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Renekton was born to fight. From a young age, it was obvious he had no fear, regularly brawling with much older children. It was usually his pride that led to these confrontations—Renekton was unable to back down, or let any insult pass. While his older brother, Nasus, disapproved of his street-fighting, Renekton relished it.

Nasus eventually left to join the prestigious Collegium of the Sun, and Renekton’s skirmishes became more serious. Fearing his brother’s violent nature would see him imprisoned or in an early grave, Nasus helped him enlist in the Shuriman army. Officially, Renekton was too young, but Nasus made sure this was conveniently overlooked.

The discipline of military life was a blessing. Renekton fought in numerous wars of conquest to expand the empire—his ferocity and toughness were still evident, but his honor and bravery became renowned. Nasus, now a celebrated general and tactician, would often say that he planned many great battles, but it was Renekton who won them.

Indeed, after saving the isolated city of Zuretta, Renekton was made a captain by the emperor himself, and named Gatekeeper of Shurima. Outnumbered ten to one, he and a small contingent had faced the enemy in the remote, rocky passes to the south, to buy time for the city to be evacuated. It was a battle none had expected Renekton to survive, let alone win... yet he held out long enough for a relief force led by Nasus to arrive, and the invading forces were routed.

Through decades of service, Renekton’s reputation came to rival even the god-warriors of the Ascended Host, his presence on the battlefield an inspiration to those fighting alongside him, and terrifying to his foes. Still, he was a grizzled and battle-scarred veteran of middling years when word reached him that his brother was close to death.

He raced back to the capital to find Nasus a pale shadow of his former self, having been struck down by a debilitating wasting malady. The sickness was incurable.

Nevertheless, the general’s greatness was recognized by one and all. Beyond his military acumen, Nasus had curated the empire’s great libraries, and compiled or translated many of the finest literary works of antiquity. Such a man could not be allowed to pass, and it was decreed that he was worthy of Ascension.

The whole city gathered in witness, but Nasus no longer had the strength to climb onto the dais before the Sun Disc. Without thought for his own safety, Renekton lifted his brother in his arms, and climbed the final steps, fully expecting to be obliterated in the process. He was just a warrior, after all, and he knew Shurima would need Nasus in the years to come.

However, Renekton was not destroyed. Beneath the blinding radiance of the Sun Disc, both brothers were raised up and remade, and when the light faded, two mighty god-warriors stood before the crowds—Nasus in his lean, jackal-headed body, and Renekton as an immense reptile. The jackal was often regarded as the most clever and cunning of beasts, and the fearless aggression of the crocodile fit Renekton perfectly.

Renekton had been a mighty hero before, but now he possessed power beyond mortal understanding. He led Shurima’s armies to many bloody victories, neither giving nor expecting any mercy. His legend spread far beyond the borders of the empire, and it was his enemies that knew him as “the Butcher of the Sands”, a title he embraced.

But there were some—Nasus among them—who came to believe that a portion of Renekton’s humanity had been lost in his transformation. He seemed crueler, taking ever greater pleasure in the spilling of blood, and there were whispers of many battlefield atrocities. Nevertheless, he remained a staunch defender of Shurima, faithfully serving a succession of emperors, even through the rebellion of Icathia and the horrifying war that followed.

Some years later, it was decided that the young emperor Azir would join the ranks of the Ascended Host, and become the immortal ruler his people deserved.

The results were catastrophic.

Renekton and Nasus were each more than a day’s journey from the capital when it happened, and they arrived to find the glorious city in ruins. The Sun Disc was failing, drained of all its power. At the center of the carnage, they found the emperor’s treacherous magus, Xerath—now a malevolent being of pure energy.

The brothers fought hard, but knowing that they could not destroy Xerath, Renekton finally wrestled him into the Tomb of the Emperors beneath the city, and bade his brother seal them inside. Knowing there was no other way, Nasus reluctantly did as his brother ordered.

Xerath and Renekton continued their battle. For uncounted centuries they stalked one another through the lightless depths, as the once-great civilization of Shurima turned to dust in the world above. Xerath taunted his adversary, whispering poison in Renekton’s ear, and gradually, his viperous words began to take hold. He convinced Renekton that Nasus, jealous of his success, had leapt at the chance to be rid of him, and enjoy immortality alone.

Piece by piece, Renekton’s sanity cracked. Xerath drove a wedge into these cracks, twisting his perception of what was real and what was imagined. When the Tomb of the Emperors was finally opened by greedy mortal scavengers, Renekton roared his fury and thundered out into the desert, sniffing the air for his brother’s scent.

But Shurima has changed much in his absence. The Ascended Host is no more, leaving the people scattered and leaderless, for the most part. Though he cares little for such things, Renekton has attracted followers among the most fierce and bloodthirsty of the desert raiders... even if he cannot always tell friend from foe in his frequent, deranged frenzies.

And while there are moments when he resembles the proud, honorable hero of the past, most often Renekton is little more than a devolved, hate-maddened beast, driven on by the thirst for blood and vengeance.

Nasus’ brilliance was recognized long before he was chosen to join the ranks of the Ascended. A voracious student, he memorized and critiqued the greatest works of Shuriman history and philosophy before he was ten.

However, his passion was not shared by his younger brother Renekton, who tended to bore quickly, and fight with other local children instead. Nonetheless, the brothers were close, and Nasus kept an eye on Renekton, ensuring he didn’t get into too much trouble.

When he came of age, Nasus was welcomed into the prestigious and exclusive Collegium of the Sun. He had the best teachers in the empire, and developed a keen understanding of military strategy and logistics, eventually becoming the youngest general in history. While a competent soldier, his genius lay not in fighting battles, but in planning them.

A deeply empathetic man, Nasus took his responsibilities seriously, always ensuring his soldiers were well provisioned, paid on time, and treated fairly. He guided the emperor’s mortal armies to countless victories, and was respected by all who served beneath him. Sure enough, his brother Renekton also entered military service, and rose through the ranks as a trusted and capable warrior under Nasus’ command.

But despite his triumphs and accolades, Nasus did not enjoy war. He understood its importance—for now, at least—in the empire’s rapid expansion, yet firmly believed his greatest contribution to Shurima was the knowledge they could gather and preserve in the wake of each conquest. At his urging, all the books, scrolls, and teachings of the cultures they defeated were added to libraries and repositories throughout the empire, to bring wisdom and enlightenment to generations still to come.

After decades of dutiful service, Nasus was cruelly struck by a terrible wasting sickness, and his physician solemnly declared that the general would be dead within a week.

The people of Shurima were bereft, for Nasus was their brightest star and beloved by all. The emperor himself pleaded with Setaka of the Ascended Host for the great man’s deeds to be weighed before the Sun Disc.

After a day and night, Setaka’s emissaries confirmed that Nasus would be blessed with Ascension. He would have to undergo the rituals at once, despite his infirmity.

Renekton, now a warleader in his own right, raced home to be with his brother. He was shocked to find Nasus’ flesh wasted away, his bones fragile as glass. So weak was he that, as Sun Disc’s golden radiance streamed over the dais, Nasus was unable to climb the final steps into its light.

Renekton’s love for his brother was stronger than any sense of self-preservation. He carried the weakly protesting Nasus onto the dais, and would willingly accept oblivion.

However, Renekton was not destroyed as expected. When the light faded, not one but two god-warriors emerged—both brothers had not only survived, but flourished. Nasus stood as a towering, jackal-headed avatar of wisdom and strength, while Renekton was a muscled behemoth in the likeness of a crocodile.

Nasus had been gifted powers far beyond mortal understanding. The greatest boon of his Ascension was the countless lifetimes he could now spend in study and contemplation... though this would also eventually come to be his greatest curse.

But he was more immediately concerned by the increased savagery he saw within Renekton. At the siege of Nashramae, finally bringing the city under Shuriman rule, Nasus learned that his brother had razed the grand library and massacred all who stood against him. This was the closest the brothers ever came to bloodshed, facing one another in the rubble, weapons drawn. Only under Nasus’ stern, disappointed gaze did Renekton’s bloodlust dwindle, and he turned away in shame.

War with the rebel state of Icathia changed many of the Ascended. The horrors they witnessed left them hollow, and quicker to anger. Nasus undertook centuries of solitary study as he tried to comprehend what had happened to his immortal brethren, and what it could mean for the future.

When the Ascension of Emperor Azir went terribly wrong, Nasus and Renekton were both far from the capital, and returned with all haste... but they were too late. Over the bodies of countless Shuriman dead, they fought Xerath—that twisted, malevolent being of pure energy who had betrayed Azir—yet were unable to slay him. Filled with rage, and perhaps seeking to atone for Nashramae, Renekton wrestled Xerath into the Tomb of the Emperors beneath the city, bidding Nasus seal them in.

Nasus refused, desperate to find any other way, but there was none. With a heavy heart, he committed Xerath and his brother to the fathomless darkness for all eternity.

Drained of its power by Xerath’s sorcery, the Sun Disc fell, and every remaining god-warrior felt its loss in their immortal heart. The divine waters flowing from the city’s oasis ran dry, bringing death and famine to all Shurima. For a time, the other Ascended tried to hold the fractured empire together, before their countless rivalries led them to fight among themselves. Withdrawing entirely, Nasus bore a heavy burden of guilt, stalking the empty ruins that were slowly being swallowed by the desert, and lamenting everything that had been lost.

Centuries passed, and Nasus all but forgot his former life and purpose... until the moment when the Tomb of the Emperors was rediscovered by mortals, and its seal broken. He did not know how, but he knew Xerath was free.

Ancient vigor reawakened in Nasus, and yet even he was stunned to see Azir reborn, and the Sun Disc raised once more from the sands. Though Xerath was still a grave threat, Nasus knew the new god-emperor would have great need of guidance and counsel in the years ahead.

And hope stirred within him for the first time in millennia. Did he dare believe he might also be reunited with his beloved brother, Renekton?

Xerath is an Ascended Magus of ancient Shurima, a being of arcane energy writhing in the broken shards of a magical sarcophagus. For millennia, he was trapped beneath the desert sands, but the rise of Shurima freed him from his ancient prison. Driven insane with power, he now seeks to take what he believes is rightfully his and replace the upstart civilizations of the world with one fashioned in his image.

