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

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

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

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

Or if not dead, something else.

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

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

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

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

But he already knew the answer.

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

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

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

Everything Viego does is for her.

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

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

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

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

It does not matter to Viego.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scissors. Needles. Thread.

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

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

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

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

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

Viego.

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

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

This was a gift Gwen would not take for granted.

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

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

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

Helia, the Blessed Isles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Tyrus of Hellesmor.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They would not break him.

And he would remember this insult.

Alovédra, Camavor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Kal?” breathed Viego.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Viego nodded, trying to take comfort in her words.

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

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

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

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

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

“Yet if—”

“The blade will not claim you.”

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

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

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

revealing... nothing.

Then the Blade of the King appeared.

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

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

the ritual of binding.

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

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

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

“Viego,” Kalista said. “It is time.”

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

“Viego...” hissed Kalista.

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

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

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

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

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

His eyes widened, and his pupils contracted sharply.

Then he opened his mouth and began to scream.

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“Fools!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why were they not stopping this?

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

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

Pentakill.

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

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

“Liar!”

“Blasphemer!”

“May the scriptures curse you!”

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

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

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

“That’s enough, Viego!”

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

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

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

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

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

Viego straightened. “And if I refuse?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He glowered at Viego.

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

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

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

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

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

Doubt.

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

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

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

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

Still, the doubt remained.

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

“There is suffering in your play, Stringstress.”

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

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

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

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

The Sanctifier nodded once, then rose to his feet.

“Walk with me, Stringstress Melodie.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Melodie shook her head.

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

“They must have been,” Melodie admitted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I am grateful for them all the same.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She had never felt more alone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Music.

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

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

She was determined to find answers.

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

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

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

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

It was silent. Utterly silent.

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

It had stopped.

What could stop the Temporonomicon?

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

It fell over everything.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But Melodie was rooted in place.

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

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

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

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

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

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

He had never looked older, or more feeble.

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

She pointed to the storm.

“The answer is out there.”

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

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

“Muuuutaaaarisssss...”

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

And perhaps Viego would show her the way.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One can travel to nearly any village across Ionia and hear the tale of the Capture of the Golden Demon. Depicted in a variety of plays and epic poems, the cruel spirit’s banishment is still celebrated to this day.

But at the heart of every myth there lies a kernel of truth, and the truth of the Golden Demon is one far different than the fiction.

For years, Ionia’s southern mountains were plagued by the infamous creature. Throughout the province of Zhyun, and even as far as Shon-Xan and Galrin, a monster slaughtered scores of travelers and sometimes whole farmsteads, leaving behind twisted displays of corpses. Armed militias searched the forests, towns hired demon hunters, Wuju masters patrolled the roads—but nothing slowed the beast’s grisly work.

In desperation, the Council of Zhyun sent an envoy to beg Great Master Kusho of the Kinkou Order for help. Charged with maintaining the balance between the spirit and material realms, Kusho was adept in the banishment of demons. Leaving in secret lest the cunning creature be alerted to their intent, Kusho, his teenage son, Shen, and young apprentice, Zed, traveled to the province. They tended to countless families shattered by the killings, dissected the horrific crime scenes, and looked for connections between the murders. Soon, Kusho realized they were far from the first to hunt this killer, and his conviction grew that this was the work of something beyond the demonic.

For the next four years, the Golden Demon remained beyond their reach, and the long investigation left the three men changed. The famous red mane of Kusho turned white; Shen, known for his wit and humor, became somber; and Zed, the brightest star of Kusho’s temple, began to struggle with his studies. It was almost as though the demon knew they were seeking it, and delighted in the torment sown by their failure.

Upon finally finding a pattern to the killings, the Great Master is quoted as saying: “Good and evil are not truths. They are born from men, and each sees the shades differently.” Kusho sought to hand off the investigation, believing now that they sought not a demon, but a wicked human or vastaya, taking them beyond the Kinkou’s mandate. Shen and Zed, unwilling to turn back after all they had sacrificed to bring the killer within reach, convinced him to continue the hunt.

On the eve of the Spirit Blossom Festival in Jyom Pass, Kusho disguised himself as a renowned calligrapher to blend in with the other guest artists. Then he waited. Shen and Zed laid a carefully prepared trap, and at long last, they found themselves face to face with their hated quarry. Kusho was proven right—the famed “Golden Demon” was a mere stagehand in Zhyun’s traveling theaters and opera houses, working under the name Khada Jhin.

After they caught Jhin, young Zed made to kill the cowering man, but Kusho held him back. He reminded his students that they had already broken their remit, and that killing Jhin would only worsen matters. Kusho worried that knowledge of Jhin’s humanity would undermine the harmony and trust that defined Ionian culture, or could even encourage others to commit similar crimes. Despite Jhin’s actions, the legendary master decided the killer should be taken alive and locked away within the monastery prison at Tuula.

Shen disagreed, but submitted to the emotionless logic of his father’s judgment. Zed, disturbed and haunted by the horrors he had witnessed, was unable to understand or accept this mercy, and it is said a resentment began to bloom in his heart.

Imprisoned in Tuula, Jhin kept his secrets, revealing little of himself as many years went by. The monks guarding him noted he was a bright student who excelled in many subjects, including smithing, poetry, and dance. Regardless, they could find nothing to cure him of his morbid fascinations. Meanwhile, outside the monastery’s walls, Ionia fell into turmoil as the Noxian empire invaded, and war awoke the tranquil nation’s appetite for bloodshed.

Jhin was freed from Tuula sometime after the war with Noxus, possibly put to use by one of the many radical elements vying for power of the First Lands near the conflict’s end. He now has access to the Kashuri armories’ new weapons, though how he came to possess such implements of destruction, and what connection he has to Kashuri, is still a mystery.

Whoever his shadowy patrons might be, they have endowed Jhin with nearly unlimited funds, and seem unconcerned by the growing scale of his “performances”. Recently, he attacked members of Zed’s Yanlei order, and mass murders and assassinations bearing his signature “flair” have occurred not only across Ionia’s many regions, but also in distant Piltover and Zaun.

It seems that all of Runeterra might be but a canvas for the atrocity that is Khada Jhin’s art, and only he knows where the next brushstroke will fall.

Many years ago, in a kingdom to the south of the great Elderwood, there lived a good-natured husband and wife who worked as toymakers. They had a young daughter whose name was Rowan, as gentle and pleasant as a child could be, and together they lived quite happily making all manner of playthings from the wood of the forest.

The toys fashioned by Rowan’s parents were greatly desired, even by members of the noble houses, and because of this they became wealthy and well-renowned. The toys were never damaged no matter how roughly children played, and never grew old no matter how much time had passed, and each was a work of art unique in everything but name, never to be made again―for this was the magic of the Elderwood, such as it was back then.

It had been said that Rowan’s great-grandfather had once saved a fledgling spirit, and in return his family had been blessed for one-hundred-and-two years, so that they might harvest a single tree each year and from it make as many creations as they desired. No creature would harm him or his descendants, even the Great Guardian Hecarim, so long as his family never turned against the denizens of the forest, and not more than a single tree was taken on the first day of spring. They must also live away from the walls of the city, to signify the bond of spirit and man, and in return the Elderwood would extend its protection to their kin forevermore.

