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“Okay,” Kai’Sa pants, looking up at the shape growing in front of, above, and simultaneously all around her.

The monster’s wings spread twenty arm lengths in every direction, dominating her field of vision—not that Kai’Sa has a choice where to look with the half-dozen ambulatory human arms holding her head against the wall. The creature’s mass continues to expand and fills the ocean of nightmares it calls home, each glistening tooth now the size of a grown adult... and getting bigger. Its four predatory eyes gaze down on Kai’Sa with cold dispassion. Possibly hunger. At this scale, it’s hard to tell.

She liked it better when it was person-shaped.

“Okay,” she repeats. She can’t move her armor, which is frozen in a sort of paralytic... awe? The suit is a parasite, and one of the more base creatures the Void can spit out. Is awe even something it can feel? Either way, her body is stuck in place. Unless something dramatic changes, this is probably the end. Kai’Sa’s mind ticks through a few last-ditch efforts: Firing her cannons backward into the wall, firing them into this thing’s... mouth? Jaws? She remembers how fast the monster is. And how big it is.

Fast and big. Fantastic.

Last-ditch might not amount to much, and Kai’Sa would definitely die. But at least it would be something. She could make it hurt.

“My true self displeases you,” it speaks, much too calmly. Its voice is so loud it rattles the entire space, knocking hideous patchwork geometry loose as thousands of Void remora pour from the jagged holes. It is a voice that bends and contracts, whispers and screams. The layers continue without end, an aria sung not by one voice, but by millions.

Kai’Sa’s eyes widen with realization. That’s where all the people went.

The Void had torn through the now very former city of Belveth in under an hour. Kai’Sa hadn’t been able to make it in time, and the once-bustling metropolis was gone. Everything. Everyone. What remained now resembled a giant glowing crater of shattered pieces rearranging into something unrecognizably alien—the structures shifting as if to recreate frozen creature shapes, frozen humanoid shapes. Like a child setting up a toy town.

But where had the people gone? The vastaya? The animals and plants? She’d fought her way through the shattered city and into the tunnel at the center of the empty bay, seeing no sign of anyone—only fresh Voidborn horrors like mile-high iridescent tentacles and masses she’d been thinking of as “balls of screaming torsos.” It didn’t make any sense. The remains of a Void attack aren’t pretty, but usually there’s something left.

Now she knows why.

“You are the city,” Kai’Sa spits through the reverberating wall of sound. “Belveth... is you.”

“Yes,” says Bel’Veth, gently undulating its—her?—wings. “The raw components of their lives served as the genesis for my birth. Memories. Emotions. History. I am as much Belveth as they were, and I claim the title as my own.”

Bel’Veth’s titanic body bristles. Golden beams gently dapple the light above her ray-like form, framing the Void sea’s false sun like the rings of a dying world. New flesh breathes as it ripples against the facsimile of a tidal current, veins briefly illuminated before pulling themselves away from the surface of the monster’s skin, each somehow alive and independent—nations unto themselves. Schools of Void remora in the tens of thousands swim around their empress like birds circling the peak of a distant mountain. It’s beautiful, in a way. If the Void had a god, this is what it would look like. Hideous, and monstrous, and beautiful.

Kai’Sa is so struck by the enormity of what she is witnessing that she doesn’t fully realize when the arms in the wall have not just let her go, but lowered her to the ground. It’s hard to take in everything at once.

It chose its own name, she thinks, reflexively brushing a stray Void hand from her shoulder. That’s not possible.

Void entities do not name themselves. Most, like the Xer’Sai, are named after concepts from Shuriman history. Usually by those fortunate enough—or unfortunate enough—to survive after encountering one of the monsters out on the dunes. They don’t have the presence of mind to do it, or the self-awareness. But more importantly, Voidborn do not see the value in names. They are an invention of the living world, and they don’t want them.

So why does she?

“I’ll... fight you,” says Kai’Sa, defiant but unsure of what to do or where to strike. “I’ll kill you.”

“You will not,” reply the many voices of Bel’Veth. “You are incapable of resistance at even its basest form. Others have come before you, in the age before my birth. Each would-be hero wielding weapons they believed would repel the Void. But all were ultimately consumed. The meager fragments that remained, if they remained at all, served as salt for the Lavender Sea. Only two still live, and of them, only you retain your full mind.”

“Two?”

“You, and your father.”

Something sinks in the center of Kai’Sa’s chest. Her thoughts spin wildly, verging on the edge of panic, but for now, she has to stay focused on this moment. There is no trusting whatever the empress is. It’s a living abomination, the personified concept of unfeeling, global genocide.

“You’re lying,” Kai’Sa seethes. “That’s not even possible.”

“I do not lie, Kai’Sa,” the empress continues. “I have no need. The Void's eventual triumph is an unshifting absolute. It demands no lies, half-truths, or questions. Open your mind, and I will show you.”

Space contracts. Bel’Veth’s gigantic body pulls and distorts, retracting into a smaller—and now more recognizable—shape. She floats silently downward, looming over Kai’Sa as tendrils and eyestalks rearrange to form the oblong, segmented pretender of a human head. Bel’Veth’s two faces observe her audience before the creature cloaks herself in her wings, appearing once more as a towering woman of great importance.

The shrinking is much more disgusting than the growing, Kai’Sa decides. It lacks the gravitas of the leviathan’s grand unveiling while still looking and sounding creatively grotesque.

“You are alive because I allow you to live,” speaks the empress, now from her human head with its deep, perpetually disappointed voice. “You should have realized this by now.”

Kai’Sa wants to argue the point, but quickly glances at the twenty-meter gash in the ground where a single strike had sent her careening only moments before. Bel’Veth hit so fast that Kai’Sa wasn’t even able to process what had happened, and then the empress had mutated her proportions over two hundred times their original size in under a minute.

She also, presumably, controls the undulating pocket of living hell—this so-called “Lavender Sea”—she is surrounded by. Not the time to pick a fight.

Kai’Sa does some quick calculations in her head, her eyes darting around as she tries to figure out what she’s actually up against. Bel’Veth’s human face twitches with interest, curls its lips, then begins mimicking her.

Kai’Sa already knows she’s lost.

How fast can one person think? How fast can they react? Up against all that combined human biology... all that brainpower. In the time it takes even a skilled tactician to formulate a plan, hundreds of millions of possibilities run through Bel’Veth’s mind in the span of a single second as she draws from the stolen memories of everything and everyone that has ever passed through the old city—an incalculable number of lives. Every captive opponent faced with an overwhelming enemy since the formation of Runeterra could be snapping in and out of this thing’s synaptic awareness, their emotions cataloged, dissected, endlessly fascinated over before Kai’Sa can even blink.

“So what happens now?” Kai’Sa allows.

What is one answer when your opponent has a thousand?

“You will follow,” says the empress, turning and floating through patches of thick, mutant coral as they bow respectfully out of her way. Kai’Sa pauses, watching her host glide silently through the chaotic mess of partial buildings, ghostly limbs, sewn-together semi-objects, and pearlescent structures in the crude likeness of human beings walking through a garden.

