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Vayne had one arrow left in her wristbolt launcher. She was bleeding from three different wounds. The previously-human beast she’d spent all night hunting had just knocked her to the ground and it was about to bite the head off her shoulders.

Things were going better than expected.

Slime dripped from the shapeshifter’s maw as it shrieked in anticipation of its kill. Scanning the darkness with her nightseeker goggles, Vayne found neither weapons nor cover nearby. She’d tracked the beast to this open patch of meadow specifically so it couldn’t take cover behind the alderwoods of Demacia, but that decision left her exposed as well.

Which was fine by her. There’s no fun in an easy kill, after all.

The beast grabbed Vayne by the shoulders, its mandibles opening to reveal rows upon rows of jagged teeth. If its jaws didn’t kill her, its fetid breath could certainly finish the job.

Vayne rapidly reviewed her options. She could try to dodge the beast’s bite, but that would be a short-term solution at the very best. She could kick the creature in its absurd number of teeth and attempt to land her last wristbolt in its bucking forehead, but she couldn’t trust her arrow would find its mark through its gnashing forest of fangs. Or, she could try something flashy, violent and slightly stupid.

Vayne chose the latter.

She shoved her entire arm into its gaping mouth. The creature’s razor teeth ripped strips of skin from her knuckles and arm, but Vayne smiled – she had the beast right where she wanted it. She felt its jaw clench, ready to bite and rip her limb off. She didn’t give it the chance.

Vayne twisted her arm, dragging her wristbolt launcher across the inside of the creature’s gob until the silver tip of her final arrow pointed directly at the roof of the beast’s mouth. With the flick of her wrist, the bolt tore through the monster’s skull, shredding its brain.

The shrieking stopped as suddenly as it started, the creature’s body limp as it collapsed upon the grassy soil. Vayne crawled out from under it and attempted to remove her arm from its skull without cutting herself more than she already had, only to find that her fist was stuck inside the creature’s head.

She could either keep trying to pull her hand through the shapeshifter’s jagged mouth – and probably lose a finger or two in the process – or she could dig her arm in further to punch through the top of its head and snap its jaw like a wishbone.

As always, Vayne chose the latter.

The hard part wasn’t killing the damned thing. The hard part was carrying it back to its bride.

Well, widow.

The widow Selina was beautiful beyond imagining, with hair that caught the sunlight even in the darkness of her fire-lit cabin. The deep scratches on her face, and even the tears that streamed down her cheeks, did nothing to diminish her beauty.

Vayne laid the carcass at the woman’s feet as gingerly as she could. Its flesh was monstrously transformed and wracked with wounds both self-inflicted and not-so-self-inflicted; it looked more like a collection of limbs and meat than a person.

“Was it quick?” the widow asked through sobs.

It had not been quick. Vayne had tracked the changeling to its den in the forests outside eastern Demacia. She’d managed to interrupt it mid-transformation: its eyes had multiplied and expanded, its mouth had grown mandibles, its left arm had formed into a razor-sharp pincer – and it was angry.

Vayne flicked a glob of brain off her wrist, a clinging remnant from when she’d punched through the creature’s skull.

“Erm,” Vayne said.

“Oh, my love,” Selina said, dropping to her knees and wrapping her arms around the mutated body. “What could have caused such a tragedy?”

Vayne kneeled beside the couple as the widow brought what was left of the man’s head to her breast, either not noticing or caring as his blood smeared her dress.

“Some people transform themselves into beasts. Some are transformed against their will,” Vayne said.

She picked up the bulging hand of the corpse, casually examining it. “He belonged to the second group.”

The widow’s eyes went wide with fury.

“Someone did this to him? Who would – why would–”

The widow collapsed onto the body in tears, unable to find the words.

“Sometimes, therians – shapechangers – want a companion. Sometimes they’re just savage: they lash out and bite somebody out of confusion or anger. Others I’ve met just get bored. They think it’s fun,” Vayne said, patting the woman’s head. “But some…some just need to eat.”

The widow looked up, sniffing away tears.

“I don’t – I don’t understand.”

Vayne gave the widow a pitying smile.

“They want to eat somebody, but sometimes that somebody gets away. And the thing that tried to eat them accidentally passes on its phage. Then they end up turning, too.”

The widow glared at Vayne. The wristbolt launcher on Vayne’s arm clinked as she brushed the woman’s hair out of her tear-filled eyes.

“The last therian I killed told me his victims tasted better if they loved him. Something about the juicy flavor they took on when they blushed. Can’t even imagine how they must taste while on honeymoon, hmm?” Vayne mused.

The widow stopped crying. Her eyes grew hard.

“He did love you, you know,” said Vayne.

The widow tried to stand, but Vayne gripped a fistful of the woman’s hair and pulled tight.

“He must have been shocked after you bit him. People are unpredictable when they’re scared. And there’s nothing more frightening than being betrayed by someone you love.”

Vayne flicked her wrist, cocking the wristbolt launcher on her forearm.

“So, who turned you?”

The woman stared back with hatred, her eyes slowly darkening to a deep red.

“Nobody,” she said in a voice like knives scraping across rock. “I am of my own design.”

Vayne smiled.

“How did you know?” the widow asked, sliding her hand behind her back.

“Bite marks on the front of his neck, rather than the back, combined with the lack of wounds anywhere else on his body, told me he was attacked by someone he trusted. Go ahead. Try it.”

The widow paused.

“Try what?”

“The pincer you’re forming behind your back. Slash me. Let’s see if you can cut my hand off before I put a bolt through your forehead,” said Vayne.

The widow retracted her pincer from behind her back, crestfallen. The game was up.

“Why?” she asked.

“Why what?” Vayne blankly replied.

“Why not just walk in and kill me? Why this whole… presentation?”

Vayne smiled. A sly, hateful grin.

“Because I wanted to be sure I was right. Because I wanted you to feel the panic and the fear he felt. But mainly...”

Vayne tightened her wrist. With a metallic twang, a six-inch bolt of cold silver pierced the changeling’s brain. The widow’s eyes rolled back into her head. She collapsed to the floor like a bag of stones.

“Because it’s fun.”

Evelynn slinked through the teeming streets, the shadows of her body blending seamlessly with the night. Her eyes glinted within the gloom, though only the keenest observer would have noticed. Drunks, sailors, and harlots chatted in a nearby thoroughfare, blissfully unaware they were being watched by a demon in the dark. The demon, on the other hand, saw them all with perfect clarity, and judged them with the most discerning eye.

Evelynn’s gaze settled on a man lying in the gutter, a bottle of beet wine dangling from his hands. Ordinarily, the demon wouldn’t give a second thought to someone in his condition. But she had not fed in days, and she found herself desperate enough to consider the man, if only for a moment. It would be so easy. All she needed was to lure him to one of the numerous alleys far from the glow of the street lamps.

The thought perished as she watched a cockroach scurry across the drunk’s face. This was a man too inebriated to feel. His arousal would be vague and muted, with none of the urgent attraction she loved to see in her victims before she brought them low. She might even flay an entire arm before he mustered a scream.

And that was the problem. Over the course of countless feedings, Evelynn had learned everything about her palate: She preferred—no, needed—her victims to feel every prick, every bite, every bit of flesh she peeled away with her claws. A man in this condition would be dull and unfulfilling, scarcely worth her time.

She dismissed the drunk and continued down the muddy promenade, past the windows of a dank, candlelit tavern. A fat, belching woman threw open its door and stumbled out into the night, grasping a half-eaten turkey leg. For a moment, Evelynn considered the woman, how she might woo her into an embrace, and then into the unspeakable hell that would follow.

The demon watched as the woman wolfed down the rest of the meat, never tasting it. There was something deep inside her, a melancholy that would taint the experience.

Evelynn preferred inflicting the pain herself.

The demon moved on, gliding through the shadows of the town, over two more drunks, past a beggar asking for alms, between a couple in the midst of an argument. Evelynn found them all completely unappealing. Hurting them would be like plucking a flower that had already wilted. She preferred her daisies tall and healthy, for those were the most satisfying to cut down.

A dreadful thought overtook her. Perhaps she’d made a mistake choosing this wretched backwater as her hunting ground. Perhaps, at any moment, the thrill from her last victim might wear off, leaving only the nothingness—that utterly empty space inside her where feelings should be.

And then, she saw him…

The gentleman was positively beaming as he exited one of the high-end pubs. He was dapper without being flashy, and he hummed a jaunty tune to himself as he set off down the street with a bouquet of flowers tucked gingerly in the fold of his arm.

The two lashers on Evelynn’s back writhed with excitement. Even from a distance, she sensed this man was completely content in his own skin. She dashed after the gentleman, taking great care not to lose track of her prey or to alert him to her presence.

He walked for nearly half an hour before finally turning up a long walkway toward a modestly sized, cut-stone manor. At the end of the path, the man stepped through the heavy oak door to his home. Evelynn held her unblinking gaze on the windows of the man’s house as they lit one by one with warm candlelight. A slender, austere woman in a high-necked evening gown entered and greeted the man with a welcoming embrace. She feigned a slight surprise at the flowers he had brought, before placing them in a clean vase, right next to an old bouquet.

The demon’s interest grew.

A moment later, two children, scarcely out of diapers, ran into the room and threw their arms around the man’s legs, their wide grins sparkling with tiny teeth. Though the scene played like the epitome of domestic bliss, Evelynn knew what she would find if she probed just a little deeper.

She waited patiently, watching the candles go out one by one, until only the parlor remained lit. The man was alone, settling into a reading chair to draw on his pipe. Evelynn crept out of the shadows, her dark, wispy limbs giving way to warm flesh. Her demonic lashers disappeared behind her back, revealing a shapely female form, with curves too generous for any eye to ignore.

Her hips waggled softly as she sauntered across the lawn to the window. She was nearly arm’s length from the glass when she saw the man bolt upright from his chair at the sight of her, his pipe nearly falling from his mouth. Evelynn beckoned with a single finger, motioning for the man to join her outside.

The man crept to the front door and opened it tentatively, curious to investigate the strange beauty lurking outside his window. He approached her on the lawn with great apprehension, and greater anticipation.

“Who… are you?” he asked timidly.

“I’m whatever you want me to be,” assured the demon.

As Evelynn locked eyes with the man, she plumbed the depths of his soul and found exactly what she was looking for—that tiny lesion of discontent that festered within even the happiest person.

There it is, she thought. All that he wants and cannot have.

“My family…” the man said, unable to finish his thought.

The demon leaned close.

“Shh. It’s okay,” she whispered in the man’s ear. “I know what you want, and the guilt you feel for wanting it. Let it go.”

She pulled back to find the man hopelessly captivated.

“Can I… have you?” he asked, ashamed of his brazenness, but overcome by a strange desire to take her right there on the lawn.

“Of course, honey. That’s why I’m here,” said the demon.

He touched her face with the tips of his fingers, caressing her cheek. She held his hand firmly to her skin and released a soft, sultry chuckle. This sweet, tender, happy man would be hers tonight. He had so much pain to give, and she would take it all.

From behind them, the shuffling of slippered feet sounded from the open doorway of the house.

“Is everything okay, love?” asked the man’s wife.

“Everything’s going to be wonderful, my darling,” the demon answered for the dumbstruck man.

The deal had become even sweeter, and the prospects more enticing. There was one daisy in full flower to pluck, and one bulb to bloom while it watched.

The doctor stumbles on the slick bridge. His hand reaches out for the worn guardrail as his foot loses connection to the wiring in his ankle. For a moment, he is disoriented. His vision slips from the wet floor plates of the commuter overpass to the unending assembly of metal, glass, and perpetual light that is Upper Central.

He blinks away the brightness and reconnects his augmented foot. Etched in the circuit there is a faded memory from the last user—it was expensive…

Also a size and a half too big, his own mind echoes back sourly. The mod is a belittling, secondhand thank you from a rich upper-sector patient too scared to pay traceable credits to his back alley physician.

The doctor has scrubbed the processor half a dozen times since acquiring it, but there are still old impressions trapped in the silicon, like a fingerprint that can’t quite be rubbed off. He grunts and shakes off the recollection. It is a discomforting reminder of what happens when common anatomy tries to plug into technology above its pay grade.

Water drips through the strands of the doctor’s thinning hair and gets behind his micron-glasses, blurring the lights on the far side of the bridge. Condensing moisture hadn’t been listed in the morning’s announcements. Then again, the doctor hadn’t been prepared for much of what landed in his lap today. He pets the bio-inert plastic sleeve in his breast pocket. Weapons grade. Enough for the retirement he had promised himself twenty revs ago.

The doctor is alone on the thick span of metal and fiber-reinforced plastic that connects the lower sectors to the mechanized lifts of Upper Central. The commuter crowd he had come down with has disappeared quickly into the darkened stalls and shaded side alleys of the transition market. He grunts again and tries to hurry, continuing his hobbled pace across the bridge. He wipes a hand over the wetness now running in rivers down his face. He is old, but even he isn’t old enough to remember real rain—only this sad concentration of a hundred million organic breathing cycles stacked one top of another.

The magnetic thrum of the lift behind him slows as the doors prepare to release a new tide of enhanced humanity into the market mazes. The doctor gives his retirement package one more pat and ventures a quick look back.

The pneumatics hiss open, revealing the elevator’s darkness and a sea of unknown faces. The doctor releases the breath he was holding.

“Transition level. Proceed with caution,” a digitized voice announces.

The crowd engages their light shades and pulls up hoods of synthetic duvetyne to shield them against the drizzle and Upper Central’s oppressive glow. Like well-trained mice, they scurry eagerly onto the bridge.

And that’s when the doctor sees it: a predatory metal shadow that stands a head taller than the surrounding crowd.

His breath fogs his glasses in a growing rhythm of panic.

The shadow steps into the ambient light. Its lean shape is all dark, wiry muscles of carbon fiber braided over heavy servos. His jet-colored chest plating swallows the glare from above. The doctor recognizes the matted fur collar, coiled like a feral cat, around a neck of dark, anodized steel. But it is the contours of the shadow’s featureless mask, defined now only by the drip of falling water and the reflection of the pulsating holo-signs, that rattles the doctor to his inadequate, common bones.

Khada Jhin.

The doctor tries to back away. He slips again on the metal plating. The flesh of one set of knuckles scrapes on the handholds of the bridge as he catches himself. The crowd, focused only on getting out of the wet and the light, pushes the doctor down, indifferent to the fear that is choking him.

The doctor scrambles on his hands and knees. Real and metal feet crush his fingers into the bridge grating. He can’t keep up. The swarm of people giving the doctor cover begins to thin, exposing him to his pursuer. He wipes the moisture from his eyes with shaky hands, his glasses lost in the chaos. Blood mixes with tears. His vision clears for a moment; the sight of a moisture converter promises salvation. The vent is belching murky clouds of stale, humid air from the lower sectors.

He reaches the sanctuary just as the last of the crowd breaks away. He cowers, wheezing through barely parted lips. The labyrinth of the transition markets is just a few meters away. If he can make it there he can disappear, away from the shadow that haunts him.

The moisture converter slows its labored breath. The last commuter vanishes into the transition market, revealing a mirror-glass display in an abandoned stall. In its reflection, the doctor watches the metal shadow raise a long pulse rifle to its shoulder. The faceless mask winks to life in a pixelated slash of angry red.

The doctor tilts his head up to the glow of the upper sectors—anything to escape the focus now taking aim. He squints his eyes and begs, but the neon future is not listening. Especially not to such a small and solitary creature.

Through the rain, the doctor hears the unmistakable metal click of the pulse rifle’s safety. His hand goes to his chest, shielding the one real treasure he carries. Through the plastic sleeve of the package, he can feel his heart racing.

As the unflinching light from above bears down on him, it fills the doctor’s animal brain with one last mortal thought.

There is nothing the future will not take.

“Freeze playback.”

At my last performance hearing, I asked the reviewing officers what it took to make it in Central. One of them said you had to be ready to trade a piece of yourself—that every upgrade would take you higher up PROJECT’s command line, but would cost some more of who you were in the bargain. Rather bluntly I told them I didn’t think anyone in their right mind would pay that kind of price. Not for a little clean silicon, and a fancy logotype.

They all laughed. And then they promoted me.

Now, the image in front of me wavered as a ribbon of static washed through it. The tri-dimensional hologram of the doc’s body was suspended in what would be his last living moment. His face was tipped up to the sky, his features a mix of fear and acceptance. Centimeters from the back of his head was an arc of red from a pulse rifle. Another tick or two forward in time, and the concentrated plasma would melt a hole through the man’s head.

“You stopped before the best part, Vi.”

Mosley, my newly assigned partner, stretched and yawned. What could have been muscle in his early years had lost the fight against gravity and sagged down to his middle. Fighting crime behind a desk had ensured he hadn’t missed any nutritional breaks.

But he sure is hungry. I noted for the third time that Mosley couldn’t keep his eyes off my promotion data cube. My new captain had plunked it down on the desk that morning for me, tossing in her hearty congratulations and my new beady-eyed partner.

I watched as Mosley finally gave in to his greed. He picked up the small cube off the vid desk and tossed it absently between his soft hands.

