LoL Universe Indexing and Search

Sona’s earliest memories are of the Ionian monastery where she was raised, in the province of Galrin. The monks, along with kindhearted volunteers from the local villages, took in any orphans or foundlings left at the front gates, and made sure that they would want for nothing.

As a young girl, Sona was considered shy and quiet, until it became apparent that she couldn’t speak at all. But she was unusually thoughtful and attentive, and the other children tended to seek her out whenever they needed comfort, their playful smiles quickly restored.

And Sona discovered other ways to express herself.

Unlike her playmates, she had one possession when she was first found—a curiously strung instrument, packed into a plain wooden case. None of the visiting musicians or teachers knew what it was… though that did not stop several of them from attempting to procure it for themselves, one way or another. Instead, Sona taught herself how to play it, and her simple, beautiful melodies moved even the most skeptical listener to tears of joy.

However, dark times were approaching. The foreign empire of Noxus had begun landing troops in the northern provinces, and the monks decided to evacuate their young charges to safety before the invasion reached Galrin. After their caretakers struck a deal with a Demacian trader, Sona and a handful of her friends found themselves bundled onto one of the last ships to escape before the Noxian blockade of Ionia’s western coast. She looked back in anguish, knowing that she would not be able to return for many years, if at all.

After months at sea, they arrived in Demacia—a strange, dour land where magic was widely distrusted. Their monks were called “Illuminators”, and they worshipped no gods or spirits, yet still placed great value on showing kindness to strangers and the needy.

So it was that Sona was taken in by the Buvelle family. Lord Barrett and his wife, Lestara, were prominent supporters of the Illuminator order, and renowned patrons of the arts in the Great City. Sona became like a sister to their daughter, Kahina, and Lestara in particular grew very attached to her. The Demacian language was often difficult to learn, but the Buvelles developed a personalized sign language that enabled Sona to communicate easily with her new family, and their friends.

Yet she yearned to express so much more. To show her appreciation to her adopted countrymen, she decided to use her gift to delight and soothe them, and returned to her music with renewed passion.

Soon, word spread of her virtuoso talents. Her performances captivated audiences, bringing them from sorrow to bliss, from righteous martial pride to almost exquisite peace… and Lestara became intrigued by the mysterious instrument that made this possible.

Delving deep into the libraries of the Illuminators, she came to believe it was one of the fabled etwahls—wondrous artifacts dating back thousands of years before Demacia’s founding, and now exceedingly rare in the world. If that were true, then this was an object of magic, and Sona’s preternatural connection to it was a dangerous gift indeed. Lestara urged her to keep it secret, to avoid bringing unwanted attention from the Demacian mageseekers.

Sona obeyed, though she wondered how something that brought people peace could be seen as a threat.

Some years later, Lord Barrett Buvelle was slain fighting Noxus at the Gates of Mourning. When Kahina took up her father’s blade and military commission, the heartbroken Lestara decided the time had come for Sona to return to Ionia, and the two of them withdrew from all courtly engagements to make the journey together.

In the war’s aftermath, a great “restoration” was underway across the First Lands, but the people were much changed by what they had endured, and Sona realized there was no longer any place for her there. Saying farewell to Ionia once again, she went back to Demacia with Lestara.

Even so, her chosen homeland is not without its own problems. In the wake of King Jarvan III’s assassination, the mageseekers have gained significant power, and many innocent citizens are persecuted for any supposed connection to magic.

As a child of two wildly different cultures, Sona increasingly finds herself at odds with her family’s political allegiances. With etwahl in hand, her melodies now serve not only to provide comfort, but also to defend what she knows is right and just.

Magga was about to die for the fourteenth time. She had bitten into a rotten apple–yet again. Its putrid flesh had, as always, infected her with carrionshade. The actress went through the motions of stumbling to her death while shouting her final words for all to hear.

“Oh, but how wondrous a dream is life? Only now—too late!—do I wake to see its myriad of splendors,” she bemoaned.

With a puff of smoke and glittering powder, Kindred made a grand entrance upon the stage. As per tradition, they were played by one actor, his head covered by two opposing masks. He approached Magga, the white mask of the Lamb facing her.

“Hark! Do I hear a plea for my keenest arrow? Come, child, let the warmth of your heart fade into the cold embrace of oblivion.”

Magga refused, as she had thirteen times before. Any nuance in her performance was buried beneath the ear-splitting delivery of her scream. On cue, Lamb spun around, revealing the second mask–that of the Wolf.

“There is naught ye can do to stave off thine end,” growled Wolf.

“I am but a poor young maiden! Please, let my piteous cry fall on all four of thine ears.”

The audience seemed enraptured by the unfolding dramatics of the Orphellum Mechanicals. With the twin threats of plague and war on the tongues of those in neighboring protectorates, death dramas were all the rage.

Denji, the actor portraying both Lamb and Wolf, descended upon the young actress, awkwardly baring wooden fangs. Magga offered her neck. At the threat of Wolf’s bite, she triggered the device sewn into her blouse’s collar. Ribbons of red fabric unspooled to the delighted pips and yelps of the audience. They’d gotten what they paid for.

By the time the Mechanicals had staggered back to their wagon and set off in the direction of Needlebrook, there were no stars to be seen. Instead, a veil of clouds stretched across the night sky.

Needlebrook always delivered a good audience, Illusian, the company’s owner and sole dramaturg, explained once more. He staggered around, drunk on his own accolades—as well as the wine Parr had grifted from the locals.

The night wore on, and the troupe had descended into bickering. Tria and Denji lambasted their playwright over the quality of his plots, which fell into a predictable structure: tragedy strikes maiden, death finds maiden, death takes maiden. Illusian argued that complicated plots detracted from a good death scene.

Magga, the youngest of the bunch, agreed with Tria and Denji’s diagnosis, but kept her mouth shut. Had she not stowed away in the wandering troupe’s wagon, she would certainly be somewhere far more miserable. Luckily for her, the Mechanicals had recently lost several actors due to Illusian’s insistence on complete artistic control. Because of his attitude—and obvious mediocrity—they were facing a drought of fresh faces. And so, the Orphellum Mechanicals agreed to contract Magga to die in all their dramatics for the foreseeable future. For which she had been grateful.

Illusian was still smarting from Denji and Tria’s words when he motioned to Parr, their wagoner, to stop and make camp. The inebriated auteur set out his bedroll in pride of place next to the wagon. He then threw the rest of the bedding into the long grass nearby.

“Ungrateful players can sleep in the wilds,” Illusian spat, “where they shall hopefully find their manners.”

The rest of the troupe built a fire and swapped stories. Denji and Tria had fallen asleep in each other’s arms while whispering potential names for their unborn child into each other’s ears. They had nattered on about the day the traveling company would stop in Jandelle, a town so perfect and peaceful they would set aside their vagabond ways to raise their child.

Magga moved closer to the crackling fire so its pops and whistles would drown out the irksome affections of her traveling companions.

But sleep never came. Instead, Magga tossed and turned, thinking about the looks on the audience’s faces as the coiled spurts of blood unfurled from her neckline. A pretty maiden struck dead by her own naïveté was all the theatrical pomp Illusian could muster, but the crowd lusted after the gruesome façade.

Eventually, she left her bedroll and set out into the woods to soothe her unsettled mind.

In the dead of night, Magga came upon a low grassy mound with slabs of standing stone at its base. Although she could not read the inscriptions, her fingers traced the familiar etching of Kindred’s twin masks. This was a place of the dead, a burial site built long ago.

She felt a chill on the back of her neck that compelled her to look up. She was not alone. Magga immediately understood what she saw, for she’d encountered a crude impersonation of them night after night. But poor Denji couldn’t begin to instill the dread washing over Magga. Before her, perched on a weathered barrow-archway, was Lamb herself, flanked by her ever-faithful counterpart, Wolf.

“I hear a beating heart!” said Wolf, his black eyes twinkling with delight. “May I have it?”

“Perhaps,” replied Lamb. “I sense she is afraid. Speak, beautiful one. Tell us your name.”

“I-I would have yours first,” stammered Magga, stepping backward. Her slow escape was halted by the speedy Wolf, who materialized unsettlingly close behind her.

He spoke directly in her ear. “We have many names.”

“In the West, I am Ina to his Ani,” said Lamb. “In the East, Farya to his Wolyo. But we are Kindred everywhere. I am always Lamb to Wolf, and he is always Wolf to Lamb.”

Wolf reared up and sniffed at the air.

“She is playing a boring game,” said Wolf. “Let us play a new game, one of chasing and running and biting.”

“She is not playing, dear Wolf,” said the Lamb. “She is frightened and has lost her own name. It hides behind her lips, afraid to come out. Worry not, dear child, I have found your name. We know it as you know us, Magga.”

“P-please,” Magga stammered. “Tonight is not a very good night for—”

Wolf’s great pink tongue lolled out of the side of his mouth, and he proceeded to cackle.

“All nights are good nights for pouncing,” said Wolf, laughing.

“All days are, too,” Lamb said. “With light comes a clear shot.”

“There is no moon tonight!” cried Magga. She used what Illusian had taught her—to gesture grand, so those in the back could see her movements. “It is hidden by a blanket of clouds, tucked away from my eyes and yours. Without the moon, what would be the last thing I would see?”

“We see the moon,” replied Lamb, as she caressed her fabled bow. “It is always there.”

“There are no stars!” said Magga, trying again, this time gesturing smaller and speaking quieter. “No menagerie of twinkling diamonds, glittering in the midnight hue. What more beautiful view could one hope for whence one meets Lamb and Wolf?”

“This Magga-thing is playing a new game,” growled Wolf. “It is called ‘stalling.’”

Wolf stopped moving and cocked his head to the side. He turned his sideways snout toward Magga before speaking. “Can we play ‘Chasing the Magga-Thing and Bite Her to Bits?’?” Wolf clacked his fangs together loudly for effect.

“Let us ask her,” said Lamb. “Magga! Do you prefer Wolf’s chase, or my arrow?”

Magga was trembling now. Her eyes raced to take in every last detail of the world around her. It wasn’t such a bad place to depart. There was grass. There were trees. There was the ancient archway. There was stillness to the air.

“I would prefer Lamb’s arrow,” she said, looking at the rough crusts of bark on the trees. “I’ll imagine myself climbing to the highest boughs, like when I was a child. Only this time, I will never stop climbing. Is that what it is like to go with you?”

“No,” said Lamb, “though it is a nice thought. Fear not, little maiden, we are just having our fun. You have come to us tonight; we have not come for you.”

“I cannot chase Magga-thing,” said Wolf, with a hint of disappointment in his voice. “But there are other things nearby. Other things ripe for the chasing and the biting. Hurry, Lamb. I am hungry.”

“For now, know that your theatrics have pleased us, and we will watch them until the day we meet again.”

Wolf passed over Magga and disappeared into the woods. The shadowy beast snaked away through fields of tall grass. Magga looked back toward the weathered barrow. Lamb was gone.

The actress fled.

When Magga returned to the encampment, she found it in utter ruin. The wagon she had only just begun to call home had been ransacked and reduced to a smoldering husk. Bits of clothing and ruined props lay strewn across the campsite.

She found Denji’s body near where he’d slept. He had died protecting Tria, whose corpse lay behind him. Judging from the trails of blood, their deaths had not been slow. They had dragged themselves toward each other, their fingers entwined in one last caress before death.

Magga noticed that Illusian had managed to kill two of the bandits before being burnt to a crisp along with Parr in the wagon.

The only thing that remained untouched were Denji’s Lamb and Wolf masks. Magga picked them up and held them in her hands. She placed the Lamb mask over her own eyes and heard the voice of Wolf.

“Chase the Magga-thing.”

The maiden ran the distance to Needlebrook, never once looking back.

The Golden Round was filled to the brim with a sea of twinkling eyes, all glittering in excitement at the velvet curtain. The king sat in the theater with the queen and their advisers, all eagerly awaiting the onset of the dramatics. Everyone hushed as the black curtain lifted to reveal the actors.

Magga sat in a quiet dressing room under the stage. She heard the crowd fall silent as she studied herself in the mirror. The luster of youth had faded from her eyes years ago, and left her with a long shock of silver running through her hair.

“Madame!” said the stagehand. “You’re not in costume yet.”

“No, child,” Magga said, “I only dress at the last moment.”

“It is the last moment,” said the young stagehand, holding the two final pieces of Magga’s costume: the same Lamb and Wolf masks from her days with the Orphellum Mechanicals.

“May your performance be blessed tonight,” the stagehand said.

Magga prepared to leave for the stage. She slipped the masks over her head. The old chill from the dark barrow crept down her spine. She welcomed it—as always.

She enthralled the audience as she glided onto the stage, embodying Lamb’s graceful movements. She thrilled the crowd with her rendition of Wolf’s playful savagery. She, as the twin deaths personified, eased the suffering of her fellow actors, or ripped it from their throats, until the crowd stood on its feet and erupted in thunderous applause.

It was true. All audiences loved a good death, and they loved Magga’s more than any other.

Even the king and queen were on their feet in praise of her work.

But Magga heard no applause and saw no ovations. She didn’t feel the stage beneath her feet, nor the hands of her fellow mummers in hers as they bowed low. All she felt was a sharp pain in her chest.

When Magga looked out over the audience, every single face was either a lamb or a wolf.

You, there! Yes, you! You look like a fine Demacian with working ears—one who might stay a stretch and heed the warnings of an old man who has seen the impossible. I’m on a quest, you see, at the bidding of the Wandering Caretaker, and you can help!

I must retrieve... Well, it’s best that I explain.

Come, now. Don’t shy away. Hear my tale, which is entirely true...

I was first awoken by the clanging of bells—my mother’s two-hundred-year-old wind chimes—screaming outside, beyond my window. She thought she was quite clever, my mother, convincing me their summer song would signal the coming of warm and sunny days. Even at my age, I can only count a handful of pleasant seasons in Valar’s Hollow. Ha! An adolescence marred by the endless chopping of firewood can attest to that. The night I speak of was no exception—a winter storm was raging.

I jumped to my feet when my door burst open and the rush of freezing wind filled my room. After scrambling to sheathe my trembling body in the thickest furs I owned, I made my way to the door, ready to slam it shut. But I hesitated. My mother’s chimes were still screaming in the wind. Though they mostly stirred memories of my harsh and laborious upbringing, they provided me with a sense of connection to her. I should not risk losing them, or worse—suffer no sleep from their incessant wailing.

Don’t get me wrong, the chimes did have a certain appeal. Stories of how they came into my family’s possession told of an incredible destiny and a celebrated past. They were forged from ingot—war metals—some of the rarest in the Freljord. Whenever a battle had been lost and won, the Collectors, my poor but resourceful ancestors, entered the battlefield and retrieved what had been left to rust in the blood-stained snow.

“How much ingot was out there, mother?” I asked once, as she gushed about ancient times.

“Centuries of it,” she replied.

“What did the Collectors do with it all?”

“Sold it to the Winter’s Claw,” she said, shrugging, “who made more weapons for wars to come.” Then she paused for a moment and smiled as her chimes began to sing. “But there was always a little we kept for ourselves—to make instruments of life, not death.”

Indeed, those precious chimes were instruments that brought wonderful music to our land. “Good fortune in bad times,” she told me. I prayed for that fortune when she fell ill, but it never came. The Wandering Caretaker was more concerned with his own wonderful music than helping the infirm, and I was left with her infernal chimes to remember them both by.

I digress.

Taking a deep breath, I pushed my way outside, but I was halted by an impossible sight: Floating in front of me, unaffected by the storm, was a small, translucent creature. Without wings or arms to hold it in place, it hung there, as if some eldritch magic had nailed it to a block of air. Two glowing white eyes like torches were affixed to its orbish head, and three twinkling stars in its belly began to churn and flicker. To my surprise, one of my mother’s chimes responded, and, like a child’s arm, it reached back to the shimmering creature, adopting its starry glow.

But then...

The chime cracked! And I heard its summer song deform. A fissure that was made etched its way up the chime’s side, and specks of gold light were drawn out from within it, as if certain materials that composed it were being stolen away. Those were not lights the thing was stealing; they were my mother’s tears, falling, as this beloved yet irritating heirloom was quickly being destroyed. I could not—I would not let that happen!

So I leapt into the blizzard and took hold of the chime. At its touch, I heard the blast of a horn in the distance. Why, I was not sure. I pulled back with all my might, but the creature’s magic was too strong to overcome. And worse, I felt my entire body jerk skyward, and my feet left the ground. Soon I was hurtling into the heavens, towed into the clouds by the befouled moppet!

CRACK! Another break scribbled its way down the chime. Then I saw something taking shape in the space between us—a shard, a piece of a whole, was materializing. Believing it would be the only thing to save me, I grasped it.

As I reached, I glanced back to the wicked creature, only to realize that it had disappeared. In its place, hovering before me in all his mystic glory, was the Wandering Caretaker. It had taken an entire lifetime of prayer for him to appear, and, as my mother had promised, the chimes brought him forth. The Bard seemed to stare back at me... into me... curious of my being there. But it was too late to explain.

There suddenly came a rush of wind and a wave of heat. I felt my arm stretch the length of a vine. My body followed, spinning and twisting, as I was being taken somewhere—an otherworldly place!

As to where I ended up, my mother’s old dulcimer here will aid me as I sing...

Dear Demacian, I have come a long way and farther still to warn everyone of the darkness that threatens to silence the music of this world. Runeterra is a bell—a world bell—that has been corroded by evil. Its fragments, its chimes, must be found to make it whole again.

And our first step is to place all precious metals in your possession in my basket. I will take them, inspect them, sing to them Bard’s divine music to remove any chimes of the world bell within them. Any chimeless pieces I will, of course, return to you.

No! Wait! Don’t walk away—what I tell you is true! Please, listen. There isn’t much time. The end of our world is nigh...

And only Bard and his meeps can save us.

Tarnold knew the performance was doomed when all his playwright’s tricks were exhausted. His players were lost to performance jitters. Perhaps the text was to blame, or the superstitions surrounding the performance of a dead scribe’s unfinished work, but each mummer had succumbed to one form of unprofessionalism or another.

Artlo, who played a character known only as the Philosopher, wouldn’t stop dying. Each time he pantomimed his last breath in the company of that kindred pair of macabre spirits known as the Lamb and the Wolf, he prolonged his death rattles to the point of absurdity. This time, Nenni had laughed so hard her Lamb’s mask fell off her face. It landed on the ground with a loud crack.

Emile removed his Wolf’s mask. Its sharp, jagged edges were chafing his jowls to pulp. He winced in pain—Tarnold knew he was about to ask for the poultice again.

“Stop!” Tarnold said. He did not need to yell. The Mummers’ Round’s renowned acoustics ensured even the eaves-perchers, with their half-copper admission, could hear the softest sigh with clarity.

