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“Who’s watchin’ the till?” I ask.

Sherap—the stick of a man taking weapons at the door—looks at me with bug eyes, scared he’s done somethin’ wrong.

“Ryo. Ryo’s on the till tonight,” he says.

“Get two more on it,” I tell him.

It’s a big night—lot of spenders. Last thing I need is some lowlife makin’ off with the profit.

Sherap scurries off. A couple seconds later he comes back with two of my heaviest hitters. After they join Ryo at the coin box, I check back on the action in the arena. The place is packed, crammed to the doors with nobodies, somebodies, and everyone in between—people with nothin’ much in common, except a hankering for blood. And they’re about to get it.

My star combatant, Prahn the Flayer, has just finished his long, sauntering entrance. His chiseled body is painted entirely green, and he wears a small buckler on his left forearm. His infamous whip sword, painted to look like a viper, remains coiled on his belt as he enters the pit to face his opponent. The challenger—some Shuriman guy… is it Faran? Farrel? I’ll learn his name if he wins—stares a hole in him, his hands up by his shoulders, itching to grab the twin daggers sheathed on his back. He’s come halfway around the world for this, and he’ll be damned if some local golden boy is going to show him up.

With a wave of the pit officer’s scarf, our show is on. The fighters circle each other in the center of the floor. Always the entertainer, Flayer draws the whip sword and snaps it all around his body. (He’s one of about eight people in the world who can do this without cutting his own face off, and he loves to show it off.)

Insulted by the taunt, the Shuriman draws his daggers. He sprints across the pit, throwing himself into a whirl of blades, slicing the wind at unnatural angles. Flayer is surprised, but not off guard. He parries a dagger with his buckler, throwing the Shuriman off balance for a split second.

It feels like an eternity. The Shuriman’s body is turned off kilter, hands by his waist, his entire torso a wide-open target.

In a single, fluid movement, the Flayer swings his whip sword clean across the throat of his opponent. The Shuriman drops to the floor in a growing pool of his own blood. The crowd erupts.

“How’s that till?!” I shout to the boys in the back.

“Got it, boss!” replies Sherap, as the eager throngs swarm the vestibule to settle their bets.

Back down on the floor, I see the pit crew loading the Shuriman onto the corpse cart. A few feet away, Flayer celebrates with some of his fans. He’s got a look on his face. I know it well. It’s not relief. Not contentment. He’s getting a big head, and it’s going to be bad news.

About an hour later, the crowd has gone home, and the till has been emptied and counted. Just when I’m saying goodnight to the crew, guess who stops me at the door?

It’s the Flayer. He’s holding a fat bag of coin, but he don’t look happy. Says he’s got a bone to pick. Here we go.

I ask him what’s the problem. He just won big in front of a record-breaking crowd. He says that’s just it: he drew a record-breaking crowd. He should get a cut of the till. My till.

Now, I understand where he’s coming from—same place I was coming from when I took over this whole thing. But just ’cause I understand what a fella wants don’t mean I gotta give it to him. I tell the Flayer no.

Then the guy blows up. He starts telling me how lucky I am to have him in my pit.

“Do you know how many people in the world can do what I do?” he asks. “Nine!”

“Nine. Huh. Guess they must’ve added one,” I say.

He keeps mouthing off, says I’ve gotten fat and don’t remember what it’s like to risk my neck in the pit. By this point, a bunch of my crew is starting to listen in. Seeing how I can’t have people thinking I’m soft, I figure it’s a good time to remind Flayer who’s the boss, and who’s the employee. But he’s not havin’ it.

“You’re just some washed-up ex-champ in a fur coat, tellin’ us real fighters what to do,” he says. “Anybody could do your job.”

That does not sit well with me. I tell Flayer we can go toe-to-toe in the pit, and he’ll find out just how much of a fighter I still am. I guess at this point he feels like he can’t back down, because he accepts my offer.

“If I win, I take your pit. And all that comes with it,” he says.

I nod. He waits, like he’s expecting me to add my own stipulations. As if he’s got anything I’d want.

All I ask is that we do it in front of a crowd.

“Let’s get paid for it.”

Fight night comes, and there’s so many people on hand they’re spilling out the doors of the arena. I’ve got five of my heavies on the till tonight.

I walk out to the pit, drums beating, crowd roaring, and see the Flayer standing across from me—green and hot-headed as ever. My vastayan sense of decency kicks in. I tell him all he’s got to do is tell this arena full of people how wrong he was to disrespect me, and we can call off the fight.

He spits on the ground and angrily cracks his whip sword overhead. He ain’t backin’ down.

By the time the pit official waves his scarf, the Flayer is halfway across the floor. He flings his whip sword at me, and before I can react, the shifty little cuss takes off a piece of my cheek. He snaps it a couple more times, coming dangerously close to my throat. Then, while I’m trying to deal with his weird, floppy blade, he nails me in the face with his buckler. I land flat on my back, seeing double.

He draws his whip sword back. We’re not even a minute into this, and already Flayer is going for the kill.

This ain’t happening.

His blade comes lashing at my neck once more, and this time I grab it. With my bare hand. Flayer’s eyes bulge from his dumb green face.

My blood gets pumping. My hair stands on end. I feel a little growl escape from the corner of my mouth. I barely feel the blade cutting into my palm, or the blood running down my forearm, as I stand and pull the Flayer by his sword, yanking him into my other fist.

I repeat the motion a few more times, my brass knuckle-duster chewin’ his face to pulp.

When I finally stop punching, he coughs out a tooth, and tells me I’m making the biggest mistake of my life.

“What’re you doing? I’m your biggest draw,” he says.

“Flayer, you’re losing to a washed-up ex-champ. Who’s going to pay to see you fight now?”

With his last ounce of energy, he hocks a big mouthful of blood into my face—right there in front of the gods and everybody.

I can’t have an arena full of people thinkin’ I’m not the boss.

So I pick the guy up by the throat, and slam him, hard as I can, smashing his greedy fat head deep into the floor of the pit. He twitches for a second, then stops.

The crowd eats it up.

Late that night, I stop by momma’s house, like usual. She’s in bed already, so I quietly leave a nice sack of coin on the dresser and give her a kiss on the forehead.

She wakes, and smiles at the sight of her boy standing there at her bedside. As I touch her cheek, she notices the bandage on my hand—where I grabbed the Flayer’s blade.

“Oh, Settrigh, what happened?” she says, all concerned.

“Nothin’ big. Just cut myself building,” I say.

“What did you build today, son?” she asks.

“An orphanage. For orphans, ma,” I say, as I give her one last kiss goodnight.

“Such a good boy,” she says.

Her eyes tear up as she drifts off to sleep, like she’s proud knowing her son’s making a respectable living.

Many civilizations have resisted Noxus, but none as long as the clans of the Great Barrier mountains. Though these fierce minotaurs had protected the overland trade routes to the ancient city of Zaun for centuries, they preferred to avoid Valoran’s wider conflicts.

The noble warrior Alistar was respected among all the clans. Out on the mountain peaks, his roar could scatter even the bravest trespassers, leaving only the foolhardy to face him in combat. Even so, in the moot halls he would always urge his kin to forge greater bonds with other mortal races. Many saw minotaurs as little more than beasts, which soured any interaction and kept them firmly as outsiders.

Then Noxus came, promising something better. Their emissary, the matriarch of House Tewain, proclaimed that the empire was poised to take Basilich, a coastal city to the east. However, she pledged that they would not do this without the support of the great clans of the mountains, and called for parley on neutral ground.

Many of the minotaurs were eager to accept her offer. This was a way to gain the power and recognition they sought, by joining with Noxus.

But Alistar remained skeptical—he had encountered many Noxian scouts in recent years, and knew them to be a duplicitous and cunning people. For this reason, his clan sent him to meet Tewain, along with fifty of their mightiest warriors, to reject any alliance. The other clans could do as they wished, but Alistar would not accept the rule of some distant “Grand General”.

Under the banners of truce, he and his kin were betrayed.

The larger clans had already pledged themselves to Noxus, and their representatives turned against him as soon as he made his position known. The battle was swift and bloody, and Alistar himself crushed Lady Tewain’s skull with his bare hands—but soon enough he and his surviving warriors found themselves bound in chains, headed for the distant Noxian capital, accused of inciting rebellion.

These unfortunate minotaurs found themselves cast into the Reckoning arenas of the capital, as part of a grim gladiatorial festival known as the Fleshing.

Alistar was appalled by the chanting of the bloodthirsty spectators. He implored his clanfolk not to fight back, not to give these Noxians the monstrous display they so craved…

When the festival ended twenty-one days later, Alistar was the only member of his tribe left. Pelted with pebbles and rotten fruit from the crowd, dragged out to face Reckoner after Reckoner, he was driven to fight like a beast—and think like one. He killed and killed until even his memories of home became stained with blood.

Alistar had fallen far by the time he met Ayelia, a servant girl in the arenas. At first he bellowed and charged the bars of his cage, expecting her to fear or goad him like the others, but Ayelia did neither.

She returned every day, and spoke to him with gentle respect, until eventually Alistar answered in kind. Ayelia’s homeland had also been claimed by Noxus, and seeing his suffering had convinced her they should leave this hateful city together. She whispered her plans through the bars, and for the first time in years Alistar found he could think of home without dwelling on the way it had been taken from him.

One night, Ayelia brought Alistar the key to his cell. She had sacrificed much to arrange this escape, and he swore he would repay her tenfold.

They hurried to the river, where a cargo barge awaited them. However, as they boarded, Noxian agents burst from the shadows. Alistar hurled himself into battle, his vision tunneled with rage, and although Ayelia called out to him again and again, he did not hear.

By the time Alistar had slain their attackers, the boat was gone—and Ayelia with it—so he fled south on foot instead. He searched everywhere for the servant girl, but found nothing. Had she been captured? Killed? It seemed there were no clues left to find.

Weeks later, a political coup shook the empire to its dark foundations, and the arena minotaur’s escape was quite forgotten.

Alistar now travels alone, as quietly and anonymously as he can, encouraging resistance in Noxian-held territories and fighting on behalf of the downtrodden and the abused. Only when he has cleared the shame from his heart, repaying every cruelty and every kindness, will Alistar return to the mountains and leave his rage behind.

And in every city he passes through, he asks after Ayelia.

The prisoner stands tall, his ankles chained to a wooden post, his wrists bound together with coarse rope. Blood trickles down his cheeks onto his black Noxian tunic, leaving small red puddles by his bare toes. Above him, the sky paints patches of gray against blue, unsure of its true colors.

A fence of tall jagged stakes surrounds the prisoner. Nearby soldiers run from tent to tent. Their hurried steps kick up dust, leaving grime on their boots they will be sure to clean before they face their commanders. The prisoner knows this, having observed their disciplined behavior over the past days. It is unlike any he has ever seen.

Around the camp, bright navy banners ripple in the wind, displaying the image of a sword dividing two spread wings—the sigil of Demacia.

Not long ago these were the black and crimson banners of Noxus. The prisoner remembers his orders: to reclaim Kalstead for the glory of the empire.

He failed.

And he knows the consequences. War does not forgive failure. This is the truth he is prepared to accept. For now, he awaits his fate. The first time he was held prisoner, he lost his home. This time, he will lose even more.

He closes his eyes as more memories flood his mind. There were two men, he recalls. His master he knew—he had turned a lost boy taken from his home into a fighter fit for the Reckoner arenas. The other was a stranger, claiming to represent the empire’s best interests. After they shook hands, he was sent west, under the shadow of the Argent Mountains, to Kalstead.

There were no goodbyes, no well wishes. But, he was not alone. Others like him shared a name, “soldiers-of-misfortune” as they were called back in Noxus. Ragtag groups of fighters sent to deal with tasks unworthy of a veteran warband’s attention. Not many had a say in the matter, their masters too willing to sell their talents to the military for the right price.

“You don’t look like you’re from Noxus,” a voice calls out, breaking the prisoner’s moment of reflection.

He opens his eyes and sees a Demacian man standing outside the enclosure. His garb is a mix of navy and brown fabric covered by chainmail, and a shortsword hangs by his waist. He has the bearing of a leader, the prisoner decides, but a junior one.

“What’s your name?” the soldier calls.

The prisoner thinks. Will his answer decide his fate?

“Xin Zhao,” he replies, his voice rough and dry.

“What?”

“Xin. Zhao.”

“That doesn’t sound like a Noxian name,” the soldier wonders aloud. “Noxian names are tough, like… Boram Darkwill.” He says the two words with a shudder.

Xin Zhao does not reply. He doubts this conversation is worth having before his coming execution.

“Come along, shield-sergeant,” says another Demacian. The young officer’s severe look commands the sergeant’s attention. She wears silver armor with gold trim adorning her shoulder pauldrons. A cape of vivid blue falls down her back.

“Don’t bother conversing with Noxians,” she advises. “They do not share our virtues.”

The sergeant bows his head. “Yes, Sword-Captain Crownguard. But if I might ask…”

The captain nods.

“Why is this one being kept by himself?”

She glances at the prisoner, her blue eyes stern with contempt.

“This one ended more lives than the others.”

Xin Zhao wakes to the sound of horns. He sits in the mud kicking his numb feet at the damp soil. Pressing his back against the post, he snakes himself up to a standing position and sees the sergeant from the day before approach, accompanied by four others dressed in similar attire. They open the gate to the enclosure and the sergeant walks through first, carrying a tray holding a bowl of hot soup.

“Morning. I’m Olber, and this is my watch unit,” the sergeant says. “Here’s your breakfast, Zen Jaw.”

Xin Zhao watches him set the tray on the ground. Who knew someone could mispronounce two syllables so cruelly?

A Demacian guard cuts through the rope binding Xin Zhao’s wrists with practiced motions. The sergeant and the others stand by, their hands resting on the hilts of their swords.

“Well, go on and eat,” Olber says.

Xin Zhao picks up the bowl. “They sent five of you.”

“We do as the captain orders,” Olber explains. “She’s a Crownguard, after all. They protect the king himself.”

The guards nod along and turn to each other.

“Aye, her father saved the last Jarvan at Storm’s Fang,” one mentions.

“Which Jarvan was that?” another asks.

“Second. We’re on the third one now.”

“That’s King Jarvan the Third,” Olber interjects. “Your king. And mine. You oughta show some respect, given he personally rode out here with us.”

They think highly of their king, Xin Zhao notes. While the soldiers continue to banter, he drinks his soup, one sip at a time, as he listens to their conversation. They speak of how foolish the Noxians were to venture this far west, of how easy it was for them to come to Kalstead’s aid, and of how their triumph was one achieved in the name of justice.

We were sent here to die, Xin Zhao realizes. He grips the empty bowl so tightly it cracks, the wood coming apart in his hands.

The Demacians turn their attention. Olber looks at Xin Zhao. “Hands.”

Xin Zhao offers his palms facing upward.

“You sure took a beating,” Olber remarks, tying new rope around Xin Zhao's wrists. The guards gather around. They see scars everywhere, running like rivers up and down his skin. Xin Zhao follows their gaze. He can no longer tell which scars came from which match. There were so many that he fought, and so few he cared to remember.

“Those aren’t recent wounds,” one of the guards observes.

“You’re right,” Xin Zhao says. His voice, clear and strong, grabs their attention. For a moment, they stand still, looking at him like he is no longer just another prisoner.

“What’d you do back in Noxus?” Olber asks.

“I fought in the arenas,” Xin Zhao answers.

“A Reckoner!” a guard exclaims. “I’ve heard of you savages. They fight to the death in front of thousands!”

“I’ve never heard of no Reckoner named Zen Jaw,” another mutters.

“Maybe he wasn’t a good one? Maybe that’s why he’s here, all beaten and tied up?”

“Hold on,” Olber chimes in. “Don't you Reckoners use different names in the arena?”

Xin Zhao almost smiles. This Demacian is smarter than he lets on. It is known, even outside the empire, that Reckoners often choose inventive titles. Some opt for the extravagant. Others have something to hide. For Xin Zhao, it was to remember the life he had before it was taken away.

“Viscero,” a guard says, holding an unfurled piece of parchment. “That’s what the other Noxians called him.”

Olber snatches the parchment. He examines it. A few long seconds pass before he looks up at Xin Zhao. “You're the Reckoner.”

Silence. Thin streaks of sunlight cut through the gray sky.

“Viscero,” Olber repeats, his voice tinged with awe. “The one who never lost.”

The guards look to each other. Then, together, they stare at Xin Zhao, their eyes now lit with recognition.

“I know you!” says a guard.

“Didn't you beat a minotaur?” says another.

Olber raises a hand to halt the idle chatter. “Why'd you say your name was Zen Jaw?” he asks.

