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Within the long-lost kingdom of Camavor, there once lived a village of people far from the throne. It was here, in the rural colonies, where a humble seamstress made her beloved doll, Gwen.

What Gwen can remember of her past, she remembers with love. The seamstress and the doll spent their days crafting, scissors resting in Gwen’s still hands as her maker stitched nearby with needle and thread. At night, the two could be found crouched under the dinner table, the seamstress challenging Gwen to makeshift duels, the clash of silverware against scissors echoing in their candlelit kitchen.

In time, the games stopped and the light faded. Gwen could not understand why, but whenever she struggled to recall details, she felt a twinge of pain, tied to a man whose name and face escaped her. As her memories washed away with the ocean tide, Gwen lay still for centuries, quiet and forgotten.

Then one night, her eyes opened. Gwen awoke for the very first time on a shadowy beach far from her home. By magic unbeknownst to her, she had been transformed into a living girl who could move her hands and feet—all on her own!

Gwen took to life with joy. She skipped across the sand, amazed by how far her eyes could see, how wondrous every pebble was to her touch, and how incredible the wind felt on her back. Along the coast, scattered debris left abandoned for a millennium caught her attention. Lying beside broken chests were oddly familiar tools.

Scissors. Needles. Thread.

Gwen recognized them immediately. These were her maker’s tools. When her fingers touched them, a burst of mist glinting with light flowed from her hands. To her, it felt safe and warm, like the soothing embrace of a hallowed past.

But Gwen was not the only one drawn to this magic.

Lurking in the isles, a different mist swarmed. Black in color, it coiled and twisted, forming into fearsome wraiths. Something within Gwen’s newfound presence attracted them—something they hungered for with obsession.

As the wraiths came for her, Gwen was undeterred. She thrust her scissors at them. To her delight, more of her mist filled the air, enchanting the size and strength of her tools and turning them from mere steel into spectral magic.

But the wraiths were relentless. They swelled in number, fueled by the ever-growing Black Mist. Gwen began to feel a tragic, strangely familiar pain. Surrounded by wraiths, suppressed memories surfaced. She recalled images of her maker, sick and wounded, lying in anguish. Near her was a man whose face finally returned to Gwen.

Viego.

Remembering his name brought Gwen to her knees. Wistfully, she reflected on the bygone moments spent with her maker—a happier, simpler time—and stole one final glance at her scissors...8<-8<-8<-8<-

It was then Gwen realized something amazing. Her maker, victim to that man’s twisted vanity, was not fully gone. The seamstress’ tools, the very tools that first sewed and stitched Gwen together, were now in her hands. Gwen believed this was no accident. She knew, deep down, her maker was still with her, still fighting.

This was a gift Gwen would not take for granted.

Grasping needles and thread, she spun clouds of Hallowed Mist to push back the swarming wraiths. Her scissors slashed hard and fast, reminiscent of those blissful nights when her maker imagined grand battles beneath their kitchen table. Soon, the wraiths were no more.

Though triumphant, Gwen recognized this was only the beginning. She could sense these wraiths and Viego were linked, both responsible for the spread of immense pain. With no time to lose, she resolved to track the Black Mist and stop it at any cost. Gwen expected this endeavor to be strenuous, yet she reveled in every second of being alive—for who knew how long this blessing would last?

Having been given a unique chance at life, Gwen chooses to be an indomitable, positive force against all odds. She journeys across Runeterra, determined to restore joy to those who are hurt and suffering. To Gwen, each moment is precious, and each step driven with purpose.

Each time Viego thought of her face, it looked a little different.

Sometimes, the eyes were just too far apart, or too close together. Or her cheeks were a little too thin or a little too wide. Sometimes, her hands lacked the calluses of a seamstress, but other times, they were gnarled and thick from long days holding scissors and needles. She wore a gown some days, and others, a simple work frock, and on others still, she wore nothing at all. She was never the same, but always the same, never there, but always present. A ghost of the heart Viego no longer possessed, rent open when... when...

Viego, on his shattered, blackened throne at the bottom of the world, slammed his king’s blade deeply into the rock beneath, cracking the obsidian and sending a brutal tremor across the entirety of the Shadow Isles.

To his left lay a painting he could no longer bear to look at, for the fair Isolde’s countenance had been too perfect to lay eyes upon, too lovely to grant him any peace or respite. He had torn her away, leaving only the image of a foolish young king who had believed the world was kind centuries before, but who now was rightfully dead.

Or if not dead, something else.

Viego could not remember much of his old country that was not twisted by shadows or anguish. In his memories, he stepped out upon the sandstone streets and only saw Isolde before him. Every fresco on every wall contained her within a painted world that only he could touch, only he could see. Yet when he went to reach for her, the illusion broke away, and he was here, surrounded on all sides by the putrid waters that had stolen her all over again.

Viego ripped his blade from the ground and stood, smashing its great heft into the floor and walls as he wailed. Then he was still for a long while, regarding the ancient painting from the old kingdom as if he had seen something new. Regarding himself as he was before the Isles had been swallowed up by darkness.

“Viego,” he said. “So handsome. So young. What became of you, Viego? Where have you gone?” He dropped the painting to the floor, its frame cracking awkwardly as the canvas crumpled beneath it.

“Where are you, Isolde?” said Viego. “Why won’t you come back to me?”

But he already knew the answer.

To most, the Black Mist is a plague, a vector for monstrous, life-sucking wraiths to assault the living and steal them away until the sun dies and the world crumbles into nothing.

To Viego, it is his great, unending sadness, pouring ceaselessly from his broken heart. A testament to his love, of better days long gone by, and a cruel reminder of what was taken from him so long ago.

It is this very Mist that scours the land, tendrils infecting everything with their grim power, draining the life from whatever they touch until all that remains glows with the soft, necrotic green of the Ruination. Yet this, too, has a purpose, for as Viego’s sadness ebbs and wanes, the Mist surges forward, searching as if drawn to something... something old, familiar, safe. The wraiths and spirits that travel within it do what they will, but the Mist itself, no—it grasps ceaselessly for her.

Everything Viego does is for her.

And now, it has found something, far from the shores of the Isles, far past the docks of Bilgewater and the coasts of Ionia. Something on the mainland, hidden within a modest city at the edge of a river. The object calls to Viego, screams for Viego, demands his attention at all costs. And though the people wail, though they run from the blanket of death that rolls softly across their homes and fields, though the wraiths shriek and the horrors stir to feed, Viego hears but one voice, and one voice alone.

“Viego,” he imagines it says, for he cannot make out the words.

The Ruined King bursts from the fog like a hungry shadow, tearing through the first guard he sees as he lifts his blade high above the ground. The man’s face contorts in pain as his body melts away and his spirit is absorbed into the Mist, but Viego barely pays him any attention before he brings his sword down upon the second. Everywhere around him, ghouls feast upon the living, tearing them apart as their souls are dragged away to join the king’s legions.

Searing flesh sails through the air, arrows tumble across space, swords clatter, and warriors fall.

It does not matter to Viego.

He raises a single hand before the city’s great wall, and the Mist rushes forward, stones falling away as the structure becomes tainted with decay. Viego simply steps across the threshold, and suddenly, he is through. He cuts down two more men as he moves silently toward the source of the voice, then another. They mean nothing. None of them bear any weight, and not one matters at all. Their spirits simply rise behind him, to do as he wills.

The ruler of this city now stands before him, a proud man protecting a treasure of some kind, Viego is sure. But as a fellow leader, as a skilled warrior, perhaps he would make a better vassal than hungry spirit.

“Stop,” says Viego, raising a single hand once more. The Mist, the wraiths, the horrors, the fighting—everything seems to freeze on the Ruined King’s command.

