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Galio’s legend begins in the aftermath of the Rune Wars, when countless refugees fled from the destructive power of magic. In the west of Valoran, a band of these displaced people were hounded by a vicious band of dark mages—exhausted from days without rest, the refugees hid among the shadows of an ancient, petrified forest, and their pursuers suddenly found their magic to be ineffective.

It seemed the fossilized trees were a natural magic-dampener, and any sorcery used within them would simply fail. No longer helpless, the refugees turned their swords on the dark mages and drove them from the land.

Some decided that this sanctuary from magic was a gift from the gods, others saw it as a fair reward for their terrible journey, but all agreed this should be their new home.

As years passed, the settlers crafted items of protection from the enchanted wood. Eventually, they found it could be mixed with ash and lime to make petricite—a material with a powerful resistance to magic. It would be the foundation for their new civilization, forming the walls of the new kingdom of Demacia.

For years, these petricite barriers were all the Demacians needed to feel secure from the threat of magic within the borders of their homeland. In the rare event that they needed to settle a conflict abroad, their military proved fierce and formidable… but when their enemies employed sorcery, Demacia’s roaming army had little recourse. Somehow, they needed to take the security of their magic-dampening walls into battle.

The sculptor Durand was commissioned to fashion some manner of petricite shield for the military, and two years later the artist unveiled his masterpiece. While it was not what many were expecting, the winged statue Galio would become vital to the defense of the nation, and serve as a symbol of Demacia across Valoran.

Using a system of pulleys, steel sledges, and countless oxen, they would pull the great stone figure to the battlefield. Many would-be invaders simply froze at the sight of the awe-inspiring silhouette looming before them—the titan who “ate magic” inspired a kingdom, and terrified those who opposed it.

However, no one thought to consider what exposing the statue to such unpredictable energies might do…

Demacia had been mired in battle with enemy forces in the Greenfang Mountains. A skilled order of warmages, known as the Arcane Fist, bombarded the Demacians with crackling bolts of raw, mystical power for thirteen days. Those who had survived this long felt their morale dwindling, and huddled close to Galio. Just when their spirits could be brought no lower, a slow, deafening rumble shook the vale, as if two mountains were grinding against each other. As a great shadow grew above them, the Demacian soldiers steeled themselves for death.

A deep voice bellowed from above. To the Demacians’ astonishment, the sound came from the colossus at their backs—Galio was moving, and speaking, entirely on his own. Somehow, the accumulation of absorbed magic had given him life. He threw himself in front of the Demacians, shielding them from attack after attack, absorbing each fresh bolt into his massive, stone frame.

Then Galio turned, bounded up the mountainside, and crushed every last one of the Arcane Fist into the craggy soil.

The Demacians cheered. They were eager to thank the petricite sentinel that had saved them… but as quickly as he’d come to life, their fearsome protector had ceased moving, returning to his pedestal, just as before. Back in the Great City, this bizarre tale was told in hushed tones by the few who had survived the Battle of the Greenfangs, and was usually received with silent incredulity. That day passed into legend—perhaps a mere allegory of ancient days to help people through hard times.

Certainly, no one would have believed that the colossus continued to see all that transpired around him. Even while immobile, Galio retained consciousness, longing to experience the sensations of battle once again.

He watched mortals pass beneath him, paying him tribute year after year. It puzzled him to see them disappear one by one as time rolled on. Galio wondered where they went when they vanished. Perhaps they were sent away to be mended, as he often was when he returned from war?

As the years slipped by, Galio began to realize the sorrowful answer to his question—unlike himself, the people of Demacia could not be repainted, or have their damage easily repaired. Mortals were frail, ephemeral creatures, and he now understood just how badly they needed his protection. Fighting had been his passion, but the people were now his purpose.

Even so, Galio has been called to battle only a handful of times in all the centuries since. Demacia has begun to look inward, with magic becoming rarer in his world than it once was, and so the petricite colossus remains dormant, observing the world through the murk of his waking dreams. The statue’s greatest hope is to be blessed by a magic so powerful that he will never be forced to sleep again.

Only then will Galio be able to truly serve his purpose: to stand and fight as Demacia’s protector, forevermore.

“I can’t do it.”

The words thickened Kegan’s tongue, and almost crashed against the cage of his teeth, but he forced them past his lips.

“Master. I can’t do it.”

Defeat gave him a chance to catch his breath. Who knew failure could be so exhausting? In that moment, he looked for sympathy in the older man’s eyes—to his disgust, he saw it right there, as bare as the cloudless sky.

When Kegan’s master spoke, it was with the lilting flow of faraway lands. His was an accent rarely carried by these northern winds. “It is not a matter of whether you can,” he said. “Only that you must.”

The older man clicked his fingers. With a purple flash, the bundle of deadwood flared to life; a campfire born in a single moment of willpower.

Kegan turned from the fire and spat into the snow. They were words he’d heard before, and they were as useless now as they always were.

“You make it seem so easy.”

His master shrugged, as if even that half-hearted accusation needed a moment’s thought before replying. “It is simple, perhaps. Not easy. The two aren’t always the same thing.”

“But there has to be another way…” Kegan muttered, unconsciously touching his fingertips to the burn-scars blighting his cheek. Even as he said it, he found himself believing it. It had to be true. It wouldn’t always be like this. It couldn’t always be like this.

“Why?” His master looked at him with unconcealed curiosity in the light of his eyes. “Why must there be another way? Because you continue to fail at this one?”

Kegan grunted. “Answering questions with questions is a coward’s way of speaking.”

His master raised one dark eyebrow. “And there it is. The wisdom of a barbarian who cannot yet read, or count past the number of fingers on his hands.”

The tension faded as the two of them shared a grim smile. They warmed broth, sipping it from ivory cups as their campfire cast them in a flickering amber glow. Above them—above the tundra for hundreds of miles around—the sky rippled with light.

Kegan watched the heavens’ familiar performance, the gauzy radiance caressing the moon and the stars that cradled it. For all that he loathed this land, there was beauty here in abundance, if a man knew where to look.

Sometimes that was as simple as looking up.

“The spirits dance wildly tonight,” he said.

His master tilted his unnatural gaze skyward. “The aurora? That is not the work of spirits—only the action of solar winds on the upper reaches of…”

Kegan stared at him.

His master trailed off, and awkwardly cleared his throat. “Never mind.”

Silence returned to haunt them. Kegan drew the knife from his belt, setting to work on a sliver of unburnt wood. He carved with easy strokes. Hands that had set fires and ended lives now turned to a far more peaceful purpose.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the sorcerer was watching him.

“I want you to breathe in,” the older man said.

The blade still scraped over the bark. “I’m breathing now. I’m always breathing.”

“Please,” his master said, with an edge of impatience, “do not be so obtuse.”

“So what?”

“Obtuse. It means… Well, never mind what it means. I want you to breathe in, and hold it as long as you can.”

“Why?”

His master exhaled something like a sigh.

“Fine,” Kegan agreed, tossing the branch into the fire and sheathing his bone-handled knife once more. “Fine, fine, fine.”

He took a deep breath, swelling the muscles of his chest and shoulders. Silenced as he held his breath, he looked to his master for whatever would come next.

“You do not create the air you breathe,” the sorcerer said. “You draw it inside you, letting it sustain you. You use it as your body requires, and then release it as you exhale. It is never yours. You are just a vessel for it. You breathe in, you breathe out. You are a channel through which air flows.”

Kegan made to release his breath, though his master shook his head.

“No. Not yet. Feel the air in your lungs, Kegan. Feel it pushing at the cage of your body. Feel it straining to escape.”

The young barbarian’s features were flushing red. His eyes asked the question his mouth could not.

“No,” the sorcerer answered. He gestured to Kegan with a discoloured hand. “Keep holding.”

When Kegan’s endurance finally gave out, defiance took over, buying him more time. When even his defiance began to ebb with the pain of his quivering chest, naked stubbornness took control. He glared daggers at his master, trembling with the effort, knowing this was surely a test—knowing he had to prove something, without knowing just what it might be.

Greyness misted the edge of his vision. His pulse was rhythmic thunder in his ears. All the while his master looked on, saying nothing.

Finally, his breath burst back into the chill evening air, and Kegan sagged, gasping, as he recovered. He was a wolf in that moment, a wild animal baring his teeth at the world around him, offering a threat to any that might attack in his moment of weakness.

His master watched this, too.

“I was beginning to wonder if you would actually let yourself pass out,” he murmured.

Kegan grinned, and pounded a fist against his chest, wordlessly proud of how long he’d held out.

“Therein lies the problem,” his master observed, reading his posture. “I told you the air was not yours, yet you are thrilled with yourself for how long you kept it inside you. It is the same with magic. You want it, believing it can be owned. You cling to it, forgetting that you are merely a channel through which it passes. You choke it in your heart, and in your hands. And so the magic is strangled in your grip, because you see it as something to bind to your will. It is not, and never will be. It is like air. You must draw in what exists around you, use it for a moment, then let it free.”

The two of them—student and master, barbarian and sorcerer—fell silent again. The wind howled through the canyons to the south, bringing a keening cry on the breeze.

Kegan eyed the older man suspiciously. “So… why didn’t you just say all that? Why make me hold my breath?”

“I have said all of that before. Several dozen times, in several dozen ways. I hoped a practical element to the lesson might aid your comprehension.”

Kegan snorted, then glared into the fire.

“Master. Something’s been preying on my mind of late.”

The sorcerer chuckled to himself and patted the rolled, bound parchment leashed to his back. “No, Kegan. I am not letting you read this.”

The young tribesman grinned, though his stare was devoid of mirth. “That’s not what I wanted to ask,” he said. “What if I’m not a bad student? What if you’re just a bad teacher?”

His master stared into the flames, his weary eyes reflecting the dancing firelight.

“Sometimes I wonder that myself,” he replied.

“You said something the other day,” the barbarian said as he drew alongside his master. “Something that sounded like a lie.”

The sorcerer turned slightly, his features shadowed by his hood. “I am many things,” said the older man, “and not all of them are virtuous. But I am not a liar.”

Kegan grunted what may or may not have been an apology. “Perhaps not a lie, then. More like… a fable.”

The sorcerer was watching him as they walked. “Go on.”

“That place. That empire. The kingdom you said was destroyed lifetimes ago.”

“Shurima? What of it?”

“You said it lay in a land never touched by frost, or rimed by ice.” Kegan grinned as if sharing a joke. “I’m not as gullible as you believe I am, master.”

The sorcerer found himself dragged out of his bleakness by the barbarian’s curiosity. He switched the burden of his backpack to his other shoulder, unable to hide a small smile.

“That was no lie.” He stopped walking, turning to point southward. “Far, far to the south, many hundreds of days’ walk, and across another ocean, there lies a land where…”

How does one explain the desert to a man that knows only winter? he thought. How does one explain sand to a man that knows nothing but ice?

“…a land where the earth is hot dust, and where snow is utterly unknown. The sun beats down without mercy. Even rain is rare. The ground thirsts for it, day after day.”

Kegan was staring at him again. He had that look in his pale eyes, the one that said he didn’t dare trust what was being told, in case it was some trick to make him look foolish. The sorcerer had seen that look in the eyes of many, in his time—lonely children and fragile adults alike.

“A place that has never felt Anivia’s touch,” Kegan murmured. “But is the world really that large, that a man can walk for so long and still not see its end?”

“It is the truth. There are whole lands elsewhere in the world that are not frozen. In time, you will learn that there are few places as cold as the Freljord.”

The conversation was stilted for the rest of the day’s journey, and when they made camp, there seemed little more to say. Even so, the young barbarian persevered. He looked across the campfire, to where his master sat cross-legged in sullen introspection.

“Shouldn’t you be teaching me something?”

The sorcerer raised an eyebrow. “Should I?”

He always had a look about him that suggested his apprentice was interrupting him just by being alive. They’d been together for a few weeks now. Kegan was growing used to it. The youth dragged his hands through dirty hair, brushing his mother’s ivory trinkets from his face. He muttered something that would, with imagination, pass for an agreement.

When the sorcerer still refused to answer, he pressed harder.

“So, will we get to... wherever it is we’re going, today?”

His master regarded him carefully. “No. We will not reach our destination for several weeks.”

The sorcerer did not seem to be jesting.

“And I have given more thought to the difficulties you suffer in controlling your gifts,” he added, flatly.

Kegan wasn’t sure what to say. Sometimes silence was the only way to avoid looking ignorant or impatient, so he tried that. It seemed to work, for the sorcerer continued.

“You have some talent, true enough. The ability is in your blood. Now you must stop perceiving magic as an adversarial, external force. It need not be harnessed, merely… nudged. I have watched you. When you reach out to wield it, you seek to fashion it to your will. You want control.”

Kegan was getting frustrated now. “But that’s how magic works. That’s what my mother always did. She wanted it to do something, so she made it happen.”

The sorcerer suppressed a wince of irritation. “You don’t need to make magic happen. Magic exists in the world. The raw stuff of creation is all around us. You do not need to clutch it, and bend it to your needs. You can just… encourage it. Direct it along the path you would prefer it to take.”

As he spoke, he moved his hands as if shaping a ball of clay. A faint chime sounded in the empty air, holding to its eternal, perfect note. Misty energies snaked between his fingers, binding to one another in slow lashes. Several of them tendriled out from the sphere to curl around his discolored hands, seething and darkly organic.

“There will always be those that study magic with rigid intent, mapping the ways one can exert their will on the primal forces. And, clumsy as it is, it will work. Slowly, and with limited results. But you don’t need to behave so crudely, Kegan. I am not shaping these energies into a sphere. I’m merely encouraging them to form one. Do you understand?”

“I see,” Kegan admitted, “but that’s not the same as understanding.”

The sorcerer nodded, sharing a small smile. Evidently his apprentice had finally uttered something worthwhile.

“Some men and women, souls of iron discipline or limited imagination, will codify the magical energy that flows between realms. They will manipulate it, and bind it, however they are able. They are looking at sunlight through a crack in the wall, marveling at how it bleeds into their dark chambers. Instead, they could just go outside, and marvel in the blinding light of day.” He sighed pointedly. “Your mother was one such mage, Kegan. Through repetitive ritual and traditional concoctions, she dabbled in minor magics. But all she was doing—all any of them can do with their rituals and talismans and spell books—is create a barrier between themselves and the purer forces at play.”

Kegan watched the sphere ripple and revolve, not bound within the sorcerer’s touch at all; constantly overlapping it, or threatening to roll free.

“Here is the secret, young barbarian.”

Their eyes met in that moment; pale and human, reflected against shimmering and… whatever his master really was.

“I’m listening,” Kegan said, softer than he intended. He’d not wanted to appear ignorant and awed, especially since he knew he was both.

“Magic wants to be used,” said the sorcerer. “It is all around us, emanating from the first fragments of creation. It wants to be wielded. And that is the true challenge on the path we both walk. When you realize what the magic wants, how eager it is… Well, then the difficulty isn’t how to begin wielding it. It’s knowing when to stop.”

The sorcerer opened his hands, gently nudging the sphere of cascading forces towards his apprentice. The barbarian cautiously reached out to welcome it, only for it to burst the moment his fingers grazed its surface. The trails of mist thinned and faded away. The ringing chime grew fainter, then altogether silent.

“You will learn,” the sorcerer promised. “Patience and humility are the hardest lessons, but they are all you will ever need.”

Kegan nodded, though not at once, and not without a sliver of doubt.

The sorcerer didn’t sleep that night. He lay awake, wrapped in a crude blanket of furs, staring up at the aurora undulating across the night sky. On the other side of the banked fire, the barbarian snored.

Doubtlessly dreaming the dreams of the unburdened, thought the sorcerer.

No. That was unfair. Kegan was a brute, yes, but he was a youth roughly hewn from a land of endless hardship. The Freljord bred souls whose instinct was forever focused on survival above all else. Beasts with iron hides and spear-length fangs stalked the wilds. Raiders from rival villages shed blood all along the icy coasts. Their winter had lasted a hundred lifetimes. These people grew in a land where writing and artistry were luxuries; where the reading of books was an unimaginable myth, and lore was told and retold down the generations in whispered stories by weary elders and tribal shamans.

And Kegan, for all his blunt stubbornness, was far from unburdened.

Is it a mistake, bringing him with me? Was this a moment of mercy, or a moment of weakness?

There seemed no answer to that.

I could have left him. As soon as the thought occurred, the rest of it rose unbidden, treacherously swift. And he would not be the first I had abandoned...

The sorcerer looked through the haze of heat that shimmered above the faded fire, and watched the barbarian sleep. The young man’s lip twitched, with an answering flicker of his fingers.

“I should wonder what you dream of, Kegan Rodhe,” the sorcerer whispered. “What ghosts of fading memory reach out to reclaim you?

Night after night, in his dreams, Kegan walked the paths of his past. Before meeting the sorcerer, he had been an exile, wandering the frozen wastes alone, warmed only by his brash refusal to die.

And before that? A brawler. A failed shaman. A son to a distant mother.

He was still young by any standard beyond that of the Freljord, with scarcely the chill of nineteen winters in his bones. He had lived hard, by his wits and the edge of his blade, winning a cut of renown and more than his fair share of indignity.

Night after night, in his dreams, he was a ragged wanderer lost in the howling white storm once more, slowly freezing to death in the snow. He was a healer, scrabbling over loose rocks in the rain, seeking the flashes of color that betrayed rare herbs amid the undergrowth. He was a boy crouched in his mother’s cave, in that place that was a sanctuary from the world but never from her gaze, laden with misgivings.

And night after night, in his dreams, Rygann’s Reach burned again.

He was seven years old when he learned the truth of his blood. His mother crouched before him, turning his face in her hands and looking over the scrapes and bruises marking his skin. He felt an uneasy flicker of surprise, for she rarely touched him.

“Who did this to you?” she asked, and as he was drawing breath to answer her, she spoke over him with words he was far more used to hearing. “What did you do? What did you do wrong, to earn this punishment?”

She moved away before he could reply.

He trembled in the wake of her touch on his skin, unused to the contact, fearing and cherishing that moment of awkward closeness. “Just wrestling, mother. In the village all the boys wrestle. And the girls too.”

She regarded him with a skeptical eye. “You didn’t get those marks from wrestling, Kegan,” she muttered. “I’m not a fool.”

“There was a fight after the wrestling.” He wiped his nose on his ragged sleeve, smearing away a half-dried scab. “Some of the other boys didn’t like me winning. They got angry.”

His mother was a thin woman—frail in a land that devoured the weak. She was old before her time, a victim of unspoken sorrows and the isolation brought about by her talents. Even at seven, Kegan knew all of this.

He was a perceptive child. This was the advantage of having a mage for a mother.

As he looked up at her, framed as she was by the mouth of the cave they called home, he saw a softness in her eyes that was as unfamiliar as the touch on his face had been a moment before. He thought she might sink back to her knees before him and draw him into an embrace, and the thought terrified him as much as he yearned for it.

Instead, her dark eyes frosted over.

“What have I told you about upsetting the other children? You’ll just make our lives even harder if the village hates you, Kegan.”

“But they started it.”

She stopped, half-turned, and looked back down at him. Her expression was as dark and cold as her eyes. The younger gaze lifted to meet hers was pale green, like she so often told him his father’s had been.

“And you started it all the other times. Your temper, Kegan…”

“No, I didn’t,” the boy lied. “Not every time, at least.”

His mother moved further back into the cave, crouching by the firepit, stirring the watery broth of boiled elnük fat that would serve as their dinner for the next three nights. “There’s magic in our blood. In our bones. In our breath. We have to be careful, in ways other people don’t.”

“But—”

“You shouldn’t cause trouble in the village. We already live here on their sufferance. Old Rygann has been good to us, letting us stay here.”

Instinct moved Kegan’s mouth before he had time to think. “We live in a cave in the rocks, far from the village,” he said. “You should stop healing them if they’re so bad to us. We should leave.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Kegan. I heal because I have the power to do it, and we stay because we have to stay.” She nodded to the hillside where the trees were blackened by the night, and silvered by the moon. “We’d die out there, where the woods become ice and snow, all the way to the world’s end. Let them say whatever they want to say. Don’t stir up trouble. Don’t stir up the magic in your blood.”

But the boy stood still at the rim of the cave. “If they say bad things about me, or they fight me… I’ll fight back. I’m not a coward like you.”

This night would become a memory branded forever into his mind because of what came next. For the first time, he didn’t bow his head and promise to obey her. Instead, he clenched his little fists, and narrowed his eyes.

In the silence that stretched between mother and son, he expected a slap—one of her forceless cracks against his cheek that would somehow sting for about an hour afterwards—or maybe yet more weeping. His mother cried a lot, quiet and alone, long into the night when she thought he was asleep.

But this time, there was something new in her eyes. Something fearful.

“You are your father’s son.” The words were calm and measured, and somehow all the worse for it. “His eyes, always looking at me. His crime, always there to remind me. And now his words, his spite, thrown in my face.”

The boy gazed up at her in awed, childish fury. “Is that why you hate me?”

She hesitated before answering, and that meant more than any answer ever could. It was that hesitation he never forgot, even years later, long after her skinny bones were naught but ash and dust on a cooling funeral pyre.

He was thirteen when he first saw Zvanna. She came to Rygann’s Reach with two dozen others, the survivors of a nomadic clan that had dwindled in the wilds over the course of a generation. Rather than take to raiding like so many others, they settled in the Reach, bringing fresh blood, skills, and spears to the people of the prosperous fishing village.

Kegan met her one day in the half-light of the setting sun. He was picking heather and herbs in the southern hills, stripping the stems of thorns before stuffing them into his stag-hide satchel. It was a slow task when done right, and Kegan’s fingers were pin-pricked in a hundred places from his haste.

At one point he looked up, and there she was.

He stopped working. He rose to his feet, brushing dirt from his sore hands, with no idea how curiosity and surprise looked like suspicion on his otherwise fine features. You would be handsome, his mother had once said, if you could stop glaring at the world as if you want to avenge yourself upon it.

“Who are you?” he asked.

She flinched at the question, and even to his own ears he sounded abrupt.

“I mean, you’re one of the newcomers. I know that. What’s your name? What are you doing out here? Are you lost?”

The questions rained on the girl like flung stones. She was older than him, though by no more than a year or two. Willowy, wide-eyed, practically drowning in her heavy furs, she stared back at him as she spoke. She had the voice of a mouse.

“Are you the healer’s boy?”

He smiled, showing all teeth and no humour. For the first time in years, he felt the ache of knowing that they talked ill of him in the village. Here was someone new to his world, and it was someone who had already heard a hundred dark things about him.

