Once, there might have been a world here.
No one remained to name it.
Perhaps it had never been a world like Runeterra. Perhaps it had been smaller, colder, and quieter, a lonely stone drifting around a dying star. Or perhaps it had held oceans, storms, forests, and cities where people argued over food, wealth, love, faith, and all the other fragile things living creatures treated as permanent until they were not.
Maybe children had been born under a different sky.
Maybe old enemies had hated one another across borders drawn on maps that no longer existed.
Maybe someone had loved someone else so much that they believed the feeling could survive anything.
But...
To the Void, existence itself was an offense. The smallest light, the faintest thought, the weakest breath, all of it was noise where there should have been silence. This world, whatever it had been, had committed the sin of being real.
So the Void had eaten it.
Now only pieces remained.
Fragments of ground drifted through darkness. Sheets of smooth stone turned slowly without gravity. Chunks of unknown metal floated beside dust that had once been mountains. Some pieces still held shapes that might have been roads, floors, walls, or foundations. Others were so ruined that even memory would have struggled to recognize them.
At the center of those remnants, far beyond the scattered debris, something pulsed.
A fissure.
A wound in the space that had once belonged to the world. It turned slowly in the darkness, purple and deep, a spiral of broken distance that pulled at everything around it.
The Void had consumed the world.
The rift had remained.
...
Logan was trying to remember how much of his life was actually his.
The memories were returning, but not in order. They were like pages from several books thrown into the same fire, burned at the edges, then shoved back into his hands. He could read parts. Some scenes were clear enough to make his chest ache. Others changed when he focused on them.
Ahri had explained it as gently as she could.
The spiritual beam was still there.
It stretched from his chest to one of Ahri's tails, thinner now than when he first woke, but more stable. The pale light pulsed softly in the dark, carrying warmth between them. Logan could feel her through it, not every thought, but enough. Exhaustion. Pain. Worry she tried to hide. Relief that he was awake. Determination so stubborn it almost felt familiar.
A small amount of spiritual power gathered inside him.
Very small.
The first time he tried to draw more, the darkness around them had reacted. It had pressed closer, thick and eager, as if his soul had become a louder flame. The whispers had sharpened at once. Shapes in the distance had turned toward him.
Ahri had grabbed his wrist and told him to stop.
Now he understood the rule.
Too little spiritual power, and the corruption crept in through the cracks of his mind. Too much, and the Void noticed him more clearly. He had to maintain a balance, just enough to keep his thoughts his own, not enough to make himself a beacon.
It was irritatingly precise.
Logan exhaled, though he still was not sure breathing mattered here.
"So I'm basically walking across a monster's stomach while trying not to think too loudly."
They were moving through the Void in short bursts. Calling it flying felt wrong. There was no air and no gravity, nothing that made movement behave like movement should. Logan only needed to push lightly with spiritual energy and his body would drift forward until he corrected course. Ahri stayed close, guiding him whenever the darkness tugged strangely at his path.
He was still slower than her.
Normally, that might have annoyed him. Right now, he was just glad he could move without being carried.
A faint weight brushed his back.
Logan frowned.
Then he remembered.
He reached over his shoulder and touched the hilt strapped there.
"Wait."
Ahri glanced at him. "What is it?"
"I still have Aatrox."
She blinked.
Logan twisted slightly, as if the sword might have vanished while he was not looking. It had not. The darkin blade remained on his back, silent, heavy, and far too calm for something that usually considered calm a personal insult.
Logan stared over his shoulder. "Aatrox?"
No answer.
Ahri's expression shifted from worry to confusion. "He hasn't spoken?"
"That's the weird part."
Ahri looked at the sword. "Maybe the Void is interfering with him."
"Maybe, but it's Aatrox." Logan tapped the hilt. "We are literally inside the Void. Voidborn have attacked us. I have not used him to fight a single one. At minimum, he should have called me a coward, a parasite, an unworthy host, a disappointing insect, or all four in one sentence."
The sword remained silent.
Logan tapped it again. "Aatrox. Come on. This is your moment. There are Void creatures everywhere. You hate them."
Nothing.
"Also, I forgot you existed for a while," Logan added. "That should make you furious."
Still nothing.
Ahri watched him with tired disbelief.
"I'm checking if he's alive."
Logan leaned his head back, trying to look at the blade more directly. "Aatrox, if you can hear me and you're choosing silence for dramatic effect, this is a terrible time."
No response came from the blade.
Logan's humor faded.
He touched the hilt again, more carefully this time.
Aatrox had been purified compared to what he once was, or at least steadier. He was still angry, still proud, still Aatrox. Silence did not fit him. Not in the Void. Not when Logan was vulnerable enough to be mocked for hours.
"Something's wrong," Logan said.
Ahri's eyes sharpened. "Can you feel him?"
Logan focused.
There was something there, but faint. Distant. Not dead, not gone, but buried beneath a pressure Logan could not push through. It felt like hearing someone behind a wall too thick to break.
"He's there," Logan said slowly. "But I can't reach him."
"Then don't force it." Ahri placed a hand against his arm. "Your mind is still healing."
"I know..."
They moved on.
The glow ahead grew clearer.
At first Logan thought it might be a living thing. In the Void, anything visible felt suspicious. But the light did not pulse like the Voidborn creatures they had seen. It did not move with hunger. It drifted slowly, turning end over end.
Ahri slowed. Her tails spread slightly, ready to move or defend.
"It isn't alive," she said.
They approached carefully.
The glowing object became a broad slab of broken material, maybe twenty feet across. Its edge was jagged. Its surface was smooth, pale gray, and strangely even. Logan reached it first and placed one hand against it.
It felt solid.
That alone was almost comforting.
"What is this?" Ahri asked.
Logan frowned. "I don't know. It looks like cement. Kind of. Smoother, though."
