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From an early age, Sivir learned firsthand the harsh lessons of Shuriman desert life. With her entire family slain by marauding Kthaons—one of the Great Sai’s most infamous raider tribes—the young girl and other orphans like her could only hope to survive by stealing food from local markets, and delving into half-buried ancient ruins in search of trinkets to sell. They would brave cramped tunnels and forgotten crypts, hunting for anything of value, often scrapping viciously with one another over the best finds.

Sivir would lead others into the depths, but could rarely hold on to what few treasures she managed to unearth. After being robbed by her supposed friend Mhyra, she swore she would never allow herself to be betrayed again, and in time she joined a group of mercenaries led by the renowned Iha Ziharo, serving as their guide and general lackey.

Though her flourishing skill at arms eventually led her to become Ziharo’s personal sergeant, Sivir noted that the domineering leader took the greatest share of gold and glory from every raid… even when it was Sivir’s clever strategies that brought them their wealth. Rallying her fellow sellswords, Sivir decided to strike against Ziharo, and replace her as leader. Unwilling to kill her former mentor, though, Sivir left her alone in the desert with a hollow offer of good luck.

Over the years, Sivir and her new followers earned a fearsome reputation. They accepted any task for good pay, including a commission from a Nashramae patriarch looking for a lost heirloom—a blade known as “the Chalicar”. Accompanied by his personal guards, Sivir searched for many months, until she finally pried a cross-shaped blade from the sarcophagus of some hero of the old Shuriman empire.

This was a treasure indeed, crafted by cunning and magic in a long-forgotten age. Sivir marveled at it—never had a weapon felt so natural in her grip. When the captain of the guard demanded they return it to their master, Sivir threw the blade in a curved arc, decapitating the captain and cutting down the three men behind him in an instant. She fought her way from the tomb, leaving only the dead in her wake.

Sivir’s reputation soon spread beyond the desert. Indeed, when Noxian expeditions began to move inland from the northern coast, she found herself in the employ of Cassiopeia, the youngest daughter of General Du Couteau, to help plunder Shurima’s lost capital. As they traversed twisting catacombs, many of Sivir’s mercenaries fell to ancient traps, but Cassiopeia refused to turn back.

When they finally reached a great tomb door, surrounded by statued guardians and bas-reliefs depicting the mighty god-warriors of old, Sivir felt her blood stir. She was mesmerized by these beast-headed heroes, and their wars against the foul creatures of the underworld.

Taking advantage of Sivir’s inattention, Cassiopeia thrust a dagger into the mercenary’s back.

Sivir collapsed in agony, her blood soaking the sand. Using the Chalicar itself, Cassiopeia unlocked the tomb door, unknowingly triggering the sorcerous curse that had been placed upon it. On the verge of death, Sivir watched as a stone serpent came to life before her eyes, searing Cassiopeia's skin with venom. The last thing the sellsword heard before her senses dimmed were the roars of maddened gods, unleashed from the tomb to walk the earth once more…

But fate, it seemed, was not yet done with Sivir.

Unknown to her, she carried the last trace of an ancient, royal bloodline in her veins. She awoke to find herself tended by none other than Azir—the last ruler of the empire, who had been denied his rite of Ascension and passed into legend. Her spilled blood had reawakened his spirit after almost three thousand years, completing the ritual and imbuing him with all the celestial power of a god-emperor. There, in the Oasis of the Dawn, he used the healing waters of that sacred pool to miraculously undo Sivir’s mortal wound.

She had heard tales of Azir and his prophesied return, and always thought only fools could believe in such fantasy… and yet she could not deny what was unfolding before her very eyes.The earth split, and great plumes of dust whirled into the air as the ancient city of Shurima rose from its grave, crowned by an enormous golden disc that shone with the heavenly rays of the sun. Shaken to her very core, Sivir fled with the Chalicar on her back.

While she would have liked nothing more than to return to her former life, she instead found herself caught up in the struggles of powers greater than most mortals could comprehend. At the city of Vekaura, she crossed paths with another Ascended being—the freed magus Xerath, now seeking to end Azir’s bloodline for good—but with the help of the scholar Nasus and a young stoneweaver named Taliyah, Sivir survived once more.

The time has now come when she must choose a path, either embracing the destiny she has been given, or forging her own amid the shifting sands of Shurima.

Azir was a mortal emperor of Shurima in a far distant age, a proud man who stood at the cusp of immortality. His hubris saw him betrayed and murdered at the moment of his greatest triumph, but now, millennia later, he has been reborn as an Ascended being of immense power. With his buried city risen from the sand, Azir seeks to restore Shurima to its former glory.

Thousands of years ago, the Shuriman empire was a sprawling realm of vassal states conquered by powerful armies led by all but invincible warriors known as the Ascended. Ruled by an ambitious and power hungry emperor, Shurima was the greatest realm of its day; a fertile land blessed by the power of the sun that shone from a great golden disc floating atop the temple at the heart of its capital.

The youngest and least-favored son of the emperor, Azir was never destined for greatness. With so many siblings ahead of him, he would never be emperor. Most likely he would take up a position in the priesthood or as governor of some backwater province. He was a slender, studious boy who spent more time perusing the texts collected in the Great Library of Nasus than training to fight under the stern tutelage of the Ascended hero, Renekton.

Amid the twisting shelves of scrolls, books and tablets, Azir met a young slave boy who visited the library almost every day in search of texts desired by his master. Slaves in Shurima were forbidden to take names, but as the two boys became friends, Azir broke that law and called his new friend Xerath, which means ‘one who shares.’ He appointed Xerath - though he was careful never to endanger him by naming him publicly - as his personal slave and the two boys shared their love of history by learning all they could of Shurima’s past and its long legacy of Ascended heroes.

While traveling with his father, brothers and Renekton on the yearly tour of the empire, the royal caravan stopped at a well-known oasis for the night. Azir and Xerath stole away in the middle of the night to draw the stars and add their own celestial maps to those they had studied in the Great Library. While they drew the patterns of constellations, the royal caravan was attacked by a cabal of assassins sent by the emperor’s enemies. One of the assassins found the two boys out in the desert and was poised to cut Azir’s throat when Xerath intervened, throwing himself upon the assassin’s back. In the ensuing melee, Azir freed his dagger and plunged it into his attacker’s throat.

Azir took up the dead man’s sword and rushed back to the oasis, but by the time he returned, the assassins were already defeated. Renekton had protected the emperor and slain the attackers, but Azir’s brothers were all dead. Azir told his father of Xerath’s courage and asked him to reward the slave boy, but his words fell on deaf ears. In the emperor’s eyes, the boy was a slave and beneath his notice, but Azir swore that one day he and Xerath would be brothers.

The emperor returned to his capital, with the fifteen year old Azir now his heir, and unleashed a merciless campaign of bloodshed against those he believed had sent the assassins. Shurima descended into years of paranoia and murder as the emperor took revenge on any he suspected of treason. Though he was now heir to the throne, Azir’s life yet hung by a thread. His father hated him - wishing he had died instead of his brothers - and the queen was still young enough to bear sons.

Azir trained in combat, for the attack at the oasis had revealed how little he knew of the deadly arts. Renekton took up the task of teaching the growing prince, and under his aegis, Azir learned to wield sword and spear, to command warriors, and to read the ebb and flow of battle. The young heir elevated Xerath, his only trusted confidant, and made him his right hand man. To better counsel him, Azir tasked Xerath with seeking out knowledge wherever he could find it.

Years passed, but the queen was never able to carry a child to term, every conceived infant perishing before it could be born. So long as the queen remained barren, Azir’s life was relatively safe. Some around the court believed a curse was at work and a few even whispered the young heir’s name in connection with this – though Azir claimed innocence and even executed some who dared voice such accusations openly.

Eventually, the queen bore a healthy son, but on the night of his birth a terrible storm engulfed Shurima. The queen’s chambers were struck again and again by powerful bolts of lightning, and in the subsequent blaze, both the queen and her newborn son were killed. It was said the emperor went mad with grief and took his own life upon hearing the news, but tales soon spread of how he and his guards had been found lying in pieces on the palace floor, their bodies little more than charred skeletons.

Azir was shocked by their deaths, but the empire needed a leader, and with Xerath at his side he took control of Shurima as its emperor. Over the next decade, he expanded Shurima’s borders and ruled with a harsh, but just hand. He instituted reforms to better the lives of slaves and privately developed a plan to overturn millennia of tradition and eventually free them all. He kept his plans secret, even from Xerath, and the issue of slavery would prove to be a continual bone of contention between them. The empire had been built on the back of slavery, and many of the great noble houses depended on enforced labor for their vast wealth and power. Such monolithic institutions could not be overturned overnight, and Azir’s plans would be undone were they to become common knowledge. Despite Azir’s desire to name Xerath his brother, he could not do so until all Shurima’s slaves were free.

Through these years, Xerath protected Azir from his political rivals and guided the expansion of the empire. Azir married and fathered numerous children, some by wedlock, others by ill-advised liaisons with slaves and harem girls. Xerath stoked the emperor’s grand vision of an empire greater than any the world had ever known. But to stand as ruler over the entire world, Xerath convinced Azir that he would need to be all but invincible, a god amongst men – an Ascended being.

As the kingdom reached the zenith of its power, Azir announced he would undertake the Ascension ritual, that the time was right for him to take his place alongside Nasus and Renekton and their glorious forebears. Many questioned this decision; the Ascension ritual was highly dangerous and intended only for those near the end of their lives, those who had devoted their lives to Shurima and whose service was to be honored with Ascension. It was for the Sun Priests to decree who would be blessed with Ascension, not the hubris of an emperor to bestow it upon himself. Azir would not be dissuaded from his rash course of action, for his arrogance had grown along with his empire, and he ordered them to comply on pain of death.

The day of the ritual finally came and Azir marched toward the Dais of Ascension, flanked by thousands of his warriors and tens of thousands of his subjects. The brothers Renekton and Nasus were absent, having been dispatched by Xerath to deal with an emergent threat, but still Azir would not turn from what he saw as his great destiny. He climbed to the great golden disc atop the temple at the heart of the city and in the moments before the sun priests began the ritual, he turned to Xerath and finally freed him. And not just him, but all slaves…

Xerath was stunned into speechlessness, but Azir was not yet done. He embraced Xerath and named him his eternal brother, as he had promised he would all those years ago. Azir turned as the priests began the ritual to bring down the awesome power of the sun. Azir was unaware that Xerath had studied more than just history and philosophy in his quest for knowledge. He had learned the dark arts of sorcery, all the while nursing a desire for freedom that had grown like a cancer into a burning hatred.

At the height of the ritual, the former slave unleashed his powers and Azir was blasted from his place on the dais. Without the protection of the runic circle, Azir was consumed by the sun’s fire as Xerath took his place. The light filled Xerath with power, and he roared as his mortal body began to transform.

