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“Help… me,” begged the shipwrecked man.

Yorick couldn’t say how long the survivor had been lying there, bones broken, bleeding into what remained of his wrecked sailing vessel. He had been moaning loudly, but his cries were drowned out by the multitude of wailing souls that haunted the isle. A maelstrom of spirits gathered around him, drawn to his flickering life force like a beacon, hungry to reap a fresh soul. The man’s eyes widened in horror.

He was right to be scared. Yorick had seen what happened to lost spirits taken by the Black Mist, and this—this was warm flesh, a rarity in the Shadow Isles. It had been how long—a hundred years?—since Yorick had seen a living being? He could feel the Mist on his back quivering, eager to wrap this stranger in its cold embrace. But the sight of the man stirred something in Yorick he had long forgotten, and whatever it was would not allow him to surrender this life. The burly monk heaved the damaged man onto his shoulders and carried him back up the hill to his old monastery.

Yorick studied the face of the injured man as he groaned in agonized protest with each step the monk took. Why did you come here, live one?

After completing the climb, Yorick carried his guest through several corridors in the abbey, before coming to a stop in an old infirmary. He eased the shipwrecked man onto a massive stone table and began to check his vitals. Most of the man’s ribs were shattered, and one of his lungs had collapsed.

“Why do you waste your time?” asked a chorus of voices, speaking in unison from the Mist on Yorick’s back.

Yorick remained silent. He left the table and made his way to a heavy door in the rear of the infirmary. The door resisted as he pushed, his hand doing little but leaving a print in the thick layer of dust. He pressed his shoulder against the wood and heaved his entire weight into it.

“So much effort for naught,” sneered the Mist. “Let us have him.”

Again, Yorick answered it with contemptuous silence as he finally forced the door open. The heavy oak dragged across the stone tiles of the monastery floor, revealing a chamber full of scrolls, herbs, and poultices. For a moment, Yorick stared at the artifacts of his former life, struggling to remember how to use them. He picked up a few that looked familiar—bandages, yellow and brittle with age, and some ointment that had long turned to crust—and returned to the man atop the stone table.

“Just leave him,” said the Mist. “He was ours the moment he came ashore.”

“Quiet!” snapped Yorick.

The man on the table was now gasping for breath. Knowing he had little time to save him, Yorick tried to bind his wounds, but the rotten bandages fell apart as quickly as he could apply them.

As his breath grew more ragged, the man convulsed. He grabbed the monk’s arm in agonized desperation. Yorick knew there was only one thing that could save the man’s life. He uncorked the crystal vial at his neck, and considered the life-giving water it contained. There was precious little left. Yorick was unsure if it was enough to save the man, and even if it did…

Yorick was forced to face the truth. In trying to save the man, he was just chasing the memory of his former life, when this cursed place was called the Blessed Isles. The souls in the Mist had taunted him, but they’d taunted him with the truth. This man was doomed, and if Yorick used the Tears of Life, he would be too. He closed the vial and let it rest against his neck.

Stepping back from the table, Yorick watched the man’s chest rise and fall one last time. The Black Mist filled the room, spirits clawing out from it in anticipation. The Mist shivered eagerly, then ripped the dead man’s soul from his body. It uttered a faint, feeble cry before it was devoured by its new host.

Yorick stood motionless in the room and uttered a barely remembered prayer. He looked at the soulless husk on the table, a bitter reminder of the task he had yet to complete. While the curse of the Ruination remained, anyone who came to these isles would suffer the same fate. He had to bring peace to these cursed islands, but after years of searching, all he had found were whispers about a ruined king.

He needed answers.

With a single motion of Yorick’s hand, a thin strand of Mist poured into the man’s body. A moment later, it rose from the table, barely sentient. But it could see, it could hear, and it could walk.

“Help me,” said Yorick.

The body shambled out the door of the infirmary, its sloughing footsteps echoing through the halls of the monastery. It continued out into the foul air of the cemetery, walking through the rows of emptied graves.

Yorick watched as the corpse trudged toward the center of the isles until it disappeared into the Mist. Perhaps this one would return with the answer.

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.”

She cannot breathe.

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

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

Bodies. She is buried under bodies.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then he blinks.

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

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

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

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

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

“Are you alright?” he asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

After a few moments, Arrel gave a nod.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“More lies,” snarled a Noxian.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Erath felt a hand grip his shoulder.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What was all that?” she asked.

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

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

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

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

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

“Where is Marit?” asked Teneff.

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

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

“Teneff?”

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

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

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

Erath looked at Teneff.

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

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

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

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

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

“I know not, why?”

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

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

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

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

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

Does the rain here ever stop?

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

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

It was all so unreal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She pointed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Arrel said nothing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He had been so close, and he ruined it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Erath’s frown deepened.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For that brief span of time, nothing else mattered.

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

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

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

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

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

“Riven,” said Arrel softly.

“You all knew her?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You become sisters,” Arrel finished.

Silence descended, the three huntresses lost amidst their thoughts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Up!”

Erath stirred. It was Teneff, standing watch.

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

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

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

The river wasn’t flooding. It was alive.

“Get to the treeline!” barked Tifalenji.

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

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

And it looked like it had hands.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Look!” Marit pointed with her glaive. “There’s light up ahead!”

Erath could make out the faintest cluster of lights, like a constellation in the heavens.

“This is wild country,” warned Teneff. “It could be bandits, or a Brotherhood camp for all we know.”

“Then we kill them all,” hissed Marit. “The rune-witch is right. We have no supplies, and if we do not take shelter, this storm will end us.”

Teneff spat out a mouthful of rainwater, and nodded. Together they fought the storm, putting one foot ahead of the other, until they reached the lights.

The trees overhead formed an overhang, absorbing the worst of the storm. A village materialized before them, small and isolated amidst the woods. It looked like an extension of the forest itself, the tall, thin dwellings appearing woven and sculpted. They could just see them over a wall of intertwined branches barring their way, as though the land itself had formed a stockade. The branches shuddered, peeling apart enough to create a small passage.

A dozen men and women stepped through the opening. They wore hand-spun robes, faces hidden behind hoods raised against the storm. The huntresses noted the axes and swords in their hands, the broad slab-like blades chipped and worn. The battered remnants of armor plating they were clad in.

The huntresses formed a line, with Erath and Talz behind them.

“Those are Noxian weapons,” said Teneff.

“And those are Noxians carrying them,” added Arrel.

As one they sank into battle postures. Arrel’s hounds snarled.

“Lower your weapons,” said the lead villager in perfect Va-Noxian. He pulled back his hood to reveal a scarred face, his dark hair and beard shot through with streaks of silver. “We don’t want a fight.”

“Well, you are deserters,” sneered Marit. She spat upon the ground.

“Remember what’s behind us,” Teneff grumbled under her breath.

“Realize what’s in front of us!” Marit snapped.

“Stop!” Erath pushed his way between the huntresses. There was something about the man, hearing his voice. He stepped forth with trembling hands. He regarded the lead Noxian with wide eyes.

A single tear descended the curve of his cheek.

“Father?”

The man led Erath out of the storm into one of the huts, passing onlookers, Noxian and Ionian alike, their faces expressing a spectrum of shock and anger to fear. Erath followed him, as though in a trance, struggling to believe that this was Jobin, his father.

Alive.

“You look like you’ve missed a meal or two,” said Jobin. The two sat down around a fire pit. Jobin opened a steaming pot, scooping out a measure of rice into a pair of wooden bowls and handing Erath one. “My son, what are you doing here?”

They talked, of Erath’s journey, of home. He omitted much, careful as he spoke with a man he thought was dead.

When they were done, Jobin’s eyes gleamed in the firelight. “Look at you. You’re a man now. My little enhasyi.” He paused. “How is your mother?”

“Still mourning you,” Erath said, trying to keep the bitterness from his voice. He removed the bone pendant from his neck. “Who even is this?”

“Me,” Jobin raised a hand, showing where one finger ended in a stump. “A sacrifice we all sent back, that we hoped might bring you peace.”

“Peace,” Erath exhaled the word.

After weeks traversing a realm of wild magic, of illusion and the uncanny, he had to ask the obvious question.

“Are you real?”

Jobin leaned forward. “What?”

“Are you real?” Erath said again. “Or a spell to make it appear my father is not truly dead? If it is deception I would thank you, I truly would, for all that the alternative would mean.”

For a few moments, neither spoke. The silence stretched.

“The world used to be so small,” said Jobin, finally. “You never knew it. We tended our herds, we traded with our neighbors, we raised families. We had simple lives and we were happy. Then the empire came, and our little world became so much bigger, and so much darker.”

He glanced out the door of the hut. “Being here, seeing this place, it brought me back to that.”

“And that was worth treachery?” asked Erath.

“Against what?” Jobin looked back at him. “Against some distant ruler I would never meet, pushing markers across maps? Those markers are people, Erath. Noxian people, Ionian people. We should have never begun this war.”

“But we are stronger together,” Erath insisted. “Noxus didn’t put us in chains, it set us free. No more herds growing thinner every year, no more raids from those same neighbors. And we can do the same here. You’ve been gone a long time, it isn’t the Noxus you remember. We’ve truly become part of something greater.”

“I don’t believe much has changed,” Jobin shook his head. “We came here believing what you believe, that this place needed Noxus. ’Rath, I don’t think they need our help, and they don’t need our rule, but we can coexist. I didn’t have to kill them, to become family. Once I understood that, I knew I couldn’t return.”

Erath processed his father’s words, and hung his head. “Everything you taught me was a lie.”

“I’m sorry, my son.” Jobin laid a hand on Erath’s shoulder. “I was deceived myself by it. But there is always time for something different. Something better. There is a place for you, here.”

“A lie,” Erath repeated. Slowly, he looked up. “So why should I believe you now?”

Jobin visibly sagged. “My son…”

“No,” Erath’s eyes were hard. “You don’t get to do that. You lost a finger, I lost you! And now you sit there and preach, as you hide in the woods? We had an excuse before we joined the empire, of being blind to the wider world. We don’t have that ignorance anymore. Now you are either working to unite the world, to make it better, or you’re running.”

Erath stood.

“I’m not running.”

Erath and Jobin emerged from the hut. The blade squire looked up, seeing the clouds thinning through the canopy of the trees. The rain had slackened as well.

“Think upon what I’ve said, my son,” said Jobin.

“I have,” Erath replied, stepping away to stand beside the huntresses.

Jobin swallowed, and cleared his throat. “We have offered you shelter. Now that the storm is passing, we will offer you a portion of our harvest. We ask in return only that you leave us in peace, and forget you ever found this place.”

Teneff eyed the runesmith. She tilted her head, and the huntresses stepped back to confer amongst themselves.

“The only question worth asking,” said Marit, “is if we kill them all.”

“His father is among them,” Teneff nodded toward Erath.

“His father is a traitor,” Marit replied.

“He isn’t the only one,” said Arrel. “Close to half of this village are Noxian… or were.”

“Scared of getting your hounds dirty?” Marit ran a finger down the edge of her glaive.

“Slaughtering cowards and villagers finds us Riven how?” the tracker retorted.

Erath looked to Tifalenji. The runesmith held the lives of these villagers—the life of his father—in her hands. For the life of him, Erath couldn’t decide what he wanted her to say, and that more than anything turned his heart to a lead weight in his chest. The huntresses studied her too, trying to parse her impassive features for her judgment.

Teneff rested a hand on her chain. “What’s it to be, then?”