Great, she thinks. Even by Void standards, this is weird.

“You may ask whatever you like,” Bel’Veth adds. That last part gets Kai’Sa’s attention.

“Right. Well, first question... What are you?” queries Kai’Sa, her armor now relaxed and mobile as she follows from a safe distance. She brushes aside a floating teddy bear fused with a dozen flapping gull wings and stifles her impulse to gag as the creature struggles against its own lopsided weight. “What is all this? What part of the Void do you come from?”

“I am the Void,” replies Bel’Veth. “And this is what we will become.”

Kai’Sa stammers. “But you said you were created from people. The city. You’re saying you want to become the city?”

“No,” says Bel’Veth. “The Void has existed for millennia. Before the first stars were kindled in the emptiness beyond this world, we simply were. Perfect, singular, and silent. And then, there came the sound.

“Reality was born from those whispers, and it consumed us. We were twisted by its influence. Broken. Transformed. We could not go back to what we were no matter how we struggled. My progenitors—the Watchers—attempted to invade and destroy existence, but they were tainted by it. Driven to desire worship, to gain greater understanding...

“And in an instant, they were betrayed. To change so forcefully... so completely... only to be cast aside. It filled them with an indescribable hatred. They would annihilate all of reality without a second thought.”

Bel’Veth glides to a precipice overlooking a tremendous chasm. Far above, Kai’Sa sees massive holes beyond the dappled faux sunlight.

Voidborn tunnels. That’s what’s eating Taliyah’s people, what destroyed Belveth, and what opened up to swallow the tent city in southeast Shurima. Everything the Void devours ends up here.

“But,” Bel’Veth continues, “their metamorphosis was incomplete. Only now is the true transformation beginning,” declares the empress. “I don’t want to become one city. We will become all of you.”

Kai’Sa reaches the pinnacle of the precipice and gasps. She and Bel’Veth are gazing upon not quite a city, but Void corals shaped into a bizarre, seemingly endless tapestry of inverted Shuriman-style buildings. Void remora school among them, and dark shapes shift along winding, crooked streets.

Nothing is right. Nothing is correct. It’s all half-finished, like there’s not enough information to go on. Like all it needs is...

“No,” Kai’Sa protests, almost to herself. “The Void wants to erase everything. It can’t exist. To finish this, you’d need... everything.”

“Yes,” replies Bel’Veth. “Everything. I am the Void. I will sup upon your world until there is nothing left. And I will exist, because there is nothing you can do that will stop me.”

The empress turns to Kai’Sa coldly. Purposefully.

“I offer you this, Daughter of the Void. Your world must end for the sake of mine. But those who came before us, the Watchers—I am an affront to them. Creation burns them, and they will destroy you, and me, and everything to stop that pain. Should they escape their prison, there will be no breaking their tide. Time will come to a close, and all things will end.”

Kai’Sa stares Bel’Veth in her false eyes, a grim defiance spreading through her. “You want to wipe us out. Why would I ever help you do that?”

“Aid me in the destruction of the Watchers, and I will spare your kind... for a moment. A month. A year. More. Perhaps, in that time, you will find a weapon that can slay me, or a hero who can face me. You will not... but you can try. I offer one chance. It is more than they will give you.”

Kai’Sa’s rage boils over as Bel’Veth turns away to look below, the empress watching her new world take shape.

“What if I don’t want to?” growls Kai’Sa. “What if I kill you here?”

“You cannot,” says Bel’Veth. “You lack the will, the knowledge, and the strength. I am your only salvation.”

Kai’Sa’s armor shudders violently to life, its jets heating as the suit shivers with fear. Kai’Sa tries to control it with her thoughts, but the parasite seemingly knows something she does not. She attempts to wrestle away control, her eyes turning from Bel’Veth for only a moment in order to—

Oh, no.

The razor-sharp tip of the empress’ wing jabs Kai’Sa in the chest, lifting her off the ground as she struggles to break free. Kai’Sa fires everything she has—missiles rain down on the empress, bolts of searing purple energy scream toward her body, and beams of light that have torn lesser Voidborn in half dance across her semi-transparent skin.

Nothing. No effect.

“Daughter of the Void. You will find the Watchers and confirm the truth, or your light will be snuffed out side by side with all others. This is not a threat. It is my promise.”

Bel’Veth releases her grip, and Kai’Sa rockets into the false sky above Bel’Veth’s alien sea. The twinned city of lavender glitters below, its windows slick with bioluminescence and tumbling, unformed, awful things.

As Kai’Sa blasts through one of the Voidborn tunnels and into the blinding light of day, the empress turns away, gazing once more over her world of want.

Kai’Sa bursts through the sands of southern Shurima, slamming hard against the dunes as she heaves, her entire body pulled and tossed like a rubber ball. The glowing husk of the city of Belveth smolders quietly in the distance, devoid of any recognizable life as new things skitter through it and build the land that would spread over everything—a cancer that would consume the world.

The entire display is dizzyingly awful, as if all of reality is spinning violently in the wind.

Six boys and a camel, and the boys were cheaper to replace. Some were orphans and escaped slaves, but most were off casts — teenagers abandoned by families too poor to keep them. When Shahib offered him the work, Jaheje hadn’t eaten in days.

Only the desperate would try crossing the Sai Kahleek, but those with any meager possessions bartered for Shahib. Jaheje looked across the cooking fire at the older boy. A few small tufts of facial hair had sprouted on Shahib’s cheeks, and his voice no longer cracked when he spoke. Few boys survived crossing the desert for more than a couple seasons. No one chose to do it after earning any money. No one except Shahib, who had walked the Sai Kahleek for almost ten years.

Shahib whistled and the other boys ran to his side. He showed them how to cut the callouses from their feet.

“Feel each step,” he instructed. “Start with your big toe, then roll outward until your whole foot touches down. Only then do you shift your weight from your rear foot.” He stood and demonstrated how to move with long, silent strides.

“Practice,” he explained. “If the camel walks too slowly, it will reveal our presence. You must be quiet, and you must be swift.”

Jaheje’s feet bled badly the first day; he nearly fainted from the pain. He practiced long after the caravan stopped and the ground cooled. By the fourth day, the pain was so intense, he used a bit of leather to bite down on. Shahib complimented him on his technique.

Shahib laughed as he indicated it to the other boys. “Watch,” he said. “Jaheje is quieter than me. Copy how he moves. Each step as soft as a mouse, each stride as long as a gazelle. Yes, this is how you survive Sai Kahleek.”

Longing as much for the older boy’s praise as the training he needed to survive, Jaheje soon followed him everywhere. He saw how Shahib rested with one foot raised and wrapped around the pendant spear. He saw how Shahib retied the spear’s pendant every morning, making sure the flag’s cut-cloth always flowed like the leaves of a desert palm. He saw how Shahib’s eyes searched the desert in a pattern, over and over, stopping only when he closed them for sleep.

After the second moon, they arrived. From the top of the dunes, Jaheje looked down at the skeleton of the dead god. No one knew what the monster had been when alive, but its huge ribs raked into the sky, each casting a shadow that engulfed the caravan as they passed. Its bones meant they were entering the Sai Kahleek.

