LoL Universe Indexing and Search

Luxanna—or Lux, as she prefers to be called—grew up in the Demacian city of High Silvermere, along with her older brother Garen. They were born to the prestigious Crownguard family, which had served for generations as protectors of the kings of Demacia. Their grandfather saved the king’s life at the Battle of Storm’s Fang, and their aunt Tianna was named commander of the elite Dauntless Vanguard regiment before Lux was born.

Garen took to his family’s role with fervor, joining the military when he was still little more than a boy. Lux, in his absence, was expected to help run the family’s many estates—a task she resented, even as a young child. She wanted to explore the world, to see what lay beyond the walls and borders of Demacia. She idolized Garen, but railed against his insistence that she put her own ambitions aside.

To the endless frustration of Lux’s tutors, who sought to prepare her for a life of dutiful service to the Crownguard family, she would question their every teaching, examine differing perspectives, and seek out knowledge far beyond what they were prepared for. Even so, few could find it in themselves to stay angry at Lux, with her zest for life and intoxicating optimism.

Little did any of them know a time of change was approaching. Magic had once brought Runeterra to the brink of annihilation, and Demacia had been founded as a place where such powers were forbidden. Many of the kingdom’s folktales told of pure hearts turned dark by the lure of magic. Indeed, Lux and Garen’s uncle had been slain by a rogue mage some years earlier.

And there were fearful whispers, rumors from beyond the great mountains, that magic was rising once more in the world…

Riding home one fateful night, Lux and her horse were attacked by a ravenous sabrewulf pack. In a moment of fear and desperation, the young girl let loose a torrent of magical light from deep within her, routing the beasts but leaving her shivering in fear. Magic, the terror of Demacian myths, was as much a part of Lux as her Crownguard lineage.

Fear and doubt gnawed at her. Would she become evil? Was she an abomination, to be imprisoned or exiled? At the very least, if her powers were discovered, it would see the Crownguard name disgraced forever.

With Garen spending more time away from High Silvermere, Lux found herself alone in the halls of their family home. Still, over time, she became more familiar with her magic, and her sleepless nights—fists clenched, willing her inner light to fade—became fewer and fewer. She began experimenting in secret, playing with sunbeams in the courtyards, bending them into solid form, and even creating tiny, glowing figures in her palm. She resolved to keep it a secret, as much as she could.

When she was sixteen, Lux traveled with her parents Pieter and Augatha to their formal residence in the Great City of Demacia, to witness Garen’s investiture into the honored ranks of the Dauntless Vanguard.

The city dazzled Lux. It was a monument to the noble ideals of the kingdom, with every citizen protected and cared for; and it was there that Lux learned of the Illuminators, a charitable religious order working to help the sick and the poor. Between her family’s courtly engagements, she became close with a knight of the order named Kahina, who also taught Lux more martial skills, sparring and training with her in the gardens of the Crownguard manor.

Spending more time in the capital, Lux has finally begun to learn about the wider world—its diversity, and its history. She now understands that the Demacian way of life is not the only way, and with clear eyes she can see her love for her homeland standing alongside her desire to see it made more just… and perhaps a little more accepting of mages like her.

How long had it been since Lux had come north to Fossbarrow?

She wasn’t sure. Years, certainly. The family had come north to honor the tomb of Great Grandfather Fossian, and Lux remembered complaining about the incessant rain as they made their way through the crags and gullies of the forest to his resting place. She’d been expecting a grand mausoleum, but was disappointed to learn it was little more than a grassy mound nestled at the foot of a soaring cliff face. A marble slab set into the base of the mound depicted the legend of her illustrious forebear—Fossian and the demon falling from the cliff, her great grandfather mortally wounded, the nightmarish entity with a Demacian blade piercing its black heart.

It had rained then, and it was raining now. An icy, northern deluge fresh off the dogtooth mountains that separated Demacia from the Freljord. A storm was brewing in that frozen realm, breaking on the far side of the peaks to fall on verdant swathes of Demacian pine bent by hostile winds. To the west and east, the mountains receded into an azure haze, the sky dark and threatening, like one of her brother’s saltier moods. North, the forested haunches of the highlands were craggy with cliffs and plunging chasms. Dangerous lands, home to fell creatures and wild beasts of all descriptions.

Lux had set off into the north two weeks ago; Demacia to Edessa, then to Pinara and on to Lissus. Lissus to Velorus, and eventually to High Silvermere, the City of Raptors. A night with her family at their home at the foot of Knight’s Rock, then out into Demacia’s northwest marches. Almost immediately, the character of the people and villages began to change as the heartland of Demacia fell behind her like a pennant torn from the haft of a banner-pole.

Rolling, fertile plains gave way to windswept hinterlands dotted with gorse and thistle. Silverwing raptors screeched overhead, invisible as they dueled in the clouds. The air grew colder, freighted with the deep ice of the Freljord, and the walls of each settlement grew higher with every mile she rode. It had been a long and tiring journey to Fossbarrow, but she was here, and Lux allowed herself a small smile.

“We’ll be at the temple soon, Starfire,” she said, reaching down to rub her horse’s mane. “They’ll have grain and a warm stable for you, I promise.”

The horse shook its head and snorted, stamping its feet with impatience. Lux kicked back her heels and walked her tired mount along the rutted track leading to Fossbarrow’s main gate.

The town occupied the banks of the Serpentrion, a thundering river that rose in the mountains and snaked to the western coast. The town’s walls of polished granite followed the line of the hills, and the buildings within were wrought from stone, seasoned timber and bottle-green roof tiles. The tower of an Illuminator temple rose in the east, the brazier within its steeple a welcome light in the gathering dusk.

Lux pulled back the hood of her blue cloak and shook her hair free. Long and golden, it framed a youthful face of high cheekbones and ocean-blue eyes that sparkled with determination. Two men appeared on the tower above the iron-bound gate, each armed with a powerful longbow of ash and yew.

“Hold, traveler,” said one of the guards. “The gate’s closed until morning.”

“My name is Luxanna Crownguard,” she said. “As you say, it is late, but I’ve come a long way to pay my respects to my great grandfather. I’d be in your debt if you’d allow me entry.”

The man squinted through the gloom, his eyes widening as he recognized her. It had been years since she’d come to Fossbarrow, but Garen always said that once people laid eyes on Lux, they never forgot her.

“Lady Crownguard! Forgive me!” he cried, turning to address the men below. “Open the gates.”

Lux eased Starfire forward as the solid timbers of the gate lifted into the stone of the barbican with a clatter of heavy iron chains. As soon as it had risen enough, Lux rode under it to find a hastily assembled honor guard awaiting her—ten men in leather breastplates and blue cloaks secured with silver pins in the shape of winged swords. They were proud Demacian soldiers, though their shoulders were curiously slumped and their eyes haunted with exhaustion.

“Welcome to Fossbarrow,” said the same man who’d spoken to her from the tower. “This is a great honor, my lady. Magistrate Giselle will be relieved to know you are here. May I offer you a detachment of soldiers to escort you to her home?”

“Thank you, but that won’t be necessary,” said Lux, wondering at the man’s choice of the word relieved. “I’ve arranged accommodation with Mistress Pernille at the Illuminator temple.”

She made to ride on, but sensed the guard’s desire to say something and gently pulled Starfire’s reins.

“Lady Crownguard,” said the guard. “Are you here to end our nightmare?”

The Illuminator temple was warm and dry, and with Starfire settled in the stables, she’d spoken at length with Mistress Pernille in the main hall. Lux had heard rumors of magic in the forests and crags around Fossbarrow and had set out to see what she might learn—though she hadn’t mentioned that to Mistress Pernille. The simmering power Lux sensed within herself was frightening in its growing intensity, and she hoped there might be some way she could learn more of its nature. And it was always better to learn such things away from the eyes of her family!

Lux had sensed a dark undercurrent as soon as she’d entered the town, a creeping sensation of being watched from the shadows. The few townsfolk she’d seen on the streets walked with leaden steps, their bodies weary.

A pall of fear hung over Fossbarrow. She didn’t need magic to sense that.

“A terrible business,” explained Mistress Pernille, a flaxen-haired woman in the pale robes of an Illuminator healer. “It’s Magistrate Giselle’s son, Luca. That poor boy.”

“What about him?” asked Lux.

“He went missing two days ago,” explained Pernille. “And people are certain he’s been taken by a dark mage for some terrible purpose.”

“Why do they think that?”

“Ask me again in the morning,” said Pernille.

Lux awoke with a scream, her heart hammering in her chest and her breath coming in wheezing spikes. Terror filled her mind—a nightmare of clawed hooks dragging her beneath the earth, of fetid mud filling her mouth and darkness smothering her light forever. Lux blinked away the last afterimages, glimpsing retreating shadows out of the corner of her eye. Her mouth was filled with the taste of rancid milk, a sure sign of lingering magic, and spectral radiance shimmered in her palms. Light filled the room, and with it, the last remnants of the nightmare were banished.

Warmth suffused her, her skin shimmering with a haze of iridescence, and she quickly clenched her fists, trying to pull it back within her before it got out of control.

She heard voices downstairs, and thankfully the light faded, leaving only the wan traces of daylight from the shuttered window to illuminate the room. Lux pressed her hands to the side of her head, as if seeking to push the awful visions from her mind. She tried to recall specific moments from the nightmare, but all that came was the reek of sour breath and a faceless darkness pressing down upon her.

Her mouth dry, Lux quickly dressed and descended to the temple kitchen. Though she had little in the way of appetite, she prepared a breakfast of bread and cheese. At her first bite, the taste of grave earth filled her mouth and she put the food aside.

“How did you sleep?” asked Pernille, entering the kitchen and joining her at the table.

The skin below Pernille’s eyes was purple with lack of sleep, her skin sallow without firelight to color it. Only now did Lux notice just how bone-weary Pernille was.

“About as well as you, by the looks of it,” said Lux. “Did you dream?”

“I did, but it’s nothing I want to relive by saying it out loud.”

Lux nodded slowly. “I think there’s something very wrong with this town.”

Starfire whinnied at the sight of her, his ears pressed flat against his skull and his eyes wide. He nuzzled her, and she stroked his pearl-white neck and shoulders.

“You too?” she said, and the horse tossed its mane.

Lux quickly saddled her mount and rode toward Fossbarrow’s northern gate. Dawn was already an hour old, but the town was still to fully come to life. No smoke rose from the forges, no smell of fresh bread wafted from the bakeries, and only a very few sullen-looking merchants had their doors open for business. Demacians were hard-working, disciplined, and industrious, so to see a frontier town so late to begin the day’s work was highly unusual. But if Fossbarrow’s people had endured a night like hers, she couldn’t blame them for being slow to rise.

She passed through the gate into the open ground before the town and let Starfire run to work out the stiffness in his muscles before turning onto the muddy road. The stallion had broken his leg many years ago, but it hadn’t impaired the speed of his gallop.

“Easy, boy,” said Lux as they rode into the forest.

The scent of pine and wildflowers hung heavy in the air, and Lux savored the heady, natural aroma of the northern climes. Sunlight pierced the leafy canopy in angled spars of light, and the smell of wet mud sent a shiver up her spine as her nightmare briefly surfaced. She rode deeper into the forest, following the track as it wound its way further north. Lux lifted a hand from the reins and reached for a glittering sunbeam, feeling the magic within her stir at its touch. It was thrilling to feel it rise within her, but she let it come only slowly, for fear it might overtake her fragile control.

Her world lit up as the magic filled her senses, the colors of the forest unnaturally vivid and filled with life. She saw glittering motes of light drifting in the air, the breath of trees and the sighs of the earth. How incredible it was to see the world like this, alive to the energies flowing through every living thing. From blades of grass to the mighty ironbirch trees whose roots were said to reach the very heart of the world. If this was what even the lightest touch of magic might achieve, what wonders might it work were she better able to control it?

After an hour of riding through the iridescent forest, the road diverged at a crossroads, one path leading east—to a logging town if she remembered correctly—the other dropping west to a community built around a thriving silver mine. Her father owned a stake in the mine and her favorite cloak pin had been wrought from metal dug from its deep chasms. Between the two main routes lay a smaller pathway, all but invisible and suitable only for lone riders or those on foot.

She remembered taking that path years ago, and Lux wondered why she was reluctant to guide Starfire in that direction. She had no need to go that way, for her story of paying respects to her great grandfather was just that, a story. Lux closed her eyes and lifted her arms out to the side, letting the magic drift from her fingers. She took a breath, filling her lungs with cold air and letting the light of the forest speak to her. Her understanding of such things was still new, but surely it was worth the risk to find out what was plaguing this region of Demacia.

The light spoke in contrasting hues, scintillating colors. and vibrant illumination. She felt the light of distant stars drift down like mist, light that bathed other realms and people, almost too much to bear. Where the light of Demacia fell into shadow, she flinched. Where it nourished something living, she was soothed. Lux turned in the saddle, reveling in this new sensation. The sun was almost at its zenith, and she frowned as the quality of light in the forest trembled, slipping from her grasp. She felt shadows where no shadows ought to dwell, hidden darkness where only light should exist. The breath caught in her throat, like a hand at her neck, and a sudden wave of dizziness swept over her. Her eyelids fluttered, drifting closed as if she were being pulled into a waking slumber.

The forest around her was suddenly silent. Not a breath of wind stirred the leaves of the trees, nor ruffled so much as a blade of grass. The Silverwings were silent, the chatter of animals stilled. Lux heard the soft susurration of grave cloth being pulled tight.

Sleep…

“No,” she said, but the unnatural weariness slipped over her like a comfortable blanket, warm and enfolding. Lux’s head dropped and she closed her eyes for the briefest instant.

The snapping sound of a breaking branch and the scrape of metal flicked Lux’s eyes open. She drew in a great draught of air, the cold in her lungs jolting her awake again. She blinked shadows from her eyes and let out an icy breath as the magic slipped from her grasp and faded away. She heard riders on horseback, the jingle of bridle and trace, the rasp of metal on metal. Soldiers, armored for war. At least four, perhaps more.

Lux wasn’t scared of them. Not really. Not this deep in Demacia. Whatever darkness was lurking somewhere in the forest was a more immediate threat. Its strength was uncertain, like a child exploring just what it could do. She pulled Starfire’s reins, turning him around and setting him athwart the paths.

The foliage in front of her parted, and five riders came into view.

Powerful warriors, armored head to foot in gleaming warplate. They rode wide-chested steeds of gray, none smaller than seventeen hands, and each caparisoned in cobalt blue. Four had their swords drawn, where the fifth had his golden-hilted blade sheathed in a lacquered blue scabbard across his back.

“Luxanna?” said this rider, his voice muffled by the visor of his helm.

Lux sighed as the knight removed his helmet to reveal dark hair and granite-hewn features that so embodied Demacia it was a wonder they weren’t yet on a coin.

“Garen,” sighed Lux.

Her brother had brought four of the Dauntless Vanguard.

Drawn from any other army, four warriors would be a paltry force, but every warrior of the Dauntless Vanguard was a hero, a legend with tales of valor etched into the metal of their swords. Their deeds were told and retold around tavern tables and hearthfires the length and breadth of Demacia.

Dark of hair and keen of eye was Diadoro, the bearded swordsman who’d held the Gates of Mourning against the armored host of the Trifarian Legion for an entire day. Flanking him was Sabator of Jandelle, the slayer of the hideous deepwyrm that woke every hundred years to feast, but which would now wake no more. Its fangs were hung in King Jarvan’s throne room, next to the newly mounted dragon skull brought by his son and his enigmatic companion.

Slighter, though no less striking, was Varya, she who led the charge onto the decks of the sea-wolf fleet at Dawnhold. She set their ships ablaze and, even wounded nigh unto death, cut down their berserk leader. Rodian, her twin brother, had sailed north to Frostheld and burned the Freljordian harbor city to the ground, so that no others would dare sail south to wreak havoc again.

Lux knew them all, but rolled her eyes at the thought of hearing their legends around a table tonight. Yes, they were heroes of Demacia and entirely worthy of respect, but hearing about Sabator climbing down the deepwyrm’s gullet for the tenth time, or how Varya beat a Grelmorn to death with a splintered oar was too much for Lux.

Garen came alongside her as they followed the road back to Fossbarrow. They’d circled the town until the light began to fade in search of the magistrate’s son or any sign of nefarious goings on, but had found nothing. Though any servant of darkness would have had plenty of time to run and hide, given the noise Garen and the Dauntless Vanguard were making.

“You’re really here to visit Great Grandfather Fossian’s tomb?”

“I said so, didn’t I?”

“Yes,” replied Garen. “You did. I’m just surprised. I seem to recall mother saying you hated coming here last time.”

“I’m surprised she remembered.”

“Oh, she remembered,” said Garen without looking at her. “When young Luxanna Crownguard doesn’t enjoy something, the skies darken, rain clouds empty, and forest animals hide.”

“You make me sound like a spoiled brat.”

“You kind of were,” said Garen, his easy grin only partially robbing the comment of its sting. “You got away with things I’d have had a smacked backside for doing. Mother was always telling me not to pay attention to the things you did.”

