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Clan Ferros understands sacrifice.

Most of the family’s wealth came through harvesting a rare crystal from the brackern, a creature native to Shurima. These hex-crystals—or “first crystals”—contained power normally only wielded by those born with innate magical ability. After Camille’s great-great aunt lost an arm during an early expedition, her sacrifice inspired the Ferros family motto: “For family, will I give.”

The brackern were a limited resource, and Camille's family had to augment the crystals they’d accumulated. Utilizing shadow investments in chemtech and runic alchemy, they developed less powerful, but easier to make, synthetic hex-crystals.

Yet there were consequences—synthetic crystal manufacturing has long been rumored to heavily contribute to the Zaun Gray. Furthermore, it was only through espionage, intimidation, and murder that Clan Ferros held its monopoly on this priceless commodity, and ensured its uninterrupted production in Zaun, maintaining the family’s place in Piltover’s illustrious Bluewind Court.

As the eldest surviving child of Clan Ferros’ masters, Camille received every educational advantage. She had exceptional tutors, learning to speak several foreign languages and play the cellovinna at a concert-master level. Camille also learned to read and write Ancient Shuriman while assisting her father on digs in the Odyn Valley.

Traditionally, one of the younger children would become their family's principal intelligencer, working with the clan master to secure their family’s success by any means necessary. However, Camille's younger brother, Stevan, had a weak constitution, and so Camille took his place. He jealously watched her embrace her additional training, and she became quite adept in combat, reconnaissance, and interrogation.

When Camille was twenty-five, augmented Zaunite thugs attacked her and her father, intent on stealing lucrative trade secrets. Camille’s father succumbed to his wounds, and in anguish, her mother died soon after. Stevan became clan master, and he doubled the clan’s research in human hextech augmentation, eager to prove himself as a strong leader.

After a year of mourning, Stevan oversaw the induction of Hakim Naderi—a promising young crystallographer from the Shuriman coastal city of Bel'zhun—as the family’s lead artificer.

Camille requested hextech augmentation from Hakim to push her beyond her human limitations. Hakim was instantly enamored with her, and they bonded over the preparations and late night stories of Shurima… and eventually, Camille returned Hakim's feelings. Their affair grew reckless, as they knew the surgery would conclude their time together. Hakim would move onto other projects, and Camille would once again be fully committed to the principal intelligencer’s duties. More than that, Hakim worried that in carving away Camille's heart, he might remove her humanity.

Days before Camille's operation, Hakim proposed marriage and begged her to run away with him. For the first time in her life, Camille was torn.

Stevan had no such conflict, as he needed Camille to execute his vision. When he learned of the secret proposal, he devised a plan—the next time Camille and Hakim were together, Stevan set himself up to be attacked. When she saw her brother bruised and bloodied, Camille recognized what could happen when her attention was divided.

Hakim pleaded with Camille, but she wouldn’t listen. For family, she would give. She ended her relationship with Hakim, insisting her surgery go forward.

He was the only one who could safely perform the operation, and so he excised Camille’s heart and replaced it with hextech—then resigned. When she awoke, the lab she and Hakim had shared was abandoned.

Camille focused on her work. She took on further refinements, including bladed legs, grapple-spindled hips, and other, minor hex-augmentations, leading some to wonder how much of the woman was left. And as Clan Ferros amassed more power and wealth, Camille’s missions became darker and more deadly.

Thanks to her hextech heart, she did not age—but the years were not so kind to her brother. Yet even as Stevan's body grew more frail, his iron grip on the clan remained.

Eventually, Camille uncovered the depth of Stevan's betrayal, and realized his machinations were no longer in the family’s best interests. In that moment, she discarded the last sentiment she felt toward her brother.

After installing her favorite grand-niece as clan master, Camille now runs the family's public affairs as well as its more shady operations. As a solver of… difficult problems, she embraces her more-than-human transformation and the cutting judgment it affords her—but a strange, mournful keening in her hextech heart may yet prove a troubling portent.

Regardless, Camille refuses to sit idle, and gains invigoration from well-executed industrial espionage, a fresh-brewed cup of tea, and long walks in the Gray.

Jayce is a brilliant inventor who has pledged his life to the defense of Piltover and its unyielding pursuit of progress. With his transforming hextech hammer in hand, Jayce uses his strength, courage, and considerable intelligence to protect his hometown. While revered throughout the city as a hero, he hasn’t taken well to the attention it brings. Still, Jayce’s heart is in the right place, and even those who envy his natural skills are grateful for his protection in the City of Progress.

A native son of Piltover, Jayce was raised to believe in the principles that made the city great: Invention. Discovery. Not going to Zaun if you could help it. With a knack for understanding machinery, Jayce earned the honor of being the youngest apprenta to ever be offered patronage by Clan Giopara, one of Piltover’s most respected ruling clans. Utterly unsurprised, Jayce took the offer, and spent most of his early years constructing potential hextech devices and designing transformable multi-tools for Piltover’s working class: a wrench that transformed into a prybar, a pickaxe that could morph into a shovel, a hammer that could turn into a demolition beam, if only it had a sufficiently powerful battery. Everything Jayce touched put his contemporaries to shame.

Most things came easy to Jayce, and he could never understand why his peers had so much trouble with what, to him, were simple concepts. As a result, nearly everyone who worked alongside Jayce found him arrogant, dismissive, and unwilling to slow his pace to help his colleagues catch up. As time went on, his patience became shorter, while at the same time, a chasm grew between decorum, charm, and Jayce’s natural demeanor.

Only one person ever managed to match Jayce’s intelligence while also maintaining a healthy indifference to his superior attitude.

His name was Viktor.

The two met at a mandatory Progress Day party, and immediately bonded over how little either of them wanted to be there. They started working together shortly after. Viktor expanded Jayce’s intellectual horizons and challenged many of his assumptions. While Jayce sought to improve humanity via versatile technology, Viktor sought to solve problems inherent to humanity itself, such as physical decay or illogical prejudices. They constantly argued with one another, but their conflicts never got personal – though their methods were different, the two colleagues knew their ultimate goals were very much the same. More than that, they both knew what it was like to be ostracized by their colleagues: Viktor because of his unconventional thinking, Jayce because of his rudeness.