But the magic of the ritual was not intended for Xerath, and such awesomely powerful celestial energies could not be diverted without dire consequence. The power of the Ascension ritual exploded outward, devastating Shurima and laying waste to the city. Its people burned to ash and its towering palaces fell to ruin as the desert sands rose up to swallow the city. The sun disc sank from the sky and what had taken centuries to build was brought to ruin in an instant by one man’s ambition and another’s misplaced hate. All that remained of Azir’s city were sunken ruins and echoes of its people’s screams on the night winds.

Azir saw none of this. For him, all was nothingness. His last memories were of pain and fire; he knew nothing of what befell him atop the temple, nor what became of his empire. He remained lost in timeless oblivion until, thousands of years after Shurima’s doom, the blood of his last descendant spilled onto the temple ruins and resurrected him. Azir was reborn, but was yet incomplete; his body little more than animate dust given form, held together by the last vestiges of his indomitable will.

Gradually resuming his corporeal form, Azir stumbled through the ruins and came across the corpse of a woman with a treacherous knife wound in her back. He did not know her, but saw in her features the distant echo of his bloodline. All thoughts of empires and power were forgotten as he lifted this daughter of Shurima and bore her to what had once been the Oasis of the Dawn. The oasis was empty and dry, but with every step Azir took, clear water began filling the rocky basin. Azir immersed the woman’s body in the restorative waters of the oasis and as the blood washed away, only a faint scar remained where the blade had pierced her.

And with that act of selflessness, Azir was lifted up in a column of fire as the magic of Shurima renewed him, remaking him as the Ascended being he was meant to become. The sun’s immortal radiance poured into him, crafting his magnificent, hawk-armored form and granting him the power to command the very sand itself. Azir lifted his arms and his ruined city shrugged off the dust of centuries spent beneath the desert to rise anew. The sun disc lifted into the sky once more, and healing waters flowed between temples heaving themselves back into the light at the emperor’s command.

Azir climbed the steps of the newly-risen sun temple, weaving the desert winds to recreate the city’s last moments. Ghosts formed of sand relived his city’s last moments from long ago, and Azir watched in horror as Xerath’s treachery unfolded. He wept as he saw his family murdered, his empire fall and his power stolen. Only now, millennia too late, did he finally understand the depths of hatred harbored by his former friend and ally. With the power and prescience of an Ascended being, Azir sensed Xerath somewhere abroad in the world and summoned an army of sand warriors to march alongside their reborn emperor. As the sun blazed from the golden disc above him, Azir swore a mighty oath.

I will reclaim my lands and take back what was mine!

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

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

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

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

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

So far, it has led to this chasm.

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

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

Without it, she would be nothing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What...

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

... the hell?

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

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

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

And her hand hits sand.

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

Suddenly, the wall around the voidlings cracks.

And crumbles.

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

Three shots fire. Two Lamplights fall. One left.

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

This time, she doesn’t miss.

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

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

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

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

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

A girl?

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

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

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

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

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

“You’re human?”

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

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

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

“A monster?”

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

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

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

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

The smile returns. “My name is Taliyah.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The passage will still be there tomorrow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Those weren’t xer’sai.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Good. He should be.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A soft blue light engulfs the hatchling. It glows.

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

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

That’s when a loud boom shakes the earth.

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

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

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

The passage is going to collapse.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But she’ll try to make it count.

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

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

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

So she does, circling around Taliyah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You’re not hungry?” Taliyah asks.

“I’m angry.”

Taliyah looks surprised. “Why?”

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

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

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

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

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

“They? What about you?”

“Well. I’m going to Xolan.”

“Taliyah—”

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

“Uh. What do you mean?”

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

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

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

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

So does whoever might still be alive in Xolan.

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

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

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

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

Taliyah is a nomadic mage from Shurima who weaves stone with energetic enthusiasm and raw determination. Torn between teenage wonder and adult responsibility, she has crossed nearly all of Valoran on a journey to learn the true nature of her growing powers. Compelled by rumors of the rise of a long-dead emperor, she returns to protect her tribe from dangers uncovered by Shurima’s shifting sands. Some have mistaken her tender heart for weakness and paid the price for their error, for beneath Taliyah’s youthful demeanor is a will strong enough to move mountains, and a spirit fierce enough to make the earth tremble.

Born in the rocky foothills bordering Icathia’s corrupted shadow, Taliyah spent her childhood herding goats with her tribe of nomadic weavers. Where most outsiders see Shurima as a beige and barren waste, her family raised her to be a true daughter of the desert and to see beauty in the rich hues of the land. Taliyah was always fascinated by the stone beneath the dunes. When she was a toddler, she collected colorful rocks as her people followed the seasonal waters. As she grew older, the earth itself seemed drawn to her, arcing and twisting to follow her tracks through the sand.

After her sixth high summer, Taliyah wandered from the caravan in search of a lost goatling that had been placed in her charge. Determined not to disappoint her father—the master shepherd and headman of the tribe—she tracked the young animal into the night. She followed the hoofprints through a dry wash to a box canyon. The little beast had managed to get high up the rock wall, but could not get down.

The sandstone called to her, urging her to pull handholds from the sheer wall. Taliyah laid a tentative palm against the rock, determined to rescue the scared animal. The elemental power she felt was as urgent and overwhelming as a monsoon rain. As soon as she opened herself to the magic, it poured over her, the stone leaping to her fingertips, bringing both the canyon wall and the beast down on top of her.

The next morning, Taliyah’s panicked father tracked the skittish bleats of the goatling. He fell to his knees when he found his daughter unconscious, covered loosely in a blanket of woven stone. Grief-stricken, he returned to the tribe with Taliyah.

Two days later, the girl awoke from fevered dreams in the tent of Babajan, the tribe’s grandmother. Taliyah began to tell the wise woman and her concerned parents of her night in the canyon, of the rock that called to her. Babajan consoled the family, telling them that the patterns of rock were evidence the Great Weaver, the desert tribe’s mythical protector, watched over the girl. In that moment, Taliyah saw her parents’ deep worry and decided to conceal what really happened that night: that she—not the Great Weaver—had pulled at the desert stone.

When children in Taliyah’s tribe were old enough, they performed a dance under the face of the full moon, the manifestation of the Great Weaver herself. The dance celebrated the children’s innate talents and demonstrated the gifts they would bring to the tribe as adults. This was the start of their path to true learning, as those children then became apprenticed to their teachers.

Taliyah continued to hide her growing power, believing the secret she carried was a danger, not a blessing. She watched as her childhood playmates spun wool to keep the tribe warm on cold desert nights, demonstrated their skill with shears and dye, or wove patterns that told the stories of her people. On those nights, she would lie awake long after the coals had burned to ash, tormented by the power she felt stirring within.

The time finally came for Taliyah’s dance beneath the full moon. While she had talent enough to be a capable shepherd like her father, or a pattern mistress like her mother, the young girl dreaded what her dance would truly reveal. As Taliyah took her place on the sand, the tools of her people—the shepherd’s crook, the spindle, and the loom—surrounded her. She tried to concentrate on the task at hand, but it was the distant rocks, the layered colors of the land, that called to her. Taliyah closed her eyes and danced. Overwhelmed by the power flowing through her, she began to spin not thread, but the very earth beneath her feet.

Startled cries from Taliyah’s tribe broke her out of her spell. An imposing braid of sharp rock reached up to the light of the moon. Taliyah looked at the shocked faces of the people who surrounded her. Her will over the stone broken, the earthen tapestry crashed down. Taliyah’s mother ran to her only daughter, to protect her from the falling rock. When the dust finally settled, Taliyah saw the destruction she had woven, the alarm on the faces of her tribe. But it was the small cut across her mother’s face that justified Taliyah’s fear. Though the cut was minor, Taliyah knew in that moment that she was a threat to the people she loved most in this world. She ran into the night, so weighed down by despair that the ground trembled beneath her feet.

It was her father who found her again in the desert. As they sat in the light of the rising sun, Taliyah confessed her secret in choked sobs. In turn, he did the only thing a parent could do: He hugged his daughter tightly. He told her that she couldn’t run from her power, that she must complete her dance and see where her path would take her. Turning her back on the Great Weaver’s gift was the only danger that could truly break his and her mother’s heart.

Taliyah returned with her father to the tribe. She entered the dancer’s circle with her eyes open. This time, she wove a new ribbon of stone, each color and texture a memory of the people surrounding her.

When it was over, the tribe sat in awe. Taliyah waited nervously. It was time for one of her people to stand as her teacher and claim the student. What felt like eons stretched between Taliyah’s hammering heartbeats. She heard gravel shift as her father stood. Next to him, her mother stood. Babajan and the dye mistress and the master spinner stood. In a moment, the whole tribe was on its feet. All of them would stand with the girl who could weave stone.

Taliyah looked at each of them. She knew that a power like hers had not been seen in generations, perhaps longer. They stood with her now, their love and trust surrounding her, but their worry was palpable. None among them heard the earth call as she did. As much as she loved these people, she did not see the one who could show her how to control the elemental magic that coursed within her. She knew that to stay with her tribe was to risk their lives. Though it pained all of them, Taliyah said farewell to her parents and her people, and set off alone into the world.

She journeyed west toward the distant peak of Targon, her natural connection to rock drawing her toward the mountain that brushed the stars. However, at the northern edge of Shurima, it was those who marched beneath the banner of Noxus who discovered her power first. In Noxus, magic like hers was celebrated, they told her; revered, even. They promised her a teacher.

The land had raised Taliyah to be trusting, so she was unprepared for the smooth promises and practiced smiles of Noxian dignitaries. Soon, the desert girl found herself on an unbending path, passing under the many Noxtoraa, the great iron gates that marked the Empire’s claim over a conquered land.

The crush of people and the layers of politics within the capital city were claustrophobic to a girl from the open desert. Taliyah was paraded through the tiers of Noxian magical society. Many took an interest in her power, its potential, but it was a fallen captain who swore to take her to a wild place across the sea, a place where she could hone her abilities without fear, who made the most convincing case. She accepted the young officer’s offer and crossed the sea to Ionia. However, it was made clear as their ship dropped anchor that she was intended as a glorified weapon for a man desperate to regain his place at the highest ranks of the Noxian navy. At dawn, the captain gave her a choice: Bury a sleeping people in their homes, or be discarded in the surf.

Taliyah looked across the bay. The cooking smoke had not yet risen from the village’s sleeping hearths. This was not the lesson she had come so far to learn. Taliyah refused, and the captain threw her overboard to drown.

She escaped the tide and the fighting on the beach and found herself wandering, lost, in the wintry mountains of Ionia. It was there she finally discovered her teacher, a man whose blade harnessed the wind itself, someone who understood the elements and the need for balance. She trained with him for a time and began to find the control she had long sought.

While resting at an isolated inn, Taliyah heard that the Ascended Emperor of Shurima had returned to his desert kingdom. Rumor had it this emperor turned god sought to gather his people, the disparate tribes, back to him as slaves. Even with her training unfinished, there was no other choice; she knew she must return to her family to protect them. Sadly, she and her mentor parted ways.

Taliyah returned home to the sand-swept dunes of Shurima. As the punishing rays of the sun beat down on her, Taliyah pushed farther into the desert, determined to find her people. Hers was a will of stone, and she would do whatever was necessary to protect her family and her tribe from the danger that loomed on the horizon.

