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The youngest child in a ruling family, Qiyana grew up believing she would never inherit the high seat of the Yun Tal. As her parents governed Ixaocan, a city-state hidden deep in the jungles of Ixtal, they raised their children to succeed them, schooling them in the proud traditions of their isolated nation. Primed to rule before her, Qiyana’s nine older sisters received most of the attention, and she often longed to find her own meaningful place in the family.

That place became clear the day young Qiyana began to learn the ancient elemental magic of Ixtal. Soon after she took up lessons, she realized she was blessed with extraordinary talent. Though Qiyana was only seven years old, she mastered advanced techniques within weeks, while some of her older sisters had yet to grasp the basics after years of study.

One by one, Qiyana surpassed her sisters in the elemental arts, and the more she progressed, the more resentful she became. Why did her parents waste so much effort grooming her inferior siblings? Each time they were chosen to preside over the grand rituals that shrouded Ixtal from the outside world, Qiyana lashed out in frustration, picking fights to prove her worth. It wasn’t long before Inessa, the eldest sister and immediate successor, became the target for Qiyana’s aggression.

Rather than defusing the conflict, Inessa bristled at the disrespect from her sister, who was twelve years her junior. As both grew older, their words became increasingly heated, culminating in physical threats from Inessa, and a challenge from Qiyana: they should decide who was strongest in ritual combat, for all of Ixaocan to see—and for the right to succeed their parents. Inessa accepted the challenge to teach her sister some much needed humility.

When the contest was over, Inessa was never to walk again, while Qiyana stood unscathed.

She was eager to take her place as the rightful heir, but Qiyana’s parents were furious at her actions. They denied her the prize—tradition decreed that Qiyana would always be tenth in line to inherit the high seat of the Yun Tal. Though the news was bitter, Qiyana soon discovered that the duel had made her elemental prowess known across all of Ixaocan. At last, she had found what had long eluded her: respect.

That respect quickly became an addiction. Qiyana felt a burning need to be recognized for her exceptional skill. In fact, all of Ixaocan should stand proud with her, and put the world in its place with their powerful elemental magic. Instead, they were hiding from foreign explorers, and miners who were uprooting the jungle on their borders.

In her parents’ court, Qiyana laid out her ambitions—to drive off the miners and restore the lands. Qiyana’s parents rejected the idea. Contact with the “outlanders” would bring hatred, war, and disease, jeopardizing what their dynasty had protected for centuries. Qiyana stewed, impatient to prove her strength to the world, and determined to prove her parents wrong.

Acting against their will, Qiyana raided the mining site, killing all the miners but one. As the man’s eyes shone brightly with fear, Qiyana knew he would spread her message—he would tell everyone in his Pilt-over about the grand elementalist who destroyed their mine.

In Ixaocan, Qiyana gladly took credit for the slaughter, infuriating her mother and father. They told her the Piltovan merchants were sending fresh miners and armsmen into the jungle. Qiyana’s parents would not risk their insubordinate daughter drawing even more outlanders toward their borders, and regretfully ordered her imprisoned for her crime.

Just as she was detained, several elementalists of the court came to Qiyana’s defense. The elemental talent displayed in the jungle was unheard of, and they convinced her parents that Qiyana should aid them in powering and defending the city. Qiyana was released, once she swore renewed fealty to her elders, and vowed to never cross paths with an outlander again.

As a growing number of admirers throw their support behind Qiyana, she has finally realized her true place in the world. She holds a power stronger than tradition, and she will climb the ladder of succession by any means necessary.

She is the greatest elementalist the world has ever seen. She is the inevitable ruler of Ixaocan, and the future empress of all Ixtal.

Ryze was just a young apprentice when he first learned of the arcane powers that had shaped the world.

His master, a sorcerer named Tyrus of Helia, was a member of an ancient order whose mission had been to gather and protect the most dangerous artifacts in Runeterra. Ryze overheard Tyrus speaking in hushed tones with another mage, discussing something called “World Runes.” When Tyrus noticed his apprentice, he abruptly ended the conversation, tightly clutching the scroll that never left his side.

In spite of the order’s best efforts, knowledge of the Runes began to spread—few could even begin to understand their importance, or the sheer power held within them, and yet all saw them as weapons that could be turned against their rivals. Ryze and Tyrus traveled between the various peoples of Valoran, trying to quell paranoia and encourage restraint. But over time, their missions became increasingly precarious, and Ryze could sense his master’s growing desperation. Finally, in the Noxii territories where Ryze was born, the first cataclysmic blow was struck in what would eventually be known as the Rune Wars.

Two nations were pitted against one another, and tensions were running high. Tyrus pleaded with their leaders in parley at the village of Khom, but he saw this conflict had already escalated beyond his ability to mediate. Fleeing into the hills, he and Ryze bore horrified witness to the destructive power of the World Runes firsthand.

The earth fell away beneath them, the bedrock itself seeming to retch and squeal, while the sky above them recoiled as if mortally wounded. They looked back upon the valley where the rival armies had stood, and beheld insanity—destruction on a scale so massive that it defied all physical sense. The buildings, the people, all were gone, and the ocean, once a day’s journey to the east, now rushed to meet them.

Ryze fell to his knees and stared into the great hole torn in the world. Nothing remained. Not even the village he once called home.

Open warfare soon raged across Runeterra. Ryze felt compelled to join the conflict, to pick a side and lend his magical strength to the cause, but Tyrus stayed his hand. The two of them had to guide others back toward peace, and pray there was anything left of the world by the time it was all over.

Wherever they met those who held the World Runes, Tyrus pleaded for restraint. Many were deeply sobered by the threat of total annihilation—indeed, those who had already suffered most bitterly in the war might have agreed to turn over their Runes to him, and yet none of them wished to be the first to do so.

As time passed and the conflict spread, Ryze noticed his master growing more distant. While Tyrus attended clandestine meetings with great leaders and archmages, he sent his apprentice on errands that seemed of little importance, often for many weeks at a time. Eventually, Ryze decided to confront him and, to his horror, discovered that Tyrus of Helia had secretly come into possession of not one Rune, but two.

Bitter and angry, the older mage insisted that common mortals were like reckless children, toying with powers they did not understand. He would no longer play diplomat to ignorant power-mongers. He had to stop them. Ryze tried to reason with Tyrus, but it was no use—before him stood a flawed man, susceptible to the same temptations as those he decried. The allure of the Runes had left its mark upon him. Where once he desired only peace, now he had the means to bring about the end of all things. Ryze had to act, even if it meant destroying his only true friend and ally in the world.

In an instant, he unleashed all the magic he could muster. A moment later, Tyrus’s corpse lay smoldering on the floor.

Ryze trembled as his mind struggled to process what he had done. If these deadly artifacts could corrupt a mage with the strength and integrity of Tyrus, how was Ryze to handle them? At the same time, he knew he could not entrust them to any other living soul...

Soon, the greatest civilizations all but destroyed one another, ending the war. Ryze now understood the task he had inherited—as long as any World Rune remained unsecured, Runeterra was surely doomed. This knowledge was to become a lonely burden indeed, for ever since that day he has scoured the world in search of the last remaining Runes. He continues to reject the promise of power within each one, choosing instead to bind them in secret locations, far from prying and greedy eyes.

Even with his life abnormally prolonged by the magic he is exposed to, Ryze cannot afford to rest, for rumors of the World Runes have begun to emerge once more, and the peoples of Runeterra seem to have forgotten the price of wielding them.

Vi remembers little of her childhood in Zaun, and what she does remember, she wishes she didn’t. Running with the sump-snipe gangs, she quickly learned to use her wits, as well as her fists, to survive. Everyone who encountered Vi knew she could talk—or punch—her way out of trouble. More often than not, she chose the latter.

None of the old-timers from her youth could tell her anything of her parents. Most assumed they had died in one of the industrial accidents that were, sadly, all too common in the undercity. Though she had ended up in the crumbling Hope House orphanage, a notoriously mad sump-scrapper claimed to have found her adrift in a bassinet large enough for two in the ruins of a collapsed chem-lab. In the end, Vi figured some things were best left unknown.

With her wild pink hair, she became a distinctive sight on the streets of Zaun—hightailing from angry shopkeepers in the boundary markets, swaggering through the colorful bazaars of the Black Lanes, or hitching rides up into Piltover aboard the hexdraulic conveyors. Wherever there was a scrape to be gotten into or a scam to be run, Vi was in the thick of it, though she never stole from those that couldn’t cover the loss… and never hurt those that didn’t deserve it.

As she got older, the capers of childhood became more audacious and daring, and Vi formed a gang of her own. Brash and quick to anger, she still relied on her fists a little too much, and was rarely without a black eye or split lip.

She found a mentor in the owner of a bar on the edge of the Lanes, who tempered some of her more self-destructive tendencies. He tried to reinforce her moral code, and showed her how to fight with discipline, as well as teaching her ways to better direct her simmering anger.

In time, Vi earned a reputation as someone who got things done, no questions asked.

Listening to the chatter of the Zaunite miners who frequented the bar, she came to learn when big deals were being made, and how payments were to be delivered. To a chem-baron, this was chump change—but to her and her friends, it would be a fortune. She planned a heist, but knew it would require extra bodies to pull off, so Vi reluctantly brought a rival gang, the Factorywood Fiends, in on her score.

Everything was going fine, until the leader of the Fiends killed the mine owner with a pair of oversized pulverizer gauntlets, and trapped the rest of the workers in the tunnels. Even as both gangs fled with the loot, Vi knew she could not leave these innocent people to die. She snatched up the gauntlets, the wrist mechanisms clamping down painfully on her arms, but she endured the agony long enough to smash open a path to free the miners.