Together, Jayce and Viktor invented a mechanized construction suit for Piltover’s dockworkers – something hearty enough to enhance the wearer’s strength, but light enough that its wearer wouldn’t immediately drown upon falling overboard. However, the two reached an impasse when Viktor’s design for the next version of the suit included a chemtech implant that would increase the wearer’s strength output by tenfold, while also preventing them from getting tired, panicking, or disobeying instructions from their superiors. While Viktor considered this feature a brilliant means of reducing the frequency of construction accidents, Jayce found its indifference toward free will immoral. The two nearly came to blows over the design and ultimately, after Jayce warned the academy of Viktor’s invention, Viktor was stripped of his honors and ostracized from Piltover’s scientific community.

Viktor was the closest thing Jayce had ever really had to a friend, and distraught over their falling-out, went back to working on his own. He grew more insular. His patience toward others grew even thinner.

As Jayce studied in solitude, Clan Giopara’s explorers discovered a raw, blue crystal deep within the Shuriman desert. Though Jayce volunteered to experiment on it (specifically by suggesting the clan’s other scholars wouldn’t be smart enough to get anything out of it), his lack of tact in doing so prompted Clan Giopara to give it to their better-mannered scholars as a form of punishment. Yet, after many months, the scholars reached a unanimous conclusion: the crystal was worthless. A power-drained hunk of rock. The disappointed clan leaders finally handed the crystal over to Jayce, assuming that even he, with his remarkable intelligence, wouldn’t be able to learn anything from it.

Something inside the crystal called to Jayce. No, more than that – it sang to him. He couldn’t explain why, but he knew the Shuriman gem still held mysteries yet to be discovered.

He spent many months running every variety of test on the crystal. He braced it into a cogwheel centrifuge; he superheated it and deep-froze it; he tinkered, and observed, and hypothesized, and beat his head against his copper pantograph. Quite simply, Jayce wasn’t used to working hard: this damned crystal was the first thing that had ever resisted his considerable mental aptitude. For the first time, he realized how his peers must have felt, trying so hard to solve a problem, only to bump against your own limitations. It felt frustrating. It felt unfair.

And it probably felt much, much worse if you were working alongside an arrogant inventor who dismissed your every effort.

Jayce realized that despite how dismissive he’d been toward his fellow scholars, none of them ever gave up. None of them ever stopped seeking the very things that defined Piltover: Progress. Discovery. If they wouldn’t give up, Jayce decided, he wouldn’t either.

And maybe he’d try to be nicer.

Maybe.

Jayce approached the problem from a completely different angle. Rather than trying to experiment on the crystal as a whole, he wondered, why not run more invasive experiments on a smaller shard? Jayce chiseled off a piece of the crystal and suspended it in a liquid alloy. As he sent a voltaic current through the liquid metal, Jayce’s eardrums nearly shattered from the booming baritone note that blasted from the shard. Heat radiated from the crystal and, with a flash, it glowed bright enough to nearly blind him. This was unexpected. This was potentially dangerous. But this was progress. Jayce couldn’t erase the smile from his face as he worked well through the night, into the dawn.

The next day, Jayce was surprised to find his old friend Viktor on his doorstep. Alerted by the massive power spike from the crystal shard, Viktor had a simple proposition.

Since his expulsion from the Piltovan scientific community, Viktor had commenced work on a secret project in Zaun. He’d finally learned how to achieve his dream – how to eradicate disease, hunger, hatred. If Jayce joined him, the two would accomplish more than anyone from Piltover or Zaun could have dreamed of: they’d save humanity from itself.

Jayce had heard a monologue like this before from Viktor. He never liked where it led.

Viktor told Jayce that he only needed one thing for his Glorious Evolution – a power source like Jayce’s crystal. Jayce disagreed, informing Viktor that what he truly needed was a moral compass. Viktor, who had long grown tired of Jayce’s rudeness, leapt upon him, grabbed the crystal and knocked Jayce unconscious with it. When Jayce awoke hours later, he noticed that though the Shuriman crystal was gone Viktor hadn’t seemed to notice or care about the smaller shard.

Jayce knew whatever Viktor was planning, he would only resort to these measures if he were close to completion. Even though he didn’t know what Viktor’s Glorious Evolution consisted of, it probably didn’t have a lot of respect for the free will of others. Without wasting a second, Jayce retrieved the suspended shard and installed it into a massive, transforming hammer – a demolitions invention he’d abandoned years ago for lack of a strong enough battery to power it. Though he had no idea where Viktor might have taken the crystal, he could feel the hextech hammer vibrate, pulling him not north, south, east or west, but down, toward the undercity of Zaun.

The shard, eager to be reunited with the crystal from which it was chiseled, eventually led Jayce to a warehouse in the depths of the sump. Within the cavernous building, Jayce found something horrifying. Dozens of corpses, their skulls sawed open and hollowed out, their brains transplanted into an army of immobile metal soldiers, hooked up to the now-pulsing crystal.

This was the first step in Viktor’s Glorious Evolution.

Jayce’s stride grew less confident as he approached Viktor. He and Viktor had not always seen eye to eye, but this was something else entirely. For the first time, it occurred to Jayce that he might have to kill his old friend.

He called out to Viktor, flinching as the army of robots stood to attention. Jayce asked him to look around – to see what he was doing. Whatever this was – this Evolution – wasn’t the progress they fought for in their youths. He even, to Viktor’s surprise, apologized for acting like such a jerk.

Viktor sighed. He had only two words in response: “Kill him.”

The automatons sprinted toward Jayce, breaking free of the wires connecting them to the crystal and introducing Jayce to another new emotion: panic. He gripped the hammer tight, realizing he’d never actually used it before. When the first golem was within reach, he swung as hard as he could, feeling the shard’s energy surge through his muscles, accelerating the hammer’s movement until Jayce was worried it might fly out of his hands.

It slammed into the automaton, all but exploding it into a hail of metal. Despite the obliteration of their comrade, the other machines didn’t even pause as they rushed at Jayce, trying to pummel him into unconsciousness.

Jayce analyzed the formation of the mechanical wave coming at him and attempted to quickly calculate how to take out the largest number of them with the fewest amount of swings. It was pointless; they were on him before he could swing even once. As he fell to the ground under a storm of their blows, Jayce saw Viktor looking on, not with triumph, but with sadness. He’d outsmarted Jayce and ensured humanity’s future, but he knew that future came at a cost: he couldn’t let his old friend live. Jayce vanished under a sea of swinging metal limbs.

