LoL Universe Indexing and Search

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It’s close,” Jaheje whispered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And with that, they began to run.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Try if you like,” Shahib answered.

“We can silent-step.”

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

“What will you do Shahib?” Jaheje asked.

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

Xalee asked, “Where does this valley lead?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Down!” Shahib barked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What are you doing?” Jaheje whispered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The entities watched. They scrutinized.

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

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

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

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

And so, they adapted.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Blood pooled beneath him, bright crimson against pristine white stone. His sword lay nearby, its blade broken. His killers stood around him, shadows on the periphery, but he saw nothing except her.

Her eyes stared into his own, without seeing. His blood-spattered face was reflected back at him. He was lying on his side. His breath was shallow, and weakening.

Her lifeless hand was cold, but he didn’t feel anything. A calmness descended upon him like a shroud. There was no pain, no fear, no doubt. Not any more.

His armored fingers tightened around her hand. He couldn’t be with her in life, but he would be with her in death.

For the first time in what seemed forever, he felt at peace…

“Hello, Ledros,” said a voice that shouldn’t be there.

Ledros… His name.

There was an evil, mocking laugh, and a clink of chains.

“I don’t know why you do this to yourself, but I have enjoyed seeing you suffer.”

Reality crashed over him like a tidal wave, threatening to drag him under.

The blood beneath him was centuries old, flaking and brown. The stone was not white, but black, and cracked. The sky was filled with turbulent, dark clouds lit from within by lightning.

And everywhere, the Black Mist coiled.

She was still there for a moment, and he clung to her, unwilling to let her go.

“My love,” he breathed, but then she faded, like ash on the wind, and he was left grasping at nothing.

He was dead.

And he was trapped here in this perpetual in-between.

Ledros rose, and picked up the shattered remnant of his sword.

He leveled the ghostly blade at the one who had shattered the illusion of his memory. The hateful spirit lurked in darkness, leering at him, eyes burning with cold flame. His cursed lantern sat on a smashed chunk of masonry nearby, radiating beams of deadlight, captive souls writhing within.

The Chain Warden. Thresh.

Oh, how he hated him.

The cursed spirit had haunted him for what seemed like centuries, taunting him, mocking him. Now he had found his way here? This was his sanctuary, the only place he could feel even a fleeting moment of peace before the horror of his reality reasserted itself.

“Why are you here?” Ledros demanded. His voice was dull and hollow, as if he spoke from distance or time far away.

“You were lost for quite a while this time,” said Thresh. “Months. Perhaps years. I don’t keep track any more.”

Ledros lowered his blade, and took stock of his surroundings.

He remembered this place as it had been—white stone and shining gold bathed in sunlight. Protective white mist had wreathed the isles, resisting outsiders. When they had first landed, it seemed a land beloved by the gods—a place of wealth, and knowledge, and wonder, untouched by famine or war. It had just made it easier. There had been little resistance.

Now there was no sun. All was darkness. The ruptured, shattered remnants of the library loomed above, like some great, desiccated corpse. Chunks of stonework hung in mid-air, where they’d been blasted outward and locked in time. He had been a fool to think the gods had loved this place, for they had clearly forsaken it.

Every time he re-emerged from the unformed madness of the Black Mist and reformed, it was here, where his mortal body had fallen, so long ago. Every time it was the same. Nothing changed.

The one waiting for him was new, however. It was not a change he welcomed.

Out of habit, he reached for the pendant he always wore around his neck… but it was not there.

“No…” The corpse-light glowing within him flared brightly in rising panic.

“Such a pretty trinket,” said Thresh.

Ledros’ head snapped around, eyes blazing. Thresh held aloft a short chain, from which hung a delicate silver pendant engraved with two roses, their leaves and stalks wrapped around each other like a lovers’ embrace.

Anger surged within Ledros, hot and sudden, and his sword flared as he took a step toward Thresh. He’d been a big man in life, full of wrath and violence—the king’s champion, no less. He towered over Thresh.

“That… is… mine,” hissed Ledros.

The Chain Warden did not flee before him like the lesser spirits did. The death’s head that was his face was hard to read, but there was cruel amusement in his eyes.

“You’re an aberration, Ledros,” he said, still dangling the pendant before him. “Some might say we all are, but you’re different. You stand out. Here, you are the real abnormality.”

“Give it to me,” snarled Ledros, blade at the ready. “I will cut you down.”

“You could try,” said Thresh. He spoke mildly, but his eyes burned, eager for violence. He sighed. “But this gets us nowhere. Here. Take it. It means nothing to me.”

He tossed it away with a dismissive flick. Ledros caught it in one black gauntlet, his arm snapping out with a speed that belied his size. He opened his massive fist, inspecting the pendant. It was undamaged.

Ledros sheathed his blade and removed his spiked helm. His face was insubstantial, a ghostly echo of how he had appeared in life. A cold wind whipped across the blasted landscape, but he didn’t feel it.

He pulled the precious pendant over his head, and slipped his helmet back on.

“Don’t you ever wish to see an end to this vile existence, Chain Warden?” Ledros said. “To finally be at peace?”

Thresh shook his head, laughing. “We have what mortals have coveted since time immemorial—eternity.”

“It makes us prisoners.”

Thresh smirked, and turned away, the chains and hooks hanging from his belt clinking. His lantern drifted along beside him, though he didn’t so much as touch it.

“You cling so desperately to the past, even as it runs through your fingers, like sand in a timepiece,” said Thresh, “yet you’re blind to the wonder of what we have been given. It has made us gods.”

“It is a curse,” hissed Ledros.

“Run along then, sword-champion,” Thresh said, gesturing Ledros away, dismissively. “Go, find your paramour. Perhaps this time she’ll even remember you…”

Ledros became very still, eyes narrowing.

“Tell me something,” said Thresh. “You seek to save her, but from what? She does not seem tormented. You, however…”

“You walk a dangerous line, warden,” snarled Ledros.

“Is it for her sake you do this? Or your own?”

Thresh had said words to this effect before. He seemed intent on making a mockery of Ledros’ efforts.

“I am not one of your playthings, warden,” Ledros said. “Do not make the mistake of thinking you can toy with me.”

Thresh smiled, exposing the shark-like teeth of a predator.

“Of course not,” he said.

With a gesture, Thresh called his lantern. It came to him, swiftly, then hovered just below his outstretched taloned hand. In the lantern’s glowing deadlight, Ledros saw anguished faces, pressing against their confinement, before fading to be replaced by others—a horrific cavalcade of tormented souls. Thresh smiled, savoring their pain.

“I don’t need to torture you,” he said. “You do that to yourself.”

The Chain Warden stepped into the darkness, leaving Ledros utterly alone.