Quinn and her twin brother, Caleb, were born in Uwendale, a remote mountain hamlet in northeastern Demacia. It was a thriving village of hunters and farmers, protected by rangers who patrolled the wilderness and drove off any dangerous creatures wandering down from the high peaks.

When the twins were still young, King Jarvan III visited Uwendale on a tour of his kingdom. Quinn and Caleb thrilled at the pageantry of the knights in his entourage, resplendent in their gleaming armor. Their father, a weaponsmith in the village, later saw them pretending to bravely defend the land themselves, and fashioned simple weapons for them to play with.

But as they grew, they spent every moment they could outdoors with their mother—a warden among the local rangers. She taught them how to survive in the wilds, how to track beasts, and most importantly how to fight. Quinn and Caleb became a formidable team—with her keen eye for trails, his skill at baiting their prey, her aim with a bow, and his prowess with a hunting spear.

But one expedition ended in tragedy.

Quinn and Caleb, now rangers for Uwendale, were hired to accompany a party of nobles from the capital as they hunted a giant tuskvore—a predator known for its thick hide, long horns, and ferocious temperament. But they failed to kill the creature outright, and the wounded beast turned on them. The twins were quick to intervene, with Caleb’s spear putting out one of the monster’s eyes, and Quinn driving off the tuskvore with her arrows... but not before it gored Caleb with its deadly horns.

The leader of the party, Lord Barrett Buvelle, helped Quinn bury her brother near where he had fallen. But all could see his death had broken her.

Unable to move on, she would return to the gravesite, and the joy she had felt as a ranger began to dim. Her prowess in the wilderness waned, and she started making mistakes—she missed easy tracks, and her aim was off.

A few months later, Lady Lestara Buvelle visited Quinn’s family. The noblewoman was grateful that Quinn had saved her husband’s life, and asked what she could do to repay them. Quinn could think of nothing. She thanked Lady Buvelle, and politely turned her away.

A year to the day after Caleb’s death, Quinn returned to his grave, as she so often did. Lost in grief, she didn’t hear the approaching tuskvore, its one eye marking it as the very beast that had slain her brother.

The monster charged. Quinn fired arrow after arrow, but to no avail, and she knew it was her doom. Just then, a majestic bird swooped in—an azurite eagle, a breed long thought extinct. The eagle’s talons and beak ripped bloody gouges across the tuskvore’s face, but the creature was resilient, its horns tearing into the bird’s wing.

Quinn fired her last arrow as the monster charged her again. This time her aim was true, and the shaft flew right down its gullet, felling the creature in a heartbeat.

Though the eagle was injured, she approached with caution, for such birds had been known as vicious and untamable hunters—but instead, she saw in his eyes a deep well of kinship. Quinn bound the eagle’s broken pinion, and returned to Uwendale with him. She named him Valor, and the bond that formed between them rekindled the fire in Quinn’s heart. Once more, her thoughts turned to serving Demacia in battle, as a knight.

Her mother reminded her that this would require sponsorship, and that was far beyond their family’s humble means. But her father urged her to seek out Lady Buvelle, who had already offered recompense for service to her noble family, in the capital.

With his help, Quinn crafted a new weapon worthy of a knight, a finely wrought repeater crossbow capable of firing multiple bolts with a single pull of the trigger. Quinn and Valor then set out for the Great City together.

Lestara Buvelle gladly vouched for Quinn, even paying a personal visit to High Marshal Tianna Crownguard to petition for her. Within a week, Quinn took her oaths as a ranger-knight of Demacia.

Now, having brought renown to the rangers of Uwendale, she prefers to remain out in the hinterlands, never staying within the walls of the outlying towns for long. Quinn rarely pulls rank with the rangers who report to her, instead deferring to their specialized skills and experience in the field—a stark departure from the rigid hierarchy of the rest of the military.

Quinn and Valor have ventured far and wide in service of Demacia, risking journeys into the icy Freljord and deep within Noxian-held territory. And with each mission, their unique bond has helped ensure the security of the kingdom’s borders for generations to come.

“That power of yours was meant to destroy. You don’t want to use it? Fine. Let it sink you like a stone.”

Those were the last words Taliyah heard from the Noxian captain before she slipped beneath the salty water, words that haunted her still. Four days had passed since that landing on the beach where she had made her escape. At first she ran, and then, when she could no longer hear the breaking bones of the Ionian farmers and Noxian soldiers, she walked. She followed the high skirts of the mountains, not daring to look back at the carnage she’d left behind. The snow had started to fall two days ago. Or maybe it was three; she couldn’t remember. This morning, as she passed an empty shrine, a cheerless air had begun to move through the valley. Now the wind grew stronger and broke through the clouds to reveal a sky clear and blue, a color so pure it felt like she was drowning again. She knew that sky. As a young child, she saw it blanket the sands. But this wasn’t Shurima. The wind here was not welcoming.

Taliyah hugged herself, trying to remember the warmth of home. Her coat kept out the snow, but still the cold air crept in. The invisible loneliness snaked around her, sinking deep in her bones. The memory of being so far from those she loved now dropped her to her knees.

She shoved her hands deep in her pockets, her shaking fingertips tumbling a few well-worn stones for warmth.

“I am hungry. That is all this is,” Taliyah said to no one and everyone. “A hare. A little bird. Great Weaver, I would even take a mouse if it showed itself.”

As if on command, a small crunching of powdered snow sounded several strides away from her. The culprit, a gray handful of fur no bigger than her two fists, popped its head from a burrow.

“Thank you,” she whispered through chattering teeth. “Thank you. Thank you.”

The animal looked at Taliyah inquisitively as she took one of the smooth stones from her pocket and slipped it into the leather pouch of her sling. She wasn’t used to throwing from a kneeling position, but if the Great Weaver had given her this offering, she wasn’t going to waste it.

The little animal continued to watch as she wound the sling once, seating the small rock. The cold gripped Taliyah’s body and gave her arm a jerky feel. When she had enough speed, she unleashed the stone and, unfortunately, a harsh sneeze.

The stone skipped along the snow, narrowly missing her would-be meal. Taliyah rocked back, the heavy weight of frustration erupting in a guttural growl that echoed in the silence around her. She took a few deep, clearing breaths, the cold burning her throat.

“Assuming you are anything like sand rabbits, if there’s one of you, there are a dozen more close by,” she said to the patch where the animal had been, her defiant optimism returning.

Her gaze lifted from the burrow to more movement farther down in the valley. She followed her winding tracks through the snow. Beyond them, through the sparse pines, she saw a man in the shrine, and her breath caught. His wild, dark hair tangled in the wind as he sat, head bowed to his chest. He was either sleeping or meditating. She breathed a sigh of relief. No Noxian she knew would be caught doing either. She remembered the shrine’s rough surface from earlier, as her hands had run along its carved edges.

Taliyah was shaken from her reverie by a sharp crack. Then a rumble started to build. She steadied herself for the rolling earthquake that didn’t arrive. The rumbling grew into a steady, terrible grinding of compacted snow on stone. Taliyah turned to face the mountain and saw a wall of white coming for her.

She scrambled to her feet, but there was nowhere to go. She looked down at the rock peeking through the dirty ice and thought of the little animal safe in its burrow. She desperately focused, pulling on the rough edges of the visible rock. A row of thick columns sprang from the ground. The stone blockade reached far over her head just as the crushing white avalanche slammed into it with a heavy whumpf.

The snow rushed up the newly made slope and spilled like a glittering wave into the valley below. Taliyah watched as the deadly blanket filled the little glen, covering the temple.

As quickly as it had begun, the avalanche was over. Even the lonely wind stilled. The new, muffled silence weighed heavily on her. The man with the wild, dark hair was gone, entombed somewhere beneath all that ice and rock. She was safe from the snowslide, but her stomach lurched with a sickening realization: She hadn’t just brought harm to an unsuspecting innocent; she had buried him alive.

“Great Weaver,” Taliyah said to no one and everyone, “what have I done?”

Taliyah picked her way quickly down the snow-covered hillside, skidding in places and plunging thigh-deep in others. She hadn’t run from a Noxian invasion fleet to then accidentally kill the first Ionian she saw.

“And knowing my luck, he was probably a holy man,” she said.

The pines in the valley had been reduced to spindly bushes half their original size. Only the tip of the shrine broke the snow’s surface. A string of tattered prayer flags had twisted themselves into knots, marking what used to be the far end of the glen. Taliyah scanned the area, looking for any trace of the man she had committed to the ice. When she’d last seen him, he had been under the temple’s eave. Perhaps it had sheltered him.

As she made her way to the temple, closer to the trees and away from the sweep of the avalanche, she saw two fingers that had broken through the surface.

She half trudged, half ran to the pale fingertips. “Please don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead. Please…”

Taliyah dropped carefully to her knees and started to scoop away the icy powder. She uncovered fingers as strong as steel. She reached in and gripped the man’s wrist, her own clenching hands barely obeying. Her teeth chattered, shaking her body and drowning out any pulse of life she might have felt in the man.

“If you’re not dead already,” she said to the man beneath the snow, “then you’ve got to help me.”

She looked around. There was no one else. She was all he had.

Taliyah let go of his fingers and backed away a few paces. She laid her numb palms to the surface of the snow and tried to remember what the floor of the little valley had looked like before the avalanche. Loose stones, gravel. The memory swam, then coalesced in her mind. It was dark, a coarse charcoal gray with flecks of white, like Uncle Adnan’s beard.

Taliyah held tightly to the vision and pulled up from deep below the snowpack. The crust of ice erupted in front of her, quickly followed by a towering ribbon of granite balancing a lone figure. The suddenly flexible stone wavered at its peak, as if looking to her for guidance. Unsure of any safe landing, Taliyah pushed them both toward the spindly pines, hoping their boughs might break his fall.

The granite ribbon fell short, collapsing into the snow with a heavy puff, but the evergreen arms caught the man before casually dropping him to the surface.

“If you were alive, please don’t be dead now,” Taliyah said as she hurried toward him. The sunlight faltered above her. Dark clouds were moving into the valley. More snow would soon be upon them. Beyond the trees, she saw an opening to a small cave.

Taliyah blew warm breath into her hands and willed them to stop shaking. She bent close to the man, reaching out to touch his shoulder. He let out a pained grunt. Before Taliyah could pull back, there was a quick breeze and a metallic flash. The sharp, cold edge of the man’s blade pressed at her throat.

“Not yet time to die,” he said in a broken whisper. He coughed, and his eyes rolled back in his head. The sword dipped to the snow, but the man did not release the weapon.

The first snowflake flitted past Taliyah’s chapped face. “From the look of it, you’re pretty hard to kill,” she said. “But if we’re caught in this storm, we just might find out if that’s true.”

The man’s breathing was shallow, but at least he was still alive. Taliyah reached under the man’s arm and dragged him toward the small cave.

The lonely wind had returned.

Taliyah bent to pick up a rounded stone the size and color of a small hank of raw wool. She shivered and looked back into the cave; the ragged man was still propped against the wall, his eyes closed. She pushed the bit of dried meat she had found in the man’s pack around in her mouth, hoping he wouldn’t begrudge sharing if he lived.