“Behind you is a treasure you could not fathom the importance of. I will see it returned to me, and in exchange, you will serve me personally.”

The man seems to stumble over his words, grasping at something he cannot quite muster the courage to speak. But Viego gives him time, and slowly, the words form on his lips: “If I give you this treasure, will you spare the city?”

The Ruined King seems disappointed. Whether he ponders an answer or reflects on the situation, this man will never know, as Viego suddenly appears above him, his great blade slicing down through the heart of this small, frightened warrior-king. His body slides harmlessly down the massive greatsword, as blackness spreads across his skin.

Viego rips the door behind him open, and there, the treasure lies.

An old, worn-down music box, a gift from Viego’s wedding day, whispering something he cannot quite hear. It seems possessed by grief, by boundless, immeasurable sorrow, but Viego simply holds it before his eyes, imagining the soft smile that will surely dance across Isolde’s face the day he sees her again.

“What have they done to you, my love?” he coos, as the man he slaughtered slowly rises from the earth, ghostly greens and blues throbbing from between the cracks in his skin.

“Do not worry,” he assures the music box. “I will find you. It is simply a matter of time.”

And with that, Viego is gone, vanishing as wraiths devour the city.

There’s a saying on my island. “Only through stealing our breath can the wind speak.” You want me to describe the Black Mist that greeted me when I first arrived in the Ionian village, hood raised, relic cannon on my back?

The Mist steals words too. The screams of those who die within.

Once, they were my screams—but I’m alive now.

I felt the warmth where Lucian’s hand touched my shoulder as we stepped off the boat onto Ionian soil, somehow reaching through my walls the way only he can. The way he’s the only fool stubborn enough to try.

To learn the one thing that gets through my armor, and all the rules beneath, is love.

“You go high, I go low?” I asked, feeling his warmth go cold as he considered. For a moment, he didn’t see me standing before him. He saw the woman he tried to save, who was cursed, always running. He saw the scythe, swinging toward her… He looked straight into her eyes, even as he looked into mine.

“I go low,” he said, leaving other things to silence. And now his hands were on his guns. “Senna…” His voice broke with the weight of the memory.

“It’s okay,” I said softly. I could remember that woman too.

On the horizon, darkness swirled, casting even darker shadows onto a village carved into stone, deluged by heavy rain, and worse. Somewhere in that darkness was light. Another Sentinel who’d called us here.

I’d have to fight my way to it.

The path up the mountain to the village was nearly worn away by centuries of storms, washing away everything but the toughest crags… if that’s the right damn word. I could feel the wind pressing against my hood, the spray of the ocean hard against my skin, as if the world were pushing me back, warning me of the darkness ahead. But none of that compared to what hit me as a howl rose up, roaring through the village…

It was my curse. The Mist knew I was here. It would come for me before anyone else.

“Must be time for my daily ambush,” I muttered, unmoved, and from a horizon black with death, souls poured forth. Drawn to me as I drew breath.

As I drew my weapon.

The relic stones of fallen Sentinels moved as one, each held by too many hands before mine. Men and women, fathers, sisters, all lost to darkness. But when I held my weapon, I held their light, gleaming in the gun’s two barrels.

A tendril of Mist hit me as the wraith within took shape. Staggered by the blow, I stumbled back, catching my footing just before falling toward the rocks below. Thunder pealed as the screams of souls joined the rain and crashing waves that besieged the island. But the flash of light that followed wasn’t lightning.

It was my relic cannon, the shot boiling the wraith into shadow.

It required control. It required focus. I needed to fight the Mist with every fiber of my being. And I could not stop. Not for a moment of my life.

With every shot that burned a wraith away, another was revealed. I was so close to the village now, I could see new wraiths rising, sent spiraling toward me.

Into blessed light.

“Anabal, are you there?” I called out. I’d met him only once, when Urias brought me to a meeting of Sentinels. It was rare for Sentinels to gather, but something had frightened Urias that made him call them all together. He never told me what it was, but I could tell by the way the others looked at me…

It hurt more when they didn’t know. When they tried to get past my armor, only to find the reason it was there.

Still firing, I advanced further into the village. The wraiths moved fast, swooping into buildings nearly as old as the island itself, carved from the same stone. But there was order in the chaos. The wraiths were circling above. They wanted something. Not just life. Not just souls. Not just me…

“Anabal!” I called again, barely hearing myself over the storm.

“Over here! Hurry!” a panicked voice responded. It was the voice of a girl… and then her light joined mine in the darkness.

Anabal’s apprentice, Daowan.

She stood above a crumpled body, two figures in the dark. The light of Anabal’s relic-stone glaive glowed dully on her face, concentration clear on her brow as she defended her fallen mentor.

He had managed to pass the torch, then… his relic stone was not lost.

“We have to get out of here,” the girl said with a shudder. “We have to get the villagers out of here. I can still hear them. It must be them…” She paused and looked down at the shape at her feet, in confused agony. “I can still hear him…”

But even as her knuckles grew white, clenching the haft of her glaive, I put my relic cannon on my back. I reached out gently and took her shoulder.

“We’re going to get through this,” I said. Beyond her, I saw the entrance to the village catacombs. Swarming with wraiths. “All of us,” I added softly.

Whatever the Mist wanted, it was there.

The catacombs had been carved out by countless floods. As we left the village behind, heading underground, still the storm made itself known, water rolling down the walls around us. But if we were going to drown in the depths, it wouldn’t be from rising sea, or falling squall…

It would be in the Black Mist that rolled like a wave to meet us, swallowing our light in a liquid roar.

I could hear the screams of the people from my village, torn away when I was just a girl and first saw death. I could hear the echoes of my own, and see the look on Lucian’s face, when death first saw me. I was hit by the rage and fear of the people still dying above, their cries in a language I couldn’t understand, but speaking of pain I knew all too well.

Wraiths rose up throughout the catacombs, trapped in a rictus of the agony they meant to inflict. But no matter how loud the screams of the living, the sound could never drown out their own. And no matter how brightly my light burned, it could never hurt them worse than when the darkness returned.

And so instead… I embraced them, before death could.

My call was irresistible. I could draw the Mist to myself, away from others. I felt death rush in, push the lie of my body away. As the Mist clung to me, one by one, it let the souls go. All who had been drawn here. All who had died above. For a moment, I thought I saw Anabal…

Only one vague shape lingered, a will still slowly awakening. It hovered for a moment before turning to face me, rage burning where there were no eyes.

“No,” I whispered through the shroud of death that had transformed me into a wraith. “You don’t get to speak. You listen.”

Pushing the Mist into my gun, I fired all the pain and fear I’d gathered back at its source, where it was deserved. As darkness collided with darkness, the light within me glowed. Life wouldn’t let me go. I felt my body return, as the last of the Mist left me. With a gasp, I fell to my knees.

“What did I miss?” a voice asked, emerging from deeper in the tunnels.

“You know. The usual,” I said coolly, though I was still catching my breath.

“Ruined King raiding catacombs to find who knows what?” Lucian asked.

“Pretty much,” I answered. I looked up at Daowan, realization dawning on her face. Her glaive was still pointed at me.

There’s a saying on my island. “Only through stealing our breath can the wind speak.”

In the roaring clamor of the Black Mist, I hear the words of the dead.

And I’m here to give their voices back.

From an early age, Lucian wanted nothing more than to be like his father, Urias, who was a member of the ancient order of the Sentinels of Light. While Lucian remained home in Demacia, Urias ranged far and wide, protecting the living from the wraiths of the Black Mist.

Urias would regale Lucian with tales of his adventures, where courage and ingenuity carried the day. Lucian hung on every word, picturing himself saving the people of Runeterra at his father’s side. But Urias did not want his son to follow in his footsteps, hoping to keep his family safe from the dangerous life he had chosen.