“You still haven’t installed these new subroutines yet?” His voice was artificially light as he fidgeted.

I cracked my knuckles.

My ATLAS gauntlets were on the desk. They were the bulky, standard issue of enforcers in the lower sectors. Most recruits upgraded double-quick to something that put more distance between them and whoever they’d been told to bring in, but I never minded getting close. Their blunt power fit me like a glove, too, and with no permanent install there was zero chance of someone else’s memories wandering around in the wiring. Still, I had gotten a few looks during my Central training-check, but the signing officer stopped smirking when my right hook caved in the chest of a titanium test dummy.

“You’re wasting your time anyway,” Mosley continued. Unfortunately, he thought me not answering meant that he should keep talking. “A bad doctor met a bad end. End of case. Captain wants to know when we’re going to put that lift back in service. Can’t hold up the commuters much longer.”

I ignored him. In the lower districts, our bad ends didn’t usually involve cranial de-ionization at a hundred meters with an unregistered pulse rifle. This had been a professional hit. I turned my attention to the A.I. in the room.

“Resume review. Step back.”

“Specify time increment,” the artificial voice taunted. Even the vid-scanner didn’t seem to want to get with the program.

I could feel the rough edge of frustration vibrating through me. I had only been clocked on since 0600, and the upper sector regulations were already more annoying than wading through knee-high scrap in the assembly levels.

What I needed was a good chase. Maybe hit a few things along the way. That would have been just fine. I grunted and blew the loose hair out of my face.

First day, Vi. Best behavior. Make friends. Do not punch anything. I repeated my morning’s mantra and took a deep breath.

“Three—no, four ticks,” I told the machine as patiently as I could.

The image wavered again, this time the holographic model clicked back ever so slightly. I tracked the light ballistic as it entered the range of the security feed outside the elevator. Inside the lift was darkness. The security feed there had been tampered with. The spark of light that hung in the air was all I had to go on.

“Based on ballistic entrance, extrapolate height of suspect and weapon type,” I said.

Lights flickered in the dark, humming as the calculation churned. A polygonal outline was traced in thin rays of neon. The killer was on the tall side… but other than that, I didn’t have much to go on from the rendering.

“None of this is real,” I grumbled. In the lower sectors, we didn’t work cases through fancy holo-vids. “How are we supposed to find anything staring at a computer model?”

“Query error. Restate question.” I wondered if the A.I. had been programmed to be patronizing. Or perhaps this one had taken on personality traits of its maker.

Mosley laughed. “That’s how it works up here, detective.” He hit my new title harder, trying to drive home that I was free of the lower sector grind. “An occasional rat slips through the cracks, but as long as the lights stay on above us, it’s all good. And look at it this way, we stay nice and clean.”

The half-hearted consolation had me gritting my teeth. I looked up from the simulation at Mosley. I couldn’t blame him. Most of his attention was still focused on my data cube.

“So are you gonna install this or what?” he asked.

I shut off the holo-vid. I wasn’t going to get any more useful data out of projected light. “I don’t trust upgrades,” I said quietly.

He finally looked at me. “Kid, this isn’t some lower-sector hand-me-down.” He flashed the cube at me. “This is the real deal. It came from upstairs.” The lights of the vid console reflected off it, highlighting the upside-down triangle of PROJECT’s corporate lab. “You know it’s fresh, or at least been properly wiped.”

It was clear Mosley wanted it. I rubbed the back of my neck.

“I just had one, less than a cycle ago,” I lied. “Don’t want to overcharge.” I picked up my old gauntlets off the desk. “Besides, these still work just fine.” I held out a hand for the data cube.

The strain of social politeness glistened over him in a fine sweat. I figured he was fighting the urge not to shove the subroutines in right then. But he just frowned, and handed it over.

“My next upgrade is due in a cycle, if you decide you don’t want it after all…” he offered.

I turned away and started walking toward the exit

“I’ll let you know,” I called over my shoulder. “Partner.”

“Hey, where are you going?” There was a fraction of concern in Mosley’s voice, but not much.

I slipped my gauntlets on and stepped into the lift.

“To get my hands dirty.”

I stared at the inoperative security sensor while the levels counted down on the high-speed elevator. Its micron-glass eye was clouded and dull. Whoever had come for the doctor knew Central would be watching. I rolled my shoulders and stretched my arms out behind me, taking advantage of the empty lift. Normally the large, boxy conveyor would be packed to the brim with Central workers with credit accounts that couldn’t afford the rent upstairs. The elevator was out of service to civilians until Central closed the case on the doctor’s death.

Until I closed the case. To Mosley, an unlicensed doc’s murder wasn’t worth holding up the daily commute and the efficiency of Central’s machine. The lift accelerated and for a moment I felt weightless. I flicked the inertial dampeners off in my gauntlets out of habit, letting their mass ground me. A tick later the elevator came to a full stop and shoved me back into my body.

The door in front of me slid open. A digitized voice called out into the humid air. “Transition level. Proceed with caution.”

I engaged my light shade, stepping cautiously out of the darkness of the lift and into the bridge’s ambient glow. As usual in the lower sectors, it was damp. I could feel the moisture bead on my neck where the tips of my hair touched my skin.

The span of connecting metal was empty and the vendor stalls where the bridge met the market were also vacant. A commuter lift out of commission shut down all the surrounding business. No chance running into any witnesses, even if they would be willing to talk to the police.

I walked out onto the bridge a few paces and turned to face the lift. Set on manual mode, the elevator and its darkness would wait for my command before returning to Central. Given the approximate height calculated, this was where the killer stood when they fired. A step more and they would have been seen by the bridge’s security feed outside the elevator. The moisture converter the doctor had tried to hide behind was nearly a hundred meters away. The killer was definitely not an amateur.

I looked at the deck plates of the bridge. There were a few scrapes in the metal. I crouched down to take a closer look. They were recent. Anything more than a day or two would have more noticeable water oxidation. The elevator and bridge had been closed since the murder. I scanned the depth, a string of numbers appearing in the bottom corner of my light shade. If the marks had been made by the killer, then that individual was significantly heavier than a normal augmented humanoid.

I could almost hear the sector bulletin now. Central reports chop-shop doc vaporized by armed auto-laborer, or something equally convenient.

An irregular air current pushed my wet hair against my face. Out of the corner of my light shade I could see the bridge was still empty. I sniffed. Ozone. The muscles in my shoulders tensed. I flicked the charging coupler in my gloves on and let one knee drop to the deck plating.

“You know, level six continuous stealth in a public commuter space is a violation of Central municipal codes,” I announced to the empty air.

A puddle of water trembled slightly in front of me. The vibration of power built inside my gauntlets. I launched one metal fist in a heavy uppercut, connecting against something solid. The smile barely had time to uncurl on my face before the wrist of my leading glove was caught in an unseen grip.

The momentum was too much. Locked in a tumble with an invisible assailant, I hit the metal grates of the bridge hard, my body paneling barely absorbing the impact.

The air wavered as my new friend uncloaked. On my back, I squinted to get a better look without the halo of light from above. It was a woman in weapons-grade elastomeric body armor. Long photon-bleached hair was gathered up in a tight tail, giving her a severe look. The light in her eyes was cold, and her wrist-mounted crossbolt was pointed directly at my forehead.

Her voice was a digitized growl, but I thought I heard a note of curiosity now that she had the upper hand—or rather, bolt.

She continued, “You knew I was a danger, and yet you still came at me.”

“Promotion’s been kinda stressful,” I said. “Maybe I just needed to punch something.”

“Your records list you were dispensed a PROJECT promotion cube this morning,” The woman gave my gear a secondary scan. “You haven’t installed the subroutine.”

“Whoa there, getting a little personal, aren’t you—”

“I have a need for it,” she interrupted.

“Are you over-charged?” I rubbed the back of my head with my oversized metal glove, roughing my hair into wet spikes. “I’m a tick away from hauling you off to Central.”

“You can try,” the woman said, her crossbolt still aimed at me.

I let out a bitter laugh. “Fair enough. How about a few pleasantries before we go exchanging gifts.” The sarcasm snapped in my voice processor. “Your name.”

“Classified.” The flatline of her lips broke into a predatory smile. “If I tell you, I would have to kill you.”

I decided she wasn’t the type to joke. I looked more closely at her suit and weapons and changed the subject.

“Doesn’t look like you need an upgrade.” I gestured to her wrist. “That pretty crossbolt alone is higher level than most of the pieces in Central’s standard arsenal.”

“I’m hunting something.”

“That makes two of us,” I said.

“The data cube.”

There wasn’t anything standard issue about her, but she still contained the one constant in Central: in the end, everybody wanted a piece of somebody else.

Before I could respond, a call came over my private comm. Static filled my earpiece.

“Vi? Vi, you there?” It was Mosley. Fear coated his voice like a cold sweat. “I-I think… I might need some backup… uh, partner…”

“Little busy, Mosley.” I read the time off the lower corner of my visor. “Shouldn’t you be clocked off?”

“Look, just come and help me out, okay?”

“I’m sure a local enforcer would be closer,” I said, watching the woman’s face in front of me. “They can handle—”

“I’m sending you my location.”

A pinprick of light showed up six sectors down. “The Heap’s a little out of Central’s jurisdiction, Mosley,” I sighed.

The Heap wasn’t so much a place as a rathole of unsavory outcasts. It was hard to track, as the congregation was seldom in the same spot for more than a cycle, mostly due to the fact it took residence in condemned structures about to be refactored. It was an easy place to pick up unregistered hackers, black market weapons, or “gently used” off-cycle upgrades. We tolerated its existence in the lower sectors because it made it easy to round up suspects when you needed them. But it was also an easy place to get yourself permanently wiped if you weren’t careful.

“I pick up jobs. You know, ‘off the record’ as far as the day job is concerned.” Mosley’s choked half-explanation was spiked with panic. It was hard to imagine his softness as hired muscle. “Listen, I know we just started together, but this guy’s going to kill me. I don’t have anyone else to call.”

Damn. “On my way. Stay—”

The connection clicked off abruptly. I hit the bridge with a gauntleted fist, denting the metal grating, and looked up at the weapons-grade mystery still standing over me. Her crossbolt hadn’t moved a micrometer.

I got up, taking my chances that she probably wouldn’t shoot me.

“I’ve got to go. There’s a lift down to the lower sectors on the other side of the bridge. If I disable the safety and manually ride the speed control, I can probably make it before my partner spills his drink on the wrong person.” I turned to leave. “Consider this a warning,” I added dryly. “Get that weapon of yours licensed, or next time I’ll have to write you an infraction.”

“The Heap will have your man dead before that lift reaches the next level,” the woman called after me. “How about something a little faster?”

An arcing crackle and a waft of ozone turned me around.

A personal combat hyper-cycle decloaked. The humid air was starting to condense into rain again, but the water repelled off the bike’s black aerographite panels. I could feel the pulse from the magnetic drive as she started it up.

I gave a low whistle. “That is definitely not registered.”

“Correct.”

“You don’t look like the kind that gives out free rides.”

“A ride for that promotion cube,” she said evenly, revving the engine. “Think of it as a speed upgrade instead.”

I looked into the woman’s eyes. She could have just shot me and taken what she wanted.

“I don’t trust upgrades,” I said.

I walked over and settled myself behind her on the bike.

“You shouldn’t.” She tipped the cycle’s wheel over the side of the bridge. “By the way, the name is Vayne.”

Six sectors passed in a blur of vertical neon. I tracked Mosley’s position in my light shade to keep from vomiting my last nutri-pack all over the back of Vayne’s pretty ride.

Vayne stashed the cycle on a fire egress overlooking the Heap, the only tell being a faint, acrid tang lingering in the air. I watched the coming and goings of the evening crowds through a pair of ultra-V binoculars.

It was busier than usual. It looked like someone rang the dinner bell for every mangey tomcat in the neighborhood.

“He’s in there.” I turned to Vayne and pulled the data cube from one of the tactical pouches on my hip. “Here. Before I forget my bus fare.”

“An honest cop. Not many of you left in the wild.” Vayne took the cube and sized up the latest incarnation of the Heap. “This rev seems less upstanding than the last one.”

I nodded. “Feels like it was only yesterday I was breaking up fistfights in joints like this.”

“It was.” Vayne’s cold smile was back. She checked the powercell of the larger crossbow she carried. “I take it you don’t want to go in the front door.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” I said. “You don’t have to come.”

“You’re not the only who feels like hitting something.”

I shrugged and walked around the back, examining the building’s structure for the non-load bearing walls. The building was condemned and I needed to be careful. It wouldn’t do Mosley much good if I brought the whole thing down on top of him while he was still inside.

I zeroed in on a sweet spot and charged the coupler in my gauntlet, hitting the wall with every kilogram of the day’s frustration.

The old carbon honeycomb crumbled with two solid hits. The hole was big enough to pass through in three. I brushed off the bits building as I stepped through into the darkness.

I had gotten lucky. It was a storeroom stacked floor to ceiling with aftermarket limbs. None of them looked remotely clean. But then again, actually buying personal upgrades fresh off the factory line was something for people in the sectors far, far above us.

I pushed aside some plastic sheeting to reveal a larger room pulsing with dim blue and violet fluorescents. The bass-heavy music vibrated in my chest plating. I gestured to a raised seating area.

“That him?” Vayne had hacked my internal comm and privacy-linked it with hers, so I heard her voice clearly in my mind. It was still low, but lacked the artifacts of her voice processor. She nodded at a bulky shape seated by himself at a low-light table.

“Hacking a Central officer’s private comm is a jailable violation,” I replied. “I’m not going to ask where you learned to do that.”

Vayne smiled. I looked over to see Mosley’s beady eyes reflected in the soft glow in front of him, and nodded.

“Yes, that’s him.”

I let just a little bit of energy cycle through my gauntlets, lighting the broken flooring in pools of orange. The Heap residents in front of me knew those lights and stepped aside with no questions.

I pulled a chair over to Mosley’s table. The table light flickered and I noted that the booth had also recently served as a makeshift medical bay for neural surgery, evidenced by the small bucket of teeth sitting next to Mosley’s drink. Those without Central sanctioned data ports jacked into whatever nerve bundles were available—the ones beneath the molars were especially easy to tap.

Mosley looked up at Vayne. “Y-you didn’t say you were bringing a friend, Vi.”

“An upgrade,” Vayne corrected.

I leaned forward, putting both gloved fists on the table, nearly upsetting the tooth bucket. I flipped my light shade up so I could look Mosley in his real, fragile eyes.

“Thought I might need some backup in a place like this. You don’t come to the Heap unless you’re looking for something. What were you looking for, Mosley?”

The knuckles of my gauntlets itched with unspent energy.

“He didn’t want what I had… and then I told him about your upgrade.” Mosley’s voice wavered and his eyes watered. “Figured if he was interested, I could get you to sell it to me. He said… he said if I could get you down here…”

“Where’s your buyer?” Vayne scanned the crowd of miscreants milling around.

A thin beam of red light flicked on, centered directly on the hollow of Mosley’s chest.

A preternaturally calm voice came over the building’s old crowd comm link. “Right here, my dear.”

I looked over to see Vayne’s face had erupted into a snarl. Every lower sector enforcer knew that voice pattern. “Jhin,” she growled.

“Special Lieutenant Vayne, what a delightful surprise. You’re looking so much better. Sad, what happened to your squad, but you do wear them so well. That crossbolt upgrade is especially nice.”

“Jhin? Your buyer is Khada Jhin, Mosley?” I looked at the simpering fool that was my newly assigned partner. He nodded meekly. Jhin was a notorious augment hacker with a taste for high-clearance upgrades. Word was, he had been a black-market tech that had almost gotten completely wiped in a rough job. Severe personality fragmentation. Last bulletin I downloaded said he’d been taking the shiny bits of other people ever since. Even if he hadn’t started out fragged, there couldn’t be much sanity left after so many pieces of other people had been plugged into him.

And it sounded like he and Vayne knew each other from a previous engagement.

“This day keeps getting better and better,” I said under my breath.

Jhin laughed. The psychopathy under the distortion sent a chill up my spine.

“I will break you piece by piece, you virus.” Vayne said to the disembodied voice. She was wire-taut.

“Maybe later, my dear. This is about what I want.” Jhin’s voice faded to a low, unnerving hum. “The upgrade.”

“It’s not hers to sell.” Vayne withdrew the data cube and held it up.

“Disappointing,” Jhin sighed. “I had so hoped you’d installed it first. Ah, well—I will have to rewrite the third act.”

There was a high-pitched whine as an arc of red plasma seared the air between me and Mosley. Without my light shade up, the high intensity light left me visionless. The background noise of people and tech stopped and was replaced with panic. The smell of fear and seared silicon filled my nose. My eyes teared up and I blinked to clear the neon burn.

Through the after-images, I could see the knuckles of one gauntlet were singed and there was a hole in Mosley that went right on through to the other side. I didn’t need a Central forensics kit to tell me it was the same weapon that melted the doc on the bridge.