“Kegan,” he replied. He swallowed, and sought to soften his words. “Yes, I’m the healer’s boy,” he added with a nod. “Who are you?”

“Zvanna. Can you come? My father is sick.”

Kegan’s heart sank. He found himself pitching his voice lower, as if she were a grazing beast he didn’t want to frighten away.

“I’m not a healer. Not like my mother.” The confession was like having a tooth pulled. “I just help her.”

“She’s on her way to the village,” the girl said. “She told me to find you. You have the herbs she needs.”

Kegan cursed as he buckled his bag into place. He started towards her, moving lightly over the dark earth and scree. “I’ll come now. Who’s your father? What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s a sailmaker,” Zvanna replied, leading the way back to the Reach. “He can’t eat or drink. His stomach hurts.”

“My mother will know what to do.” Kegan spoke in the tones of absolute confidence as he followed her across the hillside, descending towards the village. Inwardly, he felt a stab every time she glanced back at him, and he wondered just what she’d heard from the other children of the village.

He didn’t have to wonder for long. She spoke gently, without judgement.

“Old Rygann said you’re a raider’s son. A reaver-bastard.”

Gloom was taking hold around them with the setting of the sun. Kegan showed no emotion at all. “Old Rygann said the truth.”

“Does that really make you bad luck? Like the legends say?”

“Depends which legends you believe…” Kegan considered that a cunning enough answer, but she twisted it back at him a moment later.

“Which legends do you believe?” she asked, looking over her shoulder. He met her eyes in the twilight, and felt the force of her gentle gaze like an axe to the gut.

None of them, he thought. They’re all fears held by foolish men and women, afraid of true magic.

“I don’t know,” he said.

She had no response for that. She did, however, have another question.

“If your mother is a healer, why aren’t you?”

Because the magic doesn’t work for me, he almost said aloud, but thought better of it. “Because I want to be a warrior.”

Zvanna kept ahead of him, her tread light across the icy rocks. “But there are no warriors here. Only hunters.”

“Well. I want to be a warrior.”

“People need healers more than warriors,” she pointed out.

“Oh?” Kegan spat into the undergrowth. “Then why do shamans have no friends?”

He knew the answer to that. He’d heard it enough. People are frightened of me, his mother always said.

But Zvanna had a different answer.

“If you help my father, I’ll be your friend.”

He was sixteen when he broke Erach’s jaw. Sixteen, and already possessing a man’s size and muscle. Sixteen, and all too familiar when it came to proving a point with his fists. His mother warned him about it, time and again, and now Zvanna did the same.

“Your temper, Kegan…” she would say, in the same tone as his mother.

In his sixteenth year, the solstice celebration was a riotous affair, a louder and brighter celebration than usual with the arrival of a merchant caravan and three string musicians from Valar’s Hollow, far to the south-west. Oathings were made by the shore, and promises of eternal love spoken ardently, foolishly, and frequently. Young warriors fire-danced to impress the unwed locals watching from the sides. Hearts were broken and mended, grudges forged and settled. Fights broke out over betrothals, over property, over matters of honour. The abundance of drink only added to the atmosphere of revelry.

Many were the regrets that came with the pale, winter’s dawn, when the clarity of the unmelting snows returned through fading hangovers.

But the fight between Kegan and Erach was like no other.

Bathed in sweat from the fire-dance, Kegan looked for Zvanna by the shoreline. Had she seen him perform? Had she watched him leave the other young men of the village panting, unable to keep up with his wild leaps?

His mother was a stick-thin wraith in her sealskin cloak. Her hair was ragged, with the trinkets and talismans of bone tied into the unwashed strands resting against her cheeks. She gripped his wrist. The solstice was one of the few nights their presence was tolerated in the village, and his mother had made the journey with him.

“Where’s Zvanna?” he asked her.

“Kegan,” she warned him as she held his wrist. “I want you to be calm.”

The heat of the flames and the sweat on his skin no longer existed. His blood was frost. His bones were ice.

“Where’s Zvanna?” he asked again, this time in a growl.

His mother started to explain, but he didn’t need her to. Somehow, he knew. Perhaps it was nothing more than a flash of intuition through his dawning temper. Or perhaps it was—as the sorcerer would later say—a flicker of insight from his latent magical gifts.

Whatever the truth, he shoved his mother aside. He went down to the waves where young couples stood with their families, garlanded by winter flowers, swearing oaths to stay loyal and loving for the rest of their lives.

Murmurs started up as he drew near. He ignored them. They became objections as he forced his way through the crowd, and he ignored those, too.

He wasn’t too late. That was what mattered. There was still time.

“Zvanna!”

All eyes turned to him, though hers was the only gaze that mattered. He saw the joy die in her eyes as she recognised the look upon his face. The crown of white winter blossoms was at odds with her black hair. He wanted to rip it from her head.

The young man at her side moved protectively in front of her, but she eased him aside to confront Kegan herself.

“Don’t do this, Kegan. My father arranged it. I could have refused, if I wanted to. Please don’t do this. Not now.”

“But you’re mine.”

He reached for her hand. She wasn’t fast enough to draw away—that, or she knew it would spark him further if she tried.

“I’m not yours,” she said softly. They stood in the center of the crowd, as if they were the ones about to be bound together in the sight of the gods. “I’m not anyone’s. But I’m accepting Malvir’s pledge.”

Kegan could have dealt with it, if that was all it had been. The embarrassment meant nothing to him, for what was a fleeting, adolescent humiliation to one that had endured nothing but shame for most of his life? He could’ve walked away right then, or even—against every desire and prayer—stayed in the crowd and lied his way through the laughter and the cheers and the blessings.

He would’ve done that for her. Not easily, no, but willingly. Anything for Zvanna.

He was already releasing her, readying a false smile and drawing breath to apologise, when the hand slammed down on his shoulder.

“Leave her alone, boy.”

Old Rygann’s voice, cracked with age, cut through the silence. This was a man, the founder of the settlement, who looked like he’d been old when the world was still young. He was at least seventy, likely closer to eighty, and though it wasn’t his hand holding Kegan back, he directed the men that surrounded the healer’s son now.

“You get out of here, reaver-bastard, before you bring yet more misfortune down on all of us.”

The hand tried to haul him back, but Kegan stood firm. He was not a boy. He had a man’s strength now.

“Don’t touch me,” he said through clenched teeth. Whatever was on his face caused Zvanna to back away. Other hands joined the first, dragging him away from her, making him stumble.

And, as always, instinct was there to catch him. He turned, he roared, and he swung at the closest of the men hauling him away.

Zvanna’s father went down in a boneless heap, his jaw shattered.

Kegan walked away. Others in the crowd cried out or hurled insults, but none sought to bar his passage, or come after him. There was satisfaction in that. Vindication, even.

He cuffed at the corners of his eyes on the way home, refusing to cry, and unpleasantly soothed by the sweet pain in his throbbing knuckles.

He was nineteen when he burned his mother on her funeral pyre, and spread her ashes along the hillside overlooking Rygann’s Reach the following morning. He knew he would have to have to bear the burden alone, despite all his mother had done for the village. For all that they had feared her, they’d needed her and valued her

And yet here he was, casting her remains to the bitter winds with a prayer to the Seal Sister, alone but for his thoughts.

He imagined them in the village, and if they acknowledged his mother’s death at all it was with a selfish eye to their own suffering. They’d be worried now, with the healer gone. They couldn’t rely on her son to step up, after all. The hereditary chain had been broken when his raiding father had sired him, pouring misfortune into a mage’s blood.

Right now, those people would all be bleating their useless sentiments about his mother, maybe even convincing themselves that a few kind words uttered far too late severed them from the guilt and responsibility of how they had treated her in life. Far more likely, they were quietly celebrating the passing of a shadow from their lives.

Superstitious animals, all of them.

Only three of them came out from the village at all, and they hadn’t made the journey to say their farewells. Zvanna approached him after the lonely ceremony was over—but her son, with the same black hair as his mother, refused to come near Kegan. The boy, now almost three, stayed at his father’s side a short distance away.

“The little one is scared of me,” Kegan observed without rancor.

Zvanna hesitated, just as Kegan’s mother had once hesitated, setting the truth in his mind. “He’s heard stories,” she admitted.

“I’m sure he has.” He tried to keep his tone neutral. “What do you want?”

She kissed his cheek. “I’m sorry for your loss, Kegan. She was a kind soul.”

Kind wasn’t a word he connected with his mother, but now was hardly to the time to argue. “Yes,” he said. “She was. But what did you really come to say? We were friends once. I can tell when you’re holding something back.”

She didn’t smile as she replied. “Old Rygann… He’s going to ask you to leave.”

Kegan scratched his chin. He was too weary that day to feel anything, least of all surprise. He didn’t need to ask why Rygann had come to that decision. There was still one shadow darkening the edge of the settlement. One last shadow that would finally fade away.

“So the bad-omened boy can’t lurk nearby, now his mother’s dead,” he spat onto the ashy earth. “At least she was useful, right? She was the one with the magic.”

“I’m sorry, Kegan.”

For a brief time, together on the hillside, things were just as they had been a few short years ago. She leeched the angry heat from his heart just by being near, and he breathed in the cold air, defying every urge to reach out for her.

“You should go,” he muttered, and nodded towards Malvir and the young boy. “Your family is waiting.”

“Where will you go?” she asked. She drew her furs tighter around herself. “What will you do?”

His mother’s words echoed down the years. We’d die out there, where the woods become ice and snow, all the way to the world’s end...

“I’ll find my father,” he replied.

She looked at him, troubled. He could see the doubt in her eyes, and worse, the fear. The fear that he might be serious.

“You don’t mean that, Kegan. You don’t even know who your father’s people are, or where they hailed from, or… or anything. How would you ever hope to find him?”

“I’ll try, at least.”

Kegan resisted the urge to spit again. Even an impossible ambition sounded better than I don’t know what I’ll do, Zvanna. I’ll probably die alone on the ice.

She was drawing breath to fight him on it, even after all these years of little more than silence, but he hushed her with a shake of his head. “I’ll come see you before I leave. We’ll talk then. I’ll be down in the village tomorrow, for supplies. I’ll need things for my journey.”

Zvanna hesitated again, and he knew. Kegan knew it as if the ancestor-spirits had whispered it to him on the wind.

“Old Rygann has forbidden it,” he sighed. The words weren’t a question, or even a guess. “I’m not allowed down into the Reach. Not even to trade before I go.”

She pressed a small satchel against his chest, and that confirmed it. He could guess what would be in there: dried foodstuffs, and whatever meager provisions her young family could spare. The ferocity of unfamiliar gratitude left him shaking and almost—almost—accepting the gift.

But he handed it back to her.

“I’ll be fine,” he promised her. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

That night, he went into Rygann’s Reach alone.

He carried a week’s worth of supplies in his pack, an ivory spear in his hand, and his hair was woven with his mother’s bone charms. He looked as much a mendicant shaman as she ever had, though he carried himself with a warrior’s bulk, and moved with a hunter’s grace.

Dawn was still three hours distant. Here, in the stillest part of the night, Kegan stalked with exaggerated care, moving between the earthwork huts of the families that had rejected him and his mother for all of his short, harsh life. He felt no malice toward them, not anymore—the old anger was reduced to embers, alive but banked, burning low. If he felt anything more, it was a deep-grained and exhausted sense of pity. They were simple. They were slaves to their misjudgements.

No, his true hatred was reserved for one soul above all others.

Old Rygann’s longhouse sat proudly in the settlement’s heart. Kegan drew near, avoiding the indifferent gazes of the watchmen by staying in the shadows cast by the descending moon. Theirs was a dreary duty, and they treated it with all the informality one would expect. Why should they expect any trouble from the naked tundra, or the bare ocean? No raiders had landed at Rygann’s Reach for a long time, after all.

Kegan ghosted inside.

Old Rygann awoke to find a shadow crouched at the foot of his bed. In the shadow’s pale eyes were slivers of reflected moonlight, and in the shadow’s hands was an ivory knife—a ritual dagger last carried by Krezia Rodhe, the witch that had died only days before. It was a blade that had been used, so it was said, for blood sacrifices.

The shadow smiled, and spoke in a low, feral whisper.

“If you make a single sound without my permission, old man, you die.”

In the light-starved gloom, Rygann could have passed for a hundred years old. His sinuses stung from the reek of lantern oil, and the animal spice of the intruder’s sweat. He nodded in helpless obedience.

The shadow leaned forward, and the reaver-bastard Kegan’s face leered, coldly amused, from the darkness.

“I’m going to tell you something, old man. And you will listen to me, if for no other reason that it lets you live a little longer.”

The dagger, carved from a drüvask tooth, glinted in the half-dark. Kegan rested the tip, carved to a puncturing point, on the man’s saggy throat.

“Nod if you understand.”

Rygann nodded, wisely mute.

“Good.” Kegan kept the knife in place. His eyes were liquid with hatred, his teeth almost trembling with the force of his anger. He was a creature on the edge of savagery, held back only by tattered shreds of humanity.

Rygann swallowed hard, saying nothing. He was shaking himself, for far different reasons.

“You killed my mother,” Kegan growled. “It wasn’t the disease that ate her away from within. It was you. You killed her, day by day, with your mistrust and your ingratitude. You killed her by exiling her to the cold comfort of that cave. You killed her by banishing her on the whims of your stupid superstition.”

The blade rested on the old man’s cheek, ready to saw through the flesh.

“And now you’re killing me,” Kegan added softly. “It wasn’t enough to shame me for the sin of my father’s blood, and curse me for being bad luck. It wasn’t enough to kick a child out of your precious village, over and over, and teach me nothing except how to hate others. Now, while the embers of my mother’s funeral pyre are still warm, you want to damn me to wander the wasteland, to die.”

And then the dagger was gone.

The intruder slipped from the bed, edging back across the room. Kegan’s smile became a grin, scarcely illuminated by the shuttered lantern he held up from the bedchamber’s table.

“That’s all I came to say. I want you to think about those words when I’m gone. I want you to think of the boy you helped to raise by throwing him and his mother out into the cold.”

Rygann didn’t know how to respond, or if the healer’s son even desired a reply. He stayed silent out of a healthy blend of wisdom and fear, breathing in the earthy, oily scent that filled the room.

Kegan unshuttered the lantern, and a sudden amber glow spread across the room. Patches of resinous wetness marked the floorboards, the walls, the shelves, even the bedsheets. The intruder had done his work well—in silence—before waking his prey.

“W-wait,” the old man stammered, breathless with dawning panic. “Wait—”

“No, I have a journey to make,” Kegan said, almost conversationally, “and I should warm my hands before I go. Goodbye, Rygann.”

“Wait! Please!”

But Kegan didn’t wait. He was backing away towards the door, and tossed the lantern like a parting gift. It smashed on the rough floorboards of the bedchamber.

The world ignited, and Kegan laughed even as the flames licked at his own flesh.

Fire is like a living thing, rapacious and ravenous. It has its own hunger, its own whims, and—like fate—its own vile sense of humor. It leapt in caressing licks, as sparks that were carried by the Freljord’s hateful wind, dancing across nearby rooftops. Everywhere that it touched, it bit down and devoured.

Kegan cut north, heading through the forested lowlands, blind to the devastation in his wake. He had more pressing matters than waiting to see if Old Rygann’s hall would burn all the way to the ground. He had the seared ruin of his face to deal with; a screaming, searing wash of pain bathing the left side of his features, soothed only by pressing his flesh into the snowy earth.

Not for the first time, he wondered if there might not be something to all the talk of the ill-fortune in his blood.

By the time he reached high enough ground to turn back and witness the results of his handiwork, the sun was rising above the ocean, and the fire had long since been reduced down to a pall of thick smoke, curling and thinning in the mercy of the morning winds. He held a palmful of ice against his burned cheek, hoping to see Rygann’s hall as a charred, black heart in the center of the village.

What he saw instead stopped his breath. Mute with horror, scarred by carelessness, and staggering in an awkward run, the betrayer made his way back to the scene of his betrayal.

At first, no one marked his return. The survivors wandered among the charred skeletons of their homes, where all they owned was now gone. He was just one more silhouette in the smoky haze, one more scarred face among those that still lived.

He found Zvanna outside the blackened remains of her hut. She’d been laid carefully on the earth with her son and husband, the three of them silent and still beneath the same sooty blanket. Kegan crouched beside them for an unknown time, his skull empty of thought, his body empty of strength. Perhaps he wept. He wasn’t sure—not then, and not after—though he felt the sting of salt upon his wounded cheek.

He could only remember two things for certain, in his time at her side. The first was the sight of the family’s faces when he pulled the sheet back, to be certain it was them. When he had his answer, he covered them again.

The second was resting his ungloved hands on the filthy shroud, pleading for his mother’s old magic to work through him. He achieved no more in that moment than he ever had, when seeking to draw upon his supposed gifts.

They stayed dead. He stayed broken.

Some time later, of course, the others came for him. Kegan stayed on his knees by Zvanna’s side as they threw insults and blame, as they bleated about hexes and sacred misfortune, and cursed the day he’d been born. Kegan let it wash over him. It was nothing against the emptiness in his chest and the acid ache of his face.

The survivors had no idea. They blamed him out of mournful superstition because there was no one else to blame, little knowing the true harm he’d done to them all. They blamed his blood when they should have blamed his deeds.

Kegan left the razed village without looking back. He walked out into the wilderness, just as he had planned, though the anticipated sense of exultation was now nothing but ashes in his mouth.

What followed were the weeks of wandering. Kegan made his way inland, following game spoor and trade-trails, with no destination in mind and no knowledge of what settlements lay where. The only places he knew well were isolated glades and mountainsides with harvestable herbs his mother had used in her medicinal concoctions. Even the closest settlement, Valar’s Hollow, was weeks away, and likely to be the new home of any survivors from Rygann’s Reach. If Kegan found his way there, he doubted the welcome would be warm. Far likelier, it would be fatal.

He hunted when he could, though he lacked a true hunter’s skills. Once he gorged on the half-cooked carcass of a rabbit, only to throw the mess back up hours later when his belly rebelled.

The days bled into weeks, and the weeks into a month, and more, as the skies stayed dark and the weather turned foul. He saw no other tribespeople. He saw no sign of nearby settlements. He spent hours in a snowblind daze, and others in a frost-mad trance. Day after day he encountered nothing but the icy indifference of his homeland—the Freljord cared nothing for whether he lived or died by its howling breath. Nowhere else in the world could teach such a brutal lesson in a man’s insignificance.

Fortune, or perhaps a cruel twist of fate, led him to a cave formed from the same pale rock as his mother’s sanctuary. Emaciated, weakened from exposure, scarred by his own fire, Kegan Rodhe lay down on the cold rock, feeling his skin freeze to the stone. He would lie here and wait for the latest blizzard to die down, or he would lie here and wait to die. Whichever came first.

But on that night, he met the man who would become his teacher. His master.

The figure melted out of the storm in a weary trudge, with his shoulders hunched and head down. His beard was shaggy, and grey not with age but from the bite of the frosty winds. His features were gaunt beneath his hood, and his eyes shimmered with an unnatural iridescence. Strangest of all was the man’s skin, mottled and tattooed—in the storm’s light, with each crash of lightning, the flesh looked as though it were darkening to blue.

Later, by firelight, it was far more clearly paling to violet.

As meetings fated by destiny went, it was too anticlimactic for any bard’s tale, or saga of old. No arcane declarations were made, and no binding pacts were sworn. The newcomer had merely stood at the mouth of the cave, turning a suspicious eye on the human wreckage lying before him.

“What,” the sorcerer muttered, “do we have here?”

Kegan drifted in and out of consciousness, as well as his senses. When he finally managed to summon words, he accused the older man of being a spirit, or an illusion.

In answer, the sorcerer crouched beside him, offering a hand.

Warmth spread through Kegan from his touch, in a rush of tingling… life. It was not the sting of flame, yet the relief it brought was so fierce that it almost broke him.

“I am neither a phantom nor a fiction,” the newcomer had said. “My name is Ryze. And you, dear miserable creature… Who are you?”

Kegan woke well after dawn, thumbing the grit from his eyes. It didn’t surprise him to see that his master was already up, sitting cross-legged and with his eyes closed. He was meditating, the barbarian knew, though he couldn’t understand the point of sitting still for an hour a day. What was it supposed to accomplish? It seemed a strange suspension between sleeping and being awake, to no obvious purpose...

“Good morning,” the sorcerer said, without opening his eyes. “You did not sleep well,” he added. As so often, it was a statement and not a question.

Kegan emptied one nostril into the ashes of the campfire, and grunted. “Why do I feel like you’re watching me, even when your eyes are closed?”

“Because you’re uneasy around others. It makes you doubt their intentions.”

Kegan grunted again. “There’s nothing wrong with a little healthy suspicion.”

Ryze chuckled, remaining motionless in his meditative pose.

Kegan bristled at that. “What’s so funny?”

“I hear myself in your words, sometimes. The way you turn mistrust into a virtue is especially familiar to me. I can’t say I blame you, given all you have endured.”

Kegan stared at him. Can he read my mind? Does he see my dreams...?

The sorcerer made no response. Not even a twitch.

The young barbarian rose, stretching out the night’s soreness with a delicious crackle of sinew. “Nnh. Do you want me to heat the last of the broth, to break our fast?”

“Decent of you, Kegan. Will you gather firewood, or use your gifts?”

The question was loaded, bordering on condescending, and it took no small effort for Kegan to avoid the bait. “Firewood. I’ll try the magic again later.”

Another chuckle. Another maddening chuckle. “As you wish,” Ryze replied.

Kegan took his time finding enough fallen deadwood. His skull was awhirl with echoes of their conversations these last few weeks. Something was nagging at the back of his brain, something that made the healing burn scars itch across his face. It was only when he returned to their makeshift camp, and dumped the armful of broken branches, that he realized what it was.

“Master.”

The sorcerer didn’t move, but the air seemed to change around them both. It became sharper, somehow—maybe a touch cooler, charged with some unseen force.

“Yes?”

Kegan cleared his throat, fighting for the right way to say it. “When you spoke of magic yesterday, you mentioned… You mentioned the stuff of creation.”

Ryze remained motionless, but for his sorcery-darkened lips. “I did, yes. Go on.”

Kegan took a breath, struggling with the immensity of what he wanted to say. “Well. Water comes from rain, ice, and the sea. Fire comes from sparks and tinder, or from lightning striking the forest. And those trees that make up the forest, they come from seeds.”

“All true, to some degree. And surprisingly poetic for this hour of the morning. What is the conclusion of this thesis?”

“This what?”

The older man smiled, not unkindly. “What are you trying to say, Kegan?”