She stepped back into the warmth of the cave. The slabs of rock she had stacked still glowed with a wavering heat. She knelt. Taliyah hadn’t been sure her trick of warming the stones in her pocket would work with something larger. The young Shuriman closed her eyes and focused on the stack of rocks. She remembered the blistering sun on the sands. The way the heat sank deep in the earth long into the night. She relaxed and loosened her coat as the dry warmth settled around her, then set to work on the stone in her hands. She turned it, wrapping and pushing it with her thoughts until it was hollowed like a bowl. Satisfied, she returned to the cave opening with her newly formed dish.

A male voice groaned behind her, “Like a sparrow gathering crumbs.”

“Even sparrows get thirsty,” she replied, scooping up a bowlful of clean snow. The cold wind whispered around her. Taliyah set the round stone onto the stack of hot rocks in front of her.

“You gather stones by hand? That seems tedious for someone who can weave rock.”

A heat rose to Taliyah’s cheeks that had nothing to do with the little stone hearth.

“You’re not angry, are you? I mean about the snow and the—”

The man laughed and then clutched his side with a groan. “Your actions tell me all I need to know.” His gritted teeth still held the edge of a smile. “You could have left me to die.”

“It was my mistake that put you in danger. I wasn’t going to leave you buried in the snow.”

“My thanks. Although I could have done without the tumble through the trees.”

Taliyah grimaced and then opened her mouth. The man held out a hand to stop her. “Do not apologize.”

He strained and pulled himself upright, taking a closer look at Taliyah and the ornament in her hair.

“A Shuriman sparrow.” He closed his eyes and relaxed into the heat of the stone hearth. “You are a long way from home, little bird. What brings you to a remote cave in Ionia?”

“Noxus.”

The man raised a dark eyebrow but kept his eyes closed.

“They said I would bring people together in Noxus. That my power would strengthen her walls. But they only wanted me to destroy.” Her voice grew thick with disgust. “They told me they would teach me—”

“They have, but only half the lesson,” he said without emotion.

“They wanted me to bury a village. To murder people in their homes.” Taliyah let out an impatient snort. “And I escaped only to bring a mountain down on you.”

The man lifted his sword and looked down the length of the blade. A small breeze wiped it clean of dust. “Destruction. Creation. Neither is wholly good or bad. You cannot have one without the other. What matters is intent, the ‘why’ of choosing your path. That is the only real choice we have.”

Taliyah stood up, irritated at the lecture. “My path is away from this place. Away from everyone, until I learn to control what’s inside of me. I don’t trust myself not to hurt my people.”

“A bird’s trust is not in the branch beneath her.”

Taliyah had stopped listening. She was already at the mouth of the cave, wrapping her coat tightly around her. The wind whistled in her ears.

“I’m going to try and find us something to eat. Hopefully, I won’t bring the rest of the mountain down on you.”

The man settled against the warm stone at his back, speaking softly to no one and everyone. “Are you sure it is the mountain you seek to conquer, Little Sparrow?”

A bird pecked at a thin pine nearby. Taliyah kicked at the snow, accidentally shoving a clump of it into the top of her boot. She pulled at the cuff roughly, annoyed at the man’s words and at the melting ice slipping past her ankle.

“The why of the path? I left my people, my family, to protect them from me.”

She stopped. An unnatural hush had settled. Any small game that had been nearby had long since disappeared at the sound of her stomping feet. Not sensing any danger from the girl, the little bird had kept to its branch and twittered at her angry rants. Now even the birdsong was silenced.

Taliyah stood cautiously. In her anger, she had wandered farther than she had intended from the cave. She was drawn more to the stone than the wood, and had absently followed an exposed ridge until she found herself looking down from a rocky cliff. She didn’t think the man would follow her, yet she sensed something watching her.

“More lectures?” she asked indignantly.

There was a bone-vibrating exhalation in response.

She slipped one hand into her coat, and the other reached for her sling. Three stones tumbled in her pocket. She clutched at one just as loose gravel betrayed the movement of her stalker behind her.

Taliyah turned to face the presence at her back. There, padding carefully around sharp crags, was a great Ionian snow lion.

Even standing on four stout legs, it towered over her. The beast was easily twice as long as she was tall, its thick neck covered in a short mane of tawny white. The lion watched the girl. It dropped two freshly slain hares from its jaws and licked a drizzle of red from a canine bigger than her forearm.

Just a moment ago the high view from the cliff where she stood had been thrilling. Now it left her trapped. If she ran, she would be chased down in an instant. Taliyah swallowed, trying to push down the panic that was rising in her throat. She fit a stone into her sling and began to spin it.

“Get out of here,” she said. Her words came out with none of the terror she felt inside.

The lion took a step closer. The girl released the stone from her sling. It hit the great beast near the mane, the fur taking the brunt of the impact. The animal growled its displeasure, and Taliyah could not separate the heavy resonance from her own heart as it tried to beat its way out of her chest.

She fit another stone to the sling.

“Go on!” she shouted, feigning more courage. “I said get out of here!”

Taliyah let the next stone fly.

The predator’s hungry snarl grew louder. The bird in the thin pine, sensing no good could come from this encounter, leapt from the branch and took off on a current of air.

Alone, Taliyah reached into her pocket for her last stone. Her hands shook from the cold and the fear coursing through her. The rock slipped from her fingers and hit the ground, rolling away. She looked up. The lion’s head bobbed between muscled shoulders as it took another step toward her. The throwing stone was just out of reach.

You gather stones by hand? The man’s words echoed in her mind. Maybe there was another way. Taliyah reached out to the stone with her will. The small rock shuddered, but there was also a quiver in the ground beneath her.

The bough beside her still trembled from where the bird had taken flight. A bird’s trust is not in the branch. The choice was clear: She could either stand frozen in her doubt, letting the beast come for her, or lean into her power and take the leap.

Taliyah, a girl born in a desert land far beyond the shores of snow-capped Ionia, held on to the image of the bird and the empty branch that bounced. In that moment, she forgot the imminent death before her. The loneliness that haunted her fell away and was replaced by her last dance on the sands. She felt her mother, her father, Babajan—the whole tribe encircling her. Her whispered promise to return to them when she finally gained mastery over her gifts.

She met the gaze of the beast. “I’ve given up too much to let you stop me.”

The stone began to warp beneath her in a graceful crescent. She held on to the warmth of that last embrace and leapt.

A rumbling built beneath her, louder than the growl of the beast. The lion tried to back away, but it was already too late. The ground split beneath its thick paws into a sluice of swirling gravel, the weight of the creature pulling it farther down the crumbling cliff.

For a brief moment, Taliyah floated above the flurry of dissolving earth. The rock beneath her continued to splinter into a thousand tiny pieces, no longer solid enough to control. She knew she couldn’t hold on to the destruction forever. The girl started to fall. Before she could say goodbye to the coarse world fracturing around her, a strong wind lifted her up. Fingers like steel grasped the collar of her coat.

“I didn’t realize you were serious about bringing down the mountain, Little Sparrow.” With a grunt, the man pulled Taliyah up onto the newly created ledge. “I now understand why much of your desert is flat.”

A laugh bubbled up from within her. She was actually relieved to hear his patronizing voice. Taliyah looked over the side of the cliff and stood up. She dusted herself off, picked up the lion’s discarded hares, and walked back toward the little cave with a new skip in her step.

Taliyah bit her bottom lip. She looked around the inn, excitedly bouncing in her seat. The evening was late and the wooden tables sparsely populated. It had been so long since she had been around people. She looked to her grim companion, who had insisted on the darkened corner booth. The man who now served as her teacher didn’t count. The scowl he had worn since agreeing to a meal at the remote inn offered little in the way of camaraderie.

When it was clear that he was as much a stranger here as anyone else, he relaxed a bit and settled into the shadows, his back firmly to the wall and a drink in hand. Now that he was no longer distracted, his concentration and watchful eye returned to her.

“You must focus,” he said. “You cannot hesitate.”

Taliyah studied the leaves swirling at the bottom of her cup. The lesson today had been a difficult one. It had not gone well. In the end, they had both been covered in dust and shattered rock.

“Danger comes when your attention is divided,” he said.

“I could hurt someone,” she said, eyeing the new rip in the mantle wound around the man’s neck. Her own clothes had not fared well either. She looked down at her new overcoat and traveling skirt. The innkeeper’s wife had taken pity on her and offered what she had on hand, castoffs left by some previous patron. The long sleeves in the Ionian style would take some getting used to, but the rich fabric was sturdy and well woven. She had kept her simple tunic, faded from so much wear, determined not to give up what last bit of home she still had left.

“Nothing was broken that cannot be mended. Control comes through practice. You are capable of much more. Remember, you have improved.”

“But… what if I fail?” she asked.

The man’s gaze drifted as he watched the far door to the inn push open. A pair of merchants came in, stamping off the dusty road. The innkeeper motioned to the open tables near Taliyah and the man. The first moved toward them while the second waited for his drink.

“Everyone fails,” Taliyah’s companion said. A small edge of frustration passed over the man’s face, marring his otherwise restrained demeanor. “Failure is just a moment in time. You must keep moving, and it too will pass.”

One of the merchants took a seat at a nearby table and watched Taliyah, his eyes drifting from the pale lavender of her tunic to the glimmer of gold and stone in her hair.

“Is that Shuriman, girl?”

Taliyah did her best to ignore the merchant. He caught the protective glare of her companion and laughed it off.

“Would have been rare once,” the merchant said.

The girl stared at her hands.

“It’s a bit more common now that your people’s lost city has risen.”

Taliyah looked up. “What?”

“Word has it the rivers flow backward too.” The merchant waved a hand in the air, poking fun at the mysteries of a far-off people he considered simple. “All because your bird-god has returned from the grave.”

“Whatever he is don’t make any difference. It all threatens trade.” The second merchant joined the first. “They say he aims to collect his people. Misses his slaves and all that.”

“Good thing you’re here and not there, girl,” the first merchant added.

The second merchant looked up from his ale, suddenly noticing Taliyah’s companion. “You look familiar,” he said. “I’ve seen your face before.”

The door to the inn opened again. A group of guards entered, eyeing the room carefully. The one in the middle, clearly a captain of some sort, noticed the girl and her companion. Taliyah could feel a quiet panic rise in the room as the few guests stood and made their way quickly to the exits. Even the merchants got up and left.

The captain waded through the empty stools toward them. He stopped a blade’s length from the table where they sat.

“Murderer,” he said.

“So this is where you’ve been hiding,” the captain said. “Savor that drink. It’ll be your last.”

Taliyah was on her feet just as she heard the whisper of steel drawn next to her. She looked over to see her teacher staring down the roomful of guards.

“This man, Yasuo”—the captain spat the word—“is guilty of assassinating a village Elder. His crime warrants the punishment of death. To be carried out on sight.”

One of the guards leveled a loaded crossbow. Another nocked an arrow to a longbow nearly as tall as the girl.

“Kill me?” Yasuo said. “You can try.”