Xin Zhao sighs. “Once I became a Reckoner, there was no more Xin Zhao. There was only Viscero.” He looks down at his bound wrists, at his chained ankles, and then back at the Demacians. “In the time I have left, I’d rather live by my real name.”

“But what’s a famous Reckoner doing fighting Noxus’ border wars?” Olber asks again.

“I was bought out,” Xin Zhao replies, “by the military.” He finds explaining all this rather strange. For so long, he had assumed his final moments would pass by quickly, in the arena, by spear or sword—not with a hot meal and questions about his past.

Is this fate offering its last sympathies?

Olber appears troubled. “You didn't have a choice,” he says.

Xin Zhao shakes his head.

“You have family left in Noxus?”

Xin Zhao thinks for a moment, then shakes his head again. He wonders if he has any family at all, anywhere.

“Well, I guess you're off to a new beginning.” Olber nods at a guard who pulls out a key and starts unchaining Xin Zhao from his pole.

Xin Zhao tilts his head, curious. “What do you mean?”

Olber smiles. “Let’s get you dressed.”

Xin Zhao sits upright in the new tunic given to him. The Demacian fabric feels soft on his skin. He looks about the tent, counting the straw beds and the empty bowls of soup. Remarks of gratitude fill his ears. He recognizes the earthy voices. They come from others who, hours ago, were prisoners like him.

One by one, they rise from their beds and thank the healers who mended their wounds. Armed Demacians enter the tent. Xin Zhao watches the prisoners be escorted out. He knows them well, having marched alongside them to Kalstead. On their journey, they spent much of their time trying to best each other in individual feats of strength, with the victors celebrating their might and the defeated left in shame. Those especially vocal would boast aloud how many Demacian soldiers they planned to kill. That was before they came face to face with a real army.

There was no battle. Maybe the Noxian military would have fared better, with its legions and siege weaponry, but they were not the military. They were conscripts, untrained in the ways of formal combat, facing a unified kingdom. Within hours, Kalstead cheered for its saviors.

We were sent here to die, Xin Zhao reminds himself. And yet, as fate would have it, they still lived. Not by the will of Noxus, but by that of Demacia.

Fate flows like the four winds, his elders had once said, and no man can know its course until he sails it.

An old healer walks by. Her pale robe matches the others working in the tent. “How are you feeling, child?” she asks.

“I'm fine,” Xin Zhao replies. “Thank you.”

“Do not thank me. Thank the king. It was by his royal decree that all prisoners be cared for.”

“The third Jarvan?” This king, again. How can one man inspire so much?

“Yes, our great Jarvan the Third,” she corrects him. “He granted you the opportunity to begin anew. To find peace.”

Xin Zhao looks down at the floor with his hands folded. Viscero could always find a place in the arena. And elsewhere, the peoples of Valoran would embrace him for his strength, that much he is certain. As for his birthplace—the First Lands beyond the sea he has not seen for decades—it is as foreign to him now as any distant fantasy.

Where could he find peace? Would he want it?

No, his chance at peace died long ago, when he took his first life and was rewarded with an extension on his own.

Xin Zhao turns to the healer. “I have one question, if I may.”

“What is it, child?”

“This king of yours. Who is he?”

The healer chuckles. “Why don’t you see for yourself?”

Xin Zhao walks behind Olber with four guards surrounding him. As they trudge through the camp, he peers into the passing tents, seeing Demacian soldiers pack their belongings and captains plan for their next deployment. Rumors tell that somewhere, not a week’s march away, another battle against Noxus is imminent. Xin Zhao ponders if that is where these people will head, following a trail of turmoil, righting wrongs wherever they go. They seem to serve a higher calling, something stronger than strength, and perhaps more valuable.

He imagines how that might feel, to be so clear in your convictions you would sacrifice your own life for them. There were times in the arena when his life meant nothing. Now, it is worth an audience with a king.

“Looks like you’re the last one,” Olber says, stopping the escort and pointing ahead.

Xin Zhao follows the sergeant's finger and spots a tent larger than all the others. The same bright navy banners grace its roof. Guards in gleaming armor stand in parallel lines outside its entrance. He sees a man, bearing Noxian tattoos on his face and neck, shuffle out carrying a small bag. The man bows his head multiple times before he is led away by one of the guards, and immediately, another Demacian steps in to fill the empty space.

“That's the king's tent,” Olber says. “We are to stay here. You go in, kneel, accept the provisions granted to you by the king, and then we'll collect you.”

The sergeant smiles. “The king said once you're in front of him, you're a free man… but you’ll still need us when you’re out. Captain Crownguard runs this camp, and she’ll not have enemy combatants walk alone. Not ‘til they leave Kalstead for good.”

Xin Zhao gives a knowing nod, and heads toward the tent.

“The king welcomes Viscero!”

The voice that hails him is deep and proper. Xin Zhao walks forth. Once inside, he kneels on his right leg and bows his head low. The floor is covered in cloth embroidered with depictions of winged knights and helmed warriors.

“You may look up,” another voice comes. Xin Zhao lifts his head and identifies its source. It is a man, not much older than himself, sitting on a raised oaken chair. He wears radiant, gold-plated armor embellished with ebony spikes. Atop his head is a crown adorned with jewels. By his right hand lies a great steel lance, its edges sharp like the teeth of some magnificent beast.

This is their king, Xin Zhao realizes. His eyes linger on the man for a second longer, sensing the air of majesty about him, paired with a raw physical presence he had not expected.

To the king's left stands Sword-Captain Crownguard, just as stoic as when Xin Zhao first saw her.

To his right, dressed in a royal tunic is a little boy. He sits on an oaken chair of his own with his small leather boots dangling over the edge. It is impossible not to notice the king’s likeness in him, both having strong noses and square jaws. Two additional guards surround these three, each holding a spear pointing upward.

“Viscero is quite an unusual name,” King Jarvan III says. “What is its origin?”

Xin Zhao peers downward, wondering how he should respond.

“You will speak when the king addresses you,” the sword-captain commands.

“At ease, Tianna,” the king says with a wave of his hand. “He is surely shocked by the events of these past few days. We would be right to offer this man his time, would we not?”

The sword-captain opens her mouth only to close it without a word, choosing instead to give a curt nod.

“It is a reminder of my home,” Xin Zhao answers.

“Oh, is that so?” the king says, intrigued. “I have studied much of Noxus, yet I have never heard of a place called Viscero.”

“It is not so much a place, but a memory… albeit one that changed meaning in Noxus.”

“Ah,” the king says, looking briefly at his son, “memories of one’s childhood are such—”

“But it is not my real name.”

“You dare interrupt the king?” the sword-captain roars. Her hand clutches the hilt of her sword.

Xin Zhao bows his head. Then, he hears laughter, hearty and full. Again, the voice of Jarvan III.

“You are the first one today to have caused Tianna such grievance,” the king says. “It is her inaugural battle leading the Dauntless Vanguard, though it was not much of a battle, I am sure you would agree.”

He pats the shoulder of the young prince, who has stayed quiet, attentively observing his father. “Please,” the king says. “Tell us your story, Viscero, whose real name has not yet been revealed to me.”

Keeping his gaze low, Xin Zhao takes a breath. “My birth name is Xin Zhao, given to me by my parents who I have not seen since I was a boy. They may be alive, or dead—I do not know.”

He swallows hard. “The place I was born is known as Raikkon, a coastal village in the First Lands, which the people here call Ionia. My childhood was spent on a fishing boat named Viscero, helping the elders with whatever they needed. Life was simple, peaceful… until the marauders came in their red and black ships.”

He closes his eyes for a second. No Demacian speaks.

“We didn’t stand a chance. I was taken. After months on the sea, I found myself in Noxus. Everything was… towering, oppressive, harsh. There was none of the natural beauty that filled my home.”

Xin Zhao thinks he hears hushed sounds of agreement. A resonant murmur, a tiny voice whispering.

“As any lost boy would, I did what was needed to survive. Things I’m not proud of that got the attention of those with power. They recognized my strength, and turned me into a fighter. From there, Viscero was reborn—as a Reckoner.”

He sighs as his voice grows soft. “I killed many, many foes. Some whose real names I didn't even know. The more I killed, the louder the crowds cheered, ‘Viscero! Viscero!’ as their gold filled the pockets of my masters. I thought that would be how I lived out my days, fighting in the arena for the thrill of others. That is, until Noxus offered my masters more gold than the arenas could ever bring.”

Xin Zhao’s shoulders slump. “That was all it took for me to end up here. Your soldiers know the rest.”

Jarvan III is quiet. Everyone waits for him to speak.

“You have lived quite the life,” the king finally says. He glimpses at his son before looking back at Xin Zhao. “Thank you for sharing with us your journey. It makes me, and all of Demacia, proud to be able to release you from the bonds of Noxus.”

The king nods toward one of the guards, who brings out a linen pouch and sets it down before Xin Zhao. It jingles with coin.

“This is the blessing of Jarvan the Third,” Captain Crownguard declares. “There is enough gold there to last you one week’s worth of travel. Know that you've erred to invade lands protected by the kingdom of Demacia, but as a show of good faith, our king has granted you a second chance. Use it well.”

Xin Zhao glances at the pouch. He does not budge. Is it that simple? Take this bag and walk out of here—in peace? Just now, he spoke more honestly about himself than he has ever done, to a stranger who could have ended his life with the wave of a hand.

However, that stranger cared to listen. And through that, he became a stranger no more.

There is no peace for me, but maybe there can be a cause?

“Well,” Captain Crownguard says, pointing two fingers toward the exit.

Xin Zhao lowers his head. “I have one request, if I may.”

“Speak,” the king says.

“I wish to join your guard.”

“Absurd!” Captain Crownguard shouts. The guards strike the ends of their spears against the ground in accord.

The king lets out a soft chuckle and turns to his sword-captain. “What an interesting proposition.”

“Surely, you can't—” Captain Crownguard begins, before she is silenced by her king’s hand once more.

“Let the man explain himself,” Jarvan III says with a grin. “I wish to hear his reasoning.”

Xin Zhao raises his head. His eyes meet the king's. “You have shown me mercy and honor,” he begins. “Two things I never knew until now. All my years in Noxus, I spent fighting for a cause not my own, and during that time I knew of only two truths. Victory meant survival and defeat meant death. That was what I learned, seeing other fighters fall in the arena or disappear never to be seen again after too many losses. But you and your people fight for something else. Something more.”

A breeze ruffles the tent. Two small leather boots shuffle. Xin Zhao clears his throat.

“And I'd rather die fighting for honor than live out my days regretting that I never made that choice.”

Jarvan III leans forward. All others know to remain quiet.

“You speak well,” the king replies. “Better than some of my own advisers, truth be told. Still, my wards endure years, decades even, of training. How am I to believe you are capable?”

Xin Zhao stares at the king, at the prince, at Captain Crownguard. A part of him knows what he could say; another knows what he could do. Is it his choice to make?

No.

Fate has made its choice.

He grabs the coin pouch and throws it at the sword-captain, hitting her in the face. While she recovers, he sweep kicks the guard to his left, knocking him to the floor. Xin Zhao snatches the Demacian’s spear, swinging it in a circle to trip the other guard to his right. His body moves on instinct, fluid and swift as his mind pretends he is back in the arena. With one final twirl of the weapon, he jabs it forward at Jarvan III, its blunt end stopping inches short of the king's throat.

The young prince gasps. The king's guard gather themselves. Soldiers rush in as the sword-captain draws her blade.

Xin Zhao falls to his knees. He lays the spear down without a sound and offers his neck. Finely crafted steel weapons touch his skin.

Tension fills the room. All eyes lock onto Xin Zhao, whose own eyes are closed, at peace, ready to accept whatever comes next.

The king straightens his cloak. “Stand down,” he commands. “My father once said Noxus wasted its talent in those arenas. Now I see the truth in his words.”

“My king,” Captain Crownguard begs. “He tried to kill you!”

“No, Tianna,” the king replies. “He showed me how I could be killed. Even in front of my own trusted guards.”

“My deepest apologies,” Xin Zhao says. His voice is calm and measured, a quiet tide not yet ready to flow ashore. “It was the only way I thought to demonstrate myself.”

“And demonstrate you did,” the king says. “To me, and these warriors of Demacia. It appears they could learn a thing or two from you.”

“I will not have the king’s guard be sullied by a prisoner!” Captain Crownguard exclaims.

“When this man entered my sight, he was a prisoner no more.” The king stands from his chair. “Demacia was founded long ago, by good people who sought refuge from the evils of this world. This man's story reminds me of those tales of old, of great Orlon and his followers. The very ones my father once told me.”

His gaze falls on the prince, who looks back, amazed. “My son, my life’s joy,” the king says, “how happy I am that you are here to witness this moment. To see for yourself why we must uphold our virtues, so others may aspire to do the same. Do you understand?”

“Yes, father,” the prince says, his voice small but firm.

The king steps forward. “Xin Zhao, you have touched me with your life and your courage, a rare thing I have not felt in some time.” He bends down to help Xin Zhao to his feet. “Though you may not have been born a Demacian, I shall allow you to travel back with us, to my kingdom, where you will then prove yourself and your loyalty as my personal guard.”

Xin Zhao feels the king's sturdy hands grip his shoulders.

“Do not take this opportunity lightly.”

Xin Zhao looks Jarvan III in the eye. And for the first time, in a long time, he feels joy, washing over his body like the waves that once carried Viscero free.

The night air is chilly this far north of Kalstead. There is still a week or so before he will gaze upon the walls of the Great City of Demacia, Xin Zhao thinks as he walks outside his tent. A familiar face stands by the entrance.

“Still awake?” Olber says.

“I'm going for a walk. Won't be long.”

Strolling through the camp alone, Xin Zhao takes in the spirit of his new allies. They are an orderly lot, quick to aid one another and ensure safety among their ranks. Seeing their disciplined manner brings a smile to his face. He rounds a corner to look up at the crescent moon when he feels a sudden force pulling him down.

His body collides hard against the ground.

After blinking a couple times, he regains his senses and realizes he has been dragged inside a dimly lit tent. The sword-captain glares down at him. Beside her stand fearsome soldiers dressed in heavy warplate.

“You may have won the king's favor, but you are no Demacian in my eyes,” she states.

As Xin Zhao stands on his feet, she unsheathes her sword. Like the pride following their lioness, those around her do the same.

“I will be watching you,” she warns. “Should anything happen to the king while you are sworn in his service—”

With two hands, Xin Zhao clasps the flat sides of her blade. “Take this as my oath to you.”

Tianna Crownguard looks on, stunned, as he pulls the sword’s tip toward his own throat.

“Should anything happen,” Xin Zhao says. “You may kill me.”

June 7th, 1868

The caravan has delivered me unto Dust.

It is a listless and dead-eyed town, as likely to be swallowed by the desert as any other two-street this far south of the rail line. I recall it was once something quite spectacular back in the days of the Great Expansion, but now there is little left save a filth-encrusted saloon and a handful of sunken homesteads. The people’s faces are weighed down by a certain heaviness—they look to me for some measure of salvation, but I am not a true angel, and I cannot answer their prayers.

I am unsure how long this place might weather the dark of the frontier, or if it will be here to greet me when I return. Regardless, I must press on.

My own goal is east, shadowed by sandstone arches and miles of open backcountry. No man in his right mind would settle in these lands, as dangerously hostile as it is even for the well-prepared, and the quarry I seek is leagues beyond simple bandits or stick-up gangs. To that end, a killer travels with me. Paid half upfront, and half when the deed is done.

He is a towering hulk of a creature, filled with that selfsame darkness endemic to his kind. I can almost feel the heat of his blood boiling within that blackened heart, but he is the quality of man this venture requires. No doubt. No hesitation. Only raw power and instinct. Thus the manhunter Darius has joined me in this, our ride into the lonely spines of the Black Canyon.

It is in the depths of that bleak place that we will hunt the devil, and kill him.

It has been two days since we left the town of Dust, and Darius has scarcely spoken a word. His is a grim and unclouded resolve, fueled by some swirling anger clutched deep within his breast. He reminds me strongly of my creators in the east, but moreso of his forebears—men who years ago stormed the gardens of paradise, and slew the things within.

That is the great irony of this endeavor. A machine made in the image of the lost angels and a killer descended from killers, contracted to destroy the very product of mankind’s gravest sin. I am sure my companion is amused.

We ride against the wind, following the scent of brimstone ash, burning hoofprints, and brushlands singed by hellfire. Here the land goes on for a thousand leagues and a thousand more, an endless, open pastiche of dirt, grass, and wild lavender that meets the sky at its middle and continues on into forever. It is a blessed country; I have explored much of it in the time since my birth, and will explore more in the decades and centuries to come, should this shell of a body hold out for that long.