The boy who would eventually be called Xerath was born a nameless slave in Shurima thousands of years ago. He was the son of captured scholars, with only the prospect of endless servitude ahead. His mother taught him letters and numbers, while his father told him tales from history in the hopes that such skills might allow him a better life. The boy vowed he would not end up bent-backed and whipped like every other slave.

When the boy’s father was crippled during the excavations for the foundations of a monument to the Emperor’s favorite horse, he was left to die at the site of the accident. Fearing her son would suffer a similar fate, the boy’s mother begged an esteemed tomb architect to take him on as an apprentice. Though at first reluctant, the architect was impressed with the boy’s eye for detail and innate understanding of mathematics and language, and accepted. The boy never saw his mother again.

He was a swift learner and his master dispatched him on errands to the Great Library of Nasus to retrieve specific texts and plans on an almost daily basis. On one trip, the boy met Azir, the least-favored son of the emperor. Azir was struggling to read a difficult passage in an ancient text, and, despite knowing that to talk to royalty was to invite death, the boy paused to help the young prince with its complex grammar. In that moment, a tentative friendship was established, and over the coming months that friendship only grew stronger.

Though slaves were forbidden names, Azir gave one to the boy. He named him Xerath, which means ‘one who shares,’ though that name was only ever spoken between the two boys. Azir saw to it that Xerath was appointed to his household’s slaves, and made him his personal attendant. Their shared love of knowledge saw them devour texts from the library and become as close as brothers. Xerath was Azir’s constant companion, learning all he could from this new proximity to culture, power and knowledge, finally daring to dream that Azir might one day free him.

On the annual tour of the emperor’s dominion, assassins struck the royal caravan as it spent the night at a well-known oasis. Xerath saved Azir from an assassin’s blade, but Azir’s brothers were all slain, leaving the young prince a heartbeat away from Shurima’s throne. As a slave, Xerath could expect no reward for his deed, but Azir promised that one day they would be as brothers.

In the wake of the assassination attempt, Shurima endured years of horror and fear of the emperor’s retribution. Xerath knew enough of history and the workings of the Shuriman court to understand that Azir’s life hung by the slenderest of threads. That he was heir to the throne meant nothing, for the emperor hated Azir for living while his more beloved sons had died. Of more immediate danger, the emperor’s wife was still young enough to bear other children, and thus far she had borne many healthy sons. The odds were good that she would produce another male heir for her husband, and as soon as she did, Azir’s life was forfeit.

Though Azir was a scholar at heart, Xerath persuaded him that to survive, he must also learn to fight. This Azir did, and in return the young heir elevated Xerath, insisting he continue his education. Both youths excelled, and Xerath proved to be an exceptionally gifted pupil, one who took to the pursuit of knowledge with gusto. Xerath became Azir’s confidant and right hand man, a position unheard of for a mere slave. This position gave him great - and some said, undue - influence over the young prince, who came to rely on Xerath’s judgement more each day.

Xerath bent his every effort into seeking out knowledge wherever he could find it, no matter the cost, no matter its source. He unlocked long-sealed libraries, delved into forgotten vaults and consulted with mystics entombed deep beneath the sands; all to further his knowledge and ambition, both of which grew with unchecked rapidity. Whenever the whispers around court that spoke of his delving into unsavory places grew too loud to ignore, he would find cunning means to silence them. That Azir never mentioned these whispers was, to Xerath, tacit approval of how he was keeping his emperor safe.

Years passed, and Xerath took ever darker steps to keep the emperor’s wife from carrying a child to term, using his nascent magical abilities to corrupt every infant in the womb. Without rivals to the throne, Azir would be safe. When rumors of a curse arose, Xerath ensured they were never spoken again, and oft-times those who had voiced such suspicions vanished without trace. By now, Xerath’s desire to escape his roots as a slave had become a burning ambition to achieve power of his own, though he justified every murderous act by telling himself he was doing it to keep his friend alive.

Despite Xerath’s best efforts to thwart the queen’s midwives, a new prince of Shurima was brought into the world, but on the night of his birth, Xerath used his growing magical powers to summon the elemental spirits of the deep desert and craft a terrible storm. Xerath brought bolt after bolt of lightning down upon the queen’s chambers, reducing it to burning rubble and killing the queen and her newborn son. The emperor rushed to his queen’s chambers, only to be confronted by Xerath, his hands ablaze with arcane power. The emperor’s guards attacked, but Xerath burned them and the emperor to cindered skeletons. Xerath ensured that the mages of a conquered territory were blamed for these deaths, and Azir’s first act upon taking the throne was to lead a brutal campaign of retribution against its people.

Azir was crowned emperor of Shurima with Xerath at his side, the boy who had once been a nameless slave. Xerath had long dreamed of this moment, and expected Azir to end slavery in Shurima before finally naming him brother. Azir did none of these things, continuing to expand his empire’s borders and deflecting Xerath’s overtures regarding the end of slavery. To Xerath, this was further proof of Shurima’s moral bankruptcy, and he raged at Azir’s breaking of his promise. Azir’s face was thunderous as he reminded Xerath that he was a slave and should remember his place. Something once noble died in Xerath that day, but he bowed in supplication, outwardly accepting Azir’s decision. As Azir continued his campaigns of conquest, Xerath remained at his side, but his every action was carefully designed to increase his influence over a realm he now planned to take for himself. To steal an empire was no small thing, and Xerath knew he needed more power.

The famous legend of Renekton’s Ascension revealed that a mortal did not have to be chosen by the Sun Priests, that anyone could rise up. So Xerath plotted to steal the power of Ascension. No slave could ever stand upon the sun disc, so Xerath fed the Emperor’s vanity, inflating his ego and filling his head with impossible visions of a world-spanning empire. But such a dream would only be possible if Azir could Ascend as the greatest heroes of Shurima had before. In time Xerath’s perseverance paid off, and Azir announced he would undertake the Ascension ritual, that he had earned the right to stand alongside Nasus and Renekton as an Ascended being. The Sun Priests protested, but such was Azir’s hubris that he ordered them to comply on pain of torture and death.

The Day of Ascension arrived and Azir marched toward the Dais of Ascension with Xerath at his side. Nasus and Renekton were absent from the day’s events, for Xerath had arranged a distraction for them by weakening the seal on a magical sarcophagus containing a beast of living fire. When that creature finally broke its bindings, Renekton and Nasus were the only warriors capable of defeating it. Thus Xerath had stripped Azir of the only two beings who might save him from what was to come.

Azir stood beneath the sun disc and in the final moment before the priests began the ritual, events took a turn Xerath had not anticipated. The emperor turned to Xerath and told him that he was now a free man. He and all Shurima’s slaves were now released from their bonds of servitude. He embraced Xerath before naming him his eternal brother. Xerath was stunned. He had been given everything he desired, but the success of his plans hinged upon Azir’s death and nothing was going to dissuade him from acting. Too many pieces were in motion and Xerath had already sacrificed too much to turn back now – no matter how much that part of him wanted to. The emperor’s words pierced the bitterness enclosing Xerath’s heart, but came decades too late. Unaware of his peril, Azir turned as the priests began the ritual and brought down the awesome power of the sun.

With a roar of anger and grief combined, Xerath blasted Azir from his place on the dais, watching through tears as his former friend burned to ash. Xerath took Azir’s place and the light of the sun filled him, reshaping his flesh into that of an Ascended being. But the power of the ritual was not his to take, and the consequences of his betrayal of Azir were devastating. The unbound power of the sun all but destroyed Shurima, sundering its temples and bringing ruination upon the city. Azir’s people were consumed in a terrifying conflagration as the desert rose up to claim the city. The sun disc fell and an empire built by generations of emperors was undone in a single day.

Even as the city burned, Xerath held the sun priests in the grip of his magic, preventing them from ending the ritual. The energies filling him were immense, alloying with his dark sorcery to create a being of incredible power. As he drew ever more of the sun’s power into his body, his mortal flesh was consumed and remade as a glowing vortex of arcane power.

With Xerath’s treachery revealed, Renekton and Nasus rushed to the epicenter of the magical storm destroying the city. They bore with them the magical sarcophagus that had imprisoned the spirit of eternal fire. The Ascended brothers fought their way to the Dais of Ascension just as Xerath fell from the deadly radiance engulfing the city. Before the newly-Ascended Magus could react, they hurled his crackling body within the sarcophagus and sealed it once more with blessed chains and powerful sigils of binding.

But it was not enough. Xerath’s power had been great as a mortal, and that power - combined with the gift of Ascension - made him all but invincible. He shattered the sarcophagus, though its shards and chains remained bound to him. Renekton and Nasus hurled themselves at Xerath, but such was his newfound strength that he fought them both to a standstill. The battle raged throughout the collapsing city, destroying what had not already sunk beneath the sands. The brothers were able to drag Xerath toward the Tomb of Emperors, the greatest mausoleum of Shurima, a vault whose locks and wards were impossible to break and which answered only to the blood of emperors. Renekton wrestled Xerath within and called upon Nasus to seal the vault behind them. Nasus did so with heavy heart, knowing it was the only way to prevent Xerath’s escape. Renekton and Xerath fell into eternal darkness, and there they remained, locked in an endless battle as the once-great civilization of Shurima collapsed.

Uncounted centuries passed and, in time, even Renekton’s mighty strength waned, leaving him vulnerable to Xerath’s influence. With poisoned lies and illusions, Xerath twisted Renekton’s mind, filling him with misplaced bitterness toward Nasus, the faithless brother who had - in Xerath’s fictive narrative - abandoned him so long ago.

When the Tomb of Emperors was finally discovered beneath the desert and broken open by Sivir and Cassiopeia, both Xerath and Renekton were freed in an explosion of sand and rubble. Sensing his brother still lived, Renekton charged from the ruins, his distorted mind leaving him little better than a savage beast. After an age lost to legend, Shurima was reborn, and as it rose majestically from the desert, Xerath felt another soul return to life beneath the sand, one he had thought long dead. Azir was also newly resurrected as one of the Ascended, and Xerath knew there could be no peace for either of them while the other yet lived.

Xerath sought the heart of the desert to regain his strength and understand how the world had changed in the millennia since his imprisonment. His stolen power grew with every passing moment, and he beheld a world ripe for conquest, a world brimming with mortals ready to worship at the feet of a new and terrible god.