The words hung between them, and Lux looked away, remembering not to underestimate her brother. People knew him as honest and direct, with a sound grasp of tactics and war stratagems, but few ever thought of him as subtle or cunning.

That, knew Lux, was a mistake. Yes, Garen was a simple warrior, but simple didn’t mean stupid.

“So what do you think’s happened to the boy?” asked Lux.

Garen ran a hand through his hair.

“If I had to guess, I’d say he’s run away from home,” he said. “Or decided to have an adventure and has gotten lost somewhere in the forest.”

“You don’t think a dark mage has taken him?”

“It’s certainly possible, but Varya and Rodian rode through this way only six months ago, and saw no evidence of unnatural sorceries.”

Lux nodded and asked, “Have you spent a night in Fossbarrow?”

“No,” answered Garen, as they rode into sight of the town. “Why do you ask?”

“Just curious.”

“There’s something going on down there,” said Sabator, his hand shielding his eyes from the setting sun.

Garen’s eyes snapped to where his warrior was pointing, and all levity fell from his face. His entire posture changed, muscles taut and ready for action, his eyes utterly focused. The warriors of the Dauntless Vanguard formed up alongside him, ready to move in an instant.

“What is it?” said Lux.

An angry-looking crowd was hounding a stumbling man through the streets toward the market square. She couldn’t hear what they were shouting, but she didn’t need to hear the words to feel their anger and fear.

“Vanguard! We ride,” said Garen, raking his spurs back.

Starfire was a fast horse, but even he was no match for a grain-fed Demacian warsteed. By the time Lux rode through the gates, the sound of yelling voices echoed through the town. Starfire’s flanks were lathered with sweat and his iron-shod hooves struck sparks from the cobbles. Lux hauled her mount to a halt as she entered the crowded market square and leapt from his back as she saw a scene she’d witnessed too many times throughout Demacia.

“No, no, no…” she muttered, seeing two guards drag a weeping man onto the auction platform normally used during the buying and selling of livestock. The man’s clothes were soaked in blood and he wailed piteously. A woman with the ermine-trimmed robes and bronze wings of a Demacian magistrate stood before him, presumably Magistrate Giselle. Hundreds of Fossbarrow’s townsfolk filled the square, yelling and screaming at the man. The intensity of their hate was palpable, and Lux felt her magic drawn to the surface of her skin. She struggled to quell the rising light and pushed her way through the crowd, seeing Garen at the foot of the steps leading onto the auction platform.

“Aldo Dayan,” said Magistrate Giselle, her voice ragged with emotion. “I name thee murderer and consort of a dark mage!”

“No!” cried the man. “You don’t understand! They were monsters! I saw them, their real faces! Darkness—only darkness!”

“Confession!” cried Giselle.

The crowd screamed in response, a swelling lust for vengeance erupting from every throat. They looked set to rush the auction platform to tear Aldo Dayan limb from limb, and perhaps they would have but for the four warriors of the Dauntless Vanguard standing with their swords drawn at its edge.

“What’s going on? What happened?” asked Lux as she reached Garen’s side.

Garen didn’t look at her, his eyes fixed on the kneeling man.

“He murdered his wife and children in their beds, then ran out onto the streets and attacked his neighbors. He split three people with an axe before they were able to restrain him.”

“Why would he do that?”

Finally Garen turned to look at her. “Why do you think? There must be a mage nearby. A darkness holds sway here. Only the dark influence of a sorcerer could drive a loyal Demacian citizen to commit such heinous acts.”

Lux bit back an angry retort and pushed past Garen. She climbed the steps of the platform and marched over to the kneeling man.

“Lady Crownguard? What are you doing?” demanded Giselle.

Lux ignored her and lifted the man’s head. His face was bruised, one eye swollen shut from the heavy blow of a cudgel or fist. Blood and snot ran freely from his nose, and ropes of drool hung from his split lip.

“Look at me,” she said, and the man’s good eye tried to focus on her. The white of his eye was bloodshot and purple edged, the eye of a man who had not slept in days.

“Goodman Dayan, tell me why you killed your family,” said Lux. “Why did you attack your neighbors?”

“Not them. No. I saw. Weren’t them, they was… monsters…” sobbed the man. “Darkness clothed in skin. Among us the whole time! I woke and I saw their true faces! So I killed them! I had to do it. I had to!”

She looked up as Magistrate Giselle appeared at Lux’s shoulder. Lux saw a soul-aching grief etched in the woman’s face. The last two days had aged her ten years. The magistrate stared down in disgust at Aldo Dayan, her fists clenched at her sides.

“Did you kill my Luca?” she said, her voice wracked with sorrow. “Did you kill my son? Just because he was different?”

Baying cries for vengeance rose from the crowd as the sun sank into the west and the shadows lengthened. Handfuls of mud and dung pelted Aldo Dayan as his former friends and neighbors called for his death. He thrashed in the grip of the guards, frothing at the mouth and spitting bloody saliva.

“I had to kill them!” he screamed, staring defiantly at his accusers. “It weren’t them. Just darkness, only darkness. It could be one of you too!”

Lux turned back to Magistrate Giselle.

“What did you mean when you said your son was different?”

Giselle’s grief was all-consuming, but Lux saw past it to a secret shame beneath. The magistrate’s eyes were bloodshot and ringed with dark smudges of exhaustion, yet even that couldn’t hide the same look she’d seen in her mother’s eyes whenever Lux’s powers had gotten the better of her as a youngster. It was the same look she sometimes saw in her brother’s eyes when he thought she wasn’t looking.

“What did you mean?” she asked again.

“Nothing,” said Giselle. “I didn’t mean anything.”

“Different how?”

“Just different.”

Lux had heard such deflections before, and suddenly knew exactly how the magistrate’s son was different.

“I’ve heard enough,” said Garen as he strode onto the platform, his long, silver sword hissing from its scabbard. The blade glinted in the twilight, its edge unimaginably sharp.

“Garen, no,” said Lux. “There’s something more going on here. Let me speak with him.”

“He is a monster,” said Garen, spinning his sword up onto his shoulder. “Even if he is not a servant of evil, he is a murderer. There can be only one punishment. Magistrate?”

Giselle looked away from Lux, her eyes wet with tears. She nodded.

“Aldo Dayan, I declare you guilty, and call upon Garen Crownguard of the Dauntless Vanguard to dispense Demacian justice.”

The man lifted his head, and Lux’s eyes narrowed as she felt a prickling sensation of… something pass through him. A whisper of a lurking presence. It slithered away before she could be sure, but a breath of frigid air raised her hackles.

Dayan’s limbs spasmed, like a deranged roadside wanderer afflicted with the tremoring sickness. He whispered something, rasping and faint, as Garen lifted his warblade to deliver the executioner’s strike. Dayan’s last words were all but lost in the roars of approval coming from the crowd, but Lux finally pieced them together as Garen’s sword swept down.

The light is fading…

“Wait!” she cried.

Garen’s blade clove the man’s head from his body in one titanic blow, to a roar of approval from the crowd. The body dropped to the platform, twin arcs of blood jetting from the stump of his neck. The head rolled to Giselle’s feet as coiling smoke poured from Aldo Dayan’s corpse like black bile oozing from a charnel pit. The magistrate recoiled in shock as a phantom form of wicked claws and searing eyes erupted from the dead man’s skull.

The spectral darkness launched itself at the magistrate with a cackle of spite. She screamed as it passed through her before dissipating like wind-scattered cinders. Lux felt the breath of the thing’s demise, an energy so vile, so hateful, and so inhumanly evil, that it beggared belief. Magistrate Giselle collapsed, her flesh ashen, weeping in terror.

Lux dropped to one knee as myriad visions of horror arose within her—choking fears of being buried alive, of being driven from Demacia by her brother, of a thousand ways to die a slow and painful death. The light within her fought these terrible sights, and Lux’s breath shimmered with motes of light as she spat the taste of death from her mouth.

“Lux…”

Garen spoke in a whisper, and it took her a moment to figure out how she could possibly have heard him over the cheering crowd. Lux turned from the sobbing magistrate, and felt magic race around her body in a surge tide.

The crowd stood utterly silent.

“Lux, what’s going on?” said Garen.

She blinked away the abhorrent images still searing her mind and followed Garen’s gaze as the warriors of the Dauntless Vanguard rushed to stand with their leader.

Then, one after another, the people of Fossbarrow fell to the ground, as if the life had simply fled their bodies.

Lux clenched her teeth and pushed herself to her feet.

The sun had all but vanished behind Fossbarrow’s western wall and her mouth fell open as she saw black, vaporous shapes lift from the town’s unconscious inhabitants. No two were alike, and Lux saw an assembling host of shades in Noxian armor, vast spiders, many-headed serpents, towering shadow warriors with frost axes, great drakes with teeth like obsidian daggers and scores of things that defied sane description.

“Sorcery,” declared Garen.

The shadow creatures closed on the platform, sliding through the air without a sound. An oncoming tide of nightmarish horrors.

“What are they?” asked Varya.

“The darkest nightmares of Fossbarrow’s people given form,” said Lux.

“How can you know that?” demanded Sabator.

“I don’t, not for sure, but it feels right,” said Lux, knowing she couldn’t stay here to fight. Besides, the Dauntless Vanguard could hold their own here. She placed her thumb and forefinger against her bottom lip and whistled a summoning note before turning to Garen.

“I think I might know how to stop this,” she said. “Maybe…”

“How?” said Garen, without taking his eyes off the approaching shadowhost.

“Never mind how,” said Lux. “Just… try not to die before I get back.”

Lux ran to the edge of the platform as Starfire galloped through the creatures. Her steed passed unmolested, its dreams and nightmares of no interest to the power now abroad in Fossbarrow. Lux leapt from the platform and grabbed Starfire’s mane, swinging onto his back in one smooth motion.

“Where are you going?” demanded Garen.

The horse reared and Lux twisted in the saddle to answer her brother.

“I told you,” she shouted. “I’m going to pay my respects to Great Grandfather Fossian!”

Garen watched his sister gallop through the dark host, carefully navigating a path through the town’s fallen inhabitants. Grasping claws of shadow creatures reached for her, but she and Starfire evaded every attack. Lux rode clear of the monstrous host, and paused just long enough to wave at him.

“For Demacia!” she shouted.

The Dauntless Vanguard clashed their swords against their shields.

“For Demacia!” they answered as one.

Lux turned her horse and galloped from the town.

Garen rolled his shoulders in anticipation of the rigor of close-quarters battle and lifted his sword.

“Lockstep!” he yelled, and his warriors took up their battle stance. Varya and Rodian stood to his left, Sabator and Diadoro to his right.

“We are the Dauntless Vanguard,” said Garen, lowering his sword so its quillons framed his piercing eyes. “Let courage and a keen eye guide your blades.”

Oil-black shade-hounds were the first to reach the platform, leaping upward with tearing fangs and flashing teeth. Garen and the Dauntless Vanguard met them with shields locked and blades bared. A hammering wall of iron beat them back. Though their enemies were wrought from darkness and spite, they fought with ferocious strength and skill. Garen stepped in and thrust his blade into a writhing beast’s haunches, tearing through to where its spine ought to be. The monster’s form exploded into black dust with a shriek of anguish.

Garen spun his sword up and pulled back in an oblique turn. His sword deflected another beast’s snapping jaw. He rolled his wrists and lowered his shoulder into its attack. He pushed the thing back and down. He stamped its chest and the beast roared as it burst apart. Garen’s sword snapped back up to block a crushing blow from what looked like the silhouette of a towering Freljordian warrior. The impact drove him to his knees.

“I will fight as long as I stand!” he said through gritted teeth, straightening his legs with a roar and hammering his pommel into the savage warrior’s horned skull. Ashes burst from the shadow, and Garen spun to drive his sword into the belly of another beast.

Sabator decapitated a slavering hound as Diadoro slammed his shield down on a hissing serpent, splitting its body in half. Varya hammered the hilt of her sword into the snapping fangs of a faceless shadow warrior as Rodian drove his sword into his twin’s foe.

With every killing blow, the shadow creatures burst into amber-limned ashes. Garen’s sword flashed and the silver blade plunged into the body of a scorpion-like monster.

A slash of dark talons came at Garen’s head. Sabator’s shield parried the attack. Varya chopped her blade through the monster’s legs and it burst apart. A hideous, limping creature hurled itself at Rodian, and he thrust his blade hard into its featureless face. It screeched as it died. But for every shadow they destroyed, more always took their place.

“Back to back!” roared Garen, and the pauldrons of the five warriors clashed together. They fought shoulder to shoulder in a circle of steel, a beacon of light against the darkness.

“Show them the strength of Demacia!”

Lux rode hard through the forest, trees flashing past to either side in a blur. It was reckless to gallop through the forest at such speed, but the shadows assailing Garen and the Dauntless Vanguard would keep coming. Human imaginations were a depthless well of nightmares—fear of death, fear of infirmity, or fear of losing a loved one.

She followed the route she had taken only this morning, hoping Starfire remembered the way more clearly than she did. Together, they flew through the night, eventually reaching the crossroads where the roads diverged. Ignoring the roads east and west, Starfire leapt the overgrown bracken that all but obscured the path north.

The path to Great Grandfather Fossian’s tomb.

Even with her mount’s surefootedness, Lux was forced to slow her pace as the path wound its way through steep-sided gullies and up rocky glens. The closer she came to the tomb, the more the landscape began to change, taking on an altogether different character—like something from a tale told to frighten small children. The trees wept a sickly black sap, their branches gnarled and twisted into clawed hands that plucked at her hair and cloak. Gaps in the boles of trees resembled fanged mouths, and venomous spiders spun cloying webs in their high branches. The ground underfoot became spongy and damp with brackish pools of stagnant water—like a grove abandoned by one of the fae folk.

Starfire stopped before the entrance to a shadow-wreathed clearing and threw back his head, nostrils flaring in fear.

“Easy, boy,” she said. “Fossian’s tomb is just ahead. Only a few more steps.”

But the horse would not be cajoled into another inch forward.

“Fine,” said Lux. “I’ll go myself.”

She slid off the horse’s back and entered the clearing. Moonlight filtering through the clouds gave off just enough illumination for her to see.

The mound of Fossian’s tomb was a shallow hill of grass that looked black in the gloom, its summit crowned with a rough cairn of stacked stone. Dark smoke drifted into a sky that swirled with images of ancient horrors awaiting their time to claim the world. Dark lines snaked across the great stone slab telling of Fossian’s deeds.

A young boy, no more than twelve or thirteen, sat cross-legged before it, his thin body swaying as if in a trance. Tendrils of black smoke coiled from the tomb, wrapping around his neck like strangling vines.

“Luca?” said Lux.

The boy’s swaying ceased at the sound of her voice.

He turned to face Lux, and she faltered at the sight of his soulless, black eyes. A cruel grin split his face.

“Not anymore,” he said.

A looming spider with hook-bladed legs reared over Garen, its bloated belly rippling with distended eyes and snapping jaws. He split its thorax and kicked the flailing creature from the platform even as its body disintegrated.

Legs braced, Garen felt a searing cold in the muscle of his shoulder as a black claw plunged through his pauldron. The metal did not buckle or crack. The claw passed through unimpeded, and Garen felt a sickening revulsion spread through him. He smelled rank grave dirt—the reek of fetid earth over a centuries-old sepulchre. He fought through the pain as he had always been trained to do.

Rodian fell as a hooking blade slid under his guard and plunged into his side. He cried out in pain, his shield lowering.

“Straighten up!” yelled Garen. “Shake the pain.”

Rodian straightened, chastened at his lapse, as the shadow creatures barged into one another in their frenzy to reach the Dauntless Vanguard.

“They never stop coming!” cried Varya.

“Then we never stop fighting!” answered Garen.

Though she wanted nothing more than to flee this haunted clearing, Lux walked toward the young boy, her hand slipping to the dagger at her hip. His eyes rippled with darkness, nightmares waiting to be born from the rich loam of human frailty. She felt a cold, calculating intelligence appraise her.

Luca nodded and smoothly rose to his feet. Muttering shadows gathered at the edge of the clearing, monsters and terrors lurking just out of sight as they moved to surround her.

“You have nightmares aplenty,” he said. “I think I’ll crack your skull open with a rock to scoop them out.”

“Luca, this isn’t you,” she said.

“Tell me, who do you think it is?”

“The demon in that tomb,” said Lux. “I don’t think it was as dead as people thought when they buried Fossian.”

Luca grinned, his mouth spreading so wide the skin at the corners of his mouth tore. Rivulets of blood ran down his chin.

“Not dead at all,” he said. “Just sleeping. Healing. Renewing. Preparing.”

“Preparing for what?” said Lux, forcing herself to take another step forward.

The boy tutted and wagged an admonishing finger. Lux froze, unable to take another step. Her fingers were locked around her dagger’s grip.

“Now, now,” he said, bending to pick up a sharpened stone. “Let me cut out a nightmare first.”

“Luca,” said Lux, unable to move, but still able to speak. “You have to fight it. I know you can. You have magic within you. I know you have—that’s why you ran away isn’t it? That’s why you came here, to be next to someone who defeated a demon.”

The thing wearing the flesh of the boy laughed, and the grass withered around it at the sound.