Rowan’s family did respect the terms of this agreement for one-hundred-and-one years, and they were joyful for it.

On the eve of the one-hundred-and-second year, a nobleman from a foreign land visited Rowan and her parents. His name was Brín, and he fancied himself a king, though in truth his lands were small and his influence was quite minor among the lords and ladies of the kingdoms. As such he was obsessed with baubles giving the appearance of wealth and status, and so mesmerized by these wooden toys that he decided he must have as many as he could, so that in his court they might be considered commonplace.

“Honored toymaker,” he declared, “these treasures are priceless, and yet ye would sell them for such a pittance to the children of this land. Is it not more prudent to create them for a noble such as I? I could pay thee greatly, and fill thy coffers, so thy family may never want again.”

But Rowan’s father refused, as the Elderwood provided all the family needed. “I do not wish to sell my wares for profit, though their fame has blessed me greatly. I strive only to honor my agreement with the great forest, as my father did, and his father before.”

“Honored toymaker,” declared Brín, “thy fame is known throughout the lands, and yet ye would live among the edges of the untamed wilds. Craft these treasures in the name of my house, and I will build ye a great manse upon the riverbank, so ye might be the envy of all other men.”

Again, Rowan’s father refused, as even when they could harvest the trees no further, his family would always have a place among the fair folk of the Elderwood. “I am sorry,” he said, “but ye may purchase any wares within these walls, and bring them back to thy court. They never age or wear, and I am sure that will suffice.”

Now Brín did become furious. “If thou would’st reject such a generous offer, I will burn thy workshop to the ground. The Elderwood does not extend as far as my kingdom, and by the time its children come to thine aid thy life will be spent, and thy family slaughtered. I will take these treasures for my own, and that will be the end of it.”

With this, Rowan’s father relented, and the lord Brín would return one month hence, to claim every toy crafted from the final gifted tree.

“Father,” said Rowan, for she knew much despite her years, “what will we do? Though his lands are few, that man is a lord nonetheless, and might call upon a great many knights.”

“True,” said Rowan’s father, “but in his hubris he disregards the spirits of the wood. Take warm clothes from thy mother, and a bindle of foodstuffs, and go to the place called Copperwood Glade. There, thy eyes will fall upon a great tree as hard as armor plate. Sleep softly at its base, and the spirit that blesses this house will appear in a dream to barter with ye. But beware, for it is not a kind spirit, but a violent one. If thy words are false, or thy offers unfair, or it senses darkness in thy heart, then it will cut thy soul away, and thy body will never wake.”

And so Rowan did take warm clothes from her mother, and a bindle of food, and travel into the Elderwood, as her parents raced to carve toys for the lord Brín, in case her quest failed.

Before long Rowan did stumble upon a quiet glade apart from the forest, at its center an ancient tree whose bark shone like polished copper. Around it were the bones of many people, their tattered belongings covered in deep, green moss. Rowan could not hear the birds or the streams of the whispers of the countless spirits in this place―only silence, as though not even the wind would dare disturb its countless secrets. She felt a great dread here, as though she were being watched, but despite her fear she unpacked her bindle, and buttoned up her warm coat, and rested herself against the base of the copperwood tree as her father had told her to do.

Soon enough, she fell deeply asleep. The sun’s rays danced across her cheeks, and it seemed that these old bones strewn about were barely a bother anymore.

She awoke in the dead of night, to the sound of a hymn.

Now Rowan was brave and kind, but the words creaked and moaned like a beetle-filled log, and rustled like the branches of an old, dead willow, and soon enough her fear returned to her. Her father’s warning did echo in her ears, warning of a vicious thing, and so Rowan cried out, “Art thou the spirit of Copperwood Glade?”

And for a while the hymn continued, as if to answer the question.

Then the logs and the moss and the branches and the trees grew still, and the hymn ceased, and a strange, misshapen apparition did appear at the edges of the glade. Its arms hung low, and ended in sharpened blades, and its head turned unnaturally against its strange wooden body, and it looked at Rowan without expression.

“Hwæt þú gewilnunge mædencild?” said the spirit, its voice creaking like rotten timber.

But this was the old tongue, older by far even than Rowan’s great-grandfather, and she could not understand it.

“Ah,” said the spirit, “it has been many years since thy ancestor lent me his aid. Forgive me, for time does not pass for us as it does for thee, and often I confuse the mortal tongues. I am called Nocturne, and I am the spirit you seek. What dost thou desire, child? I wish to hear thy words. But speak not falsely, or I will cut thy soul away, and thy body will rot in the glade with those others who have aimed to trick a creature such as I.”

Yet the spirit did not draw closer, and Rowan’s fear would not subside.

“O, Nocturne,” she said. “One-hundred-and-one years have passed since ye blessed my house, and this year will be the last. We have always honored thy will, and the will of the Elderwood, and from this we will never falter. But a lord named Brín now threatens us with death, and we entreat thee for protection.”

“Ah,” said Nocturne, drawing closer. Rowan saw that he floated above the ground, and scraped his long blades across it as he went, and the bones beneath them were sliced clean in twain as though they were made from air. “I have heard of this Brín, and his lands to the west, where the air is warm and the forest thin. Should he slay thy family and steal thy treasures, I promise to take his life in return.”

“O, Nocturne,” replied Rowan, “we are unlike spirits of the wood. We have but a single life, and when it is spent go from this world hence, and do not return. Couldst thou act against him now? Would that I could offer something to a spirit such as thee, in payment...”

“Ah,” said Nocturne, drawing closer still. His hands trembled in excitement, and his blades clicked as they cut the stones and armor and paltry belongings scattered before him, and Rowan did feel within him a thirst for violence. “Perhaps if I had something fresh to eat, and something warm to wear, then I could make the journey westward.”

And Rowan did give Nocturne her bindle of foodstuffs, and her warm clothes, despite his body of bark and blades.

“Ah,” said Nocturne, rising up before Rowan, his carved face peering into her eyes. “But are thy words true? I wonder, what is the content of thy heart?”

And he sank a blade deep inside her chest, and raised her body high above his head. Yet Rowan was silent, and resolute, for she knew her fate when she saw the bones scattered about Copperwood Glade, and had accepted it gladly.

Nocturne then lowered Rowan, and placed her before him, and her wounds were healed. “Your words are spoken truly, and your offerings are given freely, and your heart is kind. You will not die upon this day. Go back to your home, and live your life, and the lord Brín will never trouble thee again.”

And Rowan did thank the spirit, and when she awoke she returned to her home at the edge of the Elderwood, and her family went on to take the final tree and then lived happily for many generations until they became one with the forest, as was the agreement they had struck so many years before.

As for Lord Brín, he and his knights were slain by a vicious spirit while they rested, and his kingdom fell into a dark slumber from which it never awakened. The Elderwood grew quickly towards these lands, and consumed them utterly within the year, with nary a soul escaping. One can still find their ruins in the place now known as Somberwood, where it is said the spirit Nocturne visits from time-to-time, to admire his handiwork.

Long, long ago, in a tower by the edge of the sea, a foolish young mage summoned something into the world that he was not prepared to control. What stepped before the boy was something older than recorded history. Something darker than a yawning, starless night. Something the world had desperately tried to forget—and in an instant, the mage, the creature, and the tower itself were lost to all of time.