Yet for all his newfound power, however far he has come from that nameless slave boy, a part of Xerath knows he is still in chains.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Taliyah had almost forgotten how much she’d missed the furnace heat of Shurima – the sweat and crush of hundreds of people pushing, cursing, haggling and speaking with such passion and speed that outsiders often thought they were fighting.

In all her travels, she’d never found anywhere with the sheer bustle and energy of her homeland. Ionia was wondrous, and the frozen landscapes of the Freljord were stunning in their own way, but the blazing sun of Shurima melted them from her memory as she set foot on the stone wharf of Bel’zhun.

The connection she felt with this land’s bedrock surged through her like one of Babajan’s spiced teas. She’d been grinning from ear to ear as she climbed the steps from the docks, and even passing beneath the black stone of a Noxtoraa couldn’t dampen her spirits.

Taliyah hadn’t stayed long in Bel’zhun. The Noxian warships in the harbor made her too nervous and brought back bad memories. She remained just long enough to buy supplies and catch the latest market-stall rumors carried from the deep desert by trade caravans. Most of it was conflicting and fantastical; visions of sand warriors, blizzards of lightning from clear skies and rivers flowing where no water had run for as far back as anyone could remember.

For the sake of some friendly faces, she left Bel’zhun in the company of a heavily armed caravan of Nerimazeth silk-merchants heading south to Kenethet. She’d endured the rolling motion of the caravan long enough to reach the bone-souks of that notorious city on the northern borders of the Sai before striking out on her own. The caravan master - a whip-thin woman named Shamara, with eyes like polished jet - advised against traveling farther south, but Taliyah told her that her family needed her, and there were no more warnings.

From Kenethet, she pushed ever south, following the winding arc of what people were once again calling the Mother of Life, a great river said to have its source in the capital of the ancient Shuriman empire. With no one around, she could make much better time, traveling with the rock as her steed, and riding its leading edge as she shaped it beneath her in sweeping waves that carried her ever southward toward Vekaura, a city she’d been told was half buried in the sand creeping out from the Sai.

Shamara had dismissed it as little more than a tribal camp built on the ruins of an abandoned city, a meeting place for weary travelers and wandering nomads. But even from a mile away, Taliyah saw she’d been misled; Vekaura was reborn.

If only she hadn’t found the dying woman.

The city’s souk was awash with color and noise. Pungent air rolled down the arched, canvas-awninged street in a wave, freighted with the sound of furious haggling, and the smell of tangy spices and roasted meat. Taliyah pushed her way through the crowds, ignoring the merchants’ extravagant promises and pleas to think of their starving children. A hand grasped her robes, seeking to pull her toward a stall laden with racks of spitted desert vermin, but she pulled away.

Hundreds of people thronged the wide street leading to the broken walls of the city. Aromatic smoke drifted like fog from the bubbling pipes of the old men sitting in doorways like wizened sages. She saw the tribal markings of Barbae, Zagayah and Yesheje, though there were dozens more she didn’t know. Tribesmen who would have sworn enemies back when she’d left Shurima, now walked side by side like brothers in arms.

“A lot’s changed since I’ve been gone,” she whispered to herself.

She had what she’d come for and needed to get back to the ruined building she’d chosen on the eastern edge of the city. She didn’t want to linger any longer than was necessary, but she’d made a promise to keep the injured woman safe, and her mother had always taught her never to break a promise. The Great Weaver took a dim view of such people.

The roughly-woven bag over her shoulder was filled with food; cured meats, oats, bread and cheese, along with two skins of water. More than she would need, but it wasn’t all for her. The gold sewn into the linings of her robes was almost gone, but she knew she wasn’t far now. She had no way of knowing for certain, but felt sure her every step was bringing her nearer to the warm embrace of her mother and father. After that, she wouldn’t need gold, she’d have all she needed right there in the tent with her.

So lost in that pleasant future was Taliyah, that she didn’t notice the big man until she ran into him. She bounced off his unmoving body and landed flat on her backside.

It had felt like walking into a cliff, not an inch of give in it. The people in the souk seemed to know that better than her. They flowed around him like water around a rock in a stream. He was dressed from head to foot in tattered robes that did little to conceal his enormous bulk and height. He held fast to a long, cloth-wrapped staff, its wide head bound in rags. Perhaps he needed it because she saw his legs were strangely angled.

“Excuse me,” she said, looking up, “I didn’t see you.”

He looked down at her, his face hidden in the shadows of an elongated cowl, but didn’t answer. He held out his hand, the fingers swathed in bandages like a plague victim. Taliyah hesitated for only moment, and took the proffered hand.

He lifted her up with barely any effort at all, and she saw a gleam of gold beneath the dusty fabric of his robes before he clasped his hands back within his sleeves.

“Thank you,” said Taliyah.

“You should watch your step, little one,” he said, his voice heavily accented and strangely resonant, as if coming from a depthless well of sadness within him. “Shurima is a dangerous place now.”

He watched the young girl run off through the souk, and turned back toward the cracked walls of Vekaura. The giant blocks only reached his head, and the courses higher were formed of sun-baked bricks painted to match. To the people of Vekaura it must look impressive, but to his eyes it was a poor copy of the real thing.

He strode through the gateway, looking up at the crudely fitted stone overhead. A water vendor, standing in the midst of a brass contraption of spinning wheels that dispensed gritty water into bottles of green glass, looked up as he passed.

“Water? Fresh from the Mother of-” said the vendor, but the words died in his throat at the sight the towering form before him.

He knew he should keep moving. The words scrawled in blood on the walls of the Astrologer’s Tower had guided him here, and the magus would also be drawn to this place. He sensed the presence of one of the Ascended Bloodline in Vekaura, one who could trace their lineage back to the days before the empire that stretched from ocean to ocean and beyond was brought to ruin. To find that person before his enemy would be crucial, for the blood of Ancient Shurima was both rare and potent. It had brought Azir back from oblivion; and in the wrong hands, could bring doom to the reborn Shurima.

Yes, he should keep moving – but he did not.

“You trade among ghosts of the past,” he said.

“Ghosts?” said the vendor, his voice wavering in fear.

“This archway,” he said, jabbing his staff toward the roof of the arch. Dust fell in veils through the cracks from the men walking on the ramparts above. “Exiled craftsmen from lost Icathia built it. Each stone was cut and fitted with such precision that not a drop of mortar was required to lock it in place.”

“I...I did not know that.”

“You mortals forget the past and consign to legend that which ought to be remembered,” he said, the bitterness of centuries lost in the deep desert threatening to become violent anger. “Did I not build the Great Library to guard against such failures of remembrance?”

“Please, great lord,” said the water vendor, pressing his back to the wall of the gateway. “You speak of myths of ancient times.”

“To you, but when I first came here, the walls were newly raised, two hundred feet of polished marble, every stone pristine and veined with gold. My brother and I entered the city in triumph at the head of ten thousand gold-armored soldiers with burnished spears. We marched through this gateway to the cheers of the city’s people.”

He let out a rumbling sigh before continuing, “A year later, it was all gone. It was the end of everything. Or perhaps it was the beginning. I have turned from the world so long I can no longer tell.”

The water vendor paled, squinting in an attempt to penetrate the darkness beneath his cowl. The man’s eyes widened.

“You’re the Lost Son of the Desert!” said the vendor. “You’re… Nasus.”

“I am,” he said, turning away and entering the city, “but there is another far more lost than I.”

Nasus followed the crowds moving through the city toward the temple at its heart, trying not to notice their stares. His bulk alone would attract attention, but the water vendor would by now have spread his identity far and wide. Shurima had always been a place of secrets, none of which cared to remain buried for long. By the time he reached the center of the city, he’d be surprised if the entire population did not know his name. Yes, it had been foolish to stop, but the vendor’s lack of regard for history offended the scholar in Nasus.

Like the wall and gateway, Vekaura’s interior was a shadow of its former glory. Azir’s mother had been born here, and the young emperor had been lavish in his gifts to its people. Stepped gardens and flowers brought from every corner of the empire garlanded its structures in vivid colors and wondrous scents. Its towers gleamed with silver and jade, and cool water flowed from the great temple, running along great aqueducts in the naive belief its bounty would never end.

The passing millennia had worn the city down to its exposed skeleton of stone, its once magnificent structures reduced to ruins. Those ruins had been built upon over the last few centuries by those who still clung to the old ways, believing their future might be saved by revering the past. As Nasus followed the growing crowds, he saw only crude imitations of an all but forgotten memory.

Buildings planned by master craftsmen were now crooked parodies of their former glory. Walls once fashioned from square-cut granite were built over in timber and crudely shaped blocks. The city’s original outline was still there, but Nasus felt like he was moving through a nightmare, where once familiar surroundings were skewed in new and strange forms, where everything was twisted from its original form in ways designed to unsettle.

He heard muttering voices around him, his name spoken in hushed whispers, but he ignored them, finally turning a corner and entering the open plaza at the heart of the city. His clawed hands clenched into fists at the sight of what the citizens of Vekaura had raised in the heart of their rebuilt city.

A sun temple built of chiseled sandstone and bare rock. Raised by human hands to human scale, it was a child’s recreation of the titanic structure that sat at the heart of the Shuriman empire. The Grand Temple had been the envy of Valoran and the architects of distant kings had traveled thousands of miles to see it. And this was how it was insultingly remembered?

The walls were black and gleamed like basalt, but Nasus could see the uneven joints between panels where they had been fixed to the rough stone beneath. A sun disc gleamed atop the temple, but even from here Nasus could see it was not fashioned from gold, but wrought from alloyed bronze and copper. Nor did it float like the disc beneath which Nasus had been transformed into his current form. Instead, braided ropes tied to asymmetrical pillars on either side of the disc held it aloft.

Part of Nasus wanted to rage against these people, to hate them for building this ugly remembrance of the empire he and countless others had fought and bled to win. He wanted to shake them and tell them what they despoiled by building upon the grandeur of the past. But they did not know what he knew, had not seen what he had seen, and he could not make them understand.

A feather-robed hierophant stood before the disc, arms raised in supplication, though his words were lost in the city’s noise.

Was this the one he had come to find?