The old theater rested near the lord castellan’s hillfort and provided a nice glimpse of the dark forest. On banquet nights like tonight, nobles descended from the castellan’s manse to drunkenly take in the mummers’ theatrics. A displeased crowd of drunken nobles was worse than the humiliation of a failed play.

The actors released their poses and turned to face their chief dramatist.

Tarnold rubbed the bridge of his nose with his fingers and looked to the wings, where a mustachioed man, dressed in black finery, leaned against one of the story stones.

“Duarte,” Tarnold said to the well-dressed man. “Buy me as much time as you can.”

Duarte nodded in understanding. “I’ll hold the audience until I hear your sign.”

“Do not disturb us, even if Lady Erhyn herself shakes off her malaise and demands a preview. We are on the verge, Duarte. We must fall together to rise together!”

“Rise we shall, Tarnold. With the gust of life.” Duarte kissed the palm of his hand and placed it on the story stone for good luck. He disappeared from the stage and exited the theater. Silence pervaded while everyone waited on the sound of the heavy bolt sliding shut.

Once they were sealed within the Mummers’ Round’s walls, with the sun dipping closer to the evening, Tarnold unleashed his temper.

“Ask a Great City boy for water, and a Great City boy will bring you fire. There is to be one death, and one death alone, Artlo.” He turned to Nenni. “Stop laughing at Artlo’s nincompoopery, you daughter of Skaggorn. Shake off your provincial humors and exude the cold menace of death.” Finally, he pointed to Emile. “I can see your blood dribbling down your cheek. Dab your cheeks.”

“Please, let me fix some padding to the inside of this accursed wolf mask.”

“Project through the pain! Did Soates complain while writing her Kindred Fables on her deathbed? No. Be honored! One of her own heirlooms chafes your cheek.”

“This one doesn’t fit me,” Nenni said. She had picked her lamb mask up off the stage floor. “It keeps sliding off.”

“Then use straps!” Tarnold said, pulling off his own belt to throw it at Nenni’s feet.

Endless hours of rehearsals had done nothing to prepare the troupe for the performance of Soates’ final, unfinished story. Part of that, Tarnold had accepted as his own fault. As the chief dramatist of Alderburg’s greatest—and only—theater, the grim task of finishing her story fell to him.

“Lambs in the Orchard was Soates’ final gush of madness. The very last of her spark is here, in our hands... and you all choose to desecrate her memory, picking at it for your own vanity and comfort. She spent her final moments coaxing truths from the impending nevermore. Had death not stilled her hand while writing this very scene, perhaps we would all have a far greater understanding of our own brief and tragic existence!”

The actors remained silent, chastened even, until Artlo cleared his throat and spoke up.

“With respect,” the gangly Demacian started. Tarnold knew Artlo meant the opposite, and rolled his eyes to show it. “Perhaps an unfinished work is simply not meant to be finished by another.”

Tarnold sensed an attack on his integrity. They had had this argument over and again. “Are you suggesting that this production is a work of sacrilege?”

“We seem unable to replicate the emotions of a master writing against time.”

“Are you mad? We are out of time!” Tarnold pointed to the dwindling rays of sunlight piercing the wooden walls of the theater. A chilly sensation swept through him.

“Perhaps, we perform the bits we know and leave the unfinished unperformed. Is that not a better way to honor Soates? You must acknowledge, Tarnold, this,” Artlo said, pointing around himself, “does not work!”

Artlo was right. They had failed to recreate the spark found in the prolific bard’s other fables. Their ailing patron, a Soates devotee, expected the impossible—an ending to an unfinished work. In desperation, Tarnold had authorized Duarte to travel to King Jarvan II’s Great City to the west, and hunt down the bard’s original masks. They were ancient and therefore costly.

Tarnold’s head slumped, his shoulders followed, and then he was on his back, struggling to breathe. His heart raced against the quickening hour.

“We have to cancel the performance.” He rubbed his forehead, trying to eke out some last shred of luck, but finding only sweat. “Worse, we’ll be forced to offer refunds.” He gasped out. “We already spent the gold!”

“It’s probably not a good time to mention that the lamb mask is broken.”

The color drained from Tarnold’s face. “What?”

“When it fell off my face, it broke. It was an accident!” Nenni held the pieces of the mask in her hand. One of the wooden ears had snapped off. “I think I can strap it back together.”

“This is utterly majestic.” Tarnold almost laughed. “That’s what we spent the gold on. They were Soates’ original masks. They’re on loan!”

“She said it was an accident,” said Emile.

“Let me think.” Tarnold stood up to take in the theater. Its storied round had existed for centuries. The story stones were the foundation of the Mummers’ Round. The circle of towering flagstones had stood in the theater’s location long before anyone settled the Nockmirch. Over the years, wooden viewing platforms were erected to allow more a better view of the theatrics and rituals performed inside the round. Performers and singers notched the pillars with their sigils, leaving their mark upon hallowed grounds.

The theater had been home to Tarnold during many difficult times. Now, under his stewardship, it was the source of all his sorrows.

“A broken mask tells two stories,” said a voice from the middle balcony, reserved for the wealthiest nobles. Even in his loneliest moments, Tarnold dared not rest his head on those fine cushions. “Three, if you consider the tale of the maskmaker... Alas, no one wishes to hear that story.”

“We agreed for no visitors during rehearsals!” Tarnold said to his performers.

“She’s been here all night,” Nenni said. “We thought she was with you.”

Had she? It was possible. Tarnold had battled insomnia for weeks. His attention snapped to the woman in the golden seats, which were reserved for the Lady Erhyn herself. Two summers ago, King Jarvan II’s little heir had sat upon those velvet cushions to enjoy Tarnold’s rendition of The King of All Fishes. The boy had clapped loudest as the final curtain fell.

“Who are you?” Tarnold said. “Step into the light.”

The woman came forward, but the light illuminated little of her mystery. Her eyes were distant stars shining through mist. She wore a ghostly half-mask with a curious twirl of a twig sprouting off the top. Upon that sprig was a single dark leaf. Her elegant gait sang of nobility, and Tarnold finally recognized the crest on her gown.

It was their patron, recovered from her malaise.

“My lady Erhyn, I did not recognize you! Please forgive me.” Tarnold offered a respectable bow. “Tell me, what mask is this that graces your face? It is familiar yet beyond memory.”

“It is made of eldlock.” She spoke in a calm voice. Her words were clear, even as she whispered. “The stories tell that any wood removed from an eldlock will continue to blossom and flower in season with its mothertree, as long as it still stands. No distance may sever their bond.”

“It is exquisite, my lady.”

“I have interrupted,” Lady Erhyn said, gesturing to the actors. “Perhaps I could suggest a change.”

“Why, of course!” Tarnold fidgeted with his hands. He looked to the wings, and to the stage. The mummers were keeping their mouths shut, for once. “Advice from our favorite patron is always welcome.”

“All actors were masked in Soates’ day—perhaps all must don masks to channel the strange spirits she saw at death’s door, as she scribbled furiously into the night’s embrace.”

“I like that!” Artlo said. “Where is the casket of masks? There were others in that trunk,” he called as he vanished behind the stage.

“Now, wait, let’s talk this—”

Tarnold was silenced by the sight of the gaunt lady with the eldlock mask clasping her hands together. There was something off about their benefactor.

Before Tarnold could put his finger on it, Artlo returned onstage, dragging a trunk that was as long as he was tall. The name Q. W. Soates was engraved on its long side. Suddenly, it struck Tarnold how much the old trunk resembled a coffin.

Artlo lifted open the heavy trunk’s lid. “Smells like dead poets,” he said.

The man really has no taste, Tarnold thought.

A heavy creak of rusted hinges reverberated through the round like the howl of a starving dog. The other two actors craned their necks to peer inside.

“Before you choose,” the woman in the eldlock mask said. “Please heed these next words wisely. The hour is late, the show waits to play, and tonight can be truly memorable if all choose the mask that is right for them, for the spirits we become...”

“...Inhabit us,” Emile completed.

“The mummers’ tenet,” Nenni said.

“Whatever flavor of madness this is,” Artlo said, a grin spreading on his face, “I want to be a part of it. Come, Tarnold. Even you must agree that at this late stage, we must perform with the gust of life.”

“Intrepid,” the lady said.

Tarnold heard the hint of a strange smile on her face. He couldn’t remember... had the nobles’ balcony not been empty when Duarte left? The whole theater was empty... Lady Erhyn struck him as different now, too. She seemed gaunt and haunted. Perhaps the noble lady Erhyn hadn’t entirely shaken off her affliction. The evening chill was settling in.

“My lady, I am most pleased at your recovery. Perhaps I can fetch you a cloak?”

“Now, this is the mask to honor a forgotten poet,” Artlo said.

Lady Erhyn waved off Tarnold’s offer, turning to Artlo. “An ominous choice. The Vulture picks at what remains, and when nothing is left... it flies on to perches far removed from here and waits for the next meal.”

“Pecking at Soates’ legacy sounds like a feast.” Artlo turned around and showed off his guise: a bone-white mask with a long, hooked beak. The gangly man resembled a carrion bird.

The gaunt lady approached the stage. She seemed so ancient, yet hale and graceful in her moves. Her skin did not look like flesh. It reminded Tarnold of plaster, after it had been set and smoothed. Her hair was the very night itself, radiating outward in a wavering embrace. He felt as if the breath were stabbed out of his lungs. How could he have ever mistaken the two?

“You’re not Lady Erhyn.”

The actors were oblivious to Tarnold’s epiphany. A chilling swoon descended upon his heart. Its beating pulsed loudly in his ears, nearly drowning out the actors’ words.

“Switch masks with me,” Nenni said to Emile. “Your soft skin can’t wear such a handsome mask. My skin’s weathered worse, I’ll reckon.”

“If you want to wear that agonizing thing...” Emile offered the wolf mask to his stage partner. “I mourn for your lovely cheekbones.”

The two slipped on their swapped masks.

The walls whispered as a gust of wind swept over the Mummers’ Round. Shutters clacked shut. Tarnold heard voices in that swift and swirling breeze.

“Heartbeats, Lamb. Here,” a deep voice growled.

Tarnold looked for the source, but could only see his mummers. They seemed to have forgotten all about him. Then, in his left ear, sang another voice.

“Bits of light,

Dancing in the dark,

Playing on, playing on, playing on...”

The words flew through Tarnold with a jolt. On the stage, he saw Nenni and Emile, hand in hand, wearing each other’s masks. Then he saw the otherwordly words were coming from the actors’ mouths.

“Yes,” Emile said, shifting his voice up to a lilting and haunted falsetto. “I see my darlingest Wolf now.”

“Ahhh.” Nenni let out a relieved growl, her voice guttural and deep. “That feels better, little Lamb.” The actor dropped down on all fours, and stretched lower than a human should be able to. “Is it time to play chase?”

“When the veil lifts,

You shall claw and bite,

My arrow swift, and on to the next act we go.”

Tarnold crossed the round, keeping his eyes fixed on the gaunt lady. “What trickery is this? Please, leave us be!”

The woman turned to Tarnold. “I am not your patron,” she said.

Tarnold looked to his masked actors. “All of you, clear the stage. Go home. The performance is over.” He raised his voice, shouting toward the barred entrance. “Duarte!”

“Tarnold...” The woman who was not Lady Erhyn turned and looked at him with the enormity of her vast, glimmering eyes. Even behind the eldlock mask, they shone with a light born of darkness. Their eerie sheen pulled Tarnold’s attention out of his body. Whoever this was, he knew her and did not; feared her and sought her. Running from her felt foolish, and reasonable. Without deciding to, he walked toward the stage.

“Take the masks off,” he said. “Now. This is madness... This play is cursed! Don’t you see? What if, in the conjuring, Soates did not happen to die while writing the play, the act of writing Lambs in the Orchard was itself what killed her... The narrative itself is a curse!”

It was not the gaunt lady, Nenni’s wolf nor Emile’s lamb that replied. Artlo, or whatever spoke through Artlo, answered in a screeching voice. He spread his arms high and stood upon one leg, like a carrion bird.

“The author waits for my beak,” he said. The corners of his lips cracked and split open. “Soates is truly dead... as none remember her now as she once was.” Tears ran down Artlo’s stretched cheeks. The voice stilled Tarnold’s heart and stopped him in his stride. “Soates flies in my wake, soon lost and forgotten. Words on a page. A name on the wind. Shreds... nothing more.”

“Shreds of Soates is still Soates,” said the gaunt lady.

“He ceased the performance...” Whatever spoke through poor Artlo didn’t care how much pain it caused the man’s body. The actor’s arm violently wrenched forward and stretched, its bony hand pointing an accusatory finger at Tarnold. “And he wears no mask...”

“You are so close to Soates,” the woman said to the dramatist. “Choose a mask, and see her final scene come alive.”

He thought about running from the Mummers’ Round. He pictured himself fleeing up to the lord castellan’s fort on the hill, or into town. What would he find in Lady Erhyn’s house? He looked to the gaunt woman. The sun had almost set. The evening cacophony of insects and night birds chirped out their greetings to the coming night. How many nights had he dreamt of Soates’ final moments, of the final scene...

“Everyone must wear a mask,” the woman said.

Mouth agape, Tarnold nodded in agreement with the woman in the eldlock mask, that dark leaf dancing in an unfelt breeze.

“If I must choose a mask, then I confess, I know the one I would select is not in that trunk, nor is it on the stage.” He felt life return to his limbs. His bones were stiff and unwieldy... but that was a temporary condition.

The gaunt woman smiled. “You wish to wear my mask? That is a most excellent decision, dear Tarnold, a man of creativity and curiosity. Come and remove it from my face.”

“I shall take your mask, and become you. May the spirits we become...”

“...Inhabit us deeply and truly,” she finished.

When Tarnold did, and placed the living eldlock mask on his face, he saw, finally, the true ending of Soates’ play. It was flawless and terrible, life-giving and breathtaking.

“Places, my friends and fellows,” he said. “Our tale waits for no one. Let us fall together to rise as one, and sing our harmonies with the gust of life.”

“One last gust,” replied Lamb, Wolf, and Vulture.

And together, they played.

Duarte had kept the news about Lady Erhyn hidden from Tarnold all day, even though the truth of her passing threatened to burst forth from his lips. Her malaise carried her off in kindred company before dawn, or so the new lady of House Erhyn had said. The news could break the morale of the entire troupe. Tarnold, he knew, would take it exceptionally hard.

But just as sorrow weighed down Duarte’s heart, there was a brightness, an exciting turn of good fortune beyond the tragedy. Lady Erhyn, on her deathbed, bade her estate to fund the Mummers’ Round, and Tarnold specifically, in perpetuity.

However, as the hour drew later, the inebriated nobles grew weary of the wait. Belligerent and insulted nobility often led to lashings, mockings, and worse: sanctions against future endeavors.

As Duarte was about to address the amassed watchers, daubed with ashes and charcoal in mourning of Lady Erhyn, he heard Tarnold’s signal to open the doors.

He rushed to the gate and removed the heavy deadbolt. The audience rushed in and stopped short as they found the actors posed upon a stage covered in wilted black-stemmed roses. Their buzzing anticipation was hushed by the macabre tableau. They quickly and quietly found their seats. Lady Erhyn’s seat of honor was the only empty spot in the house.

The actors held their strenuous positions while the noble audience waited for Soates’ long-lost and unfinished masterpiece to finally begin.

Duarte saw no sign of Tarnold. It was unusual for the dramatist to desert his cast on opening night—normally he would greet the audience before watching from the wings with a bottle of wine.

He turned to inspect the opening stance. Nenni and Emile were locked in a mortal embrace. Nenni, wearing the wolf mask, held an arrow that seemed to stick directly into Emile’s side. Emile’s hands were wrapped around Nenni’s throat.

Artlo, who was supposed to be playing a philosopher, now inexplicably wore a mask that resembled a dirge crow. He perched atop a prop tree, suspended over the other pair, his arms outstretched like great wings. Dead flowers hung from his arms like feathers.

They weren’t even breathing...

The audience stayed silent, eagerly awaiting action, but Duarte realized something was amiss. Backstage, Duarte checked the dramatist’s favorite perch. There was no bottle of wine, and no Tarnold, either.

Instead there was the last surviving copy of Lambs in the Orchard.

He thumbed to the last page. The story remained unfinished, but there was a new line written in Tarnold’s steady hand.

The end is not for those who wear no masks. She showed me, and it was beautiful.

A raised fist. A surge of necromantic power. Before him, the final spire of the final tower takes form, inky smoke coalescing into black iron. Mordekaiser gazes upon his domain with dark pride.

Mitna Rachnun, his Afterworld, is complete.

Once, he stood in this very place, a mortal soul faced with the emptiness of oblivion. Now, a kingdom stretches before him, forged through his works.

He strides down the path toward his fortress, reveling in the satisfaction of his work. Each stone underfoot, his doing. The battlements and ramparts, all shaped from cruel magic and iron will.

Where there was nothing, Mordekaiser forged his own reality—a realm where all souls will soon dwell in eternity, never to fade.

Sahn-Uzal blinked and looked around. Uncertain, his mind blank.

I am dead.

The thought flitted by, a whisper on the wind. As the truth of it sank in, for just a moment, a fleeting sadness flooded his heart. Then laughter welled up, a rumble from his gut that washed over his entire body, overflowed from his chest, and poured out in a rumbling cascade.

Good.

Sahn-Uzal scanned the distance for the grand gateway of souls that would lead to the famed Hall of Bones. Searched for the attendants who would carry him triumphant into the eternal. Savored his growing excitement to meet the great conquerors who came before him.

Yet there was nothing but fog, as far as he could see.

Sahn-Uzal took a step forward—then looked down, surprised. Fine sand—a coarse grit—shifted underfoot. In the distance, discordant voices rustled, too quiet to make out the words.

This makes no sense.

He struck out across the wasteland, determined to find the truth.

Time passed, untold.

Confusion melted into disbelief. Disbelief kindled anger. Anger flared into fury.

Nothing.

There is nothing.

The dessicated sands extended endlessly. The relentless voices whispered on, a maddening itch in the back of his mind. The fog never abated, an eternal haze that hovered, a shroud over all.

Had the priests lied? Or were they false prophets, prattling fools proclaiming hollow superstitions? Or had the ancestors made a grotesque error of judgement, and not welcomed him into the great halls?

These questions gnawed at him, at first. But they did not matter. Sahn-Uzal realized that now. Nothing mattered but the present, pressing truth—there was nothing here. A vast emptiness, devoid of reward. Devoid of promise.

As this truth percolated through him, the shadow of despair stalked Sahn-Uzal, hungry to consume him.

But he was Sahn-Uzal. Conqueror of the wildlands. Master of the tribes. He had built an empire where there was none. In life, he had overcome all odds and conquered despair through will and ambition. Death would be no different.

If death does not hold the kingdoms I was promised… I will forge them myself.

Mordekaiser walks beneath the inner portcullis, fashioned after that of the Immortal Bastion, his mortal seat of power. He walks through the entryway and into the great hall.

