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As a child, Yasuo often believed what the others in his village said of him: on the best days, his very existence was an error in judgement; on the worst, he was a mistake that could never be undone.

Like most pain, there was some truth to it. His mother was a widow already raising a young son, when the man who would be Yasuo’s father blew into her life like an autumn wind. And, just like that lonely season, he was gone again before the blanket of Ionian winter settled over the small family.

Even though Yasuo’s older half-brother, Yone, was everything Yasuo was not—respectful, cautious, conscientious—the two were inseparable. When other children teased Yasuo, Yone was there to defend him. But what Yasuo lacked in patience, he made up for in determination. When Yone began his apprenticeship at the village’s renowned sword school, a young Yasuo followed, waiting outside in monsoon rain, until the teachers relented and opened the gates.

Much to the annoyance of his new peers, Yasuo showed natural talent, and became the only student to catch the attention of Elder Souma, last master of the legendary wind technique. The old man saw Yasuo’s potential, but the impulsive pupil refused his tutelage, remaining unbridled like a whirlwind. Yone pleaded with his brother to set aside his arrogance, gifting him a maple seed, the school’s highest lesson in humility. The next morning, Yasuo accepted the position as Souma’s apprentice, and personal bodyguard.

When word of the Noxian invasion reached the school, some were inspired by the great stand that had been taken at the Placidium of Navori, and soon the village was bled of the able bodied. Yasuo longed to add his sword to the cause, but even as his classmates and brother left to fight, he was ordered to remain and protect the elders.

The invasion became a war. Finally, one rain-slicked night, the drums of a Noxian march could be heard in the next valley over. Yasuo abandoned his post, foolishly believing he could turn the tide.

But he found no battle—only a raw grave for hundreds of Noxian and Ionian corpses. Something terrible and unnatural had happened here, something that no single blade could have stopped. The land itself seemed tainted by it.

Sobered, Yasuo returned to the school the next day, only to be surrounded by the remaining students, their swords drawn. Elder Souma was dead, and Yasuo found himself accused not only of dereliction, but of murder. He realized the true killer would go unpunished if he did not act quickly, so he fought his way free, though he knew this would all but confirm his apparent guilt.

Now a fugitive in war-torn Ionia, Yasuo sought any clue that might lead him to the murderer. All the while, he was hunted by his former allies, continually forced to fight or die. This was a price he was willing to pay, until he was tracked down by the one he dreaded most—his own brother, Yone.

Bound by honor, they circled each other. When their swords finally met, Yasuo’s wind magic overcame Yone’s dual blades, and with a single flash of steel, the outcast cut his brother down.

He begged forgiveness, but Yone’s dying words were of the wind techniques responsible for Elder Souma’s death, and that his brother was the only one who could have known them. Then he fell silent, passing on before he could grant any absolution.

Without master or brother, Yasuo roamed the mountains distraught, drinking away the pain of war and loss, a sword without a sheath. There in the snow, he met Taliyah, a young Shuriman stone mage who had fled the Noxian military. In her, Yasuo saw an unlikely student, and in himself, an even more unlikely teacher. He trained her in the ways of elemental magic, wind shaping stone, embracing at last the teachings of Elder Souma.

Their world changed with rumors of a risen Shuriman god-emperor. Yasuo and Taliyah parted ways, though he gifted her the treasured maple seed, its lesson now learned. As she returned to her native desert sands, Yasuo set out for his own village, determined to put right his mistakes and find his old master’s true killer.

Within the stone walls of the council hall, Elder Souma’s death was revealed to have been an accident, one brought about by the Noxian exile known as Riven—and one for which she felt deep remorse. Even so, Yasuo still could not absolve himself of the choice he had made to abandon his master or, worse yet, how that choice had ultimately led to Yone’s death.

Yasuo eventually journeyed to the spirit blossom festival in Weh’le, though he held little hope that its healing rituals would ease his heart. It was there he encountered a demonic creature that sought to devour him, an azakana that fed on his pain and regret.

Yet a masked intruder intervened, striking down the creature with righteous fury, and Yasuo realized he knew this man—it was Yone.

Fully expecting his brother to take vengeance, Yasuo was surprised when Yone let him go with little more than a bitter blessing.

