Kai'Sa's hunger had started inside Bluebell, when the sounds of battle reached them through the Void. At first, she thought it was her own reaction, the old pressure in her chest that always came when something from below drew near. Then the symbiote tightened over her skin, and she knew.
It was starving for what those creatures carried.
These Voidborn were strong, the thing fused to her body had begun to stir like a predator smelling meat through stone.
Days ago, when the Void had seemed to grow angry, the symbiote had changed. It had become sharper, faster to answer her thoughts, more eager in battle. Kai'Sa had felt the difference and distrusted it. Power from the Void never came clean.
Now it was a frenzy.
The symbiote vibrated through every pore. It pushed heat into her limbs and pulled her reactions ahead of thought. When one of the Voidborns slashed at her from the right, she was already twisting away before her mind finished naming the attack. When the second cut through the space behind her, she folded low, kicked off the side of its blade, and came up with both hands raised.
A dozen missiles launched at once.
The projectiles streaked outward in a tight spread and hammered into the first Voidborn's chest, shoulder, neck, and face. The impacts drove it back, pieces of carapace cracking away, but it did not fall. It folded its limbs in front of itself and pushed through the explosions.
The second came from above.
Kai'Sa fired her thrusters and slipped sideways. Not far enough. One blade scraped across her side and sent a hot line of pain through her ribs. The symbiote sealed over the wound before the pain could slow her.
It wanted more.
She kicked forward, ducked under the wounded Voidborn's claw, and drove both fists into its abdomen. The symbiote hardened over her knuckles. The impact sank deeper than it should have. She felt something inside the creature rupture.
It screamed.
The sound excited the symbiote.
Kai'Sa forced herself back before that hunger could drag her too close. She spun away from the second Voidborn's strike, fired another wave of missiles, then used the blast cloud as cover to reposition.
Both creatures were damaged now.
She scanned the battlefield in broken flashes.
The man in purple armor fought the remaining two farther out.
Something black clung to the edge of his blade and burned away each time he cut. He fought without wasted motion, but not without strain.
Kai'Sa's own opponents gave her no more time to watch.
The less injured one rushed her straight on. The wounded one circled wide, slower now but still dangerous. Kai'Sa let the first come close, then shot upward at the last moment. Its claws crossed beneath her. She turned in the air and rained missiles into its back.
Six hit.
Four glanced off.
Two punched into softer tissue near the spine.
The Voidborn buckled.
The wounded one suddenly broke away.
Kai'Sa saw the line of its movement at once.
The platform.
It was no longer trying to kill her.
"No."
She launched after it.
The symbiote answered too eagerly. Speed slammed through her body. The distance closed fast, but not fast enough. The Voidborn's limbs spread, preparing to leap toward the platform.
A purple tear opened in front of it.
The armored man stepped out.
His blade was already moving.
The strike cut clean through the Voidborn's middle.
For a moment, the creature seemed not to know it had been split. Its upper body kept reaching. Its lower half drifted behind it. Then the two pieces separated, spilling black-violet matter into the dark.
Kai'Sa slowed, stunned despite herself.
One cut.
A wounded, fleeing Voidborn, but still one of the strongest she had ever seen, and he had ended it with one precise movement.
The moment did not last.
The two Voidborns that had been fighting him followed through the space he left behind.
Kai'Sa was already moving too fast toward him to stop cleanly.
The armored man glanced once in her direction and extended his arm sideways.
No words.
Kai'Sa understood.
She planted one foot on his forearm.
He braced.
She kicked off with everything she had.
The symbiote's thrusters erupted.
This time, the acceleration shocked even her.
The Void blurred.
Kai'Sa hit one of the pursuing Voidborns like a spear. The impact drove her shoulder into its chest and folded its outer plates inward. Before it could close its claws around her...
Twelve missiles fired at point-blank range.
The creature exploded.
Its chest burst outward, its head snapped back, and its limbs spasmed as the missiles detonated inside its body. Kai'Sa kicked away before the collapsing mass could swallow her in fragments.
The symbiote surged.
For a second, she felt it feeding.