The following day, Vi paid a visit to the Factorywood Fiends. Still wearing the powered gauntlets, she took on the entire gang, administering a beating so legendary that it is still spoken of in the Lanes to this day.

Vi eventually disappeared from Zaun during a time of great upheaval, when tensions with Piltover were running high. Rumors circulated between the gangs that she had been killed in a huge explosion in the heart of the undercity, or that she had turned her back on her friends and struck out for distant lands. The truth, however, finally came to light when Old Hungry’s Scars—a vicious gang whose murder sprees had spread topside—were brought down by a respected sheriff of Piltover and her new ally… Vi.

The former gang leader was now in the employ of the Wardens, and she had replaced the chem-powered pulverizer gauntlets with a pair of brand new hextech Atlas prototypes.

No one yet knows the exact reason why or how Vi came to be working alongside Caitlyn—but given the anarchic nature of the crime wave now sweeping Piltover, speculation runs rife that it might involve a certain blue-haired hellion from Zaun…

The river brings memories from a dead world. I wonder if I’m the only one able to find them.

Across the water, I see the vines my father tends, curling protectively around Ixtal and its people, the last of Runeterra. Leaves and branches hang in ragged loops all up and downstream, disappearing into gloom past dawn’s limited reach. Each visit, I wonder if the dark hides serpent or jaguar, or some other danger. My mother hunts those beasts, providing meat and protecting our village of Semchul. My parents expected I would follow in their footsteps. That I would grow into Aliay the gardener, or Aliay the hunter.

I chose neither, but their lessons combined to shape my path.

I shrug off my robe and wrap my windcord’s braid of translucent silk once around each hand. Twenty-three years’ study of the Axiomata have done much to imprint them into my mind—with the cord as my focus, I wield the elements they describe. My studies have gifted me control, understanding, wisdom. But without the cord I possess no more mastery than any other Ixtali.

I step into the river, bare feet squelching in the mud, until the water rises to my exposed waist. I quest out with my foot, searching for the submerged tree roots that serve to capture my quarry. When I find them, I set to work with the cord.

Raising my hands, I trace the lines of the Fifth Axiom from memory, whipping the cord like a paintbrush across canvas. In turn, the water churns as a bubble of air slowly widens around me, from the river’s surface to its bed. Passing water rushes and pushes against my crafted currents, straining against unnatural displacement, but my work holds. The riverbed reveals mud and stone and gnarled roots. Debris catches in the tangle, objects from somewhere beyond Ixtal. These ancient reminders are all that remain of the lost world.

These civilizations must have been astounding, for often their craftsmanship remains untouched by time or tide. Such is the case today, as something shining and silver catches a feeble ray of sun. My studied concentration turns to joy at the sight. I grin and plop right into the mud, cross-legged before the roots. I dig, revealing a short-handled axe crafted from a single piece of steel. It’s beautiful.

I envision a battle, millennia ago. Some brave warrior standing against the monsters that consumed Runeterra, and I’m grateful for the chance to memorialize that noble, doomed struggle. I scoot forward and bury my fingers into the mud, searching for my waterproof treasure box.

I find it and touch the latch, which requires a certain measure of axiomatic mastery to move—an old precaution in case I were discovered. It is filled with everything I felt worth saving—and hiding—over the years. When I am Yun Tal, I will bring these treasures to Ixaocan, to register with our historians and share with other scholars. Mivasim, my dear mentor and one of Ixtal’s greatest natural elementalists, often chastises me for my interest in the Nasiana, the World Beyond, so I keep my secrets for now. I place the axe beside a bronze helmet, then shut the box with a flick of my wrist.

And then my heart leaps into my throat.

My windcord is gone.

I never imagined it was possible. I resealed the latch on my own, without a thought. Only the Yun Tal are capable—are worthy—of such action. I scramble in the mud, but it’s nowhere to be seen. Panic, joy, and fear war within me. Then I notice the river remains parted. I am in control.

I turn toward the vined wall, the borders of Ixtal, and think a manic thought: myself, wrapped in a cocoon of protective currents of my making, wandering a landscape that’s empty of life but full of answers.

I’ve taken two steps forward when a blast of water kicks into the air, filling the space around me with a thunderclap of sound. My eyes dart instinctively, scanning for threats. I expect the ripple of jaws in the water or a hawk overhead, when I see a figure, imposing from the riverbank. It’s Mivasim, my mentor, her Yun Tal robes dark even in shadow, her frame unbent by age. Her eyes gleam like lightning on jade, and my bubble of shaped air shrinks. The water roars as Mivasim, without so much as a wave of her hand, accelerates the river’s flow from a burble to a rush. I had thought myself clever, that I’d had a secret place of my own. Had she always known?

Water whooshes by as the currents protecting me weaken and shrink. Soon I’ll be swept away. But I feel no anger from her. She thrusts an open palm toward me, a gesture I’ve become familiar with. I may avoid punishment with a clever enough argument.

Wind and spray batter me, but I see the pattern. She’s traced the lines of an axiomatic extrapolation into the air between us.

This is no punishment. It’s a test. A puzzle, one I’ve trained for years to solve. I imagine myself walking a circuit around Semchul’s modest athenaeum, and set to work against my mentor.

When I reach her side, my spirit is buoyed by her triumphant smile, but my body is in tatters. She opens her arms just in time to catch my collapsing form.

“It is time, my student,” she whispers as my consciousness fades. “In Ixaocan, you will defend yourself beneath the Vidalion, and we will judge whether you are worthy of becoming Yun Tal.”

A week of walking has put us deeper into Ixtal’s interior than I’ve ever been, yet the villages we stop at for rest seem more provincial than my own.

“Do they truly have so much to fear?” I ask Mivasim, after we say farewell to our gracious hosts in Peslan. “My father tends the borders themselves, and he fears nothing.”

“A hunter shies not from the jaguar’s charge,” she responds, absently raising and lowering the pack that floats beside her as we walk, “but a roar in the distance sends even the boldest smith fleeing.”

A pair of children tumble into view along the path, racing back toward the village. “I suppose it’s that they fear the unknown. The potential for change.”

I could sense my teacher struggling with something. I push at the broad, waxy leaves hanging just over either side of our heads. “Our situation is unique in history,” she sighs. “Tell me again how your father describes the value of his work.”

My family’s faces swim into view, around the first fire of my memory. Their stories spurred my life’s pursuit. I put on a storyteller’s whisper. “In the years following the Final War, there was much chaos. The world boiled and churned with monsters and death.”

I let the last word linger in the air, but Mivasim is unmoved. I press on.

“We were pushed almost to extinction, when the wisest of us—the first of the Yun—turned the Axiomata of Ixaocan into a weapon, quelling every foe and sealing our borders. And so, this is the only land to have survived those cataclysmic days.

“The world that’s left is poisoned. Beneath Ixtal’s canopies, we are protected from the doom that consumed all else.” I grin, and thump the bottom of my ribcage with a fist. “And so, truly, it is the great gardeners of Semchul who now keep Ixtal from that same dark fate!”

Mivasim’s smile creases the soft lines that I and her other students helped etch over the years. “And for those gardeners, the dreaded machines that cut into our jungles are merely an extension of that poison, yes? Miasma with metal legs.”

The path before us turns and opens, pale sunlight gleaming unfiltered and warm on my face. “I suppose, yes,” I reply, “though the Yun Tal are far more equipped to fight them.”

“Still. A practical problem, with a practical solution.”

“Indeed.”

“And you are a scholar, trained to argue from a perspective that is not yours, to understand that which may be foreign to you?”

I beam. “Yes.”

“So a villager—a trader, perhaps—who has neither the pride nor experience of a border-gardener…”

“...Would see the problem as an abstract, to which their reaction is rooted in emotion.”

“Exactly right.”

“Unless...” I draw out the word, gesturing with my hands at nothing in particular. “Unless we could describe the situation for them in a way which accounts for their various ignorances.”

Mivasim shakes her head. “The trader has energy to trade. Perhaps some for entertainment, the rest for family. All else is distraction.” A wryness creeps around her voice, signaling a return to more companionable chatter. “They do not have the benefit of decades at the feet of a wise and cunning master.”

I lack the words or wisdom to counter. “Nor the experience that might provide comfort. I understand. Thank you, Mivasim.”

We pass a moment in silence. “Ixtal is better for this distinction. I am glad you are not a hunter, my dear sumqa.”

My smile matches the sun.

Ixaocan is vast. It seems to span the sunlit horizon, the tallest arcologies polished and angular and sculpted above the trees. Each step toward the great capital of Ixtal reveals new vistas, new shapes.

And while the cardinal arcology imposes from a distance, it overwhelms in person.

Within minutes of striding through its proud northern gates, we are mobbed by color and noise. Youngsters rush this way and that, chased by caretakers, themselves hounded by peddlers, beauticians, scryers, and craftspeople. Mivasim’s black boots click against the stone road, more imposing here than when we were in the jungle. The crowd gives full deference to the rich blacks and purples of Mivasim’s Yun Tal weave. For all the differences between Ixaocan and Semchul, they share this: absolute respect for the Yun Tal.

“Miv? Miv!” A voice booms from ahead.

“Oh, pin’kan,” my teacher mutters, and in the same breath returns to the very picture of civility. Before us is a crossroads, canopied by a criss-crossing bridge where diners lounge in elegant chairs. A burly old man waves madly. Green eyes, no hair—and black Yun Tal robes. “Dearest Chiuq!” Mivasim calls out to him. “You’ve arrived ahead of schedule!”

Chiuq—whom I am careful not to address, without knowing his full name—lumbers toward us, trailed by a dozen bright-eyed aspirants wearing students’ robes like my own. “Aha, just as I always have, no? Taarqen is not half so far as the wilds of Semchul.”

