Riven,” said Teneff. “You cannot run away from this, not anymore. Be the Noxian we once knew, our sister. Return with us to the empire, stand tall and finally face justice. If you truly see yourself as broken, home is where you will find the last piece to make you whole again.”

Marit gave a crooked grin. “They may not even execute you.”

“Much has changed,” Arrel said. “But the soul of Noxus has not. Join us, and put a knee to the ground. Or stand against us, and we’ll put you underneath it.”

Teneff shot her comrades an angry look, before turning back to Riven. “Embrace the new Noxus, devote yourself to the empire and be reaffirmed in its eyes, and they will value your strength. I know it’s still within you, Riven. It is not too late for you.”

Riven looked away. She hesitated, hearing a truth in their words she did not want to acknowledge. What if Noxus was different? After everything that had happened, was there still a life for her there? And now that the empire had found her, would they ever stop?

Riven looked at each of her sisters, adamant in their mission. What would she have to do to stop them? And if they failed in their task, Noxus would just send more. How many innocent lives would be lost before they finally tore her away from this place?

Submission loomed heavy in her heart. Go with them, it said. Let no more Ionian blood be shed because of you. No more people dying before their time for the sake of your soul.

People like Asa. Your fair.

“Riven! Come out, now!”

The four women jolted at the voice from outside the farmhouse. Riven stood, and the huntresses followed suit, their postures growing taut.

“What is this?” she asked.

Teneff glanced at Arrel and Marit, then back at Riven. “Let’s go find out.”

Erath watched Riven appear from inside the farmhouse, flanked by the huntresses. They stepped into the daylight, finding him and Tifalenji standing there, their weapons drawn, with the Ionian man Erath had discovered kneeling between them.

“Dyeda,” gasped Asa.

“Fair!” Riven started toward him, stopping short as Tifalenji rested her rune blade against the man’s throat. “Release him,” she demanded. “He has no part in this!”

“Your deception has made him a part.” Tifalenji’s face was hard, her eyes cold. “Now we can dispense with the tears of reunion and get to the true matter at hand.”

Erath looked to Tifalenji. Riven’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

“I have someone you want,” said the runesmith, indicating Asa. “And you have something I need.” She showed Riven the broken fragments in her other hand. “Bring it to me.”

Riven hesitated, her eyes flashing between Tifalenji and Asa.

“I grow weary of these games,” snarled Tifalenji, pressing her blade hard enough for Erath to see a trickle of blood from Asa’s throat. “I am not asking, and you know of what I speak. Bring it to me, now… or there will be another death shrine, here.”

The moment stretched as Riven looked to Asa. Erath maintained his calm, carefully studying Riven. He watched her push a breath out between her teeth, and slowly turn back to the farmhouse.

“Ensure she does not flee,” commanded Tifalenji. Arrel gestured to First, and the drakehound loped around behind the farmhouse, while the other two guarded the front corners of the structure.

“What is this, runesmith?” said Teneff. She looked at Erath. “Who is this man?”

“I found him in the—”

“Be silent,” snapped Tifalenji. “This is my business.”

Riven reappeared, stepping out into the field carrying something wrapped in a blanket. All eyes were fixed upon it, especially Tifalenji’s.

“Show me,” the runesmith ordered. “Now.”

Her face tight, Riven slowly unwound the blanket, letting it fall to reveal the hilt and crossguard of an enormous broadsword. A jagged portion of the blade was still attached to it, like a chipped tooth, inscribed with the same runic script Erath had seen on the fragments they had collected.

“Damn you,” Tifalenji breathed, her voice shaking at the sight of it. Her fingers tightened around the blade fragments. “Do you have any idea what you have done?”

“This sword was entrusted to me,” said Riven, her slender fingers slowly closing around its leather-bound grip. “It is my responsibility, and no other’s. Let him go.”

“It should have never gone to you,” hissed Tifalenji. “Too long has that mistake gone uncorrected, but no longer. Surrender it now.”

Holding the sword, even broken, Riven seemed stronger. Erath could see the defiance growing within her.

“You cannot have it,” said Riven. “This weapon will never return to those who forged it. I will not allow that to come to pass.”

“Then he will die,” said Tifalenji simply. “And so will you. Even desecrated as it is, the blade is what is important. You are nothing but a parasite, clutching for its radiance to give meaning to a broken, worthless existence.”

“So, this was never about me.” Riven shot an accusing glare at the huntresses. “Was it?”

Erath stared at Tifalenji. Were they really only here for a blade?

“Your life was forfeit the moment you turned against my masters, and the blade ceased to be wielded to their purpose,” Tifalenji seethed. “You died in that moment of betrayal, Riven. I am merely here to take back what is ours.”

“You mean to kill her?” Teneff stepped forward, the chains of her hook rattling. “This was not what we agreed upon, runesmith.”

Arrel gestured, and her trio of hounds rushed around her, snarling.

“You’ll defy me now?” Tifalenji scoffed. “You have deserted, soldiers. Return to Noxus without my protection and you will be executed—or do as I say, and live. There is no alternative.”

“She’s right.”

Teneff and Arrel turned, watching Marit as she walked to the door of the farmhouse and retrieved her glaive. Riven watched as she passed her by, going to stand at Tifalenji’s side.

“Rune-witch,” said Marit. “You promised me a blade when all this was done. But I am feeling impatient, I think I’ll just have Riven’s instead.”

“Prove your worth, then,” said Tifalenji. “Strike her down and take it from her, and it shall be yours.”

“Marit, listen to me,” Teneff pleaded. “We cannot do this. We all agreed, she must return to Noxus to face justice.”

“I’ll be Noxus’ justice!” Marit snapped, leveling her glaive at Riven. “That sword always should have been mine, you never possessed the strength to do what needed to be done with it. With the blade reforged, and wielded by my hands, I will rise—my name and lineage will not die forgotten in the darkness. All that was stolen from me will be restored, won back by the edge of that blade!”

Erath studied the two women, watching the sunlight play across the gleaming edge of Marit’s glaive.

“Look at you.” Marit spat on the ground before Riven. “A broken sword, for a shell of a woman. Could you have even lifted it now?”

Tifalenji cried out as the shards whipped from her hand, leaving it bloody. The fragments sliced through the air toward Riven, shimmering with emerald light. Weaving above her, the broken segments came together, bound by crackling runic energy into an immense, fractured union.

“Lift it?” Riven spun the massive blade once, kicking up dust and bits of gravel into the air. “Oh, yes, my sister. I can still lift it.”

Marit’s gruesome visage twisted in a smile as she sank into a fighting stance. “My whole life was taken from me, you threw yours away. Come on, then! The blood we spilled to find you… You owe me this, Riv!”

Teneff took a step toward Tifalenji, with Arrel at her side. “Do not interfere,” the runesmith hissed, raising her sword. She shot a glance at Erath, and gestured to the old man. “Hold him.”

Erath laid a hand on the Ionian’s shoulder, his falchion in his other fist. He tried to split his attention between ensuring the man didn’t run, and the alarming division forming between Teneff, Arrel, and Tifalenji.

What if he had to choose a side?