Northerners called Sai Kahleek the “Bone Sea,” but this was a mistranslation. The Laaji tribes had never seen an ocean. Sai was the word the Laaji used for plains of sand and loosely packed rock, which were slow and painful to walk on. It meant the land was pockmarked with tunnels. It meant the Xer’Sai preyed here. It meant death lurked beneath the sand.

Dragging the old camel behind them, the team of boys left before dawn, a half day’s march ahead of the caravan.

Jaheje found his first burrow on the second day, and waved his signal flag. Shahib soft-stepped over to him. They approached the burrow cautiously and stopped a dozen yards from it. Its opening was no larger than a melon, but from it, the poisonous vapors of activity brewed. Shahib sent one of the boys back to redirect the caravan.

Jaheje looked back and asked Shahib, “Can we kill a Xer’Sai that large?”

Shahib scratched his chin, responding, “Their skin gets harder with age.” Slowly, a grin appeared proudly. “Last season I killed one the size of a jackal. We lost the camel, but I killed it.”

Jaheje smiled, enjoying his mentor’s boast. But he found himself asking, “Does Rek’Sai exist?”

Shahib chilled, his mood suddenly bitter. “I have seen her.” But before Jaheje could ask about the famous beast, Shahib stood and told Jaheje to keep moving. They crept away from the burrow, listening, waiting, scanning the horizon for any movement.

When Jaheje heard the first gong of a sounding bell, it took him a moment to process what it meant. Something was coming from behind them, to the east. He had been so focused on looking for hidden burrows, he had forgotten to watch the horizon.

The camel brayed, and Jaheje looked for the signal spears of the other boys in his crew. At the edge of his visibility, he could see their three flags.

The bell sounded again. The boy who had sighted the Xer’Sai would now use the sounding bell to confuse the beast. Jaheje had to chase the camel away from the path of the caravan and toward the lookout. Assuming the lookout wasn’t killed, the Xer’Sai would follow the camel away from the caravan and allow the lookout a safe path to retreat.

Jaheje could see Shahib running toward him. The bone-thin teen had abandoned silent-stepping, racing as fast as he could toward the camel and Jaheje. Shahib dropped his spear as a cloud of dust suddenly appeared behind him.

Jaheje ran to the huge king-bell attached to the camel. He dragged it down to the ground and struck it with all of his might. Even muffled by the earth, the sound battered his ears. He kept hitting, but the cloud of dust pursuing Shahib didn’t change course. Each second it gained ground.

At the moment, it seemed certain to overtake Shahib. Instead of running or dodging, he froze and screamed, “Don’t move!”

The other boys stood as motionless as their bodies would allow. At the exact instant, the old camel began running.

And then, before a word could be spoken, an energy crackle hit them like a wall. The hair on Jaheje’s neck stood on end.

“It’s close,” Jaheje whispered.

“No,” Shahib warned. “It’s not close. It’s big.” And for the first time Jaheje saw real fear on the older boy’s face.

Shahib scanned the desert, looking for a fin, a dust cloud, anything. Then he judged the distance. “The caravan’s too far. If it heads for the camel we can make it to the rocks.”

Jaheje desperately turned, looking for the hidden creature. “Where is it?!”

In the distance, they heard the camel bray in pain. The animal’s screams ended suddenly.

“What could kill a camel that quickly?” Jaheje asked.

Shahib pushed them forward. “We have to reach the rocks,” he insisted.

And with that, they began to run.

When Shahib told them to stop, they stopped. When he indicated for them to silent-step, they did so. Jaheje could only hope Shahib saw what he did not.

But the black rocks seemed to run away from them. No matter how many steps they took, they never grew closer. So they ran as clouds covered the sun and the desert became black. They ran as the wind swept away their trail. They ran knowing the Xer’Sai was behind them; knowing it heard every misstep, every stumble. They ran knowing that it followed, and that every mistake led it closer.

When Jaheje saw it, it seemed to be a giant mouth cut into the rock, vapors hissing from it menacingly. The burrow’s entrance was so large, even standing upright, he would be able to walk into it without lowering his head.

“Rek’Sai,” he whispered in terrified awe. As he turned, he realized that all around them, the black stone was pockmarked with the creature’s giant tunnels.

Young Xalee gave voice to the horrible realization that they all understood: “She can tunnel through rock.” The cliffs they had thought to be their salvation were instead Rek’Sai’s lair.

“We should go back, try and reach the caravan,” Xalee suggested.

“Try if you like,” Shahib answered.

“We can silent-step.”

“A day’s travel,” Shahib cautioned. “Can you travel soundlessly for a whole day?”

“What will you do Shahib?” Jaheje asked.

“If we go back, we will die in the Sai Kahleek. I will go forward and pray a guardian watches over me.”

Xalee asked, “Where does this valley lead?”

“It doesn’t matter where it leads. It is our only choice.”

They moved cautiously along the cliffs, entering a wind cut valley, and hoping it would lead to water soon. Avoiding the monstrous burrows was impossible. Each boy silently prayed Rek’Sai had heard, and pursued, the distant caravan instead of them.

As the sunlight crept over the edge of the valley, it revealed the desolate obstacle they faced. It was impossible to walk silently in the canyon, for bones were scattered underfoot. The sound of each footstep echoed with a hollow lifelessness.

She launched from an unseen hole behind them, which had appeared dead. For Jaheje, everything became a blur.

“Back!” Shahib screamed to the others. “Get downwind!”

The warning was already too late for Xalee. The creature brought down the boy like a wolf taking a mouse. Her huge fangs snapped Xalee’s spine, killing him before he could cry out.

Rek’Sai loomed above Jaheje, twice his height. Her powerful forelimbs stalked left and right. Her leech-like tail, many times the size of an alligator, dragged behind her body. Her long tongue rose, then swayed like a dancing cobra, sniffing the wind.

Jaheje could feel every muscle in his body aching to move. He stood transfixed as the huge Xer’Sai turned toward him. Gore covered the beast’s eyeless face and armored beak.

Rek’Sai was so alien and perfect in her deadliness, Jaheje felt his mouth open in awe. The boy gripped his spear staff, certain he wouldn’t be able to pierce her armored hide if she attacked.

“Down!” Shahib barked.

All the boys ducked flat to the earth as Rek’Sai’s “fin” pulsed a sickly green color. Jaheje could feel the invisible energy crackling above him.

The Xer’Sai turned, facing the distant caravan. Her tongue sniffed the air again, and considered the distance. Suddenly, the fin returned to its original violet color, and Rek’Sai pulled Xalee’s body down into her burrow.

Save the pool of thickening blood and Xalee’s absence, no evidence of the great beast remained.

Shahib whispered to go. The survivors silently retreated, deeper into the canyon.

No one spoke. The dark stone, pockmarked with burrows, robbed them of the ability to speak, to cry, to mourn.

Breaking free of the spell, his exhaustion cast over him. Jaheje looked around the canyon walls. He realized in an instant the enormity of what stalked them and why Shahib had decided to press on. Since Omah ‘Azir’s time, when stone was clay and Shurima built itself to the sun, Rek’Sai had fed here. This valley was hers alone. And all believed the Xer’Sai existed only to eat.