“Wait,” Taliyah cried out. But before the word had finished on her lips, she heard the trigger snap and the reverberating hum of the longbow’s release. In the heartbeats that followed, a whirling gust picked up inside the inn. It spiraled out from the man beside her, blowing abandoned glasses and wooden dinner trenches off of tables. It reached the arrows, breaking them midflight. The pieces fell to the ground with a hollow clatter.

More guards swarmed in, their swords already pulled from their sheaths. Taliyah laid down a field of sharp stone, pulling up each rock through the floor in a violent explosion to keep the men at bay.

Yasuo slipped through the crowd of soldiers trapped in the room. They brandished their weapons, foolishly trying to parry the sword that stormed around them, its metal arcing like lightning. It was too late. Yasuo’s blade flashed in and out of the men, trailing lethal ribbons of red in a whirlwind behind him. When all those who had come for the man had finally fallen, Yasuo paused, his breathing heavy and fierce. His gaze locked with the girl’s, and he prepared to speak.

Taliyah held out her hand in warning. There, at his back, rose the captain with crazed eyes and a broken smile. He wielded his sword with both hands to keep a grip on the blood-slick pommel.

“Get away from him!” Taliyah pulled at the cobbled floor of the inn, the flat stones erupting, lifting the captain off his feet.

As the captain’s body was knocked up, Yasuo was there to meet it, the cold blade cutting through the captain’s chest in three quick strikes. The body fell to the floor and was still.

More shouting was coming from outside. “We must leave. Now,” Yasuo said. He looked at the girl. “You can do this. Do not hesitate.”

Taliyah nodded. The ground rumbled, shaking the walls until the thatched roof began to vibrate. The girl tried to contain the power she felt growing from beneath the floor of the inn. A vision passed in her mind. Her mother, hemming a raw edge of cloth, singing to herself, her even stitches running away from her hand, her fingers a blur of motion.

The rock beneath the inn burst in great, rounded arcs. Stone columns threaded themselves in and out of the ground like a wave. Taliyah felt the earth rise, carrying her out into the dark night, the wild wind that was Yasuo following close behind.

Yasuo looked back at the distant inn. The round stitches of stone had sewn the path shut and blocked off any oncoming approach. It had bought them time, but dawn would be coming soon. And with it, more men for them. For him.

“They knew you.” Taliyah’s voice was quiet. “Yasuo.” She held on to the last word.

“We need to keep moving.”

“They wanted you dead.”

Yasuo let out a breath. “There are a lot of people who want me dead,” he said. “And now some will want you dead as well. If it matters, they named a crime I did not commit.”

“I know.”

Yasuo was not the name he had given on their journey, but it did not matter. She had not asked about his past in the time they’d traveled together. In truth she had not asked anything of him except to be taught. She watched her mentor now, it seemed her trust was almost painful to him. Perhaps more than if she had thought him guilty. He turned and began walking away from her.

“Where are you going? Shurima is to the west.” Confusion rose in her voice.

Yasuo did not turn back to face her. “My place is not in Shurima. And neither is yours. Not yet.” His words were cool and measured, as if he were steeling himself against a coming storm.

“You heard the merchants. The lost city has risen.”

“Tales to scare the tradesmen and drive up the price of Shuriman linen,” he said.

“And if a living god walks the sands? You don’t know what that means. He will reclaim what he has lost. The people who once served him, the tribes...” Taliyah’s voice strained with the emotion of the evening, her words boiling over. She had journeyed so far to protect them and now she was a world away when they needed her. She reached out, a hand’s breadth from pulling on his arm, anything to make him listen, to make him see.

“He will enslave my family.” Her words echoed off the rock around them. “I must protect them. Don’t you understand that?”

A gust of wind picked up, stirring pebbles on the ground and whipping Yasuo’s black hair about his face.

“Protect,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. “Does your Great Weaver not watch over them?” The words now came through gritted teeth. The man, her teacher, turned toward his lone student, anger flashing in his dark, haunted eyes, the raw emotion startling her. “Your training is unfinished. You risk your life returning to them.”

She stood her ground and faced him.

“They are worth my life.”

The wind swirled around them, but the girl was immovable. Yasuo gave a long sigh and looked back to the east. A hint of light had begun to break the blue-black night. The last of the turbulent gusts calmed.

“You could come with me,” she offered.

The hard lines of the man’s jaw relaxed. “I have heard the desert mead is quite good,” he said. A soft breeze tugged at the girl’s hair. And then the moment was gone, replaced again by a memory of pain. “But I am not finished in Ionia.”

Taliyah studied him carefully and then reached inside her tunic, breaking a long loose thread. She offered the length of handspun wool to him. He looked at it suspiciously.

“It’s a tradition of thanks among my people,” Taliyah explained. “To give a piece of yourself is to be remembered.”

The man took the thread gingerly and tied back his wild hair with it. He weighed his next words carefully.

“Follow this to the next river valley and that river to the sea,” he said, gesturing toward a lightly worn deer path. “There is a lone fisherwoman there. Tell her you wish to see the Freljord. Give her this.”

The man withdrew a dried maple seed from a leather pouch at his belt and pressed it into her hand.

“In the Frozen North there are a people that resist Noxian rule. With them you might find passage back to your sands.”

“What is in this… Freljord?” she said, testing the word in her mouth.

“Ice,” he said. “And stone,” he added with a wink.

It was her turn to smile.

“You will move quickly with the mountains beneath you. Use your power. Creation. Destruction. Embrace it. All of it. Your wings have carried you far,” he said. “They may even carry you home.”

Taliyah stared at the path leading down into the river valley. She hoped her tribe was safe. Perhaps the danger she imagined was just that. If they saw her now, what would they think? Would they recognize her? Babajan said that no matter what color the thread, no matter how thick or thin the draft was as it was taken up on the spindle, a part of the wool always remained what it had been when it started. Taliyah remembered, and took comfort in that.

“I trust that you will weave the right balance. Safe journey, Little Sparrow.”

Taliyah turned to face her companion, but he was already gone. The only sign he had been there were a few blades of grass that rustled in the new morning air.

“I’m sure the Great Weaver has a plan for you, too,” she said.

Taliyah tucked the maple seed carefully into her coat and started down the path into the valley, the stone beneath her boots rising eagerly to greet her.

“Fools!”

The word struck Melodie’s ear like a lash, echoing from beyond the temple’s walls and jarring her from the familiar calm of her meditations.

Her fingers ceased their dance along the strings of her praytar, her eyes of warm hazel flickering open to take in the arched stonework of the temple’s inner sanctum. Setting down the instrument with all the reverence due to the worldly object that enabled her communion with blessed Cacophoni, Melodie rose and made for the entrance, and the source of the disquieting voice.

She lifted the veil of lacquered plectrums she wore over her face, before whorls of incense and the midday light of the suns stole her sight for a moment. The city sprawled out before her, stone and iron and glass wrought into brutal harmony by the chosen of the gods. Grand monoliths hung in the sky, carrying and strengthening the tolling of the Temporonomicon, the rhythmic heartbeat of the world.

All was in tune—save for that single, angry voice whose owner Melodie now beheld from the top of the temple steps.

He was young, slender of build and fair of skin, with gentle locks of platinum blond that tumbled down to his shoulders. His face was ardent, eyes burning with the fervor of belief. Alone he stood, swathed in rags, the crowds ebbing back from him as though he were diseased.

“You have been led astray,” the young man continued, appealing to the wall of scowls surrounding him, “deceived by those who claim sole possession of the truth.”

Melodie glanced at the Rectifiers—those tall, hulking warriors clad in plate of gleaming brass who served as the temple’s guardians, as still as the statues they protected.

Why were they not stopping this?

The young man gestured to the main courtyard, and the brutal and abstract depictions of the Noisome Host that dominated it. “Stentorus, Cacophoni, Perpetuum,” he said. “The gods are true, and worthy of worship, but the faith raised up in their name is built upon lies. And their champions?”

He stabbed a finger in accusation at the only slightly lesser monuments standing with the gods in the silent majesty of granite and gold-flecked marble, the warlords that they had chosen to rule over all.

Pentakill.

“By your sweat did they render their thrones,” he spat. “By your blood do they quench their thirst. You are nothing but slaves to them, your toil the mortar that keeps their stale, unchanging act from collapsing!”

Melodie flinched at the sheer heresy of it, the words burrowing into her thoughts. She shook her head to free herself of them, but they held fast to her with painful barbs. Yet she would not flee back to the sanctuary of the temple, instead gaining strength from the inevitable rebuke that came from the crowd.

“Liar!”

“Blasphemer!”

“May the scriptures curse you!”

The man laughed bitterly. “Scriptures? Pentakill would have you believe that the holy books are complete, that no pages have been torn from them and hidden in fear, that all power in the universe is meted out by the Noisome Host alone. I say again, you are being lied to!”

Disquiet rippled through the assembled masses, murmurs of shock and doubt.

“There is more than you have been allowed to know,” he went on, his tone growing softer in sympathy yet somehow stronger in projection. “You believe it is the will of the gods that lays your paths out before you... but friends, there is another—”

“That’s enough, Viego!”

Melodie turned, hearing the susurrus of a cloak of golden strings trailing against the flagstones. Qylmaster the Sanctifier emerged from the calm of the temple, crossing the threshold and striding down the steps with all the grandeur and assurance enjoyed by one of his rank.

“I was wondering when you would scurry forth, priest,” the heretic smiled thinly. “Puppet of the dying light.”

“Begone from this place,” said Qylmaster, his voice calm and measured but leaving no room for debate. “Have you fallen so far from the grace of Perpetuum that you are deaf to the poison that escapes your own lips? Trouble these innocents and true believers no longer.”

Viego leaned forward and spat upon the ground. “You no longer have any hold over me, old man. I do not bow and scrape at the feet of your weary idols. I answer to a truer power, one worthy of worship. I speak of the Dissonant One!”

The Sanctifier’s expression dropped. His tone became a low rumble. “Leave. Now.”

Viego straightened. “And if I refuse?”

Qylmaster lifted a hand, revealing small cymbals bound to his thumb and index finger. “Then you will be removed.”

The Sanctifier clashed his fingers together once, and in response to the chime the Rectifiers stepped forward as one. Sworn acolytes of Stentorus, they bore mauls of flame-hardened ironwood, and their bootfalls were a percussive staccato upon the earth. Swiftly they surrounded Viego, their weapons raised and poised to strike him down.

“We will suffer no further apostasy,” said Qylmaster. “Still your forked tongue, or in the name of the Noisome Host I will have it torn from your mouth.”

But Viego only sneered. “Why not call forth your fair headliners, eh? Where are Pentakill to answer for the ‘poison’ I utter?” He turned again to the crowd. “High up in their gilded towers, fat and corrupt from your toil. Let them come here and tell me to leave, and I will depart without incident.”

There was a moment of silence. Viego cocked his ear, and his eyes met with Melodie’s, though only briefly.

Then he smirked. “Nothing. I thought as much.”