He crossed the plaza toward the temple with purposeful strides, seeing irregular steps cut into each of its four corners. Two warriors armored in form-fitting strips of bronze and feathered helms molded to represent beasts stood guarding the approaches to the stairs; they turned at the sight of him. Nasus faltered as he recognized who their helms were intended to represent. Both had elongated snouts; one in crude imitation of crocodilian jaws, the other with its visor molded into a snarling jackal’s head.

They leveled their spears as he approached, but he read their shock as he cast off his robe and stood to his full height. For too long he had wandered the world of mortals hunched over and ashamed, seeking to hide his stature. For too long he had hidden himself away, paying his penance in bleak isolation, but his days of concealment were over. Nasus had no desire to keep his true face hidden any longer.

Towering over the guards, Nasus was a figure of might and magic, an Ascended being from an age when such heroes still walked amongst mortals. His body had been raised up by the magic of the sun disc and remade, his withered, dying flesh transformed into a jackal-headed demigod of obsidian flesh. Banded golden armor, tarnished with age and hung with votive strips embossed with sigils of Shurima, enfolded his chest and shoulders. He reached up and tore the cloth bindings from his staff to reveal his long hafted war-axe. Its edge glittered in anticipation, the ocean blue gemstone at its heart drinking in the sunlight.

“Stand aside,” he said.

The guards quailed in fear, but stood their ground. Nasus sighed and spun his axe in a looping arc. The end caught the first guard on an upward stroke and hurled him back thirty yards. His reverse stroke drove the second into the dust, leaving him groaning in pain as Nasus set a clawed foot on the bottom step.

He climbed toward the summit where the sun gleamed on the beaten metal of the disc. As he climbed, he looked beyond Vekaura’s crumbling city walls. An unbroken sea of barren dunes stretched to the horizon on three sides. On the city’s eastern flank, the land steadily rose into the haunches of rugged foothills of stubborn earth, upon which grew hardy desert palms and thick stands of bhanavar trees whose roots plunged hundreds of meters below the sand to find water.

The sight of Shurima as this empty desert saddened Nasus, thinking back to when the Mother of Life had nourished the land and it had bloomed with life and vitality. Perhaps Azir would bring life to Shurima once again, perhaps not, which made his task of finding the one who bore the bloodline all the more vital.

Other guards were moving to the top of the temple, shouting in a language that owed a debt to Ancient Shuriman, but had none of the beauty and complexity of that lost tongue.

Nasus remembered the pain and fear he’d felt during his final ascent of the Great Temple in preparation for his Ascension ritual. The wasting sickness had left him too weak to climb and he’d been carried in the arms of his younger brother. By the time they reached the summit, the sun was almost at its zenith and his life was pouring out of him like the sands of a broken hourglass. He’d begged Renekton to go, to leave him to meet the sun alone, but Renekton simply shook his head and whispered their last shared words as mortals before the sun disc took them both into Ascension.

“I will be with you until the end.”

Even now, those words still had the power to wound him, cutting deeper than any blade. As a mortal, Renekton was unpredictable; sometimes prone to violence and cruelty, but equally capable of great nobility and courage. The power Ascension granted him had made him mighty, and in the end, it had been Renekton who wrestled the treacherous magus into the Tomb of Emperors and sacrificed himself to save Shurima.

Save Shurima...?

Had anything they did that day saved Shurima? Azir had died, murdered by his boyhood friend, and the city was destroyed as the unchecked magic of the broken Ascension ritual buried it beneath the desert sands. He relived the moment he sealed the doors of the tomb behind Renekton and Xerath every day, knowing there had been no other choice, but burdened by crushing guilt nonetheless.

Now Xerath and Renekton were free. Azir had somehow conquered death to become one of the Ascended, and by his will was Shurima reborn. The ancient city had risen from its desert sepulcher and cast off the weary dust of its millennial slumber. But if the tales coming out of the desert were true, the Renekton Nasus had known and loved was gone. Now he was little more than a maddened killer that slaughtered without mercy in the name of vengeance.

“And I put you there,” said Nasus.

He reached the summit, and tried to set aside thoughts of what his brother had become; a monster that roared the name of Nasus over the burning sands of the desert.

A monster he would eventually have to face.

Nasus reached the top of the temple structure, the strips of votive paper fluttering from his arms and belt. He planted the haft of his axe on the rough stone and took a moment to survey his surroundings.

Sunlight reflected from the sun disc in splintered angles, the finish of its metal rough and unpolished. The braided ropes were painfully obvious up close, and the crudity of what Vekaura’s people had built was all too apparent. The roof was bare of ornamentation; no great dais carved with the celestial vault or cardinal winds, no etchings of the heroes who had Ascended upon its sacred surface.

Ten warriors in dusty cloaks and overlapping strips of bronze armor stood between Nasus and the hierophant. The priest was a tall, slender man in a long robe of iridescent feathers with wide, wing-like sleeves and a cowl that resembled an ebon beak. The face beneath the cowl was patrician, stern and unforgiving.

Just like Azir.

“You are Nasus?” said the hierophant. The man’s voice was deep and imposing, almost regal, but Nasus heard his fear. It was one thing to claim to be descended from gods, quite another to meet one.

“That you have to ask tells me I have been away for too long. Yes, I am Nasus, but, more importantly, who are you?”

The hierophant stood taller, puffing out his chest like a preening bird in mating season. “I am Azrahir Thelamu, Scion of the Hawk Emperor, First Voice of Vekaura, the Illuminated One, He Who Walks in Light and Keeper of the Sacred Fire. Bringer of the Dawn and-”

“Scion of the Hawk Emperor?” interrupted Nasus. “You claim lineage from Emperor Azir?”

“I do not claim it, it is who I am,” snapped the hierophant, a measure of confidence returning. “Now tell me what you want.”

Nasus nodded and spun his axe, holding it in both hands, horizontal to the ground.

“Your blood,” said Nasus.

He slammed the butt of his long-hafted axe against the stonework, and a cloud of sand lifted from the roof. It hung there in shimmering veils, spinning in a slow circle around the hierophant and his warriors.

“What are you doing?” demanded the priest.

“I told you, I need to see your blood.”

In the blink of an eye, the circling sand became a roaring hurricane. The warriors raised their arms to shield their faces from the whipping sandstorm and the hierophant bent double, blinded and choking on windblown dust. The sandstorm howled with all the fury of deep desert winds that could strip a flock of Eka’Sul to the bone in minutes. Armor was no protection, the sand penetrating every nook and cranny to reach the skin below and scour it raw. The sun disc swung back and forth in the winds Nasus conjured, its supporting ropes pulling taut on the iron rings fitted to the stonework.

Nasus let the fury of the sands fill him, his limbs surging with power and his body swelling as the desert’s wrath manifested within his dark flesh. His form loomed and grew, towering and monstrous like the first Ascended were said to be.

He attacked without warning, bludgeoning his way through the guards and smashing them aside with the haft of his axe or the flat of his blade. He had no wish to kill these men, they were sons of Shurima after all, but they were in his way.

He stepped over their writhing, groaning bodies toward the hierophant. The man lay curled in a ball, his bloodied hands held up to protect his face. Nasus reached down and lifted him by the scruff of the neck as easily as a hound might carry a pup. The hierophant’s feet dangled a yard off the ground as Nasus held him to his face.

The hierophant’s skin was red raw where the sand had scoured him, and tears of blood ran down his cheeks. Nasus moved closer to the sun disc. It wasn’t the real thing, wasn’t even gold, but it reflected the light of the sun and that would have to be enough.

“You say you are of the line of Azir?” he said. “Now we will see if that is true.”

He pressed the hierophant’s face against the sun disc, and the man screamed as the scorching metal burned his exposed skin. Nasus dropped the whimpering man and stared at the hissing blood running down the disc in red rivulets. The blood was already drying to a brown crust, and the scent of it filled his nostrils.

“Your blood is not that of the Ascended Bloodline,” said Nasus sadly. “You are not who I seek.”

He narrowed his eyes as he saw a radiant blue glow reflected on the surface of the disc from something in the far distance.

Nasus turned and looked to the horizon. A cloud gathered there, dust kicked up by the feet of marching men. Nasus saw the glitter of sunlight on speartips and armor through the dust. He heard the beating of war drums and the skirl of battle horns. Lumbering beasts emerged from the dust clouds, braying war-creatures yoked with knotted ropes and directed by groups of men armed with barbed goads. Protected by calcified skin plates and armed with curling horn-tusks, the beasts were living battering rams easily capable of smashing down Vekaura’s already ruined walls.

Behind the war-beasts, a host of tribal warbands advanced on the city beneath a wide variety of carved totems. Five hundred warriors at least; light skirmishers, whooping horse-archers, and fighting men bearing scale shields and heavy axes. Nasus felt the touch of a dominating will upon them, knowing that many of these tribes would normally tear each other’s throats out on sight.

Nasus felt the presence of ancient magic and the taste of metal flooded his jaws. His every sense heightened. He heard the babble of hundreds of voices from below, saw every imperfection in the bronze disc and felt every grain of sand beneath his splay-clawed feet. A sharp smell of blood, only recently staunched, stung his nostrils. It carried the faint trace of elder days and distant echoes of an age thought lost forever. It called to him from somewhere in the east of the city, at its very edge where the ruins merged with the hills.

The bearer of this awakening magic floated above the host; a being of crackling energy and dark power bound by chains of cold iron and the shards of an ancient sarcophagus. A traitor to Shurima and the architect of the ancient empire’s doom.

“Xerath,” said Nasus.

The ruined house on the eastern edge of Vekaura was crumbling, without much of a roof, and ankle deep in sand, but it had four walls and overhanging trees that offered shade during the hottest part of the day. Taliyah’s pack was propped up in the corner, ready to go as it always was. Skins of water and goat’s milk hung from its side, and enough dried meat to last her a couple of weeks had been packed alongside clothes and pouches of rocks and pebbles gathered from all over Valoran.

Taliyah knelt beside the injured woman lying in the shade and lifted the bandage from her side. She winced at the sight of crusted blood around the stitches she’d used to seal the deep wound. It looked like a sword cut, but she couldn’t be sure. Taliyah had stripped the woman’s armor and bathed her as best she could. Apart from the near-mortal wound in her side, the woman’s body was a map of pale scar tissue. All earned in a life of battle, and all but one to the fore. Whoever this woman was, only one of her enemies had not met her face to face. Taliyah replaced the bandage and her patient grunted in pain, her sleeping body trying to heal after the Great Weaver alone knew how much she’d suffered out in the desert.