“His tears were like water in a desert,” it said, coming forward and circling her as if seeing where best he might crack her skull open. “They woke me, nourished me. I had slept for so long I had forgotten just how sweet the suffering of mortals tasted.”

The boy reached out and stroked her cheek. His touch sent a cold spike of terror through Lux. He lifted his finger away, and a smoky thread followed. She gagged as the fear of drowning filled her. A tear rolled down her cheek.

“I made him sleep, and his dreams were ripe with horrors to be made real,” said the boy. “His power is slight, a glowing ember compared to the furnace that burns in your flesh. It gave me little in the way of real substance, but childish fears are a banquet after I had gone so long without. Demacia is a terror to his kind. To your kind.”

Lux felt her magic recoil from this creature, the darkness filling the clearing pressing her light down into little more than a spark. She tried to restrain it, knowing that even a single uncontrolled spark could begin a conflagration that would devour an entire forest.

“They hated him. Luca knew that. You mortals are always so quick to fear the things you don’t understand. So easy to fan those flames and draw forth the most exquisite visions of terror.”

Lux flexed her fingers on the leather of her dagger’s handle, the motion painful. But pain meant she had control. She used it. She nursed the building spark within her, kept it apart from her terror, and let it seep slowly back into her body.

“Luca, please,” she said, forcing each word out. “You have to fight it. Don’t let it use you.”

The boy laughed. “He can’t hear you. And even if he could, you know he’s right to fear what his own people would do if they discovered the truth. That he is the very thing they hate. A mage. You of all people should know how that feels.”

Pain spread along Lux’s arms, and moved through her chest. The boy’s black eyes narrowed as he sensed the build up of magic.

“I know all too well,” she said. “But I do not let fear define me.”

Lux thrust her dagger toward the boy with a scream of pain. She didn’t want to hurt him, only to let the metal of the blade touch him and pass a measure of her light to him. Her limbs burned, and the blow was clumsy. The boy jumped back—too slow. The flat of the blade brushed the skin of his cheek.

The moment of connection was fleeting, but it was enough.

The Dauntless Vanguard fought with brutally efficient sword cuts and battering blows from their shields, but they could not fight forever.

Eventually, the shadows would drag them down.

A pack of squirming things with grasping arms attacked from the left, fouling Diadoro’s swings with their bodies. A blow glanced off his shield and hammered into his shoulder guard. He grunted and punched his sword into the belly of a dark-fleshed beast with the head of a dragon.

“Step in!” admonished Sabator. “Keep them at bay!”

Garen threw a sword cut into the writhing darkness, a backstroke to the guts and a thrust to the chest. In deep and twist. Don’t stop moving. Movement to the right—a howling insect-like skull with fangs like daggers. He slashed it in the eyes. It screamed and burst apart in smoke and cinders.

Two more came at him. No room to swing. Another pommel strike, stove in the first’s chest. Stab the other in the belly, blade out. The monsters withdrew. Garen stepped back, level with Varya and Rodian. Each was slathered from helm to greaves in ash.

“We hold the line,” said Garen.

“For how long?” asked Diadoro.

Garen looked to the north, where a distant light shone in the forest.

“As long as Lux needs,” said Garen with a warning glance.

And the shadows came at them again.

The light poured from Lux and into Luca. Blinding and all but uncontrolled radiance exploded through the clearing. The monster within the young boy was torn loose from his flesh with a howling screech of fury and desperation. Raw white fire enfolded Lux, becoming everything around them, in its own way as terrifyingly powerful as the darkness. Its power was magnificent, but she could barely cling on to its howling radiance as it roared through her. The darkness fled before its awesome power, its shadow banished by the incandescence of the light. The growing radiance kept growing until the forest and the tomb were nowhere to be seen, only an endless expanse of pale nothingness. Sitting in front of her was a young boy with his knees drawn up to his chest. He looked up, and his eyes were those of a small, frightened child.

“Can you help me?” he said.

“I can,” said Lux, walking over and sitting next to him. “But you have to come back with me.”

He shook his head. “I can’t. I’m too scared. The nightmare-man is out there.”

“Yes, he is, but together we can beat him,” she said. “I’ll help you.”

“You will?”

“If you’ll let me,” said Lux with a smile. “I know what you’re going through, how you’re afraid of what’ll happen if people know what you can do. Trust me, it’s happening to me too. But you don’t have to be afraid. What’s inside you? It’s not evil. It’s not darkness. It’s light. Maybe it’s a light we can learn to control together.”

She held out her hand.

“You promise?” he said.

“I promise,” said Lux. “You’re not alone, Luca.”

The boy gripped her hand like a drowning man grasping a rope.

The light swelled of its own volition, impossibly bright, and when it faded, Lux saw the clearing was just as she remembered it from her visit years ago. Green grass, a hillock with a stone cairn and a slab describing Fossian’s deeds. The darkness that had so transformed the forest was now absent. The clawed trees were nothing more than ordinary, the sky a midnight-blue vault of twinkling stars. The sound of night-hunting birds echoed from the forest canopy.

Luca still held her hand and smiled up at her.

“Is he gone? The nightmare-man?”

“I think so,” she said, feeling the bitter taste of dark power diminish. “For now, at least. I think maybe it’s not in the tomb anymore, but it’s gone from here. That’s what’s important right now.”

“Can we go home now?” asked Luca.

“Yes,” said Lux. “We can go home.”

Numbing cold filled Garen. His limbs were leaden, pierced through by shadow claws. Ice running in his veins chilled him to the very heart of his soul as his vision grayed.

Sabator and Diadoro were down, skin darkening. Rodian was on his knees, a clawed hand at his throat. Varya fought on, her shield arm hanging uselessly at her side, but her sword arm still strong.

Garen tasted ash and despair. He had never known defeat. Not like this. Even when he once believed Jarvan was dead, he’d found the will to continue. Now, his life was being sapped with every breath.

A towering figure reared up before him, a horned shade with an axe of darkness. It looked like a savage warrior he had slain many years ago. Garen raised his sword, ready to die with a Demacian war cry on his lips.

A summer wind blew. A strange brightness shone in the northern sky like a sunrise.

The shadow creatures faded until they vanished entirely, like smoke in the wind.

Garen let out a breath, barely able to believe he still could. Rodian sucked in a lungful of air as Sabator and Diadoro picked themselves up from the ground. They looked around, amazed, as the last remaining shadows were banished and the townsfolk began to stir.

“What happened?” gasped Varya.

“I don’t know,” said Garen.

With Luca reunited with his grateful mother, Lux and Garen rode toward Fossbarrow’s south gate at the head of the Dauntless Vanguard. Their mood was subdued, and a palpable guilt hung over every person they passed on their way from the town. None of Fossbarrow’s inhabitants could remember anything after the execution, but all knew they had played a part in a man’s death.

“May the Veiled One welcome you to her breast,” said Lux as they passed Aldo Dayan’s burial procession.

“Do you really think he deserves such mercy?” said Garen. “He killed innocents.”

“That’s true,” agreed Lux, “but do you understand why?”

“Does it matter? He was guilty of a crime and paid the price.”

“Of course it matters. Aldo Dayan was their friend and neighbor,” said Lux. “They drank beer with him in the tavern, shared jokes with him on the street. Their sons and daughters played with his children. In their rush to judgment, any chance of understanding what caused his murderous acts was lost.”

Garen kept his gaze fixed on the road ahead.

“They don’t want understanding,” he said at last. “They don’t need it.”

“How can you say that?”

“We live in a world that does not allow for such nuances, Lux. Demacia is beset on all sides by terrible foes—savage tribes in the north, a rapacious empire in the east, and the power of dark mages who threaten the very fabric of our realm. We deal in absolutes by necessity. Allowing doubt to cloud our judgment leaves us vulnerable. And I cannot allow us to become vulnerable.”

“Even at such a cost?”

“Even so,” agreed Garen. “It’s why I do what I do.”

“For Demacia?”

“For Demacia,” said Garen.

Soon after King Jarvan III’s coronation, he addressed the people of Demacia. Even though there were still many foes beyond the borders of their proud kingdom, several of the noble families had begun to feud with one another, some even raising private militias to seek the favor of their new king.

This would not stand. Jarvan would not allow such dangerous rivalries to develop, and declared his intention to end the feuding by marriage. His bride, the Lady Catherine, was much beloved by the people—and courtly gossip had long held that the two shared some secret fondness for one another. The bells of the Great City rang for a day and a night in celebration, and by year’s end came the announcement that the royal couple were expecting their first son.

But all joy was forgotten when Catherine died in childbirth.

The infant, named for his father’s line, was declared heir apparent to the throne of Demacia. Torn between grief and elation, Jarvan III swore never to take another wife, and that all his hopes and dreams for the kingdom’s future would live on in his son.

With no memory of his mother, the young prince Jarvan was raised at court, groomed and guarded every moment of his life. The king insisted that he receive the finest Demacian education, learning from an early age the moral value of charity, the solemn burden of duty, and the honor of a life spent in service to one’s people. As he grew, he was also introduced to the history and politics of Valoran by his father’s seneschal, Xin Zhao. Hailing from distant Ionia, this loyal protector taught the prince about the world’s more spiritual philosophies, as well as the myriad arts of war.

During his military training, Prince Jarvan found himself facing a brash youth of the Crownguard family named Garen. The two were of similar age, and became a quick pair—Jarvan admired Garen’s sheer determination and fortitude, and Garen looked up to the prince’s tactical instincts.

When Jarvan came of age, his father rewarded him with the honorary rank of general. While it was not necessarily expected that the heir to the throne would take to the field of battle, Jarvan was determined to prove himself, with or without the king’s blessing. The lands beyond the Argent Mountains had long been contested by the empire of Noxus, creating an almost lawless frontier where foreign reavers and warring tribes threatened many of Demacia’s allies. The prince pledged to bring stability back to the region. His great grandfather had been slain by a foul Noxian brute many years ago, in the first clashes between their nations in the south. Now, that insult would finally be answered.

Jarvan’s armies won victory after victory… but the carnage he witnessed in the outlying towns troubled him deeply. When word came that the Gates of Mourning had fallen, he resolved to drive onward into Noxian territory, against the advice of his lieutenants.

Inevitably, with the battalions spread so thin, Jarvan was encircled and defeated by Noxian warbands before he even reached Trevale.

Refusing to surrender, the prince and a handful of other survivors fled into the forests, only to be hounded for days by enemy scouts. Eventually, pierced through his side by an arrow, Jarvan collapsed into the shade of a fallen tree, where he drifted in and out of consciousness. He was devastated. He had failed his family, his kingdom, and his brothers-in-arms.

Doubtless he would have died there, alone, were it not for Shyvana.

This strange, violet-skinned woman somehow carried Jarvan all the way back to Demacia, to the old castle at Wrenwall, where she proved herself a kind and worthy companion during his days of healing. At first taken aback by her outlandish appearance, the garrison commander could not deny that she had done a great service to the throne in saving Jarvan’s life.

Unfortunately, Shyvana was herself being pursued—by the monstrous elemental dragon Yvva. When the castle’s watchmen spotted the beast on the horizon, Jarvan saw a chance to redeem himself. As Shyvana prepared to meet the beast in the skies in her half-dragon form, the prince limped from his bed to marshal the garrison, and reinforce the walls. He took up his lance, and swore that they would return to the Great City with the head of Yvva, or not at all.

The battle was swift and deadly. When his men were driven in fear from their posts, it was Jarvan who rallied them. When they were wounded, it was Jarvan who directed healers to their aid. The fell creature was slain by Shyvana, but it was the prince’s leadership that had held the line. In that moment, Jarvan saw the true strength of the Demacian people—standing together as one in defense of their homeland, no matter their differences or misgivings. He promised Shyvana that she would always have a place among his guard, if she so chose.

With the dragon’s skull in tow, Jarvan journeyed to his father’s court in triumph, Shyvana at his side. Though the king was overcome with emotion at his son’s return, some of the gathered nobles quietly questioned the wisdom of allowing such a creature to stand with the prince… let alone serve as one of his protectors.

Even so, Jarvan resumed his position within the military, also playing a key role in stately matters beyond the defense of the realm. With his friend Garen now Sword-Captain of the elite Dauntless Vanguard, and Shyvana and the Wrenwall veterans training other border garrisons, the prince felt assured that Demacia could answer any emergent threat.

But the kingdom itself was changing.

The Mageseeker order had gained support among the noble families, leading to widespread imprisonment of anyone in Demacia possessing magical talents. Fear of persecution quickly gave way to resentment, and finally rebellion. When mages attacked the Great City, Jarvan was distraught to discover that his father, the king, had been killed.

Although the prince’s political stance toward mages has hardened significantly since then, he has yet to fully allay concerns over his suitability to rule. As such, he has taken the counsel of many prominent nobles—including Garen’s aunt, High Marshal Tianna Crownguard—and pledged to heed their wisdom and experience in the days ahead.

For he must examine his own conscience and allegiances carefully if he is ever to come into his inheritance, and be crowned King Jarvan IV of Demacia.

The earthquake had struck Terbisia at dawn, the earth bucking like an unbroken colt and splitting apart in gaping fissures. Lux rode Starfire through the toppled ruin of the defensive barbican, the thirty-foot high walls of sun-bleached stone looking like Noxian siege engines had bombarded them for weeks. She guided her horse carefully between fallen blocks of masonry, heading to where a makeshift infirmary had been set up within a blue and white market pavilion.

The scale of the devastation was unlike anything Lux had seen before. Terbisia’s buildings were crafted from hard mountain granite and Demacian oak, raised high by communal strength. And almost all of them had been completely destroyed. Dust-covered men and women dug through the shattered ruins with picks and shovels, hoping to find survivors, but instead, dragged corpses from the debris. Entire streets had simply vanished into the many smoking chasms now dividing the town’s districts.

Lux dismounted as she reached the pavilion, and pushed inside. She wasn’t a healer, but she could fetch and carry or simply sit with the wounded. She’d thought that seeing the scale of the devastation would prepare her for the suffering within the tent.

She was wrong.

Hundreds of survivors pulled from the wreckage lay on woolen blankets. Lux heard mothers and fathers crying for lost children, wives and husbands clinging to their dead loved ones, and, worst of all, bewildered, glassy-eyed orphans wandering lost and afraid. Lux saw a surgeon she recognized in a blood-stiffened apron washing his hands in a pewter bowl and made her way toward him.

“Surgeon Alzar,” she said. “Tell me how I can help.”

He turned, his eyes haunted and rheumy with tears. It took a moment for recognition to penetrate the fog of his grief.

“Lady Crownguard,” said Alzar, giving a short bow.

“Lux,” she said. “Please, what can I do?”

The physician sighed and said, “Truly you are a blessing, my lady, but I would spare you the horror of what has happened here.”

“Spare me nothing, Alzar,” snapped Lux. “I am Demacian, and Demacians help one another.”

“Of course, forgive me, my lady,” said Alzar, taking a fatigued breath. “Your presence will be a boon to the wounded.”

Alzar led her toward a young man lying stretched out on a low pallet bed near the back of the pavilion. Lux gasped to see the horror of his wounds. His body was broken, all but crushed by rubble, and his eyes were bound in bloody bandages. From his stoic refusal to show pain, she guessed he was a soldier.

“He dug a family from the rubble of their collapsed home,” said Alzar. “He rescued them, but kept looking for survivors. There was a second quake, and another building fell to ruin on top of him. The rubble crushed his lungs, and shards of glass put out his eyes.”

“How long does he have?” asked Lux, careful to keep her voice low.

“Only the gods know, but his time is short,” said Alzar. “If you would stay at his side, it would ease his passing into the arms of the Veiled Lady.”

Lux nodded and sat beside the dying man. She took his hand, feeling her heart break for him. Alzar smiled gratefully and turned back to helping those he could save.

“It’s so dark,” said the man, waking at her touch. “Gods, I can’t see!”

“Steady now, soldier. Tell me your name,” said Lux.

“It’s Dothan,” he said, wheezing with the effort.

“You’re named for the hero of Dawnhold?”

“Aye. You know the story? It’s an old tally against the savages.”

“Trust me, I know it well,” said Lux with a rueful smile. “My brother told it all the time when we were children. He always forced me to play the Freljordian corsairs while he played Dothan, defending the harbor single-handedly against the skinwalkers.”

“I tried to be like him,” said the young man, his breathing labored and his voice growing faint. A rivulet of blood leaked from beneath the bandage like a red tear. “I tried to live up to my namesake.”

Lux held his hand in both of hers.

“You did,” she said. “Alzar told me what happened. You’re a true Demacian hero.”

The lines on Dothan’s face eased a little, his breath rattling in his throat as his strength began to fail.

“Why can’t I see?”

“Your eyes,” said Lux slowly. “I’m so sorry.”

“What... what’s wrong with them?”

“Surgeon Alzar told me you have shards of glass in them.”

The man drew in a sharp breath.

“I’m dying,” he said. “I know that... but I should... have liked to behold the light of... Demacia... one last... time.”

