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Each time Viego thought of her face, it looked a little different.

Sometimes, the eyes were just too far apart, or too close together. Or her cheeks were a little too thin or a little too wide. Sometimes, her hands lacked the calluses of a seamstress, but other times, they were gnarled and thick from long days holding scissors and needles. She wore a gown some days, and others, a simple work frock, and on others still, she wore nothing at all. She was never the same, but always the same, never there, but always present. A ghost of the heart Viego no longer possessed, rent open when... when...

Viego, on his shattered, blackened throne at the bottom of the world, slammed his king’s blade deeply into the rock beneath, cracking the obsidian and sending a brutal tremor across the entirety of the Shadow Isles.

To his left lay a painting he could no longer bear to look at, for the fair Isolde’s countenance had been too perfect to lay eyes upon, too lovely to grant him any peace or respite. He had torn her away, leaving only the image of a foolish young king who had believed the world was kind centuries before, but who now was rightfully dead.

Or if not dead, something else.

Viego could not remember much of his old country that was not twisted by shadows or anguish. In his memories, he stepped out upon the sandstone streets and only saw Isolde before him. Every fresco on every wall contained her within a painted world that only he could touch, only he could see. Yet when he went to reach for her, the illusion broke away, and he was here, surrounded on all sides by the putrid waters that had stolen her all over again.

Viego ripped his blade from the ground and stood, smashing its great heft into the floor and walls as he wailed. Then he was still for a long while, regarding the ancient painting from the old kingdom as if he had seen something new. Regarding himself as he was before the Isles had been swallowed up by darkness.

“Viego,” he said. “So handsome. So young. What became of you, Viego? Where have you gone?” He dropped the painting to the floor, its frame cracking awkwardly as the canvas crumpled beneath it.

“Where are you, Isolde?” said Viego. “Why won’t you come back to me?”

But he already knew the answer.

To most, the Black Mist is a plague, a vector for monstrous, life-sucking wraiths to assault the living and steal them away until the sun dies and the world crumbles into nothing.

To Viego, it is his great, unending sadness, pouring ceaselessly from his broken heart. A testament to his love, of better days long gone by, and a cruel reminder of what was taken from him so long ago.

It is this very Mist that scours the land, tendrils infecting everything with their grim power, draining the life from whatever they touch until all that remains glows with the soft, necrotic green of the Ruination. Yet this, too, has a purpose, for as Viego’s sadness ebbs and wanes, the Mist surges forward, searching as if drawn to something... something old, familiar, safe. The wraiths and spirits that travel within it do what they will, but the Mist itself, no—it grasps ceaselessly for her.

Everything Viego does is for her.

And now, it has found something, far from the shores of the Isles, far past the docks of Bilgewater and the coasts of Ionia. Something on the mainland, hidden within a modest city at the edge of a river. The object calls to Viego, screams for Viego, demands his attention at all costs. And though the people wail, though they run from the blanket of death that rolls softly across their homes and fields, though the wraiths shriek and the horrors stir to feed, Viego hears but one voice, and one voice alone.

“Viego,” he imagines it says, for he cannot make out the words.

The Ruined King bursts from the fog like a hungry shadow, tearing through the first guard he sees as he lifts his blade high above the ground. The man’s face contorts in pain as his body melts away and his spirit is absorbed into the Mist, but Viego barely pays him any attention before he brings his sword down upon the second. Everywhere around him, ghouls feast upon the living, tearing them apart as their souls are dragged away to join the king’s legions.

Searing flesh sails through the air, arrows tumble across space, swords clatter, and warriors fall.

It does not matter to Viego.

He raises a single hand before the city’s great wall, and the Mist rushes forward, stones falling away as the structure becomes tainted with decay. Viego simply steps across the threshold, and suddenly, he is through. He cuts down two more men as he moves silently toward the source of the voice, then another. They mean nothing. None of them bear any weight, and not one matters at all. Their spirits simply rise behind him, to do as he wills.

The ruler of this city now stands before him, a proud man protecting a treasure of some kind, Viego is sure. But as a fellow leader, as a skilled warrior, perhaps he would make a better vassal than hungry spirit.

“Stop,” says Viego, raising a single hand once more. The Mist, the wraiths, the horrors, the fighting—everything seems to freeze on the Ruined King’s command.

“Behind you is a treasure you could not fathom the importance of. I will see it returned to me, and in exchange, you will serve me personally.”

The man seems to stumble over his words, grasping at something he cannot quite muster the courage to speak. But Viego gives him time, and slowly, the words form on his lips: “If I give you this treasure, will you spare the city?”

The Ruined King seems disappointed. Whether he ponders an answer or reflects on the situation, this man will never know, as Viego suddenly appears above him, his great blade slicing down through the heart of this small, frightened warrior-king. His body slides harmlessly down the massive greatsword, as blackness spreads across his skin.

Viego rips the door behind him open, and there, the treasure lies.

An old, worn-down music box, a gift from Viego’s wedding day, whispering something he cannot quite hear. It seems possessed by grief, by boundless, immeasurable sorrow, but Viego simply holds it before his eyes, imagining the soft smile that will surely dance across Isolde’s face the day he sees her again.

“What have they done to you, my love?” he coos, as the man he slaughtered slowly rises from the earth, ghostly greens and blues throbbing from between the cracks in his skin.

“Do not worry,” he assures the music box. “I will find you. It is simply a matter of time.”

And with that, Viego is gone, vanishing as wraiths devour the city.

Few know of the kingdom to the east, far across the seas, whose name lies all but forgotten among the ruins that dot its shores. Fewer still know of its foolish young ruler, whose lovestruck heart was doomed to destroy it.

Now a grave threat to all, that man’s name was—and is—Viego.

The second son of a dynastic king, Viego was never intended to lead. Instead, he lived a life of comfort that made him complacent and selfish. Yet, when his older brother died unexpectedly, Viego, who possessed neither the inclination nor the aptitude for rulership, suddenly found himself crowned.

He showed little interest in his position until he met a poor seamstress, Isolde. So taken was he by her beauty that the young king offered her his hand in marriage, and thus, one of the most powerful rulers of the age was wed to a peasant girl.

Their romance was enchanting, and Viego, who’d rarely shown interest in anyone other than himself, devoted his life to her. The two were inseparable—he scarcely went anywhere without Isolde, always lavishing gifts upon his queen, and his attention could seldom be broken when she was present.

Viego’s allies fumed. Unable to interest him in governance, and with the nation beginning to unravel under his questionable rulership, some plotted in secret to end their new king’s reign before it had begun. His nation’s enemies, meanwhile, saw an opportunity to strike. And the vipers began to circle.

Thus did an assassin’s poisoned dagger one day come for Viego. But the king was well defended, and the dagger did not strike true—instead grazing Isolde.

The toxin worked quickly, and Isolde fell into a ruinous torpor, while Viego could only watch in horror as his wife’s condition grew ever more serious. Overwhelmed with fury and despair, he spent every last coin within his coffers trying to save her.

But it was all for naught. Isolde perished in her bed, and Viego was consumed by madness.

His search for an antidote became desperate, crazed. Unable to accept his wife’s death, every treasure of the kingdom—every scrap of wealth—was sacrificed to his quest to return her to him. As the land fell into disarray, Viego hid himself away with Isolde’s body, becoming hateful and violent.

Then came the day he learned the secret of the Blessed Isles, of its water that healed any ailment. With his great army, he stormed the peaceful country by force, slaughtering everyone who stood in his way until he at last breached its inner sanctum and let his wife drift beneath the blessed water. She would return to him, no matter the destruction he wrought. No matter the cost.

And for just one moment, she did.

Isolde arose a horrifying wraith of shadow and rage, and in her pain, her anger, her confusion at being ripped from death, she took Viego’s own enchanted blade and thrust it through his heart. The magic of the waters and the ancient sword clashed, and the chamber’s energy erupted, tearing across the Isles and trapping everything it touched in tortured, conscious undeath.

Yet of this, Viego remembers nothing. His country collapsed into ruin, great nations rose and fell, and in time, even his name was forgotten... until, a thousand years after his death, Viego stood once more. And this time, he would not fail.

His mind twisted by the same dangerous obsession he possessed in life, Viego’s unflinching, deranged love fuels his every action, his every desire, his every atrocity. The deadly Black Mist pours freely from Viego’s broken heart—ripping the life from everything it touches—and he uses the Mist to scour the world for some way to return Isolde to his side.

Legions will fall before him only to rise again in his service, continents will be swallowed by living darkness, and the world will pay for every moment of happiness it stole from an ancient ruler laid low by all-consuming love. He cares naught for the destruction he causes, so long as he can see Isolde’s face again.

His reign is terror.

His love is eternal.

And until Isolde returns to him, all will fall before the Ruined King.

Helia, the Blessed Isles

Erlok Grael stood separate from his peers, awaiting the Choosing.

They waited within a small open-air amphitheater, the architecture all gleaming white marble and gold-encased capstones. Helia wore its opulence proudly, as if in defiance of the brutalities of life beyond the shores of the Blessed Isles.

The others joked and laughed together, their collective nervousness drawing them closer, yet Grael stood silent and alone, his gaze intense. No one spoke to him or included him in any of the whispered japes. Few even registered his presence; their gazes slipped over and around him as if he didn’t exist. To most of them, he didn’t.

Grael did not care. He had no desire to swap inane small talk with them, and he felt no jealousy at their juvenile comradery. Today would be his moment of triumph. Today he would be embraced into the inner circle, apprenticed within the secretive upper echelons of the Fellowship of Light. He had more than earned his place there. No other student present came close. They might hail from wealth and nobility, while he came from a line of illiterate pig farmers, but none were as gifted or as worthy as he.

The masters arrived, filing down the central stairs one by one, silencing the gaggle of hopefuls. Grael watched them, eyes burning with a hungry light. He licked his lips, savoring

the prestige and glory that were soon to be heaped upon him, anticipating all the secrets that he would soon be privy to.

The masters shuffled into place upon the lower tiers of the amphitheater, their expressions solemn, staring down at the cluster of adepts on the floor below them. Finally, after an overlong pause to build suspense, a pompous, toadlike master, his skin pale and wet-looking—Elder Bartek—cleared his throat and welcomed the graduating students. His verbose speech was heavy with gravitas and self-congratulatory asides, and Grael’s eyes glazed over.

Finally, the time came for the masters to choose which of the graduates would be taken under their wing as apprentices. There were leaders here from all the major disciplines and denominations of the Fellowship. They represented the Arcanic Sciences, the various schools of logic and metaphysics, the Blessed Archives, the Astro-Scryers, Hermetic Oratory, Esoteric Geometry, the Seekers, and other branches of study. All served, in one way or another, the greater purpose of the Fellowship—the gathering, study, cataloging, and securing of the most powerful arcane artifacts in existence.

It was an auspicious gathering of some of the world’s most brilliant minds, yet Erlok Grael focused on only one of their number: Hierarch Malgurza, Master of the Key. Her dark skin was heavily lined, and her once-ebony hair was now mostly gray. Malgurza was a legend among the adepts of Helia. She didn’t appear at every year’s Choosing ceremony, but when she did, it was always to embrace a new apprentice into the inner circle.

The Baton of Choosing was brought forth. It was passed first to Hierarch Malgurza, the most honored master present. She took it in one gnarled hand, causing a ripple of murmurs among the students. Malgurza would indeed choose an apprentice this day, and the ghost of a smile curled Grael’s thin lips. The elderly woman cast her hawkish gaze across the gathered hopefuls, who held their breaths as one.

Whoever was named would be marked for greatness, joining a hallowed, elite cadre, their future assured. Erlok Grael’s fingers twitched in anticipation. This was his moment. He was already half stepping forward when the hierarch finally spoke, her voice husky, like oak-aged spirits.

“Tyrus of Hellesmor.”

Grael blinked. For a second, he thought there must have been some mistake, before the cold reality of his rejection washed over him, like a bucket of frigid water to the face. There was a delighted whoop from the chosen student, along with a burst of whispers and gasps. The newly named apprentice stepped forward amid a flurry of slaps on the back and ran up the steps of the amphitheater to take his place behind Hierarch Malgurza, a broad smile on his smug face.

Grael made no outward reaction, though he had gone dangerously still.

The rest of the ceremony went by in a dull, surreal blur. The Baton of Choosing passed from master to master, each choosing a new apprentice. Name by name, the crowd of hopefuls around Grael dwindled, until he stood alone. The sea of masters and former peers stared down at him, like a jury ready to announce his execution.

His hands did not twitch now. Shame and hatred writhed within him, like a pair of serpents locked in a death struggle. With a click of finality, the Baton of Choosing was sealed back within its ceremonial case and borne away by golden-robed attendants.

“Erlok Grael,” announced Bartek, his eyes smiling. “No master has spoken for you, yet the Fellowship is nothing if not benevolent. A place has been secured for you, one that will, it is hoped, teach you some much-needed humility, and at least a modicum of empathy. In time, perhaps, one of the masters may deign to take you on—”

“Where?” interrupted Grael, eliciting murmurs and tuts, but he did not care.

Bartek looked down his bulbous nose at him. His expression was that of a man who had inadvertently stepped upon something distasteful. “You will serve as a minor assistant to the Wardens of Thresholds,” he declared, malice gleaming in his eyes. There were smirks and stifled laughter among his former peers. The Threshers, as the student body derisively called them, were the lowest of the low, both literally and figuratively, those who guarded and patrolled the lowest depths of the vaults beneath Helia. Their ranks consisted of those who had earned the ire of the masters, whether through gross political misstep or misdemeanor, and any others whom the Fellowship wished out of the way. Down in the darkness, they could be forgotten. They were a joke. An embarrassment.

Bartek’s patronizing voice droned on, but Grael barely heard his words.

In that moment, he swore that this was not the end. He would serve among the wardens and ensure that his worth was noticed, such that none of these pompous, sniveling masters or his snobbish peers could deny him. He would serve a year, maybe two, and then he would take his rightful place within the inner circle.

They would not break him.

And he would remember this insult.

Alovédra, Camavor

It was dark and cool within the hallowed Sanctum of Judgment, and Kalista appreciated the reprieve from the scorching Camavoran summer outside. Standing at attention, bedecked

in form-fitting armor and a high-plumed helm, she waited for judgment to be rendered.

Despite being out of the sun, the slender young heir to the Argent Throne, kneeling at her side, was sweating, and his breath was shallow and quick.

His name was Viego Santiarul Molach vol Kalah Heigaari, and he waited to see if he would be crowned king, or if this day would be his last.

Absolute rulership, or death. There could be no middle ground.

He was Kalista’s uncle, but she was more like an older sister to him. They had been raised together, and he had always looked up to her. He was never meant to be the next king.

That should have been Kalista’s father, the firstborn, but his unexpected death had placed Viego, his younger brother, next in line.

The sound of the massed crowds outside was muted within the cold walls of the sanctum. Hooded priests, their faces obscured by shadow and blank porcelain masks, stood anonymous in the gloom, forming a circle. The incense from their censers was cloying and acrid, their whispering chant monotonous and sibilant.