Erath’s mind raced at the prospect. What would he choose? Marit’s vindication against betrayal? Teneff’s steadfast duty to the empire? Or the safety of Tifalenji’s authority, despite her secrets?

Would the ones he rejected try to kill him? Could he kill them?

All this while the conflict was poised to begin in front of him, and Erath was unable to take his eyes off Riven’s incredible blade.

“Marit, sister, do not do this,” Riven said through gritted teeth. “Don’t make me kill you.”

Marit spun her glaive. “Don’t worry, Riven. You won’t.”

The two began to circle. Erath took note of their postures, Marit fluid and aggressive, Riven stoic and reserved. Their weapons occupied the space between them, the edges flicking and making tiny circles but never touching…

…until, finally, Marit struck.

Sensing an opening, the rider leapt forward, her glaive a whirling blur of steel. Riven backpedaled, using the hulking length and width of her sword’s blade to deflect the flurry of blows in showers of sparks and emerald runic energy. Marit sidestepped, throwing out the haft of her glaive against Riven’s sword to knock it aside, and lunged for her throat.

Crying out, Riven swept her blade in an arc, sending a gale of lashing wind at Marit and hurling her away. Marit skidded back, her free hand digging into the earth to slow herself.

“Cute,” she said with a grin. She rose, and began her attack anew.

As they progressed, Erath noticed Riven’s defensive guise begin to slip. Something was awakening within her, the warrior spirit that had made her one of the deadliest soldiers in Noxus. Slash by slash, strike after parry, she ceased to be on the back foot. Erath began to see something overtake her features, replacing calm.

He saw rage.

Riven started attacking. Her runeblade made a sizzling thrum as it chopped and slashed against Marit’s defenses. Marit’s scarred features twisted in concentration as she used every bit of her incredible skill to ward off Riven’s assault—but every counter was swept aside, every attempt to spin inside Riven’s guard rebuffed.

For the first time, Erath considered that Marit could lose. In the shade of a massive tree, its leaves red as blood, Riven was winning.

The two were sheened in sweat. Marit’s movements had lost their grace as exhaustion set in, with an edge of desperation. Where Marit was fading, Riven surged, her eyes smoldering as she delivered increasingly powerful blows. Throwing Marit back against the tree, Riven raised her sword for an overhead strike. Marit brought up the haft of her glaive, and Riven’s blade cleaved it in half.

“You’ll never escape what makes you broken, Riven,” Marit smiled coldly, throwing away the lower half of her weapon. “No matter where you go, it will always be with you.”

Marit lunged with her broken glaive. Roaring, Riven drove her own blade forward. Blood burst around it, snapping and burning to a mist against the runes as she ran Marit through, pinning her to the tree.

In an instant, Riven’s eyes widened. She tore the blade back and Marit slowly slid to the ground, clutching her chest but unable to stem the flow of blood spilling over her fingers.

The rage vanished from Riven’s face as she beheld Marit. Her grip on her sword slackened. “Sister, forgive me.”

Marit stared up at Riven, blood trickling down the corner of her mouth. Her strength fading, Marit used the last of it to seize the collar of Riven’s shirt, hauling her down close to look her in the eye.

“No,” Marit hissed, the contempt in the word costing her what life she had remaining to her as she slumped into the dirt.

Silence descended. The shock radiated through all present, especially Erath. Marit had always seemed invincible to him, surviving the chemical attack that had disfigured her, triumphing in every battle across their journey. He could not fathom that he had just watched her fall.

And for what? he thought. What are we really doing here?

“Regrettable,” said Tifalenji, “but not unexpected.”

Riven recoiled as her blade was torn from her exhausted grasp, whirling her around to see the runesmith now holding it, wielding a runeblade in each hand.

“Through all of this, on the path here, I truly debated whether to let you live after I had taken back what is ours. But after this…” She tightened her grip on Riven’s blade. “…sacrilege, I cannot leave here while your heart still beats.”

“Enough!” cried Teneff, and she and Arrel advanced on Tifalenji. Asa whimpered at the sight, struggling to be free of Erath’s grip.

The runesmith crossed her blades and swung them out, punching the huntresses from their feet in a storm of energy. Arrel’s hounds bayed, charging to their master’s defense. Tifalenji uttered a verse and the three were suspended in mid-air, sealed inside capsules of runic energy. Erath watched the scene play out, his heart climbing into his throat, the grip of his falchion growing slick in his hand.

“You think you can stop this now?” Tifalenji roared. “Nothing will stop it! I will kill every single one of you and sleep peacefully tonight, for I am righteous, and you all are—”

The air was driven from Tifalenji’s lungs as the tip of a blade emerged from her chest. For an instant the runesmith sagged, as though weightless, before she began to fall. The twin runeblades tumbled from lifeless fingers, and the bloodied falchion held her up for a second before it was pulled free, revealing Erath holding it behind her.

The drakehounds dropped to the ground, dazed but unharmed. Arrel and Teneff hauled themselves to their feet, staring at Erath in surprise, as though looking at him for the first time.

“No more betrayal,” whispered Erath. “No more secrets. After everything we’ve been through, everything questioned and twisted, all that is constant is honor. Our duty to Noxus.”

Teneff stepped forward. Riven watched her stoop down, and retrieve both runeblades. Riven’s had fallen apart once more, the pieces scattered over the ground. Arrel collected them, before the two huntresses stood over Riven.

“He’s right,” said Teneff. She eyed Riven not with vengeance or hate, but grim resolve. “Honor is all that we have. I gave my oath to Noxus that you would see justice, sister. I will see that carried out.”

“Just leave us be,” Asa croaked, tears streaming down his face. “You do not have to take her.”

Erath looked to the huntresses, to Riven. Would there be further bloodshed before this was done?

“I will go.”

“Dyeda, no…” Asa pleaded, shocked to hear those words coming from Riven’s mouth.

Riven released a shuddering breath. “No more, fair—no more will suffer here because of me. Our responsibility rests upon our own actions, the choices made by our hearts.” She looked at him. “This is my choice.”

Asa’s mouth opened, then closed. He breathed, shakily, and stood tall. “Wherever you go, whatever you do, you will always be my dyeda. Always.”

“You will always be here, fair.” Riven’s hand fell to her heart. She looked up at Teneff. “Leave him in peace, and I will go with you.”

Teneff was still for a moment, before dipping her head a fraction. “I swear it.” She nodded to Erath, and the blade squire immediately released Asa.

The Ionian stood shakily, a look from Riven leaving him to hang his head as he stumbled toward the farmhouse. Asa slid down against the doorway, racked with sobs as he watched Teneff put Riven in chains.

Erath’s mind suddenly went to the beasts. He whirled around, relieved to see Talz still hitched in place, eating grass without a care in the world.

But Lady Henrietta had slipped her reins.

Panic surged in Erath’s chest, until he saw she hadn’t gone far. He found the reptilian steed in the shade of the tree, trying to awaken Marit with gentle nudges from her snout. Slowly, carefully, he closed the distance to them.

Henrietta hissed at Erath, baring her fangs and putting herself between him and Marit’s body as he reached out.

“I know,” Erath whispered, gently running a hand down Henrietta’s neck. “I know.”

