Singed remained still, his scarred face an unreadable mask. The ghost of his greatest failure stood before him.
"Your… artistic schizophrenia?" Singed finally said, his voice a harsh whisper, deciding to play along with this madness. "A peculiar self-diagnosis. Describe it."
"Of course! That's why I'm here," Kaen said cheerfully, hopping up and sitting with the same carefree ease he would have used on Jinx's couch—this time on the cold, metal examination table of the laboratory. He crossed his legs, his dirty preppy clothes a ridiculous contrast to the sterile lab.
"Ah, yes, my ailments," Kaen said, adopting a thoughtful pose, one hand on his chin. "Mainly, auditory hallucinations. I hear children's voices, talking about someone called Orianna. Clearly, my artistic subconscious is channeling Zaun's lost innocence. Also, a massive artistic ego, but I believe that's a personality trait, not a symptom."
The mention of his daughter's name was like an icy knife through Singed's heart. His face, if possible, hardened even more.
"You should be dead," Singed said, his good eye narrowing, burning with analytical intensity. "Complete cessation of vital functions. Rigor mortis onset. I examined you myself."
"Ah, about that," Kaen said, abandoning his seat on the table and beginning to stroll around the lab with feigned casualness, hands stuffed in the pockets of his grimy blue jacket. "It seems reports of my death were greatly exaggerated. Or perhaps I was just taking a very deep nap. The process of artistic rebirth is exhausting." He stopped in front of a complex alembic dripping thick black liquid. "What's this? Extra strong coffee?"
Ignoring his absurd question, Singed slowly approached. His eyes—one sharp and piercing, the other seared with scar tissue—scrutinized him. "You've changed," he stated.
"It's what is known as character development," Kaen replied in his monotone. "I've adopted a new life philosophy based on aesthetic chaos and the acquisition of electric bass guitars. I suppose that's a side effect of your creation process."
"Your memory," Singed whispered inquisitively. "What do you recall?"
"Nothing at all, just my artistic schizophrenia," Kaen said. "Maybe it's part of the 'ideal prototype package,' or maybe you just added it in for style points?"
Singed studied him, processing. The boy didn't remember his sacrifice. He didn't remember Orianna.
Memory loss. Total post-mortem amnesia. Singed considered it. Spontaneous reanimation was theoretically possible, given the extreme amounts of Shimmer and regenerative catalysts the body had been subjected to. Perhaps the neural matrix had purged his memory, leaving only fragments of personality and basic knowledge.
And this… new eccentric personality must be a byproduct, a random construct of a broken mind.
Singed turned away, his back to him, watching Rio float in his tank.
"Are you not interested in seeking answers about your past?" Singed asked, a glimmer of scientific curiosity in his gaze.
Kaen considered it.
"Mmm…" With one hand on his chin he finally said, "I don't think it's necessary. I'm sure I'll remember as long as I keep my artistic inspirations."
"Possibly," Singed conceded. "Your brain is rebuilding, accessing fragments of its former state. Over time, they could intensify. Or they could fade."
Before Kaen could ask more, Singed approached again, this time holding a small syringe. "Give me your arm."
Kaen extended his arm without hesitation. "Is this a tetanus shot? This place looks like a paradise for bacteria."
Singed ignored the sarcasm. He grasped the arm, his touch cold and clinical. The needle slid into his vein. Kaen didn't even flinch. Singed drew a sample of blood. It wasn't red. It was a deep, dark purple, almost black, with faintly glowing veins running through it.
He dropped a single bead of Kaen's blood into a dish containing a chemical reagent. The mixture didn't bubble. Instead, it solidified, forming delicate purple crystals. "Extraordinary," he whispered. "Spontaneous crystallization… adaptability has evolved. Death was not a failure. It was a metamorphosis."
He turned toward Kaen, his emotionless eyes shining with terrifying scientific intensity. "Your body is no longer simply resilient. It reconstructs itself at the molecular level. You have transcended biology."
"Sounds fancy," Kaen said. "Does it come with a user manual?"
At that moment, as Singed prepared another instrument, Kaen felt something. A strange sensation rippled through him. It was a resonance, a deep hum in his bones that seemed to pull him, calling from far away. His violet eyes drifted instinctively, staring through the cavern wall, upward, toward Piltover. The sensation was faint, but unmistakable. His body… craved that source.
"What is it?" Singed asked, noticing his distraction.
"Nothing," Kaen said, shaking his head and refocusing. "Just a cramp. Probably from sleeping on a couch with the ergonomics of a bear trap."
Singed didn't believe him, but filed it away for later. He had more immediate experiments to perform.
