LoL Universe Indexing and Search

In life, Yone adhered to a strict code of honor and duty. Even as a child, his love for his family led him to assume the mantle of protector, motivated in no small way by the loss of his father. This was in stark contrast to his half-brother, Yasuo, who was brash and reckless where Yone was patient and disciplined.

Still, the two were inseparable—and when Yone began his studies at the renowned sword school near their village, Yasuo followed.

As they trained, Yone was often forced to temper his younger brother’s impulsiveness. However, when Yasuo refused the personal tutelage of Elder Souma, master of the legendary wind technique, Yone gifted him a maple seed—a symbol of humility—as a sign of his support and encouragement.

Yone was proud of his brother, but he had doubts about the wise master’s judgment, fearing that Yasuo’s impulsive nature would make him a poor student. But Elder Souma was well respected, and did not make careless decisions.

Putting his concerns aside, Yone continued to practice with dual blades, his prowess quickly earning the respect and admiration of his fellow disciples. Though Yone’s skill was unmatched, Yasuo’s use of the wind technique made their sparring sessions a sight to behold, and a joy to the brothers themselves.

But that joy did not last long. War came to Ionia.

Yone, along with many other disciples, left to defend against the approaching Noxian forces while Yasuo reluctantly stayed behind to protect his master. But one fateful night, Elder Souma was discovered dead—slain by the very wind technique that he taught.

When Yone returned, he found that Yasuo had fled.

This shook Yone to his core. His fears were proven true—Elder Souma had been wrong.

Yone blamed himself. If Yasuo had murdered Souma, Yone had failed to teach him the righteous path. If Yasuo had simply abandoned his post and allowed his master to die, then Yone had failed to instill him with discipline. Either way, Yasuo had already killed several of those who pursued him—and to Yone, their blood stained his own hands as much as his brother’s.

He tracked Yasuo down. When their swords finally crossed, Yone’s steel was unmatched… but Yasuo’s mastery of the wind cut his brother down.

Death, however, was not the end. When Yone awoke within the spirit realm, the weight of his failure crushed him. His fury flared, and he pounded his fists on the ground in rage.

A rumbling laugh pierced his thoughts. He turned, and beheld a monstrous, humanoid spirit with a blood-red blade. It was a powerful azakana, a predatory entity that had long stalked Yone from beyond the veil.

Before Yone could speak, it struck.

He drew the spiritual echoes of his blades to his side just in time to block the attack. He once again found himself in a duel where his swordsmanship was unparalleled, but he was overwhelmed by magic.

Anger consumed him. A lifetime of honor and duty snapped. In one furious moment, Yone wrested the azakana’s blade from it and ran the creature through.

The last thing he heard before a new darkness took him was that same rumbling laughter…

As he came to, Yone found himself back in the material realm, though it was a grim shadow of what it had been. He struggled to his feet, the spirit realm hazy in his mind, and a blood-red sword in his hand. Upon his head, a mask had coalesced in the form of the azakana’s face—he could not remove it, but he could now see other azakana through its eyes. They were not yet true demons, content to feed on negativity before eventually manifesting to devour their hosts. But, as Yone would discover, if an azakana’s name was learned, they could be reduced to inert masks of personified emotion.

Even so, he could not tell if—or when—the azakana he wore would reawaken to consume him. In life, Yone had worn the mask of protector, brother, and disciple for so long that it had become his identity. But now, in moments of stillness, he swears he can feel the mask shifting upon his face, his own past and unresolved conflict with Yasuo now paling in comparison to this new threat.

Yone hunts these insidious creatures in an attempt to understand what he has become—with each name bringing him a step closer to uncovering that of the one whose laughter still haunts him.

Nothing else matters. There is only the chase of truth.

What is a sword without the man behind it? Teaching a swordsman to kill is simple. The true challenge lies in teaching him not to kill.

When I watched my young brother begin training, he breathed life into the blade at first touch. One heard whispers in the halls comparing him to the sword masters of old. But as Yasuo grew and his skills increased, so did his ego. He was impetuous and boastful. He ignored our masters’ lessons, and knew nothing of patience.

Fearing my brother had strayed too far from the way, I went not to warn him, but to make an appeal to his honor. I gave him a maple seed, our school's highest lesson in humility... one Yasuo seemed to have forgotten. A seed is just a seed, but given time one may come to know the beauty it holds within.

Yasuo took my gift, and the following day he pledged himself to the Elder Souma. I had high hopes he would learn the patience and virtue required of a true swordsman.

It was not to be.

Today, it seems clear to me that Yasuo murdered the very person he was sworn to protect. He has betrayed his nation, his friends, and himself. Were it not for my actions, I wonder if he would ever have been swept down this dark path.

But my task is not to question. I must bear the burden of my duty.

At first light tomorrow, I will set out to capture a sword without a sheath: my brother Yasuo.

The knife-edge of the plow cut through the rough topsoil, turning the underbelly of winter toward the spring sky. Riven walked the small field behind the ox-driven rig, her focus caught between steadying the wide set handles and the foreign words she clumsily held in her mouth.

“Emai. Fair. Svasa. Anar.”

Each step filled the air with the loamy scent of newly awakened earth. Riven gripped the wood tightly as she walked. Over the last few days the coarse handles had roused dormant calluses and fleeting memories.

Riven bit her lip, shaking off the thought, continuing with the work at hand. “Mother. Father. Sister. Brother.”

The thin-ribbed ox flicked an ear as it pulled, the plow kicking up clots and small rocks. They struck Riven, but she paid them no mind. She wore a rough woven shirt, the dirt-speckled sleeves rolled into thick bands. Pants of the same material had been dyed an earthen yellow. Their cuffed edges would now be too short on the man they had been made for, but on her, they brushed her bare ankles and the tops of her simple, mud-caked shoes.

“Emai. Fair. Svasa. Anar.” Riven continued the mantra, memorizing the words. “Erzai, son. Dyeda…”

Without slowing her pace she wiped a strand of sweat soaked hair from her eyebrow with her sleeve. Her arms were well muscled and still easily held the plow one-handed. The farmer had gone up to the house for a skin of water and their lunch. The old man said she could stop and wait on the threshold of the shaded forest that bordered the tract, but Riven had insisted on finishing.

A fresh breeze caught the damp at the back of her neck, and she looked around. The Noxian Empire had tried bending Ionia to its will. When Ionia wouldn’t kneel, Noxus had tried to break it. Riven continued her meditative pace behind the plow. For all the Empire’s strength, spring would still come to this land. It had been more than a year since Noxus had been driven out, and the grays and browns of rain and mud were finally giving way to shoots of green. The air itself seemed to hold new beginnings. Hope. Riven sighed as her hair’s bluntly cut edges brushed her chin.

“Dyeda. daughter,” she began her invocation again, determined. She gripped the wooden handles again with both hands. “Emai. Fair.”

“That's fa-ir,” a voice called out from the shadows of the forest.

Riven stopped suddenly. The plow handles lurched in her hands as the bony ox was brought up short by the leather reins. The plow kicked hard into a tough clod of dirt and gave a metal twang as a stone caught on the cutting edge.

The voice did not belong to the old man.

Riven tried to ease her breathing by exhaling slowly through her lips. There was one voice, but there could be more coming for her. She fought the years of training that urged her to take a defensive stance. Instead she stilled her body, facing the plow and beast before her. Riven felt too light. She held on tightly now to the plow’s wooden handles. There should have been a weight that anchored her, grounded her, at her side. Instead, she could hardly feel the small field knife on her right hip. The short, hooked blade was good for cutting dew apples and stubborn vegetation, nothing more.

“The word is fa-ir.”

The speaker revealed himself at the edge of the field, where the farmland met a band of thick amber pines.

“There is a break in the middle,” the man said, stepping forward. A wild mane of dark hair was pulled back off his face. A woven mantle was tucked around his shoulders. Riven noticed that it did not completely cover the metal pauldron on his left shoulder, nor the unsheathed blade at his side. He was of a warrior class, but did not serve one house or precinct. He was a wanderer.

Dangerous, she decided.

“Fa-ir,” he pronounced again.

Riven did not speak, not for lack of words, but because of the accent she knew they would carry. She moved around the plow, putting it between her and the well-spoken stranger. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and bent to examine the plow’s blade, feigning interest in the stone she had struck. Meant to cut through sod and clay, the blade would be more useful than the field knife. She had watched the old man fix it to the wooden body that morning and knew how to release it.

“I don’t remember seeing you in the village when I was here last, but I have been away awhile,” the man said. His voice held the indifferent roughness of a long time lived on the road.

The ever present insect hum became louder as Riven refused to fill the silence between them.

“I’ve heard that the magistrates are being called to hear new evidence in the case of Elder Souma’s death,” the man continued.

Riven ignored him and patted the patient ox. She ran her fingers along the leather straps as someone who was familiar with the trappings of horses and farm animals, batting away a gnat from the ox’s big, dark eyes.

“Then again, if you are new to this land, perhaps you know little of the murder.”

She looked up at the word, meeting the stranger’s gaze, the innocent beast between them. A scar stretched across the bridge of the man’s nose. Riven wondered if the one who left that mark still lived. There was hardness in the stranger’s eyes, but under that, curiosity. Riven felt the ground tremble through the soles of her thin leather shoes. There was a sound like rolling thunder, but there were no clouds in the sky.

“Someone’s coming,” the man said with a smile.

Riven looked over her shoulder at the hill that led to the old man’s farmhouse. Six armed riders crested the little ridge and marched their mounts down to the small harrowed field.

“There she is,” one of them said. His accent was thick, and Riven struggled to parse the nuance of language she had been trying so hard to learn.

“But... is she alone?” another asked, squinting at the shadows between the trees.

A quick breeze wrapped around the plow and Riven, sliding back into the shadows of the forest. Riven looked to where the stranger once stood, but he was gone, and the approaching riders left no time to wonder.

“A ghost maybe,” the leader said laughing at his man. “Someone she cut down coming back for revenge.”

The riders spurred their horses into a trot, circling Riven and crushing the even trenches she had dug that morning. The leader carried a rigid bundle wrapped in cloth over the back of his mount. Riven’s eyes followed that horse as the others moved around her, their hooves compacting the loose earth back into cold, hard clay.

She gave the plow blade a final glance. Two riders carried crossbows. She would be taken down before she reached even one of them. Her fingers itched to touch the potential weapon, but her mind begged them to be still.

Tightness quickened in her muscles. A body long trained to fight would not surrender so easily to peace. A deafening rush of blood began to pound in her ears. You will die, it roared, but so will they.

Riven’s fingers began to reach for the plow blade.

“Leave her be!” The voice of the farmer’s wife was strong from calling in errant cows and it rang out over the field, breaking Riven from her self-destructive urge. “Asa, hurry. You must do something.”

The riders halted their circles around Riven as the farmer and his wife crested the hill. Riven bit hard on the inside of her cheek. The sharp pain centered her, quelling her urge to fight. She would not spill Ionian blood in their field.

“I told you to stay in your home until we were done,” the leader said to them.

The old man, Asa, hobbled through the uneven dirt. “She’s done nothing wrong. I was the one who brought it,” he said gesturing toward the wrapped bundle. “I will answer for it.”

“Master Konte. O-fa,” the leader said. A patronizing smile tugged at the corners of his thin lips. “You know what she is. She has committed many wrongs. If I had my way, she would be cut down where she stands,” He looked Riven over, then wrinkled his nose in annoyance. “Unfortunately, old man, you can say your piece at the hearing.”

While the leader spoke Riven’s feet had sunk into the moist earth, momentarily holding her fast. The feeling of being mired, pulled down, overwhelmed her. Her pulse quickened to a shallow beat and a cold sweat slipped between her shoulders as she struggled to pull free. Her mind was enveloped by a different time, a different field. There the horses snorted, their hooves trampling blood-soaked dirt.

Riven shut her eyes before more remembered horrors could bury her. She inhaled deeply. A spring rain floods this ground, not the dead, she told herself. When I open my eyes, there will be only the living.

When she opened her eyes, the field was a field, freshly turned, and not an open grave. The leader of the riders dismounted and approached her. In his hand he held a pair of shackles, swirls of Ionian metal far more beautiful than anything that would have chained criminals in her own homeland.

“You cannot escape your past, Noxian dog,” the leader said with a quiet triumph.

Riven looked up from plow blade to the old couple. The lines on their faces already carried so much pain. She would not bring them more. She could not. Riven tried to hold onto the image, the two of them leaning into one another, each holding the other up. It was a moment of fragile defiance before they knew something would be taken. When the old man wiped a sleeve across his wet cheek, she had to turn away.

Riven shoved her wrists toward the leader of the riders. She met his smug grin with a cold stare and let the steel close over her skin.

“Do not worry, dyeda,” the farmer’s wife called out. Riven could hear the taut hope in her voice. It was too much. Too much hope. The wind carried the strained words and the smell of freshly turned earth, even as Riven was led farther and farther away. “Dyeda,” it whispered. “We will tell them what you are.”

“Dyeda,” Riven whispered back. “Daughter.”

For two days after the girl surrendered, there had been nothing for Shava Konte to do but help her husband slowly repair the trampled furrows and plant the field. It was a task made easier by the girl’s labors, and yet, if their sons still lived, it was one she and Asa should not have had to do at all.

On the cold morning of the tribunal, knowing it would take more time for their older bones to walk the long road into town, the couple left before dawn to reach the village council hall.

“They know she is Noxian.”

“You worry too much,” Shava said, clucking her tongue for good measure. Realizing her tone was more fit for calming chickens than her husband, she gave him a hopeful smile.

“Noxian. That is all they need to proclaim guilt.” Asa mumbled his thought into the homespun wool wrapped around his neck.

Shava, who had spent the better part of her lifetime coaxing stubborn animals into the butcher’s pen, stopped short, turning to face her husband.

“They do not know her like we know her,” she said, stabbing one of her fingers to his chest, exasperation escaping through her hands. “That is why you are to speak on her behalf, you old goat.”

Asa knew his wife, and knew further argument would not change her mind. Instead he nodded his head softly. Shava gave a dissatisfied harumph and turned back to the road, marching in silence to the town center. The council hall that was beginning to fill. Seeing the crowd, she hurried into the narrow space between the benches of the council hall to find a seat closer to the front... and unceremoniously tripped over a sleeping man’s leg.

As the old woman fell forward with a weak yelp, a groan escaped from the sleeping man. Like a lightning blade, his hand snapped forward, his grip like steel, catching the old woman by the arm before she fell to the stone floor.

“You must watch your step, O-ma,” the stranger whispered deferentially, drink still heavy on his breath, but slurring none of his words. He withdrew his hand as soon as the old woman was back on her feet.

The old woman looked down her nose at the unlikely savior, her eyes narrowing. Under her scrutiny, the man receded further into the shadows of the mantle wrapped around his shoulders and face; the ghost of a scar across his strong nose disappeared into the darkness.