Sadly, the secrets of my creation were long ago lost; I stand the first and last of the artificial angels, fueled by the very blood of the old choirs. Their whispers still reach my ears, but the gods are dead and their attendants lay scattered across the frontier, words shorn of all power or consequence, until they, too, vanish completely from the world. That is why I keep this journal: so that those who remain when the old has been lost might not forget us, and know, at least, our story.

In time my own earthly form will rust and the being within will return to wherever the souls of angels are wont to go, perhaps a long way from here, and I sometimes wonder if, when my days come to an end, I will ever again look upon this land of such agonizing beauty.

We smelled the ranch before we saw it. A two-story farmhouse and horse stable, both rendered down to black, ashen ruins. These are the unmistakable signs of the devil we hunt: trails marked with smoldering hoofprints and the incinerated bodies of animals and people, scattered about as if some sadistic giant had tossed them through the air before finally delivering them unto oblivion. Each creature’s burnt face twisted upward in horror and fear as they stared into the flames of some distant, devouring hell.

Damn these devils! Foreign horrors all, escaped from their prison of smoke and darkness. Some may have made this place their home; famously the great cattle-skulled stalker of the old world, prowling about this land since the time of the ancient progenitor deities. But the rest dwelt for eons within the bowels of the underworld, torturing the souls of the condemned and delivering pain upon the spirits of wicked and broken men. Then heaven fell in that first, great continental land rush, and paradise was lost to humanity for all of time.

Human souls, compromised as they were, had nowhere left to go but the great grinning maw of the pit.

Yet even hell could not hold all the wailing masses of mankind, and it burst open in a furious upwelling of flames and hatred—the devils finally rushing forth to join their cousins, the long-maligned demons. Those bestial creatures masquerading as snake-oil salesman, carnival barkers, and traveling undertakers, whose preference for plotting cruel and ironic downfalls of the desperate married happily with the newly expanded threat of hellfire and death.

Now heaven is empty, and hell has overflown, and these poor mortal souls can do fair little to save themselves from a damnation of their own making.

Still, Darius seems unmoved by the destruction that so often marks our path. He speaks of his obligation to me and to the success of our venture, yet wonders aloud what a mechanical angel might gain from fighting the long-concluded battle between good and evil. He does not seem ill at ease by my presence, nor does he expect the miracles of the angels to lighten his inner darkness. He seems rather unmoved by almost everything, save the fight ahead and the reward for his victory.

I trust the man, despite my misgivings about humanity. It is a feeling born of pragmatism, and I suspect he trusts me in kind.

I sometimes watch him in the dim hours when we camp for the evening, his eyes always drawn to the glittering coals within the firelight. Searching, perhaps, for something I cannot see.

We have reached the mouth of the Black Canyon, after many days of tracking the black hoofprints of the devil’s dread riders. Darius’ horse refuses to move ahead, and so I will leave my own mount, Virtue, behind, and the two of us will continue on foot. In the end it could work to our advantage. The beasts will not spook this way, and cannot alert our target.

The manhunter carries with him a mighty hatchet, upon its hilt countless notches for countless claimed bounties. A man devoid of emotion is a man incorruptible by fear or weakness, unlike the marshals and their untoward aggression to anything less than human. His eyes are consumed with violent intent, always alert for the slightest sound or movement, even when there is nothing on the horizon—used to, as any seasoned killer is, the unpredictability of supernatural assailants.

The winds are soft, and no sound carries save the crunch of pebbles beneath our feet. Darius asks why a devil would make his home here. I tell him that for a devil, the only better place is hell itself.

We stand amid the bones of a god, slain by men not so long ago.

It was only fifty years prior that the deities who did not retreat into the Far West were hunted mercilessly by the government, gunned down by federal marshals and broken apart by skinners, tanners, and scavengers. The god’s colossal bones, too big for even these greedy men to lift, were left here—the rock quickly forming around them into what cartographers have deemed a canyon, though a canyon it is not.

Darius laughs, and the sound carries across the limestone walls and down into the open belly of the earth. Twisting and contorting, rolling across great slabs of rock as they collapse in upon one another, his voice terminates into whispers and then into nothing—and at this, the manhunter smiles.

How long do you think it took those men to kill a god? he asks me. Before I can answer, he shoulders his weapon, a new hunger apparent upon his face, and marches down the trail, his pace faster than ever before.

Darius is beginning to worry me.

I took the manhunter on for his ruthlessness, but something about this place is awakening the coiled serpent deep within his heart, and now it has given way to even darker intention. He walks with purpose, the hilt of his axe gripped tightly in his hands. When he looks at me now, I no longer see a companion, but a challenger—a man who would split the world in two if only he could muster the strength. What he sees within me is a road to that power, barely holding himself back as the sky falls away and the air grows warm and still.

He mutters in the night about demons and devils, and what their bargains could offer.

Demons give you what you want, he likes to say. Devils give you what you need.

The true nature of the Black Canyon reveals itself the further down we journey. Whispers from within my blood grow muted within its vast stone walls, their jagged spines ripping into the rapidly vanishing sky. Dirt and dust have given way to ghostly vegetation—fields of odd white flowers contained within valleys that should not exist, ringed by mountains that defy geologic time. Night and day seem interchangeable with each passing hour, but still we move deeper into the bowels of the rock, and deeper still into the lair of the devil.

Darius grins, now and again, asking of gods and monsters, angels and demons. His questions are fueled by odd tics; he glances behind us as though someone might be there, batting at his ears as if an insect is buzzing about. I watch him carefully as we camp each night. His wild eyes glow as they stare into the burning coals, reflecting embers as they dance upward into the still air, and he interrogates me about the god who died here and how exactly it was slain.

Occasionally, as he sleeps, I will spot the grinning silhouette of an outsider watching us from some distance away. Though those strange gamblers would never test the patience of an angel, I know why they have come, sensing within this killer some vicious longing for an intractable bargain.

Darius is becoming a threat. But the devil is so close now—I can sense it, this thing we must slay… and no living creature can destroy one alone. Surely once the deed is done my charge will regain his proper senses, and perhaps the cloud over this place will finally lift itself forever.

I have prepared myself in the event that Darius turns on me. We need each other alive until we strike into the monster’s lair, but after…

Well, perhaps this man will find himself dead at the bottom of the world.

Or, if fate demands it, all three of us will.

I wonder if I will remember my death.

The thought haunts me, at times. I remember my birth quite well—the sensation of being pulled from someplace very far from here, and awakening surrounded by the creaking and clattering of old machines. I was a miracle, I was told. Built from some archaic plan found in a great, silver city, and filled with the essence of the things that had lived there but now do not. Their whispers began to touch my ears, then, and I knew how painful it was to be the first and the last of something I could only half recall.

Yet I know when I die I will remember the devil Hecarim, his skull burning within the canyon’s otherworldly darkness.

My companion had regained himself after we reached the bottom of the crevasse, where the still air broke into a calm wind, and the deep unease that had dogged us thus far seemed to finally dissipate. We found ourselves standing before the mouth of a great opening in the rock, its entrance blasted jet-black as small fires flickered across the ground, and we knew our quarry was finally within reach. The hateful riders, that roving pack of demonic horsemen that seemed to follow Hecarim everywhere, would surely meet us inside. Weapons at the ready, we entered the cave to find—

Nothing.

A dark tunnel lay before us, but the riders did not make their presence known. How long had we prepared? How long had we been down here? It was difficult to say. We followed the path for a time, into the gloom, into the heat of that furnace, lit only by the glow of crackling ash that lined the edges of the cave floor. Far ahead was some sort of clearing, some opening on the other side of the canyon wall, and in it the flickering red-yellow tongues of fire that were the telltale signs of a devil awaiting his audience.

For while we had hunted the devil, he had hunted us in turn. That was and always has been the nature of the creatures. Devils are the great kings of hell, and they demand an audience with the pomp and circumstance of any old world nobility or government man from the eastern territories. Demons may lie, and trick, and deceive. They may give mortals the things they want, and extract their prices once the terrible weight of their gifts is finally appreciated. But a devil is never caught unaware, and is always prepared to give its pursuers exactly the thing they need.

Darius sneered, his eyes lit with the glimmer of so many burning coals, and I knew he had found whatever he saw within the heart of the fire.

We emerged into a barren outcropping of molten stone and searing heat, ringed by a tower of flame that seemed to climb the very walls of the canyon itself. In its center was Hecarim, his body that of a great black stallion and the monstrous torso of a man, wearing the face of a skinless, burning horse skull. From it jutted a single wicked horn, cloaked in thick smoke, and he spoke with the voice of a mountain slowly tearing itself open:

Why have you come?

My companion said nothing. The question was not meant for him to hear, but for me, since his answer had already been given. Perhaps in his sleep, in the recesses in his own dark dreams, or whispered in the echoes of rocks and dust as they crunched beneath our feet in this long journey down. Power, he had said. I must have power. And he turned as if to answer for me, raising his axe high above his head, the weapon glowing with some bedeviled, red-hot flame, that he might bring it crashing down upon me.

Two arrows I did fire into his heart, and two arrows struck true. Darius fell to earth before his pact could be sealed: the power to slay everything before him, given at any cost.

Without a word, the manhunter was dead… or so I believed.

As I drew another arrow against the devil, Darius rose once more, his face twisted into a hateful grin, his axe glowing with the newly gifted powers of hell. And through the flames behind him rode the host of demonic horsemen. Hecarim’s trap had been sprung.

Through the tunnel I fled, up the winding paths of the Black Canyon toward my steed and open prairie. Pursued by the legions of hell, and the blackened heart of that wicked, brutal man. For monsters are drawn to such power, changed by it, made into a force that in time will burn the continent and everything in it to dust.

I ride for the border town of Angel’s Perch. There is a man there, a slayer of devils and an ally of those who once called the frontier home, who can rally the wild soul of such chaotic rabble against the threats allied against them. Perhaps they would not fight for the fate of mankind, who have cast us all into damnation with their lot. But they may yet fight for themselves.

If you have found this journal, I ask that you join us. Our forces muster at the edge of the world. There is precious little time.

Hell is coming. We must rise as one, or lose the west forever.

Even as an orphan on the streets of Basilich, Draven was headstrong and full of bravado, frequently getting into vicious brawls with older street children and shady underworld thugs. While supremely confident in his own ability—some would say overconfident—it is unlikely he would have survived childhood had it not been for his older brother, Darius, who invariably finished the fights Draven started.

When Basilich fell to the warhosts of Noxus, the brothers came to the attention of a captain named Cyrus, after Draven made an ill-considered attempt on his life. Impressed with their fighting spirit, Cyrus allowed them to join the Noxian ranks.

For years, the brothers fought as part of Cyrus’ warhost—yet while Darius took to this life easily, Draven grew steadily more bored. His martial skill was beyond question, but the daily drudgery of soldiering felt like too much effort for too little reward… and not enough personal glory.

Darius inevitably rose to command his own warband, and Draven joined him. However, if he thought that would be easier, or a way to achieve greater individual recognition, he was sorely disappointed.

Some say Draven chose to leave Darius’ command. Some say he was forced out. Either way, his skills were highly sought after as a champion and duelist, and he was enticed to join a succession of warbands during the occupation of Ionia, before ending up with a fairly respectable contract in the Reckoning pits.

For centuries, the gladiatorial Reckoners had performed a vital role in Noxus—punishing criminals and settling disputes between the noble houses—and Draven was determined to receive the riches, adoration, and renown he felt he deserved. However, with long, protracted wars on many fronts, the spectacle was beginning to lose its appeal for the common citizen. As the attention of the crowds drifted, Draven fell into a slump, spending more and more time in the seedier drinking halls and gambling dens of the capital.

He was washed-up and broke when the former general Jericho Swain found him.

Swain had a plan to reclaim Noxus’ lost glory, and needed Draven’s help to achieve it. Perhaps Swain only enlisted him as a way to ensure his brother Darius’ support after the fact. Regardless, Draven proved integral to Swain’s plan—to depose the Grand General himself, Boram Darkwill.

Standing triumphant with Swain, Draven smiled for the first time in months as the cheers of the Noxian people washed over him.

But duty called. In the days and weeks following this unprecedented coup, many among the noble elite refused to honor Swain’s succession, so they were sentenced to death in the arena.

One condemned man escaped his handlers ahead of his execution. Operating on pure instinct—as was ever his wont—Draven leapt from the high balcony and hurled a pair of axes at the fleeing man, cutting him down in a heartbeat. After a moment of stunned silence, the crowd roared their approval. Draven retrieved his axes, spinning them high in the air, playing to his new fans, and savoring their rapturous applause.

Thus Draven became the Glorious Executioner, turning routine bouts into grand spectacles that drew ever larger crowds.

Soon enough, an enterprising (and diminutive) promoter, tired of paying to house, feed, and train Reckoners only for them to die in front of dwindling audiences, approached Draven with an idea. What if the drama of the classic pit fights could be combined with Draven’s natural showmanship?

The Reckoners quickly became entertainers as much as combatants, each with their own carefully constructed backstory, fighting style, and flamboyant personality. The fights were often bloody—this was still Noxus after all—but far less often ended in death. The rivalries, trash-talking, and intrigue between the best-known Reckoners became the stuff of legend throughout the empire, but none were talked about more than Draven.

For a time he lived the high life, receiving invitations to a never-ending stream of parties and banquets, mixing with the wealthy and influential of Swain’s new Noxus. He even reconciled with Darius, and would occasionally still march out with the warhosts, defeating enemy champions and generals in single combat.

Nevertheless, Draven has started to grow restless once again. He has all that he could have ever imagined, and more, but now dreams of the day when the whole world knows his name.

“I have never seen the forgotten god. My grandmother told me these tales, but she never saw the forgotten god either—nor did her grandmother before her, or hers before her, a thousand times over. His legends endure only around crackling fires and meals of roasted fish. The further back we trace our ancestors, the truer the tales become.”

The children’s weary faces lift a little higher. Firelight dances on their cheeks, but pain lives in their eyes.

“Gods dwell around us, in the sky, in between clumps of soil, and behind the veil of stars. We need only to seek their favor, to channel their being into our hearts and deeds. For instance, on the sea, it is so cold that your eyeballs might freeze solid in their sockets. No, it’s true! But when sailors rub blubber on their faces and think about the Seal Sister, whose true name is forgotten, they are protected from the icy ocean winds.

“Others, such as Volibear, refuse to allow their own legends to fade, and still stalk this world. He demands sacrifice and forces obedience, much like the Ursine…”

They have all heard tales of the half-bear abominations. Fear makes the children lean closer to the fire.

“Oh yes, little ones—we may speak later of the bearskinned storm-bearer, but the less said about him the better.”

Like grandmother used to say, once they lean closer to the fire, they’re yours.

“Instead, these stories concern the firstborn of the gods…”

Ornn was the firstborn of his brothers and sisters. He leapt into the world, itching for a fight. This was not so easy, however. Trees were weak adversaries, snapping far too easily. Icebergs melted at his touch, running away into the sea.

Frustrated, he punched a mountain. The mountain did not yield. Ornn was pleased by this, so he challenged the land itself to a good-natured brawl.

As Ornn wrestled with the land, he dented and bruised it, shaping all of the Freljord that we know today. He headbutted mountains from the planes, and pounded down deep valleys. When he was tired, Ornn thanked the land for the glorious match. The land responded by opening a fiery pit, showing him its very heart, and he was honored to see it was a reflection of him: a fiery ram. The land had deemed Ornn worthy, and bestowed its secrets to him, gifting him the strength of primordial flame, for fire is the true agent of change.

He looked at the landscape that was the result of his fight and nodded. It would do. After this, Ornn set himself to building tools and weapons.

My ancestors must be smiling, for at this moment, a light snow begins to fall. Gentle flakes settle on the children’s furred hoods, and they stick out their tongues.

“Did you know that there used to be no snow in the Freljord?” I ask them. The children look confused. “It’s true. Our lands have always been the coldest in the entire world, but in the early days there was only bitter, dry air, and no such things as stormclouds…”

It was during the early, cloudless and cold days that Ornn built a house. He made it of the finest lumber. The magnificent home spanned three valleys. Can you imagine that? After completing his majestic Horn Hall, Ornn appraised his work.

“Good,” he said. These were the days before language, so this was a compliment indeed.

Now, his sister Anivia was annoyed. Ornn had felled her favorite perching trees to build his home. So she decided to teach him a lesson.

While Ornn was sleeping, she flew in through his bedroom window. Then, she tickled his nose with one of her feathers, causing him to sneeze a gout of flame that set fire to the bedsheets! The bedsheets set the floor ablaze! Anivia panicked, and flapped her wings to fly away, but this only stoked the fire hotter with the dry Freljord air. Soon, all of Horn Hall was alight.