That’s when Jayce, for the first time in his life, decided to stop thinking and just break stuff.

No longer caring for his own safety, Jayce used every last bit of strength he had to break free from Viktor’s automatons. He sprinted to the glowing crystal, and struck it with all of the hextech-enhanced force his hammer could muster, crushing the mystical object.

Viktor cried out in horror as the crystal shattered to fragments, the shockwave blasting them all backward as the army of automatons collapsed lifelessly to the floor. The very foundations of the warehouse shook, and Jayce barely managed to escape before the entire building toppled.

Viktor’s body was never found.

Upon his return to Piltover, Jayce informed his clan masters of Viktor’s nefarious plans. Soon, Jayce found himself a topic of discussion in both Zaun and Piltover alike. Hailed for his quick thinking in a time of crisis, Jayce became a beloved figure (at least, amongst those who hadn’t met him), earning himself a nickname: the Defender of Tomorrow.

Jayce cared little for the adoration of his fellow Piltovans, but took the nickname to heart. He knew that Viktor was still out there, plotting his revenge. One day – maybe someday soon – an awful lot of trouble was headed for Piltover.

And Jayce would be waiting.

Within the dark seams of Runeterra, the demon Evelynn searches for her next victim. She lures in prey with the voluptuous façade of a human female, but once a person succumbs to her charms, Evelynn’s true form is unleashed. She then subjects her victim to unspeakable torment, gratifying herself with their pain. To the demon, these liaisons are innocent flings. To the rest of Runeterra, they are ghoulish tales of lust gone awry and horrific reminders of the cost of wanton desire.

Evelynn was not always a skilled huntress. She began eons ago, as something primordial, shapeless, and barely sentient. This nascent wisp of shadow existed, numb and unroused by any stimulation, for centuries. It might have remained so, had the world not been upended by conflict. The Rune Wars, as they would come to be known, brought an era of mass suffering the world had never known.

As people across Runeterra began to experience a vast array of pain, anguish, and loss, the shadow stirred. The nothingness it had known for so long had been replaced by the manic vibrations of an agonized world. The creature quivered with excitement.

As the Rune Wars escalated, the world’s torment grew so intense that the shadow felt as if it might burst. It drank in all of Runeterra’s pain, which it experienced as boundless pleasure. The sensation nourished the creature, and over time, it transformed into something more. It became a demon, a ravenous spiritual parasite that fed on the basest of human emotions.

When the wars finally ended, the world’s suffering waned, and the demon found itself growing desperate. The only pleasure it had ever known was born of other creatures’ misery. Without their pain, it felt nothing, just as it had in its earliest days.

If the world would not provide the suffering the demon needed to thrive, it would have to make its own. It needed to inflict pain on other beings so that it could experience that elation again.

At first, catching prey was a challenge for the demon. It could move undetected in its shadow form, but to touch a human, the creature needed to manifest as something tangible. It made several attempts to fashion a physical body from its shadow-flesh, but each result was more monstrous than the last, scaring off her prey.

The demon realized it needed a shape that was pleasing to humans, one that would not only lure them right into its claws, but would offer them ecstasy born of their own desires, so that their pain would be that much sweeter.

From the shadows, it began to study those it sought to prey upon. It tailored its flesh to their liking, learned to say what they wanted to hear, and to walk in a manner they found alluring.

In a matter of weeks, the demon had perfected her physique, leading dozens of enamored victims to be tortured to death at her hands. Though she relishes the exquisite pain of each of her victims, she always finds herself wanting more. Each human’s desires are so small, and they always expire too soon. Their pain, too fleeting to give her anything more than tiny morsels of pleasure, is just enough to tide her over to the next feeding.

She yearns for the day she can plunge the world into utter chaos, and she can return to an existence of pure, rapturous ecstasy.

Far above, Udyr heard the cries of an eagle riding the gale. Its voice was strong, confident, but not close enough to get in the way of his own thoughts. It was a relief to feel this human.

The voices were never silent, but Udyr knew not to be ungrateful. Even a moment’s reprieve was rare.

I can hear myself breathe… for now, at least.

Today, he walked alone. He hiked up the mountain slopes, a chill wind following him, carrying away his lingering memory of Ionia’s ethereal beauty with every gust. The monks at Hirana had offered him a parting gift a few moons past when he left their lands—a riddle intended to guide him on his path to mastering his spiritual powers.

It read more beautifully in their tongue than his own, but it had not taken him long to solve. After spending months traveling with the blind monk, Udyr had learned to decipher the meaning behind Ionian speech.

Reaching the precipitous eastern slopes of Winterspike, Udyr paused to gaze out at the lake before him, frozen in all its majesty. At the edges of the lake laid the bones and corpses of wild beasts, as well as those of dead shamans and priests who had come to this place, months, years, and lifetimes before him.

Udyr stood still, his chest bare, eyes closed, bracing against the brisk morning air.

This land was my home…

He looked down at his reflection on the ice. It showed the face of a man, ragged and worn from his travels.

My rest ends. I hear them coming.

The ice stirred. A crack at first, as Udyr saw his image splinter into disparate pieces. Soon, entire slabs broke off, drifting apart. Udyr waited, respectfully.

The frigid water bubbled. Slowly to begin with, and then rapidly all at once. Steam rose from the surface, filling the air with heat.

Udyr took in a quiet breath, his shoulders rising, to ready himself.

Out of the mist leapt an ice-formed beast, carved by the land’s magic and birthed from the lake. The ground trembled as it took a thundering step toward Udyr.

Udyr looked up at the wild spirit towering above him, three times his height.

The murmurs started low, soft—leaves falling on fresh snow. Yet quickly, they grew.

Bitter. Restless.

There they are.

Grunts turned into snarls, mutters into barks, one swallowing another. Their rage seized his mind, shattering his every thought. At first, the voices competed for dominance—elnüks, drüvasks, and others. Udyr had heard these voices within himself many times. Soon, they joined together, into the shape he had most feared.

The ravenous tiger.

“Spirit walker. Step closer,” it growled. “Raise your voice and show us why you have returned.”

Udyr only just mustered the strength to stifle a gasp. His knees buckled under the weight of the noise in his head. His hands shot toward the soil to steady his body. Straining his neck, he glared up at the savage creature, not willing to answer.