Before him, his throne looms.

All around, in constant cacophony, the endless wailing of souls rises and falls, an unholy chorus of anguish. Yet Mordekaiser does not hear them—or rather, hears them as one might hear the clang of metal in a war camp, or the sound of boots on gravel during a forced march—common sounds, unnoteworthy in their banality.

After all, the worthy souls stand at attention along the hall, and none of them dare speak.

All is as it should be.

Mordekaiser steps toward his throne.

The throne looms before him. Its back of sheer iron pillars extends upward and tapers to vicious points. Ochnun script, angular and sharp, runs around the throne’s dais. The everpresent whispering is almost a roar here, incessant and desperate. Mordekaiser rests a hand on the armrest, taking pride in his work. This piece subsumed more souls in its creation than any other single part in his fortress. The wails emanating from it are music to him.

With a thought, Mordekaiser calls Nightfall to his hands. With a swing, he obliterates the throne.

A squall of a hundred souls echoes in the great hall as they are released from the throne, dissipating into oblivion. Mordekaiser watches them vanish with grim satisfaction.

Thrones are for mortals encumbered by flesh and human exhaustion. He… is now far more.

He steps atop the twisted iron and looks back across his great hall. His generals, souls that were worthy to die at his own hand when he last walked the physical realm, stand at attention. None so much as flinch in response. None will move without his direct command.

Now, his kingdom is truly ready.

Mordekaiser strides out of the great hall, toward the heart of his fortress, the centerpiece of his power and his machinations. Toward the relic that ties Mitna Rachnun to the mortal realm. Toward the place that gives the secret heart of the Immortal Bastion its true purpose.

In his first life, he thought himself a great conqueror, befitting the eternal halls of his faith. How small, how petty, how mortal his ambitions were then! But where others accepted death as the end, he used it forge the beginning of his true conquest. And now… he can hear and understand every whisper of this realm with stark clarity. Now, the magic of death itself courses through him. Now, he holds the arcane secrets gathered over a second lifetime, wrested from the hidden and unknown places of the world. Few other beings can claim the mastery of spirit, death, and mortal magics that he holds. He will wield them to shape all realms to his iron will.

The time has come to return to the world of the living. All the souls of Runeterra await.

Mordekaiser raises Nightfall in one hand.

And so, his final reign begins.

Renata Glasc’s heels click angrily against the marble floors on her way to the front door. It’s a long walk, and her annoyance grows as the bells screech out the same cloying tune a second time.

The mechanical fingers of her left hand unfurl as she reaches for the latch, twisting and snapping into the necessary shapes, embedding in the bespoke lock as its one and only key.

She throws open the ornate copper door and looks down at her visitor. “Mave.” All of Renata’s high-ranking subordinates had been informed that her priority for the evening was debuting her Decanter at the Vesella Novelty Gala.

“Ms. Glasc,” the shorter woman says with a curt nod, her prosthetic iron eyes rattling against the glass of her gel-filled goggles. “Sorry to interrupt.”

“It must be important.”

“We’ve gotten wind of a new type of breather. Not just a filtration unit. An air purifier.”

Renata’s eyes flash. “My devisers said we had nothing to worry about on that front.”

Mave shrugs—not her department.

“Who’s manufacturing it?”

“Baron Midenstokke. Not sure where yet.”

She glances at her gaudy Piltovan clock. The gala begins in just under two hours, her presentation slot is at precisely 21:05, and she hasn’t even had time to pick up the Decanter from the laboratory yet… She sighs. It looks as though the gala will have to start without her.

Time to get the night back under control.

Basile, a worm of a man, grovels at Renata’s feet, dirtying her office floor with his soot-stained tears. “I’m sorry,” he chokes out, breath still rank from whatever swill he’d been drinking when she’d interrupted his visit to the Corrodyne Taproom. “I’ll get the money to you in a week. Two, at the most.”

Renata says nothing, letting Basile squirm and sob on the floor a little longer. He had come to her for a loan six months ago for his wife’s replacement leg after an accident at a machinist’s shop. Renata gave him what he asked for, and got him a well-paying factory job to boot. But after his wife died from sepsis and Basile tried to drown his sorrows at the taproom… it’s no surprise he can’t pay.

It’s what she’s counting on.

“Do you think,” she asks finally, “that I need that money? That I would even miss it?”

“I…”

“I’m not interested in money, dear Basile. Keep it.”

Basile’s eyes fill with tears of gratitude. “Thank you,” he whispers. “Ms. Glasc—”

“But.” She holds up a finger to quiet him. “There is something I need from you.”

“Anything.”

“You’re still working for Midenstokke, yes? Got a nice little promotion last month?”

Basile’s face falls. Not everyone has the stomach to get between two chem-barons. He swallows hard. “I can get you your money in… in four days, Ms. Glasc.”

“No, Basile.” Renata Glasc leans down. She can see the sheen of sweat on his forehead. “You’ll get me the information I need, and you’ll get it to me within the hour.”

Elodat carefully moves aside the vials and burners, the metals and wires, the tools and masks that litter her own private workspace, and lays out the first few pages of designs. Renata watches as the deviser dons a loupe, looking closely at all of the details that make these new breathers tick. There are few she would trust with this new alchemical technology, but Elodat has proven her worth time and again since she first entered Renata’s employ at age twelve.

“These are unbelievable,” Elodat breathes reverently. “No filter system, no place for the toxins in the air to go. They just… destroy the toxins. Eliminate them completely.”

“And you understand how it works?” Renata asks. “Would you be able to replicate the results in a similar product?”

“Without question.” Elodat’s fingers twitch excitedly. “Is this my next project?”

“It is.” She pauses. “But make some part of it necessary to replace. Filters are a great way to keep money rolling in. Find our version of that for a purifier.”

Renata looks at Mave, who’s standing in the corner near the door and awaiting instructions. “We’re sure about the factory?”

Mave nods. “My scouts confirmed it. Just beneath Midenstokke’s dance hall in the Promenade as Basile said.”

“Excellent. 22:30, then. That should give us both plenty of time.”

Mave turns to leave, but Renata stops her and glances at the deviser. “Elodat, the Decanter’s show-ready, yes?”

Elodat snorts as she marks up the design documents. “Of course, Ms. Renata.”

Beside the deviser’s workstation sits the Decanter prototype. A weapon. A tool. A mechanized wonder attuned only to the gestures of Renata’s left hand. All elegant lines of gold and brass, both sinuous and sharp, protective, yet delicate. Bubbling inside the contraption is the glowing magenta liquid that encompasses Renata’s entire inheritance.

Renata twirls one of her mechanical fingers in the air. In response, one of the vials attached to the Decanter fills with a pink gas. She plucks a breather from Elodat’s desk and grabs the vial, clicking it into the mask in place of a filtration unit.

“Make things easy on yourself,” she says as she tosses the mask to Mave. With a nod, Mave exits.

“Um, Ms. Renata?” The deviser looks at the floor as Renata turns back to her. “How are my parents? I haven’t seen them in… yeah.”

“They’ve just bought a house,” Renata says casually. “And I’ve found work for your brother and his fiancé at a cultivair. Your work has kept them very happy.” A pause. “You should visit them.”

Elodat’s head snaps up. “Really?”

“Absolutely.” With a beckoning gesture from Renata, the Decanter’s thrusters fire, lifting it into the air. It bobs beside her as she walks toward the door. “After the demonstration.”

“And now, finally,” the announcer says with a glare at Renata, “we have the newest product from Glasc Industries, presented by the fabulous Renata Glasc, herself! Renata, darling, please join us on the stage!”

With practiced ease, Renata steps out from behind the curtain to ravenous applause. Wealthy Piltovans, dressed to impress, fill the Vesella clan’s lavish ballroom, eager to hear about the newest novelties from their favorite Zaunite. The announcer claps politely, though his eyes roll at this level of excitement from the audience.

Renata removes her mask. Every breath she takes of the empty Piltovan air cuts her throat like glass, but still, she smiles. “A big thank you to the Vesella clan for having me! What a treat it is to spend an evening in your beautiful city.

“For many of you, ‘chemtech’ is a scary word. An ugly word. One of iron and decay. What, then, could a Zaunite have to offer Piltover? Glasc Industries has shown you time and again that chemtech doesn’t have to be ugly. And tonight, I’m going to show you that it can be beautiful.”

A flick of her wrist, and the Decanter floats across the stage past the announcer to Renata. Delighted gasps punctuate the murmur of the crowd.

So easily pleased. So hopelessly naïve.

“The Glasc Industries Decanter, a milestone in the world of healing! Alchemist and nursemaid all in one, creating medicine and administering it in the same breath.”

She’s interrupted by the announcer coughing into his sleeve. She turns to him, knowing full well that none of the chemicals in the Decanter are strictly medicinal. “Would our kind announcer be interested in helping with a demonstration?”

Renata sips her sparkling wine as yet another potential investor approaches her. Across the room, the announcer stands beside the Decanter and hands out Renata’s business cards—just as Renata had... suggested.

She peers at her pocket watch and walks toward a balcony with a phenomenal evening view of Piltover. Below, even Zaun’s promenade level is visible from here...

An explosion lights up the promenade. Right about where Baron Midenstokke’s dance hall is, in fact. Or, rather, where it used to be.

But no one in the Vesella clan’s ballroom seems to care. A glance is the most any of them spare for the tragedy down in Zaun. It’s beneath them.

Except for Renata Glasc, who watches with a chuckle and takes another sip of her fine Piltovan wine.

I was young and unafraid, heart aflame with the sort of righteousness that cast out all shadows of doubt, on the day I first met Barrett Buvelle.

He watched from beside the throne of the young King Jarvan III, crowned only a fortnight earlier, as I marched into the Hall of Valor as soon as my name had left the crier’s lips. Both young men seemed interested, briefly—I know I was attractive at that age, though I did everything in my power to quiet that beauty—but the young king seemed mostly bored and tired of dealing with discontent noble families.

Jarvan waited for Barrett to whisper something in his ear before he continued. I could only see Barrett in silhouette on his left side, as his body was angled toward the king. As then, as always. “Lestara Demoisier,” Jarvan said, his voice strong and clear, echoing through the vast hall of petricite and marble. “What brings you here today?”

“Your failure.”

That got their attention, as I recall. Jarvan raised his eyebrows until they disappeared beneath his crown. Barrett, eyes wide, put his hand around his liege’s shoulder in a tight grip.

“My failure?” Jarvan asked with a mixture of confusion and amusement. “My failure in what? Not a fortnight ago was my coronation, what could I have possibly failed at since then?”

“You have been king for a whole two weeks and you have not yet addressed the plight of those beneath you.”

He rolled his eyes, thinking he knew my mind. I am sure there were many girls in those days who petitioned the king, in the hopes of elevating their own status and that of their families, and he must have tired of it. “I cannot further ennoble the Demoisiers without cause, as I have told countless other petitioners this day If you serve your country well in battle—”

“I do not speak of the nobles.”

Barrett turned to face me full for the first time with astonishment writ across his face. I still remember the gleam of his armor, stamped with the prestigious Buvelle seal right in the center of his chest. It shone like diamonds. Like his eyes.

“Then of whom,” Jarvan asked, curious, “do you speak?”

That was the opening I had been waiting for. I cleared my throat before continuing, as I knew I had much to say. I began by untucking my necklace from my blouse, revealing the lit-candle symbol of the Illuminators. “Your subjects,” I said, my tongue full of acid. “There are those in Demacia with neither home nor livelihood, and you have failed them in neglecting to provide it, even as you broker peace between the feuding nobility. There are good people, honest people who live in the streets, or slip into barns to get out of the rain at night, or go hungry for days on end because every scrap of food they collect goes to their children. If you truly seek what’s best for your kingdom, you will make them your priority... not those who already have more than enough.”

There was only a moment of dumbfounded silence from both men before Barrett let out a full belly laugh that bounced off the walls and echoed through the throne room, finally settling into my burning red ears. The embarrassment sat in the pit of my stomach like a stone.

He moved toward me then. I stepped back, wary, but he was fast. He took my hand in his and said...

Well. Regretfully, I can’t recall exactly what he said. My memory can be so clear about certain moments in my life, and so hazy with regard to others. The essence of it was that he would do what he could to personally oversee a project to house every ailing Demacian. Jarvan III gaped at his friend, as he had obviously not approved a single word of this man’s promises to me.

But Barrett never said he would do something unless he meant to commit himself to doing it properly. So he merely looked at his childhood friend until the king nodded his assent. “There should have been assistance offered to these people long ago,” the king said, looking at me with new respect. “Thank you for bringing this discrepancy to my attention. Lord Buvelle and I will get started on these plans posthaste.”

Flushed, I stared at my hand in Barrett’s, his fingers gently encircling mine. I knew who he was, of course, even then. The young king’s right hand. The man who knew the king’s heart better than any other. The man for whom the king would kill, and the man for whom the king would gladly die.

“It only pains me that it has taken us so long,” Barrett Buvelle said with a smile, “to do what was so obvious to you, Lestara Demoisier.”

That was the first time I heard him speak my name.

The last time was just over six weeks ago.

And I will never hear him speak it again.

I have been three weeks a widow, but still it has not felt... real.

Barrett’s absences, when he is called to minister to the soldiers, have always been long. Three months, usually. Kahina and I would sometimes visit him at the front, helping him distribute food and supplies and good cheer to the Demacians risking their lives on our behalf. But not often.

This time, it still feels as though he could walk back into our home at any moment, sorrow lacing his brow for what those young soldiers must go through, for the families they will leave to mourn them when they lay down their lives for their country.

He was a chaplain. He was never supposed to die in battle.

Barrett was not the only person to lose their life, of course. I am told that the battle was unwinnable. Even the Dauntless Vanguard fell before the might of Demacia’s enemies. Unthinkable, until it happened. How fitting that the place my husband and so many others died is known as the Gates of Mourning.

He wanted to hold the funeral as soon as Barrett’s body was returned to us. I told Jarvan that he needed to honor the late High Marshal first, that he could not let his love for my husband cloud his duty to those who served him with their swords and souls. Truly, though, it is because I could not bear how dreadfully real it would all become.

But funerals cannot be put aside forever. Today, I must find the strength to say goodbye.

The first four times Barrett asked me to marry him, I had said no.

“Why,” I asked, pained for him, “would you keep asking when my answer remains the same?”

“It is precisely because your answer remains the same that I must keep asking,” Barrett said with that patient smile I had come to love so deeply in the years since we had first met. He had led me to the gardens beside the palace, with the clear sky and the lilies dancing in his eyes. A more romantic setting than the first three, I admit.

“You know why I cannot accept.” I had promised myself from a young age that I would join the order of the Illuminators to help those in need, giving them shelter, providing food and work, listening to their stories, perhaps even learning some of the healing arts to help ease their pain. The Illuminators seemed to truly embody the values I had been taught as a Demacian, and all of my time spent with them had opened my eyes and my heart to the idea of a lifetime of service. And while there were lay Illuminators who were able to balance their good works with the needs of a family, those who dedicated their lives fully to the order lived a monastic existence and did not marry. This had been my intention.

“Indeed I do.” Barrett understood this about me, through our many conversations about injustice and how it could be corrected. But he had never given up on the idea that love could conquer all, even a stubborn girl’s desire to do good.

And his persistence, not just in asking for my hand but in consistently showing me through his deeds that his love for me was true, was beginning to wear on my determination. For I had come to love him as well—accidentally on my part, though through no small effort on his—and each refusal I made weighed heavily on my heart. It was all too easy to see the beautiful life I could lead with this man if only I allowed it.

My hands shook and my eyes burned as I turned from him. “You need to start looking elsewhere for a wife, Barrett, or all the kind women will have made their match already.”

“I will not marry if it cannot be to you.”

“Your family will never allow that to happen,” I said with a mirthless laugh. There was no future I could foresee in which the Buvelles did not force Barrett to marry, if only to sire an heir.

“Do you love me?”

“Of course I do.”

“And do you trust that I love you?”

“Yes. You have made that quite clear.”

“Then let me be clear about something else.” He paused. “I would appreciate if we could speak on this while... looking at one another. If that would be all right.”

I shook my head, knowing that if I looked at him right now, I would burst into tears.

“Very well.” I could hear him take a few deep breaths, presumably rolling his shoulders and attempting to relax. “My family has amassed a great deal of wealth and influence over the centuries. If you were to ask it of me... I would dedicate all of it to the good works you wish to do. To support the people of Demacia. All of them.”

My breath caught in my throat. The entire Buvelle fortune, dedicated to the benefit of the less fortunate? That would go far beyond anything I could hope to achieve with the Illuminators.

I wheeled around, suddenly incensed that he would put a price on my acceptance. “But you would not do this if I refuse to marry you? That does not make you an honorable man, Barrett, it makes you a conniver.”

Barrett blinked at me in confusion. “When did I say that you would have to marry me for such a thing? All I require to do it, is that you ask it of me. That you guide my hand, help me to understand where I could do the most good. ”

I stared at him, all of my anger dissipating like smoke. Barrett had just committed his life to me, while requiring nothing from me. And his word was truly his bond—if he said it, he meant to do it.

How could any man be like this?

He smiled again, gentle, with love in his eyes. “But I admit that I would enjoy it better with you in my life.”

And so he asked a fifth time.

And this time, I said yes.

At my request, Jarvan III had held a funeral for the High Marshal first, with citizens and soldiers coming in from all across Demacia to watch the late Purcivell Bronz be interred with the other heroes in the Hall of Valor. The streets had been lined with mourners, and Bronz had been sent off with much respect from the people he had served.

The city is not large enough to contain all the people who have come to mourn my husband.

The inns are filled. There are thousands of tents outside the walls, filled with those whose lives have been touched in some way by my husband’s good works. The funerary march has changed routes twice, winding through the streets and around the walls, so that all have the chance to touch his casket and weep.

The only thing keeping me grounded are the hands of my girls, one on each side, gripping mine steadily. I can feel their heartbeats through their palms, reassuring me that they are both alive and well and here.

Usually the throne room is filled with all of the mourners who have come to pay tribute to the fallen, but the king has had to be selective with those allowed in today. He has generously offered that the Hall of Valor be open to the public for the next week, but today it is a smaller crowd within. I recognize nearly all the faces, though I would not call most of them friends.

Nobles. Highborn. Important political figures.

Jarvan has allowed, at my behest, an Illuminator to lead the service. Mistress Myrtille, a renowned healer and a mentor to my daughter Kahina, recites out the familiar poesy:

A flame that once burned brightly has been doused.

We mourn its light, the warmth it gave us.

But though all we see is the smoke,

Remember that no light ever truly goes out.

Not when it has enkindled others

To shine brightly, to burn with passion.

Their warmth is in others, and their light still burns

As long as we honor their spark that we each hold.

The words do not bring comfort, but they are easy to say after decades of repetition, and so I say them.