“The council hall is nowhere to recover from a night of misdeeds, young man.” Shava righted her robes, the disdain evident in the tip of her chin. “A woman’s life is to be decided today. Be gone before you are asked to concede your own wrongdoings before the magistrates.”

“Shava.” The old man had caught up and put a hand on his wife’s arm. “You must keep your temper in check if we are to offer our assistance today. He meant no injury. Leave him be.”

The hooded stranger offered two fingers up in peaceful supplication, but kept his face hidden. “You strike to the heart of the matter, O-ma,” he offered, humor creeping into his voice.

Shava moved on, carrying her indignation like a delicate gift. The old man tipped his head as he passed.

“Do not judge her quickly, my boy. She worries that an innocent soul will be found guilty before the truth is known.”

The hooded man grunted in acknowledgement as the old man moved on. “On that we are of the same mind, O-fa.”

The old man glanced back at the strange, hushed words. The seat was empty, save the ghost of a breeze that rustled the robes of a nearby couple deep in conversation. The hooded stranger was already receding into the far shadows of the council hall.

The magistrates, their smooth vestments settling behind them as they took their place at the head table, looked out at the crowded hall. The noise in the great room dropped to an uneven silence. One of the three, a tall, slim woman with a falcon nose, stood solemnly.
“This tribunal has been called to take in new attestations in the matter of Elder Souma’s death.”

A hum of murmurs, like a hundred locusts, began to build from somewhere in the middle of the crush of people. Some had heard of the new evidence the judge spoke, but most had gathered at the rumor there was a Noxian in their midst. But rumors didn’t change what they all knew: Elder Souma’s death was no mystery. The wind technique, the magic that scoured his meditation hall was all the evidence that was necessary. Only one besides Souma himself could have executed such a maneuver.

A wound, unevenly healed, opened. The hive mind of the crowd coalesced in a moment of communal pain. If the elder had not fallen, they shouted to each other, the village would not have taken such heavy casualties. Shortly after the murder, half of a Noxian warband had slaughtered many on the way to Navori. So many sons and daughters had been lost in the Noxian engagement, an engagement that swelled in the distressing imbalance of Souma’s death. Worse yet, the village laid the blame on one of their own.

The thrum found a clear voice.

“We already know who murdered Elder Souma,” Shava spoke through weathered lips. “It was that traitor, Yasuo.”

The crowd nodded and a biting agreement rippled through the mob.

“Who knew Elder Souma’s wind techniques? Yasuo!” Shava added. “And now Yone has not returned from the pursuit of his unforgivable brother. Most likely the coward is responsible for that as well.”

The crowd’s gnashing grew again, this time crying out for Yasuo's blood. Shava settled more easily on the bench, satisfied that the question of guilt had been pointed back at the correct person.

The falcon-nosed judge came from a long line of woodweavers, ones famed for being able to untwist and straighten even the heaviest burls. She lifted a perfectly round sphere of hard worn chestnut and brought it down definitively against its jet-black cradle. The sharp sound wrenched the crowd into silence and order returned to the hall.

“This court seeks knowledge and enlightenment about the facts of Elder Souma’s death,” the judge said. “Do you wish to stand in way of enlightenment, Mistress…?”

The old woman looked to her husband and felt heat rise in the skin of her cheeks. “Konte. Shava Konte,” she said much less boldly. She dipped her head. The old man on the stool watched her and mopped the sheen of sweat from his own balding crown.

“As I was saying, we are here to take in new evidence.” The falcon judge looked out at the crowd for any other stubborn burls and nodded to the bailiff, Melker. “Please bring her in.”

The council hall that had been as still as a grave swarmed back to life. Armed warrior priests, drawn by the commotion, flooded through the doors, pushing past villagers who just wanted to run away from the dangerous magic that had been thrust upon them.

The falcon-nosed judge had found her footing and cracked her wooden sphere against the table.

“This hall will restore itself to balance,” she demanded.

The room grew quiet once more. Overturned benches were righted. The crowd seated themselves. The hooded stranger scratched his scarred nose and moved to examine the new chest high scorch mark that blackened the walls of the council room. A warrior priest approached the magic weapon tentatively.

Amid the broken table legs, was the blade and sheath. A greenish glow of energy crackled around the still broken pieces. The warrior priest bent and reached for the pommel, using two hands as he felt the true weight of the sword. Though fractured, the weapon held its shape.

“Put that accursed thing away!” someone shouted from the crowd. The priest slid the weapon back into the sheath as more priests came to remove it.

“I killed him,” Riven repeated. The voice was hers and not hers. It was the past speaking through her. She looked at the faces in the room. Memory restored, she was awake once more to a shadowed corner of her history.

“Riven,” the judge said.

Riven’s attention snapped from the blade to the judge.

“Do you know what you are confessing to?” she asked.

Riven nodded.

“Why did you do this?”

“I do not remember.” The words were all she had to offer. Because of her bound hands, Riven could not wipe away the silent tears that ran down her jaw.

The judge stared hard, waiting for more to reveal itself, but when nothing came, she motioned to the bailiff.

“Riven, you will stay chained in this hall until dawn so that all who need to speak with you to make peace may do so before you are sentenced.”

Riven looked at the shackles on her wrist.

“The other magistrates and I will consult the scrolls and the elders for an appropriate punishment of your crime.”

The villagers left quietly. The last to leave was the old couple. Riven knew this because she heard Shava whisper in her country voice to the old man, though emotion made the words unclear. When she heard their aged feet finally shuffle over the threshold, Riven at last looked up. The room had been emptied of the living—the only thing she was left with were the ghosts of her past.

The midnight air was cold and clear. The full moon held a ring of frost high in the dark sky. The light streamed in through the hall’s still open doors, but did not reach the shadows which held Riven at the back of the room. None of the crowd had come inside during the day to make their peace. The warrior priests had taken the blade, but the wooden spiked scorch mark that encircled the room kept the villagers from venturing inside the council hall. Some had come to the open door, a few with more rotten eggfruit, but ultimately Riven had been left alone with her thoughts. Sleep had finally come for her, but it was the light, fitful sleep of someone who knew the coming dawn could be her last. When shuffling footsteps approached in the dark hours before sunrise, she was instantly awake.

Riven opened her eyes.

“O-fa,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

The old man crouched down next to her slowly and unrolled a soft cloth full of tools. Riven recognized the metal instruments as the ones he used to fix the long blade to the plow.

“What does it look like I’m doing, child?” The silhouette of the moonlight deepened the wrinkled edge of his face, but the gloom of the shadows where the two of them sat did not touch him the way Riven had thought they would.

“You are stubborn in your wish to die,” he chided her. “That is not how you will find balance.”

He worked the shackles at Riven’s wrist and ankles. Riven did not push him away and tell him to go home as her mind insisted. Her selfish heart would not let her. If the old man was the last person she would sit beside in this life, Riven wanted the moment to go on as long as it could. She sat this way for a few minutes until she heard footsteps on the gravel outside the hall. Riven looked to Asa. He was smiling, dangling the opened cuffs before her like a child’s toy.

“O-fa. Quickly. You must hide. Someone is coming.” The edge to Riven’s voice was sudden and sharp and left no room for argument. The old man shuffled to a dark corner to wait in the shadows. Riven bowed her head again in the practiced pose of sleep. She let her hair fall in front of her face, but kept her eyes open.

A strong wind blew through the trees and curled around the posts of the hall’s great doors. There, framed by a shaft of moonlight, the contour of a man stood on the threshold.

The stranger’s mantle was now pushed back fully from his face and hung loosely over his shoulders, leaving his blade and metal pauldron clearly outlined. He paused at the doorway like the others. Unlike the villagers, he ventured inside. His feet made no sound on the stone floor. When he was a blade’s length from Riven, he stopped.

He reached behind his back and retrieved a leather scabbard with harsh runic writing carved into it. He tossed it, clattering, at Riven's feet.

“Which weighs more, Riven?” he asked. “Your blade, or your past?”

It was clear the stranger knew Riven wasn’t sleeping and so Riven no longer pretended. She looked up at him, his face reduced to gray shadow, yet the scar across his nose was clear.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Another broken blade,” he answered. “You are ready to accept guilt. For that, I admire you.”

Riven watched as a brief wash of emotion crossed his face.

“There is more to the story of your blade,” he continued. “Do you desire the truth of what happened?”

“I killed him. He died because of me. They all died because of me,” Riven countered. She was not sure if she was capable of carrying more grief.

“Pick up your weapon.”

Riven sat. She could hear the man’s low growl of frustration.

“Stand and face your past,” the man said. His voice left no room for argument.

A wind began to build, swirling around the room, knocking back benches in the hall, and pushing Riven to her feet. Instinct and physical memory guided the young woman’s arm. When Riven faced the stranger, the sheathed blade was in her hand.

“I asked him to destroy it,” she said.

“Did you?” the man’s voice was mocking.

The stranger’s question was cutting and it hit a bone of memory in Riven. She shuddered with a half-remembered vision. Elder Souma’s voice had been so calm. The air in his meditation room had been heavy with thought and the smell of incense. Elder Souma had not judged her or her burden.

Riven looked at the stranger before her now, anguish building in her heart, flooding her body until it reached her hands. She tightened her fingers around the pommel as she drew the runic blade from its sheath.

“Why are you here?” Riven asked.

The broken blade coursed with power. The blinding light cast their shadows on the walls.

“I heard you wanted to die.” The stranger smiled.

The ghosts that haunted her had returned in full force and Riven swung wildly at them now. The man’s blade parried the sadness and the fury. It infuriated her and centered her back in the present. They danced around each other. The air hummed and crackled at each block and thrust.

“I came here to kill my master’s murderer.” He was breathing hard through gritted teeth. “I came here to kill you.”

Riven laughed, tears in her eyes. “Then do it.”

The wind warrior lowered his sword, and instead manipulated the very air that swirled around them. The magic built to a fever pitch, the man focused the energy at the runic blade. The Noxian spells within the weapon shuddered, the broken pieces separating for a moment, releasing the sliver at the fore end.

The energy collapsed and the sliver broke away, speeding toward the shadowed corner that held Asa. The tiny bit of death was about bury itself in the old man’s throat. The spiced memory of incense flooded Riven’s nose, she was back in Elder Souma’s meditation room.

“No!” she shouted. Riven dropped her blade, unable to prevent that which had happened before.

Just as the piece of shrapnel was about to graze the old man’s weathered skin, it stopped, held in place by a current of air. The man with the scarred nose let out a strained sigh and the small shard of Riven’s broken blade dropped harmlessly to the stone floor.

“You are lucky your breath comes so heavily, Master Konte,” the stranger said, his own short-winded words tumbled out quickly.

Riven ran to the old man and embraced him. She looked over her shoulder at the stranger. A breeze still whipped his hair as he wiped a bit of sweat away with the back of his free hand.

“It is true.” The stranger joined them, picking up the splinter of the blade. Riven watched some of his anger melt into understanding. “You killed Elder Souma, but you did not murder him.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” The moment Riven had been searching for, she was living again. The words came fast and thick. She was shaking as she held on to the old man.

“I came to him. I begged...” Riven struggled to enunciate each word as emotion overcame her. “I begged him to help me. To break this. To break me.”

“Elder Souma tried to destroy your blade,” the scarred man said. His voice grew thick. “But we cannot destroy our past, Riven.”

Riven knew what it was to face memories that could not live again, but would not stay dead. She saw now this stranger carried his own ghosts. The swirling eddies of air calmed around him as he gave a heavy sigh.

“Elder Souma was my responsibility. If I had been there… that night… I could have protected him. It was not your intention to kill him.” Riven watched, one knowing fighter to another, as the man resettled the burden of his own unseen demons once again on his shoulders. He met her gaze. “In the end, the fault of his death lies with me.”

“Yasuo?” The old man looked more closely at the man and then wagged a gnarled finger at this. “You have shown great honor in admitting the truth in this matter.”

“My honor left a long time ago, O-fa,” In Yasuo, Riven saw her own resistance at the offer of hope, of forgiveness. The man with the wild hair shook his head at the old man’s reprieve. “One mistake has compounded many others since. That is my punishment.”

The pronouncement was interrupted by the shift of gravel. A falcon-nosed woman entered the council chamber. She walked carefully around the room, inspecting the damage of the fight between the two broken warriors. A metal jangle kept time with her footfalls. The judge slowed as she passed Riven and the old man. Riven recognized a loop of leather slung with the keys to her shackles. When the magistrate came face to face with the stranger, she stopped.

“Taking responsibility is the first step to atonement, Yasuo” she said evenly.

“And the second?” There was a desperate edge to Yasuo’s words.

Yasuo held the magistrate’s gaze. The room stilled, holding its breath.

The judge’s quiet voice was loud in the empty council hall. “Forgiving yourself.”

Riven watched the fellow warrior closely. He could not bring himself to the words that would release him from his pain. Riven had wanted death for so long, but now as she witnessed Yasuo’s own struggle, she knew the hardest thing she could do was to live and to live with what she had done. Yasuo looked at her now. Would he stay and face his past?

The man who carried the weight of the wind turned his back on the council hall and walked into the night. Riven held tightly to the weathered hands of the old man.

Sunrise was cool, but there was a thickness in the blanket of clouds that hinted the day would turn warm and humid. When the warrior priest and the hawk faced judge with the leather loop of keys had come to collect Riven, the judge had raised one slender eyebrow at the neatly piled shackles still on the floor. Riven stood on her own and walked out of the hall to face her future.

The other magistrates had gathered the waiting villagers in the square outside the council hall. Riven assumed none of them wished to be confined with her or her runic blade. A cool breeze now tugged at the plaits of the judge’s hair.

“Upon examining the evidence and consulting with the elders, the Noxian woman will stand for her crimes,” the judge began.

Riven bristled at the inclusion of the land of her birth. She watched as Shava and Asa leaned on each other.

“Though easy to carry out, a sentence of death does not keep the world in balance,” the head magistrate continued. “It does little to repair the destruction a crime rips through a community.”

The people of the village nodded in sober agreement. Riven took in their faces, noticing a pattern to the many who were missing; fathers and mothers to the young, sons and daughters of the old.

“Instead, this council seeks a longer, harsher sentence,” the judge continued. “We will see that Riven, the exile, mends that which she has broken.”

The judge looked down her falcon nose at Riven.

“It will be a punishment of hard labor,” the judge announced. “Starting with the fields of Master and Mistress Konte.”

A murmur swept through the crowd.

“This court will also see Riven make reparations to the council hall. And to those whose homes and families were injured in the Noxian invasion.”

The judge looked at Riven expectantly. “Will you live by this decision?”

All eyes were on Riven now. A new emotion caught in her throat. She looked around. The ghosts she carried did not melt away with the pronouncement. Riven looked to them as they mixed freely with the living. It surprised her. She welcomed the visions. She would prove to them that she was worthy of the gift being offered.