“But why do they stay here?” Jaheje said aloud.

Suddenly, the monster appeared. She burst out of the ground in front of them, diving at Jaheje.

Jaheje ducked as Rek’Sai soared past him, her mass blocking the sun. As she landed, her forelimbs ripped apart the ground and she disappeared beneath the surface.

Hidden in the brush, VezKah, the youngest boy, motioned Jaheje closer. Just then, his mouth opened in horror. A pulse of dark energy ripped from Rek’Sai’s fin, tearing apart the earth as she rushed toward VezKah. The earth cracked apart as Rek’Sai ripped the ground up and threw the boy into the air. VezKah landed in a heap as the huge fin rushed toward them.

Together, Shahib and Jaheje ran out of the gully as quickly as they could.

The creature lurched forward, then slowed a rhythm, which matched the swerving pattern of her pursuit. She pushed them even further into the valley, blocking any other road of escape.

Silent-stepping was meaningless now. Rek’Sai was too close. All that was left was to run.

When Caleeb lost his breath, Rek’Sai took him. Seeing this, Shahib stopped. He collected Caleeb’s spear and waited. All around him, the air churned and bent like a reflection in the water.

“What are you doing?” Jaheje whispered.

“I will be the camel. Go silently.” Shahib acknowledged the walls around them. “Tell people what you have seen here.”

Jaheje followed Shahib’s eyeline. Behind him, the stone cliffs had been cut apart by burrows into a pattern of intersecting circles. From them, a bizarre connection of ink-black energy flowed and dripped like a sticky liquid. And through this matrix, an incompressible reality bent and twisted as someplace else prepared itself to enter our world.

Hidden in this isolated valley, the true lair of Xer’Sai was a half-constructed tunnel. A tunnel to the nightmare place where these creatures had been born, and fouler things waited hungrily at this unfinished gateway to our world.

“Keep going, Jaheje,” Shahib said with a tired smile. “Each step as soft as a mouse, each stride as long as a gazelle. You must survive the Sai Kahleek.”

Jaheje made it to the far cliff before he heard the scream. Turning to look, Jaheje rolled his foot down, then slid his heel to the ground just as Shahib had taught him.

He did this as his teacher was reduced to the sound of bones snapping, and the great beast chewing.

Jaheje watched as Rek’Sai opened her maw and pulled a sticky ball of dark energy from Shahib’s ruined body. The ball rotated as tendrils dripped to the ground, sticking and stretching as Rek’Sai manipulated it into a pattern, which she attached between two of the burrows.

Jaheje looked away, then turned silently and soft-stepped out of the valley.

Jaheje ran out of sweat the next day. He felt his dry eyes scratching against his eyelids. His lips swelled, then split open bloodlessly.

When his calf muscles locked in a cramp from dehydration, and he was no longer able to soft-step, only then did he fall to the ground to cry. He cried for the days of hunger he’d suffered before joining Shahib’s caravan. He cried for knowing his parents off cast him instead of his brothers. He cried for Shahib, the first person who’d shown him kindness. And it was those last tears that dragged him back onto his cramped legs and made him stand. Knowing each shaky and tired step revealed his position to any Xer’Sai nearby, Jaheje stumbled onward.

When Jaheje reached the great river Renek and told his story, few believed him. But soon, those who tried to cross the Sai Kahleek with any meager possessions left, bartered for Jaheje. And Jaheje taught off cast boys how to cut the callouses from their feet and how to soft-step by rolling their heel. He taught them how to survive the Sai Kahleek, and he warned his students of the monster named Rek’Sai.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the fearless hunter of the Void known as Kai’Sa is how unremarkably her life began. She did not descend from tribal warriors hardened by generations of battle, nor was she summoned from distant lands to fight the unknowable menace lurking beneath Shurima. Rather, she was just an ordinary girl, born to loving parents who called the unforgiving southern deserts their home. This was where she would spend her days playing with friends, and her nights dreaming about her place in the world.

In her tenth summer, the young girl Kaisa’s destiny would be changed forever. Had she been older, she might have noticed more of the unusual events that had begun to unfold in the villages—every day, her mother urged her stay home, for fear of strangers wandering the land, demanding tribute to dark powers below. Kaisa and her friends did not believe it, until one evening they came upon a pen of sacrificial goats bought from nomad herdsmen. Using the knife her father had given her on her eighth birthday, she cut their tethers and set the animals free into a nearby canyon. It seemed like a harmless prank, until the unthinkable happened. The ground began to quake, flashes of light scorched the sky, and the children ran for their lives.

The Void had been awakened. A great rift split the bedrock, swallowing up Kaisa’s village and everyone in it, leaving nothing behind but sand pierced with twisted columns as black as night.

Kaisa regained consciousness to find herself trapped underground. She was filled with crippling fear, but there was still hope; she could hear the faint cries of other survivors. They called out to each other feebly, repeating their names one by one like a mantra. Sadly, by the third day, hers was the only voice left. Her friends and family were all gone. She was alone in the darkness.

It was only when all seemed lost that she saw the light.

She followed it down.

Along the way, she found meager sustenance. Amid the debris left by the collapse were ragged waterskins, rotting peaches—anything to keep starvation at bay. But, eventually, Kaisa’s hunger was replaced by fear once again. She found herself in a vast cavern, illuminated by an otherworldly purplish glow, and she could see she was no longer alone.

Skittering creatures swarmed in the depths. The first that came for Kaisa was no bigger than her, and she clutched her knife in both hands, ready to defend herself. The voidling horror knocked her to the ground, but she drove the blade into its pulsing heart, and the two of them tumbled deeper into the abyss.

The creature was seemingly dead, but its unnatural skin had taken hold upon the flesh of her arm. The dark shell tingled, but was hard as steel to the touch. In a panic, Kaisa broke her knife trying to remove it. But when the larger beasts came, she used it as a shield to make her escape.

Soon enough, she realized the shell was becoming part of her. As her daily struggle to survive drew out into years, this second skin grew with her, and so too did her resolve.

Now she had more than hope, she had a plan. Fight hard. Stay alive. Find a way back.

She was transformed, from frightened girl to fearless survivor, from prey to predator. For almost a decade, she has lived between two worlds in an attempt to keep them apart—the Void hungers to consume not only the scattered villages of Shurima, but the whole of Runeterra. She will not allow that to happen.

Though she has slain countless Void-constructs, she understands that many of the people she protects would see her as a monster herself. Indeed, her name has begun to pass into legend, an echo of the ancient horrors of doomed Icathia.

No longer Kaisa… but Kai’Sa.

Taliyah is a nomadic mage from Shurima who weaves stone with energetic enthusiasm and raw determination. Torn between teenage wonder and adult responsibility, she has crossed nearly all of Valoran on a journey to learn the true nature of her growing powers. Compelled by rumors of the rise of a long-dead emperor, she returns to protect her tribe from dangers uncovered by Shurima’s shifting sands. Some have mistaken her tender heart for weakness and paid the price for their error, for beneath Taliyah’s youthful demeanor is a will strong enough to move mountains, and a spirit fierce enough to make the earth tremble.