Lucian waited for the day he would become Urias’ apprentice, but it never came.

Instead, Lucian stayed in Demacia, where he found himself increasingly at odds with the kingdom’s culture. It especially rankled him that Demacia would exile peaceful mages to the hinterlands. Lucian found fulfillment in safeguarding the banished on their perilous journey. Where his countrymen saw only outlaws, reducing the world to good or evil, Lucian looked closer, and saw people in need of help.

After returning home from one such journey, Lucian found a stranger waiting at his door. She introduced herself as Senna, a Sentinel of Light. Cradling Urias’ relic pistol in her hands, Senna explained that Lucian’s father had died, falling in battle against the the long-dead wraiths of the Black Mist.

Senna had been Urias’ apprentice, fighting at his side for years.

Lucian reeled in shock—not only was his father dead, but before him stood a woman who had lived the life he had wanted for so long. As Senna made to take her leave, Lucian stopped her at the door, insisting he join her. He knew what came next—the vigil for lost Sentinels. Senna reluctantly allowed Lucian to accompany her.

Along the way, the two traded stories of their time with Urias, Senna comforting Lucian with her plainspoken wisdom, and Lucian easing her pain with fond remembrances. They arrived at Urias’ birthplace, far away from Demacian lands. There, they held the vigil for lost Sentinels.

As they prepared to depart, dark clouds rolled in over the coast, and wraiths manifested from the foulness, attacking them. Where Lucian was horrified, Senna drew her weapons with a grim familiarity—this was her curse. Since she was a child, tendrils of the Black Mist had stalked her wherever she went, unleashing its horror should she tarry anywhere for too long.

As Senna fought one of the creatures, it clawed Urias’ pistol from her grip. Lucian retrieved it, sensing his fate opening up before him. The blazing sorrow in his heart manifested in a bolt of light that blasted from the pistol, distracting the wraith so Senna could banish it. Senna fought off the remaining spirits before the pair left, the Mist ever on her trail.

Never before had one of the uninitiated fired a Sentinel’s relic weapon. For the first time, Lucian had shown Senna his potential to join the order.

Eventually, Senna entrusted Lucian with his father’s pistol, and instructed him in the tactics and doctrines of the Sentinels. He proved himself worthy of the lessons. A bond slowly formed between them, Lucian’s warmth and charm the perfect balance to Senna’s discipline and unbreakable resolve.

Lucian and Senna battled the myriad evils that ushered forth from the Black Mist, and their reliance upon each other blossomed into love. The closer Lucian grew to Senna, the more he witnessed the curse she bore. Each conflict hardened him, splitting the world apart into light and shadow, good and evil. Lucian’s urge to heal Senna became a crusade he pursued with reckless zeal.

Scouring a forgotten vault for a cure, the two Sentinels were attacked by the monstrous wraith Thresh. The ghoulish Chain Warden was a dangerous foe, and when Senna called to withdraw and regroup, Lucian refused to turn back. Throwing himself blindly into the attack, Lucian realized his mistake as Thresh gained the upper hand. Senna stepped into Thresh’s path, imploring Lucian to run.

As the dust settled, Senna lay dead before him, her soul claimed by Thresh’s eldritch lantern.

Senna’s sacrifice was nearly Lucian’s undoing. For years, he stalked Runeterra, a husk of the man he once was, his former warmth replaced with anger and bitterness. Wielding both his pistol and Senna’s, Lucian hunted Thresh in the hope of destroying the lantern and granting oblivion to his captive love. On the day that battle finally came, Lucian shattered the lantern—but instead of finding her eternal rest, Senna reemerged.

Lucian and Senna’s love is a bond even death could not sever. As Lucian struggles to grasp Senna’s altered form, he is forced to confront his own. Lucian now fights to return to his former self, while grappling with the reality that the dark forces he hates are all that keep Senna with him.

While Senna has returned with knowledge of a new mission, Lucian remains obsessed with exacting vengeance from Thresh, as he is certain the Chain Warden’s machinations have only begun.

“I’m starting to sweat, Bayal. Please, do not let me sweat.”

Qiyana’s servant fretted at the words. He mustered what little control he had over the elements, concentrating on forming a magical cloud of mist. In seconds, the mist surrounded Qiyana and grew cooler, dispelling the heat of the jungle.

“That’s better,” said Qiyana. “If I am to do this, I must be able to focus.”

She began to swivel her ohmlatl slowly around her body, causing the jungle thicket to bend and part with each rotation of the ring-blade. Roots and stems popped, tossing up bits of soil until, at last, a narrow trail revealed itself in the brush.

“Here it is,” Qiyana said, and promptly started down the winding path.

With each twist of her ohmlatl, the thick vines of the rainforest receded before her. Behind her, they slithered back across the path to conceal it. Bayal fell behind just long enough to be caught in the growth of the writhing plants.

“Keep up, Bayal,” said Qiyana. “Honestly, you have one task.”

The servant hurdled the freshly grown thicket, struggling to catch up to Qiyana, and to maintain the temperature of her mist cloud.

When the two finally emerged from the forest, the sun had sunk low in the sky, its golden dusklight shining on a small village. Qiyana took one last look behind her to see the secret path was now completely buried in jungle. Three village elders greeted her with a respectful Ixtali salute, arms held tightly across their chests, and led her into a plaza just inside the settlement.

At the far end of the plaza, a great Piltovan machine sat lifeless and defeated—spoils from a recent skirmish in the jungle. Qiyana paid it little mind as she took the seat presented to her at a small table, modestly set with fruits and nuts.

“To what do we owe this honor, Child of the Yun?” asked an elderly woman, leaning forward to get a better look at Qiyana.

“I have heard the news of your prefect’s passing. You have my condolences,” said Qiyana.

“Killed by the outlanders,” said an old man, pointing at the Piltovan machine to his rear. “Tried to stop one of those from felling trees for their mine.”

“So I was told,” said Qiyana. She sat perfectly upright as she arrived at the purpose of her visit.

“It seems that Tikras needs a more capable governor. One who is strong enough to stand up to the outlanders, and their toys,” said Qiyana with confidence. “Someone like me.”

The elders turned to each other, confusion showing through their weathered faces.

“But Yunalai, respectfully, we already have… someone like you,” said the old woman. “Your sister is here.”

“What?” fumed Qiyana.

As if on cue, a procession of local servants marched across the plaza toward Qiyana. Four of them carried a palanquin on their shoulders.

As the palanquin came closer, Qiyana could see a plush bed, several fine silk pillows, and her sister Mara, reclining with a goblet of wine in her hand. A silver tray of exquisite dishes rested beside her, and two servants cooled her with elemental magic far stronger than Bayal’s. As Qiyana wiped a bead of sweat from her brow, she glared bitterly at her servant.

“Qiyana. So… good to see you,” said Mara uneasily, as her palanquin came to rest on the ground.

“Mara. You seem to be enjoying yourself,” said Qiyana.

Mara squirmed under her sister’s penetrating stare, seemingly trying to retreat into the plush bedding.

“Would you care for some wine?” offered Mara, as she took a tense, joyless sip from her goblet.

“You’re supposed to protect this village, not empty its larders,” said Qiyana, declining the drink. “You should step down. Let me be prefect.”

Mara froze as she forced wine down her rigid throat.

“I cannot do that,” she said. “You know this. I am older than you.”

“A whole year older,” replied Qiyana. “Yet so far behind.”

She approached her sister’s bed, her smug expression slowly transforming into a scowl.

“I say this only as a statement of fact. You know it is true. What would happen if these miners discovered this village?”

“I would defend it,” said Mara meekly.