“That rat is here,” Vayne said over our comm link, “and I’m going to kill it. He wants this.” She tossed me the promotion cube. “Try not to get shot.”

I caught the upgrade as Vayne vanished into stealth mode. The Heap was nearly empty. Nothing like a pulse of de-ionizing plasma to get people moving. I charged the coupler in my gauntlets and their amber glow lit up the darkness.

Jhin’s mechanized laugh echoed off the walls. There was a hiss of static in the crowd comm.

“Ah, ah, ah, detective. A cat in gloves catches no mice,” he purred.

“Khada Jhin,” I announced, “you are wanted on multiple counts of murder.” I watched the upper areas of an open loft, looking for the tell-tale red light. “And you melted my partner, too.”

“You didn’t like him anyway. What was it you said?” There was a crackle and another hiss as an audio file was searched. “Ah, yes. Here we are...”

The hissing stopped. I heard my own voice in the crowd comm. “I don’t trust upgrades.”

“Nice trick.” I stepped around the discarded piles of old tech, continuing my hunt. “I have what you want.”

“Your new friend didn’t like the gift?” More laughter echoed around me. Movement grazed the corner of a piece of mirror-glass that had cracked into a web of broken reflections. “She doesn’t like upgrades either. Did she tell you about her last partners? About her team?”

I did not reply. I continued to advance toward his last position.

“They all died.” I could hear Jhin’s dark smile. He was delighted, if a man that was mostly machine could still feel anything like that. “Especially Special Lieutenant Shauna Vayne. They rebuilt her of course. She was special.”

“Who?” I asked, hoping if I kept him talking, he would be more prone to mistakes. “Who rebuilt her?”

“PROJECT of course, you silly kitten. They rebuild all of us.” His cackle broke the high frequency and distorted painfully in my ear. “But they may have a much harder time with you when I’m done...”

A cylinder of metal shot out of the darkness. I dove out of the way—It hit a pile of debris, a small explosion ripping through the scrap, before bouncing and exploding against a second pile.

“Did she tell you how they died?” I could hear Jhin’s excited breathing over the comm. I stood up slowly, to find a pinpoint of red light centered on my belly. Fifty meters away, I could read the tall, metal shadow taking aim.

Jhin cackled with laughter again. “It was—”

“A trap,” Vayne’s voice came over our internal link, her outline decloaking right next to him.

I took off at a run, watching as Vayne’s crossbolt lit the dark once, twice, three times, but each time she tumbled away as Jhin returned fire. His weapon was less accurate at point-blank range, but still blew out the nearby walls quite effectively.

Vayne leapt towards him, taking the metal shadow down to the ground. I was almost to them.

“Are you ready, my kittens?” Jhin hissed. “It’s time to see how well you run.”

A digitized voice announced, “Manual override. Demolition sequence engaged. Sector refactoring imminent.” Amber lights and slumbering klaxons awakened under the grime of the condemned building. Ill-fated sectors like this one were regularly sealed and collapsed to provide new foundations for the towering structures above.

I couldn’t hear if there was more to the warning, as a series of small explosions began to rip through the Heap. Metal whined as concrete supports gave way.

Jhin and Vayne broke apart, and she rolled to her feet. I stopped short, completing the standoff. It was the first time I had seen Jhin up close. He reset a servo in his shoulder with an unsettling, mechanical pop. I don’t think there was any flesh left to the man. He had no face, only a spider-like drone seated on a neck of steel.

“Go on, lieutenant. Shoot me.” Jhin opened his arms wide as if he would embrace Vayne. “It’s what you’ve always wanted.”

She unslung the larger crossbow from her back, its metal arms unfolding from the barrel.

“Vayne!” I shouted over the din. “We have to go! Now!”

“This hunt is over,” Vayne growled, taking careful aim. “You are a dead man.”

“If only I were still merely a man,” Jhin said, too calmly.

She fired the bolt. It hit him in the chest, knocking him back off his feet and spearing him into a concrete column. He was pinned. Jhin’s metal skeleton gave a shocked vibration as it de-powered. His spider-like face went dark.

“Vayne!” I looked at her, but she didn’t see me. She didn’t see anyone but Jhin.

A tick later, the glossy black drone that was Jhin’s face lit up with spots of red neon. Servos disengaged and it scuttled down the body, looking to make its escape.

“Smash that thing!” Vayne yelled. She fired small bolts of plasma from her wrist, but the drone dodged them with insect-like reflexes.

It landed on a nearby column. I punched the concrete hard, the web of plastic mesh exploding, and the drone was launched towards the ceiling. Vayne continued shooting at the spidery thing as it skittered into a crack in the corner, and disappeared into the darkness.

Another piece of the ceiling came loose over Vayne’s head. There was no time to ask permission—I tucked my shoulder and ran at her, knocking her through a blacked-out window into a neighboring structure.

We landed hard, a shower of glass raining down. I watched in disbelief as the stacked weight of Central crushed the current Heap into a pile of nothing.

“Hell of a first day,” I murmured. I flexed the fingers of my gauntlets open to make sure they still worked. I was still holding the promotion upgrade. I offered it to Vayne. “I believe this is yours.”

She got to her feet, seething with waves of anger. The light in her eyes focused into points of intense rage. There was an arc and a hiss, and a final waft of ozone filled the air as Vayne vanished into the night.

“You took a piece of my vengeance from me, detective,” her voice echoed in my mind. “An upgrade cannot settle that debt.”

The area around the collapsed structure is quiet . The rough blanket of crushed carbon and bent steel crumbles, giving way to a small, insect-like creature emerging from the chaos. Black spider legs push out from a collapsed burrow. The gloss of its carapace is dusty, but intact. It turns to the cardinal directions, reorienting itself to the world. Spatters of condensation start to fall, washing it clean, but never clean enough.

A tall, metal shadow steps over the rubble and kneels before the insect drone.

The alloy spider crawls up a leg of braided carbon fiber, past a dusty and matted fur collar, and seats itself on the spine of anodized steel. Bathed in the ambient, ever-present glow from the upper sectors, the drone’s circuitry reconnects with its body.

The metal shadow raises its arm, pushes aside the fabric panels of the vest it wears, and digs a finger into its own body plating. The probing exploration extracts a short bolt from the carbon fiber mesh. The pulsing tip is still intact. Strong fingers carefully crush the bolt’s casing, revealing a thin ribbon of circuitry. With a surgeon’s precision, the ribbon is connected to a small port behind the creature’s face. The smooth, black contours of the mask flash to life in a pattern of red light.

A digital humming builds from within the metal shadow, erupting in a clipped harmonic of sadistic laughter. It echoes, bouncing back and forth across the sheer verticality of the sector until it reaches the very top.

“Through my work,” Jhin whispers to the maze of neon above. “You shall transcend.”

“You the marshal?” the river man said, his features an unreadable patina of lowland dust and dried bottlebrush needles, caked together by mud from the bottom of an old lakebed. He stood in the doorway of Lucian's private train cabin, small and large at the same time, dressed in gold-panning rags that had been picked from a dead claim jumper on the outskirts of Progress.

The river man didn't breathe in or out. Didn't have to.

Lucian had heard about them before, the river men, but never seen one up close. They needed moisture or they'd dry out, never venturing far from the mudholes and gulches they spawned in. If a traveler was unlucky enough they’d try to fill a flask with a river man's putrid water, or dig a pan into the silt where one lived. Without warning, it would snap up like an alligator, pulling you into the suffocating muck with wide, earthen arms, and just like that you were gone. Another ghost of the Old West.

“Not anymore,” said Lucian.

Lucian looked at the river man and the river man looked back, the gunslinger comfortably resting against the floral draperies of his cabin. Flecks of light occasionally entered through the curtains as their train rattled along, illuminating the river man's dark, piscine eyes, nearly hidden beneath the earthen cracks in his face.

“I want your badge,” he said.

Lucian nodded. A federal's badge would get the thing past Fort Nox, away from its government monster hunters, and down by way of caravan to the mangrove swamps just south of Bandle. Probably thought it could take up shop there, now that more and more east coasters were settling the low desert. Didn't make the creature's gamble less desperate, but Lucian appreciated when the stakes were clear.

“Must not be many of you left,” said Lucian.

“Ain't too many of anything left,” said the river man.

The boxcar's springs clicked once as they compressed against a couplet of uneven rail lines, and in the instant that the cabin shifted, the river man spread his arms wide, the mud on his face giving way to dozens of needle-sharp teeth as great spines burst from his shoulders. Before the springs clicked again a gunshot rang out, a thin ray of hellfire erupting through the side of the train and into the setting sun, and before the river man hit the floor Lucian's sidearm was already back in its holster.

The creature's head, split down the center and burnt beyond recognition, smoldered with the faint scent of sulfur and blackthorn. Its body contorted on the ground, flame roasting its membranes from the inside, and Lucian straightened his hat as he leaned back into the darkness of his room. The darkness shuddered softly around him, and smiled.

No one came to check on Lucian. No one came to take the dessicated body of the river man. The two traveled in silence together, door open, all the way down to the last stop at Angel's Perch.

And then out to the preacher who spoke with the dead.

Progress had been alive with whispers that this was the lawman what tangled with the devil and lost, and now he was headed up to New Eden to meet with the holy reverend. Both were ill portents in the Old West, so nobody would deny the aims of the man with the grinning shadow. They didn't need another Twin Reeds or Redriver, entire towns swallowed up and gone with some foul twist of happenstance. They needed Lucian out of their settlement and fast, and would give him anything he needed with all speed.

This had been the game ever since his last job with the federals, when they'd sent him out to reckon with the devil himself and drag him back to civilization. They would ‘put the devil on trial’—or that was the play, at least—and prove to the world that the frontier was safe to claim.

Of course, Lucian knew there wasn't just one devil, but the public thought better in singulars. He’d seen how the desert was crawling with strange creatures from every end of the world: demons in clean pressed suits, angels holed up in mountain crags, witches and ghosts and all manner of beast that might cloak itself in moonlight and tear an unsuspecting pilgrim to ribbons. The western natives and their alien weaponry; the skull-faced colossi who fed on ripened flesh; the mechanical men built by human hands, long gone rogue. And always, always devils.

This devil, though, was different. He went by many names—The Reaper, The Slaughter God, Old Turnkey, and Great Horn. He collected souls, or so the stories said, and went from town to town conducting his dark business, tearing the spirits out of the living and leaving their flayed skins behind. A creature of the Old World and demon of the wild frontier who, like his kin, sated his terrible hungers on an endless river of fresh-faced pioneers. Enough so that folks were starting to take notice, and for a government aimed on expansion, folks taking notice was bad for business.

Three marshals were dead at his hands, all told. Lucian had known two of them.

“They call it Thresh,” his handlers revealed. “Think you can catch him?”

Lucian looked over the sketches, noting the monster’s brazen, bovine skull, alight with the flames of all seven hells. He figured the lantern hanging curiously nearby was the source of its power, and if he could get in a clean shot, the fight would be over before it started.

Yet it was never that easy with devils, especially devils with a federal bodycount. He remembered tangling with a particularly nasty specimen near Chuparosa that moved with the speed of a desert storm, kicking up whirlwinds as it went. It was too fast to hit with a bullet, and if it hadn’t been for the timely intervention of his partner, Lucian might not have made it out alive. This hunt required backup.

“Not alone,” said Lucian. “I’ll need Senna.”

“Last stop, Angel’s Perch,” the conductor uttered, so gently it was almost a whisper. The heat of the journey had shriveled the river man’s corpse nearly into rawhide, but in the long shadows of the cabin a worse creature had perched itself upon Lucian’s seat.

It was smoke and fire, teeth and flames, its arms the artillery of a demon general cast up from the bottom of the abyss. It had the rough shape of a man, were a man made from campfire ash, with the glowing sigil of the federal marshals inverted upon its breast. Its legs were the incinerated spires of ancient, burning elms. Its red heart pulsed with the rage of all the earth.

“God,” spoke the conductor, not knowing which god he was invoking. The thing stood on its curious, spindling legs, leaning against the train’s still air. Its face seemed to peel apart, mouth broken in horrific ecstasy, as hellfire illuminated a ragged, mocking grin.

In that moment the ash fell away, and Lucian stepped out from the darkness.

“Sorry, friend,” he spoke. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

The conductor quivered in silence for a long while before Lucian brushed past, down the steel halls of the cabin car and out into the twilit evening. He figured the man would make a good story of it.

Angel’s Perch. A boomtown at the edge of civilization, where the trees grew tall and the air was thick with the scent of honey and wine. No one knew what lay beyond the ring of gargantuan pines at the foot of the mountains west of town, but they did know they had enough guns and men to hold off anything the far frontier could throw at them. Or at least they assumed. The creatures who made a home of Angel’s Perch would only reveal so much about what lay beyond, and no other living thing what had ventured that far west had returned sane, or at all.

Lucian made his way through the Perch’s bustling train station and into the center of town, past no less than three snake oil salesmen, each hucking the artificial magic ointments of the industrial east, and a saloon girl with the body of a cobra. Her milky eyes were hidden behind a veil, lest a paying customer turn to granite before they ever sat down to drink.

Near the mouth of main street, beyond the loggers and lamplighters, the general stores and the brothels, and the reclusive gunsmith rumored to be a fallen deity, there stood the town’s famed saloon. Popular myth held it had been in business since the founding of the settlement, or perhaps even before. It was called The Earthly King: be you man, woman or beast with a fate to outrun, its kingdom was open to you… as long as you had cash to spare.

It was, in many ways, the kind of place where a man might lose himself. But Lucian didn’t have much of himself left to lose, always feeling the tug of invisible strings against the weight of his soul, the shadow grinning behind him. He couldn’t stay for long.

Humans had little knowledge of settlements in the far west, and creatures living in town wouldn’t spill their precious secrets without a fight. The natives, if they spoke at all, would never reveal anything about anything, the few who tolerated settlers busying themselves with their strange machines.

Lucian had to rely on friends. Most could have been counted among the federal marshals, but they didn’t take kindly to demons, and like it or not that was what Lucian was fast becoming. He had to reach even further back, before the government contracts and the cobblestone streets of St. Zaun, to his days as a brash young gunfighter for hire. There he’d met many friends who lived and died with a revolver in their hand, but one figure remained as steadfast and obstinate as always, too big to kill and too old to die. He wasn’t a man per se, but he’d been fighting long before the first ships landed on the continent, and would probably be fighting long after everything else was dust and whispers.

Lucian stepped through the wide-set doors of the King and, for a moment, the bar grew quiet as its unsightly patrons sized up the harrowed stranger. “I’m looking for the longhorn,” he said, and they at once turned back to their card games and beer, the high shrill of an out of tune piano crashing against a dozen incomprehensible hoots and hollers.

Lucian soon spotted the longhorn at the far end of the bar—his massive bulk was hard to miss, even amid the carousing of the King’s clientele. Despite his frame he liked to keep to himself, though it was not uncommon for cocky young fighters to call him out over some perceived slight, hoping to down the beast for fame and glory. This never ended well, and more nights than not a boisterous challenger would have their skull pulverized with a single, swift butt to the head.

Alistar was a minotaur, easily ten feet tall and six feet wide. If you picked a fight with him, you got what was coming.

“Longhorn,” said Lucian.

“Marshal,” replied Alistar.

“I’m making my way to New Eden,” said Lucian.

“Aren’t we all,” replied Alistar, as Lucian sat beside him.

Alistar was old, now—few of his kind remained, and he would no doubt outlive them all. He spent his days as a glorified thug for other, weaker creatures, and his nights on a bar stool built for beings half his size.

The pair gazed solemnly ahead. Not a man came to Angel’s Perch without a reason, and fewer still walked through the doors of The Earthly King unless that reason was dire. It was the drinking hole of renegades and dead men, a drain where the aimless slowly circled downward, and those seeking a final battle spilled their coin before vanishing into the wilderness.

Lucian was heading deep into the uncharted northwest, where no trains ran and vicious gods walked among the trees, seeking a rumor on borrowed time.

Both knew the stakes, and the favor, though none had been asked.

“What do you think she’ll say?” asked Alistar. “When you get there.”

“I don’t know,” answered Lucian. “I don’t rightly know.”

The longhorn sighed into his drink, a thick aluminum tankard about the size of a child. He never had liked long goodbyes.

“Let me draw you a map.”

Lucian had first met Senna at the end of a gun—her gun—during a bloody shootout in one of Buzzard Gulch’s most squalid drinking parlors. Not that shootouts in Buzzard Gulch were uncommon, but this one had involved some fool bounty hunter drawing on an Outsider with his back turned. It got ugly.

The Outsiders, so they claimed, were from everywhere and nowhere at once, creatures in clean pressed suits whose love of gambling had made them infamous among outlaw clans and desperate homesteaders. Beating one meant riches beyond compare, conjured from nothing and guaranteed by an Outsider’s wax seal—itself worth a small fortune. Losing was another matter, as they accepted no wager less than a man’s most deeply cherished possession. Farms, watches, children, souls… a favorite knife—the bet was always steep, even if you didn’t know it yet.