“Kal?” breathed Viego.

“I am here,” Kalista replied, standing at his side, her voice low.

He glanced up at her. His patrician face was long and handsome, yet in that moment he seemed younger than his twenty-one years. His eyes were panicked, like those of an animal caught between fleeing and fighting. Upon his forehead, three lines had been drawn in blood, coming together to a point just between his eyebrows. The blood trident was traditionally drawn only upon the dead, to help speed them on their way to the Beyond and ensure that the Revered Ancestors recognized them. It spoke of the lethality of what lay ahead.

“Tell me again of my father’s last words,” whispered Viego.

Kalista stiffened. The old king had been the Lion of Camavor, with a fearsome reputation in battle—and on the political stage. But as he lay dying in bed, he hadn’t looked anything

like the robust warrior-king who had so terrorized his enemies. In those final moments, his body was wasted and thin, all his vaunted power and vitality sapped from him. His eyes

had still radiated a small measure of the power he’d had in his prime, but it was like the last glow of a fire’s embers, one final glimmer before the darkness claimed him.

He clutched at her with the last of his strength, with hands that more closely resembled a vulture’s talons than anything belonging to a man. “Promise me,” he croaked, burning with

a desperate fire. “The boy does not have the temperament to rule. I blame myself, but it is you who must bear the weight, granddaughter. Promise me you will guide him. Counsel him.

Control him, if needed. Protect Camavor. That is now your duty.”

“I promise, Grandfather,” Kalista said. “I promise.”

Viego waited expectantly, looking up at her. The faint roar of the crowd outside rose and fell like the crashing of distant waves.

“He said you’d be a great king,” Kalista lied. “That you’d eclipse even his great deeds.”

Viego nodded, trying to take comfort in her words.

“There is nothing wrong with being afraid,” she assured him, her stern demeanor softening. “You’d be a fool if you weren’t.” She gave him a wink. “More of a fool, I mean.”

Viego laughed, though the sound had an edge of hysteria to it and was too loud in the cavernous space. Priests glared, and the heir to the throne gathered himself. He pushed a wayward strand of his wavy hair behind one ear, and was still once more, staring into the darkness.

“You cannot let fear control you,” said Kalista.

“If the blade claims me, it will be you kneeling here next, Kal,” Viego whispered. He reflected on that for a moment. “You would make a far better ruler than I.”

“Do not speak of such things,” hissed Kalista. “You are blessed of the Ancestors, with power flowing through your veins that your father did not have. You are worthy. By nightfall you will be crowned king, and all of this will be just a memory. The blade will not claim you.”

“Yet if—”

“The blade will not claim you.”

Viego gave a slow nod. “The blade will not claim me,” he repeated.

There was a change in the air, and the priests’ incessant chanting quickened. Their censers swayed from side to side. Light speared down into the sanctum through a crystal lens

set in the center of the dome high above, as the sun finally moved into position directly overhead. Motes of dust and ribbons of cloying scented smoke drifted in the beam of light,

revealing... nothing.

Then the Blade of the King appeared.

Its name was Sanctity, and Kalista’s breath caught in her throat as she looked upon it. Hovering suspended in midair, the immense sword existed only in the spiritual Halls of the Ancestors, except when called forth by the rightful ruler of Camavor, or when summoned by the priests for the judgment of a new sovereign.

Every monarch of Camavor wore the Argent Crown, a belligerent tri-spiked circlet perfectly befitting the long line of belligerent rulers, but Sanctity was the true symbol of the throne. The primacy of whoever held Sanctity was undisputed, and to possess the Blade of the King was to be soul-bound to it—although not every heir to the Camavoran throne survived

the ritual of binding.

Kalista knew that was not some vague, mythical threat, either. Down through the line of history, dozens of heirs had perished here in the Sanctum of Judgment. There was a good

reason some called the blade Soulrender, and it was rightly feared by Camavor’s heirs and enemies alike.

The crowd outside had fallen silent. They waited in hushed anticipation, ready to welcome a new monarch or mourn his passing. Either the doors would be thrown open and Viego would stride forth in glory, blade in hand, or the bell atop the sanctum would toll one singular, mournful note, signaling his end.

“Viego,” Kalista said. “It is time.”

The crown prince nodded and pushed himself to his feet. The blade hung before him, waiting for him to take it. And yet, still he hesitated. He stared at it, transfixed, terrified. The priests glared, eyes wide behind their expressionless masks, silently urging him to do what they had instructed.

“Viego...” hissed Kalista.

“You’ll be with me, won’t you?” he whispered urgently. “I don’t think I can do this alone. Rule, I mean.”

“I’ll be with you,” said Kalista. “I’ll stand with you, as I always have. I promise.”

Viego gave her a nod and turned back to Sanctity, hanging motionless in the shaft of light. In seconds, the moment would be lost. The time of judgment was now.

The priests’ chanting reached a fevered pitch. Smoke coiled around the sacred blade, like so many serpents, writhing and twisting. Without further pause, Viego stepped forward

and grasped the sword, closing both hands around its hilt.

His eyes widened, and his pupils contracted sharply.

Then he opened his mouth and began to scream.

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In the black heart of the Shadow Isles, a lone yordle trudges through the spectral fog, content in its murky misery. With an endless supply of malaise and a powerful shadow in tow, Vex shields herself from the pep and happiness of the outside world, and all of the irksome “normies” who occupy it.

Growing up in Bandle City, Vex never felt she belonged. The whimsy and color of the yordle realm was cloying to her. Despite the best efforts of her parents, she never seemed to find her “yordle spirit” or any like-minded friends, and chose to spend most of her time sulking in her room.

There, she found an unlikely soulmate in her own shadow. It was black (her favorite color), and it didn’t talk—the perfect companion for the sullen youth. She learned to entertain herself with the shadow, performing gloomy pantomimes for her own amusement.

Alas, it was just a shadow, incapable of shielding Vex from the loathsome cheerfulness that surrounded her. Surely something more lay in store. Something darker. Something sad. Something just like her.

That something arrived in the form of a Harrowing, thick clouds of Black Mist that billowed through Bandle City, stirring its residents to panic. While most yordles fought valiantly to beat back the Mist, Vex was intrigued by the foul miasma and began to follow it to its source.

When she arrived in the Shadow Isles, Vex couldn’t believe her eyes. Vast tracts of land and sea, devoid of all life and color, stretched out before her. Here, she could finally sulk, unbothered by the laughter and merriment of others.

As the days passed, Vex realized the Black Mist was having a strange effect on her. Her shadow had taken on a new ghostly persona—much more lively and expressive than its host—and her benign yordle magic had transformed into something far more sinister. Vex could now spread her misery far and wide.

“Who made this wonderfully awful place?” she wondered.

Her question was soon answered when the Ruined King, Viego, appeared in the Isles, seeking to spread his Mist to all corners of Runeterra. Upon meeting Vex, Viego realized the yordle had a unique ability to spread despair, making people more vulnerable to his Harrowing. Vex, in turn, was inspired by his vision for a world covered in Black Mist. The two became fast allies and set out to turn the entire world into a harrowed wasteland.

Before Viego’s vision could be fully realized, Vex discovered his ulterior motive: to reclaim the soul of his dead queen Isolde, and reunite with her in matrimonial bliss. She shuddered in disgust, feeling betrayed that the man she had trusted to kill the world’s happiness had, in fact, been seeking it himself. Vex left Viego to be defeated by the Sentinels of Light, his dreams of a matrimonial reunion dashed upon the stones of the Camavoran wreckage. Alone once more, she watched in disappointment as the world returned to the bright, colorful place she had always hated. Finding a lasting melancholy was going to be tougher than she’d thought.

She knew one last place she could go—a surefire way to achieve the misery she craved. She paid a visit to her parents in Bandle City, eager to show them who she had become and bask in their disapproval.

The young yordle watched as her parents turned dumbstruck, still as tree stumps. Their expressions changed from shock, to denial, to reluctant acceptance.

“Honey. We don’t understand... this,” said her mother, motioning with her finger at Vex’s entire being.

“But we love you unconditionally,” said her father. “And if you’re happy, we’re happy for you.”

Rolling her eyes, Vex released a loud, exasperated sigh. “You guys are the worst,” she moaned.

She trudged out of her parents’ living room, anxious to return to the Shadow Isles where she could sulk undisturbed.

Within the long-lost kingdom of Camavor, there once lived a village of people far from the throne. It was here, in the rural colonies, where a humble seamstress made her beloved doll, Gwen.

What Gwen can remember of her past, she remembers with love. The seamstress and the doll spent their days crafting, scissors resting in Gwen’s still hands as her maker stitched nearby with needle and thread. At night, the two could be found crouched under the dinner table, the seamstress challenging Gwen to makeshift duels, the clash of silverware against scissors echoing in their candlelit kitchen.

In time, the games stopped and the light faded. Gwen could not understand why, but whenever she struggled to recall details, she felt a twinge of pain, tied to a man whose name and face escaped her. As her memories washed away with the ocean tide, Gwen lay still for centuries, quiet and forgotten.

Then one night, her eyes opened. Gwen awoke for the very first time on a shadowy beach far from her home. By magic unbeknownst to her, she had been transformed into a living girl who could move her hands and feet—all on her own!

Gwen took to life with joy. She skipped across the sand, amazed by how far her eyes could see, how wondrous every pebble was to her touch, and how incredible the wind felt on her back. Along the coast, scattered debris left abandoned for a millennium caught her attention. Lying beside broken chests were oddly familiar tools.

Scissors. Needles. Thread.

Gwen recognized them immediately. These were her maker’s tools. When her fingers touched them, a burst of mist glinting with light flowed from her hands. To her, it felt safe and warm, like the soothing embrace of a hallowed past.

But Gwen was not the only one drawn to this magic.

Lurking in the isles, a different mist swarmed. Black in color, it coiled and twisted, forming into fearsome wraiths. Something within Gwen’s newfound presence attracted them—something they hungered for with obsession.

As the wraiths came for her, Gwen was undeterred. She thrust her scissors at them. To her delight, more of her mist filled the air, enchanting the size and strength of her tools and turning them from mere steel into spectral magic.

But the wraiths were relentless. They swelled in number, fueled by the ever-growing Black Mist. Gwen began to feel a tragic, strangely familiar pain. Surrounded by wraiths, suppressed memories surfaced. She recalled images of her maker, sick and wounded, lying in anguish. Near her was a man whose face finally returned to Gwen.

Viego.

Remembering his name brought Gwen to her knees. Wistfully, she reflected on the bygone moments spent with her maker—a happier, simpler time—and stole one final glance at her scissors...8<-8<-8<-8<-

It was then Gwen realized something amazing. Her maker, victim to that man’s twisted vanity, was not fully gone. The seamstress’ tools, the very tools that first sewed and stitched Gwen together, were now in her hands. Gwen believed this was no accident. She knew, deep down, her maker was still with her, still fighting.

This was a gift Gwen would not take for granted.

Grasping needles and thread, she spun clouds of Hallowed Mist to push back the swarming wraiths. Her scissors slashed hard and fast, reminiscent of those blissful nights when her maker imagined grand battles beneath their kitchen table. Soon, the wraiths were no more.

Though triumphant, Gwen recognized this was only the beginning. She could sense these wraiths and Viego were linked, both responsible for the spread of immense pain. With no time to lose, she resolved to track the Black Mist and stop it at any cost. Gwen expected this endeavor to be strenuous, yet she reveled in every second of being alive—for who knew how long this blessing would last?

Having been given a unique chance at life, Gwen chooses to be an indomitable, positive force against all odds. She journeys across Runeterra, determined to restore joy to those who are hurt and suffering. To Gwen, each moment is precious, and each step driven with purpose.

Bilgewater isn’t particularly known for its cuisine, which makes Oyster Bill’s Oyster Bar an interesting conundrum. Located in one of the city’s poorer pockets, the establishment gained an impressive reputation over the years with the entire venture held aloft by “local celebrity” and proprietor Oyster Bill.

Along with the oyster-man’s love of seafood and exaggerated stories, he also enjoys renting an extra room above the restaurant to various drifters and vagabonds. One such person being his most recent guest: an ascetic warrior with few belongings and an unceasing ear-to-ear smile—who just kicked Malcolm Graves horizontally through the dining-room wall.

“I didn’t even do anything!” Graves moans, shifting his toothpick to the other side of his mouth. “You want one of the other ones. Senna maybe. Or Rango.”

“Your lack of foresight now threatens millions of innocents, Malcolm Graves,” replies a cheery-sounding voice in an unfamiliar accent. “I have questions about the little present you left on my shores. Viego of Camavor.”

The voice’s owner moves purposefully through the cloud of dust and debris, her liquid whip-blade suspended in a glittering arc around her. Each step illuminates the dingy restaurant as brilliant indigos and golds cast strange, dancing shadows over everything. Messy black hair frames a thin face and violet eyes, all underlined by an oddly exuberant expression, while at her side rests a glowing sphere held by two hands cast from a foreign metal. This is Nilah, and Graves has been trying to avoid her for weeks.

It hasn’t gone well.

Nilah arrived in Bilgewater seemingly overnight, and her presence immediately raised eyebrows across the city. From her odd habit of reciting various textual passages throughout the day—always while making complicated gestures with her palms—to her strange, seven-hand-motif armor, forged from a pearlescent metal no one recognized. Or her insistence that she hailed from Kathkan, even though the last full-blooded Kathkani hadn’t stepped foot on Valoran soil in over seven hundred years.

Then she started killing sea serpents—forty, fifty, sixty fathoms long. When any ship was threatened, Nilah rushed down to the docks and soared across the surface of the sea with a wide, calm smile, her wiry frame launching itself toward the writhing necks of her foes. As word spread about her, she began to ask the port’s grateful sailors if they knew anything about a so-called order of sentinels... and that was when Graves started running.

Now that Nilah’s found him, she doesn’t seem happy.

Or rather, she isn’t acting happy. She seems disconcertingly cheerful with her pleasant grin that never breaks and her demeanor and voice that stay locked in unnatural positivity at all hours of every day. It’s this peculiarity that makes most people unable to read her intentions—besides her pathological need to fight very big things—and that makes conversations with the woman hard to navigate.

“Don’t know nothing about Viego,” Graves lies, sifting through the rubble for his gun.

“I believe it was you who sealed him in Alovedra, am I correct?” Nilah smiles cheerfully, taking another two steps forward. Her legs move in a curious, artful pattern, like a coiled snake about to strike. “Don’t lie. You are man-sized. Killing you would be very easy for me.”

“Not that easy,” Graves snorts, New Destiny finally in hand. Savoring the moment to turn the tables, he fires three rounds directly into Nilah’s torso. Or, at least, he thinks he does. The bullets seem to move around her... Or maybe she moves around them. It’s like firing his gun into deep water—a thought Graves finds inexplicably unsettling.