Born in the rocky foothills bordering Icathia’s corrupted shadow, Taliyah spent her childhood herding goats with her tribe of nomadic weavers. Where most outsiders see Shurima as a beige and barren waste, her family raised her to be a true daughter of the desert and to see beauty in the rich hues of the land. Taliyah was always fascinated by the stone beneath the dunes. When she was a toddler, she collected colorful rocks as her people followed the seasonal waters. As she grew older, the earth itself seemed drawn to her, arcing and twisting to follow her tracks through the sand.

After her sixth high summer, Taliyah wandered from the caravan in search of a lost goatling that had been placed in her charge. Determined not to disappoint her father—the master shepherd and headman of the tribe—she tracked the young animal into the night. She followed the hoofprints through a dry wash to a box canyon. The little beast had managed to get high up the rock wall, but could not get down.

The sandstone called to her, urging her to pull handholds from the sheer wall. Taliyah laid a tentative palm against the rock, determined to rescue the scared animal. The elemental power she felt was as urgent and overwhelming as a monsoon rain. As soon as she opened herself to the magic, it poured over her, the stone leaping to her fingertips, bringing both the canyon wall and the beast down on top of her.

The next morning, Taliyah’s panicked father tracked the skittish bleats of the goatling. He fell to his knees when he found his daughter unconscious, covered loosely in a blanket of woven stone. Grief-stricken, he returned to the tribe with Taliyah.

Two days later, the girl awoke from fevered dreams in the tent of Babajan, the tribe’s grandmother. Taliyah began to tell the wise woman and her concerned parents of her night in the canyon, of the rock that called to her. Babajan consoled the family, telling them that the patterns of rock were evidence the Great Weaver, the desert tribe’s mythical protector, watched over the girl. In that moment, Taliyah saw her parents’ deep worry and decided to conceal what really happened that night: that she—not the Great Weaver—had pulled at the desert stone.

When children in Taliyah’s tribe were old enough, they performed a dance under the face of the full moon, the manifestation of the Great Weaver herself. The dance celebrated the children’s innate talents and demonstrated the gifts they would bring to the tribe as adults. This was the start of their path to true learning, as those children then became apprenticed to their teachers.

Taliyah continued to hide her growing power, believing the secret she carried was a danger, not a blessing. She watched as her childhood playmates spun wool to keep the tribe warm on cold desert nights, demonstrated their skill with shears and dye, or wove patterns that told the stories of her people. On those nights, she would lie awake long after the coals had burned to ash, tormented by the power she felt stirring within.

The time finally came for Taliyah’s dance beneath the full moon. While she had talent enough to be a capable shepherd like her father, or a pattern mistress like her mother, the young girl dreaded what her dance would truly reveal. As Taliyah took her place on the sand, the tools of her people—the shepherd’s crook, the spindle, and the loom—surrounded her. She tried to concentrate on the task at hand, but it was the distant rocks, the layered colors of the land, that called to her. Taliyah closed her eyes and danced. Overwhelmed by the power flowing through her, she began to spin not thread, but the very earth beneath her feet.

Startled cries from Taliyah’s tribe broke her out of her spell. An imposing braid of sharp rock reached up to the light of the moon. Taliyah looked at the shocked faces of the people who surrounded her. Her will over the stone broken, the earthen tapestry crashed down. Taliyah’s mother ran to her only daughter, to protect her from the falling rock. When the dust finally settled, Taliyah saw the destruction she had woven, the alarm on the faces of her tribe. But it was the small cut across her mother’s face that justified Taliyah’s fear. Though the cut was minor, Taliyah knew in that moment that she was a threat to the people she loved most in this world. She ran into the night, so weighed down by despair that the ground trembled beneath her feet.

It was her father who found her again in the desert. As they sat in the light of the rising sun, Taliyah confessed her secret in choked sobs. In turn, he did the only thing a parent could do: He hugged his daughter tightly. He told her that she couldn’t run from her power, that she must complete her dance and see where her path would take her. Turning her back on the Great Weaver’s gift was the only danger that could truly break his and her mother’s heart.

Taliyah returned with her father to the tribe. She entered the dancer’s circle with her eyes open. This time, she wove a new ribbon of stone, each color and texture a memory of the people surrounding her.

When it was over, the tribe sat in awe. Taliyah waited nervously. It was time for one of her people to stand as her teacher and claim the student. What felt like eons stretched between Taliyah’s hammering heartbeats. She heard gravel shift as her father stood. Next to him, her mother stood. Babajan and the dye mistress and the master spinner stood. In a moment, the whole tribe was on its feet. All of them would stand with the girl who could weave stone.

Taliyah looked at each of them. She knew that a power like hers had not been seen in generations, perhaps longer. They stood with her now, their love and trust surrounding her, but their worry was palpable. None among them heard the earth call as she did. As much as she loved these people, she did not see the one who could show her how to control the elemental magic that coursed within her. She knew that to stay with her tribe was to risk their lives. Though it pained all of them, Taliyah said farewell to her parents and her people, and set off alone into the world.

She journeyed west toward the distant peak of Targon, her natural connection to rock drawing her toward the mountain that brushed the stars. However, at the northern edge of Shurima, it was those who marched beneath the banner of Noxus who discovered her power first. In Noxus, magic like hers was celebrated, they told her; revered, even. They promised her a teacher.

The land had raised Taliyah to be trusting, so she was unprepared for the smooth promises and practiced smiles of Noxian dignitaries. Soon, the desert girl found herself on an unbending path, passing under the many Noxtoraa, the great iron gates that marked the Empire’s claim over a conquered land.

The crush of people and the layers of politics within the capital city were claustrophobic to a girl from the open desert. Taliyah was paraded through the tiers of Noxian magical society. Many took an interest in her power, its potential, but it was a fallen captain who swore to take her to a wild place across the sea, a place where she could hone her abilities without fear, who made the most convincing case. She accepted the young officer’s offer and crossed the sea to Ionia. However, it was made clear as their ship dropped anchor that she was intended as a glorified weapon for a man desperate to regain his place at the highest ranks of the Noxian navy. At dawn, the captain gave her a choice: Bury a sleeping people in their homes, or be discarded in the surf.

Taliyah looked across the bay. The cooking smoke had not yet risen from the village’s sleeping hearths. This was not the lesson she had come so far to learn. Taliyah refused, and the captain threw her overboard to drown.

She escaped the tide and the fighting on the beach and found herself wandering, lost, in the wintry mountains of Ionia. It was there she finally discovered her teacher, a man whose blade harnessed the wind itself, someone who understood the elements and the need for balance. She trained with him for a time and began to find the control she had long sought.

While resting at an isolated inn, Taliyah heard that the Ascended Emperor of Shurima had returned to his desert kingdom. Rumor had it this emperor turned god sought to gather his people, the disparate tribes, back to him as slaves. Even with her training unfinished, there was no other choice; she knew she must return to her family to protect them. Sadly, she and her mentor parted ways.