He barrels in for an embrace, which she returns with practiced grace.

“Ah, Miv. Too long since we saw you last. Been training…” He trails off, searching undoubtedly for Mivasim’s stable of students. His eyes are slow to settle on me. “Been, uh, training?”

“And tending to Semchul, yes.” Mivasim takes an almost imperceptible step back, a signal Chiuq mirrors without seeming to notice. “Students have less time for study in the villages, and they soon leave for more achievable pursuits.”

“Ahh, to have been raised in the wilds. I’d have made the finest hunter!” He sweeps a broad arm out toward the gaggle of students in his wake. “But I’ve made a good enough teacher, if I say so myself.”

Mivasim eyes them as Chiuq laughs, and they, fawn-like, laugh after him. “The Vidalion will speak to that, I am certain,” she replies evenly.

A smallish aspirant with false-red hair flicks his elemental focus just as he trips on his too-large robes. A flame casts out and lights on a poor merchant's feather dusters. The merchant yelps, struggling to channel his own magic with an ornate jug of water. The flames only snap in response.

“Chiuqeslan!” Mivasim calls out sharply. A graceful curl of her hand draws the air from the flame.

The merchant approaches with hands clasped. “I am— Oh, dear. Bright Ones, a thousand pardons. Forgive the untidiness of my wares, it is… I mean—”

“Peace,” Mivasim says, as Chiuqeslan bellows “Hah!” and claps his student on the back.

“My boy here is gifted! See how quickly the flame consumed!” He ushers his students back, onward into the city. Over his shoulder, he calls back to me. “Good luck, student of Miv!”

The merchant stares, horrified, at Mivasim. “Apologies, honored merchant,” she says, pulling a pair of sweet papayas from her robes, a gift from the last village. She hands them to him, and then pulls me to her side.

“That man, that Chiuqeslan—” I begin, before Mivasim’s words cut into my own.

“—is Yun Tal, whatever else he may be. You have met only a handful in your life, sumqa.” She urges me down the crowded boulevard. “His is a cruel lesson, one you will learn shortly. Do not let him—nor Ixaocan itself—compel focus from your task.”

Chiuqeslan’s firestarting student fails. Tradition says he must depart Ixaocan in silence.

He had given his life to study. Perhaps he will become a merchant or a tailor or a storyteller. I hope he will be happy, but he will never be Yun Tal. His peers are hollow, their eyes sunken, their hearts torn. His example serves only to extinguish their spirit, though it steels my resolve.

Within days I am able to surmise which students will pass, which will fail, which will break. The understanding makes me want to weep for them.

But I think only of the trial ahead of me.

Finally, the moment comes. I step into the heart of Ixaocan, and see that the floor has been etched with thousands of curving lines. Hidden within this intricate geometry is the language of the elements. I feel myself growing lost amidst them, catching glimpses of one Axiom or another that I might recognize…

Careful.

I focus my thoughts. The Yun Tal stand above me in the gallery around the massive space, their robes every shade and quality of night. Each a perfect philosopher. Each a master of their elemental discipline.

The arcology’s central chamber appears to be split in two. Below, the arena where I will defend myself. Above, a wide ring of the heaviest stone, its load borne more by thaumaturgy than engineering. Where the chamber splits swirls a wide ring of magic. I cannot see how deep it goes, how far it pushes into the earth.

Floating high above the circle is the Vidalion, the great loom, itself haloed by a band of some golden alloy, its threads spinning ceaselessly. I will defend myself beneath its warp and weft. If successful, it will weave a set of robes to mark me as Yun Tal.

I will master the currents, today. I step into the center of the pattern.

I’m blinded by the surge of power, the sheer elemental might focused by the Axiomata into this single spot. It’s overwhelming. I am a hummingbird, skimming a stormcloud. I blink, and the chamber returns.

Mivasim stands somewhere above. I cannot meet her gaze; my mind is a taut wire. Eyes bore into me from all directions. They are Yun Tal, the most-wise.

“Aliay Qunlan.” My name echoes across the chamber, perhaps across all Ixtal. “You stand at the heart of all things. You are watched through the eyes of all people. Defend yourself.”

The Vidalion spins, setting loose tendrils of fabric. I reach out and let a midnight thread fall to my grasp.

“You’ve cut off that secant,” a voice, firm and disapproving, floats into my consciousness, and a section of thread lights up. “Now it will affect temperature, not pressure.”

I ignore the voice, willing more thread into my grip and directing it along the next line. After seconds of intense concentration, I hear myself respond. “Pressure and temperature are sisters. While I control the space, this effect is more powerful.” I lift the ghostly light the Yun Tal shone upon my not-error and return to my work. Distantly, I’m horrified at the ease with which I dismiss a critique of my betters.

Presently, I discard the feeling.

Another voice. “I count eleven tangents in your Axiomata. Accepted practice is to give each tangent a parallel. Not doing so risks an imbalance when non-sequential patterns are joined.”

I think of Mivasim. This was an invention of her own, discovered with the aid of my youthful rebelliousness.

“Accepted practice is not mastery, but rhetoric,” I reply. “This connection complements the Third Axiom, and empowers the Fifth. Together, they negate the imbalance.”

Silence is the only response I receive, but a shift of cloth to my right catches my attention. A woman, robes of smoke and jade, eyes of fired steel. A member of the Yunalai, the revered new generation. Her appreciative smirk claws at my heart.

I press on.

The existing Axiomata are complete, and holding. My initial anxiety and fear are fading echoes in my mind, as I become much more than the confines of my form. I am Ixaocan itself, and I wield more power in this moment than I could ever have guessed lay in all the world. I follow the shape of my design, seeking the next—

Thump-thump.

—and stop. A heartbeat, a stutter in time. I lift my gaze to the mystical swirling in the chamber’s outer wall. It churns, like threads in a mad tapestry.

In the abstract snarl, something calls to me.

Without thinking, I reach out for it.

I am not in the cardinal arcology. I soar across the jungle, across Ixtal.

I look down, and I see the Axiomata. Not a pattern focused upon a single arcology, nor many—they are a pattern encompassing the whole world. I ride along one of the lines ringing Ixaocan, and it leads me home to Semchul in an instant. I smile as I see its familiar arches, the nooks where I stole naps, the—

Semchul is behind me. Something is wrong.

My eyes widen, heels dig into nothingness as I crash into the net of tended vines that separate death from life. I brace for obliteration, squinting against the end. Instead I soar past lush greenery. Creatures buck and sprint across a too-open field. I skim a river as wide as Ixtal itself.

I am mad, surely. Are these the spiraling thoughts of a mind’s final moments?

Have I failed the test?

I see mountains, valleys—people. I see people. I—

I’ve stopped, somewhere cold. White. Blinding, with gale-driven snow.

Behind it, there is power. Axiomata cross here. This should not be.

A group of men and women draped in fur and bone spar with one another. No—they war. A club caves a skull. I reach out. Clouds of powder swirl, and they flee the phenomenon, flee me. One, taller than the others, stares into my eyes. I can feel him twist, searching for me. He crafts a spear from frost.

This brute is not Ixtali. How is it that he taps the Axiomata?

His magic is different. It comes from elsewhere, and does not touch me. But where his spear misses the mark, his being strikes me down. His very existence is wrong.

There is nothing beyond Ixtal. There is noth—

The scene disappears in an instant, leaving a vacuum inside of me. The thunder of blood in my veins rushes to fill it, and a keening pierces my ears as my mind makes connections faster than I can keep up.

Of course. Of course the world isn’t dead. Of course Ixtal alone didn’t stave off apocalypse with a thin, illusory veil of vines. Of course I wasn’t going to be a lone adventurer, trekking across the world in a cocoon of air. Foolish. I think of my father, of the gardeners, so proud of the work they do. So ignorant of their true purpose.

I feel my eyes throbbing within my skull. Chills race over my skin as part of me delights in a new discovery, even as the rest revolts. The Yun Tal can surely hear my heart, hammering a tremulous staccato. But they remain motionless.

A sudden childhood memory steals whatever’s left of my mind. In it, I reverently present Mivasim with the first artifact I discovered in the river. I remember her hesitation; I thought her impressed with my relentless curiosity. She accepted me as a student that day. I had such fondness for sharing my little theories, was so excited to become Yun Tal and chart the uncharted with the likes of most-wise Mivasim.

I must have seemed so stupid.

Ixaocan’s power stills my shuddering frame. The chills settle, my heartbeat slows. But anger crashes into the empty space, and even Ixaocan cannot stop it. A river flooding with betrayal and embarrassment and grief.

Something ugly captures me. I hold the might of Ixaocan in my trembling fists. I’ll crush this chamber, and trap us all like insects in amber. Enmeshed in Ixtal’s ancient center of power, that feels like it would be the easiest thing in the world.

I’m saved by decades of rhetorical and philosophical debate. Simple, practiced reflex to an emotional appeal: what is the truth behind that emotion? I must credit Mivasim for how quickly I retreat from the edge of madness, and arrive at the only possible conclusion.

This is the test.

The Yun Tal have maintained this illusion for generations. The world cannot be simply explained or described; one must see it for themselves, must be wise enough to move past reaction and reach understanding. I internalize a helpless laugh as I realize the purpose for so many gathered Yun Tal. Surely together they would find it trivial to destroy or confound anyone who reached this point and fell prey to their emotion, even wielding Ixaocan’s power as their own.

My rage cools to determination. I scan the room, meet the gaze of each of the most-wise above me. My eyes have words: I have passed your test, the rest is ritual.

I won’t be crushed by this reality. I return to the pattern, and the unfinished extrusion.