Nilah’s wide smile twitches at the sides of her mouth. Unbeknownst to Graves, she is unable to feel anger, or any emotion beyond a radiant joyfulness—but she knows she would want to right now, were it possible. She whips the gun out of his hands and knocks it to the far side of the restaurant before bisecting a metal table next to his head with a brutal second strike of her whip-blade. For a brief moment, Graves swears he sees phantasmal blue hands in the air around Nilah... but maybe this is his imagination. He’s been getting hit in the head a lot lately.

“An interesting armament,” Nilah muses. “I imagine it works well against lesser opponents.”

“So what does that make you?” seethes Graves.

But Nilah doesn’t answer. Instead, she sheathes her weapon within the sphere, offering a brief recitation under her breath that Graves can’t quite make out. “My apologies. Based on your fighting style, you're not the sentinel I’m looking for.”

“Sweet Tommy Kench, ain’t you supposed to be some kinda hero?” Graves yells, sitting up among wood fragments and twisted metal. “I’m a hero too, when viewed in a certain light! So lay off, will ya?”

Graves exhales. “Damn... Nice magic, though. I gotta respect it.”

Nilah offers another recitation, her hands shifting as she mouths the words beneath her breath, smiling ominously in the dark. “Thank you, Malcolm Graves. I gave much to wield it.”

“I would prefer if you’d call me ‘Graves.’”

“I wouldn’t,” replies Nilah. “There is great power in a true name, Malcolm Graves. Remember that.”

"If you say so." Graves looks behind Nilah. "You folks in the back hear that, or should we speak up?"

Right on cue, a voice rings out from the street. “We’re here for the serpent slayer!”

Nilah turns to face a half-dozen mercenaries peeking through the hole she’d ripped in the wall. Her eyes drift past the men to a massive, pale something shifting on the planks behind them... and her heart skips a beat. She is often followed by disgruntled killers, but she hasn’t seen one of these before.

“I am she,” Nilah replies, her attention fixed on the creature. “What do you want, exactly?”

“You’re losing our bosses a lot of money. Think you can just flood the market with serpent catch? We own those docks and those ships, and as of now, we own you!”

“What is that creature?” Nilah asks Graves, ignoring the mercenaries.

“Deep eater,” mutters Graves. “They chow down on anchor graves that sink to the seafloor. Gives ‘em a taste for people. Mean and real dumb, so these idiots drag ‘em up and sic ‘em on marks they don’t like.”

Nilah’s eyes flash with excitement. “How big do they get?”

“I’unno. Ten, fifteen oars? That one looks pretty big.”

“Interesting,” she whispers. “An enemy of worth.”

“Hey!” shouts a mercenary. “When I’m talking, you listen or you die. Understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes, I believe I do,” replies Nilah, dipping her hand into the sphere at her side. “I am Nilah of the Seventh Layer. May our battle sing across history.”

Nilah whips her blade outward, its glimmering water forming two sharpened prongs that dance through the air with ghostly radiance. Whatever the mercenaries were expecting, it wasn’t this, and they mutter nervously as the weapon shifts and expands.

They don’t know it, but none of them will leave this encounter alive. The Seventh Layer is not simply a title, but a mythical order steeled to face opponents of unimaginable power and scale. Self-trained killers are merely pebbles on the road to true challenge, and tonight, this so-called “deep eater” is the only foe of worth—a massive isopod with sickly, flesh-colored plates and a mean-looking maw of bloody teeth.

From the depths of Nilah’s being, a hungry joy begins to swell.

What happens next is a blur. Nilah bounds across the room with frightening speed, cutting through her unassuming opponents while wearing that same cheerful, unmoving smile. Each strike of her blade connects with the force of a towering ocean wave, yet the dancing water is sharp as polished stone. Nilah glides between blows, beautiful and deadly, as her enemies are blasted apart.

In seconds, all that’s left is the deep eater. Considering that the words “ten oars” had suggested a beast of much larger proportions, this one isn’t too bad—about the size of a covered wagon. Not the most exciting opponent Nilah’s ever faced, but here in Bilgewater, it was something that would get people talking. They’d remember this victory, and that was all that mattered.

Nilah leaps onto its back, her formless blade flickering in the night air. “Beast of the deep! May you find Joy!” she sings, and she slices the monster clean in half.

“So, what exactly are ya lookin’ fer the sentinels for?” asks Graves, consigned to either having this conversation or being cut into little pieces. “We disbanded, mostly. And I pawned all my stuff, so you’re not getting those magic rocks or whatever.”

“Viego of Camavor will free himself someday,” Nilah replies, her smile now kind. Friendly, even. “The magic binding him is Helian, and it is weakening over time. My people are in unimaginable danger.”

“Hey, we beat him once,” replies Graves. “He’s strong, but we can probably do it again.”

“He is not the true threat, Malcolm Graves,” says Nilah. “His ruinations write new magic into the world... an act that drives demonkind berserk. Enough to stir their primeval forebears.

“Ten lords, long forgotten,” she continues, tapping the sphere at her side, “who must never be allowed to wake.”

“Demons, huh?” says Graves. “You’re not a demon, are ya?”

“No,” Nilah laughs. “Not entirely.”

The ascetic performs another hand gesture, reciting something under her breath. As she speaks, Graves gazes at her sphere of prismatic liquid, which seems to draw him in. An unconscious smile curls at the edge of his lips as high-pitched, whispering laughter rings in his ears. It seems like the metal hands are almost... offering it up to him.

“Don’t look too closely,” Nilah warns, and Graves snaps back to attention. “The beast is always hungry.”

Nilah claps her hands on her hips. “Ah, but the hour is late, and I fear you have no further answers to give me. I will retire to my room,” she says matter-of-factly, walking past a confused Graves as she circles the damaged dining room and climbs the restaurant stairwell. “If you encounter any monstrosities of note, come find me so I can slay them. If you encounter Oyster Bill, tell him that I apologize for tonight’s damage.

“It is good to meet a fellow hero, Malcolm Graves.”

A door closes upstairs, and the woman is gone.

Graves flicks his broken toothpick to the ground, bitten through in all the excitement. He reaches for a replacement but finds none, so instead gazes quietly out onto the street where six dead bodies and two halves of a giant marine louse are scattered.

“The sentinels ruined my life,” he says to no one in particular.

“Neat lady, though.”

Long before the lands that would become Camavor were named, dragons dwelt there.

Once mortals arrived, conflict followed. The strife was only quelled when the first king of Camavor humbled himself before the dragon matriarch, bending the knee and pleading with her to lend her great strength to his armies, and all his dreams of empire. So it was that the dragon who would eventually be known as Grandmother Viper and the Camavoran ruler swore the oath of Vol Visperi-Desinvein, binding their lineages for generations to come.

The dragons remained fiercely loyal to the throne and to those high houses that passed the trials and performed the sacred rites of the oath. In exchange, the dragons were kept satiated with livestock and showered with offerings. The gold, jewels, and precious artifacts they accumulated over the years garnered them a great respect… and those brazen enough to cross the dragons would pause at the thought of their own fortunes being reduced to molten slag and windblown ash.

Long after Grandmother Viper passed into legend and her brood was already much diminished, the young king—Viego Santiarul Molach Vol Kalah Heigaari—called upon the imperial dragons to accompany him and the knightly orders to the Blessed Isles. The dragons refused, seeming to recognize his madness for what it was… though even remaining in Camavor with all their treasures could not spare the kingdom from the tragic repercussions of the Ruination. The handful that survived bore witness to endless neglect and conflict, roosting within the deteriorating palace where no monarch would ever reign again.

Centuries would pass before another imperial dragon would hatch.

As that hatchling grew, scarcity of game forced his mother to venture further and further to hunt. This left the nest vulnerable to far-roaming Noxian beastmasters, who stole the young dragon and set sail for home to collect their reward.

However, shortly before arriving at their destination, the mother dragon discovered the ship’s whereabouts and obliterated it with her fiery breath. In the chaos, the hatchling was swept away, borne by the current to a nearby island off mainland Noxus.

Scared, alone, and hungry, the hatchling employed his mother’s lessons to hunt small prey in this strange environment—and on one such hunt, he stumbled across a human child called Marinos. The boy would go on to name his new friend “Smolder,” and as the young dragon’s ability to communicate grew, their friendship flourished… but remained a secret. The boy feared that if anyone else were to discover Smolder, he’d be taken to the mainland and sold to the highest bidder.

As time passed, the boy grew into a man—one with responsibilities that seldom allowed for the playtime Smolder had grown so fond of. And so, in an effort to amuse himself, Smolder decided he’d learn to breathe fire like the dragons in Marinos’ stories.

After many attempts, instead of sneezing sparks as he’d done countless times before, flames burst forth… and in his excitement over this new development, Smolder failed to notice the fire spreading until it had engulfed the forest canopy.

Suddenly, louder than a hunting horn, louder than thunder, a roar unlike any other rang through the air as a massive dragon approached. Having been drawn by the rising smoke, Smolder’s mother swept down to embrace her child lovingly, as if they never parted. Carried away from the growing inferno by the scruff of his neck, Smolder soared—his first time experiencing the world as dragons should.

Smolder now roosts with his mother on the cliffside where she’d spent so long watching and waiting for signs he yet lived. Every night, she recounts the history of his kin, the meaning and responsibilities of imperial dragons, and how to hone his fledgling abilities.

And one day, when he is ready, they will return together to their ancestral home to usher in a new golden age for Camavor.

A confident and joyful woman who always wears an eerie smile, Nilah’s sudden arrival in Bilgewater has sent the city into an uproar. Her duels with rampaging sea serpents defy the limits of human ability: Racing across the surface of the open ocean with a whip-blade formed from glittering, prismatic water, she scales the great beasts before dramatically slaying them, pausing only to thank her “worthy enemies” for their efforts. Any threat taller than a house is guaranteed to draw her into combat, and the deadlier and physically larger that threat is, the more determined she becomes to challenge and destroy it.

Her strength and origins are shrouded in mystery. Yet the truth, known only to Nilah, is that she once had a different name and lived a very different life.

The precocious child of a large Kathkani family, the girl who would become Nilah was not a warrior at all—rather, she was a lanky bookworm with an interest in myths and legends. Kathkan had known relative peace since its neighbor Camavor’s collapse almost a thousand years prior, and had no further need for great warriors or storied heroes. Or, at least, that’s what Nilah believed.

Wishing the age of heroes had never ended, she collected and obsessed over colorful tales of old—epics of great beasts and shining warriors who clashed beneath the eyes of the gods, back when the world was young and humanity’s enemies were a thousandfold. She read of the mad king Viego and his tragic fall, the genesis of the first dragons, and the foundation of the universe in the Kathkan tradition. Nilah memorized each in turn, knowing in her heart that their color and magic were more than simple fiction.

One story, in particular, was her favorite: The Cycle of Ashlesh.

It spoke of the fantastical Lord of Joy, Ashlesh: A many-limbed beast who menaced the world along with its nine ferocious siblings. Hungering for primal joy, Ashlesh attempted to consume the realm of the gods—but the gods struck the monster down, trapping it deep below the earth in an endless, shimmering lake within the seventh layer of the underworld. There it would be guarded by a mythical order of heroes.

An order of heroes that, after unraveling the story’s many riddles, Nilah realized was beneath her very feet in the heart of the Kathkani capital. Overcome with excitement, she struck out to find this hidden order—to learn its secrets and perhaps even stand among the heroes as an equal...

And then she was gone. All knowledge of the girl she was—her face, her voice, her true name—was erased from living memory. Records curled and evaporated, writing vanished from walls and texts, and words failed on the tongues of her friends and family. It was as though Nilah had never been born at all.

The woman who resurfaced ten years later was a stranger to her homeland, unbound from the world she knew, yet possessed of a strange smile and an unending, ceaseless joy. Whatever happened to her during her long absence, she would not say. Perhaps she met the mythical order after all, and they trained her in the arts of magic and war. Perhaps she stood face to face with the primordial demon Ashlesh, battling it in the apocryphal darkness for a decade before finally emerging triumphant. Perhaps this wasn’t the girl at all, but a pretender wearing her flesh... Or maybe the truth was somewhere in between. Whoever or whatever she was, she began calling herself “Nilah,” the name of the legendary river of fate.

And then her work began.

Possessed of wiry, acrobatic strength, and wielding a liquid blade of incalculable might, she embarked on a conquest of the greatest threats of ancient myth: Grandmother Viper, the invincible progenitor of all Camavoran dragons; Imago, demon of change and scourge of the Carnelian Valley; the mad demigod Nabavelicus, perpetrator of countless atrocities.

Each new foe rises against Nilah in challenge, and each is snuffed out in a ferocious battle of color and fury, dazzling all witnesses.

Nilah's own legend grows with every victory. And with it, an epic tale has begun to take shape, following her journey through strange lands near and far. At her side is the power of Ashlesh itself, which Nilah wields against other evils that might one day threaten the safety of Kathkan. In her heart is the memory of what she has lost, and the knowledge of what is to come, driving her to face greater and greater opponents wherever they might be found.

Whatever happened to that lanky girl who was buried in books, Nilah now faces her future with unbridled bliss. Her mere presence inspires others to fight alongside her, while her deeds ensure that people remember the hero she has become, even if they cannot remember the woman she once was.

Facing the mythological villains of Runeterra with unerring glee, she will challenge the end itself if it means she can protect those who cannot protect themselves.

Long before she became a Truth Bearer of her people, Illaoi had been an acolyte priestess at a Buhru temple on the coast. Every morning, she went down to the shoreline to exercise in the sun. She tried to focus on the principles her teachers held dear. Discipline. Motion. Strength.

She’d been alone on the beach one morning when the sea dropped low, lower than a low tide. The lookouts on the serpent-caller towers began ringing their alarm bells and pointing toward the horizon.

A Great Wave loomed, rushing toward shore with the strength to pulverize bone and rip swimmers out to sea.

In the moments after the alarms rang out, fear blanked Illaoi’s mind. Her teachers’ lessons abandoned her all at once. Do I have the time to escape? she wondered. Should I just stand here?

She glanced at the wave, then at the waterline. At her feet, she noticed a swarm of pink crabs. The wave had sucked the water away, and the crabs were frozen absolutely still on the wet rocks, paralyzed by sunshine and surprise and indecision.

Little creatures, too small to understand the fear they felt. A crab couldn’t do much to avoid a wave like that.

Illaoi could. She shook herself into action and sprinted to the temple gates just in time for the priestesses to slam them shut. As she perched on the temple’s parapet and watched the wave hit the shore, Illaoi thought about how she had stood in paralysis and fear.

I could have died. It was the closest she’d come to death in her sixteen years.

“I won’t do that again,” she told her teachers. Nagakabouros, the Mother Serpent, loved those who grew and changed. She had no sympathy for those who carried on as before while the wave bore down on them.

These days, something about the streets of Bilgewater reminded her of those frightened crabs.

It was noon. The sun was high and hot. Usually, the streets would be filled with sailors celebrating shore leave, or sea-monster hunters spending their earnings. But today, the streets were full of people hurrying about their business heads down, silent.