“You would die. So would everyone in this village. This we both know,” said Qiyana, for everyone in the plaza to hear. “I can protect them.”

A murmur spread about the plaza. Mara bit her bottom lip—something she had done since childhood, particularly when her younger sister had gotten the better of her.

“I… cannot give it to you. The Yun Tal will not allow it,” said Mara timidly.

“They will if you resign,” said Qiyana. “Go home to Ixaocan. Tend your water garden. I will assume your responsibilities here.”

She watched Mara’s eyes dart around at the elders, as if looking for some way to save face.

“The law is clear,” said Mara. “No one else may be prefect, as long as I am capable of governing.”

Clenching her jaw in anger, Qiyana turned toward the great machine resting at the far end of the plaza. She spun her ohmlatl around her body, startling the elders from their seats. Drawing elements from all around the plaza to the blade, she launched them toward the machine. In an instant, the great metal behemoth was entombed in ice, battered by rocks, and ripped apart by vines—all at the command of the young Yunalai.

The elders and servants in the plaza gave an audible gasp at the display of power.

“You think you already have ‘someone like me,’” said Qiyana. “But there is no one like me.”

The elders frowned at her, reaffirming the decision. “As long as Yunalai Mara is capable of governing, the position belongs to her.”

The words rang in Qiyana’s head as she turned and silently left the plaza, dejected. She led Bayal back to the edge of the village, where they were met by two elementalist wardens.

“No need to see us off,” said Qiyana. “I know the way, and what to do with it.”

With a turn of her ohmlatl, she parted the brush to reveal the path that lead back through the jungle. With her servant struggling to cool her, she walked back toward the grand arcologies of Ixaocan, uncovering the secret path, and re-covering it behind her.

As soon as they were out of sight of the village, Qiyana’s ohmlatl slowed. Behind them, the path was now unconcealed, laid bare in the late day sun.

“My Yunalai—you’ve forgotten to cover the path,” said Bayal.

“Bayal, does your one task have anything to do with tending the path?” asked Qiyana.

“No, my Yunalai. But… what if someone finds the village?”

“Not to worry. I’m sure the new prefect will defend it.” said Qiyana.

The following morning, Qiyana awoke in Ixaocan to the sound of sobs.

“Outlanders. They found Tikras!”

Her sister’s cries came from the hallway outside her bedroom. Qiyana put on her robe, and opened the bedroom door to find Mara, weeping in Bayal’s arms.

“Mara. What’s the matter?” asked Qiyana, making some effort to sound concerned.

Her sister turned to her, red-faced and trembling, covered in scratches from running through the jungle.

“The miners… they leveled the village. Half the people are dead. The other half are hiding. I barely escaped—”

Qiyana embraced her sister, suppressing a smile over her shoulder.

“Do you see now? I was only looking out for you,” said Qiyana. “Being a prefect is a dangerous responsibility.”

“I should’ve listened. You… You would have crushed the Piltovans,” lamented Mara.

“Yes. I would have,” said Qiyana. She beamed as she thought of the miners and mercenaries that had plundered the village—how easily she would slaughter them, and how the surviving elders would grovel in thanks to her as they came to the same realization her sister was now reaching.

“You should be prefect of Tikras,” said Mara.

I should, thought Qiyana. I deserve it.

It was midday on the island, and Vex was just emerging from her previous night’s sleep. The Black Mist that blanketed the Shadow Isles was especially thick today, creating an atmosphere of despondency that suited her perfectly.

The grisly host of specters surrounding her released a chorus of blood-curdling shrieks and hisses, hoping she might be in the mood to engage them on this exceptionally dismal day.

“You wanna play again?” Vex sighed. “Fine. I’ll do it. But someone else has to be the gravedigger this time.”

From her back, Vex heard her shadow volunteering.

“Shadow, if you’re gravedigger, that means I have to be gravedigger too.”

Shadow looked at her with sad, hopeful eyes.

“Whatever. Even though this is completely stupid, me and Shadow will be gravedigger. Everyone else, go die.”

Covering its eyes with its hands, Shadow began to count to one hundred as the host of specters scattered to find hiding places in the rocks and ruins that dotted the island.

Vex, her eyes uncovered, could see something peculiar bobbing through the haze in the distance. It looked like... a pair of pointy ears?

“Small fry!” called a voice from just beneath the ears. “Are you here, yordling?”

“Ohhhh no,” said Vex in dismay. “Tell me that’s not...”

The pointy ears continued bobbing toward her until, at last, the figure beneath them came into view. An older yordle stood before Vex, his arms splayed in excitement.

“There you are, yordling!” he said.

Vex’s eyes narrowed contemptuously at the familiar face. “Uncle Milty, what are you doing here?”

“What do you mean? Can’t a grown yordle pay a visit to his small fry?” said Uncle Milty with unrelenting cheer.

“Don’t call me that.”

Vex noticed her spectral peers were beginning to emerge from their hiding places, curious about the new visitor.

“I’m kinda busy,” Vex said to her uncle. “Can you just tell me what you want and get outta here?”

Uncle Milty’s face melted, its stiff, resilient smile changing to a grave look of concern. “Very well. I won’t lie to you, small fry—it’s your parents.”

Vex’s eyes rolled so hard they nearly fell from their sockets. “Ughhhhh, what about ‘em?”

Why did Uncle Milty even care what her parents thought? He wasn't her real uncle, anyway.

“They’d never tell you this, but... they’re worried sick about you!” said Uncle Milty. “You’re off living in some... drab stinkhole. Cavorting with ghosts. You have to come home.”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“Please, small fry.”

“No.”

“Just for a visit? Just to show them you’re okay.”

“No.”

“Just a quick one? Pop in and pop out.”

“NO. Now get lost,” said Vex.

Uncle Milty’s brow furrowed at her resistance. A moment later, his beaming smile returned, and a twinkle sparked in his eye.

“Well, I can see there’s only one thing to do here…” said the old yordle. He wiggled his fingertips, moving his hands in an arc around his body. A large rainbow portal opened before him. “Let’s not tarry. Your parents are just about to sit down for tea. We can join them if we hurry!”

Vex winced as Uncle Milty pulled her toward the magic gateway. Thinking quickly, she raised her hand, summoning a thick, black shadow at their feet, snuffing out the brightly colored portal. “If you think I’m walking through that thing, you’re even more clueless than I thought.”

Uncle Milty raised one of his bushy eyebrows high in befuddlement. “But—small fry, look around you. This place is for... dead things.”

“Duh. That’s why I’m here,” said Vex. “People suck. Yordles really suck. Colors make me wanna puke. And this place has none of those things.”

Uncle Milty stammered, stunned by his niece’s words. Then realization began to wash over him, and the twinkle returned to his eye. “Ohhhh, I know what this is. You’ve been away from the Bandlewood for too long! You’ve lost your yordle spirit. All you need is a couple days back home, and you’ll be right as rose hips!”

He wiggled his fingers, conjuring the rainbow portal once more.

Vex felt the very bottom fall out of her soul as she realized her eternal plight: she was a yordle, would always be a yordle, and would forever be tormented by their undying enthusiasm.

Unless...

A thought popped into Vex’s mind. She nearly smiled as she realized it just might be the solution to this torture. She quickly suppressed the smile and summoned her true malaise, full strength, and gazed at the ground. “What’s the point, Uncle Milty?”

“What’s the point of what, Vexy?”

“All of it. Bandle City, yordles... life?” She looked up from the ground to see her uncle’s smile fading.

“The point of life?” he asked. “Uhhhnnn... isn’t it...”

Seeing her uncle at a loss for words, Vex eagerly answered the question for him. “I mean, we’re all just random wads of magic. Who we are, what we do, who our family is—we don’t decide any of it. We’re all just drifting by like dead leaves with no control over anything.”