Rumor had it this specimen had beaten Jeremiah James, a millionaire railroad baron Lucian had once done small jobs for. Jeremiah was a giant, and a mean one at that, who’d posted a sky-high bounty the moment he lost whatever dire prize he so foolishly put up for collateral—enough to bankrupt him twice over.

And as almost every gunfighter knew, once a reward swung out of the piss-pot, gully stabbing, prairie-shotgun-ambush fare of Buzzard Gulch’s wanted board and into the realm of jilted industrialists, bounty hunters would come calling. The whole lot of them loved money and killing, and not much else.

The hunter drew with little warning, and instantly the room went quiet. The Outsider sipped his whiskey with a calm that suggested the absence of all intent. Senna, a handful of federal marshals and the longhorn were present, among the town’s usual collection of heavily armed scoundrels and murderers. Everyone waited to make a move.

“Now, friend,” the hunter cooed, her voice sugar tinged with blood, “I know you’ve got what I came for. Turn it over, and everybody walks out the way they came in.”

The Outsider said nothing—his face was as placid as a porcelain doll, unmoved and unperturbed by the threat of his assailant’s twin six-guns. He’d known she was coming the whole time. Probably knew before she even took the job. But in the heat of the low sun, plied with drink at the edge of the world, it was hard to tell who was itching for a fight, and who was just bluffing.

The hunter broke the silence with a bullet, and a heavy round exploded from her pistol and into the center of the creature’s chest. The Outsider’s body billowed outward, the hole rippling black smoke in the shape of crows, and from the smoky mass a great, vicious claw burst into a table of poker players. Cards, chips, and searing blood sprayed across the room as the hunter started unloading.

Lucian drew on the hunter, the marshals drew on Lucian, and the longhorn tore through the bar to get as many pieces of the action as time would allow. Every gun in the place lit up, and as bullets ripped through fastgun and marshal alike, Lucian took cover behind a pool table—where he found himself in quite a different predicament.

“Hello, stranger,” said Senna, her gun squarely aimed at Lucian’s forehead. Her eyes were the color of a gentle prairie, mottled with specks of black, and Lucian almost forgot he was speaking into a loaded firearm.

“Ma’am,” he replied.

“I assume you choose to associate with these upstanding individuals?” she asked, as the lead-riddled body of a barkeep collapsed limply beside them. Black smoke drifted softly out of his mouth.

“Some of them,” Lucian answered.

Senna ducked as another shell ripped past the backside of the bar, taking a chunk of a pool table with it. The motion was so quick Lucian almost didn’t see it—then again, he’d never seen anyone dodge a bullet. Certainly not with such confidence, and Senna had plenty to spare.

She smiled warmly, her badge glinting in the light. The star of a chief marshal, one of the deadliest quickdraws in the known world.

“Well, to each their own,” she grinned, gingerly confiscating Lucian’s pistol. “Don’t worry, I’ll give it back… if you’re not dead when this is over.”

And with two quick shots from cover, she swung back into the fight, leaving Lucian wondering what had just happened.

The rest of the shootout was a blur. At one point the bounty hunter ripped some sort of oil-soaked object from the Outsider’s roiling body and ran out the saloon doors, and the creature went screaming after her. With most of the clientele dead and nobody left to shoot, the survivors went across the street to finish their drinks. Buzzard Gulch never found itself wanting for corpses or liquor.

It was there, the marshals like to say, that Lucian decided to hang up his hat and hunt monsters for the government.

Though they’ll also mention it was less about saving people from beasts, and more about a pretty girl who dodged a bullet with a smile.

The longhorn’s map had been useful, if sloppy. Lucian had followed it on foot for what seemed like a hundred years, further north from Angel's Perch than most living souls would ever dare to venture. Here colors seemed more vivid, the air itself breathed with strange magics, and when Lucian drifted off, he could swear gargantuan creatures lurked just beyond the edge of his vision, watching. Yet Lucian did not feel afraid. He made camp as the sun dipped over the horizon, and steeled himself. The shadow grew strongest at night.

He would sense its evil dragging him downwards, pulling him out of himself. Soon Lucian’s skin would itch and flake away, his mouth twisted into a hungry grin. He would feel the flames, hear the demon whisper in his own voice. He would drown in the crackling inferno of indigo sagelands erupting into a sea of hellfire. And he would feel the anger. The terrible, ageless anger, the shame, the disgust. Hateful bile born the from the darkness of his own soul. Only then would the battle begin—the demon assuming Lucian’s body, while what was left of the man tried to wrestle it back.

Lately, the transformations were beginning to last longer than Lucian liked.

He felt his skin begin to prickle, and watched as it cracked against the cool night air. Lucian rested himself against an old log, as comfortably as he could. His muscles froze in place—awaiting the change, and the struggle, and the promise of morning.

His eyes glazed over. The sky twisted into deep crimson—overtaken by a perpetual sundown, ringed with flame, and the trees around him stood as ghastly totems against thick, otherworldly fog. Only the campfire illuminated the world as it was, the greens and browns of patchy grassland. The change had begun.

Or if not the change, something worse.

Deep in the forest, a train whistle sounded. It rang hollow, a warped and yawning sound that spilled out from the demonic vision’s umber mist. This was something new, a creature Lucian had not prepared to face—and locked in combat with himself, he could not turn or draw. He tried to stand as thick metal legs splintered the primeval woodlands like they were toys, dragging a colossal torso awkwardly behind them. He could not move, nor turn his eyes from the glowing core of hungry coals, or grisly flesh, or smoke from bulbous locomotive valves that lined the shoulders of a long-dead giant.

A devil, Lucian thought. Another devil.

The hulking thing stepped before him, still obscured by fog, and bent its massive legs down until a familiar face leaned into view of the firelight.

“Lucian,” it spoke.

Lucian recognized it—him—instantly. The millionaire, long thought missing or dead, who so many years ago had wagered his own heart in an Outsider’s game of chance.

“Jeremiah?”

The old industrialist chuckled. He was hideously malformed—gone were even the last glimpses of his humanity, replaced instead by infernal steamwork and the gutted skeletons of a dozen ruined cargo trains. His belly swelled with heat of a devil’s furnace, and the campfire between the two travelers seemed to draw towards it, as though Jeremiah were breathing it in.

“I have shed that name, my good marshal,” he spoke, his voice melting over the land as Lucian sat paralyzed before him. “You may call me Urgot now, for that is the name I have taken.”

“I know what you are wondering,” he continued. “Understand that I was laid low in my efforts to civilize this desperate land, and divorced from my plans for a great steel empire. No, I made a mistake of hubris—I took a deal, as you once did… and paid so, so dearly for it.”

The colossus motioned towards where his heart might have been, now nothing but a tangled mass of white-hot copper. The rumors had been true. Jeremiah had died.

“It was not death,” he said, as if snatching the thought from the air. “Though by the time my treasured property was returned, it was far too late to call myself alive. My body was abandoned at the edge of the desert by some… associates… who have come to know the dire price of treachery. Yet as you are aware, there are many devils… and unlike the monster you failed to destroy, I was visited by one with a particularly tantalizing offer.”

Urgot was close now, the campfire pouring endlessly upwards into his stomach. The grinding of a thousand starving gears echoed from somewhere within him, and Lucian imagined a devouring maw, chaining the sky down before swallowing it whole.

“I know you will lose the duel within yourself, marshal. I did. Brought low by my losses I turned to common banditry, and the darkest hollows of my sadly mortal imagination. When you follow me down that trail—and you will—I intend to meet with the creature wearing your body. We have… a great many things to discuss.”

With that, the enormous metal legs pulled Urgot away, until even his illuminated hellmouth disappeared from view. The sky buckled, and broke—bitter sun replaced once more by cold, lightless midnight, and Lucian was alone.

The shadow would claim him soon.

He had to move quickly.

Lucian had been careless.

Forgetting what a devil was, the kind of power one could wield, he and Senna had rushed into an alpine tundra on horseback, determined to take Thresh with a single shot. Lucian was one of the greatest marshals the outfit had ever seen; Senna was the greatest. They were brave, and impetuous, and in love—and Thresh had been waiting for them.

The devil called Thresh was not an ordinary monster of the high frontier. Ravenous and cruel, he had lived for eons before the men of the Old World landed on his continent’s eastern shores.

The cosmic beings who birthed the gods grew old and died, their ancient bodies fell to earth to become the mountains and valleys and primordial seas, but Thresh continued on, his unnatural life sustained by a bottomless, ravenous thirst for destruction. Before spoken word could give shape to his name, all living things knew his face—the skull of a beast, hateful and burning, gazing balefully down upon them. His malice was woven so deeply into his ancient form that it could never be purged, and he walked across the broken bodies of the vast things he had outlived, devouring the souls of their sad and forgotten children.

Lucian didn’t even see his opponent before a razor whip sliced cleanly into his shoulder, knocking him from his mount and crippling his shooting arm. Senna leapt for her lover’s pistol, but she too was struck low by the devil’s power, walls of flame erupting from the earth as laughter echoed from his bleached, lidless skull. His voice rattled within their heads, a deep and primordial howl, and Lucian saw in his mind the beast sinking his blade deep into Senna’s throat. The fight had lasted only seconds, and already Thresh had won.

The devil stood over Senna, flames within his ancient body twisting against the chill air, and he drew a jagged blade from somewhere inside of his ragged, billowing coat. Lucian had seen the skinned corpses of a dozen frontier towns on the way to Thresh’s den, and the piles of twitching muscle where unlucky wagon trains had drawn his hellish gaze. Lucian was prepared for the devil to take him, and always had been—but he would not let Senna share the fate of a young and foolish gunfighter.

And perhaps, momentarily amused after so many years of dark, sumptuous slaughter, that was why Thresh offered him a deal.

Such a simple thing, Lucian had thought. So easy to accept.

His soul for the life of the girl.

Then the shadow took hold, the hate and shame within the young marshal coming alive, hijacking his senses, his body corrupting before Senna’s pleading eyes. The bargain had been struck, the pact sealed. As Lucian’s vision turned to flame, he watched the monstrous devil he had been sent to hunt turn to Senna’s defenseless body—laughing hideously as he ripped out her heart.

The holy reverend of New Eden was little known or understood, but the rumors of his supposed power had spread even as far as the eastern territories. A man who could speak with the dead, as many liked to say, though few did survive the pilgrimage into the unexplored northwest to see if the rumors were true. Those who struck out for New Eden never returned—and now, looking down upon the enclave from a nearby hill, Lucian understood why.

Untouched by the elements and unspoiled by the beasts of the forest, the modest church commune was small and thriving, surrounded by bountiful crops and quaint homes that seemed to swell with life. Children ran across dirt roads as shopkeeps and townspeople passed peacefully by, far removed from demons and Outsiders, gorgons and giants, and the machinations of bandit clans that should have long ago picked every building clean. It was a place from a storybook, bright and clean. Lucian wondered for a moment if he had lost the duel with the demon already, and this was his reward.

He descended from the hill, and the villagers turned to see the newcomer in their midst.

“You’ve come to meet the holy reverend?” asked a fresh-faced young man.

Lucian nodded.

“Then hallelujah, stranger,” he smiled. “You’ve come home.”

No town in Lucian’s memory accurately compared to the sights of New Eden. A bakery filled his nostrils with the scent of fresh bread, as young women danced and fiddlers played in the street. Songs of salvation drifted from mead halls that had never for a moment known the Old West’s violent madness. Ordinary people greeted him as he passed by, offering him food and water, asking where he came from and where he was going.

The demon raged inside him, but in the light of day Lucian could overpower it, control it. And there was something about this place that calmed him, in a way he hadn’t felt in a long, long time.

“No one fears death here,” someone spoke. Lucian turned to find a kindly old man, dressed in a modest preacher’s frock, possessing a youthful glint in his now-faded eyes. “A fear of death is a fear of life. We accept death for what it is, and live a life free from the snares of its uncertainty.”

Lucian liked the way the man spoke. His speech lilted softly, like a song.

“I don’t know if I believe that,” replied Lucian.

The man smiled. “Of course.”

He continued on, walking in no particular direction. Lucian followed.

“We live in a land of angels and demons. We see their influence every day, for good or evil, and the calamities they wreak. The world is old, but many of our gods are still alive, watching over their progeny even now.”

He motioned to the center of town, where a picturesque church with white walls and a blue roof stood. The building was immaculate—even the stained glass windows seemed to glow, polished to a radiant sheen. Villagers milled in and out, talking and laughing, as children crowded around their legs. The building could have been erected yesterday.

“And they bestow the faithful with many gifts. The gift of life, the gift of love.”

The man turned to Lucian, a knowing smile upon his face.

“And the gift of death.”

Something rang curiously in Lucian’s ears. It was the way the man said death, the way the sound was shaped by his lips, much like a secret whispered to a lover. The passersby, too, had become still, their eyes closed as if dreaming, and they only opened them again when the odd melody had finished washing over them.

“Meet me inside, when you’re ready,” he said. “They call me Reverend Karthus, and I have so much I want to show you.”

The interior of the church was clean and white—its pews were polished, its pulpit modest. Karthus shooed the rest of his congregation outside, and they looked lovingly at Lucian as they passed. Some whispered a passing “welcome,” others clapped their hands together in quiet reverence. To Lucian, New Eden seemed to be a sleeping child that hadn’t yet awoken to the monsters in the world outside its door. The fact that it stood at all was testament to whatever powers Karthus claimed to possess, real or not.

Deep within Lucian, the shadow raged. He once again felt the itch beneath his skin, the flames bubbling up from some dark corner of his soul, and his mouth twisting into a forceful, mocking grin. But something was different—the creature was frightened, and Lucian couldn’t understand why.

“My, my,” Karthus spoke, a smile still crossing his face. “We can’t have that now, can we?”

The reverend picked up a small, black-bound book, emblazoned with the symbol of a golden key. With a gentle wave and some intangible words, the demon was suddenly silenced—but not before Lucian felt something else, something the creature had not done before. It whispered softly in his ear, the low and crackling whimper of a dying fire.

“They are monsters.”

“In a land of angels and demons, I wonder what you will become?” continued Karthus, resting a faded stole over his shoulders. The reverend then motioned for Lucian to kneel before him, and to Lucian’s surprise, he did.

“Why do you fight this battle? What do you have to gain?”

Lucian did not answer. The light had begun to fade, as New Eden’s hopeful music slowly twisted into a strange, lopsided dirge. Karthus nodded slowly, his smile widening, and Lucian kept his eyes locked ahead. A curious skittering echoed from the floorboards behind him. It was a sound he knew well.

“We give so much of ourselves to fear,” spoke Karthus, his voice growing deeper and darker. “And you have given most of all.”

Energies swirled about the old man—luminescent blues and greens in the rough shapes of friends Lucian had lost, things he had killed. They danced against the rafters of the now decrepit church, its paint peeling away to reveal black, moldering rot.

Lucian sensed the presence of at least a dozen shapes behind him. Some were crouched on all fours, others clambered softly over the warped and ruined pews, and still more waited outside the church, their human disguises melting away. Lucian now knew why the town lay untouched, why its people seemed so good and kind: they weren’t people at all. Or if they had been, they’d been dead a very long time.

Lucian’s hands moved slowly towards his pistols.

The reverend now loomed over him, lifting off the ground as he gripped the book with the golden key, his sermon exploding into a rapturous chorus of overlapping voices: “Our souls will be purified in the cool waters of death! Our broken spirits will be repaired, the things we lost shall be returned!”

The creatures behind Lucian crawled forward, slavering and starved, as Karthus floated ever upwards, his arms outstretched, ascending into the musty air. Images of Lucian’s past twirled all around him, men and women whose deaths played out again and again.

A familiar voice brushed against his ear, almost a word, but not.

“Do you hear her?” asked Karthus.

Lucian listened.

The sound was crackling sage, the ashes of a campfire, the striking of a match. It spoke of Senna’s death, and how Lucian had fallen into despair. For years the ruined marshal had wandered from place to place, dead in everything but name and emptied of all joy. As each day had passed, another small, cruel thing filled his mind, and the shadow had grown wild within him, his inner darkness yearning to seize control. Any offer of peace had to be investigated, no matter how dangerous or foolish.

Lucian had heard of a man who could speak with the dead, and gone without question. He had given himself to a shadow that took the shape of his own monstrous hatred, and allowed it to rule him utterly.

Lucian found himself alone with the demon—away from the church, and far from the streets of New Eden. The two stood apart, facing one another, in a moonlit field of white flowers. Lucian could feel the cool air against his skin. He could see the distant lights of a town, high in the mountains, and the moon hanging low in the sky. Beneath the demon the flowers burned, but the creature stood calmly, its face twisted into a familiar, ravenous grin.

Lucian breathed. So much of himself had been lost to the shadow—to Thresh, and the spectre of the unforgiving west. But he still ruled his own soul, half-corrupted as it was, and the shadow was a part of it—a part of him.

It drew closer, slowly, each step burning more flowers away.

Lucian reached out his hand, and the shadow rested a charred limb upon it. It whispered: “Would you cast your enemies into the fire?”

Lucian was silent. His skin crackled at the shadow’s touch, but he said nothing. It already had its answer.