“We move on,” Tifalenji stated. “Our task is to find one deserter, and these are not her.” She eyed Marit. “It is not a discussion.”

“As you wish,” she shrugged, walking back to her mount. Tifalenji looked sternly upon Erath.

“Were the circumstances different, I would not condone leaving them here alive.”

“I understand,” Erath replied.

“Now make haste,” ordered Tifalenji. “Time is against us, and you know what lies ahead.”

The huntresses gathered and began the march out of the village. Erath spared a final look back as they passed through the unfolding stockade, then touched Teneff’s arm. “What lies ahead?”

Her face turned grim, and her eyes distant. “The place where all this started.”

They marched in silence, though troubled thoughts made it feel as though Erath were pushing his way through a crowd. He couldn’t reconcile the man who raised him with the one he discovered living in that village. A son is raised in the image of his father, but does he end up the same person?

The bone pendant around his neck grated against his chest.

The landscape changed, growing more arid and dry, as did the dispositions of the huntresses. Postures stiffened, reflexes had them twitching at the slightest sound, and all three had their weapons drawn, clutched in white-knuckle grips. Erath could smell a faintly acrid tang in the air.

The Noxians crested a hill, and witnessed a dusty expanse of dessicated plains ahead. A marker was erected at the border to the plain, little more than a stone totem marked with Ionian script. He could not decipher it, but the meaning behind it was clear to Erath.

It was a warning, to stay away.

They found an old man sitting by the marker. Quietly he hummed to himself, flicking a necklace of chimes he wore looped around his shoulders. His eyes grew wide as the Noxians approached, and using a cane for support, he slowly pushed himself to his feet.

“Travelers,” he raised a hand. “I have no part in any quarrel, and serve no master. I keep vigil here, at the threshold of a terrible place, to ward off those who might seek to cross.”

The huntresses were silent. Erath had never seen such tension radiating from them. Tifalenji stepped forward.

“We wish no harm to you, gatekeeper,” she said. “But do not seek to bar our passage.”

“I beg you,” the Ionian clasped his tiny hands together, “go no further. You cannot imagine the pain that occurred here.”

“We don’t have to,” answered Teneff, as she walked past.

Erath followed, passing the dejected Ionian by. “I will sing for you,” said the gatekeeper. “For your pain.”

The first step onto the dusty plain, and Erath felt like he had been transported somewhere alien, even for Ionia. It was absolutely devoid of life. The ground had a sickly, greenish tint, and the air was sour, stinging his nose and throat. His eyes and lips tingled.

A profound sense of loss emanated from the earth like a haze, stabbing into Erath.

Teneff stopped, slowly taking in the landscape.

“This is where it happened.”

“It was here,” breathed Tifalenji, the runes along her blade pulsing. She blinked. “She was here.”

“We had been fighting for years,” said Teneff. “Everything ground to a stalemate. They said they had a way to break through, brought us some mad Zaunite and his concoction.”

“Chemical fire,” Arrel murmured.

“Something so caustic it would strip the life out of anything it touched,” said Marit. “We were safeguarding the payload, moving it up to the line, when it all went wrong.”

Erath looked from one huntress to the next as their words flowed over each other.

“We were ambushed…”

“…so many of them…”

“Riven called out for support…”

“They couldn’t have known where we were.”

“They fired—”

“—and the jars ignited.”

Marit reached behind her head, undoing the clasps that kept her mask in place. The straps slackened, came loose, and Erath swallowed.

Her entire face and skull was a mass of hairless, glossy red scar tissue. Erath had seen things killed by burns, the way the flesh looked afterward, but this was different. Black veins threaded the tissue like cobwebs. Erath could not fathom what pain she must endure, even now.

Only her eyes remained unscathed. She looked at Erath, holding his gaze in cold silence.

Arrel removed her own helm. Erath glimpsed wounds around her lips and neck. The tracker hacked and spat a gobbet of blood phlegm.

She must have breathed it in, Erath realized.

“It was chaos,” said Teneff. “Comrades, enemies, boiling away, screaming themselves dead. I never saw Riven again. I believed that she died here, like all the rest.” She looked at Erath. “Do you understand? If we can find her, the thought that we can make something good from all this—”

Then she stopped, her eyes on the horizon. Erath looked, seeing a group of figures appear on the hill. They were Ionian, clad in lightweight armor and festooned with blades of all kinds. Their faces were hidden behind masks and hoods the color of dark iron.

“Calm is the ocean before the storm,” shouted one of the Ionians. “Stand to account, xiir! If any are to control this land, it will be us.”

“Navori Brotherhood,” Teneff bared her teeth, speaking the words like a curse.

“Full warparty,” said Marit, her voice calm and level despite an edge for the violence sure to come.

“The village you stole from,” said the Brotherhood warrior, spreading his arms wide. “They were all so eager to speak of you. To help us fulfill our promise.”

Erath’s blood ran cold.

“We should have killed them,” Marit snarled, rage twisting the ruin of her face as she pulled her mask back on. A light rain began to fall from the iron-gray sky.

“This forsaken rain,” hissed Arrel.

The Brotherhood warrior took a step down the hill. “We promised to find you, the xiir, wherever you might be in the First Lands. We promised to hunt you, stalk you, to cleanse our homeland of those who have destroyed the balance between the twin realms.”

The Ionians roared, raising weapons, many of which coursed and shivered with magic.

“We make these promises to all those you have taken before their time, those whose limbs you have taken, whose peaceful dreams you have stolen and replaced with terror and broken memory. These promises we will keep, so long as our hearts beat life within us!”

A dozen warriors descended the hill, coming within a handful of paces of the Noxians with weapons ready.

“Tell me,” said the Ionian. “What will you promise?”

Teneff breathed, slowly shut her eyes and opened them. “I promise… to make this hurt.”

“You promise blood, then,” the warrior smiled beneath his hood. “We accept.”

Teneff roared, hurling her hooked chain. It struck one of the Brotherhood in the temple. The force of the blow smashed him to the ground. Teneff stomped on his chest, tearing the hook free in a spray of blood. More flecked from the hook as she spun it again.

Arrel flung out her hand and her hounds attacked. First tackled one of them, clamping down around the woman’s neck. The drakehound shook savagely, wrenching her body back and forth until she went limp, then moved on to another.

The two groups closed into melee. Tifalenji thrust her sword into an Ionian’s midsection. She spat a curse and the blade ignited, setting the man ablaze with screaming jade flame. Marit strafed through their midst. Her glaive was a blur, never ceasing as it cut, stabbed and slashed in tandem with Lady Henrietta’s snapping jaws.

Erath watched the opening strikes. This place had awakened something in them, unleashed a rage that they had crushed down deep within themselves for years. The runesmith had waded in, knowing the only way to achieve her goal was to eliminate the Ionians in her way. Talz’s reins slipped from his hand, replaced by his falchion.

Teneff locked blades with the Brotherhood leader, their faces inches apart.

“This ground pains you,” he taunted. “The xiir you lost, would you like to see them again?”

As if on command, a young Ionian who had remained halfway down the hill began to sing. It was a lilting, haunting melody, a tune that no living thing should be able to make. It stilled the Noxians for an instant, the absolute wrongness of it.

Erath’s footing slipped as the earth shook. Tiny things appeared up from the ground, like seedlings but pulsing with a sickly, intermittent unlight. Erath realized after a moment that they were fingers.

Soon hands emerged, arms bursting through the soil. Insubstantial silhouettes of ragged men and women clawed their way up from below, dressed in incorporeal rags of Noxian garb, all radiating the same cold spectral darkness.

“The dead here are not at peace,” hissed the Ionian, grappling with Teneff.

“Madness,” Teneff snarled.

The Brotherhood warrior leapt back, drawing a blade. “And you will join them!”

The youth continued to sing, and more pale phantoms clawed their way up from the earth. Erath found himself surrounded, and slashed out in a wide arc. The spirits boiled away at his blade’s touch, only to resolve like a sickened wind. He struck again, carving an opening to see the wider battle.

The Brotherhood numbers were thinning from the fury of the huntresses, but the dead were massing, dredged back into being by that hellish melody. Erath recoiled, sensing that even these Ionian’s kin would condemn the evil they were unleashing. They had but moments until they were overwhelmed, and it had to be stopped.

He made for the hill. A Brotherhood warrior leapt in his path, wielding a pair of long daggers. Shouting an Ionian curse, he lunged at Erath. The blade squire parried the first dagger going low for his gut, but saw the flash of the second seeking his throat. He backpedaled, losing his balance and falling to the ground.

The Ionian dived atop him. His mask slipped free, revealing a young determined face trying to drive one of the daggers into Erath’s chest. His falchion had slipped from his grasp in the fall. He fought the man, gripping his wrists as the dagger’s tip pierced his flesh. With a roar of pain and anger, Erath rolled, reversing the positions as he drew his knife.

Erath dropped his weight down, driving the knife into the Ionian’s gut. Grunting, he twisted it sharply, and felt the strength leave the Ionian’s grip. Tugging the blade free he collected his falchion and stepped over the dying man.

Rain and blood turned the ground to mire. Erath ran, weaving between clashes of blades and the moaning hordes of lost Noxians reaching for him. Their touch numbed his flesh, as though they were filling his veins with ice water. He gasped for breath as his side was raked by translucent claws.

The singer’s eyes were closed, the lids twitching as he wept blood. Trickles of ruby issued from his nose, ears, and lips as he stood transfixed and dirged. He didn’t see Erath coming. The blade squire surged forward, pushing against cold, grasping hands. He was bent double, crying out in agony as one climbed on top of him. He thrust himself upright, throwing the ghoul back. Breathless, his vision narrowing like a collapsing tunnel, he charged forward and with the last of his strength brought his blade down.

The Ionian’s song fell silent as he collapsed, his lifeblood emptying out from where Erath’s blade had split him from collar to sternum. The phantoms shrieked, their forms elongating as they were drawn violently back down into the earth. Within moments, all that remained of them was a pale, sickly fog, and the echoing cries of the unquiet dead.

Erath turned, stumbling like a drunkard as he returned to the fight still raging below. The Navori Brotherhood warparty was down to their final warriors. They had clearly chosen to die rather than flee, save for one. Arrel’s hounds ran him down, and tore him apart. Lady Henrietta feasted, her jewelry stained crimson. Blood sizzled and snapped where it touched the runes of Tifalenji’s blade.

Erath arrived in time to see Teneff with the leader of the warriors. She had encircled his neck with her chain and drove his face into the quagmire, a boot on his back as she watched him suffocate.

All of them bled from a dozen wounds. Teneff looked up at Erath as he approached. She stood up straight sharply, snapping the Ionian’s neck, and stumbled back. She sank to one knee, overcome by the bone-deep exhaustion of prolonged fighting hand to hand.

Erath looked down. The earth fizzed and fumed wherever blood had seeped into it. His skin burned from the dust, already reddened and peeling.

“Insanity,” snapped Marit, flinging blood from her glaive. “Ionians claim to revere the dead, and yet do this?”

“We aren’t their dead,” murmured Arrel. “Even still…”

“Insanity,” Marit repeated.

“We can’t stay here,” panted Tifalenji. “The toxin is still in the ground. And who knows what further ruin their necromancy has wrought.” She stood beside Teneff.

“I had almost hoped to see Riven among them,” she said, looking up at the runesmith. “I had wished that you were wrong.”

The runesmith offered her hand. “I am not.”