The fire raged for days, darkening the skies with ash. Of course, Ornn slept through the whole thing. He awoke atop a pile of ashes in a very bad mood, for he had not had a restful sleep. But he did not know what Anivia had done. And to this day, she has never told him the truth.

“I complimented my own handiwork, and look where it got me,” said Ornn, surveying the damage. “Never again will I pat myself on the back. I shall let the quality of the work speak for itself.”

Ornn had one goal in particular for his next home: he did not want it to be flammable. He fashioned himself a spade, a lever, and a fork. With these tools, he could dig for ore, move mighty pillars, and eat the delicious spiced cherries he so enjoyed.

He hammered and shaped chunks of ore until a black mountain stood. Inside was a great forge that channeled the primordial molten flame from deep within the earth. He was pleased with his Hearth-Home—but it was too hot inside to dwell comfortably, even for Ornn.

So he dug a trench from the sea, straight to the mountain. The Seal Sister allowed cold waters to rush through the trench and cool the Hearth-Home. Great plumes of steam rose up. It took three days for the mountain to cool enough for Ornn. In that time, the ocean that fed the river dipped several inches.

By then, so much steam had risen from the waters that the perpetual blue sky was mottled with darkening gray clouds. As these new puffy forms gathered and cooled, they grew heavier and heavier until they burst with snow.

It snowed for a hundred years. This is why the Freljord still has so much snow today.

One of the children frowns at me. “If Ornn did so much for the world, then why is it only you who knows the stories about him?” she asks. The girl is young, but has already seen so much hardship that her hair has several shocks of silver running through it.

“There is one tale that answers this very question,” I reply. “Would you like to hear it?”

The children’s eager faces say it all.

Once, there were Three Sisters who needed Ornn’s help in saving their world. Ornn, however, did not care to help anyone save any world, anywhere. It was for personal reasons, and he did not elaborate on the matter. But this did not stop the Three Sisters journeying many days and nights to ask.

“There are creatures of great and wicked magic that stalk our tribes,” the First Sister said. She had fierceness and war in her eyes. “They want to destroy all things and claim the world for themselves!”

“This sounds like a problem,” Ornn said. He did not look up from his forging.

“Then will you fight with us, and use your strength to slay the monsters?”

Ornn grunted. This grunt meant “no” in such a way as to halt any more discussion. This was understood by all. If you heard this grunt, you would have thought the First Sister wise for not pressing the matter further.

“These beings watch our every move,” the Second Sister said. There was hope and wisdom in her voice. “I would ask you to take the spade that once dug your mighty river, and use it to dig the deepest trench in all the world. Then we can lure the monsters into the pit ourselves, and solve our own problem.”

Ornn grunted. The sound of this grunt meant “I will dig that hole,” and that everyone should stop talking immediately. This was understood by all. If you heard this grunt, you would have thought the Second Sister wise for not pressing the matter further.

So Ornn dug them a trench, for a very deep hole can add much to a landscape. Also, he had planned on digging one anyway, and the proposed location was a fine spot. When Ornn was finished with the trench, he left the three sisters with nary a word, for he had already said far too much to them.

“That is one deep hole,” the Second Sister said. “I pray it is deep enough.”

Wind blew up from the freshly dug abyss with an otherworldly howl, as if to say that it was deep enough. If you had heard the abyss’ howl, you would have thought it wise that no one climbed down to measure its depth.

Several years later, the sisters returned. They looked as if the battles with their foes had taken a toll.

This time, the Third Sister spoke. Her icy breath reminded Ornn of the cold and dry days, long ago. “Ornn, Builder of All Things,” she began.

“I did not build all things,” Ornn grumbled. Again, he did not look up from his forging. “Just some of them.”

The Third Sister continued. “We come now to ask you one simple favor. The pit you dug is so deep and so wide that we cannot build even a single bridge across it. Teach me how to build a bridge that can never break, and I will do the work myself.”

Ornn raised an eyebrow. He studied the Third Sister’s eyes. He did not trust her, for she had a scent of magic about her, and magic always makes sturdy things weaker. “There are many able bridge builders. Go and bother them.”

“The other builders cannot make a bridge with the type of stone we have,” the Third Sister replied. “They claim it fell from the sky, and they cannot forge it for all their efforts.” She then presented a chunk of star metal.

If you had seen the star metal, you would think it wise that only Ornn could possibly ever shape this material, for it was almost as stubborn and unyielding as him. Ornn agreed, but he would do the work alone, and required the star metal itself as payment.

The Third Sister gave it to him, and he used it to forge a tool to help build the bridge.

With that tool, and only that tool, Ornn built the bridge. The Second Sister felt bad about the Third Sister’s lie—for they did not need a bridge at all. She asked Ornn what sort of tool it was.

“I used it to hammer,” Ornn said. “So I will call it ‘Hammer.’ I have said enough.”

When he was out of sight, the Third Sister walked the length of the bridge, reciting strange incantations across the entire span. This turned the bridge into a crossbar that sealed the beasts below within the abyss. However, Ornn had been right, and the addition of magic ruined the quality of his work. Had the Three Sisters left it well enough alone, it would have lasted forever. Instead, the enchantment would slowly eat away at the masonry. It would take ages, though, so nobody paid it much mind, and the Three Sisters vowed never to speak of Ornn again.

Ornn, meanwhile, realized he did not like people asking him favors, and threw his spade as far to the west as he could. Where it landed, no one knows, and its fate is lost to darkness.

Then he turned east and threw his favorite eating fork as far as he could. It landed in the Great Sea. Some say, later, a mer-king found a powerful trident at the sea-bottom, and still uses it to rule his kingdom.

Ornn was ready to throw his hammer into the night sky, but he could not bear to do it and decided to keep it. Were you to see Ornn and ask him if it is his favorite tool, he would scold you for thinking like a child. But in secret, he favors Hammer above all other things he has made.

“Dawn brings the plumpest berries and the meatiest fish,” I say to the children. “We need to be rested.”

They groan in unison and plead with me for one more story. Just one more story.

“There is only one more story about Ornn left,” I tell them. “We should save it for another night…”

Only when they pledge to do every chore and not complain about being too tired, do I relent.

Everyone knows that you never challenge a troll to a drinking contest, don’t they? Even you little ones know not to make a bet with a troll, for trolls are sneaky and will always win. Also, everyone in the Freljord knows that the uglier a troll is, the luckier and more cunning it can be.

Unfortunately, Ornn did not know any of these things.

Grubgrack the Hideous was the oldest troll-kin in the world. His chest hair was so long, it got tangled up in his gnarled toes. Ugh! He would often trip over it and break his nose, which was bulbous and misshapen from being broken so many times. He only had two good teeth, one bad eye, and one worse eye. Warts and pimples covered his rotund belly. I will not tell you how he smelled. If I did, you would never eat fermented fish stew again.

“Build me a door that will keep my treasure safe from thieves forever,” Grubgrack said to Ornn outside Hearth-Home, “and I will give you ten casks of my trollmead. It’s a family recipe.”

Ornn dismissed his guest, but Grubgrack stuck out his foot to stop the door from closing. Ornn did not want the troll’s bunion-covered toes ruining the paint, so he let the creature go on.

“Let us make a wager,” said the truly un-beautiful troll. “Whoever can finish a cask of trollmead first owes the other a debt.”

“If it will make you go away, okay.” Ornn had never been beaten in a drinking contest. Everyone knew this back then, and now you do, too.

“At least it will be good to have a drink,” Grubrack replied, and his smile warped one of the Hearth-Home’s pillars. While Ornn’s back was turned, the troll slipped a shard of True Ice into a cask and handed it to his challenger.

They toasted in the jovial manner of the Freljord and drank. Ornn found the trollmead watered down, and he did not like it. However, Grubgrack was halfway through his cask. With his own cask still almost at the brim, Ornn tipped his head back further and drank until he thought he would drown.

But Grubgrack slammed his empty cask down and belched, and the fire in the oven turned a sickly green! Ornn coughed and spluttered.

“What is wrong?” Grubgrack teased him. “Are you choking?”

Then Ornn noticed the True Ice in his drink. It was perpetually melting and watering down the trollmead. No matter how much he chugged, the True Ice had replaced it. He smashed the cask with one hand.

“You cheated,” Ornn said. His angry voice set off an earthquake that sunk a few islands.

“Of course! What other advantage would an ugly troll like me have against the mighty Ornn?” In truth, the ugliest trolls have almost all the advantages in the world, but Ornn did not spend much time with ugly trolls, so he wouldn’t know that, but now all of you little ones do. “A deal is a deal,” Grubgrack reminded him.

“My word is as good as Hammer,” Ornn grumbled. “Even if I was cheated.”

So Ornn labored for ten days and built the single best door anyone had ever built. He adorned it with a ram’s head, like his own, and the one at the heart of the Freljord. It was impervious to magic and lock-pickers alike. Grubgrack was so impressed with the quality of the door that he was speechless, which is very rare for a troll.

Ornn fastened the door in front of the troll’s cave, which was on top of the troll’s mountain, and where all the ugliest troll-kin in history had hid their treasure.

With a grunt, Ornn trundled off, leaving Grubgrack admiring his new door.

When he had regained his wits, Grubgrack realized it had been a day since he last counted his gold, and he was growing anxious. But he could find no way to open the door! None at all.

Grubgrack tried brute force. The ram-faced door did not budge. Then, he tried to strip the paint with his foul breath. Again, the door did not budge. Lastly, he tried to pry the hinges from the cave wall but, alas, the door was fixed to the mountain so firmly that the troll only hurt his shoulders trying to shake it loose. He was locked out.

Grubgrack stormed into Ornn’s forge. “What trickery is this?” he shouted. His breath was so bad, the forge fire nearly flickered out.

“There is no trickery,” Ornn replied, stoking the flames back to life. “You told me to build a door that would keep your treasure safe from thieves forever, and I did. This door will stand longer than the mountain it is on. No one can break it. I made it just as you asked.”

“But I cannot get inside!” Grubgrack cried. “And I stole nothing from you!”

“Time is more valuable than gold,” Ornn said. “So you are a thief, and my work is as good as my word.”

Grubgrack tried for years to get back inside for his treasure, but the door never opened for him, and he could not even find the keyhole. With each attempt, the ram-headed door stared back at him, an eternal reminder of the time he cheated Ornn.

And if you listen carefully, up in the mountains, you can hear greedy old Grubgrack’s wails of anguish before any avalanche, even to this day.

The children are fast asleep, snuggled into each other around the fire. I carry them one by one to the orphans’ tent. Our tribe hasn’t much to share, but we are not the Winter’s Claw.

The last child is still awake by the fire. He lies on his side.

“Those stories aren’t real,” he says with the tiniest voice.

It’s the legless boy. We found him half-dead after our own village had been raided. We couldn’t leave him—I couldn’t leave him—so I wrapped his wounds in bandages, and carried him on my shoulders.

“I think they are made up. Or… changed to help us go to sleep.”

“A story is as real as we believe it is,” I tell him, as I settle down next to him.

“There is a god who is good, but he doesn’t care about us.”

I nod slowly. “I can see why you would think that, but it is not true. There is one more story I can tell you. It was the last story my grandmother told me before I blossomed into womanhood. She wanted me to be ready, for it is not like the others. But I think you have seen enough to be ready. What do you think?”

The boy nods. I draw him close to my chest and begin.

Once, long before the splintering of the Freljord, Ornn had a legion of smiths who lived at the base of his mountain. They claimed to worship Ornn, but if you were to ask him, they were misguided, for he would say he had no followers. Still, it is true that they built themselves a little town and that it was filled with folk who wished to make the finest things in all the world.

There were thousands of them. They made tools. They made plows. They made carts and armor and saddles. They built furnaces and homes. They called themselves the Hearthblood, for they never felt the biting cold of the Freljord, and could tolerate the immense heat bubbling beneath their bare feet on the slopes of Hearth-Home. They became the finest craftspeople in the world, and their workmanship was surpassed in quality only by Ornn’s.

Occasionally, he would appraise their work. If he liked what one of the Hearthblood had wrought, he simply said “Passable.” This was a mighty compliment from Ornn, who had learned long ago to let good work speak for itself. Do you remember that tale?

Ornn never admitted that he admired the Hearthblood but, deep inside his chest, his volcanic heart churned with respect for the hardworking people. They did not kneel or offer him sacrificed flesh. They did not turn his words into scriptures and spread them across the land to people who did not want to hear them. Instead, they focused on their work in silence. They were imaginative, resourceful, and hardworking. These Hearthblood folks made Ornn smile, although nobody knew because they couldn’t see the smile underneath his beard.

One day, Volibear came to visit his brother Ornn.

This was no friendly stop, for Ornn and his brother were never friendly, nor had they ever visited one another before. The great bear was going to make war and needed weapons for his army. Ornn saw the army—fierce aberrations, men twisted into other shapes by their efforts to please Volibear. They were simple, and fierce, and quick to anger.

“Give them swords and axes,” Volibear demanded, with wicked intent. “Give them armor, and I will make it worth your while.”

“No,” said Ornn, for he wanted no part in Volibear’s warmongering.

“Fine,” said Volibear. “Have your followers do it instead. I do not care. Do this. I am your brother.”

This irked Ornn so much that his great horns flared with molten heat. “The people in the town below do not follow me. They build for themselves. They are quiet and work hard. That is all.”

But Volibear saw beneath his brother’s words to the fiery heart in his chest. For all his flaws, Volibear was very good at reading others.

“They are a reflection of your own image.”

Ornn’s horns grew red hot, and then white hot. “If I see you again, Volibear, I will beat you within an inch of your life,” he growled. If you had heard this threat, you would think it wise for Volibear to leave and never return.

But Volibear loved fighting, and he was not wise, so he took a piece of armor from the walls of Ornn’s forge.

“If you will not make me what I want, then I will take it.”

With that, Ornn charged at Volibear and smashed him with his horns. It was so powerful a blow, the summit of the mountain shook.

This was exactly what Volibear wanted. For centuries, he had grown jealous of the love the Hearthblood freely gave to his brother. It enraged the war-bear.

They fought for eight days. They fought so hard, the base of the mountain trembled. So fierce was their fighting that molten stone exploded from the peak of Hearth-Home. Lighting strikes barraged the mountainside, and geysers of flame gushed from the cliffs. The skies grew black and red. The blood of the world ran through the highlands as the ground shook. People all over the Freljord saw the results of the battle between Volibear and Ornn.

When the smoke cleared, the mountain had lost its peak. But worse, the Hearthblood were all dead, and their town was nothing but smoldering ruins and a fading memory.

For many centuries, the half-mountain once called Hearth-Home has stood silent. Every now and then, a plume of smoke rises from the crater where the peak once stood. Some say it is Ornn, lighting his furnace to keep the fires under the surface of the world from going out. Others say he is building a great weapon that he will one day unleash.

And there are others still, who believe Ornn was killed by Volibear, for he has not been seen in the Freljord since.

“And so, Ornn’s name and tales have been lost to time and written out of the histories. These few stories, passed on around our meals of roasted fish, are all that remain.”

“That is a sad tale, which means it is the truest,” the legless boy says, looking up at me. There is a tear in his eye. “What do you believe happened to Ornn?”

“I believe when the Great Builder returns,” I tell him, “it will be to remake the world.”

The boy laughs. “I would like to see that day.”

“Maybe you will. Do not weep for the Hearthblood. Weep instead for the stories lost to war and time, for once they were more numerous than the stars. Repeat these tales so our children’s children can still hear our ancestors’ voices, and stoke the fire of the forge in our hearts.”

In my own heart, I can feel my grandmother’s smile.

It warms me. I feel no cold beneath my bare feet.

“Is anything you just heard unclear to you?”

Tifalenji knelt in darkness. She did not raise her head to the voice addressing her, because the voice was part of that darkness. It filled the chamber, swelling warm and sickly sweet, with a scent like rotting flowers. Such a thing was not particularly remarkable to one whose life was sworn to the weft and wane of runes—even a smith as young as Tifalenji did not question what surrounded her, now.

She knew when to accept that something was beyond her understanding.

“All is clear,” she answered.

“Excellent.”

The darkness rasped, as though drawing in breath. “Your mistress spoke highly of you. Resourceful,” it spoke the word in another voice, the voice of Tifalenji’s teacher, “and those who are resourceful can be of great use.”

Tifalenji swallowed. She felt the air displace, the temperature rise as though the chamber were now filled with people. Daring to look out the corner of her eye, she saw the hems of robed figures lining the walls, ringing her and the source of the voice.