“Yes.” Riven barely recognized her own voice, overcome as it was.

The old couple swept forward at this, crushing Riven between them. Riven relaxed into their embrace, leaning into them now as they did to her.

“Dyeda,” Shava murmured against the slashes of Riven’s white hair.

“Daughter,” she whispered back.

“That power of yours was meant to destroy. You don’t want to use it? Fine. Let it sink you like a stone.”

Those were the last words Taliyah heard from the Noxian captain before she slipped beneath the salty water, words that haunted her still. Four days had passed since that landing on the beach where she had made her escape. At first she ran, and then, when she could no longer hear the breaking bones of the Ionian farmers and Noxian soldiers, she walked. She followed the high skirts of the mountains, not daring to look back at the carnage she’d left behind. The snow had started to fall two days ago. Or maybe it was three; she couldn’t remember. This morning, as she passed an empty shrine, a cheerless air had begun to move through the valley. Now the wind grew stronger and broke through the clouds to reveal a sky clear and blue, a color so pure it felt like she was drowning again. She knew that sky. As a young child, she saw it blanket the sands. But this wasn’t Shurima. The wind here was not welcoming.

Taliyah hugged herself, trying to remember the warmth of home. Her coat kept out the snow, but still the cold air crept in. The invisible loneliness snaked around her, sinking deep in her bones. The memory of being so far from those she loved now dropped her to her knees.

She shoved her hands deep in her pockets, her shaking fingertips tumbling a few well-worn stones for warmth.

“I am hungry. That is all this is,” Taliyah said to no one and everyone. “A hare. A little bird. Great Weaver, I would even take a mouse if it showed itself.”

As if on command, a small crunching of powdered snow sounded several strides away from her. The culprit, a gray handful of fur no bigger than her two fists, popped its head from a burrow.

“Thank you,” she whispered through chattering teeth. “Thank you. Thank you.”

The animal looked at Taliyah inquisitively as she took one of the smooth stones from her pocket and slipped it into the leather pouch of her sling. She wasn’t used to throwing from a kneeling position, but if the Great Weaver had given her this offering, she wasn’t going to waste it.

The little animal continued to watch as she wound the sling once, seating the small rock. The cold gripped Taliyah’s body and gave her arm a jerky feel. When she had enough speed, she unleashed the stone and, unfortunately, a harsh sneeze.

The stone skipped along the snow, narrowly missing her would-be meal. Taliyah rocked back, the heavy weight of frustration erupting in a guttural growl that echoed in the silence around her. She took a few deep, clearing breaths, the cold burning her throat.

“Assuming you are anything like sand rabbits, if there’s one of you, there are a dozen more close by,” she said to the patch where the animal had been, her defiant optimism returning.

Her gaze lifted from the burrow to more movement farther down in the valley. She followed her winding tracks through the snow. Beyond them, through the sparse pines, she saw a man in the shrine, and her breath caught. His wild, dark hair tangled in the wind as he sat, head bowed to his chest. He was either sleeping or meditating. She breathed a sigh of relief. No Noxian she knew would be caught doing either. She remembered the shrine’s rough surface from earlier, as her hands had run along its carved edges.

Taliyah was shaken from her reverie by a sharp crack. Then a rumble started to build. She steadied herself for the rolling earthquake that didn’t arrive. The rumbling grew into a steady, terrible grinding of compacted snow on stone. Taliyah turned to face the mountain and saw a wall of white coming for her.

She scrambled to her feet, but there was nowhere to go. She looked down at the rock peeking through the dirty ice and thought of the little animal safe in its burrow. She desperately focused, pulling on the rough edges of the visible rock. A row of thick columns sprang from the ground. The stone blockade reached far over her head just as the crushing white avalanche slammed into it with a heavy whumpf.

The snow rushed up the newly made slope and spilled like a glittering wave into the valley below. Taliyah watched as the deadly blanket filled the little glen, covering the temple.

As quickly as it had begun, the avalanche was over. Even the lonely wind stilled. The new, muffled silence weighed heavily on her. The man with the wild, dark hair was gone, entombed somewhere beneath all that ice and rock. She was safe from the snowslide, but her stomach lurched with a sickening realization: She hadn’t just brought harm to an unsuspecting innocent; she had buried him alive.

“Great Weaver,” Taliyah said to no one and everyone, “what have I done?”

Taliyah picked her way quickly down the snow-covered hillside, skidding in places and plunging thigh-deep in others. She hadn’t run from a Noxian invasion fleet to then accidentally kill the first Ionian she saw.

“And knowing my luck, he was probably a holy man,” she said.

The pines in the valley had been reduced to spindly bushes half their original size. Only the tip of the shrine broke the snow’s surface. A string of tattered prayer flags had twisted themselves into knots, marking what used to be the far end of the glen. Taliyah scanned the area, looking for any trace of the man she had committed to the ice. When she’d last seen him, he had been under the temple’s eave. Perhaps it had sheltered him.

As she made her way to the temple, closer to the trees and away from the sweep of the avalanche, she saw two fingers that had broken through the surface.

She half trudged, half ran to the pale fingertips. “Please don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead. Please…”

Taliyah dropped carefully to her knees and started to scoop away the icy powder. She uncovered fingers as strong as steel. She reached in and gripped the man’s wrist, her own clenching hands barely obeying. Her teeth chattered, shaking her body and drowning out any pulse of life she might have felt in the man.

“If you’re not dead already,” she said to the man beneath the snow, “then you’ve got to help me.”

She looked around. There was no one else. She was all he had.

Taliyah let go of his fingers and backed away a few paces. She laid her numb palms to the surface of the snow and tried to remember what the floor of the little valley had looked like before the avalanche. Loose stones, gravel. The memory swam, then coalesced in her mind. It was dark, a coarse charcoal gray with flecks of white, like Uncle Adnan’s beard.

Taliyah held tightly to the vision and pulled up from deep below the snowpack. The crust of ice erupted in front of her, quickly followed by a towering ribbon of granite balancing a lone figure. The suddenly flexible stone wavered at its peak, as if looking to her for guidance. Unsure of any safe landing, Taliyah pushed them both toward the spindly pines, hoping their boughs might break his fall.

The granite ribbon fell short, collapsing into the snow with a heavy puff, but the evergreen arms caught the man before casually dropping him to the surface.

“If you were alive, please don’t be dead now,” Taliyah said as she hurried toward him. The sunlight faltered above her. Dark clouds were moving into the valley. More snow would soon be upon them. Beyond the trees, she saw an opening to a small cave.

Taliyah blew warm breath into her hands and willed them to stop shaking. She bent close to the man, reaching out to touch his shoulder. He let out a pained grunt. Before Taliyah could pull back, there was a quick breeze and a metallic flash. The sharp, cold edge of the man’s blade pressed at her throat.

“Not yet time to die,” he said in a broken whisper. He coughed, and his eyes rolled back in his head. The sword dipped to the snow, but the man did not release the weapon.

The first snowflake flitted past Taliyah’s chapped face. “From the look of it, you’re pretty hard to kill,” she said. “But if we’re caught in this storm, we just might find out if that’s true.”

The man’s breathing was shallow, but at least he was still alive. Taliyah reached under the man’s arm and dragged him toward the small cave.

The lonely wind had returned.

Taliyah bent to pick up a rounded stone the size and color of a small hank of raw wool. She shivered and looked back into the cave; the ragged man was still propped against the wall, his eyes closed. She pushed the bit of dried meat she had found in the man’s pack around in her mouth, hoping he wouldn’t begrudge sharing if he lived.

She stepped back into the warmth of the cave. The slabs of rock she had stacked still glowed with a wavering heat. She knelt. Taliyah hadn’t been sure her trick of warming the stones in her pocket would work with something larger. The young Shuriman closed her eyes and focused on the stack of rocks. She remembered the blistering sun on the sands. The way the heat sank deep in the earth long into the night. She relaxed and loosened her coat as the dry warmth settled around her, then set to work on the stone in her hands. She turned it, wrapping and pushing it with her thoughts until it was hollowed like a bowl. Satisfied, she returned to the cave opening with her newly formed dish.

A male voice groaned behind her, “Like a sparrow gathering crumbs.”

“Even sparrows get thirsty,” she replied, scooping up a bowlful of clean snow. The cold wind whispered around her. Taliyah set the round stone onto the stack of hot rocks in front of her.

“You gather stones by hand? That seems tedious for someone who can weave rock.”

A heat rose to Taliyah’s cheeks that had nothing to do with the little stone hearth.

“You’re not angry, are you? I mean about the snow and the—”

The man laughed and then clutched his side with a groan. “Your actions tell me all I need to know.” His gritted teeth still held the edge of a smile. “You could have left me to die.”

“It was my mistake that put you in danger. I wasn’t going to leave you buried in the snow.”

“My thanks. Although I could have done without the tumble through the trees.”

Taliyah grimaced and then opened her mouth. The man held out a hand to stop her. “Do not apologize.”

He strained and pulled himself upright, taking a closer look at Taliyah and the ornament in her hair.

“A Shuriman sparrow.” He closed his eyes and relaxed into the heat of the stone hearth. “You are a long way from home, little bird. What brings you to a remote cave in Ionia?”

“Noxus.”

The man raised a dark eyebrow but kept his eyes closed.

“They said I would bring people together in Noxus. That my power would strengthen her walls. But they only wanted me to destroy.” Her voice grew thick with disgust. “They told me they would teach me—”

“They have, but only half the lesson,” he said without emotion.

“They wanted me to bury a village. To murder people in their homes.” Taliyah let out an impatient snort. “And I escaped only to bring a mountain down on you.”

The man lifted his sword and looked down the length of the blade. A small breeze wiped it clean of dust. “Destruction. Creation. Neither is wholly good or bad. You cannot have one without the other. What matters is intent, the ‘why’ of choosing your path. That is the only real choice we have.”

Taliyah stood up, irritated at the lecture. “My path is away from this place. Away from everyone, until I learn to control what’s inside of me. I don’t trust myself not to hurt my people.”

“A bird’s trust is not in the branch beneath her.”

Taliyah had stopped listening. She was already at the mouth of the cave, wrapping her coat tightly around her. The wind whistled in her ears.

“I’m going to try and find us something to eat. Hopefully, I won’t bring the rest of the mountain down on you.”

The man settled against the warm stone at his back, speaking softly to no one and everyone. “Are you sure it is the mountain you seek to conquer, Little Sparrow?”

A bird pecked at a thin pine nearby. Taliyah kicked at the snow, accidentally shoving a clump of it into the top of her boot. She pulled at the cuff roughly, annoyed at the man’s words and at the melting ice slipping past her ankle.

“The why of the path? I left my people, my family, to protect them from me.”

She stopped. An unnatural hush had settled. Any small game that had been nearby had long since disappeared at the sound of her stomping feet. Not sensing any danger from the girl, the little bird had kept to its branch and twittered at her angry rants. Now even the birdsong was silenced.

Taliyah stood cautiously. In her anger, she had wandered farther than she had intended from the cave. She was drawn more to the stone than the wood, and had absently followed an exposed ridge until she found herself looking down from a rocky cliff. She didn’t think the man would follow her, yet she sensed something watching her.

“More lectures?” she asked indignantly.

There was a bone-vibrating exhalation in response.

She slipped one hand into her coat, and the other reached for her sling. Three stones tumbled in her pocket. She clutched at one just as loose gravel betrayed the movement of her stalker behind her.

Taliyah turned to face the presence at her back. There, padding carefully around sharp crags, was a great Ionian snow lion.

Even standing on four stout legs, it towered over her. The beast was easily twice as long as she was tall, its thick neck covered in a short mane of tawny white. The lion watched the girl. It dropped two freshly slain hares from its jaws and licked a drizzle of red from a canine bigger than her forearm.

Just a moment ago the high view from the cliff where she stood had been thrilling. Now it left her trapped. If she ran, she would be chased down in an instant. Taliyah swallowed, trying to push down the panic that was rising in her throat. She fit a stone into her sling and began to spin it.

“Get out of here,” she said. Her words came out with none of the terror she felt inside.

The lion took a step closer. The girl released the stone from her sling. It hit the great beast near the mane, the fur taking the brunt of the impact. The animal growled its displeasure, and Taliyah could not separate the heavy resonance from her own heart as it tried to beat its way out of her chest.

She fit another stone to the sling.

“Go on!” she shouted, feigning more courage. “I said get out of here!”

Taliyah let the next stone fly.

The predator’s hungry snarl grew louder. The bird in the thin pine, sensing no good could come from this encounter, leapt from the branch and took off on a current of air.

Alone, Taliyah reached into her pocket for her last stone. Her hands shook from the cold and the fear coursing through her. The rock slipped from her fingers and hit the ground, rolling away. She looked up. The lion’s head bobbed between muscled shoulders as it took another step toward her. The throwing stone was just out of reach.

You gather stones by hand? The man’s words echoed in her mind. Maybe there was another way. Taliyah reached out to the stone with her will. The small rock shuddered, but there was also a quiver in the ground beneath her.

The bough beside her still trembled from where the bird had taken flight. A bird’s trust is not in the branch. The choice was clear: She could either stand frozen in her doubt, letting the beast come for her, or lean into her power and take the leap.

Taliyah, a girl born in a desert land far beyond the shores of snow-capped Ionia, held on to the image of the bird and the empty branch that bounced. In that moment, she forgot the imminent death before her. The loneliness that haunted her fell away and was replaced by her last dance on the sands. She felt her mother, her father, Babajan—the whole tribe encircling her. Her whispered promise to return to them when she finally gained mastery over her gifts.

She met the gaze of the beast. “I’ve given up too much to let you stop me.”

The stone began to warp beneath her in a graceful crescent. She held on to the warmth of that last embrace and leapt.

A rumbling built beneath her, louder than the growl of the beast. The lion tried to back away, but it was already too late. The ground split beneath its thick paws into a sluice of swirling gravel, the weight of the creature pulling it farther down the crumbling cliff.

For a brief moment, Taliyah floated above the flurry of dissolving earth. The rock beneath her continued to splinter into a thousand tiny pieces, no longer solid enough to control. She knew she couldn’t hold on to the destruction forever. The girl started to fall. Before she could say goodbye to the coarse world fracturing around her, a strong wind lifted her up. Fingers like steel grasped the collar of her coat.

“I didn’t realize you were serious about bringing down the mountain, Little Sparrow.” With a grunt, the man pulled Taliyah up onto the newly created ledge. “I now understand why much of your desert is flat.”

A laugh bubbled up from within her. She was actually relieved to hear his patronizing voice. Taliyah looked over the side of the cliff and stood up. She dusted herself off, picked up the lion’s discarded hares, and walked back toward the little cave with a new skip in her step.

Taliyah bit her bottom lip. She looked around the inn, excitedly bouncing in her seat. The evening was late and the wooden tables sparsely populated. It had been so long since she had been around people. She looked to her grim companion, who had insisted on the darkened corner booth. The man who now served as her teacher didn’t count. The scowl he had worn since agreeing to a meal at the remote inn offered little in the way of camaraderie.