“You’re a fighter,” said Taliyah, “I can tell that about you, so fight for your life.”

Taliyah had no idea if the woman heard what she said, but maybe her words could help the woman’s spirit find its way back to her body. In any case, it felt good to talk to someone; even if they didn’t answer back – unless you counted fevered mutterings about emperors and being dead.

Since leaving Yasuo in Ionia, Taliyah had tried to keep to herself, always on the move and never staying in any one place longer than necessary. She’d already stayed in Vekaura longer than she’d planned. This was supposed to be a quick stop to buy fresh supplies, but she couldn’t leave while the woman was still unconscious. The urge to find her family was all but overwhelming, but the Great Weaver taught that everyone was bound together in the warp and weft of life. To leave one thread to fray would, in time, affect them all. So Taliyah had stayed to honor her promise to the wounded woman, though every moment not spent trying to reach her family chafed her soul.

Taliyah brushed dark hair from the woman’s fevered brow and studied her face, trying to imagine how she had come to be wounded on the edges of the Sai. She was pretty, but had a hard edge to her not even unconsciousness could entirely soften. Her skin had the tanned sun-weathered texture of a native-born Shuriman, and when her eyes would occasionally flutter open, Taliyah saw they were a piercing blue.

She let out a sigh and said, “Well, I don’t think there’s a lot I can do until you wake up.”

Taliyah heard a thudding boom coming from the west. She moved to the window as she heard the unmistakable sound of rocks grinding on rocks. At first she thought it was an earthquake, but this was more like an avalanche, and she’d seen a fair few of them in her time. Given what she’d seen of the buildings in Vekaura, it wouldn’t surprise her if this was the sound of one falling down. She hoped nobody was hurt.

“What’s going on...? Where am I?”

Taliyah turned at the sound of the woman’s voice. She was sitting up, looking around her and reaching for something.

“You’re in Vekaura,” said Taliyah. “I found you outside, bleeding and half-dead.”

“Where’s my blade?” demanded the woman.

Taliyah pointed to the wall behind her, where the woman’s strange weapon was wrapped in its boiled leather sling and hidden under a woven blanket of interleaved bird motifs.

“Over there,” said Taliyah, “Its blades are very sharp and I didn’t want it anywhere I might trip over it and slice my foot.”

“Who are you?” said the woman, her tone laden with suspicion.

“I’m Taliyah.”

“Do I know you? Does your tribe want me dead?”

Taliyah frowned. “No. I don’t think so. We’re herders. Weavers and travelers. We don’t really want anyone dead.”

“Then you’re one of the few who don’t,” said the woman. She exhaled slowly, and Taliyah could only imagine how badly her side must hurt. She sat up and grimaced as her stitches pulled taut.

“Why would anyone want you dead?” asked Taliyah.

“Because I’ve killed a lot of people,” replied Sivir, struggling to sit up. “Sometimes because I was paid to. Sometimes because they were in my way. But these days, it’s usually because they get very angry when I tell them I’m not going back.”

“Back where?”

The woman turned her piercing blue eyes on Taliyah, and she saw a deep well of pain and turmoil within.

“The city,” she said. “The one that rose from the sands.”

“So it’s true?” asked Taliyah. “Ancient Shurima really is reborn? You’ve seen it?”

“With my very own eyes,” said the woman. “There’s a lot of people going there now. I saw tribes of the east and south mostly, but others will come soon enough.”

“People are going there?”

“More every day.”

“So why don’t you want to go back?”

“You’re tiring me out with all these questions.”

Taliyah shrugged. “Asking questions is the first step on the journey to understanding.”

The woman smiled and nodded. “Good point, but be careful who you ask. Some people answer questions with a blade.”

“Do you?”

“Sometimes, but since you saved my life, I’ll let it go.”

“Then tell me one more thing.”

“What?”

“Your name.”

“Sivir,” said the woman through her pain.

Taliyah knew the name; there were few in Shurima who did not, and she’d already had a good idea of who this woman was from the style of her cross-bladed weapon. Before she could reply, a new sound overtook the rumble of falling stones. She’d seldom heard anything like it in her homeland, but had heard plenty on the shores of Ionia, in the warrens of Noxus and on the icy wastes of the Freljord.

Taliyah eyed her pack, working out how long it would take her to escape Vekaura. Sivir heard the sound too, and swung her legs out as she tried to stand. The effort was almost too much for her and she grunted. Sweat beaded her brow with the effort.

“You’re in no state to go anywhere,” said Taliyah.

“Can you hear that?” said Sivir.

“Of course,” said Taliyah. “It sounds a lot like people screaming.”

Sivir nodded. “That’s exactly what it is.”

Fire was raining from the sky.

Comets of white blue flame leapt from Xerath’s outstretched arms, arcing like boulders from a war-machine. The first fell to earth in the market, exploding like a falling star. Searing fire detonated from the impact. Burning bodies were hurled into the air like blackened kindling. Fiery winds carried Xerath’s spiteful laughter, an ageless insanity that reveled in the pain of others.

How could I not see the evil in him before?

Nasus heard screams rising from the city and all his earlier anger at these people vanished like morning mist over an oasis. The city walls were smashed aside by the pain-maddened war-beasts that reared and stamped with ground shaking force. Lightly armored warriors streamed into the city over the rubble. They howled a dozen different war-cries, eager to begin the slaughter.

Nasus spun his axe and descended the temple steps, taking them four at a time until he was back on the ground. Hundreds of people streamed into the main plaza from the western edges of the city, fear pumping in their veins. Bloodthirsty yells and the clash of weapons followed them. Panicked citizens sought refuge in the buildings around the edges of the plaza, bolting doors and shuttering windows in the hope it would keep them safe. Nasus had walked the bloody streets of enough captured cities to know how brutal warriors could be after such battles. Xerath would see every man, woman and child in Vekaura put to the sword.

More fireballs slammed down like thunderbolts and the air filled with screams and the smell of burned flesh. Stone split and tumbled in cascades of molten rock from the impacts of the magical assault. The market was burning and pillars of black smoke smudged the sky.

Nasus pushed through the terrified crowds, moving steadily eastward, following the spoor of potent blood he now scented. The hierophant had been a fraud, his blood weak and diluted after thousands of years, but the one he now sensed...? They were strong. He could hear the thunder of a heart beating within a mortal breast. This person came from a line of emperors and warrior queens; men and women of towering ambition and strength. It was the blood of a hero.

People shouted his name, begging for help. He ignored them, knowing he served a higher calling. The sun had wrought him anew to serve Shurima beyond death, to fight for its people and defend them against their enemies. He served that purpose now, but leaving the inhabitants of Vekaura to their doom twisted a familiar barb of guilt in his soul.

How many more will you leave to die?

He pushed the thought aside, weaving a path through broken streets piled high with drifts of sand. Most of the buildings here had been claimed by the desert, little more than broken foundations and sheared stumps of square-cut columns. Desert scavengers fled at the sight of him as he drew ever closer to the thudding heartbeat. The city began to thin out, its ruins ever more buried in the encroaching sand.

Eventually he came to a crumbling structure that might once have served as a bathhouse, its walls thicker and stronger than those around it. He ducked as he entered, smelling the sweat and blood of two souls within. One young, and one with a soul so old it was like coming face to face with a friend who had walked beneath the same sun as he.

A young girl emerged from a doorway, clad in a free-flowing coat from a land across the eastern ocean – the same girl he’d spoken to in the souk. He felt her fear, but also her determination as her hands moved in curving, looping patterns as though weaving some naturalistic magic. The ground trembled, the stones danced at her feet and threw off their coating of sand. Behind her, Nasus saw a woman struggling to stand, using the peeling walls for support. Her tunic was soaked red. A grievous wound, but not yet a mortal one.

“I am Nasus, Curator of the Sands,” he said, but from the look in her eyes, she already knew who he was. Her mouth fell open in astonishment, but she didn’t move.

“Stand aside, girl,” said Nasus.

“No, I won’t let you hurt her. I made a promise.”

Nasus spun his axe, slinging it across his back as he took a step forward. The girl backed into the ruin, the ground rippling in radial patterns at her feet. Rock lifted from the ground as flakes of plaster peeled from the walls. Cracks split the stonework, racing upward to what remained of the roof. The last time he had faced someone with similar abilities he had been mortal and it almost killed him. The injured woman stared at the girl in shock. Clearly she was entirely ignorant of her companion’s abilities.

“You have the power to break the rock of Shurima,” said Nasus.

She cocked an eyebrow. “Yes. So you’d better back off before I break you.”

Nasus grinned at her bravado. “You possess a hero’s heart, girl, but you are not the one I seek. Your magic is strong, so if I were you, I would leave this city before Xerath rips it from you.”

Her skin paled. “I’m not going anywhere. I promised I’d protect Sivir, and the Great Weaver hates a broken promise.”

“If you are her protector, then know I am not here to hurt her.”

“So what do you want?”

“I am here to save her.”

The bandaged woman limped to stand at the young girl’s side. Though she was in obvious pain, Nasus was impressed at her resolve. But then, he should expect no less from one whose blood flowed directly from Ancient Shurima.

“Who’s this Xerath?” she asked.

“A dark magus who already knows too much of your existence.”

The woman nodded and turned to Taliyah, placing a callused hand on the young girl’s shoulder.

“I owe you my life, but I won’t be in anyone’s debt,” she said, “so consider your promise fulfilled. I can take it from here.”

The relief on the girl’s face was plain, but still she hesitated.

“I appreciate that, but you can barely walk,” said Taliyah. “At least let me help you out of the city.”

“Deal,” said Sivir gratefully, before turning back to Nasus. She swung her hand around to reveal a glittering cross-blade of gold, with an emerald gemstone at its center. She held it at the ready, a weapon no ordinary mortal could wield with such ease.

“I’ve had enough of people saving me lately,” she said. “They always want something in return. So tell me, big man, what do you really want?”

“To keep you alive,” said Nasus.

“I can do that without your help.”