"Show me your hands," Singed ordered.
Amused, Kaen extended his hands, palms up. Singed approached and, with a clinical detachment, grasped Kaen's wrist. His fingers—calloused, chemical-stained—pressed against the skin, feeling the steady, unshaken pulse. Then, without warning, he pulled a sharp scalpel from his coat.
Before Kaen could react, Singed made a quick, deep cut across his forearm.
"Hey!" Kaen exclaimed, his monotone voice laced with a hint of genuine annoyance. "I didn't sign any consent form for stabbing."
"Not necessary," Singed replied.
Kaen hissed, not from pain but from the sheer audacity of this "doctor." He stared at the cut, expecting a torrent of blood. But blood barely welled up. Instead, the wound's edges began to glow faintly purple. The tissue writhed, knitting itself back together before his eyes. In less than ten seconds, the wound had sealed, leaving only a faint pink line that faded until it vanished entirely.
Kaen looked at his arm, now perfectly intact. "Huh," he said, monotone tinged with genuine awe. "That's going to save me a fortune in band-aids."
Singed released his arm, his gaze glowing with renewed fascination. He turned to fetch something else to test the regeneration.
He quickly returned with a syringe containing a suspicious black liquid.
"Eeeh, another shot?" Kaen complained.
"I won't inject it," Singed said with nearly exhausted patience. "Just a drop. On the skin."
Kaen's common sense, pea-sized though it was, screamed at him to run. But his gremlin curiosity and strange trust in this body's durability won out. He extended his hand with a dramatic sigh. "If my hand melts, the bill for the solid-gold prosthetic goes in your name."
With surgical precision, Singed dropped a single black bead onto the back of Kaen's hand.
The droplet hissed. Acrid smoke rose. Kaen's skin blackened, dissolving as though eaten away by acid.
"Ah! It burns! My precious model hand!" Kaen exclaimed, his monotone voice at odds with his comically pained grimace.
But then, just as with his arm, as the necrotic agent began to burrow deeper, the flesh around it began to glow faintly purple. The charred tissue was expelled, replaced with fresh, pale skin knitting itself at visible speed. In less than ten seconds, the wound was gone, not even a scar remaining.
Silence.
Kaen flexed his fingers, staring at his hand.
Singed stared, wide-eyed. "Reactive adaptability," he whispered, his voice full of near-religious awe. "The body doesn't just regenerate. It learns. It identified the threat and rewrote local cellular structure to become immune to it. If I applied another drop, it would likely do nothing."
He gestured toward the cold examination table at the center of the room. Kaen lay back on it like a patient at a regular doctor's office, crossing his hands over his chest like a mummy. "Proceed, doctor."
"Your pulse is stable," Singed murmured, placing a device over Kaen's chest. "Too stable for someone who has suffered a total cessation of vital functions." He held Kaen's blood sample under a gas lamp. "The Shimmer composition has fused into your cellular structure. It is no longer an additive. It is… part of you."
"Does that mean I glow in the dark?" Kaen asked. "That'd be awesome for my concerts."
"Your body," Singed said, voice tinged with reverent awe (ignoring, once again, his absurd question). "It is a perfect canvas. The extreme modifications that once pushed it to the brink… now they're mere starting points." He picked up a small vial containing a refined, highly concentrated Shimmer, so potent it seemed to vibrate. "Your resilience… let's see how far it goes now."
Before Kaen could deliver a sarcastic quip, Singed opened his mouth and dropped a single bead onto his tongue.
The effect was instant. It was as if lightning struck every cell in his body. Kaen felt searing heat erupt from his core, the familiar hum of Shimmer in his veins magnified a thousandfold. His muscles tightened, his violet eyes blazing with brilliant light.
"I feel… ticklish," Kaen said, his monotone voice an anchor in the storm raging inside him.
Singed watched, fascinated. "No seizures. No cellular degradation. Your body is… assimilating it."
The next hour was the strangest medical session in history. Singed, in a frenzy of discovery, subjected him to various tests. He had him inhale a gas that should have rendered him unconscious; Kaen just felt a bit dizzy and commented, "The world looks brighter, like at a music festival." He exposed him to a sonic frequency that should have burst his eardrums; Kaen described it as "an annoying buzz, like a mosquito with delusions of grandeur."
Every time, the reaction was the same. A brief flicker of discomfort, a faint purple glow beneath the skin, and then—adaptation. Immunity.
-------
"How would you describe your current physical state?" Singed asked as he scribbled notes of their tests and checks.