When it was clear that he was as much a stranger here as anyone else, he relaxed a bit and settled into the shadows, his back firmly to the wall and a drink in hand. Now that he was no longer distracted, his concentration and watchful eye returned to her.

“You must focus,” he said. “You cannot hesitate.”

Taliyah studied the leaves swirling at the bottom of her cup. The lesson today had been a difficult one. It had not gone well. In the end, they had both been covered in dust and shattered rock.

“Danger comes when your attention is divided,” he said.

“I could hurt someone,” she said, eyeing the new rip in the mantle wound around the man’s neck. Her own clothes had not fared well either. She looked down at her new overcoat and traveling skirt. The innkeeper’s wife had taken pity on her and offered what she had on hand, castoffs left by some previous patron. The long sleeves in the Ionian style would take some getting used to, but the rich fabric was sturdy and well woven. She had kept her simple tunic, faded from so much wear, determined not to give up what last bit of home she still had left.

“Nothing was broken that cannot be mended. Control comes through practice. You are capable of much more. Remember, you have improved.”

“But… what if I fail?” she asked.

The man’s gaze drifted as he watched the far door to the inn push open. A pair of merchants came in, stamping off the dusty road. The innkeeper motioned to the open tables near Taliyah and the man. The first moved toward them while the second waited for his drink.

“Everyone fails,” Taliyah’s companion said. A small edge of frustration passed over the man’s face, marring his otherwise restrained demeanor. “Failure is just a moment in time. You must keep moving, and it too will pass.”

One of the merchants took a seat at a nearby table and watched Taliyah, his eyes drifting from the pale lavender of her tunic to the glimmer of gold and stone in her hair.

“Is that Shuriman, girl?”

Taliyah did her best to ignore the merchant. He caught the protective glare of her companion and laughed it off.

“Would have been rare once,” the merchant said.

The girl stared at her hands.

“It’s a bit more common now that your people’s lost city has risen.”

Taliyah looked up. “What?”

“Word has it the rivers flow backward too.” The merchant waved a hand in the air, poking fun at the mysteries of a far-off people he considered simple. “All because your bird-god has returned from the grave.”

“Whatever he is don’t make any difference. It all threatens trade.” The second merchant joined the first. “They say he aims to collect his people. Misses his slaves and all that.”

“Good thing you’re here and not there, girl,” the first merchant added.

The second merchant looked up from his ale, suddenly noticing Taliyah’s companion. “You look familiar,” he said. “I’ve seen your face before.”

The door to the inn opened again. A group of guards entered, eyeing the room carefully. The one in the middle, clearly a captain of some sort, noticed the girl and her companion. Taliyah could feel a quiet panic rise in the room as the few guests stood and made their way quickly to the exits. Even the merchants got up and left.

The captain waded through the empty stools toward them. He stopped a blade’s length from the table where they sat.

“Murderer,” he said.

“So this is where you’ve been hiding,” the captain said. “Savor that drink. It’ll be your last.”

Taliyah was on her feet just as she heard the whisper of steel drawn next to her. She looked over to see her teacher staring down the roomful of guards.

“This man, Yasuo”—the captain spat the word—“is guilty of assassinating a village Elder. His crime warrants the punishment of death. To be carried out on sight.”

One of the guards leveled a loaded crossbow. Another nocked an arrow to a longbow nearly as tall as the girl.

“Kill me?” Yasuo said. “You can try.”

“Wait,” Taliyah cried out. But before the word had finished on her lips, she heard the trigger snap and the reverberating hum of the longbow’s release. In the heartbeats that followed, a whirling gust picked up inside the inn. It spiraled out from the man beside her, blowing abandoned glasses and wooden dinner trenches off of tables. It reached the arrows, breaking them midflight. The pieces fell to the ground with a hollow clatter.

More guards swarmed in, their swords already pulled from their sheaths. Taliyah laid down a field of sharp stone, pulling up each rock through the floor in a violent explosion to keep the men at bay.

Yasuo slipped through the crowd of soldiers trapped in the room. They brandished their weapons, foolishly trying to parry the sword that stormed around them, its metal arcing like lightning. It was too late. Yasuo’s blade flashed in and out of the men, trailing lethal ribbons of red in a whirlwind behind him. When all those who had come for the man had finally fallen, Yasuo paused, his breathing heavy and fierce. His gaze locked with the girl’s, and he prepared to speak.

Taliyah held out her hand in warning. There, at his back, rose the captain with crazed eyes and a broken smile. He wielded his sword with both hands to keep a grip on the blood-slick pommel.

“Get away from him!” Taliyah pulled at the cobbled floor of the inn, the flat stones erupting, lifting the captain off his feet.

As the captain’s body was knocked up, Yasuo was there to meet it, the cold blade cutting through the captain’s chest in three quick strikes. The body fell to the floor and was still.

More shouting was coming from outside. “We must leave. Now,” Yasuo said. He looked at the girl. “You can do this. Do not hesitate.”

Taliyah nodded. The ground rumbled, shaking the walls until the thatched roof began to vibrate. The girl tried to contain the power she felt growing from beneath the floor of the inn. A vision passed in her mind. Her mother, hemming a raw edge of cloth, singing to herself, her even stitches running away from her hand, her fingers a blur of motion.

The rock beneath the inn burst in great, rounded arcs. Stone columns threaded themselves in and out of the ground like a wave. Taliyah felt the earth rise, carrying her out into the dark night, the wild wind that was Yasuo following close behind.

Yasuo looked back at the distant inn. The round stitches of stone had sewn the path shut and blocked off any oncoming approach. It had bought them time, but dawn would be coming soon. And with it, more men for them. For him.

“They knew you.” Taliyah’s voice was quiet. “Yasuo.” She held on to the last word.

“We need to keep moving.”

“They wanted you dead.”

Yasuo let out a breath. “There are a lot of people who want me dead,” he said. “And now some will want you dead as well. If it matters, they named a crime I did not commit.”

“I know.”

Yasuo was not the name he had given on their journey, but it did not matter. She had not asked about his past in the time they’d traveled together. In truth she had not asked anything of him except to be taught. She watched her mentor now, it seemed her trust was almost painful to him. Perhaps more than if she had thought him guilty. He turned and began walking away from her.

“Where are you going? Shurima is to the west.” Confusion rose in her voice.

Yasuo did not turn back to face her. “My place is not in Shurima. And neither is yours. Not yet.” His words were cool and measured, as if he were steeling himself against a coming storm.

“You heard the merchants. The lost city has risen.”

“Tales to scare the tradesmen and drive up the price of Shuriman linen,” he said.

“And if a living god walks the sands? You don’t know what that means. He will reclaim what he has lost. The people who once served him, the tribes...” Taliyah’s voice strained with the emotion of the evening, her words boiling over. She had journeyed so far to protect them and now she was a world away when they needed her. She reached out, a hand’s breadth from pulling on his arm, anything to make him listen, to make him see.

“He will enslave my family.” Her words echoed off the rock around them. “I must protect them. Don’t you understand that?”

A gust of wind picked up, stirring pebbles on the ground and whipping Yasuo’s black hair about his face.

“Protect,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. “Does your Great Weaver not watch over them?” The words now came through gritted teeth. The man, her teacher, turned toward his lone student, anger flashing in his dark, haunted eyes, the raw emotion startling her. “Your training is unfinished. You risk your life returning to them.”

She stood her ground and faced him.

“They are worth my life.”

The wind swirled around them, but the girl was immovable. Yasuo gave a long sigh and looked back to the east. A hint of light had begun to break the blue-black night. The last of the turbulent gusts calmed.

“You could come with me,” she offered.

The hard lines of the man’s jaw relaxed. “I have heard the desert mead is quite good,” he said. A soft breeze tugged at the girl’s hair. And then the moment was gone, replaced again by a memory of pain. “But I am not finished in Ionia.”

Taliyah studied him carefully and then reached inside her tunic, breaking a long loose thread. She offered the length of handspun wool to him. He looked at it suspiciously.

“It’s a tradition of thanks among my people,” Taliyah explained. “To give a piece of yourself is to be remembered.”

The man took the thread gingerly and tied back his wild hair with it. He weighed his next words carefully.

“Follow this to the next river valley and that river to the sea,” he said, gesturing toward a lightly worn deer path. “There is a lone fisherwoman there. Tell her you wish to see the Freljord. Give her this.”

The man withdrew a dried maple seed from a leather pouch at his belt and pressed it into her hand.

“In the Frozen North there are a people that resist Noxian rule. With them you might find passage back to your sands.”

“What is in this… Freljord?” she said, testing the word in her mouth.

“Ice,” he said. “And stone,” he added with a wink.

It was her turn to smile.

“You will move quickly with the mountains beneath you. Use your power. Creation. Destruction. Embrace it. All of it. Your wings have carried you far,” he said. “They may even carry you home.”

Taliyah stared at the path leading down into the river valley. She hoped her tribe was safe. Perhaps the danger she imagined was just that. If they saw her now, what would they think? Would they recognize her? Babajan said that no matter what color the thread, no matter how thick or thin the draft was as it was taken up on the spindle, a part of the wool always remained what it had been when it started. Taliyah remembered, and took comfort in that.

“I trust that you will weave the right balance. Safe journey, Little Sparrow.”

Taliyah turned to face her companion, but he was already gone. The only sign he had been there were a few blades of grass that rustled in the new morning air.

“I’m sure the Great Weaver has a plan for you, too,” she said.

Taliyah tucked the maple seed carefully into her coat and started down the path into the valley, the stone beneath her boots rising eagerly to greet her.

The overcast skies had parted since the magistrates entered. When the large doors at the back of the hall opened again, Riven watched as the room full of villagers was split by a blinding shard of daylight. She walked across the hall’s threshold and the movement pushed aside the still air in the hall like the release of a held breath.

The doors closed behind her. Two warrior priests marched her through the large aisle that divided the throng. The council hall was once again cast in the murky gloom from curled windows set high in the ceiling and the cylindrical lanterns that hung from the sculpted roof. She watched Shava Konte swallow thickly as she passed.

She knew what they saw. A woman, her white hair matted with straw from a rough sleep in stone cell. A stranger. An enemy. A daughter of Noxus.

Fatigue clung to Riven’s bones like the farmer’s mud that still stained her clothes. Her soul felt stiff and misshapen, but when Riven’s gaze found the old man on the stool, she stood a little straighter.

She took in the three judges seated on the dais before her. The stern one in the middle motioned for Riven to be seated, rather than shackled standing.

Riven refused the wooden chair shaped by magic. She recognized the bailiff as the lead rider that came to old couple’s field. His thin lips stretched in the same arrogant smile.

“Suit yourself, it’ll just be harder for you.”

The bailiff sat on the chair himself with an air of satisfaction. The center judge gave the bailiff a look of admonishment and then spoke to Riven.

“I know you are not of this land. The dialect here is tricky. I will speak the common tongue so that we may better understand each other.”

Like most Noxians, Riven had learned enough of Ionia’s common tongue to command and order, but like the land itself, the accent of each village had a unique personality flavored by its people. She nodded at the judge and waited.

“What is your name?”

“Riven,” Riven said. Her voice was hoarse, catching in her throat with a croak.

“Bring her water.”

The bailiff stood and took up a skin of water, shoving it at her. Riven looked at the skin, but did not take it.

“It is only water, child,” the judge seated beside the center judge said, leaning forward over the table. “What, do you fear we would poison you?”

Riven shook her head, refusing the offer. She cleared her throat, determined to speak without any more assistance. The bailiff pursed his lips and took a deep swig, water dribbled from the corner of his mouth. He flashed his teeth in a triumphant sneer meant for her.

“You have been brought before this council,” the judge interrupted, drawing Riven’s attention back to the three robed figures and the crowd gathered within the hall. “Because we wish to know what you have to say.”

“Am I not being sentenced?”

The judge swallowed her surprise.

“I am unclear about how justice is carried out where you come from, but here we believe justice is first served by understanding and enlightenment.” The judge spoke to Riven as if she was a young child. “We believe you have knowledge of an event that is most important to this community. If that knowledge reveals a crime, then you could be sentenced and punished accordingly.”

Riven looked from the judge to Asa, then back. Justice in Noxus was often decided in combat. If one was lucky, it was decided swiftly and with the sharpened end of the weapon. Riven eyed the judge warily. “What do you want to know?”

The judge leaned back. “Where are you from, Riven?”

“I have no homeland.”

The judge’s narrowing gaze told Riven that her words had been taken as defiance. The hawk-faced magistrate paused, tempering her response. “You must have been born somewhere.”

“A farm in Trevale.” Riven looked at the old man. “Noxus,” she admitted.

The council hall, which had dropped back to silence in order to hear the prisoner, took in a collective breath.

“I see,” continued the judge. “And you no longer call that place home.”

“When your home tries to kill you, is it still home?”

“You are an exile then?”

“That would imply I wish to return,” Riven said.

“You do not?”

“Noxus is no longer what it once was.” Impatience edged into Riven’s voice. “Can we get on with this?”

“So be it,” the judge said with a calmness that irritated Riven more than the shackles on her wrists. “You came with the Noxian fleet, yes?”

“I assume so.”

“You do not know?” The judge looked confused.

“I do not remember,” Riven said. She glanced to the crowd, her sideways look catching the eyes of Shava. The old woman had asked a similar question. Riven shook her head. “Does it matter? There was a battle. Many died. That is all I know.”

The painful memory of war that smoldered among the crowd flared to life at Riven’s words. They shoved each other, shoulders knocking together and shouting, as they all tried to stand at once.

Someone lashed out. “Noxian filth! My son is dead because of you!”

A moldy eggfruit sailed through the air and pelted Riven in the neck. The fermented juice and pulp slid wetly down the back of her shirt. The rotten smell rose up in the air, but Riven would not allow the scent of death to take her back to that moment long ago. She closed her eyes, allowing her breath to come through parted lips.

With that, the crowd erupted. Riven knew what it looked like, that she felt nothing for what had happened to these people. “Please,” she whispered to herself, unsure if she was imploring them to stop, or to encourage the fullness of their barely contained anger.

In answer, more of the late season eggfruit exploded on the stone floor. One caught Riven behind the knee. She stumbled, struggling to maintain her balance with her hands bound.

The judge rose to her full height, towering over the seated villagers and Riven. Her magistrate’s robe flared as she slammed the chestnut sphere against its cradle. The wooden benches beneath the crowd strained, groaning and flexing in response to the magistrate’s will.

“I will have balance restored to this hall!”

The reprimanded villagers quieted.

“Yes, Riven, the council remembers that time,” the judge continued with more restraint. “Many Ionians… and Noxians… perished. And you?”

It was a question that plagued Riven. Why had she been spared when others had not? She could offer no answer that would satisfy. “It seems I did not,” she said quietly

“Indeed.” The judge smiled coldly.