The voices rose at the sight of Udyr’s inaction, with the tiger roaring above the rest.

“You do not deserve to call the Freljord home. You are weak.”

Udyr braced himself as the spirit rammed its head into him, shards of its icy body cutting into his skin. Tumbling far across the ground, Udyr landed against hard rock.

I must not give in.

Regaining his balance, he wiped the blood off his face and forced his hands into fists. He punched his knuckles into the frosty ground, and the throbbing in his arms overtook him. Veins pulsated from his hands to his shoulders. Getting back to his feet, Udyr readied himself to deflect another blow.

The spirit roared once more. “The strong fight! Instead, you stifle your voice and cower!”

The spirit charged headfirst. Udyr tried dodging out of the way, but his foe was quicker and stronger. As he rolled to the side, the tiger swiped his leg with its claws, spraying the spirit walker’s blood across the frosted ground.

Udyr knelt on one knee in pain. He felt his own anger building, but still he held back.

I must not give in.

The spirit loomed closer, letting out a feral cry before pouncing toward Udyr. Realizing he could not dodge in time, he crossed his arms before him and clenched his fists. Magical energy surrounded him, blocking the tiger spirit’s lethal blow.

The spirit slid backward. After regaining its footing, it grinned through its fangs. Its icy body crackled with vicious energy, splintering the bones of its past victims beneath its feet. Death was all this place knew.

Udyr knelt on both knees now, his head down, his body pounding with pain while the spirit paced around him. He felt the ground shake with its every step.

This is not the way.

He gritted his teeth, their points drawing blood from his lips as he felt the ground tremble once more.

The voices boomed. “The weak… are prey!”

Udyr looked up, seeing the spirit charge toward him, its eyes lusting for blood—so wide he could see himself staring back, with the same lust for violence.

I must embrace who I am.

Golden flames erupted from Udyr’s skin like wildfire, the anger coursing through his body matching the fury of the tiger spirit before him.

“Finally, the prey has decided to fight!”

Udyr roared as he rushed straight at the tiger spirit. Vaulting onto the beast’s leg, he climbed its craggy surface, smashing his bleeding hands into whatever piece of ice he could to pull himself upward. The creature shook, the sharp edges of its body piercing the spirit walker’s skin. Udyr screamed, relishing in his might. At last, his wrath matched the fire in his foe, as the two reveled in their savage violence.

With a brutal lunge, he reached the spirit’s back, trails of his blood dripping down its sides. Spirit energy surged through him, a force strong enough to drown out any pain. The voices of wild beasts clamored unchecked in his mind—the bitter cries of those consumed by the tiger, and his own unbridled anger—merging as one.

“I am no prey!”

Udyr brought his fists down in a flurry of explosive blows, creating a web of cracks running down the creature’s body. He clawed and slashed with abandon, tearing away at his foe. Howling in pure rage, he threw back his head and sank his fangs deep into the spirit’s neck.

He expected the spirit to tumble over, its body to break apart, giant lumps of ice disappearing to dust.

But it was already gone, along with its voices. Had they shrieked? Had they cried?

High above, he heard the eagle call.

Focus. Calm.

Udyr fell and staggered onto solid ground. Breathing heavily, he lay next to the lake, and watched the last of his enemy vanish. Suddenly, he heard another rumbling and stumbled to his feet. The lake, as if celebrating his victory, began to thaw. Piece by piece, the remaining ice melted, raising the water level to wash over the cold, hard land.

Remembering the ritual he had repeated countless times at Hirana, Udyr limped forth. Cupping his hands, he splashed cool water across his head, shoulders, and back, rinsing his wounds clean. Then, gently, he took a drink.

He stared at his reflection, seeing a man looking back. Wounded, tested, alive.

I am who I am.

Udyr heard only the sound of flowing water—and yet, he did not smile.

But this fight is far from over.

Zaun and Piltover sing to one another. The refrains are full of old wounds, and injustice, and pain. I think it's just me that can hear it, but we all feel it, a hum at the back of everyday life, pushing both Zaunites and Piltovans into strident discord.

I know they can sing together. I've heard it. Scraps of it—once in a while—little chords that make my heart ache with possibility. And once, a beautiful, crushing tidal wave of harmony and hope. It was the same moment I heard my hextech crystal for the first time.

The voice sang a thousand hymns at once. Each of them was a pebble in an avalanche, impossible to understand beyond scattered notes. The voice could hear me—and I wanted so badly to keep listening—but it fell back to a fuzzy hum the instant Zaun and Piltover ended their symphony.

Here in the Entresol, where I hide in the dark behind the stage, that duet should ring clear. The top of Zaun; the bottom of Piltover. The Gray lingers, smearing grime across hammered Piltovan bronze. Zaunite chem-lamps scatter the colors of Piltovan stained glass across Zaunite cobbled streets carefully engineered with Piltovan tools.

And folk from both cities make their way here, bringing that rapturous soul-song only I can hear. Zaunites pour in from below, a thousand different instruments strummed with tuneless enthusiasm. Kids taunt and jeer, while older folks usher them along, searching for a moment’s peace. Piltovans march down in trumpeting waves, inquisitive and bright and proud. They come by descender, or by the stairways and ramps connecting to the overhead Promenade, the Entresol’s posh Piltovan twin. They laugh and joke together, gesturing appreciatively at the quaintness of our makeshift open-air theatre.

It’s exciting, at first. I’m so happy they’re all here. I close my eyes and tune to my crystal, pleading for it to speak again.

But the crystal emits that same warbling, distant hum, a presence there and not there. Even that fades to a murmur as the songs clash, turning duet into duel. Piltovan laughter lapses into sneering discomfort. Zaunite shouts quiet into indignant scowls. And, almost as if they’d planned it, the crowd organizes into two perfect, separate halves.

This is what it means to live in Zaun and in Piltover. The Entresol’s a place to come together, sure, but not to connect. Only because the cities have to touch, somewhere. I watch as one Piltovan trips, nearly crossing that perfect gap between them, only for two of his fellows to catch him and bring him protectively back into the fold.

Ugh! They’re all here for the same reason! Why can’t they put their guards down for, like, one moment and just be with each other?