At least, that’s what the stories say.

In the Freljord, children frighten each other around the fire with tales of a monster that raises itself from untended graves in the ice, its body a shambling mass of helmets, bucklers, furs, and wood. In Bilgewater, drunken sailors trade accounts of something standing alone on a tiny, distant atoll from which no one has ever returned. An old Targonian legend speaks of how a child of twilight stole the only joy from a ragged, whispering horror, while veteran Noxian soldiers prefer the fable of a lonely farmhand who was blamed for a poor harvest and fed to the crows, later returning to the world as a demon.

Demacia. Ixtal. Piltover. Ionia. Shurima. In every corner of Runeterra, these myths persist—reshaped, respun, and passed down by countless generations of storytellers. Stories of a thing that looks almost human and stalks places thick with fear.

But these are simply fables to frighten young children. No one would ever be afraid of a silly old monster called Fiddlesticks…

Until now.

Something has awoken in the Demacian hinterlands, drawn by the climate of rising fear and paranoia. Rural protectorates, separated from the capital by hundreds of miles of farmland, are emptying in mere days. Travelers vanish from the old footpaths. Guard patrols fail to report back from the edges of the kingdom. And wild-eyed survivors claw at their faces from the safety of roadside taverns, wailing of crows that aren’t crows, sounds that aren’t sounds, and a lopsided horror in the shape of a scarecrow that croaks in the stolen voices of the dead.

Most blame rogue mages. Such accusations are common in these days of rebellion.

Yet the truth is far worse. Something has returned, just as it had in the fictitious tale of the young mage in his seaside tower. An evil gone from the world for numberless centuries—long enough that the warnings of a nascent humanity passed into rumor, then myth, then legend… until all that remained were simple fables. An entity so utterly alien that it defies almost all contemporary knowledge of magic. So impossibly ancient that it has always been. So universally feared that even animals grow nervous when someone speaks its name.

In the wake of this revival, another tale, nearly lost to memory, has seen a resurgence throughout the hinterlands. A legend of a great evil that has no form, no thoughts, and no understanding of the world it inhabits, instead building itself into the crude shape of those that fear it. The terror of all living things, given life in that first terrible scream of creation. A demon before demons were known.

At least, that’s what the stories say.

But Fiddlesticks is real.

Luxanna—or Lux, as she prefers to be called—grew up in the Demacian city of High Silvermere, along with her older brother Garen. They were born to the prestigious Crownguard family, which had served for generations as protectors of the kings of Demacia. Their grandfather saved the king’s life at the Battle of Storm’s Fang, and their aunt Tianna was named commander of the elite Dauntless Vanguard regiment before Lux was born.

Garen took to his family’s role with fervor, joining the military when he was still little more than a boy. Lux, in his absence, was expected to help run the family’s many estates—a task she resented, even as a young child. She wanted to explore the world, to see what lay beyond the walls and borders of Demacia. She idolized Garen, but railed against his insistence that she put her own ambitions aside.

To the endless frustration of Lux’s tutors, who sought to prepare her for a life of dutiful service to the Crownguard family, she would question their every teaching, examine differing perspectives, and seek out knowledge far beyond what they were prepared for. Even so, few could find it in themselves to stay angry at Lux, with her zest for life and intoxicating optimism.

Little did any of them know a time of change was approaching. Magic had once brought Runeterra to the brink of annihilation, and Demacia had been founded as a place where such powers were forbidden. Many of the kingdom’s folktales told of pure hearts turned dark by the lure of magic. Indeed, Lux and Garen’s uncle had been slain by a rogue mage some years earlier.

And there were fearful whispers, rumors from beyond the great mountains, that magic was rising once more in the world…

Riding home one fateful night, Lux and her horse were attacked by a ravenous sabrewulf pack. In a moment of fear and desperation, the young girl let loose a torrent of magical light from deep within her, routing the beasts but leaving her shivering in fear. Magic, the terror of Demacian myths, was as much a part of Lux as her Crownguard lineage.

Fear and doubt gnawed at her. Would she become evil? Was she an abomination, to be imprisoned or exiled? At the very least, if her powers were discovered, it would see the Crownguard name disgraced forever.

With Garen spending more time away from High Silvermere, Lux found herself alone in the halls of their family home. Still, over time, she became more familiar with her magic, and her sleepless nights—fists clenched, willing her inner light to fade—became fewer and fewer. She began experimenting in secret, playing with sunbeams in the courtyards, bending them into solid form, and even creating tiny, glowing figures in her palm. She resolved to keep it a secret, as much as she could.

When she was sixteen, Lux traveled with her parents Pieter and Augatha to their formal residence in the Great City of Demacia, to witness Garen’s investiture into the honored ranks of the Dauntless Vanguard.

The city dazzled Lux. It was a monument to the noble ideals of the kingdom, with every citizen protected and cared for; and it was there that Lux learned of the Illuminators, a charitable religious order working to help the sick and the poor. Between her family’s courtly engagements, she became close with a knight of the order named Kahina, who also taught Lux more martial skills, sparring and training with her in the gardens of the Crownguard manor.

Spending more time in the capital, Lux has finally begun to learn about the wider world—its diversity, and its history. She now understands that the Demacian way of life is not the only way, and with clear eyes she can see her love for her homeland standing alongside her desire to see it made more just… and perhaps a little more accepting of mages like her.

Xayah jumped upward into the trees’ foliage, dodging the gunfire that exploded from the temple’s walls. The humans called their weapons “Kashuri rifles”. They were deadly, and the town’s guards were obviously trained warriors. But they were too late. Too late to hit her. Too late to stop the tribesmen she commanded, who had already climbed the ancient temple and reached what it guarded: a quinlon.

It was a circle of five massive rocks, orbiting around each other, floating in the sky. A great ward, it contained ancient enchantments, which held back and limited the natural magic of this land.

From the quinlon’s gray stone hung a dozen ropes, attached to spikes that the vastayan tribesmen had cast and hammered into it. The tribesmen were the Kepthalla vastaya. Their bodies were feathered, like Xayah’s own tribe, but their heads were long, and from their crown grew great horns.

Hanging from some of those lines, with ropes tied to their waists, were the bodies of the slain. And on the ground far below were more dead bodies. A dozen comrades who had died trying to reach the stone—killed by the humans’ cruel missiles. But their sacrifice had, at least, secured the line Xayah needed.

She nodded to Rakan, her lover and partner. He stole a kiss from her as he took the bundle she held. Then Rakan bounded into the treetops.

“Whooo!” He screamed in joy as he skipped from tree to tree before jumping into the sky with breathtaking speed.

His final leap traversed the height of the tower, a distance greater than a dozen men standing on each other’s shoulders, and still he was rising higher and higher into the air.

Xayah felt her lungs empty. So many had died for this moment… and in it she feared her lover might join the dead. Everything seemed too bright. Rakan’s cape glittered like the sun through the thin autumn clouds. The guns were tracking him. Aiming. It all came down to this. But the energy of his leaps was slowing…

Above him, on one of the ropes, a Kepthalla tribesman swung down from his hiding place, toward Rakan. But Rakan was slowing. And the guns began firing at him.