Riven knew there was little she could say to pacify the bereaved crowd. She owed them the truth, but even that was not hers to give. Her memories of that time were broken. She bowed her head.

“I do not remember,” Riven said.

The judge did not stop the questioning. Riven knew doing so would only allow for interruptions to spew forward from the anger simmering in the room.

“How long have you been in this land?”

“I do not remember.”

“How did you come to this village?”

“I do not remember.”

“Have you been here before?”

“I…” Riven hesitated, but could not hold on to the moment that would give a clear answer. “I cannot remember.”

“Did you meet with Elder Souma?”

The name stirred something within her. A memory of a memory, hazy and sharp at the same time passed through her. Anger flooded the empty place where her past once lived. She had been betrayed. She had betrayed.

“I can’t remember!” Riven lashed out in frustration, the shackles at her wrists rattling.

“War breaks many things,” the judge said, softening. “Some we cannot see.”

In the face of this enlightenment, some of the fight left Riven. “I cannot remember,” she said, more calmly than before.

The judge nodded. “There are others who may be able to speak to what you cannot remember.”

Riven watched the old man make his way slowly to a witness stool set in front of the judges. His fingers shook as he smoothed a few errant hairs in his thick eyebrows.

“Asa Konte,” the judged said patiently. “O-fa, thank you for sharing your knowledge with us today.”

The old man nodded.

“Do you know this woman, the one called Riven?” the judge asked.

“Yes,” the old man said. “She came to us at the beginning of this past wet season.”

“Us?”

“Myself and Shava, my wife.”

The judge looked up at Mistress Konte, who still shifted uncomfortably on the bench at the front of the hall. The judge gestured to Riven.

“She came to you?”

“Well, I found her in our field,” the old man offered sheepishly. “We had a calf wander in the night. At dawn I went looking for it. Instead I found her.”

Murmurs of surprise and concern spilled again from the crowd.

“Spy!”

“More will come!”

“We must protect ourselves!”

The judge rested a hand on the heavy wooden sphere in front of her. The room grew quiet. “What did she want, Master Konte?”

The old man smoothed his eyebrows again and glanced at Riven. His look begged apology.

“She wanted to die, magistrate,” he said softly.

The judge leaned forward.

“It was the start of the wet season,” Asa continued. “She was soaked to the skin, nothing but fevered bones held together by mud and stubborn Noxian muscle.”

“You knew she was Noxian?”

“She carried a weapon, a blade, the scabbard was inscribed with the marks of their father tongue. No Ionian would carry such a weapon.”

The judge pursed her lips. “Master Konte, you took heavy losses during the invasion?”

“I did, magistrate,” the old man said. He looked to his wife. “Two sons.”

“What did you do with the woman?”

The old man took a deep breath.

“I took her home to Shava,” he said.

The murmur of the hall rose again, questioning the man’s lenience on a foe that had been so merciless. The faces within the hall told their stories of loss. None in their community had been untouched by the conflict. The old man lifted his head, and turned to the crowd, challenging the hardness of their hearts.

“My sons… My boys… Their bones have long since been cleaned by the sky. Would those we lost wish us to bury ourselves in grief beside them?”

Riven watched as the old man and his wife shared a knowing look. Shava’s eyes were wet and full.

“We were not ready to let them go, but…” The old man’s voice quivered. “But it does us no good to mire ourselves in the past when there is life left to live.”

Shava bit her bottom lip and sat up straighter, daring those who sat next to her to speak ill of their choice. Asa turned away from the crowd’s stares. He sat facing the magistrate, the stool creaking beneath him.

“There were so many deaths, I couldn’t bear to add another,” he explained. “We cleaned her up and offered what we had in peace.”

The judge nodded without emotion. Riven watched as the judge took in Riven’s shirt and pants, mentally unrolling the cuffs. She knew what the judge pictured as she had thought the same thing many times since the old woman had presented the clothes. They were meant for a young man, a head taller than her, maybe a man with Shava’s smile or Asa’s kind eyes.

For Riven it was a constant reminder of her own weakness. All her years of living or dying by the strength of Noxus, and Riven had accepted their fragile offer of hope, let herself be clothed in it and in a family that could have been.

“When she regained her strength, she wanted to work in the fields,” the old man went on. “My wife and I are old. We welcomed the help.”

“You and your wife did not fear for your lives?”

“The girl wants nothing to do with Noxus. She hates Noxus.”

“She said this to you?”

“No,” he said. “She said nothing of her past. Shava asked her once and she said nothing. We saw that it pained her, so we did not ask again.”

“If she said nothing, then how do you infer her feelings about her homeland?”

Master Konte wiped at his old eyes. Riven watched the trouble pass over his face, like the words were not his to give. He spoke quickly, conscious suddenly of the audience surrounding him.

“Fevered dreams, magistrate,” he said. “The night she came to us. Something that belonged to her, something she had cared for greatly, had been broken. For that she cried out against Noxus.”

“Do you know the thing she spoke of?”

“I believe so, magistrate.” The old man nodded slowly. “The pommel of her weapon has been bound into her scabbard. Four days ago I saw her undo the laces. I saw the blade was broken.”

Riven had thought she had only been watched by the fat mousing cat that day in the barn.
A few snide comments about the quality of Noxian weapons passed like handshakes among the crowd.

“And what did you do with that knowledge, Master Konte?”

“I took the blade to the temple.”

The judge cocked her head to one side, looking down her predatory nose at the old man. “To what end?”

“I hoped the priests might be able to mend it. That if the blade was made whole, she might be relieved of some of the ghosts that haunt her.” Even as crowd erupted behind him, the old man looked at Riven and the chains that bound her hands. “That she might have some peace in the present.”

“Thank you, Master Konte, for sharing your knowledge with the council,” the judge said, coldly staring the congregation into silence. “Your attestation is finished.”

She looked down at an unrolled parchment and back to the bailiff.

“Bring in the weapon.”

Riven watched two temple priests carry in a large wooden tray draped with a scarlet cloth and set it gingerly on the table before the council judges. A warrior priest stepped forward, his high rank made evident by the fluted edges of his wooden pauldron and breastplate.

“Show us,” the judge said.

The warrior priest withdrew the scarlet cloth, revealing a weapon and sheath both bigger than a kite shield. The scabbard was etched in the harsh strokes of Ur-Noxian, the heavy angles and slashes in stark contrast to the fluid script of Ionia. But it was the blade that drew the interest of the judges. A blade so thick and heavy it looked like it would break the well-trained arm of a temple priest to lift it, let alone the slender wrist of the young woman shackled before them. Indeed, when Riven had seen the weapon for the first time, she had thought the same thing.

Now, instead of one solid blade, the weapon was fractured into angry pieces, as if monstrous claws had raked through its metal flesh. The five largest pieces would have been deadly in their own right, but laid out against the soft Ionian cloth, broken and raw as it was, it was terrifying.

The judge looked at Riven. “This weapon belongs to you.”

Riven nodded her head.

“I suppose in this many pieces, it makes it a bit difficult to wield,” the judge said to herself.

There were snickers among the crowd.

The warrior priest shifted uncomfortably. “This weapon is ensorcelled, magistrate. The Noxians have bound magic into the blade.” The disgust hung heavy on his words.

Riven didn’t know if the judge was listening to the priest. The judge was nodding absently, her gaze washing over the weapon until it found the spot that Riven knew it would, the empty place Riven had struggled to fill. The judge’s falcon nose twitched.

“There is a piece missing.”

A young temple adept swayed nervously before the council hall.

“Adept, is this the weapon Master Konte presented to the temple?” the lead judge asked.

“Yes, magistrate.”

“You were the one to alert this court?”

“Yes, magistrate.”

“How did you know this weapon would be of interest to us?”

Riven watched the adept wipe his hands on the lengthy sleeves of his robes. His face was pale, as if he might faint, or be sick on the stone floor.

“Adept?” the judge probed.

“I am a bone washer, magistrate.” The words tumbled out of the young man. His hands hung like spent candle wax. “For the elders. After their bodies have been left to the sky, I collect them and prepare them.”

“I am familiar with the duties of a bone washer, adept. How is it this weapon concerns you?”

“The blade is the same.”

A moment of confusion swept over the judge’s face. The same uncertain daze washed over the crowd, passing from person to person in befuddled looks. Riven, however, felt a wave of unease crawl over her skin.

“When I prepared the bones of Elder Souma, after his time, for the temple, I mean to say.” The adept’s haphazard explanation was losing many. Instead of continuing he pulled from a fold in his robe a small silk bag and started undoing the tight knots with his long fingers. He retrieved from the bag a shard of metal and held it up. “This metal, magistrate. It is the same as the broken blade.”

The adept scurried from his place and approached the judge. She took the shard from his outstretched hand and turned it over in her fingers. Even held at a distance, the metal seemed similar to the broken blade.

Riven's breath caught in her throat. There was the piece of her past that she had searched for and given up finding. Now it was on the verge of coming together, illuminating a dark and forgotten corner of her mind. The guilt Riven carried and had buried deep was finally being unearthed. Riven steeled herself against what she knew would come next.

“Where did you find this?” the judge asked.

The adept cleared his throat. “In the bones of Elder Souma’s neck.”

The council hall gasped.

“You did not bring this forward before?” The judge’s eyes narrowed as she focused in on her target.

“I did,” the adept said, trying desperately to look anywhere but the warrior priest who stood next to Riven’s broken blade. “But my master said it was nothing.”

The judge had no such trouble looking at the warrior priest.

“Approach,” she ordered. She handed the bit of mangled metal to the warrior priest. “Put it with the rest.”

The warrior priest glared at the adept, but followed the orders given. He approached Riven’s blade and then turned at the last minute to the judge. “Magistrate, there is dark magic in this weapon. We don’t know what this piece may reveal.”

“Proceed.” The judge’s words left no room for argument.

The warrior priest turned back. All the eyes in the council hall watched as he took the sliver of hammered metal and placed it nearest the tip of the broken blade.

The weapon was silent.

The judge let out a small sigh. Riven, however, continued to watch the old man and his wife. She knew their hope would last only a moment longer. She had been weak to accept it, to believe that there was something in this world for someone so broken. Their relief at her fleeting innocence hurt most of all. It hurt because Riven knew in that moment the good they believed about her was a lie. The truth of her past was sharper and more painful than any blade.

Riven heard the sword beginning to hum. “Please,” she called out. She struggled to be heard over the chatter of the hall. She struggled against her restraints. “Please, you must listen.”

The vibration built. Now it could be heard and felt. The villagers panicked, pushing and shoving to get back. The judge stood quickly, her arms outstretched to the wooden table that held the broken sword. The edge of the table began to grow and curl, the wood budding new green limbs over the weapon, but Riven knew the magic would not hold.

“Everyone, get down!” Riven yelled, but the sound of the blade drowned out her voice, indeed all the voices, as the weapon built to a fever pitch.

Then, all at once the power exploded in a burst of runic energy and splintered wood. A gust of wind knocked everyone who had been standing down to the floor.

From the ground, the faces of the crowd turned to Riven.

Riven’s lips were cold and her cheeks flushed. The ghosts of her mind, memories she had entombed, they were fully alive now, looming one by one before her. They were Ionian farmers, sons and daughters, the people of this village that would not kneel to Noxus. They were looking at her. Haunting her. They knew her guilt. They were her warriors, too, her brothers- and sisters-in-arms. They would have gladly sacrificed themselves for the glory of the empire, instead she had failed them. She had led them under the banner of Noxus, a banner that had promised them a home and purpose. In the end, they were betrayed and discarded. All of them cut down by the sick poison of war.

Now these ghosts stood among the living, the courtroom of spectators knocked down by the power of the blade. The villagers slowly rose to their feet, though Riven was still there in that valley from long ago. She couldn’t breathe. Death choked her nose and throat.
No, these dead aren’t real, she told herself. She looked at Asa and Shava and they at her. Two shades stood near them. One with eyes like the old man’s and the other with a mouth like Shava’s. The old couple clung to one another as they steadied themselves and stood, oblivious to the deathly past that surrounded them.

“Dyeda,” the old woman said.

At that Riven could no longer contain her guilt and shame.

“I did it.” The words fell from Riven’s lips with an empty hollowness. She would accept her fate at the hands of these people. She would let them pass judgment and she would answer for her crimes.

“I killed your Elder,” she told them, breathless. Her ragged confession filled the room. “I killed them all.”

“A shadow fades before the light,” the girl repeated to herself.

The words were a mantra, one she often used to put herself at ease when she felt herself losing control. Though she was only thirteen, she had become adept at using tricks like this to ease the symptoms of her affliction. But today she found the words to be little help. Today, the girl needed to be alone.

She fought to hold in the tears, avoiding eye contact with passersby as she walked briskly toward the scrutinizing glare of the sentries at the city gates. If they stopped her, she felt she might break down and spill everything to them. At least then it would all be over, she thought.

But they paid her little mind as she walked through the archway, to the open lands outside the city.

Far off the main highway, the girl found a quiet nook in a wooded hillside. Once she was sure she wouldn’t be seen, she removed a clean handkerchief from her pocket, placed it to her face, and sobbed.

The tears came fast and thick down her cheeks. If anyone had seen the girl like this, they probably would not recognize her. Everybody knew her as the fresh-faced optimist who cheerily bid them Good morning! and Nice to see you! everyday, regardless of circumstance.

The other side of her – this ugly and decidedly un-Demacian one – was a face the girl shared with nobody.

As she stanched the flow of tears with her thin linen cloth, her mind began to settle. She finally dared to recall the events that had led to the tears. She had been in the lecture room with her classmates when her gaze began to wander to an open window. The flock of fuchsia nectarflies outside were far more interesting than the drab lesson in field tactics their instructor was offering. The flies danced, not in unison at all, but in a vivacious chaos that was strangely beautiful. She had taken in their movement, feeling herself warming to the core with an intense happiness.

The warmth was familiar to her. Most of the time it could be tamed, stuffed back inside her like feathers that had leaked from a mattress. But today the warmth was... hot, with a life of its own. She felt it burning, in her teeth, threatening to explode into the world with a fan of iridescent hues as it had only done in privacy before.

For a brief moment, a thin trickle of white light leaked from her fingertips.

No! This is not for anyone to see! she thought, hoping to suppress the glow.

For the first time in her life, it felt too big. The girl had only one chance to save herself. She needed to leave. She stood and gathered her belongings.

“Luxanna,” her instructor had said. “Are you-”

“A shadow fades before the light,” she had muttered, and ran from the room without explanation. “A shadow fades before the light. A shadow fades before the light.”

As she finished drying her eyes in the calm of the woods, her feet carried her farther and farther from the city. She began to assess the cost of the incident. Word would spread quickly across the citadel that a student had stormed out of class without leave. What punishment would she receive for that insubordination?

Whatever was to come, it would be better than the alternative. If she’d stayed, she would have erupted, filling the entire building in the brightest, purest light. Then everyone would know she was afflicted with magic.