“That wound in your side tells me otherwise. You are-”

“This?” said Sivir before he could finish. “Just a disagreement with some fools who wouldn’t take no for an answer. Trust me, I’ve had worse and walked away. And I don’t need protecting. Fate seems to be looking out for me these days, no matter what I do.”

Nasus shook his head. How little mortals understood of destiny.

“The future is not set in stone,” he said. “It is a branching river whose course can change at any moment. Even those whose fate is written in the stars can find the water of their lives run to barren ground if they are not careful.”

He gestured to Sivir’s weapon and said, “Do you know to whom that blade once belonged?”

“What does it matter?” said Sivir. “It’s mine now.”

“It is the Chalicar, the blade once borne by Setaka, foremost Warrior Queen of the Ascended Host; when enough of us remained for that name to mean something. I was honored to fight at Setaka’s side for three centuries. Her deeds were legendary, but I can see you do not know her name.”

“The fallen are forgotten,” said Sivir with a shrug.

Nasus ignored Sivir’s cold dismissal of his quiescent war-sister and said, “A desert stylite once told her she would see the sun rise on the day a Shuriman emperor ruled the entire world. It made her think she was invincible, for we were yet to conquer the world, but she was brought down by monsters on the eve of Icathia’s doom. I held her as her light dimmed and I sent her to her slumber far below the sands with her weapon upon her breast.”

“If you’re here to take it back, then you and I might have a problem.”

Nasus dropped to one knee and crossed his hands over his chest.

“You are of the Ascended Bloodline. The weapon is yours to bear, for the blood of emperors runs in your veins. It resurrected Azir and Shurima, so that has to mean something.”

“No, it doesn’t,” snapped Sivir. “I never asked Azir to bring me back. I don’t owe him anything. I don’t want anything to do with you or this Xerath.”

“Your wants are irrelevant,” said Nasus. “Xerath will kill you whether you embrace your destiny or not. He has come here to end the bloodline of Azir once and for all.”

“What does Azir want with her?” asked Taliyah. “And what is he going to do now that he’s back? Does he want to make us slaves?”

“She asks a lot of questions,” said Sivir.

Nasus hesitated before answering.

“In truth, I do not know what Azir plans. That he will stand against Xerath is enough for me. Now you can both meekly bare your necks, or you can live to fight another day.”

Sivir lifted her tunic to show her blood-wet bandage and gave a wry grin. “I’ve never done anything meekly in all my days, but I don’t plan to be fighting anything more threatening than sleep for a while.”

“You must live,” said Nasus, rising to his full height. “And you need to be ready.”

“Ready for what?” asked Sivir, as she and Taliyah began gathering up their few possessions.

“The battle for Shurima,” said Nasus. “So for now we must run. Xerath’s warriors are killing everyone in Vekaura.”

“What’s so special about this place?” asked Taliyah, shrugging on her pack.

“They are looking for her,” said Nasus.

Sivir’s face hardened and she let out a long breath before saying, “Nasus, eh? I’ve heard stories about you since I was a child. Stories of war and heroic battles. All the legends say that you and your brother were Shurima’s protectors, yes?”

“That is true,” said Nasus. “Renekton and I fought for Shurima over many centuries.”

Sivir took a halting step toward him, her face as set with imperious determination as Azir’s had been on the day he ordered the priesthood to prepare the sun disc for his Ascension, in defiance of centuries of tradition.

“Then fight for Shurima now,” said Sivir, as imperious as any emperor. “Sons and daughters of the desert are dying out there as we speak. If you’re the hero I’ve heard about all my life, then it’s your duty to get out there and save as many people as possible.”

This was not how Nasus had imagined this meeting to go, but Sivir’s talk of duty fanned an ember that had slumbered too long within his breast. He felt its flame spread through him, only now understanding how truly lost he had been all the long, lonely years since Shurima’s fall and subsequent rebirth.

“You have my oath it will be so,” said Nasus, reaching up to unhook a pendant hung on a leather thong around his neck. “If you both go now, I shall do all I can to protect Vekaura’s people.”

The stone of his pendant was jade, ocean green with veins of pale gold threading its surface. A faint light emanated from within, pulsing like a slowly beating heart.

He offered it to Sivir and said, “Wear this and it will keep you from Xerath’s sight. It will not last forever, but maybe long enough.”

“Long enough for what?” asked Sivir.

“For me to find you again,” said Nasus, turning away.

He left Sivir and Taliyah before he could change his mind, knowing their best chance of survival was to draw Xerath’s warriors to him. They watched him go, but he did not turn back. Flames burned at the center of the city, and Nasus followed the screams of Vekaura’s inhabitants.

His anger built as he passed the bodies of men and women cut down by the rampaging warriors – more deaths to add to the tally still to be settled between him and Xerath. Nasus rolled his shoulders to loosen his muscles. The last time he had faced the magus, his brother had been beside him, and a tremor of fear touched him.

We could not defeat him together. How can I defeat him alone?

Nasus saw a group of five warriors blocking the exit from the plaza. They had their backs to him, but turned at the sound of him unsheathing his axe. He should have felt their terror at the prospect of fighting an Ascended warrior, but the blue fire of Xerath’s will burned in their eyes and they feared nothing.

They rushed him with bloodied swords and spears. Nasus met their charge head on, swinging low and splitting three of them in half with a single sweep of the blade. He put his fist through the chest of another and fastened his jaws on the bare head of the last man. Nasus bit down and the warrior’s skull burst open.

He entered the plaza, seeing what remained of the city’s inhabitants kneeling at swordpoint before the sun temple, heads bowed like cowed worshippers. Groups of bloodied warriors thrust their spears aloft toward the bright and terrible god burning at its summit.

The burning body of the traitorous magus hung suspended in the air, the edges of the sun disc molten beneath the furnace heat of his Ascended body. The screaming figure of the hierophant writhed in the air before him.

“You mortals are fools,” said Xerath as he unraveled flesh from the bones of the hierophant’s body. “Why would you claim lineage to an emperor as worthless as Azir?”

“XERATH!” shouted Nasus, his voice echoing around the plaza.

The mortal warriors turned, but made no move to attack. Silence fell and Nasus felt the hatred radiating from Xerath wash over him like a surge tide. What was left of the hierophant’s body burned to cinders in a heartbeat, drifting away in the hot winds swirling around the magus. Nasus marched into the plaza with his axe held tight to his side as every pair of eyes turned his way.

“Of course it would be you,” said Xerath, his voice as honeyed as it had been when he walked as a mortal. “Who else but the coward who sealed me beneath the world for millennia?”

“I will put you back there,” promised Nasus.

Xerath’s form burned brighter. “You had your beloved brother to help you then. Tell me, have you seen Renekton since our shared prison was broken open?”

“Do not speak his name,” snarled Nasus.

“Have you seen what he has become?”

Nasus said nothing, and Xerath laughed, the sound like warring fire spirits.

“Of course you haven’t,” continued Xerath, the trapped flame of his being pulsing with dark amusement. “He would have killed you on sight.”

Xerath drifted down the crumbling walls of the temple, flames licking along his limbs and drifting away like fireflies. The dominated soldiers stood as still as statues. This confrontation was not for mortals.

“The power within you was meant for Azir,” said Nasus, taking slow steps toward Xerath. “You were not chosen by the sun.”

“Neither was Renekton, and he was raised up.”

“Do not say his name,” said Nasus through gritted fangs.

“Your brother was weak, but you knew that already, didn’t you?” said Xerath, drifting closer. “He broke more easily than I could have imagined. All it took was telling him how you abandoned him to the darkness. How you trapped him with his enemy and left him to die.”

Nasus knew the magus was goading him, but his hate blinded him to all else but sundering the chains that kept the unimaginable power of Xerath’s body contained. They faced each other in the center of the city, two Ascended beings out of time; a warrior king and magus of living magic.

Nasus attacked first, his body going from motionless to blinding speed in the space between heartbeats. His legs pistoned him into the air, his axe swinging overhead in a downward arc. The blade smashed into Xerath’s chest. Chain links exploded from the impact.

Xerath was hurled back into the walls of the temple. The stonework split apart and dust from the tomb far below billowed from zigzagging cracks. Vast panels of stone fell from the building. The magus hurled himself forward, searing beams of energy blazing from his crackling limbs. Nasus howled as Xerath’s fire burned him, and they slammed together with ferocious power.

A shockwave of magical energy exploded outward, spinning people away like leaves in a hurricane. The nearest buildings collapsed as the seismic force shattered their walls. Vekaura’s people fled, trying to find safety in the midst of these brawling gods of ancient days. His hold upon them broken, Xerath’s warriors scattered and ran for the edges of the city. Flames erupted as Xerath called arcane fire from the heart of his being and unleashed it indiscriminately.

Nasus rolled aside as a series of glittering comets slammed down. Their fire was cold, but burned just the same. He rose to his feet in time to use his spinning axe blade to deflect a series of screeching orbs of white light. Xerath floated in the air above him, laughing as forking lightning blazed around him. Nasus thrust his blade at the magus to unleash a burst of withering power. Xerath roared in pain and anger, the fire at his heart flickering, but undimmed.  

Nasus leapt toward Xerath. They grappled in mid-air to smash into the sun temple once again. The impact shattered the outer wall and huge blocks of stone toppled from the summit. They slammed down like the fists of ancient tomb guardians, cracking the earth and exposing the temple’s shadowed crypts. The remains of the sun disc fell from the roof, tumbling downward like the flipped coin of a giant. It shattered as it hit the ground, sending gleaming metal scything in all directions. A shard buried itself in the meat of Nasus’s thigh. He wrenched it clear, and shimmering blood ran down his leg.

Xerath rose from the wreckage of shattered stone and a searing bolt of pale fire struck Nasus in the chest. He grunted and staggered backward. Xerath unleashed another torrent of glittering magical energy and this time it hammered Nasus’s heart. The pain was all-consuming and he fell to his knees, his skin scorched and raw. Nasus could fight a mortal army single-handed, but Xerath was no ordinary foe. He was an Ascended being who wielded the stolen strength of the sun and the power of dark magic.

He lifted his head as the city burned around them. “The one you seek is not here and is now hidden beyond your sight.”

“The last of Azir’s brood cannot hide from me forever,” said Xerath. “I will find them and end that worthless bloodline.”

Nasus held his axe out, the gemstone upon its blade throwing off crackling lines of force.