A strange look of determination came over Uncle Milty. “Oh, I don’t think that’s true. What about making people happy? We all have the ability to do that!”

“I guess. But their happiness never really lasts, does it?”

Vex could feel her words knock the wind out of Uncle Milty’s sails as his long, perky ears began to droop.

“It’s like everything else in this world,” she continued. “Happiness, birds, trees, bugs… rainbows—they all fade away. I guess you could say that’s their purpose. They hang around for a few minutes, and then die. Just ask all these chumps here.”

Vex motioned toward her spectral friends, who were poking their gruesome, withered faces out from their hiding spots. When she turned back to her uncle, she could barely see the edges of a frown forming on his lips.

“I guess I never… thought of it quite that way,” said her uncle.

Vex reached into her bottomless well of despair, hoping to drive the stake of misery deeper into his heart. “I know it’s a downer, but the whole point of life… is death.”

“Death?” whimpered Uncle Milty.

“Yeah. And the worst part of it all? Yordles don’t even get to do that. We just go on forever. Doomed to a stupid, magical, pointless existence.”

Uncle Milty’s lip quivered. Tears that shimmered like diamonds trickled from his eyes. The rainbow portal behind him evaporated into the surrounding darkness.

“That’s... so... awful,” he cried.

“Right?” said Vex.

Suddenly, Uncle Milty erupted in uncontrolled sobs. They came like thunder, scaring off even the ghastliest of the wraiths lingering nearby.

As her uncle ran away crying, Vex breathed a deep sigh of relief, the burden of intrusive cheer no longer weighing on her tiny, slouching shoulders. “Okay,” she said, “you can all come out now.”

One by one, her spectral comrades emerged from the rocks and ruins around her.

“One more game,” said Vex. “And sure, why not—I’ll be the gravedigger.”

They came at Lucian in a blur of shadow, lunging at him with insubstantial talons and ancient, rusted blades. They moved fast… but he was faster.

He moved like a dancer, turning and spinning, ever in motion, the relic pistols in his hands lighting up the rotting interior of the inn with their blazing, arcane light.

Lucian’s long leather coat and tightly bound locks whipped around him as he moved, effortlessly avoiding the frenzied attacks coming at him from every direction. Every shot he fired burned with the intensity of the sun, banishing one of the screeching spirits, sending them reeling back into formless darkness.

He took no satisfaction in this duty. Not anymore. All the light in his world had been snuffed out when she had been taken.

Dark talons raked across one of Lucian’s forearms, making him hiss in pain. Cursing himself for being momentarily distracted, he destroyed the offending spirit with a blast of light to its head, and focused upon the task at hand. Standing firm in the center of the inn, he gunned down the tide of spectral forms rushing at him, every shot lighting up the darkness.

At last he was alone, arms spread wide, weapons pointed in opposite directions, their stone tips still glowing. He glanced left and right, awaiting another attack. The fire in the inn’s hearth seemed to burn more brightly, banishing the deeper shadows, and the icy chill retreated.

Suddenly weary, Lucian righted a fallen bench and sat with a groan. He placed his pistols upon the table, then turned his attention to his wound.

Wincing, he slid the long, black glove from his left hand. The leather was unmarked, but the flesh of his forearm was blackened where ghostly talons had slashed him—almost like frostbite.

He caught a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye, and Lucian was instantly on his feet, both pistols aimed at… a dark-haired girl, barely into her teenage years, who had emerged from her hiding place in a back storeroom.

She froze, staring up at him, eyes wide and unblinking.

“Please,” she whispered. “Don’t.”

“Shouldn’t sneak up on people,” Lucian said, lowering his guns.

He made to turn away, but caught a shadow of movement reflected in the girl’s eyes. He spun, swinging his weapons around, but this time he was not fast enough.

A wraith lunged from the receding gloom—an emaciated, insubstantial creature, swathed in shrouds. Pale, blue-green light spilled from its eye sockets and gaping mouth, and it lashed at him with talons the length of daggers.

Lucian was hurled backwards by the force of the blow, flying over the bar, some fifteen feet distant. He slammed into the wall, shattering dozens of empty liquor bottles lined up on the shelves, and fell to the floor in a shower of broken glass. His chest burned where the wraith had struck him, and an icy chill clutched at his heart, making him gasp for every breath.

He searched frantically for his weapons. He spied one, lying on the uneven floor ten paces to his left. Too far. The other had spun across the floorboards, before coming to a halt at the girl’s feet.

She picked up the ancient weapon and aimed it at the wraith, clutching it with shaking hands as the thing lunged towards her, its mouth opening impossibly wide.

“It won’t fire!” she wailed, backing away. “There’s no trigger!”

An echo of memory rose in Lucian’s mind, as sudden as a knife strike.

“But how do you fire it?” Lucian said, looking down at the exquisitely crafted weapon, a look of puzzlement on his face. “There’s no trigger.”

“It doesn’t need a trigger, my love,” said Senna, her eyes glinting with amusement. She touched him lightly on the side of his head. “The trigger is in here.”

“I don’t understand,” said Lucian.

Senna aimed her own weapon—a more elegant version of the one he held—at the target twenty feet away. Her expression hardened, her eyes narrowing. “You have to will it to fire,” she said, and the target exploded in a searing blast of yellow flame.

“Right. Will it to fire,” said Lucian, leveling his pistol at the next target. Nothing happened. He shook the pistol, and snorted, partly in frustration, and partly in bewilderment.

“It requires control,” said Senna. “It requires focus. You need to will it to fire with every fiber of your being.”

Lucian laughed and turned to Senna, one eyebrow raised. “Every fiber of my being?”

“Try it!” she urged.

He did, but couldn’t keep a smile from curling at the corners of his mouth. “I give up,” he sighed. He stepped in close to Senna, and drew her into an embrace. “How do you expect me to focus on anything else when you are near?”

Senna pushed him away, laughing. “You’re not getting out of this that easily,” she said. “Again. And actually try this time.”

The girl was backed up against a wall now, the slender relic gun—Senna’s gun—a useless weight in her hands.

“Throw it to me!” Lucian barked, darting forward.

The girl shrieked as the spirit flew toward her, and hurled the gun in Lucian’s direction. It spun end-over-end through the air, passing straight through the wraith. Lucian deftly caught it in mid-sprint, simultaneously dropping to one knee and sliding across the floorboards to scoop up his other weapon. He came to his feet with both pistols ready, and opened up.

The wraith screamed and tried desperately to escape, coiling and spinning through the air away from him, but Lucian was relentless. He dashed sideways, maintaining his strafing torrent of fire. The blazing light tore through the ghastly apparition, and its cry became piteous as its dark form dissipated, like mist beneath the rising sun.

Lucian came to a halt, though he kept the pistols raised. All was silent once more.

“Is… it gone?” the girl said.

He didn’t answer immediately, his narrowed eyes scanning the room. At last, he holstered the two guns. “It’s gone. You are safe.”

“I… I couldn’t make it fire,” the girl said, staring at the darkness. “I thought I was going to die. Like the others.”

Lucian remembered his own difficulty with the weapon—it felt so long ago now.

It requires control. It requires focus.

“I certainly have focus now, my love,” Lucian murmured, under his breath.

“Did you say something?” asked the girl.

“No,” Lucian replied. He cocked his head. The sound of rattling chains was coming from somewhere nearby. “Do you hear that?”

The girl shook her head. “I don’t hear anything.”

Lucian frowned, eyes narrow. “He taunts me, still…”

He turned to leave the inn, cursed to follow that distant, tormenting sound.

“Bolt the door,” he ordered. “And pray for dawn.”

