The sky over the Freljord had turned wrong.
Ashe stood on the ridge with her bow in hand, watching the distant horizon where purple rain fell over the snowfields. From so far away, it should have looked no more threatening than a storm. The Freljord had storms enough. Whiteouts could swallow entire hunting parties. Blizzards could bury halls, herds, and memory itself. The north was never kind.
But this was not weather.
Even from the evacuation point, Ashe could feel it pressing against her skin.
The wind carried no snow. It carried a damp, sour smell that did not belong in the Freljord, a rot too warm and too wet for a land of ice. The people behind her had noticed it too. Hunters, elders, children, Avarosans and Winter's Claw warriors alike, they stood in uneasy clusters around sleds and pack animals, whispering prayers to the old spirits or tightening grips on spears that would mean nothing against what raged in the distance.
Ashe had spent the last hours doing what she could.
That was the only thought that kept her steady.
Do what can be done.
She had sent riders to the outlying shelters first, then to the fishing camps, then to the hidden storehouses where stubborn families sometimes stayed when they refused to follow tribal orders. She had ordered the old and young moved southward, then sent Iceborn to carry those who could not walk. She had shouted herself hoarse until even the proudest warriors stopped arguing and started moving.
There had been no time for dignity.
Only survival.
And now, with the nearest settlements emptied as best as she could manage, Ashe could do nothing but watch.
That was the worst part.
She could command an evacuation. She could aim an arrow through a charging raider's eye at impossible distance. She could hold a tribe together with words, oaths, and the weight of Avarosa's dream.
But against that battlefield, she was helpless.
Beside her, Sejuani sat astride Bristle, her flail resting across one shoulder. The boar stamped once, snorting mist, but even he seemed unwilling to charge toward the far-off disaster. Sejuani's face was set in a hard scowl, but Ashe had known her long enough to read the stiffness beneath it.
The Winter's Claw did not fear storms.
Sejuani did not fear pain.
But she understood scale.
And the battle unfolding beyond the purple rain was power far above them.
"Still nothing?" Sejuani asked.
Her voice was rough, impatient, angry at the very existence of waiting.
Ashe shook her head. "Nothing we can understand."
In the distance, light flashed, white, blue, violet, then something soft and pink that spread like a flower across the horizon before vanishing. A moment later, the ground beneath them trembled.
Some of the evacuees cried out.
Ashe did not turn around. If she looked back and saw fear in their eyes, she might hesitate. And right now, she could not afford to be only a woman. She had to be warmother.
Sejuani clicked her tongue. "This is ridiculous."
Ashe glanced at her.
Sejuani's expression twisted further. "Do not look at me like that. I know we cannot help. That is what makes it ridiculous."
For once, Ashe did not argue.
She felt it too.
When enemies came with blades, arrows, hunger, or pride, the path was clear. You fought, bargained, retreated, endured. The Freljord had survived for generations because its people knew how to face the cruel things of the world.
But this?
This was not an enemy meant for tribes.
This was a calamity gods had failed to end.
A cold streak of light crossed the sky.
Then, suddenly, the air before them split.
Ashe's bow was raised before thought completed. Sejuani's flail snapped into her hand, and Bristle lowered his tusks with a growl that shook frost from his bristles.
Lissandra stepped out of the fracture in space.
She was different.
Not broken.
Never broken.
But agitated.
Her breathing was too sharp. Her head turned too quickly toward the distant battlefield. Frost gathered and cracked beneath her feet in uneven pulses rather than smooth sheets. Her pale face was calm, but the calm looked forced over something too vast to contain.
Ashe's throat tightened.
If Lissandra was shaken, then something had gone terribly wrong.
"What happened?" Ashe asked immediately.
Sejuani leaned forward. "Where is Logan?"
For the briefest moment, Lissandra did not answer.
That moment told Ashe almost everything.
Then the Frost Witch spoke.
"The first Watcher is dead. Its death contaminated part of the region with Void power. Logan stopped the worst of the backlash. The remaining Watchers attempted to self-destruct and tear open a path through the Void. He severed the affected space from Runeterra and was taken with it."
The words were clear.
Too clear.
Ashe heard them, understood them, and still felt her mind reject them.
"Taken," she repeated.
"Into the Void," Lissandra said.
Behind Ashe, someone whispered Logan's name. Another voice cursed. A child began to cry and was quickly hushed.
Sejuani's grip tightened on her flail. "Dead?"