Lux felt the magic stir within her, but whispered the mantra taught to her by the Illuminators to keep it from rising too close to the surface. Over the years, she’d learned to better control her power, but sometimes, when her emotions ran close to the surface, it was hard to keep the energies contained. She looked around and, satisfied no one was watching, placed her fingertips on the bloody bandage covering Dothan’s eyes. Lux eased the numinous radiance of her magic down through the man’s skull to the undamaged parts of his eyes.

“I can’t heal you,” she said, “but I can at least give you that.”

He squeezed her hand, his mouth falling open in wonder as Demacia’s light shone within him.

“It’s so beautiful...” he whispered.

“A shadow fades before the light,” the girl repeated to herself.

The words were a mantra, one she often used to put herself at ease when she felt herself losing control. Though she was only thirteen, she had become adept at using tricks like this to ease the symptoms of her affliction. But today she found the words to be little help. Today, the girl needed to be alone.

She fought to hold in the tears, avoiding eye contact with passersby as she walked briskly toward the scrutinizing glare of the sentries at the city gates. If they stopped her, she felt she might break down and spill everything to them. At least then it would all be over, she thought.

But they paid her little mind as she walked through the archway, to the open lands outside the city.

Far off the main highway, the girl found a quiet nook in a wooded hillside. Once she was sure she wouldn’t be seen, she removed a clean handkerchief from her pocket, placed it to her face, and sobbed.

The tears came fast and thick down her cheeks. If anyone had seen the girl like this, they probably would not recognize her. Everybody knew her as the fresh-faced optimist who cheerily bid them Good morning! and Nice to see you! everyday, regardless of circumstance.

The other side of her – this ugly and decidedly un-Demacian one – was a face the girl shared with nobody.

As she stanched the flow of tears with her thin linen cloth, her mind began to settle. She finally dared to recall the events that had led to the tears. She had been in the lecture room with her classmates when her gaze began to wander to an open window. The flock of fuchsia nectarflies outside were far more interesting than the drab lesson in field tactics their instructor was offering. The flies danced, not in unison at all, but in a vivacious chaos that was strangely beautiful. She had taken in their movement, feeling herself warming to the core with an intense happiness.

The warmth was familiar to her. Most of the time it could be tamed, stuffed back inside her like feathers that had leaked from a mattress. But today the warmth was... hot, with a life of its own. She felt it burning, in her teeth, threatening to explode into the world with a fan of iridescent hues as it had only done in privacy before.

For a brief moment, a thin trickle of white light leaked from her fingertips.

No! This is not for anyone to see! she thought, hoping to suppress the glow.

For the first time in her life, it felt too big. The girl had only one chance to save herself. She needed to leave. She stood and gathered her belongings.

“Luxanna,” her instructor had said. “Are you-”

“A shadow fades before the light,” she had muttered, and ran from the room without explanation. “A shadow fades before the light. A shadow fades before the light.”

As she finished drying her eyes in the calm of the woods, her feet carried her farther and farther from the city. She began to assess the cost of the incident. Word would spread quickly across the citadel that a student had stormed out of class without leave. What punishment would she receive for that insubordination?

Whatever was to come, it would be better than the alternative. If she’d stayed, she would have erupted, filling the entire building in the brightest, purest light. Then everyone would know she was afflicted with magic.

That’s when the annullers would come.

Once or twice, the girl had seen the annullers in the streets with their strange instruments, rooting out practitioners of magic. Once these afflicted people were found, they were forcibly relocated to slums outside the kingdom, never to take part in the grand society Lux’s family knew so well.

That was the worst part, knowing her family would be shamed. And her brother... Oh, her brother. She shuddered to think what Garen would say. The girl often dreamed of living in a different part of the world, where people with arcane gifts were revered as heroes, and celebrated by their families. But the girl lived in Demacia, where people knew the destructive potential of magic, and treated it as such.

As she found her situation becoming increasingly hopeless, Lux realized she was standing within view of the Galio monument. The gargantuan statue had been made long ago as a battle standard for the military, accompanying them in their missions abroad. Sculpted from petricite, Galio possessed magic-absorbing properties that had saved many lives from archmage attacks. If one believed the legends, he had even come to life at times, when enough mystical power had seeped into his mortar. At the moment, he stood still as a mountain, straddling the Memorial Road, far from the traffic of the main highway.

Lux cautiously approached the statue. Ever since she was a little girl, she had imagined the old titan keeping vigilant watch over all those who passed beneath him. It seemed to peer into her soul, judging her.

“You have no place here,” it would say accusingly.

Though it only spoke in her imagination, the girl knew it spoke true. She was different. That was undeniable. Her constant smiles and exuberance stood out glaringly among Demacia’s trademark austerity.

Then there was the glow. Ever since she could remember, Lux felt it burning in her heart, longing to burst free. When she was small, the glow was weak, and she could easily conceal it. Now the power had become far too great to stay hidden.

Burdened with guilt, Lux lifted her eyes to the Colossus.

“Well, go on and say it!” she yelled.

It was uncharacteristic of Lux, but the day had not been kind, and it soothed her soul to vent. She expelled sharp breaths of air in relief, then immediately felt embarrassment at the outburst. Did I really just yell at a statue? she marveled, and looked around to make sure nobody had seen. At certain times of the year, this road was flooded with travelers making their pilgrimages to the colossus, paying tribute to the symbol of Demacian resolve. But presently, the Memorial Road was empty.

As Lux was searching for bystanders, she heard a gravelly racket in the air above her. She whipped her head up – it had come from the top of the colossus. It was common for birds to take flight from their nests in the statue’s crown, but this was no bird. It sounded like a heavy clay pot being dragged across cobblestones.

Lux stared for a long while, but nothing stirred about the statue. Perhaps this was her mind again, working through the trauma of the day’s events. Even so, her eyes remained fixed on the colossus, daring whatever had moved to do so again.

And then it did: the eyes of the statue actually shifted. The large stone orbs physically swiveled in their sockets to find Lux in the grass below.

The girl’s face blanched for a moment. She could feel the enormous stone figure studying her. This time, it was definitely not in her imagination. Lux found her legs and ran, away from the statue, as fast and as far as she could.

Later that night, Lux entered the alabaster arch of her family’s city manor. She had walked many miles, all day long, all over the city, in the hope her parents would be asleep when she returned home. But one person was not.

Her mother Augatha sat in on a sofa in the corner of the grand foyer, glowering at the door with burning expectation.

“Do you know what hour it is?” she demanded.

Lux did not respond. She knew it was past midnight, well beyond the hour when her family were typically asleep.

“The school has chosen not to expel you,” said Augatha. “It was not an easy mess to fix.”

Lux wanted to break down crying, but she had done nothing but weep all day, and she simply had no more tears. “They almost saw it,” she said.

“I figured. It’s getting worse, isn’t it?”

“What should I do?” said Lux, exhausted from worry.

“What we must,” her mother replied. “You’ve lost control of it. Eventually, someone will get hurt.”

Lux had heard of men dying in battle at the hands of sorcerers, bodies melted beyond recognition and souls torn in two. She felt wretched, knowing she harbored any power that might be used for such destruction. She wanted to hate herself, but found herself numbed by the constant torrent of emotions she’d experienced that day.

“I’ve enlisted the help of a professional,” said Augutha.

Lux’s stomach turned. There was only one profession that dealt with her affliction. “An annuller?” she said, light of breath.

“He’s a friend. Someone I should have called on a long time ago,” said Augatha. “You can trust him to be discreet.”

Lux nodded. She knew the shame that was imminent. Even if the man told no one, as her mother assured her, he would still know.

And the cures — she didn’t want to think about those.

“He’s coming for your consultation in the morning,” said Augutha, as she walked up the stairs toward her bedroom. “This will be our secret.”

The words were no comfort. Lux was not even a woman yet, and already her life was over. She wanted nothing more than to retire upstairs to a deep slumber that would bury all her troubles in darkness, but she knew her particular troubles would not disappear with the night. The light would still grow inside her, threatening to erupt again at any moment. The annuller would arrive in the morning to perform some dreadful treatment. Lux had heard rumors, horrible rumors, of petricite ground and swallowed in potions, followed by bouts of excruciating pain. True, the girl wanted to be rid of the affliction, but no part of her wanted to experience that.

Isn’t there another way? she wondered.

Of course!

The idea leapt into her head like lightning. All at once she was filled with dread and hope, unsure if the plan she’d just thought up would work, but knowing it was something she had to try.

Under the deepening night, Lux frantically retraced her steps, back through the alabaster archway, down the boulevard, sneaking her way past the guards at the gates. To the south, she found the Memorial Road, and followed it for miles before coming to Galio’s resting spot. Her heart galloped in her chest.

“Hello?” the girl asked shakily, unsure if she wanted an answer.

Lux approached the plinth where the colossus stood, all alone in the stillness of night. She cautiously placed her hand on the cold petricite foundation. Wonder what it tastes like. I bet it’s really bitter, she reckoned. She supposed she would find out soon enough, unless her plan worked.

“Well, they say you fix magic,” she said. “So fix me. I want to be Demacian.”

She gazed up at the colossus. It was as inert and unwavering as the Demacian way of life. Not even the bats were fluttering about it tonight. What she had heard before — what she thought she saw — was something she had imagined after all, then. She removed her hand from the plinth, pondering where else she could turn.

“Small girl person,” said a booming voice above.

Lux’s head shot upward to see the statue tilting its enormous head down. Her mind raced. He knows. And he’s not going to fix you. He’s going to squash you like a bug.

“Can you... scratch my foot?” asked the colossus.

Galio watched in wonder as the girl ran away from him, her tiny head shrieking words he could not understand. Though he’d observed her for years, he never knew she could move so quickly, and loudly.

Ever since the girl was very small, Galio had seen her as she stopped by on yearly trips with her family. He would study her with fascination, straining to keep sight of her as she skipped in and out of his field of vision. Then, in the middle of play, she would suddenly remember him standing above her, and she would shy away behind her mother’s skirt. When the colossus was dormant, everything seemed to move with a hazy distortion. The world was dull, people were but flickers before his eyes.

But even then, Galio could feel something profoundly special in the girl. It was a glow, but not just a visual luminescence. Time slowed with her, and the haze lifted as something strange stirred within his stone form.

It started small. When the girl was a toddler, Galio could feel her strange warmth tickling his toes. On her second visit, Galio could feel the glow tugging at his entire leg. By the time she was ten, the girl’s warmth was so strong Galio could feel her approaching from a mile away, and would grow giddy with anticipation of her visit.

Now, here she was again, even though it was not her normal visiting day. Her power burned so intensely it had spread like wildfire across his cold innards. She had brought him life!

Now that Galio was awake, he saw her brilliance with stunning clarity. She shone like all the stars in the heavens.

And she was leaving again.

With every step the girl took, Galio felt his life evaporating, returning him to his cold, motionless state. If he went still, he would never know the girl. He had to follow.

His towering legs rumbled from the plinth, easily catching up to the girl with their enormous gait. Her eyes shot wide as she whirled toward the lumbering colossus. A concentrated beam of light fired from the girl’s fingers into Galio’s leg. The strange feeling within him intensified until he thought he might explode, scattering bits of himself all over Demacia.

But Galio did not break. Instead, he grew even warmer, and more alive. He bent down and gently scooped up the girl in his hands. She covered her face, as if to shield herself from some imminent harm.

The colossus began to laugh, like a child playing in a fountain.

“Small golden-head person,” he bellowed. “You are funny. Please, do not leave.”

The girl slowly overcame her trauma, and responded, “I... I can’t. You’re holding me.”

Realizing his offense, Galio carefully placed the girl back on the ground.

“I am sorry. I don’t often meet small girl people. I only wake up to smash things,” he explained. “Do you have things to smash? Large things?”

“No,” said the girl meekly.

“Then let us find something to smash.” He walked a few booming steps, then turned to find the girl was not following. “Are you not coming, girl person?”

“No,” she replied, even more shakily, unsure if the answer would upset the giant. “I’m sort of trying not to be noticed right now.”

“Oh. Forgive me, girl person.”

“Well. I’m going to go now,” said Lux, in what she thought was a final parting word. “It was nice to meet you.”

Galio followed right behind her. “You are walking away from your city,” he observed. “Where are you going?”

“I don’t know,” she responded. “Someplace I belong.”

The colossus tilted his head at her. “You are Demacian. You belong in Demacia.”

For the first time, the girl saw empathy in the giant, and she felt herself opening up.

“You wouldn’t understand. You’re a symbol of this kingdom. I’m just...” She searched for a word that would tell everything without telling too much. “I’m all wrong,” she said, at last.

“Wrong? You can’t be wrong. You give me life,” boomed Galio, lowering his huge boulder of a face to her level.

“That’s the problem,” said the girl. “You’re not supposed to be moving. The only reason you are moving is me.”

Galio reacted in stunned silence for a moment, then erupted with joyful epiphany.

“You’re a mage!” he thundered.

“Shhh! Please be quiet!” begged the girl. “People will hear you.”

“I crush mages!” he proclaimed. He then quickly added: “But not you. I like you. You are the first mage I’ve liked.”

Luxanna’s fear began to fade, giving way to irritation. “Listen. Even though this is all wondrous and miraculous, I’d really prefer you leave me alone. Besides, people are going to notice you’re gone.”

“I do not care,” insisted Galio. “Let them notice!”

“Don’t!” said Lux, recoiling at the thought. “Please, just go back where you belong.”

Galio stopped to reflect, then smiled as though he’d recalled something amusing. “Do that thing to me again. With your wonderful starlight!” he said, far too loudly for Lux’s comfort.

“Shhh! Stop yelling!” she urged. “Are you referring to my affliction?”

“Yes,” said Galio, in a slightly quieter tone.

“I’m sorry. I can’t always do it. And I shouldn’t do it. You have to go,” she insisted.

“I can’t go. If I leave you, I will sleep. And when I wake, you will be gone, small girl thing.”

Lux paused. Though she was mad from exhaustion, she found herself touched by the titan’s words.

“If I can do it again, do you promise to go away?” she asked.

The colossus thought for a moment, then accepted the proposal.

“Okay,” said the girl. “I’ll try.”

She screwed in her hands toward her body and thrust them forward toward Galio. To her disappointment, nothing but a tiny spark of light glinted from her fingers. She tried again, and again, getting less of a result each time.

“I must be tired,” she realized.

“Rest,” suggested Galio. “Then when you are refreshed you can give me your magic.”

“Hmm,” thought Lux, mulling the suggestion. “I can’t get rid of you, and I have no place to go. Suppose I might as well bed down.”

She began feeling around the ground for a comfortable patch of grass. Once she’d found a suitable place, she lay down and wrapped her cloak snugly around herself.

“Well, I’m going to sleep now,” she said with a yawn. “You should too.”

“No. I sleep too much,” replied Galio.

“Can you just... I don’t know, freeze yourself for a while, then?”

“I do not work that way,” said the colossus.

“Then be still and pretend you’re not alive.”

“Yes. I will just stand here and watch you rest, girl person,” said Galio.

“Please don’t,” insisted Lux. “I can’t sleep with you staring at me. Can you... turn around?”

Galio honored the girl’s wish, turning himself away from her, toward the distant lights of the Demacian capital. It was not as interesting as the girl, but it would suffice.

Making do with the modicum of privacy, Lux closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.

Once she was certain Galio would not turn around, she quietly got up and crept away into the night.

Luxanna walked quickly, knowing her first order of business was getting as far away as possible from the colossus. If she didn’t, her magic would still empower him, and he would surely come looking for her. By morning, every patrol in the kingdom would be searching for the missing Crownguard girl who had vanished in the night. They’d surely notice the walking national monument following her, and they’d know the girl must be the magical source that had awakened it.

Lux’s aching legs quickened to a sprint. She had only a vague idea of her surroundings. It was difficult to find any landmarks at this black hour of night. All she knew for sure was the Cloudwoods were nearby - their thick, towering redbarks forming the skyline to the south. It would be an ideal place to hide from any search parties, and a good foraging ground for breakfast. She could cross the forest in two days time and find shelter in one of the Vaskasian timber villages, where people were unlikely to recognize her. It was not a brilliant plan, by any stretch, but it was the best she had.

Lux could see the beginnings of the forest coming into view, its trees progressing in height like a pyramid, with the largest in the center. As she crossed the threshold of the woods, she paused a moment to grieve what she was abandoning. She would miss her brother Garen, and her beloved steed Starfire, and even her mother, but this was the way it had to be.

A shadow fades before the light, she reassured herself, and then stepped into the blackness of the dense evergreen woods.

After an hour of plowing her way through the barbed, resinous branches of the forest, Lux already found herself doubting her plan. Her stomach was growling, and any confidence she’d had in finding a clear path through the trees had vanished with the brightest moon behind the clouds. All around she could hear the snorts and rustles of nocturnal animals, and that made her nervous.

Just a little light, she thought. Surely just a little won’t hurt, way out here.

She began to conjure a luminescent orb between her hands. For a brief moment, a flicker of light danced on her fingertips, causing an audible ruckus in the creatures around her. But the light snuffed out as quickly as it came, returning all to blackness. Lux looked at the outlines of her hands, inspecting them for flaws. She wondered what could have hampered her from doing what had previously come so easily and unbidden.

It’s the colossus, she realized. It must be.

