Bluebell and Goldie stopped again.
Jinx had already learned that when the meeps stopped, something weird was about to happen.
The two meeps drifted close together and began speaking in their soft chiming language.
Jinx floated beside Vi and folded her arms. "Uh-oh. Committee meeting."
Ekko looked past her at the two meeps. "Maybe they're deciding the next route."
Kai'Sa did not join in. Her carapace was pulled tight against her body, and the faint glow along its edges had almost disappeared. She watched the darkness around them instead of the meeps.
Jinx did not like that. Silent and tense meant bad.
Bluebell chimed louder.
Goldie answered with a short, firm sound.
The two meeps floated apart.
Then Bluebell began to grow.
At first, Jinx thought the little creature was only puffing itself up, like a startled animal trying to look bigger. Then its whole body expanded, round and soft and luminous, swelling far past the size it should have been able to reach. Its flower-like collar stretched with it. The purple-blue glow in its body deepened until it looked like a tiny nebula had been wrapped in skin.
"Uh," Ekko said. "That's new."
Bluebell grew until it was large enough to cover the whole team.
Before anyone could decide whether to dodge, Bluebell opened wide.
Not a mouth exactly. More like its whole body unfolding into a soft, glowing pocket.
Then it swallowed them.
Jinx screamed for half a second before realizing she was not being digested.
The team floated inside Bluebell's belly, suspended in a round chamber of warm, purple-tinted light. The walls were translucent. Jinx could see Goldie outside through them, distorted like she was looking through thick glass.
She touched the inner surface with one gloved hand.
It bounced.
"Oh," she said. "Okay. That's disgusting and adorable."
Vi braced herself beside Vander. "Everyone alive?"
"I think so," Ekko said, though his voice sounded strained.
"My stomach hates this," Jinx added.
Kai'Sa floated near the front, one hand pressed against the inner wall. "It is protecting us."
"From what?"
Kai'Sa did not answer.
That was becoming one of her most annoying habits.
Outside, Goldie also grew, though not nearly as much. It became large enough to hold onto Bluebell with both tiny hands. Then it grabbed Bluebell, planted its little feet against nothing, and began to spin.
Jinx's eyes widened. "Wait. Wait, wait, wait."
The world became a blur.
Goldie spun Bluebell faster and faster. The whole belly chamber turned with them. Jinx slammed into Ekko, bounced off Vander, hit the wall, and found herself upside down relative to everyone else, if upside down still meant anything in the Void.
Vi cursed.
Ekko yelled something technical that became a groan halfway through.
Vander tried to steady them and failed.
Kai'Sa dug her claws into the inner wall and somehow stayed controlled, which Jinx found deeply unfair.
Goldie spun them one final time.
Then let go.
Bluebell shot forward.
Jinx's scream came back immediately.
They moved faster than anything the team had managed since entering this place. Bluebell's body held together around them, turning itself into a living projectile while the team tumbled inside like loose bolts in one of Jinx's bombs.
"Bluebell!" Jinx yelled. "I love the energy, hate the method!"
Nobody heard her over the screaming.
——————
Logan knew, after smiling like a maniac at the Eye, that they really did need to leave.
The barrier still surrounded the platform. The Watcher still sat there, apparently unconcerned by the Eye, the red beam, and whatever would come after it. Ahri had been arguing with it for several minutes.
"Take the barrier down."
The Watcher stared at her.
"Or hide us. Or move the platform. Or do anything that is not sitting there like a pretty rock."
No response.
Logan rubbed his face and walked toward Aatrox.
The Darkin blade remained buried in the platform where the Watcher had thrown it earlier. For a while, Logan only looked at it. Aatrox had been silent through too much.
That was not like him.
Logan grabbed the hilt and pulled the blade free.
"How long are you going to stay quiet?" he asked.
Aatrox said nothing.
Logan's grip tightened. "This is the Void. Wasn't this supposed to be the thing you cared about once? Protecting Shurima from all this?"
For a moment, Logan thought the blade would ignore him again.
Then Aatrox spoke.
"Not yet."
His voice was calm.
Logan stared at the blade. "Not yet? That's all you have?"
No answer.
"Very helpful."
Logan carried Aatrox back toward Ahri and the Watcher. The Eye remained in the distance, visible as a hateful point. The red beam was gone, but Logan did not believe that meant they were safe. If anything, it felt like the pause before impact.
Ahri turned when he approached. "Did he say anything?"
"Two words."
"That is more than the Watcher."
She studied his face. "How are you this calm?"
Logan looked past her at the Watcher.
"I'm not," he said. "I'm worried about you. I'm worried about whatever that Eye is sending."
Ahri's expression tightened.
"But," Logan continued, "something tells me this Watcher is too interested in us to let the Void consume us right away."
Ahri glanced at the Watcher. "It might only want to watch us die."
"Then it would have let the Eye's beam finish whatever it wanted to do."
"That beam did not kill us."
"It threatened us. It showed me things."
Ahri stepped closer. "What things?"
Logan looked at her.
He did not want to describe Ahri reaching for him while the Void erased her piece by piece.
"Enough," he said.
Ahri understood that he was not ready and did not push.
Logan looked around the platform. "The enemy is probably coming. We don't know how far or how fast. The best thing we can do right now is rest."