Henrietta hissed again, softer this time. Erath reached for her reins, and the beast did not pull away.

Arrel finally gave voice to the question in all their heads. “How will this end? The runesmith is dead, her mandate does nothing for us now.”

“She died on the route of her expedition.” Teneff stared at Tifalenji’s body. “In service to the empire. In her name we continued on, and succeeded in her task, bringing a fugitive to justice.”

“That is what you will tell them?” asked Arrel.

Teneff was unmoving. “That is the truth.”

“Well, then,” said Arrel. “You and the blade squire seem to have everything in order.”

Erath looked at the tracker, realization dawning. “You aren’t coming with us.”

“This was important.” Arrel shook her head, handing Teneff the shards of Riven’s blade. “But it is done, and I serve Noxus better on my own.”

Teneff slowly extended a hand. “Until we meet again, sister.”

Arrel looked at it for a moment, before grasping it, wrist to wrist. “Until then.” She gestured and her hounds padded to her side, as they began to walk the dirt road away from the farm.

“Just the two of us, then,” said Erath, watching Arrel disappear.

“You aren’t coming either,” said Teneff.

Erath stared at her, at Riven, confused.

“This duty is mine alone now,” she said. “My search is over—but not yours.” She nodded to Lady Henrietta. “Now go. Find your betrayer.”

At first, Erath said nothing. After witnessing Riven’s power he didn’t want to leave Teneff alone with her, but he knew in his heart that it was the right choice. And she was right, there was something left that he had to do here.

Erath straightened, hammering a fist proudly against his chest. “For Noxus.”

Teneff returned the salute. “For Noxus.”

Erath helped Teneff drape Marit’s body in her family’s standard, and load it onto Talz before retrieving his own things. “Grow big and strong, Talz,” he patted Talz’s flank. “Keep Ten out of trouble.”

The basilisk swung his head playfully, nearly knocking Erath off his feet. He smiled, feeling his eyes sting. He turned away, wiping away a tear with his thumb, and turned to Lady Henrietta.

Inching toward her, Erath pictured every person he had witnessed Lady Henrietta kill. Every shriek of reptilian fury, every strangled cry ripped from the throats of her prey. Every time he had cleaned the gore from her jewelry. Softly humming he approached, reached out, and gently ran a hand over her scaly hide. She twitched, but did not recoil from him. Encouraged, he tested her reins, and after a moment Erath climbed into the saddle on Lady Henrietta’s back.

She accepted him.

Riven and Teneff watched Erath ride away down the road. Riven’s manacles clinked, and she realized this was the second time she had been dragged from the farm in chains. She remembered how she had felt then—the fear and the panic, allowing it to wash over her and ebb away. It would not be the same as it was before. This time was different, but so was she.

Teneff turned to Riven. “You are my captive, but you are also my sister. I will treat you with respect due. Are you ready?”

Riven exhaled, sparing one last look at Asa and the home she would never see again, and gave a nod. “Yes.”

“Good.” Teneff helped Riven onto Talz’s back, looking out at the long road ahead of them. “To Noxus.”

Erath rode through the night. After the hardships of the journey to find Riven on foot, the speed of covering ground with Lady Henrietta was exhilarating. Were his purpose different, he would have allowed the joy of riding to overwhelm him. But his heart was heavy, like a stone sitting in his chest, as the distance to his destination whittled away to nothing.

The natural stockade did not open for him. Erath drew his falchion, clashing it against his armor.

“I am Jobin’s son!” Erath bellowed. “Let him show himself, or stand aside so that I might face him.”

After a few moments’ silence, the barrier peeled apart wide enough to admit him. He trotted into the village, feeling the frightened eyes of Ionians and wayward Noxians upon him.

“Jobin!” Erath called. “Father, face me!”

“Peace!” An elder emerged from the crowd. Erath recognized him as the old man who had watched over the site of the chemical attack. “Be at peace, my child. I will take you to him.”

Exhaling, Erath sheathed his falchion, and dismounted Lady Henrietta. The elder led Erath to Jobin’s hut, and the two entered. Ionians gathered a distance from Henrietta, singing calming melodies. Henrietta spat at them.

The hut was dark. The Ionian lit a few candles, granting enough illumination for Erath to see the shape at the center of the room, draped in a shroud.

“Your father,” said the elder.

Erath drew a breath. He knelt, trying to keep his hands from shaking as he drew back the shroud, revealing the pale, cold face of his father. It was scarred, bruised, and discolored.

“Why did you return?” asked the Ionian.

“I came,” Erath’s voice shook, “to hear why he betrayed me and my companions to the Brotherhood.”

“Betray?” Sadness flooded the elder’s features. “My child, he did not.”

Erath’s eyes fell over the wounds, taking in every bruise, tracing every laceration.

“The Brotherhood came not long after you departed,” said the Ionian. “They demanded we reveal your path. He defied them, and for his defiance he endured torture. They took his life.”

Erath barely heard the words. His breath caught in his throat. Emotions collided over him. His journey. Denied from fighting for his tribe, enduring the hardships to find his place in another. Discovering their own broken family. Seeing it torn apart and pieced back together.

He touched his father’s face. A tear fell, striking Jobin’s cheek. The weight in Erath’s chest vanished, the stone melting away beneath warmth.

“You could stay,” the elder ventured. “We would welcome Jobin’s son here. Wait for the blossom festival to come once more.”

“No,” Erath shook his head. “His spirit is at peace with me.”

The Ionian stepped back, dipping his head in understanding.

“Help me wrap him,” said Erath, taking hold of the shawl. “He’s coming with me.”

“Where will you take him?” asked the elder.

Erath looked at the Ionian, and smiled. “Home.”

Fast and dumb, or slow and smart?

That’s what Yi always asks me. Well, I say “asks,” but it’s not really a question. Not up for discussion. Not really. You can be impulsive and quick and improvisational and have fun... or you can do things Yi’s way. The right way. Slow. Patient. Strategic. With a gruff, determined expression on his face, like he stepped in crap. Because he did. Because I shoved some inside his boot, thinking he’d find it funny.

He didn’t.

(I did, though, so it all kinda worked out in the end.)

The really irritating thing, though: he’s usually right. Through the years we’ve trained together, I’ve beaten him in combat something like...twelve times? Versus the hundreds of times he’s walloped me. And every time – every single time I ate a mouthful of dirt – I knew it was because I’d gotten impatient. Took a swing I wasn’t sure would land. Lunged for an opening that ended up being a trap.

And I’m not being humble. I’m good. Really good. Yi, humorless as he is, just happens to be one of the best warriors I’ve ever met. It’s not like the guy is slow, either: he’s fast. Faster than anyone I’ve ever seen. As in: he unsheathes his blade, then there’s a blur, then three guys are bleeding on the ground. That fast.

So when he tells me to choose slow and smart over fast and dumb, I try to listen most of the time.

Keyword being “try.”

And “most of the time.”

We were wandering through a forest of man-high mushrooms when we heard the shouting.

In addition to cutting off the punchline of an incredible joke I’d been telling, Yi made me dive into the thick of a thistleshrub to avoid detection.

There were six of them. Five bandits and their rope-bound captive, an elderly farmer with anxious eyes.

