Logan had split two more beams.
Each orange beam was thin, focused, and viciously fast.
The first had parted around him and Ahri with barely an inch to spare. The second had come lower, aimed for his chest. Logan had turned the blade at the last moment and forced the beam into two crooked lines, one burning through the platform near his feet, the other vanishing into the dark beyond the gravitational field.
His hands were still shaking from the impact.
Aatrox was doing most of the work. Logan knew that. The sword guided his angle, corrected his wrist, pulled his body into movements he would never have found alone. Even so, the strain ran through him each time, from his fingers to his spine, leaving his nerves hot and his breathing uneven.
He could not dodge anymore.
Any step away from Ahri opened a line toward her. She still could not move.
The blade remained raised in both hands, crimson-pink light running along its edge.
"No matter what happens," he had said. "I will protect you."
A strange time to say it, maybe. Too clean and dramatic. Like something a man said right before proving he had no idea what was coming next.
Still, the words had come out by themselves.
Logan laughed under his breath without taking his eyes off the Watcher. "I think I heard that line in a dream once. Sorry if it sounded corny."
Behind him, Ahri was silent for half a second.
Then she said softly, "So you heard my words."
Logan thought he heard her voice break.
He wanted to look back but he couldn't.
The fuchsia Watcher was already raising its arm again.
Kassadin struck before it could fire, cutting across the creature's shoulder. Void energy burst against fuchsia flesh, tearing a dark gash that did not close right away. The Watcher turned on him, and for a moment Logan saw the proof of something he had been thinking since the fight began.
Kassadin could hurt it.
Maybe not kill it. But he could force the Watcher to respect him. If Kassadin's attacks were useless, the creature would have ignored him and charged straight for Logan. Every time Kassadin got close enough, the Watcher answered.
But he was running out of time.
Kassadin's teleports were becoming shorter. The pauses between them were getting rougher. The purple light around his armor flickered in uneven pulses, like an engine being pushed past its limit. He still moved with discipline, but discipline could not erase exhaustion. The Watcher pressed him harder every exchange, forcing him away from the platform, then trying to steal a shot at Logan whenever the angle opened.
Another orange eye bloomed from a twisted limb.
"Aatrox," Logan muttered.
"I see it."
The beam fired.
Logan swung.
The blade met the light at a slant. For an instant his arms almost buckled, then Aatrox pulled the cut through. The beam split and passed on both sides, one fork close enough to scorch the air near Logan's cheek.
He clenched his teeth.
"The truth," Logan said, keeping his voice loud enough for Ahri to hear, "is that Aatrox is the one protecting both of us."
The Watcher's next attack came faster.
Kassadin had barely forced it aside before the limb bent around him with the smooth, ugly logic of a serpent. The orange eye opened near the end. Logan brought Aatrox up.
"Not split," Aatrox said. "Push it to one side."
"What?"
"Deflect it. Do not divide it."
"Any particular reason?"
"Yes."
Logan did not have time to argue.
The beam struck.
His instinct was to cut it open again, but he forced himself to trust the voice in the blade. He angled Aatrox harder to the right, letting the edge catch the beam and shove instead of slice.
The pressure changed at once.
Splitting the beam had felt like parting a wire under tension. This was worse. The attack resisted movement, burning against the blade as if it wanted to drill through. Logan's boots scraped across the platform. His injured muscles screamed. Then the beam slid away, carving a long orange line through the empty space to his right.
Logan exhaled hard.
"Why?"
"Again," Aatrox said.
The Watcher fired once more.
Logan shifted, set his stance, and moved the beam farther to the side than before. The force nearly turned his shoulders out of place. Aatrox steadied him, not by taking over, but by becoming a frame around his movements.
It was strange.
Logan had trained with Jax and Master Yi. Those lessons were still there. He could feel them in his stance and grip.
But this was different.
With Jax and Yi, he had been a student trying to remember what he had been taught.
With Aatrox, he felt as if the sword remembered with him.
Not just technique. Rhythm. Intention. The smallest tilt of his wrist, the pressure in his front foot, the exact moment to move before the beam fully touched the edge.
Aatrox guided.