The Yun Tal are silent as I work.

It is finished. The Axiomata mark my full understanding of—and control over—air, water, and all the ways they might be combined. I think of the man, of the World Beyond. Above, the Yun Tal roam the threads of my work, searching for error. They will find none.

Something shifts in the air as they make their decision. I rise up, spinning slowly, absurdly, free of the earth’s pull. I look, again, into my mentor’s eyes. I hope to see shame, or guilt, or sorrow for her decades of lies. But there is only pride.

I laugh. I can’t help it, even as the Vidalion spins faster, as the threads I laid upon the etched floor ensnare me now like prey in a spider’s cruel web.

Pain takes me as the magic bleeds from my body. The Yun Tal chant as one. I cannot understand their words, but threads of light trail and curl around me, and shimmering rainbows spin their way down my arms and legs.

I float, trapped between the Vidalion and the nascent fabric. I feel power creep back into me, like waking a sleeping limb.

As the threads resolve into cloth, I feel it. I am Yun Tal.

Their chant crescendos as I float to the ground. Impassive faces break into joyous smiles, but I cannot feel any warmth from them.

I dream of my treasure box, of ancient things.

My foolish passion. Decades spent imagining the World Beyond, eager to share with the Yun Tal things I thought I knew. I think of young, foolish Aliay, so eager to discover. Vengeance is the wrong name for what I wish for him, but it’s close.

“You’re awake,” comes a familiar voice, somewhere outside of time. I don’t feel awake, but there is a comfortable bed, a warming brazier, a concerned mentor. I want to ask her so much, but I fear I already know all the answers.

“I’m awake, Mivasim.” My voice is smoother than I expect, free of the choke of tears or the roughness of anger.

“Miv, now,” she responds. “We are peers.”

Silence follows. So many years together, and only today is she at a loss for words.

Finally, she speaks. “I was furious with my own teacher, you know. We didn't speak for days. I… I just wanted to be sure you were comfortable, but I can leave you to your rest.”

I don’t want rest. I want action.

But outwardly, I am calm. “You prepared me well.”

“Oh? Please, tell me your thoughts.” This is a question I’ve heard in study, but which now sounds strangely free of expectation. Peers after all.

I have not had the time to practice deception the way the other Yun Tal have, but I don’t need it. I understand the great lie of which I am now a part. I can provide the basic shape of it, and Mivasim’s relief and pride will fill in the details well enough to conclude this conversation.

“The Yun Tal preserve Ixtal,” I confirm. “Every Ixtali understands the finality of their decisions, once made.”

I feel more myself as I speak. The familiarity of rhetoric is comforting.

Still, I resent the feeling. Just a little.

“A million small threads comprise each decision, learned through argument, discovery, and new perspectives. If you understand the threads, you will make the perfect decision.”

It's hard for me not to look to Mivasim for approval, to suggest I'm on the right path, so I continue staring into the brazier’s fire even as it stings my eyes. “So the Yun Tal bear the burden of decision. To the Ixtali—to myself, until recently—our land is a closed realm. We reveal to each only those threads that they are capable of processing, as we discussed on the road. And…”

I turn, finally, to seek the brief but firm nod that signals the rightness of my thinking. “The early Yun were faced with this unimaginable dilemma. How best to protect their people from the world outside. They chose to cloister us. Anyone without sufficient wisdom might have misstepped, caused Ixtal’s end. Hence the distinction, the rigor of study that produces the Yun Tal.”

It’s a defensible argument. Still, I loathe it.

I conclude. “Which must mean that the Yun Tal have argued among themselves for countless centuries, and not a single one of them has brought forth a suggestion worthy of reversing that choice.”

A peaceful status quo, awaiting the brightest mind to ensure the next step is the right one. It’s wrong, somewhere, beyond its cruel deception.

I suppose I will have all my life to put words to that wrongness. To make the status quo my enemy.

Mivasim inclines her head toward me in a gesture of respect. “It took me rather longer to draw the same conclusion after I faced the Vidalion.” She stands, and offers me her hand. I take it, and limp to a standing position. “Come. Eat. We elders must celebrate with those who can stand to look the rest of us in the eye.”

I think again of my old treasure box.

I imagine myself lifting the lid, placing my anger within it, and sealing it away.

A tired smile forms on my face. “Let’s go.”

I watch from the mezzanine as noise fills the hall. Tables full of food drift between small groups entrenched in discussion, storytelling, and dancing. A few of the other new initiates seem as angry as I, but their frustration is soothed by camaraderie and assurances that this outrage is nothing new. Nowhere in Ixtal are the elements under such firm command, and most seem quick to embrace the opulence of their new lives.

We idolize the Yun Tal. Perfect philosophers, I once called them. Seekers of truth. I collected trinkets, eager to share in the study and exploration of another world. I studied, hoping to make myself worthy of debating with the brightest minds to grace Runeterra.

Now when I look at them, they seem… frail.

“Pah, you are right to brood.” I hear the clatter of metal as braceleted wrists drape against the balustrade. “I have seen better celebrations for the birth of mules.”

The Yunalai from my test. Her presence fills the narrow space despite her small stature, and her imperious tone demands a respect I don’t know how to give.

I opt for a simple bow. “I am happier to listen from here, honored Yunalai.”

Her laughter brings forth a small snort. “It is not my family bringing me honor.” She stares a moment, and when I fail to respond she says, “I do not mind saying, it pains me that you do not know of this. Of Qiyana.”

Qiyana. She speaks her own name with acerbic reverence, and my face burns with embarrassment. “Forgive me. I live far from Ixaocan.”

“Yes, well. Now you are aware. Come. May I call you Aya?”

It seemed to not be a question. I follow her to the balcony’s open doors and step into the night. Even now Ixaocan is bright with activity and firelight.

“During my test, Aya, I saw the most resplendent thing. An almost primal thing, clawing for the skies, and of such power as I have only seen in the arcologies! It is so far from us, and many people have warred for control of it.”

“I saw something similar,” I respond, and she nods enthusiastically.

“Yes! And I could think only, ‘This should not be so!’ For such a place to exist outside of Ixtal, with no Yun Tal to be its shepherd? Aya, it was horrible.”

I find kinship in her words.

Here is an enemy of the status quo.

“The Yun Tal, we are respected for our mastery of this world. Aya, how much more there is of the world than Ixtal! We lead, but we do not act. Maybe some are wise enough to recognize they can’t bear that decision alone. Maybe others are afraid?”

I listen, and I know Qiyana is not afraid. Whatever buoys her step, whatever fuels her unshaken confidence, it is unique among the Ixtali.

“It should not be so,” I murmur. The words feel heavy, significant.

She looks at me, the light of Ixaocan reflected in her eyes. “Well then. You and I, Aya, will be the ones to change it.”

My robes feel strange for the first time since I donned them, a year past. Perhaps it’s the other Yun Tal. Perhaps it’s the chamber. This is the first time I have returned since my test.

Magic still swirls in a ring along the walls, and in its depths I see what I know now to be the Freljord, from our oldest histories. I will walk its mountain paths in person one day.

A student strides through the doors. Her confident grin reminds me of my mother, who was so proud with her Yun Tal child so many months ago.

I want to weep for her.

The collected Yun Tal share silent affirmations. Mivasim, ahead and to my left across the gallery, nods at me, pride still sparking her gaze. I return the gesture, and look over to Qiyana. Her face betrays nothing, but her presence is a comfort. I am not alone in recognizing the failings of those assembled.

Thank you, Mivasim, for your lessons. I will use them to correct our mistakes. Alongside Qiyana, I will build the perfect argument, one that honors even the frustration of your first days among the Yun Tal.

I hope, when the time comes, you are prepared to hear it.

The student strides forward. The chamber stills.

“Ah— Hey! Bo’lii!” I cry out. “Cut me a little deep, don’t you think?”

I crane my head up and around from the wicker mat I’m lying prone on to stare right into the eyes of the vastaya kneeling over me. I can feel the blood sliding down my back.

“How about you be a little more careful?” I add.

Bo’lii pulls his qua’lo and mulee away from my shoulder, the tools of a tattoo artist, like a hammer and chisel, made from serpent bone. Some use other animals or metal, but the serpent bones are just hollow enough to give the ink the fine line that a master like Bo’lii demands in his work. A little more of my blood drips off the mulee and onto my back. He smiles, dabs it with a swatch of old linen and shakes his head. Then he holds up his hands and shrugs, as if to ask, You want me to stop?

The words don’t come. Noxian soldiers took most of his tongue long before I began coming here, but I know him well enough to know what a look can say. His work is more than a fair trade for a little discomfort.

And the blood? I can take a little blood. A lot, if it’s not my own.

“Just clean it up a little, okay? I don’t think we have much time,” I tell him.

Bo’lii begins tapping the mulee with the qua’lo and adding the ink. He has the best inks, rich colors made from crushed Raikkon wild berries and the enchanted flower petals found only on the southern faces of the Vlonqo cliffs. He is a master, and I am honored to be his canvas.

I started coming to Weh’le not long after I stopped listening to Shen. All those years in the Kinkou Order “treading carefully”? No. Shen was wrong about that. About me.

Restraint has never been my thing.

I turn back around on the mat and rest my chin on top of my hands. Keeping my eyes trained on the door that leads into Bo’lii’s tavern. His place is clean, but the air hangs heavy with guilt. The tavern is home to a collection of thieves, rogues, and bad decisions. People come to Bo’lii’s to arrange a way out of Weh’le. Out of Ionia. Because getting into Weh’le is hard… but getting out is even harder.

Weh’le is a phantom port, a hidden coastal village, protected by the mystical properties of Ionia. Unlike Fae’lor, she doesn’t welcome outsiders, and you won’t find her on the maps. Should Weh’le appear at all, it is always on her own terms, daring people into doing very dumb things.