That’s when the annullers would come.

Once or twice, the girl had seen the annullers in the streets with their strange instruments, rooting out practitioners of magic. Once these afflicted people were found, they were forcibly relocated to slums outside the kingdom, never to take part in the grand society Lux’s family knew so well.

That was the worst part, knowing her family would be shamed. And her brother... Oh, her brother. She shuddered to think what Garen would say. The girl often dreamed of living in a different part of the world, where people with arcane gifts were revered as heroes, and celebrated by their families. But the girl lived in Demacia, where people knew the destructive potential of magic, and treated it as such.

As she found her situation becoming increasingly hopeless, Lux realized she was standing within view of the Galio monument. The gargantuan statue had been made long ago as a battle standard for the military, accompanying them in their missions abroad. Sculpted from petricite, Galio possessed magic-absorbing properties that had saved many lives from archmage attacks. If one believed the legends, he had even come to life at times, when enough mystical power had seeped into his mortar. At the moment, he stood still as a mountain, straddling the Memorial Road, far from the traffic of the main highway.

Lux cautiously approached the statue. Ever since she was a little girl, she had imagined the old titan keeping vigilant watch over all those who passed beneath him. It seemed to peer into her soul, judging her.

“You have no place here,” it would say accusingly.

Though it only spoke in her imagination, the girl knew it spoke true. She was different. That was undeniable. Her constant smiles and exuberance stood out glaringly among Demacia’s trademark austerity.

Then there was the glow. Ever since she could remember, Lux felt it burning in her heart, longing to burst free. When she was small, the glow was weak, and she could easily conceal it. Now the power had become far too great to stay hidden.

Burdened with guilt, Lux lifted her eyes to the Colossus.

“Well, go on and say it!” she yelled.

It was uncharacteristic of Lux, but the day had not been kind, and it soothed her soul to vent. She expelled sharp breaths of air in relief, then immediately felt embarrassment at the outburst. Did I really just yell at a statue? she marveled, and looked around to make sure nobody had seen. At certain times of the year, this road was flooded with travelers making their pilgrimages to the colossus, paying tribute to the symbol of Demacian resolve. But presently, the Memorial Road was empty.

As Lux was searching for bystanders, she heard a gravelly racket in the air above her. She whipped her head up – it had come from the top of the colossus. It was common for birds to take flight from their nests in the statue’s crown, but this was no bird. It sounded like a heavy clay pot being dragged across cobblestones.

Lux stared for a long while, but nothing stirred about the statue. Perhaps this was her mind again, working through the trauma of the day’s events. Even so, her eyes remained fixed on the colossus, daring whatever had moved to do so again.

And then it did: the eyes of the statue actually shifted. The large stone orbs physically swiveled in their sockets to find Lux in the grass below.

The girl’s face blanched for a moment. She could feel the enormous stone figure studying her. This time, it was definitely not in her imagination. Lux found her legs and ran, away from the statue, as fast and as far as she could.

Later that night, Lux entered the alabaster arch of her family’s city manor. She had walked many miles, all day long, all over the city, in the hope her parents would be asleep when she returned home. But one person was not.

Her mother Augatha sat in on a sofa in the corner of the grand foyer, glowering at the door with burning expectation.

“Do you know what hour it is?” she demanded.

Lux did not respond. She knew it was past midnight, well beyond the hour when her family were typically asleep.

“The school has chosen not to expel you,” said Augatha. “It was not an easy mess to fix.”

Lux wanted to break down crying, but she had done nothing but weep all day, and she simply had no more tears. “They almost saw it,” she said.

“I figured. It’s getting worse, isn’t it?”

“What should I do?” said Lux, exhausted from worry.

“What we must,” her mother replied. “You’ve lost control of it. Eventually, someone will get hurt.”

Lux had heard of men dying in battle at the hands of sorcerers, bodies melted beyond recognition and souls torn in two. She felt wretched, knowing she harbored any power that might be used for such destruction. She wanted to hate herself, but found herself numbed by the constant torrent of emotions she’d experienced that day.

“I’ve enlisted the help of a professional,” said Augutha.

Lux’s stomach turned. There was only one profession that dealt with her affliction. “An annuller?” she said, light of breath.

“He’s a friend. Someone I should have called on a long time ago,” said Augatha. “You can trust him to be discreet.”

Lux nodded. She knew the shame that was imminent. Even if the man told no one, as her mother assured her, he would still know.

And the cures — she didn’t want to think about those.

“He’s coming for your consultation in the morning,” said Augutha, as she walked up the stairs toward her bedroom. “This will be our secret.”

The words were no comfort. Lux was not even a woman yet, and already her life was over. She wanted nothing more than to retire upstairs to a deep slumber that would bury all her troubles in darkness, but she knew her particular troubles would not disappear with the night. The light would still grow inside her, threatening to erupt again at any moment. The annuller would arrive in the morning to perform some dreadful treatment. Lux had heard rumors, horrible rumors, of petricite ground and swallowed in potions, followed by bouts of excruciating pain. True, the girl wanted to be rid of the affliction, but no part of her wanted to experience that.

Isn’t there another way? she wondered.

Of course!

The idea leapt into her head like lightning. All at once she was filled with dread and hope, unsure if the plan she’d just thought up would work, but knowing it was something she had to try.

Under the deepening night, Lux frantically retraced her steps, back through the alabaster archway, down the boulevard, sneaking her way past the guards at the gates. To the south, she found the Memorial Road, and followed it for miles before coming to Galio’s resting spot. Her heart galloped in her chest.

“Hello?” the girl asked shakily, unsure if she wanted an answer.

Lux approached the plinth where the colossus stood, all alone in the stillness of night. She cautiously placed her hand on the cold petricite foundation. Wonder what it tastes like. I bet it’s really bitter, she reckoned. She supposed she would find out soon enough, unless her plan worked.

“Well, they say you fix magic,” she said. “So fix me. I want to be Demacian.”

She gazed up at the colossus. It was as inert and unwavering as the Demacian way of life. Not even the bats were fluttering about it tonight. What she had heard before — what she thought she saw — was something she had imagined after all, then. She removed her hand from the plinth, pondering where else she could turn.

“Small girl person,” said a booming voice above.

Lux’s head shot upward to see the statue tilting its enormous head down. Her mind raced. He knows. And he’s not going to fix you. He’s going to squash you like a bug.

“Can you... scratch my foot?” asked the colossus.

Galio watched in wonder as the girl ran away from him, her tiny head shrieking words he could not understand. Though he’d observed her for years, he never knew she could move so quickly, and loudly.

Ever since the girl was very small, Galio had seen her as she stopped by on yearly trips with her family. He would study her with fascination, straining to keep sight of her as she skipped in and out of his field of vision. Then, in the middle of play, she would suddenly remember him standing above her, and she would shy away behind her mother’s skirt. When the colossus was dormant, everything seemed to move with a hazy distortion. The world was dull, people were but flickers before his eyes.

But even then, Galio could feel something profoundly special in the girl. It was a glow, but not just a visual luminescence. Time slowed with her, and the haze lifted as something strange stirred within his stone form.

It started small. When the girl was a toddler, Galio could feel her strange warmth tickling his toes. On her second visit, Galio could feel the glow tugging at his entire leg. By the time she was ten, the girl’s warmth was so strong Galio could feel her approaching from a mile away, and would grow giddy with anticipation of her visit.

Now, here she was again, even though it was not her normal visiting day. Her power burned so intensely it had spread like wildfire across his cold innards. She had brought him life!

Now that Galio was awake, he saw her brilliance with stunning clarity. She shone like all the stars in the heavens.

And she was leaving again.

With every step the girl took, Galio felt his life evaporating, returning him to his cold, motionless state. If he went still, he would never know the girl. He had to follow.

His towering legs rumbled from the plinth, easily catching up to the girl with their enormous gait. Her eyes shot wide as she whirled toward the lumbering colossus. A concentrated beam of light fired from the girl’s fingers into Galio’s leg. The strange feeling within him intensified until he thought he might explode, scattering bits of himself all over Demacia.

But Galio did not break. Instead, he grew even warmer, and more alive. He bent down and gently scooped up the girl in his hands. She covered her face, as if to shield herself from some imminent harm.

The colossus began to laugh, like a child playing in a fountain.

“Small golden-head person,” he bellowed. “You are funny. Please, do not leave.”

The girl slowly overcame her trauma, and responded, “I... I can’t. You’re holding me.”

Realizing his offense, Galio carefully placed the girl back on the ground.

“I am sorry. I don’t often meet small girl people. I only wake up to smash things,” he explained. “Do you have things to smash? Large things?”

“No,” said the girl meekly.

“Then let us find something to smash.” He walked a few booming steps, then turned to find the girl was not following. “Are you not coming, girl person?”

“No,” she replied, even more shakily, unsure if the answer would upset the giant. “I’m sort of trying not to be noticed right now.”

“Oh. Forgive me, girl person.”

“Well. I’m going to go now,” said Lux, in what she thought was a final parting word. “It was nice to meet you.”

Galio followed right behind her. “You are walking away from your city,” he observed. “Where are you going?”

“I don’t know,” she responded. “Someplace I belong.”

The colossus tilted his head at her. “You are Demacian. You belong in Demacia.”

For the first time, the girl saw empathy in the giant, and she felt herself opening up.

“You wouldn’t understand. You’re a symbol of this kingdom. I’m just...” She searched for a word that would tell everything without telling too much. “I’m all wrong,” she said, at last.

“Wrong? You can’t be wrong. You give me life,” boomed Galio, lowering his huge boulder of a face to her level.

“That’s the problem,” said the girl. “You’re not supposed to be moving. The only reason you are moving is me.”

Galio reacted in stunned silence for a moment, then erupted with joyful epiphany.

“You’re a mage!” he thundered.

“Shhh! Please be quiet!” begged the girl. “People will hear you.”

“I crush mages!” he proclaimed. He then quickly added: “But not you. I like you. You are the first mage I’ve liked.”

Luxanna’s fear began to fade, giving way to irritation. “Listen. Even though this is all wondrous and miraculous, I’d really prefer you leave me alone. Besides, people are going to notice you’re gone.”

“I do not care,” insisted Galio. “Let them notice!”

“Don’t!” said Lux, recoiling at the thought. “Please, just go back where you belong.”

Galio stopped to reflect, then smiled as though he’d recalled something amusing. “Do that thing to me again. With your wonderful starlight!” he said, far too loudly for Lux’s comfort.

“Shhh! Stop yelling!” she urged. “Are you referring to my affliction?”

“Yes,” said Galio, in a slightly quieter tone.

“I’m sorry. I can’t always do it. And I shouldn’t do it. You have to go,” she insisted.

“I can’t go. If I leave you, I will sleep. And when I wake, you will be gone, small girl thing.”

Lux paused. Though she was mad from exhaustion, she found herself touched by the titan’s words.

“If I can do it again, do you promise to go away?” she asked.

The colossus thought for a moment, then accepted the proposal.

“Okay,” said the girl. “I’ll try.”

She screwed in her hands toward her body and thrust them forward toward Galio. To her disappointment, nothing but a tiny spark of light glinted from her fingers. She tried again, and again, getting less of a result each time.

“I must be tired,” she realized.

“Rest,” suggested Galio. “Then when you are refreshed you can give me your magic.”

“Hmm,” thought Lux, mulling the suggestion. “I can’t get rid of you, and I have no place to go. Suppose I might as well bed down.”

She began feeling around the ground for a comfortable patch of grass. Once she’d found a suitable place, she lay down and wrapped her cloak snugly around herself.

“Well, I’m going to sleep now,” she said with a yawn. “You should too.”

“No. I sleep too much,” replied Galio.

“Can you just... I don’t know, freeze yourself for a while, then?”

“I do not work that way,” said the colossus.

“Then be still and pretend you’re not alive.”

“Yes. I will just stand here and watch you rest, girl person,” said Galio.

“Please don’t,” insisted Lux. “I can’t sleep with you staring at me. Can you... turn around?”

Galio honored the girl’s wish, turning himself away from her, toward the distant lights of the Demacian capital. It was not as interesting as the girl, but it would suffice.

Making do with the modicum of privacy, Lux closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.

Once she was certain Galio would not turn around, she quietly got up and crept away into the night.

Luxanna walked quickly, knowing her first order of business was getting as far away as possible from the colossus. If she didn’t, her magic would still empower him, and he would surely come looking for her. By morning, every patrol in the kingdom would be searching for the missing Crownguard girl who had vanished in the night. They’d surely notice the walking national monument following her, and they’d know the girl must be the magical source that had awakened it.

Lux’s aching legs quickened to a sprint. She had only a vague idea of her surroundings. It was difficult to find any landmarks at this black hour of night. All she knew for sure was the Cloudwoods were nearby - their thick, towering redbarks forming the skyline to the south. It would be an ideal place to hide from any search parties, and a good foraging ground for breakfast. She could cross the forest in two days time and find shelter in one of the Vaskasian timber villages, where people were unlikely to recognize her. It was not a brilliant plan, by any stretch, but it was the best she had.

Lux could see the beginnings of the forest coming into view, its trees progressing in height like a pyramid, with the largest in the center. As she crossed the threshold of the woods, she paused a moment to grieve what she was abandoning. She would miss her brother Garen, and her beloved steed Starfire, and even her mother, but this was the way it had to be.

A shadow fades before the light, she reassured herself, and then stepped into the blackness of the dense evergreen woods.

After an hour of plowing her way through the barbed, resinous branches of the forest, Lux already found herself doubting her plan. Her stomach was growling, and any confidence she’d had in finding a clear path through the trees had vanished with the brightest moon behind the clouds. All around she could hear the snorts and rustles of nocturnal animals, and that made her nervous.

Just a little light, she thought. Surely just a little won’t hurt, way out here.

She began to conjure a luminescent orb between her hands. For a brief moment, a flicker of light danced on her fingertips, causing an audible ruckus in the creatures around her. But the light snuffed out as quickly as it came, returning all to blackness. Lux looked at the outlines of her hands, inspecting them for flaws. She wondered what could have hampered her from doing what had previously come so easily and unbidden.

It’s the colossus, she realized. It must be.

She suddenly became aware of voices in the woodland murmur. Slow, purposeful footsteps, and whispers. They were-

An arm shot around Lux’s throat and restrained her. She could sense the presence of at least two other men to her sides.

“Where are you headed tonight, miss?” asked one of the men.

Lux stammered, not quite formulating a response. The man restraining her tightened his grip.

“You’re supposed to be in the annulment slums, yeah?” he said.

“No...” Lux gasped, the man’s arm wedged firmly under her chin. “I’m not...”

“We aren’t fools, miss,” said the third man. “Come on, let’s take you back.”