A hollow wind ripped through the shattered city, but he did not feel it.

He felt nothing but her.

She was hunting.

Ledros stepped into the mist, letting it flow around him. Then he shifted through it.

The Black Mist writhed around him, full of hate, anger, and fear, but he remained distinct from it, maintaining his sense of self. He was drawn toward her like a moth to candlelight, and just as unheeding of the danger. He whipped across what had once been the Blessed Isles, passing over wasted lands and the churning water of the straits dividing them. Wherever the Black Mist extended—reaching blindly, searching, always searching—he was able to go. This was their sunless prison.

Her burning presence within the darkness lured him on. She was close. Feeling the nearness of her, he stepped from the mist once more.

He stood in a blackened forest, the trees withered and dead, their branches dry and cracked. The echoes of leaves long since fallen rippled in the memory of a breeze far more gentle than the cold gale now howling through the dead forest.

He sensed movement in the trees. His heavy boots crunched on blackened soil as he began to stalk it.

His iron shield was strapped to his left arm, though he didn’t remember securing it there, and he drew his sword. The leather wrapped around its hilt had rotted long ago, and while the blade was broken a few feet above the hilt, the ghostly outline of its full length could still be seen, glowing softly. Shattered and corroded by the ravages of time, it was a shadow of its former majesty. It had been gifted to him by the king himself, back when his monarch was a man to be admired and loved.

The ground sloped sharply below, but he kept to the high ground, moving along a ridge marked with jutting stone and twisted roots. He could see them now—shadowy spirits borne upon spectral steeds, galloping through the glen below. They moved swiftly, weaving between the trees, east toward a sun that would never again rise over these shores.

They moved as one, like a hunting party… yet they were the ones being hunted.

Ledros broke into a run, keeping pace with them.

A voice echoed through the trees.

“We come for you, betrayers…”

It spoke not as a single voice, but rather a score or more of them, layered and overlapping, a legion of souls speaking as one. The strongest of them was one he knew well.

Ledros quickened his pace, running fast and low. The riders below had been forced to weave around massive stone formations and the boles of ancient, desiccated trees. It slowed them, while the ridge he ran was straight. He quickly outpaced them and drew ahead of the hunted spirits.

Ledros turned abruptly, stepping over the edge of a sheer cliff. He landed in a crouch at the base, some thirty feet below, the earth cracking beneath him.

He stood within a narrow defile, where the natural contours of the land had created a funnel. The riders would have to come through.

With blade drawn, he waited.

The first of the horsemen appeared, riding at a gallop, a being of spirit and twisted metal—a vile mockery of the once-proud knights of the Iron Order. They were nothing to him now, just hateful fragments of the men they had once been.

A dark lance, its tip jagged and hooked, was clasped in the knight’s mailed grip, and great curling horns extended from his helm. Seeing Ledros, he wrenched his mount violently to the side, making it snarl and spit. Its hooves were wreathed in shadow, and it seemed not to touch the ground at all.

Had Ledros killed this one before? Or had he been one of those that had survived his rampage, and killed him?

The other riders appeared, pulling their steeds up short.

“Stand aside, bladesman,” one hissed.

“We have no quarrel with you,” said another.

“Our quarrel will last until the end of time itself,” growled Ledros.

“So be it,” snarled another of the deathly knights. “Ride him down!”

“You shouldn’t have stopped,” said Ledros, a smirk playing on his lips. “That was an error.”

One of the knights was hurled from his saddle, a glowing spear impaling him. His steed turned to smoke as he hit the ground. The knight screamed as he followed it into nothingness, condemned to join the Black Mist once more. No spirit went to that darkness willingly.

“She’s here!” roared the lead rider, dragging his steed around to face the new threat.

There was confusion among the others, caught somewhere between the desire to turn and fight, and to flee in panic.

They’d have been better off taking their chances at riding him down. At least a few might have escaped. Against her, all would be returned to the mist.

Another knight was ripped from the saddle, a spear hurled from the mist taking him in the chest.

Then she appeared, loping from the gloom like a lioness on the hunt, her eyes burning with predatory light.

Kalista.

Ledros’ gaze was instantly drawn to the ethereal speartips protruding from her back, and he felt a pang in the core of his being, as sharp as the blades that had ended his own life.

Kalista padded forward, a spectral spear clasped in one hand. A knight charged her, hook-bladed lance lowered, but she rolled lightly out of the way. Coming to one knee, she hurled her spear, impaling the knight as he rode past. Even as she threw, she was moving toward her next enemy.

She flexed her hand, and a new weapon materialized in her grasp.

A sword flashed down at her, but Kalista avoided it expertly, slapping the blade aside with the haft of her spear, before swaying away from the flailing hooves of the knight’s steed. Leaping from a blackened rock, she twisted in the air and drove her spear down into the rider’s chest, banishing him to darkness. She landed in perfect balance, eyes locked to her next victim.

Ledros had never met a woman as strong as Kalista in life. In death, she was unstoppable.

While the others focused on her, two of the knights charged Ledros, belatedly seeking to escape Kalista’s methodical slaughter. Stepping sideward at the last moment, Ledros slammed his heavy shield into the steed of the first, knocking the spectral beast to the ground, legs kicking, and sending its rider flying from the saddle.

The lance of the second knight took Ledros in the side, punching through his armor and snapping halfway down its length. Nevertheless, Ledros retained his feet and spun, lashing out with his blade. He struck through the neck of the knight’s steed, a blow that would have decapitated the beast had it been made of flesh and bone. Instead, it exploded into nothing with a keening scream. Its rider crashed to the ground.

Ledros smashed the ghostly warrior backward with a heavy blow of his shield as he rose, hurling him onto the point of Kalista’s spear. Her hunt, her kill.

Ledros sheathed his blade, and watched as she destroyed the last of the spirits.

Tall and lean, Kalista was in constant motion. Her enemies had been martial templars whose skill at arms was legendary, yet she moved among them effortlessly, side-stepping lance thrusts and sword strikes, dispatching each in turn.

Then it was done, and the only two left standing were Kalista and Ledros.

“Kalista?” he said.

She turned her gaze upon him, but there was no hint of recognition in her eyes. Her expression was stern, as it ever had been in life. She regarded him coldly, unblinking.

“We are the Spear of Vengeance,” she replied in that voice that was not hers alone.

“You are Kalista, Spear of the Argent Throne,” said Ledros.

He knew the words she would speak next before she even opened her mouth. It was the same every time.

“We are retribution,” said Kalista. “Speak your pledge, or begone.”

“You were niece to the king I served in life,” said Ledros. “We are… acquainted with each other.”