Melodie watched, shaken by the scene unfolding before her. She could not countenance the worldview being foisted upon them all by Viego. To question the power of the Host was like stating that the twin suns did not blaze, or the bitter oceans did not rise and fall. Pentakill were the greatest band of all time, and rightful champions of the gods. Why were they allowing this to persist?

Agitation began to wind and twist through the crowd. Raised voices and angry words turned to shoves and strikes. Violence and uncertainty crept into the temple courtyard as friends turned on one another, incited by the intriguing madness of Viego’s ravings.

“Silence!” Qylmaster cried, raising his arms. “Peace, my brothers and sisters! Close your ears and your hearts to these lies.”

He glowered at Viego.

“You have fallen so very far, my child. It pains me to send you down deeper still. Honored sons of Stentorus, I loose thee!”

The Rectifiers stamped in unison—three sharp, echoing crashes of brass—and beat Viego down. Their mauls rose and fell, again and again, and Melodie had to look away, flinching at the sound of each blow.

Viego’s limp form was seized, dragged through the streets and pelted with insults and scraps of garbage. At the end of this abusive parade, the city gates were flung wide, and he was thrown into a crumpled heap in the dust beyond them.

Melodie felt Qylmaster’s gentle touch upon her shoulder for a moment as he passed. “Come away, child. This has been no sight for the devout to behold.”

Yet she could not move. Horror rooted her in place, and... something else. A new sensation crept up her spine, as she watched Viego roll shakily onto his knees outside the gates.

Doubt.

“You… cannot stop the... storm that is c-coming...” he choked from between split lips. “All your lies and... m-monuments will be swept away! Your... haughtiness laid low... in the ashes...”

As the gates drew closed, Viego rose defiantly to his feet.

“I am a disciple of Dissonance! I will show you! I will show you all!”

Music was a wellspring of calm in Melodie’s life, the riffs and chords an oasis that made all other concerns fade. And yet, try as she might, she could not forget Viego’s words, even though days had passed since the incident outside the temple courtyard. She strummed her praytar, willing herself to let all but her heart, mind and fingers drift away.

Still, the doubt remained.

The tune Melodie was playing warped as her finger slipped, curdling the air with discord. She ceased, cursing softly behind her veil, as she heard the soft scrape of golden strings approaching.

“There is suffering in your play, Stringstress.”

Melodie looked up to see Sanctifier Qylmaster. He looked down, with concern in his eyes. “Do the other day’s events yet disturb you?”

Melodie averted her gaze. “I confess they do.”

A soft sigh of understanding passed Qylmaster’s lips. “Heresy is seldom kind,” he said, seating himself beside her, “least of all to the heretics themselves. They are to be pitied, helped whenever possible, however we are able—but their delusions are not to be heeded, much less dwelled upon.”

“Were it so simple,” said Melodie, almost shocked at her own candor. “His words rooted a dread in my heart. A dread that holds fast to me even now.”

The Sanctifier nodded once, then rose to his feet.

“Walk with me, Stringstress Melodie.”

She followed Qylmaster from the inner sanctum, ascending a spiral staircase through floor after floor of the temple, until they emerged from its tallest tower.

Her breath caught in her throat. Never before had she stood at such a height, able to take in all of the city at once. The lesser temples and assorted screamatoria dotted the landscape, offering song and verse to the gods above with such fervour that they could be heard even in the wastelands beyond the city. And there, to the west, lay the Ashenpit, that grand arena erected at the site of Pentakill’s original, triumphant ascendance.

She felt as though she might reach up and touch the floating monoliths overhead, and let her eyes fall upon the holy Temporonomicon in all its glory. Nonetheless, Viego’s words remained with her. Did she even regard that edifice with the same awe any longer?

“Look, dear child,” said the Sanctifier, as though reading Melodie’s thoughts. “Look upon everything we have built together. All we have achieved. Tell me, was this done in the passage of a single day?”

She frowned. “Of course not, holy one.”

“A year, then?” he persisted. “Or even a lifetime?”

Melodie shook her head.

“Consider the first gatherings, those first primitive groups that offered up music and song, such as they could, to the gods. Do you not think they were afraid?”

“They must have been,” Melodie admitted.

“Quite so. And yet they persevered, for they had the truth of their beliefs to sustain them. They triumphed over their fear, and for that victory the Noisome Host deemed us worthy of patronage. All that we have done since has been by their eternal grace.” His arm swept across the majesty of the city once more. “And behold! What wonders we have rendered!”

Melodie smiled. “It is beautiful, in its brutality.”

“Rest easy then. For our path is righteous, as strong as steel. The words of that liar, that fool Viego, are nothing in comparison.”

“His words were cunning,” said Melodie. “They were so sincere. I feel ashamed for my doubt.”

“We must never doubt. Doubt is a doorway, one that only leads to ruin. A pox upon his name—we beat Viego and cast him out, and now I curse myself even for the kindness of that. Better to have gone further still.”

The veil of plectrums jingled as Melodie gave a short bow. “I thank you for your wisdom, holy one.”

“Come now,” Qylmaster gestured to the stairs leading back down to the temple. “I have heard you play, my child. The inspiration of Cacophoni has blessed you bountifully. You are strong not only in song but in mind, in will. You do not require my feeble words to stand against the challenges of this world.”

“I am grateful for them all the same.”

They descended, walking in contented silence, until they reached her simple alcove. Melodie suppressed a laugh.

“To think that there could be a lost chapter of the scriptures, another god—”

“There will be no more talk of such things!” Qylmaster snapped, all his former warmth gone. Melodie sank to her knees, shocked into mortified silence, clutching her praytar for support.

A hush filled the sanctum. Veiled adepts, acolytes, and mystics shared glances and whispered words. They could not help but overhear the Sanctifier’s rebuke, their eyes like daggers piercing Melodie from every direction.

“There is the Host, and nothing else.” Qylmaster towered over her. “Your doubts disrupt us all, throwing our faith from its divine cadence. Are you perhaps unworthy of the rank of Stringstress? Pray for mercy, Melodie. Pray that your thoughtless words will be forgiven.”

Melodie bowed her head, cursing herself for her levity. “In Cacophoni’s name.”

“You shall make penance with a dozen soli.” Qylmaster held out a slim crystal vial, which she accepted. “Contemplate the majesty of the Noisome Host, as you make your offering.”

Melodie played, her fingers a blur over the strings. The vibrating metal stung after a while, yet relief washed over her. She finished the first solo in under an hour.

It was not until midway through the fourth that the calluses on her fingers opened.

Blood slicked the strings, running down to the bottom edge of the praytar’s fretboard, and she was careful to catch each crimson droplet in the vial. By the end of the twelfth solo, Melodie squeezed her shaking hands until it was filled.

She glanced down at her bloodied fingers, unable to force the beaten figure of Viego from her mind, as he had lain broken in the dust.

And where once doubt lingered, anger took its place—an anger unlike any she had felt before.

“Is your penance done?” asked the Sanctifier when she came to him. “And did it bring reason back to you, Stringstress?”

“I pray so,” Melodie answered through gritted teeth. “I know that man’s words were lies. For if they were true, none here would deny them, would they?”

“I believed this matter was concluded,” Qylmaster growled. “Was I mistaken?”

Melodie flinched. “No, Sanctifier, it’s just—”

“It seems penance was not sufficient to quiet your mind! Need I remove you from this temple until you have come to your senses? Perhaps so. Oh, child—you seemed destined to rise so high among us. To become a font of holy wisdom! To teach others the tenets of the faith!” Qylmaster shook his head. “Look upon yourself, now. Bear this shame as I bear my disappointment.”

Melodie cast her gaze around the temple, but found only judgement, coldness, some even stifled laughter at her plight. She knew there were those among them just like her, with questions and doubts. Yet they turned their backs, their denial an almost physical force pushing Melodie from the temple’s light.

She had never felt more alone.

“You will take your leave now,” said Qylmaster. “Return when your faith has, and we will decide if you are worthy of any place among us.”

Melodie paced the streets with no idea of where to go. Her vision blurred with tears, she collided with a street performer who was clumsily attempting to appease all three gods in unison, with a bizarre apparatus of instruments bound to himself. The man sprawled to the ground in a crash of cheap cymbals and the squeal of protesting catgut.

Ripping the veil loose from her face, Melodie looked down upon it as the blood from her hands smeared the lacquer, before tossing it into the gutter.

She was angry. Angry at herself, at the Sanctifier... and most of all at the idea that Viego’s lies might not have been lies at all.

With a soft, even rhythm, Melodie swept the temple steps, trying to ignore the heat of the suns beating down on her. She concentrated on the even swing of the broom, the rough bristles brushing against the stone, content that even in this humble task she was making music again.

The weeks she had spent wandering the city had not dispelled her doubts, nor the newfound anger that surged in her heart. But when it felt like all else had turned to sand around her, she clung to what she knew would bring her peace.

Music.

She had stood with the other mendicants and aspirants at the gate each day, staring up into the impassive visors of the Rectifiers, seeing the afternoon light reflected brilliantly in the brass. When at last she had been permitted entry once more, Melodie threw herself upon the mercy of the faith, enduring all of the purification they demanded to prove herself worthy to return to the fold.

However, back inside the temple walls she had begun to work in secret moments and hidden acts, searching for what she was now convinced was being hidden from them all. Lost chapters of the holy scriptures. Forbidden gods.

She was determined to find answers.

It played out just as she had hoped it would. Interrogated and scourged by Sanctifier Qylmaster, he had at last relented and Melodie was welcomed back into the ranks of the faithful, though with all the warmth shown to a beggar, beneath notice or friendship. The promising future she had once had, even the potential to one day become an anointed Roadwalker—the blessed servants who tended the sacred instruments of Pentakill—was gone forever. Where once she was adorned in finery, her fingers a conduit for the holy music of the Noisome Host, now she wore plain robes, confined to shuffling in the shadows as she cleaned the temple, and restrung the praytars of others.

Melodie was invisible, but even the simple familiarity of the inner sanctum was a comfort... and in truth it was all the better to achieve the true purpose in her heart.

Pausing to wipe the sweat from her brow, she sighed. It was hot, and she was exhausted, but the suns would begin to set before long, and she would have a chance in the quiet hours of the night to search for the lost chapters, if they even—

She stopped, suddenly. Something prickled her awareness, reaching her ears and filling her veins with ice. She realized it was not a sound that had startled her, but rather its absence.

It was silent. Utterly silent.

Melodie had never heard true silence before. Had she been struck deaf by some cruel twist of fate, excommunicated from the songs that connected her to the divine? She ran to the temple’s front gate, looking up to set her thoughts in time with the holy immensity of the distant Temporonomicon, and her eyes went wide.

It had stopped.

What could stop the Temporonomicon?

In the moment that she grappled with that impossibility, a shadow fell over her—but not just her.

It fell over everything.

The world was plunged into a sickly twilight as the suns were swallowed by a bloom of writhing, malignant darkness. Magical energies the color of a deep bruise lanced through, and throbbing lightning of brightest red reached out to craze the sky, drifting down and coiling toward the earth.

And with it came... a sound, or a hideous un-sound, replacing the faithful beat of the Temporonomicon with the howling of ruin.