Bilgewater was on the edge of a civil war, but this was no battle of fresh and eager wills. Sarah Fortune and Gangplank were fighting the same damned war they’d fought already. The same war they’d fight a hundred times, if they could. Gangplank wanted his throne back; Sarah wanted him dead. The city stank of the stagnation lurking in their hearts. Each believed that victory would give them the things they had lost. Respect, perhaps. Justice for the long-lost dead. Something to soothe the pain of defeat and failure.

It would be so much easier if I cared nothing for either of them, Illaoi thought. But Sarah was her closest friend—and Gangplank, her former lover. Never before had two people been so trapped by their past, and so eager to waste their potential.

Illaoi glanced down at the lockbox under her arm. “And this is your fault, too,” she muttered.

The lockbox screamed back at her.

Its screams were quiet, just soft enough that they were hard to hear without listening closely. But whenever Illaoi focused on them, a hateful presence started scrabbling at the edge of her mind.

The fellow within the lockbox—the screamer who hurled horrible, muffled imprecations at Illaoi day and night—was to blame for everything.

It was he who put the shadow on Sarah’s soul.

Just then, some of Sarah’s crew came marching around the corner. Cutlasses and pistols hung from every belt, and every knuckle was ornamented with brass. They were streaked with blood and sweat and gunpowder. The fighting had been hard.

And with them, of course, was Sarah Fortune herself. She looked exhausted. The right sleeve of her fancy captain’s coat was stained with blood. Her shoulders were hunched and her hat was tipped low, as if a cold rain only she could feel battered her from above.

“Hey, Illaoi,” Sarah called, her voice flat and sharp. “Let’s get this done.”

“Are you well?” Illaoi asked. “You look miserable.”

“I’ve been chasing Gangplank for a week.” Sarah pointed at the quietly wailing lockbox. “And that thing is still on this island, too. Come on, let’s finish this.”

They turned to a nearby artifact dealer’s shop. While Sarah’s crew remained on guard outside, guns drawn, Illaoi led the way inside.

The loupe in the owner’s eye flashed as they entered. “Illaoi!” he called. “It’s been too long!”

Jorden Irux was a spindly fellow with knees and elbows heading in every direction. He was also the only artifacts dealer in the city with mixed paylangi and Buhru heritage. Illaoi often went to him for help identifying the relics she couldn’t recognize.

“I have a puzzle for you, Jorden.” Illaoi thumped the lockbox down on his countertop.

“You have two for me,” he said, glancing at Sarah. “Captain Fortune herself in my little shop!”

“Don’t get weird about it,” Sarah growled. “Let’s get this over with.”

The moment Illaoi’s key clicked in the lockbox, Sarah shuddered. A sickly light blazed a slash of teal across the wall.

Inside the box sat an amulet. Three curved stones, carved in the Buhru style and looped together with a thin wire. They glowed brightly with the light of a trapped soul.

“Oh, that’s nasty.” Jorden, too, could hear the screams. “By the Goddess, that’s not...?”

Illaoi nodded. “Viego of Camavor.”

It had been only a week since this furious shade of an ancient king attempted to turn Bilgewater into a smoking crater. The whole city knew his name now, and knew to curse his memory. If he gets out of this amulet, he will do it all again.

“It’s a temporary solution,” Sarah said. She let out a short, bitter laugh. “We couldn’t figure out how to kill him for good. There’s no telling what he’ll do if he gets out of there.”

Illaoi nodded. “Our historians say that the stones are made of serpent-amber... but we do not know if shattering them will release the spirit, or kill it.”

“Goddess’s Tears? I’m not surprised,” Jorden said, using the Buhru term for serpent-amber. “It is so rare, only a fool would practice smashing it.” He leaned close and adjusted his loupe. “A Buhru artisan shaped these. Our people’s style is unmistakable. But there’s a marking here on the back... Where did this come from?”

Illaoi laughed. “The Shadow Isles, actually. Our people studied with the scholars there, before the Isles were transformed.” If Viego escapes, he will try to transform Bilgewater into a twisted graveyard, too.

“Let me look something up.” Jorden leaped off his stool and ran into the back of the shop.

A half second of prickly silence followed... and then Sarah turned to Illaoi. “I know what you’re going to say,” she said, grit in her voice. “So don’t.”

“I was not planning to say anything.” After their last fight, there was no use belaboring Sarah with a truth she refused to listen to. “I was not going to talk about your futile hunt for Gangplank, or what it’s doing to the city. I was actually planning to let us stand in awkward silence.”

Sarah scowled. “I’m having a terrible week. Don’t make it worse.”

They silenced themselves when Jorden burst back into the room. He carried a scroll covered with a strange script Illaoi didn’t recognize. And there was a drawing of... a tower?

“Look.” Jorden pointed to a matching symbol etched onto the back of the amulet. “The sign of its makers. The Brethren of the Dusk.”

“Gloomy,” Sarah said. “Never heard of them.”

“Religious order from the Blessed Isles. They died out long ago.”

“Damn.” Sarah shook her head. “Then that’s a dead end.”

Jorden caught himself. “Wait—I forgot. There is a mad hermit who claims he represents them. But... you know what people who spend too much time over there are like.”

The twisted spirits of the happy folk who had once called the Blessed Isles home were not good neighbors. A thousand years wandering under the shadow of the Black Mist had turned most of them into beasts—wraiths, specters, and mistwalkers contorted in endless hideous reflections of mortal weakness. Any living person who chose to live alongside those shades must be uncommonly strong, and very strange. Some of the mortals who made their home on the Isles worshiped death and disease. And spiders, too, for some reason.

But Illaoi had not yet met a Shadow Isles dweller she couldn’t flatten like a sea star beneath her Goddess’s idol. “Such beings do not frighten me,” Illaoi said. “Not long ago, we killed Thresh, the Isles’ greatest monster. Compared to him, parlaying with this hermit will be a simple task. He may know something about the amulet.”

They paid Jorden and stepped out onto the street. “I didn’t expect this would send you back to the Shadow Isles,” Sarah muttered. She seemed apologetic.

Illaoi nodded. Before trapping Viego in the amulet, they’d tracked and fought him on the Isles. Camping in collapsed ruins and sharing meals around a campfire were joyful when friends were there... but to go back so soon, alone, would be melancholy.

“You’ll need a ship. There’s a captain who owes me—Matteo Ruven. He knows safe routes to the Shadow Isles. But don’t let him know about the amulet.”

“Few are left in this city whom we can trust,” Illaoi agreed.

Suddenly, Sarah’s face turned red. Her brow tightened.

Ahh, I’ve said the wrong thing, Illaoi realized. She cannot trust me, because I will not fight in her heedless war against Gangplank.

“I know you are still furious with me,” Illaoi said. She struggled for a new way to say the things Sarah refused to hear. “But my friendship comes with... with challenge. With change.”

“I can hear everything the king says in that amulet,” Sarah blurted. “Did I tell you that? Every moment of the day and night. He talks about... my mother.” Her voice cracked, and her face contorted into a grimace. “I can hear that box whispering from all the way across the city.”

Goddess. That’s a burden.

Illaoi embraced her friend. The need came over her, and she did it, without worrying what Sarah would think.

At first, Sarah held back—but then she returned the embrace. Tears started at the corners of her eyes. “Guhh,” she sighed. “Okay. Fine.”

“You are meant for more than this,” Illaoi told her. “You are meant for better things.” She believed it. She’d never believed anything more. But no matter how many times she said it, Sarah never understood.

“Meant for better things?” Sarah rubbed her hand across a damp eye. “Tell that to Gangplank.”

Sarah must have had a serious claim on Captain Ruven, because he scrambled to make his ship, the Trained Rat, ready for sail the very next day.

When Illaoi arrived, the ship was swarming with sailors hurrying to make it seaworthy. Ruven hollered orders from the command deck. He was older, slender, and knobbly-elbowed, with a halo of frizzy, wind-blasted orange hair.

I could snap him in half, Illaoi thought. Those were her two categories of people—ones she could snap in half, and ones she could not. It made the world an easier place to navigate.

He waved her up to the command deck. “I know you,” he called. “You’re the Buhru queen.”

“Absolutely not,” Illaoi said. “I am a Truth Bearer. A priestess.” This will be one of the annoying ones, she thought.

“All right.” Ruven shrugged. “Ship’s a disaster today. But this is the kind of service you get when you only give me twelve hours’ notice.” He flashed her a disarming, jagged smile, and extended his hand for a shake. “There’s an empty cabin for you down below.”

“Will we leave today?” Illaoi asked.

“We better. Or Sarah Fortune will include me in one of her little dockside executions.”

The ship’s passageways were so cramped, Illaoi could barely fit her idol down the stairs into the lower deck. The enormous orb of sea-tempered metal was wider across than Illaoi’s muscled shoulders. Down here, the roof was too low to carry it comfortably on her back, and the passageways were too narrow to carry it at her side. She had to balance it on her hip and shuffle crabwise between the cannons.

“Excuse me,” she muttered, squeezing past a group of sailors with scrubbing rags and buckets. As she passed, she heard them cursing quietly. Sailors, in Illaoi’s experience, were usually full of motion, game for anything and everything—her favorite sort of paylangi. But this crew was sullen. Their brittle fear filled the ship as completely as the stink of sea salt and rotten ropes.

Bilgewater’s ill temper lives here, too.

When the ship lifted its anchor and turned to ride the wind, Illaoi made her way up to the breezy command deck to speak with Ruven again. The jagged roofline of the city was soon hidden by wave chop and clouds of soaring birds.

“Bilgewater to my rear, and all my troubles forgotten.” Ruven laughed.

“Is Bilgewater more frightening to you than the Shadow Isles?” The idea made Illaoi smile. “The mood there is foul, certainly. But the Shadow Isles are worse.”

“Hey, none of the spirits over there have it out for me personally,” Ruven said. “Our fearless queen, on the other hand... well. Between you and me, I’m lucky to still be alive.”

Illaoi raised an eyebrow. “What did you do?”

Ruven coughed out a nervous laugh. “I owe her. We have an agreement. I bring you there and back, and all my debts to her are cleared.”

Sending someone to the Shadow Isles seemed like a poor way to collect a debt. Your chance of losing the debtor to a wraith or a spider bite seemed a little too high. “You must owe her a great price.”

“Yeah. I tried to blow her up.”

“What?!”

“Look, I wasn’t working for Gangplank.” Ruven rubbed his face with his hands. “I was just against the new loot fees. I made some new friends... it was their idea.”

These were not the words of a man who faced his destiny bravely or took responsibility for his choices. Ruven seemed like he was tossed about by the whims of others.

“Captain Fortune does not care for such excuses,” Illaoi said. “These days, she solves problems like you with a pistol.”

“Yeah.” His voice dropped. “The crew is... not pleased. We lost a choice contract because of it. So I went to Fortune and I told her: I’m useful! Make use of me. My pa and I were pilots for hire to the Shadow Isles, back in the day. I know routes nobody else knows.”

“To be used by others is no freedom for a soul,” Illaoi said.

“Well, it’s better than being executed! Look, you’re friends with Fortune, right?” he asked. “Being enemies with her is exhausting. I may be a sorry old fellow, but I could still learn some new tricks.”

Illaoi sized him up. It isn’t likely, she found herself thinking. “Your life is ruled by stagnation,” she said. “The freedom you seek is impossible without motion. You need spiritual counsel, not... help with small talk.”

Ruven chuckled. “I mean, I’d take that too.”

Illaoi sighed. Even the most stagnant people could hide deep currents where the soul still moved and changed. Everyone deserves a chance to prove themselves worthy.

And she knew: If this man can change, then Sarah certainly can, too.

“Perhaps we can talk,” Illaoi said. “If we have time on the journey.”

Ruven loved to talk.

He told Illaoi about his father—a pilot for hire, perpetually lurking around Bilgewater’s busiest pubs, “copping free drinks off captains and fishing for gigs.” He wasn’t around when Ruven needed him most, but he was building a legacy, Ruven insisted, charting his route to the Shadow Isles.

“You’ll see it when we get there. It’s incredible. Only safe approach to the entire archipelago. Never seen a wraith on the beach there once.”

“Impressive. How did you learn it? Did your father show you?”

Ruven laughed. “No way! He used to hand me the charts, shove me into a dingy, and make me do the trip myself. All alone in the Black Mist, with him safe on the ship!”

“That is a great effort,” Illaoi said. “Any man who can teach himself a route to the Shadow Isles alone can turn his life around.” He is like Sarah, Illaoi thought. There is greatness within him. He must only find it.

In the final days of their trip, the daylight was less reliable. Each afternoon, an early “evening” crept across the sun and drowned its light in an exhausted gray. It was the Black Mist—its frayed edges, at least. The lookouts grew more tense. The Mist’s cover could give safe passage to furious wraiths of all kinds.

Illaoi always made the most converts to her faith among sailors who had been to the Shadow Isles. When they heard her preach against stagnation, they knew what she meant. Black sand shores. Rotten, twisted, leafless trees. Monuments of slick, dark stone, moist from ocean spray, buried by heaps of ancient loam.

As those haunted Isles loomed on the horizon, Ruven joked constantly and obnoxiously, ribbing sailors about their frowns. The Buhru term for people like him was wave-dodgers: those who shift back and forth on the beach, trying to keep their toes dry with frivolous and frightened motion. Many small steps to avoid a bigger one.

When the Isles were close enough to pick out the ruined towers on the hilltops, though, Ruven turned his frantic energy into action. He vanished into his cabin, then returned brandishing a bundle of paper scrawled with notes and diagrams. When he replaced the navigator at the ship’s wheel, he looked as if he were about to vomit.

“Time for me to prove my worth,” he told Illaoi. He turned to the crew in the rigging and shouted, “Half speed!”

The ship began a strange dance toward the shore. Ruven grappled with the wheel, throwing his scrawny weight into every urgent turn. The ship’s timbers groaned, and the tips of jagged rocks passed less than an arm’s length from the hull. She glanced at Ruven’s inscrutable papers. No wonder Sarah kept him alive. Whatever knowledge he has is useless in translation.

They came to a stop in a rocky little cove. Shattered stones hid it from the open sea, and sheer cliffs concealed the mast and sails from the shoreline. A rare safe harbor... and luckily, not too far from the monastery.

Ruven leaned against the wheel, exhausted. “And that’s how I earn my keep,” he said. “Tell Captain Fortune how impressive I am, will you?”

About twenty sailors—more than half the crew—went ashore for the mission. The monastery would be a few hours’ walk inland. Illaoi brought only her idol, a full canteen, and the lockbox.

“Stay close,” she told the crew. “My Goddess scorns the Mist, so the Mist fears her idol. We will be safe from it if we move together.”

The sailors fell into place behind Illaoi and Ruven as they pushed into the forest. Illaoi’s idol parted the Mist, revealing strange architecture and foliage on either side of their path. Everything was frozen in a moment of decay. Desiccated trees more ancient in life than the citadels of the Buhru capital scraped the sailors’ faces and shoulders as they trudged by.