“Just that everything comes from somewhere. Everything has… a birth. A source. Is it the same for magic? Does it have a source in the world?”

Ryze didn’t answer at once. His stillness, to Kegan’s eyes, seemed suddenly a thing of restraint, rather than serenity.

“That is an intelligent question, my friend. There is a purity to your barbaric way of thinking, and I commend you for that line of thought. But it is not a discussion you and I are ready to have.”

The barbarian clenched his teeth, swallowing his temper. Finally he’d asked something worthy of an answer, and his master denied it to him. “But I was thinking… If you controlled the rain, you could make new rivers. If you had a thousand seeds, you could plant a new forest. If you have iron, you can forge an axe. What if you could control the source of magic? You wouldn’t need to guide it or nudge it. You could command it, after all.”

Ryze opened his eyes.

His gaze was colder than any Freljordian wind. There was mercy in those eyes, and admiration, but beneath both of those was a knifing, sickly hint of fear.

You’re afraid, Kegan thought, and his skin crawled at the very idea.

He didn’t know why. He couldn’t guess what it was about his words would inspire that stern, cold dread in his master’s soul. But Kegan knew what fear looked like, in the eyes of others. He’d seen it all his life.

“Not yet,” Ryze murmured. “When you are ready, we will speak of this. But not yet.”

Kegan Rodhe nodded, agreeing without understanding, intrigued by the unease in his master’s stare. Fear was a weakness, after all, and weaknesses had to be faced.

And conquered.

Born into the noble Crownguard family, along with his younger sister Lux, Garen knew from an early age that he would be expected to defend the throne of Demacia with his life. His father, Pieter, was a decorated military officer, while his aunt Tianna was Sword-Captain of the elite Dauntless Vanguard—and both were recognized and greatly respected by King Jarvan III. It was assumed that Garen would eventually come to serve the king’s son in the same manner.

The kingdom of Demacia had risen from the ashes of the Rune Wars, and the centuries afterward were plagued with further conflict and strife. One of Garen’s uncles, a ranger-knight in the Demacian military, told young Garen and Lux his tales of venturing outside the kingdom’s walls to protect its people from the dangers of the world beyond.

He warned them that, one day, something would undoubtedly end this time of relative peace—whether it be rogue mages, creatures of the abyss, or some other unimaginable horror yet to come.

As if to confirm those fears, their uncle was killed in the line of duty by a mage, before Garen turned eleven. Garen saw the pain this brought to his family, and the fear in his young sister’s eyes. He knew then, for certain, that magic was the first and greatest peril that Demacia faced, and he vowed never to let it within their walls. Only by following their founding ideals, and by displaying their unshakeable pride, could the kingdom be kept safe.

At the age of twelve, Garen left the Crownguard home in High Silvermere to join the military. As a squire, his days and nights were consumed by training and the study of war, honing his body and mind into a weapon as strong and true as Demacian steel. It was then that he first met young Jarvan IV—the prince who, as king, he would one day serve—among the other recruits, and the two became inseparable.

In the years that followed, Garen earned his place in the shieldwall as a warrior of Demacia, and quickly gained a fearsome reputation on the battlefield. By the time he was eighteen, he had served with honor in campaigns along the Freljordian borders, played a key role in purging fetid cultists from the Silent Forest, and fought alongside the valiant defenders of Whiterock.

King Jarvan III himself summoned Garen’s battalion back to the Great City of Demacia, honoring them before the royal court in the Hall of Valor. Tianna Crownguard, recently elevated to the role of High Marshal, singled out her nephew in particular, and recommended him for the trials necessary to join the ranks of the Dauntless Vanguard.

Garen returned home in preparation, and was greeted warmly by Lux and his parents, as well as the common people living on his family’s estate. Though he was pleased to see his sister growing into an intelligent, capable young woman, something about her had changed. He had noticed it whenever he visited, but now Garen wrestled with a real and gnawing suspicion that Lux possessed magical powers… though he never let himself entertain the idea for long. The thought of a Crownguard being capable of the same forbidden sorceries that had slain their uncle was too unbearable to confront.

Naturally, through courage and skill, Garen won his place among the Vanguard. With his proud family and his good friend the prince looking on, he took his oaths before the throne.

Lux and her mother spent much more time in the capital, in service to the king as well as the humble order of the Illuminators—yet Garen tried to keep his distance as much as possible. Though he loved his sister more than anything else in the world, some small part of him had a hard time getting close to her, and he tried not to think about what he would be forced to do if his suspicions were ever confirmed. Instead, he threw himself into his new duties, fighting and training twice as hard as he had before.

When the new Sword-Captain of the Dauntless Vanguard fell in battle, Garen found himself put forward for command by his fellow warriors, and the nomination was unopposed.

To this day, he stands resolute in the defense of his homeland, against all foes. Far more than Demacia's most formidable soldier, he is the very embodiment of all the greatest and most noble ideals upon which it was founded.

Under the heat of the midday sun, my opponent and I circled one another. I kept my weight on my heels, hefting my enormous shield. Its spiked sun-in-glory rose in a dazzling display, providing cover for all but my eyes. Crouching low, armored boots scraping across the tamped earth, I slowly advanced like a hungry bolor.

My opponent’s golden armor reflected dappled light in the dust, and though their expression was hidden by the shadow of their helmet, their eyes blazed, locked on my own. I waited—not indecisive, but precise.

My patience was rewarded when their gaze flicked just to the side and over their shoulder, trying to find their footing and continue their retreat. It felt as though I was watching from outside my body, my movements so practiced that I hardly thought about them.

I rushed Shorin with a cry. They raised their shield defensively, but I lifted my own and then drove it down, using their front-heavy weight to topple them. In a flash, my sword was over my shield, pointed at their throat. They lifted their sword to the side to show the stroke would have felled them.

“Your guard was up... but you were distracted,” I suggested, stepping back and resuming a guarded stance, blinking away sweat. “Let’s try again.”

Shorin groaned. “Oh, let’s rest for a moment, please, Tyari,” they said, sheathing their sword and unbuckling the shield from their arm. “We have more than earned it.”

I straightened and nodded, removing my helm. I should have felt energized by besting an opponent, but instead I felt tired.

“I wouldn’t mind,” I admitted. I raked damp hair off of my face and began the arduous process of removing my armor.

Shorin grinned at me and took off their helmet, tossing their dark braid over one shoulder. They shrugged off the padding under their armor, revealing the plain clothes of an acolyte of the Solari infantry. They peeled the front of their shirt off their chest and billowed it, fanning themselves.

“Nice work,” they said. “I thought I was clever to bait you into pressing the attack, assuming you’d leave your flank open, but you proved me wrong.”

“I have a height advantage,” I pointed out, which was true—though Shorin was of average stature, I was a good head-and-shoulders taller, and a fair amount heavier.

“Height, certainly, but you’ve got the makings of a great soldier. And you’re a dedicated acolyte. Who else would be training on their day off?” They shot me another grin.

I allowed myself a smile in return. “If this is your way of thanking me, know that I'm happy to help if it means you feel better prepared for the trials ahead.”

Shorin scoffed playfully and came to stand before me, hands on their hips. “You’re a good friend, and a good warrior. I suspect you’ll be leading your own phalanx before too long,” they said. “I’m proud of you, Tyari.”

I shrugged as my smile wavered and held, trying not to look too forlorn. Both of us strove to become Solari soldiers, Rakkor who fought in defense of the Sun and Her chosen—the Solari faithful. Ever since my protection magic had manifested as a child, I had dreamed of the honor afforded to those noble warriors, donning their golden armor to protect friends and family.

And, after many years in training, I was good at it... but my heart wasn’t in it. I didn’t relish the idea of going to battle like some of the other acolytes did. I wasn’t impassioned by prayer. I didn’t beam with pride to see our shining soldiers demonstrate their martial prowess. All of it felt... hollow, somehow.

And it made me feel like a pretender.

My gaze wandered up the snowy slopes of Mount Targon. I found myself regarding it more and more lately, its great form an impressive constant. I thought of how it would feel to climb it—the conviction and determination it must take, risking danger for reward... and my heart beat a little faster. Hurriedly, I turned away.

It was not quite winter, and for now, the sun felt good. Soon it would offer little comfort against the piercing cold that descended over the mountains. I removed the last of my armor and walked to the edge of the plateau. On one of the lower peaks, I could see shrine tenders attending midday prayers, the flames of their braziers bright even at this distance. Shepherds led flocks of goats and tamu in the valleys.

I glanced back at the great mountain, looming in the near distance. I didn’t know how long I’d been lost in thought, but my reverie was broken by Shorin’s laughter.

“I said, you seem distracted, Tyari.”

“Oh.” I felt heat rise in my cheeks, and Shorin chuckled.

“You aren’t cheered by the thought of leading a glorious army into battle at dawn?” They spread their arms wide to indicate the size of such a contingent, and I rolled my eyes, laughing.

“I’m sorry, Shorin. I’ve got a lot on my mind,” I said, apologetically.

“Of course you do, my friend.” They offered me a knowing smile, and I froze. How well Shorin knew me. “We’re only a month out from the trials, and you’re the frontrunner for alpha initiate. No wonder your thoughts are elsewhere.”

I turned my face away to hide my disappointment. They only saw the dutiful acolyte, after all.

How little the trials seemed to matter right now! I wished I could tell them how I felt, about my dissatisfaction, but my feelings were jumbled, impossible to voice. Yet if anyone understood the pressure I was under, it was Shorin. And if anyone knew my heart, it was my closest friend.

Tell them.

“It’s exciting,” was all I could say.

“From your expression, I wouldn’t think it.”

They stood beside me, gray eyes following where my own had led—up the mountain, disappearing into the massive bank of clouds that perpetually lingered there. I somehow felt that we were both looking beyond it.

“Tyari,” they began, then paused.

I glanced over and froze again. Something in Shorin’s expression reflected an emotion I recognized in myself: longing.

Longing for what?

“I won’t be taking the initiation rites,” they told me, attention fixed on that bank of clouds.

“What?” I was perplexed. “You... you’ve played at being a soldier since we were children! Your father used to boast that you held a sword before you could walk. You’ve trained for it your whole life! And... you’re going to give it up? How? Why?”

“That,” they said, and pointed toward Mount Targon’s peak.

Long and long the mountain stretched overhead. Who knew how far away the peak itself was? Yet Shorin’s expression was certain.

My mouth dropped open. “You can’t be serious.”

“Undertaking a journey wherein death is all but guaranteed? Dear friend, I have never been more serious.” Shorin laughed easily. They seemed so unburdened, as if climbing the mountain were the only choice, and forever had been. I envied their conviction.

“Why?”

They made a noise of acknowledgment. “I’ve been asking myself the very same since I first felt the mountain call to me.”

“You don’t know? But you have your honor to uphold, and that of the Solari warriors! If you’re looking for an Aspect’s blessing or power, there are other ways to test your strength and prove yourself,” I argued. “Why don’t we keep running these drills? You’ve almost got it—”

“I’m not concerned with any of that. I don’t want power. I don’t even want honor,” they said. “I just want an answer.”

“But... your family,” I began, thinking on Shorin’s younger sister, Hadaetha, who would also be joining the infantry, and Yundulin, their father, who was an anointed warleader by the time he had retired. “You would be letting them down, wouldn’t you?”

They frowned.

“There is so much danger—you would be worrying them, and for what? What if you fail? What if you never come back?”

After a long moment, Shorin spoke again. “You’re right. Nothing is guaranteed. There’s still time to decide.” They shrugged uncertainly, and their voice lacked conviction. “Maybe the answer I’ve been looking for lies with the infantry, after all.”

“Exactly,” I said, breathing a quiet sigh of relief. I couldn’t bear to think of losing Shorin. “We’re shield-mates. And there’s nobody else I’d want by my side.”

They glanced up the mountain, then began to don their armor again. “Alright, Tyari. The same maneuver as before—I want to see if I can keep my footing this time.”

As the sun began to dip behind the foothills, I removed my helmet and looked out over the sunset, letting the sweat dry on my brow. The last of the harvest season’s insects buzzed about, but soon they, too, would rest. The distant bleat of goats and the rising smoke from cooking fires felt peaceful, comforting. It reminded me that I would soon be seeing my cousin Anua for a meal.

I trusted my cousin, though she could be stubborn. She had always known her path. The turmoil I felt, and the desire to seek an answer... I wondered what she would make of it.

I thought on what Shorin had said. How could they want to leave without knowing why they were going? I wasn’t so set in my own journey, but I hoped this feeling would pass. I was head of my class. I had my family and my faith to serve, and what I wanted was not more important than the role I had to play.

I had friends. I had faith. I had family. I had honor. So why did it all feel like I was living someone else’s life?

Suddenly angry, I picked up a stone and hurled it at the retreating sun.

I went to gather my things, collecting my armor, sword, and shield. As I lifted my weapon, I paused, seeing my reflection in its blade. I felt as though I was looking at a stranger—a lonely Rakkor with a heavy heart. But my people saw a soldier, a leader, a skilled and dutiful Rakkor meant to fight in the war of Sun and Darkness. And if that was who my people saw... that was who I had to be.

The first snow was just a dusting, which was fortuitous, as the trials were only a couple of weeks away. The other acolytes and I had gathered to march up and down the slopes of our village in the cold. It was a show of stamina, and a test of our faith while the Sun grew more distant from us.

I pushed myself to excel. If I couldn’t make myself feel like a soldier, I could at least act the part.

Shorin was beside me, serving as my shield-mate. They had said no more about the mountain’s call, and so I assumed they had decided to stay. For that, I was grateful. I was far less lonely with them by my side.

I was caught up in my own thoughts, eyes forward as we rounded a tight corner on a narrow path. I had been whispering a Solari prayer when I heard Shorin yell, and I turned in time to see them stumble.

As they teetered on the edge, I tossed my sword and shield aside and leapt to save them, extending my powers of protection in the hopes of creating a magical shield, but it was too late; the rock they had been standing on sheared off the cliffside, and they landed hard below.

I was the first down the cliff after them, cursing myself for my inattention, and gasped as I came on the grisly scene. I dared not lift Shorin from the rubble, and shouted for aid instead, cradling their head in my lap as they cried out in pain.

One of the Solari priests came, hands blazing with mystical fire, but the injury was not one that could be healed simply, and certainly not this far from the temple. My heart sank as my peers carried Shorin between them back to the village. It was not certain that Shorin would walk ever again.

There was my childhood friend, their legs extended in front of them as they sat abed, propped up on a series of handmade blankets and pillows. They gave me a tired but cheerful smile as I came in and sat beside them, noting the many small gifts and trinkets at their bedside. Among them was a pendant bearing the crest of the Solari, a gift I had given to their father so he would pass it along.

“Shorin,” I began, my chest and throat tight, “I’m so sorry—”

“For?” Shorin interrupted, raising an eyebrow.

“I... for... I didn’t...” I fumbled for the words, at a loss. “I was your shield-mate. I should have caught you in time. And my magic, I...” I lifted my hands by way of demonstration, then let them drop into my lap, my face hot.

Shorin stared at me, their expression disbelieving. “Do you really think you’re to blame for any of this?”

“Yes!” I blurted, then lowered my voice. “Soldiers of the Sun shine their light for their allies.”

Shorin shook their head, and I noted the deep bags under their eyes. “Certainly, when we’re in the heat of battle and fending off the enemy, but... I don’t think we have a contingency for tripping and falling off a mountain.” They grinned, then winced. “My heart wasn’t in the drill, not really. No matter how much attention you had been paying, I doubt you could have stopped it from happening.”

My heart lurched. “You didn’t... do this on purpose,” I said, “as a way out of the trials... did you?”

Shorin scoffed. “If I wanted to climb the mountain by the farewell ceremony, I’d want to be in my best shape, don’t you think?”

I frowned. I trusted Shorin, but the situation left me feeling uneasy. “So... what do you think you’ll do?”

“Well,” Shorin began, “I’m honestly not sure. I feel myself drawn to the mountain. The journey... that’s what I needed. That’s what I felt. Seeking an answer didn’t mean sabotaging myself before I could become a warrior. But now both paths are closed to me.” They smiled wryly.

I took a deep breath. Disorganized as my thoughts were, I owed it to them to be honest. To say what I hadn’t said when they had first revealed their own ambition.

“I... I know what you mean,” I said. “The need to know... whatever it is that the journey might reveal.” I paused, and Shorin raised an eyebrow expectantly. “But I can’t just leave everything—all of this—behind.”

Right?

“Tyari.” Shorin fixed me with a serious stare. “You have to go.” I began to object, but they leaned forward, intent. “I see it in you. I’ve seen it... forever.”

I bit my tongue. How? How could Shorin have seen it, or known it, before me?

They gestured vaguely. “More importantly, I know it because I feel it, too. And I don’t have it in me to overlook it anymore, my friend. I can sense you want the change.” Shorin sighed. “This is the last farewell ceremony before the trials. If you don’t go, you’ll be inducted into the infantry, and should you ever abandon your post there... That would be more than dishonorable. Even if you did come back from the mountain, your family would outright disown you.”

Their brows furrowed. “This is the time. You have to go.”

My thoughts felt scattered. “This... is very sudden. You’ve been wanting this for a while, but I’ve only just recognized what this feeling is. I can’t make this choice so impulsively! There are the trials to attend, and service in the name of the Sun, and—”

And how could I explain this to the other acolytes? To Anua?

I fell silent. The prospect of making this climb stirred something in me, and I had to admit that I was excited. If Shorin had seen this in me for a while, perhaps the pull had been there longer than I thought. Have I really been gazing up at the mountain all these years?

Now that I reflected on it, it seemed so clear. When I looked to the mountain, I saw more than opportunity. I felt hope looking at its winding paths, its soaring peak. I felt its draw.

And I was surprised to find that what I felt most of all was yearning.

“If you don’t believe me,” Shorin said, “consult with Raduak. He knows the ways of the mountain and has advised many Rakkor about its mysteries. I have no doubt he can help you.”

Raduak and I were related, a cousin of a cousin, and Shorin was right—I could ask him for his advice. He was a well-known mystic, and truly insightful.

I hadn’t seen him since my magical powers had manifested as a child, and only then for him to advise my uncle on how to watch for any further developments in my ability. My talents had never become particularly impressive, and so I did not delve into training with him, as others with more significant ability might have.

He lived up in the foothills not far from my home, his dwelling built into the mountain. I approached the wooden door, which was masterfully crafted to sit flush with the hewn rock, and took a moment to steady myself.

I knocked politely and stood back. I had just begun to doubt myself when the door opened inward and Raduak appeared in the entrance, raising bushy white eyebrows in surprise. “Tyari?”

“Yes, sir. It’s been a long time. May I speak with you?” I asked, shifting self-consciously under his searching gaze. He looked at me for a long moment, thoughtful, then waved me inside.

“Of course you may. Your uncle brought you—oh, what was it?—almost a decade ago, didn’t he?” He led the way, stroking his well-kempt beard. “Powers to defend others and keep them safe, so like our beloved Protector. An impressive power, and an important one, especially for a young warrior.”

“Yes, sir.”

The inside of Raduak’s home had seemed massive when I was a child, but now it felt somewhat cramped. Sigils and stars were scrawled across the rough walls and ceiling in dizzying patterns. Scrolls and parchment lay across a series of small desks. I ducked beneath a hanging mobile of what I assumed were constellations.

“So, have you come to ask for a blessing on your path to becoming a warrior? Advice on how to utilize those powers of yours?”

I hesitated, hunched against a wall where an enormous rack was stuffed with charts and leaning scrolls. Would I be seen as less dutiful if my path as a soldier was not at the forefront of my mind?

“Something else,” I admitted.

“Oh?” Pausing over a small astrolabe, Raduak turned in my direction. “Then...?”

I steeled myself. “Lately, I’ve felt a... a calling. Something beyond what I’ve known before. Something beyond mere ambition. Something that speaks directly to me.” I was fumbling, despite having thought on what to say at least a dozen times on the walk over. “What I mean to say is... I’ve been thinking about Mount Targon. I—I want to make the climb.”

He straightened, his expression unchanged, as if that were the most banal thing he’d ever heard. “And?”

I deflated. I thought admitting to this grand endeavor was worth some reaction. Was talk of abandoning everything I knew to climb an all-but-impassable mountain at the risk of catastrophic doom not enough? “And... I suppose I was wondering if you could advise me as to whether that was the right course.”

Raduak’s expression relaxed into one of gentle amusement, and he chuckled. “There’s no deciding your path for you, Tyari. I chart the stars and discern their meaning. I do not tell the future.”

I frowned, feeling self-conscious again. “No, of course not, sir. I didn’t mean that. I meant... when you look to the stars, what do you see? Is there... anything there that can help me?”

Raduak smiled. “What do you see?” he replied, and the painted night sky above us came to life.

My eyes grew wide as the symbols glowed and descended. I reached out to touch the stars, so suddenly near, but my hand passed through them. I could have sworn that I felt heat where the pinpricks of light shone. I stared at them in quiet wonder.

“As your gifts are those that lend themselves to protecting others, I will tell you the story of Taric, the Shield of Valoran,” Raduak intoned. His voice and presence filled the room, powerful and commanding. “The Protector was not of the Rakkor. He was born in Demacia, the city of petricite that lies many miles to the north. A soldier and a guard, he was nonetheless an appreciator of beauty and life. He found joy in the splendor of the forests and plains, in simple birdsong, in great works of art. His heart was full of love for the many things that make our world so beautiful.”

I knew of Taric. Many Rakkor, including my cousin Anua, revered him, for he watched over and protected life and beauty. I had never given much thought to him, as my life was devoted to the Sun, and She, too, was a protector of Her people.

Taric had been a mortal before he climbed the mountain and was granted tremendous power by an Aspect. I had never heard that he was a warrior before his ascent. Our stories were already intertwined.

“It was during his time as a soldier that he let himself become distracted, and it was then that the enemy struck.” The night sky in front of me flashed dangerously, stars flaring to life only to be extinguished, one by one. “His fellow soldiers, the people he had sworn to protect, were cut down. While he knew he would face certain punishment for his negligence, the hardest burden to bear was the weight of his guilt for failing them.”

Shorin. The tiny stars blurred, and I felt tears slip down my cheeks. I knew that guilt. That shame.

“Taric was sentenced to climb Mount Targon, though many expected he would instead go into exile, daunted by the task that lay ahead. However, he accepted the challenge. It was a test the Demacians did not expect him to succeed in. If he did, he would be rewarded with redemption. But how could a single mortal, ignorant of the mountain’s great powers, expect to brave Mount Targon alone?”