Lissandra's face turned colder. "No."
That single word cut through the air like True Ice.
Ashe looked at her carefully. It had not sounded like certainty. It had sounded like refusal.
Lissandra continued before either of them could challenge it. "Nilah is already going to the Twin Cities. They must be told what happened. I am going to Mount Targon."
"Mount Targon?" Ashe asked. "Why?"
"To find a way to retrieve him."
That answer was not enough, and all three of them knew it. But there was no time to demand more.
A low growl rose from behind a cluster of broken stones at the base of the ridge.
Ashe turned.
A bear emerged from the drifting mist.
It was not one of the great old spirit bears, nor a beast marked by Volibear's storm. It was a common Freljordian bear, large, scarred, thick-furred, the kind hunters respected and avoided unless hunger demanded otherwise.
But it moved strangely.
Its front right leg dragged for half a step before snapping forward. Its head jerked at odd angles. Frost clung to one side of its muzzle, while the other side seemed wet, dark, and swollen.
Then it looked at them.
Purple light glowed in its eyes.
A strange layer covered part of its body, like slick flesh grown over fur, translucent in places, with veins of violet pulsing beneath. It looked as though something had begun crawling over the bear from the inside and had not yet finished deciding what shape to take.
The bear opened its mouth.
What came out was not a roar.
It was a wet, tearing shriek.
The evacuees panicked.
"Back!" Ashe shouted.
The bear lunged.
It was fast, too fast for its size, too fast for something dragging a half-mutated body. Ashe loosed an arrow. Frost streaked through the air and struck its shoulder, blooming into ice on impact. The bear staggered, but the purple growth pulsed once and shattered the frost from beneath.
Sejuani roared and urged Bristle forward.
Lissandra raised one hand.
The bear froze in mid-leap.
Not slowed. Not restrained.
Frozen.
Black-blue ice swallowed it from jaws to hind legs, sealing the purple light inside. For one heartbeat, Ashe saw the creature's eyes still moving beneath the ice, frantic, furious, not like an animal in pain but like a door something else was trying to force open.
Then Lissandra closed her hand.
The bear shattered.
Fur, bone, purple growth, and frozen blood scattered across the snow in glittering fragments. Before any piece could twitch, Lissandra's ice ground them into dust.
No one spoke.
Ashe stared at the place where the bear had been.
She had killed beasts before. She had killed men. She had watched people die in battle, by hunger, by winter, by choices she had made.
This felt different.
The bear had not been an enemy.
It had been a warning.
"Part of this region was contaminated when the first Watcher died," Lissandra said. Her voice had regained its cold edge, but now Ashe could hear the urgency beneath it. "Logan prevented the affected area from spreading as far as it should have. Without him, the corruption would have reached settlements already. Perhaps more."
Ashe looked toward the purple rain.
"So the danger is not over."
"No," Lissandra said. "It has only changed form."
Sejuani spat to the side. "Void creatures?"
"Some will already be forming. Some animals will change. Some things buried beneath the ice may wake. Some corpses may not remain corpses." Lissandra turned her pale gaze toward Ashe and Sejuani. "You will sweep the affected area. Kill everything touched by the Void."
Ashe's fingers tightened around her bow.
Lissandra continued, "Do not capture them. Do not study them. Do not bring them back for healers to examine. Burn what can burn. Freeze and shatter what cannot. If anything resists ordinary weapons, call for Iceborn. If Iceborn fail, retreat and mark the area. I will deal with what remains after I return."
"If you return," Sejuani said.
Lissandra ignored the jab. "The Void spreads quickly. Faster than fear, faster than rot. Every living thing it claims can become another mouth. Every mouth can become a nest. Act now, or you will lose more than a few hunting grounds."
Ashe felt the weight of every evacuee behind her.
A few hunting grounds.
That was how Lissandra spoke. As if lives, homes, and sacred places were pieces on a board.
But Ashe had seen the bear.
She had seen the purple light in its eyes.
She knew, with a cold certainty, that Lissandra was not exaggerating.
The Frost Witch turned as though the matter had already been settled. Ice gathered beneath her feet, forming a path that pointed south and upward, toward distances beyond ordinary travel.
"Wait," Ashe said.
Lissandra stopped.
Ashe hated the question before she asked it. She hated the shape of it in her mouth, hated the answer she already feared.