Soon they found themselves among the ruins of a small town. Crumbling walls forced them to twist and turn through the underbrush. They slowed to pass, single file, along a tight path through the thicket—what might have once been an alleyway.

The dried bushes and trees all looked the same. “Do you even know where you’re going?” someone behind Illaoi demanded.

He was a small, wiry fellow with a patchy beard and a spattering of golden teeth. Another very snappable man.

“Yes,” Illaoi said. “Please chart your own path, if you would like. I can hurl you into the Mist in any direction you please.”

“Kristof? Shut up,” Ruven said. “Or you’re going in the brig when we get back on the ship.”

Kristof was furious. “We shoulda put you in the brig, after what you pulled with Fortune!”

“Stop this nonsense at once,” Illaoi commanded. But now everyone had joined the argument, and their raised voices were echoing through the forest.

Illaoi knew this would draw enemies. Behind the shouts, she could pick out a quiet crunching noise, like footsteps through heavy loam.

The thicket beside the path suddenly churned. Branches scraped against one another with a sound like blades drawn across bones. Clawlike brambles unfurled into hands. There was a face in every bush and tree, withered like those of the unshriven dead.

The arguing turned to screaming—and then the thicket smashed shut. The path was gone in an instant. The sailors bolted in sheer terror. She saw one dash into the woods, but he was slammed to the ground by a knotty branch. The trees closed over him, strangling his panicked shout.

Illaoi even caught a glimpse of Ruven’s back as he ran away through the trees, his papers scattering behind him. Coward, she thought. Then the wraiths were upon her.

The sailors nearest Illaoi fought back, but their swords did nothing—it was like stabbing a thornbush. The wraiths pressed forward through a hail of glancing blows and stabbed the sailors with splintered wooden limbs.

When a wraith lunged toward her, Illaoi ferociously swung her idol. Her strike was true—its body echoed like a hollow bucket and burst into pieces. When another rushed forward, Illaoi punched it so hard it snapped in half like a rotten fencepost.

Goddess, that’s satisfying!

The avatars of the Goddess specialized in muscular force. “Nagakabouros,” she shouted, “defend us!”

She lifted her idol in the air and slammed it down into the mud. The sailors staggered, but the wraiths flew back, repelled by the idol’s blazing green glow.

Paylangi always asked her: Where do the tentacles come from? She’d tell them, It doesn’t matter. The Goddess was everywhere, in everything that changed. She could go anywhere, and be anything, because anything could change.

A wraith, for example, could change into many tiny pieces of wraith.

A protective wall of tentacles erupted from the ground and began transforming wraiths into sawdust. Illaoi helped. Bushes and trees splintered. Knotty wooden heads went rolling through the mud like bowls. She caught a glimpse of a wraith flung high in the air, spreadeagled; it looked like a bird.

When the wraiths nearest them had fallen to pieces, Illaoi hefted her idol onto her shoulder, and the tentacles faded away. The trail was eerily quiet. There was no sign of the sailors who’d run off—not even distant screams. Even the dead were missing. Borne off, perhaps, or buried beneath roots.

“Collect your breath,” she told the group. “Who remains?”

There were only seven. Kristof was among them. “Should we go looking for the captain?” he asked. He didn’t seem enthusiastic. “We can’t sail away from here without Ruven.”

Illaoi saw Ruven’s bundle of charts lying on the ground, soaked through with mud. She picked it up and fished out the map she’d given him. Behind the grime, the way to the monastery was still visible.

On the ship, he’d seemed ready to change. But he’d returned to cowardice in the end—a stagnant soul, forever tossed about by the tide of others’ whims. I’d only be saving him to use him, she thought. Like Sarah and the others did.

And searching for him with only seven injured and exhausted sailors? They would surely die. Kristof and his crewmates did not deserve such a fate. The living can still change and grow, she reminded herself. The dead cannot.

Her decision was clear. “We must press ahead,” Illaoi announced. “To the monastery. We shall have to rely upon the charity of the hermit who lives there.”

It wasn’t long before the monastery loomed up out of the Mist. It seemed well maintained—its tall tower looked just like the one carved on the amulet.

As Illaoi approached the gate, a man leaped onto the path ahead of her. He looked so much like a beast of the Isles, she almost smashed him with her idol.

“Wait! It’s me,” Ruven croaked.

For a moment, the whole group simply stared. Ruven’s body was completely coated with mud. His jacket was soaked with blood. Dead twigs were trapped in his hair. He looked like he’d been run over by a herd of giant rock crabs.

Illaoi was relieved—for a moment. Then her frustration returned in full force. “That was a shameful thing you did,” she snapped. “Leaving your crew.”

Ruven seemed shocked. “I thought you’d be glad to see me.”

“I am never glad to see a man abandon his duty!” Illaoi did not hold back. “You told me you wanted to change. I did not see a man who wants to change on the battlefield today.”

Ruven shot the crew an embarrassed glance, and Kristof went for blood. “How’d you survive the Mist?” he asked.

A strained smile cracked the mud on Ruven’s cheeks. “I, uh...”

“Illaoi said running off by yourself was death.”

Ruven’s expression darkened. “If you’d like to know, I brought my own protection, actually. I was fine.”

Illaoi was disgusted. A protection he did not choose to share. An artifact of some kind? “We shall discuss your shame at a later time,” she said. “First, we must get inside.”

She turned and knocked on the massive wooden door. The sound echoed in some open space beyond. Then, high above, someone cleared his throat and said, “Who goes there?”

Illaoi could make out broad shoulders and a hooded head leaning over the parapet. “I am Illaoi, Truth Bearer of the Buhru,” she called. “I seek the hermit who represents the Brethren of the Dusk. May we take shelter here?”

The man paused for a moment. “I will let you in,” he said, his voice deep. “But do not lay a hand on any creature inside.”

“Creature?” one of the sailors whispered.

The doors slowly began to grind open. Each door was more than twice as tall as Illaoi, and enormously heavy. When they were cracked open about an arm’s length, she saw who was pushing them from within: mistwalkers.

They were spirits shaped like hunched, tired men and women, with long dragging arms and slack mouths ringed with fangs. But unlike others Illaoi had seen, they moved in passive, obedient silence, heaving against the door like dutiful footmen.

Illaoi recoiled, shocked—but the mistwalkers did not lunge for her. Behind her, the sailors reached for their weapons.

The man from the parapet stepped into view. “Do they frighten you?” he asked. “They are my companions.”

Illaoi had never seen anyone like him before. He was robed like a priest, but built like a boulder, with huge shoulders muscled by hard work. Not a man I could snap in half. In one hand, he carried a heavy shovel of dark, rugged metal, stained with dirt, as if he’d just come from digging these beasts out of their graves.

Illaoi noticed that his arms were not sleeved. Their bluish tone... that was his bare skin.

“Are you also a mistwalker?” She had allied with mistwalkers before, though it gave her no joy. Creatures trapped in the stagnation of death often brought pain to the living, and were an unholy affront to the sanctity of life.

The man smiled. “Are you asking if I am alive?”

“On these isles, it is a fair question!”

“A very private one, too.” He made a thoughtful shrug. “I am... a caretaker. Please, come inside.”

The courtyard beyond was filled with mistwalkers carrying scraps of wood and rocks, clambering among rows of gravestones. They paid the newcomers no mind. Though their mouths hung open and their eyes were vacant, they seemed to be driven by some strange mission.

“This is madness,” Ruven whispered. “He has an army.”

“He has protection of some kind, too,” Illaoi said. “Look. The Black Mist does not attack him.”

The hermit overheard them. “It does not need to. It has the Maiden to watch me.”

He pointed at the top of the tower. Illaoi caught a glimpse of a figure up there, but it retreated behind the parapet, as if ashamed to be seen.

“The Maiden?”

“Another... companion of mine.”

“And what is your name?”

“Yorick,” said the hermit. “I am the last of the Brethren at my post.”

She stared. No. He can’t be serious. “The last?”

“I’ve been here since all this started,” he said, gesturing at the Mist-choked sky. “I’ve been here since the Ruination.”

Illaoi had never imagined a home like Yorick’s. The empty halls of the monastery were alive with the motion of mistwalkers. They walked the clean-swept floors in silence, each fixed on some cryptic duty.

She felt her skin prickle and her mouth go dry. It was not fear—it was anger. He keeps the dead in servitude. Unconscionable. Disgusting. She kept this thought to herself, however. This man could still help save Bilgewater.

“You had trouble on the road,” Yorick observed. He gestured to a spiraling stairwell. “I have little in the way of mortal comforts, but there is clean water in the cistern downstairs. And a fire to keep you warm.”

While the others went down to wash on the lower level, Illaoi waited on the doorstep, gazing at the mistwalkers in the yard below. Before her journey with Sarah and their friends to stop Viego, if she’d met a man trapped in the rut of his life for a thousand years, leading an army of restless spirits... she’d have killed him on sight. And Nagakabouros would have blessed me for it.

Yorick appeared at her side. “You have business with me,” he said.

“I do.” She kept her voice calm with difficulty. “But I am not used to seeing spirits treated this way.”

“They are not trapped here, if that is what worries you,” Yorick said. “I search these islands for the tormented dead. Some of them stay here with me for a while, before they move on.”

“And what are they doing?”

“Building graves,” he said. “These are the people of the Blessed Isles. My countrymen, seeking rest and peace.” He paused for a moment, as if saying a prayer. “We can speak privately upstairs, in my library.”

The tower was made of huge, dark blocks of stone, smoothed by time and streaked black with torch smoke. It was older than the ruins of Helia, or the vaults Illaoi and Sarah had visited before.

He has been entombed here like a man dead for a thousand years. Stagnation incarnate. His politeness almost made it worse.

The chamber at the top of the tower was lined with bookshelves and lit by a cold, blue light filtering in through the window. Beside the door hung a pair of stone pauldrons with a cape of Black Mist roiling from them. And atop one of the lofty bookshelves, a nest of dark Mist and glowing blue light slowly turned on itself.

“That is the Maiden,” Yorick said. “She has been with me for centuries.”

“I thought you said they moved on.”

“When they are ready.” He closed the door behind them. “And, if you are ready, please show me who you are hiding in that box on your belt.”

Illaoi raised an eyebrow. “You can sense it?”

“The Maiden speaks to me. She told me whose spirit that is.”

Illaoi opened the box with the key around her neck. Yorick leaned forward to see, and the light of the amulet made a sinister dance across his craggy features.

“Viego of Camavor,” he said. He extended one huge, calloused hand toward the box—then stopped himself. “Since the Ruination, I’d hoped to see something like this. But... I expected more.”

“What did you expect?”

“That the Mist would be gone. But it remains. That the spirits would cease their suffering. But it continues.” There was an unreadable expression on his face. “Perhaps I expected that I would change.”

Illaoi felt a blaze of sympathy for him. She, too, had wondered if the Shadow Isles might change with Viego’s banishment, if the Mist might finally disperse. But that is a challenge for some greater strength than ours, she reminded herself.

“When you defeated him, I saw the lights in the sky,” Yorick said. “But the spirits were not freed, and the Maiden continued whispering in my ear. So my responsibility to them continued.” He gazed at Illaoi, his expression stony. “I am a member of a holy order, same as you. Long years of toil... that is our way. Persistence, faith, and dedication.”

Illaoi bristled. “Nagakabouros does not scorn dedication. She scorns stagnation.”

Yorick stood and went to the window. “Come, look at this.”

Spread out beyond the walls of the abbey, across miles of wild and Mist-wreathed hillsides, were thousands of tombs. Tombs carved by the hands of mortal artisans stood side by side with rough, makeshift ones assembled from rubble by the stumbling dead. Here and there, the endless acres of gravestones stirred with the motion of mistwalkers.

“Is that not the largest cemetery you have ever seen?” Yorick asked wryly.

It was, Illaoi realized, half as big as Bilgewater itself.

Yorick’s voice was tight with controlled emotion. “If there is any agent of change on these isles, I am it. I open the earth and bring the spirits to their rest. And the world around me changes.” He turned to Illaoi. “Do I not, then, honor your goddess?”

A constellation of beliefs netted Illaoi to the particulars of her faith. They were simple beliefs, clear and gracious and humanizing. Though her relationship with the Goddess had changed over the years, the core of her faith remained strong. Life is motion. To live fully is to change; to change is strength.

The living can change. The dead cannot.

Illaoi now felt that foundation shifting beneath her feet. Can the dead build a world of their own? Can they follow their own desires? No. Why would he think that?

She’d brought motion to beings trapped between life and death before. The Bloodharbor Ripper, Pyke, was one of them. But his grace had been given to him by Nagakabouros, and the Goddess had no part in Yorick’s domain.

“I suppose,” she finally admitted, “the dead could have their own kind of motion. But Nagakabouros would never keep spirits here beyond their years in life.”

“She would see them reborn?”

“Yes. As soon as possible! It would be a sin to deny them life for even a moment.”

“And this is our difference,” Yorick said. “You would banish spirits before their time.”

Illaoi knew that if the conversation continued, she’d never settle the issue of the amulet. So she changed the subject. “This is one spirit I’d like to banish.” She lifted the amulet by its chain and showed him the mark on its back. “Your order made this, but in the Buhru style. We hoped you could tell us how to destroy the spirit inside.”

Yorick took the amulet in his bare hand. It did not seem to trouble him the way it had troubled Sarah.

“I think I remember the woman who made this,” he said. He turned to his bookshelves and found a sheaf of fragile, gray parchment. “She was a Buhru sailor. She saw too many perish at sea. So she joined our order, to bring peace to the dying.”

The parchment was covered in an ancient Buhru script. Illaoi could pick out the old words well enough. This artisan had worked on gems made of serpent-amber—a technique practiced only by the Buhru. But she had also tempered the gems under high heat, to form a crystalline shell capable of holding an angry spirit. The technique she used was from the Blessed Isles.

“I cannot read Buhru myself,” Yorick admitted. “Does it say anything useful?”

Illaoi’s eyes wandered down the page. She picked out an illustration of some kind of blast furnace, powered by magic focused through prisms and lenses. A gyroscopic dynamo of light and flame. The illustration was labeled, The Spirit Destroyed.

That seemed clear enough. “She used your people’s machines to temper the gems. At the same heat, we could kill the spirit inside.”

“The furnaces?” He laughed sadly. “I used the blocks to make tombstones.”

They stood for a moment in silence again, thinking. Illaoi wondered how Sarah was doing. She wondered if, across all this distance, she could still hear the amulet speaking to her.

“There is one solution close at hand,” Yorick suddenly said. “You could hurl the amulet into a volcano.”

Illaoi glanced at him. “You are joking.”

“I am not. I have not gone this far in a thousand years, but volcanoes, at least, last that long.” He returned to the bookshelves and found a map rolled into an enormous sheaf. It showed the Blessed Isles as they had been before the Ruination, marked with roads and cities. “This one.” Yorick pointed to a tiny dot in a far corner of the map. “Scardover Cay. Half a day’s sail from here.”