After a moment, Teneff took it.

For once the rain was a blessing. Cool and cleansing, it washed the blood and poisoned earth from their bodies as they left the site of the chemical attack behind. They could all see the runesmith’s sword was shining now, humming to her.

“She’s close,” Tifalenji whispered, eyes locked to the runes. “So very close.”

She nodded to Marit and Arrel, and the two began ranging ahead.

Erath felt his chest as they walked. Gingerly avoiding his dagger wound, he pulled his pendant out from under his jerkin, rubbing a thumb slowly over its surface. “He gave us up. My father gave us up.”

“He may have been coerced,” said Teneff. After a while she shook her head. “It doesn’t really matter.”

“I was only a child. They told me that he died, he’s gone, he’s never coming back, I’ll never see him again. Then I do see him, and everything I knew about him was a lie.” He looked at Teneff, taking a shaking breath. “What do I do with that?”

Teneff reflected for a moment. “You can let him go.”

Erath cuffed away a tear. “How does that help, after everything?

“It’s not about helping everything.” She gripped his shoulder. “Just you. So long as Noxus endures, you will always have a family, Erath.”

Erath paused. He let the words and memories of the past days wash over him. Exhaling, he pulled at the pendant until the cord around his neck snapped. He stared down at it, and slowly tilted his palm until the sliver of bone fell to the ground.

Without looking back he jogged off to catch up to the others, as the pendant quickly vanished beneath the earth.

The boy admired the yellow dormisroot peeking through the frozen soil. It was one of hundreds growing in a tiny patch of vivid color in an otherwise barren landscape. He crouched next to the blossom and inhaled. Crisp morning air and a faint aroma greeted his nose. He reached out to pick the wildflower.

“Leave it be,” said Vannis.

The older man towered over the boy, his blue cloak stirring in the gentle breeze. Marsino stood next to him, holding an unlit torch. The three had been waiting for a while, completely unchallenged.

The younger man smiled down at the boy and nodded.

The boy plucked the flower and stuffed it in his pocket.

Vannis shook his head and frowned. “Your time with the boy has instilled bad habits.”

Marsino flushed at the remark, his smile disappearing. He cleared his throat and asked, “Do you see anything?”

The boy stood and studied the row of houses across the frostbitten field, the weathered dwellings nothing more than dilapidated shacks strewn across a hillside. Shapes and shadows moved past the cast-glass windows.

“There’re people inside,” he said.

“We can all see that,” said Vannis, his tone biting. “Do you see what we’re looking for?”

The boy searched for the smallest hint or impression. He saw nothing but the dull grey of weathered planks and hewn stone.

“No, sir.”

Vannis grumbled underneath his breath.

“Perhaps if we drew closer,” said Marsino.

The older man shook his head. “These are hillfolk. They’ll put a spear in you before you get within twenty paces of their door.”

The boy shivered at the words. The southern hillfolk’s fierce reputation was known back in the Great City. They lived in the untamed edges of the kingdom, near the disputed territories. He glanced over his shoulder and inched closer to Marsino.

“Light the torch,” said Vannis.

Marsino struck his flint, showering the oil-soaked cord with sparks. The pitch erupted in flames and chased away the brisk morning air.

They didn’t need to wait long.

Several cabin doors opened, and a dozen men and women marched toward the group. They carried pikes and axes.

The boy’s hand fell to the dagger at his side. He turned to Marsino, but the man’s eyes were fixed on the villagers.

“Steady, boy,” said Vannis.

The crowd stopped at the edge of the field, their ragged clothing in stark contrast to the royal blue and white finery worn by Vannis and Marsino. Even the boy’s own clothes were better kept.

A slight tingle ran down his spine. He touched Marsino’s arm, attracting his attention, and nodded. The man acknowledged the signal and motioned for him to step back. There was a process to be followed.

An old woman stepped out from behind the crowd. “Do mageseekers burn villages now?” she asked.

“There’s nothing here, move on!” shouted a young man with wild hair, standing next to the woman. The others joined in, jeering and barking.

“Hush!” the woman snapped, elbowing the man in the ribs.

The man winced and bowed his head. The crowd fell silent.

The hillfolk were unlike anyone the boy had seen in the Great City. They didn’t shrink at the sight of mageseekers in their traditional blue cloaks and half-masks of hammered bronze. Instead, they stood tall and defiant. A few fiddled with their weapons, glaring at the boy. He averted his gaze.

Marsino stepped forward. “A bushel of dormisroot arrived in Wrenwall six days ago,” he said, gesturing to the flowers with his torch.

“People sell things. People buy things. Is it different in the city?” the old woman asked.

The hillfolk laughed.

The boy nervously joined in. Even Marsino offered up a weak smile. Vannis remained unmoved. He regarded the crowd, hand on his quarterstaff.

“Of course not,” said Marsino. “But the flower is rare this time of year.”

“We’re good farmers. Good hunters, too,” she said, the smile disappearing.

Vannis fixed his gaze on the old woman. “Aye, but the ground is frozen and there isn’t one among you who’s ever worked a plough.”

The old woman shrugged. “Things grow where they want. Who are we to say different.”

Vannis smirked. “Aye, plants grow,” he said, as he unclipped the Graymark from his cloak. He dropped down on his haunches and held the carved, stone disk over a dormisroot.

The petals wilted and shriveled.

“But they don’t die at the sight of petricite,” said Vannis, standing back up. “Unless you use magecraft to grow them.”

The smiles disappeared from the villagers’ faces.

“The use of magic is forbidden,” said Marsino. “We are all Demacian. Bound by birth to honor her laws—”

“You can’t eat honor up here,” said the old woman.

“Even if you could, your belly’d be empty,” sneered Vannis.

The crowd stirred at the insult and pressed in closer, coming within several paces of the mageseekers.

Marsino cleared his throat and raised a hand. “The hillfolk have always honored the ways of Demacia. Keeping with law and tradition,” he said. “We only ask you do so again today. Will the afflicted step forward?”

No one moved or said a word.

After a moment, Marsino spoke again. “If honor does not compel you, then know we have a boy here that will root out the guilty.”

The crowd focused on the boy. Reproach welled in their eyes as harsh whispers flowed through their ranks.

“So the runt can invoke magic without censure, but not us?” asked the man who had shouted earlier.

The boy shrank at the accusation.

“He works in service to Demacia,” Marsino said, before turning to the boy. “It’s fine, go ahead.”

He nodded and rubbed a sweaty palm on the leg of his breeches before turning to face the hillfolk. Among the dirt-streaked faces stood a singular, radiating presence. A corona of light pulsated and shimmered around the mage.

Only the boy could see this light, and it had been so all his life. This was his gift. This was his affliction.

The rest of the villagers watched with scorn. It was the same everywhere. These people hated him for his gift. All of them—except for the old woman. Her soft eyes simply pleaded with him not to speak.

The boy hung his head and looked at the ground.

They all waited as the moment stretched in silence. He could feel Vannis taking measure, and judging him harshly.

“It’s alright,” said Marsino, placing an encouraging hand on his shoulder. “We keep the order. We uphold the law.”

The boy looked up, ready to point out the mage.

“Don’t say it, boy,” said the old woman, shaking her head. “I’ll accept it. Do you hear me?”

“Enough of this,” Vannis snapped, pushing past him, Graymark in hand.

The radiant light around the mage momentarily dimmed as the crowd closed in.

“Wait!”

“Quiet, boy. You had your chance.”

But it wasn’t the woman who was afflicted.

The boy turned to Marsino. “It’s not her! It’s the other one!” he said, pointing to the wild-haired man standing next to the old woman.

Marsino took his eyes off the hillfolk, attempting to follow the boy’s gesture. But before he could fix on the threat, the man lunged at the mageseekers.

“Mamma!” he yelled as he reached for Vannis. His hands glimmered with an emerald sheen as thorny vines bloomed from his fingertips.

Vannis spun out of the way, swinging his staff in a wide arc, and cracked the mage across the temple with the hefty wooden pole.

The mage stumbled into Marsino, clutching him by the arm. Sharp thorns pierced his sleeve. Marsino recoiled in pain and shoved the stricken man to the ground, dropping the torch in the commotion.

Flames licked the man’s tunic and ignited the tatters.

The old woman screamed and rushed toward her son.

Arms grabbed and pulled her back, holding her as she struggled. The rest of the hillfolk pressed forward, but Vannis held his ground, staff ready.

“Did he touch you?!”

Marsino fumbled with his weapon, finally unhooking his scepter, his eyes glazed and unfocused.

“Marsino!”

“I’m fine!”

“Are there any more?” Vannis yelled.

The boy didn’t answer. He remained frozen, gazing down at the dying mage writhing in the flames. Bitterness rose in his throat, but he choked back the foul taste, refusing to retch.

“Boy!”

He finally snapped to attention. The fire was spreading through the field, creating a wall between them and the mob. He searched the murderous faces behind the growing flames, the heat overwhelming his senses.

“No.”

“Then mount up!”

The boy mounted his pony. Marsino and Vannis quickly followed on their own steeds and the three raced away from the village. The boy turned to look back. The fire roared, and the field of flowers was already wilting.

Vannis had pushed them to ride well into the evening, putting as much distance between them and the hillfolk as possible. It would take three days to reach Castle Wrenwall. Vannis intended to mount a cohort of mageseekers and return. The law must be upheld, he said.

They bedded down shortly after dark, the rocky terrain too dangerous to navigate. The boy was relieved to have his own feet on the ground. Boys from Dregbourne rarely rode horses, unless they stole them from a livery stable, and he’d never been much of a thief.

He took the first watch, sitting at the base of a towering oak, back and bottom sore and stiff from hours of riding. He shifted his body, seeking a comfortable position. After a few minutes, he stood and leaned against the ancient giant. A solitary wolf howled somewhere up in the hills, and a chorus responded in kind. Or perhaps they were braget hounds—he still couldn’t tell them apart.

Distant thunderheads flickered in the night sky, their rumblings so removed they never reached his ears. Overhead, stars struggled to push through drifting billows of gray. A sheet of thick fog settled over the lowlands.

He threw another bundle of wood in the fire. It sent up a burst of embers that quickly died out.

Ghostly voices filled the stillness in his mind. They pleaded and denied a shimmering truth as memories of the burning mage danced in the campfire. He shuddered and turned away.

It had been a gruesome death. But every time those thoughts invaded his mind he pushed them away and replaced them with all the beauty he’d witnessed since joining Vannis and Marsino.

He’d been traveling with the mageseekers for months, seeing the world outside the crowded streets of Dregbourne for the first time. He’d explored the distant hills and mountains he’d once watched from the roof of his tenement. New mountains now stood before him, and he wanted to see more.

Magic had made it possible.

The affliction that once filled him with fear of discovery was now a gift. It allowed him to walk as a true Demacian. He even wore the blue. Perhaps someday he would also don a half-mask and a Graymark of his own, in spite of being a mage.

Faint rustling broke his thoughts.

He turned and found Marsino mumbling in his sleep. Next to him lay an empty blanket roll. The boy’s heart raced at the sight. He searched the treeline for the older mageseeker—

Vannis stood beneath a nearby oak, watching him.

“You hesitated today,” he said, as he stepped out of the shadow. “Made a bad showing. Was it fear or something else?”

The boy averted his gaze and remained silent, searching for an answer that would satisfy the mageseeker.

Vannis scowled, growing impatient. “Go on, say your piece.”