Bilgewater isn’t particularly known for its cuisine, which makes Oyster Bill’s Oyster Bar an interesting conundrum. Located in one of the city’s poorer pockets, the establishment gained an impressive reputation over the years with the entire venture held aloft by “local celebrity” and proprietor Oyster Bill.

Along with the oyster-man’s love of seafood and exaggerated stories, he also enjoys renting an extra room above the restaurant to various drifters and vagabonds. One such person being his most recent guest: an ascetic warrior with few belongings and an unceasing ear-to-ear smile—who just kicked Malcolm Graves horizontally through the dining-room wall.

“I didn’t even do anything!” Graves moans, shifting his toothpick to the other side of his mouth. “You want one of the other ones. Senna maybe. Or Rango.”

“Your lack of foresight now threatens millions of innocents, Malcolm Graves,” replies a cheery-sounding voice in an unfamiliar accent. “I have questions about the little present you left on my shores. Viego of Camavor.”

The voice’s owner moves purposefully through the cloud of dust and debris, her liquid whip-blade suspended in a glittering arc around her. Each step illuminates the dingy restaurant as brilliant indigos and golds cast strange, dancing shadows over everything. Messy black hair frames a thin face and violet eyes, all underlined by an oddly exuberant expression, while at her side rests a glowing sphere held by two hands cast from a foreign metal. This is Nilah, and Graves has been trying to avoid her for weeks.

It hasn’t gone well.

Nilah arrived in Bilgewater seemingly overnight, and her presence immediately raised eyebrows across the city. From her odd habit of reciting various textual passages throughout the day—always while making complicated gestures with her palms—to her strange, seven-hand-motif armor, forged from a pearlescent metal no one recognized. Or her insistence that she hailed from Kathkan, even though the last full-blooded Kathkani hadn’t stepped foot on Valoran soil in over seven hundred years.

Then she started killing sea serpents—forty, fifty, sixty fathoms long. When any ship was threatened, Nilah rushed down to the docks and soared across the surface of the sea with a wide, calm smile, her wiry frame launching itself toward the writhing necks of her foes. As word spread about her, she began to ask the port’s grateful sailors if they knew anything about a so-called order of sentinels... and that was when Graves started running.

Now that Nilah’s found him, she doesn’t seem happy.

Or rather, she isn’t acting happy. She seems disconcertingly cheerful with her pleasant grin that never breaks and her demeanor and voice that stay locked in unnatural positivity at all hours of every day. It’s this peculiarity that makes most people unable to read her intentions—besides her pathological need to fight very big things—and that makes conversations with the woman hard to navigate.

“Don’t know nothing about Viego,” Graves lies, sifting through the rubble for his gun.

“I believe it was you who sealed him in Alovedra, am I correct?” Nilah smiles cheerfully, taking another two steps forward. Her legs move in a curious, artful pattern, like a coiled snake about to strike. “Don’t lie. You are man-sized. Killing you would be very easy for me.”

“Not that easy,” Graves snorts, New Destiny finally in hand. Savoring the moment to turn the tables, he fires three rounds directly into Nilah’s torso. Or, at least, he thinks he does. The bullets seem to move around her... Or maybe she moves around them. It’s like firing his gun into deep water—a thought Graves finds inexplicably unsettling.

Nilah’s wide smile twitches at the sides of her mouth. Unbeknownst to Graves, she is unable to feel anger, or any emotion beyond a radiant joyfulness—but she knows she would want to right now, were it possible. She whips the gun out of his hands and knocks it to the far side of the restaurant before bisecting a metal table next to his head with a brutal second strike of her whip-blade. For a brief moment, Graves swears he sees phantasmal blue hands in the air around Nilah... but maybe this is his imagination. He’s been getting hit in the head a lot lately.

“An interesting armament,” Nilah muses. “I imagine it works well against lesser opponents.”

“So what does that make you?” seethes Graves.

But Nilah doesn’t answer. Instead, she sheathes her weapon within the sphere, offering a brief recitation under her breath that Graves can’t quite make out. “My apologies. Based on your fighting style, you're not the sentinel I’m looking for.”

“Sweet Tommy Kench, ain’t you supposed to be some kinda hero?” Graves yells, sitting up among wood fragments and twisted metal. “I’m a hero too, when viewed in a certain light! So lay off, will ya?”

Graves exhales. “Damn... Nice magic, though. I gotta respect it.”

Nilah offers another recitation, her hands shifting as she mouths the words beneath her breath, smiling ominously in the dark. “Thank you, Malcolm Graves. I gave much to wield it.”

“I would prefer if you’d call me ‘Graves.’”

“I wouldn’t,” replies Nilah. “There is great power in a true name, Malcolm Graves. Remember that.”

"If you say so." Graves looks behind Nilah. "You folks in the back hear that, or should we speak up?"

Right on cue, a voice rings out from the street. “We’re here for the serpent slayer!”

Nilah turns to face a half-dozen mercenaries peeking through the hole she’d ripped in the wall. Her eyes drift past the men to a massive, pale something shifting on the planks behind them... and her heart skips a beat. She is often followed by disgruntled killers, but she hasn’t seen one of these before.

“I am she,” Nilah replies, her attention fixed on the creature. “What do you want, exactly?”

“You’re losing our bosses a lot of money. Think you can just flood the market with serpent catch? We own those docks and those ships, and as of now, we own you!”

“What is that creature?” Nilah asks Graves, ignoring the mercenaries.

“Deep eater,” mutters Graves. “They chow down on anchor graves that sink to the seafloor. Gives ‘em a taste for people. Mean and real dumb, so these idiots drag ‘em up and sic ‘em on marks they don’t like.”

Nilah’s eyes flash with excitement. “How big do they get?”

“I’unno. Ten, fifteen oars? That one looks pretty big.”

“Interesting,” she whispers. “An enemy of worth.”

“Hey!” shouts a mercenary. “When I’m talking, you listen or you die. Understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes, I believe I do,” replies Nilah, dipping her hand into the sphere at her side. “I am Nilah of the Seventh Layer. May our battle sing across history.”

Nilah whips her blade outward, its glimmering water forming two sharpened prongs that dance through the air with ghostly radiance. Whatever the mercenaries were expecting, it wasn’t this, and they mutter nervously as the weapon shifts and expands.

They don’t know it, but none of them will leave this encounter alive. The Seventh Layer is not simply a title, but a mythical order steeled to face opponents of unimaginable power and scale. Self-trained killers are merely pebbles on the road to true challenge, and tonight, this so-called “deep eater” is the only foe of worth—a massive isopod with sickly, flesh-colored plates and a mean-looking maw of bloody teeth.

From the depths of Nilah’s being, a hungry joy begins to swell.

What happens next is a blur. Nilah bounds across the room with frightening speed, cutting through her unassuming opponents while wearing that same cheerful, unmoving smile. Each strike of her blade connects with the force of a towering ocean wave, yet the dancing water is sharp as polished stone. Nilah glides between blows, beautiful and deadly, as her enemies are blasted apart.

In seconds, all that’s left is the deep eater. Considering that the words “ten oars” had suggested a beast of much larger proportions, this one isn’t too bad—about the size of a covered wagon. Not the most exciting opponent Nilah’s ever faced, but here in Bilgewater, it was something that would get people talking. They’d remember this victory, and that was all that mattered.

Nilah leaps onto its back, her formless blade flickering in the night air. “Beast of the deep! May you find Joy!” she sings, and she slices the monster clean in half.

“So, what exactly are ya lookin’ fer the sentinels for?” asks Graves, consigned to either having this conversation or being cut into little pieces. “We disbanded, mostly. And I pawned all my stuff, so you’re not getting those magic rocks or whatever.”