"What if there are humans in the affected area?" Ashe asked quietly. "Or Iceborn? Someone we failed to evacuate. Someone still alive, but touched by that corruption."
Sejuani said nothing.
The wind moved across the ridge.
Behind them, the evacuees had gone silent too.
Lissandra did not turn around at once.
For a while, she only stood there, back straight, white hair still in the unnatural calm around her. Ashe could not see her face.
When Lissandra finally spoke, her voice was quieter than before.
"The mission is the same."
Ashe closed her eyes.
A murmur passed through the people behind her, fear, denial, anger. She could not blame them. A part of her wanted to reject it too. There had to be another way. There had to be a cure, a ritual, a chance to bind the corruption long enough to save whoever remained.
But the Freljord did not always give people kinder choices.
Sometimes mercy came too late to be mercy.
Sometimes hesitation killed everyone.
Lissandra took one step forward.
"Warmother," Ashe said, and the title sounded strange directed at the Frost Witch.
Lissandra paused again.
Ashe opened her eyes. "Bring him back."
For the first time, Lissandra turned her head slightly.
Her expression was unreadable.
Then she vanished into a streak of cold light.
Ashe remained still long after the last trace of Lissandra's presence faded.
Sejuani dismounted from Bristle and walked to Ashe's side. For once, she did not mock, did not demand, did not sneer at the softness of Avarosan hopes.
She only looked toward the poisoned horizon.
"You know she is right," Sejuani said.
Ashe wanted to say she did not.
But she was tired of lies.
"Yes."
"If we find people..." Sejuani began, then stopped.
Ashe looked at her.
Sejuani's jaw tightened. "If they are gone, they are gone."
That was as close to gentleness as Sejuani could come.
Ashe nodded once.
Then she turned to the gathered warriors.
"Affected beasts are to be killed at range if possible. No one touches the bodies. Fire teams will follow behind the Iceborn. Scouts will mark every den, cave, ravine, and corpse. No one moves alone. If you see purple growth, glowing eyes, unnatural movement, or hear voices that do not belong to the living, you retreat and report."
Her voice steadied as she spoke.
Not because she felt steady.
Because they needed her to be.
Sejuani lifted her flail. "Winter's Claw! You heard her. Anything twisted gets crushed. Anyone who freezes up dies, and if you die stupidly, I will drag your corpse back and insult it myself!"
The Winter's Claw warriors answered with grim laughter and raised weapons.
Ashe glanced at Sejuani.
For a moment, the two of them were children again, standing on opposite sides of a future neither had asked for. Then the moment passed.
Ashe extended her hand.
Sejuani stared at it, snorted, and clasped her forearm.
No grand oath was spoken.
No ancient song rose.
They simply nodded to each other.
Then the hunt began.
Far beneath Shurima, in the Lavender Sea, Bel'Veth watched her kingdom convulse.
The Lavender Sea was never still. It breathed, pulsed, grew, consumed, and remade. Coral towers swayed like living spines. Schools of pale, blade-thin fish flowed through sunken streets. Vast manta-like shapes drifted between ruins that had once belonged to a devoured city, their wings stirring currents filled with violet dust.
All of it was hers.
Not by inheritance.
By consumption.
Bel'Veth had eaten memory, flesh, stone, language, and empire. She had made a realm from what she devoured, a mockery and continuation of everything the Void had erased. Within this domain, Voidborn bent to her will. They did not love her. They did not understand loyalty. But they belonged to the pattern she imposed.
Or they had.
Now that pattern was tearing.
Xer'Sai burst from the seabed in violent sprays of lavender silt, shrieking as they tore into one another. Smaller Void creatures scattered, only to be caught by larger ones and ripped apart. A long eel-like thing with four jaws slammed itself repeatedly into a coral pillar until its skull split open, then continued biting at the fragments as if the stone had offended it.
Bel'Veth hovered above the chaos, her false face still and expressionless.
A quarter of them.
Approximately a quarter of the creatures in her domain had entered a frenzy.
They attacked anything they saw. Her servants. Their own brood. The coral. The ruins. The water itself.
The rest fought back because she commanded it.
But even obedience had become strained.
The death of the Watcher had shaken the one mind, and that shock had reached even here. The Void within them screamed. Bel'Veth's will pressed down upon that scream, elegant, immense, absolute.
Still, some screamed louder.
A pack of frenzied Xer'Sai turned toward her.
For a moment, Bel'Veth looked down at them with something almost like disappointment.
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