With nothing left for him in the First Lands, Yasuo has embarked on a new adventure, though he knows not where it will lead, his sense of guilt the only thing weighing down the free wind.

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 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.

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.”

“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.

In Ionia’s central province of Bahrl, a mountain settlement once stood, hidden away in its serene beauty. Here, in the village of Wuju, the boy Yi grew up learning the ways of the sword, chasing a dream that later turned to tragedy.

Like most children, he admired those who wore silk robes and carried blades with poems to their name. His parents being swordsmiths, Yi made a strong impression on the local warriors who frequented their workshop. He spent his mornings in the garden, sparring with his mother, and his nights reciting poetry to his father by candlelight. When it came time for Yi to study under Wuju’s masters, his parents could not have been prouder.

Carrying his talent and discipline over to his training, he surpassed every expectation. Soon, the whole village knew of the “Young Master” Yi.

Still, the humble student wondered about the rest of Ionia. From atop the tallest pagodas, he spotted faraway towns no one else ever mentioned, but when he sought to journey down the mountain with blade in hand, his mentors forbade him. Wuju was founded by those believing their swordsmanship to be too precious to share, too sacred to draw blood—so for centuries, it flourished in isolation, with no outsiders knowing its true nature.

All this changed the day Yi saw vast plumes of smoke rising above the distant towns. Noxian warbands had invaded from the coast, conquering settlement after settlement in waves that washed the provinces red. Choosing the people of Ionia over Wuju’s hallowed tradition, Yi ventured down to help defend the First Lands. To astonished eyes, he swept across the front lines in a blur, routing the enemy with blinding swordplay never before seen by outsiders.

Word of the one-man army spread far and wide, like mist in the mountains. Inspired by his courage, even his fellow disciples joined the fight, and together they journeyed to Navori where the greater war was raging.

The Noxian commanders saw in Wuju a threat that could not be ignored. They scouted the origin of these peerless warriors, and elected to strike at their home without mercy. In a single night, the entire village was destroyed, its people and culture obliterated by chemical fire that no steel could hold back.

After the war finally ended, Yi returned as the only surviving disciple, to find nothing but ruins. The very magic of the land had been defiled, and everyone he had known and loved was no more. Slain in spirit, if not in body, Yi became the attack’s final casualty. With no other practitioners of Wuju left alive, he realized the title of master was his to bear alone.

Grief-stricken, he chose seclusion, training obsessively to bury the guilt of his survival, but the wisdom of bygone masters seemed to fade with the haze of time. He began to doubt if one man could preserve an entire heritage… until he encountered the least expected of individuals.

A curious, monkey-like vastaya challenged him to a duel. Reluctantly, Master Yi entertained the creature’s demands, defeating him with ease. But the vastaya refused to give up, returning day after day with increasingly clever tricks that forced Yi to react and improvise. For the first time in years, Yi felt the spirit of Wuju once more.

The two clashed for weeks, until the bruised stranger finally knelt on the ground and introduced himself as Kong, of the Shimon tribe. He begged to learn from Yi, who saw in this reckless but determined fighter the makings of a new disciple. Through teaching, Yi found his purpose restored. He would pass on the ways of Wuju, and gifted his pupil an enchanted staff and an honorific as a sign of this vow—from that day onward, Kong was known as Wukong.

Together, they now travel the First Lands, as Yi seeks to honor the legacy of his lost home, allowing him to fully embody the “master” in his name.

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.”

The boy ran at a dead sprint, driven by terror.

Under the sliver of a waning moon, darkness swallowed his surroundings with only the faintest starlight giving a silver sheen to the misty night. Silhouettes of trees flashed by. The lantern in the boy’s hand flickered and sputtered, in danger of snuffing out. But it was not the darkness he feared.

It was the thing that stalked him in the darkness.

The boy had felt it first—a sudden chill in the summer air, a creeping dread that clutched at his heart. Sensations that he might have dismissed as symptoms of the late hour and a long night. On any other occasion, he would have chastised himself for indulging in his imagination. He was thirteen now, too old to be afraid of darting shadows and harmless spirits.