It was a ludicrous plan, based on some idiotic circus move she’d seen Rakan perform. Xayah knew she shouldn’t have used it. She was risking the battle, the fate of this tribe, and her lover’s life all on Rakan’s luck and athleticism. He was a warrior and an acrobat certainly. But there were so many guns. If he failed—if he hesitated—if he slowed… if he got hurt…

The tribesman hanging from the stone held out his hands and Rakan grabbed them, propelling himself even further upward.

And then he was on the side of the quinlon. He ran up its near-vertical surface, his cape flowing behind him majestically. And he was laughing. Laughing and mocking the mortals firing at him.

“You beautiful bastard,” Xayah whispered joyfully. She felt her hands unclench at last.

“What, warleader?” said the diminutive Kepthalla messenger-singer beside her.

“Sound the retreat! Get everyone off that rock,” Xayah roared.

The messenger blew the horn he carried. Its strangely deep and melancholy sound echoed through the forest and off the temple’s walls.

The Kepthalla tribesmen began to flee from the quinlon. Rappelling, jumping, falling, before running for the forest. They were easy prey for the human marksmen… but they didn’t take the bait. The mortals knew that Rakan was the only target who mattered now. But now he was alone.

Gunshots exploded around him, peppering the stone of the quinlon with tiny holes. When he reached the top, Rakan set down the package, then glanced around in confusion. He looked down at Xayah and shrugged.

“No, you damn idiot!” Xayah screamed. “The matches! The fire sticks behind your ear!” But her words were lost in the gunfire and distance.

Xayah leapt to the top of the trees, exposing herself to the marksmen, and mimed reaching behind her ear.

The bullets were impacting all around him, sending up tiny shards of shrapnel and dust. But Rakan only covered his eyes from the afternoon glare and looked to Xayah. Seeing her gesture, he seemed to suddenly remember the rest of her plan.

He yanked a match from the feathers behind his ear. Struck it on the rock. Leaned over the bundle with it. Then jumped clear.

He used his cape to direct his fall, gliding and banking, somehow always evading the gunfire directed at him. He was a battle-dancer, and their true skill was feeling what an enemy would do, even before they did.

He crashed through the treetops, lost control briefly, hit a tree limb, then somehow backflipped and landed gracefully beside her.

“I am gorgeosity in motion!” Rakan shouted in triumph. He held the smoking match out to Xayah. “Do we still need this fire stick?”

“Ashai-rei,” Xayah swore while rubbing her forehead. “No, we don’t need the match anymore.”

“Now what?” Rakan asked.

“Watch as one of the humans’ own weapons—a bomb used against our people in Navori—watch as it destroys our prison!” Xayah shouted, not to Rakan, but to the Kepthalla tribesmen gathering around her.

Only silence replied… followed by another round of gunfire raking the woods.

“Rakan, did you remember to light the fuse?” Xayah asked with all the calm she could muster and wondering, not for the first time, why she trusted him with these things.

“Fuse?” Rakan asked.

But before Xayah could scream, an explosion cracked overhead.

The largest rock of the quinlon broke apart. It was larger than any house, and its remains crashed into the other floating stones around it. And then the other, surrounding rocks stilled, no longer rotating.

“I put the fire stick on that little string,” Rakan said as the remaining stones of the quinlon began to quiver. Then, all at once, they plummeted downward. The earth shook as they crashed into the valley and monastery below.

The giant quinlon was gone, and the countless centuries of magic it had held back was suddenly released, like a dam crumbling and releasing a flood.

Around Xayah, the forest shone with light. Will-o’-the-wisps pulsed to life like miniature stars. Oddly-shaped beings of wild magic, glimmering with the light of the spirit realm, faded in and out of existence all around her. It was glorious.

She looked to Rakan, and he smiled back at her. His cape shimmered, crimson and gold. His feathers ruffled and peacocked. As the magic swelled, the faint impression of horns grew out from his sharp cheekbones, but he batted them away in favor of darkening his face to a color matching Xayah’s.

“There’s so much, I can feel it. I can feel it changing us,” Xayah said as she breathed it in. It was as if a great iron bar had been clamped tightly around her chest, throat, and skull for years, and now she was finally free of it. Her feathers rose around her and she realized with only a passing thought she could effortlessly change their color, shape, and size. Though the initial wave of freed magic was ebbing, it took only a flick of her consciousness for her to rise into the air, high above the ground.

“We are born from here. On these edges of this world. Half of spirit, half of form.” The Kepthalla tribesmen gathered beneath Xayah, and her voice boomed as she spoke. “This is what we have fought for. This is the land of your ancestors. As it was. As it is meant to be.”

Xayah slowly floated back down to the ground. The tribesmen around her, with their mouths open in wonder, were also transforming. Invigorated by the magic suddenly available to them, they cheered, laughed, and roared in joy.

Xayah’s Kepthalla messenger-singer—a previously shy runt—grabbed her and spun her around in a hug without warning. “You did it!” he screamed in joy. “You did it!”

“Now, you must defend it,” Xayah laughed as she gently pushed from him, allowing herself to float away.

The messenger, with the slightest twist of the magic available to him, transformed his sounding horn. Now it was longer than a tiger, and a dozen bone pipes grew from the instrument. Into it he blew a song as joyful as it was overwhelming.

Behind Xayah the forest was moving. The trail they had taken here, which turned right then left, now also turned the other left, into the spirit realm. A direction that went through places-past, places beyond the forests—and would transform any who took it.

“An ancient pathway has opened!” Xayah whispered in awe. She had not expected the magic here to be so strong. She turned to where Rakan had been, but found him missing.

She spotted him at the forest edge, his cape glowing like the afternoon sun. He was looking outward.

“Mieli?” she asked as she approached, using the ancient word for lover.

“We destroyed it,” Rakan said solemnly.

“Yes. We are free—that quinlon is no more.”

“No, their town.” He indicated the temple and the human settlement around it.

Vines larger than wagons churned the earth. They ran like massive waves from the forest, smashing a dozen houses into flinders.

The other woodwoven houses in the town were growing uncontrollably, folding in on themselves and crushing all inside, as they transformed into colossal trees.

A mortal woman, clutching a small child, ran from her home to a horse cart. Behind her, a man barely escaped being squashed by a huge vine that fell and crumbled his house.

He was carrying an armful of their possessions. He threw them into the cart, but as the wave of powerful freed magic overtook them, the vehicle burst to life, reforming itself as the plants from which it had been fashioned. Xayah watched as it changed into a giant insect-like creature made of wood and vines. The man slashed at the creature with a walking stick, before fleeing from it with the woman and child.

An old man with a long braid struggled on the undulating earth. He scrambled for a few paces before a pair of glowing forest spirits, shaped like ghostly butterflies, grabbed him. The spirits dragged him into the air. Then, growing tired of his struggles, they dropped him as they rose over a tree. He landed with a thud. His soul shuddered against the confines of his body, seeking to escape its own shell and join the forest.

Other mortals were running past him. Xayah could see their souls buffeting against the confines of their bodies too. An old woman grabbed the old man with the braid, lifting him to his feet, and together, limping, they fled… as the earth and spirits churned around them.

“The humans’ greed brought this to them,” Xayah said finally.

Rakan’s said nothing in reply. Xayah followed his gaze back to the destruction her plan had wrought.