She suddenly became aware of voices in the woodland murmur. Slow, purposeful footsteps, and whispers. They were-

An arm shot around Lux’s throat and restrained her. She could sense the presence of at least two other men to her sides.

“Where are you headed tonight, miss?” asked one of the men.

Lux stammered, not quite formulating a response. The man restraining her tightened his grip.

“You’re supposed to be in the annulment slums, yeah?” he said.

“No...” Lux gasped, the man’s arm wedged firmly under her chin. “I’m not...”

“We aren’t fools, miss,” said the third man. “Come on, let’s take you back.”

Lux struggled to free her arms as the men tried to bind them with coarse rope. She concentrated, but still could not summon the magic that had apparently once been hers. She freed one hand, struck one of the men squarely in the jaw, and heard the twigs on the ground crunch as he fell. The two other men angrily descended on her.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” said one of them with a scowl. “You really shouldn’t have done that.”

The men began to tighten her bindings. They were making a point to pull the knots as tightly and painfully as possible, when the ground began to vibrate with dull thunderous beat. The men paused in dread, searching for the source of the noise, as it slowly increased in frequency and volume.

It rumbled like an earthquake, only broken up into steady rhythmic booms... like gigantic footsteps.

And they were getting nearer.

“What is it?” asked one man, too frightened to move.

The ground shook more, and its quaking was joined by the crackling of great trees being broken apart. Whatever it was, it was now in the forest and almost upon them.

“It’s... It’s...”

All looked up to see the monstrous Galio, striding toward them, a path of felled redbarks in his wake. The men ran, getting only a few steps through the trees before a giant petricite hand snatched them up high into the air. Galio glared with one enormous eye at the trembling wads of flesh held tight in his grip.

“Is it time for fighting?” said the colossus with a grin. “I will engage you!”

He opened his clenched fist, and raised the other hand as if to smash the men between his palms.

“No!” said a tiny voice. “Please stop!”

The colossus found Lux on the ground below, beating on his ankles with her bound arms.

“It isn’t right!” she shouted.

Confused, Galio lowered the men to the ground and released them. Lux heard the quick patter of the men’s feet, sprinting away from her with the urgency of hunted elk. As she wriggled out of her bindings, she gazed up at the colossus.

“I turned around and you were gone, girl person,” he said. “Why are you in the trees?”

“I- I don’t know,” Luxanna managed.

Galio reclined on a hillside, gazing at the stars with the tiny yellow-headed girl he had befriended. Neither spoke, save for an occasional sigh - not the stressful gasps that Lux had previously known. These were the sounds of two beings that had found utter contentment in each other’s company.

“I do not usually awaken for this long,” said the colossus.

“Me neither,” said the girl, with an enormous yawn.

“How do people spend time together without battle? Should we have a conversation?”

“No. This is nice,” said the girl. “I feel... calm.”

A frown crossed Galio’s face. There was something different about the girl. Something missing. She no longer shone like the stars.

“Why are you sad? You’ve cured me,” said the girl. “As long as you’re near me, I can return home and be normal.”

Galio did not brighten or look up. The girl continued her thought.

“I mean, maybe I can just come visit you every day to keep my affliction away—”

“No,” said the titan, finally locking eyes with her.

“Why not?” she asked.

“Young girl person, you are special. Since before you can remember, I have felt your gift. For so long, I wanted it near me. But now I see... I smash your gift.”

“But it gives you life.”

Galio pondered her words, but only for a moment. His mind was made up.

“Life to me is very valuable,” he said. “But your gift is everything. Never lose it.”

He got to his feet and gingerly placed the girl on his shoulder. Together, they began to trudge back toward the city to face what awaited.

The sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon when Lux returned to her family manor. Outside the city walls, Galio was returning to stillness on his plinth beside the Memorial Road, leaving Lux to face her problems alone.

A shadow fades before the light, she thought, and she opened the latch to her front door.

She entered the house to find her mother sitting in the parlor with a balding middle-aged man, who held a case of exotic medical tinctures in his lap.

“Luxanna, so glad you decided to return home,” said Augatha, through clenched teeth.

Lux looked warily at the man on the couch.

“This is the man I was telling you about,” her mother whispered. “The one who’s going to fix your... problem.”

Lux felt light-headed, as if her spirit was leaving her body to watch what she was about to say.

“You know what, mother?” she said, her voice trembling with words she’d been longing to say. “I don’t think I want to see this man. In fact, I’d like you to send him away.”

The annuller looked offended. He stood and slung his bag over his shoulder.

“No, stay,” begged Augatha. She cornered Lux and began to speak with authority. “You do not know what you are saying. This man has risked everything to help you. It is the only way you’re ever going to be Demacian. Have you forgotten your afflic-”

“I am not afflicted!” Lux cried out. “I am beautiful and valuable, and one day I will prove it to this kingdom! And if anyone has a problem with me, I’ve got a very large friend they can talk to.”

She strode upstairs to her room, leaving her mother alone with the annuller.

As Lux flopped onto her bed, she expelled a deep, easy breath. For the first time in years, her mind was as still as a pond in summer. The light that had once exploded from her unbidden was still there, but she could feel its beginning and its end, and knew that one day she could master it.

As she drifted off to sleep, she realized her mantra had always been wrong. No light could ever kill shadows.

A shadow thrives beside the light, she thought. It had a nice ring to it.

For the noble defenders of Demacia, daily life is the very model of focused, selfless dedication to the ideals of king and country. Called upon to continue his family’s long tradition of military service, Taric never dreamed of shirking that responsibility—though he would not limit or define exactly whom and what he would protect.

The young warrior trained hard, and possessed great martial skill. Even so, in his scant hours of free time, he would find other ways to serve his homeland. He volunteered with the Illuminators, tending the sick or helping rebuild homes damaged by flooding. He lent his creative talents, such as they were, to the stonemasons and craftsmen who raised monuments to the glory of the Winged Protector and the lofty ideals it embodied.

A work of art. A stranger’s life. These were the things that made Demacia worth fighting for. Taric saw every one of them as beautiful, fragile, and worthy of saving.

Fortunately, his disarming manner and innate warmth allowed him to brush aside any criticism from his fellow soldiers or commanding officers. He rose modestly through the ranks, and even fought beside a young Garen Crownguard.

Ironically, it was Taric’s steady rise that would bring about his eventual downfall—at least as far as Demacia was concerned.

Elevated to the prestigious Dauntless Vanguard, he was suddenly held to a far higher standard of conduct. No more would he be allowed to roam the forests looking for glimpses of some rare animal, neglect combat drills to sit in a tavern and listen to a bard’s simple ballad, or skip line inspections to ride out and observe the silver cloak of night settling across the hinterlands. Taric began to feel at odds with himself, and soon attracted attention as an insubordinate.

Garen urged him to shape up and do his duty. He could see Taric had the potential to become one of Valoran’s greatest heroes—and yet he seemed to be thumbing his nose at destiny as well as his country.

To keep him from demotion, Taric was seconded to serve the Sword-Captain of the Vanguard, though neither of them was particularly happy about it. However, when the older man was slain in battle along with the rest of his personal retinue, Taric was found to have abandoned his post… and rumor had it that he had been spotted wandering the cloisters of some forgotten ruined temple nearby.

Nothing more could be said. A dozen warriors were dead, and Taric faced the executioner’s block for it.

However, seeking mercy for his friend, Garen intervened. As the Sword-Captain’s successor, he sentenced Taric to endure “the Crown of Stone”—in accordance with Demacia’s most ancient traditions, he would be sent to climb Mount Targon, a trial that few had ever survived.

Though the Crown of Stone usually allowed the dishonored to simply flee Demacia and start a new life in exile, Taric took the first ship heading south, and swore to actually atone for what he had done.

The climb nearly claimed him, body and soul, numerous times. But Taric pushed past the pain, the ghosts of his dead comrades, and other tests inflicted upon him by the mountain. As he approached the summit, he was beset by a wave of new visions of loss and destruction…

He witnessed the great Alabaster Library set aflame… and still he dashed into the inferno to retrieve the heavenly poetries of Tung. He screamed in anguish as the Frostguard ran the last dreamstag into the Howling Abyss… and then leapt over the precipice himself in a desperate attempt to save it. At the gates of the Immortal Bastion, Taric slumped to his knees when he saw Garen’s broken body swinging from a gibbet… before raising his shield, and charging headlong into the waiting hordes of Noxus.

When the visions finally faded, Taric found himself at the very pinnacle of the mountain, and he was not alone. Before him stood something wearing the shape of a man, though its almost crystalline features blazed with the light of the stars themselves, and its voice was a thousand whispers that cut through Taric like a blade.

It spoke truths he had somehow always known. It spoke of the mantle for which he had unwittingly been preparing his entire life, with every decision and deed that had brought him here, now, to Targon.

And he would stand as the Shield of Valoran in great wars yet to come.

Reborn as the Aspect of the Protector, gifted with power and purpose unimaginable to most mortals, Taric has gladly accepted this new calling—as the steadfast guardian of an entire world.

As a mage born to a poor Demacian family, Sylas of Dregbourne was perhaps doomed from the start. Despite their low social standing, his parents were firm believers in their country’s ideals. So, when they discovered their son was “afflicted” with magical abilities, they convinced him to turn himself in to the kingdom’s mageseekers.

Noting the boy’s curious ability to sense magic, they used Sylas to identify other mages living among the citizenry. For the first time in his life he felt he had a future, a life in service to his country, and he performed these duties faithfully. He was proud, but lonely—forbidden from associating with anyone but his handlers.

Through his work, Sylas began to notice that magic was far more prevalent than Demacia cared to admit. He could sense glimmers of hidden power even among the wealthy and prominent… some of whom were the most outspoken decriers of mages. But while the poor were punished for their afflictions, the elite seemed above the law, and this hypocrisy planted the first seeds of doubt in Sylas’ mind.

Those doubts finally bloomed in one deadly, fateful event, when Sylas and his handlers encountered a mage living in hiding in the countryside. After discovering it was only a young girl, Sylas took pity on her. When he tried to shield the child from the mageseekers, he accidentally brushed against her skin. The girl’s magic rushed through Sylas’s body—but rather than killing him, it shot forth from his hands in raw, uncontrolled bursts. It was a talent he did not know he possessed, and it resulted in the deaths of three people, including his mageseeker mentor.

Knowing he would be called a murderer, Sylas went on the run, and quickly gained notoriety as one of the most dangerous mages in Demacia. Indeed, when the mageseekers found him, they showed no mercy.

Though he was still just a youth, Sylas was sentenced to life imprisonment.

He languished in the darkest depths of the mageseeker compound, forced to wear heavy shackles of magic-dampening petricite. Robbed of his arcane sight, his heart turned as hard as the stone that bound him, and he dreamed of vengeance on all who had put him there.

After fifteen wretched years, a young volunteer from the Illuminators named Luxanna began to visit him. Even with his shackles, Sylas recognized her as a singularly powerful mage, and over time the two forged an unusual and secretive bond. In exchange for Sylas’ knowledge of the control of magic, Lux educated him about the world outside his cell, and brought him whatever books he desired.

Eventually, through careful manipulation, he convinced the girl to smuggle a forbidden tome into his cell—the original writings of the great sculptor Durand, detailing his work with petricite.

The work revealed the secrets of the stone to Sylas. It was the foundation of Demacia’s defenses against harmful sorcery, but he came to see that it did not suppress magic, but absorb it.

And if the power was held within the petricite, Sylas wondered, could he release it…?

All he needed was a source of magic. A source like Lux.

But she never visited Sylas again. Her family, the immensely powerful Crownguards, had learned of their contact, and were furious that Lux had broken the law to help this vile criminal. Without explanation, it was arranged for Sylas to be executed.

On the scaffold, Lux pleaded for her friend’s life, but her cries fell on deaf ears. As the headsman pushed past her to raise his sword, Sylas managed to touch Lux. As he had predicted, her power surged into the petricite shackles, ready for him to unleash—and with that stolen magic, Sylas blasted his way free, sparing only the terrified young Crownguard.

He left the mageseeker compound not as an outcast, but as a new, defiant symbol of the broken and persecuted in Demacia. While traveling the kingdom in secret, he amassed a following of exiled mages… However, perhaps he always knew that even their combined power would not be enough to succeed in toppling the throne.

Which is why, with a band of his closest followers and several hardy oxen, Sylas eventually journeyed over the northern mountains to the frozen tundra of the Freljord.

There he seeks new allies, and the great elemental magic of ancient legend, so that he might return to Demacia and demolish the oppressive system that has made him and his fellow mages suffer for so long.

The first rays of dawn brushed the rooftops of the Great City, turning pale stone to gold. The air was still, and the only sounds filtering up to the high garden terraces on the east side of the citadel were the gentle chorus of morning birds and the hushed murmur of the waking city below.

Xin Zhao sat cross-legged upon a stone dais, hands resting upon his spear, laid across his lap. He stared down across the lower garden tiers, over the battlements and out across Demacia’s capital beyond. Watching the sun rise over his adopted homeland normally brought him peace… but not today.

His cloak was charred and splattered with blood, and his armor dented and scratched. Strands of his iron-gray-streaked hair—no longer the full inky black of his youth—hung wild over his face, having escaped his topknot. Under normal circumstances he would have already bathed, washing away the sweat, blood, and stink of fire. He would have sent his armor to the battlesmiths for repair, and secured himself a new cloak. Appearances mattered, particularly as the seneschal of Demacia.

But these were far from normal circumstances.

The king was dead.

He was the most honorable man Xin Zhao had ever met, and he loved and respected him above all others. He was oath-sworn to protect him… and yet Xin Zhao had not been there when he was needed most.

He took a deep, wracking breath. The weight of his failure threatened to crush him.

The mage uprising the day before had taken the whole city by surprise. Xin Zhao had been wounded in the running battles as he fought to make his way back to the palace, but he felt nothing. For hours, he’d sat here, alone, letting the cold of the stone seep into his bones as the shroud of grief and shame and guilt descended upon him. The palace guards—those that hadn’t been killed in the attack—had left him to his misery, keeping clear of the tiered garden where he sat in silence through the hours of darkness. Xin Zhao was grateful for that small mercy. He didn’t know if he could cope with the accusation in their eyes.

The sun reached him, finally, like the light of judgment, forcing him to squint against its glare.

He sighed deeply, steeling himself. He pushed himself to his feet, and took one final glance across the city he loved, and the garden that had always before brought him solace. Then he turned, and walked back toward the palace.

Many years ago, he had made a promise. Now he intended to keep it.

He drifted along corridors of the palace that seemed suddenly cold and lifeless. The servants he saw did not speak, shuffling along in shocked silence, their eyes wide. The guards he passed wore mournful expressions. They saluted, but he looked down. He did not deserve their acknowledgment.

Finally he stood before a closed door. He reached out to knock, but paused. Did his hand tremble? Cursing his weakness, he rapped sharply on the solid oak, then stood to attention, planting the butt of his spear sharply to the floor. The sound echoed along the corridor. For a long, drawn-out moment, he remained motionless, staring at the door, waiting for it to open.

A pair of patrolling palace guards turned a corner and marched past him, armor clanking. Shame kept him from looking at them. Still, the door remained shut.

“I believe High Marshal Crownguard is in the North Ward, my lord seneschal,” said one of the guards. “Overseeing increased security.”

Xin Zhao sighed inwardly, but gritted his teeth and nodded his thanks to the guard.

“My lord…” said the other guard. “No one blames you for—”

“Thank you, soldier,” Xin Zhao said, cutting him off. He didn’t want their pity. The pair saluted, and moved on their way.

Xin Zhao turned and marched down the corridor in the direction the guards had come, toward the northern wing of the palace. It was no reprieve that the High Marshal, Tianna Crownguard, was not in her office. It merely drew out this matter.

He walked through a hall hung with pennants and banners, pausing briefly beneath one of them—a standard depicting the white-winged sword of Demacia on a field of blue. It had been woven by the king’s late mother and her handmaidens, and even though almost a third of it had been destroyed by fire, it was a work of astounding beauty and artistry. It had fallen at the battle of Saltspike Hill, but King Jarvan himself had led the charge to reclaim it, Xin Zhao at his side. They’d cut their way through hundreds of fur-clad Freljordian berserkers to reach it, and Xin Zhao had been the one to lift it high, even as flames licked at its embroidery. The sight of the reclaimed standard had turned the tide that day, rallying the Demacians, and securing an unlikely victory. Jarvan had refused to allow it to be repaired on its safe return to the palace. He wanted all who looked upon it to remember its history.

Xin Zhao passed a small room, a remote library in a little-used corner of the palace that was one of the king’s favorite places to spend his evenings. It was his place of escape, where he could get away from the fussing of servants and nobles. Xin Zhao had spent many long nights here with the king, sipping fortified honey-wine, and discussing the finer points of strategy, politics, and the now-distant memories of their youth.  Jarvan was ever the stoic, stern leader in public, yet here, in this inner sanctum—particularly in the early hours, when they were deep in their cups—he would laugh until tears ran down his face, and speak with passion about his hopes and dreams for his son.

Fresh pain wracked Xin Zhao as he realized he’d never hear his friend laugh again.