It whispered once more, now in Lucian’s own voice, as its ashen body bonded with his mortal flesh: “Then we will go together.”

“Do you hear the love you have lost?” Karthus sang.

Lucian drew his pistol. “No.”

His arm elongated, stretching into the hellish cannon of the demon within him, and a ray of unholy flame ripped through Karthus’s forehead. As the preacher’s body fell, Lucian spun around, melting into shadow as a screaming ghoul leapt at him from one of the broken pews. He fired again, obliterating the creature, and launched a third shot into the crowd of its shriveled, wide-mouthed brethren—the fiddlers and bakers, dancers and farmers now shrunken, twisted, and hollow. The bullet exploded among them, blasting their bodies apart, and at once a swelling sea of horrors flowed in through the doors, windows, and broken cracks in the church’s ruined facade. New Eden had risen to greet him.

Lucian’s body gave way to the shadow, and it lifted its arms high as a stream of liquid fire tore through the crowd of monsters. The demon shrieked with joy, its voice melding with Lucian’s own, and it soared into the air as hellfire sprayed in every direction. Burning wood fell from the ceiling as shots tore outward through the church’s brittle walls and across the sprawling wastes of New Eden, setting the town alight. Ghouls shrieked in terror, their hordes turned to flee, but the demon was quick—springing through the crumbling roof and into the delipidated streets, firing the cannons of hell into the creatures’ still-open mouths.

Then, Lucian surged outwards from within the demon’s form, its body bursting into ashen mist. He clapped his pistols together as the undead hordes scattered in every direction. Artificial magics woven into the gunmetal bubbled, their intricate filigrees spiraling outward as the barrels hungrily fused. A concentrated beam of light surged from somewhere within them, cutting across the plains as screaming undead melted beneath its fury.

Soon the light faded, and the metal unwound itself as Lucian scanned his surroundings.

He waited. The shadow within him was quiet now. No more ghouls lept from the burning, derelict homes, or rose from the beds of rotten crops. Karthus lay dead as his church collapsed around him, flames consuming even the memory of his fell magic. Though from the corner of his eye Lucian swore he could see the old preacher, grinning among a crowd of New Eden’s townsfolk, as the burning roof finally caved in over their heads.

The former marshal turned back towards civilization and began to walk, the shadow grinning close behind.

He’d been close to speaking with Senna again. Closer than he’d ever been. But Lucian no longer needed the comforts of old rituals and incantation—he would see his love once more, one way or another, the day he was lowered into the dirt. That was the rightful end of a true and valiant gunfighter. Until then, there were terrible things lurking in the darkness, which could only imagine the demon soon to knock upon their doors.

Out there, somewhere in the wild expanses of the great frontier, Lucian had a devil to kill.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beneath Ionia’s veil of harmony lie the tales of those left behind. For Zed, his story began as a boy on the cold steps of the home of the Kinkou Order.

Taken in by Great Master Kusho himself, Zed found his place within the temple’s ancient walls. He dedicated himself to understanding the Kinkou’s spiritual tenets, quickly outpacing his peers both in combat and study. Even so, he felt overshadowed by another—his master’s son, Shen. Though Zed’s passion shone through in every technique he perfected, he lacked Shen’s emotional balance. In spite of this, the two pupils became like brothers.

In time, they journeyed together with their master to track down the infamous Golden Demon. When they finally succeeded in capturing this feared “monster,” it was revealed to be a mere man named Khada Jhin. The young Zed marched forward with his blades held high, but Kusho stopped him, ordering that Jhin be imprisoned instead.

Returning to their temple, Zed’s heart bloomed with resentment, and he began to struggle in his studies. He was haunted by the memories of Jhin’s grisly murders, and rising tensions between Ionia and the imperialistic forces of Noxus only worsened his disillusionment. While Shen was growing to adopt his father’s dispassion, Zed refused to let lofty notions of balance stand in the way of punishing evil.

He ventured deep into the temple’s hidden catacombs, and there he discovered an ornate, black box. Even though he knew it was forbidden to any but the masters of the order, he peered inside.

Shadows enveloped Zed’s mind, feeding his bitterness with contempt for the weak, and hinting at an ancient, dark magic.

Returning to the light of the temple, he came face to face with Great Master Kusho. Zed demanded the Kinkou strike at the Noxian invaders with every means at their disposal. When Kusho refused, Zed turned his back on the order that had raised him.

Unbound by Kinkou doctrine, he raised a following of warriors to resist Noxus. Any soul who threatened his homeland, or stood idle in its defense, was marked for death without mercy—including native vastaya who wavered in their allegiance. Zed urged his followers to embrace the fervor of war, but soon enough he realized his own abilities would never match his ambitions without the black box.

Amassing his new acolytes, he returned to the Kinkou temple, where he was met by Kusho. The elderly man laid his weapons at Zed’s feet, imploring his former pupil to renounce the shadows in favor of a more balanced path.

Moments later, Zed emerged back onto the temple steps. In one hand, he grasped the box—and in the other, his freshly bloodied blade.

The Kinkou, frozen with shock, fell in droves as Zed’s warriors cut them down. He then claimed the temple for himself, establishing his Order of Shadow, and began training his acolytes in the ways of darkness. They etched their flesh with shadowy tattoos, learning to fight alongside shrouded reflections of themselves.

Zed took advantage of the ongoing war with Noxus, and the suffering it brought to the Ionian people. In the wake of a massacre near the Epool River, he came upon Kayn, a Noxian child soldier wielding nothing but a farmer’s sickle. Zed could see the boy was a weapon waiting to be sharpened, and took him as his personal student. In this young acolyte, he saw a purity of purpose to match his own. In Kayn, Zed could see the future of the Order of Shadow.

Though he did not reconcile with Shen and the remaining Kinkou, now scattered throughout the provinces, they reached an uneasy accord in the aftermath of the war. Zed knew what he had done could not be undone.

In recent years, it has become clear that the balance of the First Lands has been disrupted, perhaps forever. For Zed, spiritual harmony holds little consequence—he will do what needs to be done to see Ionia triumph.

Ashe hails from the northern Freljord, where brutal tribal raids and inter-clan warfare are as much a part of the landscape as the scream of the frozen winds, and the unyielding cold of the tundra.

The only child of Grena, the matriarchal chieftain of the tiny Avarosan tribe, Ashe was Iceborn: a member of the warrior caste, gifted with an ancestral connection to the magic of her lands, and the rare ability to wield the power of True Ice. Everyone assumed that Ashe would follow her mother as the tribe's next leader. However, this was never a glory Ashe desired. The grim responsibility of her warlike lineage and extraordinary gifts instead left Ashe feeling isolated, burdened, and alone.

Her only respite was when Sejuani, an Iceborn girl from a sister tribe, would stay with them for the summer hunts around the Ornnkaal Rocks. The girls' friendship defined their childhoods, but was cut short just as they reached their teens. Somehow, Grena had offended Sejuani's grandmother, and the fellowship between their tribes ended suddenly.

Soon after, with her youth fading, Ashe's mother began her lifelong quest for the “Throne of Avarosa”, a supposed hoard of treasures and magical items that she hoped would return her people to greatness.

But Grena’s belief in prophecies and legends led her to take risks, which often left her tribe enfeebled. Finally, during a dangerous and unnecessary raid in another tribe's lands, Grena was killed. Her sudden death left young Ashe on the run, while most of her tribe was wiped out.

Alone, pursued, Ashe followed her mother's last map to a deserted glacier where she found the supposed grave of Avarosa, and her magical bow of True Ice. Ashe used the weapon to avenge her mother's death, then turned west.

Whether it was out of duty or loneliness, Ashe gained a reputation by protecting the many scattered hearthbound tribes she encountered. She spurned the custom of taking thralls, and instead chose to adopt these desperate people as full members of her new tribe, and her fame grew quickly. Soon many began to believe that she did not just carry the weapon of Avarosa—Ashe was the legend herself, reborn and destined to reunite the Freljord.

But tall tales would not feed her followers, and their long march south left the tribe on the verge of starvation. So, Ashe leveraged the myths surrounding her, using them to form alliances with the powerful and land-rich southern tribes, promising to unite them into a nation capable of challenging neighboring kingdoms.

These new alliances brought new dangers, and Ashe quickly found herself at the center of a political feud. A Warmother, as Freljordian tribal leaders are known, was expected to wed, and taking a husband from one of the major tribes would anger the others. Ashe could take several husbands, but this would only bring the conflict to a boil within her own household, and the ensuing bloodshed would shatter the alliances she had fought to build.

Her answer was an impoverished vagabond from a mountain clan that had been nearly wiped out—the warrior Tryndamere. He was neither a spirit-walker nor blessed with any elemental powers, but upon his arrival in Ashe’s new capital, Tryndamere had thrown himself into every dueling ring he could find. He fought with abandon, desperate to prove the destitute survivors of his clan were worthy of adoption by one of the stronger tribes. But even for the Freljord, his brutal fighting style and extraordinary vitality were unsettling, and many suspected he was touched by dark magic. Ignoring this, Ashe offered to adopt his people as her own, if he became her first and only bloodsworn.

Tryndamere accepted reluctantly. Though a political marriage, the attraction they felt for each other was palpable, and slowly a true affection blossomed.

Now, Ashe stands at the head of the largest coalition of Freljordian tribes in many generations. Even so, the unity she would bring rests upon an uneasy peace threatened by internal intrigues, foreign powers, the growing violent horde of the Winter's Claw, and a supposed destiny that Ashe must at least pretend to believe…

The Northern Steppes ain’t the place for fancy undies and golden piss pots. It’s tough land. Ain’t nothing go here but barbarian raiders, poison grass, and harsh winds. To survive, you gotta eat rocks and crap lava. And I’m the toughest, meanest, killingest bastard in these parts. So I figure that makes these plains mine.

“But how did I end up here? And why am I alone with yer dumb yella hide?” I say out loud, starting it off again.

Skaarl snorts her response from the rock she’s sunning herself on. Her scales is dark metal with hints of gold. Ain’t nothing can break that drakalops’s skin. I’ve seen a steel sword shatter against her leg.

Don’t make her farts smell any better though.

“I’m callin’ you a damn coward. You got somethin’ to say about that?”

“Greefrglarg,” it says as it looks up and yawns.

“It was a hooked grouse! No bigger than my hand. And you run… Darn dumb, stupid animal!”

“Greef…rglarg?” Skaarl asks as it swats the flies away from its half-opened eyes.

“Oh, good retort! Yeah, real funny, right? Ha ha ha! I’m damn tired of yer heretical pontifications. I should leave ya here to die. That’s what I should do. You’d die o’ loneliness. Hell, you wouldn’t last a day without me.”

Skaarl lays its head back down on the rock.

There ain’t no use communicating with her. I should forgive her—but then, and no doubt to mock me, her sphincter splutters rhythmically as she breaks wind. The smell hits me like a frying pan.

“That’s it, you bastard!” I throw my stinking hat onto the ground and march away from the campsite, swearing I’ll never set eyes on that foul-mouthed drakalops again. ’Course, it was my good hat, so I have to trot back and snatch it off the ground.

“Yeah, keep sleeping, ya lazy flaprat,” I say as I walk away. “I’ll do the patrol!”

Being ten moons from any farmstead don’t preclude doing the patrol. It’s my land. And I aim to keep it that way. With or without that treason-ish lizard’s help.

The sun’s dragging its way down to the horizon by the time I reach the hills. This time of day, the light plays tricks on you. I meet a snake who wants to discuss pie crusts. Except it ain’t a snake, it’s the shadow of a rock.

Damn shame. I have some durn specific notions about pie crusts. At least when I remember what they are again. I ain’t had a proper conversation about the subject in years.

I’m about to take a swig of my mushroom juice and explain my views to the snake, when I hear them.

Drake hounds howling and braying. It’s the sounds those beasts make when they is herding elmarks. And if there’s elmarks, then there is humans. And those humans is trespassers.

I scramble up a nearby boulder and check north first.

The rolling hills of my grasslands is empty, save for the iron buttes scattered across the horizon. The braying sounds might be the mushroom juice playing tricks on my head… But then I turn south.

They is about a half day’s walk from this hill. Three hundred elmarks grazing. Grazing on my land.

The drake hounds circle around the herd, but there’s no horses. A few humans walk around them on foot. Humans don’t like walking. So it don’t take a genius to figure they must be part of some larger convoy then. ’Course, I am a genius. So that was easy to figure.

My blood begins to boil. That means more damn trespassers, disturbing my peace. Here, when I was about to have a lovely conversation about pie crusts with that snake.

I take another sip of mush-juice and head back to the campsite.

“Get up, lizard!” I say as I grab my saddle.

It raises its head, grunts a response, and returns to lying in the cool grass.

“Get up! Get up! GIT UP!” I yell. “There’s trespassers, invading the peaceful serenity of our environs.”

It looks at me blankly. I forget sometimes she don’t understand me when I’m speaking.

I buckle the saddle onto its back. “There’s humans on our land!”

It stands, and its ears perk up nervously. Humans. That word it knows. I jump into the saddle.

“Let’s get those humans!” I roar, indicating our southward destination. But the damn beast immediately starts going north.

“No, No, NO! They’s that way! That way!” I say, using my reins to pull the cowardly beast back in the right direction.

“Greefrglaaarg!” the drakolops cries as it kicks off. In an instant, she’s running. The insane speed of it makes my eyes close. Scrub grass whips painfully against my legs. A cloud of dust billows behind us. What’d take me half a day of walking is past before I can get my hat tied down.

“Greefrglorg!” the drakolops screeches.

“Now, don’t be like that! Weren’t you saying you wanted company last night?”

The sun is just starting to dip below the horizon when we reach the herd. I slow Skaarl to a trot as we approach the humans’ campsite. They’d already started a fire and have a stew going.

“Hold, stranger. Show your hands before you approach,” a human in a red hat says. Their leader, I figure.

I slowly take my hands off the reins. But instead of putting them up, I pull my long axe from its saddle loop.

“I don’t think you understand me, old timer,” the human in the red hat says again. His fellows ready weapons: swords, lassos, and a dozen repeater crossbows.

“Greefrglooorg,” Skaarl growls, ready to leave already.

“I got it under control,” I tell my lizard, before turning my attention back to the humans. “I ain’t impressed with your fancy, city-folk weapons. Now I’m giving you one warning. Get off my land. Or else.”

“Or else what?” a younger human asks.

“You boys best know who you’re dealing with,” I say. “This is Skaarl. She’s a drakalops. And I’m Kled, Lord Major Admiral of the Second Legion’s forward artillery—cavalry multiplication.”

Several of the humans start snickering. I’ll learn them soon enough—once I’m done talking.

“And what makes you think this is your land?” asks the human in the red hat, smirking.

“It’s mine. I took it from them barbarians.”

“It’s property of Lord Vakhul. He was granted it by the High Command. It’s his by rightful dispensation.”

“Well, High Command! Why didn’t you say so?!” I say before spitting on the ground. “The only law a true Noxian respects is strength. He can have it. If he can take it from me.”

“You and your pony best be moving on, while you still can.”

I forget sometimes humans don’t see us like we see them. It’s the last straw though.

“CHARGE!!!!” I scream, and snap the reins. The drakolops kicks off, and we rush them. I meant to make a clever retort first, but I got ahead of myself.

The humans let loose their first volley, but Skaarl raises her ears. Like giant bronze fans, they shield us as the crossbow bolts ricochet off her impenetrable flesh.

She roars happily as we dive through their camp at the leader in the red hat. Swords clang against Skaarl’s hide, while my axe swings. I turn two of them humans into confetti. The bastard in the red hat’s quick. He ducks under my blade as we pass by. Another volley of crossbow bolts hits us.

Skaarl screams in fear. Damn thing’s unkillable and immortal, but easily spooked. Problem with magical beasties, they don’t make no sense.

I yank the reins, and we ride back into the middle of the humans. I easily kill the rest of his men, but the red-hat bastard’s a tough one. My blade slams into him—but the blow clangs dully against his heavy breast plate. That should give him something to think about, anyway.

That’s when the ballista fires. The bolt is longer than a wagon. It smashes into the drakolops, knocking my long axe from my hand, and sends us rolling to the ground. Skaarl ain’t hurt. But she shakes me off the saddle and runs for the hills.

“You ungrateful bastard! We had the frassa-gimps in the razabutts!” I mean to scream more insults, but my words start tripping over themselves.

I roll to my feet. Dust and grass cover my face. I throw my hat toward the cowardly lizard’s path, then turn back to kill the man in the red hat.

But behind him, on the hill line, is another hundred of them humans. Iron warriors, bloodrunners, and a wagon-mounted ballista. Red-hatted blurf-herder brought most of a legion with him.

“You ain’t nothing but a durn sneaky-sneak!” I scream.

“You don’t look like much,” he says, “but I guess you’re the one who’s been giving Lord Vakhul’s ranchers so much trouble.”

“Vakhul ain’t no real Noxian. Your lordship can kiss my lizard’s puckered mudflap!”