I felt this situation called for a liberal application of hitting people in the head with my staff, but Yi held me back. He put a finger to his lips, then pointed at his eyes. Observe. Strategize. Fast and dumb, or slow and smart?

I sighed and looked over the group with a discerning eye.

Raggedy clothes hung off their hunched backs, taut with stress. They seemed to take far better care of their blades than themselves. Their eyes scanned their surroundings as they marched, on the lookout for any potential ambush. One shoved a gag into the old farmer’s mouth, presumably to stop the shouting we’d just heard.

Bandits.

The old farmer collapsed to the ground. The tumble was intentional; anyone could tell that. His captors certainly did.

The leader stopped and faced the old man. “Well, that tears it,” he said. “You’re old, my friend, but you’re not that old. Falling over every few hundred steps to stall for time? Give yourself a second to think about how you’re gonna get out of this? That’s an old trick. Older than you.”

He squatted to the farmer’s level.

“You don’t really have a chestful of precious stones at home, do you?”

The old man stared at the bandit, terror slowly replacing itself with resignation.

He shook his head.

“That’s a shame,” the bandit said, a genial smile on his face. The kind of smile that usually leads to somebody pulling out a dagger.

“I’m gonna go save him now,” I whispered to Yi.

Yi shook his head as hard as he could without rattling his goggles. I didn’t have to ask why. He likely wanted one of us to sneak around them and attack from the other side of the pass, trapping them in a pincer. Or something equally cunning and time-consuming. Slow and smart.

Yi’s big problem – apart from not finding me funny, and the fact that his goggles make him look like a man-sized bug – is that he spent the last handful of years sitting alone in a field of flowers. His patience is infinite. He thinks everything can be thought through. Planned for.

Still, Yi had said to go slow. We’d try it his way. I nodded at him, then at the path behind the thugs. You get behind them. I’ll attack on your signal.

Yi circled back through the brush. He darted to the other side of the trail, too quick to notice, even if they had been looking in his direction. Classic ambush setup: he’d get their attention, and while their backs were turned, I’d hit them from my side of the path.

That’s when the lead bandit pulled a blade out of his right pocket. A small little thing, not good for much more than peeling fruit. Or slicing the throat of a tired old farmer.

I couldn’t see Yi in the brush on the other side of the road, but I knew he couldn’t see the blade. He didn’t know what was about to happen.

They were about to kill the old man, no matter how safe Yi wanted to play it. We had no time to go slow.

Thankfully, I had a secret weapon up my sleeve: I’m really, really, really good at fighting.

The leader grabbed the old man’s scalp and put a knife to his throat. I leapt out of the brush, staff held high, and smacked the blade out of his hand. Then we got to my favorite part.

Whenever I get the drop on somebody, I usually get about a two to three second window as they try to make sense of me. Most people have never seen a vastaya, much less a Shimon. They stand there slack-jawed, which typically gives me a chance to hit ‘em before they realize what’s going on.

I drove my knee into the lead bandit's chin, and his teeth clacked together so hard, even I winced at the sound.

“Stay where you are, Yi!” I shouted into the bush where he waited, unseen. “I got this.”

That’s when a knife hit me in the shoulder.

Apparently, one of those jerks had been wearing a bandolier of throwing daggers across his chest, and I hadn’t noticed. I tried not to imagine Yi smirking to himself.

“Still ‘got this,’ do you?,” he yelled from the brush. Likely staying out of the fight just long enough for me to get my teeth kicked in, so he could leap in, save me, and shout that he told me to slow down.

“Completely!” I shouted as I tossed a handful of smokepoppies to the ground. (I always keep a few on me. They’re useful in combat, and even more useful for irritating Yi when I’m bored.)

Then I beat the hell outta the rest of them. I won’t trouble you with the details–

–Wait, yes I will, because they’re great.

I held my staff out and twirled around, aiming high so as to avoid the prone old man. My arms shuddered with every impact of wood against skull. I dodged blows, parried strikes, and only got punched in the face, like, twice.

By the time the smoke cleared, I was the only one still standing. Well, me and the old man, once I got him to his feet.

Yi stepped out of the brush, sighing.

“Oh, come on,” I said. “What are you sighing for? I saved the grungy old man–”

“–Hey!” the old man said.

“And my shoulder will probably heal in a couple of days. Ow,” I said, touching the wound. “What’s disappointed you this time?”

Yi cut the man’s bindings. “I’m not disappointed,” Yi said. “I’m irritated.”

“Why?”

“I don’t like admitting I’m wrong. You were impatient, reckless, and you absolutely made the right call.”

I smiled.

“Fast and dumb.”

He patted me on my non-bleeding shoulder.

“Fast and dumb,” he said.

With a kiss to my wife and resting my spear against my shoulder, I joined my fellows as we left the village. The morning was new, dawn stretching through the thick forests of Tokogol as the six of us made our way to the watch point by a worn dirt path. We were travelling light, as our vigil would only last until the next moon before another band of spearmen took our place. Tokogol shared borders with Noxus, and its increasing belligerence of late had stirred the house lords to ensure that all of their spears were honed.

Our journey was short and uneventful, a soldier’s dream. The better part of a half day’s march brought us within sight of the outpost, and we pointed as the signal fire was lit, welcoming us with a column of thin, white smoke. The mood among my comrades was light, the easy talk of bonded brothers and neighbors. Though our duty was to watch the frontier in search of any sign of it, war in Tokogol was a distant thought.

When we arrived, we found the gates to the stockade open and unbarred, yet not broken or forced. An odd feeling crept over us, like a chill dancing up our spines. I could see it in the others, just as surely as I felt it in myself.

We formed a tiny shield wall, two ranks of three men, and entered the stockade expecting to find slaughter—ruin and destruction, with signs of Noxus for all to see.

But we found none of this.

What we discovered was the picture of an outpost no different than any other. The fires had crackled down to embers beneath cooking pots that were still full. Clothes hung drying, and the lanterns were still on their poles from the night before. We looked at each other in alarm, in confusion. It was as if our comrades had simply disappeared.

“What could have happened here?” whispered Bel. Our wall straightened and broke as we searched the outpost for any sign of life.

“Could they have been captured?” asked Ulryk.

I approached a wall of the stockade. A stripe of the timber was burnt blacker than pitch. I reached toward it, and the barest touch of my fingertips sent it crumbling, revealing a crater of smooth wood underneath. The others found similar marks across the camp, though none of us could fathom how they had been made.

A cry sent us all back into a warrior’s crouch. “Come quick!”

It was Afron. We ran to him, finding him standing over a body.

“It’s Halryn,” he said, looking to us. “The tanner’s boy.”

The young man was pale, lying fetal on the ground. We saw no sign of battle on him, no blood or wounds.

I drew my knife. Sinking to my haunches, I brought the blade beneath Halryn’s nose. The day was cold, and shallow puffs of breath clouded the steel in a slow, stilted rhythm.

“He yet lives,” I said, reaching for his shoulder. We leapt away as soon as I’d rolled him onto his back.

Halryn’s eyes were open, yet there was nothing there. From what we could tell, he was conscious, but his right eye simply stared up at the sky, empty of light.

That was not what we had recoiled from.