Lux struggled to free her arms as the men tried to bind them with coarse rope. She concentrated, but still could not summon the magic that had apparently once been hers. She freed one hand, struck one of the men squarely in the jaw, and heard the twigs on the ground crunch as he fell. The two other men angrily descended on her.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” said one of them with a scowl. “You really shouldn’t have done that.”

The men began to tighten her bindings. They were making a point to pull the knots as tightly and painfully as possible, when the ground began to vibrate with dull thunderous beat. The men paused in dread, searching for the source of the noise, as it slowly increased in frequency and volume.

It rumbled like an earthquake, only broken up into steady rhythmic booms... like gigantic footsteps.

And they were getting nearer.

“What is it?” asked one man, too frightened to move.

The ground shook more, and its quaking was joined by the crackling of great trees being broken apart. Whatever it was, it was now in the forest and almost upon them.

“It’s... It’s...”

All looked up to see the monstrous Galio, striding toward them, a path of felled redbarks in his wake. The men ran, getting only a few steps through the trees before a giant petricite hand snatched them up high into the air. Galio glared with one enormous eye at the trembling wads of flesh held tight in his grip.

“Is it time for fighting?” said the colossus with a grin. “I will engage you!”

He opened his clenched fist, and raised the other hand as if to smash the men between his palms.

“No!” said a tiny voice. “Please stop!”

The colossus found Lux on the ground below, beating on his ankles with her bound arms.

“It isn’t right!” she shouted.

Confused, Galio lowered the men to the ground and released them. Lux heard the quick patter of the men’s feet, sprinting away from her with the urgency of hunted elk. As she wriggled out of her bindings, she gazed up at the colossus.

“I turned around and you were gone, girl person,” he said. “Why are you in the trees?”

“I- I don’t know,” Luxanna managed.

Galio reclined on a hillside, gazing at the stars with the tiny yellow-headed girl he had befriended. Neither spoke, save for an occasional sigh - not the stressful gasps that Lux had previously known. These were the sounds of two beings that had found utter contentment in each other’s company.

“I do not usually awaken for this long,” said the colossus.

“Me neither,” said the girl, with an enormous yawn.

“How do people spend time together without battle? Should we have a conversation?”

“No. This is nice,” said the girl. “I feel... calm.”

A frown crossed Galio’s face. There was something different about the girl. Something missing. She no longer shone like the stars.

“Why are you sad? You’ve cured me,” said the girl. “As long as you’re near me, I can return home and be normal.”

Galio did not brighten or look up. The girl continued her thought.

“I mean, maybe I can just come visit you every day to keep my affliction away—”

“No,” said the titan, finally locking eyes with her.

“Why not?” she asked.

“Young girl person, you are special. Since before you can remember, I have felt your gift. For so long, I wanted it near me. But now I see... I smash your gift.”

“But it gives you life.”

Galio pondered her words, but only for a moment. His mind was made up.

“Life to me is very valuable,” he said. “But your gift is everything. Never lose it.”

He got to his feet and gingerly placed the girl on his shoulder. Together, they began to trudge back toward the city to face what awaited.

The sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon when Lux returned to her family manor. Outside the city walls, Galio was returning to stillness on his plinth beside the Memorial Road, leaving Lux to face her problems alone.

A shadow fades before the light, she thought, and she opened the latch to her front door.

She entered the house to find her mother sitting in the parlor with a balding middle-aged man, who held a case of exotic medical tinctures in his lap.

“Luxanna, so glad you decided to return home,” said Augatha, through clenched teeth.

Lux looked warily at the man on the couch.

“This is the man I was telling you about,” her mother whispered. “The one who’s going to fix your... problem.”

Lux felt light-headed, as if her spirit was leaving her body to watch what she was about to say.

“You know what, mother?” she said, her voice trembling with words she’d been longing to say. “I don’t think I want to see this man. In fact, I’d like you to send him away.”

The annuller looked offended. He stood and slung his bag over his shoulder.

“No, stay,” begged Augatha. She cornered Lux and began to speak with authority. “You do not know what you are saying. This man has risked everything to help you. It is the only way you’re ever going to be Demacian. Have you forgotten your afflic-”

“I am not afflicted!” Lux cried out. “I am beautiful and valuable, and one day I will prove it to this kingdom! And if anyone has a problem with me, I’ve got a very large friend they can talk to.”

She strode upstairs to her room, leaving her mother alone with the annuller.

As Lux flopped onto her bed, she expelled a deep, easy breath. For the first time in years, her mind was as still as a pond in summer. The light that had once exploded from her unbidden was still there, but she could feel its beginning and its end, and knew that one day she could master it.

As she drifted off to sleep, she realized her mantra had always been wrong. No light could ever kill shadows.

A shadow thrives beside the light, she thought. It had a nice ring to it.

Posters across Noxus warn of a dangerous criminal, armed with a massive, blunted spear and borne atop a magical fiend, whose mere existence poses a threat to the safety and security of the entire nation. Even some within the steeled ranks of the Trifarian Legion have begun to worry that they will be sent after her to their almost certain deaths.

What kind of monster could be behind such heinous, unchecked destruction?

The simple answer is a sixteen-year-old girl.

The complicated one is unforgivable.

Rell was special from the moment of her birth—and fated to suffer for it. Born the daughter of a Noxian footsoldier and the heir to a fallen noble house, she enjoyed neither the trappings of wealth nor the gilded upbringing common to children of the lower aristocracy. Nevertheless, her parents had grand plans to mold her into someone who could shatter through Noxus’ dense political landscape. As Rell’s mother always said, “Excellence is measured in sacrifice.”

Rell’s unhappiness grew with time, sparking something unique within her—a magic unlike anything seen in centuries: the ability to manipulate metal. To Rell’s parents, this was something to be exploited—for Rell’s own sake, of course!—and they tried unsuccessfully to apprentice her with many powerful mages who might whisk their daughter into the political or military elite.

But someone else took notice of the young girl’s magic. Seeing in Rell a weapon who could one day face Noxus’ most hated, ancient foe, a certain pale woman visited the family with a dark bargain. Rell soon found herself the star pupil of a very special academy, hidden far from the capital and away from the council’s prying eyes. And though they rarely made appearances in her new boarding school, her mother and father never seemed more proud or more hopeful of their daughter’s future.

It seemed, at least for a moment, that perhaps Rell would be loved after all.

Then the true horrors began.

Rell was first forced into combat with another student when she was eight, and, afterward, a kind of magic sigil was painfully grafted into her arm, amplifying her powers so that she could become even stronger. Yet while this had been framed as a training exercise, Rell never saw the boy again. She never saw any of her opponents again.

Every day, she grew more powerful, honing her magic for martial combat. Her body became covered with sigils that amplified her magical abilities to impossible heights. In time, she could rip a vein of raw ore from deep out of the ground, twist the walls into deadly weapons, and superheat an opponent’s armor until it collapsed and crushed them. But her instructors desired even more from her—all in the hopes that Rell would be the most powerful soldier the empire had ever known.

On her sixteenth birthday, after a particularly barbaric duel, she’d finally had enough. Casting her instructors aside, Rell tore past the guards and ripped open the doors of a forbidden wing of the academy, discovering the true nature of her school: Every opponent she’d defeated had been Nullified—their magic forcibly extracted from them and placed into the very sigils covering Rell’s body—and left as emotionless puppets devoid of memories. This was the price of her power, and she could never give it back.

Worst of all was the headmistress who oversaw the procedures herself: Rell’s own mother. All of this had been for Rell, she said. After all... excellence is measured in sacrifice.

Rell raged.

To the small handful of faculty who survived her escape from the academy, it was like the earth had been torn open into a twisting whirlwind of razor-sharp slag. The building ripped itself apart, forming an impenetrable suit of black armor around Rell as she crushed those who stood before her, flattening seasoned soldiers with a lance heavier than a mountain. Bursting through the front gate on a steed made of rippling iron, she led as many of her classmates as she could to freedom—leaving the Rose scrambling to recover the Null and erase any trace of what their organization had done.

But it was far too late. Soon enough, the surviving faculty members began to die in increasingly public ways, and the Null could no longer be kept secret.

Rell is now a threat to Noxus, but not in the way the handbills proclaim. She is a self-styled defender of the meek, full of unchecked fury, distrustful of everyone, and merciless toward a government that turned a blind eye to years of suffering and abuse. Not because the empire was personally responsible—but because they stood by and did nothing.

Riding atop her iron steed, Rell’s eyes are set on nothing less than the complete destruction of Noxus and saving any children who, like her, survived the Black Rose academy.

And there is nothing in this world that can stop her.

K’Sante wipes his forehead, his bloodied fingers catching sweat and dirt. He stands with his back hunched, and wounds fresh, but still towers over the tensome attackers surrounding him. Beside them, fallen bodies lie baking in the Shuriman heat—all crazed followers of the Ascended who’ve been seeking K’Sante’s death.

The remaining zealots raise their swords. K’Sante sees glints of light on their blades. He knows the sun is watching overhead, its gaze awaiting his next move. He entertains the thought of dying here and spits on the ground. It was a simple ambush. He hadn’t become the Pride of Nazumah just to perish in the very savanna where his ancestors had overcome even grander foes. These were raiders at best—lost in some deranged sorcerer’s delusions of conquest.

The zealots holler and charge, shrublands echoing the rumble of their feet. K’Sante watches their movements. There’s no strategy here—only bloodlust. He grits his teeth, and, despite his battered legs, a bruised chest, and the taste of his own blood in his mouth, braces himself.

Metal clashes against metal. K’Sante’s ntofos block a lethal slash. He growls as he pushes against the zealot’s blade, the weight of his own weapons working in his favor. K’Sante had constructed them with that in mind, their hefty rectangular structure built from cobra-lion armor—one of the strongest materials in all of Shurima.

A zealot sneaks in with a sword and slices K’Sante’s cheek. He grunts from the pain and shoves his ntofos into the foe he’s blocking, causing them to collapse, then swings his weapons in an arc, striking the zealot who’d cut him. He chuckles. Somehow, slaying a Baccai seems easier now than fending off wave after wave of the Ascended’s zealots.

“Kill the nonbeliever!” cry his enemies. “The Magus demands it!”

K’Sante has many words he wishes to say about Xerath, but telling the Magus’ followers would be a waste. They’ll soon join their companions, unable to pass on any messages, and he’d rather speak to Xerath himself to let the Magus know it was he who slayed the Baccai abomination. To think the Magus, a self-declared “god,” would create a cobra-lion to terrorize innocent people...

K’Sante’s stomach churns in disgust. His people, his culture—they are his pride. And, unfortunately for the Magus’ followers, that pride fuels his survival. Eyes forward, he grips his weapons tighter as his enemies push their assault.

The zealots plunge toward him, attacking from all angles. How many are there? Four, five, six? His vision fades in and out—maybe due to heat, maybe due to exhaustion—and he steps forward, but his right knee buckles beneath him. Using his ntofos, he steadies himself and blocks strikes from above and below. His enemies are piling against him, now. They must think he’s hit his limit.

Hardly.

With a roar, he knocks them back and hefts himself onto his feet again. But before he can retaliate, three arrows fall from the sky and land dead center in three zealots’ throats. Stunned, K’Sante watches his foes stagger and gasp for air before toppling over.

“Take them out!” a voice commands.

K’Sante turns, seeing a tall, armored warrior wielding a bow and leading three other archers, each nocking fresh arrows. They wear matching patterns of green and gold, but the leader’s face is hidden behind an ornate mask.

“Worry not, Nazuman,” the leader says. “We are no friends of the Ascended.”

K’Sante glances at the arrows stuck in the dead zealots’ bodies. “I see that.”

The leader laughs. His voice is warm and rich and somehow familiar. K’Sante can’t see the man’s face, yet is reassured.

The zealots rush once more while K’Sante’s unexpected allies gather together.

“Ready, Nazuman?” the leader asks.

“Always.”

K’Sante slams down his ntofos. The ground before him ruptures, sending cracks rippling through the dirt and gravel surging upward from the impact, which knocks back the foes closest to K’Sante. The ntofos’ outer layers shatter. Their now-exposed centers shimmer in the sun, revealing twin obsidian blades. K’Sante reverses his grip and aims the sharpened edges ahead. He knows he only has a brief time before his weapons regenerate their defensive coating.

K’Sante leaps forward. Mustering all his strength, he uses his momentum to spin midair, heaving one leg across his front to land a devastating roundhouse kick on three of his foes. As they tumble back, he lands with a thud and slices his ntofos across their chests, tearing through armor and flesh.

The zealots scream.

K’Sante’s allies roar.

A hail of arrows falls around him, blocking the zealots who’ve flanked to his sides.

“Take no prisoners!” the leader declares.

K’Sante nods. Red runs down his face—whether it’s his blood or his enemies, he isn’t sure. With clenched teeth and furrowed brow, he pushes ahead, thrusting his blades into the hearts of his enemies. One by one, they fall.

When the dust settles, the zealots lie still, finally among their previously fallen companions.

“It is over,” the leader observes, satisfied.

“Yes,” K’Sante says. “For now.” He stands upright, but just barely, his face and body stained crimson. The ntofos in his hands begin to regenerate as he stares at the lifeless zealots’ bodies.

“You haven’t changed one bit, K’Sante,” the leader says.

K’Sante looks up. Mask now in hand, a smiling face looks back. It's an expression K’Sante assumed he’d never see from this man—from Tope—ever again.

“I’m sure you have questions. But for now, come with us.” Tope gestures loosely into the distance with his hand. “Our camp is nearby, and you look dreadful.”

K’Sante can’t stifle his strained breathing. Even though he’s unsure, the idea of rest is too enticing. K’Sante nods slowly and takes a step closer, but the world spins around him, and he collapses to the ground.

When K’Sante wakes, he’s lying on a wooden bed beneath soft blankets. He runs his fingers along the verdant threads, feeling their gentle, sinewy fibers—a trademark of Marrowmarkan fabric.

The tent overhead shields him from the sun’s heat, but he can still hear the bustling camp outside its walls. Iron being forged, steel being hammered—sounds that remind him of his own weapons. K’Sante quickly scans his surroundings and, to his relief, sees his now fully regenerated ntofos leaning against the bedpost, polished and cleaned. He studies the cobra-lion inlay along their sides, images he carved and painted himself based on some of Tope’s old drawings. He wonders if Tope noticed. Would he say something, even if he did? What if Tope made the wrong assumption? That was years ago, after all. K’Sante tries to remember. Exactly how long has it been?

“Two whole days,” a voice says. “You were out like a baby armordillo.” Dressed in a Marrowmarkman tunic of greens and golds, Tope stands by the entrance of K’Sante’s tent, his arms crossed. Seeing his grin, K’Sante offers a half-smile in return.

“No mask today?” K’Sante asks, sitting up.

“We both know, had I not been wearing a mask, you wouldn’t have let me help with those zealots.”

K’Sante opens his mouth to protest, only to close it again with a sigh. Despite his recent efforts to curb his more audacious tendencies, he knows there’s still truth in that statement.