Why do I always think it’ll change? I’m just one person. Just Seraphine. Who could barely even leave her house for how many years? How am I supposed to make them see that it could be different? Why do I think I can?

Why did I ever think I could?

The lights come on, and the shock makes me realize I’ve been holding my breath. I feel the chill on my forearms, the mic in my shivering grip. I look at the crowd. There are a few appreciative whoops, but mostly they’re focused on keeping separate from the other side. I take a breath.

A pure, familiar note of soul-music rings out to me from the Piltovan audience. I look over and see Schala’s tired smile, beaming up at me from a crowd that melts for a moment into the background as I’m swept up in her song. During visits to my parents’ shop, Schala would tell me about her thesis, reading dramatically from it like an eager parent would a storybook. She’d tell me what had changed since the last time it had been rejected by the college. “Seventh time’s the charm” was what she said the last time we talked. But even back then, I could hear the doubt edging into her optimism. Six rejections, and she was still facing forward. But it was through a cloud of doubt: Should she maybe be doing something else with her life?

Her self-doubt nestles into mine, and the next breath comes a little easier.

Another song joins the melody, this time from the Zaunite crowd. I look over and see Roland, an absolute artist of a silversmith. I’d first been drawn to his little workshop by the sound of music. He’d piled crates and supplies all on one side of the shop to make room for a handful of kids who were using the corner for what looked like band practice. He said that the ruckus made it easier to focus, that he needed the sound more than the space. That he might need to get used to such a small room if his next design didn’t sell.

Roland’s song twists with Schala’s in my head, one drums and brass and gravel, one wind and horns and hushed vocals. They couldn’t sound more different, but something just makes it work somehow. One song full of self-doubt, the other, fear for the future.

But there’s something else. A sturdy, rolling, endless beat that keeps their songs from spinning out into singular, dying notes. It’s the same beat in both songs. Schala loves her work, and Roland his.

Their determination finds mine, snatches it from a fall into darkness.

The next breath is sweet.

I don’t need to solve everything. I’m not here for that. Neither are they, and that’s okay. I listen for the crystal, and its steady rhythm builds and rumbles, indistinct but there. I want to reach out, and I only know one way how.

I close my eyes and let myself be filled with Schala’s song and with Roland’s. I imagine their struggles. Schala, chewing on a pen until her eyes widen in epiphany and she writes the perfect conclusion to her thesis. Roland, one eye closed tight as he gently, gently, shapes the last detailing into an ornate silver frame, then stands back with a grin and a sigh when he knows it’s perfect. Tiny explosions crawl across my shoulders, up my spine, into my head, and music lights my whole body on fire.

I sing.

Maybe our voices are quiet alone. Maybe mine’s quiet alone. But I’m not. We’re not. I don’t hold anything back, because I know they don’t either. The panic, the fear, the self-doubt. I pour it all into the song, heaps of it, so much that I want to cry. Our songs are droplets of rainwater on a windowpane. Schala’s swirls itself into mine, and we become a little stream. We find Roland, happy to be caught up in our motion. Together, we find the crowd, each droplet gathering another and another and another until we’re a flood of song and feeling.

That flood grows louder and louder as the crowd, silent but for the swell of their souls, opens to the music. Once, I would have gotten lost in this storm of sound. But I have Roland, and Schala, and myself, and we feel what they feel. They know what drives us, what drives me. I’m so grateful. I’ll make sure they know that, too. I push that feeling into a single note, and in that moment, I know the music we’re making could pierce the heavens.

The song ends, and my eyes open to the crowd. A single entity greets me, raucous and cheering and surging together toward the stage. Not a cobble in sight. My muses have found one another in the center of the crowd, and I can’t tell anymore which side is which.

The Entresol’s a beautiful place. I’ve got the best seat in the house, a hidden little corner table where a lucky patron can sit in secret silence, sip a hot cup of tea, and watch the world pass by.

My show ended a few bells ago, but the crowd stuck around, talking and laughing together. Local businessfolk took quick advantage, opening up shop and ferrying out tables and chairs. My stage, powered down and pushed off to the side, has become a makeshift playground, where Piltovan and Zaunite kids are challenging one another to various antics. I can feel the charge in the air, excitement and wonder and that airy feeling you get on days you never want to end.

I sit back, put both hands around my steaming mug, close my eyes, and smile. They all make such wondrous music. Piltover and Zaun continue their duet, if only for a little while.

A familiar voice rumbles through me, faint but urgent. My soul soars even as my heart starts to pound. I don’t know what I’ll hear, whether we’ll understand each other this time, how long we have. I only know that it needs to be heard.

Its song lifts in an orchestral swell, and I brace for the avalanche. It has so much to sing, and just me to hear it.

But I won't ever stop trying to listen.

Karma is the living embodiment of an ancient Ionian soul, who serves as a spiritual beacon to each generation of her people. Her most recent incarnation came in the form of a 12-year-old girl named Darha. Raised in the northern highlands of Shon-Xan, she was headstrong and independent, always dreaming of a life beyond her provincial village.

But Darha began to suffer strange, fitful visions. The images were curious—they felt like memories, yet the girl was certain they had not happened to her. At first, the problem was easy enough to conceal, but the visions grew in intensity until Darha was convinced she was descending into madness.

Just when it seemed she would be confined to the healing huts forever, a group of monks visited her village. They had come from a place known as the Lasting Altar, where the divine leader Karma had passed away some months earlier. The monks were in search of the old man’s next incarnation, believing him to be among the villagers. They applied a series of tests to everyone they met, but eventually prepared to leave empty handed.

As they passed the healing huts, Darha threw herself out of her cot and ran to stop them. She wept, telling them of her visions, and that she had known the monks’ voices from the babble in her head.

They recognized the signs immediately. This was their Karma. The visions were past lives rushing to fill a new vessel.

In that moment, Darha’s life changed forever. She bid farewell to all she’d ever known, and journeyed to the Lasting Altar to learn from the monks. Over the years, they taught her to connect with her ancient soul, and to commune with thousands of previous incarnations, each espousing the wisdom of ages past. Karma had always advocated peace and harmony, teaching that any act of evil would bring about its own repercussions, and so required no response.

But Darha questioned these principles, even as she became Karma. Some of her followers were confused. How could she be invested with the Spirit of Ionia, the First Lands’ most sacred manifestation, and yet disagree with their most self-evident philosophies?