“By the gods,” Ulryk breathed. Afron spat to avert evil, and we joined him.

Where Halryn’s left eye had been, only a dark pit remained. I had seen enough battle in my time to know the telltales of a spear or blade, but no weapon I knew could have made such a wound. It was too clean, too precise for battle’s disordered frenzy. No pain marked the boy’s face from the horrific injury.

“What could have done this to him?” Bel demanded. “Some beast? A plague?”

We shrank back from the body at the thought. “No,” Caer frowned, his hand straying to the satchel of herbs and poultices at his waist. “No sign of festering. This wasn’t disease.”

“Find the others,” ordered Bel. “Now.”

One by one, we found them. These were men we knew, men of our village who sold fish and hammered steel. All bore the same wound to their left eye, all reduced to the same catatonic state. They appeared almost serene, and all the more horrifying for it.

Afron looked to Bel. “What do we do?”

“We must give warning,” said Ulryk.

“Of what?” asked Caer. “We have no idea what is happening here.”

They argued. Voices clashed and overlapped. Above it all, I noted the smell of smoke in the air.

“Wait.”

The others stopped, looking back at me. I swallowed.

“If they are all in this state,” I pointed back to the signal fire behind us, “then who lit the beac—”

Ulryk was in the air before we knew what was happening. A blinding flash stole my sight, but I glimpsed a huge, darkened shape against it. Oaths, prayers and curses filled the air from my comrades’ lips. They were silenced by a crack like a bullwhip, followed by an overwhelming, fizzing shriek.

When I could see clearly again, I was on the ground.

I looked down to see my legs splayed, broken. Other warriors, my brothers and friends, lay staring up at the sky above.

I heard only one other voice, and turned. I could only watch as Afron, a youth of barely sixteen, struggled beneath the monster. Bathed in harsh violet light, he writhed as one of its appendages sank into his skull through his eye. His screams stopped as he became a mere husk, like all the others.

Then the monster turned its baleful gaze in my direction.

In an instant, it was looming over me. I looked up into that single, swollen eye, and sensed a hunger beyond imagining. A hunger not of flesh, but something far deeper. My soul teetered on the edge of this abyss, its merciless hunger pulling…

No.

I am Hennis Kydarn, a warrior and a spear of Tokogol. I refused to give it the satisfaction of my cries, even as its tentacle knifed down through my eye. There was no pain—

—as I work. The analysis can inflict physical pain, should I desire it, but that is not critical here. I have learned much of pain, and its uses.

This one’s information is precious, as all knowledge is. A settlement, interactions, castes. A particular female of the species, and offspring… This one resists my analysis of those, but it is a simple thing to overcome.

With nothing more to consume, I travel here, to disseminate what I have collected.

The rift beneath me is a conduit for information to be passed into the true realm. The creatures that inhabit this world have designated our domain as the Void. Such curious poetry these entities weave—a curiosity that illustrates how far my task is from completion.

A universe of knowledge surrounds me, of great power and distant lands, and I shall collect it all. I offer this information, now, and all of the rest to come.

Accept.

Consume.

Learn.

Thunderclouds rolled off the Argent Mountains, promising pyrotechnics, but delivering none.

From the tower, the advancing mob looked like a child’s mismatched toys—all toothpick spears and tiny torches. The figure at the head of the group was tall, with a splash of grey hair, and a blade belted to her homespun tunic.

Veigar watched as the group started battering the outer gates, incensed by his villainous ways, demanding justice for the terrible acts he had wrought. Finally! He hurried down the stairs to the inner door.

There was a mighty crack as the gates gave way, and villagers tumbled into the courtyard. The leader drew her sword and advanced, picking her way between ungainly limbs, waiting for the rest of the group to find their feet and hold the right end of their spears.

Squinting through the gap in the door, Veigar giggled with anticipation.

The woman’s gaze snapped up.

Veigar clapped a gauntlet over his mouth, but the jig was up. The farmers tripped over themselves to cower behind their leader’s skirts. It was perfect. He stepped back and, barely holding his staff steady with all his booming laughter, blasted open the door with an explosive ball of purple energy.

He strode out to the top of the stone steps as the dust settled. He knew how imposing a figure he must strike—his hat barely clearing the enormous door frame, his iron boots sending up sparks and thunder with each giant step, his gauntlet big enough to crush any fool who might challenge him.

Unfortunately, the cowering villagers hadn’t looked up yet, and holding an intimidating pose this long was starting to feel forced. He let go of the breath he’d been holding, and deflated a little.

“The villain!” shouted the leader, eventually, brandishing her blade in his direction.

In the shadow beneath his hat, Veigar grinned. He drew himself up as intimidatingly as possible as the villagers beheld him.

Then the shouting and wailing began. Delightfully, someone at the back even fainted.

He gathered his sinister magic, gaining an inky nimbus, and causing violet sparks to leap off speartips and belt buckles. The leader stumbled back as a serpentine gash of deepest midnight encircled the villagers, and exploded upwards into an ensnaring cage of sorcery.

“Silence!” Veigar commanded them.

He relished every long stride down the steps toward the trapped mob. Around them, humming walls of violet light stretched between claw-like pillars, forming an eldritch henge. He stopped barely a sword’s length from the leader, glaring at his prisoners through his arcane barrier.

“I can see the fear in your hearts!” he began with a derisive, humorless, snort. “You dare march here to challenge my dread rule? I, Veigar, who has yoked the magic of the universe to my will? Veigar, Great Master of Evil, who has defeated countless arcane foes in my quest for ever greater—”

“Cursed my fields with rat-weevils for two seasons, you have!” an especially cloddish looking farmer cried out, crimson-faced with fury.

Veigar blinked, trying to process this interruption. “Cursed you with what…?”

“And ye turned Dollee lame the week ‘afore harvest!” claimed an outraged tiller, wagging her finger at the increasingly befuddled Great Master of Evil.

With that, the banks broke and the villagers began to make all of their grievances heard. Veigar could only catch snippets of the loudest accusations, the majority featuring soured milk and undersized beets. As he shrunk away from the verbal onslaught, the purple barrier flickered and collapsed, but the villagers didn’t even notice. They shuffled forward, yelling in his face.

He felt the stone banister of the stairs at his back. He was surrounded.

He tried feebly to respond, his voice losing depth with every word. “But I… I am…” They crowded closer, glaring, now eye to eye with him rather than looking up.

Suddenly, a commanding older voice rose over the din. “Stand down. Everyone.”

“But Margaux…” someone began, before the leader’s glare withered their objection. The mob retreated, and Veigar found himself alone with her. She seemed more than twice his height by this point, and radiated confidence.

He hated her.

“Alright, villain,” she spat. “You’ve heard our accusations. Do you plead innocence?”

Veigar felt like he had been slapped. He puffed out his chest, feeling a foot taller. “Innocence? Innocence?!” He turned and began climbing the steps, gaining height on the crowd. “You have the audacity to bring your superstitious bellyachings to my door, and then insult me by asking if I deny them?!”

He glared over his shoulder in their direction.