“Maybe I’ll let you end your days in Lord Vakhul’s fighting pits. If you can learn to keep your mouth shut.”

“I’m gonna rip your lips off and use them to wipe my butt!” I roar.

I guess he don’t like that, ’cause him and his hundred friends start running at me, weapons drawn. I could run. But I don’t. They’ll pay dearly to kill me.

Red Hat’s fast. He’s nearly on me before I can recover my weapon from the ground. His blade is high. He’s got the killing stroke. But I’ve got my hidden scattergun.

The blast sends him to the ground. It knocks me back, too. I tumble end over end. The single shot buys me some time. But not much.

The bloodrunners are closing fast. Their hooked blades is ready. I’m gonna die in this turd-stain. Well, if it’s my last stand, might as well make it a good one.

I dust myself off as the first line of bloodrunners attacks. I’m carving those dark magical bastards apart, but they’re cutting me to ribbons. I’m beginning to tire from the effort and loss of blood.

Then the iron warriors scream their battle cries, as they charge in their thick black armor. They’ve split into two groups, doing one of those “pinching” maneuvers. Plan on using those two walls of metal to crush me flatter than a Noxian coin.

Damn it.

Any hope I got of surviving this, it’s gone…

And that’s when I see her. The most loyal, trustworthy, honorable friend an undeserving bastard like me could ever have.

Skaarl.

Riding like hell toward me. Faster than I’ve ever seen her run. A rooster tail of dust is shooting up behind her. The damn lizard even picks up my hat on her way to me. I run to her just as those black-clad warriors are about to crush me.

I leap into the saddle, and we circle around the iron warriors. There’ll be time to kill them after we get rid of that ballista.

“It’s been a while since we took on a whole army together,” I say.

“Greefrglarg,” Skaarl screeches happily.

“Back at you, buddy,” I say with a smile wider than a croxagor’s.

’Cause there ain’t nothing I love more than this dang lizard.

How long had it been since Lux had come north to Fossbarrow?

She wasn’t sure. Years, certainly. The family had come north to honor the tomb of Great Grandfather Fossian, and Lux remembered complaining about the incessant rain as they made their way through the crags and gullies of the forest to his resting place. She’d been expecting a grand mausoleum, but was disappointed to learn it was little more than a grassy mound nestled at the foot of a soaring cliff face. A marble slab set into the base of the mound depicted the legend of her illustrious forebear—Fossian and the demon falling from the cliff, her great grandfather mortally wounded, the nightmarish entity with a Demacian blade piercing its black heart.

It had rained then, and it was raining now. An icy, northern deluge fresh off the dogtooth mountains that separated Demacia from the Freljord. A storm was brewing in that frozen realm, breaking on the far side of the peaks to fall on verdant swathes of Demacian pine bent by hostile winds. To the west and east, the mountains receded into an azure haze, the sky dark and threatening, like one of her brother’s saltier moods. North, the forested haunches of the highlands were craggy with cliffs and plunging chasms. Dangerous lands, home to fell creatures and wild beasts of all descriptions.

Lux had set off into the north two weeks ago; Demacia to Edessa, then to Pinara and on to Lissus. Lissus to Velorus, and eventually to High Silvermere, the City of Raptors. A night with her family at their home at the foot of Knight’s Rock, then out into Demacia’s northwest marches. Almost immediately, the character of the people and villages began to change as the heartland of Demacia fell behind her like a pennant torn from the haft of a banner-pole.

Rolling, fertile plains gave way to windswept hinterlands dotted with gorse and thistle. Silverwing raptors screeched overhead, invisible as they dueled in the clouds. The air grew colder, freighted with the deep ice of the Freljord, and the walls of each settlement grew higher with every mile she rode. It had been a long and tiring journey to Fossbarrow, but she was here, and Lux allowed herself a small smile.

“We’ll be at the temple soon, Starfire,” she said, reaching down to rub her horse’s mane. “They’ll have grain and a warm stable for you, I promise.”

The horse shook its head and snorted, stamping its feet with impatience. Lux kicked back her heels and walked her tired mount along the rutted track leading to Fossbarrow’s main gate.

The town occupied the banks of the Serpentrion, a thundering river that rose in the mountains and snaked to the western coast. The town’s walls of polished granite followed the line of the hills, and the buildings within were wrought from stone, seasoned timber and bottle-green roof tiles. The tower of an Illuminator temple rose in the east, the brazier within its steeple a welcome light in the gathering dusk.

Lux pulled back the hood of her blue cloak and shook her hair free. Long and golden, it framed a youthful face of high cheekbones and ocean-blue eyes that sparkled with determination. Two men appeared on the tower above the iron-bound gate, each armed with a powerful longbow of ash and yew.

“Hold, traveler,” said one of the guards. “The gate’s closed until morning.”

“My name is Luxanna Crownguard,” she said. “As you say, it is late, but I’ve come a long way to pay my respects to my great grandfather. I’d be in your debt if you’d allow me entry.”

The man squinted through the gloom, his eyes widening as he recognized her. It had been years since she’d come to Fossbarrow, but Garen always said that once people laid eyes on Lux, they never forgot her.

“Lady Crownguard! Forgive me!” he cried, turning to address the men below. “Open the gates.”

Lux eased Starfire forward as the solid timbers of the gate lifted into the stone of the barbican with a clatter of heavy iron chains. As soon as it had risen enough, Lux rode under it to find a hastily assembled honor guard awaiting her—ten men in leather breastplates and blue cloaks secured with silver pins in the shape of winged swords. They were proud Demacian soldiers, though their shoulders were curiously slumped and their eyes haunted with exhaustion.

“Welcome to Fossbarrow,” said the same man who’d spoken to her from the tower. “This is a great honor, my lady. Magistrate Giselle will be relieved to know you are here. May I offer you a detachment of soldiers to escort you to her home?”

“Thank you, but that won’t be necessary,” said Lux, wondering at the man’s choice of the word relieved. “I’ve arranged accommodation with Mistress Pernille at the Illuminator temple.”

She made to ride on, but sensed the guard’s desire to say something and gently pulled Starfire’s reins.

“Lady Crownguard,” said the guard. “Are you here to end our nightmare?”

The Illuminator temple was warm and dry, and with Starfire settled in the stables, she’d spoken at length with Mistress Pernille in the main hall. Lux had heard rumors of magic in the forests and crags around Fossbarrow and had set out to see what she might learn—though she hadn’t mentioned that to Mistress Pernille. The simmering power Lux sensed within herself was frightening in its growing intensity, and she hoped there might be some way she could learn more of its nature. And it was always better to learn such things away from the eyes of her family!

Lux had sensed a dark undercurrent as soon as she’d entered the town, a creeping sensation of being watched from the shadows. The few townsfolk she’d seen on the streets walked with leaden steps, their bodies weary.

A pall of fear hung over Fossbarrow. She didn’t need magic to sense that.

“A terrible business,” explained Mistress Pernille, a flaxen-haired woman in the pale robes of an Illuminator healer. “It’s Magistrate Giselle’s son, Luca. That poor boy.”

“What about him?” asked Lux.

“He went missing two days ago,” explained Pernille. “And people are certain he’s been taken by a dark mage for some terrible purpose.”

“Why do they think that?”

“Ask me again in the morning,” said Pernille.

Lux awoke with a scream, her heart hammering in her chest and her breath coming in wheezing spikes. Terror filled her mind—a nightmare of clawed hooks dragging her beneath the earth, of fetid mud filling her mouth and darkness smothering her light forever. Lux blinked away the last afterimages, glimpsing retreating shadows out of the corner of her eye. Her mouth was filled with the taste of rancid milk, a sure sign of lingering magic, and spectral radiance shimmered in her palms. Light filled the room, and with it, the last remnants of the nightmare were banished.

Warmth suffused her, her skin shimmering with a haze of iridescence, and she quickly clenched her fists, trying to pull it back within her before it got out of control.

She heard voices downstairs, and thankfully the light faded, leaving only the wan traces of daylight from the shuttered window to illuminate the room. Lux pressed her hands to the side of her head, as if seeking to push the awful visions from her mind. She tried to recall specific moments from the nightmare, but all that came was the reek of sour breath and a faceless darkness pressing down upon her.

Her mouth dry, Lux quickly dressed and descended to the temple kitchen. Though she had little in the way of appetite, she prepared a breakfast of bread and cheese. At her first bite, the taste of grave earth filled her mouth and she put the food aside.

“How did you sleep?” asked Pernille, entering the kitchen and joining her at the table.

The skin below Pernille’s eyes was purple with lack of sleep, her skin sallow without firelight to color it. Only now did Lux notice just how bone-weary Pernille was.

“About as well as you, by the looks of it,” said Lux. “Did you dream?”

“I did, but it’s nothing I want to relive by saying it out loud.”

Lux nodded slowly. “I think there’s something very wrong with this town.”

Starfire whinnied at the sight of her, his ears pressed flat against his skull and his eyes wide. He nuzzled her, and she stroked his pearl-white neck and shoulders.

“You too?” she said, and the horse tossed its mane.

Lux quickly saddled her mount and rode toward Fossbarrow’s northern gate. Dawn was already an hour old, but the town was still to fully come to life. No smoke rose from the forges, no smell of fresh bread wafted from the bakeries, and only a very few sullen-looking merchants had their doors open for business. Demacians were hard-working, disciplined, and industrious, so to see a frontier town so late to begin the day’s work was highly unusual. But if Fossbarrow’s people had endured a night like hers, she couldn’t blame them for being slow to rise.

She passed through the gate into the open ground before the town and let Starfire run to work out the stiffness in his muscles before turning onto the muddy road. The stallion had broken his leg many years ago, but it hadn’t impaired the speed of his gallop.

“Easy, boy,” said Lux as they rode into the forest.

The scent of pine and wildflowers hung heavy in the air, and Lux savored the heady, natural aroma of the northern climes. Sunlight pierced the leafy canopy in angled spars of light, and the smell of wet mud sent a shiver up her spine as her nightmare briefly surfaced. She rode deeper into the forest, following the track as it wound its way further north. Lux lifted a hand from the reins and reached for a glittering sunbeam, feeling the magic within her stir at its touch. It was thrilling to feel it rise within her, but she let it come only slowly, for fear it might overtake her fragile control.

Her world lit up as the magic filled her senses, the colors of the forest unnaturally vivid and filled with life. She saw glittering motes of light drifting in the air, the breath of trees and the sighs of the earth. How incredible it was to see the world like this, alive to the energies flowing through every living thing. From blades of grass to the mighty ironbirch trees whose roots were said to reach the very heart of the world. If this was what even the lightest touch of magic might achieve, what wonders might it work were she better able to control it?

After an hour of riding through the iridescent forest, the road diverged at a crossroads, one path leading east—to a logging town if she remembered correctly—the other dropping west to a community built around a thriving silver mine. Her father owned a stake in the mine and her favorite cloak pin had been wrought from metal dug from its deep chasms. Between the two main routes lay a smaller pathway, all but invisible and suitable only for lone riders or those on foot.

She remembered taking that path years ago, and Lux wondered why she was reluctant to guide Starfire in that direction. She had no need to go that way, for her story of paying respects to her great grandfather was just that, a story. Lux closed her eyes and lifted her arms out to the side, letting the magic drift from her fingers. She took a breath, filling her lungs with cold air and letting the light of the forest speak to her. Her understanding of such things was still new, but surely it was worth the risk to find out what was plaguing this region of Demacia.

The light spoke in contrasting hues, scintillating colors. and vibrant illumination. She felt the light of distant stars drift down like mist, light that bathed other realms and people, almost too much to bear. Where the light of Demacia fell into shadow, she flinched. Where it nourished something living, she was soothed. Lux turned in the saddle, reveling in this new sensation. The sun was almost at its zenith, and she frowned as the quality of light in the forest trembled, slipping from her grasp. She felt shadows where no shadows ought to dwell, hidden darkness where only light should exist. The breath caught in her throat, like a hand at her neck, and a sudden wave of dizziness swept over her. Her eyelids fluttered, drifting closed as if she were being pulled into a waking slumber.

The forest around her was suddenly silent. Not a breath of wind stirred the leaves of the trees, nor ruffled so much as a blade of grass. The Silverwings were silent, the chatter of animals stilled. Lux heard the soft susurration of grave cloth being pulled tight.

Sleep…

“No,” she said, but the unnatural weariness slipped over her like a comfortable blanket, warm and enfolding. Lux’s head dropped and she closed her eyes for the briefest instant.

The snapping sound of a breaking branch and the scrape of metal flicked Lux’s eyes open. She drew in a great draught of air, the cold in her lungs jolting her awake again. She blinked shadows from her eyes and let out an icy breath as the magic slipped from her grasp and faded away. She heard riders on horseback, the jingle of bridle and trace, the rasp of metal on metal. Soldiers, armored for war. At least four, perhaps more.

Lux wasn’t scared of them. Not really. Not this deep in Demacia. Whatever darkness was lurking somewhere in the forest was a more immediate threat. Its strength was uncertain, like a child exploring just what it could do. She pulled Starfire’s reins, turning him around and setting him athwart the paths.

The foliage in front of her parted, and five riders came into view.

Powerful warriors, armored head to foot in gleaming warplate. They rode wide-chested steeds of gray, none smaller than seventeen hands, and each caparisoned in cobalt blue. Four had their swords drawn, where the fifth had his golden-hilted blade sheathed in a lacquered blue scabbard across his back.

“Luxanna?” said this rider, his voice muffled by the visor of his helm.

Lux sighed as the knight removed his helmet to reveal dark hair and granite-hewn features that so embodied Demacia it was a wonder they weren’t yet on a coin.

“Garen,” sighed Lux.

Her brother had brought four of the Dauntless Vanguard.

Drawn from any other army, four warriors would be a paltry force, but every warrior of the Dauntless Vanguard was a hero, a legend with tales of valor etched into the metal of their swords. Their deeds were told and retold around tavern tables and hearthfires the length and breadth of Demacia.

Dark of hair and keen of eye was Diadoro, the bearded swordsman who’d held the Gates of Mourning against the armored host of the Trifarian Legion for an entire day. Flanking him was Sabator of Jandelle, the slayer of the hideous deepwyrm that woke every hundred years to feast, but which would now wake no more. Its fangs were hung in King Jarvan’s throne room, next to the newly mounted dragon skull brought by his son and his enigmatic companion.

Slighter, though no less striking, was Varya, she who led the charge onto the decks of the sea-wolf fleet at Dawnhold. She set their ships ablaze and, even wounded nigh unto death, cut down their berserk leader. Rodian, her twin brother, had sailed north to Frostheld and burned the Freljordian harbor city to the ground, so that no others would dare sail south to wreak havoc again.

Lux knew them all, but rolled her eyes at the thought of hearing their legends around a table tonight. Yes, they were heroes of Demacia and entirely worthy of respect, but hearing about Sabator climbing down the deepwyrm’s gullet for the tenth time, or how Varya beat a Grelmorn to death with a splintered oar was too much for Lux.

Garen came alongside her as they followed the road back to Fossbarrow. They’d circled the town until the light began to fade in search of the magistrate’s son or any sign of nefarious goings on, but had found nothing. Though any servant of darkness would have had plenty of time to run and hide, given the noise Garen and the Dauntless Vanguard were making.

“You’re really here to visit Great Grandfather Fossian’s tomb?”

“I said so, didn’t I?”

“Yes,” replied Garen. “You did. I’m just surprised. I seem to recall mother saying you hated coming here last time.”

“I’m surprised she remembered.”

“Oh, she remembered,” said Garen without looking at her. “When young Luxanna Crownguard doesn’t enjoy something, the skies darken, rain clouds empty, and forest animals hide.”

“You make me sound like a spoiled brat.”

“You kind of were,” said Garen, his easy grin only partially robbing the comment of its sting. “You got away with things I’d have had a smacked backside for doing. Mother was always telling me not to pay attention to the things you did.”

The words hung between them, and Lux looked away, remembering not to underestimate her brother. People knew him as honest and direct, with a sound grasp of tactics and war stratagems, but few ever thought of him as subtle or cunning.

That, knew Lux, was a mistake. Yes, Garen was a simple warrior, but simple didn’t mean stupid.

“So what do you think’s happened to the boy?” asked Lux.

Garen ran a hand through his hair.

“If I had to guess, I’d say he’s run away from home,” he said. “Or decided to have an adventure and has gotten lost somewhere in the forest.”

“You don’t think a dark mage has taken him?”

“It’s certainly possible, but Varya and Rodian rode through this way only six months ago, and saw no evidence of unnatural sorceries.”

Lux nodded and asked, “Have you spent a night in Fossbarrow?”

“No,” answered Garen, as they rode into sight of the town. “Why do you ask?”

“Just curious.”

“There’s something going on down there,” said Sabator, his hand shielding his eyes from the setting sun.

Garen’s eyes snapped to where his warrior was pointing, and all levity fell from his face. His entire posture changed, muscles taut and ready for action, his eyes utterly focused. The warriors of the Dauntless Vanguard formed up alongside him, ready to move in an instant.

“What is it?” said Lux.