“I don’t understand… what’s the harm in growing dormisroot?”

Vannis grumbled and shook his head. “Every inch given is an inch lost,” he said. “It's true on the battlefield and true with mages.”

The boy nodded at the words. Vannis regarded him for a moment.

“Where’s your heart, boy?”

“With Demacia, sir.”

Marsino stirred once again. His mumbles rapidly turned into moans until the man was struggling against his blanket roll.

The boy walked over and tugged at the man’s shoulder. “Marsino, wake up,” he whispered.

The young mageseeker twisted at the boy’s touch. The moans grew louder until the man was wailing. He shook Marsino again, only more roughly this time.

“What’s wrong?” Vannis asked, looming over him.

“I don’t know. He’s not waking.”

Vannis pushed the boy aside and turned Marsino over. Sweat slicked his brow and temple, matting his dark hair. Marsino’s eyes were open and vacant and shined a cloudy white.

Vannis pulled back the heavy blanket and opened Marsino’s cloak. Dark tendrils of blight marred his arm. To the boy’s eyes, a radiant bloom pulsed beneath the corrupted skin.

They had been riding since before first light.

Vannis and the boy had managed to lift Marsino onto his horse and secured him to the saddle. The young mageseeker had remained in a fever dream as Vannis tied Marsino’s horse to his own and set off.

The boy’s pony struggled to keep the brisk pace Vannis had set—Castle Wrenwall was still over a day’s ride away.

He watched Marsino jostle with every stride. The wounded man threatened to fall over several times, but Vannis would slow down and resecure Marsino in his saddle. Every time the old mageseeker did so, he scowled at the boy before pushing on.

They reached Corvo Pass by mid-morning. Their mounts clambered up the narrow switchbacks carved into the mountainside. It would cut half a day from their travels, but the treacherous path was ill kept and the thick brush slowed them to a crawl.

The boy squeezed his legs and clutched the reins, nervously watching the precarious drop into the deep gorge below. His pony simply trudged along, instinctively keeping them from certain death.

They broke through the thicket into a flat clearing. He watched Vannis push on his stirrups, driving the horses into a canter—Marsino began inching to his right, leaning over much further than before.

“Vannis!”

The mageseeker reached out, but it was too late. Marsino fell over and slammed onto the ground.

The boy reined up and leapt off his mount, rushing to the downed man. Vannis did the same.

Blood streamed from Marsino’s forehead.

“We need to staunch the bleeding,” said Vannis.

The man unsheathed his dagger and, without asking, reached out and cut a long strip of cloth from the boy’s cloak.

“Water,” said Vannis.

The boy pulled his water skin and poured a stream over the deep gash as Vannis cleaned the wound.

Marsino shifted and muttered incoherently in his fevered state. The boy tried following the man’s ramblings but understood only a few words.

“Drink,” he said, pouring drops of water over the man’s dry lips.

The young mageseeker stirred, his tongue lapping at the moisture. He opened his eyes. Ruddy blotches stained the cloudy white.

“Are we… there?” Marsino asked, chest wheezing with every word.

Vannis shot the boy a look. He knew not to say a thing. They were still far from reaching help.

“Almost, brother,” said Vannis.

“Why build… Wrenwall… so far up a mountain?”

“'It's supposed to be hard to reach,” Vannis said, with a brittle smile.

Marsino closed his eyes and chuckled slightly. It soon turned into a cough.

“Easy there, brother,” Vannis said, watching the man for a moment before turning to the boy. “The dormisroot—do you still have it?”

“Yes.”

The boy dug into his pocket, drawing a straw horse, a polished river stone, and the yellow flower. He smiled at the sight, knowing the blossom would help Marsino.

Vannis snatched it from the boy’s hand. “At least you did something right, boy.”

His stomach tightened at the words. Vannis was right. He had faltered, and his friend had paid the price.

Marsino shook his head. “It’s not… his fault… I should’ve been… more careful.”

The older mageseeker remained silent as he picked several petals from the dormisroot.

“Chew on this. It’s not refined, but it will help with the pain.”

“What about… the magic?” Marsino asked.

“It quickened the growth and kept it hardy, but the plant is untainted,” Vannis said as he placed the petals in Marsino’s mouth. He leaned in close and whispered in the younger man’s ear, gently stroking his hair. Marsino smiled, seemingly lost in some memory.

The boy took a swig from his waterskin. A slight shiver ran down his spine. The fine hair on his arms stood on edge.

He turned and walked to the end of the clearing—a verdant canopy of pines covered the lowlands below.

“What is it?” Vannis asked.

“I don’t know…” He gazed down at the valley. Nothing appeared out of place, even the sensation had disappeared.

“I thought—”

He stopped short. Plumes of dark smoke rose in the distance.

The boy stared at the charred and smoldering husks lying in the pasture. The smell of burnt animal flesh hung in the air. His stomach rumbled.

“What do you think did that?” he asked, tending to Marsino. The young mageseeker lay on a makeshift litter made from a blanket roll and lengths of rope.

“Don’t know,” said Vannis. “Stay there and keep watch.”

The older mageseeker inspected the dead cattle. They all bore fist-sized puncture wounds in their thick hides. Vannis prodded one of the scorched cavities with the tip of his stave, measuring its depth. A third of the shaft disappeared.

“Maybe we should go,” the boy said.

Vannis turned to him. “Do you feel anything?”

The boy studied the cattle. Traces of magic radiated underneath the seared flesh. Whatever had killed them was powerful enough to mutilate the immense creatures. A man couldn’t fare any better. Even one with a quarterstaff.

The boy turned his attention to the farmstead. It held a small log cabin, a weathered barn, and an outhouse at the far end. The property was tucked against the hills, surrounded by dense forest. They never would have seen it if not for the smoke.

The sound of footfalls approached.

Vannis spun around and raised his staff.

An old man rounded the corner of the barn. He stopped at the sight of the unannounced visitors. He wore trousers and a tunic fitted for a larger man, and he carried an old, beaten halberd, its edge gleaming and sharp.

“What are you doing on my farm?” The man asked, shifting the grip on his weapon and remaining well outside Vannis’ reach.

“My friend’s hurt,” said the boy. “Please, he needs help, sir.”

Vannis gave the boy a sidelong glance but said nothing.

The farmer looked down at Marsino. The young mageseeker stirred in his litter, lost to a fever dream.

“They have healers in Wrenwall,” the farmer said.

“It’s over a day’s ride. He’ll never make it,” said Vannis.

“A beast prowls these woods. You best ride out,” the old man said, gesturing to the dead cattle.

The boy glanced at the dense treeline. He sensed nothing at the moment, but he remembered the shiver he’d felt earlier. At that distance, it had to be a massive creature.

“What kind of beast? Is it a dragon?”

“Steady, boy.” Vannis said as he stepped toward the farmer. “You have a duty to quarter a Demacian soldier.”

The farmer stood his ground. “You wear the blue… but a mageseeker is not a soldier.”

“Aye, but I was once. Like you.”

The farmer’s eyes narrowed, and he angled the spearpoint of his halberd in Vannis’ direction.

“It’s that pole cleaver,” Vannis said. “A gut ripper of the old Thornwall Halberdiers, if memory serves. Far as I can see, neither it nor this old soldier have lost their edge.”

The farmer regarded his weapon with a faint smile. “That was long ago.”

“Brothers are for life,” said Vannis, softer this time. “Help us. And we’ll hunt your beast down after we’re done.”

The boy glanced down at Marsino. The mageseeker’s eyes remained shut as he drew shallow breaths.

The farmer regarded Vannis, considering the offer. “That won't be necessary,” he finally said. “Let’s bring your man inside.”

Vannis and the farmer carried Marsino inside the cabin. A small fire burned in the firepit and the modest room smelled of cedar and earth. The boy cleared a table standing in the middle of the room, tossing wooden bowls and hardtack biscuits onto a nearby sleeping pallet. The men eased Marsino down onto the wooden planks.

“Who else is here?” Vannis asked, using his dagger to cut off Marsino’s tunic.

“I live alone,” the old man said, examining the wound. The boy could see the blight had spread. Dark tendrils reached out toward Marsino’s neck and heart.

“We have to have cut it out,” said Vannis.

Marsino started to convulse, threatening to fall off the table.

“Hold ‘em down,” said Vannis. The boy pinned Marsino’s legs, using his weight to secure them in place. The man thrashed against the restraint. A heavy boot kicked free and cracked the boy in the mouth. He stumbled back, nursing his jaw.

“I said hold him!” Vannis yelled as he wiped down the blade of his dagger.

He reached for Marsino’s legs again, but the farmer stepped in.

“It’s alright, son,” the man said. “Try talking to him.”

He moved around the table. Marsino’s tremors had eased, but his chest rattled with each ragged breath.

“Marsino?”

“Hold his hand, let him know you’re there,” said the farmer. “It helps with injured animals. Men aren’t much different.”

The boy grasped Marsino’s hand. It felt warm to the touch and slick with sweat. “It’s going to be alright. We got help.”

Marsino seemed to focus on his voice, turning toward the sound, his cloudy white gaze now a deep red.

“Are we in Wrenwall?”

The boy looked at Vannis, and the magehunter nodded.

“Yes. The healers are working on you,” the boy said.

“The dormisroot… it bought me… some time,” Marsino said, squeezing his hand. “You did good… You did good…”

The boy clenched his teeth, fighting back the grief swelling in his throat. He held Marsino’s hand tighter, not wanting to let go.

“I’m sorry, Marsino. I should’ve—”

“Don’t… it wasn’t… your fault,” Marsino said, every word labored and pained. He strained to lift his head. Searching the room with eyes that could no longer see.

“Vannis?”

“Right here, brother.”

“Tell ‘em… tell ‘em it’s not on him.”

Vannis fixed his stare on the boy. “Aye, bad luck is all,” he finally said.

“See…” Marsino said, offering a wan smile. “You don’t need… to carry it.”

Vannis gripped Marsino’s shoulder and leaned in close to the man’s ear. “We need to cut it out, brother,” Vannis said.

Marsino nodded his head.

“He’ll need something to bite on,” said the farmer.

The boy unsheathed his dagger, the carved wooden handle perfectly suited for the task. He placed it in Marsino’s mouth.

“Good,” Vannis said, holding his own blade inches from the wounded arm.

The tendrils slithered beneath the skin. To the boy’s eyes, they radiated a soft, pulsating light the others couldn’t see.

“Stop,” he said.

Vannis looked up at the boy. “What is it?”

Marsino bit down on the dagger’s handle and released a stifled scream. He squeezed the boy’s hand and thrashed against the table until the movement underneath his skin subsided.

The blight stretched across Marsino’s neck.

“It’s too deep,” said Vannis. “I can’t cut it out.” The mageseeker stepped back, unsure of what to do next.

“What if you burn it out?” The boy asked.

“You can’t cauterize that close to the artery,” Vannis said. He turned to the old man. “Do you have any medicinals?”

“Nothing that would help that.”

Vannis gazed down at his injured partner, weighing something in his mind. “What about a healer?” he said, the words no louder than a whisper.

“They would have medicinals, but the closest one—”

“Not that kind of healer.”

The old man remained silent for a moment. “I don’t know anyone like that.”

It appeared Vannis wanted to push the matter, but he bit his tongue and searched the cabin instead.

The boy followed the mageseeker’s gaze. He found a stack of hides in one corner, a netted hammock in another, and a carver’s workbench crowded with dozens of wooden drakes against a wall. Nothing that would help.

