"Tell me a romantic story," Ahri said.
Logan looked at her.
They were still trapped on the platform, surrounded by a barrier they could not break, sitting in front of a Watcher. The distant rift turned in silence behind the ruins of a dead world. Aatrox remained stabbed into the ground several meters away, silent as ever.
And Ahri wanted romance.
"Now?" Logan asked.
"Yes, now."
Ahri glanced at the Watcher. "It asked for stories."
"You are enjoying that far too much."
"I am injured, exhausted, trapped, and still angry. Let me have this."
Logan opened his mouth, closed it, then sighed. "Fine. But if you want a romantic story, you tell one first."
Ahri narrowed her eyes. "You just want time to think of one."
"..."
She smiled faintly, but it did not last long. Her gaze drifted toward the broken statue in the distance, then to the rift, then nowhere in particular. For a while, she said nothing.
Logan did not rush her.
Through the connection between them, he felt her searching through old memories. Most were blurred. Some were not hers, or not only hers.
Ahri finally spoke.
"There were three souls in the Spirit Realm," she said. "They traveled together for a time. One was a man who had died far from home. One was a woman who had followed him through grief, anger, and stubbornness until even death could not decide where she belonged. The third was another woman, a friend to both of them."
Logan settled in to listen.
Ahri kept her voice low, but the Watcher seemed to focus more intently.
"The man and the first woman were in love before either of them understood what that meant. They argued constantly. He thought she was reckless. She thought he was too careful. He would step in front of danger without thinking, then scold her for doing the same. She would mock him for worrying, then spend the whole night watching over him when he was hurt."
"When they reached the Spirit Realm, their feelings changed shape. They no longer had homes, families, or bodies in the same way. What remained was choice. They could have followed separate paths. They could have let their memories fade. Instead, they kept choosing each other."
Ahri's eyes softened. "The third woman loved one of them too. Quietly. Not in a way that demanded anything. She knew the love between the other two was already whole, and she never tried to break it. She walked with them anyway, laughed with them, fought beside them, and when the path became dangerous, she protected both."
Logan looked at her.
For a moment, something passed through the connection. A thin ache, almost too quiet to notice. Not sadness exactly. Something more like standing outside a lit window and being glad the people inside were warm.
Then it was gone.
Ahri continued before he could understand it.
"Eventually, they reached a river where souls had to decide what they wished to carry forward. The man and the woman crossed together. The third stayed behind. She told them she had more roads to walk. Maybe that was true. Maybe she simply did not want to follow where she was not needed."
"That is a sad romance."
"Most good ones have a little sadness."
"What happened to her?"
Ahri's smile returned, smaller this time. "No one knows. Some say she still walks near rivers, pretending she is not waiting."
Logan was quiet for a moment.
He did not know why that last line bothered him.
The Watcher looked between them, unmoving.
Ahri nudged him with her shoulder. "Your turn."
Logan leaned back on his hands and stared at the dark above them.
A romantic story.
He considered lying. Telling something harmless, some half-remembered tale from Earth, simplified enough that it would fit here. But Ahri had given him something real, or close to real. He owed her more than a joke.
Then an idea came to him.
It was risky, but not dangerous. At least, not physically.
He wanted to see if it caused any reaction.
"There was another fox woman," Logan said.
Ahri raised an eyebrow. "Another?"
"From Runeterra."
"Should I be jealous?"
"No names," Logan said. "Just a story."
She tilted her head, interested now.
Logan chose his words carefully.
"She did not know where she came from. Her first memories were not of a family, or a home, or a village. She ran with foxes in the cold north. They accepted her as something close enough to kin, even though she was not truly one of them. She carried old gemstones connected to a people she did not remember, and had magic tied to the spirit world."
Ahri's playful expression faded.
"She learned she could draw life from others," Logan continued. "Not only life. Memories. Feelings. Pieces of who they were. When she fed, she did not just survive. She became full of stolen moments. Joy, fear, hunger, desire, regret. It made her powerful, but it also made her less certain where she ended and others began."
The Watcher's eye shifted slightly.
Logan kept going.
"For a long time, she lived like a predator because she did not know how else to live. Then she met people. Spoke with them. Desired them. Hurt them. One man saw her when she was feeding. He should have run. Instead, he stayed. He loved her, or something close enough that it mattered. She loved him too."
Ahri's breathing slowed.
Logan did not look at her yet.
"But her hunger was not gentle. One day, she took too much. She did not mean to. That did not save him. He died in her arms, and the memory of him became a wound she carried everywhere."
Ahri made a small sound.
"She tried to escape herself after that. She searched for the truth of her people. She sought places where memory could be surrendered. At one point, she considered giving away the pain, the guilt, maybe even the love itself, because keeping it hurt too much."
Logan finally looked at her.
Tears had gathered in Ahri's eyes.
She seemed surprised by them.
Logan softened his voice. "But part of her understood that losing the memory would be another kind of killing. If she erased the pain completely, she would also erase what made the love real. So she kept moving. Not healed nor innocent. But still trying to become someone who could choose what to take, what to keep, and what to give."
Ahri wiped at her cheek, almost annoyed. "Why am I crying again?"