Most approach from the sea, dreaming of riches, discovery or maybe just a new start, only to have their hopes dashed in an instant. First, the shoreline that once called to them vanishes behind a dense wall of cobalt fog crackling with arcane power. The sea rises and falls violently before unleashing torrents of crushing waves. As the survivors cling to their splintered vessel, the fog pulls back for the briefest of moments, allowing them one look at the flickering lanterns of Weh’le cruelly saying goodbye just before the water pulls them down to the bottom of the Breathless Bay.

I can’t do anything about those people. Not my people. Not my problem.

Bo’lii stops tapping. I’m here for someone else entirely.

I feel my satchel against my thigh. It puts me at ease, although I would rather have it on me. From there, I could fire three kunai into three hearts on instinct. Three kills without a thought. Where it is now, I’d have to think a little.

I look up just in time to see the man come through the front door. He is flanked by three guards in their battle dress.

“Well, that makes it easy… I wonder which one I’m supposed to kill?” I mock.

Bo’lii laughs. He can still do that, even without a tongue. It sounds a little weird, but it’s real. He shakes his head again, and does that thing he always does. With a series of hand movements and head nods he tells me to try and do my business outside this time, after they leave his establishment.

“You know I can’t promise that,” I say as I check my satchel, and turn towards the din of the tavern.

I pause at the doorway and turn back to him.

“I’ll do what I can,” I say, before lifting the mask over my face. I don’t mind them seeing me, but if they saw me laughing at them, I think it would be just too much.

The guy with the guards is my people—a high councilman from Puboe, a place not far from the Kinkou Order. But, like many, he sold out his people to the invaders for gold and safe passage to Weh’le, and beyond. So now he is my problem.

But this is as far as he will get. Sure, I could’ve taken him out in his sleep at the inn, or when they made camp along the road to Weh’le, but where’s the fun in that? I want him to taste the salt air. I want him to feel a sense of relief before the end comes. But I also want the others to see him pay for his crimes, and know that this will not stand.

Actions have consequences.

I approach without a sound. His hands are shaking as he raises a mug of ale to his lips. His guards stand in his defense when they notice me. I’m impressed.

“Nice to see manners around here for a change,” I say with a smile they cannot see.

“What’s your business, girl?” One of them asks through a plate of pitted and tarnished steel.

“Him,” I say pointing with my kama. It glistens with hues of the magic it was forged in. “He’s my business right now.”

The guards draw their weapons, but even before they can step towards me, they disappear in a thick ring of blinding smoke. The kunai begin to fly, hitting their targets with a satisfying flesh and bone THUNK.

One. Two. Three.

Footsteps.

I send two more kunai in that direction. A clang of metal, followed by the THUCK-THUCK of them ricocheting into the walls.

More footsteps.

“Aw, you’re gonna bleed!” I call out, flinging a single shuriken from my hip, and flipping across the room, following in its wake.

I break through the smoke to see the last guard splayed out on the ground next to the door. The three prongs are lodged deep in his windpipe—I can see his chest rising and falling ever so slightly. I grab him by the collar, raise him up, just to be sure.

“Almost…” I whisper.

At that moment, I hear a gurgling behind me. I turn to see the councilman through the receding smoke, bleeding out on the floor. His eyes are open, darting back and forth across the tavern, wondering what just happened.

He looks so peaceful now.

He arrived at the camp only moments before the strategy council was to begin, flanked by a small honor guard, each handpicked from the Trifarian Legion. They remained at the entrance as I watched him approach.

Some men cast a shadow greater than themselves, but few could bring a darkness such as this, one that circled above us and hungrily cawed. In a way, the ravens that seemed to follow him around the camp were a grim reminder of every warrior’s fate, the tattered cloth in their beaks a match for the state of our own banners. Yet, as he strode into the remains of the war tent, I realized I had not prepared myself for how truly mortal he looked.

There was grey in his hair, framed by a crimson sky choking on ash. His battle-worn armor gave way to a functional coat, and he kept his arms tightly within its folds—as I imagined one of his lineage might. I smiled, for he was still, at his heart, a gentleman. He wore no signs of rank beyond the telltale scars of a soldier who had seen his share of bloodshed. There were many gathered now for the council who demanded more fear and respect, swaying their warhosts with powerful displays of strength. Each of them seemed more than capable of breaking the man before us.

But, somehow, this was the man who led us all. The Grand General of Noxus.

Looking at him, I could feel there was something I could not place, no matter how closely I looked. Something truly unknowable, perhaps? Perhaps it was because there was something unknowable about this man, that so many flocked to his side. Whatever the draw, Jericho Swain stood before us now, and it was far too late for me to turn back.

Five warhosts had marched onto the Rokrund Plain, but it had been only a matter of weeks before the locals had shattered our positions. They blasted through our hastily-constructed berms with explosive powder, mined from hills that seemed even more barren than those of home. Disaster had built upon disaster, until Swain himself had no choice but to intervene. I had made sure of that.

For months, I had prepared. I had sent warmasons deep into the mines. I had mapped every detail, every conceivable twist of the land… and the fates upon which Noxus now balanced, the whispers that gave each moment shape…

My ear itched at the memory of the pale woman’s words. Of the moment she first commanded me, and gave voice to our plot.

Everything was in place. I had accounted for it all. Here, where the earth opened into a maze of canyons impossible to escape, I and I alone would determine the future of the empire.

After all, was that not what Swain had called upon this council to do?

“My trusted generals,” Swain said finally. The power in his voice rang out like the drawing of a blade. He paused, as if giving us a moment to test ourselves against its keen edge. “Tell me how Noxus may prevail.”

“There are twelve war-barques here, in the hills,” Leto began, pointing to a spot on the map already worn white by his attention, “each drawn by a basilisk. Send them before the warbands, and we’ll be marching over the enemy dead. Those beasts would rut with a hedge of rusty spears if we let them.”

He smiled, pleased at his own cunning, but Swain was more concerned with the wine being poured into his glass.

Will it be poison? his eyes seemed to ask, as he peered around the table. I stared at my reflection in his armor. I would betray nothing of my intent.

“We can scarcely control the basilisks ourselves,” Swain finally murmured, carefully regarding the fine Ionian vintage. “Imagine even a single explosive, dropped by a sapper within earshot of the beasts. And then tell me, in your imagination, who runs first—the basilisks with their tails between their legs? Or your vaunted warhost?”

“We scorch the earth then,” Maela petitioned before Leto could respond, the words flying wildly from her mouth. “Set fire to the pitch they’ve laid to burn on our advance. Drive them out of those damn mines.”

Swain sighed. “We came here for the very earth you would burn. Though I suppose it is too much to expect you to know the uses of saltpetre.” He swirled the wine in his glass, betraying a hint of disappointment. “All you have done so far is bury your own men with it.”

“The redblades are still sharp,” Jonat spat impatiently from the shadows where he lurked, the darkness seeming almost bright against his Shuriman skin. “We’ll enter the mines after dusk, take out their leaders. Clean or messy. Doesn’t matter.”

“An admirable strategy,” Swain laughed. “But those leaders are not soldiers. Not yet. Our enemy here merely follows whomever bellows the loudest. Kill one, and there will be three bellowing by morning.”

I laughed, nodding to the frowning leader of the redblades. “For a moment, I was afraid you’d find a way for us to actually win, Jonat.”

Silence fell around the table. The candles were burning low beside the maps.

This was my moment. The pale woman would be pleased. I would say her name as I sent our Grand General to oblivion.

“The truth is, you cannot win this battle,” I continued. “No one can fight death. Not even the ruler of Noxus. Darkwill showed us that.”

Swain and the others watched as I carefully drew the flint striker from my tunic. The fuse line was already in my other hand. Leto, aging hero of the Siege of Fenrath, bristled.

“Granth, what are you doing?” he growled, glancing down at the crude demolition charge I had carefully positioned under the table, barely an hour before. “You would threaten the Grand General? This is treason.”

Still, none of them dared approach me. I held the striker over the fuse, ready.

Except… someone was laughing. It took me a moment to realize who it was.

“And there, General Granth is the only one who has the right of it,” Swain chuckled, smoothing the wrinkles from his coat. “He alone understands. The rest of you, you see a battle and ask what you must do to avoid defeat. But some battles cannot be won. Sometimes, the only strategy is to burn. To charge into the flames, knowing full well you will die, but that twenty thousand march behind you. And that behind them, there is a greater power.”

He let his coat fall open, to reveal… To… reveal…

“Granth and I,” he said with a cruel smile, “we always look for what must be sacrificed in order to win.”

Maela lunged for my trembling hands. Leto too. But it was Swain’s inhuman grip that clamped around my throat, hefting me from the ground, the unlit fuse forgotten.

“If only you could tell her yourself how you failed,” the Grand General whispered, his voice rumbling with the wrath of eons. “If only she, too, could heed the wisdom of the dead.”

I tried to scream then, to confess it all. To somehow beg for forgiveness.

But there is nothing now, save for the soft murmur of whispers. I spill my secrets, this tale, into your ears. Fading like the rustling of wings, as the raven cries its carrion caw…

“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.

Urgot always believed he was worthy.

As a headsman, an executioner of the weak, he was a living embodiment of the Noxian ideal that strength should rule, making it a reality with every swing of his axe. His pride swelled as the bodies piled ever higher behind him, and his intimidating presence kept countless warbands in line.