Without having noticed it, Xin Zhao found himself passing by the halls of training. He’d probably spent more hours there over the last twenty years than anywhere else. That was his real home, where he felt most himself. There, he’d spent untold hours training and sparring with the king. That was where, to the king’s amusement and delight, his son had adopted Xin Zhao into the family. Where Xin Zhao had taught the young prince to fight with sword, spear, and lance; where he’d consoled him, wiping away his tears and helping him back to his feet when he fell; where he’d laughed with him, and cheered his successes.

Thought of the prince struck him like a blade to the gut. Xin Zhao might have lost his dearest friend the previous day, but young Jarvan had lost his father. He’d already lost his mother in childbirth. He was now alone.

With a heavy heart, Xin Zhao made to walk on, but a familiar sound gave him pause: a blunted blade slamming against wood. Someone was training. Xin Zhao’s brow furrowed.

A sickening feeling grew in the pit of his stomach as he slipped through the heavy doors leading within.

At first he couldn’t see who was there. The arches and pillars around the edge of the vaulted room conspired to keep them obscured. The sound of sword strikes echoed loudly around him.

Rounding a cluster of pillars, he at last saw the prince hacking at a wooden practice dummy with a heavy iron training sword. He was covered in a sheen of sweat, and his chest was heaving with exertion. His expression was one of anguish, and he attacked wildly.

Xin Zhao paused in the shadows, heart aching to see the young prince so raw and hurt. He desperately wanted to go to him, to console him, and help him through this awful time, for the prince and his father were the closest Xin Zhao had ever had to family. But why would the prince want him here? He was the king’s bodyguard, and yet he lived while the king lay dead.

Hesitancy was not familiar to Xin Zhao, nor a feeling he was comfortable with. Not even in the Fleshing pits of Noxus had he ever second-guessed himself. Shaking his head, he turned to leave.

“Uncle?”

Xin Zhao cursed himself a fool for not having left immediately.

They were not blood relatives, of course, but the prince had started calling him uncle soon after Xin Zhao had come into the king’s service, twenty years earlier. Jarvan had been just a boy, and no one had corrected him. The king had been amused by it, at first, but over the years Xin Zhao had become as close as blood kin to the royal family, and he had watched over the king’s son as if he had been his own.

He turned slowly. Jarvan was a boy no longer, standing taller than Xin Zhao. His eyes were red-rimmed, and surrounded by dark rings. Xin Zhao guessed he was not the only one to have had no sleep.

“My prince,” he said, dropping to one knee and bowing his head low.

Jarvan didn’t say anything. He just stood there, looking down at Xin Zhao, breathing hard.

“My apologies,” said Xin Zhao, his head still lowered.

“For interrupting, or for not being there to protect my father when he was murdered?”

Xin Zhao glanced up. Jarvan glowered down at him, heavy training sword still in hand. He had no good way to answer, to say all that he felt.

“I failed him,” he said at last. “And I failed you.”

Jarvan stood for a moment longer before turning and striding to one of the many weapon racks arranged around the room.

“Rise,” Jarvan ordered.

As Xin Zhao did, the prince threw him a sword. He caught it reflexively in his off-hand, still holding his spear in his right. It was another training blade, heavy and blunted. Then Jarvan was coming at him, swinging hard.

Xin Zhao jumped backward, avoiding the blow.

“My lord, I don’t think this is—” he began, but his words were cut off as Jarvan lunged at him again, thrusting his sword at his chest. Xin Zhao batted it aside with the haft of his spear, and stepped back.

“My prince—” he said, but again Jarvan attacked, more furiously than before.

Two strikes came at him this time, one high, one low. Jarvan may have been using a training blade, but if those blows struck, they would break bone. Xin Zhao was forced to defend himself, deflecting the first with a side-step and an angled spear, the second with the blade of his own sword. The impact rang up his arm.

“Where were you?” snarled Jarvan, pacing around him.

Xin Zhao lowered his weapons. “Is this how you want to do this?” he said, in a quiet voice.

“Yes,” said Jarvan, his anger simmering, his sword held in a deathgrip.

Xin Zhao sighed. “A moment,” he said, and moved to put his spear on a rack. Jarvan waited for him, hand clenching and unclenching on the hilt of his sword.

As soon as Xin Zhao returned to the center of the room, Jarvan attacked. He came in a rush, grunting with effort. There was little finesse to the strikes, but fury lent him strength. Xin Zhao turned those blows aside, using Jarvan’s power against him, not wishing to meet the heavy blows directly.

At any other time he would have berated the prince for his poor form—he was thinking only of attack, and leaving himself open for ripostes and counter-strikes—but Xin Zhao would not interrupt the prince’s justified anger. Nor would he take advantage of the gaps in his defense. If the prince needed to beat him bloody, then so be it.

“Where—were—you?” Jarvan said between strikes.

“We have been so fixated on that which we fear,” the king said, still not looking up, though he did pause from his angry scratching for a moment. “We’ve been fools. I’ve been a fool. In trying to protect ourselves, we’ve created the very enemy we sought to protect ourselves from.”

“You have nothing to say?” demanded Jarvan.

“I should have been with your father,” he answered.

“That is no answer,” snarled Jarvan. He turned away abruptly, tossing his sword aside with a sharp, echoing clang. For a moment, Xin Zhao hoped the prince was done, but then he retrieved a different weapon from its place upon one of the racks.

Drakebane.

Now the prince leveled the lance toward him, his expression hard and unflinching.

“Get your spear,” he said.

“You are not armored,” protested Xin Zhao.

Training weapons could easily break limbs, but the slightest mistimed parry with a combat blade could be lethal.

“I don’t care,” Jarvan said.

Xin Zhao bowed his head. He bent to retrieve Jarvan’s discarded training sword, and placed it carefully upon a rack, along with his own. Reluctantly, his heart heavy, he retrieved his spear and moved back out into the open area in the center of the hall.

Without a word, Jarvan attacked.

“I blame myself,” said King Jarvan. His eyes were unfocused, staring off into empty space. “I let them have too much power. It never sat right with me, but their arguments were convincing, and they had the backing of the council. I see now I was wrong to have ignored my own judgment. With this letter, I am commanding the mageseekers to halt their arrests.”

The seneschal swayed aside, deflecting the deadly strike with a circular turn of his spear, careful the blades did not hook his own weapon.

Even in the brutal contests of the Fleshing, Xin Zhao had never seen a weapon like Drakebane. In truth, the secret of how to fight with it had been lost in the reign of the first kings of Demacia, and in unskilled hands it was as deadly to its wielder as to the enemy. As such, for centuries it had been little more than ceremonial, an icon of the ruling family. However, when the prince was still just a boy, he had dreamed of fighting with it, like the heroes of old he idolized, and so Xin Zhao had promised to teach him when he was ready.

Jarvan leapt forward, bringing the lance down in a scything blow. Xin Zhao turned it aside, but the prince followed up instantly with a spinning strike that missed him by scant inches, the bladed tip slicing by his throat. Jarvan was not holding back.

Before Xin Zhao could teach the young prince how to wield the weapon, however, he had to master it himself. With the king’s approval, he began training to learn its secrets. Surprisingly light in the hand and perfectly balanced, it was a sublime weapon, created by a master at the peak of his abilities.

Forged in Demacia’s infancy by the renowned weaponsmith Orlon, the lance was a revered icon of Demacia, as much a symbol of its greatness as its towering white walls or the crown of the king. Wrought to defeat the great frostdrake Maelstrom and her progeny who had plagued the early settlers of Demacia in ages past, it had long been a symbol of the royal line.

For years, Xin Zhao had practiced with the lance every day before dawn. Only when he felt he understood it well enough had he begun to teach the teenage prince how to wield it.

Jarvan grunted with effort, lunging at Xin Zhao. The seneschal thought only of defense, stepping neatly away and always aware of his surroundings. His spear was a blur before him, knocking the lance from its intended course each time it came at him.

Young Jarvan had already been learning the uses of sword and spear and fist—as well as the more cerebral arts of military history and rhetoric—it was on his sixteenth birthday that he was finally presented with Drakebane by his father. He trained hard, sustaining countless self-inflicted injuries along the way to mastery, but he eventually fought with the weapon as if it were an extension of himself.

Jarvan pressed Xin Zhao hard, striking furiously. He gave the seneschal no respite, each attack blending seamlessly into the next. A foiled lunge became an upward, sweeping slash, which in turn came around in a pair of scything arcs, first in a low, disemboweling cut, then back across the throat. All were avoided by Xin Zhao, his body swaying from side to side, and his spear flashing to turn each strike aside.

Nevertheless, while Jarvan had long been Xin Zhao’s student, the prince was younger and stronger, and his tall frame gave him a greater reach. No longer was he an awkward aspirant; he’d been hardened by battle and training, and Jarvan’s skill with Drakebane now easily outstripped his own. Jarvan harried him mercilessly, forcing him to retreat with every step.

It took all of Xin Zhao’s considerable skill to remain unscathed… but it could not last.

He held it out to his seneschal.

For the first time since they began, Xin Zhao wondered if the prince was actually trying to kill him.

There was a certain balance in dying to the son of the man he had failed to protect.

Jarvan slapped Xin Zhao’s spear aside with the butt of Drakebane and turned swiftly, bringing the weapon around in a tight arc, the blade seeking his neck.

It was a perfectly executed move, one that Xin Zhao had taught the prince himself. Jarvan’s footwork to set up the strike was sublime, and the initial hit to his weapon was weighted just enough to knock it aside, but not so hard that it slowed the final strike.

Even so, the seneschal could have blocked it. It would have been a close thing, but he trusted his speed—even tired as he was—to have ensured the strike did not land.

And yet, he made no move to do so. His will to fight was gone.

He lifted his chin ever-so-slightly, so that the strike would be true.

The blades of Drakebane hissed in. The blow was delivered with speed, skill, and power. It would slice deep, killing him almost instantly.

The killing blow stopped just as it touched Xin Zhao’s throat, drawing a series of blood-beads, but nothing more.

“Why will not you say where you were?” said Jarvan.

Xin Zhao swallowed. A warm trickle of blood ran down his neck. “Because I am at fault,” he said. “I should have been there.”

Jarvan held the blade at Xin Zhao’s throat for a moment longer, then stepped back. He seemed to wilt suddenly, all the fire and fury draining out of him, leaving just a grieving, lost son.

“My father ordered you away then,” he said. “And you do not wish to blame him for your absence.”

Xin Zhao said nothing.

“I’m right, am I not?” said Jarvan.

Xin Zhao sighed, and looked down.

“No,” said the king. “I want you to go now.”

“I should have been there,” said Xin Zhao, weakly.

Jarvan rubbed his eyes.

“And defy your king’s order? No, that’s not you, uncle,” said Jarvan. “What was it he had you doing?”

“This is not a request, seneschal,” he said. “You will deliver this decree. Now.”

Xin Zhao nodded, and Jarvan let out a bitter laugh. “How very like him,” he said. “Always thinking of state matters. You know he missed my blade ceremony, on my fourteenth birthday, because of a meeting of the Shield Council. A meeting about taxation.”

“I remember,” said Xin Zhao.

“You delivered this letter, I take it?”

“No,” Xin Zhao said, shaking his head. “I turned as soon as I heard the bells. I made my way back to the palace as swiftly as I was able.”

“And ran into trouble in the streets, by the looks of it,” said Jarvan, indicating his battered appearance.

“Nothing that could not be dealt with.”

“Mages?” said Jarvan.

Xin Zhao nodded. “And others who had thrown their lot in with the murderer.”

“We should have executed them all,” hissed Jarvan.

Xin Zhao looked at the prince in alarm. He’d never heard him speak with such vitriol before. Indeed, he knew the prince had always been troubled by Demacia’s treatment of its mages. But that was before.

“I do not believe your father would share that view,” said Xin Zhao, in a measured voice.

“And they killed him,” snapped Jarvan.

There was nothing helpful for Xin Zhao to say, so he remained silent. That moment’s fire was extinguished within Jarvan almost immediately. Tears welled in his eyes, even as he tried to hold them back.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said. In that moment, he was a boy again, scared and alone.

Xin Zhao stepped forward, dropping his spear, and took Jarvan in his arms, hugging him tightly. “Oh, my boy,” he said.

Jarvan cried then, deep wracking sobs that shook his whole body, and tears he had not yet shed now ran freely down Xin Zhao’s face as well.

They stood clinging to each other for a few more moments, held together by shared loss, then stepped apart. Xin Zhao turned away to pick up his fallen spear, allowing them both a moment to gather themselves.

When he turned back, Jarvan had thrown off his sweat-stained shirt, and was pulling on a long, white linen tunic emblazoned with a blue-winged sword. Already he looked more composed.

“Now you will do what you were born to do,” Xin Zhao said. “You will lead.”

“I don’t think I’m ready,” said Jarvan.

“No one ever does. At least, not the good ones.”

“But you will be with me, uncle. To help me.”

A coldness clawed at Xin Zhao’s heart. “I… regret that will not be possible,” he said.

“You are the king,” said Xin Zhao. “You are Demacia.”

“Demacia is greater than any king!” snapped Jarvan. “This is not up for debate. It is an order.”

Xin Zhao’s inner sense for danger was screaming, but his devotion to duty silenced it.

“Then it will be done,” he said.

With a bow, he turned and strode from the room.

“And how many times did you save my father’s life?“ said Jarvan, suddenly stern. In that moment he seemed so much like his father, in Xin Zhao’s eyes. “I personally witnessed you do so at least three times. I know there were others.”

Xin Zhao frowned.

“My honor is my life,” he said. “I could not live with the shame of going back on my word.”

“To whom did you make this pledge?”

“High Marshal Tianna Crownguard.”

Jarvan frowned.

“When you entered my father’s service, you pledged yourself to Demacia, did you not?” he said.

“Of course.”

“Your pledge was to Demacia.” said Jarvan. “Not my father. Not anyone else. Your duty to Demacia overrides all.”

Xin Zhao stared at the prince. He is so like his father.

“But what of the High Marshal?”

“I will deal with Tianna,” said Jarvan. “Right now, I need you to do your duty.”

Xin Zhao let out a breath that he didn’t realize he had been holding.

“Will you serve as my seneschal, as you served my father?” said Jarvan.

Xin Zhao blinked. Moments earlier he’d been certain Jarvan was going to execute him… and he didn’t feel that would have been unjustified.

He hesitated, his emotions in turmoil, his mind reeling.

“Xin Zhao… Uncle,” said Jarvan. “Our kingdom needs you. I need you. Will you do this? For me?”

Slowly, as if expecting Jarvan to change his mind at any moment, Xin Zhao dropped to one knee.

“It would be my honor… my king.”

Soldiers were everywhere. Demacia’s most elite battalion—the Dauntless Vanguard—had been brought in to supplement the palace guard, and they stood at every doorway, watchful and disciplined.

Jarvan’s expression was stern, his bearing regal. Only Xin Zhao had witnessed the outpouring of emotion down in the training room. Now, in front of the palace servants, the nobles, and the guard, he was in complete control.

Good, thought Xin Zhao. The people of Demacia need to see him strong.

Everyone they passed dropped to one knee, bowing their heads low. They continued on, striding purposefully.

Jarvan paused before the great council doors.

“One thing, uncle,” he said, turning to Xin Zhao.

“My lord?”

“The letter my father wanted you to deliver,” he said. “What happened to it?”

“I have it here,” said Xin Zhao. He loosened it from his belt, and handed the leather case over.

Jarvan took it, broke the case open, and unfurled the sheet of vellum within. His eyes flicked back and forth as he read his father’s words.

Xin Zhao saw Jarvan’s expression harden. Then he crushed the letter in both hands, twisting it as if he were wringing a neck, before handing it back.

“Destroy it,” Jarvan said.

Xin Zhao stared at him in shock, but Jarvan was already turning away. He nodded to the guards standing on either side, and the council doors were thrown open. Those seated at the long table within stood as one, before bowing low. Flames crackled in the ornate fireplace set against the south wall within.

There were a number of empty seats at the table. The king was not the only one who had fallen in the previous day’s attack.

Xin Zhao was left holding the crumpled letter, stunned, as Jarvan moved to the head of the table. He looked back at Xin Zhao, still standing in the door.

“Seneschal?” said Jarvan.

Xin Zhao blinked. At Jarvan’s right, High Marshal Tianna Crownguard stared at him, her gaze dangerously cold. On Jarvan’s other side, his gaze equally icy, was Tianna’s husband, the intended recipient of the king’s letter—the head of the mageseeker order. Xin Zhao’s gaze passed between them, then returned to Jarvan, who raised his eyebrows questioningly.

Without further pause, Xin Zhao strode into the room, and threw the letter into the flames.

Then he took his place, standing behind his ruler. He hoped none of the deep concern he suddenly felt was visible.

“Let us begin,” said Jarvan.

I was young and unafraid, heart aflame with the sort of righteousness that cast out all shadows of doubt, on the day I first met Barrett Buvelle.