Kalista regarded him for a moment, then she turned and strode away.

“Our task is unfinished,” she said, without looking back. “The betrayers will suffer our wrath.”

“Your task can never be finished,” said Ledros, hurrying to keep pace. “You are trapped in a never-ending spiral! I am here to help you.”

“The guilty shall be punished,” said Kalista, continuing to march back through the trees.

“You remember this, don’t you?” said Ledros, drawing the pendant from around his neck. That gave her pause, as it always did. It was the one thing Ledros had discovered that could break through her fugue, even if only for a moment. He just needed to figure out how to extend that moment…

Kalista came to a halt, cocking her head to one side as she looked at the delicate pendant. She reached for it, but stopped herself before she touched it.

“I tried to give this to you once,” said Ledros. “You refused it.”

Uncertainty touched her eyes.

“We… I… remember,” she said.

She looked at him—actually saw him.

“Ledros,” she said. Her voice was her own now, and for a moment she was the woman he remembered. The woman he’d loved. Her features softened, ever so slightly. “I could never have given you what you wanted.”

“I understand,” said Ledros, “even if I didn’t at the time.”

Kalista looked around, as if only now becoming aware of her surroundings. She looked at her hands, glowing from within and as insubstantial as smoke. Ledros saw confusion, then anguish play across her face. Then her features hardened.

“Would that I had never brought him here,” said Kalista. “All this could have been averted.”

“It was not your fault,” said Ledros. “I knew madness had claimed him. I could have ended it before it came to this. No one would have questioned his death. No one would have mourned him.”

“He wasn’t always that way,” said Kalista.

“No, but the man we knew died long before all this,” Ledros said, gesturing around him.

“…We have a task to complete.”

Hope stirred within him. It was an unfamiliar feeling.

“Whatever it is, we will complete it together, just as…” he said, but his words petered out as he realized his error.

The cold mask had dropped over her features, and she turned and strode away. Despair clutched at Ledros.

He’d failed again, just as he had so many times before.

He saw himself in the early years after the Ruination, stalking the spirits of those who had killed her in life, convinced that destroying them would free her. It hadn’t. He’d spent countless years pursuing that goal, but it had amounted to nothing.

He saw himself felling the arrogant cavalry captain, Hecarim, hacking his head from his shoulders and rendering him back to the mist. That one had struck Kalista the final, fatal blow, and had long toiled, seeking his end. Time and again they fought, as the years, and decades, and centuries rolled by, and the unseen stars turned overhead. But Hecarim was strong of will, and he returned from the Black Mist, of course, each time more monstrous than the last.

Either way, it changed nothing. Kalista became steadily more lost as she absorbed the vengeful spirits of the mortals who pledged themselves to her, seeking her aid against their own betrayers.

Once, he had brought Kalista face to face with Hecarim, a feat that had taken dozens of lesser deaths to achieve. He had believed that was the key to finally setting her free, and he’d rejoiced as he saw the now monstrous creature Hecarim skewered, a dozen spears piercing his towering frame… but banishing him to the darkness had done nothing. A moment of satisfaction, and then it was past.

Nothing had changed.

Just another failure added to his growing tally.

At one point, despair drove him toward self destruction. The purity of the one sunrise he’d seen since the blood had ceased coursing through his veins burned him, his intangible body dissipating like vapor. Guilt at leaving Kalista behind clawed at him, but in that agony he had rejoiced, daring to believe he’d finally found release.

Even in seeking final oblivion, he had failed, and he’d been condemned to the madness of the Black Mist once more.

All the moments preceding his banishment blurred together in a never-ending cavalcade of horror and defeat.

He roared as a purple-skinned sorcerer cast him back to the darkness, tearing him asunder with runic magics.The savage joy he’d felt as he joined the slaughter in the streets of a festering harbor city overrun with the Black Mist gave way to sudden pain as he was blasted to nothingness by the faith of indigenous witches.

He laughed as a sword impaled him on its length, but his amusement turned to agony as the blade burst into searing light, burning with the intensity of the sun.

Again and again and again he’d been condemned back to the nightmarish Black Mist, but always he’d returned. Every time, he returned to a land locked in stasis, waking in the same place, the same way.

A being of lesser will would have succumbed to insanity long ago, as so many of the spirits had. But not him. Failure clung to him, but his will was as iron. His stubborn determination to free her kept him going. That was what ensured he came back, over and over again.

Snapping back to the present, Ledros watched Kalista stalk away from him, intent on her unending mission.

A creeping melancholia settled within him. Was it all for nothing?

Was Thresh right? Was his attempt to free her from her path of retribution actually selfish?

She was sleepwalking through this nightmare, unaware of its true horrors. Would she thank him were he to wake her? Perhaps she would despise him, wishing he had let her be.

Ledros shook his head, trying to dislodge the insidious notion, even as a vision of Thresh—smiling, predatory—appeared in his mind.

“Get out of my head,” he snarled, cursing Thresh.

A new idea came to him suddenly, banishing his lingering doubts and fears. There was something he hadn’t tried, something he’d never considered until now.

“Kalista,” he called.

She did not heed him, and continued on her way, her step unrelenting.

He loosened his sword belt, and cast his scabbarded blade to the ground. He wouldn’t need it any more.

“I betrayed you,” he called out.

She stopped, her head whipping around, unblinking eyes locking on to him.

“I should have stepped forward as soon as the order was given,” Ledros continued. “I knew Hecarim was looking for any excuse to be rid of you. You’d always been the king’s favorite. It all happened so fast, but I should have been faster. We could have faced them, back to back. We could have cut our way through them and been free, together! I betrayed you with my inaction, Kalista. I failed you.”

Kalista’s eyes narrowed

“Betrayer,” she intoned.

An ethereal spear manifested in her grasp, and she began marching toward him.

Ledros unstrapped his shield and threw it aside as she broke into a loping run. He opened his arms wide, welcoming what was to come.

The first spear drove him back a step as it impaled him.

His had been the true betrayal. He’d loved her, even if he’d only spoken those words aloud alone, in the darkness of night…

A second spear drove through him, hurled with tremendous force. He staggered, but stubbornly remained standing.

He had not stepped in to stop her being murdered. He was her real betrayer.

Her third spear plunged through him, and now he dropped to both knees. He smiled, even as his strength leached from him.

Yes, this was it. This was what would finally break her from that awful, unending spiral. He was sure of it.

“Finish it,” he said, looking up at her. “Finish it, and be free.”

They stared at each other for a moment, a pair of undying spirits, their insubstantial forms rippling with deathless energy. In that moment, Ledros felt only love. In his mind’s eye, he saw her as she had been in life—regal, beautiful, strong.