After their victory, Rakan and Xayah had received a call for aid from the Vlotah tribe, and it had taken three moons to travel to their main village.

It wasn’t much to look at. The Vlotah had always been a small tribe, even in ancient times. The town was little more than a couple dozen warping trees that surrounded a crystal pool. As Xayah and Rakan were led into the village by a guard, a few of the trees grew openings and Vlotah tribesmen stepped outside to see who the visitors were.

The Vlotah were lithe and narrow, but with massive shoulders that protruded vertically from their backs like wings of bone. Their iridescent fur glittered in the light, first green, then purple, all over their bodies—save for their faces, which were creamy-white and vaguely feline in aspect.

But tints and vapors of sickly yellow and black seemed to be weeping from the trees, the vastaya, and even steaming from the pool. It was the color of hunger and sickness.

Xayah whispered that she thought the vastaya here looked too weak to fight, or even help her and Rakan fight.

“The magic here is unclean,” Rakan observed. “We should leave quickly. It’s upsetting my coat.” He ruffled his feathers.

“Rakan, a victory here would raise awareness of our cause across Zhyun. We need another success to prove a rebellion is possible.” Xayah looked again at the tribesmen around her, pitying them, and confirming her suspicions that they were too sickly to fight for themselves. “The Vlotah tribe asked for our help. And clearly they need it, my love.”

“Is helping them more important than me looking amazing?!” Rakan said incredulously, then flashed a smile to reveal he was joking.

“Obviously not,” said Xayah, playing along and finding herself cheered by his humor.

“We have to pri-or-i-tize!” Rakan cried, emphasizing every syllable.

“Rakan and Xayah, I presume?” a voice rumbled.

In the center of the village, sitting cross-legged on a boulder shaped like an eight-legged turtle, was an ancient Vlotah. He was white-furred and wearing a crown shaped to look like elk horns.

“I am Leivikah, the Vlotah tribe’s elder,” he said, before coughing.

Xayah and Rakan bowed. A crowd formed around them. Dozens of the Vlotah tribesmen were whispering in their own tongue.

“We have heard of how you saved Consul Akunir and Speaker Coll at Puboe. I am hoping you can help us,” Leivikah said, with a weak voice that barely rose above the crowd’s whispers.

Xayah glanced over to her partner and he took his cue.

“I am Rakan,” he confirmed with that deep voice he used sometimes. It was loud and certain, and somehow it held a smile behind it. Its confidence silenced the crowd. Then, with his shoulders squared and his back arched, Rakan turned so as to make eye contact with everyone around them. “And this is Xayah, the Violet Raven. You have heard of her triumphs, and her call for rebellion.”

And just like that, the crowd and elder were hanging on his words, excited he was here. Xayah shook her head, amazed how Rakan could so often say almost nothing, but with exactly the right feeling. She secretly nudged him in the back, keeping him focused.

“Oh, uh… We have answered your summons and we are happy to visit you as friends, or… as comrades. Tell us how we can help.” Rakan finished by flashing his glowing smile.

“Thank you, Rakan and Xayah, our need is great.” Leivikah rose unsteadily with his staff, then pointed toward the mountains. “North of here is the Kouln temple. It contains a small crystal quinlon. For many generations it has conditioned the magic of this region, and we have lived in peace with the mortals who tended it.”

He coughed and indicated the sickness around him. “But black-and-red-clad warriors calling themselves Yanlei have taken over. Now the magic here has dwindled and darkened. We attempted to retake the temple with the good monks of Kouln, but were driven back. Now we are too weak and too few to fight. It is our hope that, with your help, our allies can reclaim their sacred place.”

Xayah frowned and looked at the poverty around her. She began speaking then stopped herself, before finally saying with irritation, “You want us to help some humans retake a quinlon?”

“We have heard of your great successes,” Leivikah said.

“You heard we destroyed the quinlon in the valley of Houth and freed the Kepthalla tribe,” she said.

“The monks of Kouln are—”

“Human,” Xayah snapped, interrupting the elder. “Why would we—and why should any of you—care about squabbles between the mortal races? You ask us to help those who strangled the magic of these lands? Are you a fool?”

Elder Leivikah snarled and then looked to Rakan. But Xayah’s partner didn’t appear to be paying attention. He was humming and balancing a twig he’d just found on his index finger.

“We will help you. But only by destroying the quinlon—not by surrendering it to some monks,” Xayah said finally.

“That will destroy the valley town!” the elder exclaimed.

“Yes,” she agreed.

“Many people will die!”

“Many humans will die,” Xayah said, correcting him.

“And when the humans try to take back their lands? What will—”

“With magic, you can defend it.”

“This is no way to speak to an elder!” Leivikah roared at Xayah, spittle coming from his mouth. “You do not have rights here, child! You make demands without knowing our tribe’s ways. Your fame as a warrior does not make you an elder!”

As Leivikah ranted, Rakan stepped away from Xayah and darted along the edge of the crowd, like a predator circling its prey. What few warriors this town still contained quickly backed away from the challenge Rakan was implying. Suddenly he leapt up onto the giant stone, landing beside the elder. Rakan stood over him for a moment.

“Do you want me to slap you off that rock?” Rakan asked.

Leivikah saw all of his guards had stepped away from the famous battle-dancer. Then he stammered, “I… I meant no disrespect.”

Rakan continued, “My lady speaks wisdom, fool. And she speaks only the truth. Listen. And watch your tone. Or we’re gonna have a problem.”

Rakan leapt back down from the rock as the elder pleaded. “My tribe only wants to return to the way it has been. The monks of Kouln have never broken their promises to us, and have protected us. We are not war-seekers like you.”

Rakan walked over to Xayah, adjusted his feathers, and then scratched his ear.

“What do you think?” Xayah asked quietly.

“About what?” Rakan replied in a whisper.

“About what he was saying?”

“I wasn’t listening to the words,” Rakan shrugged. He kissed her on the cheek and said, “You were both yelling. You were angry, but he is just scared.”

Xayah smiled, realizing Rakan was right before whispering, “Thank you, mieli.” Then she gave him a quick kiss on the lips.

“I’m sorry, Elder Leivikah,” she said apologetically with a bow. “I also meant no disrespect.”

Then Xayah placed her hand over her heart and said, “You are afraid. There is no shame in that. But as long as you rely on humans to keep their promises, your tribe will never be free. And that is what I truly fear. How many generations has it been since you saw a child in this village? More than most of our people? Look around you. Your numbers were dwindling long before these new warriors appeared. But in the Kepthalla forests they have hope for the future. They hope that children will be born again—because, at last, the magic there is free!”

She looked around the crowd—like Rakan had—making eye contact with as many tribesmen as she could. “Rakan and I have fought these Yanlei before. Many know them as the Order of Shadow, and they are dangerous. Very dangerous. But we are willing to fight for you. We want to help you!”

Then Xayah let her shoulders drop, and shook her head. “Neither honor nor oath-magic binds you to those Kouln monks anymore—so we offer you a chance to take back your lands. You need only the courage to accept our offer and protect what is yours!”

The elder stared at her for a long moment before replying, “You are truly as fierce as your reputation, Xayah of Lhotlan, and we thank you. We will consider your words, and I will have our answer for you in the morning.”