Indeed, these beliefs were truly tested when Noxus invaded Ionia. Many thousands were killed as the enemy warbands advanced inland, and Karma was forced to face the harsh realities of war. She could feel the immense destructive potential that swelled in her soul, and wondered what the point of this power could be, if it was not to be used.

The voices of the past urged her to remain at the Lasting Altar, to comfort her people and allow this conflict to pass. And yet, a far deeper truth compelled her to act...

Karma agonized over this, until she could stand it no longer. She confronted a Noxian commander on the deck of his own war frigate, and unleashed her divine fury. This was no single, measured attack—she obliterated the entire vessel and its crew in a heartbeat.

Though many Ionians rejoiced at this apparent victory, the monks believed she had made a huge mistake. She had upset the spiritual harmony of their homeland, disgracing all who had borne the name of Karma before her, and tarnished her own undying soul along with those of her followers. Even if it meant a life of solitary meditation and penance, they implored her to do no further injury.

Karma silenced them with a raised hand. Though she could still hear the voices in her head, it was the Spirit of Ionia in her heart that guided her… and the First Lands were stirring to defend themselves. She did not know if she had been chosen for her courage and strength of will, but Karma knew that sometimes harmony came only at a great cost. Their world was changing, and true wisdom lay not in resisting that fact, but accepting it.

Though the war with Noxus is now long over, there are still many in Ionia who have become only too glad to meet violence with violence, even against their own neighbors. Karma has pledged to guide as many of them as she can to a more enlightened path—to peace when possible, to action when necessary.

Zaun is a place of wondrous experimentation and vibrant, colorful life where anything can be achieved—but not without a cost. For all its boundless creativity, there is also waste, destruction, and suffering in the undercity, so pervasive that even the tools created to alleviate it cannot escape its corrosive grasp.

Designed to remove the toxic waste claiming whole neighborhoods of Zaun, lumbering mechanical golems toiled in violently hazardous locations. One such golem worked alongside its fellows, fulfilling its programming to reclaim Zaun for the people. But the caustic reality of their mission soon wore away at its robust form, and before long it was rendered inoperative and discarded as useless.

Useless to all but one person. The inventor Viktor discovered the abandoned golem and, seeing the potential still within the inert chassis, inspiration struck. Viktor began a series of experiments, seeking to improve the automaton by introducing a new element that would elevate it far beyond the original scope of its creation.

Hextech.

Implanting a priceless hextech crystal sourced from the deserts of Shurima into the chassis of the forsaken golem, Viktor waited with baited breath as the machine rumbled to life.

Viktor named the golem Blitzcrank after the fizzing arcs of lightning that danced around their frame, an unexpected side effect of the hextech crystal, and sent them down into the most toxic regions of Zaun. Not only did Blitzcrank prove as capable as any of their steam-powered brethren, but they accomplished their tasks with vastly improved speed and efficiency, and as the days turned into weeks, Viktor began to watch something miraculous unfold…

His creation was learning.

Blitzcrank innovated, interpreting and extrapolating on their daily directives. As a result, they did far more to serve the people of Zaun, and even began to interact with them on a regular basis. Seeing his golem progress to the cusp of self-awareness, Viktor sought to replicate his achievement, but found only frustration and failure, as the key to Blitzcrank’s blossoming consciousness eluded him.

Not all of Blitzcrank’s growth was cause for celebration. Concepts like moderation and nuance escaped them, and Blitzcrank would pursue any effort with the entirety of their being, or none at all. They would occasionally overdo or misinterpret the requests of Zaunites, such as smashing down the front of a tenement to admit a single resident who had lost their key.

Or even tearing an entire factory apart.

Dispatched by Viktor to clear a neighborhood of toxic chemicals, Blitzcrank traced the caustic runoff to its source. Reasoning that the most efficient means to prevent further pollution was to eliminate the source of said pollution, Blitzcrank proceeded to destroy the factory, their lightning-wreathed fists not stopping until it was reduced to a mound of rubble and twisted iron.

Enraged, the chem-baron who owned the ruined factory descended upon Viktor, demanding that he destroy the golem or pay a steeper price in blood. Viktor was devastated, having come to view Blitzcrank as a living being rather than simply a tool to do his bidding. He concocted a scheme to smuggle his creation to safety, ready to accept the dangers and consequences of doing so—but as he returned to his laboratory to set his plan in motion, he discovered that Blitzcrank was already gone.

Blitzcrank’s evolution beyond the constraints of their original programming had yet to cease. Having grown into full self-sufficiency, they resolved to take up their mission independent from their creator. Rumors abound that the golem has even begun to upgrade their own form as they labor tirelessly to assist and protect Zaunites without pausing for instruction.

They now patrol the undercity, deciding for themselves how best to shepherd Zaun down the path to becoming the greatest city Valoran has ever seen.

Nestled among the eclectic storefronts of Piltover sat the workshop of the renowned artificer Corin Reveck. Famous for his masterful craft in artificial limbs, Corin’s intricate brass designs made the prosthetics both breathtakingly beautiful and often superior to the originals. His daughter, Orianna, served as his apprentice—friendly and inquisitive, she was a natural fit to run the shop, and blossomed into a capable artisan in her own right.

Orianna had an adventurous spirit, but her father, fearing for her safety, never allowed her to venture beyond their neighborhood. Instead, he took her to the theater, where dancers, through leaps and pirouettes, told stories of distant lands. Orianna dreamed of visiting these strange and marvelous places, and would scurry home to build clockwork dancers of her own.

News of disaster in the undercity of Zaun made its way to their shop. An explosion had ruptured a chemical line, venting clouds of poisonous gas. Orianna insisted they help the victims, but Corin forbade it. Zaun was far too dangerous.

So, with as many supplies as she could carry, Orianna snuck away in the night and rode the hexdraulic descender into the depths.

The devastation was overwhelming. Debris still filled the streets, and Zaunites walked through the toxic haze, faces covered with little more than oily rags. Night after night, Orianna repaired respirators and installed esophilters. She even gave her own mask to a child who could scarcely breathe.

Her father was furious, but soon after her return, Orianna fell gravely ill. Her lungs were ravaged past all hope of recovery. Refusing to accept this, Corin threw himself into his most ambitious project yet: a fully functional set of artificial lungs.