I must admit, I do not pay close attention to the service. Instead, my eyes continue to wander to the cinerarium. Barrett’s armor has been refashioned to hold his ashes, as is the custom for all those who die in battle. I can picture him in those gleaming pauldrons, though I cannot imagine him inhabiting it now. It appears far too small to hold the man I knew, now. Perhaps he is not in there at all.

It feels as though no time has passed, yet it is time for the eulogies.

“Lord Buvelle was a great Demacian.”

“A skilled warrior.”

“Humble servant of the crown.”

“A safeguard of tradition.”

My face flushes red with anger. Barrett hadn’t fought in a battle in nearly thirty years, and he was more interested in aiding the Demacian people than in “safeguarding” the traditions of the noble families. Most of the people who stand to speak, do so as if they have never met Barrett, only heard of him from afar, even though I know many of them saw him nearly every day. How could they know him so little?

Yet none of these accolades feel more false than those offered by Eldred of the Mageseekers.

“Lord Buvelle was, at his core, dedicated to ridding Demacia of its worst ills.”

Eldred was no friend to my husband in life, yet he speaks as though he knew Barrett’s heart. And even though I know Barrett was indeed committed to improving Demacia, it is not in the way that Eldred means to imply.

My husband was never fearful of mages. Indeed, we both unknowingly welcomed one into our home and our family, and we would never allow her to be taken from us. Sona, our adoptive daughter, sits beside me today, her tears falling silently as she averts her gaze from the Mageseeker.

“He saw the horrors that threaten to devour Demacia from within, and he dedicated his time and efforts to supporting organizations that would eat away at that rot,” Eldred says with an eelish smile. “And his support meant the world to those of us whose lives revolve around securing Demacia’s future.”

It stings to hear my husband so misrepresented.

Jarvan III is the last to speak before the family. He catches my eye from the dais, still clutching Barrett’s ragged blue tabard, and speaks his words directly to me.

“Barrett Buvelle was as a brother to me. Without him... I would not be the man I am today. The leader I am today. I am not ashamed to say that I would be a more thoughtless man. A more reckless man. A man who could love deeply but struggled to put that love into word or deed. But his friendship changed me, helped me be the husband and father and king that I am today. Barrett touched the soul of every person he met, and made them better for it.”

“Finally,” Sona signs to me, “someone is speaking of Father as he actually was.”

It’s true. I knew that if anyone would do so today, it would be Jarvan.

“That he has been ripped away from us, when he had so much more to give this world, is simply unbearable. He was not a man for whom war was easy, but he was a man who made war easier by giving freely of his time and love to the Demacians who fought for their country. And for it... for this love, for our country and our countrymen, he was stolen from us.

“So I swear, by the swords of the Winged Protectors, that I will hold responsible those who took him from me. From all of us. If it takes me a lifetime, so be it, for my love for him did not die with him. It will die with me.”

It feels as though my heart has been plunged into ice water. The king stares at me for another moment before nodding very slightly, the way Barrett used to when he made a promise. I realize that he believes this is what I want, too.

Applause rocks through the room, echoing and echoing and growing louder. The whole hall is filled with bloodthirsty people, willing to send more Demacians to die for... for what? Revenge? False justice?

This is not what Barrett would have wanted.

Before I know it, Kahina is helping me stand, gesturing toward the dais. She looks at me with those same piercing eyes her father had and offers a quick smile. “You can do this, Mother,” she signs to me. “I am here for you.”

“We both are,” signs Sona. My sweet girls. Two gifts that my husband and I were able to give each other, and the world.

My throat is raw, and my voice comes out as a ragged whisper. I cough and try again to limited success, but the din of the room has quieted.

“I do not have the words to tell you about how much my husband cared for the people of Demacia,” I say, willing my voice to remain steady. “Instead, I will do as he would have done, and show you.” I look around at the highborn people surrounding me, with the same fire in my words that I had the first time I had stood in this room. “I am donating the Buvelle residence within the Great City to the people of Demacia, in my husband’s honor. It will become a library, populated with our own private collection, for any Demacian to use at any time.”

A ripple of murmured shock spreads throughout the room. Other nobles do not allow the ordinary citizenry to peruse their book collections. Indeed, I imagine the thought that anyone could educate themselves to be distasteful to some. Barrett and I, however, first discussed the library years ago, and he loved the idea of providing for the Demacian people beyond the basics for survival.

It is the least I could do to honor him, especially when others tried to honor him so poorly.

“Our daughter Sona has composed a song in memory of her father that she would like to play. Sona?”

Sona stands, her etwahl strung across her back, and trades places with me at the dais, where the etwahl’s wooden stand is already in place. As I sit beside Kahina once again, my husband’s cinerarium now in my arms, Kahina whispers in my ear, “He would have loved this. It is the right thing to do.”

“I know it is,” I say, and squeeze her hand as Sona plays the first few notes on her instrument.

It takes only six measures before her song has moved everyone within the Hall of Valor to tears.

“It would only be for a few months,” the Illuminator finished breathlessly. “Would you be able to help sponsor the welfare of these children while they are in our care?”

Barrett and I looked at one another. “I think we can do a bit more than that,” Barrett said with a smile. “How many of these war orphans are there?”

“We are caring for nine, though two of them are ill and they might not last the week. One of them also doesn’t speak, and we aren’t sure yet if that’s something we can heal.”

“Can you spare one of your healers until they are well again?”

“Well... yes, that should be doable.”

“Then bring them all here,” Barrett said, nodding. “We have the room and the resources to help these children, and you’ll be able to focus on finding them families to stay with long-term.”

The Illuminator thanked us profusely for opening our home. We had never housed so many children before, and never from outside Demacia. But Demacians are not the only people in the world, which means they are not the only people worth helping when they are in need.

I remember Kahina became terribly excited, and she spent time researching Ionia with her tutors to see if there was any way we could make the children more comfortable. Any holidays we could celebrate together, things like that. Barrett and I did what we could to ready the rooms, and worked together to prepare an enormous first meal for them all.

When the children arrived, we realized that none of them spoke Demacian. So Barrett and Kahina took it upon themselves to find another way to communicate, one that involved a lot of pointing and hand gestures and facial expressions. I heard the house ring with laughter that evening.

But I wandered away when I heard music. I couldn’t think of where it could be coming from, so I followed it throughout the house, checking room by room to see what I could find.

Then, I saw her. Sona. Her face so serious, playing an instrument three times her size, swaying in time with her own music. She started when I entered the room, but she didn’t stop playing.

It was the most beautiful music I had ever heard.

Barrett found me there, leaning back against the doorframe, sometime later in the evening. “Lestara? Is everything...” He lost his train of thought as soon as the music hit him.

All too soon, the small girl stopped playing and stared back at us with enormous eyes. Barrett and I exchanged glances. Then, he waved at the girl. Just a little wave, to say hello.

She smiled, and her smile was as bright as the moon. She waved back shyly, then walked over and sat just in front of us.

“I think this is the girl they said couldn’t speak,” Barrett said gently.

“I don’t think she needs to.” I remember feeling like I knew everything about her, just from listening to her play. It had felt like a conversation, one that went deeper than words.

Barrett looked back at me. After a moment, he smiled and gave me a small nod.

We hosted those nine orphaned children for about three months. Eight of them left.

Sona stayed.

The funeral reception is held in the gardens beside the Citadel of Dawn, among the lilies where I had said yes to Barrett’s offer of marriage and where we had finally sworn ourselves to one another as husband and wife. It feels like that was so long ago. It feels like it was yesterday.

My daughters sit beside me as we receive endless noble mourners. They keep me from drifting off too far into my own memories, though it is hard to stay rooted to the present.

A young woman with a trained azurite eagle perched on her shoulder approaches. I immediately recognize her as the one who saved Barrett’s life a couple years ago, and lost her own brother in the battle. I stand and grasp her hands tightly between my own. “Thank you, Quinn,” I whisper, “for giving me two more years with him.”

She blushes, embarrassed. “I... It was nothing.”

“It was not nothing. It was everything. Please, if there is anything I can do for you, you only have to let me know.” I wait for her while she wrestles with whether she would like to tell me, if this is the appropriate time. “Please. I want to help you, any way that I can.”

It takes some coaxing, but finally Quinn comes to her point. She aspires to become a knight, and asks haltingly if I would speak to the newly appointed High Marshal on her behalf. “Of course,” I tell her as I stand. She and my daughters both begin to say that I do not need to go right now, but I am quietly happy to have something else to think about today. Something to do.

Tianna Crownguard has not approached me and my daughters yet. Instead, she stands beside her betrothed and listens to him speak with nobles from other houses about his hopes for expanding the Mageseekers. None of them look particularly interested, but a Crownguard’s presence makes Eldred’s words worth listening to, I suppose.

Both Crownguard and Eldred turn as I approach and offer their own condolences. She even embraces me, as though she is not part of the reason my husband is dead. “Tianna,” I say after she has let go of me, “there is a young woman over there, Quinn, who wishes to speak with you.”

“My dearest Lestara, today of all days you should not have to worry about serving others,” she says. “Let others serve you, for once.”

“If you are offering, then I would like to suggest that the best way you could serve me would be by speaking to the young woman. She saved Barrett’s life, once.”

Crownguard purses her lips, shamed. She had been the sword-captain of the Dauntless Vanguard during the battle of the Gates of Mourning three weeks earlier, but she’d had to resign in order to stand any chance of being named the next High Marshal. It was her Vanguard who had failed to keep my husband safe, failed to keep Purcivell Bronz safe. How she had been given a higher command, I cannot pretend to understand.

“We will speak of business another day,” she says coolly.

I am not so easily deterred. “Certainly, Tianna. When?” She mumbles something about returning to the front within the week. “Then I shall have to pay you a visit in the next few days, my dear. Tea?”

To her good fortune and visible relief, one of her polished warriors pulls her away to discuss strategy or some other convenient matter. In her absence, Eldred sidles up beside me. “A library is such a generous offer to make to the Great City,” he says with a light smile.

“Yes, my husband was a generous man.”

“I am interested in seeing what your collection holds.”

I roll my eyes. “The Mageseekers will not find any book of magic within my estate, of that I can assure you.”

“Ah, but descriptions of magic can be dangerous, too, Lady Lestara.” His smile is gone now, replaced with a stony expression meant to distract from the fanaticism in his eyes. “And some books tend to reference magic with a... shall we say, a treacherous lack of judgment. Sorcery deemed morally gray, instead of the evil we know it to be. And we can’t let that corrupt the minds of the Demacian people into believing that magic is... some sort of neutral force.”

“Are you suggesting that the Mageseekers audit my collection before the library opens?” I cannot believe the gall of this man. The Mageseekers do not have the power to make those sorts of demands, especially not of the nobility. “Because I am still Lady Lestara Buvelle, head of the Buvelle family until my daughter claims the title. With all the history behind that name, I don’t believe the king would—”

“Necessitate it? Oh, but didn’t you hear?” His smile is back, and I just want to slap it off his face. “It was Noxian mages that brought down the Gates of Mourning. Who is it that you think the king wants to punish?”

“The Noxians.” I say it firmly, but doubt creeps into my mind.

Eldred confirms these doubts with a shake of his head. “The mages.”

I had wondered for some time about Sona’s instrument, but it became clear after a few years that there was more to it than beautiful music.

And I did not know how best to tell Barrett.

We had never kept anything from one another, and I knew he did not fear and hate mages the way that some others in the nobility did. But I did not know how he would react if I told him that I suspected our daughter used magic.

It took months before I felt like I knew what to say. It was before bed, a week or so before spring would become summer, on a warm and peony-scented night.

“Barrett.”

“Hm?” He was paging through the Illuminators poesy book, as he often did when it seemed like he would need to go speak with soldiers at the front soon.

“I need you to know that, as much as I love you, I would leave you if you ever did anything to hurt our daughters.”

Barrett dropped his book on the floor. “What?” he asked, astounded. “What have I done to make you think that I would ever—”

“I just need you to know it,” I said. “You would never see me or our daughters again, for the rest of your life.”

He frowned. “Has something happened?”

I remember leaning over and lifting his book off the floor, smoothing the pages out where they had bent. I needed something to do with my hands, and somewhere to look that was not my husband’s face.

“I believe that Sona uses magic.”

“...Oh.”

His face, when I glanced up at him, was unreadable.

What had I done? Had I endangered my daughter’s life? Had I destroyed my marriage?

He turned to me, a look of wild fear in his eyes. I had never seen him afraid like this before, and I did not yet know what it meant.

“How...” he asked, his voice breaking. “How can we keep her safe?”

I had never loved my husband more than I did in that moment.

The entire day has left me drained, and my daughters help me to my feet as the last of the noble guests trickle out of the gardens.

“Should we take you home?” Sona asks. I can tell she’s worried about me, she’s been doting on me all day, but I know the grief has been taking its toll on her as well.

I shake my head. “No. I... I want us to say goodbye. Just the three of us. Before we leave.” Before the throne room is opened to the public tomorrow and the throngs of mourners crowd the space too much for any semblance of privacy.

Kahina nods and goes off to find the king. Jarvan, of course, says that we can have as much time as we need. “I’ll be just outside the doors if you need me,” he says. I’m touched by this offer—the king has only ever offered to stand guard for one man, and now that man is ash. His love for Barrett, it would seem, extends to Barrett’s family as well.

I kneel beside the carving that seals his resting place. On the outside is a detailed relief of his face in profile, his name, and the Buvelle family crest. The official images, the ones that commemorate him to all of Demacia forever. But I know that on the inside, facing his ashes, is a picture Kahina scribbled out when she was a child. It is Barrett, beside two men on horseback, giving them each a water cask and a new pair of boots. A child’s drawing of a man she loved very much.

Kahina kneels beside me and kisses my cheek. “I have been thinking of how I want to honor him.”

“You honor him by living as the wonderful woman you’ve grown to be,” I say, pressing my lips to her forehead.

But she pulls back from me and lets her hands fall to her lap. “I’m serious, Mother.”

Frowning, I gesture for her to continue. I don’t know what I expect her to say, but it’s clear that she does not expect me to be happy about it.

With a long look at her father’s tomb, Kahina says, “Father’s commission needs to be filled.”

“...He was a chaplain.”

“And so shall I be. Sort of.”

“I don’t understand, Kahina.”

She takes a deep breath, which does not calm the worry in my stomach. But then she smiles, radiant. “I have decided to join the Illuminators as a knight.”

I gasp. I can’t help it.

Knightly Illuminators may do their good works in battle, coming to the aid of Demacia when they are needed. In times of peace, they are devoted entirely to the cause of bettering the kingdom.

So devoted that they neither marry nor hold titles. Not a problem for most who join, but for Kahina, the intended inheritor of the Buvelle name...

“That... is wonderful, my love. Wonderful news.” I hug her tightly and try not to let her see the worry I know has settled onto my face. “Your father would be so proud of you, as I am.”

It is true. He would be.

Sona touches the petricite seal to Barrett’s tomb, and I see that she is shaken by this news as well. Kahina joining the Illuminators would mean that Sona is the only remaining heir.

And as an adopted child, especially one of Ionian rather than Demacian blood, that could prove difficult for her.

Especially if the Mageseekers gain the sort of power Eldred seems to be anticipating.

What would happen if things got too dangerous for her to remain within Demacia? Barrett and I discussed the possibility while he was still alive, but neither of us ever thought it would truly come to be an issue. The Mageseekers have never been well-loved or admired, but with Eldred wedded to Tianna Crownguard, that might not matter for long.

I don’t know how long I sit there considering both of my daughters’ futures, but all too soon they are ready to leave. I tell them that I will stay behind, to go home without me.

I am still not ready to say goodbye.

Jarvan III steps into the hall, and I cannot tell if I am annoyed or relieved. “Lestara? Are you still here?”

“I am.”

Quietly, he comes to kneel beside me. He is a tall man, but the weight of his grief has bent his shoulders. I have never looked at Jarvan and thought of him as old, but now I can see his age clearly.

“I remember,” he says, breaking the silence, “the first time I met Barrett. As a boy.”

I have heard this story many times over the years, but always from Barrett’s perspective. I wonder how the king’s account will differ.

“I was angry at another child, a boy who worked in the stables. I think perhaps I had lost in some game or another, something of no real importance, and I was throwing a tantrum the way small children do. I was yelling so fervently that I’m told my face was turning purple.” He laughs at this, though there is still no joy on his face. “And Barrett came up to me and started in on me, asking me what made me think this poor stable boy deserved my abuse, with that damned smile of his.”

“The one where he’s being so patient with you.”

“Exactly. The worst sort of thing for a six year old to see, when he’s crying so hard he can’t breathe. So I start shouting at him instead. ‘Do you know who I am?’ And he just patiently answers that of course he does, and he would have expected better of me than that.” He shakes his head, and I swear I can see tears on his cheeks. “He impressed me then. Didn’t care that I was a prince, just thought that I should have been better. That calmed me down, and when the tears stopped I asked him his name.” This smile is real, full of the love for this boy in a memory. “As I said before, he made me a better man.”

I can feel my own tears starting again, hot behind my eyes. “Did he?”

“What do you—”

“Barrett would not want his death avenged.”

Jarvan knows I’m right. I can tell because his face loses every bit of color. “Not everything we do is what the dead would have wanted from us,” he says, voice tinged with sadness and steel. “But the living have to go on finding ways to live. Ways to move forward.”

I know there are things I could say to him, but none that would get him to change his mind. Jarvan III is a man who, like my husband was, is as good as his word. He will do what he chooses once he has decided to do it, and nothing can stop him from it.

So we sit there together in silence for a little while longer. I stand, wishing that I could have had more time alone with my beloved, but the king shows no sign of moving and I don’t care to sit beside him any longer.

As I start toward the doorway, though, I hear Jarvan speak again. “You made him a better man, Lestara. I hope you know that.”

“I do. He never failed to tell me so.”

Suddenly, the King of Demacia stands and wraps me in a tight hug. I can feel him start to shake as he tries to hold back more sobs.

This is the moment it hits me.

Barrett is gone. He’s really gone.

My own tears start to fall, and soon I’m gasping for air, unable to breathe. It feels as though all of the breath has been wrung from my body, and all I have left is burning tears.

We cry in each other’s arms, unable to speak for the hideous grief that chokes us both. I cannot let go or I would fall to the floor.

I don’t know how long we stay like that. Seconds, minutes, hours. But eventually my breath comes back to me, and I stand there and breathe, feeling Jarvan calm as well.

“I’m having trouble remembering things about him,” Jarvan whispered. “It’s like my mind always trusted that he’d be there, so there was no reason to... to catalogue his laughter, or remember the exact way he’d say something profound. But I... I need some of his words, Lestara. Something that will allow his voice to echo in my mind again. Please.”

I think for a moment, but... the things I remember best about him are not memories I want to share with Jarvan III. They are mine, moments between Barrett and me that are my own treasures.