Logan had expected power from anger. That was how these things usually went in stories. A character hit the breaking point, screamed, burned brighter, and somehow became stronger. And this was Aatrox they were talking about. The Darkin Blade. If anyone should have surged through wrath, it was him.
Instead, power came from calm.
A terrible, sharpened stillness.
Logan did not know if he should keep calling him Darkin. Aatrox was still far from what he had once been as an Ascended. Logan could feel that much. This power was only a shard of a ruined god-warrior, shaped through a blade and a body that was not his own.
But the direction had changed.
The mind inside the sword no longer felt like a storm trapped in metal. It felt like a warrior kneeling after a long madness, lifting his head at last.
"Farther," Aatrox said.
Logan forced the next beam wider.
His left arm trembled. His right hand had gone numb around the hilt. Spiritual power leaked through his body in uneven currents, thin and dirty from the Void's pressure. The wound inside his soul had not disappeared. Every use of power still scraped against corruption.
But Aatrox made the motion cleaner.
Another beam came.
Logan pushed it almost fully sideways.
"You're setting something up," Logan said.
"Yes."
Kassadin reappeared above the Watcher and drove his blade down with both hands. The strike landed at the base of one antler-like growth. Purple energy burst outward, and for the first time, the Watcher recoiled with visible irritation. Its torso twisted. Three small eyes opened across its side and fired at Kassadin from close range.
Kassadin teleported away from two.
The third did not miss.
It caught the edge of his armor as he reappeared, cutting across his side in a sharp orange line. The hit did not pierce through him, but it broke his momentum. Kassadin twisted in the air, one hand snapping toward the wound as the purple light around his armor flickered.
For the first time in the exchange, he did not counterattack immediately.
That was all the Watcher needed.
Both of its arms rose.
Logan's stomach dropped.
"Oh, hell."
The horn-like ends of both limbs twisted open at once. Two orange eyes bloomed, brighter than before. This time the Watcher had more space and a fraction more time to charge. The beams forming inside the eyes looked denser, their color burning closer to molten gold at the core.
"Can we do both?" Logan asked.
Aatrox did not answer immediately.
That was answer enough.
If Logan failed, one beam would go through him. Worse, it would reach Ahri.
He adjusted his stance anyway.
Behind him, Ahri tried to push herself up again.
"Don't worry," Logan said.
"Logan—"
The Watcher fired.
Aatrox moved.
For a heartbeat, Logan felt the sword take more than guidance.
Not possession, like the old stories of Aatrox devouring flesh and wearing bodies as disposable vessels. This was lighter, controlled, almost respectful. A hand over his hands. A will aligned with his own.
They met the first beam and shoved it away.
The second struck half a breath later.
Logan's body twisted beyond what he could have managed alone. Aatrox turned the blade, caught the line, and forced it off its path. One beam veered completely aside, tearing into the far dark.
The other did not move enough.
Pain detonated through Logan's left shoulder.
The beam did not cut him so much as erase part of him. Flesh, cloth, and spiritual reinforcement vanished together in a white-orange flash. The edge of the wound disintegrated into glowing ash before his power sealed enough of it to stop his arm from falling uselessly away.
But the beam missed Ahri.
Logan staggered, nearly dropped to one knee, and jammed Aatrox's tip against the platform to stay upright.
"Logan!" Ahri screamed.
Kassadin came back with a roar. He slammed into the Watcher from the side and drove it farther from the platform, forcing the creature to turn fully toward him again. Purple bursts flashed across the distance as he struck three times in rapid succession, each one pushing the Watcher back another step.
Logan's vision blurred.
He breathed through his teeth, waiting for the pain to become something he could work around.
Behind him, Ahri cursed at herself.
"I'm a burden," she said, the words sharp with hate. "Right now, I'm just—"
"What are you talking about?" Logan interrupted.
His voice sounded rough, but it held.
He forced himself to stand straighter. The left shoulder was bad. Very bad. He could still move the arm, barely, but only because spiritual power and Aatrox's will kept it from becoming dead weight.
"You carried me through this nightmare," Logan said. "I've been the burden since we entered the Void."
"That is not true."
"Sure it is. And before that too, probably since the day we met."
"..."