"You want to nap while the Void comes for us?"
Ahri stared at him.
Then, despite herself, she laughed.
It was small, tired, and rough at the edges, but it eased something in Logan's chest. He smiled back, and that seemed to calm her more than any argument he could have made.
They moved a short distance from the Watcher and lay down on the hard surface of the platform.
It was not comfortable. The ground was cold, uneven, and made from stolen debris compressed by alien gravity. Logan's injuries complained immediately. Ahri settled beside him anyway, close enough that their shoulders touched.
Above them was only darkness.
No stars.
No sky.
No way home.
"Romantic," Ahri said.
"You asked for that earlier. This is the kind of setting you get."
"I would have preferred a river."
"I would have preferred a bed."
"I would have preferred a bath."
"Now you're just being cruel."
She smiled faintly. "Heh."
For a while, they stayed there without speaking. Logan did not sleep. He doubted Ahri did either. But lying still helped.
...
Then the Watcher's voice came from behind them.
"Stories."
Logan closed his eyes. "Of course."
Ahri covered her mouth, trying not to laugh too loudly. "It is learning."
"It has terrible timing."
The Watcher said again, "Stories."
Logan and Ahri looked at each other.
Then they laughed.
So they told stories.
Not important ones. Not all of them. Some were small memories dressed up as tales. Old rumors from places Logan barely understood. Ahri told one about a spirit who stole shoes from travelers and only returned them if complimented sincerely. Logan answered with a story about a man who tried to cook for someone he loved and nearly poisoned both of them through confidence alone.
The Watcher listened.
Hours passed, or something close to hours.
Time in the Void did not behave properly, but fatigue had its own measure. Logan's wounds stiffened. Ahri's breathing steadied. The Eye remained distant.
...
...
...
Then the first Voidborn arrived.
It crashed against the invisible wall with enough force to shake dust from the platform.
Logan sat up at once.
Ahri was already moving.
The creature outside the barrier clawed at the boundary, jaws opening and closing as if it could bite through gravity. Behind it came three more. Then seven. Then shapes Logan could not count properly because they moved in ways that hurt to follow.
They could not pass.
The Watcher's field held them back.
The Voidborn slammed against it anyway, furious, hungry, commanded. Their bodies struck the invisible surface and slid along it, leaving no marks. One tried to pierce the barrier with a hooked limb. Another wrapped around it and squeezed. A smaller one exploded against it in a burst of acidic violet light.
Nothing worked.
Logan stood with Aatrox in both hands.
Ahri stepped beside him.
The Watcher remained seated.
Then something tore open in the dark beyond the field.
Not the same as a Void rift. This was sharper. Controlled. A cut made by someone who had used such wounds so many times that space itself had learned to fear the blade.
A figure emerged.
Armored. Masked. Human-shaped, though the Void had left its mark on him. He moved before the first Voidborn could turn, crossing the space between them in an instant.
A crescent of energy flashed.
The Voidborn split apart.
Another lunged from above. The armored figure vanished and reappeared behind it, striking before the creature understood he had moved. A third tried to flee toward the swarm gathering farther out. He raised his weapon and fired a burst that tore through its core.
Logan stared.
He knew that armor.
He knew that movement.
Riftwalk.
"Kassadin," Logan whispered.
Kassadin kept fighting.
The Voidborn outside the barrier did not last long. Some were large enough to make the platform feel small. Others were fast and vicious, built to overwhelm by numbers. Kassadin cut through them with ruthless precision. He did not waste motion. Every step was either an attack, a dodge, or a repositioning through space.
When the last of the first wave fell, he stood among dissolving remains and looked toward the far darkness.
"Damn Eye," he muttered, loud enough for them to hear through whatever carried sound here. "It did not only send the ocean."
Ahri frowned. "Who are you? And what do you mean, ocean?"
Kassadin turned toward the platform.
His gaze passed over Logan, the seated Watcher, Ahri**,** then returned to the Watcher and stayed there.
"There will be time for questions later," he said. "I have several of my own. Especially why two living beings are standing beside a Watcher."
Ahri's tails lifted slightly.
Logan raised one hand before she could snap back. "It won't attack. Not right now."
Kassadin stared at him.
"That is a dangerous thing to assume."
"It is," Logan said. "But it's been true so far. I also wouldn't recommend teleporting inside the field. The Watcher might take that differently."
Kassadin's head tilted slightly. "You know of my ability."
For a moment, Kassadin said nothing.
Then another group of Voidborn rushed in from the dark.
He turned away from the platform.
He vanished.
The fight resumed.
This time Logan watched more carefully. His blade, his gauntlet, his whole armor worked like a set of tools built for one purpose.
Survive the Void.
Kill what came from it.
When the second wave ended, Logan let out a breath he had not noticed he was holding.
"Thank you," he called.
Kassadin looked back.
"Do not thank me yet."
Logan followed his gaze.
Far away, the darkness was moving.
At first it looked like a line. Then a wall. Then Logan understood that it was neither. It was a number too large for his mind to accept all at once.
Voidborn appeared across the distance in an absurd mass, spreading through the dark like a living tide.
Small things crawling over large ones.
Winged shapes cutting through spaces between giants.
Tower-sized bodies pushing forward behind countless lesser forms.
The army had arrived.
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