After weeks of sleepless nights, he completed his desperate task and carried out the surgery himself. To keep her from ever venturing too far again, the lungs were wound with a special key Corin kept in his safe.

Orianna returned to work, and yet the poison continued to spread throughout her body. Father and daughter worked feverishly to develop new implants and prosthetics, replacing each of her organs as they failed. Piece by piece, Orianna's body was transformed from mortal to mechanical until only her healthy heart remained. This long—and expensive—process cost Corin his fortune, forcing him to relocate their business to Zaun… but he saved his daughter's life. And, for a time, they were happy.

Gradually, Orianna began to feel disconnected from who she had been before. Old memories felt like stories. Even her creativity began to fade, and her beloved clockwork dancers became more like masterfully tuned mechanisms than works of art.

But, even as time seemed to stand still for Orianna, it marched onward for her father.

Long, lean years brought Corin agonizing chest spasms that meant he could no longer work, and Orianna was forced to provide for him. She'd become profoundly adept at crafting her figurines, even if she took only distant pleasure in recalling what once inspired their creation. The miniature dancers brought in good coin and barter, but never enough to afford the one thing she believed could save her father. For that, she turned to a local chem-baron.

Orianna never asked how the man came by a hextech crystal. She simply paid what he asked. Even so, before she could use it, the chem-baron returned demanding a second payment. Then a third. When the money ran out, Orianna knew his next visit would end in violence. She looked to the crystal device, still incomplete, too unrefined and powerful for a human body. She saw the logical solution—she didn't need her human heart anymore, and Corin needed a heart no one could ever take from him.

She spent weeks in preparation, building a clockwork orb—integrating it into her own mechanisms, readying it to house the crystal so she could defend herself in the journey ahead. Slipping her father a sleeping draught, she commenced the surgery.

Corin became one with the last remnant of the daughter he had known and loved. She listened to his steady heartbeat through the night, the quiet hum of hextech in the beautifully intricate ball by her side. Only then did she realize she had shed the last of her humanity—but she felt no fear or remorse, merely acceptance. She had become something entirely new, a lady of clockwork, and she needed to find where in the world's vast machine she might fit.

At dawn, she collected the key that wound her lungs, a single pulse from her ball welding it firmly to her back. Then she left for good.

That old, familiar smell hit her first. Hay, strawberries, and sturdy wood. The courtyard of the Argentine Inn had a particular waft to it that brought the ache of memories long past: a hundred concerts, a thousand faces lit by lantern light, and—most painful of all—a time when things were simpler and happier in Demacia.

But these days, that version of her home country felt distant. Worlds away. When she first spotted her old friend Etra emerging from the doorway of the inn, her breath hitched—maybe this, too, was different. But Etra’s eyes went wide. She shrieked with joy, and as she ran forward to wrap Sona up in her arms, Sona breathed a little sigh of relief. Some things didn’t change after all.

“You got my letter!” Etra said, and squeezed her tight.

Sona nodded. As Etra released her, she stood back to get a good look, still clasping Sona’s hands. “Someone’s been traveling,” she said, impressed. As if noticing Sona was on edge, Etra paused, released her hands, and slipped into the rough sign language they’d forged over a lifetime. All is well?

It was a relief to be able to sign back. To be understood by someone who loved her. Yes, of course, Sona responded, whether it was true or not. Missed you terribly, though. She held her hands a little lower. Didn’t want passersby to see the sharp gestures, the twitching fingers, and draw the wrong conclusions.

How long will you stay this time?

As long as I can, Sona signed. You know I never could refuse an empty stage.

Etra grinned. Excellent.

There was no audience around sunset, when Sona struck her first chord, but the first few folks trickled in right away. She was standing front and center in the Argentine’s “concert hall”—a converted barn with a bit of raised wood at the front to make a stage. Some of the people she could see were familiar faces. They brought their evening plans with them: wine by the flagon, cheese in its cloth.

As they settled into their familiar rhythm, the crowd swelled. Wagons were pulled up beyond the open door of the stage hall now, horses tied to posts. Some of the men had started to sing along loudly. They were drunk faster than usual. Sona smirked over at Etra, and she signed back with one hand: They missed you, too.

Things were tense for folks right now. They’d just lost their king and seen their country turn on itself in a single bloody year.

As if to punctuate Sona’s thoughts, four figures slipped into the back row of the audience, hoods pulled loose over their faces. Dark blue fabric. Not terribly suspicious on its own, but…

One of them tilted their head up at Sona, and she saw the hint of a gold mask glinting in the light.

Mageseekers.

Sona’s stomach lurched. She heard the slightest hitch in Etra’s voice, too, but neither of them dared look at each other right now.

The only answer was to keep performing, keep singing, and—hopefully—keep up appearances. The next song in the set was a solo. Etra and Cal slipped backstage.

This was the moment the crowd had really come to hear, and there were small murmurs and comfortable rustles in the audience as people settled in. There was no name for the piece, but they all knew it regardless. It was Sona’s own creation, and she relaxed into it. Her fingers brushed the strings, the air teemed with silence—and then, with a pick of a single note, they were off.

Her fingers danced like fireflies. The song flowed, built, faded, built again.

But then something evolved in the music. There were additional layers to it, notes that should have been impossible to play simultaneously. Sona looked up and saw only smiles and closed eyes. The audience had become enamored, absorbed.

It was time. The etwahl had awoken. Long, twisting illusions rose up from the strings, stretching and snapping as the very air hummed. To her, they were brilliant—a language she and the instrument alone shared. No one else could see them.

The etwahl had chosen someone. An old woman in the back of the room was thinking of her husband, a farmer, and the instrument had become throaty with the full warmth and bass of his voice. Sona could almost hear him talk. And in the shapes that rapidly shifted before her, she saw the outline of his weathered face, the way his cheeks crinkled when he smiled. But the outline morphed… the fuzzy curve of a sleeping figure. He had fallen ill and passed a month ago. A hard harvest without him, no doubt.

The etwahl hummed something private to Sona then: the last rasping song the man had ever sung to his wife. The notes hung in the air. She took the snatched phrases of the melody and, without even having to pause, she wove it back into the song, building around it. When she glanced up, Sona saw the widow’s eyebrows raised with recognition, tears trailing down the woman’s cheeks.