I scrubbed my face with the back of my hand. How indeed?

“He faced many challenges on his journey. Tests of his physical strength, as befit the soldier, but also tests of his will. Visions of the companions he had failed to protect haunted him. Great works of art were tarnished, ruined as marauding armies burnt cities to the ground. He saw the beauty and life that he so cherished meet their end, again and again. Yet he persisted.

“And the Aspect of the Protector found him worthy.”

Taric’s face coalesced before me, as though a constellation. His eyes were twinkling stars, two brilliant points of light that burned brighter than all the rest. It wasn’t me he was looking at... was it?

I turned to find Raduak watching me, his brows furrowed, his expression measuring.

“Look again, Tyari,” he said softly, indicating the swirling stars, and I obliged. Where there had been darkness, there was brilliance. I saw my own face among the stars, overlaid by something—someone—else.

In the patterns of this new constellation, I saw an expression of benevolence, of peace, and confidence. I didn’t know who or what this figure was, only that I felt strangely in harmony with them.

Was that meant to be... me?

“Who is she?” I whispered.

“What do you see, cousin?” he implored gently.

I reached for the face. “She... she’s unlike anyone I’ve ever seen. Is this... an Aspect?”

“It could be any one of a number of things,” he murmured.

My heart swelled in my chest. I saw her. I saw... myself.

“Do you see your face in her stars?” Raduak asked.

My eyes lingered on the constellation a moment longer before it faded back into an endless blanket of stars.

I was overwhelmed, unable to speak. Raduak motioned, and the lights disappeared, leaving us in the relative dark of the chamber.

He laid a gentle hand on my shoulder. “What you saw there... is for you alone to interpret. My only advice is that you trust your heart.”

I thanked Raduak and left, my mind abuzz. My breath plumed in the air as I emerged from the dwelling and onto the snowy slope. As I hurried home, I could not bring myself to behold the sea of stars above, fearful that I would not see her face again.

The trials were set to begin in less than two weeks’ time—the farewell ceremony, a week.

As I paced anxiously at home, the constellation from the night before came back to me, clear and bright, though I had never seen it before that evening. Something about it shone like a beacon in my mind. It felt at once like something I was, that I had to do, and something that was yet unattainable.

I tried to shut it out. Whatever this was couldn’t be for me.

The climb was made by those who had something to prove, but in the eyes of my people, I was already well on my way to being proven. I was to serve as a warrior until such time as I was no longer fit. Then I would retire, or start a family. That was... right. Wasn’t it?

It was supposed to be right—and yet the call persisted, clarion. Now that I had heard it, it would not be silent.

I had plans to share a meal with my cousin Anua. She would guide me, I had no doubt.

I gathered my warm cloak and gloves, donning them as I paused before the silvered mirror at the threshold, and I gazed at my reflection.

I saw my own face, but there was something in the way my hair fell, something in my posture, that reminded me of the woman I had seen in the stars. Moreover, there was something in me now that hadn’t been there before.

Conviction.

“Foolish,” I echoed faintly. A straightforward proclamation, but I expected no less from Anua. Others might expect more mysticism from a seer, but I knew very well that she wasn’t one who minced words.

She made a low noise of agreement.

“Why?”

“This is a sudden decision, Tyari.” She raised the cup to her lips, blowing steam off the surface before taking a tentative sip. “Our people prepare their entire lives for the climb. And you will do it—what, on a whim?”

“It’s not a whim, Anua. I saw something in the stars. A face. My face.” I hesitated, struggling to articulate just what I had seen, what I felt. “It’s a... a calling.”

“It is not a calling.” She snorted, shaking her head, causing the tiny polished stones she wore on her ears and braided into her thick red hair to tinkle. I bristled. My dear cousin. So blunt.

“What would you say it is, then?”

Anua sniffed. “Delusion. You have spent too much time daydreaming instead of training,” she said stiffly, taking another sip of her tea.

“I’ve already proven my ability as an acolyte. This is my chance to pursue something I want for the first time, instead of just doing what’s expected of me.”

“I seem to recall a young Rakkor very determined to join the infantry,” she said archly. “You would excel at it. Why ask for more than what is given to you?”

“I know how it must seem.” I hadn’t expected that she would challenge me so readily, and under the weight of her judgment, I struggled to sound as convinced as I felt. “But... I’ve changed. That’s what I mean when I say I’ve felt a calling.”

Anua lacked the ability to see, but she pierced me with a disapproving glare nonetheless. “It is unlike you to be so impulsive, and it is foolish to assume your time spent as an acolyte is enough to see you through such a journey.”

“Taric did it without ever training for it,” I countered, though seeing her stiffen at his name made me feel ashamed, as though I had used it like a curse.

She brought her hand to the gems at her neck defensively. Gems, I knew, that she and her order believed had been gifted to them by the Protector himself. “Tyari,” she said flatly, her voice low, a warning.

I frowned. “Taric was a soldier, wasn’t he? That has been my path as well.”

“Then you know you are not acting as a soldier should. Where is your honor, that you would turn your back on your duty?”

I suppressed a squirm. I said much the same to Shorin.

“Taric and I share so many similarities,” I said. “If he could do it—”

“Taric climbed the mountain to atone. You are on the path to a place of honor. Why would you throw that away?” Anua snapped, frustrated, gesturing in a way that came perilously close to upending the teapot. I moved it aside as she withdrew. “He was no ordinary man, Tyari. It is not for us to make these comparisons, let alone hope to accomplish what he did through—well, extraordinary means.” She set her cup down emphatically on the polished wood of her table.

Her father had made that table, I knew. Another family heirloom. Another unspoken expectation. My face felt hot. A long moment of silence passed between us.

“I am sorry, cousin,” she said hesitantly. “Your family loves you. I love you. I cannot bear to think of what I might do if you should come to harm, or worse...” She shuddered.

“Anua.” I reached out and took her hand. “There is a chance of that, yes, but...” I sighed. “The faith that you put in your order’s protector... lend it to me. Lend me your strength and his. He would encourage me, wouldn’t he? I don’t want to make this climb without your blessing. It is your faith that will see me through.”

Anua was silent for a moment. Her fingers grazed the gemstones resting on her collarbone, and she turned away from me.

“We were raised together. We are all but siblings. It is because I love you that I will not give you my blessing.” She pressed her lips together. “Not when I know that you might meet your end before your life truly begins.”

I bowed my head. It felt as though my heart was breaking. My heartbeat pounded in my ears, sluggish and heavy. Chest tight, I swallowed around the lump in my throat. “Anua...”

“I will say no more about it.”

I clenched my teeth hard, trying to prevent my forming tears from spilling over. How can she claim to love me if she won’t even try to understand? It felt like my journey was being brought to an end before I even began it.

“Very well,” I told her, slowly standing and placing my cup on the table. “Then I’ll do it without your blessing.”

She didn’t respond, and her gaze dropped to the floor as I stood a moment more, hoping for an apology or well-wishing before I went on my way... but she remained silent.

“Goodbye, cousin,” I said, the words hitching in my throat as I gathered my cloak and gloves. I hastily turned and left, closing the door gently behind me.

I took a deep breath as I stepped out into the snow. The cold felt good against my face, cooling my hot skin. I lowered my head and let out a sob.

I was angry. I despaired. Was Anua right? She wanted to protect me, after all. Yet my thoughts kept coming back to the climb. I wanted to know what the journey held. But how could I hurt my family?

Over and over, the thoughts raced through my mind. I fought them off, channeling them into my drills. As they emerged, I cut them down, raised my shield against them, and threw myself into the practice.

I parted ways with the last of the acolytes for the day, and though they kindly and enthusiastically complimented my form, the praise felt hollow. I was simply attending to my grim duty.

It wasn’t until I heard their shuffling pace that I noticed Shorin was approaching, their slow, uneven stride supported by a cane. How long had they been watching me? I bristled, feeling vulnerable, resentful, and guilty.

“Is my form so poor?” I snapped, but Shorin simply smiled, brushing my anger off easily.

“Your form is perfect, as you know.”

Their cadence was so calm, their earnest good nature so obvious. My guilt doubled, now compounded by my misplaced impatience.

“Anua told me that you visited her.”

I turned my attention downward, partially to hide my embarrassed flush, kicking a stone out from underfoot. “And?”

Shorin’s voice was kind. “Is this really what you want, Tyari?”

I kept my gaze down, and my shoulders sagged. Suddenly the weight of my spear was too much, and I let the tip fall to the dirt. What could I say? The weight of this decision was as heavy as my weapon. It was so difficult to know. “Shorin...”

I struggled to find the right words. I was prepared to tell Shorin I wanted to do my duty as an acolyte, but I couldn’t bring myself to lie. Not again.

“We guide our lives by constants, like the Sun and the stars. Evidence of their influence is all around; we can see them.” I turned, lowering my shield. “How can I make this decision if all I have to trust is my own intuition?”

Shorin came to stand beside me, and placed their hand on my shoulder. “My friend,” they began, “if you were to live only by what is prescribed for you, and only in a way that others understand, would you be satisfied?”

I stood blinking in the sun. “No, but—”

“And would you be satisfied to simply take a partner, live out the rest of your days in the foothill villages, or the farms of the valleys?”

“No.”

“I admit, I cannot see you as a farmer,” they joked. Sobering, Shorin nudged me, and I looked up to meet their eyes. “I see the pain it causes you, Tyari.”

A cold thrill went down my spine, despite the heat of the day. They truly did know me. I said nothing.

“The pain of not knowing, but moreover, the pain of not pursuing that which calls to you.” They clasped my shoulder and gave me a gentle shake. “Uncertainty is not indecision, my friend. You aspired to be a soldier to protect those you love, but you must love yourself, too... and that you can only do if you honor your heart.”

After Shorin left, I stood in the dusty valley until long after the sun had set. The moon was barely a sliver this evening, and the night sky was illuminated by the stars.

I closed my eyes, thinking back to the constellation Raduak had shown me. Then I looked up. There, in my periphery, I saw the face again. Her face. My face.

She smiled, and there was a promise in it—the certainty I had been lacking.

I thought back to what Shorin had said, and Raduak, and even Anua. I didn’t need to know where my path was taking me—it was good enough to know that it was a path I needed to take. I silently dubbed the woman in the constellation “the Traveler,” and I knew in my heart that I must follow her, wherever she would lead.

I gathered my weapons and stripped off the armor of the Solari, for what I knew would be the last time.

The ceremony was as grim and somber as anything still considered a celebration could be. We faced the crowd of onlookers and well-wishers, and beneath the midday sun, we swore to relinquish all that we were leaving behind: our homes, our earthly goods, and our former oaths, in favor of the freedom to make our climb. As no one would be able to claim our bodies or bury us should we fail, the priest sprinkled soil over our heads, a final farewell.

All that was left was to step beyond the threshold, which would signify our departure. Now, however, was the last time we could speak to our friends and family. My hands trembled, clutching the staff my uncle had gifted to me when I first exhibited my powers as a child. He had said I would grow into it. How right he was.

I hadn’t been able to bring myself to tell Anua that I was making the climb, so I had told her father, my uncle, who received the news with grim stoicism. While I could not expect her attendance, I looked for her regardless, hoping against hope.

I saw only Shorin. My heart swelled, but my joy was tempered by sadness. Anua had not come.

I steeled myself against sorrow, and embraced my determination to make the journey ahead of me.

I gazed at another Rakkor who was leaving, and it was not someone I recognized—a youth from a distant village, perhaps. He was clad in the garb of a mountain shrine tender, and I gathered that his trek was one with religious intent. It might have been that he was seeking power, glory, or good fortune, but I would not ask, and I hesitated even to guess. My reasons for climbing were my own, after all. Far be it from me to remark on those of others.

I wish I had paid more attention to what the ceremony’s priests were saying, but my mind had been buzzing. I had been going over my route, one that was as well-planned as it could be without knowing what the upper reaches of the mountain had in store. There had been those who ventured up and came back to tell the tale, but never beyond a certain point, and even then, it was said that the mountainscape became labyrinthine, unchartable for the ways that it shifted and moved.

A test of one’s will, as Raduak had said.

I spoke with Shorin once more, and their best wishes were given with the same cheerful demeanor as always. It felt strange, as though I was taking their place, but they would hear none of it. They seemed genuinely happy for me, and waved off my apologies and professions of gratitude sternly, but not unkindly.

“Your training will see you through the worst of it,” Shorin said with a confidence I did not feel, glancing over the map I had spent the last several nights drafting and annotating. “You’ve taken and passed an endless number of tests already.” They pointed at my chest. “The most important one was trusting yourself.”

We embraced and both shed tears, knowing it was unlikely we would meet again. But if anyone knew that I had to do this, it was Shorin. I watched them retreat slowly, aided by their cane, greeted by friends and family that I feared I would never see again... but strangely, my heart felt lighter.

The crowd was thinning as one by one, the climbers began to depart. Each went alone, taking a different path. I would soon know that same independence. I took a deep breath, steeling myself for my turn to step through the threshold, when I saw Anua approach, guided by her father.

I had thought I’d shed enough tears to last me until I reached Mount Targon’s peak, but I wept to see her. She must have heard my choked-up cry of relief, for a small smile played about her lips as she recognized my voice.

“Tyari,” she said gently. I took her hand, placing her palm flat against my heart and wrapping my own around it.

“Cousin,” I managed, swallowing hard and wiping away tears. “You came.”

She nodded hesitantly. “I thought on what you said. I still do not understand this, Tyari... but I can accept it. Because it matters to you, and I will love you always. If even a small blessing might make the difference on your journey, I would be unwise not to grant it.”

She produced a necklace almost identical to the one she wore, light blue crystals that chimed gently.

“We ask the Protector to shield our beloved cousin,” she murmured, lifting the necklace to the sky. “Taric, act as our shield against that which might harm us. Help us to see the path, so that we may find our way. Lend us your strength, so that we might find it in ourselves to endure.” She lowered the necklace and clasped it around my neck. “Especially our cousin... but also for those of us that are left behind.”

I closed a fist over the necklace. The crystals were cool and slightly rough. “Thank you. Thank you, Anua. This means so much to me. I promise to wear this always.” It felt naive to ask, but I did so anyway. “Will this... protect me?”

Anua smiled sadly. “I certainly hope so, cousin.”

I bid her and her father farewell, and soon enough, they, too, had slipped away into the crowd.

Of the others still making their last preparations, I saw a young woman by herself. I didn’t recognize her garb. It was clearly made for the cold, but the colors weren’t earthy, like mountain folk would wear, and she wasn’t heavily armored, like some who had passed through from more militant lands. She looked up occasionally, as if to scour the landscape for a familiar face, but then she returned to checking her packs, her items, her clothing, readying herself for the climb.

I felt a pang of sorrow for her. There were no gifts laid at her feet. She was utterly alone. Though her expression was determined, it could not hide the sadness beneath. Still... she was here.

I reflected on how lucky I was to have friends and family lend me their strength at such a meaningful moment. I could surely do the same for others.

After all, it was what the Protector would do.

I approached her, letting my nervous energy manifest as enthusiasm. “Hello,” I said, smiling, and she scanned my face as if expecting the friendly greeting to be false. “I saw you at the farewell ceremony. It’s a surprise to see someone on the mountain that isn’t a Rakkor.”

“True, I am not Rakkor,” she answered, still trying to read my expression. After another moment of my unwavering good cheer, she smirked and looked me up and down. “What is your name?”

“Tyari,” I said, and proffered a gloved hand to her.

She shook it. Her grip was firm. The grip of a warrior. “Haley,” she said. “Nice to meet you, Tyari. So, you’re making the climb?”

“Yes.” I nodded, then added, “With you, I hope.”

Haley lifted her eyebrows, no longer suspicious, but genuinely taken aback. “You want to go with me?”

“I figure if we’re going to make it to the top, we’ll have a better chance if we work together.”

She was speechless. I waited, leaning on my staff.

After a moment, she nodded. “There was someone else at the ceremony. Another outsider, like me. A Demacian, I think—Emir? He seems to be a bit of a mountain man. Perhaps that would lend itself to our journey. Three people... it’s not quite so much of a longshot, then. What do you say?”

I felt my excitement build. “I’d like that.”

“Good. I’ll find him.” She started off, then paused, glancing back at me. Her smirk became a genuine smile. “I’m glad we’ll be traveling together. You look so certain... as if you already know your path.”

I smiled in return, although a bit bashfully, and she chuckled.

“Emir and I, we will meet you by the farewell stones.”

“I’ll be there.”

I watched as she retreated into the dispersing crowd of well-wishers, who would soon be lost over the horizon like so many other trappings of the life I’d come from—disappearing and dropping away into the distance as we made our way up Mount Targon’s perilous slopes. Doubt and fear would be left behind, as well.

A sense of certainty enveloped me.

My journey began here, and it would end at the top. I knew that whatever I found on the way would be worth the climb.

Quinn ran through the forest, moving softly and swiftly. It was past dawn, though the sun had not yet risen over the mountain peaks to the east. The light was cold and pale, casting everything in shades of gray. Quinn fogged the air with every measured breath.

There were no paths through the untamed woodlands that spread like a blanket across the foothills of the Eastweald Mountains. Ferns and ivy concealed moss-slick rocks, rotting logs, and wild tangles of roots, but Quinn was more at home here than she was in any city or town, and was not slowed by the rough terrain. Despite her speed, there were only a handful of rangers in Demacia—all of them trained by Quinn herself—who would have had any hope of tracking her, so light was her step.

She caught a flicker of movement to her right, and dropped into the undergrowth, instantly motionless. Her eyes were golden, unblinking, and intense, missing nothing.

For ten breaths she remained still, all but invisible among the brush. She glimpsed movement again, and tensed... until she saw it was a greathorn stag. Big one, too, with a rack of antlers easily two arm spans across. Already its fur was starting to change, turning pale and silvery in anticipation of the rapidly approaching winter.

Some said that encountering a greathorn was a good omen. Quinn was not sure that was true, but she’d take it. These days, Demacia needed as many good omens as it could get.

In recent months, Quinn had been helping the Eleventh Battalion hunt rebellious mages—emboldened by the king’s murderer, Sylas of Dregbourne—through the wildlands of northern Demacia. Her rangers were too few, however, and the Eleventh’s strength did not lie in chasing an enemy that didn’t stand and fight. There had been running battles and skirmishes, but it was like trying to grasp smoke.

Quinn had lost three rangers in the last weeks, and their deaths weighed heavily upon her. Thus, it did not sit well with her that she had been ordered away from the hunt for rebel mages, and tasked with escorting Garen Crownguard and a detachment of the Dauntless Vanguard on some diplomatic mission beyond Demacia’s borders. She was due to meet up with them three days hence, on the south side of the Greenfang Mountains.

It hardly seemed the time for such an exercise, and Quinn would much rather have reassigned this mission to one of the others in her command—Elmheart, perhaps. However, the writ of order, delivered by swiftwing, had named Quinn specifically.

And the seal of High Marshal Tianna Crownguard brooked no argument.

She watched the giant stag a moment longer before pushing herself back to her feet. The greathorn saw her now. It held its ground, unafraid.

“Honor and respect, noble one,” she said, with a nod.

It was a long way to the Greenfang Mountains, but the skies were clear. She was confident she would get to the rendezvous point ahead of schedule.

The sun had finally climbed over the peaks, with golden light filtering through the canopy and dappling the forest floor, when the wind changed. It carried a distant, familiar scent.

Smoke.

A keening cry cut through the morning air. Quinn glimpsed Valor above the canopy, through the branches of the immense firs.

“What do you see up there, little brother?” she breathed.

The azurite eagle circled twice, then struck eastward like a blazing blue arrow loosed toward the rising sun. Without pause, Quinn turned and followed.

A short time later, she stood atop a ridge, where a rare break in the trees revealed a valley below. It was partly cleared, and scattered livestock could be seen in dry-stone partitioned fields. Under other circumstances it would have been a peaceful, picturesque view, but Quinn’s gaze was drawn to the smoke rising from the dark shape of a cabin. Her expression hardened.

She began picking her way down the steep incline, descending into the valley.

Quinn warily circled the smoking cabin. She’d known bandits to light fires like this to lure unsuspecting targets, and so she would not approach until she was certain it was not a trap.

She had her repeater crossbow in hand, bolts loaded. It was a one-of-a-kind weapon, lovingly crafted. It was nowhere near as powerful as a traditional heavy crossbow, but she could wield it one-handed, on the move, and without the need to reload after each shot, which made it worth ten times its weight in gold to Quinn.

She frowned as she came across a series of tracks on the ground. There’d been a lot of activity around this cabin in the last day or so, but it seemed she was alone here now. Quinn approached cautiously, crossbow at the ready.

The cabin was a humble abode, but had been built with obvious care. She pushed open the heavy front door—still smoldering, and hanging off its hinges—and stepped over the threshold.

A simple ceramic vase stood upon a fire-blackened hardwood table, holding a handful of wilted wildflowers. The remnants of hand-sewn curtains, mostly burned away, hung mournfully from window frames. Those curtains had been drawn shut, Quinn noted, and the surviving shutters pulled closed. The fire had started after dark.

On a solid oak door frame, Quinn noticed tiny notches carved into the wood. That brought a memory long forgotten, of Quinn’s parents doing something similar to record the growth of her and her brother.

This was not some rarely used hunting cabin—this was a family’s home.

Chairs and cabinets had been overturned and smashed. Drawers had been ripped open, and their contents strewn across the floor. Nothing of value remained. On the wall above the hearth, Quinn noted the sun-bleached outline of a shield.

As she turned, something in the ashes glinted in the sunlight streaming through a hole in the burned roof. Kneeling, she saw an object—a coin, perhaps?—wedged between the hearth and the blackened floorboards. Quinn holstered her crossbow, and used the tip of her hunting knife to pry it free. Likely, it had fallen down there, and been lost—she’d only seen it because the fire’s heat had twisted the floorboards out of shape.

Finally, it came loose, and Quinn saw it was a palm-sized silver shield that bore the winged sword emblem of Demacia. There were words engraved on its reverse: Malak Hornbridge, Third Battalion. Demacia honors your service.

It was a Shield of Remembrance, given to the families of soldiers who fell in the line of duty. Quinn had delivered more than a few of them to grieving spouses and parents herself.

Pocketing the medallion—it didn’t feel right to leave it amid this destruction—Quinn continued looking through the cabin. In what was clearly the family bedroom, which had escaped the worst of the fire, delicately woven garlands were strung across the rafters above the main bed.