Even so, a single word was all it took to seal his fate. Sent to distant Zaun to eliminate a supposed conspiracy against the ruler of Noxus, Urgot realized too late the mission was a setup, removing him from the capital even as the usurper Swain seized control of it. Surrounded by agents of the chem-barons, and enraged that everything he believed was a lie, Urgot was dragged down into the chemtech mines beneath Zaun. He was defeated. He was enslaved. He was not worthy after all. He endured the mine’s hellish conditions in grim silence, waiting for death.

In the Dredge, death came in many forms…

The mine’s warden, Baron Voss, would sometimes offer freedom in return for a prisoner’s tortured confession—granting it with the edge of her blade. From the screams that echoed through the tunnels, Urgot learned about the wonders of Zaun. There was something special about the city, something marvelous and evident even in the secrets that spilled from slit throats. Urgot didn’t know what it was until he was finally brought before Voss, fearing that she would break him.

But as the baron’s blade cut into his flesh, Urgot realized that his body was already wracked with agony, far beyond anything Voss could inflict. The Dredge had made him stronger than he’d ever been as a headsman.

Pain was Zaun’s secret. His laughter drove Voss back to the surface, and a reign of anarchy began in the depths.

Seizing control of the prison, Urgot reveled in new trials of survival. He found the parts of his body that were weakest, and replaced them with scavenged machinery, technology created by those who would die without it—necessity being the mother of pain.

The guards could no longer enter the areas Urgot had carved out of Voss’ grasp. The prisoners themselves were more afraid of their new master than they were of her. Many even grew to hold a fanatical respect for Urgot, as they were forced to hear his feverish sermons on the nature of power, his grip tightening around the necks of those who would not listen.

Only when a Noxian agent arrived in the Dredge was Urgot finally forced to confront his own past. Though the spy recognized him and sought his aid in escaping, Urgot beat him mercilessly, and hurled his broken body into the darkness.

It was not strength that ruled Noxus, Urgot now realized, but men… and men were weak. There should be no rulers, no lies, nothing to interfere with the pure chaos of survival. Starting a riot that ignited a chemtech vein within the mine, Urgot shook the city above, and cracked the prison open in an explosion that rivaled the birth of Zaun itself. Many prisoners died, with thousands fleeing into the Sump—but the worthy, as ever, survived.

From that day, Urgot’s reign of terror only grew. A hideous fusion of industrial machinery and Noxian brutality, he slaughtered chem-barons and their lackeys one by one, gathering a following among Zaun’s downtrodden masses. He was said to be a new savior, one who would lift the boot of the oppressor from the neck of every common Zaunite.

However, his actions did not make such distinctions, as Urgot tested the worthiness of the meek and the powerful alike. To any who found themselves spared in his deadly trials, his message was clear: he was not there to lead, but to survive. If others were worthy, they would survive, too.

When Urgot finally struck at representatives of the Piltovan merchant clans, the Wardens were forced to intervene, hauling him in chains to a fortified prison cell—though this merely seemed to confirm “the Dreadnought” as a legend among the gangers, the sump-snipes, and the forgotten.

For Piltover is not the first to shackle Urgot, and one must wonder if any cage can ever hope to hold him for long…

Raised in a large working-class family, Zeri grew up surrounded by warmth, care, and many strong opinions. They were no strangers to hardship, having lost loved ones to Zaun’s dangers. Even so, their community was their strength.

From birth, Zeri had a unique relationship with electricity. Each giggle caught a spark—each cry, a shock. Magic wasn’t rare in Zaun, but Zeri’s electric charm was. It charged with her emotions, sometimes grounded, sometimes building to fierce and fiery. By her teenage years, her neighbors knew she was more likely the cause of power outages than a broken circuit. Life in Zaun was beautiful chaos, her grandma would say, and Zeri embodied that all too well.

Not everyone found her quirks endearing. To family and friends, Zeri was a lovable mess. To others, she was simply... a mess. During occasional outbursts where her stray currents shattered a street lamp or two (or twelve), Zeri thought she'd even see flashes of something—or someone—but there was no time to dwell. She wished she had better control of her volatile powers. Her determination was there, but her patience could have used some work.

Still, with every spark came an opportunity.

One night while Zeri strolled through the Entresol markets, the ground rattled from underground excavations that soon swelled into a destructive quake. She wasted no time zooming past fallen buildings to rescue trapped victims. As her world slowly crumbled, Zeri became a furious blur. She knew the chem-barons had mining facilities nearby that were installed after they'd claimed to have discovered resources better than hextech, but what they did not reveal were the risks of their uncontrolled digging.

The faster Zeri moved, the more charged she became. She thrived under pressure, realizing what her powers could do and how much her neighborhood meant to her—even if it meant nothing to the barons.

After the dust settled, survivors gathered to thank Zeri. Beneath her relief was anger. Zeri knew she could’ve saved more if she had better command of herself.

What Zeri did accomplish was sure to catch the attention of the barons. She knew they wouldn’t think twice about who they went through to get to her, and she couldn’t risk others getting hurt. Not again. To guard them from herself, Zeri scoured the mining disaster’s wreckage and constructed a jacket to contain her electricity and avert the barons’ gaze. Now she could restrain her gift to protect those in need.

Walking the damaged streets, Zeri saw broken faces. Families scrambled to rebuild, and Zeri lent her hand, doing all she could without her powers. But the more she helped, the more she witnessed. Workers struggled to jumpstart generators. Parents toiled to make meals with broken stovetops. These people didn’t have anyone standing up for them, let alone someone with a gift like hers. She knew her district—and those like it—would never truly be safe if things stayed the way they were. The barons saw them as nothing more than objects to be neglected and resources to be bled.

Zeri knew what had to be done. She couldn’t wait for the next mining “accident.” She had to take the fight to the barons.

Zeri was a one-woman force, sending shockwaves through Zaun. Word spread of chem-baron supply lines being destroyed, with reports of “lightning” striking faster than the eye could see. Enraged at their losses, the local barons formed a rare alliance, and their combined power trounced Zeri wherever she went. She tried to adapt—to strike faster—but against the barons’ endless resources, it wasn’t enough.

She retreated with her body broken and her powers fizzling. The barons were united. She was alone.

As she headed home, Zeri expected disappointment from those she let down. But what welcomed her was family, friends, and people she’d never met, all standing up to fight their oppressors. From their rebuilt homes came rediscovered courage. Zeri had never felt so inspired, yet it was she who had inspired them. She was the spark that ignited their fire.

And she was no longer alone. With the help of their neighbors, Zeri’s mother had fashioned her a rifle made of materials given by those Zeri fought for: The people of the Entresol. The gun’s ammo was Zeri’s emotions, its conductive barrel amplifying her powers directly from her hands. Paired with her jacket, she could better control her voltage, charging up to shoot precise—or, at least, somewhat precise—electric bursts. Zeri gazed warmly at her family and her neighbors. She thought she’d lose them all in her efforts to fight back, but because she stood up for them, they stood up with her.

Backed by her community, Zeri fights for those who cannot. Zaun is not perfect, and neither is Zeri, but sometimes a spark is all it takes to change the world.

Nights in Noxus were never silent.

You couldn’t cram so many thousands of people from all across the empire into one place and expect quiet.

Desert marching songs from the Zagayah enclave drifted from their tented pavilions by the water, and the martial clashing of blades echoed from a nearby Reckoner’s arena. Drakehounds corralled in an iron-walled enclosure howled as they caught the scent of slaughtered livestock from the northern kill yards.

The cries of widowed spouses, grief-stricken mothers, or nightmare-wracked veterans were a nightly chorus to accompany the roars of drunken soldiers and the promises of street hawkers who plied their trade best in the darkness.

No, the nights in Noxus were never silent.

Except here.

This part of Noxus was deathly quiet.

Maura held her pack of brushes, paints, and charcoals close to her chest as she felt the din of the Noxian night fade. The lack of sound was so sudden, so shocking, that she stopped in the middle of the street—never normally a good idea—and looked around.

The street was in an older, wealthier district of Noxus known as Mortoraa, or Iron Gate, but was otherwise unremarkable. The light of a full moon reflected from its paving of irregular cobbles like scores of watching eyes, and the buildings to either side were well built with stone blocks that spoke of an experienced hand, perhaps that of a warmason. Maura saw a tall shrine at the end of a side street, where three armored figures knelt before the obsidian wolf within its pillared vault. They looked up in unison, and Maura hurried on, knowing it was unwise to attract the notice of men who prayed in the dark with swords.

She shouldn’t be out here in the dark.

Tahvo had warned her not to go, but she’d seen the serpent in his eyes and knew it wasn’t fear for her safety that moved him, but envy. He had always believed himself to be the best painter in their little circle. That she had been selected for this commission instead of him cut deep. When the crisply folded and elegantly written letter had arrived at their shared studio, Cerise and Konrad had been elated, begging her to remember everything she could, while Zurka simply told her to be sure her brushes were clean.

“Do you think you’ll get to speak to him?” Cerise had asked as Maura opened the door to hear the drifting echoes of the night bell fading over the harbor. The idea of venturing out into the darkness filled Maura with equal parts dread and excitement.

“He’s sitting for a portrait, so I suppose I shall have to,” she’d answered, pointing to the darkened sky. “We’ll need to discuss what manner of painting he wants, especially since I won’t have natural light.”

“Strange that he wants his portrait done at night, eh?” said Konrad, wide awake and wearing his blanket like a cloak.

“I wonder what he sounds like,” added Cerise.

“Just like everyone else,” snapped Tahvo, rolling over and wadding his threadbare pillow. “He’s not a god, you know. He’s just a man. Now, will you all just shut up? I’m trying to sleep.”

Cerise ran over and kissed her. “Good luck,” she giggled. “Come back and tell us… everything, no matter how sordid.”

Maura’s smile had faltered, but she nodded. “I will. I promise.”