"I'm stronger than a dwarf titan, faster than one of Jinx's errands, and ridiculously handsome," Kaen listed. "I also have these very fashionable fangs." He flashed them in an empty smile. "And my reflexes are excellent for dodging bills and responsibilities."
"That's the surface," Singed said, scientific excitement overtaking caution. "The primary effects. But true adaptability…" He walked to a cage where a cat-sized rat hissed aggressively, its fur bristling, eyes glowing with Shimmer. "Your body was designed to evolve under stress. To develop biological countermeasures."
He opened the cage. The mutated rat lunged straight for Kaen.
Kaen didn't move. Just as the creature leapt for his throat, his hand shot out, catching it mid-air. His fingers closed around it with inhuman speed. But something else happened. Small, nearly invisible violet veins briefly flared across the back of his hand just before impact, then vanished. An instant adaptation to protect against the creature's teeth.
Kaen stared at his hand, then at the writhing beast. He released it. The rat tried to flee into a dark corner, but Singed was faster. He reached out, spraying a fine powder from a vial. The rat inhaled it, convulsed, and collapsed, its body twisting and changing. Within seconds, its fur hardened into sharp, blade-like scales.
"A dermal petrifying agent," Singed explained with clinical calm. "Temporary, of course."
Kaen glanced at the rat turned into a spiny statue. "Sure. 'Temporary.'"
"Your cells adapt and regenerate," Singed continued, his gaze growing more intense. "But can they replicate external properties?" He approached Kaen with a needle containing a sample of the rat's altered blood. "Your body is a blank canvas. Now let's see what it can learn to paint."
"I vehemently oppose this artistic metaphor," Kaen said, but before he could complain further, Singed stabbed the needle into his shoulder.
The sensation was strange. Cold spreading through his arm, followed by intense tingling. He looked at his skin. With a mix of horror and fascination, he saw its surface harden. Not into stone—but into a metallic sheen, almost like chrome. He raised his arm, rapped his knuckles against the exam table. The sound was not flesh, but metal against metal.
"Property assimilation," Singed whispered, ecstatic. "You've replicated the hardness, but adapted it. You've turned a petrifying agent into temporary biological armor."
The effect lasted only a minute before his skin returned to normal, smooth and pale. He sat up, rubbing his arm.
"So," Kaen said slowly, staring at Singed, "you've turned me into some kind of… stylish adaptable flesh golem?"
"I've turned you into the next step," Singed corrected, his voice filled with almost religious conviction. "The mutation must survive. And you, my reborn prototype, are the living proof of it."
He approached a table full of vials, his mind already racing toward the next experiment. "The Fangshade toxin. Lethal in seconds. But if my theory is correct…"
"Whoa, whoa," Kaen said, raising a hand. "I appreciate your enthusiasm for science, but I'm not interested in becoming your personal lab rat again. I've had enough of that in my… previous life?" He gestured at the capsule where Rio floated. "Besides, I don't want to end up like your giant salamander buddy."
Singed stared at him, frustration warring with scientific obsession. This boy was the culmination of his work, yet he refused to cooperate.
Kaen slid off the metal table.
He walked toward Rio's tank, violet eyes fixed on the floating creature. He saw the healing scars, the slow beat of its mutated heart. He saw a reflection.
"So this body," Kaen said, his voice more serious than usual. "It can evolve?"
"It can transcend," Singed corrected, stepping up beside him. Both stared at the creature. "Flesh is weak. It breaks. It sickens. It rots. But mutation is survival. It is the next step."
Kaen looked at his hand, flexing his fingers. He felt the power humming beneath his skin.
He turned toward Singed, a slow smile spreading across his face, a flash of fangs.
"Well, 'father,'" he said, his tone turning playful again. "Thanks for the tech talk. It's been… vaguely informative." He patted Rio's tank. "Take good care of my tadpole brother. I'll be back to complain if I find more glitches."
With that, he turned and began walking toward the exit.
"Wait," Singed said.
Kaen stopped at the lab's entrance but didn't turn back.
"You are valuable," Singed said, like a scientist admiring his most complex creation. "Your purpose. That body was made for a reason. To save my daughter."
Kaen laughed, the sound echoing through the cavern. His back was to Singed. He didn't feel the guilt or burden of the boy who had made such a promise. But as thanks for the new life the original Kaen had given him, maybe he'd find a way to help the 'poor father' after all.
"I know," Kaen replied. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to my roommate. She's probably already blown something up by accident and needs my artistic supervision."
With one last look at the laboratory, he left the cave and returned to Zaun's chaotic, vibrant darkness. The meeting was over.