“I do! I deny every one of them! But do not dare presume that I claim innocence. You accuse me of evildoing—and I am evil! Since I took this arcane tower from its puny owner, I have burned your fields! I have terrorized your warlords, defeating them so thoroughly that they swore never to return!” He took the last two stairs in one great stride. “And I have begun my campaign of terror upon neighboring villainous sorcerers! For none will be permitted to obstruct my path to ultimate magical power! ”

At this, the sky crackled, and magical bolts hurtled from the clouds, exploding around the courtyard. Veigar threw his head back and laughed, reveling in the sheer glory of his own evil. These puny mortals would beg forgiveness in the face of his terrible magnificence!

When he stopped for breath, the villagers were conferring in a huddle, casting appraising glances in his direction. One of them popped her head up. “Did you defeat Vixis the Cruel? The warlord?”

“Of course I did! She failed to exhibit proper deference, and I…”

His words trailed off as the group returned to their earnest whispers. Veigar shifted uncomfortably, straining to hear what they were saying. One by one, the mob nodded to each other, and turned to face him.

They found him coolly admiring the polished gleam of his gauntlet.

The leader, Margaux, strode to the bottom of the steps, awkwardly half-bowing, and addressed him. “Oh, great and mighty… uh… sorcerer…?”

“Wizard!” Veigar corrected her.

“Mighty wizard. We, the residents of the barely-worth-bothering-with village of Boleham—”

“That’s our village!” someone helpfully interjected.

Margaux sighed. “Yes, our village. Well, you see, we’ve come to our senses, and do humbly beg the mighty wizard, Gray Jar—”

“It’s Vay-gar! Veigar!”

“Sorry! Veigar! We humbly beg that you spare us and just, umm, you know… keep doing what you’re doing.”

Veigar narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you know. We’ll just go home, and you keep doing your… reign of terror… thingy. Live and let terrorize, that’s what I say.”

This had to be some kind of trick. And yet, she went on.

“Of course, we’d exhibit the proper, you know, deference. Curse your name in your absence. Spread tales of your vile rampage. Frenk says his cousin down in Glorft heard a rumor of an evil sorcerer, if you’d be interested in, you know…”

“Destroying them! And taking their dread sorceries for my own!” Veigar clenched his gauntleted hand, imagining the sweet triumph of crushing an arcane peer in a wizard battle.

Margaux was watching him carefully. Hopefully, Veigar realized.

Finally, after a long pause, he rolled his eyes and flourished his staff.

“You fools! You thought you could trick me, Veigar, Master of Evil?! Perhaps you hoped I would grant you the mercy of a swift and painless end! Well, I regret to inform you that your lives are simply not worth my time!”

He laughed—a big, booming laugh to match his renewed stature.

“Take yourselves from my sight, insignificant peasants! Return to Boleham, and pray I do not find you worthy of my attention ever again!”

The villagers managed a few half-hearted bows or curtseys, before shuffling back toward the damaged archway. Margaux chanced a quick wink at him, then turned to leave.

“Wait!” he thundered. Her hand snapped to the pommel of her sword.

With as much indifference as he could muster, Veigar edged his way down the steps once more.

“When do you think I could talk to Frenk’s cousin about that other sorcerer?”

The overcast skies had parted since the magistrates entered. When the large doors at the back of the hall opened again, Riven watched as the room full of villagers was split by a blinding shard of daylight. She walked across the hall’s threshold and the movement pushed aside the still air in the hall like the release of a held breath.

The doors closed behind her. Two warrior priests marched her through the large aisle that divided the throng. The council hall was once again cast in the murky gloom from curled windows set high in the ceiling and the cylindrical lanterns that hung from the sculpted roof. She watched Shava Konte swallow thickly as she passed.

She knew what they saw. A woman, her white hair matted with straw from a rough sleep in stone cell. A stranger. An enemy. A daughter of Noxus.

Fatigue clung to Riven’s bones like the farmer’s mud that still stained her clothes. Her soul felt stiff and misshapen, but when Riven’s gaze found the old man on the stool, she stood a little straighter.

She took in the three judges seated on the dais before her. The stern one in the middle motioned for Riven to be seated, rather than shackled standing.

Riven refused the wooden chair shaped by magic. She recognized the bailiff as the lead rider that came to old couple’s field. His thin lips stretched in the same arrogant smile.

“Suit yourself, it’ll just be harder for you.”

The bailiff sat on the chair himself with an air of satisfaction. The center judge gave the bailiff a look of admonishment and then spoke to Riven.

“I know you are not of this land. The dialect here is tricky. I will speak the common tongue so that we may better understand each other.”

Like most Noxians, Riven had learned enough of Ionia’s common tongue to command and order, but like the land itself, the accent of each village had a unique personality flavored by its people. She nodded at the judge and waited.

“What is your name?”

“Riven,” Riven said. Her voice was hoarse, catching in her throat with a croak.

“Bring her water.”

The bailiff stood and took up a skin of water, shoving it at her. Riven looked at the skin, but did not take it.

“It is only water, child,” the judge seated beside the center judge said, leaning forward over the table. “What, do you fear we would poison you?”

Riven shook her head, refusing the offer. She cleared her throat, determined to speak without any more assistance. The bailiff pursed his lips and took a deep swig, water dribbled from the corner of his mouth. He flashed his teeth in a triumphant sneer meant for her.

“You have been brought before this council,” the judge interrupted, drawing Riven’s attention back to the three robed figures and the crowd gathered within the hall. “Because we wish to know what you have to say.”

“Am I not being sentenced?”

The judge swallowed her surprise.

“I am unclear about how justice is carried out where you come from, but here we believe justice is first served by understanding and enlightenment.” The judge spoke to Riven as if she was a young child. “We believe you have knowledge of an event that is most important to this community. If that knowledge reveals a crime, then you could be sentenced and punished accordingly.”

Riven looked from the judge to Asa, then back. Justice in Noxus was often decided in combat. If one was lucky, it was decided swiftly and with the sharpened end of the weapon. Riven eyed the judge warily. “What do you want to know?”

The judge leaned back. “Where are you from, Riven?”

“I have no homeland.”

The judge’s narrowing gaze told Riven that her words had been taken as defiance. The hawk-faced magistrate paused, tempering her response. “You must have been born somewhere.”

“A farm in Trevale.” Riven looked at the old man. “Noxus,” she admitted.

The council hall, which had dropped back to silence in order to hear the prisoner, took in a collective breath.

“I see,” continued the judge. “And you no longer call that place home.”

“When your home tries to kill you, is it still home?”

“You are an exile then?”

“That would imply I wish to return,” Riven said.

“You do not?”

“Noxus is no longer what it once was.” Impatience edged into Riven’s voice. “Can we get on with this?”

“So be it,” the judge said with a calmness that irritated Riven more than the shackles on her wrists. “You came with the Noxian fleet, yes?”

“I assume so.”

“You do not know?” The judge looked confused.

“I do not remember,” Riven said. She glanced to the crowd, her sideways look catching the eyes of Shava. The old woman had asked a similar question. Riven shook her head. “Does it matter? There was a battle. Many died. That is all I know.”

The painful memory of war that smoldered among the crowd flared to life at Riven’s words. They shoved each other, shoulders knocking together and shouting, as they all tried to stand at once.