As the elder rose to his feet, Rakan asked Xayah, “Are we staying the night?”

“Looks that way,” she replied.

Rakan pointed randomly at the crowd. “Which one of you wants to make me dinner? And… do you have chocolate?!”

Unsure of the human substance he was seeking, the crowd exchanged confused looks. Rakan turned back to Xayah and with annoyance cried out.

“No chocolate?!”

In the morning, Elder Leivikah made his decision. He swore his people would defend any lands reclaimed by the wild magic released, and he assigned the few warriors he had to Xayah’s command.

After looking at their weakened and sickened condition, and because she knew the Vlotah tribe would need its warriors to defend their lands later, Xayah decided it was best to use them only as a diversion.

So while Xayah and Rakan were attempting to retake the temple alone, the Vlotah warriors would instead attack the Yanlei patrols—and hopefully draw some of their numbers away from the temple.

It took Rakan and Xayah a day to walk from the Vlotah’s forest to the giant village the elder had spoken of.

Looking down on it from the hilltops, Xayah and Rakan saw it was far larger than any they had encountered in years. It was a small city, which dominated the entire valley with hundreds of dwellings.

“Can we go around it?” Rakan asked.

“No. Not unless we climb on the bare cliff walls surrounding the city.”

“Climbing could be fun.”

“We would be exposed the whole time we were on the cliff’s face. If the humans have ballistae, or their Kashuri rifles…”

“I hate tubebows,” Rakan grumbled. Then he gestured to the hills beyond the town. “I can hear the quinlon disturbing the magic. But I can’t see it. A forest is after the town.”

“We can rest there. But we must pass through the town without being spotted by the black-and-red-clad ones. They will know of us from what happened at Puboe and with the Kepthalla. We must try to look like humans.”

“Perhaps some of the Vlotah can circle back to help us get around it,” Rakan suggested.

“They are too scared and too weak, Rakan,” she replied. “And they would only draw attention to us.”

Xayah began pulling items from a bag she had taken from the village. “The Vlotah gave us human-style foot coverings. And we’ll wear big hoods.”

“That cloak is gray,” Rakan said with breathless horror. “That’s not even a color!” He snapped a twig off a tree and threw it with great force into the forest.

Xayah looked down at the garments, and then she too shuddered at the thought of putting these coarse human fabrics over her feathers.

Guards dressed in black and red were closing the gate and waving the last visitors into the city as night fell. Xayah ducked her head down as she and Rakan walked past them.

As she entered through the gate, she stole a glance at the great town’s wall. It was massive, many times the height of the tallest tree in the forest.

“Rakan, could you jump over this wall?” Xayah whispered.

“Why?” he asked.

“If we had to get out of here quickly,” she said.

He looked up at the wall, judging the distance, before saying, “No—too little clean magic here.”

She could feel the ill magic used to construct the wall. It was alien, even for mortal magic. Dark and angry. She had only felt its like once before… at Puboe.

The enormous thorn vines, each wider around than a horse, hadn’t been asked or coaxed into dragging these stones into the wall—they had been goaded and forced. And the magic that held the wall and ramparts above her wailed and growled.

The wall would be a powerful barrier against invaders, but she wondered what would happen when the vines, which had been holding this magic, were suddenly let free.

The gates closed behind them and locked. Xayah and Rakan hid amongst the travelers and peasants who walked down the main road toward the town’s center.

“There is a mage here,” Rakan said.

“I hear their magic,” Xayah replied, “but I can’t see them.”

“Above us.”

On a tower made out of cut and dead trees, a man stood in burgundy robes. From his eyes a strange darkness emanated, and he held an ornate brass bell which misted a dark vapor.

“He is looking for vastaya and yordles,” Rakan said with certainty.

Xayah grabbed Rakan’s arm and pulled him into an alleyway, as the mage screeched a horrific sound. He had seen through their disguises. Horns of alarm blared from the walls answering the mage’s cry.

Footsteps and guards shouted behind them. Xayah and Rakan ran, dodging from alleyway to alleyway, but soon discovered the streets formed a labyrinth.

They could feel the mage scrying to find them. He was swinging the magically touched bell. It chimed softly but let free an invisible lash of magic in their direction. Again and again, it released a sound no mortal would hear—or feel the pain of—but which cracked like a giant’s whip in the ears of the vastaya. One of his strikes crashed down the alleyway, just missing Rakan as he dove against a wall.

The bell’s magic vibrated their feathers and for a moment Xayah thought they had been discovered. But then the mage rang the bell in a slightly different direction, down another alleyway. He was searching blindly, clearly uncertain what and where they were.

Ahead, at an intersection, the Yanlei guards were grabbing townsfolk and dragging them out into the open where the mage could see them.

One of the guards, a leader, was dressed differently than the rest. He wore a dark gray vest of rough cloth, unbuttoned. To the vastaya, he seemed malformed, touched by some sort of corruption. Rakan nodded to the black-within-black tattoos covering both of the man’s arms.

“Shadow magic,” Rakan growled.

Xayah nodded. “They are insane.”

“Let’s see if he can dance,” Rakan said. On instinct Xayah grabbed her lover’s hand and held him back.

Just then, the man’s tattoos came alive. They rose from his body like smoke. Their darkness solidified into barbed talons like a spider’s legs, each holding a cruel hook-sword. Then these shadow forms slashed a villager who had resisted being pulled out into the open. The man hit the ground screaming, a red gash along his back.

Rakan and Xayah swung against the wall under the overhang of the building next to them, then slipped into another alleyway that stank of rot and garbage. Then seeing it free of guards, they ran with everything they had. Bounding off the walls and drawing on some of the reserves of magic they held within themselves for greater speed. But the alleyway curved around. They discovered it led only back to the wide street.

Behind them several of the black-and-red-clad warriors appeared on a balcony and leapt down.

Rakan scanned the street, looking at each of the houses and inhabitants. Then he grabbed Xayah’s hand and dragged her around the corner toward a nearly ruined house with failing timbers.

“What are you doing?” Xayah asked.

“This one is good,” Rakan responded, indicating the house’s recently swept entranceway and clean windows.

“What?!” Xayah responded.

One of the guards down the street spotted the desperation of their pace, and indicated the pair to his commander. The tattooed brute was still standing over the wailing peasant.

“What’s wrong?” a woman’s voice asked.

Xayah turned and saw an elderly woman dressed in yellow. She had long white hair held up in an elaborate braid, and her eyes were narrowed in suspicion.

“Nothing,” Xayah replied. “We were just—”

“The guards are looking for us,” Rakan interjected. “We need help.”

The woman looked to the guards, then back to Xayah and Rakan. Rakan gave her a hopeful smile. “We mean no harm,” he assured her.

“Quickly, come through the side door,” she said, gesturing to the alleyway beside her house. Then she closed and barred the front entrance behind her.

Rakan and Xayah ducked into the alleyway and ran along the side of the house. It was a dead end… and they couldn’t see any doors.

“Damn it, why would you say that to her?” Xayah cursed. She could hear the mage scrying above them—his magic cracking loudly through the spirit realm. They could see the shadows of the guards in the street, heralding their approach.

But then, a wall suddenly moved, as a hidden door into the house slid open. The old woman leaned out and gestured for them to come inside.