“I will die before I allow that to happen.”

“As you wish,” said Xerath, his arms pulling back again and again to hurl arcing traceries of light. Nasus did what he could, but couldn’t stop them all.

Xerath drifted toward him, and said, “I told your brother over and over again of your betrayal and the jealousy you kept hidden from him. He cursed your name and wept as he told me how he would rend you limb from limb.”

Nasus roared and surged to his feet. A volcanic pillar of fire erupted beneath Xerath, and the magus bellowed as the shimmering fire of the Many Suns engulfed him.

But it wasn’t enough. It could never be enough. The last time they had fought, Nasus and Renekton had been at the height of their powers. Now Nasus was a shadow of his former glory, and Xerath’s power had been growing for centuries.

The magus shrugged off this last, desperate attack, and Nasus had nothing left to give. Xerath’s magic lifted him and swung him around, hurling him into the crumbling ruins of the temple. Stonework shattered around him and he felt his sun-fused bones snap like tinderwood.

Nasus came to a halt in the midst of the rubble, his legs broken and twisted beneath him. His left arm hung uselessly at his side, shattered from shoulder to wrist. He tried to push himself upright with his good arm, but white hot pain surged up his spine where his back had broken. His body could heal these wounds in time, but he had no time left.

“How far you have fallen, Nasus,” said Xerath drifting toward him with gobbets of liquid fire dripping from his fingertips like cinders. “I would pity you if I didn’t hate you for what you did to me. Your spirit has broken in the long years you wandered alone and burdened.”

“Better to be broken and burdened than an oathbreaker,” coughed Nasus through a mouthful of blood. “Even with all your newfound power, you are still a betrayer and a slave.”

He felt Xerath’s fury and reveled in it. It was all he had left.

“I am no slave,” said Xerath. “Azir’s last act was to free me.”

Nasus was stunned. Xerath a free man? It made no sense…

“Then why all this? Why betray Azir?”

“Azir was a fool and his gift was offered too late,” said Xerath.

Nasus grunted in pain. The splintered bones in his shoulder ground together as they began reknitting. He felt strength returning to his arm, but kept it limp and useless looking.

“What will you do when I am dead?” said Nasus, remembering how much Xerath had loved the sound of his own voice. “What will become of Shurima with you as its emperor?”

He tried to keep the pain hidden as his transformed flesh worked wonders within his body to undo the damage Xerath had done.

The magus shook his head and lifted out of reach.

“Do you think I cannot see your body renewing itself?” he said.

“Then come down and fight me!” cried Nasus.

“I have pictured your death a thousand times,” said Xerath, rising beyond the hollowed temple. “But never by my hand.”

Nasus watched the magus rise as the unsupported walls of the temple groaned and cracked, leaning in and ready to fall.

“The Butcher of the Sands will have his due,” said Xerath, his form blazing brighter than the sun disc ever had. Rocks and dust tumbled from above. “And I will be there to watch him claw the meat from your bones.”

The magus hurled chains of white fire into the crumbling walls and said, “But until then, I entomb you beneath the sands as you once trapped me.”

Xerath blazed like a newborn star and dragged his fiery chains inward. A thunderous rain of broken stones fell in an avalanche as murderous fire poured from the sky to fill Vekaura.

The ground felt like it was breaking apart, the rock beneath Nasus spinning and rising up to meet the cascade in a deafening tsunami of fluid stone. The walls of the temple crashed down, burying Nasus beneath hundreds of tons of debris.

After the darkness, light.

A sliver of hot brightness. Sunlight?

At first, he wasn’t sure if it was real or some trick devised by the mind to ease a body into death.

Was this how an Ascended being died?

No. This was not death. The sunlight moved across his field of vision, and he felt it warm his skin. He shifted his weight, extending his legs and rotating his shoulders. His limbs were renewed, which meant he had spent a considerable time in darkness. His body healed fast, but he had no idea how long he had spent unconscious.

However long it was, it was too long.

Xerath was free and stronger than ever.

Nasus reached up, seeing the rock above him formed a perfect dome, its rippled underside glass-smooth and warm to the touch. Even in the half-light, he could make out its patterned surface swirled like paint half-mixed on an artist’s palette. He slammed his fist against the sliver of light again and again until the rock finally split apart in chunks of stone vitrified by intense heat. Light flooded in and he saw the entire temple was now little more than a jumbled heap of smashed blocks. Nasus bent to lift a shard of the broken dome that had protected him. He turned it over in his hands, seeing blended material that had no business being in one piece of rock.

He slipped the dagger-like shard into his tunic and walked from the smashed sun temple. He surveyed the ruins as a mournful wind sighed, its breath freighted with mutterings of the dead.

The city was gone, or at least what its inhabitants had built upon its ruins. Nasus saw that much of the bedrock had buckled upward and had the same rippling texture of the dome that saved his life. The leading edge of every surface undulated like a glazed tidal wave frozen in mid-surge.

And from beneath that wave, sheltered from Xerath’s killing fire, came handfuls of Vekaura’s inhabitants. They came in ones and twos at first, then in small groups, blinking in the sunlight and amazed at their miraculous survival.

Nasus gave a small nod and said, “Shurima thanks you, Taliyah,” as he turned and made his way from the city.

The rest of Vekaura had returned to the desolate shell it had been the last time Nasus had ventured this way. Broken walls, shattered foundations and stumps of columns that stood like dead trees in a petrified forest. He had seen ruins like this before; in the wake of his first battle with Xerath when Shurima fell. Guilt had caused him to turn his face from the world then, but he would not do so now.

Xerath had spoken of Renekton as a blood-maddened beast, but Nasus knew his brother better than the magus ever had. Xerath saw only the beast Renekton had become; forgetting the noble warrior that lay beneath. The man who had selflessly offered his own life for his brother. The warrior who had willingly sacrificed everything to save his homeland from a betrayer. Xerath had forgotten all of that, but Nasus never would.

If Renekton lived, then a part of him must remember the hero he once was. If Nasus could reach that part of his brother, then he might lift him from the pit of madness. Nasus had long believed he would one day face Renekton, but until now he had always imagined that encounter would end with one of them dead.

Now he knew differently. Now he had purpose. The bloodline of Azir endured, so there was yet hope.

“I need you, Renekton,” he said. “I cannot kill Xerath without you.”

Before him, the desert called his name.

Behind him, the sand reclaimed Vekaura.

This was the moment.

The singular moment that had cost him so much, that had taken a lifetime of planning. A corrupt empire and its strutting princeling would be struck down under the blankly idiotic sun symbol they both so trusted. The key to immortality, jealously guarded and miserly offered, would be his alone, stolen in front of the entire world. A singular moment of perfect vengeance that would finally free the slave known as Xerath.

Though his master's helm revealed no human expression, and knowing that the lovingly etched metal could not respond in kind, Xerath smiled up at the soulless hawk's face just the same, his joy genuine. A life spent in servitude, first for a mad emperor and now a vain one, endless manipulations for and against the throne, a near-damning quest for barely remembered knowledge that almost consumed him – all of it led to this grotesque masquerade of Ascension.

The very word when spoken aloud was an assault: We will Ascend, while you are chained to the broken stone as the sands of time swallow you all. No. Not anymore, and never again. The chosen golden lords will not be taken into the sun’s embrace and made gods. A slave will do this; a simple slave, a boy who once had the misfortune to save a noble child from the sands.

And for this sin, Xerath had been punished with a horrible, maddening promise: Freedom. Unobtainable. Forbidden. Should the thought even dart through a slave’s mind, it would be punished by death, as the Ascended could gaze past flesh and bone, deep into one’s very soul, to see its dim traitorous glow. And yet, there it was, spoken by the young princeling he dragged from the embrace of the mercurial mother-desert. Azir, the Golden Sun, vowed that he would free his savior and new friend.

A promise unkept to this day. The words of a grateful child, innocently oblivious to the impact they would have. How could Azir upend thousands of years of rule? How could he fight tradition, his father, his destiny?

In the end, the young emperor would lose it all by not honoring his word.

And so, Xerath was elevated and educated, eventually becoming Azir's trusted right hand – but never a free man. The soured promise ate into what he was, and what he could have been. Denied a small, simple thing, the right to live his life, Xerath decided to take everything, all of the things denied to him, all of the things he deserved: the empire, Ascension, and the absolute purest form of freedom possible.

With each step taken toward the offensively grandiose Dais of Ascension, positioned respectfully behind his emperor and flanked by the inept sentinels who supposedly protected Shurima, Xerath felt an unknown lightness he was genuinely shocked by. Was this joy? Does vengeance bring joy? The impact was almost physical.

At that very moment, the overwrought suit of golden armor that was his tormentor abruptly halted. And turned. And walked toward Xerath.

Could he know? How could he possibly know? This spoiled, self-obsessed boy? This righteous, falsely benevolent emperor whose hands were just as bloody as Xerath's own? Even if he did, there was no staying the killing blow that was already in motion.

Xerath had planned for every contingency. He had bribed, killed, out-maneuvered, and plotted for decades – he even tricked the monstrous brothers Nasus and Renekton into staying away from the event – but he had not planned for this...

The Emperor of Shurima, the Golden Sun, Beloved of Mother Desert, soon to be Ascended, took off his helmet, revealed his proud brow and smiling eyes, and turned to his oldest and most trusted friend. He spoke about the love of brothers, the love of friends, of hard fights won and others lost, of family, of future, and finally... of freedom.

At these words, the guards flanked Xerath, moving in, weapons drawn.

So the princeling did know. Had Xerath's plans had been undone?

But the fools in armor were saluting. There was no menace to them, they were honoring him. They were congratulating him.

On his freedom.

His hated master had just freed him – he had freed them all. No Shuriman would ever wear chains again. Azir's last act as a human was to unfetter his people.

The foundation-shuddering roar of the assembled masses drowned out any response Xerath could have had. Azir donned his helmet and strode out onto the Dais, his attendants preparing him for the godhood that would never come.

Xerath stood in the shadow of the monolithic Sun Disc, knowing that an empire-destroying doom was but seconds away.

Too late, friend. Too late, brother. Far too late for us all.

Nasus walked at night, unwilling to face the sun. The boy followed in his wake.

How long had he been there?