In a corner, a smaller, child-sized bed had been overturned, and Quinn’s eyes narrowed as she knelt beside it. Charcoal markings were drawn onto the floorboards where the cot had once stood. The symbols were barbaric, of a sort not generally seen within Demacia. Bones and small pebbles were placed at intentional positions upon the runes, and she was careful not to disturb any of the lines. She had seen such runes before...

Valor’s piercing call sounded, high above, drawing Quinn away from the strange and unnerving display. Keeping low, she returned to the cabin’s main room, and pressed her back against a wall. With a quick, careful glance, she peered through one of the burned-out windows.

A cloaked and hooded man was approaching the front of the cabin, a rangy, pale gray hound loping along at his heels. The dog gave a low growl, but he silenced it with a word.

Moving soundlessly, Quinn repositioned herself in the shadow behind the smoldering front door. The man stepped inside, then froze, like a deer tensing as it feels an unseen predator’s eyes upon it.

“That you, boss?” he asked the seemingly empty room.

Quinn smiled. “What gave me away?”

The man turned, lowering his hood. He had the look of someone who spent most of his time outdoors, his face tanned and his short beard unruly. Just outside the threshold, the hound whined in excitement. “Don’t see many azurite eagles anymore,” he explained with a grin.

“True enough,” admitted Quinn.

“It’s good to see you, boss.”

Quinn knelt on the ground outside the cabin, ruffling the hound’s ears. It had been over a year since she had last seen the Greenfang warden, Dalin, and his faithful dog, Rigby.

The warden had given Quinn his assessment. He’d arrived at the cabin only an hour before her, and after a quick look around, had set out to speak to those living nearby.

“A woodsman saw a group moving through the trees last night, about half a mile up the valley,” said Dalin, pointing. “The moon was full, else he wouldn’t have seen them at all. Raiders, it looks like.”

“Setting a cabin on fire is not a good way to remain unseen,” observed Quinn. Rigby rolled onto his back, looking up at her with adoring, eager eyes.

“Perhaps they were more concerned about alerting anyone to their approach than remaining unseen afterwards? Or perhaps they lit the fire to draw attention to it, while they slipped off?” Dalin glanced over his shoulder. “Careful now—I think someone’s getting jealous.”

Valor was staring at her, unblinking, from a branch of a dead tree.

“Valor knows he’s my one true love,” she said, looking at the azurite eagle, her eyes smiling, even as she vigorously scratched the hound’s exposed belly. “Has there been much banditry in these parts of late?”

Dalin shook his head. “Been mercifully quiet, until this. The unrest spreading from the capital has got people nervous, but the sight of so many soldiers has driven most of the brigands into hiding. Small blessings, I guess. I hear you and yours have been busy, though, back west. Bad times.”

“Bad times,” agreed Quinn. Her jaw clenched, and she changed the subject. “A soldier’s widow and her child lived here. Anyone know where they are?”

The warden gave her a look, then shook his head with a laugh. “I shouldn’t be surprised you already figured that out,” he said. “The woman’s name is Asta. Her man died fighting mages when everything flared up in the Great City. She lives alone with her daughter.” He glanced back at the cabin, and sighed. “I didn’t see evidence of bloodshed when I looked around here earlier, but it doesn’t seem good.”

“No friends or family nearby who they could be with?”

“Seems not,” said Dalin. “The woman’s foreign-born. Keeps to herself. Her husband was from Lissus, back west. No family in these parts.”

“Foreign-born?”

“One of the independent nations to the east, apparently. No one seems to know exactly where.”

Quinn grunted and stood. She turned around on the spot, considering, then looked back toward the forest. She paced toward the tree line, studying the ground as she went.

“Here,” she said, coming to a halt. Dalin joined her, and she indicated a number of confusing, overlapping scuff marks. “They came out of the forest, and stopped here.”

Dalin dropped to his haunches, nodding. “At first I figured they were watching for the right moment to approach,” he said. “But then I saw these tracks here.”

Quinn circled around the tracks that Dalin indicated, careful not to let her own footsteps obscure them.

“A second set, lighter than the others,” she murmured. “Our widow and her child.”

“My guess is she confronted them—then they looted and burned her cabin.” Dalin’s eyes narrowed. “I couldn’t find the woman’s tracks returning to the house...”

“They don’t,” agreed Quinn, her expression grim. “Looks like they took her with them. Her and the child. See there? The little girl’s footsteps stop. Someone picked her up.”

She looked back at the cabin. “But these raiders didn’t approach the cabin, either. The ones who burned it approached from the other side. It’s possible the raiders split into two groups before their attack.”

Dalin folded his arms, thinking. “There’s something else,” he said. “I don’t know if there’s any truth in it, but it seems at least some folk ’round these parts believe the woman was... different. A mage.”

Quinn thought of the runes drawn onto the floor underneath the child’s cot. They seemed more like archaic superstition than sorcery... though she could not be certain. This was not her area of specialty.

“The local gossip is that the raiders were allies of Sylas,” continued Dalin, “and they came to collect one of their own. It could explain why it doesn’t look like there was a fight, but why burn the cabin?”

Quinn frowned. She was missing something, she was sure of it. “Could be retaliation,” she mused, “for her husband fighting against mages. Perhaps they were looking for some payback.”

“Killing him wasn’t enough?”

Quinn shrugged.

“Whatever the case, I’ll be going after them,” said Dalin. “They’re at least half a day ahead, but if they’re carrying the child, they’ll be slowed.”

Quinn glanced at the sun, judging the time and how far she still had to travel to rendezvous with Garen. It would be cutting it fine, but...

The woman, Asta, had been made a widow by the mage conflict, and it seemed likely she’d been abducted. Quinn could not in good conscience ignore that.

“I’ll come with you,” she declared. “There’s at least five of them, by my count. You’ll need help.”

“Mighty pleased you happened by, boss.”

“Let’s get going, then,” said Quinn. “And don’t call me boss.”

Technically, as a ranger-knight, Quinn was Dalin’s superior, but rigid hierarchy and honorifics had always made her uncomfortable.

“Whatever you say, boss,” Dalin said with a wry grin, knowing exactly how uncomfortable it made her. “C’mon, Rigby! Let’s move!”

Rigby loped alongside his master, tongue lolling seemingly of its own volition, while Valor sliced between the trees, flying low overhead.

The majestic azurite eagle streaked past the two running rangers, tucking his broad wings to avoid branches. In the blink of an eye, he was gone, disappearing into the distance. A few minutes later, Quinn and Dalin found him perched on a branch, waiting. The eagle watched impassively as they ran below him. Only when they were almost out of sight did he launch back into flight, zigzagging at blinding speed, once again shooting by them.

It wasn’t hard to follow the outlaws, particularly with Rigby chasing their scent. There were five of them with the widow, and they’d made no attempt to cover their trail, choosing speed over stealth. The rangers tracked them over a ridge to the north, into a neighboring valley of unbroken forest. The trail then cut due east, following an icy stream that writhed its way down from the mountains.

For hours, Quinn and Dalin ran, closing the distance. The land gradually rose as they climbed higher into the foothills. They didn’t speak, only pausing to check that they were still following the trail. Rigby happily bounded back and forth on these occasions, snuffling through the undergrowth, while Valor watched the dog aloofly.

When the sun was just past its zenith, Quinn stopped, kneeling in the soft loam beside a few boulders. Some moss had been scraped away from one, most likely by a careless boot. Quinn inspected it, and picked something off a flat rock, looking closely.

“They broke bread here,” she said. “I’d say it was only an hour ago. Maybe a little more.”

“We’re getting close,” said Dalin, sitting down and sucking in deep breaths. Rigby was taking the moment’s respite to lap from the nearby stream, while Valor watched. “We’ll overtake them by sundown.”

“Not fast enough,” said Quinn, balling her fists in frustration. “They’ll be over the border by then.”

“You think they’re trying to leave Demacia?”

Quinn shrugged. She pulled a hard trail biscuit from her pack, bit off half, and tossed the remainder to Dalin. He caught it deftly and nodded his thanks. The rations didn’t taste the best—in truth, Quinn could imagine sawdust had more flavor—but they’d sustain them. After a moment, she broke out a second biscuit, and launched it at Rigby. The pale dog snatched it out of the air, jaws snapping, devouring it instantly.

“It’s possible,” she said. “If they were just trying to hide, they’d have done better turning north. There are chasms and ravines up there that would take weeks to scour.”

Dalin chewed his tasteless biscuit thoughtfully. “The closest border crossing’s half a day’s march to the south, though,” he said. “And there’s no way they’d get through. The gates have been locked since the king’s murder. There’s nought but sheer cliffs and watchtowers this way.”

“Unless there’s another crossing we don’t know about,” said Quinn. She glanced down at the dog, now panting beside Dalin. “You think your master can keep up, Rigby, or should we ditch him?”

The hound looked at her quizzically, turning his head to the side.

Dalin snorted. “Funny,” he said. Then, with a groan, he pushed back to his feet.

A short time later, Quinn and Dalin stood on a bluff, overlooking a ravine. A massive rocky spire rose above the forest canopy in the distance.

“There,” said Dalin, pointing.

Climbing around the circumference of the spire was a group of people. It was hard to make out any details—at this distance, they looked like ants—but it was clear that they would reach the border before the rangers.

“If I can get in front of them, I can slow them,” said Quinn.

“The only way you’d be able to do that is if...” started Dalin, but his words trailed off as he saw Quinn staring at him, a half smile on her face.

“Oh,” he said. “Right.”

Quinn soared through the air, borne aloft by Valor. The eagle’s bladelike talons were latched tightly around her shoulders, and she squinted against the biting wind as they sailed over the trees.

“Take us around to the north,” Quinn shouted as they approached the spire. She leaned her weight in that direction, and Valor obligingly angled their descent.

The raiders had circled around to the south of the spire and disappeared into the trees, but Quinn didn’t intend to follow their path directly. No, she needed to get in front if she was to slow them long enough for Dalin and Rigby to catch up. Two rangers against five were not great odds, but it was better than confronting them alone.

Valor continued to come down, and Quinn lifted her legs to avoid hitting the highest branches. The spire loomed before them, and Valor banked around its northern flank, gaining a little height as updrafts buoyed them. Then the rocky ground rose rapidly to meet them. Spying a likely place to land, Valor shifted their approach, and angled his wings back to slow their descent.

Two powerful beats of his wings, and Quinn’s feet touched down, ever so gently.

“Thank you, brother,” she breathed as Valor released his grip. Then she was running again, into the cover of the forest. The azurite eagle, unshackled by her weight, took to the air once more.

Quinn leaped over tangles of roots and burst through stands of ferns and hanging lichen. She ran along the length of a fallen tree, using it as a bridge to traverse a cascading waterfall, before bounding off it and charging up the rise on the other side.

This was not her usual, mile-eating pace that she could sustain for hours on end. This was a full sprint, and her heart was hammering in her chest. After racing up the hill, she hurled herself to the ground, concealed among the bracken. Elbowing herself to the edge of the rise, she peered down into the hollow bellow.

A lone figure appeared, bow in hand. It was a man, bearded and bedecked in furs. A bronze torc around an upper arm glinted in the dappled light filtering through the trees, and Quinn glimpsed swirling warpaint or tattoos on his pale flesh.

The ranger-knight instantly knew this was no Demacian rogue mage or bandit. This was no Demacian at all.

The raider paused, surveying the way ahead, and Quinn felt his gaze flit over her. She resisted the urge to crawl back, knowing the movement of the ferns would draw more attention than if she remained motionless.

Seemingly satisfied, the outsider lifted a hand and gestured forward before continuing on. Quinn stayed where she was, waiting as the rest of the group appeared. One of them had a gleaming Demacian shield strapped across his back. That was the shield that had been stolen from above the cabin’s hearth—a shield that had belonged to a noble soldier who’d fallen in battle. Seeing an outsider wearing it as a trophy filled her with a cold-burning anger.

It wasn’t hard to pick out the widow. While the others were bedecked in furs and leather, she was wearing a simple but elegant woolen dress, rolled up to free her legs. A fur shawl was wrapped around her shoulders, and she wore a pair of practical, tall boots. She looked exhausted, stumbling forward with her head down. With a breath of relief, Quinn saw the child, a toddler with a mass of golden curls, asleep in the thick arms of one of the marauders.

The ranger-knight watched them for a moment longer, then crawled slowly backward, a plan formulating in her mind. She knew where they were going, for she’d been here before, years earlier.

In her youth, she and her twin brother, Caleb, had roamed the wilds around their home of Uwendale, several days’ march to the northwest. The pair had often disappeared into the wilderness for weeks at a time, exploring the forests and mountain foothills, hunting for their own food, and sleeping under the stars. Their father had been none too excited about it, but their mother had always encouraged them. She was a big believer in the importance of self-reliance and resourcefulness, and both children had accompanied her on hunts from a young age.

Their father had come around eventually—it probably helped that the family larder was always well stocked with venison and boar after they returned—though he never stopped worrying for them.

And it turned out he’d been right to worry.

Quinn had been here only once, a month before Caleb’s death. And so she knew that if the outsiders continued on their path, they’d have to make their way up through a narrow ravine, half a mile farther on.

Running low and fast, hidden by the crown of the rise to her right, Quinn sprinted on a path parallel to the raiders. She made it to the ravine before they did, and ran up the side. She’d just set herself up at the top of it, her back against a concealing rock, when she heard the first of the outsiders begin his ascent.

Quinn took measured breaths, slowing her thumping heart. She left her repeater crossbow holstered, but drew her large hunting knife. The blade was long and broad, almost the size of a shortsword.

The outsider was good—he made almost no noise as he climbed steadily up the rocky gulch—but not good enough to realize Quinn was waiting for him. As he hauled himself up the final, steep climb, Quinn stepped from concealment. She was to his side, and he didn’t see her until the last moment. He tried to turn, drawing back the string of his bow, but he was too slow. Quinn struck him in the temple with the pommel of her knife, and he dropped without a sound.

She hastily dragged him out of view. He was bleeding, but he was alive. With swift, practiced movements, the ranger-knight bound the unconscious man’s wrists, before yanking them back and tying them to his ankles. Then she resumed her position, back against the rock. She drew her crossbow, and flipped the knife around in her other hand so that its point was down.

With a quick glance, she peered down the ravine before ducking back. Three raiders were climbing the steep rise below, with the widow between them. The one Quinn presumed was their leader—he was bigger than the others, and alone among them wore chainmail under his furs—was at the front. He was the one who bore the Demacian shield upon his back.

Quinn ground her teeth in frustration. There should have been four of them left. Where was the last one? Was he simply acting as a rearguard, or could he be approaching from an unexpected angle? She closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. It was too late to change her plan. She’d deal with him if and when he appeared.

As the leader of the outlanders neared, Quinn stepped out in front of him, crossbow leveled at his throat.

It took him a moment to register her presence. His eyes widened and he halted, reaching instinctively for his axe, hanging over his shoulders.

“Don’t,” warned Quinn. She wasn’t sure the man would understand her, but the shake of her head was a universal language, and the outlander’s hand froze.

He was a big man, two heads taller than Quinn, and easily twice her weight, but she had the higher ground, and was unintimidated. She’d brought down far bigger prey in her time.

His hair was straw-colored and long, hanging in elaborate plaits, and his beard, streaked with gray, was bound with bones and stone beads. His eyes were like slivers of slate, and he stared up at her without blinking.

There was a shout of alarm from the raiders half hidden behind his bulk, but the big man barked something over his shoulder in his own clipped, harsh language. He looked past the ranger-knight, searching. Probably trying to see what support she had.

His gaze returned to her. He licked his lips, and Quinn knew he was judging the chances of closing the distance without taking a fatal bolt.

“You speak my language?” asked Quinn. “You understand my words?”

The outlander stared at her for a moment before giving a slow nod.

“Let the woman and child go,” said Quinn, “and we won’t have to see how long it takes you to bleed out from a bolt to the throat.”

The big man snorted in amusement. “You’ve been tracking us? Alone?” His voice was deep and heavily accented. “You may kill me, if you are lucky, but my men will tear you apart. I do not think I will do as you ask.”

“I wasn’t asking,” said Quinn.

The outlander grinned. Two of his teeth were made of gold. “There is steel in you, Demacian. I like that.” His smile dropped abruptly. “Where’s my scout?”

“Alive,” said Quinn.

“Good. He is my brother, by oath. My wife would be angry if I had let him get killed.”

“What’s going on?” the widow called up.

The leader of the outlanders barked a response in his own language, though Quinn did recognize something amongst that garble of words: Asta. The widow’s name.

The woman begged. “Please, I don’t want any—”

“Be silent!” shouted the leader, half turning, his face flushing a deep crimson. When he looked back at Quinn, his expression was angry. “You should not have tried to stop us by yourself.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Quinn saw the fifth raider rising to his knees atop the ridge to her left, bow in hand. Quietly he nocked an arrow and drew the string, weapon leveled at her.

Quinn, still holding the leader’s gaze, gave him a smile. “What makes you think I’m alone?”

There was a flash of blue, moving like a thunderbolt, and the bowman gave out a strangled cry. His arrow, loosed in haste, sailed into the undergrowth, and he fell back, clutching at his bleeding hand.

The widow screamed, and everyone broke into motion.

One of the warriors threw a hand axe, sending it hurtling end over end toward Quinn. She swung aside, dodging it, but that was enough of a distraction for the leader. He sprang forward, swinging his axe off his shoulders. Quinn loosed two bolts in quick succession, but the first missed its mark, slicing harmlessly by his head. The second took the raider in the meat of his shoulder, embedding itself there, but it did nothing to slow his charge.

With a roar, he brought his weapon around in a lethal arc. It was a heavy, double-handed axe, and the strike was meant to hack Quinn in two. She swayed back from the wild swing, then reversed her momentum—she was far quicker than the outsider, for all his power—and stabbed him in the chest. It should have been a killing blow, delivered right to the heart, but the tip of her knife caught in his chainmail, stopping it from sinking deep.

The big man drove Quinn back with a swinging elbow, sending her reeling, then brought down his axe in a heavy overhead blow. Diving to the side, Quinn avoided the strike, and let loose a bolt at close range as she rolled. The bolt plunged into his flesh just above the knee, and the warrior collapsed with a growl of pain.

Quinn was on him instantly, knife at his throat.

That gave the other raiders pause, and they traded glances, unsure what to do. One of them was still cradling the woman’s child, though the infant was now wailing loudly.

The widow scrambled forward on her hands and knees. “No, no, no,” she cried. “Please, don’t hurt him!”

Quinn blinked. “You... know this man?” she asked, looking at the exhausted, tearful woman before her.

“Of course I do,” the widow said. “He’s my brother.”

“My husband was in the capital when the king was murdered,” said the widow, Asta. She held her daughter in her arms, and was gently swaying back and forth, trying to calm her. “He was defending the palace. The mages killed him.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” murmured Quinn, as she bound a length of cloth around the outlander leader’s leg. His name was Egrid. His chest wound was only minor—his chainmail had saved him from worse harm there—and he’d torn out the bolt from his shoulder himself.

The other warriors were sitting on rocks nearby. One had some ugly cuts on his hand, and was staring balefully at Valor, perched on a branch overhead, while the one Quinn had tied up was rubbing gingerly at the side of his head.

Standing near Quinn, a deep frown on his face, was Dalin.

“I met Malak when a diplomatic contingent came to my homeland, six summers back,” said Asta. “In Skaggorn, I was a chieftain’s daughter, but when Malak returned to Demacia, I came with him as his wife.”

Quinn finished tying the bandage, then sat back to inspect her work.

“You are fast, and strong, and you stitch wounds well,” said Egrid with a grin, his golden teeth flashing. “Marry me, and come back to Skaggorn with us, yes?”

Quinn didn’t even dignify that with an answer. “But why try to leave Demacia now?” she asked Asta. “You must have known that would bring trouble down upon you.”

“My people left the Freljord many generations ago,” said Asta, “traveling over the mountains and settling in Skaggorn. Yet the old blood still runs in my veins. My grandmother was a seer, one you would call a mage, or a witch. I do not have that power, but what if my daughter develops the sight? I have heard what is going on. She would be taken from me. The Frost-Bringer knows what would happen to her. I could not risk that, so I sent word to my family by hawk, begging them to get us out.”

“Mageseekers,” Quinn hissed, shaking her head.

She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. If the child manifested arcane powers, the mageseekers would take her. Were she in the widow’s shoes, Quinn would likely have already taken her child far beyond the reach of that insidious organization. She couldn’t blame Asta for what she was attempting.

“You understand we can’t let you go,” said Dalin. “The borders are closed. No one is allowed to leave without express permission from the high council itself. It’s the only way to ensure the traitor Sylas and his associates don’t slip away, and escape justice.”

“My husband died fighting against the traitor!” said Asta. “Everything here reminds me of Malak. Without him, I don’t wish to stay. And the small-minded farmers of our valley hate me. They already think I’m a witch.”

“You didn’t ransack your own home when you left, did you,” said Quinn. It was a statement, not a question. “And you didn’t set it ablaze, right?”

“What? No, of course not.” Asta paused. “Did someone truly do that?”

Quinn nodded. “And the markings under your daughter’s cot,” she said. “They were not of a... sorcerous nature, were they?”

Asta laughed, shaking her head. “A blessing of protection. A mark all Skaggorn mothers make for their children.”

Quinn nodded again, finally understanding. “But that runic blessing might seem like sorcery to those who wouldn’t know any better. Even I was suspicious of it.”

“I was careful to keep the old traditions to myself, but my neighbors were always wary of me,” Asta said. “And with all that’s been happening...”

It seemed clear now that the second set of tracks leading to the cabin had not belonged to any warrior of distant Skaggorn. Maybe the locals were seeking evidence of Asta’s sorcery. If so, perhaps they saw those charcoal runes, and set the house ablaze in a clumsy attempt to burn away what they thought was dangerous magic.

Quinn sighed, shaking her head. On the whole, Demacians were good, honorable people, but fear and distrust were spreading like a plague, and bringing out the worst in the kingdom’s scared citizens. It needed to end.

“I found something that I think you should have,” Quinn said, remembering what she had recovered in the wreckage. She handed over the Shield of Remembrance, and tears appeared in Asta’s eyes.

“Thank you,” she said, clutching the medal to her chest. “I thought it had been lost. It broke my heart to leave without it.”

“I’m sorry, but we cannot allow you to leave,” said Dalin.

“We are leaving, Demacian,” growled Egrid, pushing himself unsteadily to his feet. “Do not try to stop us.”

“Egrid, enough!” snapped Asta. “These two rangers are just doing their duty.” She turned to Quinn. “But please, I beg you, at least let my daughter go. She should not have to suffer for something beyond her control. Let her go with my brother, and I will return with you.”

