The echo of Kaen's last words hung in the heavy silence of the lab. He lay there in a disordered heap across the broken worktable, the clatter of falling tools still ringing in his ears. The silence that followed was thick, dense—broken only by the faint hum now emanating from Kaen himself.
Jinx was the first to react. The shock gave way to a surge of protective panic. She crawled closer to him, pushing twisted pieces of metal out of the way.
"Bad? What do you mean bad?" she asked, her voice a sharp whisper. "Does it hurt? Talk to me, you idiot!"
Her instinct was to touch him, check him, make sure all the parts were still in place. A trembling hand reached out, brushing through his hair.
"Your… your hair…" she whispered, awestruck. Her eyes locked on his—swirling iridescence of purple, blue, and pink. "…and your eyes… What did that thing do to you?"
Kaen blinked, the world slowly coming back into focus. No pain. He felt… different. The air around him vibrated, textures of wood and metal sharper, colors deeper. Through his new eyes, reality carried an overlay, as though he were seeing the source code of the universe. Faint, transparent runic symbols floated in the lab's air. He saw the energy flow diagram inside a gas lamp, the stress fractures running through a ceiling beam.
He closed his eyes, opened them again. Still there.
"I think I just got a software update," he murmured, his voice still rough.
He tried to stand, but his legs felt strange, as if he had to relearn how to use them. Leaning on the workbench for support, a crackling purple imprint of energy flared beneath his palm before fading. Screwdrivers and wrenches nearby floated half an inch in the air, held by some invisible magnetic field, before clattering back down.
Jinx stared, wide-eyed. "Did you just do that?!"
"Apparently," Kaen replied, studying his own hand with detached curiosity.
That was when another voice broke the silence. Weak, yet firm, filled with desperate disbelief.
"Impossible."
They both turned. Viktor had pulled himself to his feet, leaning against a chalkboard covered in equations. His mutated leg hummed faintly, its light flickering in sympathy with the energy radiating off Kaen. His face wasn't angry—it was the astonishment of a scientist watching his wildest theories manifest in the most monstrous way.
He limped closer, amber eyes locked on Kaen, ignoring Jinx. "Organic tissue shouldn't be able to stabilize that level of arcane flux. Not without a runic frame. You should have disintegrated!" His gaze swept over Kaen. "My body can barely handle a fraction of it. What are you? How can you contain it?"
Kaen straightened, his new legs finally obeying him. He looked at the gaunt scientist. "I'm a work of art in constant evolution. And it seems I've just absorbed your magnum opus. My condolences."
The mention of his life's work snapped Viktor out of his scientific daze. Panic flooded his face. "The Hexcore! Where is it? What have you done with it?"
"The Hexcore?" Kaen put a hand on his chest. The hum was stronger there, a steady, powerful heartbeat beneath his skin. "I think we've… fused. It's my new internal roommate."
Realization—and horror—struck Viktor. "No! It's mine! My work! My life!" His voice cracked, desperation sharpening it. "I need it… to cure!"
Seeing Viktor's anguish, Jinx's newfound loyalty flared hot. She stepped between Viktor and Kaen, Zapper appearing in her hand like a magic trick.
"You're too late, Cripple!" she spat, instinctively protective. "We stole it! And now it's part of him! So it's ours!"
Kaen raised a hand, mediator-like. "Calm down. No need to argue over property rights." He gave Jinx a look of gratitude, then Viktor one of mock sympathy. "Technically, it belongs to me now, since it's, well, inside me." He paused, as if weighing it. "Consider it an unsolicited donation to the 'Kaen Vexis Foundation for Sonic Arts and Aesthetic Mutation.' A tax receipt will be issued in due time."
Viktor gaped, words failing against such absurdity. He was about to protest, to beg, when Kaen froze.
His head snapped toward the door, new eyes focusing on something only he could see.
The city's background hum, which he now perceived as a vast lattice of energies, had shifted. Points of light. Eight, no—nine. Moving fast. Moving in formation.
"Company," Kaen said, his tone stripped of all amusement. "They're coming fast. And they don't look like the autograph-seeking type."
A second later, as if to confirm him, a distant but unmistakable intrusion alarm wailed across the Academy, announcing their discovery.
"Shit!" Jinx shouted, alleyway instincts kicking in. She darted for the door, searching for an exit. "That beam of light gave us away! We've gotta go!"
Panic made sense. But Kaen remained eerily calm. The Hexcore's sensory overload had settled into icy clarity. He could feel the Enforcers closing in, their paths drawn like glowing lines across a map in his mind.
"Alright," he said, taking command. "Slight change of plans. Debate over ownership postponed due to imminent incarceration."