"Cement?"
"Building material. Roads, floors, walls. That sort of thing."
Ahri lowered herself onto the slab. She sat with a quiet wince she tried to hide. Logan noticed anyway.
He sat beside her.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
The slab drifted in darkness, carrying them with it. Far away, Logan could see more pieces. Some were small as tables. Others were as large as houses. A few looked like sections of flooring, though he had no idea what kind of civilization could have made them.
He looked down at the slab beneath them.
"Why can we see it?"
Ahri turned toward him. "What do you mean?"
"It's glowing." Logan lifted his hand. The surface gave off no obvious light, not like a lamp or magic. Yet it was visible against absolute darkness. "There's nothing shining on it. No sun. No fire. No reflection. It shouldn't be visible."
Ahri looked at the slab, then at her own hand.
Logan followed her gaze.
He could see her perfectly.
Not because she was casting enough light to illuminate the area. She was dimmer than before, her spirit weakened from too much fighting. But her body remained clear to his eyes. Her hair, face, ears, tails, the exhaustion in her expression. All of it stood out against the Void.
Then Logan looked at his own hands.
They were visible too.
Faintly luminous.
His thoughts clicked into place.
"I remember something," he said.
Ahri sat straighter. "What?"
He hesitated, sorting memory from memory. "The Void hates creation because creation shines to it. Not just light. Existence itself. Souls, matter, life, magic, thoughts, all of it. To the Void, reality is bright. Painfully bright."
Ahri looked into the darkness around them.
Logan continued, "That's why Void creatures hate what exists. But there's an irony to it. Once they exist, they shine too. Even they become part of what the Void despises."
Ahri's ears lowered slightly. "So these fragments..."
"They're still pieces of creation." Logan touched the slab beneath them. "Even ruined, even swallowed, they still shine a little."
Ahri did not answer.
The realization made the darkness worse, somehow.
Logan stood.
"Can you move?"
He offered a hand.
She stared at it for half a second, then took it. He helped her up, though he knew she was stronger than him even exhausted. She allowed it anyway.
They moved from fragment to fragment.
Some were made of the same smooth gray material. Others were black stone, metal, glasslike sheets, or rough chunks of earth with no roots left in them. Logan saw a piece of something like a wall with grooves carved across it in a pattern too damaged to read. Ahri found a narrow strip that might have been part of a road.
They did not speak much.
Logan had too many things on his mind.
Then he saw the purple point in the distance.
At first, it was small. Just a dim mark beyond the debris. Logan thought it might be another fragment, or a Voidborn watching from far away. But as they moved closer, it widened.
Not a point.
A circle.
No, a spiral.
Ahri stopped beside him. "Do you see that?"
"Yes."
"Do you know what it is?"
"No..." He narrowed his eyes.
They continued carefully.
The closer they got, the more debris appeared around them. Smooth slabs, twisted beams, broken stone, chunks of unknown material, all drifting in slow patterns. It was as if the spiral sat at the center of a field of ruins, pulling the remains of the dead world into a loose orbit.
Ahri's hand moved near Logan's arm.
The beam between them pulsed.
The purple spiral grew larger.
It was still far away, but distance in the Void was difficult to trust. One moment it seemed no bigger than a door. A few minutes later, it looked wide enough to swallow a tower. The space around it bent slightly, warping the debris near its edge.
Logan frowned. "Is it moving?"
Ahri's eyes narrowed. "I think we are."
"What?"
The pull hit them.
There was no warning beyond a sudden pressure in Logan's chest. Then the debris around them shifted all at once, rushing toward the spiral.
Ahri grabbed him.
Logan grabbed her back.
The force tore them from their path and dragged them forward at terrifying speed. The spiritual beam between them flared as both tried to stabilize themselves. Logan pushed with too much power by instinct, and the corruption around him surged.
Pain stabbed through his head.
"Not too much!" Ahri shouted.
"I'm trying!"
They slammed through a field of smaller debris.
A slab shattered against Logan's shoulder. Another struck Ahri's back and spun them sideways. Logan held on harder. Ahri wrapped her tails around him, shielding him as they crashed through fragments of stone and smooth gray material.
The spiral grew.
Too fast.
They hit a larger piece of earth with enough force to break it apart.
Logan lost his grip for half a second.
Ahri caught him again.
Then they smashed into a massive chunk of ground.
The impact drove the "air" from Logan's lungs, or convinced his body it had. Cracks spread through the surface beneath them. Ahri landed beside him, rolled, and stopped only when one of her tails hooked around a jagged stone protrusion.
For several seconds, neither of them moved.
Logan stared into the dark above him.
His whole body hurt.
He turned his head.
"Are you okay?"
Ahri asked at the same time, "Are you hurt?"
They both paused.
Then Logan let out a breathless laugh.
Ahri closed her eyes for one second, visibly relieved, before pushing herself up. Logan did the same more slowly.
They were on a huge piece of land now, far larger than the drifting slabs they had used before. It was not whole, but it had enough mass to feel like a broken island. Dust floated above it in slow streams. Farther away, more ruins circled through the darkness.
Then Logan looked ahead.
The spiral was still distant.
And it was enormous.
What he had thought was a circle was only part of its outer motion. The rift turned in layers, violet and black folding into each other, its center too deep to focus on. Debris moved around it in slow arcs, some pieces vanishing as they neared the center, others being spat out in broken paths. The surrounding space looked torn, as if reality had been twisted until it could no longer remember its own shape.
Logan stared at it.
The memory returned more cleanly this time.
A term. A concept. Something tied to the Void, to openings between existence and the place that hated existence.
Ahri stood beside him, pale and tense. "Logan?"
He swallowed.
"I think that's a Void rift."
The rift pulsed in answer, and the broken world continued to drift around it.
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