Dalin and Quinn traded a look. The law was firm. No one was allowed to leave Demacia, not Asta, her daughter, or the Skaggorn warriors.

“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” said Dalin.

“If we let them go, then we are the ones violating the law,” whispered Dalin.

The two rangers walked behind as the group trekked eastward.

“We need to know how they got across the border,” replied Quinn in a low voice.

Dalin looked troubled, but he gave a clipped nod and fell into silence.

It wasn’t long before they reached the cliffs marking the edge of Demacia. The Skaggorn party led them to a secluded location, tucked just out of view of the guard towers to the north and south. Every inch of these cliffs should have been visible to one of the dozens of Demacia’s watchtowers, but clearly this was a blind spot.

Quinn leaned over the edge. The drop was several hundred feet, but heights had never bothered her. She could see pitons hammered into the rock. “You approached the base of the cliff at night, so as not to be seen by the sentries?” she asked.

Egrid nodded. Quinn grunted, impressed.

“Quite the climb to make, even in daylight,” she said. She looked down at the big man’s strapped leg. “Sorry about the knee. Are you going to manage it?”

“Of course! We of Skaggorn are strong,” boasted Egrid. “You are strong, too. You should return with us. The two of us, we would make strong warrior children. Yes?”

Quinn stared at him without speaking, her expression unreadable. Eventually, he shrugged and turned away.

“Worth asking the question,” he muttered. With a shout, he ordered his men to retrieve the ropes, hidden in the undergrowth nearby.

“I thought you just wanted to find out how they crossed into Demacia unseen,” hissed Dalin, taking Quinn aside. “We’ll be breaking our oaths if we allow them to go!”

“I’m uncomfortable with forcing a woman to stay and risk having her child taken simply because of a quirk of her bloodline,” she said, her voice low. “Besides, our first oath is to protect Demacia.”

“And letting them go protects Demacia?”

Quinn flashed him a fierce glance. “If we try to stop them, this plays out in one of two ways,” she whispered. “Either they kill us and leave anyway, in which case Demacia has lost two of its best rangers—or we defeat them, and Demacia gains an enemy, for the people of Skaggorn will know we are holding a chieftain’s daughter against her will.”

Dalin glanced at the big warriors, and conceded the point. “Doesn’t make it right, though,” he muttered. “And still makes us lawbreakers.”

Quinn regarded him. “If you want things to be simple, then you’d be better off in the regular infantry. Things are always more complicated out on the fringes.”

“The laws—”

“The laws be damned,” snapped Quinn. “It does not weaken Demacia in any way to let them go, but it will if we try to stop them.”

“But—”

Quinn rarely enforced the power her rank allowed her... but she did so now.

“Stand down, soldier,” she growled. “I am letting them go. That is an order.”

He stiffened for a moment, then gave her a sharp salute.

“As you will it, ranger-knight.”

The sun was starting to set as the Skaggorn party commenced climbing down the cliff. Quinn waited till they were all on their way—tied to each other, with the widow Asta’s child strapped tightly upon Egrid’s back—before she turned away. As good as their word, Egrid’s men removed the pitons they’d hammered into the stone as they descended.

Quinn had less than three days to get to the meeting point with Garen. She’d be forced to run through the night to make it in time, but had no doubt that she would. She gathered herself, readying for the journey ahead.

Before she left, Quinn paused, glancing over at Dalin, who was sitting near the cliff’s edge, Rigby at his side. He was looking eastward, away from her. They had barely spoken since the Skaggorn began their descent.

“I don’t expect you to feel good about it,” Quinn said, “but letting them go was for the best.”

He looked at her. “I understand,” he said. “Matters just aren’t as straightforward as I’d like them to be, I guess.”

“For some, they are,” said Quinn, shrugging. “But we are rangers.”

The Greenfang warden gave a slow nod, then stood to see Quinn off.

“You watch out for her, Valor, you hear?” he said, addressing the azurite eagle perched nearby. “Demacia needs her.”

Valor clacked his beak in reply.

“Speak to the local garrison,” Quinn said. “See that they build a watchtower here. Best make sure this gap in our defenses is closed for good.”

“Pulling rank on me again, boss?”

Quinn snorted, and scratched Rigby behind the ears. “Something like that.” She looked the warden in the eye. “Stay safe, and stay vigilant, Dalin,” she said. “Demacia needs you, too.”

Then she turned, and started running once more.

The first rays of dawn brushed the rooftops of the Great City, turning pale stone to gold. The air was still, and the only sounds filtering up to the high garden terraces on the east side of the citadel were the gentle chorus of morning birds and the hushed murmur of the waking city below.

Xin Zhao sat cross-legged upon a stone dais, hands resting upon his spear, laid across his lap. He stared down across the lower garden tiers, over the battlements and out across Demacia’s capital beyond. Watching the sun rise over his adopted homeland normally brought him peace… but not today.

His cloak was charred and splattered with blood, and his armor dented and scratched. Strands of his iron-gray-streaked hair—no longer the full inky black of his youth—hung wild over his face, having escaped his topknot. Under normal circumstances he would have already bathed, washing away the sweat, blood, and stink of fire. He would have sent his armor to the battlesmiths for repair, and secured himself a new cloak. Appearances mattered, particularly as the seneschal of Demacia.

But these were far from normal circumstances.

The king was dead.

He was the most honorable man Xin Zhao had ever met, and he loved and respected him above all others. He was oath-sworn to protect him… and yet Xin Zhao had not been there when he was needed most.

He took a deep, wracking breath. The weight of his failure threatened to crush him.

The mage uprising the day before had taken the whole city by surprise. Xin Zhao had been wounded in the running battles as he fought to make his way back to the palace, but he felt nothing. For hours, he’d sat here, alone, letting the cold of the stone seep into his bones as the shroud of grief and shame and guilt descended upon him. The palace guards—those that hadn’t been killed in the attack—had left him to his misery, keeping clear of the tiered garden where he sat in silence through the hours of darkness. Xin Zhao was grateful for that small mercy. He didn’t know if he could cope with the accusation in their eyes.

The sun reached him, finally, like the light of judgment, forcing him to squint against its glare.

He sighed deeply, steeling himself. He pushed himself to his feet, and took one final glance across the city he loved, and the garden that had always before brought him solace. Then he turned, and walked back toward the palace.

Many years ago, he had made a promise. Now he intended to keep it.

He drifted along corridors of the palace that seemed suddenly cold and lifeless. The servants he saw did not speak, shuffling along in shocked silence, their eyes wide. The guards he passed wore mournful expressions. They saluted, but he looked down. He did not deserve their acknowledgment.

Finally he stood before a closed door. He reached out to knock, but paused. Did his hand tremble? Cursing his weakness, he rapped sharply on the solid oak, then stood to attention, planting the butt of his spear sharply to the floor. The sound echoed along the corridor. For a long, drawn-out moment, he remained motionless, staring at the door, waiting for it to open.

A pair of patrolling palace guards turned a corner and marched past him, armor clanking. Shame kept him from looking at them. Still, the door remained shut.

“I believe High Marshal Crownguard is in the North Ward, my lord seneschal,” said one of the guards. “Overseeing increased security.”

Xin Zhao sighed inwardly, but gritted his teeth and nodded his thanks to the guard.

“My lord…” said the other guard. “No one blames you for—”

“Thank you, soldier,” Xin Zhao said, cutting him off. He didn’t want their pity. The pair saluted, and moved on their way.

Xin Zhao turned and marched down the corridor in the direction the guards had come, toward the northern wing of the palace. It was no reprieve that the High Marshal, Tianna Crownguard, was not in her office. It merely drew out this matter.

He walked through a hall hung with pennants and banners, pausing briefly beneath one of them—a standard depicting the white-winged sword of Demacia on a field of blue. It had been woven by the king’s late mother and her handmaidens, and even though almost a third of it had been destroyed by fire, it was a work of astounding beauty and artistry. It had fallen at the battle of Saltspike Hill, but King Jarvan himself had led the charge to reclaim it, Xin Zhao at his side. They’d cut their way through hundreds of fur-clad Freljordian berserkers to reach it, and Xin Zhao had been the one to lift it high, even as flames licked at its embroidery. The sight of the reclaimed standard had turned the tide that day, rallying the Demacians, and securing an unlikely victory. Jarvan had refused to allow it to be repaired on its safe return to the palace. He wanted all who looked upon it to remember its history.

Xin Zhao passed a small room, a remote library in a little-used corner of the palace that was one of the king’s favorite places to spend his evenings. It was his place of escape, where he could get away from the fussing of servants and nobles. Xin Zhao had spent many long nights here with the king, sipping fortified honey-wine, and discussing the finer points of strategy, politics, and the now-distant memories of their youth.  Jarvan was ever the stoic, stern leader in public, yet here, in this inner sanctum—particularly in the early hours, when they were deep in their cups—he would laugh until tears ran down his face, and speak with passion about his hopes and dreams for his son.

Fresh pain wracked Xin Zhao as he realized he’d never hear his friend laugh again.

Without having noticed it, Xin Zhao found himself passing by the halls of training. He’d probably spent more hours there over the last twenty years than anywhere else. That was his real home, where he felt most himself. There, he’d spent untold hours training and sparring with the king. That was where, to the king’s amusement and delight, his son had adopted Xin Zhao into the family. Where Xin Zhao had taught the young prince to fight with sword, spear, and lance; where he’d consoled him, wiping away his tears and helping him back to his feet when he fell; where he’d laughed with him, and cheered his successes.

Thought of the prince struck him like a blade to the gut. Xin Zhao might have lost his dearest friend the previous day, but young Jarvan had lost his father. He’d already lost his mother in childbirth. He was now alone.

With a heavy heart, Xin Zhao made to walk on, but a familiar sound gave him pause: a blunted blade slamming against wood. Someone was training. Xin Zhao’s brow furrowed.

A sickening feeling grew in the pit of his stomach as he slipped through the heavy doors leading within.

At first he couldn’t see who was there. The arches and pillars around the edge of the vaulted room conspired to keep them obscured. The sound of sword strikes echoed loudly around him.

Rounding a cluster of pillars, he at last saw the prince hacking at a wooden practice dummy with a heavy iron training sword. He was covered in a sheen of sweat, and his chest was heaving with exertion. His expression was one of anguish, and he attacked wildly.

Xin Zhao paused in the shadows, heart aching to see the young prince so raw and hurt. He desperately wanted to go to him, to console him, and help him through this awful time, for the prince and his father were the closest Xin Zhao had ever had to family. But why would the prince want him here? He was the king’s bodyguard, and yet he lived while the king lay dead.

Hesitancy was not familiar to Xin Zhao, nor a feeling he was comfortable with. Not even in the Fleshing pits of Noxus had he ever second-guessed himself. Shaking his head, he turned to leave.

“Uncle?”

Xin Zhao cursed himself a fool for not having left immediately.

They were not blood relatives, of course, but the prince had started calling him uncle soon after Xin Zhao had come into the king’s service, twenty years earlier. Jarvan had been just a boy, and no one had corrected him. The king had been amused by it, at first, but over the years Xin Zhao had become as close as blood kin to the royal family, and he had watched over the king’s son as if he had been his own.

He turned slowly. Jarvan was a boy no longer, standing taller than Xin Zhao. His eyes were red-rimmed, and surrounded by dark rings. Xin Zhao guessed he was not the only one to have had no sleep.

“My prince,” he said, dropping to one knee and bowing his head low.

Jarvan didn’t say anything. He just stood there, looking down at Xin Zhao, breathing hard.

“My apologies,” said Xin Zhao, his head still lowered.

“For interrupting, or for not being there to protect my father when he was murdered?”

Xin Zhao glanced up. Jarvan glowered down at him, heavy training sword still in hand. He had no good way to answer, to say all that he felt.

“I failed him,” he said at last. “And I failed you.”

Jarvan stood for a moment longer before turning and striding to one of the many weapon racks arranged around the room.

“Rise,” Jarvan ordered.

As Xin Zhao did, the prince threw him a sword. He caught it reflexively in his off-hand, still holding his spear in his right. It was another training blade, heavy and blunted. Then Jarvan was coming at him, swinging hard.

Xin Zhao jumped backward, avoiding the blow.

“My lord, I don’t think this is—” he began, but his words were cut off as Jarvan lunged at him again, thrusting his sword at his chest. Xin Zhao batted it aside with the haft of his spear, and stepped back.

“My prince—” he said, but again Jarvan attacked, more furiously than before.

Two strikes came at him this time, one high, one low. Jarvan may have been using a training blade, but if those blows struck, they would break bone. Xin Zhao was forced to defend himself, deflecting the first with a side-step and an angled spear, the second with the blade of his own sword. The impact rang up his arm.

“Where were you?” snarled Jarvan, pacing around him.

Xin Zhao lowered his weapons. “Is this how you want to do this?” he said, in a quiet voice.

“Yes,” said Jarvan, his anger simmering, his sword held in a deathgrip.

Xin Zhao sighed. “A moment,” he said, and moved to put his spear on a rack. Jarvan waited for him, hand clenching and unclenching on the hilt of his sword.

As soon as Xin Zhao returned to the center of the room, Jarvan attacked. He came in a rush, grunting with effort. There was little finesse to the strikes, but fury lent him strength. Xin Zhao turned those blows aside, using Jarvan’s power against him, not wishing to meet the heavy blows directly.

At any other time he would have berated the prince for his poor form—he was thinking only of attack, and leaving himself open for ripostes and counter-strikes—but Xin Zhao would not interrupt the prince’s justified anger. Nor would he take advantage of the gaps in his defense. If the prince needed to beat him bloody, then so be it.

“Where—were—you?” Jarvan said between strikes.

“We have been so fixated on that which we fear,” the king said, still not looking up, though he did pause from his angry scratching for a moment. “We’ve been fools. I’ve been a fool. In trying to protect ourselves, we’ve created the very enemy we sought to protect ourselves from.”

“You have nothing to say?” demanded Jarvan.

“I should have been with your father,” he answered.

“That is no answer,” snarled Jarvan. He turned away abruptly, tossing his sword aside with a sharp, echoing clang. For a moment, Xin Zhao hoped the prince was done, but then he retrieved a different weapon from its place upon one of the racks.

Drakebane.

Now the prince leveled the lance toward him, his expression hard and unflinching.

“Get your spear,” he said.

“You are not armored,” protested Xin Zhao.

Training weapons could easily break limbs, but the slightest mistimed parry with a combat blade could be lethal.

“I don’t care,” Jarvan said.

Xin Zhao bowed his head. He bent to retrieve Jarvan’s discarded training sword, and placed it carefully upon a rack, along with his own. Reluctantly, his heart heavy, he retrieved his spear and moved back out into the open area in the center of the hall.

Without a word, Jarvan attacked.

“I blame myself,” said King Jarvan. His eyes were unfocused, staring off into empty space. “I let them have too much power. It never sat right with me, but their arguments were convincing, and they had the backing of the council. I see now I was wrong to have ignored my own judgment. With this letter, I am commanding the mageseekers to halt their arrests.”

The seneschal swayed aside, deflecting the deadly strike with a circular turn of his spear, careful the blades did not hook his own weapon.

Even in the brutal contests of the Fleshing, Xin Zhao had never seen a weapon like Drakebane. In truth, the secret of how to fight with it had been lost in the reign of the first kings of Demacia, and in unskilled hands it was as deadly to its wielder as to the enemy. As such, for centuries it had been little more than ceremonial, an icon of the ruling family. However, when the prince was still just a boy, he had dreamed of fighting with it, like the heroes of old he idolized, and so Xin Zhao had promised to teach him when he was ready.

Jarvan leapt forward, bringing the lance down in a scything blow. Xin Zhao turned it aside, but the prince followed up instantly with a spinning strike that missed him by scant inches, the bladed tip slicing by his throat. Jarvan was not holding back.

Before Xin Zhao could teach the young prince how to wield the weapon, however, he had to master it himself. With the king’s approval, he began training to learn its secrets. Surprisingly light in the hand and perfectly balanced, it was a sublime weapon, created by a master at the peak of his abilities.

Forged in Demacia’s infancy by the renowned weaponsmith Orlon, the lance was a revered icon of Demacia, as much a symbol of its greatness as its towering white walls or the crown of the king. Wrought to defeat the great frostdrake Maelstrom and her progeny who had plagued the early settlers of Demacia in ages past, it had long been a symbol of the royal line.

For years, Xin Zhao had practiced with the lance every day before dawn. Only when he felt he understood it well enough had he begun to teach the teenage prince how to wield it.

Jarvan grunted with effort, lunging at Xin Zhao. The seneschal thought only of defense, stepping neatly away and always aware of his surroundings. His spear was a blur before him, knocking the lance from its intended course each time it came at him.

Young Jarvan had already been learning the uses of sword and spear and fist—as well as the more cerebral arts of military history and rhetoric—it was on his sixteenth birthday that he was finally presented with Drakebane by his father. He trained hard, sustaining countless self-inflicted injuries along the way to mastery, but he eventually fought with the weapon as if it were an extension of himself.

Jarvan pressed Xin Zhao hard, striking furiously. He gave the seneschal no respite, each attack blending seamlessly into the next. A foiled lunge became an upward, sweeping slash, which in turn came around in a pair of scything arcs, first in a low, disemboweling cut, then back across the throat. All were avoided by Xin Zhao, his body swaying from side to side, and his spear flashing to turn each strike aside.

Nevertheless, while Jarvan had long been Xin Zhao’s student, the prince was younger and stronger, and his tall frame gave him a greater reach. No longer was he an awkward aspirant; he’d been hardened by battle and training, and Jarvan’s skill with Drakebane now easily outstripped his own. Jarvan harried him mercilessly, forcing him to retreat with every step.

It took all of Xin Zhao’s considerable skill to remain unscathed… but it could not last.

He held it out to his seneschal.

For the first time since they began, Xin Zhao wondered if the prince was actually trying to kill him.

There was a certain balance in dying to the son of the man he had failed to protect.

Jarvan slapped Xin Zhao’s spear aside with the butt of Drakebane and turned swiftly, bringing the weapon around in a tight arc, the blade seeking his neck.

It was a perfectly executed move, one that Xin Zhao had taught the prince himself. Jarvan’s footwork to set up the strike was sublime, and the initial hit to his weapon was weighted just enough to knock it aside, but not so hard that it slowed the final strike.

Even so, the seneschal could have blocked it. It would have been a close thing, but he trusted his speed—even tired as he was—to have ensured the strike did not land.

And yet, he made no move to do so. His will to fight was gone.

He lifted his chin ever-so-slightly, so that the strike would be true.

The blades of Drakebane hissed in. The blow was delivered with speed, skill, and power. It would slice deep, killing him almost instantly.

The killing blow stopped just as it touched Xin Zhao’s throat, drawing a series of blood-beads, but nothing more.

“Why will not you say where you were?” said Jarvan.

Xin Zhao swallowed. A warm trickle of blood ran down his neck. “Because I am at fault,” he said. “I should have been there.”

Jarvan held the blade at Xin Zhao’s throat for a moment longer, then stepped back. He seemed to wilt suddenly, all the fire and fury draining out of him, leaving just a grieving, lost son.

“My father ordered you away then,” he said. “And you do not wish to blame him for your absence.”

Xin Zhao said nothing.

“I’m right, am I not?” said Jarvan.

Xin Zhao sighed, and looked down.

“No,” said the king. “I want you to go now.”

“I should have been there,” said Xin Zhao, weakly.

Jarvan rubbed his eyes.

“And defy your king’s order? No, that’s not you, uncle,” said Jarvan. “What was it he had you doing?”

“This is not a request, seneschal,” he said. “You will deliver this decree. Now.”

Xin Zhao nodded, and Jarvan let out a bitter laugh. “How very like him,” he said. “Always thinking of state matters. You know he missed my blade ceremony, on my fourteenth birthday, because of a meeting of the Shield Council. A meeting about taxation.”

“I remember,” said Xin Zhao.

“You delivered this letter, I take it?”

“No,” Xin Zhao said, shaking his head. “I turned as soon as I heard the bells. I made my way back to the palace as swiftly as I was able.”

“And ran into trouble in the streets, by the looks of it,” said Jarvan, indicating his battered appearance.

“Nothing that could not be dealt with.”

“Mages?” said Jarvan.

Xin Zhao nodded. “And others who had thrown their lot in with the murderer.”

“We should have executed them all,” hissed Jarvan.

Xin Zhao looked at the prince in alarm. He’d never heard him speak with such vitriol before. Indeed, he knew the prince had always been troubled by Demacia’s treatment of its mages. But that was before.

“I do not believe your father would share that view,” said Xin Zhao, in a measured voice.

“And they killed him,” snapped Jarvan.

There was nothing helpful for Xin Zhao to say, so he remained silent. That moment’s fire was extinguished within Jarvan almost immediately. Tears welled in his eyes, even as he tried to hold them back.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said. In that moment, he was a boy again, scared and alone.

Xin Zhao stepped forward, dropping his spear, and took Jarvan in his arms, hugging him tightly. “Oh, my boy,” he said.

Jarvan cried then, deep wracking sobs that shook his whole body, and tears he had not yet shed now ran freely down Xin Zhao’s face as well.

They stood clinging to each other for a few more moments, held together by shared loss, then stepped apart. Xin Zhao turned away to pick up his fallen spear, allowing them both a moment to gather themselves.

When he turned back, Jarvan had thrown off his sweat-stained shirt, and was pulling on a long, white linen tunic emblazoned with a blue-winged sword. Already he looked more composed.

“Now you will do what you were born to do,” Xin Zhao said. “You will lead.”

“I don’t think I’m ready,” said Jarvan.

“No one ever does. At least, not the good ones.”

“But you will be with me, uncle. To help me.”

A coldness clawed at Xin Zhao’s heart. “I… regret that will not be possible,” he said.

“You are the king,” said Xin Zhao. “You are Demacia.”

“Demacia is greater than any king!” snapped Jarvan. “This is not up for debate. It is an order.”

Xin Zhao’s inner sense for danger was screaming, but his devotion to duty silenced it.

“Then it will be done,” he said.

With a bow, he turned and strode from the room.

“And how many times did you save my father’s life?“ said Jarvan, suddenly stern. In that moment he seemed so much like his father, in Xin Zhao’s eyes. “I personally witnessed you do so at least three times. I know there were others.”

Xin Zhao frowned.

“My honor is my life,” he said. “I could not live with the shame of going back on my word.”

“To whom did you make this pledge?”

“High Marshal Tianna Crownguard.”

Jarvan frowned.

“When you entered my father’s service, you pledged yourself to Demacia, did you not?” he said.