He watched from beside the throne of the young King Jarvan III, crowned only a fortnight earlier, as I marched into the Hall of Valor as soon as my name had left the crier’s lips. Both young men seemed interested, briefly—I know I was attractive at that age, though I did everything in my power to quiet that beauty—but the young king seemed mostly bored and tired of dealing with discontent noble families.

Jarvan waited for Barrett to whisper something in his ear before he continued. I could only see Barrett in silhouette on his left side, as his body was angled toward the king. As then, as always. “Lestara Demoisier,” Jarvan said, his voice strong and clear, echoing through the vast hall of petricite and marble. “What brings you here today?”

“Your failure.”

That got their attention, as I recall. Jarvan raised his eyebrows until they disappeared beneath his crown. Barrett, eyes wide, put his hand around his liege’s shoulder in a tight grip.

“My failure?” Jarvan asked with a mixture of confusion and amusement. “My failure in what? Not a fortnight ago was my coronation, what could I have possibly failed at since then?”

“You have been king for a whole two weeks and you have not yet addressed the plight of those beneath you.”

He rolled his eyes, thinking he knew my mind. I am sure there were many girls in those days who petitioned the king, in the hopes of elevating their own status and that of their families, and he must have tired of it. “I cannot further ennoble the Demoisiers without cause, as I have told countless other petitioners this day If you serve your country well in battle—”

“I do not speak of the nobles.”

Barrett turned to face me full for the first time with astonishment writ across his face. I still remember the gleam of his armor, stamped with the prestigious Buvelle seal right in the center of his chest. It shone like diamonds. Like his eyes.

“Then of whom,” Jarvan asked, curious, “do you speak?”

That was the opening I had been waiting for. I cleared my throat before continuing, as I knew I had much to say. I began by untucking my necklace from my blouse, revealing the lit-candle symbol of the Illuminators. “Your subjects,” I said, my tongue full of acid. “There are those in Demacia with neither home nor livelihood, and you have failed them in neglecting to provide it, even as you broker peace between the feuding nobility. There are good people, honest people who live in the streets, or slip into barns to get out of the rain at night, or go hungry for days on end because every scrap of food they collect goes to their children. If you truly seek what’s best for your kingdom, you will make them your priority... not those who already have more than enough.”

There was only a moment of dumbfounded silence from both men before Barrett let out a full belly laugh that bounced off the walls and echoed through the throne room, finally settling into my burning red ears. The embarrassment sat in the pit of my stomach like a stone.

He moved toward me then. I stepped back, wary, but he was fast. He took my hand in his and said...

Well. Regretfully, I can’t recall exactly what he said. My memory can be so clear about certain moments in my life, and so hazy with regard to others. The essence of it was that he would do what he could to personally oversee a project to house every ailing Demacian. Jarvan III gaped at his friend, as he had obviously not approved a single word of this man’s promises to me.

But Barrett never said he would do something unless he meant to commit himself to doing it properly. So he merely looked at his childhood friend until the king nodded his assent. “There should have been assistance offered to these people long ago,” the king said, looking at me with new respect. “Thank you for bringing this discrepancy to my attention. Lord Buvelle and I will get started on these plans posthaste.”

Flushed, I stared at my hand in Barrett’s, his fingers gently encircling mine. I knew who he was, of course, even then. The young king’s right hand. The man who knew the king’s heart better than any other. The man for whom the king would kill, and the man for whom the king would gladly die.

“It only pains me that it has taken us so long,” Barrett Buvelle said with a smile, “to do what was so obvious to you, Lestara Demoisier.”

That was the first time I heard him speak my name.

The last time was just over six weeks ago.

And I will never hear him speak it again.

I have been three weeks a widow, but still it has not felt... real.

Barrett’s absences, when he is called to minister to the soldiers, have always been long. Three months, usually. Kahina and I would sometimes visit him at the front, helping him distribute food and supplies and good cheer to the Demacians risking their lives on our behalf. But not often.

This time, it still feels as though he could walk back into our home at any moment, sorrow lacing his brow for what those young soldiers must go through, for the families they will leave to mourn them when they lay down their lives for their country.

He was a chaplain. He was never supposed to die in battle.

Barrett was not the only person to lose their life, of course. I am told that the battle was unwinnable. Even the Dauntless Vanguard fell before the might of Demacia’s enemies. Unthinkable, until it happened. How fitting that the place my husband and so many others died is known as the Gates of Mourning.

He wanted to hold the funeral as soon as Barrett’s body was returned to us. I told Jarvan that he needed to honor the late High Marshal first, that he could not let his love for my husband cloud his duty to those who served him with their swords and souls. Truly, though, it is because I could not bear how dreadfully real it would all become.

But funerals cannot be put aside forever. Today, I must find the strength to say goodbye.

The first four times Barrett asked me to marry him, I had said no.

“Why,” I asked, pained for him, “would you keep asking when my answer remains the same?”

“It is precisely because your answer remains the same that I must keep asking,” Barrett said with that patient smile I had come to love so deeply in the years since we had first met. He had led me to the gardens beside the palace, with the clear sky and the lilies dancing in his eyes. A more romantic setting than the first three, I admit.

“You know why I cannot accept.” I had promised myself from a young age that I would join the order of the Illuminators to help those in need, giving them shelter, providing food and work, listening to their stories, perhaps even learning some of the healing arts to help ease their pain. The Illuminators seemed to truly embody the values I had been taught as a Demacian, and all of my time spent with them had opened my eyes and my heart to the idea of a lifetime of service. And while there were lay Illuminators who were able to balance their good works with the needs of a family, those who dedicated their lives fully to the order lived a monastic existence and did not marry. This had been my intention.

“Indeed I do.” Barrett understood this about me, through our many conversations about injustice and how it could be corrected. But he had never given up on the idea that love could conquer all, even a stubborn girl’s desire to do good.

And his persistence, not just in asking for my hand but in consistently showing me through his deeds that his love for me was true, was beginning to wear on my determination. For I had come to love him as well—accidentally on my part, though through no small effort on his—and each refusal I made weighed heavily on my heart. It was all too easy to see the beautiful life I could lead with this man if only I allowed it.

My hands shook and my eyes burned as I turned from him. “You need to start looking elsewhere for a wife, Barrett, or all the kind women will have made their match already.”

“I will not marry if it cannot be to you.”

“Your family will never allow that to happen,” I said with a mirthless laugh. There was no future I could foresee in which the Buvelles did not force Barrett to marry, if only to sire an heir.

“Do you love me?”

“Of course I do.”

“And do you trust that I love you?”

“Yes. You have made that quite clear.”

“Then let me be clear about something else.” He paused. “I would appreciate if we could speak on this while... looking at one another. If that would be all right.”

I shook my head, knowing that if I looked at him right now, I would burst into tears.

“Very well.” I could hear him take a few deep breaths, presumably rolling his shoulders and attempting to relax. “My family has amassed a great deal of wealth and influence over the centuries. If you were to ask it of me... I would dedicate all of it to the good works you wish to do. To support the people of Demacia. All of them.”

My breath caught in my throat. The entire Buvelle fortune, dedicated to the benefit of the less fortunate? That would go far beyond anything I could hope to achieve with the Illuminators.

I wheeled around, suddenly incensed that he would put a price on my acceptance. “But you would not do this if I refuse to marry you? That does not make you an honorable man, Barrett, it makes you a conniver.”

Barrett blinked at me in confusion. “When did I say that you would have to marry me for such a thing? All I require to do it, is that you ask it of me. That you guide my hand, help me to understand where I could do the most good. ”

I stared at him, all of my anger dissipating like smoke. Barrett had just committed his life to me, while requiring nothing from me. And his word was truly his bond—if he said it, he meant to do it.

How could any man be like this?

He smiled again, gentle, with love in his eyes. “But I admit that I would enjoy it better with you in my life.”

And so he asked a fifth time.

And this time, I said yes.

At my request, Jarvan III had held a funeral for the High Marshal first, with citizens and soldiers coming in from all across Demacia to watch the late Purcivell Bronz be interred with the other heroes in the Hall of Valor. The streets had been lined with mourners, and Bronz had been sent off with much respect from the people he had served.

The city is not large enough to contain all the people who have come to mourn my husband.

The inns are filled. There are thousands of tents outside the walls, filled with those whose lives have been touched in some way by my husband’s good works. The funerary march has changed routes twice, winding through the streets and around the walls, so that all have the chance to touch his casket and weep.

The only thing keeping me grounded are the hands of my girls, one on each side, gripping mine steadily. I can feel their heartbeats through their palms, reassuring me that they are both alive and well and here.

Usually the throne room is filled with all of the mourners who have come to pay tribute to the fallen, but the king has had to be selective with those allowed in today. He has generously offered that the Hall of Valor be open to the public for the next week, but today it is a smaller crowd within. I recognize nearly all the faces, though I would not call most of them friends.

Nobles. Highborn. Important political figures.

Jarvan has allowed, at my behest, an Illuminator to lead the service. Mistress Myrtille, a renowned healer and a mentor to my daughter Kahina, recites out the familiar poesy:

A flame that once burned brightly has been doused.

We mourn its light, the warmth it gave us.

But though all we see is the smoke,

Remember that no light ever truly goes out.

Not when it has enkindled others

To shine brightly, to burn with passion.

Their warmth is in others, and their light still burns

As long as we honor their spark that we each hold.

The words do not bring comfort, but they are easy to say after decades of repetition, and so I say them.

I must admit, I do not pay close attention to the service. Instead, my eyes continue to wander to the cinerarium. Barrett’s armor has been refashioned to hold his ashes, as is the custom for all those who die in battle. I can picture him in those gleaming pauldrons, though I cannot imagine him inhabiting it now. It appears far too small to hold the man I knew, now. Perhaps he is not in there at all.

It feels as though no time has passed, yet it is time for the eulogies.

“Lord Buvelle was a great Demacian.”

“A skilled warrior.”

“Humble servant of the crown.”

“A safeguard of tradition.”

My face flushes red with anger. Barrett hadn’t fought in a battle in nearly thirty years, and he was more interested in aiding the Demacian people than in “safeguarding” the traditions of the noble families. Most of the people who stand to speak, do so as if they have never met Barrett, only heard of him from afar, even though I know many of them saw him nearly every day. How could they know him so little?

Yet none of these accolades feel more false than those offered by Eldred of the Mageseekers.

“Lord Buvelle was, at his core, dedicated to ridding Demacia of its worst ills.”

Eldred was no friend to my husband in life, yet he speaks as though he knew Barrett’s heart. And even though I know Barrett was indeed committed to improving Demacia, it is not in the way that Eldred means to imply.

My husband was never fearful of mages. Indeed, we both unknowingly welcomed one into our home and our family, and we would never allow her to be taken from us. Sona, our adoptive daughter, sits beside me today, her tears falling silently as she averts her gaze from the Mageseeker.

“He saw the horrors that threaten to devour Demacia from within, and he dedicated his time and efforts to supporting organizations that would eat away at that rot,” Eldred says with an eelish smile. “And his support meant the world to those of us whose lives revolve around securing Demacia’s future.”

It stings to hear my husband so misrepresented.

Jarvan III is the last to speak before the family. He catches my eye from the dais, still clutching Barrett’s ragged blue tabard, and speaks his words directly to me.

“Barrett Buvelle was as a brother to me. Without him... I would not be the man I am today. The leader I am today. I am not ashamed to say that I would be a more thoughtless man. A more reckless man. A man who could love deeply but struggled to put that love into word or deed. But his friendship changed me, helped me be the husband and father and king that I am today. Barrett touched the soul of every person he met, and made them better for it.”

“Finally,” Sona signs to me, “someone is speaking of Father as he actually was.”

It’s true. I knew that if anyone would do so today, it would be Jarvan.

“That he has been ripped away from us, when he had so much more to give this world, is simply unbearable. He was not a man for whom war was easy, but he was a man who made war easier by giving freely of his time and love to the Demacians who fought for their country. And for it... for this love, for our country and our countrymen, he was stolen from us.

“So I swear, by the swords of the Winged Protectors, that I will hold responsible those who took him from me. From all of us. If it takes me a lifetime, so be it, for my love for him did not die with him. It will die with me.”

It feels as though my heart has been plunged into ice water. The king stares at me for another moment before nodding very slightly, the way Barrett used to when he made a promise. I realize that he believes this is what I want, too.

Applause rocks through the room, echoing and echoing and growing louder. The whole hall is filled with bloodthirsty people, willing to send more Demacians to die for... for what? Revenge? False justice?

This is not what Barrett would have wanted.

Before I know it, Kahina is helping me stand, gesturing toward the dais. She looks at me with those same piercing eyes her father had and offers a quick smile. “You can do this, Mother,” she signs to me. “I am here for you.”

“We both are,” signs Sona. My sweet girls. Two gifts that my husband and I were able to give each other, and the world.

My throat is raw, and my voice comes out as a ragged whisper. I cough and try again to limited success, but the din of the room has quieted.

“I do not have the words to tell you about how much my husband cared for the people of Demacia,” I say, willing my voice to remain steady. “Instead, I will do as he would have done, and show you.” I look around at the highborn people surrounding me, with the same fire in my words that I had the first time I had stood in this room. “I am donating the Buvelle residence within the Great City to the people of Demacia, in my husband’s honor. It will become a library, populated with our own private collection, for any Demacian to use at any time.”

A ripple of murmured shock spreads throughout the room. Other nobles do not allow the ordinary citizenry to peruse their book collections. Indeed, I imagine the thought that anyone could educate themselves to be distasteful to some. Barrett and I, however, first discussed the library years ago, and he loved the idea of providing for the Demacian people beyond the basics for survival.

It is the least I could do to honor him, especially when others tried to honor him so poorly.

“Our daughter Sona has composed a song in memory of her father that she would like to play. Sona?”

Sona stands, her etwahl strung across her back, and trades places with me at the dais, where the etwahl’s wooden stand is already in place. As I sit beside Kahina once again, my husband’s cinerarium now in my arms, Kahina whispers in my ear, “He would have loved this. It is the right thing to do.”

“I know it is,” I say, and squeeze her hand as Sona plays the first few notes on her instrument.

It takes only six measures before her song has moved everyone within the Hall of Valor to tears.

“It would only be for a few months,” the Illuminator finished breathlessly. “Would you be able to help sponsor the welfare of these children while they are in our care?”

Barrett and I looked at one another. “I think we can do a bit more than that,” Barrett said with a smile. “How many of these war orphans are there?”

“We are caring for nine, though two of them are ill and they might not last the week. One of them also doesn’t speak, and we aren’t sure yet if that’s something we can heal.”

“Can you spare one of your healers until they are well again?”

“Well... yes, that should be doable.”

“Then bring them all here,” Barrett said, nodding. “We have the room and the resources to help these children, and you’ll be able to focus on finding them families to stay with long-term.”

The Illuminator thanked us profusely for opening our home. We had never housed so many children before, and never from outside Demacia. But Demacians are not the only people in the world, which means they are not the only people worth helping when they are in need.

I remember Kahina became terribly excited, and she spent time researching Ionia with her tutors to see if there was any way we could make the children more comfortable. Any holidays we could celebrate together, things like that. Barrett and I did what we could to ready the rooms, and worked together to prepare an enormous first meal for them all.

When the children arrived, we realized that none of them spoke Demacian. So Barrett and Kahina took it upon themselves to find another way to communicate, one that involved a lot of pointing and hand gestures and facial expressions. I heard the house ring with laughter that evening.

But I wandered away when I heard music. I couldn’t think of where it could be coming from, so I followed it throughout the house, checking room by room to see what I could find.

Then, I saw her. Sona. Her face so serious, playing an instrument three times her size, swaying in time with her own music. She started when I entered the room, but she didn’t stop playing.

It was the most beautiful music I had ever heard.

Barrett found me there, leaning back against the doorframe, sometime later in the evening. “Lestara? Is everything...” He lost his train of thought as soon as the music hit him.

All too soon, the small girl stopped playing and stared back at us with enormous eyes. Barrett and I exchanged glances. Then, he waved at the girl. Just a little wave, to say hello.

She smiled, and her smile was as bright as the moon. She waved back shyly, then walked over and sat just in front of us.

“I think this is the girl they said couldn’t speak,” Barrett said gently.

“I don’t think she needs to.” I remember feeling like I knew everything about her, just from listening to her play. It had felt like a conversation, one that went deeper than words.

Barrett looked back at me. After a moment, he smiled and gave me a small nod.

We hosted those nine orphaned children for about three months. Eight of them left.

Sona stayed.

The funeral reception is held in the gardens beside the Citadel of Dawn, among the lilies where I had said yes to Barrett’s offer of marriage and where we had finally sworn ourselves to one another as husband and wife. It feels like that was so long ago. It feels like it was yesterday.

My daughters sit beside me as we receive endless noble mourners. They keep me from drifting off too far into my own memories, though it is hard to stay rooted to the present.

A young woman with a trained azurite eagle perched on her shoulder approaches. I immediately recognize her as the one who saved Barrett’s life a couple years ago, and lost her own brother in the battle. I stand and grasp her hands tightly between my own. “Thank you, Quinn,” I whisper, “for giving me two more years with him.”

She blushes, embarrassed. “I... It was nothing.”