Someone lashed out. “Noxian filth! My son is dead because of you!”

A moldy eggfruit sailed through the air and pelted Riven in the neck. The fermented juice and pulp slid wetly down the back of her shirt. The rotten smell rose up in the air, but Riven would not allow the scent of death to take her back to that moment long ago. She closed her eyes, allowing her breath to come through parted lips.

With that, the crowd erupted. Riven knew what it looked like, that she felt nothing for what had happened to these people. “Please,” she whispered to herself, unsure if she was imploring them to stop, or to encourage the fullness of their barely contained anger.

In answer, more of the late season eggfruit exploded on the stone floor. One caught Riven behind the knee. She stumbled, struggling to maintain her balance with her hands bound.

The judge rose to her full height, towering over the seated villagers and Riven. Her magistrate’s robe flared as she slammed the chestnut sphere against its cradle. The wooden benches beneath the crowd strained, groaning and flexing in response to the magistrate’s will.

“I will have balance restored to this hall!”

The reprimanded villagers quieted.

“Yes, Riven, the council remembers that time,” the judge continued with more restraint. “Many Ionians… and Noxians… perished. And you?”

It was a question that plagued Riven. Why had she been spared when others had not? She could offer no answer that would satisfy. “It seems I did not,” she said quietly

“Indeed.” The judge smiled coldly.

Riven knew there was little she could say to pacify the bereaved crowd. She owed them the truth, but even that was not hers to give. Her memories of that time were broken. She bowed her head.

“I do not remember,” Riven said.

The judge did not stop the questioning. Riven knew doing so would only allow for interruptions to spew forward from the anger simmering in the room.

“How long have you been in this land?”

“I do not remember.”

“How did you come to this village?”

“I do not remember.”

“Have you been here before?”

“I…” Riven hesitated, but could not hold on to the moment that would give a clear answer. “I cannot remember.”

“Did you meet with Elder Souma?”

The name stirred something within her. A memory of a memory, hazy and sharp at the same time passed through her. Anger flooded the empty place where her past once lived. She had been betrayed. She had betrayed.

“I can’t remember!” Riven lashed out in frustration, the shackles at her wrists rattling.

“War breaks many things,” the judge said, softening. “Some we cannot see.”

In the face of this enlightenment, some of the fight left Riven. “I cannot remember,” she said, more calmly than before.

The judge nodded. “There are others who may be able to speak to what you cannot remember.”

Riven watched the old man make his way slowly to a witness stool set in front of the judges. His fingers shook as he smoothed a few errant hairs in his thick eyebrows.

“Asa Konte,” the judged said patiently. “O-fa, thank you for sharing your knowledge with us today.”

The old man nodded.

“Do you know this woman, the one called Riven?” the judge asked.

“Yes,” the old man said. “She came to us at the beginning of this past wet season.”

“Us?”

“Myself and Shava, my wife.”

The judge looked up at Mistress Konte, who still shifted uncomfortably on the bench at the front of the hall. The judge gestured to Riven.

“She came to you?”

“Well, I found her in our field,” the old man offered sheepishly. “We had a calf wander in the night. At dawn I went looking for it. Instead I found her.”

Murmurs of surprise and concern spilled again from the crowd.

“Spy!”

“More will come!”

“We must protect ourselves!”

The judge rested a hand on the heavy wooden sphere in front of her. The room grew quiet. “What did she want, Master Konte?”

The old man smoothed his eyebrows again and glanced at Riven. His look begged apology.

“She wanted to die, magistrate,” he said softly.

The judge leaned forward.

“It was the start of the wet season,” Asa continued. “She was soaked to the skin, nothing but fevered bones held together by mud and stubborn Noxian muscle.”

“You knew she was Noxian?”

“She carried a weapon, a blade, the scabbard was inscribed with the marks of their father tongue. No Ionian would carry such a weapon.”

The judge pursed her lips. “Master Konte, you took heavy losses during the invasion?”

“I did, magistrate,” the old man said. He looked to his wife. “Two sons.”

“What did you do with the woman?”

The old man took a deep breath.

“I took her home to Shava,” he said.

The murmur of the hall rose again, questioning the man’s lenience on a foe that had been so merciless. The faces within the hall told their stories of loss. None in their community had been untouched by the conflict. The old man lifted his head, and turned to the crowd, challenging the hardness of their hearts.

“My sons… My boys… Their bones have long since been cleaned by the sky. Would those we lost wish us to bury ourselves in grief beside them?”

Riven watched as the old man and his wife shared a knowing look. Shava’s eyes were wet and full.

“We were not ready to let them go, but…” The old man’s voice quivered. “But it does us no good to mire ourselves in the past when there is life left to live.”

Shava bit her bottom lip and sat up straighter, daring those who sat next to her to speak ill of their choice. Asa turned away from the crowd’s stares. He sat facing the magistrate, the stool creaking beneath him.

“There were so many deaths, I couldn’t bear to add another,” he explained. “We cleaned her up and offered what we had in peace.”

The judge nodded without emotion. Riven watched as the judge took in Riven’s shirt and pants, mentally unrolling the cuffs. She knew what the judge pictured as she had thought the same thing many times since the old woman had presented the clothes. They were meant for a young man, a head taller than her, maybe a man with Shava’s smile or Asa’s kind eyes.

For Riven it was a constant reminder of her own weakness. All her years of living or dying by the strength of Noxus, and Riven had accepted their fragile offer of hope, let herself be clothed in it and in a family that could have been.

“When she regained her strength, she wanted to work in the fields,” the old man went on. “My wife and I are old. We welcomed the help.”

“You and your wife did not fear for your lives?”

“The girl wants nothing to do with Noxus. She hates Noxus.”

“She said this to you?”

“No,” he said. “She said nothing of her past. Shava asked her once and she said nothing. We saw that it pained her, so we did not ask again.”

“If she said nothing, then how do you infer her feelings about her homeland?”

Master Konte wiped at his old eyes. Riven watched the trouble pass over his face, like the words were not his to give. He spoke quickly, conscious suddenly of the audience surrounding him.

“Fevered dreams, magistrate,” he said. “The night she came to us. Something that belonged to her, something she had cared for greatly, had been broken. For that she cried out against Noxus.”

“Do you know the thing she spoke of?”

“I believe so, magistrate.” The old man nodded slowly. “The pommel of her weapon has been bound into her scabbard. Four days ago I saw her undo the laces. I saw the blade was broken.”

Riven had thought she had only been watched by the fat mousing cat that day in the barn.
A few snide comments about the quality of Noxian weapons passed like handshakes among the crowd.

“And what did you do with that knowledge, Master Konte?”

“I took the blade to the temple.”

The judge cocked her head to one side, looking down her predatory nose at the old man. “To what end?”

“I hoped the priests might be able to mend it. That if the blade was made whole, she might be relieved of some of the ghosts that haunt her.” Even as crowd erupted behind him, the old man looked at Riven and the chains that bound her hands. “That she might have some peace in the present.”

“Thank you, Master Konte, for sharing your knowledge with the council,” the judge said, coldly staring the congregation into silence. “Your attestation is finished.”

She looked down at an unrolled parchment and back to the bailiff.