“Death to all betrayers,” she said, and ran him through.

Ledros’ vision wavered as his form began to come apart, yet he saw Kalista’s expression change, the impassive mask dropping, replaced with dawning horror.

“Ledros?” she said, her voice now her own.

Her eyes were wide, and seemed to fill with shimmering tears. She rushed to be beside him as Ledros fell.

“What have I done?” she breathed.

He wanted to reassure her, but no words came forth.

I did this for you.

Darkness crashed in, and tendrils of mist reached to claim him.

Kalista reached out to comfort him, but her fingers passed through his dissolving form. Her mouth moved, but he could not hear her over the roaring madness of the Black Mist.

His armor fell to the ground and turned to dust, along with his sword. Blind terror beckoned, but he went into it gladly.

Dimly, he registered the pale specter of Thresh, watching from the shadows with his fixed, hungry smile. Even the Chain Warden’s unwanted presence could not dampen Ledros’ moment of victory.

He’d done it. He had freed her.

It was over.

Blind, all-consuming terror.

Incandescent, uncontrollable rage.

Claustrophobic horror, cloying and choking.

And behind it all was the insatiable hunger—the yearning to feed on warmth and life, to draw more souls into darkness.

The cacophony was deafening—a million screaming, tortured souls, writhing and roiling in shared torment.

This was the Black Mist.

And only the strongest of souls could escape its grasp. Only those with unfinished business.

Blood pooled beneath him, bright crimson against pristine white stone. His sword lay nearby, its blade broken. His killers stood around him, shadows on the periphery, but he saw nothing except her.

Her eyes stared into his own, without seeing. His blood-spattered face was reflected back at him. He was lying on his side. His breath was shallow, and weakening.

Her lifeless hand was cold, but he didn’t feel anything. A calmness descended upon him like a shroud. There was no pain, no fear, no doubt. Not any more.

His armored fingers tightened around her hand. He couldn’t be with her in life, but he would be with her in death.

For the first time in what seemed forever, he felt at peace…

No. Something was not right.

Reality crashed in.

None of this was real. This was but an echo left behind, the residual pain of his death, hundreds of lifetimes earlier.

Thankfully, the Chain Warden was not here to mock him.

How long had it been, this time? There was no way to know. Decades, or a few minutes—it could have been either, and yet it hardly mattered. Nothing changed in this vile realm of stasis.

Then he remembered, and hope surged through him. It was not a sensation he was familiar with, but it blossomed like the first bud of a seemingly dead tree after rainfall.

He turned, and she was there, and for a moment he knew joy, true joy. She was herself again, and she had come to him!

Then he saw her expression. The cold, severe mask, the lack of recognition in her eyes. The hope inside him withered and died.

Kalista stared past him, her head cocked, as if listening to something only she could hear.

“We accept your pledge,” she said, before turning and stepping into the mist.

Then she was gone.

Reaching out with his will, Ledros felt her now far away. Someone had called to her, from a distant continent to the north-west. Someone else who had traded their soul for a promise of vengeance against whoever had wronged them. They knew not what horror awaited.

Bitterness and bile filled Ledros. He cursed himself, twisting his hatred inward.

There was no hope. He knew that now. He’d been a fool to think otherwise.

She was trapped for eternity, as were they all. Only pride and stubbornness had made him think he could solve it, like a riddle, for all these years.

Pride and stubbornness—traits that were as much his bane in death as they had been in life, it seemed.

The cursed Chain Warden was right. It was a selfish desire to free her, he saw that now. Kalista may not be herself, but at least she was not tormented like he was. At least she had purpose.

Ledros yanked the pendant from around his neck, shattering the links of its thin chain. He hurled it into the mist.

To even hope for anything more was foolishness. There could be no peace, not unless the curse that held these isles in its foetid grasp was broken.

“And so, I must end it,” Ledros said.

Oblivion called.

Thresh stepped from the darkness. He glanced around, ensuring he was alone. Then he knelt and picked up the discarded silver pendant.

The fool had been so close. He was on the brink of bringing her back… and now, after countless centuries of trying, he had abandoned his task, at the very moment of success.

Thresh smiled, cruelly. He liked seeing hope wither and die, like blighted fruit upon the vine, as what could have been sweet turned to poison. It amused him.

He opened his lantern, and tossed the pendant within. Then he stepped back into the darkness, and faded from view.

After a time, the rattle of his chains faded, and he was gone.

Kai’Sa peers out from the mouth of the tunnel and feels like she’s standing at the edge of the world.

A chasm, so deep that sunlight doesn’t hit the bottom. Surrounding it are the openings of dozens of other tunnels. All are carved into rock that sits deep below the surface, now exposed and crumbling.

Once, this had been home to a vast colony of Void creatures. These had been their burrows, formed with the randomness of unmade matter. Sharp corners, dead ends, coils upon coils... all constructed without a plan beyond “eat the world.” That is the Void—mindless organic machines, driven by instinct to fight and consume and unmake with no thought beyond the present. She’s killed enough to know there is nothing deeper to the creatures than that.

But the tunnel Kai’Sa stands in is different. It is not random unmaking. It is practically a straight line running north, one she’d followed for nearly four days. This tunnel, this passage, was made with intention. With a goal. It doesn’t make sense...

Kai’Sa would make it make sense, starting with where this passage led.

So far, it has led to this chasm.

Kai’Sa eyes the openings on the opposite side. Hard to tell how deep any of them go. But she would bet her second skin that one of them is a piece of the same passage she stands in now.

She rolls her shoulders. Her living armor wakes, pulling its flesh tightly against her own. It has been her only constant, growing with her from the time she was a little girl. It had been one of the voidling beasts that killed her family, her village. Covered in its carapace, Kai’Sa would always be seen as a monster. But without it, she could not keep the world safe from the Void.

Without it, she would be nothing.

The scaly pods at her shoulders flex, and the embedded crystals illuminate as she selects her first target. The heat from the crystals spawns a plasma missile; she launches it down the mouth of a tunnel deep below the surface. It takes six seconds to cross the chasm. Massive. Another second, and the missile hits a curve. Nope. Not what she’s looking for.

From here, it’s point and shoot, over and over. Most missiles hit something a second or two in. But Kai’Sa is nothing if not patient. She will go at this as long as it takes.

She finds the tunnel she’s looking for just as the sun begins to set. She waits for her missile to cross the chasm, then starts the count. One. Two. Three.

Four. Five. Six. This is it. This one’s the other end of the passage.

Grinning, she fires a barrage around the opening to mark it. Her earlier missile is still going... until she hears the horrible screech from whatever it struck.

She turns her shoulder pods inward, pressing them together to hide their light. She waits silently for her prey to show itself.