“Watch the moon.” Suddenly there was a pulse of light, reflecting cold and silver against the floor. “See its course, how it turns.”

Her mind raced, considering what lay ahead, the moments available to her spilling away one by one, like grains of sand from an hourglass.

“Remember your task above all else.” A hand extended from the dark, cupping Tifalenji’s chin. “What we have entrusted you to find, to return to us, cannot be replaced.” The hand lifted Tifalenji’s head, and she looked up into a perfect reflection of her own face, grinning with another person’s smile.

“You, however, can be.”

Erath was a son of Noxus. From the first generation of his tribe to be born into the empire, his training had begun the day he took his first steps.

Fortitude. Discipline. Resolve.

He was raised among shepherds, tending flocks and beasts of burden, keeping them well until the time for harvest came. He learned to kill, quickly and cleanly, with the small knife he had been taught to never let leave his side. It was a lesson that would do him credit when the day came that Noxus would call upon him to serve.

He had been taught to kill his enemies, his empire’s enemies, but never to hate them. Because an enemy of the empire was never more than a ceremony away from being a wayward brother or sister, brought forth with honor and purpose into the arms of Noxus to stand beside Erath in the line. To make him stronger.

Kill them until they’re family, his father had once told him, when he showed Erath the dull purple trails of his old campaign scars. Erath had never hated his enemies, but here, looking around at the scope of what surrounded him, without even knowing who their enemy was, he pitied them.

The streets quaked with an endless procession, tens of thousands of soldiers passing down the boulevards and avenues of the Immortal Bastion. A dozen tongues overlapped in the primal shouted rhythm of battle chants, marching calls, and war song. The full unbridled might of the Noxian host was on display, with blades and the hands that wielded them from across the breadth of the empire. Tribal war parties sauntered down the roads, clad in skins and ceremonial dress, followed by tightly regimented cohorts of troops encased in blackened iron plate, and a contingent of brightly uniformed naval soldiers from Shurima.

And more after them, and on, and on.

Countless peoples, but a single empire. The spectacle, the sheer demonstration of strength, stilled Erath’s heart to see it.

Erath’s own tribe was in the midst of disembarking from the riverboat that had ferried them from the plains of Dalamor down south to the capital. He and his comrades had marveled over their oars at the sight of the Immortal Bastion, the towering central monolith of ancient stone visible two days out from their arrival. He looked up from watching his chieftain Yhavi squabble with a gaggle of quartermasters to behold it again, now within the boundaries of the city proper. The sun was trapped behind the trio of enormous towers at the center of the Bastion, locked away like a shining jewel.

The thought of their unknown enemy returned to Erath’s mind, and he smiled. What could stand before this?

Donnis, one of the spearmen, nudged Erath from his thoughts, nodding toward their chieftain who was beckoning Erath over. He quickly moved to stand before Yhavi, who had just been handed a ream of vellum inked with their orders.

“We move soon,” Yhavi began, speaking in their tribal tongue as he looked over their mandate.

“Have they said where the fighting will be, yet?” asked Erath, letting his excitement get the better of him.

“No,” Yhavi frowned, squinting at the Noxian script before looking at the boy. “But it won’t matter to you. You won’t be coming with us.”

“I don’t understand,” Erath adopted his chieftain’s frown. “I’m to be your blade squire.” Erath had won the honor in a blood trial before the tribe departed home. It was Erath’s right to bear Yhavi’s wargear on the battle train, to hone and oil his relic blade on the eve of battle, to arm his chieftain and bind his wounds, and should calamity pass, to see to Yhavi’s body if he fell. If not Erath, then who?

“You shall be a blade squire indeed,” said Yhavi. “Just not mine. You have been seconded elsewhere.” He sensed the confusion in Erath, and his tone hardened. “For Noxus.”

Erath straightened, pushing the questions from his thoughts, his features neutral and firm as he thudded a fist against his chest in salute. “For the empire.”

Yhavi returned the salute, and dipped his head in approval. “We all shall answer when called, blades sharp, minds ready.”

With a deep breath, Erath put his disappointment out of his mind. “I am ready.”

Yhavi’s grim facade cracked, and he offered the boy a warm grin. “I know you are, Erath. He would see you this day and feel pride, I know it.” Erath glanced down for a moment, and Yhavi handed him a small scroll, sealed and tightly rolled. “Proceed to the ninth gate of the Bastion, across the canal just ahead of us. The legionaries will stop you. Show them this.”

Even a mention of the Trifarian Legion made Erath stand straighter. He studied the scroll, brightly bleached paper compared to the rough vellum of his brethren’s mandate. He had never seen paper before. It felt delicate in his fingers.

“It seems fate has its own course for you to walk, enhasyi,” Yhavi favored Erath with the tribal expression for a warrior poised to make his mark on the warpath. He laid a scarred paw of a hand on Erath’s shoulder, before sending him on his way. “Walk it well.”

Erath navigated the bustling throng of a city readying itself for war. For a boy raised in a lonely shepherd’s village, the scale of everything was astounding. Towering monuments and buildings of stone, iron, and glass loomed over streets worn smooth by armies marching to the next campaign. Erath moved along the current of humanity, barely able to lift his arms within the crowd. He had never considered there could be so many peoples, so many languages. It was nearly overwhelming, but he kept his mind to his duty.

Few from the tribe were learned in Noxian, but Erath knew a passable amount of Va-Noxian, the unified spoken tongue, and a paltry understanding of the empire’s formal written language. He knew enough to guess at the signs and engravings to guide him along toward the ninth gate, just up ahead, where he was to report to his new commander.

Shouldering the sackcloth pack holding his kit, Erath reached into his jerkin, passing over the bone pendant he wore around his neck. He laid a reassuring hand on the pendant for a moment before touching his orders, inscribed on the tightly rolled sheet of bleached paper. The value of the tiny thing made his mind race as to who his new leader would be, and how important their mission. He was so lost in thought he didn’t notice falling under a pair of towering shadows cast over the courtyard of the gate.

“Khosis g’vyar!”

A sharp crash of iron froze Erath in place. He looked up from the ground, finding himself staring down the gleaming edges of twin halberds, each longer than he was tall and leveled at his heart. Wielding the spears were monsters of blackened iron plate, capes the hue of fresh blood billowing from their shoulders, glowering down at him from the impassive masks of spiked war helms.

Erath’s breath caught in his throat. Trifarian Legionaries. He noticed then that the gates weren’t barred. These two, of the Noxian warrior elite, they were the bars.

The challenge repeated, thundering from one of the legionaries, somehow deepened and projected to an inhuman degree by his mask. The words were unfamiliar, thick with a strange dialect.

Was it Va-Noxian? Erath squinted, remembering what he had learned. The warrior tilted his head, clearing his throat with a sound like rubble dislodging.

“Where go, little blade?” the legionary rumbled again, in more clipped tones.

Erath exhaled like a drowning man finally reaching the water’s surface, able to understand the words. Still his tongue defied him, thick and still behind teeth he desperately fought to keep from chattering. Slowly, he reached into his jerkin, wincing as he saw the legionaries tense, and produced the scroll.

The warriors exchanged a glance, and one of them, the one who had spoken, shouldered his halberd. He advanced on Erath with heavy, pounding bootsteps, stopping just a pace away from the boy. Erath looked up, barely reaching the man’s chest, and held out his orders.

The legionary plucked the scroll from Erath’s grasp, the paper looking ridiculous in his thick, gauntleted fingers. With a quick squeeze he crushed the seal in his fist, and the scroll unspooled in a small shower of broken bits of red wax. After studying it for a moment, the legionary spun on his heel and hammered the butt of his halberd three times against the polished stone floor, the boom of each impact ringing from the dark archway of the gate.

Within seconds, Erath heard the soft, echoing slaps of sandaled feet approaching. A robed figure emerged from the darkness of the gate, her features hidden in the shadow of a red cowl. She stopped before the legionary, completely unfazed by his menacing, armored bulk, and took the scroll from him.

“You will follow me,” she said to Erath without sparing him a glance, turning and setting off across the courtyard. Erath hurried after her, looking back over his shoulder to watch the legionary plod back to his place beside his fellow guard.

Erath followed the robed woman as they crossed over another canal and wound deeper into the bustling city. They kept to side streets, avoiding the larger boulevards packed with troop movements and hemmed by rows of barrack tents arrayed on either side.

Before long, Erath began to pick up strong scents on the air. Straw, cut grass, dung, smells that were familiar to any shepherd or beast herder. He heard the low baying of animals, some he recognized, many he did not.

The narrow alley they were walking ended, opening up into a wide open square filled with people tending animals. Massive pack beasts grazed on confined plots. Men and women checked pens of sheep and counted chickens in their coops. It seemed to Erath as though the area had served some other purpose, maybe as a park or public garden, but now had been requisitioned and was being used as part of the greater mobilization.

The comfort of familiarity washed over Erath, setting his mind at ease as they stopped before a tent at the periphery of the square. The robed woman returned the scroll to Erath and pulled the flap aside, gesturing for him to enter and disappearing as soon as he had.

Inside the tent the air was cold, and thick with the spicy tang of incense that made Erath’s eyes water. He wrinkled his nose as he stood at the entrance, squinting to try to study the interior. The only light came from a kneeling figure at the center of the tent, her arms weaving a strand of glowing green runes around a sword that hung suspended in the air above her.

Erath watched the magic, entranced by the elegant dance of the runes as they burned themselves into the blade of the sword and vanished one by one. He remembered watching the shamans of his tribe as a child, when they turned the air into fire for their rituals. He avoided staring directly at the symbols, as even out of the corner of his eye they made his teeth itch. The woman turned her head slightly as the last rune winked out, catching her blade as it fell and rising to her feet.

“Reporting for duty,” Erath snapped to attention and saluted. He extended the scroll to her. “My orders.”

The woman ignored him, moving as though in a trance to set her blade on an arming rack. She lit a lantern at the center of the tent, bathing them both in soft, amber light. She was tall, her dusky skin speaking of a home far from the chill northern reaches Erath hailed from. He saw the same green light from the runes flicker once in her eyes, as she glanced at him.

“Literate?”

Erath hesitated. Her Va-Noxian had a lilting, mellifluous accent, far different from the curt and guttural voices he had heard so far in the capital. The woman’s eyes narrowed.

“You are literate?” she asked again. She looked either fatigued or bored, and Erath couldn’t tell which.

Erath nodded. “I know some of the written word, mistress.”

“Did you read this?” she asked, holding up the scroll Erath realized was no longer in his hand.

“No, mistress,” Erath shook his head.

“Good,” she said sharply, tucking the roll of paper into her sleeve. “I am Tifalenji, and from this moment, my word is law to you. Read, think, and do what I say, when I say, and much unpleasantness will be avoided between us. Do you understand?”

Erath saluted again. “Yes, mistress.”

“Once we are clear of the capital, there will be no more saluting.” Tifalenji took up a ledger from a table, thumbing through its contents.

“May I ask a question, mistress?”

She looked up. “Do not make a habit of it.”

“How may I serve?” Erath asked. “What are to be my duties?”

Tifalenji snapped the ledger shut. “I needed someone versed in the care and upkeep of beasts, young and of hearty enough stock. You are from the plains of Dalamor, yes?”

“Yes, mistress,” he fought to keep anger from his voice. He had nearly had to kill his cousin to win his blood trial and become his chieftain’s second, and now he was back to tending beasts? “I was a shepherd there.”

She offered him a thin smile, and Erath could swear he could hear something snarling behind him, just within earshot. “The creatures under your care here may be more… exotic.”

The flap of the tent was thrown open in a snap of whipping canvas. Erath turned, his hand immediately on the grip of his knife.

“I wouldn’t,” said Tifalenji, as Erath discovered the source of the snarling.

Four drakehounds lined the entrance to the tent, sleek beasts of taut rippling muscle, bony carapace, and razor-sharp claws. Erath was told stories as a boy of when the tribes of the plains were brought into the Empire, that the chief of chiefs had been honored with a single drakehound pup, a gift worth more than three wagons of silver. He had never seen one up close, let alone a whole pack of them.

A woman in gleaming war-plate stood behind them, glowering from behind an armored mask. Her hair was a stunning, crimson red, bound at the top of her head and flowing like a crest down her back. The hounds parted as she stepped forward into the tent, a pair to either side.

“Arrel,” Tifalenji inclined her head. “You made good time, tracker.”

Erath beheld Arrel, still unable to imagine someone owning four drakehounds. “Are you of the nobility, mistress?”

Arrel flicked her eyes to Erath, as gray and cold as her armor, then back to Tifalenji.

“Our blade squire,” said Tifalenji to Arrel before looking at Erath. “We don’t send the nobility to Tokogol.”

“The western frontier,” said Erath. “How did you find Tokogol, mistress?”

“Cold,” Arrel grumbled. Her voice was low, her accent severe.

“I see,” Erath nodded. “And your journey here?”

“Long,” Arrel glanced back at Tifalenji. “Does it always talk this much?”

Erath started. “Have I displeased you, mistress?”

“Fourth,” Arrel called. One of the drakehounds snapped forward from Arrel’s side, placing itself between her and Erath. Barely restrained violence radiated from the beast’s muscled frame. Thin strands of saliva descended from its bony mask, pebbled with froth from a growling throat.

“If you had displeased me, blade squire,” said Arrel, “this hound would have made it known to you. And I am not your mistress.”

“Forgiveness,” Erath took a slow step back. “How would you have me address you, then?”

“Unless necessary, I would have that you not.” She tensed, as though speaking this much had made her throat sore. She flicked her wrist, signaling an end to the discussion.

“There is a quartermaster outside gathering our supplies,” said Tifalenji, handing Erath a requisitions order. “Go and find him.”

Erath exhaled, walking carefully around Arrel and her hounds to exit the tent. He heard Arrel ask a question as he left, the same one he still asked himself.

“Why am I here, runesmith?”

“Never seen a basilisk before, eh, boy?”

Erath barely heard the quartermaster, his attention consumed by the great, lumbering beast before him. A giant saurian, the basilisk’s green flesh was hard as iron, and bulging with bands of dense muscle from its tree-trunk limbs to its long, thick tail. It looked to Erath as though it could crush a man into a paste without ever realizing it had done so.

“What are you used to tending?” the quartermaster asked.

“Sheep,” Erath answered.

“Ah, don’t you fret,” the quartermaster clapped Erath on the back. “Just think of him like a big sheep, then. He’s still a baby so you’ll be fine with ’im. Time hasn’t made ’im mean, yet.”

“This,” Erath looked at the man, “is a baby?”

The quartermaster chuckled. “We use the bigguns to break down castle walls, son.”

Erath glanced at the requisitions order the runesmith had given him. Mercifully it was written in plain terms, mostly numbers, and the quartermaster had helped with anything he couldn’t understand. The basilisk would be carrying the better part of an entire campsite on its back, but it looked like they were carrying much more equipment than would be needed for three people, even with Arrel’s drakehounds.

“Everything in order?” Tifalenji appeared behind Erath. He noticed she was fully armored now, with her rune-etched sword on her back and a canvas rucksack at her feet.

“We’re getting him squared away,” replied the quartermaster. “Most everything but the waterskins are loaded, we’ll be takin’ care of that next and you’ll be on your way.”

“Good,” said the runesmith, checking the height of the sun. “We’ll link with the caravans leaving out the south entrance. We need to be on the road and clear of the city before sunfall.”

“The road?” Erath asked. Ever since he arrived at the capital, Erath had watched the armies and warbands of Noxus, including his own tribe, march to embark on great troop ships at the docks. “We won’t be traveling with the others across the sea?”

The runesmith shook her head. “No, we aren’t finished on the mainland, yet. There’s still someone we need to find first.”

They left the organized chaos of the capital behind. The towering silhouette of the Immortal Bastion lingered on the horizon as Erath, Arrel, and Tifalenji joined a massive procession of troops moving east across the southern steppe of Noxus. Like a gargantuan snake of red banners and dark iron they marched, traversing flat plains that reminded Erath of his home, back in Dalamor.

“There’s just too many of us,” a grizzled line sergeant had told Erath, waiting in the ration line as they camped one night. “The capital’s docks are huge and they could run them day and night—and they are—and it still wouldn’t be enough for the full mobilization.”

“That’s why we are going east?” Erath asked.

The sergeant grunted, smiling at his beaten tin cup as it was filled with stew and a hunk of hard brown bread. “While the rest of them get to share a damp boat’s innards with some rats for company, we get to stretch our legs a bit before we split off to berths across the coast.”

“And then where?” Erath nodded his thanks to the cook as he received his own portion. “Where are all of us going?”

“Nobody’s told you?” the line sergeant scoffed. “We’re going to Ionia, boy.”