“Of course.”

“Your pledge was to Demacia.” said Jarvan. “Not my father. Not anyone else. Your duty to Demacia overrides all.”

Xin Zhao stared at the prince. He is so like his father.

“But what of the High Marshal?”

“I will deal with Tianna,” said Jarvan. “Right now, I need you to do your duty.”

Xin Zhao let out a breath that he didn’t realize he had been holding.

“Will you serve as my seneschal, as you served my father?” said Jarvan.

Xin Zhao blinked. Moments earlier he’d been certain Jarvan was going to execute him… and he didn’t feel that would have been unjustified.

He hesitated, his emotions in turmoil, his mind reeling.

“Xin Zhao… Uncle,” said Jarvan. “Our kingdom needs you. I need you. Will you do this? For me?”

Slowly, as if expecting Jarvan to change his mind at any moment, Xin Zhao dropped to one knee.

“It would be my honor… my king.”

Soldiers were everywhere. Demacia’s most elite battalion—the Dauntless Vanguard—had been brought in to supplement the palace guard, and they stood at every doorway, watchful and disciplined.

Jarvan’s expression was stern, his bearing regal. Only Xin Zhao had witnessed the outpouring of emotion down in the training room. Now, in front of the palace servants, the nobles, and the guard, he was in complete control.

Good, thought Xin Zhao. The people of Demacia need to see him strong.

Everyone they passed dropped to one knee, bowing their heads low. They continued on, striding purposefully.

Jarvan paused before the great council doors.

“One thing, uncle,” he said, turning to Xin Zhao.

“My lord?”

“The letter my father wanted you to deliver,” he said. “What happened to it?”

“I have it here,” said Xin Zhao. He loosened it from his belt, and handed the leather case over.

Jarvan took it, broke the case open, and unfurled the sheet of vellum within. His eyes flicked back and forth as he read his father’s words.

Xin Zhao saw Jarvan’s expression harden. Then he crushed the letter in both hands, twisting it as if he were wringing a neck, before handing it back.

“Destroy it,” Jarvan said.

Xin Zhao stared at him in shock, but Jarvan was already turning away. He nodded to the guards standing on either side, and the council doors were thrown open. Those seated at the long table within stood as one, before bowing low. Flames crackled in the ornate fireplace set against the south wall within.

There were a number of empty seats at the table. The king was not the only one who had fallen in the previous day’s attack.

Xin Zhao was left holding the crumpled letter, stunned, as Jarvan moved to the head of the table. He looked back at Xin Zhao, still standing in the door.

“Seneschal?” said Jarvan.

Xin Zhao blinked. At Jarvan’s right, High Marshal Tianna Crownguard stared at him, her gaze dangerously cold. On Jarvan’s other side, his gaze equally icy, was Tianna’s husband, the intended recipient of the king’s letter—the head of the mageseeker order. Xin Zhao’s gaze passed between them, then returned to Jarvan, who raised his eyebrows questioningly.

Without further pause, Xin Zhao strode into the room, and threw the letter into the flames.

Then he took his place, standing behind his ruler. He hoped none of the deep concern he suddenly felt was visible.

“Let us begin,” said Jarvan.

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.

How long had it been since Lux had come north to Fossbarrow?

She wasn’t sure. Years, certainly. The family had come north to honor the tomb of Great Grandfather Fossian, and Lux remembered complaining about the incessant rain as they made their way through the crags and gullies of the forest to his resting place. She’d been expecting a grand mausoleum, but was disappointed to learn it was little more than a grassy mound nestled at the foot of a soaring cliff face. A marble slab set into the base of the mound depicted the legend of her illustrious forebear—Fossian and the demon falling from the cliff, her great grandfather mortally wounded, the nightmarish entity with a Demacian blade piercing its black heart.

It had rained then, and it was raining now. An icy, northern deluge fresh off the dogtooth mountains that separated Demacia from the Freljord. A storm was brewing in that frozen realm, breaking on the far side of the peaks to fall on verdant swathes of Demacian pine bent by hostile winds. To the west and east, the mountains receded into an azure haze, the sky dark and threatening, like one of her brother’s saltier moods. North, the forested haunches of the highlands were craggy with cliffs and plunging chasms. Dangerous lands, home to fell creatures and wild beasts of all descriptions.

Lux had set off into the north two weeks ago; Demacia to Edessa, then to Pinara and on to Lissus. Lissus to Velorus, and eventually to High Silvermere, the City of Raptors. A night with her family at their home at the foot of Knight’s Rock, then out into Demacia’s northwest marches. Almost immediately, the character of the people and villages began to change as the heartland of Demacia fell behind her like a pennant torn from the haft of a banner-pole.

Rolling, fertile plains gave way to windswept hinterlands dotted with gorse and thistle. Silverwing raptors screeched overhead, invisible as they dueled in the clouds. The air grew colder, freighted with the deep ice of the Freljord, and the walls of each settlement grew higher with every mile she rode. It had been a long and tiring journey to Fossbarrow, but she was here, and Lux allowed herself a small smile.

“We’ll be at the temple soon, Starfire,” she said, reaching down to rub her horse’s mane. “They’ll have grain and a warm stable for you, I promise.”

The horse shook its head and snorted, stamping its feet with impatience. Lux kicked back her heels and walked her tired mount along the rutted track leading to Fossbarrow’s main gate.

The town occupied the banks of the Serpentrion, a thundering river that rose in the mountains and snaked to the western coast. The town’s walls of polished granite followed the line of the hills, and the buildings within were wrought from stone, seasoned timber and bottle-green roof tiles. The tower of an Illuminator temple rose in the east, the brazier within its steeple a welcome light in the gathering dusk.

Lux pulled back the hood of her blue cloak and shook her hair free. Long and golden, it framed a youthful face of high cheekbones and ocean-blue eyes that sparkled with determination. Two men appeared on the tower above the iron-bound gate, each armed with a powerful longbow of ash and yew.

“Hold, traveler,” said one of the guards. “The gate’s closed until morning.”

“My name is Luxanna Crownguard,” she said. “As you say, it is late, but I’ve come a long way to pay my respects to my great grandfather. I’d be in your debt if you’d allow me entry.”

The man squinted through the gloom, his eyes widening as he recognized her. It had been years since she’d come to Fossbarrow, but Garen always said that once people laid eyes on Lux, they never forgot her.

“Lady Crownguard! Forgive me!” he cried, turning to address the men below. “Open the gates.”

Lux eased Starfire forward as the solid timbers of the gate lifted into the stone of the barbican with a clatter of heavy iron chains. As soon as it had risen enough, Lux rode under it to find a hastily assembled honor guard awaiting her—ten men in leather breastplates and blue cloaks secured with silver pins in the shape of winged swords. They were proud Demacian soldiers, though their shoulders were curiously slumped and their eyes haunted with exhaustion.

“Welcome to Fossbarrow,” said the same man who’d spoken to her from the tower. “This is a great honor, my lady. Magistrate Giselle will be relieved to know you are here. May I offer you a detachment of soldiers to escort you to her home?”

“Thank you, but that won’t be necessary,” said Lux, wondering at the man’s choice of the word relieved. “I’ve arranged accommodation with Mistress Pernille at the Illuminator temple.”

She made to ride on, but sensed the guard’s desire to say something and gently pulled Starfire’s reins.

“Lady Crownguard,” said the guard. “Are you here to end our nightmare?”

The Illuminator temple was warm and dry, and with Starfire settled in the stables, she’d spoken at length with Mistress Pernille in the main hall. Lux had heard rumors of magic in the forests and crags around Fossbarrow and had set out to see what she might learn—though she hadn’t mentioned that to Mistress Pernille. The simmering power Lux sensed within herself was frightening in its growing intensity, and she hoped there might be some way she could learn more of its nature. And it was always better to learn such things away from the eyes of her family!

Lux had sensed a dark undercurrent as soon as she’d entered the town, a creeping sensation of being watched from the shadows. The few townsfolk she’d seen on the streets walked with leaden steps, their bodies weary.

A pall of fear hung over Fossbarrow. She didn’t need magic to sense that.

“A terrible business,” explained Mistress Pernille, a flaxen-haired woman in the pale robes of an Illuminator healer. “It’s Magistrate Giselle’s son, Luca. That poor boy.”

“What about him?” asked Lux.

“He went missing two days ago,” explained Pernille. “And people are certain he’s been taken by a dark mage for some terrible purpose.”

“Why do they think that?”

“Ask me again in the morning,” said Pernille.

Lux awoke with a scream, her heart hammering in her chest and her breath coming in wheezing spikes. Terror filled her mind—a nightmare of clawed hooks dragging her beneath the earth, of fetid mud filling her mouth and darkness smothering her light forever. Lux blinked away the last afterimages, glimpsing retreating shadows out of the corner of her eye. Her mouth was filled with the taste of rancid milk, a sure sign of lingering magic, and spectral radiance shimmered in her palms. Light filled the room, and with it, the last remnants of the nightmare were banished.

Warmth suffused her, her skin shimmering with a haze of iridescence, and she quickly clenched her fists, trying to pull it back within her before it got out of control.

She heard voices downstairs, and thankfully the light faded, leaving only the wan traces of daylight from the shuttered window to illuminate the room. Lux pressed her hands to the side of her head, as if seeking to push the awful visions from her mind. She tried to recall specific moments from the nightmare, but all that came was the reek of sour breath and a faceless darkness pressing down upon her.

Her mouth dry, Lux quickly dressed and descended to the temple kitchen. Though she had little in the way of appetite, she prepared a breakfast of bread and cheese. At her first bite, the taste of grave earth filled her mouth and she put the food aside.

“How did you sleep?” asked Pernille, entering the kitchen and joining her at the table.

The skin below Pernille’s eyes was purple with lack of sleep, her skin sallow without firelight to color it. Only now did Lux notice just how bone-weary Pernille was.

“About as well as you, by the looks of it,” said Lux. “Did you dream?”

“I did, but it’s nothing I want to relive by saying it out loud.”

Lux nodded slowly. “I think there’s something very wrong with this town.”

Starfire whinnied at the sight of her, his ears pressed flat against his skull and his eyes wide. He nuzzled her, and she stroked his pearl-white neck and shoulders.

“You too?” she said, and the horse tossed its mane.

Lux quickly saddled her mount and rode toward Fossbarrow’s northern gate. Dawn was already an hour old, but the town was still to fully come to life. No smoke rose from the forges, no smell of fresh bread wafted from the bakeries, and only a very few sullen-looking merchants had their doors open for business. Demacians were hard-working, disciplined, and industrious, so to see a frontier town so late to begin the day’s work was highly unusual. But if Fossbarrow’s people had endured a night like hers, she couldn’t blame them for being slow to rise.

She passed through the gate into the open ground before the town and let Starfire run to work out the stiffness in his muscles before turning onto the muddy road. The stallion had broken his leg many years ago, but it hadn’t impaired the speed of his gallop.

“Easy, boy,” said Lux as they rode into the forest.

The scent of pine and wildflowers hung heavy in the air, and Lux savored the heady, natural aroma of the northern climes. Sunlight pierced the leafy canopy in angled spars of light, and the smell of wet mud sent a shiver up her spine as her nightmare briefly surfaced. She rode deeper into the forest, following the track as it wound its way further north. Lux lifted a hand from the reins and reached for a glittering sunbeam, feeling the magic within her stir at its touch. It was thrilling to feel it rise within her, but she let it come only slowly, for fear it might overtake her fragile control.

Her world lit up as the magic filled her senses, the colors of the forest unnaturally vivid and filled with life. She saw glittering motes of light drifting in the air, the breath of trees and the sighs of the earth. How incredible it was to see the world like this, alive to the energies flowing through every living thing. From blades of grass to the mighty ironbirch trees whose roots were said to reach the very heart of the world. If this was what even the lightest touch of magic might achieve, what wonders might it work were she better able to control it?

After an hour of riding through the iridescent forest, the road diverged at a crossroads, one path leading east—to a logging town if she remembered correctly—the other dropping west to a community built around a thriving silver mine. Her father owned a stake in the mine and her favorite cloak pin had been wrought from metal dug from its deep chasms. Between the two main routes lay a smaller pathway, all but invisible and suitable only for lone riders or those on foot.

She remembered taking that path years ago, and Lux wondered why she was reluctant to guide Starfire in that direction. She had no need to go that way, for her story of paying respects to her great grandfather was just that, a story. Lux closed her eyes and lifted her arms out to the side, letting the magic drift from her fingers. She took a breath, filling her lungs with cold air and letting the light of the forest speak to her. Her understanding of such things was still new, but surely it was worth the risk to find out what was plaguing this region of Demacia.

The light spoke in contrasting hues, scintillating colors. and vibrant illumination. She felt the light of distant stars drift down like mist, light that bathed other realms and people, almost too much to bear. Where the light of Demacia fell into shadow, she flinched. Where it nourished something living, she was soothed. Lux turned in the saddle, reveling in this new sensation. The sun was almost at its zenith, and she frowned as the quality of light in the forest trembled, slipping from her grasp. She felt shadows where no shadows ought to dwell, hidden darkness where only light should exist. The breath caught in her throat, like a hand at her neck, and a sudden wave of dizziness swept over her. Her eyelids fluttered, drifting closed as if she were being pulled into a waking slumber.

The forest around her was suddenly silent. Not a breath of wind stirred the leaves of the trees, nor ruffled so much as a blade of grass. The Silverwings were silent, the chatter of animals stilled. Lux heard the soft susurration of grave cloth being pulled tight.

Sleep…

“No,” she said, but the unnatural weariness slipped over her like a comfortable blanket, warm and enfolding. Lux’s head dropped and she closed her eyes for the briefest instant.

The snapping sound of a breaking branch and the scrape of metal flicked Lux’s eyes open. She drew in a great draught of air, the cold in her lungs jolting her awake again. She blinked shadows from her eyes and let out an icy breath as the magic slipped from her grasp and faded away. She heard riders on horseback, the jingle of bridle and trace, the rasp of metal on metal. Soldiers, armored for war. At least four, perhaps more.

Lux wasn’t scared of them. Not really. Not this deep in Demacia. Whatever darkness was lurking somewhere in the forest was a more immediate threat. Its strength was uncertain, like a child exploring just what it could do. She pulled Starfire’s reins, turning him around and setting him athwart the paths.

The foliage in front of her parted, and five riders came into view.

Powerful warriors, armored head to foot in gleaming warplate. They rode wide-chested steeds of gray, none smaller than seventeen hands, and each caparisoned in cobalt blue. Four had their swords drawn, where the fifth had his golden-hilted blade sheathed in a lacquered blue scabbard across his back.

“Luxanna?” said this rider, his voice muffled by the visor of his helm.

Lux sighed as the knight removed his helmet to reveal dark hair and granite-hewn features that so embodied Demacia it was a wonder they weren’t yet on a coin.

“Garen,” sighed Lux.

Her brother had brought four of the Dauntless Vanguard.

Drawn from any other army, four warriors would be a paltry force, but every warrior of the Dauntless Vanguard was a hero, a legend with tales of valor etched into the metal of their swords. Their deeds were told and retold around tavern tables and hearthfires the length and breadth of Demacia.

Dark of hair and keen of eye was Diadoro, the bearded swordsman who’d held the Gates of Mourning against the armored host of the Trifarian Legion for an entire day. Flanking him was Sabator of Jandelle, the slayer of the hideous deepwyrm that woke every hundred years to feast, but which would now wake no more. Its fangs were hung in King Jarvan’s throne room, next to the newly mounted dragon skull brought by his son and his enigmatic companion.

Slighter, though no less striking, was Varya, she who led the charge onto the decks of the sea-wolf fleet at Dawnhold. She set their ships ablaze and, even wounded nigh unto death, cut down their berserk leader. Rodian, her twin brother, had sailed north to Frostheld and burned the Freljordian harbor city to the ground, so that no others would dare sail south to wreak havoc again.

Lux knew them all, but rolled her eyes at the thought of hearing their legends around a table tonight. Yes, they were heroes of Demacia and entirely worthy of respect, but hearing about Sabator climbing down the deepwyrm’s gullet for the tenth time, or how Varya beat a Grelmorn to death with a splintered oar was too much for Lux.

Garen came alongside her as they followed the road back to Fossbarrow. They’d circled the town until the light began to fade in search of the magistrate’s son or any sign of nefarious goings on, but had found nothing. Though any servant of darkness would have had plenty of time to run and hide, given the noise Garen and the Dauntless Vanguard were making.

“You’re really here to visit Great Grandfather Fossian’s tomb?”

“I said so, didn’t I?”

“Yes,” replied Garen. “You did. I’m just surprised. I seem to recall mother saying you hated coming here last time.”

“I’m surprised she remembered.”

“Oh, she remembered,” said Garen without looking at her. “When young Luxanna Crownguard doesn’t enjoy something, the skies darken, rain clouds empty, and forest animals hide.”

“You make me sound like a spoiled brat.”

“You kind of were,” said Garen, his easy grin only partially robbing the comment of its sting. “You got away with things I’d have had a smacked backside for doing. Mother was always telling me not to pay attention to the things you did.”

The words hung between them, and Lux looked away, remembering not to underestimate her brother. People knew him as honest and direct, with a sound grasp of tactics and war stratagems, but few ever thought of him as subtle or cunning.

That, knew Lux, was a mistake. Yes, Garen was a simple warrior, but simple didn’t mean stupid.

“So what do you think’s happened to the boy?” asked Lux.

Garen ran a hand through his hair.

“If I had to guess, I’d say he’s run away from home,” he said. “Or decided to have an adventure and has gotten lost somewhere in the forest.”

“You don’t think a dark mage has taken him?”

“It’s certainly possible, but Varya and Rodian rode through this way only six months ago, and saw no evidence of unnatural sorceries.”

Lux nodded and asked, “Have you spent a night in Fossbarrow?”

“No,” answered Garen, as they rode into sight of the town. “Why do you ask?”

“Just curious.”

“There’s something going on down there,” said Sabator, his hand shielding his eyes from the setting sun.

Garen’s eyes snapped to where his warrior was pointing, and all levity fell from his face. His entire posture changed, muscles taut and ready for action, his eyes utterly focused. The warriors of the Dauntless Vanguard formed up alongside him, ready to move in an instant.

“What is it?” said Lux.

An angry-looking crowd was hounding a stumbling man through the streets toward the market square. She couldn’t hear what they were shouting, but she didn’t need to hear the words to feel their anger and fear.

“Vanguard! We ride,” said Garen, raking his spurs back.

Starfire was a fast horse, but even he was no match for a grain-fed Demacian warsteed. By the time Lux rode through the gates, the sound of yelling voices echoed through the town. Starfire’s flanks were lathered with sweat and his iron-shod hooves struck sparks from the cobbles. Lux hauled her mount to a halt as she entered the crowded market square and leapt from his back as she saw a scene she’d witnessed too many times throughout Demacia.

“No, no, no…” she muttered, seeing two guards drag a weeping man onto the auction platform normally used during the buying and selling of livestock. The man’s clothes were soaked in blood and he wailed piteously. A woman with the ermine-trimmed robes and bronze wings of a Demacian magistrate stood before him, presumably Magistrate Giselle. Hundreds of Fossbarrow’s townsfolk filled the square, yelling and screaming at the man. The intensity of their hate was palpable, and Lux felt her magic drawn to the surface of her skin. She struggled to quell the rising light and pushed her way through the crowd, seeing Garen at the foot of the steps leading onto the auction platform.

“Aldo Dayan,” said Magistrate Giselle, her voice ragged with emotion. “I name thee murderer and consort of a dark mage!”

“No!” cried the man. “You don’t understand! They were monsters! I saw them, their real faces! Darkness—only darkness!”

“Confession!” cried Giselle.

The crowd screamed in response, a swelling lust for vengeance erupting from every throat. They looked set to rush the auction platform to tear Aldo Dayan limb from limb, and perhaps they would have but for the four warriors of the Dauntless Vanguard standing with their swords drawn at its edge.

“What’s going on? What happened?” asked Lux as she reached Garen’s side.

Garen didn’t look at her, his eyes fixed on the kneeling man.

“He murdered his wife and children in their beds, then ran out onto the streets and attacked his neighbors. He split three people with an axe before they were able to restrain him.”

“Why would he do that?”

Finally Garen turned to look at her. “Why do you think? There must be a mage nearby. A darkness holds sway here. Only the dark influence of a sorcerer could drive a loyal Demacian citizen to commit such heinous acts.”

Lux bit back an angry retort and pushed past Garen. She climbed the steps of the platform and marched over to the kneeling man.

“Lady Crownguard? What are you doing?” demanded Giselle.

Lux ignored her and lifted the man’s head. His face was bruised, one eye swollen shut from the heavy blow of a cudgel or fist. Blood and snot ran freely from his nose, and ropes of drool hung from his split lip.

“Look at me,” she said, and the man’s good eye tried to focus on her. The white of his eye was bloodshot and purple edged, the eye of a man who had not slept in days.

“Goodman Dayan, tell me why you killed your family,” said Lux. “Why did you attack your neighbors?”

“Not them. No. I saw. Weren’t them, they was… monsters…” sobbed the man. “Darkness clothed in skin. Among us the whole time! I woke and I saw their true faces! So I killed them! I had to do it. I had to!”

She looked up as Magistrate Giselle appeared at Lux’s shoulder. Lux saw a soul-aching grief etched in the woman’s face. The last two days had aged her ten years. The magistrate stared down in disgust at Aldo Dayan, her fists clenched at her sides.

“Did you kill my Luca?” she said, her voice wracked with sorrow. “Did you kill my son? Just because he was different?”

Baying cries for vengeance rose from the crowd as the sun sank into the west and the shadows lengthened. Handfuls of mud and dung pelted Aldo Dayan as his former friends and neighbors called for his death. He thrashed in the grip of the guards, frothing at the mouth and spitting bloody saliva.

“I had to kill them!” he screamed, staring defiantly at his accusers. “It weren’t them. Just darkness, only darkness. It could be one of you too!”

Lux turned back to Magistrate Giselle.

“What did you mean when you said your son was different?”

Giselle’s grief was all-consuming, but Lux saw past it to a secret shame beneath. The magistrate’s eyes were bloodshot and ringed with dark smudges of exhaustion, yet even that couldn’t hide the same look she’d seen in her mother’s eyes whenever Lux’s powers had gotten the better of her as a youngster. It was the same look she sometimes saw in her brother’s eyes when he thought she wasn’t looking.

“What did you mean?” she asked again.

“Nothing,” said Giselle. “I didn’t mean anything.”

“Different how?”

“Just different.”