“The cattle,” said Vannis.

The farmer blanched at the mention of the dead livestock. “What of them?”

“Did they ever suffer from tinea worm?”

“Yes. We burn it out with a pulvis of lunar caustic.”

“If we cut the source and use a thin band of the pulvis for the rest, it might work,” Vannis said. “Where is it?”

The farmer looked out the window. He seemed to hesitate, perhaps trying to remember where to search in all the clutter.

A deep guttural sound rose from Marsino’s throat. He violently convulsed and teetered toward the edge of the table, dagger clenched between his teeth.

Vannis held the wounded man down by the shoulders. “Where’s the pulvis?”

The farmer wrestled with Marsino’s flailing legs. “It’s in the barn, but—”

Marsino wailed.

“I got it!” the boy said, as he turned and ran outside.

Crisp mountain air rushed past his face as he raced toward the barn, the heat building in his legs and lungs. The barn door was less than twenty paces away when a shiver ran down his spine.

He slid to a stop.

The surrounding forest stood dark and silent. He searched the dense thicket for the slightest hint of magic but found nothing in the brush. Steam and smoke still rose from the smoldering heaps in the pasture. The tingling sensation spread across his back—there was something nearby.

He needed to warn Vannis but knew better than to shout.

Should he go back?

Another agonizing scream erupted from within the cabin. Marsino needed him to be brave.

He took a deep, sobering breath and darted to the outbuilding. His trembling hands fumbled with the latch until he finally got the door open, then he slammed it shut behind him.

A jolt rushed down his spine.

He stumbled back and fell, crashing into a rack of ditching tools. Shovels and spades clattered on the floor.

It was inside the barn.

The boy reached for his dagger but found the sheath empty. He had given it to Marsino. A silvery brilliance radiated from one of the stalls.

He tried to stand, but his legs refused to act. The glow flourished as a shape exited the stall and rounded the corner. He’d never witnessed a light so blinding. It distorted the very air in waves of colors.

The shape approached.

A droning rose in his ears, like an army of nettle bees swarming inside his head. The boy scrambled back, one hand shielding his eyes as the other searched the ground for a weapon. He found nothing.

The world vanished behind a sheet of light and color.

A sound tried to break through the hum as the shape pushed through the radiant glow. His mind struggled to piece it together until a single utterance made everything clear…

“Papa?”

With a word, the entire world resolved back into place.

It was a little girl.

She stared at him, eyes wide in fear. The corona around her flared brighter again. It pulled at the boy, compelling him to reach out and touch its radiance.

“W-Who are you?” she asked.

“I’m… I’m Sylas.” He rose to his feet, holding out his hand. “I won’t hurt you… if you don’t hurt me.”

The girl balled her hands and pressed them to her chest. “I would never hurt anyone…” she said, her gaze falling to her feet. “Not on purpose.”

The boy recalled the cattle in the pasture. He pushed the thought away and focused on the golden-haired child. She seemed tiny and lost, even here in her own home.

“I believe you,” he said. “It’s not always… easy.”

The light around her dimmed, and the pull on him diminished.

She looked up at the boy. “Have you seen my papa?”

“He’s inside the house. Helping my friend.”

She timidly reached out to grasp his hand. “Take me to him.”

He drew back. “You can’t go inside,” he said.

“Is something wrong with papa?”

“No. It’s… He’s helping a mageseeker.”

The little girl recoiled at the word, and the inside of the barn brightened once again. She understood the danger.

“Are you a mageseeker?” She asked, her voice quivering.

The question wrenched at something deep inside the boy.

“No,” he said. “I’m like you.”

The girl smiled. It was genuine and warmed his heart in a way that no praise from a mageseeker ever had.

Another scream came from the main house.

“Papa?”

“It’s my friend. I need to go back,” he said. “Can you hide until we’re gone? Can you do that?”

The girl nodded.

“Good,” he said. “Do you know where the lunar caustic is?”

She pointed to a clay jar sitting on a narrow shelf.

The boy snatched the container and bolted from the barn. Another agonizing wail broke as he approached the cabin. He pushed harder for the last few steps and burst through the door.

“I found it,” he said, holding the jar like a prize in hand.

Silence filled the room.

Vannis was staring at Marsino’s lifeless body. Only the farmer turned toward the door.

There was fear and resentment in the old man’s eyes. It was the same the boy had seen in all those desperate souls trying to hide their affliction.

The old man slowly reached for his halberd, his gaze sweeping from the boy to Vannis, who still hadn’t moved or said a word.

The boy shook his head, silently imploring the man to stop.

The farmer paused and looked toward the barn before looking back at the boy.

He offered the father a reassuring smile.

The old man regarded him for a moment and then rested his weapon against the wall.

Vannis finally snapped from his trance. “What took you so long?” the mageseeker asked.

“It’s not the boy’s fault. Your friend was too far gone.”

Vannis stepped back from the body and sat down on the sleeping pallet.

“The cur is the reason we’re here,” he sneered. “He’s one of them, you know. Pretending to be normal.”

“Your friend didn’t believe so,” said the farmer. “Honor that memory.”

Vannis looked away from Marsino’s body. He fixed his attention on the dozens of carver’s tools and wooden figures strewn about the floor beneath the hammock.

“He was a young fool who felt things far too deeply,” he finally said. Vannis fell into a deep silence after that, his thoughts seemingly elsewhere.

The farmer and the boy joined him in the uncomfortable stillness, unsure of what to do next.

“So it’ll be the two of us hunting the beast, then?” Vannis asked the old man.

“It’s not necessary,” said the farmer. “Tend to your friend. I have a wagon. It’s yours.”

“Doesn’t seem proper to leave you here… alone,” said Vannis. “I’d be abandoning a brother.”

The mageseeker’s voice carried a subtle sharpness that made the boy uneasy. Sorrow transformed into suspicion. The grieving mentor had become the interrogator once again.

“I’ll manage,” said the farmer. “Been doing so since my days wearing the blue.”

“Of course,” Vannis said, smiling.

The mageseeker leapt from the cot, rushed the farmer, and slammed him against the wall—his dagger tip poised inches from the man’s throat.

“Where is it?”

“What?” The farmer asked, his voice trembling and confused.

“Your beast?”

“I-It’s in the woods.”

“Does it bed down in your cabin at night?”

“What?”

“Your hammock,” said Vannis, gesturing to the netted cord. “Spend enough time on campaign and it becomes your best friend.”

Vannis pressed the dagger to the man’s flesh. “So why the cot?”

“It… belonged to my daughter,” said the farmer, his gaze momentarily flicked to the boy. “She passed last winter.”

The boy looked at the sleeping pallet. It was built for a child.

But it wasn’t only the cot. There was a wooden bowl and spoon, and a practice sword too small for a grown man. If he could see through the lie, then…

“Let’s visit her grave,” said Vannis.

“We can’t,” said the farmer, averting his eyes in shame. “The beast took her.”

“Like it took your cattle?” Vannis sneered. “I wager if we search carefully we’ll find it on your farm.”

“There’s nothing here,” the boy said. “We should go.”

“What do you see on that table, boy?”

He stared at Marsino’s body. The bloodstained eyes wide and lifeless. The blighted tendrils had choked off his neck and webbed his face.

“What do you see!”

“Marsino… I see Marsino.” he said, the words choking his throat.

“A mageseeker, boy. One of my own,” Vannis said, anger and pain seeping from each word. “What is he to you?”

Marsino had been the only mageseeker that showed him kindness. He had accepted him as a true Demacian, despite his affliction.

“He was my friend.”

“Aye… and he was killed by a mage,” Vannis said. “This man hides one from us. A dangerous one.”

The boy remembered the intense glow of the little girl and the scorched flesh of the dead cattle.

“What do we do?” Vannis asked.

The boy wiped the corners of his eyes with his sleeve.

“We keep the order. We uphold the law.”

Vannis led the boy and the farmer outside, driving them with his staff. The three stood in the pasture, watching the barn and the outhouse. He jabbed the man in the ribs with the stave.

“Call your daughter.”

The farmer winced at the blow. “She’s not here,” he said. “She’s gone.”

“We’ll see.”

The old man looked at the boy, silently pleading.

“I’ll search the barn,” the boy said.

“No. Let her come to us.” Vannis slammed the farmer’s head with the edge of his staff, driving the man to the ground.

“Come out! We have your father!”

There was no response. No movement. And then the man wailed.

The boy turned to find the farmer tottering on one knee, clutching his temple. Blood pooled underneath the man’s fingers, slicking his hand with blood. Vannis stood over him, ready to strike again.

“What are you doing?”

“What needs to be done,” said Vannis, his face contorted by anger and grief.

A jolt raced down the boy’s spine. And once again, all the fine hair on his arms and neck stood on edge.

The barn door creaked open.

“That’s right, come on,” Vannis said.

Darkness framed the doorway. Tiny footfalls approached. The little girl crossed the threshold and stepped outside. Her panicked eyes fixed on her injured father.

“Papa…” she said, tears cascading down her face.

“It’s alright,” the bleeding farmer stammered. Papa’s just talking to these men.”

They all watched as the child inched toward them, the men were unaware of what only the boy could see.

She glowed like the midday sun.

The power inside her pulsated and shifted colors. It shimmered with a radiance that appeared to bend light itself. She was a living rainbow.

This was his affliction. This was his gift.

He alone could see the fundamental beauty and nature of magic. It lived in this frightened child as it lived in every single mage in Demacia, and perhaps all across the world. How could he betray that? The boy had seen all he needed to see.

“She’s… normal.”

“Are you sure? Look again!”

He turned to the mageseeker. To Demacia, Vannis was a venerated bulwark, guarding against the threat of magic. But to the boy, he was a simple man clinging to tradition.

“You were wrong. We should go.”

Vannis regarded him for a moment, searching for deception. The mageseeker shook his head and scowled.

“We’ll see if she passes the trials,” he said, removing the Graymark from his cloak.

The farmer’s eyes went wide at the sight of the petricite emblem.

“Run, child! Run!” the old man shouted as he leapt to his feet and lunged at Vannis.

The mageseeker moved fast, thrusting his staff into the farmer's midsection. The man staggered back from the blow, creating some distance between the two. Vannis darted forward and drove the stave down onto the man's head. His crown shattered in a bloom of crimson.

The little girl screamed. Her hands crackled with sparks of lightning—this time, for all to see.

Vannis held out his Graymark, capturing the flickering arcs in the stone and suppressing the magic. But the petricite rapidly darkened and cracked, overwhelmed by the little girl's power. Vannis dropped the ruined disk and spun around, swinging his wooden stave at the child’s head.

“No!”

The boy rushed toward the girl, throwing himself between the heavy quarterstaff and the flaring streams of light. The hairs on his arms singed and his fingers blistered as he touched the little mage.

A twisting arc of lightning pierced his hand, and a blazing current rushed through his flesh, contorting his entire body. The boy's heart clenched and all the air inside him rushed out. He gasped for breath but drew only emptiness.

The edges of his vision blurred and the colors drained as deathly magic flooded him. Vannis appeared motionless, staff in mid-swing, like ancient statuary depicting a hero of old. The little girl was also frozen, her tears dull crystals as the radiant glow around her dimmed and faded…

And then his lungs filled with air.

His heart raced, pumping a numbing calmness throughout his body. The blaze inside him remained, but no longer threatened to consume him. Instead, it flowed calmly throughout, and for the briefest moments it felt malleable to his thoughts. Then it suddenly sparked and flared hotter until he could no longer contain it inside.