So I shake my head. “I don’t remember his words, not exactly.” Then, for the first time in three weeks, I feel myself start to smile. It feels foreign to me now, but I still remember how to do it somehow. “But I remember what he did, and how he made me feel. And that’s all anyone can hope to leave behind. It’s the only legacy that matters.”

Far from the Citadel of Dawn, Sona dragged her trunk out from beneath her bed, trying to keep from waking her sister sleeping down the hall, and began emptying her closet. Almost all of it was the things she would wear when performing, and very little of it was particularly practical. Certainly it was not the usual attire for a runaway teenager. But if she was going to support herself away from home, she would need her music and her performance skills to do it.

In the three weeks since her father had died, things already felt so different in Demacia.

She knew that the war the king wanted to wage would not be against the Noxians. It would be against people like her... and Sona was all too aware that her mother could not protect her the way that her father could, as the king’s best friend.

So she was leaving. Leaving before anything else could go wrong. Leaving before anyone could stop her.

Or so she had hoped. Sona heard the front door open—that would be her mother, finally returning home. She can’t stop me, she thought as she ran her hand along the side of her etwahl. I can make sure she doesn’t.

Lestara took one look through Sona’s door and nodded, her hands settling comfortably and easily into the signs as she told her daughter in no uncertain terms, “I’m coming with you.”

Sona chased after her mother as she strode toward her own bedroom. “Mother, you don’t even know where I’m going!” she signed frantically as soon as Lestara could see her hands.

“It doesn’t matter. I’m going with you. I’ll pack my things now, we’ll leave within the week.”

“Mother—”

Lestara gave her daughter a sad smile. “Sona. When have you been able to talk me out of anything once I’ve set my mind to it?”

And with that, she walked away.

Sona didn’t realize she was crying until she looked out her window and felt the cold night air across her face.

This isn’t fair, she thought. I don’t want to leave. This is my home.

But was it? Was it still? With her father gone, could it ever be again?

As she often did when she did not know what else to do, Sona sat down at her etwahl and began to play.

The mournful melody drifted out through her window echoing down the streets of the Great City, through the Citadel, even past the walls. Those who heard it did not know why they began to weep.

But Sona knew.

They cried for the death of a man without equal.

And they cried for the country he had once bettered with his presence, now forever changed in his absence.

Sona knew. And so she wept, and she played.

My name is Alyssa Roshka Gloriana val-Lokan. For almost two millennia, my ancestors ruled the Delverhold as kings.

Warlords, nations and would-be empires sought to overthrow us, jealous of the wealth the Ironspike Mountains offered up to us, but none could breach our fastness. They broke against our walls like ocean waves, and fell back from the doom of our blades.

All of them failed... until Noxus came.

And then my family were kings no more.

She held her head high as they climbed the Stairs of Triumph. Liveried guards stood sentinel every twelve steps, but her flinty gaze was locked forward, unwavering. This might have been Alyssa’s first time in the capital, but she refused to be overawed; she would not gawk like some provincial lowborn. She was of the Delverhold, and the blood of kings flowed through her veins.

The steps were flanked by guards clad in dark steel. The ore used in the forging of their armor came from the depths below her mountain home. All the best plate in Noxus started there, deep under the mountains. For five generations, ever since her realm had been conquered by Noxus and incorporated into the empire, it had been so.

Red banners rippled in the evening’s dry wind as they ascended. The scent of coalfire and industry wafted upon that hot breeze. In Noxus, the forges rarely cooled.

The Immortal Bastion loomed before them, dark and threatening.

“They flaunt their wealth and decadence, while we live as paupers,” said her brother, Oram. She looked askance at him, striding beside her.

Oram Arkhan val-Lokan. Broad-shouldered, strong of arm, and undeniably skilled with a blade, he was also arrogant and limited of mind—in Alyssa’s opinion—but she kept her disdain concealed behind an impassive, unexpressive mask. He was her elder, if only by a matter of minutes, and was only two steps removed from ruling the Delverhold himself. Alyssa was well aware of her place.

Outwardly, the fact they were twins was obvious. Both were tall and athletic in stature, and each had the cold eyes of the family line, as well as the proud demeanor of those born to nobility. Both wore their long, black hair bound artfully in tight braids, they each bore angular facial tattoos and wore shale-grey cloaks over their armor.

They reached the top of the stairs. There was a flutter of wings, and a raven flew low over their heads.

Alyssa almost flinched, but caught herself. “Should we consider that an ill omen, brother?”

She saw Oram’s hands turn to fists.

“Too long have we filled the coffers of Noxus and armored its soldiers,’ he snarled, making only the barest pretense in keeping his voice out of the earshot of the guards. “And for what?”

For survival, Alyssa thought, though she didn’t speak it aloud.

A pair of warriors clad in full plate awaited them outside the great metal doors of the palace. They stood to attention, heavy axe-headed halberds gripped in their gauntlets. The three indentations in their breastplates and their dark red cloaks and tabards informed Alyssa these were no regular guards.

“Legionaries,” breathed Oram, his usual bluster and arrogance forgotten.

In a nation of killers, the elite Trifarian Legion was feared and respected above all—by both friend and foe alike. It was said that their mere presence had seen cities and nations take the knee, rather than face them in battle.

“They honor us,” Alyssa said. “Come brother. It’s time we meet this so-called ‘Council of Three’ for ourselves.”

The throne sat empty, however, as it had since the previous Grand General of Noxus had died.

Not died, Alyssa corrected herself. Been executed.

No emperor for Noxus, no tyrant upon the throne. Not any longer.

Before she’d left the Delverhold, Alyssa had been counselled regarding this new leadership.

“The Trifarix,” her father’s chief advisor had named it. “Three together, each representing one of the core Principles of Strength—Vision, Might, and Guile. The theory is, where a single individual could doom Noxus through incompetence, madness or corruption, now there will always be two others to hold any rogue third accountable.”

To Alyssa, it was an intriguing concept, but one that remained untested in practice.

The chamber felt cavernous, large enough to house over a thousand petitioners, but at this moment it was empty, other than three figures sat at a simple table of marbled stone at the foot of the throne’s raised platform.

The two grim, unspeaking warriors of the Trifarian Legion escorted Alyssa and her brother towards the trio, their footfalls echoing sharply upon the cold floor. The three were deep in discussion, but they ceased their talk as the siblings of the Delverhold came towards them. They were seated in a row, facing the approaching envoys like a silent panel of judgement.

Two of them she knew by reputation. Of the third… well, no one knew anything, really.

In the center, keen-eyed and unblinking, sat Jericho Swain—the renowned visionary, the new Grand General. Some among the noble houses still called him usurper, since it was he who had dragged the madman Boram Darkwill from the throne of Noxus, but none of them said it to his face. His gaze, which seemed to see too much, bore first into Oram, then Alyssa. She resisted the urge to stare at the sleeve of his left arm, tucked within his dark coat. It was said he had lost the limb during the failed invasion of Ionia, severed by some blade-witch of that fey archipelago.

To his right sat Darius, the legendary Hand of Noxus, leader of the elite Trifarian Legion, and now commander of all the empire’s armies. He was the embodiment of might itself; where Swain sat rigidly upright, Darius slouched back, the fingers of one gauntleted hand drumming a steady tattoo upon the wooden armrest of his chair. His arms were massive, his expression hard.

The third figure—only ever referred to as “the Faceless”—was a mystery. This individual sat unmoving, bedecked from head to toe in a many-layered, voluminous robe. They wore a blank, staring, glossy-black mask, and even the eye-holes were obscured with dark mesh, giving away nothing as to their identity. Their hands, too, were concealed, hidden in sleeves of thick fabric. Alyssa thought she perceived a vaguely feminine aspect to the mask, but that might simply have been the way it happened to catch the light.

A barely perceptible inclination of the chin from Darius dismissed the legionaries that had escorted them in. The two warriors slammed their armored fists to their breastplates in salute, and retreated a half dozen steps, leaving Alyssa and her brother alone before the Trifarix.

“Sit, please,” said Swain, indicating the chairs opposite.

“I prefer to stand, Grand General,” replied Oram.

“As you wish.”

There was something undeniably threatening and predatory about the Grand General, Alyssa decided… considering he was a cripple heading into his twilight years…

“Oram and Alyssa val-Lokan, third and fourth-born children of the Governor of the Delverhold,” he continued. “It’s a long journey from the Ironspike Mountains. I take it this is not a social visit.”

“I come bearing the seal of my father,” said Oram, “to speak in his name.”

“Get on with it, then,” said Darius, his voice the warning growl of a murk-wolf. “No ceremony. This is Noxus, not some noble court.”

His accent was rough and earthy, not cultured like Swain’s. The voice of a commoner. Alyssa could almost feel her brother’s sneer.

“For decades, the Delverhold has served loyally,” Oram began, emphasizing the nobility of his own accent, perhaps in an unwise show of superiority. “Our gold feeds the campaigns of conquest. Our iron clads and arms the warbands of the empire. The Trifarian Legion too.”

Darius remained unimpressed. “Ironspike ore makes the best armor. I would not have the Legion protected in anything else. You should be proud.”

“We are proud, my lord,” said Alyssa.

“I am no lord. Especially not yours.”

Swain smiled, raising his hand. “What he means to say is—in Noxus, no man or woman is born superior to another. It is not by bloodline that one earns their place, but by their deeds.”

“Of course,” Alyssa demurred, cursing herself inwardly for her mistake.

“We toil likes slaves in the darkness of the deep-mines below the mountains,” Oram went on. “And every day we watch as the fruits of our labors are taken from us in great wagon trains that come back empty. We are scarcely able to feed our—”

“Oh, really?” Swain exclaimed, raising an eyebrow. “Please, show me your palms.”

“What?” said Oram, taken aback.

“Show us your hands, boy,” said Darius, leaning on the polished surface of the table between them. “Show us these hands that toil in the rock and dust and darkness beneath your mountain fortress.”

Oram squared his jaw, refusing to be drawn.

Darius scoffed. “Never struggled a day in his life, this one. Her neither. The only calluses you two possess certainly didn’t come from hard work.”

“I will not be spoken to in such a manner by…” Oram began, but Alyssa placed a placating hand upon his shoulder. He angrily shrugged it off, but wisely chose not to finish the thought. “The mountains are being bled dry,” he said, his voice more measured. “It is unsustainable, and that is not good for anyone—not for us, and certainly not for the armies of Noxus. There must be concession.”

“Tell me, Oram Arkhan val-Lokan,” said Swain, “how many warriors does the Delverhold send out to fight for Noxus? Approximately. Annually.”

“None, sir. But that is by-the-by. Our people serve better working the mines and guarding the northern frontiers from barbarian attack. That is where our chief value to Noxus lies.”

Swain sighed. “Of all the provinces, city-states and nations that submit to Noxus, the Delverhold stands alone in providing no soldiers to join our warhosts. You do not bleed for Noxus. You have never bled for Noxus. Is that not concession enough?”

“It is not,” Oram replied, curtly. “We have come at our father’s behest to renegotiate our tithes, or the Delverhold will have no option but to reconsider its place within the Noxian empire.”

The room had become very still. Even Darius had ceased the incessant tapping of his fingers.

Alyssa’s face drained of color, and stared at her brother in horror. This was a turn she had not been privy to, and her mind reeled at its implications. The Faceless continued to gaze levelly at her, from behind that glossy mask.

“I see,” said Swain, finally. “I believe I know your father’s real purpose in sending the two of you here, but the question is… do you?”

Oram nodded to Alyssa. “Show them,” he ordered, his eyes flashing in anger.

She took a deep breath, and brought forth a scroll case. Unhooking its end with trembling fingers, she slid free an old sheaf of parchment, covered in intricate, angular writing in Ur-Noxian. It bore both the seal of the Delverhold, and the blood-red crest of Noxus. She placed it upon the table, and smoothed it flat before standing back at her brother’s side—although half a step behind, as was her place, according to Ironspike custom.

Darius appeared disinterested, but both Swain and the Faceless leaned forward to look upon the document. Once again, Alyssa found herself trying to get any sense of who it was that hid behind the mask.

“When the Delverhold submitted to Noxian rule, eighty-seven years ago,” said Oram, “our ancestors gave up their sovereign rights and bowed before the throne of Noxus—the very throne I see before me now, empty.”

Darius glowered at him. “And…?”

“The terms are clear, as you can see for yourself, as to where we pledged our allegiance. The last man to sit on that throne died a little over seven years ago,” said Oram, gesturing up at the dais. “As far as our father is concerned, this piece of paper is now worthless. The Delverhold is under no obligation to continue to pay any tithes at all, but has continued to do so as an act of good faith. However, if our concessions are not met, the Delverhold will be forced to extricate itself from the empire. The Ironspike region will no longer be under our immediate protection.”

Alyssa wanted to look away, wanted to run, but found herself rooted to the spot as she waited for the reaction of the council.

“History only remembers the victors,” Darius warned them. “Stand with Noxus, and be remembered forever. Stand against us, and you will be crushed and forgotten.”

“No army has ever breached the Delverhold,” said Oram. “Our forefathers opened the gates to Noxus willingly, remember. No blood was spilled.”

“You’re playing a dangerous game, boy.” Darius pointed to the warriors standing a few paces behind Alyssa and Oram. “Just two of the Trifarian Legion could walk in and take your precious Delverhold. I wouldn’t even trouble myself to go with them.”

As if to emphasize his point, the two legionaries slammed the butts of their halberds into the floor, the sound echoing like a thunderclap.

Oram scoffed at the display, but Darius’ confidence struck Alyssa. He did not seem to be a man to make idle boasts.

“Enough,” said Swain, with a wave of his hand. “Let us hear what these concessions would entail.”

The silver moon had passed its zenith in the night sky overhead by the time Alyssa and Oram left the palace. They began making their way toward the nearby estate that served as their base of operations within the capital.

Alyssa was quiet and brooding, her stomach a tight knot of unease, but her brother seemed energized by the encounter with the rulers of Noxus.

“Swain will agree to our terms! I’m sure of it,” he gushed. “He knows the Delverhold is too important to the empire to allow father to close its gates.”

“This is madness,” Alyssa muttered. “We walk in there and you threaten them? That was your plan?”

“That was father’s plan.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Would you have agreed to it, had you known?”

“Of course not,” Alyssa replied. “This is a fool’s errand. We may just as well have offered ourselves up for the next Fleshing…”

“If Swain is convinced, we only need one of the others to join him for them to concede to our terms,” said Oram, seeming not to hear her concerns. “That is how the Trifarix works. Their leadership cannot be deadlocked, when only two of them need agree on anything to get it done.”

“Darius will never agree.”

“Darius is an arrogant dog. He thinks he could send two men to take the Delverhold? Pah! But I fear you are right. While he objects, that leaves only the Faceless. Our future prosperity lies with the vote of whoever is behind that mask.”

“Then there is nothing more to do but wait to hear what our fates will be,” said Alyssa, a hint of bitterness in her voice.

Oram’s eyes gleamed dangerously. “Not necessarily.”

The knot in Alyssa’s stomach tightened a little more as he began to explain.

Dawn was still several hours away, but Alyssa was already uncomfortably warm as she made her way swiftly and quietly through the streets of the capital. At the head of a contingent of Delverguard, she wore a tight-fitting helmet of dark steel, and already she could feel her hair dampening with sweat beneath it.

There were a dozen of them in all, cloaked and hooded over their armor. All carried heavy crossbows, with blades strapped at their waists. In this city, it was not at all unusual to see armed warbands from all across the empire; if anyone saw them, their weapons would not raise alarm, and yet Alyssa could not shake the feeling they were being watched.

And, somehow, that the observer knew their intent.

The streets and alleys of Noxus were narrow and twisting, designed to stifle and frustrate any attacking force that managed to penetrate the city’s outer defenses. The rooftops were flat and crenellated, like the battlements of a castle, allowing any soldiers above to dominate any enemy below. Alyssa eyed those dark rooftops warily. Anyone could be up there, marking their progress. They could well be walking into an ambush…

A flutter of black wings overhead made her skid to a halt, swinging her crossbow skywards. She cursed herself for being so jumpy, and gestured her retainers on.

“This is a bad idea,” Alyssa said to herself, for the twentieth time since leaving the estate.

She had said as much to her brother, trying to dissuade him from this course of action, but his mind was set. This was their father’s will, Oram had stated with finality. They would return home having secured a new deal, or they would not return at all. There was no other course.

Now she had some time to digest it, Alyssa was not surprised that this was the old governor’s plan all along. Of course it was. While it may well end in both her and her brother’s capture and subsequent execution, what was that to her father? He had never cared for either of them over-much, saving his affections for his heir: Alyssa’s oldest brother, Herok. And if they were caught, and the Trifarix tried to hold them as hostages to keep the Delverhold within the rule of Noxus, she knew what their father’s answer would be.

To him, Alyssa and Oram were expendable.

She and her men hugged the shadows as they closed in on the Shrine of the Wolf, which butted up against the old southern bulwarks of the Immortal Bastion itself. Her brother would be a few streets to the east, with more of their armed retainers.

In the weeks before the contingent arrived in the capital, spies in their employ had been watching the comings and goings around the palace. One of the observations had been of particular interest, and it was upon that intelligence that Alyssa and her brother were now operating.

They were getting close. Alyssa lifted a hand, and the Delverguard fell in around her, pausing in the shadows of a narrow passage looking towards the Shrine of the Wolf. It was a tall, multi-tiered tower with open sides, each level held aloft by pillars of dark stone. In the center of the tower, looming almost fifty feet high, was a massive obsidian statue of a seated wolf.

They waited there for a long minute, until they saw two brief flashes of light in the distance—the sparks of a blade against flint. That was the signal Oram was in place, and the way was clear.

“Let’s move,” Alyssa hissed, and as one, she and her attendants were up and running, breaking from cover and hurrying towards the shrine, watchful for guards. There were none. It seemed her brother and his men had done their work.

Alyssa loped up the steps to the shrine, indicating with a flick of her hand for her warriors to spread out. They entered, passing over the threshold, and circled out around the wolf statue. They hugged the shadows, leaning in against the pillars, melding into the darkness, and waited.

She gazed up. In ancient Valoran custom, death was often represented as a dualistic in nature, taking the form of the Lamb of peaceful death, and the Wolf of violent ends. In Noxus, the latter was honored with rather more rigor and panoply. Dying peacefully in one’s bed was not the way to secure honor in an empire that venerated strength.

Alyssa steadied her breathing, trying to slow her racing heart. Her hands were clammy. She wiped them on her cloak.

Waiting was the always the worst part.

She glanced around again, and found herself barely able to make out her retainers. Good. If they were spotted too early, then all of this would be for naught. Alyssa reached up and fastened a veil of finely wrought chainmail to her helmet, so that it hung below her eyes, obscuring her features.