But this spirit had opened glowing blue eyes and stared into his soul. This shadow had whispered his name.

The boy risked a glance behind to see if it still followed, and promptly slammed into something. He fell back, the breath knocked from his lungs, and his lantern clattered to his side, its weak light fluttering wildly. Surprise and pain shifted quickly to fear as he saw the figure looming over him.

A man, tall and lithe, stood with a bare torso, unfazed by the unusually chilly night. From the waist down, loose robes billowed in the wind, frayed from wear. An intricate belt of woven rope tied strange masks across his waist, monstrous visages trapped in alabaster. Bandages bound both his arms, and each hand grasped a blade—one of tempered steel, shimmering in the moonlight, the other shining an ominous red.

Yet it was the man’s face that left the boy frozen.

Those cold blue eyes peered down through a cruel mask that radiated the same strange red as the man’s blade. The mask grasped the man’s face, nearly devouring his stern frown.

“S-stay back!” the boy croaked.

“It is not me you should fear,” the man spoke, his voice a soft growl, eyes fixed on some point beyond the boy.

Confusion knit the boy’s brow as he followed the man’s gaze. What he saw sent him scrambling to his feet.

A vague shape hovered in the mists. If the stranger hadn’t pointed it out, the boy might have missed it altogether. The mist twisted into wide eyes and slitted pupils, and the outline of a lumbering body took form, visible where it pushed the fog away to leave a negative space. The boy squinted. Something else glistened in the foggy night… Teeth?

He had never seen anything like it, yet it somehow felt familiar. Like the boy knew this thing. It drew him, compelled him toward it. He took a tentative step forward.

Something cold pierced through his chest.

The boy looked down in shock at the tip of a shining red blade. His mind raced as his breath grew choppy from panic, expecting pain and blood. But neither came. Instead, a strange numbness spread through his body. Behind him, he heard the man mutter under his breath, and a strange sigil appeared in the air in front of them, as if painted by an invisible brush. A word—or name?—the boy did not recognize.

“W-what—”

The man ignored him. “My blade sees your true name, azakana.”

The boy felt the sword pulled from his body, and he fell to his knees, gasping. His hands flew to his chest—but there was no puncture or wound. Even more strange, the boy felt lighter, as if some burden had been excised. He looked up, and a wall of teeth met his gaze.

The creature lunged.

A clash of steel rang out. The masked stranger stood before him, blades blocking the creature’s massive, pale fangs. No—it was not the man, but a shadowy spirit in his form. The boy looked behind him where the man himself stood, eyes closed, as if in meditation. A shiver ran down the boy’s spine as the chill in the air now seeped into his bones, and with each motion of the struggling monster and man, he felt his soul lurch and sway, their very existence exerting a palpable force over him. The boy stared in awe.

What is he?

The spirit swordsman pushed the creature back, then burst into swirling tendrils of smoke, washing over the boy as it returned to the body of the stranger. The hideous creature bellowed in rage. As the boy squinted, he could see other parts of the beast through the mist—matted fur, claws, a huge torso—but when he tried to focus on the whole body, parts would fade out from focus.

You dare deny what is already mine? A rasping, impossible voice reverberated in the boy’s mind, cutting through the rattling growls he heard from the monster. The boy belongs to me.

The boy’s stomach dropped. It can speak?

“Nothing in this realm belongs to you,” the man said, unfazed. “Cower, Taan Ko’au!”

Though the words meant nothing to the boy, their utterance made his skin crawl. Yet their effect was far more pronounced on the creature, which emitted an ear-splitting squeal. Twisting, sinuous muscle wrapped around pale teeth and claws. Four scarlet eyes narrowed on its horrific face, glowering atop a lumbering torso of gray hair that shimmered into existence, ephemeral wisps turned to flesh and bone.

“So you are named,” the man with the broken mask said. “So you are revealed.”

A defiant howl shook the ground. The man shifted his stance, crouching low as he brought both swords to bear.

“So you shall perish.”

The beast charged, but the stranger dashed forward so fast that the boy nearly missed him. Swords sliced through the moonlight, one flashing silver, the other leaving a blood-red trail in its wake. Ichor sprayed from the creature as it fell to the ground.