Erath stumbled to a halt, his food nearly falling from numb fingers. He felt for his chest, finding the lump of the pendant he wore. Ionia.

“You’re holding up the line,” the sergeant frowned at him.

“The last time…” Erath said quietly. “The war. The empire, they levied half the men of my tribe to go fight.” He looked up at the sergeant. “None of them came back.”

“Sounds like you’re gonna get a chance to get some blood back.” The sergeant pulled the collar of his tunic down, revealing a wicked red scar that branched like lightning across his entire chest. “Magic. A lot of us got scores to settle over there, kid, and we’ve been patient. Now it’s time to collect.”

Erath offered the sergeant a thin smile he didn’t feel, and wandered back to his billet, suddenly not feeling hungry anymore.

The march continued on, brisk and uneventful. As the days went on, more segments of the battle train branched off, heading to ports they were assigned to deploy from. Erath continued to feel isolated from his companions, the runesmith Tifalenji aloof and Arrel hostile, so he focused instead on what he had been seconded from his tribe to do, and cared for the party’s hulking basilisk.

Despite the creature’s immense size and strength, the quartermaster back in the capital had been right. Erath found him docile and receptive to his care, something he hoped with time would extend to Arrel’s drakehounds, though he didn’t hang too much hope on that. The pack practically orbited the armored Noxian at all times, totally obedient to their alpha.

Erath had taken to calling the basilisk Talz, the name of his old herding dog when he had been a boy. The lumbering saurian responded to his new name as Erath led him to graze and kept him in line with the convoy.

A week into their journey, the runesmith gathered the party, announcing that while the main body was continuing east, they would be taking their own path down a southern branch.

“We make for the Bloodcliffs,” said Tifalenji, as Erath watched the convoy slowly shrink in the distance, still an unbroken column of Noxian warriors marching to the coast.

“What’s there?” he asked.

“Not what,” answered the runesmith, “but who.”

Erath nodded, remembering Tifalenji had mentioned someone else before. He looked back at the extra supplies loaded onto Talz’s back. “Who is it?”

“A haughty k’naad,” scoffed Arrel, pouring water from a flask into her palm to allow her hounds to drink. First’s ears perked up at the word, which Erath didn’t know but could guess as to its meaning. Arrel sneered at Tifalenji. “We are wasting our time, we don’t need her.”

“I’ll be the reckoner of that,” the runesmith replied flatly. She glanced at Erath, and sighed through her teeth. “Her name is Marit, blade squire.”

“Marit’s quite keen on reminding anyone within earshot that she was of the nobility before the revolution,” grumbled Arrel. “They stripped her family of their estate and power, though she hardly seems to realize that from talking to her.”

Arrel scanned the landscape. “She went on and on about these wondrous lands her family held.” She shook her head. “What a shithole.”

“She is an elite soldier,” countered Tifalenji. “Experienced and battle-tested. She will be an asset, and that is the end of this conversation.”

The road to the Bloodcliffs cut through arid plains and low, sunbaked hills. The heat was a new experience for Erath, far from the fog-blanketed chill of Dalamor. He took care to ration what water they had as they traveled beneath the glaring sun in a cloudless, blisteringly blue sky.

Arrel paused, and Erath patted Talz’s flank to bring him to a halt as he watched the tracker. She knelt, pressing a palm to the earth. “Something’s close.”

From atop Talz’s back, the runesmith drew a spyglass from her belt, extending the brass tube and looking through it. “Riders ahead,” she confirmed. “And they aren’t Noxian.”

Erath looked, seeing two tiny figures as they crested the top of a hill. He was just able to make out that they were on horseback. His pulse quickened, and his hand fell to the leather-wound haft of the short falchion at his hip. After so long on the road, day after day of monotony, the prospect of a skirmish was refreshingly welcome.

“Second, Third,” Arrel called, and the two drakehounds leapt forward.

“Wait,” said Tifalenji, now looking behind them. “There’s more.”

Erath turned, seeing more figures appear behind them, and then to either side. He barely heard the sharp note of a horn, as they descended the hills toward them.

“Raiders,” Tifalenji drew the runesword on her back. “Form a circle, now.”

The ground began to shake, soft at first but steadily climbing to thunder as the horsemen charged. Erath turned to Talz, trying to find some means to root him to the ground in case the basilisk panicked, and recoiled as Tifalenji struck him across the head.

“Focus!” she hissed.

Erath forgot Talz, pulling his falchion and gripping it tightly. He distanced himself from Arrel and the runesmith, trying to cover his third of the tiny perimeter they made. The raiders were in full view now, lightly armored with billowing cloaks and teal banners streaming from the tips of barbed lances.

The Noxians braced for the charge. Emerald fire lit the runes along Tifalenji’s blade. Arrel’s hounds howled.

At the last second, the horses peeled to either side, sprinting in a circle around them. The dust kicked up by their iron-shod hooves grew into a thick, whirling curtain, rising to cut them off from the world. Erath could just barely make out the silhouettes whipping around them.

The air whistled and Erath leapt to one side as a lance embedded itself where he’d just been standing. He heard Arrel bark a command and one of her hounds leapt into the dust. Tifalenji began chanting, the words hurting Erath’s ears as worms of green light shivered across her blade.

“Say-RAH-dech!” she roared, slashing with her blade and sending a wave of jade lightning through the wall.

Erath couldn’t tell if she hit anything. If Arrel’s hound was still alive. Everything was chaos. Noise. A keening wail split the air. The cyclone caging them shuddered. Erath heard something rip, and leapt back as a jet of dark blood burst from the wall of dust, coating his face and chest with hot crimson.

He stood there. Help them, you idiot.

The dust began to settle, and Erath summoned his courage. He focused on a shadow directly ahead of him and charged with falchion raised and the death cry of his tribe on his lips. He sprinted through the stinging grit, and as he opened his eyes he found what stood before him was no horse.

Whatever it was, its rider had a glaive at his throat in an instant.

“Now, now,” came a voice, smooth and cultured. “My dear steed feasted well today but she may yet have room for more.”

The speartip lifted Erath’s jaw, and he followed it up to the speaker. She was a tall, thin woman, her face hidden behind a mask of iron and black leather. A Noxian banner hung from her glaive, while a second tattered standard Erath didn’t recognize was gathered around her shoulders like a cloak.

She rode confidently upon a lithe, bipedal creature, all sleek muscle and lashing tail, somewhere between a lizard and a bird. Its vicious visage bared its blood-stained fangs in challenge. The dust had cleared now, revealing the dead raiders around them in various states of dismemberment.

Erath felt the penetrating gaze from behind the mask, studying him. Her eyes narrowed in amusement as she dipped her glaive to a dead raider, cutting his banner free with a flick of her wrist. Only then did he see the others dangling from her mount as Tifalenji and Arrel approached.

“Arrel, you icy k’naad!” the Noxian exclaimed, striding out confidently to meet the party. “Where did they dig you out of? Last I heard you were hunting bounties in that wretched stink-pit Zaun.” She shivered theatrically. “Like missing teeth, that city. Hideous!”

“Marit,” Arrel said flatly. Erath glanced at the tracker. Even for Arrel, the greeting seemed cold, and he saw something different in the steel grey of her eyes.

“And who are your friends here?” Marit regarded Erath and Tifalenji. “I find it hard to believe you would just happen to be passing through.”

“Hail,” said Tifalenji, dipping her head in greeting. “Your instincts are true enough. We come in the empire’s service. Our mandate.”

The runesmith handed Marit a scroll. The masked woman unfurled it, her dark eyes flicking up to regard Tifalenji several times as she read it.

“Under penalty of death,” Marit read dramatically, before handing the scroll back to Tifalenji. “Well this all seems to be in order. When do we leave?”

“Now,” answered Tifalenji.

“Fair enough,” Marit eyed Erath. “manservant, eh?”

He hesitated. “Uh, I’m a blade squi—”

“You may address me as ‘my lady,’ manservant,” Marit gestured to her mount. “And this is my glorious steed, the Lady Henrietta Eliza Vaspaysian IV of Orogonthis.” She looked at Erath, narrowing her eyes. “But you do appear quite stupid, so I suppose just Henrietta will suffice.”

Henrietta swung her long, muscled neck in Erath’s direction, breathing out a chittering hiss through her gleaming fangs.

“What does she eat?” asked Erath.

“People who get on my nerves,” said Marit as she turned away toward her pavilion. “Tend to her ends, little man, and speak when spoken to.”

Erath opened his mouth to reply, but Henrietta hissed again, and he bit down on his anger.

Together they worked quickly, striking Marit’s camp and loading it onto Talz. The basilisk bore the weight easily, as though he didn’t even notice the added burden. Erath was beginning to understand how a fully grown one could level fortifications.

“Is everything ready to move?” asked the runesmith.

Erath nodded, and she signaled for them to move. Marit leapt up into a polished leather saddle on Henrietta’s back, binding the Noxian banner to her glaive and the second standard around her neck like a cloak.

“Come on then, Talz!” Erath called, urging the basilisk from where it drank and munched on the soft grasses of the watering ground.

Marit cocked her head to one side. “Wait, he named our pack animal?”

“He did,” said Arrel.

Marit scoffed. “Well, I suppose we can use the idiot’s tears to season the meat when we have to eat it on the trail.”

“Those riders,” said Tifalenji, nodding in the direction where she had watched them vanish over the horizon.

“Yes?” Marit leaned down from her saddle. “What about them?”

“Aren’t you concerned they’ll simply go back to raiding in your absence?”

Marit waved her hand. “Nonsense. These are my ancestral lands. If they choose to be good stewards of them then fine, and if they don’t, I’ll just kill them all when I return. Worry gives you frown-lines.”

A few days’ ride took them from the Bloodcliffs. The runesmith kept their pace brisk, having the party sleep in shifts along the trail and only stopping when absolutely necessary. Erath saw her each night, either on the road or at camp, sitting apart from the others with her eyes intent upon the moon.

They skirted east across the base of low mountains before arriving at their port of call at the Drakkengate, at the first light of dawn. Erath found the docks there to be just as bustling as any other, mired in the same organized chaos of armed mobilization that seemed to be taking place over the entire eastern coast of Noxus. Thousands of warriors, and the countless armorers, cooks, builders, menders, priests, and forge-smiths that attended to them, filed into the holds of great troop ships, ready to unfurl immense crimson sails and dip their oars for the voyage across the sea.

Erath set about hunting down supplies as soon as they arrived. While the ships were already provisioned for soldiers and more common animals for the crossing, their party had accumulated a variety of exotic creatures he was now responsible for. Luckily for Erath, the mandate the runesmith carried granted them swift passage through the congested queues and overruled any of the more obstinate quartermasters. Before midday, they were ready to board.

“There,” Tifalenji pointed toward the docks. “That is our ship. The Atoniad.”

Erath’s eyes fell upon the vessel. The Atoniad was a troop carrier of unmistakably Noxian design, from its strong lines and dark iron plating to the tightly bound red sails, eager to be unleashed and carry the ship forward onto the waves. The largest boat he had ever embarked upon was the river skiff that had borne his tribe to the Immortal Bastion, and comparing that to the Atoniad was like comparing a toothpick to a battle axe.

Lines of men and women were already boarding, filing up gangplanks, while other wider ramps admitted animals and pallets of tools, stone, and lumber.

“I don’t see many soldiers,” said Erath.

“We’ll be traveling with mostly laborers and stonemasons,” said Tifalenji. “The Atoniad is bound for Fae’lor, not the main islands.”

“Fae’lor?” Erath glanced at the runesmith. “We go to the great fortress, then?”

“What’s left of it,” muttered Arrel.

Word had reached as far as Dalamor of the tragedy at Fae’lor. Erath had gathered with the tribe around a fire as the shamans relayed how a cowardly band of Ionians had assaulted the Noxian fortress there. In their desperation, they had unleashed magic that was beyond their power to control, wrecking horrific damage to the defenses, there.

A fortnight later, the tribe had received the call to carry their spears to the capital.

All of their spears.

“We embark,” said Tifalenji. She pointed to the wider access points. “Take the beasts and get them aboard, blade squire.”

Erath dipped his head, looking over at Arrel. “Shall I take the hounds as well?”

All four drakehounds glared at Erath. They somehow managed to snarl at him in the exact same pitch, at the exact same time. A chorus of angry jaws.

“They will remain with me,” Arrel snapped a finger and the pack fell silent.

Erath gathered up the reins for Talz. Marit handed over the reins to Henrietta, favoring her steed with a final caress down her jawline.

“Make sure the good lady has her own accommodations,” called Marit as Erath led the beasts toward the ship. “If you put anything else in with her, she’ll be alone soon enough.”

The open air was cold, and sharp with salt spray. Twelve other ships sailed beside the Atoniad in the squadron, their red sails full and taut with a generous wind that at least for now handled the duty of the oarsmen below decks. Gossip aboard amongst bored soldiers had spread the rumor that they had passed through pirate routes at some point the previous night, though few of them could imagine any corsair fool enough to try their luck against a dozen Imperial warships packed from bow to stern with war-edgy killers.

Erath turned from looking out across the squadron as Arrel approached, nearly saluting before remembering he had been told not to. Arrel ignored the awkwardness. She glanced down, noting how tightly the boy held on to the railing. “Your first passage?”

The blade squire nodded. “Three days at sea, and still another three, they say, until we get to Fae’lor.” He waved a hand at the endless span of churning grey waves stretching all the way to the horizon, broken only by the salt-shrouded shapes of the other warships. “I never thought there could be this much water.”

Arrel grunted, noncommittal.

“You were in the war before,” Erath said, uneasy with the subject. “Ionia, what is it like?”

Arrel did not answer him at once. The tracker stared out over the ocean, reaching down to scratch the sleek, leathery skin behind Second’s bony crestmask. She breathed slowly. “It is a place of beauty, and of death.”

“All of Ionia is just one giant jungle raptor with its head cut off,” Marit appeared from behind them, strutting forward to lounge against the railing. “We decapitated it last time, and now it’s just thrashing about, making a mess, too stupid to realize it’s already dead.”

“I’ve hunted raptors,” said Arrel. “And even headless they can still gut you.”

“So it is war, then?” asked Erath. “Another war with Ionia?”

Marit shrugged. “Damned if I know, but the Grand General sure shoved a lot of boots across the ocean just to rattle swords. Just hope he has enough backbone to let us finish what we start, this time.”

Arrel walked away, and Erath looked back at the fathomless expanse of gently crashing waves. “What is the name of this ocean?” he asked.

“Who cares what it’s called?” Marit leaned over Erath’s shoulder before she stalked off. “It’s ours.”

Erath had never been so grateful to see dry land.

The fortress of Fae’lor grew in size and definition on the horizon before them. The Atoniad had made speed in her voyage to the island, but Erath had discovered he was far from suited for a life on the seas. The heaving, rolling motion of their warship had stolen many meals from his stomach, offered to the ocean in the queasy tribute of abrupt sickness. Everything was soaked, coated in a crackling crust of salt that burned his skin.

He had kept below decks for the most part, ensuring that the creatures in his care endured the passage with as much comfort as he was able to offer. Talz seemed fine, eating regularly and spending the majority of the time in his pen, sleeping. Lady Henrietta, however, had required more diligent attention. A nimble and energetic beast, Marit’s steed was clearly unhappy with the confines of the ship. Erath took extra care during her feedings, to ensure he did not become the meal himself, and looked forward to getting Henrietta off the Atoniad where she could stretch her legs.

When the call for land had gone out from the scouts at the ship’s bow, Erath hurried above decks to see. The top deck was crowded with Noxians eager for their own view. At first it was little more than a smudge in the distance, faintly more defined than the hazy stripe where the water met the sky, but the closer they came, the more distinct it grew. Erath glimpsed what appeared to be banks of fog surrounding the island, tinted a ruddy brown that upon closer inspection became red.

Fae’lor was surrounded by Noxian ships.

There were concentric circles of vessels ringing the island, defense pickets that were constantly shifting. The Atoniad was halted by the outermost patrols, a pair of frigates that lashed themselves to the larger vessel with boarding hooks as squads of naval soldiers came aboard.

Erath noted their stern countenances as they inspected the troop ship, weapons in hand as they pored over the captain’s mandate and manifest. They scoured every deck, and the blade squire watched as a trio of robed blood mages studied every soldier onboard, softly chanting as they looked every man and woman in the eye.

“What are they looking for, mistress?” he asked Tifalenji.

“Signs of subterfuge,” replied the runesmith. “Deceptions. Wild magic.”

To Erath it all seemed strange. “But we are all Noxian soldiers, on an imperial ship. Does this not seem paranoid?”

“Patience, boy,” said Tifalenji. “When we dock at Fae’lor, you will understand.”