A distant watchtower tolled the fourth hour. Alyssa readied herself. If the information from their spies was correct, the target would be approaching any moment…

And, as if on cue, a heavily robed figure emerged.

It came from the direction of the Immortal Bastion proper, accompanied by four palace guards. The lead figure was almost invisible in the pre-dawn darkness, dressed as they were, from head-to-toe in black.

It was the third member of the Trifarix—the Faceless.

The anonymous figure walked slowly towards the shrine, head turning from side to side, as if scanning the shadows. Their hands were clasped before them, hidden beneath heavy sleeves.

The guards stopped at the foot of the shrine. It appeared the Faceless conferred with them briefly, though Alyssa was too far away to hear their words, before the masked figure continued on alone, seemingly to pay respects to the Wolf.

While warriors of the warhosts and reckoners from the gladiatorial pits were perhaps the most frequent visitors to the various martial shrines scattered around the capital, even bureaucrats, shop-keeps and servants made frequent offerings. The Faceless, it had been observed, visited this shrine at the fourth hour of every fifth day, always guarded and under the cover of darkness.

Thankfully, while the loyalties of the Trifarian Legion were absolute, mere palace guards could most certainly be bribed to look the other way.

As the masked figure approached the great statue, Alyssa stepped out of the concealing darkness. On cue, the paid off guards turned on their heels and marched back towards the Immortal Bastion. Alyssa had her crossbow levelled at the Faceless as she stepped cautiously into the flickering light of the sconces around the statue.

“Don’t move, and don’t cry out,” she hissed. “Your guards are gone. Twelve crossbows are aimed at you right now.”

The robed figure made a muffled sound, perhaps in surprise, and came a step closer to her. There was something distinctly familiar about it, both in the sound and its awkward movement…

“Hold, I say,” said Alyssa. The Faceless froze.

No one in Noxus seemed to know who the third member of the Trifarix was—no one that Alyssa and Oram had been able to find, at least. That was the strength of deception, the principle of guile represented on the Council of Three.

But Alyssa intended to change that.

“It’s all about leverage,” her brother had said. “If we can learn the identity of that one, then we can use it to our advantage.”

“We mean you no harm,” Alyssa declared, as boldly as she could. “Take off your mask, and there will be no bloodshed.”

The hooded figure looked around, perhaps seeking the guards, or trying to spot the crossbowmen Alyssa had spoken of, concealed in the darkness. Then the figure edged forward again, now almost within weapons’ reach, hands still hidden from view.

Alyssa aimed her crossbow at the figure’s chest. “Don’t. Take. Another. Step.”

The figure made another muffled sound, shaking the mask emphatically. Alyssa narrowed her eyes.

Then she exhaled slowly, as the realization crept over her.

“Ah. That makes things easier.’

She pulled the trigger, and her bolt took the robed figure in the throat.

One of her retinue was at her side in an instant, urging her to run. “We have to go,” he said. “We have to be out the city before sunrise, before anyone knows what has happened.”

“It’s already too late,” Alyssa answered.

She knelt beside the figure, now gasping on the ground. Blood was pooling beneath the body. Alyssa had seen enough wounds in her time to know this one was fatal.

She reached out, and pulled the mask free.

Oram stared up at her.

Her brother’s face was pallid, his eyes wild, and a gag had been stuffed in his mouth. He jerked and twitched as death came for him. The movements pulled his sleeves back, revealing his hands, bound tightly together with cord.

In his last moment, his gaze shifted from Alyssa to the massive statue of the Wolf looming over them.

It was then that the legionaries arrived, loping out of the darkness like hunting hounds, to surround the shrine.

The sun was high in the cloudless sky outside, sending angled beams of light through the narrow slit-windows into the audience chamber.

Alyssa stood before the Trifarix once more, her head held high, wrists manacled behind her back. The members of the council regarded her carefully. The inscrutable masked face of the Faceless was, to Alyssa in this moment, perhaps the most intimidating of the three.

It was Swain who finally broke the silence.

“Let me speak plainly,” he said. “The Delverhold is of great value to Noxus, but not so valuable that we would acquiesce to the demands and threats of its governor. That would be a signal of weakness. Within the week, a dozen other provinces would be lining up with demands of their own. No, that was never going to be happen. But, you already knew that.”

“I did,” said Alyssa. “My brother clearly didn’t.”

“Then, it might make lesser minds wonder… why would an intelligent young woman such as yourself go along with such an obvious and clumsy scheme?”

“Duty,” Alyssa replied.

“Duty to the empire must always overshadow duty to family,” said Swain.

Alyssa might have imagined it, but she thought she saw Darius’ expression darken very slightly at those words. Even so, the Hand of Noxus held his tongue.

“I agree entirely,” said Alyssa. “Which is the reason, when I realized it was my brother under the mask, I shot him.”

Swain turned towards the masked Faceless. “A risky gambit, to gag and disguise your captive. There were other ways we might have tested her.”

He turned back to Alyssa.

“Indulge me, please, for the benefit of my fellow council members. Why would you knowingly shoot and kill your brother?”

“My father sent us here to die,” Alyssa replied, “and would have used our deaths to justify closing the gates of the Delverhold to Noxus.”

“Go on.”

“My father and my brothers are fools. They have been blinded by their desire to rule the Ironspike Mountains as kings once more, as our forebears did. They would lead my people to their doom for such a fleeting vanity.”

The merest hint of an icy smile turned the corner of Swain’s mouth.

“So then, Alyssa Roshka Gloriana val-Lokan—what would you propose instead?”

The aging Governor val-Lokan looked up, an expression of pure outrage upon his face, as Alyssa threw open the doors to his tally-chamber.

“What is this, girl?” he snarled, rising to his feet. “You return unannounced? Where is Oram?”

Striding behind her were two warriors of the Trifarian Legion, imposing and ominous in their dark Ironspike armor, halberds at the ready.

Beside her father was her brother Herok, heir to the Delverhold. His eyes were wide and fearful.

“Guards!” the governor shouted. “Stop them!”

His personal guard, however, made no move to intervene. The reputation of the Legion was known throughout Valoran—even among those who had never fought beside or against them. They marched with the authority of the Hand of Noxus. To defy them was to defy the Trifarix itself.

Alyssa had thought much about the words Darius had spoken, those words that her brother had scoffed at.

Just two of the Trifarian Legion could walk in and take your precious Delverhold.

It had proved to be no idle boast after all.

“What have you done?” her father hissed, sinking back into his chair.

“What was needed.”

Alyssa produced a rolled parchment, freshly written and stamped with the crest of Noxus—the crest of the Trifarix—and slammed it down on the table before her father, making him jump.

“On the order of the Grand General, I am removing you from office,” said Alyssa, “Henceforth, I shall govern this place, for the good of the empire.”

“You?” her father scoffed. “A woman has never ruled the Delverhold!”

“Then perhaps it is time that changed. It is time for someone who will look to the future of our people, and not obsess about the kings and faded glory of the past.”

Alyssa nodded, and her father’s own guards stepped forward, grabbing hold of him.

“You can’t do this!” he screeched. “I am your father! I am your lord!”

“You are no lord,” said Alyssa. “Especially not mine.”

“Hurry up, Wyn!” shouted Janke. “The Rising Howl’s on its way!”

“I know!” he shouted back. “You don’t need to tell me!”

Wyn could hear the squeal of greased iron and the taste of metal tingling on his teeth. The interior of the vent pipe he was climbing vibrated with the hexdraulic elevator’s approach.

He pushed his back against the beveled ironwork, keeping his cramping legs braced on the opposite side. Looking up, the square of light that was the way out of the pipe seemed impossibly distant. A head appeared above him; his older brother, Nico.

“Almost there, little man,” said Nico, reaching back to offer his hand to Wyn. “You need me to come down?”

Wyn shook his head and dug deep, pushing with his spine straight as the muscles in his legs burned. Step by step, he inched upward until he was close enough to reach for his brother’s hand.

Nico grabbed his wrist and hauled, pulling him from the pipework. Wyn landed badly and stumbled, falling flat on his face in the cliff-side alcove known to every kid in Zaun. The space was barely wide and tall enough for them to stand next to each other with a sheer drop at the edge. Maybe ten yards beyond the edge were the elevator’s three support columns, each two yards wide and wrought from heavy ironwork.

Feen stood at the farthest part of the ledge, looking down with a manic grin. The wind billowed around him, his patchwork clothes flapping and his hair wild. Kez stood next to Nico, her cheeks flushed with excitement. Janke beat a nervous tattoo on his thigh with the palm of his hand, glowering at Wyn.

“You almost made us miss it.”

“Howl ain’t here yet,” snapped Wyn. “We ain’t missed nothing.”

Janke glared at Wyn, but with Nico here, he didn’t dare say or do anything. Back at Hope House for Foundling Children, Janke was a bully, but a bully it was sometimes handy to have around when low-rent Chem-Baron thugs fancied kicking downward.

Kez reached to help Wyn up. He smiled and took her hand.

“Thanks,” he said.

“My pleasure,” she said, leaning in to be heard over the noise.

Wyn smelled the caustic soap she’d washed with that morning - like chemical lemon juice. Given the nature of this excursion, she’d made an effort with her clothes too, digging out an old dress from the boxes of clothes discarded by kids who’d outgrown them, or who’d left the foundling home when they got too old. Wyn had beaten the worst of the dust and grime from his own threads, but he suddenly felt acutely scruffy next to Kez.

“I’ve never ridden the Howl,” she said, still holding tight to his hand. “Have you?”

The screeching roar was getting louder. The clattering rattle of the elevator’s mechanisms echoed deafeningly from the dripping, algal-green walls of the alcove. Feen was looking back at him and Janke had an ugly grin plastered over his face. Fear of looking like a dumb kid made the lie easier to tell.

“Me? Yeah, loads!” he said, knowing instantly it was a mistake. Wyn glanced over his shoulder. The others were gathered at the edge; legs braced, leaning into the wind.

Wyn leaned close to Kez’s ear.

“Sorry, I don’t know why I said that,” he said. “I ain’t done this before. Not never once. Don’t tell the others, but I’m crapping it.”

She let out a relieved breath.

“Good. I didn’t want to be the only one.”

Riding the Rising Howl was one of many rites of passage for the kids of Zaun. Like reaching the top of Old Hungry with all your limbs intact, cutpursing a baron’s man or playing knock-and-run with a stilt-walking sump-scrapper. Zaun had a seemingly endless procession of insanely dangerous tests you had to pass to truly count yourself a hard-bitten street kid.

But gathering his courage to leap from the rocky ledge, this test seemed to Wyn to be the craziest. The scream of the approaching elevator was getting louder, filling the alcove with the shriek of metal on metal and the boom of ratcheting gears.

Nico stood, leaned out and stared down, turning back with a crooked grin and a thumbs up. He bent his knees and threw himself out from the cliff. Arms and legs flailing, he vanished from sight. Not wanting to be shown up, Janke went next, hurling himself from the ledge with a wild whooping yell. Feen followed his friend, laughing like a maniac.

“Ready?” yelled Wyn, his words drowned out by the Rising Howl.

Kez nodded. No way she could hear him, but she got the message. She still hadn’t let go of his hand. He grinned, and they ran toward the cliff edge. Wyn’s heart was in his mouth, beating like a pneuma-hammer against his ribs. His step faltered, but it was too late to stop now. He reached the edge of the cliff and leapt into the wind, yelling a defiant roar of fear and bravado.

The ground vanished beneath him. Only empty air between him and the lower levels of Zaun, hundreds of yards below. Sheer, undiluted terror seized Wyn. It clamped him in a smith’s vice and squeezed the air from his lungs. Wyn saw himself tumbling to the ground, windmilling his arms as if he might suddenly learn to fly like the cliff-shrikes. He looked down. The ovoid, glass and iron shape of the Rising Howl was below him, coming up fast.

Nico, Janke, and Feen were already on it, clinging to its baroque latticework frames or braced against its structure. Wyn slammed into the thick glass and rolled. He flailed for a handhold, sliding down the curve of the outer windows. His sweaty palms slipped. His feet scrabbled for purchase. Anything to slow his descent.

Nothing.

“No, no, no...” he gasped, sliding over the curved topside toward the edge. “Janna’s mercy!”

An updraught of wind flipped him over onto his front and he saw a bronze hook standing proud on the giant elevator’s side. He threw himself at it, and it seemed the wind at his back gave him just enough of a push to reach it. His fingers closed on the metal and his sliding descent to oblivion halted.

With the threat of a long fall, followed by a hard stop, averted, Wyn was able to get his feet under him and looked around for Kez. He saw her higher up, laughing hysterically at having survived. Wyn felt the urge to laugh, and couldn’t stop grinning like a lunatic as he clambered up to where the upper surfaces of the Rising Howl were less angled.

Nico gave a whoop when he saw him and punched Janke in the arm.

“See? Told you he’d make it!”

Wyn clambered to his brother, his legs rubbery as a shimmerfiend’s after an all-night bender. He sucked in a great draught of clean air. Down in the Sump, the air had texture, but getting higher, it had a sharp clarity that made him pleasantly light-headed.

“Not bad, little man, not bad,” said Nico, giving him a slap on the back. His older brother coughed and spat a wad of gray phlegm onto the glass. Nico wiped his lips with his palm and Wyn couldn’t help but notice the brackish residue left on his hand.

“Yeah, no bother,” said Wyn.

Nico laughed at his bravado. “Worth it though, eh?”

“It’s beautiful,” said Kez.

Wyn had to agree. Far below, this part of Zaun spread over the rocky floor of the canyon in a glittering, bottle-green swathe of light and color. Vapor rainbows arced over the Factorywood and spiraling plumes of shimmering smoke danced over the chem-forges. From up here, sump pools wavered like emerald mirages and the winking hearth-lights in the darkness were like the stars he rarely saw from Hope House.

Tears pricked Wyn’s eyes, and he told himself it was the keenness of the wind. High above, Piltover shone in towers of ivory and bronze, copper and gold. Beautiful also, but Zaun’s beauty was lived in. Its streets were filled with life and vitality, every one bearing a heaving, bustling mass of humanity. Wyn loved Zaun. For all its faults, and there were many, its sheer unpredictability and exuberance gave it a pulse you didn’t often find up in Piltover.

Wyn looked down through the glass beneath his feet to see scores of people staring up at him. The passengers of the Rising Howl were used to folk hitching a lift upward, but that didn’t mean they liked it. A few were Zaunites, but most of them were well-heeled Pilties, returning after an evening spent in the gaslit commercia arcades, glass-ceilinged food parlors, or pounding music halls of Zaun.

“Bloody Pilties,” said Janke. “Coming down to slum it in Zaun. Think they’re living dangerously, but at the end of the night they run back up to Piltover.”

“Be a lot less coin flowing down in Zaun if they didn’t,” pointed out Kez. “Pilties do well outta Zaun, and we do well outta them. And how many grand days out we had up in Piltover? Remember the fireworks over the Sun Gates last Progress Day? Remember that Piltie girl you were sweet on? You talk big, Janke, but you’re the one always wants us to head up top.”

They laughed as Janke went red.

“I’ll give ‘em something to look at!” said Feen with a grin. The scrawny lad shucked the braces from his shoulders, dropped his trousers, and planted his ass on the glass ceiling. “Hey, Pilties, there’s a new moon out tonight!”

And like a dog dragging its backside along the ground, Feen let himself slide down the glass with his ass-cheeks splayed for the viewing pleasure of the people below.

They laughed uproariously at the horrified expressions of the elevator’s passengers - men covering the eyes of children and shaking their fists at the filthy Zaunites.

“We’re not going right up top,” said Nico, getting his breath back and wiping tears from his eyes. “Babette’s is on the Entresol level.”

“We ain’t even sure Mama Elodie’s gonna be there,” said Janke.

“She’ll be there,” said Wyn. “I saw the playbill on her desk. Painted picture of her singing on stage, sure as Gray follows Day. But we gotta hurry, she goes on at eight bells and it’s already gone six!”

Mama Elodie was the mistress of Hope House, a foundling home dedicated to the welfare of the many orphans created in the wake of the disaster that tore Zaun apart. Initially funded by the families who would go on to become Piltover’s clans, more than two hundred orphans had been cared for within its walls. But in the century or so since its opening, the institution’s fortunes had waned as the money from the newborn city on high stopped flowing. The wealthy upsider families eventually decided they’d assuaged their guilt with enough gold, and that was that.

Mama Elodie was the only member of staff to stay on when the funds dried up, a dark-skinned woman who said she was an Ionian princess. Wyn suspected that might just be a story to charm donations out of the Chem-Barons, but he liked it when she told how she’d chosen to see the world instead of living a boring life in a palace. Wyn couldn’t imagine turning your back on wealth like that, but he’d never met anyone else from Ionia - even when he’d run errands for seafarers down at the docks.

Every waif and stray in Hope House had heard Mama Elodie singing as she cooked and cleaned. Her voice was extraordinary, and Wyn had fallen asleep to her lullabies more than once as a babe in arms. Wyn had been delivering a cup of herbal tisane to Mama Elodie when he’d seen the folded playbill for Babette’s Theatrical Emporium tucked under a sheaf of dog-eared letters. He’d only had time for a quick look, but swore on a chest of golden gears that it was Mama Elodie, dolled up in her best finery and singing on a footlit stage. She’d seen his look and sent him on his way with a cuff round the ear and a sharp rebuke for being nosy.

He told the others what he’d seen, and within the hour they’d formed a plan to sneak out and see her sing.

“Look!” yelled Wyn, nudging Nico in the ribs.

Nico looked down and nodded, seeing the uniformed conductor shouting into a flexible speaking tube.

“He’s warning the staff above to watch out for freeloading Zaunites,” said Nico. “But it don’t matter. Remember, we ain’t riding it all the way to the platform.”

“So where we getting off then?” asked Feen, clambering to his feet and, mercifully, hauling up his trousers.

“There’s an old winch mechanism just below the embarkation platform,” said Nico, pointing upward. “The cowl’s nice and flat and wide, and next to it, there’s a vent pipe that’s lost its cover.”

“We’re going to have to jump again?” asked Wyn.

Nico grinned and winked.

“Yeah, shouldn’t be a problem for a seasoned pro like you, eh?”

Wyn let out a shuddering breath, his palms bloody where they’d grabbed the rusted cowl of the winch. His second jump into thin air had been just as gut-wrenchingly terrifying, but at least this time he’d known he could do it. The Rising Howl continued upward on its way, and Wyn was glad to see it go.

At least heading back down to Zaun would be easier. They’d take the steps cut into the sheer rock or slide down the dizzying screw-stairs plunging through the overhanging structures cantilevered from the side of the cliffs.

The winch cowl was right next to an open vent, just as Nico had said it would be. The inside reeked of toxic runoff, but at least it was mostly dry. Thankfully, it was large enough to stand upright, which meant it had likely carried a whole lot of gunk and deposited it down into Zaun.

“Where does this end up?” asked Kez, careful to avoid the greenish slime that pooled in depressions in the iron.