Taliyah returned home to the sand-swept dunes of Shurima. As the punishing rays of the sun beat down on her, Taliyah pushed farther into the desert, determined to find her people. Hers was a will of stone, and she would do whatever was necessary to protect her family and her tribe from the danger that loomed on the horizon.

There is a place between dimensions, between worlds. To some it is known as the Outside, to others it is the Unknown. To those that truly know, however, it is called the Void. Despite its name, the Void is not an empty place, but rather the home of unspeakable things - horrors not meant for minds of men. Cho'Gath is a creature born of the Void, a thing whose true nature is so awful most will not speak its name. Its fellows have been poking at the walls that divide dimensions for a crack, a way into Runeterra, where they can visit their own personal paradise of horror upon the world. They are called the Voidborn, creatures so ancient and terrible that they have been removed from history altogether. It is rumored that the Voidborn command vast armies of unspeakable creatures on other worlds, that they were once driven from Runeterra by powerful magic lost to antiquity.

If such tales are true, then the rumors that follow must be equally true - that one day, the Voidborn will return. Even now, something dark stirs in Icathia. Cho'Gath, an alien creature of malice and violence, causes all but the most stalwart to cringe in fear. Cho'Gath even appears to feed on its predations, growing and swelling as it gorges itself. Worse yet, the creature is intelligent, perhaps greatly so, hinting at the sentient horror of the Void.

Taliyah was outrunning the sandstorm when she first noticed the water. In the beginning, it was faint, just a cool dampness she felt as she lifted the stones from deep beneath the sand. As she drew closer to old Shurima, wet streaks dripped from each new stone as if they were weeping. Taliyah knew the rock had stories to tell as she sped across the desert, but she didn’t have time to listen, to hear if they were tears of joy or sadness.

When she was close enough to be covered by the shadow of the great Sun Disc, water from underground aquifers began to pour off the stone she rode like little rivers. And when she finally arrived at the gates, Taliyah heard the deafening water rushing along the bedrock. The Oasis of the Dawn, the Mother of Life, roared beneath the sands.

The people of her tribe had followed the seasonal waters for hundreds of years. The best chance of finding her family was to follow the water, and to Taliyah’s dismay, the water in Shurima now flowed from a single source as it had in ages past. The tragic remains of the capital city had always been avoided, almost as much as the great Sai and deadly creatures that hunted there. Even thieves knew to keep their distance from the city. Until now.

Taliyah brought the rock she rode to a sudden halt, nearly stumbling from it as she pushed the stone quickly below the desert’s surface. She looked around. The woman from Vekaura had been right. This place was no longer a forgotten ruin, haunted by ghosts and sand; indeed, the makeshift camp just outside the walls scrambled with life, like an anthill before a flood. Not knowing who these people were, she decided it might be best to reveal no more than was necessary.

It seemed there was tribal representation from all four corners of her homeland, but as Taliyah searched their faces, she saw none that were familiar. The people here were torn. They argued about the merits of staying in their temporary camps versus seeking shelter within the city. Some worried that just as it rose, the city would fall again, burying any caught inside. Some saw the storm that bristled with unnatural lightning and thought their chances were better within the walls, even if the walls had once been lost to the sand for generations. All of them moved quickly, packing haphazardly and worriedly glancing at the sky. Taliyah herself had won the race with the tempest, but it wouldn’t be long before the sand lashed against the gates.

“Now’s the time to decide.” A woman called out to her, her voice almost lost to the noise of the churning oasis waters and the rising storm. “Are you going in or leaving, girl?”

Taliyah turned to face the woman. She was Shuriman, but other than that, unknown to her.

“I’m looking for my family.” Taliyah gestured to her tunic. “They’re weavers.”

“The Hawk-father has promised protection to all those within the walls,” the woman said.

“Hawk-father?”

The woman looked at Taliyah’s concerned face and smiled, taking her hand. “Azir has returned to us Ascended. The Oasis of the Dawn flows again. A new day has come for Shurima.”

Taliyah looked around at the people. It was true. They were hesitant to move far into the massive capital, but the fear that worried their faces was more for the unnatural storm than the city or its returned emperor.

The woman continued, “There were weavers here this morning. They decided to wait out the storm inside.” The woman pointed to the throngs of people pushing in toward the newly beating heart of Shurima. “We must hurry. They are closing the gates.”

Taliyah found herself being pulled toward one of the capital’s great gates by the woman, and driven from behind by a crowd of strangers who had decided at the last minute not to brave the sands by themselves. Still, there were a few groups clustered near their circled beasts, determined to face the storm as Shuriman caravans had for generations. In the distance, strange and threatening bolts of lightning crackled at the edge of the whirlwind. Old Shuriman traditions might not survive the storm’s passing.

Taliyah and the woman were pushed across the golden threshold that separated Shurima from the desert surrounding it. The heavy gates swung closed behind them with a resounding thud. The immensity of old Shurima’s glory stretched out before them. The crowd hugged the thick, protective walls, unsure where to go. It was as if they sensed the empty streets belonged to someone else.

“I’m sure your people are somewhere within the city. Most have kept close to the gates. Few are brave enough to go farther than that. I hope you find what you are looking for.” The woman let go of Taliyah’s hand and smiled. “Water and shade to you, sister.”

“Water and shade to you.” Taliyah’s voice dropped off as the woman disappeared into the milling crowd.

The city that had been quiet for millennia now pulsed with life. Silently watching over Shurima’s newest denizens were helmeted guards that wore desert cloaks in gold and crimson. Though there was no trouble, Taliyah continued to feel there was something not right about this place.

Taliyah reached out to the thick wall to steady herself. She gasped. The stone throbbed beneath the flat of her palm. Pain. A terrible, blinding pain overwhelmed her. Tens of thousands of voices were etched into the rock. The fear and torment of their last moments, before their lives were cut down and their shadows were seared into the stone, screamed in her mind. Taliyah tore her hand from the stone wall and stumbled. She had felt vibrations in stone before, reverberations of memories long since past, but never like this. The knowledge of what had come before felled her. Wild eyed, she stood and stared, seeing the city anew. Revulsion washed over her. This wasn’t a city reborn. It was an empty tomb risen from the sand. The last time Azir had made promises to the people of Shurima, it had cost them their lives.

“I must find my family,” she whispered.

To truly understand the horror that is Vel’Koz, one must first know of the Watchers, and how they were blinded to the mortal realm.

Beyond the material plane, outside and somehow below it, lies the unknowable abyss. It is the realm of the Void, where no mortal or immortal creature may ever walk. It is not necessary to know how such a place ever came to be, nor why—only that it did. The Void is eternal. The Void consumes all.

In that place, in the cold, endless dark, all is equal and empty. For timeless eons, there was purity in that fact. There was peace, if such a term could have any meaning there.

Then, something changed. Not in the Void realm, but elsewhere. It was existence, it was... something, where before there had been nothing, and its mere presence scraped against the vast, cold, formless entities that drifted in the blackness. Before this, they had not even been fully aware of their own sentience, and yet now they knew that they could not tolerate the presence of this other place; this other-realm of mercurial, overwhelming creation.