After they had been over every inch of the Atoniad, a contingent of the soldiery remained aboard while the others returned to their frigate, and the ship was cleared to advance to the next ring of the blockade. The inspections and checks repeated with each checkpoint, the guard detail rotating each time the Atoniad was stopped. Erath had been poked, prodded, and scrutinized so many times that when they finally had the harbor in sight, he questioned whether any of his own comrades trusted him, or anyone for that matter.

And then he got a better look at Fae’lor, and understood why.

The fortress had been gutted. He could make out only echoes of the great ramparts that had once stood at its heart, the formerly impregnable fortifications reduced to shattered remnants that rose from the ground like blackened, broken teeth. But the extent of the devastation went far beyond the walls and towers. The very land itself was broken open, torn apart and ripped out, bearing all the hallmarks of some incredible natural disaster.

The Atoniad drew up to her berth, and Noxians leapt to work both aboard and on the dock as soon as she came to a halt. Craftsmen rushed out to their assigned posts, while raw materials and supplies were offloaded and taken ashore. Erath went below decks, trying to put the shock of the island from his mind as he went about getting Talz and Henrietta off the Atoniad.

Standing out against the herds of livestock and more mundane pack animals, Erath led his beasts up a wide ramp leading from the ship’s hold. Waiting as those ahead of him were processed and allowed into Fae’lor, he stood transfixed as he watched crews descend over the wreckage of another warship like a swarm of furious ants.

Great winches and chains hauled the wreck up out of the water, a piece at a time. Teams scrambled down within, pulling out the pale, bloated shapes of the fallen in droves. She was more than twice the tonnage of the Atoniad, and her hull had been broken in two, like a stick over a man’s knee.

What kind of power could have possibly done such a thing?

Erath thought back to when he stood in the shadow of the Immortal Bastion. The certainty he felt there, seeing the empire marching to war, that there was nothing in creation that could possibly stand against them.

For the first time, seeing what had befallen Fae’lor with his own eyes, he felt doubt creep into his heart.

Finally he reached the end of the ramp, stepping from soaked wood onto cracked rock. The air was thick, humid, and dusty. It smelled of spice, things Erath couldn’t place as he realized, at long last, that he was there.

This was Ionia.

Erath lost track of how long he was standing there, or how the leather of Henrietta’s reins was sliding through his fingers. By the time he was aware of it, Marit’s mount was loping into the camp.

“Hey!” The blade squire started to pursue her, before looking back at Talz. “Stay,” he warned, drawing his knife and pinning the basilisk’s reins to the ground with it before sprinting after Henrietta.

“Whoa,” he called to the roving saurian as she stalked between a line of billet tents. She stopped, her long neck swiveling to regard Erath. Henrietta hissed at him through the gleaming metal of her chanfron, what Marit called “her jewelry.” Enclosing her face and skull, it was part protective helm, part weapon, accentuating her already vicious fangs with sharpened iron blades.

“Easy, my lady,” Erath coaxed, arms wide as he slowly closed the distance between them. “Easy, now.”

“Control that thing!” bellowed a voice from a group nearby. Both Henrietta and the blade squire shot them a hostile glare.

“She’s been cooped up on a ship for days,” Erath barked at the soldiers. He took advantage of Henrietta’s diverted attention and grabbed hold of her reins, wrapping the leather around his forearm. “She needs exercise, you want to be it? Then stay out of the way!”

Erath stared down the soldiers and watched them disperse, only registering after a time that the runesmith was calling for him. He went back to gather up Talz’s reins and guided his charges along, tugging the basilisk forward and holding Henrietta back as he headed toward where Tifalenji waited with Arrel and Marit. He saw new tension in the runesmith’s companions as he approached, a tightness in their postures that hadn’t been there before.

“Take your time,” Marit sneered, snatching Henrietta’s reins from Erath. Arrel squatted down, fingers brushing over the rubble strewn over the ground as her drakehounds orbited her.

“This was old magic,” muttered the tracker. “Something long-sleeping, now roused.”

“Where did you learn to sense magic?” Marit arced a skeptical eyebrow.

“Here,” Arrel answered, barely above a whisper.

“Oh joy,” replied Marit. She glanced at Tifalenji expectantly. “Well?”

“The last member of our expedition is here, at Fae’lor,” the runesmith replied. “We simply need to find her.”

“Just look for a dueling pit,” said Arrel. “She won’t be far from the scent of blood.”

Erath nodded, growing accustomed to gleaning what he could from inferences and cryptic words. “Does she have a beast that I am to care for as well?”

“Oh, manservant,” Marit shook her head. “Teneff? She is the beast.”

Arrel was right. While Fae’lor was in the midst of its reconstruction, it still remained a Noxian military camp. They followed the sound of ringing steel, sharper than the rhythm coming from the forges’ hammers, leading them to where the warriors on the island trained.

Past rows of billet tents were dug a series of shallow pits, each of them occupied by a pair of dueling soldiers. With blunted swords, wooden staves, or bare hands they sparred, but one in particular had attracted a crowd. The party had to muscle their way through the watching soldiers to catch a glimpse into the pit.

Two Noxians circled each other in full war-plate. One wielded a training sword and buckler, the other a heavy iron hook mounted on a length of chain. The soldiers watching cheered the pair as they measured distance and exchanged feints.

The swordsman sensed an opening. He lunged forward, flicking his buckler into his opponent’s face while slashing low with his sword. The other fighter leapt back, just shy of the blade, while throwing her hooked chain to ensnare the man’s shield arm. She whipped her arm down, wrenching the swordsman forward into a brutal headbutt. He dropped to the mire like a stone, blood spraying from a ruined nose.

“That’s first blood to me,” she crowed, and the onlookers erupted in cheers.

“That was dirty, Teneff,” the swordsman snarled, pawing blood from his mashed nose with a wicked laugh. “Let’s make it second blood. I’m not done with you yet.”

“First blood was the agreement,” Teneff repeated, with no compromise in her voice. “We need you in the line, Cestus.”

The swordsman barked out a swear and stood, trudging up out of the pit. Teneff wound her chain around her forearm, looking up to find Erath and the party staring down at her. Her eyes widened in confusion. “Marit? Arrel?”

Marit chuckled. “Still cracking skulls, eh, Ten?”

Teneff spat a gobbet of phlegm onto the ground. “Some of us never stopped,” she said with a grin, taking the hand Arrel offered her to pull her up out of the pit.

Erath backed out of her way as she climbed out. Teneff bore the hallmarks of a shield-breaker, a warrior of the line at home when her enemy was within arm’s reach. Scars crisscrossed any flesh not covered in leather and iron armor, tales of blood and honor etched into her over a lifetime of battle. He wondered how many of the scars she bore were earned here in Ionia.

“The last time I saw either of you,” said Teneff, “we were all—”

“Here,” said Marit. Quiet descended between the soldiers for a few moments. There was a bond between them, Erath could see that clearly. But there was a void there as well, something unspoken, or even missing. He had lived around soldiers long enough to know not to prod.

“Well,” said Teneff, breaking the silence. “If you’re all coming from Valoran, then you’ve been eating ship’s slop for days. Our cook’s no artist, but they’re a damn sight better than that. Come.”

The sun had begun to sink into the horizon, painting the sky in dappled bands of gold, orange, and scarlet, drifting down into indigo. They made their way through the mess tent and then found seats around a fire as the air started to chill. The women talked amongst themselves, of what they had done since last they served beside each other, and of the old wounds endured together. Erath remained silent, and listened.

“And you, boy,” said Teneff, her attention shifting to the blade squire. “You blooded? Fought your principal yet?”

Erath straightened. “I served my principal, yes.”

Her aspect became serious, analytical. “Where?”

“It was a border skirmish west of the Dalamor plains,” Erath answered. “A quick action, pretty light.” He looked to each of them, seeing that his answer had not been enough. This was not the ignorant voyeurism of the civilian, eager to satisfy some fanciful idea of what it was like to fight in a war they would never experience. These were veterans, warriors who may find themselves beside him in the line, needing to know what he had seen and how he had carried himself.

“It was a shallow expansion through a fertile valley,” he continued. “They were big boys, farming stock, but they were brought up to till the soil, not turn it red. Once we got within a rapid drumbeat, running charge, we closed, rolled up their right side double fast. Opened them up quite quickly.”

“Any of them left afterward,” asked Arrel, “to till that soil?”

Erath shook his head. “We tried. After their elders came around, we brought in others to help them take up the work. Harvest needed planting, no time to wait.”

Marit tilted her head. “And how many of those big farm boys did you make the soil red with, eh?”

“Leave it alone,” said Tifalenji.

“I was rearguard,” Erath shrugged. “By the time the lines rotated to me, they were already broken. We mostly just finished off those too wounded to save, and dug graves.”

The memory surfaced in Erath’s mind without asking. Trudging through the aftermath of a broken shield wall, feeling someone take hold of his ankle. Looking down, seeing a man who had taken a spear thrust to the belly, croaking at him in words he didn’t know, but a message he understood clear enough.

Putting his speartip to the man’s throat. The man tilting his head back to accept it.

“When was this?” asked Teneff.

“This past spring,” Erath answered.

“An infant!” exclaimed Marit.

“I said leave it alone,” the runesmith growled. “He’s here to tend beasts, nothing more.”

Marit chuckled, her eyes narrowed in amusement. Teneff eyed Tifalenji. “What of you then, rune-shaper? Where have you served?”

“Far from here,” she answered, and the odd light in her eyes convinced Erath that was as much as they would hear of her experiences.

Sleep was a glorious thing to a soldier. Any span of uninterrupted rest was precious, rivaling a full belly or a pair of well-made boots to a fighting man or woman. Erath had tried to adjust to the endless rolling and pitching of the Atoniad, but sleep had only come to him in fits and starts. Back on solid ground, with his cloak laid out on a flat, dry patch near the animal pens and his duties done, the blade squire rested his head against his pack and savored the prospect of sleeping through the next handful of hours before the early morning feedings came.

It felt as though he had no more than blinked before he heard the voice, sharp and cold as the edge of the knife he felt against his neck.

“Do as I say, in silence, or I will cut your throat.”

Erath opened his eyes. Dawn’s light was still hours away, the moon a thin silver sickle overhead as he was jerked to his feet. His knife had been taken. They walked, Erath careful to keep his movements slow and hands in view as he was led to the edge of the camp.

A huddle of figures stood ahead. He heard the low snarling of hounds as they approached, the silhouettes materializing into Arrel and Marit with the kneeling figure of the runesmith between them.

“What are you doing in Ionia, boy?” demanded the voice as Erath was shoved to his knees beside Tifalenji. He was alert enough to recognize the voice behind him as Teneff’s.

“I—”

“He knows nothing,” said Tifalenji calmly. Teneff lifted the knife from Erath’s throat and rounded upon the runesmith.

“And what do we know about you, eh?” Teneff looked to her fellow veterans. “Documents can be forged, mandates concocted.”

“My mandate is quite genuine,” said Tifalenji, her calm eerie to Erath, “as is the power you are flirting with opposing.”

Marit tilted her head. “Does the boy even know who you say you’re hunting? Who you would have us hunt?”

“He knows what has been necessary for him to know, and nothing more.”

“Then perhaps it’s time he knew,” Teneff looked down at Erath. “You seek a ghost. A warrior who died in honor as a hero to Noxus. Our comrade.” She gestured to Arrel and Marit. “Our sister!”

“She lives,” said the runesmith.

“Lies!” Teneff hissed. “Tell me why I should believe a word from your mouth and not kill you right here?”

“Because the powers to which I answer do not make those mistakes. If they say she lives, then she lives. You all served alongside her in service of the empire. Now the empire commands that we find her, and bring her back to them. My authority supersedes that of the garrisons here, they do not know of our task, nor shall they.”

“What proof do you have of any of this?” demanded Marit.

“Her blade,” Tifalenji sighed. The women stiffened.

“What of it?” hissed Teneff.

“Did you know she tried to destroy it?” asked the runesmith. She drew in a deep breath, and her eyes pulsed emerald. “She failed, and the magic that infused it cried out at the desecration. My masters heard it, and they saw who was responsible, as clearly as if they were standing in the room with her. That is how we know.”

“If she yet lives,” said Teneff, “then she is a deserter, the very crime you now ask us all to commit. The punishment for which is death.”

Tifalenji met Teneff’s withering gaze. “Succeed in this task, aid me in hunting her down and return her for judgment in Noxus, and no censure will befall you. Look into yourselves, all that you sacrificed in this place, and tell me that her treason does not wound you. Tell me you would turn your backs on seeing justice done, and the wayward answer for the life she has led these past years.”

A dark silence hung over the gathering. Tension radiated from Teneff, Marit, and Arrel, the threat of violence balanced on a knife’s edge. Erath fought his nerves, the simmering rage of secrets and the idea he may die here, on Fae’lor, with no inkling at all as to why.

“We will go with you.”

All eyes fell on Arrel, her first words since Erath had been brought to them. Marit rounded on the tracker. “You speak for all of us, now?”

“I do,” Arrel said flatly. She cleared her throat, the effort sounding almost pained to Erath. “Because we are soldiers, all of us. And a soldier does their duty. But more than that, she was a sister to us. And sisters deserve answers.”

Marit glared at Arrel, her dark eyes slits of intensity, but she relented. “Answers,” she repeated.

Teneff gritted her teeth, looking to the other veterans who gave her solemn nods. She hauled the runesmith to her feet by her collar, but did not release her. “At the first inkling that what you have told us here are lies, witch, I will take your head.”

“I speak only the truth,” answered Tifalenji. “And more now that we can tarry no longer than we already have. We must cross into the heart of the First Lands, and we must do so now.”

Tifalenji looked to Erath now for the first time. “What I have said to them bears the same truth to you, blade squire. Go with us along this path, attend and serve, and you will be rewarded.”

“I am a loyal warrior of Noxus,” Erath proclaimed. “I do my duty, and need not shadowy promises or the threat of a slit throat to do it. The empire bids I serve you, so I do. I only ask one question.”

Tifalenji regarded Erath soberly. “Ask it.”

“Who is it?” asked Erath. “Who are we hunting?”

The runesmith drew her sword. “She may call herself something different now, some adoptive name for her new life in the First Lands.”

The runes Erath had watched her etch along the blade leapt from the iron into the sky, like a trail leading off into the dark mystic land that loomed ahead of them.

“But in Noxus, her name was Riven.”

Rumored to have never lost in one-on-one combat, Xin Zhao spent much of his life fighting an uphill battle. Some of his earliest memories are of the Viscero, an Ionian fishing boat he served aboard off the coast of Raikkon. A diligent cabin boy, he obeyed his elders’ every request—from cleaning grimy decks to fixing tangled nets—and enjoyed a peaceful existence… until the day they unknowingly ventured too deep into foreign waters.

A pair of privateer ships from Noxus chased down the smaller vessel. Their commander cited the glory of the empire as he boarded, claiming the Viscero and its crew as his rightful property. They were mostly ageing fishermen, unfit for military service, but they would be taken back to Noxian territory regardless.

After enduring a tough journey across the open ocean, Xin Zhao found himself in a strange new land. There was no delicate beauty in the waters here, no magic in the trees. Imposing gateways and fortified stone walls unlike anything he had ever seen lined the streets, and the people were crammed into every available inch of space. He learned this was the capital of Noxus, and it was from here that a man known as “Darkwill” ruled the vast empire. Separated from the rest of the Viscero’s crew, and with no means of returning home, Xin Zhao entered the service of the man who had taken him prisoner.

His skill with a spear did not go unnoticed, and soon he was promised a better life—with meals served on plates—in exchange for his martial prowess. Noxus celebrated strength, and his patron deemed him to be a strong fighter.

Having nothing to lose, the young man accepted. He shed his ragged clothes for crude armor, and entered the Reckoning arenas.

Truly, this was a strange form of entertainment. Mighty warriors, known by even mightier titles, fought each other before ravenous crowds, who cheered for displays of skill and showmanship as often as they did for blood. Xin Zhao, taking the name “Viscero”, was catapulted into success. His bouts soon filled the seats of every arena… and also the pockets of his sponsors. In only a few short years, Viscero became a celebrated name—one that audiences adored, and other Reckoners came to fear.

But this good fortune did not last.

Beyond the distractions of the Reckoner circuit, the empire faced difficult times. Hostile nations encroached upon its territories, provoking rebellion all along the Noxian frontier. It was rumored that Darkwill and his advisors had offered a fortune in gold for the private release of mercenaries, prisoners, and Reckoners alike, to be conscripted into the empire’s warhosts. With little more than a handshake, Xin Zhao and his fellows were bought out, and placed on a transport ship heading west.