Light erupted from his hands, and the world disappeared.

Sylas opened his eyes. Three smoldering husks lay strewn on the scorched ground. One of them held a warped and splintered staff in hand. The other two had fallen near each other, their arms splayed and reaching, but forever apart. His eyes welled at the sight of his failure, and regret gripped his heart. He rolled over onto his back and shuddered.

Countless stars stretched across a cloudless firmament. He watched them arc across the darkness and disappear behind a black canopy of trees.

The night sky turned a purple hue before he finally staggered to his feet.

His legs trembled as he limped away from the carnage. He stopped after a short distance, but didn’t look back.

There was no need. Those images would remain with him for the rest of his life. He pushed them from his thoughts and gazed at the spine of mountaintops spanning the horizon.

He had no intention of riding to Wrenwall, or any of their strongholds. No amount of pleading would save him from their punishment. In time, they would seek him out, not stopping until he was brought to justice. After all, the law must be upheld.

But he knew their ways, and Demacia was vast.

“You should have killed her.”

My brother settled two cubes of sugar neatly in a slotted spoon suspended on the fine lip of his teacup. His gleeful attention turned to the pouring of the tea. The wrinkles on his face pulled back into a smile and a delighted giggle escaped as he watched the shapes melt and fall into each other. Unable to flee, the last remnants of sweetness collapsed under the dark brew.

“Lady Sofia will not be a problem,” I said.

Stevan batted a hand in the air, annoyed. “Today maybe, but tomorrow? Emotions fester if left unchecked, sister.” He looked up at me, questioning. “Better to snuff the spark before it sets the house on fire, no?”

“I have spoken to the Arvino’s principal intelligencer—”

“You intelligencers and your deals. I still say she betrayed her house and should pay for it with her life—”

“There may come a time for that,” I said, softening my tone. “But I have made the agreement. Adalbert will see she stays out of trouble. She is his responsibility.”

My part in the discussion was over. Stevan leaned back in his chair with a look of begrudging acceptance and picked at the blanket laid over his lap.

“That man could use another pair of eyes installed in his head,” Stevan harrumphed quietly. In Stevan’s view, it was never about the pursuit of a solution, just the end result. For my brother, the fixes I doled out could make many problems in Piltover disappear. Rarely did he consider the choices leading up to those decisions.

I held my cup in one hand and let the other drift absently to my hip, taking comfort in the grapple line spooled there. Stevan was partially right. End results were nice, but I much preferred the chase.

I watched Stevan through the steam of my drink. He pursed his lips as if deciding something. The pressure whitened the skin on his chin and highlighted the age spots that crept up past the silk wrapped around his neck.

“There is something else,” I said.

“Am I that obvious, sister?”

I think he would have blushed if his weak pulse had allowed it. He smiled painfully instead and pulled a folded piece of paper and a beaded chaplet from a drawer in the desk between us. Stevan rolled his wheeled chair back, coughing with the effort. On the chair, he turned small levers, the modest effort driving little cogs that drove bigger cogs, until the clockwork mechanism pushed the wheels toward me, and him with it.

“Lady Arvino’s short-lived engagement was not the only thing uncovered during this mess,” he said. “This was found on one of the Baron’s men during the clean up.”

I set my cup down in its pale saucer and took the scrap of paper and chaplet he offered. I shifted the balance of the blades beneath me, and their sharpened points dug deeper into the rich carpet.

The edges of the note were charred, and a greenish hue wicked through the paper from the ragged singe. The chaplet had been well loved; the facets of the glass prayer stones were burnished and smooth.

“Camille.”

My brother only said my name like that when he was serious. Or when he wanted something. I unfolded the note, a waft of Zaun’s acrid unpleasantness rising with it. I took in the strong lines. The diagramming was neat and orderly, the flowing script precise. My eyes found the artificer’s mark just as Stevan confirmed it.

“If Naderi has returned—”

“Hakim Naderi is gone.” The words fell from my mouth, a reflex.

It had been more than just years since the crystallographer had served as lead artificer for our house, it had been a lifetime.

Stevan contemplated his next move. “Sister, you know what this is.”

“Yes.” I looked down at the paper; the diagram mirrored the mechanical and crystalline construction that pulsed within my chest.

I held my own heart’s design.

“We thought them all destroyed. If this exists, others could as well. I could finally be free of this chair,” he said. “To walk about my house as the master of his clan should.”

“Perhaps it is time to let another take on the responsibility of clan master,” I said.

It had been many years since Stevan had been able to navigate the halls on his own. Something his own children and grandchildren never let him forget. This wasn’t just a piece of paper and a string of prayers. For Stevan, this was a map to immortality.

“This is only one schematic,” I continued. “You believe if we uncover the rest of Naderi’s designs, our artificers will be able to recreate his work. There would still be the question of how to power it—”

“Camille. Please.”

I looked at my brother. Time had not been kind to a body born frail. But his eyes, after all these years, his eyes were still like mine, the Ferros blue. That deep cerulean couldn’t be watered down by age or ailment. His eyes were the same luminous color as the hex-crystals lighting the drawing I held before me. His gaze pleaded with me now.

“You and I, we have led this house to greater success than Mother and Father ever dreamed,” he said. “If your augmentation can be repeated, this success—our success, Camille—it can go on forever. This house will ensure the future of Piltover. Indeed, we will ensure progress for all of Valoran.”

Stevan always had a flair for the dramatic. Coupled with his weaker constitution, it had been difficult for our parents to deny him anything.

“I am not the intelligencer for all of Valoran. I may find nothing.”

Stevan gave a relieved sigh. “But you will look?”

I nodded and gave him back the schematic, but kept the chaplet, tucking the twisted loops into my pocket. I turned to leave the study.

“And Camille? If he’s alive, if you find him—”

“It will be as it was before,” I said, stopping my brother before he could unearth more of the past. “My duty, as always, is to the future of this house.”

The late afternoon crowds near the North Wind Commercia still swarmed in anticipation of the Progress Day revels. The people’s faces were flushed with the effort of making ready for the city’s annual observance of innovation. However, it was not they, but a foreign trader tottering from drink that revealed my second shadow.

“By an Ursine’s frozen teat,” the trader said, frustrated with the press of the crowd. He pushed away those who had stopped to assist him. “I need no help.”

Piltover’s worker bees thrummed around us, all except for one blonde drone at the edge of the square. I kept her in view as I leaned down to the trader in front of me.

“Then get up,” I told him.

The Freljordian looked up at me. His annoyance had him reaching for the carved tusk dagger at his waist. I met his glare and watched it slip down past the hex-crystal in my chest to my bladed legs. The man released his grip on the knife.

“There’s a good boy,” I said. “Now get out of my way.”

He nodded dumbly. The trader backed away, and the mercantile hive mind of Piltover broke and reformed around him as he stumbled his way across the street. Only my shadow escort remained still, watching me from a distant market stall.

I continued through the crowds, the people parting easily before me. When the opportunity presented itself, I ducked into a blind alley and fired my barbed grapple lines into a high wooden cross brace above the corridor. I drew myself up into the darkness above and waited.

A moment later, my escort entered the alleyway. Her clothes were layered and nondescript enough not to draw attention in the promenade levels of Zaun, but the ornamented whip at her side said Piltover, or at least a very generous sponsor. I let her walk a pace forward into a shaft of light that would blind her. Once she was in position, I dropped in behind, the tips of my blades slipping neatly into the cobblestone gristle.

“Did you lose something, girl?” I said, letting a low growl roll over my whisper.

Her hand crept toward the black leather handle of her whip. She was tempted, but good sense seemed to win out.

“It seems I’ve found it.” The girl raised her open hands to her shoulders. “I bring a message.”

I arched an eyebrow.

“From your brother, ma’am,” she said.

Stevan’s drama was going to be the death of someone if he wasn’t careful.

“Give it here.”

The girl kept one hand up and used the other to pull a small note from her tightly cuffed sleeve. The wax seal carried the Ferros sigil and Stevan’s personal mark.

“Move more than an eyelash, and I will slit your throat,” I said.

I opened the note. I could feel my annoyance rise like a fever. Stevan had taken it upon himself to hire me a helper. In case my inquiry stirred up any “lingering sentimentality” that prevented me from seeing to my duty.

I told myself he meant well, but even after all these years, it seems he did not trust me with Hakim. It was cowardice to hide these feelings behind his lap blanket and not tell me this to my face before I left.

“I should kill you for delivering the insult,” I said, weighing her response. “Your name.”

“Aviet.” She kept her hands and voice even. She was young, not even an augmented finger.

“And you took this assignment knowing the possible consequence of my irritation?”

“Yes, milady,” she said. “I hoped if I pleased you, there might be a more… permanent position within your house.”

“I see.”

I turned my back to her and began walking out of the alley, giving her an opportunity to come at me if that was truly her intention. I could hear her exhaled breath and a raspy jangle as she brushed the coiled steel of the whip at her side. Her footsteps followed.

“Do we have a destination, milady?”

“Church,” I said, patting the chaplet in my pocket. “Keep up.”

The First Assemblage of the Glorious Evolved was technically still within Piltover, but only just. Here, past the Boundary Markets, the pernicious odors of the city below outweighed the celebratory smell of roasting meats and sweet cakes. The Zaun Gray rolled in like a low tide. It lapped at one’s legs and condensed along soot-covered merchant awnings into puddles of clouded muck.

I turned to the girl. “You will stay here.”

“I’m to follow you,” Aviet said. “Your brother’s—”

“You will stay here,” I said again, leaving no room for argument. My patience for my brother’s game was thinning. “The Glorious Evolved are fervent believers. They do not take kindly to the unaugmented.”

I looked over my new assistant, daring her to respond. Aviet shifted her weight slightly to her back foot. She still itched for a fight, to prove herself, but was unsure if this was the moment.

I smiled. “There’s time enough for that later, girl.”

The entry of the old building gave way to a dim foyer set back from the main hall by an iron lattice. Through the diamond patterns of welded metal, several clusters of yellow-orange therma lamps illuminated the congregation. The 50 or so people there murmured in rolling unison, giving the impression that a great machine breathed beneath them. Velveteen fabrics in dark colors were draped over the parts of their bodies that were still flesh, while their metal arms and augmented legs were exposed to the warm light. Here, high-end augmentations mixed with those of a more utilitarian function. Piltovan or Zaunite, it didn’t matter to the Glorious Evolved. These designations were secondary to their higher pursuit. In the center of the group, a young woman with mechanical elbows reached out to a man with a sleek metal jaw.

“The body is frail,” she said to the man. “The flesh is weak.”

“The machine drives us forward,” the group responded together. The words echoed in empty air above them. “The future is progress.”

I hadn’t come to bear witness. I kept to the shadows, ignored by the augmented flock, and continued my search.

I heard the soft gurgling of Brother Zavier’s esophilter before I saw the man. His balding head was tucked down to his chest as far as his breathing apparatus would allow. He was kindling a few spark lights on the corners of the side chapel’s altar.

Watching over him was an imposing figure outlined in cold lead and frosted glass. The Gray Lady, holy patron of the Glorious Evolved. The stained-glass window glowed from within, lit eerily by the arc lamps outside.