“It has... exposed lava?” She felt ridiculous asking.

“Time changes these things,” Yorick said. “But it did, in my day.”

A thought occurred to Illaoi. If Pyke could see the truth in the Goddess’s ways, this man could, too. “It is still your day,” she said. “Come with us. You wanted to see this king destroyed. You may hurl him to his death yourself, if you like!”

Yorick coughed out a grim bark of a laugh. “It is beyond the Black Mist. I doubt I will be able to help you much when I am outside the realm of the dead.” He gestured to the Maiden. “My powers lie with the dead. And I have not left my post in a thousand years.”

“Then there is no better time to try it!” Illaoi urged. “Leave this place, if only for a day. I think you will enjoy the experience.”

Yorick considered for a moment. “What a curious idea,” he murmured. “Doing something because I would enjoy it.” He drew himself up straight, and crossed his huge arms on his barrel chest. “And you’re right. There is nothing I’d enjoy more than killing Viego.”

They all gathered in the courtyard to leave the monastery.

Ruven stood apart from the rest of the group. As Yorick directed his spirits to open the gate and let them out, Illaoi bundled the navigational charts she’d found in the woods, and went to talk to the captain.

“Have you settled things with your crew?” she asked. “Can you all return to the ship in peace?”

He would not look directly at her. “Sure. Yeah. We can walk back.”

“Did they threaten you? I have a mission. I will tolerate no interruption from you or the crew.” Still, Ruven refused to look at her. Frustration tightened her throat. “You must tell me if they plan a mutiny,” she muttered.

He shrugged. “I don’t know anymore. I don’t give a toss what they do with me. This is my last voyage, probably.”

Illaoi looked down at the navigational notes. He’s the only one who can use them, she thought. There will be time to bring him back to his senses once we’re on open ocean.

She handed him the paper bundle. “I expect focus from you,” she told him. “Dedication. A man can change his life, but he has to try.”

“Fine.” Ruven stuffed the papers into his mud-stained jacket.

They returned to the ship in frigid silence. Half the crew was dead, and Ruven was no longer on speaking terms with the ones remaining. As Ruven navigated out of the cove, Yorick stood at the railing and watched the Maiden standing alone on the sand.

“You are leaving her for the first time in a thousand years,” Illaoi said. “Do you feel any different?”

He lifted something from his collar: a small vial, filled with a clear, bright liquid. “The Mist’s whispers are quieter,” he said. “And the sound this makes—it is louder.”

Illaoi took a moment to realize what she was looking at. “Blessed water?”

“Indeed.” He hid the vial under his collar again. “At the monastery, this merely kept me alive. Out here, I pray it will bring me strength.”

The journey was a straight shot, half a day’s voyage to an island on the edge of the Shadow Isles’ archipelago. The crew kept the sails trimmed for speed, and Ruven stewed on the command deck. He hunched his shoulders, thrust his hands deep in his pockets, and kept his eyes fixed grimly on the horizon—and now and then, on the crew, too.

Illaoi approached him. “I know we said we would discuss Nagakabouros, and your place in Bilgewater,” she told him. “If you still wish for guidance, I am here.”

He glanced at her. There was something in his eyes—fear? “Maybe later,” he muttered.

“What did you discuss with your crew at the monastery?” They must have had choice words for him. Whatever they’d said, he needed to listen closely.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. “Look, I’m busy.”

Illaoi shrugged, and descended from the command deck to walk the length of the ship with Yorick.

She was surprised at how much she enjoyed it. When she didn’t have to look at his army of mistwalkers, it was easier to discuss his beliefs on their own merits. They spent all night deep in conversation. His beliefs were as sincerely held as hers, but his priorities were so strange. Healing the dead was more important to him than returning them to the light of life.

“I will never understand it,” she told him. “But I believe that you mean it.”

“I do not expect you to understand. But I am glad you listened.”

Most of the sailors went to sleep in the lower deck sometime before dawn. When the sun rose, the Trained Rat left the last of the Black Mist behind, and their destination came into view.

“There it is,” Ruven said. “The island. That shadow on the horizon.”

A handful of crew members gathered at the railing. There was a dark, conical blemish on the pale gray skyline ahead.

“Scardover Cay,” Yorick mused. “I’ve heard that people lived there, long before my time. I am not sure I believe it.”

Illaoi could pick out the stench of sulfur when they were still miles from shore. As they grew closer, the hazy shadow on the horizon resolved into a mountain of dark ash, running bare and treeless from the waterline to the lip of the crater. Here and there, it was studded with the stark forms of jagged rocks, each larger than a house.

As the crew lowered the anchor, Illaoi returned to her bunk to retrieve her idol. The belly of the ship was shadowed and quiet, with no sound louder than the creak of timbers and the slosh of waves against the hull. Here and there, crew members were still sleeping in hammocks strung from the ceiling beams.

Her idol was on her bunk. Carrying it awkwardly at her side, she made her way back down the center of the lower deck, between the cannons.

It’s so quiet, she thought.

Then she realized she couldn’t hear anyone snoring.

She put her hand on the nearest hammock and tipped it toward her. Kristof lay inside... and he was not breathing. His dry lips were parted, and his eyes stared blankly upward. Illaoi could feel the presence of his spirit, but he lay like one dead.

A magical stasis? This was not done by natural means.

She stepped swiftly to the next hammock. The sailor there was trapped in corpse-like stasis, too.

Every ship that leaves the Shadow Isles can carry as many stowaways as it has shadows.

“Reveal yourself,” she said. “Who did this?”

THUMP. Farther up the length of the ship, the hatch fell closed over the stairway, and the whole of the lower deck was drowned in darkness.

Illaoi crouched and tightened her grip on her idol. There was barely any room to fight in the lower deck. It was the only place on the ship where she was vulnerable. “You waited until Yorick and I were separated, didn’t you?”

A wink of blue light flared in the dark. “Yes,” a voice said. “And until the Mist was gone. Your new friend wields it like a weapon.” Ruven stepped out of the shadows between Illaoi and the stairwell. “I wanted to speak in private.”

A faint glow wreathed him. And behind him stood someone else.

It was a hunched, robe-swaddled spirit, dressed like a Blessed Isles scholar. His gowns were crisscrossed with arcane geometry and stained with black slime, as if he’d come wading out of some putrid swamp. Tendrils of Black Mist coiled around him. And above his tight, tarnished-gold collar sat a warped face of sagging, melted skin, split by an enormous, toadlike mouth. When his lips pulled back in a smile, Illaoi could see multiple rows of little pointed teeth.

“I know you’ve made a habit of stooping low, captain. But I did not expect this. You’ve made a pact with a monster.”

“I’ve made a pact with a man who helped me! That’s all I ever wanted—a little help.” Ruven’s lips twisted into a pained grin. “I’ve worked hard enough in my life, haven’t I? I don’t need spiritual work, Illaoi. I just need some help!”

The spirit raised his hand. He held an orb that glowed with the same blue light that flickered around Ruven. Black Mist flowed from it, as it flowed from the spirit himself. Then the orb flared, and Ruven’s head made a strange jerk.

Illaoi realized she’d badly misread this man. He didn’t want to do the work of changing. He wanted to be some leader’s lackey. He just wanted a more forgiving master than Sarah.

It was too cramped for her to attack, so she tried to keep the conversation going. “And where did you meet this spirit?” she asked, making her way forward between the cannons.

“Bartek saved me from the wraiths.”

Illaoi could not hold back her bitter laugh. “He’s using you. Be your own man, Ruven.”

Ruven hesitated, but the orb flared again. He jerked like a puppet brought back to stand at attention.

“Stop her,” Bartek said. His voice was rough and wet, like a gas pocket escaping from a bog. “Get the amulet.”

Illaoi did not wait to see what he would do. She took one silent, confident step forward into an open space and swung her idol as hard as possible into Ruven’s snappable little body.

He flew across the deck and hit the opposite hull of the ship hard, cracking the boards in half. Bartek recoiled in surprise and gave a frustrated shriek. “Foolish priestess!”

“Choose your champions better,” she said. “Or why not fight yourself?”

She approached him, and the creature’s craven retreat answered her question clearly enough. “My master has given me a weapon stronger than your Goddess,” he snapped. “And a champion to fight for me.”

Once again, the orb in his hand flared... and the captain stirred. Slowly, he lifted his broken body back to its feet.

“You cannot kill him,” Bartek told Illaoi. His lips parted in a wide, toothy smile, like the River King’s catfish mouth. “I can bring him back. The lantern-lighter’s gift has given me dominion over his soul.”

The lantern-lighter—Thresh! Illaoi stepped back. An artifact that ensnared souls, a gift from Thresh’s hand? By the Goddess. That’s no good.

Ruven moved like a pile of sticks held together with string. Illaoi could see his muscles bunching strangely on his arms and neck—driven by magic, not by his own will. With a twist of his cracked legs, he launched himself toward her with uncommon speed. She dove out of the way and dropped her idol, awkwardly, as she squeezed between cannons. It rolled across the boards of the deck between them.

They paused. Ruven sized her up with a cross-eyed stare. Illaoi took a sharp breath, and lunged for the idol. Ruven dashed forward and kicked her in the ribs. It was like being hit by a mortar shell—and now it was Illaoi’s turn to shatter the boards behind her. The idol flew out of her hand and straight through the hull, leaving a ragged gap as tall as Illaoi herself.

As her fingers slipped from the idol’s grip, she felt her vital connection to Nagakabouros fade. Damn! Fists it is, then. She struggled to peel herself off the deck and square up against Ruven.

“Lost your magic?” Ruven sneered.

“But not my faith. I have wanted to snap you in half for the last day,” Illaoi told him. “I think Nagakabouros will grant me my wish.”

But as she raised her hand to strike him in the jaw, Bartek also raised his. The orb in his palm flared. In the hammocks around the deck, glass-eyed sailors sat up, rigid as a board. Each leaped from their hammock like a Piltovan automaton.

“You profane the dead,” Illaoi snarled.

“They aren’t dead until I tell them to lie down and die!”

Bartek swung the orb, and the sailors swung for her. There were eight or nine of them, and they each hit with the force of a charging brineseal. Illaoi kept her guard up over her face, twisting to shrug off the blows.

Without her idol, she could not summon Nagakabouros’s tentacles to throw them back—but she could punch. The Goddess tests even me, she thought. But this is a test I am glad to bear!

She hit a sailor on the shoulder so hard, his arm dislocated with a sound like a plank cracking in half. She kneed another so forcefully that his flying body shattered the stairs leading to the upper deck. She moved through forms of combat she’d learned while training for the priesthood. Fists snap forward, like the strike of a ramming ship. Legs planted, like the roots of an island in the bed of the sea. Whispering a regretful prayer to Nagakabouros, she dodged Kristof’s punch, rolled him over her shoulder, and threw him down on the deck. His forehead left a splatter of red on the boards.

She began backing up toward the hole in the wall. Outside the ship, I’ll have room to fight. “Captain, you’re an embarrassment,” she taunted. “You are everyone’s fool.”

Exactly as she expected, Ruven’s expression curdled with rage.

“You feel weak because you are weak,” she continued. “Nobody’s help can change that.”

He dove at her. Illaoi let the force of his leap carry them both straight out the side of the ship.

They burst into the sunlight locked arm-in-arm. She caught a glimpse of the chaos on the upper deck: Yorick swarmed by attacking sailors, each wreathed by blue light. She saw him swat a woman clear off the ship with the flat of his shovel.

Then she and Ruven sank into the sea. This was her territory—Ruven was strong beyond human strength, but the man could not swim. Illaoi had been training to swim through riptides since childhood. She pinned him to the sand on the bottom of the bay, grabbed him by the neck, and held him down. Then she punched him until she cut her knuckles on his teeth.

Illaoi could hold her breath underwater for nearly five minutes, if she was conserving her energy. Punching Ruven into submission took so much out of her, she only lasted for a minute and a half before she had to kick up to the surface and take a gulp of air.

Ruven was thrashing weakly on the bay floor, kicking up a cloud of sand. Illaoi swam back down, grabbed him by the jacket, and dragged him across the water and onto the shore. “Give in,” she shouted, and struck him again. He coughed up a mouthful of seawater. “Give in! You’re a dead man.”

Ruven’s eyes darted to the ship. She followed his glance and saw Yorick and Bartek grappling at the prow of the boat. Yorick was holding Bartek’s throat, but the spirit’s hand, gripping the orb, was raised to the sky...

The orb flared a blinding white, and pain drove Illaoi to her knees. It was as if someone had driven a lance of fire through the top of her head. By the Goddess, what was that? She hurt too much to move.

Ruven crawled to her on broken limbs, a dagger in his hand. “His master is too powerful, Illaoi,” he said. “We all have people we answer to. He answers to a phantom who’s near like a god. Just... just give him the amulet.”

Illaoi had destroyed that “god” several weeks ago. “No,” was all she could croak.

But the searing light of the orb shone from the boat again, and this time, the pain was worse. Illaoi gritted her teeth. It felt like someone was trying to peel her mind from her body.

“Give in,” Ruven begged her. “He’ll suck your soul out your ear and make you a puppet. Like he did me.”

“I’d like... to see... him try.”

She struggled to raise her arm—and simply gave Ruven a backhanded slap. He was so badly injured that it sent him sprawling.

A moment later, a shadow loomed over Illaoi, and Bartek hurled Yorick to the ground beside her. Yorick seemed dazed, but alive.

With tendrils of Black Mist flickering about him, Bartek leaned down and unhooked the lockbox from Illaoi’s belt. “My prize,” he gurgled.

“Heal me, master,” Ruven begged. “Please... I’m dying.”

Bartek simply gave a flat, scornful cough of a laugh. “No.”

Illaoi knew they had only moments before Bartek left. She turned to Yorick. “Gravekeeper,” she whispered.

Yorick blinked, shook himself and collected his focus. He placed his palm on the sand to push himself up—then drew it back, as if burned. “There’s something down there,” he replied. “The dead. Corpses.”

Ruven had seized the hem of his new master’s robes. “I want to live,” he begged.

He won’t survive this, Illaoi realized. But his crew still could. She glanced at Bartek, then back at Yorick. “Let them out.”

Yorick closed his eyes. “Rise,” he told the bones. “I have work for you!”

Illaoi felt the rumbling before she heard it.

The sand danced. The ash on the slope of the volcano began to slide down toward them in sheets. Bartek looked about, suddenly nervous. Deep below them, in the bedrock beneath the ocean, something cracked.

Then a tide of spirits rose.

From a crevasse growing beneath Yorick’s palm poured a torrent of furious souls. Illaoi could see spirits leaping from the sand all around her, howling with a rage so profound and concentrated that she lost her breath. They stank of sulfur. The air was so thick with their charred, transparent forms, the terrain around her distorted.