Here, at the coastal fortress of Kalstead, the names and reputations of even the most well-known Reckoners counted for little. They were hurled into battle against the elite forces of King Jarvan III of Demacia, who was determined to curb Noxian influence on Valoran… and Xin Zhao quickly learned that war was unlike any arena duel.

While many of the former Reckoners deserted in the face of inevitable defeat, Xin Zhao held his ground, staining his spear with the blood of hundreds. When the king’s Dauntless Vanguard—some of whom were silently impressed by his skill—finally surrounded him, still he refused to run. Xin Zhao stood tall, welcoming his execution.

However, Jarvan thought differently. Unlike the arena crowds, the king of Demacia took no pleasure in needless killing. He granted the defeated Noxians their freedom, if they would swear to leave Kalstead in peace. Surprised by this show of mercy, Xin Zhao thought about what awaited him back in Noxus. He could return to a society where his life had meant little beyond the gold he earned for his patrons… or he could fight for those who embodied the virtues to which he, himself, aspired.

Compelled by honor, he knelt before Jarvan III, pledging himself to the king’s service.

In the decades that followed, Xin Zhao proved his loyalty time and again. As a seneschal of the royal household, he became bodyguard and advisor not only to his friend and master, but also to the king’s son—young Prince Jarvan, who would one day inherit the crown. Xin Zhao’s path to becoming a Demacian may have been unusual, yet never once did he falter in his commitment to the kingdom and its ideals. This was not from a sense of duty, he reasoned, but by choice.

However, his greatest test came when a mage insurrection threatened the capital. With the nefarious Sylas of Dregbourne wreaking havoc throughout the Great City, Xin Zhao stood ready to defend his liege, but the king commanded him to leave on a personal mission of critical importance. With a heavy heart, Xin Zhao reluctantly obeyed.

It was only when the palace bells tolled that he knew the true gravity of his mistake. By the time the seneschal fought his way back, King Jarvan III was dead.

Xin Zhao believed his life would be forfeit… but instead, Prince Jarvan reminded him of the pledge he had once made, and accepted a renewal of his service to the kingdom.

For now, more than ever, Demacia needs its seneschal. The throne lies vacant, as the other noble houses fear that the prince may not yet be fit to rule. Xin Zhao has no such concerns—he is utterly devoted to Jarvan, and determined to guide him in the perilous days to come.

No one knew who lit the fire, but we saw the plume of smoke from far away.

The Winter’s Claw had driven our tribe north, where the land was so harsh that even our warmother Olgavanna shivered through the first night. Our elnuk herd died on the second. At least we had food for the third.

But even that feast was a memory as we climbed the mountain with no peak. Legless Kriek called it “the Half-Mountain of Old Ornn.” Our shaman had lost his mind, but Olgavanna bade us carry the fool. He had convinced her that our survival lay at the source of that mysterious smoke. The rest of us believed we were marching to our doom.

The slopes of the half-mountain were a tortured landscape of black stone. We found the ruins of a forgotten city shown on no map—now just a maze of charred foundations. Kriek, perched atop Boarin’s shoulders, insisted it was once named Hearth-Home.

Dark clouds to the east flashed lightning and winds carried the stench of wet fur and sweet decay. Our scouts did not return. We all knew what this meant, but none of us wished to utter the word “Ursine” aloud.

We climbed until we stood at the edge of a vast crater. Then, Kriek saw the fire. This was odd, because Legless Kriek was also blind.

In the center of that basin was the source of the smoke venting into the sky. Olgavanna reasoned that at least the steep crater walls offered respite from the howling winds, and so we descended into what would likely be our grave. The smoldering terrain proved difficult to navigate, but any halt would mean to bow our heads and accept slaughter.

Then we saw the furnace. The domed structure was the only one that looked hand-made. It was crafted like the head of a great ram, with tufts of goat-grass in the spaces between the smooth flagstones. In the ram’s mouth was a flame so bright, we could find it with our eyes closed.

We huddled around it for warmth while Olgavanna laid out the plans for our last stand. It was better to die on our feet, than shivering and huddled in the cold. Most of us were farmers, builders, menders, and few were skilled in combat like the other tribes. We cared for our elderly, our sick, and our children. Now we were far from the aid of the Avarosans—but war craves only blood and bones.

We could only ever stand a chance against the Winter’s Claw. If the Ursine struck first, our defense would be terrifyingly short. That hideous legion of half-bear abominations would overwhelm us.

And soon enough, we heard their battle-growls growing louder, along with the clamor of their footsteps. We smelled their stench. Hundreds descended the cliffs, like shadows twisting down the basalt slopes. We fashioned spears from our stretchers, and sharpened our carving knives on the flint. We would minister the Rite of the Lamb to our elderly and wounded, and the rest of us would dance with the Wolf. It would all be over by morning.

No one saw who stoked the fire, but it grew so hot that we needed to back away. Then the furnace spoke, its voice like crackling logs.

“Volibear is near,” it said. “Seek shelter now.”

“There is no shelter to seek,” Olgavanna replied to the fire in the forge. We knew not in whose presence we stood. “Enemies are at our heels. The Ursine are flanking us.”

“The Ursine…” and the forge grew hotter at these words, “…will be stopped. The other problems are your own.” The goat-grass caught fire. The flagstones grew red hot around the edges, then toward their centers. Steam sizzled from the cracks.

Some shed their clothes to seek reprieve as the temperature rose. Others fainted. The next wave of blistering heat dropped us all to our knees, gasping for air. “I never thought I’d see the day!” cried Kriek, weeping tears of joy.

Stone began to drip like candlewax. Masonry flowed down the base of the structure. The domed top of the forge melted inward, pulling the rest of the outer shell into a molten pool.

A flash of orange light blinded us, briefly silhouetting a humanoid figure. Then, a geyser of flame spouted into the air, drops of molten rock hardened on the ground at our feet. Where the massive forge had stood, there was now a hulking beast, its form blurred by waves of heat. There it was, the forgotten legend Kriek always told us about—Old Ornn, as tall as three frost pines. The ancient forge-master cooled rapidly into fur and form, lava dribbling down his chin and hardening into a braided beard. His eyes were glaring embers. In one hand he carried a hammer, in the other he hefted an anvil with equal ease.

We gathered behind our warmother. Olgavanna gripped Fellswaig, her true-ice axe, and approached Ornn. “If the Ursine are your foes, we will fight by your side,” she said. Then, in a gesture unbecoming of an iceborn warmother, she bent the knee and laid her weapon at Ornn’s feet. Fellswaig’s true-ice melted, revealing an ordinary bronze and iron axe beneath.

I had never seen true-ice melt. No one had ever seen true-ice melt. We felt it wise to join Olgavanna in her kneeling.

Ornn grunted. “Stand up. Kneeling is death.” He looked to the gathering thunderstorm swirling overhead. “I will deal with the Ursine. Do not follow me.”

He lumbered toward the advancing horde, who charged forward with vicious speed. We could see his fire reflected in their large eyes. Boarin hoisted the old shaman higher onto his shoulders. “Old Ornn swinging his hammer, he pounds valleys from mountains,” the legless fool half-sung.

We watched in stunned silence as the creature stood alone against the Ursine. With a roar, he brought his hammer down onto the ground, and a fissure cracked toward the advancing army, stopping just short of their vanguard. Spouts of lava and sulfur jetted into the sky, hardened fire rained down on the half-bear warriors.

Whatever Old Ornn was, he fought with the hot blood of the earth.

Behind the Ursine, giant chunks of slag broke through the ground, cutting off their retreat. Ornn charged and smashed them with more swings of his hammer. Still, they attacked with the viciousness of ten berserkers each.

But we knew when Ornn reached their rearguard, for there was a deafening explosion—the slag wall shattered, and Ursine flew through the air in contorted arcs of burning flesh and fur.

The sky darkened with ash. Columns of smoke rose to clash with the menacing thunderclouds, and bolts of lightning lanced through the haze. The world grew eerily still as the Thousand-Pierced Bear itself took to the battlefield. We could see its telltale shape: spears, swords, tusks, all were stuck in its hide. Lightning followed in its wake.

And it laughed.

The answering blare of the horn shook our insides. Lava bled from the black cliffs, rivers of fire flowed down the slopes, rushing toward the valley basin, and formed a surging wave. Bolts of lightning stabbed back at the cliffs, to cauterize the wounds in the rock, and a thick, caustic fog blanketed the entire caldera. We saw only blue-white bolts and hellish crimson explosions filtered by the thick vapor. The heat from below the ground scorched the soles of our boots.

Then we saw that surging wave of flame form into a great stampeding ram. Ornn charged at the molten beast, catching the thing he had named as Volibear between his shoulder and the lava-ram.

The force of the explosion toppled us all. The legless shaman was thrown a hundred paces from Boarin’s shoulders, laughing the whole time.

We waited all night for the great cataclysm to overtake us, but it never came. We only heard the roars of the Thousand-Pierced Bear, and the gruff bellowing of the forge ram.

When the pall lifted in the late morning, we saw that the slopes around us were covered in chunks of hissing scree, and unnatural columns of crusted basalt rose at odd angles from the ground.

As we realized what stood before us, we recoiled in horror and awe. The Ursine were frozen in stone, their faces petrified masks of agony.

We did not see any sign of Ornn, nor Volibear. We had no time to look, either. The hunting horns of the Winter’s Claw announced their approach. We picked up our weapons and dug in our heels. What remained of our clothes were scorched tatters of cloth, but our skin no longer prickled with cold.

Olgavanna’s hair had been singed away, her muscular back branded with heat. Her once true-ice axe was bronze and iron, as naked as we were. She had never looked stronger.

Our blood boiled. Our stomachs growled. We were raw and blistered, bare and exposed. We smeared our chests with ash in the shape of a hammer, and ram horns upon our faces.

We sang and chanted in the memory of last night, with the words of mad old Kriek.

We knew who lit the fire. The Winter’s Claw would know, too.

Under the setting sun, hidden behind a dense thicket, a young lady stands with large black bows in her silvery blue hair, complimented by golden ornaments and an elegantly tailored dress. Her hands grip a pair of giant spectral scissors. It has been weeks—months, maybe—since she first arrived on the western continent. The land here paints a vast horizon, the biggest she has ever seen, but Gwen has one thing on her mind:

The Black Mist.

She has tracked it here all the way from the Isles, stopping it wherever she could. Not far off in the distance sits a small cobblestone farmhouse. A chimney puffs out smoke. Foggy windows begin to glow with the reflection of candlelight. A wooden door swings open and two boys run out, each holding a doll. They chase one another across the farm, laughing and shouting words of battle. In this moment, they are no longer children and their toys no longer cloth and string. They are kings and their toys are brave warriors, fighting evil to defend their kingdoms.

Gwen sighs. She thinks of her maker’s home, not too different from the one before her now. She remembers how it felt to play without a worry in the world. Back when she was a toy doll herself, back when her maker was happy and safe...

The pain always hits first. Gwen clutches her chest, and then she sees it. From the woods to the east, it comes: thin tendrils of blackened mist, coiling over each other to form almost familiar shapes. Their contorted hands claw for life under the weight of piercing screams. The boys drop their toys and run.

Gwen cannot bear to hear their cries. Not those of the Black Mist—that she has heard many times—but of the children. They are innocent. They deserve joy.

She leaps out of the thicket. Her scissors swing high above her head, white wisps flowing from their closed blades. As her dress twirls, she slashes in a downward arc, ripping a slew of unsuspecting Black Mist wraiths asunder.

“Ha!” Gwen shouts. “Took you quite long enough. Scared of me, are you?”

The wraiths turn their attention to Gwen and screech through jagged maws.

Gwen looks to the stunned children, crouched behind a fallen tree. Her voice softens. “Don’t worry. I won’t let them hurt you.”

The wraiths swarm. Somber cries fill the air. Dark, ruinous clouds materialize out of the once gentle sky, surrounding Gwen. The boys huddle close.

Gwen opens her scissors. For a breath, the wraiths stand still. Gwen seizes her chance and dashes forward. She cuts too fast for the naked eye. Tufts of darkness appear and fade, sheared out of existence by Gwen’s magical blades. One, two, three seconds later, and only a small handful of the Black Mist’s servants remain.

Gwen catches her breath, one hand on her knee, the other holding her scissors nose-down in the dirt. Ripped threads of her dress sway in the wind. Her eyes scan for the collapsed tree. Two pairs of frightened eyes peek out. She turns her attention back to the wraiths. “I won’t let them down,” she says to herself. “I promised I wouldn’t let anyone down.”

She plucks a few needles out of her pocket and throws them upward. With a spin, she smacks a hand down on the ground. The needles, as if on command, fall into place and form a circle around Gwen. She closes her eyes and whispers, “Hallowed be my mist.”

Threads of mist, white with glints of light, flow from each needle. One boy covers his eyes. The other looks on. This mist is different. It feels quiet, warm, safe even? Its threads swirl and blend neatly, the work of a master seamstress. Soon, Gwen is shrouded by a protective fog.

A single wraith, brave or desperate, dives into this mysterious domain. The others corral nearby, eager to follow. Inside, Gwen dances circles around her foe. She dodges every claw, every swipe, chuckling between the clangs of her scissors.

Another wraith enters. Another chuckle echoes.

From the outside, both boys watch in awe. Who is she? What is she?

To them, it appears easy, but Gwen knows these wraiths are relentless. She needs to end this. Gritting her teeth, she swings her scissors, slicing another wraith in two before setting her weapon aside. She draws her last needles and, channeling all the magic she can muster, shoots them forward. They fly from the shroud into the hollow chests of the wraiths.

Gwen does not chuckle. She lets out a triumphant yell as the wraiths burst and vanish, leaving only needles on the dirt.

A cool breeze tickles Gwen’s glistening brow as all the mist fades. She grabs her scissors and needles, and exhales. Her eyes turn back to the fallen tree where the children now sit.

Gwen approaches them. “Are you alright?”

A grass-stained face looks at her and nods. “You’re amazing!” the other boy exclaims. He drops his torn doll to the ground where another already lies. “Not like us,” he mutters under his breath. “We can’t do nothin’.”

Gwen frowns. She senses their pain. They were helpless, and they have every right to be sad and angry, yet she can’t help but see the broken dolls and feel hurt herself.

“Who are—” one boy begins. “Will you stay with us?” the other blurts out.

Gwen wonders for a second before a bedraggled woman, short of breath, rushes out and embraces the children.

“My darlings! I’m so glad you’re safe,” she says, tears flowing down her face.

“Excuse me, miss,” Gwen says politely. “Who are you?”

“Oh, you’ll have to forgive me,” the woman replies. “Where are my manners?” She wipes her eyes, sees Gwen in full for the first time, and hesitates.

“She’s our mom, duh!” a child says. The woman nods and kisses her son.

“Thank you,” the woman says to Gwen, her voice quavering. “I don't know what those things were, or who you are, for that matter... but you saved my boys, and that’s enough for me.” Her hands reach toward Gwen, palms open—a sign of gratitude.

Gwen looks at the mother’s hands, the calluses on her fingers and the nicks in her nails. She sees her apron, its front pocket holding a near-empty spool with thread trailing toward the cobblestone house. Gwen eyes the broken dolls again and smiles knowingly. Watching the mother’s arms wrapped around her children, she hears laughter. Its sweet tones of happiness and relief remind Gwen of something stronger than the children’s pain.

Love.

And not just a pure, innocent kind, but one born out of sacrifice. Gwen steals a glance at the distant horizon, remembering her maker. She lays her scissors down and picks up the children’s dolls, setting them in their mother’s hands.

“Oh, these silly toys I made for them,” the woman says.

“Why, I was once a silly toy, just like these,” Gwen says. “But I was brought to life by magic.”

“Magic! What magic?” a boy asks.

“Well, I’m not entirely sure,” Gwen thinks aloud, “but the person who had that magic was my maker, you see, and the sacrifices she made came from a very special place. A joyful, loving place.”

Gwen turns to the woman. “Your mother might know.”

The woman and her children stare at Gwen, confused.

“I’m sorry,” Gwen says to them, knowing the Black Mist is still out there. “I must get going.” She grabs her scissors with one hand and flicks out two threads with the other. They float in the air, two precious heartstrings, before finding homes in the dolls’ torn fabric, sewing their rips together.

“Wow!” one boy says, lifting his mended toy up high. His brother imitates Gwen’s flicking motion at his own doll, hoping it’ll somehow animate on its own. “I wish I had magic,” he says, eyes wide.

Gwen looks at the mother, whose love is reflected in how tight she holds her children, and sees the brothers’ joy, listening to their renewed laughter as they play with their dolls.

“You do,” Gwen whispers before turning to leave the family behind.