Sona slipped music into the woman’s heart. Music to warm her. Music to soothe her. Music to give her strength to face the year ahead.

The music had reached crescendo now. She and the etwahl were deep in conversation. The shapes had expanded, brilliant and ever-moving, an aurora stretching across the hall…

A shout shattered the song. She halted, frozen. But the shapes still drifted, no longer a secret between her and the instrument.

She’d lost control.

The mageseekers in the back had risen, making their way down the center aisle. They were coming for her. Some threw their hoods back now. The rest of the audience was still transfixed, unseeing. They hadn’t yet registered what was happening. Sona took two steps back, toward the archway that led out the back of the barn.

“Stop!” one of the mageseekers cried. They were undeniably here for her. She bolted, hefting her skirts in one hand. The etwahl shuddered, broke free of its stand, and drifted after her through the air. Why hide it anymore?

She emerged out back and into the darkness. There was an alley back there—she could flee into the woods before they spotted her. But as she reached the end of the alley, two seekers stepped into her path. She pulled up short and turned around. Maybe… No. Three more blocked her way back to the inn’s door. She was trapped.

“If you don’t resist…” one of them started, but she saw the flash of Demacian steel in his hand and she heard nothing else. Behind her, footsteps. They were closing in.

She backed up against the wall of the inn, all five of them now standing in front of her.

She laid her fingers on the etwahl. I hope Etra ran, she thought.

The etwahl glowed. She struck a violent burst of music. The chord shot forth from her and slammed into the seekers. The air was charged gold, sickeningly radiant. They turned away from her. She heard their groans, their broken screams, and knew it was over.

They were dancing, all of them. They cut an eerie sight to anyone who might see: contorted, twisting figures bent against their will like puppets being made to perform. It was painful, she knew that much. But she had to make them hurt. She had to make pain the only thing they could remember. That way, they couldn’t remember Etra. They couldn’t come after her.

“For pity’s sake, mercy!”

“Ungh… My arm—”

At first they begged her to stop, but after a moment even that died away and there was nothing but gurgling, the shuffle of footsteps, the creaking and snapping of joints. I didn’t want to hurt you, she thought. I never do. But you… You’re the reason home isn’t home anymore.

One last beat. One final encore. She strummed. The chord reached them, deep violet. They dropped to the floor instantly like discarded toys, unconscious and forgetful.

And Sona disappeared into the silence of the woods.

Born with genius-level intellect, Ekko constructed simple machines before he could crawl. His parents, Inna and Wyeth, vowed to provide a good future for their son—Zaun, with all its pollution and crime, would only stifle Ekko, whom they felt deserved the wealth and opportunities of Piltover. Throughout his youth he watched his parents age beyond their years, toiling for too many hours under dangerous conditions in suffocating factories. They earned meager wages while greedy factory owners, and sneering Piltovan buyers, profited immensely from their labor.

It would all be worth it, they reasoned, if it meant their son could one day rise to the city above.

Ekko saw things differently. Beyond Zaun’s flaws, he saw a dynamic place overflowing with energy and potential. Zaunites’ industry, resourcefulness, and resilience stirred a hotbed of pure innovation. They had built a thriving culture from catastrophe, and flourished where others would have perished. That spirit captivated Ekko, and spurred him to a youth of wild invention and innovation.

He wasn’t alone. He befriended scrappy orphans, inquisitive runaways, and eager upstarts. Zaunites tended to eschew formal education in favor of apprenticeships, but these “Lost Children of Zaun” looked to the labyrinthine streets to be their mentor. They wasted time in glorious, youthful fashion—foot races through the border markets, or daring climbs from the Sump to the Promenade. They ran wild and free, answering to no one.

One night, on a solo trek into the rubble of a recently demolished laboratory, Ekko made an astonishing find: a shard of blue-green crystal that glittered with magical energy. Every child of Zaun heard tales of hextech, said to power weapons and heroes alike. Such a thing had the potential to change the world, and now he held a broken one. He scrambled to find more pieces, but the crunching footfalls of teched-up enforcers told him he wasn’t the only one looking. Ekko barely escaped, and returned to his home.

He experimented madly with the crystal. During one less-than-scientific attempt, the gem exploded into a vortex of shimmering dust, triggering eddies of temporal distortion. Ekko opened his eyes to see several splintered realities—and several “echo” versions of himself—staring back in sheer panic amid the fractured continua.

He’d really done it this time.

After some tense coordination between Ekko and his paradoxes, they managed to contain and repair the hole he had torn in the fabric of reality. Eventually, he harnessed the shattered crystal’s temporal powers into a device that would allow him to manipulate small increments of time… at least in theory.

On his name day, his friends badgered him into climbing the ancient clocktower known as Old Hungry, so Ekko brought the untested device along with him.

The Lost Children climbed, stopping occasionally to paint an obscene caricature or two of prominent Pilties. They were near the top when a handhold gave way, sending one of Ekko’s friends tumbling to certain doom. Instinctively—as if he’d done it a thousand times before—Ekko activated his device. The world shattered around him, and he was wrenched backward through swirling particles of time.

Then Ekko was back, watching his friend reach again for the same rotting plank. The plank broke, the boy fell… but Ekko was ready this time, diving to the edge and grabbing him by the shirt. Ekko tried to swing him to safety, but his friend became caught in the tower’s clockwork gears, and—

Stop. Rewind.

Several attempts later, Ekko finally saved his friend’s life. But to his crew, Ekko’s supernatural reflexes had saved their friend before anyone even realized the danger. He told them about the crystal and made them swear to secrecy. Instead, they dared each other to new heights of foolishness, knowing Ekko had the means to pluck them out of danger.

With each trial, and so much error, the time-warping device—which Ekko dubbed the Zero Drive—grew more and more stable. The only limit was how many do-overs his body could take before exhaustion set in.

Ekko’s time-bending antics have made him a person of interest to some of Zaun and Piltover’s most inventive, most powerful, and most dangerous individuals. But his only interest is in his friends, his family, and his city. He dreams of the day when his hometown rises up to dwarf the so-called City of Progress, when Piltover’s golden veneer will be overshadowed by the towering ingenuity and relentless spunk of a Zaun born not from generations of privilege, but from sheer daring. He may not have a plan yet, but he’s got all the time in the world.

After all, if Ekko’s Z-Drive can change the past, how hard can it be to change the future?