He turned to Jinx, voice sharp. "Agent Jinx, acquisition phase is over. We move to extraction phase. Pack the essentials." He nodded toward Viktor's research notes. "The user manual for my new roommate. Could come in handy."
His gaze slid back to Viktor, who stood frozen, torn between protecting his work and saving himself.
"We have to go!" Jinx shouted, already cramming papers into her bag.
Viktor's mind reeled with an impossible dilemma. Let his creation, now fused with this bizarre Zaunite, vanish with criminals—or risk the Enforcers seizing it here, confiscating everything, and likely locking him away for unauthorized Shimmer experiments? Piltover and Zaun were already a powder keg. This… this could be the match.
He saw the desperation in Jinx's eyes, the eerie calm in Kaen's. Protect the experiment. Continue the work. That was all that mattered. He made a radical choice.
"Not the door," he rasped. "They're covering all main exits." He hobbled to a patch of floor identical to the rest. "There's a hatch. Old ventilation system. Leads to the lower levels."
Kaen arched a brow. "You're helping us?"
"I'm not helping you," Viktor snapped, eyes fixed on Kaen's chest. "I'm protecting my work. If the Enforcers take you, I'll never see it again." He yanked a hidden ring, lifting a square of flooring to reveal a dark, dusty opening. "Go. I'll cover you. I'll say you attacked me and fled. I'll create a distraction."
Kaen and Jinx shared a glance. Opportunity.
Jinx jumped first, vanishing into the black. Kaen followed, but not before turning back to Viktor one last time.
The scientist's eyes met his—not as a thief, but as a custodian. "Meet me," Viktor whispered urgently. "Tomorrow. Once this calms down. In Zaun. I need… to understand."
Kaen nodded, a silent promise between creator and accidental creation.
Then he dropped into the darkness, the hatch sealing above him, leaving Viktor alone in his chaotic lab, bracing for the Enforcers' arrival.
...
The hatch closed over them, plunging them into absolute darkness and the smell of dust and cold metal. They landed with a dull thud in a ventilation duct, big enough to crawl through but not tall enough to stand upright. The only sound was the distant echo of the Academy's alarm and their own breathing.
"Well," Jinx's voice came from the dark, her tone a mix of adrenaline and annoyance. "That was unexpectedly cooperative of the cripple. You think he'll really cover for us?"
"He had no choice," Kaen's voice answered, strangely calm. "Protecting his work is his only priority. And right now, his work is me."
"Fine," Jinx muttered. "Now, which way?"
Kaen didn't answer immediately. He focused. He could feel the flow of energy through the walls. And he could sense the points of light of the Enforcers moving above them, searching. The fusion with the Hexcore wasn't like the constant buzz of Shimmer. It was… different. He could feel the power, a nearly infinite reservoir of energy pulsing in his chest. His perception of the world had changed irreversibly.
"This way," he said, pointing to a tunnel on the left.
They began to move, Jinx in front with Zapper in her hand, and Kaen behind. The escape wasn't a frantic sprint but a tense navigation. Kaen guided her, telling Jinx to stop when he felt a patrol passing above them, or to turn right to avoid a shaft that led into a security chamber.
"How are you doing that?" Jinx whispered after he stopped them just before the sound of heavy boots echoed directly overhead.
"I can sense it," Kaen said. "The airflow is stronger that way. Means it leads to a larger space, probably a main exit."
Jinx glanced over her shoulder at him, her eyes narrowing at those strange eyes faintly glowing in the dark. "You've gotten weird. Even by your standards." But she turned right anyway, trusting his bizarre new intuition.
The sound of the alarm above had faded, replaced by the distant roar of Piltover's great machinery.
"Okay, now comes the fun part," Jinx said, stopping in front of a large vent grille bolted tight. "It's shut. Guess I'll have to—"
"Let me try," Kaen cut in.
"What, you gonna politely ask it to open?"
"Something like that," he replied.
He stepped up to the grille. He extended a hand but didn't touch it. Just held it a few inches away from the metal. He closed his eyes. Focused on that new reservoir of power in his chest, on the sensation of the runes he now saw layered over reality. He focused on the bolts, on the grooves in the metal.
And pulled. Not with his muscles, but with his will.
A groan of tortured metal echoed in the tunnel. The thick iron bolts began to turn slowly, unscrewing themselves. Jinx stared, her mouth slightly open, as all four bolts spun loose and clattered to the floor. The heavy grille tilted forward and crashed down with a loud bang.
Kaen opened his eyes, a bead of sweat on his temple.
"You… you just did telekinesis," Jinx whispered, awestruck.
"It was more of a persuasive magnetic suggestion," he replied, though he sounded just as impressed as she was.