The directions to her new patron’s mansion were exceptionally specific. Not simply in her eventual destination, but in the precise route she must take to get there. Maura knew the geography of the capital well, having walked its streets for days when hunger gnawed her belly. Or when they couldn’t pool enough commission money, and the owner of their studio kicked them out until they’d earned enough to pay what was owed.

This part of town, though, was a growing mystery to her. She’d known the mansion was here, of course—everyone in Noxus knew where he lived, though few could recall ever going there. With every step she took, Maura felt like she’d wandered into a strange city in a newly-conquered land. The streets felt unfamiliar—narrower and more threatening, as if each twist and turn brought the walls closer and closer until they would eventually crush her. She hurried on through the unnerving quiet, craving a source of fresh light—a boundary lantern perhaps, or a low-burning candle in an upper window, set to guide a night-calling suitor.

But there was no illumination beyond that of the moon. Her heartbeat and pace quickened as she heard what could be a soft footfall behind her, or the sigh of an expectant breath.

Turning a sharp corner, Maura found herself in a circular plaza with a fountain gurgling at its center. In a city as cramped as this, where people lived cheek by jowl and space was at a premium, such extravagance was almost unheard of.

She circled the fountain’s pool, its water silver in the moonlight, admiring the sculpted realism of its carved centerpiece. Hammered from crude iron, it represented a headless warrior encased in thick war-plate, and bearing a spiked mace.

Water spilled from the neck of the statue, and Maura felt a chill as she realized who it was intended to represent.

She hurried past the fountain towards a double gate of seasoned silverbark set in a black wall of red-veined marble. As the letter had promised, it stood ajar, and Maura eased herself between its heavy leaves.

The mansion within the walls had been built from a pale stone of a kind she hadn’t seen before—imposing without being monolithic, as a great many grand structures of Noxus often were. Nor, the more she studied it, did it adhere to any one particular style, but rather a collection of architectural movements that had come and gone over the centuries.

Foremost among such oddities was a rough stone tower rising over the main building, and this portion alone appeared out of place. It gave the impression that the mansion had been built around some ancient shaman’s lair. The effect should have been jarring, but Maura rather liked it, as though every aspect of the mansion offered a glimpse into a bygone age of the empire. Its windows were shuttered and dark, and the only light she saw was a soft crimson glow at the tower’s summit.

She followed a graveled path through an exquisite garden of elaborate topiary, carefully directed waterways, and strange looking flowers with exotic scents and startlingly vivid colors. This, together with the spacious plaza outside, suggested fabulous wealth. The idea that she had been chosen for this task sent a frisson of pleasurable warmth through her limbs.

Hundreds of colorful butterflies with curiously patterned wings flitted to and fro between the flowers. Such light and fragile creatures, yet so beautiful and capable of the most miraculous transformation. Maura had never seen butterflies at night, and she laughed with joy as one alighted on her palm. The tapered shape of its body and the patterning on its outstretched wings was uncannily similar to the winged-blade heraldry she saw flying on every Noxian flag. The butterfly fluttered its wings and flew away. Maura watched it circle and swoop with the others, amazed to see so many rare and wonderful creatures.

She let her fingers brush the colorful leaves as she passed, savoring the scents clinging to her fingertips and drifting up in motes of dust that glittered in the moonlight. She paused by a particularly beautiful bloom, one with flame-red petals so bright they took her breath away.

No red she had ever mixed from Shuriman cinnabar or Piltovan ochre had achieved such luster. Even the ruinously expensive Ionian vermillions were dull by comparison. She chewed her bottom lip as she considered what she was about to do, then reached out to pluck a number of petals from the nearest plant. The flower’s remaining petals immediately curled inwards, and the stem bent away from her as if in fear. Maura felt terrible guilt and looked up at the mansion to see if she had been observed, but the shuttered windows remained closed and lightless.

The front door stood open, and she paused at its threshold. The letter had told her to enter, but now that she was here, Maura felt a curious reluctance. Was this some trap, a means to lure her to some unspeakable fate? If so, it seemed needlessly elaborate. The notion felt absurd, and Maura chided herself for letting fear get in the way of what was likely to be the greatest opportunity of her life.

She took a breath, stepped across the threshold, and entered the mansion.

The vestibule was vaulted by dark and heavy timbers, with faded murals of the empire’s early, bloody days painted in the spaces between. To Maura’s left and right, wide openings revealed long galleries draped in shadow, making it difficult to tell who or what might be displayed. A long, curving staircase climbed to an upper mezzanine and a wide archway, but what lay beyond was impossible to make out. The vestibule was all but empty, save for what looked like a large, sheet-draped canvas upon an easel. Maura tentatively approached the covered canvas, wondering if this was to be where she would paint.

She hoped not. The light in here was ill-suited to portraiture. Where moonlight pooled on the herringbone floor, the space was bright, but elsewhere it was entirely dark, as though the light refused to approach those corners.

“Hello?” she said, and her voice echoed throughout the vestibule. “I have a letter…”

Her words lingered, and Maura sought in vain for any sign she wasn’t entirely alone in this strange house in the middle of the night.

“Hello?” she said again. “Is anyone here?”

“I am here,” said a voice.

Maura jumped. The words were cultured, masculine, and redolent with age. They seemed to drift down from above and be breathlessly whispered in her ear at the same time. She turned on the spot, searching for the speaker.

She was alone.

“Are you Vladimir?” she asked.

“I am, yes,” he replied, his voice freighted with deep melancholy as if the name itself were a source of torment. “You are the painter.”

“Yes. That’s me. I’m the painter,” she said, adding, “My name is Maura Betzenia. I’m the painter.”

She cursed her clumsiness before realizing his last words had not been a question.

“Good. I have been waiting a long time for you.”

“Oh. My apologies, sir. The letter said I wasn’t to leave until the harbor bell rang.”

“Indeed it did, and you have arrived precisely when you were supposed to,” said Vladimir, and this time Maura thought she saw a sliver of deeper black in the shadows. “It is I who am at fault, for I have been delaying sending for someone like you much too long. Vanity makes fools of us all, does it not?”

“Is it vanity?” asked Maura, knowing the wealthier patrons liked to be flattered. “Or simply waiting for the right moment to capture the truth of your appearance?”

Laughter drifted down from above. Maura couldn’t decide if he thought she’d said something funny or was mocking her.

“I hear a variation of that every time,” said Vladimir. “And as to truth, well, that is a moveable feast. Tell me, did you like my garden?”

Maura sensed a trap in the question, and hesitated before answering.

“I did,” she said. “I had no idea you could grow anything that beautiful in Noxian soil.”

“You cannot,” said Vladimir with wry amusement. “Such thin soil produces only the hardiest specimens, ones that spread far and wide to drive out all others. But none of them could be called beautiful. The red flower you killed, it was a nightbloom.”

Maura felt her mouth go dry, but Vladimir appeared not to care what she had done.

“Nightblooms were once native to an island chain in the east, a blessed place of rare beauty and enlightenment,” he said. “I dwelled there for a time until it was destroyed, as all mortal endeavors ultimately must be. I took some seeds from a grove once tended by a temperamental nature spirit and brought them back to Valoran, where I was able to entice them to grow with a combination of blood and tears.”

“Don’t you mean blood, sweat, and tears?”

“My dear, what possible use would sweat be in growing a flower?”

Maura had no answer, but the musical cadence of his voice was seductive. She could listen to it all night. Maura shook off the velvet quality of Vladimir’s drifting voice and nodded towards the covered canvas.

“Is that where I am to paint?” she asked.

“No,” said Vladimir. “That was merely my first.”

“Your first what?”

“My first life,” he said as she lifted the edge of the sheet.

The painting had faded with the passage of time, its colors bleached by light, and the brushstrokes flattened. But the image was still powerful—a young man on the cusp of adulthood, armored in archaic-looking bronze plate and bearing a fluttering banner depicting a wickedly curved scythe blade. Much of the detail had been lost, but the boy’s blue eyes were still piercingly bright. The face was extraordinarily handsome, symmetrical and with a tilt of the head that captivated her gaze.

Maura leaned in and saw an army behind the young man, a host of hulking warriors too large to be human, too bestial to be real. Their outlines and features had faded with age, and Maura was thankful for that small mercy.

“This is you?” she asked, hoping he might appear to explain the portrait in person.

“Once, a long, long time ago,” said Vladimir, and Maura felt ice enter his words. “I was an unneeded heir of a long-vanished kingdom, in an age when gods made war on one another. Mortals were pawns in their world-spanning strife, and when the time came for my father to bend the knee to a living god, I was given up as a royal hostage. In theory, my father’s loyalty would be assured by the constant threat to my life. Should he break faith with his new master, I would be slain. But like all my father’s promises, it was empty. He cared nothing for me, and broke his oath within the year.”

The story Vladimir was telling was strange and fantastical, like the Shuriman myths Konrad told when they shared scare stories on the roof of the studio at night. Konrad’s tales were thinly veiled morality plays, but this… this had a weight of truth behind it, and felt uncontaminated by sentimentality.

“But instead of killing me, my new master had something altogether more amusing in mind. Amusing for him, at any rate. He offered me the chance to lead his armies against my father’s kingdom, an offer I gladly accepted. I destroyed my father’s city and presented his head to my master. I was a good and faithful hound on a leash.”

“You destroyed your own people? Why?”

Vladimir paused as though trying to decide if her question was serious.

“Because even if the god-warriors had not come, my father’s kingdom would never have been mine,” he said. “He had sons and heirs aplenty, and I would never have lived long enough to claim my birthright.”

“Why would your master make you do that?”