“Viego of Camavor will free himself someday,” Nilah replies, her smile now kind. Friendly, even. “The magic binding him is Helian, and it is weakening over time. My people are in unimaginable danger.”

“Hey, we beat him once,” replies Graves. “He’s strong, but we can probably do it again.”

“He is not the true threat, Malcolm Graves,” says Nilah. “His ruinations write new magic into the world... an act that drives demonkind berserk. Enough to stir their primeval forebears.

“Ten lords, long forgotten,” she continues, tapping the sphere at her side, “who must never be allowed to wake.”

“Demons, huh?” says Graves. “You’re not a demon, are ya?”

“No,” Nilah laughs. “Not entirely.”

The ascetic performs another hand gesture, reciting something under her breath. As she speaks, Graves gazes at her sphere of prismatic liquid, which seems to draw him in. An unconscious smile curls at the edge of his lips as high-pitched, whispering laughter rings in his ears. It seems like the metal hands are almost... offering it up to him.

“Don’t look too closely,” Nilah warns, and Graves snaps back to attention. “The beast is always hungry.”

Nilah claps her hands on her hips. “Ah, but the hour is late, and I fear you have no further answers to give me. I will retire to my room,” she says matter-of-factly, walking past a confused Graves as she circles the damaged dining room and climbs the restaurant stairwell. “If you encounter any monstrosities of note, come find me so I can slay them. If you encounter Oyster Bill, tell him that I apologize for tonight’s damage.

“It is good to meet a fellow hero, Malcolm Graves.”

A door closes upstairs, and the woman is gone.

Graves flicks his broken toothpick to the ground, bitten through in all the excitement. He reaches for a replacement but finds none, so instead gazes quietly out onto the street where six dead bodies and two halves of a giant marine louse are scattered.

“The sentinels ruined my life,” he says to no one in particular.

“Neat lady, though.”

Rakan is the worst.

He’s not listening. He’s fixated on his own golden feathers—as if they’d changed from when he cleaned them this morning. I’m going to have to repeat the plan. Although, thinking it over again, it probably was too complicated for a rescue mission. Simple is better.

“They will kill me if they catch me,” I tell him.

“Who?!” He looks ready to kill at the thought of anyone harming me.

“The guards,” I say. “It’s always guards.”

“Then I’ll distract them!” He puffs his chest out. “When?”

“Look for a green flash before the sun sets. Then draw the guards away from the western walls while I run along the ramparts to the cells.”

“I put on a show the moment the sun sets,” he says like it was his idea. “Where do we meet?”

“At the gate. I’ll throw a golden blade into the sky. But you have to be there in ten breaths.” I pull one of his feathers from his cloak. It’s warm on my fingers. A memory floods back of me lying in his arms by the Aphae Waterfall. The sun filtering through the leaves, catching the edges of our feathers as they lay atop each other. That was a lovely day.

“I will be at the gate the moment you throw the blade,” he swears.

I take his hand in mine and lean close. “I know.”

That smug, confident grin cracks his face. I want to slap him. Or kiss him. Or both.

“Now, darling—if I were you, I would stay behind the cover of the tree line, so you’re not spotted.”

Our embrace is so warm I wish it would last all night. But the sun is dangerously close to the horizon, and our esteemed consul isn’t going to escape a dungeon guarded by a horde of shadow acolytes on his own.

Rakan tells me to be careful as he wanders away, looking at the sky. Every time he leaves, my heart sinks. I’m sure it won’t be the last time I see him. Although, one day, it might.

“Remember, my heartfire,” I whisper after him. “Sunset.”

I dart in between the fortress’ parapets unseen. Years of avoiding the stares of humans taught me their many blind spots.

Six acolytes guard the gate leading to the dungeons. They carry double-firing crossbows, swords tucked in their belts, and who-knows-what-else in the pouches fastened around their waists. I slink along the inner wall behind them to get within striking distance. I pluck five of my feathers and stack them neatly in my palm, holding them in place between my index finger and thumb, ready to send them flying.

There’s a noise from outside the walls. The crash of a gong. Shouts. Confused men. It has to be Rakan.

The prison guards hear it, too. Worry chokes my heart. I hope my love is okay. I know he’s going to be okay. He’d better be okay, or I will force a necromancer to resurrect him so I can murder him myself. He knows I’ll do that, too. I’ll figure it out.

The guards are distracted from their posts. He’s early, but it’s perfect timing. I can get in without needing to fell a single one of them.

I almost reach the dungeon door, when I see another guard climb the parapet and take deadly aim with his rifle. Nobody aims anything at my Rakan. I’ll have the still-beating heart of anyone who dares to harm as much as one of his feathers. It’ll make a cute beating-heart necklace.

I stop. The prisoners won’t be going anywhere. I’ve got time to turn this guard into a sieve.

I leap back toward the parapet. The first feather I throw slices off the barrel of the gun. It clatters loudly to the floor. The rest slice through his chest. He drops like a bag of turnips.

“Intruder!” one of the guards at the gate shouts.

I duck and roll as crossbow bolts ping off the stone wall behind me, or stab into the wooden posts. Staying low, I race straight toward the acolytes who are fanning out to get better angles. I leap. They shoot where they think gravity will take me, instead of where I am: hovering in the air.

I throw another handful of feathers, shaping them into blades mid-flight.

Five of the guards drop, my quills sticking out of their chests. The remaining acolyte narrows his eyes and squares his shoulders, ready to fight. His sword is out before my feet touch the ground.

“Your soul will serve me forever,” he grunts. I can feel the shadow magic bound up in his blade, the essence of every life it has taken.

I laugh. “I killed more people in the last twenty paces than you have in your entire life.”

The acolyte hesitates before slashing wildly in my direction. His little sword leaves wavering trails of darkness. I don’t have time for this, the sun is setting. I turn my back.

With a snap of my fingers, my quills tear free of the corpses behind the acolyte, and fly back toward me.

I hear the sword clang to the floor a moment before the dull thud of his body. I’m sure the Order of the Shadow will find some way to harness these men’s souls into a slingshot or something. I don’t really know how these guys work, but good on them for being so economical. One shouldn’t waste life essence.

I take Rakan’s feather and launch it high into the air. It hangs in the sky, a golden message that should turn some heads. But there’s only one who knows what it means.

Meanwhile, I have a date in the dungeons with the consul.

He looks terrible sitting in a cage. Emaciated. Weak. Beaten. He doesn’t look up, figuring me for one of the guards. He and his mate are Sodjoko, but his entourage are vastaya from other tribes. Their harrowed eyes thank me more than their tongues. They know as well as I that this is no time for gratitude. We’re not out of the fortress yet.

As I lead the prisoners toward the eastern gate, I’m perplexed by the appalling lack of guards. Nearly every post is deserted. Isn’t this supposed to be a fortress? Who makes their schedules?

We round past the armory and the barracks. There’s the gate. Looks like Rakan found the guards. Dozens of them. They’re surrounding him. My feathers bristle. Heartbeat necklace, here I come!

Rakan reaches us. His smile turns from confident to bemused as he speaks with the consul. Akunir is one of my father’s oldest friends, and the most important of our ambassadors. I have much to discuss with him once we’re out of this.

“All of you, run for the tree line,” I command.

They’re panicked, but thankfully Rakan took out the riflemen. More of us will survive crossing the field. “Run!” I yell.

Akunir’s too slow. Rakan begins to lead him toward the forest.

The consul grabs at Rakan. “No. Please, protect Coll.” Rakan turns back toward her.

I shake my head. Rakan understands. He drags the consul behind him.

I nod to the strongest-looking juloah. He lifts Coll in his arms. She calls him Jurelv, and he pledges on his horns to keep her safe.

He makes it ten paces before the first arrow strikes him, but he doesn’t stop. He carries Coll into the forest. The shadow acolytes surge forward after them.