“Slumber, azakana. You are unmoored from flesh.” The man strode forward and plunged both blades deep in the creature. It roared, then wheezed.

The boy stared as its body dissipated into a swirling fog, its monstrous face contorting through a gamut of expressions as it shrank and calcified into an almost human-like appearance, finally assuming the shape of… a mask. His eyes widened in recognition. Though it still possessed the four eyes of the monster in a distorted, exaggerated pose, it looked almost mournful—and eerily close to his own face.

With a shudder, the mask floated upward toward the man’s outstretched hand. With a fluid motion, he sheathed his sword and tied the mask next to the others on his waist. Then he turned to leave.

“What are you?” the boy asked.

“Once, I knew the answer. But now…” The stranger paused. He fixed the boy with a steel gaze.

A question tumbled from the boy’s lips. “Was that thing… me?”

“Only a festered nightmare, feasting on your sorrows. But you aren’t defined by it any longer.”

The boy bit his lip. “It’s my fault. I’m weak—never good enough. My father was right.”

Without a sound, the man turned as though to approach, and the boy recoiled almost by habit. The stranger’s expression softened ever so slightly.

“Those we love say the things that hurt us most.” The man pulled the mask from his waist, examining it. “Despair devours our own voice, wearing the guise of reason—claiming to show us who we are. But it only shows us a warped version of our true selves.”

He turned the mask around and held it aloft for the boy to see. It seemed small, fragile… Toothless.

“Pierce through its falsehoods to find your truth.” The smallest hint of a smile crossed the man’s face. “You’ll be just fine, Andu.”

With that, the stranger turned away, leaving the boy alone in the dark woods.

Beneath the glare of the Shuriman sun, there have always been those blessed with the power of foresight. The only son of aging trinket peddlers, Malzahar did not realize his gift until his parents had already succumbed to a wasting sickness, leaving the young, traumatized boy to fend for himself on the city streets of Amakra. He read fortunes in the gutter, for a coin or scraps of bread.

As his auguries proved more and more accurate, his reputation grew. He used his second sight to predict who a curious cameleer might marry, or where throwing daggers would land in games of chance at the bazaar. Soon, he began to receive patrons dressed not in dirtied sandals, but jeweled slippers.

However, for all this, Malzahar could never see his own destiny. His future was hidden.

Increasingly disillusioned with his success, he noted the common disparities of wealth, and witnessed those unhappy with their lives acting out in spiteful violence against one another. It was apparent to him that people were bound up in a never-ending cycle of pain, often of their own making, and no hopeful prophecy seemed able to break it. Malzahar himself soon felt nothing but a sense of emptiness, finally relinquishing his mortal possessions and leaving Amakra for good.

For years, he roamed the land, from the trackless wastes of the lesser sai to the ruins of old Shurima. By distancing himself from others, he was alone with his thoughts at last. He divined not just how callous people could be, but also how corrupt the world might yet become. Feverish visions began to plague his waking hours, along with otherworldly whispers of war and strife, and endless suffering.

He wandered far, until the sands turned to salt. He could not know that he had arrived in Icathia, a lost city ravaged in the wars of a bygone age. There, gazing into the depths of a ragged abyss, Malzahar opened his unsteady mind, desperate for understanding.

And the Void answered.

That would have been the end of any other tale, and yet somehow Malzahar endured. What lay in the darkness below brushed against the soul of the broken seer, only for an instant, and yet its strange and unknowable energies saturated his mind completely.

The lone figure that eventually strode out of Icathia was no longer just a man, but something greater. Malzahar had seen in the abyss an end to all the suffering he had witnessed in his mortal lifetime. He realized the future he had believed hidden from him all this time was in fact a vision of his true calling: to accelerate the world toward inevitable oblivion. He had to return to the people, and spread word of the holy nothingness that would gladly embrace them, the willing and non-believers alike. He would become the herald of the world’s salvation.

Among the nomads of the deep desert, he found his first disciples. Before their astonished eyes, he used his new Void-given powers to rend the very earth itself, summoning chittering, nightmarish creatures to carry away any who dared to deny him. Within a matter of months, strange rumors began to travel with the merchant caravans; rumors of men and women gladly sacrificing themselves to unseen powers, and of powerful quakes opening up the bedrock of Shurima in new fault lines hundreds of miles long.