Another screech. A voidling creature emerges from the other side of the passage. Kai’Sa has spent years fighting and observing and cataloging voidlings. This is not one she’s seen before. The creature’s smooth, rounded body, injured from her missile, deforms as it opens its long lower jaw. Its mouth is filled with translucent needle-like teeth jutting out at dangerous angles. Its sides expand and contract like it’s breathing.

Or taking in scent, she thinks as it turns. No eyes, but it can still find me. She takes aim as the sun dips below the horizon. The voidling begins... to glow. Something—a tongue?—emerges from its mouth and emits a soft bluish light, looking like the hanging lamps in humans’ mines. Haven’t seen a voidling do that before. She notices that its injury is glowing, too.

Guess I’ll call it a Lamplight. She lets a missile fly. The Lamplight’s posture changes. It lets out a high, sustained shriek and dodges Kai’Sa’s blast. Dammit. Kai’Sa lines up another shot.

The entire tunnel behind it blooms with blue light. Hundreds of Lamplights join the first, mouths open, tongues raised and glowing. Kai’Sa forces herself to breathe slowly. She’s fought worse odds. All in one spot. Excellent. Kai’Sa unleashes a barrage, hoping to take out all the voidlings at once.

In the time it takes the missiles to cross, the voidlings spill out like dust, clinging to the walls of the chasm as the barrage whistles past them harmlessly.

What...

Led by the injured Lamplight, they move as one. Toward Kai’Sa.

... the hell?

She raises her hands and fires rapidly at the swarm. She hits a few, but not enough to make a dent in their numbers. And they are already a quarter of the way to her. Kai’Sa looks around wildly. Not many options. Fight from her current location. Run back down the passage. Take her chances and dive down. Try to climb, fight them from the surface.

She glances above, then at the swarm. They’re halfway around. Climb. Kai’Sa shoots into rock four times in a zigzag—one for each of her hands to grip and her feet to balance. Pulling herself up, she begins the climb.

Shoot, grab, pull. Shoot, grab, pull. As fast as she can, Kai’Sa makes her path. Her shoulder pods shoot at the swarm. They’re near, but Kai’Sa’s pace is good. She’s more than halfway to the—

And her hand hits sand.

She shoots again. There’s nothing for her missile to pierce. It blows through the sand, and more seeps down to fill in the empty spot. There’s nothing to grab. Can she jump the rest of the way? Jaw clenched, Kai’Sa turns toward the monsters. If she’s going to die, she’ll take as many of them with her as she can.

Suddenly, the wall around the voidlings cracks.

And crumbles.

Hundreds of Lamplights drop with the falling stone, their light swallowed by the darkness of the chasm. Only three of them still rush toward Kai’Sa. That’s a number she can handle. They’re close enough that she can see barbs on their tongues.

Three shots fire. Two Lamplights fall. One left.

It smacks its thorny tongue against Kai’Sa’s ribcage. Her ribs crack beneath her armor as she slams against the rock. She struggles to take a breath while the suit repairs over her injury. Gripping the wall with her left hand, she grabs the creature’s tongue just below the barbs with her right. Violet power surges. The Lamplight’s tongue melts around her hand. Screaming, it backs away. Kai’Sa takes aim.

This time, she doesn’t miss.

Okay. Kai’Sa breathes. Okay. Next step. She’ll have to find a way to the surface.

That’s when she notices the stone cube sticking out from the sand.

That wasn’t there before. Kai’Sa reaches out and grabs—it is exactly the right size for her hand. She tests part of her weight on it. It holds. Curious, she leans to one side and looks farther up. Jutting out every armspan or so is another one of these stone cubes. She’ll question this turn of good luck later.

Kai’Sa scrambles up, one cube at a time, until she’s out. Looking around in the moonlight, she sees no landmarks, just dunes and rocky cliffs. A sand storm kicks up in the distance. She glances down into the chasm. If she squints, she can almost make out a glow...

The wind gets loud. Storm’s approaching fast. She turns to face it. At the center of the storm is...

A girl?

The ground explodes under Kai’Sa’s feet. She hurtles through the air toward the storm, an arm in front of her broken ribs. She shifts position mid-air, her shoulder pods folding in front of her like a battering ram. If Kai’Sa’s attacker wants to bring her closer, that’s their mistake.

Something wraps around her shoulder pods and wrists, pulling her down, slamming her to the ground. Her ribs feel like they’re on fire, and her helm cracks where her head meets the earth.

She gets to her feet and forces her wrists apart. A red scarf, studded with stones, falls away. With a guttural yell, she sets her hands alight.

She’s stopped by the look of surprise and horror on the girl’s face. Even all these years later, she is still taken aback when someone looks at her and sees only a monster.

Push past it, Kai’Sa. She brings her hands up again, ready to attack...

“You’re human?”

Kai’Sa realizes she’s looking at the girl through the crack in her helm. Oh.

“You... see me?” It doesn’t matter. Humans are always afraid of her, whether or not they know she is one of them. But the girl’s expression gives Kai’Sa a foolish hope. Maybe this time could be different. Cautiously, Kai’Sa lets the helm pull away from her head, revealing the rest of her true face.

The girl drops to her knees, and Kai’Sa’s breath catches in her throat. “I am so sorry,” the girl says. “I thought you were—”

“A monster?”

“Well, yeah.” The girl gestures toward the chasm. “People tend not to survive long in these collapses.” She gazes at Kai’Sa’s second skin. “And you don’t... look human? At first glance.”

The girl is not as young as she’d thought; she must be around her own age, or older. Kai’Sa stares as the scarf lifts from the ground by its stony ends. “The stones,” she says quietly. “You control the stones.” The girl nods as the scarf wraps itself around her neck as though by magic. “You made those cubes come out of the sand.”

The girl shrugs, smiling. “I could feel someone was down there with those monsters. So I tried to help.” Her smile slips. “It’s all I’ve been doing for weeks now. Months? Hard to keep track.”

Kai’Sa blinks, eyes suddenly stinging. Someone else is fighting the Void, she realizes. Not the same way I am, but... “Who are you?”

The smile returns. “My name is Taliyah.”

The tents, cobbled from scraps of fabric and solid slabs of rock, look like Taliyah’s work. A group of thirty or forty, mostly children and elders, surround a large firepit at the center of the camp. The way they look at her—silently, with wide eyes and hunched shoulders—is horribly familiar.

Fear. Kai’Sa doesn’t meet anyone’s gaze. It’s for their comfort. But really, it’s for her own.

Taliyah’s arms are open wide as she introduces Kai’Sa, diving into a dramatic retelling of their meeting. The only movement in the crowd is the flickering of flames. Stillness, and silence, is their only response as Taliyah finishes her tale.