An angry-looking crowd was hounding a stumbling man through the streets toward the market square. She couldn’t hear what they were shouting, but she didn’t need to hear the words to feel their anger and fear.

“Vanguard! We ride,” said Garen, raking his spurs back.

Starfire was a fast horse, but even he was no match for a grain-fed Demacian warsteed. By the time Lux rode through the gates, the sound of yelling voices echoed through the town. Starfire’s flanks were lathered with sweat and his iron-shod hooves struck sparks from the cobbles. Lux hauled her mount to a halt as she entered the crowded market square and leapt from his back as she saw a scene she’d witnessed too many times throughout Demacia.

“No, no, no…” she muttered, seeing two guards drag a weeping man onto the auction platform normally used during the buying and selling of livestock. The man’s clothes were soaked in blood and he wailed piteously. A woman with the ermine-trimmed robes and bronze wings of a Demacian magistrate stood before him, presumably Magistrate Giselle. Hundreds of Fossbarrow’s townsfolk filled the square, yelling and screaming at the man. The intensity of their hate was palpable, and Lux felt her magic drawn to the surface of her skin. She struggled to quell the rising light and pushed her way through the crowd, seeing Garen at the foot of the steps leading onto the auction platform.

“Aldo Dayan,” said Magistrate Giselle, her voice ragged with emotion. “I name thee murderer and consort of a dark mage!”

“No!” cried the man. “You don’t understand! They were monsters! I saw them, their real faces! Darkness—only darkness!”

“Confession!” cried Giselle.

The crowd screamed in response, a swelling lust for vengeance erupting from every throat. They looked set to rush the auction platform to tear Aldo Dayan limb from limb, and perhaps they would have but for the four warriors of the Dauntless Vanguard standing with their swords drawn at its edge.

“What’s going on? What happened?” asked Lux as she reached Garen’s side.

Garen didn’t look at her, his eyes fixed on the kneeling man.

“He murdered his wife and children in their beds, then ran out onto the streets and attacked his neighbors. He split three people with an axe before they were able to restrain him.”

“Why would he do that?”

Finally Garen turned to look at her. “Why do you think? There must be a mage nearby. A darkness holds sway here. Only the dark influence of a sorcerer could drive a loyal Demacian citizen to commit such heinous acts.”

Lux bit back an angry retort and pushed past Garen. She climbed the steps of the platform and marched over to the kneeling man.

“Lady Crownguard? What are you doing?” demanded Giselle.

Lux ignored her and lifted the man’s head. His face was bruised, one eye swollen shut from the heavy blow of a cudgel or fist. Blood and snot ran freely from his nose, and ropes of drool hung from his split lip.

“Look at me,” she said, and the man’s good eye tried to focus on her. The white of his eye was bloodshot and purple edged, the eye of a man who had not slept in days.

“Goodman Dayan, tell me why you killed your family,” said Lux. “Why did you attack your neighbors?”

“Not them. No. I saw. Weren’t them, they was… monsters…” sobbed the man. “Darkness clothed in skin. Among us the whole time! I woke and I saw their true faces! So I killed them! I had to do it. I had to!”

She looked up as Magistrate Giselle appeared at Lux’s shoulder. Lux saw a soul-aching grief etched in the woman’s face. The last two days had aged her ten years. The magistrate stared down in disgust at Aldo Dayan, her fists clenched at her sides.

“Did you kill my Luca?” she said, her voice wracked with sorrow. “Did you kill my son? Just because he was different?”

Baying cries for vengeance rose from the crowd as the sun sank into the west and the shadows lengthened. Handfuls of mud and dung pelted Aldo Dayan as his former friends and neighbors called for his death. He thrashed in the grip of the guards, frothing at the mouth and spitting bloody saliva.

“I had to kill them!” he screamed, staring defiantly at his accusers. “It weren’t them. Just darkness, only darkness. It could be one of you too!”

Lux turned back to Magistrate Giselle.

“What did you mean when you said your son was different?”

Giselle’s grief was all-consuming, but Lux saw past it to a secret shame beneath. The magistrate’s eyes were bloodshot and ringed with dark smudges of exhaustion, yet even that couldn’t hide the same look she’d seen in her mother’s eyes whenever Lux’s powers had gotten the better of her as a youngster. It was the same look she sometimes saw in her brother’s eyes when he thought she wasn’t looking.

“What did you mean?” she asked again.

“Nothing,” said Giselle. “I didn’t mean anything.”

“Different how?”

“Just different.”

Lux had heard such deflections before, and suddenly knew exactly how the magistrate’s son was different.

“I’ve heard enough,” said Garen as he strode onto the platform, his long, silver sword hissing from its scabbard. The blade glinted in the twilight, its edge unimaginably sharp.

“Garen, no,” said Lux. “There’s something more going on here. Let me speak with him.”

“He is a monster,” said Garen, spinning his sword up onto his shoulder. “Even if he is not a servant of evil, he is a murderer. There can be only one punishment. Magistrate?”

Giselle looked away from Lux, her eyes wet with tears. She nodded.

“Aldo Dayan, I declare you guilty, and call upon Garen Crownguard of the Dauntless Vanguard to dispense Demacian justice.”

The man lifted his head, and Lux’s eyes narrowed as she felt a prickling sensation of… something pass through him. A whisper of a lurking presence. It slithered away before she could be sure, but a breath of frigid air raised her hackles.

Dayan’s limbs spasmed, like a deranged roadside wanderer afflicted with the tremoring sickness. He whispered something, rasping and faint, as Garen lifted his warblade to deliver the executioner’s strike. Dayan’s last words were all but lost in the roars of approval coming from the crowd, but Lux finally pieced them together as Garen’s sword swept down.

The light is fading…

“Wait!” she cried.

Garen’s blade clove the man’s head from his body in one titanic blow, to a roar of approval from the crowd. The body dropped to the platform, twin arcs of blood jetting from the stump of his neck. The head rolled to Giselle’s feet as coiling smoke poured from Aldo Dayan’s corpse like black bile oozing from a charnel pit. The magistrate recoiled in shock as a phantom form of wicked claws and searing eyes erupted from the dead man’s skull.

The spectral darkness launched itself at the magistrate with a cackle of spite. She screamed as it passed through her before dissipating like wind-scattered cinders. Lux felt the breath of the thing’s demise, an energy so vile, so hateful, and so inhumanly evil, that it beggared belief. Magistrate Giselle collapsed, her flesh ashen, weeping in terror.

Lux dropped to one knee as myriad visions of horror arose within her—choking fears of being buried alive, of being driven from Demacia by her brother, of a thousand ways to die a slow and painful death. The light within her fought these terrible sights, and Lux’s breath shimmered with motes of light as she spat the taste of death from her mouth.

“Lux…”

Garen spoke in a whisper, and it took her a moment to figure out how she could possibly have heard him over the cheering crowd. Lux turned from the sobbing magistrate, and felt magic race around her body in a surge tide.

The crowd stood utterly silent.

“Lux, what’s going on?” said Garen.

She blinked away the abhorrent images still searing her mind and followed Garen’s gaze as the warriors of the Dauntless Vanguard rushed to stand with their leader.

Then, one after another, the people of Fossbarrow fell to the ground, as if the life had simply fled their bodies.

Lux clenched her teeth and pushed herself to her feet.

The sun had all but vanished behind Fossbarrow’s western wall and her mouth fell open as she saw black, vaporous shapes lift from the town’s unconscious inhabitants. No two were alike, and Lux saw an assembling host of shades in Noxian armor, vast spiders, many-headed serpents, towering shadow warriors with frost axes, great drakes with teeth like obsidian daggers and scores of things that defied sane description.

“Sorcery,” declared Garen.

The shadow creatures closed on the platform, sliding through the air without a sound. An oncoming tide of nightmarish horrors.

“What are they?” asked Varya.

“The darkest nightmares of Fossbarrow’s people given form,” said Lux.

“How can you know that?” demanded Sabator.

“I don’t, not for sure, but it feels right,” said Lux, knowing she couldn’t stay here to fight. Besides, the Dauntless Vanguard could hold their own here. She placed her thumb and forefinger against her bottom lip and whistled a summoning note before turning to Garen.

“I think I might know how to stop this,” she said. “Maybe…”

“How?” said Garen, without taking his eyes off the approaching shadowhost.

“Never mind how,” said Lux. “Just… try not to die before I get back.”

Lux ran to the edge of the platform as Starfire galloped through the creatures. Her steed passed unmolested, its dreams and nightmares of no interest to the power now abroad in Fossbarrow. Lux leapt from the platform and grabbed Starfire’s mane, swinging onto his back in one smooth motion.

“Where are you going?” demanded Garen.

The horse reared and Lux twisted in the saddle to answer her brother.

“I told you,” she shouted. “I’m going to pay my respects to Great Grandfather Fossian!”

Garen watched his sister gallop through the dark host, carefully navigating a path through the town’s fallen inhabitants. Grasping claws of shadow creatures reached for her, but she and Starfire evaded every attack. Lux rode clear of the monstrous host, and paused just long enough to wave at him.

“For Demacia!” she shouted.

The Dauntless Vanguard clashed their swords against their shields.

“For Demacia!” they answered as one.

Lux turned her horse and galloped from the town.

Garen rolled his shoulders in anticipation of the rigor of close-quarters battle and lifted his sword.

“Lockstep!” he yelled, and his warriors took up their battle stance. Varya and Rodian stood to his left, Sabator and Diadoro to his right.

“We are the Dauntless Vanguard,” said Garen, lowering his sword so its quillons framed his piercing eyes. “Let courage and a keen eye guide your blades.”

Oil-black shade-hounds were the first to reach the platform, leaping upward with tearing fangs and flashing teeth. Garen and the Dauntless Vanguard met them with shields locked and blades bared. A hammering wall of iron beat them back. Though their enemies were wrought from darkness and spite, they fought with ferocious strength and skill. Garen stepped in and thrust his blade into a writhing beast’s haunches, tearing through to where its spine ought to be. The monster’s form exploded into black dust with a shriek of anguish.

Garen spun his sword up and pulled back in an oblique turn. His sword deflected another beast’s snapping jaw. He rolled his wrists and lowered his shoulder into its attack. He pushed the thing back and down. He stamped its chest and the beast roared as it burst apart. Garen’s sword snapped back up to block a crushing blow from what looked like the silhouette of a towering Freljordian warrior. The impact drove him to his knees.

“I will fight as long as I stand!” he said through gritted teeth, straightening his legs with a roar and hammering his pommel into the savage warrior’s horned skull. Ashes burst from the shadow, and Garen spun to drive his sword into the belly of another beast.

Sabator decapitated a slavering hound as Diadoro slammed his shield down on a hissing serpent, splitting its body in half. Varya hammered the hilt of her sword into the snapping fangs of a faceless shadow warrior as Rodian drove his sword into his twin’s foe.

With every killing blow, the shadow creatures burst into amber-limned ashes. Garen’s sword flashed and the silver blade plunged into the body of a scorpion-like monster.

A slash of dark talons came at Garen’s head. Sabator’s shield parried the attack. Varya chopped her blade through the monster’s legs and it burst apart. A hideous, limping creature hurled itself at Rodian, and he thrust his blade hard into its featureless face. It screeched as it died. But for every shadow they destroyed, more always took their place.

“Back to back!” roared Garen, and the pauldrons of the five warriors clashed together. They fought shoulder to shoulder in a circle of steel, a beacon of light against the darkness.

“Show them the strength of Demacia!”

Lux rode hard through the forest, trees flashing past to either side in a blur. It was reckless to gallop through the forest at such speed, but the shadows assailing Garen and the Dauntless Vanguard would keep coming. Human imaginations were a depthless well of nightmares—fear of death, fear of infirmity, or fear of losing a loved one.

She followed the route she had taken only this morning, hoping Starfire remembered the way more clearly than she did. Together, they flew through the night, eventually reaching the crossroads where the roads diverged. Ignoring the roads east and west, Starfire leapt the overgrown bracken that all but obscured the path north.

The path to Great Grandfather Fossian’s tomb.

Even with her mount’s surefootedness, Lux was forced to slow her pace as the path wound its way through steep-sided gullies and up rocky glens. The closer she came to the tomb, the more the landscape began to change, taking on an altogether different character—like something from a tale told to frighten small children. The trees wept a sickly black sap, their branches gnarled and twisted into clawed hands that plucked at her hair and cloak. Gaps in the boles of trees resembled fanged mouths, and venomous spiders spun cloying webs in their high branches. The ground underfoot became spongy and damp with brackish pools of stagnant water—like a grove abandoned by one of the fae folk.

Starfire stopped before the entrance to a shadow-wreathed clearing and threw back his head, nostrils flaring in fear.

“Easy, boy,” she said. “Fossian’s tomb is just ahead. Only a few more steps.”

But the horse would not be cajoled into another inch forward.

“Fine,” said Lux. “I’ll go myself.”

She slid off the horse’s back and entered the clearing. Moonlight filtering through the clouds gave off just enough illumination for her to see.

The mound of Fossian’s tomb was a shallow hill of grass that looked black in the gloom, its summit crowned with a rough cairn of stacked stone. Dark smoke drifted into a sky that swirled with images of ancient horrors awaiting their time to claim the world. Dark lines snaked across the great stone slab telling of Fossian’s deeds.

A young boy, no more than twelve or thirteen, sat cross-legged before it, his thin body swaying as if in a trance. Tendrils of black smoke coiled from the tomb, wrapping around his neck like strangling vines.

“Luca?” said Lux.

The boy’s swaying ceased at the sound of her voice.

He turned to face Lux, and she faltered at the sight of his soulless, black eyes. A cruel grin split his face.

“Not anymore,” he said.

A looming spider with hook-bladed legs reared over Garen, its bloated belly rippling with distended eyes and snapping jaws. He split its thorax and kicked the flailing creature from the platform even as its body disintegrated.

Legs braced, Garen felt a searing cold in the muscle of his shoulder as a black claw plunged through his pauldron. The metal did not buckle or crack. The claw passed through unimpeded, and Garen felt a sickening revulsion spread through him. He smelled rank grave dirt—the reek of fetid earth over a centuries-old sepulchre. He fought through the pain as he had always been trained to do.

Rodian fell as a hooking blade slid under his guard and plunged into his side. He cried out in pain, his shield lowering.

“Straighten up!” yelled Garen. “Shake the pain.”

Rodian straightened, chastened at his lapse, as the shadow creatures barged into one another in their frenzy to reach the Dauntless Vanguard.

“They never stop coming!” cried Varya.

“Then we never stop fighting!” answered Garen.

Though she wanted nothing more than to flee this haunted clearing, Lux walked toward the young boy, her hand slipping to the dagger at her hip. His eyes rippled with darkness, nightmares waiting to be born from the rich loam of human frailty. She felt a cold, calculating intelligence appraise her.

Luca nodded and smoothly rose to his feet. Muttering shadows gathered at the edge of the clearing, monsters and terrors lurking just out of sight as they moved to surround her.

“You have nightmares aplenty,” he said. “I think I’ll crack your skull open with a rock to scoop them out.”

“Luca, this isn’t you,” she said.

“Tell me, who do you think it is?”

“The demon in that tomb,” said Lux. “I don’t think it was as dead as people thought when they buried Fossian.”

Luca grinned, his mouth spreading so wide the skin at the corners of his mouth tore. Rivulets of blood ran down his chin.

“Not dead at all,” he said. “Just sleeping. Healing. Renewing. Preparing.”

“Preparing for what?” said Lux, forcing herself to take another step forward.

The boy tutted and wagged an admonishing finger. Lux froze, unable to take another step. Her fingers were locked around her dagger’s grip.

“Now, now,” he said, bending to pick up a sharpened stone. “Let me cut out a nightmare first.”

“Luca,” said Lux, unable to move, but still able to speak. “You have to fight it. I know you can. You have magic within you. I know you have—that’s why you ran away isn’t it? That’s why you came here, to be next to someone who defeated a demon.”

The thing wearing the flesh of the boy laughed, and the grass withered around it at the sound.

“His tears were like water in a desert,” it said, coming forward and circling her as if seeing where best he might crack her skull open. “They woke me, nourished me. I had slept for so long I had forgotten just how sweet the suffering of mortals tasted.”

The boy reached out and stroked her cheek. His touch sent a cold spike of terror through Lux. He lifted his finger away, and a smoky thread followed. She gagged as the fear of drowning filled her. A tear rolled down her cheek.

“I made him sleep, and his dreams were ripe with horrors to be made real,” said the boy. “His power is slight, a glowing ember compared to the furnace that burns in your flesh. It gave me little in the way of real substance, but childish fears are a banquet after I had gone so long without. Demacia is a terror to his kind. To your kind.”

Lux felt her magic recoil from this creature, the darkness filling the clearing pressing her light down into little more than a spark. She tried to restrain it, knowing that even a single uncontrolled spark could begin a conflagration that would devour an entire forest.

“They hated him. Luca knew that. You mortals are always so quick to fear the things you don’t understand. So easy to fan those flames and draw forth the most exquisite visions of terror.”