Yorick lifted his hand and flung it at Bartek. With a sound like a cracking whip, a lash of Black Mist flew from the cape on his back and struck the Helian scholar. The Mist around him surged and coiled.

“This man is a servant of the Mist,” Yorick shouted. “The Mist that woke you, and trapped you here!”

The spirits surged toward Bartek, drawn like hounds to a scent.

“Kill him,” Yorick commanded.

The geyser of souls struck Bartek, flipped him onto his back, and thumped the sand around him into a crater. The furious dead tore at Bartek’s robes and beat him with their fists. He writhed, screaming; every strike of their sulfurous hands burned him.

Something flashed in his own hand. The lockbox! Illaoi forced her aching body to stand. The sand bubbled and churned as hundreds of spirits erupted from it, and the rushing current of passing souls whipped her hair and buffeted her like a strong wind. She could barely keep her footing.

She pushed forward, stumbling, and grabbed Bartek by the robes. Spirits writhed around her, screaming in their desperate attempt to strike him. Holding on to him was like holding on to a flag in a hurricane. She tugged him closer. “Give me the amulet!”

“It belongs to my master,” Bartek roared.

She struck him in the jaw. She felt something crack. “Your master is dead,” she shouted. “My friends and I killed him!”

But then his jaw writhed back into position on his face. “No,” Bartek snarled, tar spilling over his warped and sagging lips. “He still lives!”

He brandished his orb, but Illaoi grabbed it. Its smooth surface burned her hands, but she ripped it from his grasp just as it released its final flash. The souls around him recoiled, screaming, and Illaoi fell backward.

She caught a glimpse of Bartek launching himself out over the sea. The lockbox was clutched in his slimy fist. He floated there, victorious...

But then the spirits caught up. They overwhelmed Bartek, and the force of their charge pushed him toward the horizon. He shot like a cannonball over the surface of the water—two hissing sheets of spray flew up on either side of his path.

“No,” she heard Yorick shout to the dead. “Wait!”

The spirits ignored him. The ocean boiled with furious souls, and they carried her enemy and her duty away from her. Far out at sea, something detonated, and a tower of spray shot up the height of a ship’s mast. A moment later, there came another, even farther out. The spirits were moving faster than any ship or serpent-steed.

Illaoi dropped Bartek’s orb and fell to her knees. She pressed her forehead to the sand. I’ve failed. He has Viego.

Yorick collapsed beside her. “This is their will, not mine,” he croaked.

“I’ve failed in my duty,” she said. “I’ve failed Sarah.”

“Who?”

Illaoi struggled to sit up. “My dearest friend. I told her—I promised her I would destroy it.” When she needed me most, I failed her. Goddess, forgive me!

Yorick watched as more spirits rushed out to sea. “I’ve uncorked something I cannot control,” he said. “They were locked down there for centuries, beneath the stone. A city of souls. So much pain and fury. They want revenge... and he is a creature of the Black Mist that roused them.”

As the last of the spirits rose from the earth and poured into the ocean, Illaoi could feel their rage dissipating. “What will happen to them?” she asked.

“If they make their way back to the Isles, I will find them,” Yorick said. “But I doubt I will find that toad who took Viego.”

They struggled to their feet and surveyed the battlefield. Bartek’s rule over the ship’s crew had ended. She could see several of the sailors lying still on the beach, and more draped over the railing of the ship. Ruven himself lay nearby, half-buried by a drift of sand. Illaoi felt for a pulse, but could not find one. “He has died,” she told Yorick.

“But his spirit is still here.”

Yorick knelt beside Ruven and placed a hand on his shoulder. Illaoi saw a shade of him rise from the body, shimmering a near-invisible pale blue in the bright morning light.

His voice was faint and echoing, like a person whispering to them from the far end of a pipe. “I’ve died!” he exclaimed, dismayed. “Gods. I’ve died!”

Yorick took the spirit’s hand. “You’re safe,” he said. “You’ve left your body behind.”

Ruven regarded his broken body with uncomprehending shock.

“You can leave it all behind,” Yorick said. “I’ve awoken you so that you can find peace.”

Ruven froze. “Find peace?”

“Is there anything you need to say?” Yorick asked. “Anything you need to do?”

“I’m not going to find peace. Not without the crew,” Ruven said. “I’m their captain. I owe them.” He glanced around. “Where’s that fiend’s artifact?”

Illaoi was dumbfounded. In his moment of death, at last, Ruven thought of his crew. Goddess, Yorick was right. The dead can change.

“I have the artifact,” Illaoi said. “Can you use it?”

“It held my soul,” Ruven said. “I felt how it works. It can’t save me... but it can save them if they haven’t died yet.”

“Help me heal them,” Yorick begged. “Please, show me how.”

Ruven turned to Illaoi. His face was split with a silly grin, the only genuine smile she’d seen on him since they’d met. “Priestess, watch this,” he said. “I’ll show you what I can do.”

Then he gripped Yorick’s hand... and faded away.

Yorick ran down the beach. The sailors on the shore were at the brink of death. He seemed to know whose spirit still stayed with them, and who had already passed. With Ruven’s knowledge guiding him, Yorick moved among the corpses. When the globe shone in his hand, their breath returned.

As Kristof came alive again in a fit of coughing, Illaoi thought, Yorick heals the living and the dead. What does the Goddess think of him?

But she knew the Goddess would not tell her what to think of Yorick. The Goddess needed her to decide for herself.

That evening, after she’d hauled her idol up from the bottom of the bay, Illaoi and Yorick went to bury Ruven and the other dead high up near the lip of the volcano.

“There’s a fantastic view up here,” Yorick remarked, covering the final grave. He wielded his spade like an accomplished craftsman.

Illaoi approached the edge of the volcano and looked down into the black-capped, red-cracked lake of lava below. She wasn’t sure what to feel. “Perhaps their spirits can watch the rest of the world covered in ruination from up here,” she said.

Yorick stood beside her. “I do not think that will happen,” he said. “Even if Viego tries to kill the whole world... well. The dead have their own kind of will.” He glanced at Illaoi. “I’ve met several in my time who would see him destroyed. They can help us.”

Illaoi thought for a moment. The dead, rising up against Viego? She’d seen something like that on the Shadow Isles before. But it was so rare. With Yorick, was another future possible? Spirits and Buhru, aligned with the same goals? It felt impossible. But...

“I will help them,” Yorick promised.

Illaoi felt a strange hope growing inside her. “You have a good heart,” she said. “Your ability is like a promise of Nagakabouros fulfilled, I think. The power to move the dead from stagnation... I have never seen anything like it before.”

Yorick shrugged. “I do what I must.”

“No,” Illaoi insisted. “You do more than anyone expects. You freed Ruven’s spirit. You moved him after his death. And you brought motion to the trapped dead!”

As she spoke the words, she felt the shock of it growing within her. If this is possible, she found herself thinking, then anything is. Motion for my friends. Freedom for Sarah. A better world for all of us.

“Nagakabouros brought us together for a reason,” she continued. “I think we can learn from one another, as the ancients did.” The possibilities blossomed in her mind. The ancient Buhru and the scholars of the Blessed Isles had created such incredible things together. What they lacked was a common purpose, a mission uniting them toward a single goal. “What your Brethren wished for the world, what my faith dreams of—they are the same. Change and growth. Liberation!”

“I do not know if the rest of your religion would agree.” Yorick laughed.

“I will make them,” Illaoi promised.

“I think it is possible. In my youth, our people were close. But for now, I must return to my home. There are spirits there to whom I owe a duty.”

The Maiden, Illaoi thought. “It is your way. Persistence and dedication, as you said. But one day, when you are ready to leave, the Buhru will welcome an honorable monk like you. We will need an ally in the fight against Viego.”

Yorick gazed down at the lava below. “No one has ever called me an honorable monk before,” he mused.

To assume the Aspects act in the interests of Targon or its people is folly of the highest order.

When the first Rakkor climbed the Great Mountain, they did so to bring themselves closer to their holy sun, the divine source of all light and majesty in this world. But when they reached the summit, they found strange, otherworldly beings waiting there for them.

Not gods. There are no gods on the mountain, nor above it. The Aspects have never claimed this, and the Rakkor have never considered them as such. In spite of all their heavenly power, they had descended from the firmament of the celestial realm, yet were still unable to cross over into Runeterra unaided—and this was something for which they would be willing to bargain most dearly. Enough to use our own worst natures against us. Enough to betray the golden sun itself.

To this day, the Aspects strive to manipulate a world that is not theirs, for reasons we cannot fully comprehend, on a timescale that mocks even the grandest of mortal ambitions.

However, we can be certain that their motivations are not human, and their capacity for cruelty and deception is unmatched in all existence.

— from ‘Tribe of the Last Sun’, by the Hierarch Malgurza of Helia

Weary from the day’s labors, Iula wiped her stiff hands upon her apron, and raised a cup to the mantel.

“Here’s to you, my love,” she whispered, before bringing it to her lips.

A flood of sweetness. Warmth. The last rays of an autumnal sunset.

She measured the taste for a moment, letting it sit on her palate, breathing out slowly through her nose. Then she looked down into her drink and gently swirled the golden liquid around.

“How is it?” Hanne asked, as she heaved the farmhouse door closed behind her.

Iula shrugged. “It’s fine. Maybe it will age into something better.”

The younger woman set down two large sacks of grain on the floor beside the kitchen table, and poured a cup for herself. Iula watched her sniff it, and take a long swig.

Then Hanne coughed, and blinked hard, twice.

A third time.

“You can... You can really taste the smoke...” she managed. “Is mead always... like this?”

Iula smiled, running her fingers through the bunches of herbs hanging from the roof beams. “No, not always. Depends what you put in. For a traditional medu, I hoped the hedge-sage would come through a little stronger. Maybe next time we’ll use more. And fresh, not dried.”

“Are we still taking it to the market, though? Will it be ready by then?”

“It’s fine. We can backsweeten each jar with a little more honey, before I seal them.”

Hanne finished her cup with only the slightest hint of a grimace, before setting it down. “I think I saw one last honeycomb in the storehouse,” she said. “I’ll bring it in.”

“There’s no rush. I’m not doing it tonight. Need to start on the sourdough before bed.”

“It’s no trouble!” Hanne insisted. “I’ll go now, before I get this young man his supper.”

Little Tomis was still seated at the table, swinging his bare feet back and forth. Even though the day had been long, his eyes were still keen... and very much fixed on the drink in Iula’s hand.

“Can I have some?” he asked, the moment Hanne was gone.

Iula made a show of turning to face him with an expression of mock-confusion. “You mean this lovely stew that Hanne has made for us all?” she said, gesturing to the fireplace with her cup.

Tomis shook his head. “No. The medu.”

“Well, I don’t think that’s a good idea, is it?” she replied, stepping over the bench to sit next to him. Her knees and elbows creaked as she went—but her knees and elbows always creaked, so she had given up remarking on it years ago.

She tapped the large glass jar next to him.

“What about your fine batch of sun tea, eh? Wouldn’t you rather have some of that? We spent all day on it, and you’ve been very helpful! I’ve been looking forward to trying it.”

Tomis wrinkled his nose. “I don’t like sun tea anymore.”

“Oh, that’s not true! It’s a very special drink for a young Rakkor. It fills you up from top to toe with the blessings of the Sun. Don’t you want that?”

The boy went very quiet, and still. His eyes sank to the tabletop.

“Then why do you put your drink in the dark?” he murmured, plaintively. “Does that mean it’s bad?”

Iula was suddenly worried that she had gone too far. “Oh, no,” she chuckled, putting her arm around him, “it’s not bad. Not bad at all. My dear husband taught me how to make mead, when we were first married. It needs to sit in the dark for a while to... umm... to get more... sort of...”

Then she gave up trying to explain fermentation to a four-year-old, and playfully poked his nose.

“Look, my boy, some of the best things that grown-ups enjoy happen in the dark, all right? One day, when you’re older and taller, you’ll understand that. And then you can have a sip of mead! But for now, it’s sun tea for us both! Can you spare my tired old feet, and bring me two clean cups?”

Tomis giggled, and scurried away to the pantry. Iula watched him go, before craftily gulping down the last of her drink, just as the farmhouse door opened.

“Actually, Tam,” she spluttered, “bring three. Hanne’s back, and she’ll want—”

“Iula.”

Something in Hanne’s tone chilled Iula’s blood. She was on her feet before she realized it, moving to join the girl in the open doorway. “What is it?”

“There’s someone coming. I think... I think it’s a Solari.”

Iula strained her eyes into the twilight gloom of the valley, past the dusty yard of their simple homestead, and the fields of empyrean wheat beyond.

There.

True enough, she could just make out the distant, haggard form of a man clad in dulled, golden battleplate. He was moving slowly through the crop, but there could be no doubt as to his intended destination. Iula’s home was remote and secluded, the nearest neighbors several hours to the north.

She sighed, steeling her nerve, and strode into the yard.

“Greetings, friend,” she called out. “May the Sun’s light be upon you. I hope your journey through the mountains has not been too hard.”

The man did not respond, nor halt in his approach.

Iula continued. “I can offer you food and water, but I am sorry to say warriors are no longer welcome in the house that I once shared with my beloved. Perhaps you have heard of him? Pylas of the Ra’Horak. A worthy hero of the Solari, some forty years past. I have the countenance of the priesthood in recognition of his service. You will find no enemies here, I assure you.”

Still, the man did not respond.

He crossed the bottom ditch. He was now barely a hundred yards from the house.

“Hanne,” Iula said calmly, “please go get my husband’s sword.”

The girl did not move. Her wide eyes were fixed on the approaching figure.

Iula shot her a serious glance.

“The sword hanging above the fireplace. Bring it here. Now. And make sure Tomis is hidden.”

There was something curious about this warrior. As he drew closer, she could see that his deep blue cloak was ragged and stained from battle, and his shield hung limply at his side. His spear, the haft pitted and bent, dragged in the dirt behind him as though it might be a beggar-king’s plow.

Iula took a step back. She did not know why the man had come... but if he meant the three of them harm, she would be ready to fight back.

Hanne tumbled out of the house with the sheathed sword clutched to her chest, letting out a whimper when she saw the warrior heave himself onto the path that ran between the yard and the fields. He stumbled, and Iula noticed that his left sandal was flapping loosely from his bloodied foot.

Her heartbeat thundered in her ears.

“...Atreus?”

The warrior stopped at the sound of his own name. The spear slipped from his grasp.

And then he was falling.

Though neither of them consciously intended it, Iula and Hanne both lunged forward in a vain attempt to catch him; some instinctive, mortal reaction to seeing true divinity humbled and laid low.

But of course, they could not.

Atreus, once known as Pantheon and the Aspect of War, crashed face-first onto the flagstones, his helm seeming to ring like a cracked temple bell as it rolled away into the dusk.

On the fourth day, he awoke. Iula did not hear him climb from his bed, pulling on the freshly washed and dried tunic that she and Hanne had left out for him, nor creep down the gritty stone passageway to the kitchen.