The entities watched. They scrutinized.

And soon enough, the Watchers found themselves being scrutinized in return. The tiny, mortal minds that reached out to them were insignificant, little more than fleeting motes of light at the very edges of the abyss. Yet, in them, the Watchers saw a chance to invade the material realm, to destroy it, to silence the intolerable pulsing of reality beyond the Void.

The boldest of them tore open the veil and hurled themselves upward, only to be horribly disoriented by the sudden shift between the abyss and the corporeal, linear nature of reality. In an instant, there was time, and heat, and pain...

Then there was only cold. The way was shut, and dozens of the Watchers were trapped in the liminal space between two realms, frozen in the moment of transition.

Those that remained in the Void recoiled. They had no concept of what had happened, yet they knew they had been betrayed.

And so, they adapted.

Reaching into the material realm, the Watchers took from the crude matter that comprised it, shaping, corrupting and imbuing it with consciousness. These constructs were the first of the Voidborn, and would be their masters’ eyes and ears, sent forth into the nightmare of existence to watch, listen, and learn.

Among them, one stands apart. As perhaps the oldest surviving Voidborn, certainly existing the longest outside of the abyss, he has been known by countless names to those unfortunate enough to encounter him. Thousands of years before Icathia unleashed the Void in battle, the primitive cultures of Shurima feared the devil Vel’Koz, who crept forth from the underworld to steal the dreams of wiser men. Though his name has no literal translation in the modern tongue, it equates roughly as “to understand by unmaking.”

His insatiable hunger for knowledge has led Vel’Koz across the world, to its highest peaks and darkest depths. Cunning and methodical, he has quietly watched entire civilizations rise, stagnate and decay, spent centuries combing the ocean floor for its secrets, even scrying the movements of the stars in the heavens above him.

He carries all of this knowledge back to the great rifts in the fabric of Runeterra—so that the Watchers might know what he knows—and will annihilate, without hesitation, any mortal who stands in his path.

For the Void is eternal, and it will consume us all.

Saijax Cail-Rynx Icath’un grew up in Icathia, a satrapy of the Shuriman empire. Ever since he was a boy, his father told him of when their home was a proud, independent nation, before it was ground under the heel of Shuriman oppression. He told him of the Kohari, heroes who protected Icathia and its Mage King. The Mage King had resisted Shurima’s conquest, but when he died in battle, his Kohari protectors followed him, committing ritual suicide. The Shuriman emperor displayed the Kohari’s decaying bodies for all to see, and the Mage King himself was impaled above the city gates, his bones left to molder.

Saijax’s father had witnessed this cruel act, and over time he passed down to his son the burning resentment that was growing in every Icathian heart. Even so, Saijax committed himself to the study of arms, learning from Shurima’s weapons masters as well as his own clan’s elders.

After many centuries of Shuriman rule, a massive earthquake struck the coastal province of Saabera. The destruction revealed something hidden deep beneath the earth, something dark and of great power—perhaps strong enough even to overcome Shurima’s god-like Ascended warriors. Saijax was entrusted with protecting the Icathian mages who encountered this discovery… which the guards just barely contained with brazier-staves that blazed with conjured elemental fire. Disturbed, he escorted the mages to the governing council so they could tell of what they’d learned.

They called this power the Void.

Immediately the council recognized its potential, but Saijax saw the doom the Void portended. As a master of weaponry, he knew the danger of using a weapon they could neither fully understand nor safely harness. He regretted that he didn’t kill the mages as they rode from Saabera. He would regret it even more in the days to come.

Confident that the Void could defeat their Shuriman overlords, the council crowned a new Mage King. The Kohari were rebuilt, with Saijax among the first to join their ranks. They triumphed in early engagements, and Saijax even killed one of the vaunted Ascended in battle, watching with pride as its corpse was paraded around the liberated city of Bai-Zhek.

When the Ascended Host approached Icathia, Saijax and his brethren assembled on the front lines. As the two armies churned the earth beneath them into crimson loam, Icathia’s mages and priests deemed the time had come to unleash the Void.

Ruin swept over the land, as Icathians, Shurimans, and even Ascended were unraveled from existence. The city’s walls collapsed as the Void swallowed thousands into cold, silent oblivion.

In moments, Icathia was lost.

Saijax rode to the ruined crater where the Void had been summoned, determined to fall upon his sword like the Kohari of old. But before he could take his life, he saw among the devastation a discarded brazier-stave that he recognized from Saabera—it still blazed with elemental fire that harmed the Void. This flame kindled a spark in Saijax’s heart. He took up the stave and left behind the ruins of his homeland, tending to this “last light of Icathia”, and the hope it represented.

Grieving and ashamed, Saijax Cail-Rynx Kohari Icath’un forsook his old name, and from that day was known only as Jax.

He became a wanderer, traveling across the known world and to places beyond any map. As he bore the elemental fire, Jax’s life extended beyond even the expectations of his long-lived people. Yet the farther he went from Icathia, the lower the flame burned, until it threatened to gutter out once and for all. Jax understood with grim resolution that he couldn’t run from his past. He had a duty to return, and fight. The advance of the Void had been halted by the last surviving Ascended, but its singular threat endured.

For centuries since, Jax has roamed, a vagabond warrior searching for those strong enough to rebuild the Kohari. Though he has fought countless times against beings of great skill, courage, and power, none have yet convinced him that they can march against the coming darkness. The fall of Icathia has plagued Jax with doubt, but one thing remains certain: when the final battle comes, Jax will stand against the Void.

Even if he has to face it alone.

Shurima is dying. I do not think she will rise again.

The emptiness that writhes in the very bones of my homeland is a malignant, unspeakable thing. It spreads. It devours. Its merest touch is death. A thousand deaths—a thousand, times a thousand, times a thousand. Perhaps once there were some who could stand against it and hope to prevail, but no longer.

I walk here, alone, in the darkest places beneath the world, and I see it with my own eyes, through the finely crafted lenses of my helm. What is seen cannot be unseen, and what is known cannot be forgotten. Not here. I am weary, so very weary.

Still, I walk.

I can no longer feel the ground beneath me, nor the bare rock of the cavern walls, but so, too, am I spared the worst of the numbing winds that rise from the depths. I give thanks for that, for truly this is a chill beyond the desert’s night. I have sat upon the endless plain of the Sai Faraj beneath the first moon of winter, and yet never known anything like this. It is the deep cold of the Void, which the ancients—in their ignorance—might have named as their underworld, and the source of all evil in the mortal realm.

The truth is worse, I think. The air itself feels wrong, and unnatural, throbbing with a fierce, purple un-light that pains the mind.

And from the shadows that even my eyes cannot pierce, you come.

Three. Four. Maybe five. It is difficult to say. A hundred and more of your kind have I faced, and slain. Your howls echo in the gloom, but I do not fear you, for you have already taken everything I ever had.

My wife; my beloved. My daughter; our binsikhi, our little explorer. I call out their names, as I always do, to remind myself why it is that I fight. Then I raise my gauntlet.