“I don’t have to stay,” Kai’Sa mumbles.

Taliyah shakes her head. “You’re injured. I can’t send you back out there when you haven’t eaten or rested. I won’t.”

A child half her height, a red cowl wrapped around his shoulders, stands. “You sure she’s human?” He squints. “Maybe it’s just some kinda disguise.” He almost falls backward from the force of two older girls pulling him down into his seat.

Taliyah laughs. “Have you seen a Void monster that can smile, Samir?” she retorts. “I haven’t.”

Everyone looks at Kai’Sa expectantly. She does her best approximation of a smile, close-lipped so as not to look too aggressive. It doesn’t seem to scare the children. A victory.

The boy, Samir, stands again. “Fair enough,” he says as he walks toward Kai’Sa. He offers her a half-eaten piece of meat on a stick. “Want the rest of my sandsnake?”

Everyone else seems to breathe easier as Kai’Sa accepts the food. She rips the meat from the stick and swallows without chewing, her suit purring in relief. Zaifa, one of the older girls with jade beaded through her hair, offers her more. This time, Kai’Sa slows down enough to appreciate the flavoring of cinnamon, sour lemon, and smoky ul-tawaat berries.

The taste brings back old memories, of life with her parents, of her father cooking over an open flame while her mother ground the ul-tawaat with her pestle...

Kai’Sa shakes her head to clear her mind—no good can come from dwelling in those memories. She really doesn’t need the rest, and she’s already eaten enough for her ribs to start healing.

But the camp has already started to relax, with people chatting over their own meals. Some have even turned their back to her. A show of trust. And the hope in Taliyah’s eyes is unmistakable. Please stay, they seem to say. Don’t leave us yet.

“I’ll stay awhile,” she concedes. “To heal.”

The passage will still be there tomorrow.

They are dead. Killed by the Void, as my own family was. Kai’Sa does not say what she is thinking.

Some of the elders speak of the sun-blessed Ascended warriors. Others tell the story of the last emperor, and the chaos that followed his death. Zaifa describes the darkness that infected the Ascended and drove them to madness and evil. None are believable, but Kai’Sa listens intently.

The story told by Kadira, an older girl with rocky arm braces, is by far the most outlandish. She talks of a place called Xolan, across the Sai Kahleek, that has been magically protected for millennia. “It is said to be a paradise,” she sighs. “With libraries, and gardens, and water that flows as far as the eye can see. And everyone is safe, without fear.”

Kai’Sa does not realize that she has scoffed until Kadira and the children look at her. “No place is safe from the Void,” Kai’Sa says. “Especially so close to the Sai Kahleek. It’s a myth.”

“It’s real,” Kadira insists. “Where do you think we’re all headed?”

Without another word, Kai’Sa stands and leaves the storytellers to their tales.

She finds Taliyah leaning against one of the tents, deep in conversation with Zaifa and Samir, lit more by moonlight than by firelight. Zaifa traces her finger across an open scroll.

“You aren’t actually searching out this Xolan.” Kai’Sa doesn’t frame it as a question. “You’d be putting yourselves in real danger, crossing the Sai Kahleek over a fantasy.”

Taliyah exchanges a look with Zaifa, who hands Kai’Sa the scroll—a map of eastern Shurima. She points to a dot to the north of the Sai Kahleek. Xolan. North. The same direction as the passage. Kai’Sa frowns.

“It’s the best chance we have of finding safety for these people,” Taliyah explains. “Their homes have been destroyed, their families... separated. They need hope that things will be okay.”

“False hope helps no one. When it comes to the Void, the only thing you can do is run and hope you’re fast.”

Taliyah shakes her head. “If we go around the sai, we’ll run out of food. Stay where we are, we run out of food. Go back, and all we’ll find are the towns that fell. Where else do we run?”

Kai’Sa stares at Taliyah. “Do you know what lives in the Sai Kahleek? What hunts there?”

“The xer’sai. We’ve all heard the stories.”

“No. Xolan is a story,” Kai’Sa says. “The xer’sai are real. I’ve fought them before, many at a time. This is their nest. Trying to cross it is a death sentence.”

“I’ve fought Void creatures too. Or did you forget that I saved you?”

“Those weren’t xer’sai.”

“Whatever they were, I defeated them when you couldn’t.” Kai’Sa can see determination in the set of Taliyah’s jaw. “If Xolan is our only hope, then that’s where I’m going to lead everyone.”

“Besides, we’ve got a plan,” Samir says, excited. “Taliyah’s going to build a bridge or wall or something over the sand, and we’ll take people across together.”

He can’t be that much older than I was when the Void took me. Aloud, she asks, “What, can you move stone too?”

“I’m the best rock hopper you’ve ever met,” Samir says with a confident grin. “None of those monsters can move as fast as my sandboard. And if they try?” He mimes a blast from the ground. “Taliyah drives ’em back with some rock-splosions.”

“You sound like a child,” Kai’Sa spits. Samir’s smile drops. “The children of Rek’Sai... all they do is devour. Anything that gets in their way? Gone.” She leans in close. “When they hear you, they hunt you. They don’t stop until their teeth close around your bones.”

“You’re scaring him,” Zaifa accuses as she puts a steadying hand on Samir’s shoulder.

“Good. He should be.”

“So come with us,” Taliyah says confidently. “You can help keep everyone safe.”

“No. Because you’re not going.” Kai’Sa points to Samir. “You are not putting these children in that kind of danger. They’ll die. Make your way around the sai. Take as many as you can. Leave the slowest behind, use their rations to—”

“We won’t!” Samir stands toe to toe with Kai’Sa, glaring up at her. “Taliyah will protect us. I will protect us.” He puffs out his chest. “I’m going to help these people, and they’re all going to make it across because... because each of their lives means something.” He stomps back toward the firepit, with Zaifa chasing after him.

“It’s your only chance,” Kai’Sa says quietly. “Otherwise, you’re condemning them all to death.”

“No.” Taliyah steps in front of Kai’Sa, refusing to let her look away. “Our world is a tapestry, and every life is a thread of a different color. Each one makes the whole more beautiful.”

Ugh. Metaphors. “Then the Void is a flame,” Kai’Sa replies. “It unmakes everything it touches. If your tapestry catches fire, the entire thing will burn... unless you cut the smoldering threads away. Then you still save most of it.”

“You’re wrong. Any threads that drop make it all unstable, easy to unravel.” Sunlight appears at the horizon, and Taliyah’s eyes flash gold. “I’m not willing to let any of them go.”

Taliyah collapses the stone structures back into the earth, leaving little sign that they were ever there. Kai’Sa watches and nibbles at her bread, trying to make it last.