Once the pair was inside, the old woman slid the smugglers’ entrance closed, hiding its existence.

The two vastaya looked around and discovered they were in a storage room with a low ceiling and dirt floors. It was dark and illuminated by only a single oil lamp and the glow of a pair of dying ekel-flowers.

Beneath her cloak, Xayah formed two feather blades and readied them.

Perhaps sensing the danger, the woman backed away toward a full-moon spear resting against the wall. It was a fine weapon, well-oiled and touched by ancient magics that purred happily inside of it.

“You are vastaya?” the woman said cautiously.

Before Xayah could stop him, Rakan nodded and said with the deep voice, “I am Rakan, battle-dancer of the Lhotlan tribe.”

To Xayah’s surprise, the woman let out a deep breath, and laughed. “Leivikah told me he was seeking your help, but we have heard no word from the Vlotah tribe since then. I am Abbess Gouthan.”

There was a loud banging on the front door.

“Stay quiet, I’ll get rid of them,” Gouthan said as she hurried to the front room, sliding the hallway’s door closed behind her.

While the abbess checked who was at the front door, six young mortal acolytes appeared from the house’s other rooms. Many wore bandages and appeared injured. They nervously exchanged glances with each other. Xayah could sense them gathering what little magic they could muster.

Xayah slid one of her hands inside the woolen cloak she wore and willed a new feather blade into existence. If the monks attacked, it would be too close for her to throw the daggers, so she altered the blade’s handle, shaping it into a short falchion.

When Abbess Gouthan reappeared, the woman held a finger to her lips to indicate they should stay quiet. Then, almost silently, she sent her more heavily injured monks back into their rooms, while she and her two remaining students readied a cooking fire. They quietly sang and hummed a haunting tune as they began to prepare food.

Rakan put his arm around Xayah’s shoulder and led her to a low table in an adjoining room. The couple sat down together. While the monks cooked, Xayah slowed her breathing before cautiously reabsorbing her blades and their magic back into her feathers.

As she waited, Xayah wrapped both her winged and woolen cloaks around her legs—only a few beeswax candles and the cooking fire illuminated their side room and barely held back the evening chill.

When the candles had burned down to a thumb span, the abbess and her two attendants finished cooking and quietly joined Rakan and Xayah with several plates of food.

“We hid in the hills for a few weeks after they took our temple,” Gouthan whispered. “Then, like you, we snuck into the city.”

She and one of her students passed the meager food they had prepared from the fire pit of their kitchen to the table Rakan and Xayah sat at.

“This old house was my family’s long before I became the abbess of Kouln temple. We managed to avoid detection only because the Navori—”

“Who is the warrior with black tattoos?” Rakan asked.

“The warriors with tattoos are the Order of Shadow. They are a part of the Navori Brotherhood… or they were, when—”

“Their tribe is at war with yours?” Rakan interrupted again.

“Not exactly,” Gouthan replied patiently. “They took our temple but let most of us live, I suppose to keep the local villagers from revolting against them. The peace ensures they can gather the foul shadow magic they are harvesting. But I’ve been sneaking my students back into the city. Readying ourselves.”

Rakan bit into the stone-cooked bread. “You sang ‘Theln and the Falling Leaves’ while cooking this?”

“Yes,” Gouthan replied. “When vastaya cook, the song is important, right?”

“It is important,” Xayah said without emotion. Her plate sat untouched in front of her.

Rakan explained, “For stone flour bread, it is traditional to use a happy song that you can drum with.”

“And you can taste that?”

Rakan shoved another piece of bread into his mouth and nodded.

“My apologies, we have so little to offer you, and even less skill in your customs,” the abbess said before bowing her head. She was clearly ashamed of what her order had been reduced to.

Rakan patted her on the shoulder. “It’s good! It’s not a song used for stone bread, but it goes well with this flour.”

“You are too kind.”

“He is hungry,” Xayah said.

“Now that we have shared food, can we discuss how we will take back our temple?” the abbess asked hopefully.

“Your help will not be needed,” Xayah responded.

“My students can lead you there. I myself can stand against more than a few of the shadow warriors. Also I sent word to the Kinkou Order—surely they will send reinforcements.”

Xayah and Rakan exchanged a glance. Then Xayah asked, “How many of these Yanlei warriors are in the city?”

“Perhaps a hundred.”

“And at the temple?”

“Perhaps fifty.”

“We can handle that number,” Xayah said.

“Alone?”

“Alone.”

“They are bad dancers,” Rakan murmured, while grabbing another piece of bread.

“But surely, if we wait for the Kinkou—”

“The Vlotah cannot wait for the Kinkou’s help. That is why we are here.”

“I understand,” the abbess said. “I failed them. Allow me to at least join you against these Yanlei bastards.”

“You should wait here in the city,” Xayah said flatly.

“I can show you where they have set up patrols—”

“You can show us in the morning,” Xayah said. “But if you don’t mind, I would like a moment with my partner.”

“Oh… uh, okay.” The abbess rose with her attendant. Rakan followed them to the door, gave each of them a hug and handed them a couple pieces of bread as they returned to the rooms at the front of the house.

Then Rakan closed the door, and sat back down beside Xayah. She whispered, “We should leave as soon as they fall asleep.”

“We should warn them about what will happen when we destroy the quinlon,” he responded, shoving another piece of bread into his mouth.

“If they knew what we were going to do, they would betray us to these other mortals. Or the Kinkou.”

“Many mortals will die,” Rakan said.

“The Vlotah tribe will die while waiting for help. My love, we are on this path. They settled on vastayan lands. They raised a wall with magic which they barely control and do not understand.”

“If you say so. But I prefer this abbess to Elder Leivikah. At least she’s not scared.”

“You’ve just been seduced by their food.”

Rakan took another mouthful and shrugged. “It was made with care and a song sung truthfully.”

“I don’t trust her. Not with our lives on the line.”

“This is why you said we didn’t need their help?”

“Fifty warriors is a lot,” Xayah admitted. “And that’s before you add shadow magic.”

Rakan shrugged. “You don’t have a plan?”

“Of course I have a plan.”

“Then I trust it,” Rakan said softly.

Xayah shook her head. “We’re going in alone. If my plan goes wrong—”

“You are never wrong about those things.”

Xayah ran her fingers through her feathers and bowed her head, running through every detail she had learned about the terrain—the black-and-red-clad warriors, the town, the mountain temple, and the crystal quinlon—from the Vlotah elder.

Then after a long silence, she asked, “Why did you trust this monk?”

“Because I know about these things,” Rakan replied.

Xayah lay awake for many hours that night, studying the maps the Vlotah had provided her with. She was able to deduce where the warriors had probably set patrols and pickets, and charted a path that would allow them to avoid detection until they were only a few hundred paces from the temple.

They left after the moon rose and were able to sneak out of the house without incident.

The town was still, save for the sound of insects, making it easy to avoid the Yanlei warriors by listening for their footsteps. After Xayah deduced where these warriors were, it was simple for her to find a pathway through the sentries’ patrols.

They left the city and past the last of the farmhouses leading up the mountain as dawn was just beginning to lighten the sky.

The forest on the mountain was the color of ash. Rakan and Xayah could feel the magic they held inside them being tugged away from them.