The first she knew of his recovery, at all, was when the unmistakable smell of burning reached her nostrils.

She hauled herself out of her simple cot in a daze, her heart pounding.

“Hanne!” she yelled. “Hanne, get Tam!”

The floor was cold beneath her feet, but she did not think to look for her sandals. She threw the dividing curtain aside, cursing when her shoulder struck the wooden jamb as she passed beneath it.

There was smoke in the passageway.

“Hanne!”

Wincing, cradling her shoulder, she drummed a fist on the rough stone wall of Hanne’s small room all the way down to the kitchen, before remembering that the girl would have left for market hours earlier. Iula would have to deal with this alone.

Then she turned the corner, and stopped abruptly.

Atreus was crouched before the bread oven in the fireplace, frantically fanning a small blaze with his shield. His eyes were raw from the smoke, his hands smeared with flour and soot.

He looked over his shoulder at Iula.

“Forgive me,” he choked. “I... I don’t know what I...”

She let out a cry of exasperation and grabbed a flagon of water from the pantry.

“Get out of the way, you big oaf!”

Steam billowed from the oven as the fire was quenched. Iula coughed and wheezed, dropping the flagon so she could cover her mouth and nose with her nightsmock. She glared at the warrior standing sheepishly in the middle of the room.

“What are you waiting for? Get the damn door open,” she snapped at him, even as she hobbled over to the window and pushed the shutters outward. The morning sun streamed into the gloom, becoming almost solid bars of light in the haze.

Atreus opened the door, then thought for a moment, and started moving it back and forth to waft fresher air inside. Iula shot him a withering glare, before lowering herself to her knees in front of the oven, to inspect the damage.

“Well, that’s the whole batch ruined,” she muttered, gingerly plucking one of the sodden, blackened loaves from the mess. The stone base groaned and ticked as it cooled, with a slurry of ashes and water splattering down onto the floor beneath the open grate. “And the fire’s dead too. It took me a whole day to get it up to the right heat, you know.”

She jabbed a thumb over her shoulder, in Atreus’ direction.

“I told you last time you were here—you will never be a baker. Just give up.”

He continued to waft with the door, as if it were the most important task in the world. “The girl,” he murmured. “She asked me to mind the bread. Before she left.”

Iula got back to her feet with some effort. “You spoke to Hanne?”

Atreus nodded. He looked around for something to prop the door open, before shrugging and using his shield. Even when he stood again, she noted that he would not look her in the eye, and kept his gaze on the floor between them.

And she could not quite shake the sense that he looked somehow... lesser than she remembered. Diminished, perhaps. In the past, he had always radiated a kind of stubborn defiance, one that reassured his allies and unsettled those who might seek to oppose him.

That was gone, now.

He ran his fingers through his beard, apparently trying to find a specific combination of words that he wanted to speak. “I wanted to... I want to find a way to repay you, Iula. For all your many kindnesses to me, over the years.”

She scoffed. “Well, we’ll have to find something outside of the kitchen, won’t we. Maybe I’ll let you till the fields before I sow again, next season. Not even you can set mud on fire. At least, I hope not. Maybe I’m wrong.”

A glimmer of a smile crossed his features, but it was only a glimmer.

Then his gaze darted past her, to the passageway.

Iula looked to see Tomis standing there, peering around the corner, gripping the edge of the wall with his little fingers. She smoothed out her smock, and beckoned to him.

“Come here, Tam. Come and say hello. This is the man we’ve been helping. His name is Atreus—we’ve been friends for a long time. A very long time. Although you wouldn’t know it from looking at him, eh?”

The boy did not move. Neither did Atreus.

Sighing, she trudged over and scooped Tomis up, letting him lean into her bruised shoulder as she carried him into the kitchen. “He’s a little afraid of you, I think. You’re the first soldier he’s seen, since...” The words died on her lips. She smiled down at the boy, and blew an affectionate raspberry into his hair. “Well. He’s an orphan. These past few years have not been kind to the folk of the high valleys.”

Atreus looked from Iula to Tomis, and back again.

“He is not yours?”

Iula laughed. “Are you being serious? I am never quite sure with you.”

Atreus’ eyes fell to the floor again. “I... I don’t...”

“No, Atreus. I can tell you this very young boy is not my son. And before you ask, no, Hanne is not my daughter either. I’m sixty-eight years old, and I know I look it, so don’t try to flatter me into forgiving you for the burned bread, either. I know you don’t ever seem to age, but the rest of us mortals bloody well do.”

Then she looked at the warrior standing before her, a man she had known almost all her life, and saw something she had never seen before.

His eyes were brimming with tears. He was trembling.

She made to take a step toward him, but Tomis squirmed uncomfortably in her arms at the prospect, and she lowered him to the floor instead. “Go on, young man. Back to your room. I’ll bring you some breakfast shortly.”

In spite of her reassuring smile, the boy still edged out of the kitchen most warily. Iula turned back to Atreus, who had stooped to pick up the flagon.

“You’ve been gone so long,” she said, reaching out to place a reassuring hand on his arm. “I was beginning to wond—”

Atreus reacted to her touch as though struck by summer lightning.

“Get away from me!” he bellowed, recoiling with such force that he crashed over the low wooden bench, and split his forehead on the corner of the table.

Iula started away, almost losing her balance as well.

Atreus covered his face with one hand, and tried to regain both his footing and his composure. He backed into the space behind the open door, and brought his knees up like a wall between him and the rest of the world. “Don’t touch me, don’t touch me, don’t touch me,” he repeated again and again, under his breath.

It had pained her to see him physically broken, but Iula knew now that the wounds he must recently have suffered ran far deeper than his flesh.

And that, that hurt her more than anything else she could imagine.

She folded her arms tightly across her chest, sobbing gently, grasping the fabric of her smock, and sank down to sit opposite him on the floor.

They sat there for some time. Iula said nothing for a goodly while, watching the sunlight through the window move slowly across the gray tiles, and not thinking about the rheumatic ache in her joints, or the chill in her toes.

Eventually, when Atreus seemed to have calmed enough to let his head sink a little, she wiped her eyes with her sleeves and cleared her throat.

“What happened to you, old friend?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t... I don’t really remember.”

“What do you remember? Do you recall the last time you were here? The last time we saw each other?”

He frowned a little. “I think so. How long ago was it?”

“Six years, Atreus. I haven’t seen you in six years.”

Her words seemed to hang in the air longer than she had intended. She watched him attempt to process them in light of whatever it was he wanted to tell her.

“I... I think I went back to the peak,” he murmured. “I think I climbed the mountain again.”

Iula’s eyes widened. “But...”

“I know. It shouldn’t be possible. And yet, there it is.”

It was beyond anything she had ever considered. Certainly, there were legends that pre-dated even the empire of Shurima, of climbers who reached the summit of Mount Targon and yet were claimed by no Aspect, who then managed against all odds to make their way back down and return to their people; whether in shame or triumph, it was often unclear in the telling, and usually considered nothing more than fanciful allegory.

But the notion that any mortal, even an Aspect’s host, might make the climb twice...

It was unheard of.

She laughed, clapping her open palm on the floor. “My old friend,” she beamed, “if ever someone was going to rewrite the rules of the world, it would be you!”

Atreus shook his head, and Iula felt all levity fade.

“No,” he replied. “It wasn’t me.”

“Then who—”

“Viego.”

Even though she had never heard it before that moment, the name sent a shudder through her. She did not like to think that words, or names, could have power over the living. Maybe it was simply the way Atreus had spoken it, his gaze haunted and thin.

“Viego. The ancient king who brought the Black Mist to our lands. I tried to fight him, but he... uhh...”

Atreus rubbed absently at his scalp.

“He made me his puppet, Iula. I think I’ve done some terrible, terrible things.”

Iula was numb. She recalled Atreus’ disheveled state when he stumbled back into the valley, and how she and Hanne had not dared imagine what foes he must have faced to blunt the weapons and dull the armor of an Aspect.

Had they even been foes at all?

She hauled herself up onto her knees, and found she could not stop shaking her head in disbelief at the injustice of it all. “I’m sorry. I know how hard it was for you to be controlled by the Pantheon, all those years ago. This must have been... Oh, Atreus. I’m so truly sorry for what has happened to you, my friend.”

Slowly, cautiously, she reached out to him again. This time he did not flinch, but his face creased in pained sorrow.

“Oh, Atreus,” she said again, and took him in her arms, rocking gently back and forth with him on the kitchen floor. He clutched at her clothing with his scarred hands, his face pressed against her chest—not so very different from young Tomis in those early days after he first came to the homestead.

Close to tears herself, Iula closed her eyes.

“Tell me what you need, old friend,” she whispered. “Whatever I can do for you, I will. You know that.”

Atreus took a deeper breath to steady himself.

“I need you to tell me it’s okay to give up,” he replied.

Iula felt suddenly cold. “What?”

“There is too much evil in the world. You and I have both seen it. I’ve fought it for so long, I can’t remember what came before... but I’m tired. I’m so damn tired, Iula. How can mortals hope to win out against undying kings, or fallen god-warriors? The Aspects and their slaves. Demons from the spirit realm. Runeterra is becoming their playground. I thought all I needed to do was keep getting back up, no matter what. But if I can be made an enemy too, then simply being able to endure is no longer enough.”

He gritted his teeth, and looked her dead in the eye.

“And worst of all, I’ve lost whatever power I still held after my Aspect was slain. Viego must’ve seen to that. Whatever it was that connected me to the celestial realm, it’s gone. I am... I am just a man. So I need you to tell me that it’s okay for me to leave all this behind. You’re the only person I—”

Iula pushed him away, and clambered shakily to her feet. Adrenaline surged in her veins. She saw that this wasn’t just the absence of his comforting defiance, which for so many years had made her feel safer, just knowing he was out there, somewhere in the world.

He had actually given up.

“How dare you,” she murmured.

Atreus rose, confused, towering over her. He wiped his face with the back of his forearm.

“I don’t underst—”

“How dare you!” Iula shrieked. “How can you even think to ask that?”

He faltered, his fists clenching involuntarily. “I can’t do this anymore. Please.”

A sour taste rose in the back of her throat. Her anger was so fierce, so hot, that she couldn’t feel the floor beneath her feet anymore.

“Damn you,” she spat. “Damn you. Coward. How dare you say that to me.”

“Iula, please, listen to—”

She slapped him, hard, across the face.

And again.

He did not try to defend himself, but only stared down at her, dumbfounded, his cheek reddening quickly.

Iula could not weep. She was too enraged. “He loved you, Atreus! Pylas loved you more than any brother. He was my husband, but he went with you up that accursed mountain, even though I begged him not to. He was mine, and you lost him up there!” She let out a wordless cry of pain, and dug her nails into her forearms. “You got to hold him, Atreus. You got to hold him as he died. And what did I get?”

She pointed to the mantel, where Pylas’ blade hung.

“I got a sword. Nothing more.”

Iula squared her jaw and looked up into the clear, open sky she imagined beyond the ceiling beams.

“Don’t you dare tell me about what you’ve lost, and how you can’t go on anymore. You don’t get to retire. You don’t have that option. This isn’t about you. It never has been. I helped you because that’s what Pylas would have wanted. I even tried to become a soldier and follow you on the battlefield after he was gone. He died for you, so you could become something greater than any Ra’Horak. Greater than any mortal.”

Atreus shook his head. “But I’m not.”

Exasperated, she stomped to the fireplace and snatched down the blade, wrenching it from its sheath and pressing it to Atreus’ heart in one sweeping motion.

“Then we don’t need you! We may as well just let the Aspects have their war, and let that be the end of everything!”

The tip of the sun-tempered steel parted the threads of his tunic, and drew a trickle of blood from his breast. He looked down at the small crimson spot slowly spreading across the fabric.

Then he looked back to Iula.

“What war?” he asked, his voice sounding weak.

She tightened her grip on the sword, realizing only then that she did not know how she expected this to end.

“The Solari, Atreus. They see heresy everywhere. And they’re not just killing anyone they suspect of being a Lunari—but anyone suspected of harboring them, too.” Unable to take a hand off the hilt, she nodded instead toward the open passageway. “Tomis’ entire settlement. The Ra’Horak butchered them. This, this is what happens when the Aspects cloak themselves in mortal superstition. Your former brethren have been driven into darkness by the blinding light of their new savior.”

Something like recognition flickered across Atreus’ features, as if he were trying to recall a fading dream. “And the Aspect of the Moon... Of course, she has not yet stepped forward to lead the Lunari.”

“And how much worse will it all get, once she does?” Iula hissed. “You swore that you would stand against them, Atreus. That you would not let this world’s fate be decided by such inhuman monsters, even when they choose to do nothing. I am sorry for what has happened to you, I truly am... but I cannot let you break your oath. Not now.”

Atreus slowly, deliberately closed the fingers of his right hand around the sword blade. “Killing either the Aspect of Sun or Moon will not end the conflict in Targon. Just as the death of War did not lead to eternal peace.”

“Shut up. Stop trying to justify what you want, and do what you know you should. That little boy was absolutely terrified of you when you arrived, and yet he wanted to wear your helm and pick up your spear from the moment he saw them. If you won’t act now, then that’s the only future he has—growing up to fight and die like too many Rakkor before him.”

She forced as much conviction into her voice as she could muster.

“You need to get back up, Atreus. I didn’t want to be a widowed farmer. I didn’t want to inherit all this. I had to give up my life and my love, so now you need to prove you’re worthy of the faith my husband had in you. You need to honor the sacrifices we’ve all made. You need to stop the Aspects from destroying our people entirely.”

Atreus gripped Iula’s leading hand, gently urging her to drive the blade onward, his expression resolute.

“I can’t,” he whispered, his voice cracking. “I’m not strong enough.”

That was it. Iula was done.

She threw down the sword and barged past him, heading for Tomis’ room. “Well, if you’re going to just lay down and die, please pass on my love to my husband when you see him,” she yelled over her shoulder, before scooping up the startled child and hurrying out of the farmhouse in tears. She did not look back to see if Atreus was following them.

“Where are we going?” Tomis asked.

Iula winced as her bare feet were cut raw on the stony path, but did not slow her pace.

“We’re going to cut some more firewood, my boy,” she managed to smile. “We’re going to bake bread again today.”

When they returned, Atreus was gone.

Iula ignored the handwritten note that had been carefully placed beside Pylas’ sheathed sword on the kitchen table, and went to close the door.

Telling herself she was merely looking out for Hanne on her way back from market, she scanned the distant trackways that led up and out of the valley, but saw no sign of anyone.

She took a deep breath to calm herself, letting it out slowly as she walked back to the fireplace, and knelt before the cold oven with a grunt of discomfort. Then, without reading it, she balled up the note and stuffed it into the grate, and began to hum an old song from her youth as she stacked fresh kindling on top.

She genuinely hoped that would not be the last time she saw her old friend; that he would find his way out of the shadows, for all their sakes, by whatever path he had chosen.

But until then, she would sharpen her husband’s blade, and prepare to meet whatever was still to come.