She looked away. "I feel as if I already knew that story."
Logan's heart tightened, but he only smiled.
"Maybe some stories echo."
Ahri laughed quietly, though her eyes were still wet. Logan reached out and brushed a loose strand of hair away from her face, then let his hand rest on her head for a moment.
She did not pull away.
For a few seconds, the platform felt smaller. The Watcher was quiet enough that Logan almost forgot it was there.
Then it moved.
Both Logan and Ahri turned at once.
The Watcher was still sitting, but its posture had changed. One hand rested on the ground. The other lifted toward its single eye.
"What now?" Logan murmured.
Ahri wiped the last tear from her face and straightened. "Maybe it wants another word."
The Watcher's eye brightened.
Logan's mind filled with images.
They were not clear. Not like memories. More like looking through cracked glass while sinking underwater. Shapes moved. Light bent. Meaning came in pieces.
A world.
Not Runeterra.
Its sky was wrong, or perhaps Logan only thought that because he did not understand the colors. Trees rose in spirals instead of trunks, their branches widening into flat, layered fans. Animals moved between them, some four-legged, some winged, some with bodies too flexible to name. Rivers carried pale light through stone channels. Cities stood low and wide beneath cliffs, built from white material that shone faintly in the dark.
Then came the rift.
A tear opened where there should have been only air.
The Watcher entered through it.
It arrived as an observer. It hid in places where the world's creatures did not look. It watched animals move in packs, watched trees bend toward warmth, watched people gather around fires, doors, beds, graves.
Human-like people.
Not exactly human. Not vastaya either. Close enough in outline to feel familiar.
The images shifted.
Two of them touched their foreheads together before one left with a group carrying tools. A smaller one ran to wrap its arms around a larger one's waist. Three sat beneath a fan-shaped tree, sharing food from a single bowl. One stood in front of another during a storm of falling stone, shielding them with its body even though the shield would not be enough.
The Watcher did not understand.
Logan felt that part more than saw it.
At first, the brightness of the world repulsed it. Every living thing shone. Every thought, every bond, every act of making or protecting or grieving pressed against the Void like a thorn. The Watcher hated that light because it existed.
But it also wondered.
Why did one creature risk itself for another? Why did pain in one body cause movement in a separate body? Why did some refuse survival if survival required leaving another behind?
The Watcher observed.
And while it observed, it obeyed its purpose.
The rift widened.
That was its task. Gather information. Expand the wound. Prepare the way.
Then the Eye appeared in the vision.
Logan did not know how to describe it. Not an eye like the Watcher's. This was different. A command hidden inside a gaze. Something that did not need to move because other things moved for it.
Through the rift came the others.
Watchers.
Voidborn.
So many that the images became hard to follow. The bright world was buried beneath them. Cities broke. Forests collapsed. Rivers changed color. Animals vanished into mouths, claws, and lightless holes. The human-like creatures ran, fought, prayed, hid, and died.
The Watcher in the vision watched it happen.
Not from hatred anymore.
From confusion.
The final image was clearer than the rest.
A family beneath a shattered building. A father pushing stone upward with bleeding arms. A mother curled around a little girl. The child's mouth was open in a scream Logan could not hear. Dust fell. The light around them flickered.
Then the rubble came down.
The three lights vanished.
The vision ended.
Logan came back to himself with a sharp breath.
Ahri had gone very still beside him.
The Watcher sat in front of them, unchanged.
For a while, nobody spoke.
Then Logan slowly turned toward the distant rift.
The massive purple spiral kept turning among the ruins of the consumed world. Around it drifted the fragments they had crossed earlier, stone, metal, walls, roads, the broken statue, and all the remains that had seemed mysterious before.
Now they were not mysterious.
"That was this world," Logan said.
Ahri followed his gaze. "I think so."
"He opened the rift."
"Yes."
"And the Eye sent the rest through."
Ahri's expression darkened. "So he stayed near the place afterward."
"Because he was interested in them..."
"Maybe." She looked back at the Watcher. "Maybe he did not know what else to do with that interest."
The Watcher did not confirm or deny it.
Logan thought about the Eye from the vision.
That was the part that stayed with him most. Not the destruction, though that should have been enough. It was the sense of command. The feeling that the Eye was not merely another Void creature, not simply a larger Watcher or a smarter Voidborn.
It had directed them.
Maybe it still did.
A thin purple crescent appeared in the distance.
Logan's body reacted before his mind understood why. His spine tightened. His injured hands clenched. Ahri looked toward it at the same time.
The crescent hung in the dark like a narrow moon.
Then it opened.
A sliver became an eye.
The same Eye from the vision.
Furious.
Searching.
Its gaze swept across the Void, not looking in one direction but through too many at once. Logan felt it pass over distant spaces, dead fragments, sleeping horrors, and things he had no names for. It was hunting for something.
Or someone.
A chill ran through him.
Strangely, so did excitement.
Logan did not know whether that came from fear, madness, corruption, or the simple fact that he was staring at what might be the heart of their enemy.
The Watcher looked at the Eye.
Logan could not read its expression. It had none.
But for the first time, he wondered if the Watcher was afraid too.
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