Those mortals who caught a glimpse of the monstrous vagabond always ran, all save the boy. Together, they wove a path through the bygone tapestry of Shurima. Self-imposed isolation chipped at Nasus’s consciousness. The desert wind howled around their malnourished frames.

“Nasus, look, above the dune sea,” said the child.

Stars guided the pair’s sojourn across the desiccated expanse. The old jackal no longer wore the armor of the Ascended. The golden monuments lay buried with the past. Now a hermit dressed in tattered fabric, Nasus scratched at his matted fur before slowly raising his head to observe the night sky.

“The Piper,” said Nasus, his voice low and graveled. “The season will change soon.”

Nasus put a hand on the boy’s tiny shoulder and looked down into his sunburnt face. There, he saw the soft lines and curves of Shuriman lineage, worn ragged by travel.

When did it become your place to worry? Soon we will find you a home. Wandering between the ruins of an extinguished empire is no life for a child.

This was the nature of the universe. Brief moments unfolded into the endless cycles of existence. The heady philosophy weighed upon him, but it was more than just another stone in his endless tally of self-imposed guilt. In truth, the boy would inevitably be changed if he was allowed to follow. Remorse darkened Nasus’s brow like a thunderhead. Their companionship sated something deep within the ancient hero.

“We can reach Astrologer’s Tower before dawn. But we’ll have to climb,” said the boy.

****

The tower was close. Nasus pulled himself up the cliff face hand over hand, the climb memorized to such perfection that he took great liberties with each handhold, tempting death. The boy clambered up by his side, his agile form utilizing every nook and cranny offered by the blemished rock.

What would happen to this innocent if I gave in to death? The thought troubled Nasus.

Wisps of fog rolled through the crags of the upper cliffs, each threading the narrow rocks like tiny mountain paths. The boy scurried over the top first. Nasus followed.

In the distance, metal clanged against stone, and voices could be heard through the haze — they spoke in a familiar dialect. Nasus was shaken from his reverie.

The well at Astrologer’s Tower occasionally attracted nomads, but never this close to the equinox. The boy stood perfectly still, his fear palpable.

“Where are the fires?” asked the boy.

A horse’s whinny pierced the night.

“Who goes there?” asked the boy. The words rolled through the darkness.

A lantern sparked to life, illuminating a band of riders. Mercenaries. Raiders.

The jackal’s eyes snapped wide.

He saw seven of them. Their curved blades remained sheathed, but the look in their eyes spoke of martial training and guile.

“Where is the caretaker?” asked Nasus.

“He and his wife are asleep. The cool evening prompted them to retire early,” replied one of the riders.

“Old jackal, my name is Malouf,” said another rider. “We have been sent by the Emperor.”

Nasus stepped forward, betraying the briefest hint of anger.

“Does he seek acknowledgement? Then let me give it. There is no emperor in this fallen age,” said Nasus.

The boy stepped forward defiantly. The dark messengers backed away from the lantern. Long shadows obscured defensive stances.

“Deliver your message and leave,” said the child.

Malouf dismounted and stepped forward. He reached a calloused hand into the folds of his shirt and produced a dark amulet bound to a thick, black chain. The geometry of the metal sparked recollections of magic and destruction in Nasus’s mind.

“Emperor Xerath sends offerings. We are to be your servants. He welcomes you to his new capital at Nerimazeth.”

The mercenary’s words fell on Nasus like a hammer on glass.

The boy promptly knelt and snatched up a weighty rock.

“Die!” cried the boy.

“Take him!” said Malouf.

With a heave, the boy hurled the rock through the air, its perfect arc threatening to shatter mercenary bone on impact.

“Renekton, no!” roared Nasus.

The riders abandoned their half-hearted deception. Nasus knew then that the caretaker and his wife were dead. Xerath’s greeting would come in the form of cold steel. Truth began to eclipse illusion.

Nasus reached for the boy. The child tore into shadows of memory that dissipated across the starlit ground.

“Goodbye, brother,” whispered Nasus.

Xerath’s emissaries fanned out, their horses bucking and snorting. The Ascended was flanked on three sides. Malouf did not hesitate, drawing his blade and piercing Nasus’s side with it. Pain rippled through the ancient curator’s body. The rider attempted to withdraw his weapon, but it wouldn’t budge. A clawed hand gripped the blade, keeping it agonizingly buried within Ascended flesh.

“You should have left me to my ghosts,” said Nasus.

Nasus tore Malouf’s sword from his hand, shattering fingers and tearing ligaments.

The demigod pounced on his attacker. Malouf’s body cracked under the jackal’s enormous weight.

Nasus leapt to the next rider, pulling him from his saddle; two strikes ruptured organs and stole the wind from his lungs. His broken form spun off into the sand, a ruined mass of agony. His horse reared and fled into the desert.

“He’s mad!” said one of the riders.

“Not any longer,” said Nasus, approaching the mercenary leader.

A strange fragrance filled the air. Dead flowers spinning on lavender colored threads followed in his wake. Malouf twisted on the ground, the broken fingers of his right hand withered, skin sagging like wet parchment. The barrel of his chest caved in on itself like a rotting spine fruit.

White-knuckled panic overtook the remaining mercenaries. They struggled to keep their mounts under control, if only to retreat. Malouf’s body lay abandoned in the sand.

Nasus turned east toward the ruins of Nerimazeth.

“Tell your ‘emperor’ his cycle nears its end.”

Am I a god?

He no longer knows. Once, perhaps, when the sun disc gleamed like gold atop the great Palace of Ten Thousand Pillars. He remembers carrying a withered ancient in his arms, and them both borne into the sky by the sun’s radiance. All his hurts and pain were washed away as the light remade him. If this memory is his, then was he once mortal? He thinks so, but cannot remember. His thoughts are a cloud of duneflies, myriad shattered memories buzzing angrily in his elongated skull.

What is real? What am I now?

This place, this cave under the sands. Is it real? He believes so, but he is no longer sure he can trust his senses. For as long as he can remember, he knew only darkness; awful, unending darkness that clung to him like a shroud. But then the darkness broke apart and he was hurled back into the light. He remembers clawing his way through the sand as the earth buckled and heaved, the living rock grinding as something long buried and all but forgotten heaved itself to the surface once again.

Towering statues erupted from beneath the sand, vast and terrible in their aspect. Armored warriors with demonic heads loomed over him, ancient gods of a long dead culture. Bellicose phantoms rose from the sand and he fled their wrath, escaping the rising city as light blazed and the moons and stars wheeled overhead. He remembers staggering through the desert, his mind afire with visions of blood and betrayal, of titanic palaces and golden temples brought down in the blink of an eye. Centuries of progress undone for the sake of one man’s vanity and pride. Was it his? He does not know, but fears it might have been.

The light that once remade his flesh now pains him. It burned him raw and seared his soul as he wandered the desert, lost and alone, tormented by a hatred he did not understand. He has taken refuge from its unforgiving light, but even here, squatting and weeping in this dripping cave, the Whisperer has found him. The shadow on the walls slithers around him; always muttering, always conspiring to feed his bitterness. He presses long, gnarled hands that end in vicious, ebon talons to his temples, but he cannot shut his constant companion in the darkness out. He never could.

The Whisperer tells tales of his shame and guilt. It speaks of the thousands who died because of him, who never had the chance to live thanks to his failure. A part of him believes these to be honeyed falsehoods, twisted fictions told often enough that he can no longer sift truth from lies. The Whisperer reminds him of the light being shut away, showing him the jackal-face of his betrayer looking down as he condemned him to the abyssal dark for all eternity. Tears gather at the corners of his cataracted eyes and he angrily wipes them away. The Whisperer knows every secret path into his mind, twisting every certainty he once clung to, every virtue that made him the hero revered as a god throughout...Shurima!

That name has meaning to him, but it fades like a shimmering mirage, remaining bound within the prison of his mind by chains of madness. His eyes, once so clear-sighted and piercing, are misted with the eons he spent in the endless dark. His skin was as tough as armored bronze, but is now dull and cracked, dust spilling from his many wounds like sand from an executioner’s hourglass. Perhaps he is dying. He thinks he might be, but the thought does not trouble him overmuch. He has lived an age and suffered too long to fear extinction.

Worse, he is no longer sure he can die. He looks at the weapon before him, a crescent bladed axe without a handle. It belonged to a warrior king of Icathia, but a fleeting memory of breaking its haft as he had broken its bearer’s army returns to him. He remembers remaking it, but not why. Perhaps he will use it to slice open his ridged throat and see what happens. Will blood or dust flow? No, he will not die here. Not yet. The Whisperer tells him fate has another role for him. He has blood yet to spill, a thirst for vengeance yet to slake. The jackal-face of the one who condemned him to darkness floats in his mind, and each time he sees it, the hatred carved on his heart boils to the surface.

He looks up at the cave walls as the shadows part, revealing the crude daubings of mortals. Ancient, flaking images, so faded as to be almost invisible, depict the desert city in all its glory. Rivers of cold, clear water flow in its pillared thoroughfares and the life-giving rays of the sun bring forth wondrous greenery from a newly fertile landscape. He sees a king in a hawk-headed helm atop a towering palace and a dark-robed figure at his side. Beneath them are two giants in armor wrought for war, one a hulking, crocodilian beast armed with a crescent-bladed axe, the other a jackal-headed warrior-scholar. In the reptilian form, he recognizes a mortal’s awed representation of his ascended incarnation. He turns his gaze upon the remaining warrior. Time has all but erased the angular script beneath the faded image, but enough is still legible for him to make out his betrayer’s name.

“Nasus…” he says. “Brother…”

And with the source of his torment named, his own identity is revealed like the sun emerging from behind a stormcloud.

“I am Renekton,” he hisses through hooked teeth. “The Butcher of the Sands.”

He lifts his crescent blade and rises to his full height as the dust of ages falls away from his armored form. Old wounds seal, broken skin knits afresh and color returns to his supple, jade crocodilian skin as purpose fills him. Once the sun remade him, but now darkness is his ally. Strength surges through his monstrously powerful body, muscles swelling and eyes burning red with hatred for Nasus. He hears the Whisperer speak once again, but he no longer heeds its voice. He clenches a clawed fist and touches the tip of his blade to the image of the jackal-headed warrior.

“You left me alone in the darkness, brother,” he says. “You will die for that betrayal.”