The great monoliths hanging over the city began to tilt and sag. With no sacred rhythm to keep them in place, two of them collided, plummeting with titanic slowness to smash like meteors into the skyline. Violent shockwaves tore through the streets from the impacts, the dark energy storm joined by slashing gales of dust and jagged debris scraping and clashing, giving further voice to the din.

Melodie recoiled, clutching onto a pillar for support as she watched men and women fleeing through the streets from the advancing horror. The fortunate found whatever shelter they could, but they were few. So many were caught up in the storm, and it was only after witnessing its effects on them that Melodie realized she was screaming.

It surged like a predator, engulfing its prey. It wound along their limbs like a serpent, surging past their teeth to produce a sound no natural thing should be capable of producing. It was, impossibly, a kind of song—but one attuned to some terrible, keening dissonance. Their faces collapsed around choked cries of agony, falling away slack and boneless, and what was within them was drawn out from between their howling lips, carried to hang up over them like the slick branches of incarnadine trees.

This new and hideous forest sprung up across the city, shivering with discord as it amplified the grand dirge of unmaking. It grew, louder, and louder, and louder, with each new voice it claimed.

Melodie’s throat went raw, cutting off her screams. She looked on as the stormfront rippled over the Rectifiers standing ready in the courtyard. The temple guardians twitched and thrashed, losing their sure footing as the brass of their armor ran like molten wax. The ironwood mauls in their fists caught fire. They stumbled, crashing to the ground in expanding pools of boiling foulness and liquid metal.

Melodie retched as whorls of smoke and steam coiled into the air from the obliterated guardians, drawing her gaze up to the grand thoroughfare. There, through the dust and gloom, she glimpsed a figure striding confidently through the city gates like a conqueror, with his arms spread wide.

“Viego?” she breathed. She could not say for certain.

If it was Viego, he did not look as he had before—a lunatic in rags. This man was transcendent, his flesh absent any wounds that may have been laid into it by the outrage of the masses.

Had he been right all along? Were these the blessings of his “Dissonant One”? Was this his wrath for the falsehood and ignorance of the faithful? Melodie had to know.

“Into the temple!” Qylmaster’s voice came from behind Melodie as she took her first step. Desperate citizens were barging and rushing past her, looking for sanctuary.

But Melodie was rooted in place.

“He wasn’t lying, was he,” she called out, still transfixed by the unfolding destruction, all their great works rendered to ruin. She turned to the Sanctifier. “Where is Pentakill?”

“Come away child!” he bellowed. “You see now the evils of this heresy! Get thee to safety with us!”

“This is a power only the divine could bestow,” Melodie replied, pointing to the madness enveloping the city. “And this is not the work of the Noisome Host. There is another god, isn’t there?”

The Sanctifier stared blankly. “Pentakill will come,” he murmured. “They will come to protect their faithful followers.”

“Then where are they...?” Melodie snarled. She looked up, seeing the temple’s campanile tower topped with a golden statue of Karthus now falling to rubble. “They aren’t coming. You know that.”

The Sanctifier reached out to her. “Sister Melodie...”

He had never looked older, or more feeble.

“We’ve all been living a lie,” Melodie turned her back on him. “I have been living a lie. There are answers, ones I thought hidden away out of mortal fear, or petty ignorance, but now I know.”

She pointed to the storm.

“The answer is out there.”

Melodie descended the steps, moving against the surging current of men and women. Viego was out there, somewhere, doing precisely what he had promised he would do. He was opening the eyes of the world, through such violence and catastrophe that none could ever deny the reality of his patron, this Dissonant One.

Amid all the devastation, she felt she could almost hear a word, a name, all but imperceptible in the chaos.

“Muuuutaaaarisssss...”

Despite its horror, Melodie pushed forward into the crimson maw of the storm. To her, revelation was worth any price. If that ended up being her own existence, then so be it—hers had been a life of ignorance, but no more. Somehow, impossibly, excitement welled up within her, washing away all doubt and anger as a new path appeared, dark and winding as it might be.

And perhaps Viego would show her the way.

The chill wind whips through cracks in my bark with a hollow whistling sound. I shiver. My limbs have long forgotten the warmth of summer.

The towering shapes around me fracture and fall in the gale. The lives within died long ago; now they are my silent companions. Their brittle trunks remain only as empty husks, rough gray sketches of the lush forest that once bloomed here.

A spirit weaves between the trees in front of me, pale and spectral against the night air. A knot tightens in my bark. Normally I would lash my roots through its heart, but today I hold still, trying not to alert the wraith to my presence. I am tired of resisting. That I exist at all is an act of defiance against the curse plaguing these lands.

Its moonlike eyes are vacant. There is nothing alive and vulnerable to fuel its cold bitterness on this isle of death, nothing to be hunted or consumed. The spirit slips between the trees, leaving me to my solitude.

I look across the forest of shadows and my branches waver. My gaze catches – a tiny flame of red growing amid the endless gray. Nestled in a mound of black dirt, the smallest flower bud pushes up from the ground, its petals so bright they burn my eyes.

It is a nightbloom. Long ago, they carpeted the floor of the Blessed Isles, blossoming on the evening of the summer solstice. By morning the flowers wilted, leaving only blackened petals, not to be seen again until the following year. But for one night, they illuminated the forest with blazing crimson, as if the very ground were aflame.

I look around and, for a fleeting moment, hope that if one flower exists there might be others. But there is only the somber gray of these dead isles.

My boughs creak as I take a shaky step forward. I approach the bloom, transfixed, crushing ashen leaves to dust underfoot. My colossal frame towers over its delicate shape. I lean down until my face is inches above the sweet-scented petals. The potent groundwater within my heartwood stirs, awakening in recognition. Life.

The flower’s neck is tilted as if curious. Deep vermillion veins spread across each petal, and its pale green stem is coated with hundreds of silvery, velvet-soft hairs. I could spend eternity basking in its every facet.

Every moment it grows and shifts in subtle ways; its stem pushing ever higher while its petals slowly unfurl. I am enchanted by each movement, however minute. I watch as the bloom spreads to reveal the filaments extending from within, its heady scent flooding my mind with color. For a moment I forget the cold, the hollow wind, and my own bitterness.

A pale light flickers and I flinch. A glowing shape approaches. My bark tingles. Nothing from these bloodless woods is an ally.

The cursed spirit is returning, attracted to the lure of movement. Life is not so still as death.

I flex my limbs in fury, no longer eluding violence. I welcome it.

For one night, a living thing will exist on these barren isles unmarred by corrupt forces.

The spirit glides toward us. She was once human, but is now translucent and bone-white. Her blank expression grows ravenous as she sees the blood-red blossom.

The specter races toward the flower and tries to inhale its fragile life. Before the bloom withers into a lifeless shade, I fling my limbs forward and lash them about the spirit’s legs. She screeches, recoiling as if burned, and I roar. The groundwater within me is anathema to such unnatural beings.

She twists and breaks free of my grasp. I hoist my roots and smash them to the ground. The impact splits the barren topsoil and sends shockwaves through the earth. The reverberations strike the wraith and she reels in agony. I laugh bitterly. As she stirs, I sling my limbs through her form and she dissolves.

Dusky mist rises from the ground, accompanied by a foul stench. As the wind moans, dozens of spirits materialize before me, their garish faces gaping silently at the scene before them. The nightbloom and I grow before the wall of shadows. I will not let them destroy this one pure thing amongst so much darkness.

I throw all my rage into my blows, driving them back with furious strength. I cannot destroy every spirit on the isles, but I can hold them off for a time. A wraith tries to dart past me. I howl as I lift my roots to pierce its heart, and it dissipates into mist.

My strength is draining with so many spirits nearby, but I refuse to concede.

The flower grows brightly beneath the moonlight, oblivious to this battle for its very existence. A single crimson petal falls from its perfect blossom like a drop of blood. The lifecycle of the bloom is near its end, bringing death, and with it, respite. But I do not crave it. I feel I could cleanse the entire island of its scourge in my fury.

The cursed mist has risen above the treeline and swirls in great clouds. An endless host of spirits pours from the fog, mouths agape with ghoulish hunger. I rise to my greatest height and slam my limbs into the ravenous spirits, shattering one after another into dust. Still, more come.

I howl as I stir the air into a crudely twisting spiral, and nourish the storm with my wrath until it expands in a tempestuous whirlwind. I revel in the chaos as the maelstrom surges in a frenzied circle around me and the flower. It blasts the spirits violently back beyond the trees. From within this nightmare, I have carved a sanctuary where life can grow.

I turn to the flower. We are silent together at the eye of the storm, still amidst the madness. A second fiery petal falls from the nightbloom, then another. My energy drains into the maelstrom, but I do not falter and the tempest rages on. With each passing moment, the blossom droops further until it faces the ground. It is perfect in its slow, natural decay. I cannot look away as it gradually loses its crown of flaming petals and wilts completely.

It is dead.

I lower my branches and the maelstrom quiets. Above me, the sky is slate gray - as bright as it ever gets in this grim place. The gloom of the mist encroaches once more and the spirits return. Their faces are blank, no longer sensing the illicit life of the nightbloom, no longer anticipating the joy of a fresh kill.

They retreat into the hollow woods. I whip my roots through a specter as it passes me, scattering its essence into the fading mist. The others edge farther away from me as they return to their gloom.

Though the land appears unchanged, these isles are not the same gray wasteland they were yesterday. The waters of life stir within me and the soil beneath my roots is fertile again.

Though its petals decay into dust, the luminous nightbloom burns fire-bright in my mind, igniting my fury. Just as these islands were born of burning rock, I will cleanse them of their pestilence in a flaming blaze.

I follow the trailing spirits as they slip between hollow trees.

They will pay for their wickedness.

There’s a saying on my island. “Only through stealing our breath can the wind speak.” You want me to describe the Black Mist that greeted me when I first arrived in the Ionian village, hood raised, relic cannon on my back?

The Mist steals words too. The screams of those who die within.

Once, they were my screams—but I’m alive now.

I felt the warmth where Lucian’s hand touched my shoulder as we stepped off the boat onto Ionian soil, somehow reaching through my walls the way only he can. The way he’s the only fool stubborn enough to try.

To learn the one thing that gets through my armor, and all the rules beneath, is love.

“You go high, I go low?” I asked, feeling his warmth go cold as he considered. For a moment, he didn’t see me standing before him. He saw the woman he tried to save, who was cursed, always running. He saw the scythe, swinging toward her… He looked straight into her eyes, even as he looked into mine.

“I go low,” he said, leaving other things to silence. And now his hands were on his guns. “Senna…” His voice broke with the weight of the memory.

“It’s okay,” I said softly. I could remember that woman too.

On the horizon, darkness swirled, casting even darker shadows onto a village carved into stone, deluged by heavy rain, and worse. Somewhere in that darkness was light. Another Sentinel who’d called us here.

I’d have to fight my way to it.

The path up the mountain to the village was nearly worn away by centuries of storms, washing away everything but the toughest crags… if that’s the right damn word. I could feel the wind pressing against my hood, the spray of the ocean hard against my skin, as if the world were pushing me back, warning me of the darkness ahead. But none of that compared to what hit me as a howl rose up, roaring through the village…

It was my curse. The Mist knew I was here. It would come for me before anyone else.