“I don’t suppose you’ve changed your mind,” Taliyah says, “and decided to join us.” Kai’Sa sees the sheen of sweat on the girl’s brow. This exhausts her more than she lets on.

“No. I have somewhere else to go.” She sighs. “And you haven’t changed yours.”

Taliyah shrugs. “I have somewhere to go, too.” She turns back to her work. “I’m disappointed. You know what you’re doing with these Void monsters. You could help these people.”

The best way I can help is to figure out what made that Void passage. It was made with a purpose in mind... and that scares me. But she doesn’t say that. Instead, she says, “I hope you can help them yourself.”

Except it feels lonely now. Kai’Sa wonders if she shouldn’t have spent so much time with Taliyah. She’s been alone for more than half her life, just her and the Void monsters that dwell below the surface world. She didn’t realize how good it would feel to be a person again.

Alone with her thoughts, she hardly notices the time pass. Soon, she sees older tunnels, enormous holes punctuating the passage walls and leading elsewhere. Xer’sai tunnels. I’m below the Sai Kahleek. But she still doesn’t see or hear any xer’sai.

She spots a bluish glow down one of the tunnels. Quietly, and with as little motion as possible, Kai’Sa peers down the opening into the darkness.

She sees a few smaller xer’sai of a kind that she has encountered and named before. A group of Callers, reedy bipedal creatures with four prehensile jaw-talons, chirp softly to one another. Their shrieks can cut through the desert, alerting others to the presence of fresh prey. Spiky hatchlings, already larger than the Callers and due to grow much larger still, stand beside them. Together, they encircle dozens of Lamplights.

One of them has a glowing blue mark like a burn on the side of its body. That’s the one I shot, Kai’Sa realizes in horror. Taliyah’s attack didn’t kill it. It might not have killed any of them...

As she watches, one of the hatchlings stalks over to the marked creature. It extends its tongue and touches it to the hatchling’s horn.

A soft blue light engulfs the hatchling. It glows.

The sudden chattering of Callers drowns out Kai’Sa’s gasp. What are they doing? Her heart beats in her throat as more hatchlings and Callers go toward the Lamplights to receive their own glow. Are they making the xer’sai more powerful? She shakes her head to clear her thoughts, and takes aim at the marked creature.

Whatever it is, I’m going to stop them.

That’s when a loud boom shakes the earth.

An enormous xer’sai Dunebreaker cuts through the stone wall with the bladed horn above its eight eyes. The talons along its jaw scratch into the rock, leaving deep gashes. Every step shakes the ground to drive fear into its prey. It hisses, swiping its horn at the Lamplights. It slices three of them at once, their deflated bodies leaking bright blood.

The Dunebreaker doesn’t like what the Lamplights are doing.

The Lamplights screech and flee toward the passage—toward Kai’Sa. She feels the familiar rush of power as she and her suit become invisible just in time for the Lamplights, then the Dunebreaker, to rush northward past her. The Dunebreaker’s horn rips a deep gash through the top of the passage. It bows inward.

The passage is going to collapse.

She dashes ahead, trying to keep up with the massive xer’sai while it can’t see her. I need to know where this leads. I have to understand.

But then, from somewhere behind her... Screams. Human screams.

Kai’Sa drops her invisibility and dashes up toward the surface before everything crumbles beneath her. She blinks as her helm readjusts to the sunlight. The dust clouds make it hard to see, and the crash of rockfall pierces her ears, but she can still hear the sounds of panic. She runs toward them.

Ahead of her, she sees the crevasse that formed where the Dunebreaker’s horn tore through the ceiling of the passage. A stone platform is dangling over the edge, though most of it remains on the sand, refusing to fall into the fissure. The people standing atop the platform are screaming, but a lone figure remains calm. Taliyah. Her stone bridge. She’s the only thing keeping it up. Her arms shake from the strain, but slowly, she lifts the front of the platform back toward the surface.

A child’s shout comes from below. Someone fell into the passage.

Kai’Sa sprints toward Taliyah. “You need to get back!” she shouts as the bridge rises. “The whole thing is going to collapse beneath you all if you don’t move!”

“Samir’s down there!” Taliyah screams as the bridge finally makes it to the surface, settling onto the ground with a thud. “I’m not going to leave him!”

She lets out a strangled yell and pushes against air with one hand. The bridge groans as it scrapes away from her, pushing it a good distance away from the collapse. Then she dives into the crevasse.

Kai’Sa stares over the edge. She’s going to die down there if I don’t help her.

Kadira and Zaifa come running from the bridge. Kai’Sa fires at their feet.

“What are you doing?!” Kadira shouts, jumping back.

“That huge xer’sai could turn back any minute,” Kai’Sa says. “Get the others out of here.”

“We’re not going anywhere until we know Taliyah and Samir are safe,” Zaifa says with clenched fists. “We can help you.”

I don’t have time for this, Kai’Sa thinks as her shoulder pods unfold, crystals crackling with power. If I kill these two, the others will run.

Kadira and Zaifa join hands, but they do not move. Kai’Sa remembers the stories they told around the firepit. The food they shared with her. Their fear of her, and how it left them over the course of the night.

... I don’t want to hurt them. “I’ll go down and help them. Please, go back to the others. They need someone to be strong for them.”

“Fine. But you have to bring them both back,” Zaifa spits out as she and Kadira run back toward the bridge.

I will. I promise. Without glancing back, Kai’Sa leaps into the growing hollow below.

Her feet hit the bottom hard enough to snap any normal person’s bones. In the distance, she sees glowing voidlings—not just the Lamplights, but the hatchlings and Callers they’ve converted—surrounding a smooth stone dome. That must be where Taliyah and Samir are.

She hears a subtle shift in the rumbling sound from afar. The Dunebreaker’s turned around, she realizes. If it’s after the Lamplights... it’ll be coming right back here.

Kai’Sa digs deep into the power of her living armor. Her wrists are surrounded by violet light, until they’re not. Invisible again.

She fires on the Callers. All five die without making a sound. The hatchlings turn, looking for the source of the attack. Only the blind Lamplights, tasting the air, can sense her. Before they can pinpoint her, she’s already taken out the hatchlings.

Now she’s in trouble. Dozens of Lamplights rush toward her. She fades back into visibility and dashes away as fast as she can.

They’re on her in a matter of seconds. She fires wildly, but only a few of them drop. One catches her by the ankle, slicing through her suit with the barbs on its tongue. She falls as she attempts to dodge more attacks. But they slice at her from all sides, faster than her suit can knit itself back together. Blood drips from her arms, her legs, her cheek. She tastes the tang of copper as it runs over her lips...