“Word spreads fast,” Tope explains. “Over the past few months, the Ascended forces have encroached farther south. I expected them to be by the savanna. And I expected Nazumah to send its finest. What I didn’t expect was to see you. Just you. Fighting twenty-plus of their soldiers.”

“I thought I could take them.” K’Sante stumbles out of bed. He grabs his armor from beside his weapons and grunts as he puts it on, his body aching everywhere.

“Of course you did,” Tope mutters under his breath. “And I’m sure you would have.” He shakes his head. “Well, if you can walk, you can eat. Why don’t you thank me over lunch? I won’t have the Pride of Nazumah returning home on an empty stomach.”

K’Sante gingerly follows Tope out of the tent. Before him, the camp stretches wide. Warriors spar and restring bows, and among them are some faces he recognizes from Tope’s rescue party. Nearby, chefs stir various cast-iron pots. K’Sante smells something comforting and familiar wafting out from one of them: Cassava, yams, and cornmeal. And from another, tomatoes, onions, goat meat, and peppers over rice.

Tope pulls a couple chairs up to an open table. A young man wearing armor two sizes too large rushes over with filled glasses.

“Palm wine?” Tope offers.

K’Sante is tempted. It is the favorite drink of his home. But, he passes. He wishes to keep his mind sound for wherever this conversation might lead. “Water,” he answers. “Please.”

Tope beams at the attendant. “You heard the man.”

The young man scurries off.

“So,” K’Sante asks, “what do they call you here?”

“King or Lord, mostly,” Tope says, face static. K’Sante hesitates. Tope slaps the table with a grin. “I’m joking! You think, after all these years, I’d crown myself like a mad Ascended?”

“I don’t dare guess what your aunty might think,” K’Sante says.

“Oh, that woman would have me disowned,” Tope assures. “Publicly—so our ancestors would not be offended,” he explains in his aunty’s voice.

K’Sante chuckles.

“That’s no joke.” Tope continues, chuckling in tandem. “Your parents would do the same.”

He pours water for K’Sante and himself as the attendant returns with two plates of food. K’Sante’s stomach growls at the sight of peppered rice, dyed bright orange by spices, with fiery scents steaming off its top.

“Please,” Tope says. “Dig in.”

As K’Sante eats, he examines Tope and the surrounding camp. Everyone here seems happy, even amid warfare. Laughter travels from nearby people exchanging battlefield tales. Men and women come and go, offering their well-wishes as they jog between stations. The atmosphere is busy and driven, but whenever Tope asks for more food and drink, it’s delivered without complaint.

“Looks like you’ve made it,” K’Sante observes.

Tope sips his wine. He then raises an arm and motions to the rest of the camp with a sweep of his hand. “Yes, leading my own band of fools. So far, no one’s removed me from command. Can you believe it?”

“You’re too stubborn for that.”

“Does the cheetah call the leopard spotted?”

Both men smile. K’Sante notices the roughened edges on Tope’s face—marks of age and a few scars. Are they new? Or were they part of what he failed to notice before? K’Sante searches for something. Anger, sadness, pain? His body stiffens with guilt. He continues to eat and glances around the camp, the busy clamor filling the pause in their conversation.

“Commander,” Tope says. “That’s what they’re supposed to call me. I don’t like it, so I command them not to.”

“At least you’re not the Pride of Marrowmark,” K’Sante says.

“Ha! That title always fit you better than it did me. Say, I hear there’s going to be a celebration in your name?”

K’Sante humbles himself. “Uh, yes. At Hunter’s Hall in Nazumah.”

Tope looks impressed. “Right where we used to train. That’s fantastic! Your mother and father—I assume they’re going?”

“I couldn’t drag them away.”

“I would like to see you try.”

K’Sante chuckles.

“When is it?” Tope asks.

K’Sante swallows another bite of peppered rice. “It’s next month. The first weekend.”

“Oh, right around my wedding!” Tope chirps cheerfully.

K’Sante wavers, searching for words. Quickly, he smiles. “Congratulations!”

“Thank you,” Tope smiles back, unaware of K’Sante’s fluster. “Looks like we’ll both miss each other’s special occasions.”

K’Sante chuckles again. After all these years, Tope still has his wit. That’s what had attracted him to Tope in the first place. How, in their interactions, there was always laughter. On hunts, at dinner, in bed. The timeless parts of their romance were the joys they shared.

K’Sante misses it. And yet, he knows it was the right choice for them to separate. That final cobra-lion hunt—it broke them. They were young. They were strong. And they couldn’t agree on anything. That’s the funny thing about pride. Sometimes, it reveals the worst version of your best self.

Out of all the things K’Sante expected, the last was this meal with the man sitting across from him. But he isn’t unprepared. Years ago, he had promised himself that should this day happen, there would be no blame. The past was the past. In fact, he’s more curious now about the present and the future.

K’Sante stares up from his food. “How did you two meet?”

“Ah, funny story,” Tope responds. “I met him at school.”

“School?”

“Yes,” Tope says, then pauses. “After the cobra-lion, I went back to Marrowmark. Back to school. You know that I always loved studying the intricacies of combat. So, I took a couple years to learn everything, such as strategies from faraway cultures. Noxus, Demacia, and those cold, sad warriors in the Freljord.”

K’Sante feigns surprise. “And that was enough to convince them to make you commander?” He exhales through closed teeth with exaggerated gravity. “War really does make people desperate.”

Tope snickers. “I’m glad you’ve not lost your humor.”

He leans back in his chair. “We’ve both come far, K’Sante,” Tope observes. “From two young hunters with... What did they used to call us? All talent, no discipline?”

K’Sante nods. “Now we’re some talent with some discipline... sometimes.”

Tope laughs, loud and free. K’Sante is reminded of the warmth of that booming sound—how Tope always made those around him feel accepted. K’Sante sighs, relaxes his shoulders, and, for the first time during this meal, he too leans back against his chair.

“You know, I never got the chance to say this,” Tope begins, “probably because I didn’t believe it back then, but now... I'll regret it if I don’t. So here goes.”

K’Sante watches Tope pick at his nails before he continues.

“I’m sorry,” Tope finally says, sitting up tall. “I didn’t support you back then. During the cobra-lion battle, I mean. At least, not the way you wanted. I hadn’t realized what it meant for you to—”

“No,” K’Sante interjects.

He’s thought about this conversation many times over. A few years ago, it was the only thing he could think about. Rehashing what he felt, and why. Then, later on, it started to come up less frequently and felt more like a lesson. A reminder of how their relationship had evolved him, and how it allowed him to finally acknowledge the damage his pride could do.

It took him even longer to understand that, even now, his pride is a force—one that drives off others and turns tides in battle. In love, it is... not so different. Killing enemies is straightforward. Resolving conflicts is not.

These days, K’Sante hasn’t thought about this conversation much, if at all. Again, he certainly hadn’t expected to be having it now, but all those years spent thinking about it allows him to say what comes next.

“No,” K’Sante repeats firmly, and sits forward. “I hurt you.”

He exhales. “Yes, the cobra-lion was damning. And yes, it meant everything to me to slay it—to prove that I could be Nazumah’s greatest warrior. But I didn’t need to do it in a way that belittled you. In fact, I used your notes. You discovered it was Baccai. That’s what allowed me to finish what we had started. For that, I’m grateful.”

K’Sante looks down at their plates, both half-eaten. A sign of deep conversation. His eyes rise to meet Tope’s. “I could’ve been a better partner to you, too. And for that, I’m sorry. I truly am.”

He senses the cool desert air on his skin as he watches Tope’s face soften. The sun must’ve set. When it dropped from the sky, he can’t recall.

He takes a breath and smiles. “But you should also thank me.”

“Oh?” Tope says, amused. He sips his wine as he considers K’Sante. “And why’s that?”

“By doing what I did, it seems I’ve helped you in both your career and your love life.”

Wine spurts from Tope’s nose. He throws his head back, howling with laughter. It’s contagious. The merry sounds of both men intertwine with nearby campfire songs and dance.

“That pride of yours,” Tope says, “has never truly gone away.” Smiling and sighing, he wipes droplets of wine off the table. “It is your greatest strength, and I, for one, think the Nazumans are lucky to have you. In times like these, there is no better Pride of Nazumah.”

K’Sante sits back and enjoys the wide, open evening sky. He had imagined this conversation going a million different ways. Seeing Tope’s success, hearing his acceptance, and feeling his maturity—coupled with K’Sante’s own growth—is a relief.

He grabs the pitcher of palm wine and pours himself a glass. “And no better commander of Marrowmark.”

“Then let us toast,” Tope declares. “Ascended, empires, or beasts—”

“None shall threaten our homes while we still stand!”

The source of the crying is a boy. Six, maybe seven summers.

He sits cross-legged with his back to me, in front of a tall sapwood. The weeping settles into sniffling, wet hiccups. I stop at the edge of the trees, and look back at the shade of the road below. The midday sun is merciless, streaming bright into the boy’s meadow. He doesn’t seem hurt. The clearing is open. Unprotected.

You’re not needed. Keep to your path.

The voice rings clear in my head, though I haven’t heard it spoken aloud for some time. I turn, but about-face at the sound of a deep, racking sigh, ending in renewed little sobs.

When I am about three sword lengths away, I step on a dry twig to announce my arrival. The boy starts at the sound.

“Teo, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…” The boy’s rushed apology is muffled by the swipe of his sleeve across his face. He stops dead at the sight of me.

He retreats so quickly that his back thuds against the tree.

“Emai paid the Brotherhood,” he stammers. “I wasn’t playing on the road.”

At the mention of the group, my hand goes to my blade. The boy stares at me; his crying gives over to a series of shallow gasps. Of course. He thinks I’m some Navori thief coming to take something from him.

He thinks you’re a criminal.

I release my grip, trying to appear more friendly. “No, I’m not with the Brotherhood,” I say. “I heard someone from the road. Sounded like they were having a tough time.”

The boy wipes his wet cheek with his sleeve again, trying to save face in front of the stranger standing before him.

“Know anyone like that?” I ask.

The boy starts to shake his head slowly, but the truth tumbles out of him.

“It was me,” he admits, shame roughing his voice. “I… I just wanted to play with it.” He points up. There among the tree’s uppermost branches is an old festival kite, its silk tails fluttering in the light breeze. “It’s Teo’s.”

His eyes start to water again. He shows me the palms of his hands, covered in sap, darkened with dirt and bark.

“I tried climbing the tree, but it’s too tall. Teo’s going to be so angry with me. He told me not to.”

A moment passes between us. “Brothers often say that,” I murmur.

There is a small pile of broken soil in front of the boy. I kneel, wiping away the top layer to reveal a newly sprouted sapwood nut.

“My emai is a woodweaver. I’m learning. I thought…” The boy hangs his head, embarrassed at the idea. Woodweaving even a sapling would take far longer than an afternoon.

I keep the smile from my lips. “An admirable effort.”

The boy’s gaze lingers on the fluted edges of my pauldron.

“That pattern isn’t from our village,” he says, caution edging into his voice. “Or the village in the next valley.”

“I’m on my way to Weh’le,” I reply. “I was making good time on the Noxian road. Even if the stone is a bit hard on the feet.” I try to smile, but with the thought that Noxus could leave us anything of value, I know it comes off a grimace.

“Can you help me?” he asks.

I look up at the kite sitting delicately in the high branches. “It’s been a while since I’ve climbed a tree, kid.”

“Joab,” he says. “My name is Joab.”

I offer him my hand, my own name hesitant on the tip of my tongue. It’s been too long since I've said it with anything but shame.

Come on. You’ve been called worse.

“Yasuo,” I say, and pull him up from the ground.

I step from the shade of the tree, and back into the sunlight of the clearing to get a better view. The day is hot and still. I close my eyes to feel the tiny currents of air lingering at the edges of the meadow. A small breeze picks up, pushing the wisps of hair from my face.

“I wish I could just blow it down. Woodweaving is useless,” Joab mutters, frowning from the kite to his sapwood seed. “There was an elder once who could move the wind, but he’s dead. And his student could too, but emai says he’s dangerous, that he killed the elder…”

I reach for the blade at my side. As I draw the weapon, I focus the magic. Eddies of wind swirl around it, gathering in tighter and tighter whirls. Dust and dead leaves dance on the blade until I shape the whirlwind to my liking, then release it with a flick of my wrist.

The invisible force hits the tree dead-on, the trunk shuddering with the impact. The branches shake as if some unseen spirit rises through them, finally reaching the kite. The colorful silk lifts off gently as the air returns to the sky above, and drifts slowly into my outstretched hand.

The boy’s mouth hangs open a bit, but he closes it quickly. The fear is back.

“You?” he asks. “The elder’s student?”

All of Ionia knows what you are.

Joab looks to the forest road, maybe for someone to come hunting for me. “Did you escape?” he whispers, but I shake my head. “Did they let you go then? I mean, were you pardoned?”

“I can’t be forgiven for a crime I didn’t commit.” It’s just a technicality, but I say it before the voice in my head can.

But you killed the others…

I take a deep, steadying breath, concentrating on the cool breeze at my back and the kite in my hand to keep the memories at bay. Joab chews on his own thoughts for a moment.

Just as his mouth opens for another question, a glint of metal emerging from the forest catches the sun.

I raise my blade in anticipation, only to find a slightly older mirror of Joab carrying a small farming tool attached to a long rope. I lower my weapon quickly, but too late—fear and wariness settle into the meadow.

Too fast to react, too slow to stop.

Never enough for him. It’s my whole life in miniature.

Joab’s brother watches us. He does not leave the safety of the forest edge.

“Joab,” the older boy calls out. Joab runs over obediently, but stops when he sees the tool and the rope. I pull on the light breeze, straining to hear.

“What’s that for, Teo?” Joab asks, realization turning to anger. “You knew I would take the kite?”

I shake my head. Of course he knew.

Big brothers always know what little brothers will do.

“Yeah, always the exact opposite of whatever I tell you, Joab,” the older boy says, still watching me. “Who’s that?”

Joab glances back, then leans over and whispers in his brother’s ear. Teo’s eyes grow wide for a moment, then relax into a dismissive scowl.

“Emai says it’s time to eat,” Teo says as he turns to leave. Joab pulls on his arm, trying to slow him down. He whispers again in Teo’s ear.

I try to quiet the wind that carries the next words, to stop listening, but it’s too late.

“No, he can’t come,” Teo says. “He’s xiiri.”

Xiiri.

The word catches in my throat as the wind finally stills around me. Xiiri is something unwanted. A misfortune brought by outsiders or greed. A little pest that follows big brothers around…

The sun beats down, heating the blade at my side. It’s a word I’ve heard all my life.

You’re not needed. Keep to your path.

I steel myself, and walk to the brothers.

“Listen to him, kid,” I say, handing the precious silk bundle to Joab. “Brothers know best.”

Before either of them can answer, I walk on, returning to the road ahead.