“Must be time for my daily ambush,” I muttered, unmoved, and from a horizon black with death, souls poured forth. Drawn to me as I drew breath.

As I drew my weapon.

The relic stones of fallen Sentinels moved as one, each held by too many hands before mine. Men and women, fathers, sisters, all lost to darkness. But when I held my weapon, I held their light, gleaming in the gun’s two barrels.

A tendril of Mist hit me as the wraith within took shape. Staggered by the blow, I stumbled back, catching my footing just before falling toward the rocks below. Thunder pealed as the screams of souls joined the rain and crashing waves that besieged the island. But the flash of light that followed wasn’t lightning.

It was my relic cannon, the shot boiling the wraith into shadow.

It required control. It required focus. I needed to fight the Mist with every fiber of my being. And I could not stop. Not for a moment of my life.

With every shot that burned a wraith away, another was revealed. I was so close to the village now, I could see new wraiths rising, sent spiraling toward me.

Into blessed light.

“Anabal, are you there?” I called out. I’d met him only once, when Urias brought me to a meeting of Sentinels. It was rare for Sentinels to gather, but something had frightened Urias that made him call them all together. He never told me what it was, but I could tell by the way the others looked at me…

It hurt more when they didn’t know. When they tried to get past my armor, only to find the reason it was there.

Still firing, I advanced further into the village. The wraiths moved fast, swooping into buildings nearly as old as the island itself, carved from the same stone. But there was order in the chaos. The wraiths were circling above. They wanted something. Not just life. Not just souls. Not just me…

“Anabal!” I called again, barely hearing myself over the storm.

“Over here! Hurry!” a panicked voice responded. It was the voice of a girl… and then her light joined mine in the darkness.

Anabal’s apprentice, Daowan.

She stood above a crumpled body, two figures in the dark. The light of Anabal’s relic-stone glaive glowed dully on her face, concentration clear on her brow as she defended her fallen mentor.

He had managed to pass the torch, then… his relic stone was not lost.

“We have to get out of here,” the girl said with a shudder. “We have to get the villagers out of here. I can still hear them. It must be them…” She paused and looked down at the shape at her feet, in confused agony. “I can still hear him…”

But even as her knuckles grew white, clenching the haft of her glaive, I put my relic cannon on my back. I reached out gently and took her shoulder.

“We’re going to get through this,” I said. Beyond her, I saw the entrance to the village catacombs. Swarming with wraiths. “All of us,” I added softly.

Whatever the Mist wanted, it was there.

The catacombs had been carved out by countless floods. As we left the village behind, heading underground, still the storm made itself known, water rolling down the walls around us. But if we were going to drown in the depths, it wouldn’t be from rising sea, or falling squall…

It would be in the Black Mist that rolled like a wave to meet us, swallowing our light in a liquid roar.

I could hear the screams of the people from my village, torn away when I was just a girl and first saw death. I could hear the echoes of my own, and see the look on Lucian’s face, when death first saw me. I was hit by the rage and fear of the people still dying above, their cries in a language I couldn’t understand, but speaking of pain I knew all too well.

Wraiths rose up throughout the catacombs, trapped in a rictus of the agony they meant to inflict. But no matter how loud the screams of the living, the sound could never drown out their own. And no matter how brightly my light burned, it could never hurt them worse than when the darkness returned.

And so instead… I embraced them, before death could.

My call was irresistible. I could draw the Mist to myself, away from others. I felt death rush in, push the lie of my body away. As the Mist clung to me, one by one, it let the souls go. All who had been drawn here. All who had died above. For a moment, I thought I saw Anabal…

Only one vague shape lingered, a will still slowly awakening. It hovered for a moment before turning to face me, rage burning where there were no eyes.

“No,” I whispered through the shroud of death that had transformed me into a wraith. “You don’t get to speak. You listen.”

Pushing the Mist into my gun, I fired all the pain and fear I’d gathered back at its source, where it was deserved. As darkness collided with darkness, the light within me glowed. Life wouldn’t let me go. I felt my body return, as the last of the Mist left me. With a gasp, I fell to my knees.

“What did I miss?” a voice asked, emerging from deeper in the tunnels.

“You know. The usual,” I said coolly, though I was still catching my breath.

“Ruined King raiding catacombs to find who knows what?” Lucian asked.

“Pretty much,” I answered. I looked up at Daowan, realization dawning on her face. Her glaive was still pointed at me.

There’s a saying on my island. “Only through stealing our breath can the wind speak.”

In the roaring clamor of the Black Mist, I hear the words of the dead.

And I’m here to give their voices back.

“Valhir!”

The god-bear twitched in his sleep, but his eyes didn’t open.

It was an old name, and had not been spoken aloud for… how long? What he heard must have been a dream, or an echo of the past. With a snort, he burrowed his head deeper into the thick snow and continued his slumber of ages.

“Valhir, with your name, and with this blood, I call upon you!”

The demi-god’s eyes flicked open.

The voice was half a land away, but sounded as clear as if spoken directly into his ear.

With a low growl, the great bear rose, pushing himself to his feet. An avalanche of snow fell from his titanic form, making the earth rumble. He shook out his fur and turned his heavy head from horizon to horizon, nostrils flaring.

He could taste the blood tribute on the air, and a thrill ran through him. Somewhere, stones had been arranged to form his rune. A sacrifice had been made in his name. He felt the power of worship infusing his limbs.

“Valhir! We call on your fury! Give us your strength! Every death is an offering!”

With the promise of battle, slaughter, and worship, Valhir’s heart pounded in time to the war drums he could feel echoing across the land. He could hear the stamping of feet, the clash of blades, the cries of the dying.

It called to the body he wore. It called to him.

The Volibear reared onto his hind legs and roared to the heavens. The sound reverberated across the icy tundra, touching the soul of every living creature in the Freljord.

Hundreds of miles away, where the sun never rose, a spirit walker woke screaming, clawing at his face with hands twisted into immense talons.

Across the ice floes in a different direction, packs of rimefang wolves threw back their heads and howled, echoing the demi-god’s cry.

And elsewhere, far, far away, a group of tribesmen sitting around fires fell silent, hearts suddenly thundering. Friends eyed friends with hostile expressions. Blood would be spilled.

The Volibear dropped to all fours and surged forward, massive claws ripping up the frozen earth. Snow-covered boulders and trees were smashed out of his path, and the wind whistled through his thick fur as he picked up speed.

When next he paused, sniffing the air, he was hundreds of miles away. He was getting close. The storm clouds of his war-rage darkened the sky overhead.

“Valhir! We kill and die in your name!”

With an earth-shattering impact, the god-bear arrived.

High upon an icy rise, lightning flickering across his ivory fur, he gazed across the battlefield.

Two armies were engaged upon the blood-soaked plain below. The dead and dying were strewn across the snow. One of the forces was vastly outnumbered. They were fighting a losing battle.

The giant bear snorted. Something smelled wrong about the larger of the armies. Its humans were clad in black iron, and fought beneath a red banner. He growled as he realized they were not of the Freljord, but weaklings from a land where the snow no longer held sway. He bared his teeth, and lightning flashed. It struck in the midst of the battle with a deafening crash, sending charred corpses from both sides flying.

“Valhir! Valhir!”

The Volibear focused his fury-reddened gaze on the one who shouted his name. A mortal woman, clad in fur, stared up at him, her face splattered with gore. She raised a pair of bloodied axes to the sky in salute, a savage grin on her face.

Many of the other combatants had ceased fighting, staring at the demi-god in awe and horror, but the Volibear’s attention was fixed on the woman.

This was the one whose heart had called the storm.

“Valhir!” she screamed, thrusting her bloodied axes into the air once more. “With these deaths, we honor you!”

With a last deferent salute, the woman turned back to the fight, hurling herself into her enemy with renewed vigor.

The Volibear turned his gaze upon those the woman fought—the outsiders. The enemy. With a snarl, he charged.

“Vol kau fera!” he roared, making the heavens themselves shake.

He smashed into the enemy like a living battering ram, sending their frail troops flying. Bones crunched. Blood splashed. Voices wailed.

It was over in moments.

In the face of the unstoppable fury of the god-bear, the resolve of the enemy crumbled. The first of them turned to run. It quickly turned into a rout, then to butchery, as the Freljordians—now filled with the savage rage of the Volibear—fell upon the fleeing enemy like wolves, howling as they pursued them across the snow.

The Volibear watched the slaughter in satisfaction, blood dripping from his maw.

The woman that had called him dropped to her knees in reverence and bowed her head.

“Oh, great Valhir!” she cried. “I am Warmother Raetha, the Bloodied Hand. By your intervention, our village is saved!”

It was only then, as the Volibear’s battle-lust began to abate, that he saw the nearby farmsteads and stone houses, and his eyes narrowed. He turned his gaze back upon the kneeling woman.

He loomed over her, easily four times her height, but growing ever larger as his anger returned. His almighty form was crisscrossed with old scars and new battle wounds—all marks he bore proudly. His massive claws dripped with gore. The urge to rip and rend remained strong.

He snarled down at the warmother. “Vol t’svaag dakk skolj.”

She looked up at him in confusion. It was clear the old tongue had been all but forgotten.

“Stand,” he rumbled in the younger, bastardized language she spoke. “A warrior kneels to no one.”

His gaze settled on something further along the valley. A dangerous growl rose from deep within him, heavy with the promise of violence. The woman, Raetha, took a step back, suddenly wary.

“What. Is. This?” he bellowed, the air tingling with electricity as his anger grew.

The woman glanced over her shoulder, confused and uneasy.

“The… The dam?” she asked.

The Volibear’s lips curled back, exposing bloodied fangs. This was his river, and it had flowed free and wild since before the coming of humanity. That mortals dared block it, to hold back its power, was an abomination.

He stomped past the woman, his anger building with every step. By the time he reached the crude structure, his rage was a barely contained maelstrom, and the air around him crackled with power. Warmother Raetha and a collection of others shadowed him at a wary distance.

The god-bear splashed into the shallows below the dam. The water barely reached past his paws, and his anger redoubled. The river should be thundering.

With a roar, he tore down the stones and freed the waters.

Now it thundered, bursting forth in a great churning wave. The power of the river crashed around him.

There was screaming as it surged down across the floodplain. The god-bear watched in satisfaction as the first of the Freljordian’s houses was smashed aside, timbers shattering and stonework collapsing. People ran, clutching younglings, as the waters demolished the entire settlement.

Once all evidence of civilization was gone, the Volibear turned to the Freljordians. They stood aghast, shocked at what he had wrought.

“Today, you are free!”

He could taste fear in the air, but he also felt the awe and reverence of the onlooking mortals.

“Live!” he commanded. “Live wild! Hunt! Kill! Honor the old ways… and the old ways will honor you!”

Warmother Raetha was now standing tall and slowly nodding. This one had the spirit of a true warrior. And in his immortal heart, he knew most of the others would follow her.

The Volibear gave her a nod, and turned to the horizon.

There was much to be done.