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After Silco seized the throne of the Undercity, the first thing he did was "clean house." In the world Chen came from, they'd call it a political purge; in Zaun, it was just a massacre.
Silco's method was brutal: he flooded the Black Alley with Shimmer. He didn't care about the collateral damage; he wanted a city of addicts or a city of corpses. Either worked for him. The Last Drop changed hands, and the heart of the Lanes began to rot from the inside out.
But a few survivors found a sanctuary. Ekko had led a group of refugees to a massive, hollowed-out cylindrical structure—a hidden grove where, if you climbed high enough, you could actually see the sun. It was the birth of the Firelights.
However, the "sanctuary" was currently a scene from a nightmare. Dozens of people, shivering and pale, were lashed to makeshift beds with rusted belts.
"Just a drop... please! Kill me, just kill me!" they shrieked.
Ekko, no longer the "Little Man" who played with scrap, watched them with hardened eyes. He had seen Benso die and watched his family vanish. He had matured into a leader, but it was a leadership forged in trauma. He knew the only way to save them from the Shimmer was the "cold turkey" method—locking them in a room and letting them scream until the poison left their blood.
"Ekko..." a young boy whispered, looking at a bed where the occupant had stopped struggling. Permanently. "Another one didn't make it."
Ekko bit his lip, his fists clenching. "I have to go out. I need to find something to dull the pain, or we're going to lose everyone."
Zero-Dollar Shopping
"Where is Little Man?" Powder asked, her voice muffled by the thick scarf Chen had wrapped around her face.
Finding Ekko wasn't going to be a walk in the park. Chen knew about the Firelight base from the show, but finding a hidden tree in a city of pipes was a needle in a haystack.
"Let's check Benso's old shop," Chen suggested. "Ekko spent half his life there. If he's looking for parts or a way to fight back, he'll head to the one place that felt like home."
Chen had meticulously crafted two heavy cloaks and masks for them. He was an East Asian male—rare enough in Zaun to stand out like a sore thumb—and Powder's blue hair was practically a "Wanted" poster. Bundled up, they looked like just another pair of Sump-scrappers.
The roads were a vertical maze, but with Powder leading, the trip took hours instead of days. When they reached Benso's, Chen felt a heavy weight in his chest. The shop was boarded up, surrounded by wilted wreaths and guttering candles. People had come to mourn the man who was the heart of the Lanes.
Powder stood frozen, staring at Benso's portrait, her eyes welling up. Chen clasped his hands in a silent prayer, then peered through the grimy colored glass. He remembered the treasures Benso kept in his display cases.
"He had masks on the wall," Chen whispered, his gamer brain firing. "A Liandry's Torment, a Haunting Guise, and a Rabadon's Deathcap. If I can get that three-piece set, I'll be legendary."
He checked the door. Bolted. "Any way in?"
Powder wiped her tears and climbed a nearby pipe with the agility of a cat. She reached into a hidden crevice above the frame and dangled a brass key. "Little Man told me where they kept the spare."
Chen unlocked the door and stepped into the ruins. The shop had been ransacked. "Zero-dollar shopping," Chen cursed, kicking a pile of broken glass. The Deathcap was gone. The masks were gone. Someone had looted his "Legendary" build before he even arrived.
Just as he was about to give up, his boot struck something small and hard. He looked down and saw a green, weathered turtle shell.
"No way... a Heart of Gold!"
For old-school players, this was a holy relic. Back in the day, the "GP10" (Gold per 10 seconds) items were the lifeblood of supports and tanks. Chen picked it up, and his HUD updated:
Item: Heart of Gold
Stats: +200 Health
Passive: Gain 10 Gold every 24 hours.
"Balanced for the real world, I see," Chen muttered. "10 gold a day? I'll take it. And that HP boost is huge."
His health bar jumped to 685. Between his base stats, his Grasp stacks, and the turtle shell, he was finally moving out of "one-shot" territory.
But he didn't get to celebrate.
THWACK.
A sharp, explosive pain blossomed at the base of Chen's skull. His knees buckled, the Heart of Gold rolling across the floor as his vision tunneled into black.
Status: Unconscious.
"Again? Seriously?" was his last coherent thought.
As he drifted out, he vaguely felt someone shaking his shoulders. "Chen! Chen, wake up!" Powder was screaming.
Then, her tone shifted. The vulnerability vanished, replaced by a cold, sharp edge that made the air in the room feel thin.
"I'm going to kill you," Jinx hissed.
The metallic click-clack of a handgun being cocked echoed through the empty shop.
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