“Comes out just behind the Bonscutt Pump Station, I think,” said Nico.

“Don’t you know?” said Janke. “I thought you’d done this before?”

“I have, but it was about a year ago and I ain’t too sure the layout’s gonna be the same as it was.”

They followed the pipe as it rose and twisted through the rock. The metal groaned and creaked with the movement of the cliffs.

“The cliffs are muttering again,” said Kez.

“What are they saying?” asked Wyn.

“Nobody knows,” she answered. “Mama Elodie once told me the rock was still sad about what happened when they split the land to make the canal. She said that every now and then, when the rock’s sorrow gets too much, it sobs, and that’s what shakes the earth.”

“So for all you know, this might end in a wall of rock or a barrier of twisted metal?” said Janke.

“Could be,” said Nico. “But I doubt it. Look.”

Nico pointed to thin spars of light up ahead. Swirling motes of dust hung in the air, and Wyn saw a rusted ladder rising into a square-cut channel in the pipe.

“Looks like we got ourselves a way out,” said Nico.

Wyn had only traveled to Zaun’s Entresol level a couple of times in his life, and on each occasion it had left a singularly vivid impression on him. Situated just below the notional border between Piltover and Zaun - a fluid and ever-changing line at best - the Entresol was a flourishing hub of cosmopolitan commercia arcades, supper-clubs, recital halls and joy houses, making it one of the most populated districts of the cities. It was also widely regarded by the people that lived and toiled there as the place where the real work of Zaun got done.

Emerging from the pipework, they’d quickly got their bearings and navigated toward one of the main thoroughfares. Wyn and Kez were the only ones who could read well enough to decipher the cursive street signs, and Kez led them to a wide boulevard thronged with the most amazing people Wyn had ever seen.

Men and women from Piltover and Zaun happily mingled on the cobbled street, dressed in colorful finery and plumed hats. The women wore pleated dresses with scoop-lined necks and brightly colored sashes. The men looked dashing in their long frock coats and polished boots that wouldn’t last a day in the muck below.

“Everyone is smiling,” he said, feeling the corners of his mouth twitch upward in imitation. “And laughing.”

“You’d laugh too if you weren’t struggling every day to feed yourself,” said Janke.

Wyn started to reply, but Nico shook his head. Janke had come to Hope House older than most foundlings, and was on the verge of having to leave and find his way in the world. Small wonder he was bitter.

Wyn understood that bitterness. After all, who didn’t want more than they had? Who didn’t want to live somewhere nicer if they could? The harsh reality of the world was that folk lived as high as they could afford. Most folks were content with their place in the grand scheme of things, but Wyn yearned for a life spent in a place where he could walk hand in hand with a beautiful girl, take in a show, and eat a meal under the moonlight whenever he wanted.

On impulse he took Kez’s hand, and when she didn’t pull away, his heart beat harder than it had when he made his first jump. With Nico in the lead, they strolled down the center of the street like they had every right to be there. Which, of course, they did, but the stares their grimy attire attracted made it clear that, while no one was going to kick them back down, they weren’t exactly a welcome sight.

For a moment, Wyn fantasized that they could stay here forever, walking along a street of glowing chem-lumens, surrounded by people who could direct them to the best delicatessens with the creamiest crag-duck confit, or advise which plays they simply had to see. He pictured himself dressed like a dandy, greeting his fellow citizens and doffing his hat to visiting clan representatives.

“Is that a cultivair?” said Wyn, pointing to a latticework dome of smoky glass leaning out from the edge of the cliff.

“I think so,” said Kez. “I’ve only ever seen them from below.”

An iron bridge and taut cables tethered the glass dome to the rock, and they paused to take in the beauty of what it contained. Behind the glass, a small forest of tall trees with broad leafy canopies were tended by a robed gardener with a tattooed and shaven head. A riot of flowers, with petals of red, gold, and blue stood out in contrast to the greenery within. Wyn had never seen anything quite so beautiful in all his life. He waved to the gardener, wishing he could walk with Kez through the forest, smelling the perfumed blooms and feeling the soft grass between his toes.

The gardener smiled and waved before returning to his duties.

A series of bells rang out. Wyn counted seven in total.

“Come on,” he said urgently. “The show’ll be starting soon.”

Janke turned to Nico. “You sure you know where this place is?”

“Babette’s? Yeah, I know it,” said Nico, covering his mouth as he coughed again. “I took Aleeza there once, when I had a few coin to my name after I beat that merchant from Bel’Zhun in a drinking contest.”

Wyn remembered that night well, watching in disbelief as his brother threw back shot after shot of kouaxi, a potent spirit the Shuriman had said was made from fermented goat’s milk. They reached twenty shots before the merchant finally keeled over. Nico was hungover for a week before he could spend his winnings.

“It’s just up here,” said Nico, as they entered a cavernous plaza hollowed out from the cliffs.

People thronged the wide open space, talking, negotiating and haggling over who knew what. A few people with metallic augments strolled through the plaza, each bearing the sigil of one of the Chem-Barons, but they were few in number and attracted more than their fair share of wary glances.

At the far end of the plaza stood a grand structure of vivid color and noise. Barkers shouted inducements to enter and handed out playbills. Fluted columns of black marble veined with gold formed the building’s giant portico, over which was a series of statues of wild animals, dragons, and armored warriors. Greenish chem-lights illuminated them, and the wavering flames made it look like they were alive.

“I give you Babette’s Theatrical Emporium,” said Nico, taking a deep bow and pointing to the brightly-lit structure.

“What do you mean we can’t come in?” said Nico.

The two doormen were well-dressed, but no amount of finery could conceal their experience in hurting people. Snaking tattooes covered their necks and wrists, and one of them had a mechanized arm that buzzed with something energized. A shok-club maybe? Or something even more deadly? Or perhaps it just wasn’t working very well.

“We can pay,” said Kez.

“It ain’t the money, girly,” said the first doorman, a man Wyn mentally christened Chem-Breath.

“Then what is it?” she demanded.

“You ain’t dressed right.”

“Indeed,” chimed in the second doorman, the one with the buzzing, mechanical arm. “Mistress Babette expects a certain level of... hygiene in her guests’ sartorial selections. Your attire falls somewhat below the expected standard, I fear.”

“Yeah, so go and crawl back to where you came from,” said the first.

“Where we came from?” said Kez, incredulous. “This is Zaun ain’t it? This is where we come from, you stupid sump-sucker!”

“Get lost, ya snipes,” said Chem-Breath. “This part of Zaun ain’t your Zaun.”

“Fine,” said Nico, turning and walking away. “Let’s go.”

“Wait, what?” said Wyn, as he and the others followed Nico. “We’re just going home?”

His brother waited until they were out of earshot before responding, making sure the crowds at the entrance obscured them from the two doormen.

“‘Course not,” said Nico. “Stupid of me. Forgot the first rule of the Sump: Only marks go in through the front door.”

They traversed the length and breadth of the plaza for ten minutes before finding what they sought. Wyn kept one eye on the theater doors. People were still going in, so the show probably hadn’t started.

“There,” said Feen, pointing to a sudden plume of emerald smoke gusting from a nearby roofline. Feen worked for Gray-Scrape Malkev, a ductwork maintenancer who threw a couple of cogs the scrawny lad’s way to worm through the narrow ducts and clean off the scum when the breather pipes got too clogged.

The source of the smoke was an eatery that looked as if it served a fusion of Zaun street food and upscale Piltovan cuisine. The diners were languid, artist types, and the food looked almost too beautiful to eat.

“That’s a shared pipe if ever I sniffed one,” said Feen. “See, you can smell the food from the kitchens and the burn-off from the crystal burners up at Babette’s.”

“I knew there was a reason we brung you along, Feen,” said Nico, leading them down the alley cut through the rock between the eatery and the theater. Heavy crates hauled up from the docks were stacked against the wall, and hissing, groaning pipes sagged overhead. Burly men hauled crates inside, grunting with the effort. None of them paid the kids so much as a second glance.

Feen traced the routes of the ducts with his fingers, counting and listening as they gurgled and rattled. He sniffed the air and grinned.

“That’s the fella,” he said, pointing to a narrow vent that passed into the rock-face.

“You sure?” asked Janke. “I don’t wanna find you picked it wrong and we get flushed out over Zaun.”

“I ain’t wrong, sump-raker,” said Feen. “You crawl through enough soot and slime like I have, you get a nose for what leads where.”

They waited until the men working for the eatery took a break before using the crates to climb up onto the roof. Feen quickly found them a crawl-hatch on the side of the pipe and prized it open. Wyn blanched at the fumes leaking from the hatch.

“Is that safe?” he asked.

“Safe enough for a sump-snipe,” said Feen. “Trust me, you’ll get more grit on your lungs walking the Black Lanes than you will from the fumes in there.”

Wyn wasn’t so sure about that, but Feen crawled inside, swiftly followed by Kez. Janke went next, and Nico gestured to the pipe.

“Your turn, little man,” said Nico.

Wyn nodded and climbed inside, following the sounds of scraping knees, cursing and coughing. Feen was right about one thing; the air in here was pretty rank, but nothing like when the Gray closed in and made every breath a battle. Nico climbed in behind him and he settled into a rhythm of shuffling forward on his elbows and knees. Light filtered in through cracks in the metal where it had split, but that ended the minute the pipe plunged into the cliffs.

“How much farther?” called Nico from behind him, the sound resonating weirdly in the pipes. He received no answer, only echoes. Wyn tried not to think of all the reasons why there was only silence. Had the pipe emptied them out over the cliffs as Janke had feared? Had the others hit a pocket of gas that had knocked them out or suffocated them? Or maybe the rock hereabouts was sad too, and had chosen to crush the tiny figures crawling through it.

Just before the thought of being crushed to death by melancholy cliffs paralyzed Wyn with fear, a hand reached down from above and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck.

“Got ya!” hissed a voice as he was hauled up through a hatch that had been invisible in the darkness. He cried out in alarm and struggled before he realized it was Janke pulling him up. He was deposited on a wooden floor in a lightless room. No, not lightless, a thin bar of light shone from beneath a nearby doorway. As Wyn’s eyes adjusted, he saw the myriad paraphernalia of the performer’s art stacked haphazardly around the room; shelves upon shelves of masks, garish costumes, theatrical backdrops and fake props.

Feen was laughing as he pranced around the room with the top half of a horse costume on his head. Kez wore a golden crown with paste-gems studded around its edges and a bright red stone at its center. Janke swung a wooden sword, its blade painted to look like gleaming silver.

Wyn grinned as Nico climbed from the pipe behind him. He felt light-headed, but couldn’t tell if it was from the fumes or the elation of getting inside.

“Nice work, Feen,” said Nico, dusting himself off and coughing out a wad of gray phlegm.

Feen threw off the horse costume and beamed at this unaccustomed praise. He started to speak, but then they heard the beat of drums and the skirl of pipes.

“It’s starting,” said Kez.

The interior of Babette’s was no less impressive than its exterior. The main hall was adorned in colorful fabrics, gilded balconies, and a vaulted ceiling decorated with stunning vistas of sweeping forests, soaring mountains, and achingly blue lakes. An enormous chandelier of sparkling crystals hung from the center of the ceiling, wheeling constellations that sent beams of splintered light through the chamber.

Hundreds of people filled the space, revelers in fashionable attire and dancers who had shed their coats and inhibitions both. A raised stage at one end was home to musicians who played from the heart, a pounding, driving beat that shivered the blood and got your feet tapping. The music was infectious and Wyn laughed as Kez dragged him onto the dance floor. The sight of five sump-snipes anywhere else might have provoked a reaction, but here, amid the spinning dancers and singers, it barely raised an eyebrow.

They moved with the ease of those who knew how to slip out of a Piltover warden’s grip in a heartbeat. Feen stomped and threw his arms around like a madman, all elbows and knees. Janke shuffled and bobbed his head, lost in his own private world of music. Nico danced in a weaving pattern, smooth as you like, pausing every now and then to flirt with a pretty girl. Wyn waved as he and Kez twisted across the dancefloor, spinning each other around with euphoric abandon.

The music was so loud they couldn’t speak.

He didn’t care.

Chemlights threw a rainbow at the chandelier and it exploded in a dazzling borealis of colors in splitting lozenge patterns. Wyn lifted his hands, as if trying to catch the light. Kez threw her arms around his neck and reached for the lights as well. He smelled her soap and sweat, the perfume of her hair and the heat of her body. He never wanted this moment to end.

But it did.

A meaty hand came down on Wyn’s shoulder and he felt the crushing disappointment of a moment that might never come again being snatched away from him. He cursed at the interruption, but the swears he was about to unleash died when he saw Chem-Breath the doorman looking down at him.

“Didn’t I tell you to go back to the Sump?”

He glanced over at Kez and saw her chest heaving with excitement. She nodded, and the answer to his unasked question was in her outstretched hand.

Wyn laced his fingers in hers and yelled, “Run!”

He squirmed from Chem-Breath’s grip and they bolted toward the heart of the dancefloor. Kez gave a wild yell and they wove through the dancers as if they were playing hook-dodge in the Sump. They ran hand in hand, Chem-Breath right on their heels. He barged through the dancers, but Kez and Wyn had run the streets of Zaun since they’d learned how to use their legs. They’d given the slip to wardens, chem-thugs, and vigilnauts alike.

A fat doorman was no challenge at all.

They heard Chem-Breath’s enraged shouts even over the music, as if he were singing along to it. They led him on a merry chase, ducking between the gyrating dancers and singers. Kez held tight to his hand. Wyn couldn’t help but laugh even as they let Chem-Breath get close. Then, just as the man’s hand reached for his shoulder, Chem-Breath fell to the dancefloor, smashed in the face by Feen’s flailing elbow.

They left him rolling on the ground. Wyn couldn’t remember a feeling this intoxicating. His every dancing, running step was in time with the beat of the music. Each soaring chorus felt like it had been written especially for this moment. They laughed like lunatics through the light and sound, united in a way they’d never known before.

Then the music stopped. The lights were extinguished and a single chem-burner focused its illumination upon the stage. The suddenly stilled dancers gave a collective sigh as a woman rose from the center of the stage. Magic or stagecraft, Wyn didn’t know or care, it was a magnificent entrance.

“Mama Elodie,” said Kez.

Wyn knew it was her, but still couldn’t match the stern, matronly mistress of Hope House with this goddess before him. She wore her long hair tied up in an elaborate series of braids threaded with beads of mother-of-pearl and jade that glittered like newborn stars. She wore a radiant green gown that hung in sweeping folds and which shimmered like silken spider-skin.

She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

Mama Elodie raised her head, and the music built from a slow, glacial pace to a rising heartbeat. Her head lifted in time with the music and her dark skin shimmered with diamond dust. Her eyes swept the crowd, seeming to fix everyone in Babette’s with her soulful gaze. She smiled, as if surprised to see so many people, and the warmth of her almond eyes reached everyone who saw her. Wyn felt her goodness enfold him, feeling as if burdens he didn’t know he carried were being peeled away, layer by layer.

And then she began to sing.

The words were unknown to him, but they flowed like honey, half spoken, half sung. Every note drifted like leaves on a warm, summer night, flowing in spirals around the room. Her voice rose in pitch and volume, and Wyn felt his skin tingle with its touch. He let Mama Elodie’s song wash over and through him. Wyn felt a swelling feeling of connectedness between him and Kez. Her eyes met his and he knew she felt the same.

But it was more than that.

Wyn felt a connection between him and everyone in the audience, a sense of oneness and harmony he’d never known or dreamed was possible. Mama Elodie’s hands sculpted the air as her powerful voice filled the chamber with harmonies that penetrated skin and bone and made every edge within them smooth. Sweat sheened her skin, and veins stood out on her neck.

However she was making this music, it was clearly taking a toll.

The light filling the chamber dimmed as her voice grew softer and softer. The notes melted like snow in spring, sunset over a winter ocean. Tears flowed down Wyn’s face, and he knew he wasn’t the only one crying. Dozens of men and women wept, reaching toward Mama Elodie and imploring her to continue. She swayed on the stage, the song nearing completion.

Slowly, so very slowly, she descended through a trapdoor into the stage until she was gone. Mama Elodie’s voice grew softer and softer, until it was little more than a whisper.

Soon, even that was gone.

The chamber was entirely dark now. Wyn let out a shuddering breath as the house lights gradually came up. He blinked as his eyes adjusted, seeing how low the chemlights had burned. How long had Mama Elodie’s song lasted? Hours? Minutes? He had no way of knowing for sure. Wyn felt exhausted, but renewed at the same time. His thoughts were lighter, his lungs feeling clearer than than they had in months. He turned to Kez, and saw she too felt the same sense of rejuvenation. The audience members were smiling; friends and strangers alike embracing in the shared magic of what they had just experienced.

Nico, Feen, and Janke came over, and every one of them had experienced some profound revelation. What that was, Wyn couldn’t know, but that every one of them felt changed was clear.

“Did you...?” said Wyn.

“Yeah,” said Nico.

They hugged, five orphans from Zaun, sharing a brief moment of belonging they would never know again. By the time they broke apart, it was to see the two doormen, Chem-Breath and Buzz-Arm, standing with their hands balled into fists. Chem-Breath’s nose was askew on his face. An improvement, thought Wyn.

“I believe we told you to go home,” said Buzz-Arm.

“Bloody sump-rats,” snapped Chem-Breath, still nursing a bleeding nose. “Think they can give us the runaround.”

He thumped one meaty fist into his palm for extra emphasis.

“It’s time for you to leave, and I can’t promise it won’t be painful,” said Buzz-Arm, sounding almost apologetic.

“There’s no need for that,” said a melodious voice behind them.

Wyn let out a relieved breath as Mama Elodie put a hand on the back of his neck. Her fingers were warm and he felt a calming sensation flow through him at her touch.

“They with you?” asked Chem-Breath.

“They are indeed,” replied Mama Elodie.

The two doormen looked as though they wanted to take this further, but came to the conclusion that arguing with the headline act in front of her bewitched audience probably wasn’t a good idea. The doormen backed away, making eye contact with each of the kids to let them know that they may have escaped a beating this time, but coming to Babette’s again would be a really bad idea.

Wyn turned to face Mama Elodie, but whatever magic she had woven on stage was now entirely absent. The Ionian princess was gone and the Zaunite housemistress was back. She glared at them with hard, flinty eyes.

“I should have let them give you a good beating to teach you all a lesson,” she said, ushering them toward the front door of the theater. The others nodded in mute acceptance of her anger, but only Wyn caught the glint of amusement in her eye. Even so, Wyn could see a great deal of menial labor in all their futures.

“You were amazing,” said Kez as Mama Elodie marched them from the theater and turned toward Drop Street. The late-running descender to Zaun had a station there, so at least they’d be spared more jumping onto elevators or a lot of stairs. Nico, Feen, and Janke waved and ran off, old enough to head home on their own without needing to ask permission. Wyn didn’t mind; he was with Kez and Mama Elodie, so he’d enjoy this moonlit descent to Hope House.