“Bring in the weapon.”

Riven watched two temple priests carry in a large wooden tray draped with a scarlet cloth and set it gingerly on the table before the council judges. A warrior priest stepped forward, his high rank made evident by the fluted edges of his wooden pauldron and breastplate.

“Show us,” the judge said.

The warrior priest withdrew the scarlet cloth, revealing a weapon and sheath both bigger than a kite shield. The scabbard was etched in the harsh strokes of Ur-Noxian, the heavy angles and slashes in stark contrast to the fluid script of Ionia. But it was the blade that drew the interest of the judges. A blade so thick and heavy it looked like it would break the well-trained arm of a temple priest to lift it, let alone the slender wrist of the young woman shackled before them. Indeed, when Riven had seen the weapon for the first time, she had thought the same thing.

Now, instead of one solid blade, the weapon was fractured into angry pieces, as if monstrous claws had raked through its metal flesh. The five largest pieces would have been deadly in their own right, but laid out against the soft Ionian cloth, broken and raw as it was, it was terrifying.

The judge looked at Riven. “This weapon belongs to you.”

Riven nodded her head.

“I suppose in this many pieces, it makes it a bit difficult to wield,” the judge said to herself.

There were snickers among the crowd.

The warrior priest shifted uncomfortably. “This weapon is ensorcelled, magistrate. The Noxians have bound magic into the blade.” The disgust hung heavy on his words.

Riven didn’t know if the judge was listening to the priest. The judge was nodding absently, her gaze washing over the weapon until it found the spot that Riven knew it would, the empty place Riven had struggled to fill. The judge’s falcon nose twitched.

“There is a piece missing.”

A young temple adept swayed nervously before the council hall.

“Adept, is this the weapon Master Konte presented to the temple?” the lead judge asked.

“Yes, magistrate.”

“You were the one to alert this court?”

“Yes, magistrate.”

“How did you know this weapon would be of interest to us?”

Riven watched the adept wipe his hands on the lengthy sleeves of his robes. His face was pale, as if he might faint, or be sick on the stone floor.

“Adept?” the judge probed.

“I am a bone washer, magistrate.” The words tumbled out of the young man. His hands hung like spent candle wax. “For the elders. After their bodies have been left to the sky, I collect them and prepare them.”

“I am familiar with the duties of a bone washer, adept. How is it this weapon concerns you?”

“The blade is the same.”

A moment of confusion swept over the judge’s face. The same uncertain daze washed over the crowd, passing from person to person in befuddled looks. Riven, however, felt a wave of unease crawl over her skin.

“When I prepared the bones of Elder Souma, after his time, for the temple, I mean to say.” The adept’s haphazard explanation was losing many. Instead of continuing he pulled from a fold in his robe a small silk bag and started undoing the tight knots with his long fingers. He retrieved from the bag a shard of metal and held it up. “This metal, magistrate. It is the same as the broken blade.”

The adept scurried from his place and approached the judge. She took the shard from his outstretched hand and turned it over in her fingers. Even held at a distance, the metal seemed similar to the broken blade.

Riven's breath caught in her throat. There was the piece of her past that she had searched for and given up finding. Now it was on the verge of coming together, illuminating a dark and forgotten corner of her mind. The guilt Riven carried and had buried deep was finally being unearthed. Riven steeled herself against what she knew would come next.

“Where did you find this?” the judge asked.

The adept cleared his throat. “In the bones of Elder Souma’s neck.”

The council hall gasped.

“You did not bring this forward before?” The judge’s eyes narrowed as she focused in on her target.

“I did,” the adept said, trying desperately to look anywhere but the warrior priest who stood next to Riven’s broken blade. “But my master said it was nothing.”

The judge had no such trouble looking at the warrior priest.

“Approach,” she ordered. She handed the bit of mangled metal to the warrior priest. “Put it with the rest.”

The warrior priest glared at the adept, but followed the orders given. He approached Riven’s blade and then turned at the last minute to the judge. “Magistrate, there is dark magic in this weapon. We don’t know what this piece may reveal.”

“Proceed.” The judge’s words left no room for argument.

The warrior priest turned back. All the eyes in the council hall watched as he took the sliver of hammered metal and placed it nearest the tip of the broken blade.

The weapon was silent.

The judge let out a small sigh. Riven, however, continued to watch the old man and his wife. She knew their hope would last only a moment longer. She had been weak to accept it, to believe that there was something in this world for someone so broken. Their relief at her fleeting innocence hurt most of all. It hurt because Riven knew in that moment the good they believed about her was a lie. The truth of her past was sharper and more painful than any blade.

Riven heard the sword beginning to hum. “Please,” she called out. She struggled to be heard over the chatter of the hall. She struggled against her restraints. “Please, you must listen.”

The vibration built. Now it could be heard and felt. The villagers panicked, pushing and shoving to get back. The judge stood quickly, her arms outstretched to the wooden table that held the broken sword. The edge of the table began to grow and curl, the wood budding new green limbs over the weapon, but Riven knew the magic would not hold.

“Everyone, get down!” Riven yelled, but the sound of the blade drowned out her voice, indeed all the voices, as the weapon built to a fever pitch.

Then, all at once the power exploded in a burst of runic energy and splintered wood. A gust of wind knocked everyone who had been standing down to the floor.

From the ground, the faces of the crowd turned to Riven.

Riven’s lips were cold and her cheeks flushed. The ghosts of her mind, memories she had entombed, they were fully alive now, looming one by one before her. They were Ionian farmers, sons and daughters, the people of this village that would not kneel to Noxus. They were looking at her. Haunting her. They knew her guilt. They were her warriors, too, her brothers- and sisters-in-arms. They would have gladly sacrificed themselves for the glory of the empire, instead she had failed them. She had led them under the banner of Noxus, a banner that had promised them a home and purpose. In the end, they were betrayed and discarded. All of them cut down by the sick poison of war.

Now these ghosts stood among the living, the courtroom of spectators knocked down by the power of the blade. The villagers slowly rose to their feet, though Riven was still there in that valley from long ago. She couldn’t breathe. Death choked her nose and throat.
No, these dead aren’t real, she told herself. She looked at Asa and Shava and they at her. Two shades stood near them. One with eyes like the old man’s and the other with a mouth like Shava’s. The old couple clung to one another as they steadied themselves and stood, oblivious to the deathly past that surrounded them.

“Dyeda,” the old woman said.

At that Riven could no longer contain her guilt and shame.

“I did it.” The words fell from Riven’s lips with an empty hollowness. She would accept her fate at the hands of these people. She would let them pass judgment and she would answer for her crimes.

“I killed your Elder,” she told them, breathless. Her ragged confession filled the room. “I killed them all.”

Day 283

Deer Dieree: No pashents today. But that’s OKay. Evry bizness has downs. I am fine withh it. In fact it is good becuz it means pepul in Zaun are healfy! No patients is good noos for the peeple, I always say.

Day 301

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

Day 30-Hundred-somethin

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

Day 304

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

Day 305

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

Day 306

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

Day 30-Blundred-&

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

Day %5#

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

Day 2,22,0172

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

DAY 0.19

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

DAY ^*∞∞∞

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