I approached the shrine. There were jars of organs. Single eyeballs floated like pickled eggs. Bundled offerings were wrapped in linen, some of it fine, some of it oily and ragged. A few flies buzzed among the discarded pieces of the congregation. One of the wrapped bundles moved. A little plague rat poked its nose out shortly after, daring me to take away its prize. The gauze of the newfound treasure caught on the edge, and the rest of the bundle tumbled away, revealing a desiccated finger. The rat scampered down, but Brother Zavier shooed it back into the darkness.

“Camille,” he said. I could hear the smile in his voice underneath the wet burble. “Have you come for contemplation?”

“Information, brother.” I pulled the chaplet from my pocket, the glass beads tangling with the wire chain.

Brother Zavier turned to face me. His eyes were also under glass, magnified like those in the jars, although unlike those, his darted with life. I handed him the chaplet.

“Where did you find this?” He shook his head as he inspected it and then clucked his tongue. “Never mind, I should know by now not to ask those questions.”

He went back to attending his votive lights. “Several weeks ago, I met a man carrying this. He came to light a spark and ask her favor for the coming Progress Day.” Brother Zavier nodded toward the figure depicted in the window. The Gray Lady’s cloak was a mosaic of ash-violet glass, oxidized cogs, and blackened pistons. Her epithet was often invoked when an inventor felt at a loss due to inability or failure. Hers was a blessing that often required sacrifice.

“He had the tanned skin of the desert dwellers. Older than the usual foreign apprentas who pursue the auditions,” Brother Zavier continued.

“Do you know which clan he sought?”

“He said he was staying at a pay house near Clan Arvino.” The factory hum of the congregation fell away. “This evening’s testifying is over. My duties call.”

Brother Zavier patted my hand. He gathered his dark robes and made his way back to the main hall, leaving me to my contemplations.

Hakim had returned, but had not sent word. Not that the last conversation we shared had detailed how best to reach one another. I picked up the brittle finger from the floor and placed it back with the other offerings. It annoyed me, the idea of him petitioning like an ordinary apprenta. Hakim was spheres above Clan Arvino’s artificers. Through the cut-glass triangles and diamonds of the side chapel’s window, I could see Aviet standing beneath a streetlamp. She was still following orders… for the moment.

My indulgent silence was broken by a shuffling scrape, small, but much larger than a rat. I felt the hex-crystal in my chest vibrate in anticipation as I turned to face the threat.

“Are you her?” a small voice asked.

From the darkened corner near a metal bench, a little girl stepped forward. She could not have been more than six or seven.

“Are you the Gray Lady?” she asked again. Closer now, my hex-crystal pulse slowed, lighting her face in a soft, blue glow. In one arm, she carried a bundle wrapped in gauze, all too similar to the ones stacked behind me. The opposite sleeve of her dark dress hung empty.

Balanced as I was, I towered over her. I knelt down, bringing my face to her level, and gently touched the metal bench to arc some of the crystalline energy off my fingers. The girl watched the anxious spark reflect in the polished metal of my blades.

“Did you give up your legs for Progress Day?” she asked.

The Glorious Evolved celebrated the old Zaunite tradition of sacrificing something personal for Progress Day in the hopes the next iteration of invention would be better. It was a practice that could be traced back to the old days of the city, when the people of Zaun had to face rebuilding their lives after the devastation of “the incident.” The wealth and growth of Piltover on top of those scarred ruins served as evidence to many that the tradition had merit.

I looked at the little girl. It was not my legs that I had given up on a Progress Day long ago, but something far more dear.

“I chose these,” I said. “Because they better served my purpose.”

The girl nodded. The blue light between us had dimmed, but I could still see the black spider veins on the little fingers that clutched her bundle. It was rare for the blight to affect one so young in this part of the city. The Glorious Evolved often took in the sick, seeing the removal of dying flesh as a key to transforming a person’s life and faith through technology.

“Brother Zavier said it gets easier,” she offered.

“It does,” I told her.

The physicker attending her had been remiss his duty. The girl should have had both arms taken at once. I’m sure the surgeon explained away that lack of courage when holding the knife as a kindness, but waiting would do the girl no favors. If she did not have the other arm cut away soon, those spider veins would creep closer to her chest, eventually blackening her heart. The chances were slim she would live to see the next Progress Day.

The young girl bit her lip, hesitating before the next thought. In that moment, my eye caught movement through one of the larger stained-glass panels. I stood and watched several dark shapes approach. Aviet was no longer alone.

I stepped into the dim corridor to make my way outside.

“Do you miss them?” the little girl called out.

I didn’t turn back. I knew the girl’s hopeful face wavered like the row of spark lights on the altar. I knew because I remembered my own trembling doubt. So many years ago, Hakim had demanded of me a similar question. My heart? Him? Would I miss any of it? I touched my hex-crystal augment, assuring myself it still vibrated evenly. Just to the right of the Ferros sigil’s angular engraving I felt a small, fluid lettering. It was the mark of Hakim Naderi.

“No,” I lied.

Aviet was ready to fight, her blonde hair lit up like a halo under the streetlight. There were five men circling her like dock sharks. Their utilitarian augmentations cut jagged shapes in their silhouettes.

“Give us that pretty thing, and maybe we won’t kill you slow like,” the smallest one slurred loudly, eyeing the whip in Aviet’s hand. All the vexations of the day compounded, from Stevan’s brotherly chiding to my new unnecessary companion to the thought of Hakim having returned. I could feel the pent-up energy crackle down my spine, impatient to find release. A pompous miscreant and his dog-eared crew would do nicely.

“You didn’t say please,” I called out.

The mouthy one with the twitching nose looked up. “Ay, boys,” he said. “No worries now. Looks like there’ll be more than enough to go around.”

“Nice of you to join us, milady,” Aviet said.

“Yes, we was about to indulge in a little Progress Day remuneration,” one of the big ones with a copper augmentation said. His twin-sized partner tugged the brim of a dirty woolen cap over his fluid-filled eyepiece and sneered. “Your Grace.”

My arrival had distracted them, allowing their circle to become lopsided and a small breach to open up.

It was more than enough.

Speed and decisive thinking have always been my most cooperative allies, and I sprinted in toward the break, catching the lanky one across the shoulder with a long sweep. My bladed leg cut through the dirty tweed, a line of darker red blossoming quickly in the cloth, but it was the arcing blue of the subsequent hex-crystal energy that knocked him unconscious.

The chubby one and the one with the Sump accent took to Aviet, while the tall ones approached me. I let a dark smile spread across my face; after so much contemplation, this was exactly what I needed.

My two dance partners were not amused. Both had heavyset shoulders as thick as the double bells that rang out over the Iron Sand Commercia. They still had not decided who would approach first, and their indecision was my opportunity. I would take them both.

I stepped in toward the one with the eyepiece, letting my back leg rake down the coiled tubes of his copper-plated brother. He had misjudged my reach and scrambled to reconnect the sliced hoses to a sputtering chempump. A low swipe rendered his partner’s leg useless from the knee down. I waited a moment for the copper one to come back with his working arm. They always thought they could outmaneuver the second strike.

They were always wrong.

“Now collect your broken bits, and get out of my sight,” I told him. His brother was already limping into the shadows, his worthless leg dragging in the muck.

The metal of Aviet’s whip rang out in the alleyway. There was another wire-taut snap, and sparks rained down on the chubby one as he cowered, his face to the cobbles, tears streaking his grime-covered cheeks. That was only four.

I looked around. The rodent-faced one with the oversized ego was missing. I found him slinking back toward the Assemblage Hall.

The barb of my grapple line sunk deep in the angled stone above the hall’s entrance. I dropped in quickly on my Sump rat, tucking his and my weight together into a tidy roll.

When we came to a stop, I was on top. His fetid breathing was fast and shallow.

“Did you really think you could run?” I asked, low and even.

His head shook out a terrified no, but his greasy hand fingered a stick knife at his belt. He squinted from the blinding radiance of my hex-crystal so near his face. He was desperate to drive the knife into my thigh, anything to get me away from him.

“Go ahead,” I whispered.

His eyes widened in surprise, but he didn’t let my permission linger long. The tip of his knife pierced the dark leather, but went no further, stopped by the metal of my leg. Surprise registered on his face just as his hand slipped down with the force of the blow, driving the flesh of his closed fist along the edge of his own blade.

He did not swallow his scream like the others, and it rang out on the damp stone of the buildings.

I looked up as it echoed from the Assemblage Hall. The stained-glass window of the Gray Lady towered above us. A small face was pressed to the colored glass, watching.

I leaned in and let the blade at my knee almost kiss the fluttering pulse in the neck of the man beneath me.

“Hunt here again, and I will end you,” I promised.

Realizing he had been granted an extra life, my prey pulled himself away in an awkward crab walk. Once there was enough distance between us, he got up, clutching his dripping red hand, and ran for some dark hole to lick his wounds.

I could hear Aviet winding the metal of her whip.

“I heard you didn’t have a heart under all those mechanics,” she said, her interest sparked. “Perhaps the rumors are mistaken.”

“Mind your manners, girl,” I told her coldly as I walked out of the alley. “Or I’ll mind them for you.”

The Boundary Markets and the Assemblage Hall were always steeped in shadows, overwhelmed by so much progress towering above them. But it had truly become night by the time we reached the pay house nearest Clan Arvino. After some proper encouragement, the innkeeper became quite generous with his detailed ledger, although his handwriting left much to be desired. Naderi was either somewhere in the basement or on the third floor. I left Aviet to the cellars, while a grapple line gave me access to an open window on the third floor.

The small forge at the back of the room had burned down to embers smoldering under a crust of ash. I crouched through the window and stepped inside. The room was dim, with only a single lamp lighting a small desk. But it was the man asleep at the desk that caught my breath, the curls of dark hair and the desert-tanned skin. The vibration of my hex-crystal stuttered. Perhaps he, too, had stalled time for himself.

“Hakim,” I called out softly. The shape at the desk moved, waking slowly from sleep. He stretched with the grace of a cat and turned. The young man wiped the sleep from his eyes in disbelief. He was so much like Hakim it hurt.

But it was not him.

“Mistress Ferros?” He shook himself more awake. “What are you doing here?”

“Have we met?” I asked.

“No, not exactly, milady,” he said, almost embarrassed. “But I have seen your face often.”

He went back to his desk and shuffled some papers, pulling out one that was slightly older and more worn than the others. He handed it to me.

The lines were strong, the inkwork neat and orderly, and the shading precise. It was Hakim’s work, but it was no diagram. Instead, it was a drawing of my face. I couldn’t recall posing for it. He must have sketched it from memory after working in the lab one night. My hair was down. I was smiling. I was a woman in love.

The sting was so sharp, I couldn’t help but take a breath. I didn’t say anything to the young man in front of me now. I couldn’t.

“It could have been drawn yesterday, milady,” he said, filling the silence.

He meant it as a compliment, but it just magnified the acres of time that stretched on in my mind.

“My uncle carried this with him until he passed.”

“Your uncle, he’s dead?”

“Yes, Hakim Naderi. Do you remember him?” he asked.

“Yes.” The word stuck in my mouth and wrapped itself around a selfish question I had carried for far too long. One I was never sure if I wanted the answer to. If the pain of memory was to overwhelm me with a thousand little cuts, better to open them all at once and be done with it. I looked at the young man who looked too much like Hakim. “Tell me, did your uncle ever marry?”

“No, milady,” he said, unsure if he was going to disappoint me. “Uncle Hakim said that to love your work was more than we could ask for in life.”