They crawled out into a vast cavern full of man-sized pipes and the suffocating heat of the city's boilers. It was a labyrinth of steam and metal. And most importantly, it was empty.
"What else can you do?" Jinx asked, still staring at him with a flicker of awe.
"I'm about to find out," Kaen said. His new vision showed him the flows of energy in the pipes, the weak points in the catwalks above. He could see the safest path through the maze as if it were a glowing map. "Follow me."
He guided them through the boiler hall with a confidence and efficiency that left Jinx speechless. He leapt gaps with perfect precision, ran across narrow pipes without hesitation, and at one point, when a steam valve burst, he simply raised a hand and an invisible barrier of violet energy deflected the scalding jet, shielding them both.
Jinx, who usually led with her innate streetwise instincts, found herself following this new and improved Kaen, feeling a strange mix of excitement and a prickle of unease. Same idiot, but now an idiot with magic superpowers.
For now. They stopped in the dark, quiet tunnel to rest for a moment.
"Okay," Jinx said, leaning against a wall. "We need to talk about… all that." She gestured vaguely at him. "The glowing, the telekinesis, the steam shield… what the hell happened to you?"
Kaen looked at his hands. The sensation of power was intoxicating. He touched his chest. "I think it turned me into some kind of… living Hextech amplifier."
To prove it, he focused. Extended his palm. "I need a favor, Agent Jinx."
"Now you want favors?"
"Lend me the Hextech gem," he said.
Jinx hesitated a moment, then pulled the stolen gem from her pocket. Its blue light pulsed softly. She placed it in his outstretched hand.
"Be careful with it," she warned. "If you scratch it, I'll use you as target practice."
Kaen didn't respond. He just took the gem. The instant it touched his skin, it reacted. The blue light intensified, and thin tendrils of violet energy, matching his own, crackled over its surface.
"Whoaa," Jinx whispered, impressed.
"Watch," Kaen said.
He closed his eyes. Focused, not on seeing, but on feeling. He felt the Hexcore's energy inside him, the constant hum, and extended it outward into the gem in his hand. He linked it to his own internal circuit.
Slowly, Kaen raised his hand and the gem floated an inch above his palm, spinning slowly, the blue and violet light painting swirling patterns on the tunnel walls. Tiny, faint runic symbols, identical to the ones in his new vision, flickered in the air around the floating gem like arcane fireflies.
Jinx gaped. She stepped closer, wide-eyed, studying the phenomenon. "How… how are you doing that?"
"I don't know," Kaen admitted, his voice a whisper of concentration. "It's… intuitive. Like I've always known how." He could feel the energy flowing from the core in his chest, through his arm, into the gem, controlling it, speaking to it in a language without words.
The floating gem now glowed bright enough to fully light the tunnel, revealing a network of ducts branching in multiple directions.
"This power," Kaen whispered. "Now… I can hear it. I can feel it." He looked at Jinx, his new iridescent eyes reflecting the glow of the runes. "I think we can do more than just make weapons with this."
Jinx looked at him—and at the magic hovering between them. The night had started with a plan to sneak into Piltover and ended with her partner turning into a Hextech god-in-training. And despite the danger, despite the unknown, she couldn't help but smile.
"Alright, genius," Jinx said, shaking off her awe. "You can do magic tricks. Can you tell us how to get out of here?"
Kaen didn't respond right away. He closed his eyes again, concentrating. The runic vision overlaying his reality flared brighter. He could sense the path of least resistance, the route leading down into the maintenance levels, toward the river.
"This way," he said, opening his eyes. He pointed to a dark, downward-sloping duct to the left, leading toward the Academy district's edge. The floating gem drifted ahead of him like a personal drone, lighting the way.
They moved forward, Kaen in the lead, the gem acting as their arcane lantern. Their escape wasn't a flight—it was an experiment. At every obstacle, he tested his new limits.
Whenever they felt lost, Kaen would stop, close his eyes, and use his strange perception to find the path away from the Enforcer patrols he sensed far above them.
Jinx followed close, her awe giving way to feverish excitement.
"So," she said, as they squeezed through a narrow section, "what else can you do? Shoot laser beams from your eyes? Turn metal into candy?"
"I don't know," Kaen said. "I'm still reading the user manual. And it seems to be written in a nightmare cosmic language." The image of the Watchers flickered in his mind, sending a shiver down his spine.
Finally, after what felt like an hour, they reached the end. One last grate, rusted from the damp. Beyond, they could hear the gentle lapping of water. Jinx popped it open with one of her silent charges, and they emerged onto a narrow stone ledge.
They were in Piltover's lower canals, level with the river, far from the Academy district. This was a forgotten section of the city, an area of old loading docks and abandoned warehouses lining the Pilt River. The air was damp and smelled of stagnant water and wet stone. The fog was thick, but through it, they could see the lights of Zaun on the far bank of the wide, dark river.