Lux had heard such deflections before, and suddenly knew exactly how the magistrate’s son was different.

“I’ve heard enough,” said Garen as he strode onto the platform, his long, silver sword hissing from its scabbard. The blade glinted in the twilight, its edge unimaginably sharp.

“Garen, no,” said Lux. “There’s something more going on here. Let me speak with him.”

“He is a monster,” said Garen, spinning his sword up onto his shoulder. “Even if he is not a servant of evil, he is a murderer. There can be only one punishment. Magistrate?”

Giselle looked away from Lux, her eyes wet with tears. She nodded.

“Aldo Dayan, I declare you guilty, and call upon Garen Crownguard of the Dauntless Vanguard to dispense Demacian justice.”

The man lifted his head, and Lux’s eyes narrowed as she felt a prickling sensation of… something pass through him. A whisper of a lurking presence. It slithered away before she could be sure, but a breath of frigid air raised her hackles.

Dayan’s limbs spasmed, like a deranged roadside wanderer afflicted with the tremoring sickness. He whispered something, rasping and faint, as Garen lifted his warblade to deliver the executioner’s strike. Dayan’s last words were all but lost in the roars of approval coming from the crowd, but Lux finally pieced them together as Garen’s sword swept down.

The light is fading…

“Wait!” she cried.

Garen’s blade clove the man’s head from his body in one titanic blow, to a roar of approval from the crowd. The body dropped to the platform, twin arcs of blood jetting from the stump of his neck. The head rolled to Giselle’s feet as coiling smoke poured from Aldo Dayan’s corpse like black bile oozing from a charnel pit. The magistrate recoiled in shock as a phantom form of wicked claws and searing eyes erupted from the dead man’s skull.

The spectral darkness launched itself at the magistrate with a cackle of spite. She screamed as it passed through her before dissipating like wind-scattered cinders. Lux felt the breath of the thing’s demise, an energy so vile, so hateful, and so inhumanly evil, that it beggared belief. Magistrate Giselle collapsed, her flesh ashen, weeping in terror.

Lux dropped to one knee as myriad visions of horror arose within her—choking fears of being buried alive, of being driven from Demacia by her brother, of a thousand ways to die a slow and painful death. The light within her fought these terrible sights, and Lux’s breath shimmered with motes of light as she spat the taste of death from her mouth.

“Lux…”

Garen spoke in a whisper, and it took her a moment to figure out how she could possibly have heard him over the cheering crowd. Lux turned from the sobbing magistrate, and felt magic race around her body in a surge tide.

The crowd stood utterly silent.

“Lux, what’s going on?” said Garen.

She blinked away the abhorrent images still searing her mind and followed Garen’s gaze as the warriors of the Dauntless Vanguard rushed to stand with their leader.

Then, one after another, the people of Fossbarrow fell to the ground, as if the life had simply fled their bodies.

Lux clenched her teeth and pushed herself to her feet.

The sun had all but vanished behind Fossbarrow’s western wall and her mouth fell open as she saw black, vaporous shapes lift from the town’s unconscious inhabitants. No two were alike, and Lux saw an assembling host of shades in Noxian armor, vast spiders, many-headed serpents, towering shadow warriors with frost axes, great drakes with teeth like obsidian daggers and scores of things that defied sane description.

“Sorcery,” declared Garen.

The shadow creatures closed on the platform, sliding through the air without a sound. An oncoming tide of nightmarish horrors.

“What are they?” asked Varya.

“The darkest nightmares of Fossbarrow’s people given form,” said Lux.

“How can you know that?” demanded Sabator.

“I don’t, not for sure, but it feels right,” said Lux, knowing she couldn’t stay here to fight. Besides, the Dauntless Vanguard could hold their own here. She placed her thumb and forefinger against her bottom lip and whistled a summoning note before turning to Garen.

“I think I might know how to stop this,” she said. “Maybe…”

“How?” said Garen, without taking his eyes off the approaching shadowhost.

“Never mind how,” said Lux. “Just… try not to die before I get back.”

Lux ran to the edge of the platform as Starfire galloped through the creatures. Her steed passed unmolested, its dreams and nightmares of no interest to the power now abroad in Fossbarrow. Lux leapt from the platform and grabbed Starfire’s mane, swinging onto his back in one smooth motion.

“Where are you going?” demanded Garen.

The horse reared and Lux twisted in the saddle to answer her brother.

“I told you,” she shouted. “I’m going to pay my respects to Great Grandfather Fossian!”

Garen watched his sister gallop through the dark host, carefully navigating a path through the town’s fallen inhabitants. Grasping claws of shadow creatures reached for her, but she and Starfire evaded every attack. Lux rode clear of the monstrous host, and paused just long enough to wave at him.

“For Demacia!” she shouted.

The Dauntless Vanguard clashed their swords against their shields.

“For Demacia!” they answered as one.

Lux turned her horse and galloped from the town.

Garen rolled his shoulders in anticipation of the rigor of close-quarters battle and lifted his sword.

“Lockstep!” he yelled, and his warriors took up their battle stance. Varya and Rodian stood to his left, Sabator and Diadoro to his right.

“We are the Dauntless Vanguard,” said Garen, lowering his sword so its quillons framed his piercing eyes. “Let courage and a keen eye guide your blades.”

Oil-black shade-hounds were the first to reach the platform, leaping upward with tearing fangs and flashing teeth. Garen and the Dauntless Vanguard met them with shields locked and blades bared. A hammering wall of iron beat them back. Though their enemies were wrought from darkness and spite, they fought with ferocious strength and skill. Garen stepped in and thrust his blade into a writhing beast’s haunches, tearing through to where its spine ought to be. The monster’s form exploded into black dust with a shriek of anguish.

Garen spun his sword up and pulled back in an oblique turn. His sword deflected another beast’s snapping jaw. He rolled his wrists and lowered his shoulder into its attack. He pushed the thing back and down. He stamped its chest and the beast roared as it burst apart. Garen’s sword snapped back up to block a crushing blow from what looked like the silhouette of a towering Freljordian warrior. The impact drove him to his knees.

“I will fight as long as I stand!” he said through gritted teeth, straightening his legs with a roar and hammering his pommel into the savage warrior’s horned skull. Ashes burst from the shadow, and Garen spun to drive his sword into the belly of another beast.

Sabator decapitated a slavering hound as Diadoro slammed his shield down on a hissing serpent, splitting its body in half. Varya hammered the hilt of her sword into the snapping fangs of a faceless shadow warrior as Rodian drove his sword into his twin’s foe.

With every killing blow, the shadow creatures burst into amber-limned ashes. Garen’s sword flashed and the silver blade plunged into the body of a scorpion-like monster.

A slash of dark talons came at Garen’s head. Sabator’s shield parried the attack. Varya chopped her blade through the monster’s legs and it burst apart. A hideous, limping creature hurled itself at Rodian, and he thrust his blade hard into its featureless face. It screeched as it died. But for every shadow they destroyed, more always took their place.

“Back to back!” roared Garen, and the pauldrons of the five warriors clashed together. They fought shoulder to shoulder in a circle of steel, a beacon of light against the darkness.

“Show them the strength of Demacia!”

Lux rode hard through the forest, trees flashing past to either side in a blur. It was reckless to gallop through the forest at such speed, but the shadows assailing Garen and the Dauntless Vanguard would keep coming. Human imaginations were a depthless well of nightmares—fear of death, fear of infirmity, or fear of losing a loved one.

She followed the route she had taken only this morning, hoping Starfire remembered the way more clearly than she did. Together, they flew through the night, eventually reaching the crossroads where the roads diverged. Ignoring the roads east and west, Starfire leapt the overgrown bracken that all but obscured the path north.

The path to Great Grandfather Fossian’s tomb.

Even with her mount’s surefootedness, Lux was forced to slow her pace as the path wound its way through steep-sided gullies and up rocky glens. The closer she came to the tomb, the more the landscape began to change, taking on an altogether different character—like something from a tale told to frighten small children. The trees wept a sickly black sap, their branches gnarled and twisted into clawed hands that plucked at her hair and cloak. Gaps in the boles of trees resembled fanged mouths, and venomous spiders spun cloying webs in their high branches. The ground underfoot became spongy and damp with brackish pools of stagnant water—like a grove abandoned by one of the fae folk.

Starfire stopped before the entrance to a shadow-wreathed clearing and threw back his head, nostrils flaring in fear.

“Easy, boy,” she said. “Fossian’s tomb is just ahead. Only a few more steps.”

But the horse would not be cajoled into another inch forward.

“Fine,” said Lux. “I’ll go myself.”

She slid off the horse’s back and entered the clearing. Moonlight filtering through the clouds gave off just enough illumination for her to see.

The mound of Fossian’s tomb was a shallow hill of grass that looked black in the gloom, its summit crowned with a rough cairn of stacked stone. Dark smoke drifted into a sky that swirled with images of ancient horrors awaiting their time to claim the world. Dark lines snaked across the great stone slab telling of Fossian’s deeds.

A young boy, no more than twelve or thirteen, sat cross-legged before it, his thin body swaying as if in a trance. Tendrils of black smoke coiled from the tomb, wrapping around his neck like strangling vines.

“Luca?” said Lux.

The boy’s swaying ceased at the sound of her voice.

He turned to face Lux, and she faltered at the sight of his soulless, black eyes. A cruel grin split his face.

“Not anymore,” he said.

A looming spider with hook-bladed legs reared over Garen, its bloated belly rippling with distended eyes and snapping jaws. He split its thorax and kicked the flailing creature from the platform even as its body disintegrated.

Legs braced, Garen felt a searing cold in the muscle of his shoulder as a black claw plunged through his pauldron. The metal did not buckle or crack. The claw passed through unimpeded, and Garen felt a sickening revulsion spread through him. He smelled rank grave dirt—the reek of fetid earth over a centuries-old sepulchre. He fought through the pain as he had always been trained to do.

Rodian fell as a hooking blade slid under his guard and plunged into his side. He cried out in pain, his shield lowering.

“Straighten up!” yelled Garen. “Shake the pain.”

Rodian straightened, chastened at his lapse, as the shadow creatures barged into one another in their frenzy to reach the Dauntless Vanguard.

“They never stop coming!” cried Varya.

“Then we never stop fighting!” answered Garen.

Though she wanted nothing more than to flee this haunted clearing, Lux walked toward the young boy, her hand slipping to the dagger at her hip. His eyes rippled with darkness, nightmares waiting to be born from the rich loam of human frailty. She felt a cold, calculating intelligence appraise her.

Luca nodded and smoothly rose to his feet. Muttering shadows gathered at the edge of the clearing, monsters and terrors lurking just out of sight as they moved to surround her.

“You have nightmares aplenty,” he said. “I think I’ll crack your skull open with a rock to scoop them out.”

“Luca, this isn’t you,” she said.

“Tell me, who do you think it is?”

“The demon in that tomb,” said Lux. “I don’t think it was as dead as people thought when they buried Fossian.”

Luca grinned, his mouth spreading so wide the skin at the corners of his mouth tore. Rivulets of blood ran down his chin.

“Not dead at all,” he said. “Just sleeping. Healing. Renewing. Preparing.”

“Preparing for what?” said Lux, forcing herself to take another step forward.

The boy tutted and wagged an admonishing finger. Lux froze, unable to take another step. Her fingers were locked around her dagger’s grip.

“Now, now,” he said, bending to pick up a sharpened stone. “Let me cut out a nightmare first.”

“Luca,” said Lux, unable to move, but still able to speak. “You have to fight it. I know you can. You have magic within you. I know you have—that’s why you ran away isn’t it? That’s why you came here, to be next to someone who defeated a demon.”

The thing wearing the flesh of the boy laughed, and the grass withered around it at the sound.

“His tears were like water in a desert,” it said, coming forward and circling her as if seeing where best he might crack her skull open. “They woke me, nourished me. I had slept for so long I had forgotten just how sweet the suffering of mortals tasted.”

The boy reached out and stroked her cheek. His touch sent a cold spike of terror through Lux. He lifted his finger away, and a smoky thread followed. She gagged as the fear of drowning filled her. A tear rolled down her cheek.

“I made him sleep, and his dreams were ripe with horrors to be made real,” said the boy. “His power is slight, a glowing ember compared to the furnace that burns in your flesh. It gave me little in the way of real substance, but childish fears are a banquet after I had gone so long without. Demacia is a terror to his kind. To your kind.”

Lux felt her magic recoil from this creature, the darkness filling the clearing pressing her light down into little more than a spark. She tried to restrain it, knowing that even a single uncontrolled spark could begin a conflagration that would devour an entire forest.

“They hated him. Luca knew that. You mortals are always so quick to fear the things you don’t understand. So easy to fan those flames and draw forth the most exquisite visions of terror.”

Lux flexed her fingers on the leather of her dagger’s handle, the motion painful. But pain meant she had control. She used it. She nursed the building spark within her, kept it apart from her terror, and let it seep slowly back into her body.

“Luca, please,” she said, forcing each word out. “You have to fight it. Don’t let it use you.”

The boy laughed. “He can’t hear you. And even if he could, you know he’s right to fear what his own people would do if they discovered the truth. That he is the very thing they hate. A mage. You of all people should know how that feels.”

Pain spread along Lux’s arms, and moved through her chest. The boy’s black eyes narrowed as he sensed the build up of magic.

“I know all too well,” she said. “But I do not let fear define me.”

Lux thrust her dagger toward the boy with a scream of pain. She didn’t want to hurt him, only to let the metal of the blade touch him and pass a measure of her light to him. Her limbs burned, and the blow was clumsy. The boy jumped back—too slow. The flat of the blade brushed the skin of his cheek.

The moment of connection was fleeting, but it was enough.

The Dauntless Vanguard fought with brutally efficient sword cuts and battering blows from their shields, but they could not fight forever.

Eventually, the shadows would drag them down.

A pack of squirming things with grasping arms attacked from the left, fouling Diadoro’s swings with their bodies. A blow glanced off his shield and hammered into his shoulder guard. He grunted and punched his sword into the belly of a dark-fleshed beast with the head of a dragon.

“Step in!” admonished Sabator. “Keep them at bay!”

Garen threw a sword cut into the writhing darkness, a backstroke to the guts and a thrust to the chest. In deep and twist. Don’t stop moving. Movement to the right—a howling insect-like skull with fangs like daggers. He slashed it in the eyes. It screamed and burst apart in smoke and cinders.

Two more came at him. No room to swing. Another pommel strike, stove in the first’s chest. Stab the other in the belly, blade out. The monsters withdrew. Garen stepped back, level with Varya and Rodian. Each was slathered from helm to greaves in ash.

“We hold the line,” said Garen.

“For how long?” asked Diadoro.

Garen looked to the north, where a distant light shone in the forest.

“As long as Lux needs,” said Garen with a warning glance.

And the shadows came at them again.

The light poured from Lux and into Luca. Blinding and all but uncontrolled radiance exploded through the clearing. The monster within the young boy was torn loose from his flesh with a howling screech of fury and desperation. Raw white fire enfolded Lux, becoming everything around them, in its own way as terrifyingly powerful as the darkness. Its power was magnificent, but she could barely cling on to its howling radiance as it roared through her. The darkness fled before its awesome power, its shadow banished by the incandescence of the light. The growing radiance kept growing until the forest and the tomb were nowhere to be seen, only an endless expanse of pale nothingness. Sitting in front of her was a young boy with his knees drawn up to his chest. He looked up, and his eyes were those of a small, frightened child.

“Can you help me?” he said.

“I can,” said Lux, walking over and sitting next to him. “But you have to come back with me.”

He shook his head. “I can’t. I’m too scared. The nightmare-man is out there.”

“Yes, he is, but together we can beat him,” she said. “I’ll help you.”

“You will?”

“If you’ll let me,” said Lux with a smile. “I know what you’re going through, how you’re afraid of what’ll happen if people know what you can do. Trust me, it’s happening to me too. But you don’t have to be afraid. What’s inside you? It’s not evil. It’s not darkness. It’s light. Maybe it’s a light we can learn to control together.”

She held out her hand.

“You promise?” he said.

“I promise,” said Lux. “You’re not alone, Luca.”

The boy gripped her hand like a drowning man grasping a rope.

The light swelled of its own volition, impossibly bright, and when it faded, Lux saw the clearing was just as she remembered it from her visit years ago. Green grass, a hillock with a stone cairn and a slab describing Fossian’s deeds. The darkness that had so transformed the forest was now absent. The clawed trees were nothing more than ordinary, the sky a midnight-blue vault of twinkling stars. The sound of night-hunting birds echoed from the forest canopy.

Luca still held her hand and smiled up at her.

“Is he gone? The nightmare-man?”

“I think so,” she said, feeling the bitter taste of dark power diminish. “For now, at least. I think maybe it’s not in the tomb anymore, but it’s gone from here. That’s what’s important right now.”

“Can we go home now?” asked Luca.

“Yes,” said Lux. “We can go home.”

Numbing cold filled Garen. His limbs were leaden, pierced through by shadow claws. Ice running in his veins chilled him to the very heart of his soul as his vision grayed.

Sabator and Diadoro were down, skin darkening. Rodian was on his knees, a clawed hand at his throat. Varya fought on, her shield arm hanging uselessly at her side, but her sword arm still strong.

Garen tasted ash and despair. He had never known defeat. Not like this. Even when he once believed Jarvan was dead, he’d found the will to continue. Now, his life was being sapped with every breath.

A towering figure reared up before him, a horned shade with an axe of darkness. It looked like a savage warrior he had slain many years ago. Garen raised his sword, ready to die with a Demacian war cry on his lips.

A summer wind blew. A strange brightness shone in the northern sky like a sunrise.

The shadow creatures faded until they vanished entirely, like smoke in the wind.

Garen let out a breath, barely able to believe he still could. Rodian sucked in a lungful of air as Sabator and Diadoro picked themselves up from the ground. They looked around, amazed, as the last remaining shadows were banished and the townsfolk began to stir.

“What happened?” gasped Varya.

“I don’t know,” said Garen.

With Luca reunited with his grateful mother, Lux and Garen rode toward Fossbarrow’s south gate at the head of the Dauntless Vanguard. Their mood was subdued, and a palpable guilt hung over every person they passed on their way from the town. None of Fossbarrow’s inhabitants could remember anything after the execution, but all knew they had played a part in a man’s death.

“May the Veiled One welcome you to her breast,” said Lux as they passed Aldo Dayan’s burial procession.

“Do you really think he deserves such mercy?” said Garen. “He killed innocents.”

“That’s true,” agreed Lux, “but do you understand why?”

“Does it matter? He was guilty of a crime and paid the price.”

“Of course it matters. Aldo Dayan was their friend and neighbor,” said Lux. “They drank beer with him in the tavern, shared jokes with him on the street. Their sons and daughters played with his children. In their rush to judgment, any chance of understanding what caused his murderous acts was lost.”

Garen kept his gaze fixed on the road ahead.

“They don’t want understanding,” he said at last. “They don’t need it.”

“How can you say that?”

“We live in a world that does not allow for such nuances, Lux. Demacia is beset on all sides by terrible foes—savage tribes in the north, a rapacious empire in the east, and the power of dark mages who threaten the very fabric of our realm. We deal in absolutes by necessity. Allowing doubt to cloud our judgment leaves us vulnerable. And I cannot allow us to become vulnerable.”

“Even at such a cost?”

“Even so,” agreed Garen. “It’s why I do what I do.”

“For Demacia?”

“For Demacia,” said Garen.

Luxanna—or Lux, as she prefers to be called—grew up in the Demacian city of High Silvermere, along with her older brother Garen. They were born to the prestigious Crownguard family, which had served for generations as protectors of the kings of Demacia. Their grandfather saved the king’s life at the Battle of Storm’s Fang, and their aunt Tianna was named commander of the elite Dauntless Vanguard regiment before Lux was born.

Garen took to his family’s role with fervor, joining the military when he was still little more than a boy. Lux, in his absence, was expected to help run the family’s many estates—a task she resented, even as a young child. She wanted to explore the world, to see what lay beyond the walls and borders of Demacia. She idolized Garen, but railed against his insistence that she put her own ambitions aside.

To the endless frustration of Lux’s tutors, who sought to prepare her for a life of dutiful service to the Crownguard family, she would question their every teaching, examine differing perspectives, and seek out knowledge far beyond what they were prepared for. Even so, few could find it in themselves to stay angry at Lux, with her zest for life and intoxicating optimism.

Little did any of them know a time of change was approaching. Magic had once brought Runeterra to the brink of annihilation, and Demacia had been founded as a place where such powers were forbidden. Many of the kingdom’s folktales told of pure hearts turned dark by the lure of magic. Indeed, Lux and Garen’s uncle had been slain by a rogue mage some years earlier.

And there were fearful whispers, rumors from beyond the great mountains, that magic was rising once more in the world…

Riding home one fateful night, Lux and her horse were attacked by a ravenous sabrewulf pack. In a moment of fear and desperation, the young girl let loose a torrent of magical light from deep within her, routing the beasts but leaving her shivering in fear. Magic, the terror of Demacian myths, was as much a part of Lux as her Crownguard lineage.

Fear and doubt gnawed at her. Would she become evil? Was she an abomination, to be imprisoned or exiled? At the very least, if her powers were discovered, it would see the Crownguard name disgraced forever.

With Garen spending more time away from High Silvermere, Lux found herself alone in the halls of their family home. Still, over time, she became more familiar with her magic, and her sleepless nights—fists clenched, willing her inner light to fade—became fewer and fewer. She began experimenting in secret, playing with sunbeams in the courtyards, bending them into solid form, and even creating tiny, glowing figures in her palm. She resolved to keep it a secret, as much as she could.

When she was sixteen, Lux traveled with her parents Pieter and Augatha to their formal residence in the Great City of Demacia, to witness Garen’s investiture into the honored ranks of the Dauntless Vanguard.

The city dazzled Lux. It was a monument to the noble ideals of the kingdom, with every citizen protected and cared for; and it was there that Lux learned of the Illuminators, a charitable religious order working to help the sick and the poor. Between her family’s courtly engagements, she became close with a knight of the order named Kahina, who also taught Lux more martial skills, sparring and training with her in the gardens of the Crownguard manor.

Spending more time in the capital, Lux has finally begun to learn about the wider world—its diversity, and its history. She now understands that the Demacian way of life is not the only way, and with clear eyes she can see her love for her homeland standing alongside her desire to see it made more just… and perhaps a little more accepting of mages like her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The children’s eager faces say it all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unfortunately, Ornn did not know any of these things.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One day, Volibear came to visit his brother Ornn.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“They are a reflection of your own image.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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