“It was not nothing. It was everything. Please, if there is anything I can do for you, you only have to let me know.” I wait for her while she wrestles with whether she would like to tell me, if this is the appropriate time. “Please. I want to help you, any way that I can.”

It takes some coaxing, but finally Quinn comes to her point. She aspires to become a knight, and asks haltingly if I would speak to the newly appointed High Marshal on her behalf. “Of course,” I tell her as I stand. She and my daughters both begin to say that I do not need to go right now, but I am quietly happy to have something else to think about today. Something to do.

Tianna Crownguard has not approached me and my daughters yet. Instead, she stands beside her betrothed and listens to him speak with nobles from other houses about his hopes for expanding the Mageseekers. None of them look particularly interested, but a Crownguard’s presence makes Eldred’s words worth listening to, I suppose.

Both Crownguard and Eldred turn as I approach and offer their own condolences. She even embraces me, as though she is not part of the reason my husband is dead. “Tianna,” I say after she has let go of me, “there is a young woman over there, Quinn, who wishes to speak with you.”

“My dearest Lestara, today of all days you should not have to worry about serving others,” she says. “Let others serve you, for once.”

“If you are offering, then I would like to suggest that the best way you could serve me would be by speaking to the young woman. She saved Barrett’s life, once.”

Crownguard purses her lips, shamed. She had been the sword-captain of the Dauntless Vanguard during the battle of the Gates of Mourning three weeks earlier, but she’d had to resign in order to stand any chance of being named the next High Marshal. It was her Vanguard who had failed to keep my husband safe, failed to keep Purcivell Bronz safe. How she had been given a higher command, I cannot pretend to understand.

“We will speak of business another day,” she says coolly.

I am not so easily deterred. “Certainly, Tianna. When?” She mumbles something about returning to the front within the week. “Then I shall have to pay you a visit in the next few days, my dear. Tea?”

To her good fortune and visible relief, one of her polished warriors pulls her away to discuss strategy or some other convenient matter. In her absence, Eldred sidles up beside me. “A library is such a generous offer to make to the Great City,” he says with a light smile.

“Yes, my husband was a generous man.”

“I am interested in seeing what your collection holds.”

I roll my eyes. “The Mageseekers will not find any book of magic within my estate, of that I can assure you.”

“Ah, but descriptions of magic can be dangerous, too, Lady Lestara.” His smile is gone now, replaced with a stony expression meant to distract from the fanaticism in his eyes. “And some books tend to reference magic with a... shall we say, a treacherous lack of judgment. Sorcery deemed morally gray, instead of the evil we know it to be. And we can’t let that corrupt the minds of the Demacian people into believing that magic is... some sort of neutral force.”

“Are you suggesting that the Mageseekers audit my collection before the library opens?” I cannot believe the gall of this man. The Mageseekers do not have the power to make those sorts of demands, especially not of the nobility. “Because I am still Lady Lestara Buvelle, head of the Buvelle family until my daughter claims the title. With all the history behind that name, I don’t believe the king would—”

“Necessitate it? Oh, but didn’t you hear?” His smile is back, and I just want to slap it off his face. “It was Noxian mages that brought down the Gates of Mourning. Who is it that you think the king wants to punish?”

“The Noxians.” I say it firmly, but doubt creeps into my mind.

Eldred confirms these doubts with a shake of his head. “The mages.”

I had wondered for some time about Sona’s instrument, but it became clear after a few years that there was more to it than beautiful music.

And I did not know how best to tell Barrett.

We had never kept anything from one another, and I knew he did not fear and hate mages the way that some others in the nobility did. But I did not know how he would react if I told him that I suspected our daughter used magic.

It took months before I felt like I knew what to say. It was before bed, a week or so before spring would become summer, on a warm and peony-scented night.

“Barrett.”

“Hm?” He was paging through the Illuminators poesy book, as he often did when it seemed like he would need to go speak with soldiers at the front soon.

“I need you to know that, as much as I love you, I would leave you if you ever did anything to hurt our daughters.”

Barrett dropped his book on the floor. “What?” he asked, astounded. “What have I done to make you think that I would ever—”

“I just need you to know it,” I said. “You would never see me or our daughters again, for the rest of your life.”

He frowned. “Has something happened?”

I remember leaning over and lifting his book off the floor, smoothing the pages out where they had bent. I needed something to do with my hands, and somewhere to look that was not my husband’s face.

“I believe that Sona uses magic.”

“...Oh.”

His face, when I glanced up at him, was unreadable.

What had I done? Had I endangered my daughter’s life? Had I destroyed my marriage?

He turned to me, a look of wild fear in his eyes. I had never seen him afraid like this before, and I did not yet know what it meant.

“How...” he asked, his voice breaking. “How can we keep her safe?”

I had never loved my husband more than I did in that moment.

The entire day has left me drained, and my daughters help me to my feet as the last of the noble guests trickle out of the gardens.

“Should we take you home?” Sona asks. I can tell she’s worried about me, she’s been doting on me all day, but I know the grief has been taking its toll on her as well.

I shake my head. “No. I... I want us to say goodbye. Just the three of us. Before we leave.” Before the throne room is opened to the public tomorrow and the throngs of mourners crowd the space too much for any semblance of privacy.

Kahina nods and goes off to find the king. Jarvan, of course, says that we can have as much time as we need. “I’ll be just outside the doors if you need me,” he says. I’m touched by this offer—the king has only ever offered to stand guard for one man, and now that man is ash. His love for Barrett, it would seem, extends to Barrett’s family as well.

I kneel beside the carving that seals his resting place. On the outside is a detailed relief of his face in profile, his name, and the Buvelle family crest. The official images, the ones that commemorate him to all of Demacia forever. But I know that on the inside, facing his ashes, is a picture Kahina scribbled out when she was a child. It is Barrett, beside two men on horseback, giving them each a water cask and a new pair of boots. A child’s drawing of a man she loved very much.

Kahina kneels beside me and kisses my cheek. “I have been thinking of how I want to honor him.”

“You honor him by living as the wonderful woman you’ve grown to be,” I say, pressing my lips to her forehead.

But she pulls back from me and lets her hands fall to her lap. “I’m serious, Mother.”

Frowning, I gesture for her to continue. I don’t know what I expect her to say, but it’s clear that she does not expect me to be happy about it.

With a long look at her father’s tomb, Kahina says, “Father’s commission needs to be filled.”

“...He was a chaplain.”

“And so shall I be. Sort of.”

“I don’t understand, Kahina.”

She takes a deep breath, which does not calm the worry in my stomach. But then she smiles, radiant. “I have decided to join the Illuminators as a knight.”

I gasp. I can’t help it.

Knightly Illuminators may do their good works in battle, coming to the aid of Demacia when they are needed. In times of peace, they are devoted entirely to the cause of bettering the kingdom.

So devoted that they neither marry nor hold titles. Not a problem for most who join, but for Kahina, the intended inheritor of the Buvelle name...

“That... is wonderful, my love. Wonderful news.” I hug her tightly and try not to let her see the worry I know has settled onto my face. “Your father would be so proud of you, as I am.”

It is true. He would be.

Sona touches the petricite seal to Barrett’s tomb, and I see that she is shaken by this news as well. Kahina joining the Illuminators would mean that Sona is the only remaining heir.

And as an adopted child, especially one of Ionian rather than Demacian blood, that could prove difficult for her.

Especially if the Mageseekers gain the sort of power Eldred seems to be anticipating.

What would happen if things got too dangerous for her to remain within Demacia? Barrett and I discussed the possibility while he was still alive, but neither of us ever thought it would truly come to be an issue. The Mageseekers have never been well-loved or admired, but with Eldred wedded to Tianna Crownguard, that might not matter for long.

I don’t know how long I sit there considering both of my daughters’ futures, but all too soon they are ready to leave. I tell them that I will stay behind, to go home without me.

I am still not ready to say goodbye.

Jarvan III steps into the hall, and I cannot tell if I am annoyed or relieved. “Lestara? Are you still here?”

“I am.”

Quietly, he comes to kneel beside me. He is a tall man, but the weight of his grief has bent his shoulders. I have never looked at Jarvan and thought of him as old, but now I can see his age clearly.

“I remember,” he says, breaking the silence, “the first time I met Barrett. As a boy.”

I have heard this story many times over the years, but always from Barrett’s perspective. I wonder how the king’s account will differ.

“I was angry at another child, a boy who worked in the stables. I think perhaps I had lost in some game or another, something of no real importance, and I was throwing a tantrum the way small children do. I was yelling so fervently that I’m told my face was turning purple.” He laughs at this, though there is still no joy on his face. “And Barrett came up to me and started in on me, asking me what made me think this poor stable boy deserved my abuse, with that damned smile of his.”

“The one where he’s being so patient with you.”

“Exactly. The worst sort of thing for a six year old to see, when he’s crying so hard he can’t breathe. So I start shouting at him instead. ‘Do you know who I am?’ And he just patiently answers that of course he does, and he would have expected better of me than that.” He shakes his head, and I swear I can see tears on his cheeks. “He impressed me then. Didn’t care that I was a prince, just thought that I should have been better. That calmed me down, and when the tears stopped I asked him his name.” This smile is real, full of the love for this boy in a memory. “As I said before, he made me a better man.”

I can feel my own tears starting again, hot behind my eyes. “Did he?”

“What do you—”

“Barrett would not want his death avenged.”

Jarvan knows I’m right. I can tell because his face loses every bit of color. “Not everything we do is what the dead would have wanted from us,” he says, voice tinged with sadness and steel. “But the living have to go on finding ways to live. Ways to move forward.”

I know there are things I could say to him, but none that would get him to change his mind. Jarvan III is a man who, like my husband was, is as good as his word. He will do what he chooses once he has decided to do it, and nothing can stop him from it.

So we sit there together in silence for a little while longer. I stand, wishing that I could have had more time alone with my beloved, but the king shows no sign of moving and I don’t care to sit beside him any longer.

As I start toward the doorway, though, I hear Jarvan speak again. “You made him a better man, Lestara. I hope you know that.”

“I do. He never failed to tell me so.”

Suddenly, the King of Demacia stands and wraps me in a tight hug. I can feel him start to shake as he tries to hold back more sobs.

This is the moment it hits me.

Barrett is gone. He’s really gone.

My own tears start to fall, and soon I’m gasping for air, unable to breathe. It feels as though all of the breath has been wrung from my body, and all I have left is burning tears.

We cry in each other’s arms, unable to speak for the hideous grief that chokes us both. I cannot let go or I would fall to the floor.

I don’t know how long we stay like that. Seconds, minutes, hours. But eventually my breath comes back to me, and I stand there and breathe, feeling Jarvan calm as well.

“I’m having trouble remembering things about him,” Jarvan whispered. “It’s like my mind always trusted that he’d be there, so there was no reason to... to catalogue his laughter, or remember the exact way he’d say something profound. But I... I need some of his words, Lestara. Something that will allow his voice to echo in my mind again. Please.”

I think for a moment, but... the things I remember best about him are not memories I want to share with Jarvan III. They are mine, moments between Barrett and me that are my own treasures.

So I shake my head. “I don’t remember his words, not exactly.” Then, for the first time in three weeks, I feel myself start to smile. It feels foreign to me now, but I still remember how to do it somehow. “But I remember what he did, and how he made me feel. And that’s all anyone can hope to leave behind. It’s the only legacy that matters.”

Far from the Citadel of Dawn, Sona dragged her trunk out from beneath her bed, trying to keep from waking her sister sleeping down the hall, and began emptying her closet. Almost all of it was the things she would wear when performing, and very little of it was particularly practical. Certainly it was not the usual attire for a runaway teenager. But if she was going to support herself away from home, she would need her music and her performance skills to do it.

In the three weeks since her father had died, things already felt so different in Demacia.

She knew that the war the king wanted to wage would not be against the Noxians. It would be against people like her... and Sona was all too aware that her mother could not protect her the way that her father could, as the king’s best friend.

So she was leaving. Leaving before anything else could go wrong. Leaving before anyone could stop her.

Or so she had hoped. Sona heard the front door open—that would be her mother, finally returning home. She can’t stop me, she thought as she ran her hand along the side of her etwahl. I can make sure she doesn’t.

Lestara took one look through Sona’s door and nodded, her hands settling comfortably and easily into the signs as she told her daughter in no uncertain terms, “I’m coming with you.”

Sona chased after her mother as she strode toward her own bedroom. “Mother, you don’t even know where I’m going!” she signed frantically as soon as Lestara could see her hands.

“It doesn’t matter. I’m going with you. I’ll pack my things now, we’ll leave within the week.”

“Mother—”

Lestara gave her daughter a sad smile. “Sona. When have you been able to talk me out of anything once I’ve set my mind to it?”

And with that, she walked away.

Sona didn’t realize she was crying until she looked out her window and felt the cold night air across her face.

This isn’t fair, she thought. I don’t want to leave. This is my home.

But was it? Was it still? With her father gone, could it ever be again?

As she often did when she did not know what else to do, Sona sat down at her etwahl and began to play.

The mournful melody drifted out through her window echoing down the streets of the Great City, through the Citadel, even past the walls. Those who heard it did not know why they began to weep.

But Sona knew.

They cried for the death of a man without equal.

And they cried for the country he had once bettered with his presence, now forever changed in his absence.

Sona knew. And so she wept, and she played.

Quinn and her twin brother, Caleb, were born in Uwendale, a remote mountain hamlet in northeastern Demacia. It was a thriving village of hunters and farmers, protected by rangers who patrolled the wilderness and drove off any dangerous creatures wandering down from the high peaks.

When the twins were still young, King Jarvan III visited Uwendale on a tour of his kingdom. Quinn and Caleb thrilled at the pageantry of the knights in his entourage, resplendent in their gleaming armor. Their father, a weaponsmith in the village, later saw them pretending to bravely defend the land themselves, and fashioned simple weapons for them to play with.

But as they grew, they spent every moment they could outdoors with their mother—a warden among the local rangers. She taught them how to survive in the wilds, how to track beasts, and most importantly how to fight. Quinn and Caleb became a formidable team—with her keen eye for trails, his skill at baiting their prey, her aim with a bow, and his prowess with a hunting spear.

But one expedition ended in tragedy.

Quinn and Caleb, now rangers for Uwendale, were hired to accompany a party of nobles from the capital as they hunted a giant tuskvore—a predator known for its thick hide, long horns, and ferocious temperament. But they failed to kill the creature outright, and the wounded beast turned on them. The twins were quick to intervene, with Caleb’s spear putting out one of the monster’s eyes, and Quinn driving off the tuskvore with her arrows... but not before it gored Caleb with its deadly horns.

The leader of the party, Lord Barrett Buvelle, helped Quinn bury her brother near where he had fallen. But all could see his death had broken her.

Unable to move on, she would return to the gravesite, and the joy she had felt as a ranger began to dim. Her prowess in the wilderness waned, and she started making mistakes—she missed easy tracks, and her aim was off.

A few months later, Lady Lestara Buvelle visited Quinn’s family. The noblewoman was grateful that Quinn had saved her husband’s life, and asked what she could do to repay them. Quinn could think of nothing. She thanked Lady Buvelle, and politely turned her away.

A year to the day after Caleb’s death, Quinn returned to his grave, as she so often did. Lost in grief, she didn’t hear the approaching tuskvore, its one eye marking it as the very beast that had slain her brother.

The monster charged. Quinn fired arrow after arrow, but to no avail, and she knew it was her doom. Just then, a majestic bird swooped in—an azurite eagle, a breed long thought extinct. The eagle’s talons and beak ripped bloody gouges across the tuskvore’s face, but the creature was resilient, its horns tearing into the bird’s wing.

Quinn fired her last arrow as the monster charged her again. This time her aim was true, and the shaft flew right down its gullet, felling the creature in a heartbeat.

Though the eagle was injured, she approached with caution, for such birds had been known as vicious and untamable hunters—but instead, she saw in his eyes a deep well of kinship. Quinn bound the eagle’s broken pinion, and returned to Uwendale with him. She named him Valor, and the bond that formed between them rekindled the fire in Quinn’s heart. Once more, her thoughts turned to serving Demacia in battle, as a knight.

Her mother reminded her that this would require sponsorship, and that was far beyond their family’s humble means. But her father urged her to seek out Lady Buvelle, who had already offered recompense for service to her noble family, in the capital.

With his help, Quinn crafted a new weapon worthy of a knight, a finely wrought repeater crossbow capable of firing multiple bolts with a single pull of the trigger. Quinn and Valor then set out for the Great City together.

Lestara Buvelle gladly vouched for Quinn, even paying a personal visit to High Marshal Tianna Crownguard to petition for her. Within a week, Quinn took her oaths as a ranger-knight of Demacia.

Now, having brought renown to the rangers of Uwendale, she prefers to remain out in the hinterlands, never staying within the walls of the outlying towns for long. Quinn rarely pulls rank with the rangers who report to her, instead deferring to their specialized skills and experience in the field—a stark departure from the rigid hierarchy of the rest of the military.

Quinn and Valor have ventured far and wide in service of Demacia, risking journeys into the icy Freljord and deep within Noxian-held territory. And with each mission, their unique bond has helped ensure the security of the kingdom’s borders for generations to come.