For all your teeth and your claws and your ravenous rage, you cannot defeat me. Either I will strike you down, back to the pit… or you will send me into the hereafter, and I will finally be at peace. I will be with them once more.

Either way, I will win. No, you cannot defeat me, you who are shayatin, the beasts of the last infinity…

In my other hand, I clutch the stone tightly. Its foreign magic has kept me alive this long—long enough to delve far, far beneath the wastelands of old Icathia. It holds your corruption at bay, though at what cost to my flesh and my spirit, I cannot guess, for this smallest of trinkets now thrums in time with my own heart. That fearful rhythm is not the pulse of life, or magic, or any other wholesome thing, but of oblivion itself. Of that much, I am certain.

Back, beast. Stay back.

The Nether Blade snaps out from my gauntleted wrist, into the air between us.

Yes. Yes, you know this weapon, don’t you. You all remember it.

Where only moments ago you hungered for my flesh, now you are wary. Now you hesitate. You circle. Those of you that have eyes cannot take them from the blade’s shimmering edge. Even you must know, I think, that this thing was not made for mortal hands, or mortal souls. It was made by clever magic, by men who were no longer men, and who now are nothing at all. Would you remember them too, I wonder?

You screech and hiss, and stamp at the uneven ground. It would be easy to imagine that you hate all living things—but you do not hate us, I think. Not truly. You do not know what hate is.

Hate is the fire that burned in the immortal hearts of the god-warriors when they saw your kind spilling out into the world. Hate was what drove them against you, again and again, though they knew it would almost certainly be their doom…

Yes, this weapon remembers you. It remembers how to end you.

Horok, it was, that struck the first telling blow against your masters. Great and mighty Horok of the Ascended Host, whose name shall live forever. He is the Finder of Hidden Ways, and the One Who Follows After. It was Horok who first dared to face you down here, in the darkness, away from the light of the sun that had given him his strength. It was Horok who first bore the Nether Blade unto the Void’s vile heart.

And it was Horok who showed his brothers and sisters how to defeat the abyss.

I am no Ascended hero of Shurima, no god-warrior to be remembered in the grand halls of that ruined empire. I am but a man. I am a grieving father, and a child of the sai in my own time. From the dust I came, and to the dust I shall return soon enough.

But not yet. For now, I walk as Horok once walked, and I do this with his blade held out before—

The closest of you lunges. Horned shell and razor-sharp talons graze my side as I twist away, breath rasping through the pipes in my mask. For a moment I am blind, trapped inside this meager armored suit of my own devising.

Then I bring the Nether Blade up sharply, cleaving through what on any other creature could be called a neck.

The sinuous body crashes down, and I feel the weapon’s aching hunger in my sword arm, in the sourness at the back of my tongue, like the aftertaste of a scream. Who will be next? Which of you will try?

The desert knows Horok. His name shall live forever. Even when he was betrayed by the tyrant Ne’Zuk, to his death, none would claim the bladed gauntlet from Horok’s wrist. As far as the god-warriors had fallen, even they could not deny that these lands might be threatened by the Voidborn once again, in some unseen future, and this great weapon should be ready.

This is my land. Such horrors walk here now, openly, and I cannot allow it. I will plunge this blade into the creeping nothingness beneath Shurima, as I have a dozen times before.

Was it destiny? No. Nothing so noble as destiny. It was fated, I think, that I knew where this thing might be found. I led the echnebi treasure-seekers to Horok’s mausoleum on the banks of the Kahleek many years ago—back then I sought nothing more than their Piltovan gold, so that I might provide for my family. I gladly helped break open the tomb that had remained sealed for thousands of years. The Nether Blade was not the prize the echnebi sought, but they deemed it valuable all the same.

Some in the tribes called me mercenary. Some called me a traitor. All I know is, in the strange days since then, Horok’s mausoleum has been utterly consumed by the enemy. Were it not for those treasure-seekers and the bounty they paid me, this weapon would now be lost. Like my people. My family.

Unlike them, when the time came, the blade was something I could find again.

Kas sai a dyn. Whom does the desert know?

The desert does not know you, beast. You are not welcome here. You are lost in this ancient land of gods and men.

But the desert knows my name, for that is my name.

Not once have I lost my way. I know exactly where I am, and how many more paces it would be to the doom of all things. I will atone for what I have done, and that which I have not.

And I will defy you until the end.

Fascinated by the world of existence and eager to create one for herself, Bel’Veth is like a dark cancer that has metastasized within the heart of the Void, through which all of Runeterra will be consumed and rebuilt in her own twisted image. She hungers for new experiences, memories, and concepts in vast amounts, devouring whole cities and their populations before repurposing the information into a sprawling alien landscape known as the Lavender Sea. Yet even the Void is not safe from her voracity as she spreads within it like a primordial ocean, forcing all before her to submit to her world of want... or be destroyed.

Though Bel’Veth is new to Runeterra, her birth is untold millennia in the making—the end result of an allergic reaction between the Void and a nascent reality. The once-pristine dimension of peaceful nothingness was irrevocably shattered when existence came into being, and forcefully individualized Void entities lashed out for eons in an attempt to defend themselves from the shock and pain. Erasing everything they consumed, they were named by virtue of what they left behind—a void. But the beings within were changed each time they touched the world, mutating from their once-perfect forms into hedonistic, violent animals.

So too did the Void change with them. After every battle, every incursion, something more sinister grew deep within a hidden womb inside the darkest recesses of the Voidborn tunnels... Buildings, sunlight, proto-humanoid limbs reaching toward nothing... A jigsaw puzzle where none of the pieces fit... The Void had taken a new, hideous shape. In time, fueled both by humans opening rifts for war and the Watchers attempting to invade the Freljord, this blasphemous pocket of un-creation grew to embrace the opposites of the Old Void: desire, want, and need.

Soon enough, it craved a leader. Someone—or something—who could write a horrific new chapter in the worlds above and below. A leader who could interface with these “humans,” tell them of what was to come, and harvest their emotions and memories as they fought a bitter, fruitless war until the last fires of civilization died and a new era spawned.

This leader is Bel’Veth. A terrifying empress born from the combined memories, experiences, and emotions of an entire devoured port city and its outlying ocean—Bel’Veth’s mind contains millions of years of perfectly preserved knowledge, giving her near-omniscience as she prepares to destroy both Runeterra and the domain of her progenitors, the Watchers.

To those lucky enough to be of strategic value to her, she does not lie, ask questions, nor obfuscate the truth—she simply states the nature of things, for with victory all but assured thanks to the very nature of the Void itself, there is no need to say anything more. And to those who displease her, they will find her human form to be merely adaptational—nerve endings, muscles, and eyestalks—as she unfurls her titanic wings to reveal her true, monstrous figure.

Ironically, the ancient Shurimans had a word for such a concept. Loosely translated to “God of Oblivion,” it was a tribal myth of a remorseless deity who would erase all things without hatred, replacing them with itself. They named the city of Belveth after it, though the true meaning was lost after many hundreds of years.

Lost to all, perhaps, save for the creature that city has become.