In the years since, Malzahar’s legend has spread even to the northern ports. As followers of “the Prophet” grow in number, nearby settlers are said to experience malefic visions grasping at their hearts, and fear gives rise to superstition—even the hardy villagers of the far wastes now make offerings of livestock to appease the voidling creatures below.

Little do they know, this only helps Malzahar in shepherding the coming of the end.

Within Ionia’s magical forests dwells a tribe of vastaya known as the Shimon. A cautious people, they see life as an evolutionary climb to wisdom—upon death, they believe they become stones, returning to the soil to begin the climb of life anew.

Impulsive, clever, and easily bored, young Kong never had much in common with other Shimon. For countless years, they endured his pranks… until the day he arrived in a panic, insisting that a great elemental dragon was coming to burn their woodland home.

But Kong only chuckled as his tribe began to flee. Realizing he had fooled them, and with their patience finally at an end, the Shimon named him outcast. Kong, for his part, was ambivalent. He would seek out people with a better sense of humor.

Living as something of a charlatan, he proclaimed himself “the Monkey King” and often challenged mortals to duels, or games of cunning. He claimed to be undefeated—until he crossed a Noxian headsman in the hinterlands of Zhyun. The Noxian and his comrades chased the Monkey King deep into the wilderness, where he hid, only emerging again after the invaders left the shores of the First Lands for good.

And in time, Kong saw the brutality Noxus had inflicted upon his homeland.

He set out to meet the fabled combat-masters of Wuju, but found that their village had been annihilated. The only living soul was a man sitting quietly among the ruins, so Kong challenged him to a good-natured fight. In a single motion, the man stood, knocked the vastaya down, then resumed his meditation.

For weeks, Kong returned again and again, determined to defeat this dour man—but the Monkey King was always outmaneuvered, no matter if he approached from behind, above, or below. The warrior could sense whenever Kong was about to attack, even when the vastaya tried to distract him with hilarious jokes, and he somehow knew not to drink his tea when Kong laced it with stupefying spirits.

Eventually, the Monkey King knelt before the man and begged to learn his ways. Kong wanted to be the greatest warrior, but he also sought something more. He just couldn’t quite put it into words.

The man saw Kong’s humility, and knew the vastaya was ready. He introduced himself as Yi, the last master of Wuju, and agreed to train Kong in its virtues of discipline and patience. He could help channel Kong’s recklessness and impulsiveness into a lethally swift and surprising fighting style.

The two grew to respect each other, yet Yi refused to speak much of his past, or why he would not leave the ruined village. Kong made a proposition. The two would engage in a friendly sparring bout. If Kong won, Yi had to reveal why he’d stopped fighting. If Yi prevailed, Kong wouldn’t speak for four full seasons.

Yi eagerly accepted.

When Kong had first arrived at Wuju, he crept through a field of smokepoppies, and he lured his master back there now. Each time Yi attacked, the agitated flowers would burst around him—until finally he struck out through the growing haze at what he believed was Kong, but instead hit a straw decoy. Kong seized his opportunity, and grappled Yi to the ground.

Finally, Yi told Kong the truth. He and his fellow disciples had gone to defend Ionia during the war, bringing the wrath of Noxus down upon Wuju in turn. He blamed himself for the death of every last villager, and watched over the ruins as penance.

This, Kong realized, was what he sought. Although his tribe had cast him out, he wanted to defend the Shimon, who had sheltered him for so long, and set him on the path to wisdom and enlightenment. Proud of his student, Yi also felt a renewed sense of purpose—he granted Kong an enchanted staff, crafted by the legendary weaponsmith Doran, and a new honorific, reserved only for the brightest students of Wuju.

From that day forward, he was known as Wukong.

Though the war is long over, Noxus’ influence continues to defile Ionia. Roads have been carved through the ancient forests, self-styled “tax collectors” hound peaceful folk who have nothing left to give, and the great festivals of renewal have been slowly declining, year after year.

But the great warriors Wukong and Master Yi are ready. Side by side, they roam the First Lands, resolved to combat injustice and hatred wherever they find it.