"You saved Zaun from Styraatu. You brought my soul to Lamb and Wolf. You kept me alive more times than I can count."
Ahri did not answer.
Logan stared at the Watcher as Kassadin continued to fight.
"So don't give me that burden crap," he said.
Kassadin was pushed back again.
Both of the Watcher arms turned toward Logan.
Logan lifted Aatrox.
His shoulder screamed.
The distance had increased. Maybe with the Watcher farther away, he could deflect another pair even with his shoulder half gone.
Two orange eyes opened at the ends of the Watcher's twisted limbs.
Logan set his feet.
The beams did not fire.
For one short, terrible moment, the Watcher simply held the aim on him, letting the charge build.
Then one of its arms moved.
The eye at the end of that limb shifted away from Logan and snapped toward Kassadin.
The beam shot toward Kassadin.
"A feint!" Logan shouted.
Kassadin tried to teleport, but the space around him tightened. Fuchsia veins flared across the Watcher's chest. The teleport stuttered, caught for a fraction of a second. Kassadin raised his blade, braced it with his gauntlet, and released a pulse of force from his armor.
The beam hit.
He barely held.
The orange light drilled against his blade, driving him backward through the Void. His armor screamed under the pressure. Purple energy wrapped around the point of impact, trying to disperse the beam, but the Watcher raised its other arm and added a second shot.
The two beams merged.
The combined blast struck Kassadin like a falling star.
He vanished into the distance, thrown far beyond the platform, swallowed among the black currents and broken lights.
The fuchsia Watcher turned back to Logan.
...
For a brief moment, nothing moved.
No Kassadin between them.
Just Logan, wounded and standing in front of Ahri with a fraction of his power available, facing a true Watcher that could pierce the gravitational field whenever it chose.
The sword hummed in his hands.
...
Aatrox spoke.
"I will take your body for a moment."
Logan did not hesitate.
"Do it."
...
Ahri's fear hit him before she said anything. Maybe it came through the thin spiritual bond between them. Maybe he just knew her too well by now.
Logan kept his eyes on the enemy.
"It's all right," he said. "Aatrox will help me."
Then he paused.
"No. I'll try to help Aatrox."
The blue Watcher was still sitting on the edge of the platform. Silent.
Logan turned his head slightly, not enough to take his gaze fully away from the fuchsia Watcher, but enough to speak toward the other one.
"And you," he said. "Watch Aatrox very carefully. This will be interesting."
Aatrox's glow changed.
The crimson-pink light along the blade deepened first, gathering near the core as if blood and dawn had been pressed together beneath the metal. Then another color entered it.
Orange.
Brighter. Almost gold.
The light spread from the sword into Logan's hands.
His injured shoulder stopped hurting.
Not because the wound healed. The missing flesh remained missing.
But pain lost authority.
The golden-orange radiance moved through his arms, across his chest, down his spine. Crimson-pink followed it like a second pulse, threading through bone, soul, and skin.
The Void reacted.
The darkness around the platform bent away.
The fuchsia Watcher recoiled, its many eyes opening across its body. Orange light gathered in them all at once, but it did not fire. The creature seemed to hesitate, as if facing something it had not expected to see in this place.
The blue Watcher leaned forward.
Ahri went still behind Logan.
The glow reached his back.
Something unfolded there.
Wings.
They formed from light first, wide and burning, edges drawn in crimson-pink, inner feathers blazing with orange-gold. Then structure followed, power knitting into shape around Aatrox's will and Logan's soul. The wings spread across the broken platform.
The whole emptiness seemed to hate it.
The Watcher hissed without sound.
The Void pressed down.
The light grew.
For a moment, Logan felt the shape of something older than Darkin.
A battlefield beneath a merciless sun. A god-warrior raising his blade. Wings cutting through dust and blood. Not madness nor slaughter. Duty before it curdled into despair.
Aatrox had not forgotten after all.
The sword rose in Logan's hands, and this time it did not feel like a weapon being held.
It felt like a name being remembered.
The fuchsia Watcher drew back, enraged.
The blue Watcher continued to observe.
Ahri whispered something Logan did not catch.
A new being was being born.
Or reborn.
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