Lux flexed her fingers on the leather of her dagger’s handle, the motion painful. But pain meant she had control. She used it. She nursed the building spark within her, kept it apart from her terror, and let it seep slowly back into her body.

“Luca, please,” she said, forcing each word out. “You have to fight it. Don’t let it use you.”

The boy laughed. “He can’t hear you. And even if he could, you know he’s right to fear what his own people would do if they discovered the truth. That he is the very thing they hate. A mage. You of all people should know how that feels.”

Pain spread along Lux’s arms, and moved through her chest. The boy’s black eyes narrowed as he sensed the build up of magic.

“I know all too well,” she said. “But I do not let fear define me.”

Lux thrust her dagger toward the boy with a scream of pain. She didn’t want to hurt him, only to let the metal of the blade touch him and pass a measure of her light to him. Her limbs burned, and the blow was clumsy. The boy jumped back—too slow. The flat of the blade brushed the skin of his cheek.

The moment of connection was fleeting, but it was enough.

The Dauntless Vanguard fought with brutally efficient sword cuts and battering blows from their shields, but they could not fight forever.

Eventually, the shadows would drag them down.

A pack of squirming things with grasping arms attacked from the left, fouling Diadoro’s swings with their bodies. A blow glanced off his shield and hammered into his shoulder guard. He grunted and punched his sword into the belly of a dark-fleshed beast with the head of a dragon.

“Step in!” admonished Sabator. “Keep them at bay!”

Garen threw a sword cut into the writhing darkness, a backstroke to the guts and a thrust to the chest. In deep and twist. Don’t stop moving. Movement to the right—a howling insect-like skull with fangs like daggers. He slashed it in the eyes. It screamed and burst apart in smoke and cinders.

Two more came at him. No room to swing. Another pommel strike, stove in the first’s chest. Stab the other in the belly, blade out. The monsters withdrew. Garen stepped back, level with Varya and Rodian. Each was slathered from helm to greaves in ash.

“We hold the line,” said Garen.

“For how long?” asked Diadoro.

Garen looked to the north, where a distant light shone in the forest.

“As long as Lux needs,” said Garen with a warning glance.

And the shadows came at them again.

The light poured from Lux and into Luca. Blinding and all but uncontrolled radiance exploded through the clearing. The monster within the young boy was torn loose from his flesh with a howling screech of fury and desperation. Raw white fire enfolded Lux, becoming everything around them, in its own way as terrifyingly powerful as the darkness. Its power was magnificent, but she could barely cling on to its howling radiance as it roared through her. The darkness fled before its awesome power, its shadow banished by the incandescence of the light. The growing radiance kept growing until the forest and the tomb were nowhere to be seen, only an endless expanse of pale nothingness. Sitting in front of her was a young boy with his knees drawn up to his chest. He looked up, and his eyes were those of a small, frightened child.

“Can you help me?” he said.

“I can,” said Lux, walking over and sitting next to him. “But you have to come back with me.”

He shook his head. “I can’t. I’m too scared. The nightmare-man is out there.”

“Yes, he is, but together we can beat him,” she said. “I’ll help you.”

“You will?”

“If you’ll let me,” said Lux with a smile. “I know what you’re going through, how you’re afraid of what’ll happen if people know what you can do. Trust me, it’s happening to me too. But you don’t have to be afraid. What’s inside you? It’s not evil. It’s not darkness. It’s light. Maybe it’s a light we can learn to control together.”

She held out her hand.

“You promise?” he said.

“I promise,” said Lux. “You’re not alone, Luca.”

The boy gripped her hand like a drowning man grasping a rope.

The light swelled of its own volition, impossibly bright, and when it faded, Lux saw the clearing was just as she remembered it from her visit years ago. Green grass, a hillock with a stone cairn and a slab describing Fossian’s deeds. The darkness that had so transformed the forest was now absent. The clawed trees were nothing more than ordinary, the sky a midnight-blue vault of twinkling stars. The sound of night-hunting birds echoed from the forest canopy.

Luca still held her hand and smiled up at her.

“Is he gone? The nightmare-man?”

“I think so,” she said, feeling the bitter taste of dark power diminish. “For now, at least. I think maybe it’s not in the tomb anymore, but it’s gone from here. That’s what’s important right now.”

“Can we go home now?” asked Luca.

“Yes,” said Lux. “We can go home.”

Numbing cold filled Garen. His limbs were leaden, pierced through by shadow claws. Ice running in his veins chilled him to the very heart of his soul as his vision grayed.

Sabator and Diadoro were down, skin darkening. Rodian was on his knees, a clawed hand at his throat. Varya fought on, her shield arm hanging uselessly at her side, but her sword arm still strong.

Garen tasted ash and despair. He had never known defeat. Not like this. Even when he once believed Jarvan was dead, he’d found the will to continue. Now, his life was being sapped with every breath.

A towering figure reared up before him, a horned shade with an axe of darkness. It looked like a savage warrior he had slain many years ago. Garen raised his sword, ready to die with a Demacian war cry on his lips.

A summer wind blew. A strange brightness shone in the northern sky like a sunrise.

The shadow creatures faded until they vanished entirely, like smoke in the wind.

Garen let out a breath, barely able to believe he still could. Rodian sucked in a lungful of air as Sabator and Diadoro picked themselves up from the ground. They looked around, amazed, as the last remaining shadows were banished and the townsfolk began to stir.

“What happened?” gasped Varya.

“I don’t know,” said Garen.

With Luca reunited with his grateful mother, Lux and Garen rode toward Fossbarrow’s south gate at the head of the Dauntless Vanguard. Their mood was subdued, and a palpable guilt hung over every person they passed on their way from the town. None of Fossbarrow’s inhabitants could remember anything after the execution, but all knew they had played a part in a man’s death.

“May the Veiled One welcome you to her breast,” said Lux as they passed Aldo Dayan’s burial procession.

“Do you really think he deserves such mercy?” said Garen. “He killed innocents.”

“That’s true,” agreed Lux, “but do you understand why?”

“Does it matter? He was guilty of a crime and paid the price.”

“Of course it matters. Aldo Dayan was their friend and neighbor,” said Lux. “They drank beer with him in the tavern, shared jokes with him on the street. Their sons and daughters played with his children. In their rush to judgment, any chance of understanding what caused his murderous acts was lost.”

Garen kept his gaze fixed on the road ahead.

“They don’t want understanding,” he said at last. “They don’t need it.”

“How can you say that?”

“We live in a world that does not allow for such nuances, Lux. Demacia is beset on all sides by terrible foes—savage tribes in the north, a rapacious empire in the east, and the power of dark mages who threaten the very fabric of our realm. We deal in absolutes by necessity. Allowing doubt to cloud our judgment leaves us vulnerable. And I cannot allow us to become vulnerable.”

“Even at such a cost?”

“Even so,” agreed Garen. “It’s why I do what I do.”

“For Demacia?”

“For Demacia,” said Garen.

I have too many questions I want to ask her. I sneak a side-glance as we walk. She’s looking straight ahead. I watch her gaze sweep back and forth across the far perimeter of the park, her red hair catching the last scraps of the afternoon light with each step. Does she see something? Is this the way she normally patrols? Is she bored? Why is she here? I can’t believe she wanted to come. Why did she come? I quicken my pace to keep up.

“Fortun—Sarah,” I say, remembering.

She doesn’t look away from the path ahead, so I keep going.

“Ez really does have detention, Lux,” she says.

“Oh,” I stammer. “It’s cool.” I can feel the pink in my cheeks. I tug on the tips of my gloves. She turns to look at me, a smug grin softening her face.

“He wanted to be here,” she says. “Soraka too, but Pantheon’s was short staffed. And tonight is Syndra’s astronomy class at the university—”

“—And Ahri?” I blurt out too quickly.

Sarah’s smile tightens. “She’s been busy.”

“No worries,” I say, looking for a way to change the subject. In the middle of the park, Janna pushes Poppy and a free-loading Jinx on a squeaky merry-go-round. Lulu sways idly in a close-by swing set, its metal chains clang softly, like lonely windchimes. There’s no one else in the park besides us. “It’s pretty quiet.”

“Like you said, it’s probably nothing,” she says casually.

I take the folded slip of paper out of my pocket. The frayed edge where I tore it out of Lulu’s notebook flutters in the breeze. The shapes of the playground equipment and power lines surrounding Valoran City’s metro park were clear enough, but it was the dozens of circles in the sky that worried me. Poppy said that it was too warm in physics class, and Lulu was just doodling to stay awake.

“Look!” Lulu shouts from the swing, snapping me out of my thoughts. She is at the top of the swing’s arc, gesturing excitedly at the horizon. A bright spot has risen just over the silhouette of the skyline. “Twilight star! I saw it first.”

I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. It’s just a star. Stars can’t hurt us.

“The twilight star is not a real star,” Poppy groans. “Technically it’s a planet.”

“Janna said everything has starlight in it,” Lulu argues back.

Janna nods her head in agreement.

“What are you gonna wish for, Loops?” Jinx juggles Shiro and Kuro absently as the merry-go-round spins. Lulu pumps her legs on the swing, pushing it higher.

“More stars!” she shouts. “I want to see more stars.”

“But it’s not dark yet,” Jinx says. “The other stars aren’t out yet.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Lulu pumps her legs harder. “The other stars are always there no matter what. Even if you can’t see them.”

“Rocket-breath is right,” Poppy says, hiding her reluctant agreement with Jinx by examining a non-existent scuff on her hammer. “It needs to get really dark before you can see the stars in the city. It’s not like at the camp.”

I cup my hands together and shout back to them, “You’re all right.” Jinx opens her mouth to argue, but shrugs and takes the win.

I turn back to Sarah.

“Are they always like this?” she asks. I’m sure she’s thinking about us compared to her own team. How this kind of talk would never happen if it was only them. They would just get right down to business. Search the park and be done. I can’t tell if she’s disappointed or annoyed or both.

“You mean are they always this argumentative?” I offer. “No, I mean, well, yes… sometimes—”

“This innocent,” she says, quietly.

“Well, you have Ahri to lead you. Of course you always know what you’re doing. Us, well… All they’ve had is me.”

“Innocent isn’t always a bad thing.” She has that faraway look on her face again, like she’s trying to remember a dream she had a long time ago. She nods her head slowly as if agreeing on the memory. “Yes, that’s who you remind me of.”

“Me? Remind you of Ahri?!” I ask, trying desperately to not sound desperate. Does she really think I’m like Ahri? Which part? Maybe a younger Ahri? I mean, she should know, she’s Ahri’s lieutenant. Did Ahri have multiple lieutenants on her old team? Maybe if our teams join, I can be another one, like Sarah?

“No.” Sarah lets out a sharp laugh. I don’t know if she can read minds, but my hope deflates like an untied balloon.

“Someone else. You remind me of someone else,” she says, softening. “Someone I lost a long time ago. She had pink hair too.” She looks me over again, and I try not to squirm under the scrutiny. “Come to think of it, you’re also too loyal for your own good… and such a dreamer. You’re kinda a mix of all of them,” she says.

Them? The team you lost? Is this a bad thing? Who were they? I add ten more questions I want to ask her to the list running constantly in my head.

How did it happen?

“Lux! Sarah! Look.” Lulu yells happily, interrupting my thoughts before I can get any further. “My wish!”

We look back at the distant playground. I run through a quick check. Lulu. Jinx. Poppy. Janna. Still safe and sound. The twilight has softened all of them, making them seem younger than they really are. The street lamps in the park click on in an unsettling coincidence. Hovering above the team are a swarm of twinkling lights. The team looks like they’re caught in a magical dream.

“Loops, It’s like Short Stop said, it’s not dark enough…” The creaking of the merry-go-round slows to a stop as Janna, Poppy, and Jinx look up as well. It’s getting darker fast. Too fast. I can barely see the trees around the edge of the park. Sarah and I start walking back toward the playground more quickly.

“Those aren’t stars,” Sarah says. I squint to get a better look. The points of light waver, almost glistening. As we get closer I can see what Sarah means. Dozens of thin translucent spheres reflect the light from the street lamps. Bubbles? They were… bubbles? I stuff Lulu’s drawing into the cuff of my glove.

“I don’t think the twilight star heard you right, Lulu,” Poppy says. “Those are bubbles.”

They aren’t just bubbles. One of them floats down toward Poppy, almost as if it was following the sound of her voice. Poppy steps back, letting it drift toward the metal railing of the merry-go-round.

The hushed silence is interrupted by a snort-laugh from Jinx. “C’mon. They’re harmless—”

A trail of bubbles begins to close in on her. I reach for my wand as I start running. “Jinx!”

I throw the staff out ahead of me. It and a prismatic rainbow of starlight just graze the top of Jinx’s pigtails before returning to my hand. A sphere of multicolored light covers Jinx and Poppy. A few bubbles bounce off the barrier and pop against the swing set leaving behind a swirl of dark mist, fluttering black shapes—bugs perhaps, or moths?—and a long, high-pitched laugh, like the delighted cackle of a child.

“That can’t be good, right?” Jinx whisper-yells. “Let’s pop these bad boys!”

“My thoughts exactly.” A double shot of Sarah’s twin pistols fire before she can finish her sentence. A wave of bubbles pop in a shower of black haze and twisted butterflies.

“What’s inside doesn’t look that great either,” Poppy says.

The high-pitched laugh stops short and is quickly replaced by an annoyed groan. The noise echoes around us, setting my teeth on edge. In the center of the pack of toxic bubbles that Janna gathered, a thin circle takes shape. The circle opens into a portal, letting long tendrils snake out from some dark dimension. One unsettling squid eye opens, followed by a second. The gelatinous blob unfolds into some cross between an evil octopus and demonic jellyfish.

“Take it down,” Sarah yells. Shiro and Kuro fire eagerly. Poppy twists around, pulling her hammer back for a long, arcing hit. She growls through the effort as the hammer swings around. In a resounding smack, it connects with the bubble mass, knocking the now angry and disoriented jellyfish out of the center. The malcontent blob drifts for a moment, but collects itself and the scattered bubble pack. They move purposefully toward Sarah.

“Sarah, get down,” I yell. I can feel the heavy power of pure starlight channel through my staff, vibrating the bones in my fingers and arm. The creature darts around, hiding behind bubbles. I fire in a beam of white-hot light. The little jellyfish slips between the bubbles and I miss. I try to get closer, but it feels like time is standing still.

“Loops, no!” Jinx yells.

It’s too late. From out of nowhere, a tiny Lulu pushes Sarah out of the way. Sarah lands hard, but rolls onto her back, both barrels blasting above her.

One bubble escapes the pack above. It floats down, straining to get closer. It breaks against Lulu’s cheek in a wet pop. The darkness seeps out, expanding, and in the space of two heartbeats, Lulu is enveloped by an inky cloud. Her eyes close as she crumples to the ground in a small heap. I dive for Lulu, scooping her up in my arms. More bubbles pop above me as Sarah and Jinx finish off the last of them. A portal opens above the dark jellyfish. The maniacal laughter gets louder and the little beast floats toward the opening, almost as if was buoyed by the sound. As it crosses the portal’s threshold, it disappears, taking the remains of the dark magic with it.

I bring my ear down to Lulu’s face. She’s breathing, slow and even… is she asleep?

“Lulu!” I shake her by the shoulders. Lulu lets out a soft moan and her eyes flutter for a second. I bring my wand up, the brightness is near blinding. Lulu’s closed eyes flinch. “Lulu, by Starlight, wake up!”

“Lost. They were lost.” Lulu’s voice is barely a whisper. Her eyes close tighter against the light, and her lip quivers. It’s as if she’s stuck in a nightmare. “Dark now,” she says.

Lulu sits bolt upright, her blue eyes wide open now. She looks past all of us, like we’re not there, like she’s seeing through us to somewhere else. Like she’s somewhere else.

“She’s on her way,” Lulu says.

“She? Who, Lulu? Who’s on their way?” This is big. One blaring thought shuts out all the others in my brain. Could it be her? Is Ahri on her way? I bite my lip. I look around at Janna, Poppy, Jinx, and finally Sarah.

“Ahri!” I say. “Ahri will know.”

“No,” Sarah says.

“Of course she will.” I push off her muted reply, trying to keep a smile of optimism for the others. “Can you call her, Sarah?”

“I can’t.” Sarah won’t look at me.

“Wait, why?”

“We’re not talking right now,” she says quietly.

“Sarah, I think this is more important than—”

“—The slumber party.” Sarah interrupts looking me straight in the eye. “That night. She was supposed to come. At the last minute, she said there was something she had to take care of. Something she wouldn’t let me help with. I thought she was just being…”

“Ahri,” I finish as she nods her head in confirmation. “You haven’t seen her since?”

Sarah shakes her head no, tightening her grip on the pair of pistols in her lap. Just before Sarah looks away, I see it—a flicker of panic. I can feel my heart thump harder in my chest.

A hundred more questions flood my brain. My stomach tightens.

What could make Sarah panic like this? Where did Ahri go? What’s coming?

Are we strong enough to face it?

Am I strong enough?

I want to ask her, but I can’t.