The quinlon here wasn’t just dampening the power of spirit magic to create change, or limiting its life-giving vitality by holding back the wild magic mortals found too dangerous; this one was actively absorbing magic, leeching it from the landscape and the spirit realm at a rate Xayah had never experienced before. It was as if the normal function of the quinlon had been turned upside down, allowing only the darkest magics to ebb out from the spirit realm.

For most of the day, Rakan and Xayah marched through the woods, concealing themselves in what remained of the bone-colored underbrush of the forest, keeping a few dozen yards from the trail. They stayed motionless as the enemy warriors went past. At first they seemed to be on regular patrols, but soon large groups of warriors were marching downhill with an obvious urgency.

Xayah surmised the Vlotah tribesmen had begun the diversionary raids she had directed. Certainly, she and Rakan could defeat these humans—but Xayah knew it was safer to conserve what scarce magic they had.

Weakened and sick from the lack of magic, the Vlotah who had volunteered to draw these Yanlei away had shown great bravery. Xayah assured herself these new comrades would be safe for at least a while. But if she and Rakan failed to take out the quinlon soon? Xayah could feel her fingernails digging into her palms as she and Rakan lay hidden behind a wagon-sized boulder.

After a while, the patrols of red- and black-clad warriors significantly dwindled in size and frequency, enabling her and Rakan to travel more quickly than they had before.

They reached the temple by late afternoon. The building was ugly, and it hated the world. It was tall and as pale as a corpse. Leafless branches and thorns had grown from its woodwoven walls, forming battlements and defensive spikes.

Rakan whistled, drawing the attention of the first guard he saw. The man turned just in time to take one of Xayah’s feather blades in the chest. Rakan caught him before he fell—showing off.

A distant horn sounded, and Xayah knew they had been spotted. From hiding places scattered around the temple, a dozen more of the black-clad warriors appeared.

Rakan dashed into their midst, kicking, spinning, and throwing them up into the air, while Xayah’s blades took their toll. They were moving fast now. They cut a path to the temple’s entrance.

Xayah used her magic to pull her feather blades back to her, killing the warriors that stood against them, while Rakan took a bow.

She rolled her eyes at his antics and left him to keep these black-clad warriors busy.

She pushed through the vines at the gateway of the temple, then walked into its grand entranceway. With doors broken and strewn on the ground, dark curving passageways lay open on both sides of her. She ignored them, and instead followed the path the sunlight cut toward a vine-covered doorway at the far end of the room.

She paused as she passed a small stack of crystal boxes, hidden against a wall. They were odd things, perfectly square and completely soulless, somehow holding no magic at all. In some great act of sacrilege against the world, it was as if their maker had managed not to let any of his essence—or the essence of their base materials—pass into them. She gave them a wide berth, and crept through a doorway overgrown with black roots.

She found the center of temple bathed in red light. Xayah looked up to see the quinlon glowing above her. Like many quinlons, it was an arrangement of rotating stones, but this one appeared to be made of giant shards of ruby, each larger than a horse. It glowed. She could feel its pull as it took in magic.

And she watched in horror as it pulled tiny forest spirits up into it.

There was a shift in the air, and she knew she wasn’t alone. She ducked just as an armored warrior appeared from the shadows. He vaulted above her, bouncing off the walls and pillars as a battle-dancer might—but he was appearing and disappearing in puffs of smoke.

She had known vastaya, touched by the clouds, with similar techniques. But this man’s magic was strange. Even the shadows inside him were touched by something else, an echo of the magic of the twilight. He was powerful—more powerful than any mage, any mortal she had encountered. Weakened as she and Rakan were, Xayah knew defeating this armored warrior was unlikely.

She threw feather blades, but he simply cut them apart, and with each movement she was getting weaker and he closer. She stared as the warrior parried the next of her attacks and sent one of her feather blades up into the quinlon.

The red stone cracked instantly.

It was then the reason this small quinlon had been set inside the temple became clear. The strange ruby-like mineral it was made from gave it its unusual power… but it was fragile. Especially now that it was overloaded.

She couldn’t defeat this warrior, not under these conditions… but if she kept him distracted, she could still destroy the quinlon.

She willed as many feather blades into existence as she could. The effort of it drained her limbs, making her feel as if she was being held underwater. But she threw blindly, forcing her opponent to dodge, to duck—knowing that every blade that went past him would sink into the quinlon, cracking it, or fly beyond it into the roof of the temple.

But her breathing had become short and desperate, and her foe circled around her like a shark. He had been letting her tire—and now he was ready to finish their duel.

In her exhaustion, Xayah clenched her jaw, preparing herself for what she knew she must do. She would die, and so would this warrior… but the Vlotah would survive.

And then for the briefest of seconds she realized she never again would see Rakan. Feel him against her. Hear his laughter. See his sly smile… And in her distraction the armored warrior struck at her. Barely she turned his blow, but the impact knocked her to the ground. The warrior backflipped away from her, then, without pausing, jumped back toward her with blades ready for his killing blow.

This was her chance. Instead of parrying, she drew back her magic blades and… ripped the quinlon and the roof of the temple apart! As the shadow warrior fell onto her, the quinlon’s giant shards and the stones of the roof began to fall onto them both, as certain as death.

And then, suddenly… Rakan!

His arms were around her, holding her, embracing her. A swirl of golden energy wisped from his cape and surrounded them. She could feel the impact of the shadow warrior’s blades slam against its magic—unable to deliver the killing blow. She felt Rakan’s chest against her cheek. She could feel it rising as he took in a breath.

Bigger pieces of the temple’s roof and the quinlon were falling now—whatever magic Rakan had held on to glowed as a bubble of energy, holding back the stones. But Xayah could feel him weakening under the shield’s weight. He roared, screeching like a tiger in a trap, as the entire building collapsed. His chest shuddered, and he fell to his knees.

And then there was darkness.

When Xayah opened her eyes, Rakan was helping her to her feet in the ruins of the temple. The strange warrior was gone, and his cohorts were running down the trail, fleeing as the first wave of wild magic crashed free into this world.

The forests glowed, flowers bloomed, and the great spirits were awakening. The light from the other world washed around them.

She looked at Rakan, smiled, and wiped a smudge from his cheek.

They embraced and took in the magic— it was different here than in the Kepthalla’s forest. Despite, or perhaps because of, how it had been caged and abused, it was bursting with vitality and joy.

The Vlotah tribe would be free as the Kepthalla tribe were. And there would no longer be a question of whether destroying the quinlons was possible or right. More tribes, even Xayah’s, would see the future she believed was possible for her people.

The ground rumbled—something giant beneath the mountain was awakening, and the two lovers danced across the great cracks forming in the landscape.

Rakan kissed Xayah gently, then said, “The humans cannot live in our lands, but I’m going to see if I can help that abbess escape. If I dive down that pink stone cliff, I might get there in time.”

“Go, save your bread-maker, my love. But I think she will have already fled the town.”

Rakan tilted his head in confusion.

Xayah cupped his face with her hands. “I left her a message, telling her what was about to happen, and that she should flee with as many of her kind as she could.”

“You told her what would happen?” Rakan asked, smiling as he held her hands against his face.

“You trusted her,” Xayah replied. “And I trust you in these things.”