“Where did you learn to sing like that?” asked Kez.

“My mother taught me when I was a girl,” said Mama Elodie. “She was of... an old Ionian line, though her voice was far superior to mine.”

“It was a beautiful song,” said Wyn.

“All the vastaya songs are beautiful,” said Mama Elodie. “But they are also sad.”

“Why are they sad?” asked Wyn.

“True beauty is only beautiful because it is finite,” said Mama Elodie. “That is why some of their songs are too sad to sing now.”

Wyn didn’t really understand. How could a song be too sad to sing? He wanted to ask more, but the farther they walked from Babette’s, the less important it seemed.

He looked up. Chemlights and reflected stars shimmered on the city of iron and glass as they navigated the cliffside streets toward home. Wyn saw a sliver of moonlight peeking out from behind the clouds, and took a deep breath of clean air, knowing it might be his last for a while.

“You know you’re all scrubbing floors and pots for the rest of the week, yes?” said Mama Elodie.

Wyn nodded, but didn’t mind. He was still holding Kez’s hand. A week of scrubbing seemed like a small price to pay.

“Sure,” he said. “Sounds good.”

The overcast skies had parted since the magistrates entered. When the large doors at the back of the hall opened again, Riven watched as the room full of villagers was split by a blinding shard of daylight. She walked across the hall’s threshold and the movement pushed aside the still air in the hall like the release of a held breath.

The doors closed behind her. Two warrior priests marched her through the large aisle that divided the throng. The council hall was once again cast in the murky gloom from curled windows set high in the ceiling and the cylindrical lanterns that hung from the sculpted roof. She watched Shava Konte swallow thickly as she passed.

She knew what they saw. A woman, her white hair matted with straw from a rough sleep in stone cell. A stranger. An enemy. A daughter of Noxus.

Fatigue clung to Riven’s bones like the farmer’s mud that still stained her clothes. Her soul felt stiff and misshapen, but when Riven’s gaze found the old man on the stool, she stood a little straighter.

She took in the three judges seated on the dais before her. The stern one in the middle motioned for Riven to be seated, rather than shackled standing.

Riven refused the wooden chair shaped by magic. She recognized the bailiff as the lead rider that came to old couple’s field. His thin lips stretched in the same arrogant smile.

“Suit yourself, it’ll just be harder for you.”

The bailiff sat on the chair himself with an air of satisfaction. The center judge gave the bailiff a look of admonishment and then spoke to Riven.

“I know you are not of this land. The dialect here is tricky. I will speak the common tongue so that we may better understand each other.”

Like most Noxians, Riven had learned enough of Ionia’s common tongue to command and order, but like the land itself, the accent of each village had a unique personality flavored by its people. She nodded at the judge and waited.

“What is your name?”

“Riven,” Riven said. Her voice was hoarse, catching in her throat with a croak.

“Bring her water.”

The bailiff stood and took up a skin of water, shoving it at her. Riven looked at the skin, but did not take it.

“It is only water, child,” the judge seated beside the center judge said, leaning forward over the table. “What, do you fear we would poison you?”

Riven shook her head, refusing the offer. She cleared her throat, determined to speak without any more assistance. The bailiff pursed his lips and took a deep swig, water dribbled from the corner of his mouth. He flashed his teeth in a triumphant sneer meant for her.

“You have been brought before this council,” the judge interrupted, drawing Riven’s attention back to the three robed figures and the crowd gathered within the hall. “Because we wish to know what you have to say.”

“Am I not being sentenced?”

The judge swallowed her surprise.

“I am unclear about how justice is carried out where you come from, but here we believe justice is first served by understanding and enlightenment.” The judge spoke to Riven as if she was a young child. “We believe you have knowledge of an event that is most important to this community. If that knowledge reveals a crime, then you could be sentenced and punished accordingly.”

Riven looked from the judge to Asa, then back. Justice in Noxus was often decided in combat. If one was lucky, it was decided swiftly and with the sharpened end of the weapon. Riven eyed the judge warily. “What do you want to know?”

The judge leaned back. “Where are you from, Riven?”

“I have no homeland.”

The judge’s narrowing gaze told Riven that her words had been taken as defiance. The hawk-faced magistrate paused, tempering her response. “You must have been born somewhere.”

“A farm in Trevale.” Riven looked at the old man. “Noxus,” she admitted.

The council hall, which had dropped back to silence in order to hear the prisoner, took in a collective breath.

“I see,” continued the judge. “And you no longer call that place home.”

“When your home tries to kill you, is it still home?”

“You are an exile then?”

“That would imply I wish to return,” Riven said.

“You do not?”

“Noxus is no longer what it once was.” Impatience edged into Riven’s voice. “Can we get on with this?”

“So be it,” the judge said with a calmness that irritated Riven more than the shackles on her wrists. “You came with the Noxian fleet, yes?”

“I assume so.”

“You do not know?” The judge looked confused.

“I do not remember,” Riven said. She glanced to the crowd, her sideways look catching the eyes of Shava. The old woman had asked a similar question. Riven shook her head. “Does it matter? There was a battle. Many died. That is all I know.”

The painful memory of war that smoldered among the crowd flared to life at Riven’s words. They shoved each other, shoulders knocking together and shouting, as they all tried to stand at once.

Someone lashed out. “Noxian filth! My son is dead because of you!”

A moldy eggfruit sailed through the air and pelted Riven in the neck. The fermented juice and pulp slid wetly down the back of her shirt. The rotten smell rose up in the air, but Riven would not allow the scent of death to take her back to that moment long ago. She closed her eyes, allowing her breath to come through parted lips.

With that, the crowd erupted. Riven knew what it looked like, that she felt nothing for what had happened to these people. “Please,” she whispered to herself, unsure if she was imploring them to stop, or to encourage the fullness of their barely contained anger.

In answer, more of the late season eggfruit exploded on the stone floor. One caught Riven behind the knee. She stumbled, struggling to maintain her balance with her hands bound.

The judge rose to her full height, towering over the seated villagers and Riven. Her magistrate’s robe flared as she slammed the chestnut sphere against its cradle. The wooden benches beneath the crowd strained, groaning and flexing in response to the magistrate’s will.

“I will have balance restored to this hall!”

The reprimanded villagers quieted.

“Yes, Riven, the council remembers that time,” the judge continued with more restraint. “Many Ionians… and Noxians… perished. And you?”

It was a question that plagued Riven. Why had she been spared when others had not? She could offer no answer that would satisfy. “It seems I did not,” she said quietly

“Indeed.” The judge smiled coldly.

Riven knew there was little she could say to pacify the bereaved crowd. She owed them the truth, but even that was not hers to give. Her memories of that time were broken. She bowed her head.

“I do not remember,” Riven said.

The judge did not stop the questioning. Riven knew doing so would only allow for interruptions to spew forward from the anger simmering in the room.

“How long have you been in this land?”

“I do not remember.”

“How did you come to this village?”

“I do not remember.”

“Have you been here before?”

“I…” Riven hesitated, but could not hold on to the moment that would give a clear answer. “I cannot remember.”

“Did you meet with Elder Souma?”

The name stirred something within her. A memory of a memory, hazy and sharp at the same time passed through her. Anger flooded the empty place where her past once lived. She had been betrayed. She had betrayed.

“I can’t remember!” Riven lashed out in frustration, the shackles at her wrists rattling.

“War breaks many things,” the judge said, softening. “Some we cannot see.”

In the face of this enlightenment, some of the fight left Riven. “I cannot remember,” she said, more calmly than before.

The judge nodded. “There are others who may be able to speak to what you cannot remember.”

Riven watched the old man make his way slowly to a witness stool set in front of the judges. His fingers shook as he smoothed a few errant hairs in his thick eyebrows.

“Asa Konte,” the judged said patiently. “O-fa, thank you for sharing your knowledge with us today.”

The old man nodded.

“Do you know this woman, the one called Riven?” the judge asked.

“Yes,” the old man said. “She came to us at the beginning of this past wet season.”

“Us?”

“Myself and Shava, my wife.”

The judge looked up at Mistress Konte, who still shifted uncomfortably on the bench at the front of the hall. The judge gestured to Riven.

“She came to you?”

“Well, I found her in our field,” the old man offered sheepishly. “We had a calf wander in the night. At dawn I went looking for it. Instead I found her.”

Murmurs of surprise and concern spilled again from the crowd.

“Spy!”

“More will come!”

“We must protect ourselves!”

The judge rested a hand on the heavy wooden sphere in front of her. The room grew quiet. “What did she want, Master Konte?”

The old man smoothed his eyebrows again and glanced at Riven. His look begged apology.

“She wanted to die, magistrate,” he said softly.

The judge leaned forward.

“It was the start of the wet season,” Asa continued. “She was soaked to the skin, nothing but fevered bones held together by mud and stubborn Noxian muscle.”

“You knew she was Noxian?”

“She carried a weapon, a blade, the scabbard was inscribed with the marks of their father tongue. No Ionian would carry such a weapon.”

The judge pursed her lips. “Master Konte, you took heavy losses during the invasion?”

“I did, magistrate,” the old man said. He looked to his wife. “Two sons.”

“What did you do with the woman?”

The old man took a deep breath.

“I took her home to Shava,” he said.

The murmur of the hall rose again, questioning the man’s lenience on a foe that had been so merciless. The faces within the hall told their stories of loss. None in their community had been untouched by the conflict. The old man lifted his head, and turned to the crowd, challenging the hardness of their hearts.

“My sons… My boys… Their bones have long since been cleaned by the sky. Would those we lost wish us to bury ourselves in grief beside them?”

Riven watched as the old man and his wife shared a knowing look. Shava’s eyes were wet and full.

“We were not ready to let them go, but…” The old man’s voice quivered. “But it does us no good to mire ourselves in the past when there is life left to live.”

Shava bit her bottom lip and sat up straighter, daring those who sat next to her to speak ill of their choice. Asa turned away from the crowd’s stares. He sat facing the magistrate, the stool creaking beneath him.

“There were so many deaths, I couldn’t bear to add another,” he explained. “We cleaned her up and offered what we had in peace.”

The judge nodded without emotion. Riven watched as the judge took in Riven’s shirt and pants, mentally unrolling the cuffs. She knew what the judge pictured as she had thought the same thing many times since the old woman had presented the clothes. They were meant for a young man, a head taller than her, maybe a man with Shava’s smile or Asa’s kind eyes.

For Riven it was a constant reminder of her own weakness. All her years of living or dying by the strength of Noxus, and Riven had accepted their fragile offer of hope, let herself be clothed in it and in a family that could have been.

“When she regained her strength, she wanted to work in the fields,” the old man went on. “My wife and I are old. We welcomed the help.”

“You and your wife did not fear for your lives?”

“The girl wants nothing to do with Noxus. She hates Noxus.”

“She said this to you?”

“No,” he said. “She said nothing of her past. Shava asked her once and she said nothing. We saw that it pained her, so we did not ask again.”

“If she said nothing, then how do you infer her feelings about her homeland?”

Master Konte wiped at his old eyes. Riven watched the trouble pass over his face, like the words were not his to give. He spoke quickly, conscious suddenly of the audience surrounding him.

“Fevered dreams, magistrate,” he said. “The night she came to us. Something that belonged to her, something she had cared for greatly, had been broken. For that she cried out against Noxus.”

“Do you know the thing she spoke of?”

“I believe so, magistrate.” The old man nodded slowly. “The pommel of her weapon has been bound into her scabbard. Four days ago I saw her undo the laces. I saw the blade was broken.”

Riven had thought she had only been watched by the fat mousing cat that day in the barn.
A few snide comments about the quality of Noxian weapons passed like handshakes among the crowd.

“And what did you do with that knowledge, Master Konte?”

“I took the blade to the temple.”

The judge cocked her head to one side, looking down her predatory nose at the old man. “To what end?”

“I hoped the priests might be able to mend it. That if the blade was made whole, she might be relieved of some of the ghosts that haunt her.” Even as crowd erupted behind him, the old man looked at Riven and the chains that bound her hands. “That she might have some peace in the present.”

“Thank you, Master Konte, for sharing your knowledge with the council,” the judge said, coldly staring the congregation into silence. “Your attestation is finished.”

She looked down at an unrolled parchment and back to the bailiff.

“Bring in the weapon.”

Riven watched two temple priests carry in a large wooden tray draped with a scarlet cloth and set it gingerly on the table before the council judges. A warrior priest stepped forward, his high rank made evident by the fluted edges of his wooden pauldron and breastplate.

“Show us,” the judge said.

The warrior priest withdrew the scarlet cloth, revealing a weapon and sheath both bigger than a kite shield. The scabbard was etched in the harsh strokes of Ur-Noxian, the heavy angles and slashes in stark contrast to the fluid script of Ionia. But it was the blade that drew the interest of the judges. A blade so thick and heavy it looked like it would break the well-trained arm of a temple priest to lift it, let alone the slender wrist of the young woman shackled before them. Indeed, when Riven had seen the weapon for the first time, she had thought the same thing.

Now, instead of one solid blade, the weapon was fractured into angry pieces, as if monstrous claws had raked through its metal flesh. The five largest pieces would have been deadly in their own right, but laid out against the soft Ionian cloth, broken and raw as it was, it was terrifying.

The judge looked at Riven. “This weapon belongs to you.”

Riven nodded her head.

“I suppose in this many pieces, it makes it a bit difficult to wield,” the judge said to herself.

There were snickers among the crowd.

The warrior priest shifted uncomfortably. “This weapon is ensorcelled, magistrate. The Noxians have bound magic into the blade.” The disgust hung heavy on his words.

Riven didn’t know if the judge was listening to the priest. The judge was nodding absently, her gaze washing over the weapon until it found the spot that Riven knew it would, the empty place Riven had struggled to fill. The judge’s falcon nose twitched.

“There is a piece missing.”

A young temple adept swayed nervously before the council hall.

“Adept, is this the weapon Master Konte presented to the temple?” the lead judge asked.

“Yes, magistrate.”

“You were the one to alert this court?”

“Yes, magistrate.”

“How did you know this weapon would be of interest to us?”

Riven watched the adept wipe his hands on the lengthy sleeves of his robes. His face was pale, as if he might faint, or be sick on the stone floor.

“Adept?” the judge probed.

“I am a bone washer, magistrate.” The words tumbled out of the young man. His hands hung like spent candle wax. “For the elders. After their bodies have been left to the sky, I collect them and prepare them.”

“I am familiar with the duties of a bone washer, adept. How is it this weapon concerns you?”

“The blade is the same.”

A moment of confusion swept over the judge’s face. The same uncertain daze washed over the crowd, passing from person to person in befuddled looks. Riven, however, felt a wave of unease crawl over her skin.

“When I prepared the bones of Elder Souma, after his time, for the temple, I mean to say.” The adept’s haphazard explanation was losing many. Instead of continuing he pulled from a fold in his robe a small silk bag and started undoing the tight knots with his long fingers. He retrieved from the bag a shard of metal and held it up. “This metal, magistrate. It is the same as the broken blade.”

The adept scurried from his place and approached the judge. She took the shard from his outstretched hand and turned it over in her fingers. Even held at a distance, the metal seemed similar to the broken blade.

Riven's breath caught in her throat. There was the piece of her past that she had searched for and given up finding. Now it was on the verge of coming together, illuminating a dark and forgotten corner of her mind. The guilt Riven carried and had buried deep was finally being unearthed. Riven steeled herself against what she knew would come next.

“Where did you find this?” the judge asked.

The adept cleared his throat. “In the bones of Elder Souma’s neck.”

The council hall gasped.

“You did not bring this forward before?” The judge’s eyes narrowed as she focused in on her target.

“I did,” the adept said, trying desperately to look anywhere but the warrior priest who stood next to Riven’s broken blade. “But my master said it was nothing.”

The judge had no such trouble looking at the warrior priest.

“Approach,” she ordered. She handed the bit of mangled metal to the warrior priest. “Put it with the rest.”

The warrior priest glared at the adept, but followed the orders given. He approached Riven’s blade and then turned at the last minute to the judge. “Magistrate, there is dark magic in this weapon. We don’t know what this piece may reveal.”

“Proceed.” The judge’s words left no room for argument.

The warrior priest turned back. All the eyes in the council hall watched as he took the sliver of hammered metal and placed it nearest the tip of the broken blade.

The weapon was silent.

The judge let out a small sigh. Riven, however, continued to watch the old man and his wife. She knew their hope would last only a moment longer. She had been weak to accept it, to believe that there was something in this world for someone so broken. Their relief at her fleeting innocence hurt most of all. It hurt because Riven knew in that moment the good they believed about her was a lie. The truth of her past was sharper and more painful than any blade.

Riven heard the sword beginning to hum. “Please,” she called out. She struggled to be heard over the chatter of the hall. She struggled against her restraints. “Please, you must listen.”

The vibration built. Now it could be heard and felt. The villagers panicked, pushing and shoving to get back. The judge stood quickly, her arms outstretched to the wooden table that held the broken sword. The edge of the table began to grow and curl, the wood budding new green limbs over the weapon, but Riven knew the magic would not hold.

“Everyone, get down!” Riven yelled, but the sound of the blade drowned out her voice, indeed all the voices, as the weapon built to a fever pitch.

Then, all at once the power exploded in a burst of runic energy and splintered wood. A gust of wind knocked everyone who had been standing down to the floor.

From the ground, the faces of the crowd turned to Riven.

Riven’s lips were cold and her cheeks flushed. The ghosts of her mind, memories she had entombed, they were fully alive now, looming one by one before her. They were Ionian farmers, sons and daughters, the people of this village that would not kneel to Noxus. They were looking at her. Haunting her. They knew her guilt. They were her warriors, too, her brothers- and sisters-in-arms. They would have gladly sacrificed themselves for the glory of the empire, instead she had failed them. She had led them under the banner of Noxus, a banner that had promised them a home and purpose. In the end, they were betrayed and discarded. All of them cut down by the sick poison of war.

Now these ghosts stood among the living, the courtroom of spectators knocked down by the power of the blade. The villagers slowly rose to their feet, though Riven was still there in that valley from long ago. She couldn’t breathe. Death choked her nose and throat.
No, these dead aren’t real, she told herself. She looked at Asa and Shava and they at her. Two shades stood near them. One with eyes like the old man’s and the other with a mouth like Shava’s. The old couple clung to one another as they steadied themselves and stood, oblivious to the deathly past that surrounded them.

“Dyeda,” the old woman said.

At that Riven could no longer contain her guilt and shame.

“I did it.” The words fell from Riven’s lips with an empty hollowness. She would accept her fate at the hands of these people. She would let them pass judgment and she would answer for her crimes.

“I killed your Elder,” she told them, breathless. Her ragged confession filled the room. “I killed them all.”