“Xayah!” Rakan yells. “Bowtube or tubebow?!”

I wish I had time to play, but I don’t.

Instead, I join the fight.

And it’s not pretty.

For the acolytes.

We were safe under the forest canopy by the time Jurelv’s body could ignore its wounds no longer.

Coll kneels next to his corpse. His blood is on the leaves. We have already prayed that his spirit finds our ancestors in joy and peace. His family will mourn for moons.

I’m used to death. It doesn’t move me as it once did. Rakan takes it hard; I have to be strong for him.

At least the consul is safe. After taking his hand off his wife’s shoulder, he turns to me.

“I have friends in the south,” he says. “The Kinkou must be informed.”

“Humans broke the pact.” I feel my blood rising. “How can you not see this as a grievous trespass? To them, magic is power. To us, it is life. They will never respect our boundaries.”

“Humans are a splintered race, Xayah. Only Zed and his shadows broke the pact. They do not speak for all men.”

“You are naïve. Your friends in the south will betray you. Then, they will turn on us all.”

“The Kinkou are honorable. They will believe me. I trust them.”

“So you’re not naïve, you’re an idiot.” Akunir is shocked that I dare speak to him like this. I reject the notion of being diplomatic. Diplomacy will not restore life to the dead.

Coll stands up. Her face is a mask of grief and anger. “I will go back north, Akunir. I will tell them what was done to us.”

I honestly didn’t think she had it in her.

The glow fades from Akunir’s eyes. “Coll, no.”

“I will bear word of Jurelv’s fate to his kin, and mourn with them. Then, I will muster arms and prepare the tribe to fight.”

“You cannot do that!” the consul proclaims.

Coll ignores him. “I forsake my claim to you. I forsake your claim to me.”

“Coll… please.” His voice falters.

“No,” she says.

The consul takes a step toward her, but Rakan stops him.

“I will speak with my mate,” Akunir says to Rakan. To his guards.

But Coll is already turned away. She looks at me, and I no longer see a diplomat’s wife. I see a warrior. She gathers those loyal to her—all but two of the consul’s entourage.

“Thank you, Xayah,” Coll says before she turns north and walks farther into the forest.

Akunir and his guards watch her leave, then wordlessly set off to the south.

Rakan moves in close to me. I feel his heart beating in time with my own.

“Promise me nothing will come between us like that, mieli,” I say.

“We’re not like them, miella.” Rakan assures me. “We’ll never be like them.”

I watch Coll as she disappears among the trees.

“Where to now, Xayah?”

“Let’s just stay here a moment longer,” I murmur.

I bury my face in his chest. He drapes his cloak and arms around me. My head rises and falls with his breath. I could stay here forever.

“Repeat it back to me,” I tell him.

“We are not like them,” he says. “We are not like them.”

He smiles and kisses my forehead. The vows we took at the Aphae Waterfall spring to mind. His heart beats for me, and mine for him. Home is within his arms, his breath, his smile.

There is no one better than Rakan.

The sea was mirror-smooth and dark. A pirate’s moon hung low on the horizon as it had for the last six nights. Not so much as a whisper of wind stirred the air, only that damned dirge carried from who knew where. Vionax had sailed the oceans around Noxus long enough to know that seas like this only ever presaged ill-fortune. She stood on the Darkwill’s foredeck, training her spyglass on the far ocean, searching for anything she could use to plot their position.

“Nothing but sea in all directions,” she said to the night. “No land in sight and no stars I recognize. Our sails are empty of wind. The oar decks have rowed for days, but no matter which way we turn, land never comes and the moon neither waxes nor wanes.”

She took a moment to rub the heels of her palms against her face. Thirst and hunger growled in her belly and the constant darkness had made it impossible to accurately gauge the passage of time. The Darkwill wasn’t even her ship. She’d been it’s first mate until a Freljordian reaver’s axe had split Captain Mettok’s skull and given her a sudden promotion. The captain and fifteen other Noxian warriors were laid within sewn-up hammocks on the main deck. The growing stench rising from the bodies was the only consistent measure of time’s passing.

She lifted her gaze to the open ocean and her eyes widened as she saw thick black mist rising from the water. Shapes moved in the mist, lambent suggestions of clawed arms and gaping mouths. That damned dirge rang out over the water again, louder now and accompanied by the dolorous peals of a funeral bell.

“The Black Mist,” she said. “All hands on deck!”

She turned and vaulted down to the main deck, running for the quarterdeck and the ship’s wheel. Not that she could do anything to move the ship, but she’d be damned if she’d be found anywhere else. A haunting lament for lost souls drifted over the ship as men stumbled from below decks, and even as terror shivered her spine, Vionax couldn’t deny the poetry in the sound. Tears pricked her eyes and ran down her cheeks, not in fear, but from infinite sadness.

“Let me end your grief.”

The voice in her head was cold and lifeless, the voice of a dead man. It conjured the image of iron-rimmed wheels on a corpse-heaped cart, a knife cutting yet another death mark on a staff. Vionax knew the tales of the Black Mist; she knew to avoid the islands brooding beneath the darkness in the east. She’d thought the ship was far from the Shadow Isles, but she was wrong.

She pulled up short as black mist boiled up over the gunwale, bringing with it howls and screeches of dead things. Wraiths spun overhead, a swirling chorus of the damned, and the Darkwill’s crew cried out in terror at the sight of them. Vionax drew her pistol and cocked the hammer as a figure loomed from the mist; towering and wide-shouldered, robed in tattered vestments like an ancient prelate, yet his shoulders and gaunt skull were armored as a warrior. A chained book hung at his waist and he carried a long staff with its haft notched by countless tally-marks. Spectral light shone at its tip and burned like a fallen star in the palm of his free hand.

“Why do you cry?” said the creature. “I am Karthus, and I bring you a great gift.”

“I don’t want your gift,” said Vionax, pulling the trigger. Her pistol boomed and fire exploded from the barrel. The shot struck the monstrous wraith, but passed through it without harm.

“You mortals,” said Karthus, shaking his helmeted head. “You fear what you do not understand and would turn away from a boon that is freely offered.”

The monster drifted closer, and the dark radiance of his staff bathed the ship’s deck in pale, sickly light. Vionax backed away from the wraith’s chill as her crew fell before the light, their souls drifting like steam from their bodies. Her heel caught on one of the laid out hammocks and she tripped, falling backwards onto her haunches. She pushed herself away from Karthus, scrambling over the bodies of her fellow sailors.

The hammock beneath her moved.

They were all moving, squirming and writhing like fresh-caught fish gasping for air at the bottom of a boat. Tendrils of mist rose from tears in the canvas and between the rough stitches the ship’s sailmaker had used to sew them shut. Faces moved in the mist, faces she’d sailed with for years, men and women she’d fought beside.

The wraith towered over her and the dead crew of the Darkwill stood beside him, their spirit forms limned in moonlight.

“Death is nothing to be feared, Mistress Vionax,” said Karthus. “It will free you from all your pain. It will lift your eyes from your mundane existence and show you the glory of life eternal. Embrace the beauty and wonder of death. Let go of your mortality. You do not need it.”

He held his hand out and the light there swelled to envelop her. She screamed as it pressed through her skin, into muscle, through bone, down to her very soul. The wraith clenched his fist and Vionax cried out as she felt herself being unwoven from the inside out.

“Let your soul fly free,” said Karthus, turning to carve another notch in his staff with a sharpened nail. “You shall feel no pain, no fear, no desire to feel anything but the beauty of what I have to show you. Miracles and wonders await, mortal. Why would you not crave such rapture...?”

“No,” she said with her last breath. “I don’t want to see.”

“It is already done,” said Karthus.