I had wept all my tears long ago, and so there were none left to come to me now. I picked up the stack of papers and set the drawing of my face on top. The lines of ink wavered in the blue light of the machine that replaced my heart. What I was. What I gave up. All the sharp-toothed sacrifice that made me who I am today. All of it was rendered in painstaking detail. I could hold the past, but never have it again.

“This is all of it? All of the work?” My words came out a dark whisper.

“Yes, milady, but…” His voice trailed off in disbelieving horror as I set the bundle on the banked coals and blew gently. The oiled parchment ignited and quickly burned a red-orange. I watched the past bubble and darken until nothing but cinders and dust was left. It was the young man that pulled me back to the present.

Hakim’s nephew shook his head slowly, his disbelief palpable; I understood how the shock of losing so much so quickly could be overwhelming. He was numb. I escorted him down the stairs to the street below. He adjusted the leather satchel on his shoulder and stared at the cobbles.

He looked back to me; the air of defeat was replaced by one of growing fear. Having been so lost in my own past, I took less notice of the shadows on the street. I barely heard the metallic jangle of wire. The lash of the whip came fast, binding my arms to my side.

“That’s far enough, milady,” Aviet said. Her voice was smug. I watched her look Hakim’s nephew over.

“Is this what my brother paid you for?” I had suspected as much. Aviet had been watching for an opportunity all evening. My distraction at finding Hakim’s nephew seemed as good an opportunity as any.

“Yes,” she said. “All of us.”

Two big men stepped onto the cobbles, their repaired augmentations catching the streetlight. The chubby one and his little rat-faced counterpart followed behind. They were the same men from the alley behind the Assemblage Hall. The chubby one shoved a knife at Hakim’s nephew, while the other smiled his rodent smile and bound and gagged the young apprenta.

The juggernaut with the newly connected chemtubes stepped forward. His fingers twitched, eager to return the violence I had visited on him earlier.

“Mind the crystals, Emef,” Aviet said. The whip tightened, and I felt metal cuffs close around my wrists. She walked around to stand next to Hakim’s nephew. “We’re to collect them and Naderi, or no one gets paid.”

Was all of this for my brother’s jealousy? I knew Stevan felt the tide of years slipping away and saw me standing near immortal in all of it. But he truly had no idea the cost of my duty to the family. Could he not see what it would cost him now?

“And the rest?” the copper man asked, smiling at me as if he were about to tuck into a Progress Day feast.

“All yours,” replied Aviet.

“It was nice of you, Your Grace, to demonstrate your talents earlier,” he said as he pulled his augmented arm back into a fist. He obviously felt no need to hide the telegraph when facing a bound opponent. His grin widened. “It will make this go much quicker.”

The metal knuckles connected with my jaw. He expected me to fight it, but instead, I let the punch take me down to a knee. The inertia forced his heavily augmented arm to come down to the ground with me. I tasted my own blood on my lips, but it was he who was off balance for the moment. The rest of the gang’s prattle went silent.

“You haven’t seen all my tricks,” I said as I stood.

The energy of my hex-crystals coursed through me, the power building up like a wall. The juggernaut’s brother attempted to step in, bringing his own augmented fist down on the glowing buffer. The shield popped and hissed, but held. It was my turn to smile.

Aviet grabbed the trailing handle of the wire whip, hoping to shake me free of the energy field. She yanked hard to pull me off balance. She had no idea how long I’d lived my life on a knife’s edge.

My hands still bound, I leapt forward into a spinning kick, slitting the throat of the second juggernaut and coming down to impale the first. The tail of the whip snaked out of Aviet’s hand. She called to the two who still held Hakim’s nephew.

“Abandon the job, and I’ll kill you both.”

“Do you still think I have a heart now?” I asked her, her two goliaths lying dead at my feet.

Aviet was unsure, but stood her ground.

“I am the sword and shield of Clan Ferros,” I told her, ice enunciating every word. “My brother seeks to kill me to extend his brittle life for a few more selfish moments. His desires have betrayed his duty and our house.”

I felt the crystals pulse faster.

“And you will not live to see the morning,” I said.

I channeled the crystal’s energy for a moment, building its intensity until the shield that had once surrounded me became an electrified prison. There would be no escape.

I leapt into the air, higher than before, and came down hard, shattering the metal that bound my wrists and the cobbles between us. The force of the impact knocked over Aviet, her two remaining thugs, and Naderi’s nephew. The street had ruptured in a crater, and dust hung in the air. The fight Aviet had been looking for since we met, to prove herself to my brother, was not going as planned. The heels of her leather boots scuffed the stone of the street, her body announcing her retreat before even her mind had fully agreed to it. I read her fear as she stood facing me. Whatever my brother had told her of me, she had sorely underestimated. Aviet saw that any trace of the mercy I carried before had been boiled away by the full revelation of my brother’s betrayal.

I stepped forward and let my back leg arc around. I leaned into the blade as it connected. Aviet struggled to keep what was in her belly from spilling out, but it was a futile effort. I made short work of her last two goons, and the alley behind the pay house was quiet again. I picked up Aviet’s blood-soaked whip from the street.

The nephew of Hakim Naderi had backed himself against a wall in his panic. The young man’s breath was coming in panting waves through the dirty cloth that gagged him. I approached him as you would an animal you didn’t wish to startle. I untied the bindings at his wrists. I offered him my hand, and his fingers trembled at my touch. As soon as he was set upon his feet, he let go.

He had seen the violent face of my duty, what I could never bring myself to show Hakim, and I had let it happen. The softhearted woman I once was had truly been burned away, leaving only a cold darkness and gray ash.

“The tests,” he said, his chin quivering with a different kind of terror. The reality of the evening was coming to bear as he realized none of this was a dream. “What am I to show the artificers tomorrow?”

“You studied under your uncle?”

“Yes. He taught me everything, but the designs—”

Hakim’s nephew knew his options, either come to work for me or give up his life’s work. My position as intelligencer would not allow the knowledge he possessed to fall to another house. In his frightened eyes, I saw his innocence of the world sacrificed. I was a murderous savior and a dark protector. In this moment of cruel understanding, I had become his Gray Lady, a steel shadow to be feared and venerated.

“You will build them better tomorrow,” I said.

Unable to process his thoughts into words, he nodded his head and stumbled into the night. I prayed he would rebuild his resolve before the dawn. Otherwise, there would be nowhere to run that I could not catch him.

I stood and looked out over the balcony of my brother’s study. A chilled breeze ruffled the pennants that hung from the eaves of the house. The entire city stretched out before me.

The doors to the study opened, and for a moment, I could hear the preparations for tomorrow’s influx of apprentas. In those voices and quickened steps, I heard the years behind me unfolding, all of them too similar to separate. All of them save two: The one where a handsome man from the Sands danced away with my heart. And the one where I demanded the same man carve it away.

How often had Hakim come here with me between those two slivers of time? The breeze that teased the pennants would catch the curls of his hair as he stood on the balcony. “Such promise,” he would say as his eyes danced over the glittering towers of the city, the glow of Zaun lighting the buildings from below, “such a delicate machine, all these parts working together.”

I told him what my father told me, that this was the promise of progress, the promise of Piltover. It moved our city forward, but, I cautioned, one ill-shaped gear could threaten it all. One cog that rejected its role could destroy the entire machine.

Stevan’s chair creaked along the carpet. My fingers ached for the curls of Hakim’s hair or even the solace of the chaplet’s polished glass in my pocket. Instead, I coiled Aviet’s whip into tighter circles in my hands. Hakim so wanted to draw me out of this darkness, only realizing too late that my work, my duty to my family, was something I could no more cut away than my own shadow.

“Camille?”

I said nothing, unable to tear my eyes from the fragile view and my even more fragile thoughts of the past. The clockwork mechanism ticked, and the wheels of Stevan’s chair brought him up behind me.

“You’ve returned,” he said. “Aviet?”

I tossed Aviet’s whip on the woolen blanket laid over his lap.

“I see.”

“She served her purpose,” I said.

“That being?” For having sat so long in that chair, my brother was an artful dancer. He plucked at the wire of the whip.

“To remind me of mine,” I said.

“Your purpose?” Stevan’s initial nervousness slipped into agitation. He knew he would die tonight. He had been caught, and he couldn’t run, especially from me. His only consolation was to try and wound me just as grievously before his time expired. Bound as he was by his frailty, the only weapons left to him were words.

“Your duty is to me,” he said. “Just as it was to our father.”

Duty. My father. The right words could cut more deeply than a knife.

“You are here to serve me,” he growled.

“No, I swore to serve this house.” The oath I had taken pricked fresh in my mind, the oath of all intelligencers. I repeated it now without effort or remorse. “To this house, I will be true and faithful, putting its needs before my own. To this, I will commit mind, body, and heart.”

They were the same words I told Hakim the night I had ended things between us. I could not be his, for I had promised myself to another.

“That duty of intelligencer was meant to be mine.” Stevan’s voice wrenched me back to the present. He gripped the arms of his chair until his knuckles whitened. “You swore an oath to our father, and what did you do? He died because you were not strong enough. And then you nearly deserted this house. For what? Love? Attention? Where was your duty then?”

He spat the words in the space between us. These spider veins, this blight, I had let it fester far too long. What kindness had I shown this house in ignoring his madness?

“I cut out my heart for the family. For you, Stevan,” I said. “I have given all that I am. After all these years, can you say the same?”

Stevan sputtered like a wet spark, desperately trying to flare to life, but knowing there was little left to catch fire.

“Father just gave this to you, but I was the one who spent my entire life proving to him I deserved it,” he said. Disgust weighed on his words. My brother’s anger ran faster, the toxicity poisoning the air like a chem spill. “You may see me as your betrayer, but you are the one responsible, sister. If you could be trusted to make the right decisions, I would not have to step in.”

I had let him become this monster. I tolerated his grim plots and motivations all because I was unwilling to face a future without him, a future where no one remembered the woman I was. If I had been stronger in my resolve, I could have ended this years before. I had chiseled away parts of myself, but in all that time, I never had the courage to cut away the piece I knew would blacken our house.

“That night, I would have run away with Hakim if you had not made the effort to remind me of my duty,” I said.

He had come to me, bloody and broken, forcing me to confront a reality where I had abandoned my charge. Even when I discovered the truth years later, that he had been behind his own attack, I had been relieved. On the brink of a decision clouded by sentiment, my brother had given me the hard push that let me separate honor from emotion. I knew that, without it, I might have given up who I was meant to be. It was his dark encouragement that let me take on fully the mantle I wore now.

I moved toward him and let my fingers rest on his shoulder. I could feel his aged bones beneath the rich silk and parchment skin. The vibrations in my chest built. Stevan looked up at me, the blue of his eyes hardening like chips of broken glass as the energy around my augmentation grew.

“You have always been my responsibility, brother.” The chill in the air entered my words. “Stevan, I will fail you no longer.”

I could feel the charge electrifying the hair at the back of my neck. I let my hand drift from his shoulder to the edge of his face. The boyish lock of hair that fell over his temple had thinned and disappeared years ago. The spark arced through my fingertips and enveloped Stevan.

It didn’t take much to push his heart over the edge, the atrophied muscle that drove my brother to such dark places finally seized in his chest. His eyes closed, and his chin sagged in my hand.

The vibration of the crystals in my chest slowed to an even rhythm. I turned back to face the city. Tonight’s cold would settle in her metal bones, but tomorrow, she would continue to push forward, to pulse with life. To progress.

Such a delicate machine.