They were out of the lab, but now trapped in Piltover—on the wrong shore, without a boat, with the full force of the Enforcers likely hunting for them.
Kaen's floating gem returned to his hand and he gave it back to Jinx, who took it like a sacred relic. The arcane glow faded, plunging them once again into the gloom of distant gas lamps.
They stood there a moment, the sound of water licking at the stone beneath their feet. The distant wail of sirens reminded them just how close they'd come to being caught.
Jinx looked at Kaen, at those strange new eyes glowing faintly in the dim light.
"This," she said, breaking the silence, a slow, exhilarated grin spreading across her face despite their situation, "just got a whole lot more fun."
Her words hung in the damp, foggy air, a spark of euphoria in the middle of their grim reality. The adrenaline of escape began to fade, replaced by the cold hard fact of their problem. The wide, dark Pilt River stretched before them—an unpassable barrier.
"'Fun' isn't the word I'd use," Kaen said, his monotone voice back to its usual drawl. He stared at the water with a look of disinterest, but his mind, now buzzing with Hexcore power, processed variables at incredible speed. "I'd go with 'problematic.' We're on the wrong side of the map, no transport, and a high probability of bored Enforcer patrols wandering into these picturesque abandoned docks."
Jinx peered over the stone edge, staring at the black, oily water. "We could look for another boat. Or steal one."
"A viable option," Kaen conceded. "And it would require finding a boat first. Which, in this desolate industrial wasteland at five in the morning, seems unlikely."
They stood in silence for a moment, the problem sinking in. Jinx started rummaging through her belt, probably looking for something she could blow up in a way that would magically catapult them across. Kaen, however, stood still, his iridescent eyes fixed on Zaun's far shore.
He closed his eyes. The world vanished, replaced by his new perception. He felt the flow of energy around him. He felt the mass of water, the pull of gravity, the push of air. And he felt the power within him.
An idea, born not of logic but of pure, absolute arcane instinct, took shape in his mind. It was absurd. And therefore perfect.
He opened his eyes. Turned to Jinx, who was now tying grenades to a plank of wood, apparently building an improvised rocket raft.
"I have a plan," he said.
"Unless it involves you turning into a giant bird, I don't think it'll work," she shot back without looking up.
Without a word, Kaen walked over. Before Jinx could ask what he was doing, he crouched down and, with the same smoothness as before, scooped her up again bridal-style.
"Hey!" she yelped, startled, dropping her half-finished bomb-raft. "What the hell are you doing!? We already did the whole jumping thing!"
"This is different," he said, his voice calm and certain. "Consider this phase two of transportation."
He held her firmly and walked to the edge of the stone ledge. Beneath them, the black water lapped gently.
Panic finally hit Jinx. The total confidence she'd felt during the earlier jump was replaced by very real alarm. "Kaen, wait! Wait, wait, wait!" She squirmed in his arms. "You can't jump this! We'll drown! And this water will probably melt your skin off!"
He didn't stop. With a calm that was downright terrifying, he stepped off the stone ledge.
Jinx squeezed her eyes shut, bracing for the icy impact of contaminated water. A strangled scream caught in her throat.
But the impact never came.
There was no drop. No splash. Only a smooth, steady sensation of forward movement.
Slowly, heart pounding in her chest, Jinx cracked one eye open. Then the other.
She gasped.
They were walking. Or rather, Kaen was. He was walking on air, just a few inches above the water's surface. Each step he took was firm, solid, as if he were treading on an invisible floor. Small ripples of violet energy shimmered in the water beneath his boots with every step, and faint runic symbols glowed for a fraction of a second in the air where his foot landed.
Jinx looked down. Saw her own reflection, and his, on the dark, rippling river surface. They were, for all intents and purposes, walking on water.
She was utterly stunned. Her struggling ceased. She went still in his arms, her mind grappling with the impossible physics of what was happening. He was… walking. As if he created a momentary bridge of pure force beneath his feet with each step.
"How…?" she whispered, her voice full of awe that overshadowed any fear.
Kaen looked at her, his face expressionless under the broken moonlight, but his iridescent eyes glowed with quiet power.
He simply gave her a soft smile.
They continued their surreal walk across the Pilt River, two solitary figures moving through the mist like specters. The silence was broken only by the gentle sound of Kaen's steps on nothingness. Jinx, for the first time, was completely silent, simply watching, feeling utterly safe in the arms of someone who was far more than she had ever imagined. Everything else faded, leaving only pure, unfiltered wonder.
She was witnessing magic.
And she nestled closer in Kaen's arms.