“I used to think it was because he saw a spark of greatness within me, or the potential to be something more than a mere mortal,” said Vladimir with a soft sigh that sent warm shivers down Maura’s spine. “But more likely he just thought it would be amusing to teach one of his mortal pets some tricks, as the mountebank teaches a monkey to dance around his stall, to attract the gullible.”

Maura looked back at the image of the young man in the picture, now seeing something dark lurking deeper in the eyes. A hint of cruelty perhaps, a glint of festering bitterness.

“What did he teach you?” asked Maura. As much as she wasn’t sure she wanted an answer, something in her needed to know.

“My master’s kind had the power to defy death—to sculpt flesh, blood, and bone into the most wondrous forms,” continued Vladimir. “He taught me something of their arts, magic he wielded as easily as breathing. But it took every scrap of my intellect and will to master even the simplest of cantrips. I was later to learn that teaching their secrets to mortals was forbidden under pain of death, but my master delighted in flaunting the mores of his kind.”

Vladimir’s sourceless laughter echoed around her, yet there was no mirth to the sound.

“He couldn’t help challenging convention, and in the end, it was his undoing.”

“He died?” she asked.

“Yes. When one of his kind betrayed them, their power over this world was broken. My master’s enemies united against him, and he looked to me to lead his armies in his defense. Instead, I killed him and drank in a measure of his power, for I had not forgotten the many cruelties he had inflicted upon me over the years. Taking his life was my first step on a road far longer than I ever could have imagined. A boon and a curse in one bloody gift.”

Maura heard the relish in Vladimir’s tone, but also sadness, as if the mark this murder had cut on his soul had never truly left him. Did he feel guilt at this killing, or was he simply trying to manipulate her emotions?

Not being able to see him made it that much harder to divine his intent.

“But enough of this painting,” said Vladimir. “It is vital, yes, but only one of my accumulated lives. If you are to immortalize this one, you must see the others I have experienced over the years before we can truly begin.”

Maura turned to the stairs as the shadows draping their length retreated like a soft, black tide. She licked her lips, conscious again that she was alone in this echoing mansion with Vladimir, a man who had just admitted to murdering his father and his monstrous mentor.

“Hesitation? Really?” he said. “You have come this far. And I have already bared so much of my soul to you.”

Maura knew he was goading her into climbing the stairs. That alone ought to make her leave and return to her friends. But as much as she knew she should be afraid, part of her thrilled to be the center of Vladimir’s attention, to feel the power of his gaze upon her.

“Come to me,” he continued. “See what it is I ask of you. And then, if you feel the task is too great and choose to leave, I will not stop you.”

“No,” she said. “I want to know it all.”

The archway atop the mezzanine led into a wide corridor of dark stone that was so shockingly cold, it took Maura’s breath away. Fixed to the dark walls were row upon row of lacquered wooden boards.

And pinned to these boards were many thousands of butterflies with spread wings.

Sadness touched Maura. “What is this?”

“One of my collections,” said Vladimir, his voice coming from nowhere and everywhere at once. It drew her onwards along the corridor.

“Why did you kill them?”

“To study them. Why else? These creatures live such short lives. To end them a moment sooner is no great loss.”

“The butterfly might disagree.”

“But look at what each death taught me.”

“What do you mean?”

“The butterflies you saw in the garden? They exist nowhere else in nature. They are unique because I made them so. With will and knowledge, I have wrought entire species into being.”

“How is that possible?”

“Because, like the gods, I choose which ones live and which ones die.”

Maura reached out to the nearest pinned butterfly, one with vivid crimson circles on the larger part of its wings. As soon as her finger brushed the insect’s body, its wings disintegrated and the rest of it crumbled like ancient, flaking paint.

A cold wind sighed past Maura, and she stepped back in alarm as a cascade of dissolution swept across the pinned specimens. Scores, then hundreds of butterflies crumbled to powder that spun in the air like ash and cinders stirred from a banked fire. She cried out and rushed down the corridor, frantically waving her hands to brush the dust from her face. It grazed the skin beneath her clothes, and she spat as she tasted the grit of insect bodies in her mouth, felt it gather in her ears.

She stopped and opened her eyes as she felt the quality of sound and light change. She rubbed dust from her face, seeing she had entered into a wide, circular chamber.

Maura took a moment to look around and regain her composure, brushing the last of the dust from her face and clothes. The walls of the chamber were primitively cut stone, and she guessed she stood within the base of the ancient tower. A rough-hewn staircase corkscrewed its way up the interior walls, and strange, ruby light fell in shimmering veils from somewhere high above. The air smelled of hot metal, like the iron winds carried from the bulk forges that fed the empire’s insatiable hunger for armor and weapons.

The circular walls were hung with portraits, and she moved cautiously around the gallery’s circumference, studying each painting in turn. No two were alike in their framing or style, ranging from crude abstracts to renderings so lifelike it was as if a real face were imprisoned within the warp and weft of the canvas. She recognized the styles of some, the work of masters of the craft who had lived centuries ago.

Where the painting in the vestibule was that of a young man in his prime, these were a mixture of the same individual, but at very different times in his life.

One showed him in his middle years, still fit and hearty, but with a bitter cast to his eyes. Another was a portrait of a man so aged and ravaged that Maura wasn’t even sure it had been painted while its subject was alive. Yet another depicted him bloodily wounded in the aftermath of a great battle before a titanic statue of ivory stone.

“How can these all be you?” she asked.

The answer drifted down in the veils of red light.

“I do not live as you do. The gift carried in my former master’s blood changed me forever. I thought you understood that?”

“I do. I mean, I think I do.”

“The paintings around you are moments of my many lives. Not all great moments, I have come to realize, and captured by journeymen for the most part. In the earliest days of my existence I was arrogant enough to believe my every deed was worthy of such commemoration, but now…”

“But now?” asked Maura, when he didn’t continue.

“Now I only commit the renewal of my life to canvas amid events that mark turning points in the affairs of the world. Climb the steps, and see what I mean.”

Maura found her circuit of the gallery had brought her to the base of the stairs, as though her every step had led her to this point. Not just tonight, but every moment since she had first picked up a brush and painted the animals on her mother’s farm in Krexor.

“Why me?” she asked. “Why am I here? There are other artists in Noxus better than me.”

A soft chuckle drifted around her.

“Such modesty. Yes, it is true there are artists more technically proficient than you,” said Vladimir. “Your jealous colleague, Tahvo, for example, understands perspective better than you ever will. Young Cerise’s use of color is outstanding, and the stoic Zurka has an eye for detail that makes his work endlessly fascinating. Konrad, however, will never be more than a dabbler, but you already know this.”

“You know my friends?” she said.

“Of course. Did you think I chose you at random?”

“I don’t know. How did you choose me?”

“To capture such a transformative moment, I required someone whose heart and soul goes into their work, an artist truly worthy of the name. That is why you are here, Maura Betzenia. Because every brushstroke is personal to you. Every mark on the canvas, every choice of color has meaning. You understand the heart of a painting, and willingly give something of your soul to capture the life it represents.”

Maura had heard the flattery of patrons and the empty praise of her fellow painters before, but Vladimir’s words were utterly sincere. He meant every word, and her heart lifted to hear such affirmation.

“Why now? What’s so special about this moment in time that you want your portrait painted? What was it you said? You only have a painting done at a turning point in the affairs of the world…”

Vladimir’s voice seemed to coil around her as he spoke.

“And such a moment is upon us. I have dwelled here for such a long time, Maura. Long enough to oust the Iron Revenant from his Immortal Bastion, long enough to see the many rulers who came after him claw their way to power over the corpses of their brothers before treacherous ambition brought them low. Long enough to know the canker that lurks at the empire’s heart—a midnight flower with roots in old and corrupt soil. We have danced, she and I—oh, how we have danced in blood over the centuries, but the tempo of the music has changed, and the dance nears its end. This parade of fools I walk among, this life… it is unsuited for what must come next.”

“I don’t understand. What is coming next?”

“At almost any other time before, I could have answered that with certainty,” continued Vladimir. “But now…? I do not know. All I know is that I must change to face it. I have been passive for too long, and allowed flunkies and hangers-on to fawn over my every whim. But now I am ready to take what is mine, that which was for so long denied me—a kingdom of my own. This is immortality, Maura. Mine and yours.”

“Immortality…?”

“Of course. Is it not by the warriors’ deeds and artists’ craft that they achieve immortality? The legacy of their work lives on beyond the feeble span of mortal lives. Demacia reveres the warriors who founded it in the martial tenets to which they dogmatically cleave. Great works of literature set down thousands of years ago might still be performed, and sculptures freed from blocks of marble in the ages before the Rune Wars are still viewed with awe by those who can find them.”

Maura sensed with complete clarity that to climb these stairs would be committing to something irrevocable, something final. How many other artists had stood where she was right now? How many had lifted their foot and placed it on the first step?

How many had come back down?

How many had turned and walked away?

Maura could leave now, of that she was certain. Vladimir was not lying to her. If she chose to leave, she had no doubt she would arrive back at the studio unharmed. But how could she face each day from now until the Wolf or the Lamb came for her, knowing she had lacked the courage to take this one chance to create something incredible?

“Maura,” said Vladimir, and this time his silken voice was right before her.

She looked up, and there he was.

Silhouetted against the red light drifting down from above, his form slender and cursive. White hair streamed behind him, and swarms of crimson-winged butterflies filled the air above.

His eyes, once rendered in vivid blue, were now a smoldering red.

They pulsed in time with her heartbeat.

He reached out to her, and his slender fingers were elegantly tapered, with long nails like glittering talons.

“So, shall immortality be our legacy?” asked Vladimir.

“Yes,” she said. “It shall.”

Maura took his hand, and together they climbed the staircase into the veils of crimson.