And then something explodes from beneath. The Lamplights are propelled back and away.

They pause, confused. Kai’Sa looks beyond them. Taliyah’s head pokes through the top of the dome. She’s shouting something. Kai’Sa’s helm reforms, and she hears Taliyah shout, “Come toward me!”

Kai’Sa crouches. “Give me a running start!”

The earth explodes beneath her, propelling her through the air, over the voidlings and toward Taliyah. She lands on her good ankle, and tries to sprint—she can’t. So she dips back into her suit’s power, letting it drain her reserves of energy to speed the healing of her ankle. She can’t run for long.

But she’ll try to make it count.

As the monsters get closer, Taliyah propels Kai’Sa toward her again. The ground she lands on is different, with sharp bumps dotting the earth. Kai’Sa runs over them, trying to get the Lamplights to follow her rather than go toward Taliyah. The one in front bears her mark, and gets close enough to reach for her again...

An explosion tears it to pieces, staining the earth with glowing blood. Kai’Sa stops in shock.

“Keep running!” Taliyah shouts. “That’s what triggers the explosions!”

So she does, circling around Taliyah.

A few Lamplights get too close. Taliyah’s “rock-splosions” tear through them. The others seem to learn, slowing down, but they become a target for Kai’Sa’s missiles.

It doesn’t take long to thin their ranks. But the rumbling grows louder as the Dunebreaker bores its way back. We don’t have much time.

There’s only a handful left. Kai’Sa stands near the dome, exhausted, and fires the last missiles she has the energy to make. Slowed by the minefield, each voidling takes the hit.

Grinning, she turns to Taliyah. The girl is pale, coughing from the dust in the air. Her arm is around a frightened Samir’s shoulders, as he struggles to keep her upright.

“I can’t...” Taliyah pants. “The ground... It’s unstable. Can’t keep holding it up...”

Kai’Sa takes Taliyah in her arms. She beckons for Samir to cling to her back, then runs toward the walls of the hollow. I’m at my limit. I don’t know if I can make it up to the surface like this.

Suddenly, Taliyah twists out of Kai’Sa’s grip and leaps, summoning a rising platform beneath her feet. She pulls Kai’Sa toward her and propels them all upward. Her strength gives out just short of the surface. Kai’Sa and Taliyah grab the ridge and do their best to hold on...

A dozen hands reach down, covered in dirt and dust. Is this real? Kai’Sa wonders as she stretches up toward them. Two hands pull her up. It is. She looks up, recognizing some of the faces from Taliyah’s camp. One of the hands around her wrists belongs to Kadira. I’m being rescued.

“Zaifa!” Taliyah cries once they’re all on solid ground again. “Kadira! You came back for us!”

“And brought help.” Kai’Sa nods at them both. “Smart. Thank you.”

Below, the Dunebreaker bursts back into the hollow. Kai’Sa holds a finger to her lips and mouths don’t move. Dunebreakers can only sense things they can hear or feel or see moving. If we stay still and quiet, we’ll live.

The creature prods the deflated bodies of the Lamplights with its horn. It shuffles around, finding the corpses of the glowing Callers and hatchlings.

Satisfied that its enemies are dead, it burrows back through the rock and down into the earth.

Kai’Sa waits until they can’t hear it anymore before she lets anyone move. Then Taliyah, exhausted and pale, lifts another bridge of stone from the ground and takes them all back toward the others. A drained Kai’Sa and an only somewhat humbled Samir bring up the rear.

“I would have made it back up on my own,” Samir says with a tired grin at Kai’Sa. “But it was nice of you to come help. What with me slowing everyone down and all.”

Kai’Sa gives the kid a sidelong glance, and can’t help but smile. “Couldn’t sit back and lose the best rock hopper I’ve ever met, could I?”

Kai’Sa lies beyond the light, not willing to let on how sore her body still is. Better to rest than to eat, she thinks miserably, the scent of charred cabbage floating toward her.

Taliyah sits and silently offers Kai’Sa a bowl full of cabbage and millet. Kai’Sa pushes it away.

“You’re not hungry?” Taliyah asks.

“I’m angry.”

Taliyah looks surprised. “Why?”

“You should have listened to me,” Kai’Sa says bitterly. “Instead? You couldn’t protect your people—those voidlings you thought you killed were the ones attacking us. You almost lost everyone. If I hadn’t been there, you would have.” She sees the regret in the twist of Taliyah’s lips, the set of her jaw. “And when they needed you most, you abandoned them. You left them all to die so you could try to maybe save one person.”

Taliyah is quiet for a moment. “Not that I’m not grateful, but... you know you did the same thing when you came down to help me, right?”

Kai’Sa doesn’t know how to respond to that.

“Don’t go toward Xolan,” Kai’Sa says after a few moments of awkward silence. “The Void passage that collapsed, the one I’ve been following, was directly below your route there. I’m pretty sure that Xolan is where it leads. That means the Void already has it.”

Taliyah nods, her shoulders slumping. “I’ll tell them they need to find another place.”

“They? What about you?”

“Well. I’m going to Xolan.”

“Taliyah—”

“That’s where you’re going, right?” Taliyah sighs. “I thought I could protect these people. Get them to safety. But you were right—there is no safe place. So... we’ll have to make one.”

“Uh. What do you mean?”

“If the Void is in Xolan... then we take it back! Make it safe enough to lead everyone to it... and try to help whoever is already there.” Taliyah sounds so optimistic.

“If the Void has taken the town... there’s not going to be anyone left to save.”

“We can’t know that from here. Even if there’s one person who needs our help, that will be worth it to me.” Taliyah steps forward and takes Kai’Sa’s hands in her own. They feel warm and calloused, even through Kai’Sa’s second skin. “I can’t do it without you, Kai’Sa. I didn’t kill those Lamplights on my own... but I was able to when you were there with me. Let’s find this place together.”

If she had been there when my home fell to the Void... maybe I could have been something different. Kai’Sa looks at the hope in Taliyah’s eyes, the strength in it. But I am who I am. The world needs me like this. So does she. I’ve seen what we can do together. I think I need her, too.

So does whoever might still be alive in Xolan.

Kai’Sa takes a bite of the charred cabbage and nods. “Fine. Another thread for the tapestry.”

“Be safe and be well,” Taliyah had said, hugging her tightly. “The blessings of the Great Weaver upon you all.”

Now, they are out of sight. She turns back to Kai’Sa, her only companion for the next leg of this journey. I know she’s happy to have the company, Taliyah thinks with a secret smile. Even if she won’t admit it.

Together they set out across the Sai Kahleek on a floating stone bridge, their destinies momentarily woven into one.