Void essence, hot and wrong, passed into it through threads she could not see. Kai'Sa's stomach turned. At the same time, her limbs filled with a terrible rush, a pleasure that did not belong to her and yet ran through her body as if it did.
Disgust and ecstasy hit together.
She almost lost herself in it.
Her hands curled into fists.
"No," she said under her breath. "Enough."
The symbiote trembled, reluctant, then obeyed.
But it did not return to what it had been.
Kai'Sa felt it changing under her skin, not only growing stronger, but reshaping itself around the new power it had consumed. Fibers tightened. Plates adjusted. The flow of heat through her limbs became cleaner, faster, more controlled.
It was evolving.
And the worst part was that part of her knew how to move with it.
The armored man drifted closer. He said nothing. His helmet faced the two remaining Voidborns.
Kai'Sa followed his gaze.
Only two left.
Both badly wounded.
They were drawing closer to one another now.
Kai'Sa glanced at the armored man.
He had already chosen his target. His blade angled down. Violet light gathered around him in a quiet pulse.
So she chose the other.
No signal was needed.
They moved at the same time.
Kai'Sa launched forward and felt the symbiote shift over her skin. For one strange instant, the Voidborn's attention slid off her. Its head turned toward the armored man instead, as if Kai'Sa had vanished from the world.
She looked down.
Her body was gone from sight.
Not transparent or blurred, invisible.
The realization almost broke her focus. She had no time to question it. She angled away from the direct path, circled wide, and came in behind her target.
The Voidborn sensed something too late.
Twelve missiles launched.
The blasts tore through the creature's spine and ribbed shell. It folded inward, then burst apart in a flash of purple-white fire. Pieces scattered and burned.
Kai'Sa turned immediately.
The armored man had finished too.
His Voidborn drifted headless, the neck opened by a single clean cut. The body twitched once, then went still.
For several seconds, nothing attacked.
The silence felt wrong.
Kai'Sa did not trust it until she had scanned every direction twice.
No more movement.
...
They had won.
She let herself breathe.
The armored man turned toward the platform. Kai'Sa followed, keeping a short distance behind him.
"Thank you," she said.
He stopped.
The helmet angled slightly toward her.
"For stopping the one that tried to reach them," Kai'Sa added.
For a moment, she thought he would ignore her.
Then he spoke, dry and low.
"Are you from Shurima?"
Kai'Sa stilled.
The question was too specific.
"Yes."
He looked at her then, not like someone admiring a fighter. The stare was sharper than that. Searching. Measuring. Kai'Sa felt the weight of it on the symbiote, as if the man could see past the shell and into the place where human flesh and Void matter had become impossible to separate.
Her skin prickled.
He lowered his gaze.
A quiet breath left him, almost a sigh.
Then he turned and continued toward the platform.
Kai'Sa followed.
Up close, the damage was worse than she expected.
Logan lay broken across Jinx's lap, pale and shaking in small, uneven pulses. A fox woman lay beside him with her head also resting against Jinx, her body pierced through, her blood soaking into everything around them. Jinx had one hand under Logan's head and the other braced against Ahri's shoulder, as if she were afraid either one would slip away if she moved wrong.
Vi stood near them with one leg half-bent, blood running from a puncture in her thigh. She looked at Kai'Sa as soon as she arrived.
"They dead?"
Kai'Sa nodded. "All of them."
Vi let out a breath and looked at the armored man. "Thanks."
He did not answer.
Vander had already moved to the side. His suit was way larger than the others. He opened one reinforced compartment inside the outer shell and pulled out a folded anti-corruption suit, smaller than his own but still heavy. The material uncoiled in stiff segments, waiting for a body to seal around.
"We get this on him?" Vander asked.
Jinx's head snapped up. "No."
Everyone looked at her.
She swallowed, then shook her head harder. "No. Maybe. I don't know. That's the problem."
Vi frowned. "Jinx."
"It's not made to heal him," Jinx said, voice too fast now that it had started. "It keeps corruption out. Keeps it from getting in. That's not the same thing as pulling it out when it's already inside him."
She looked at Logan's face, then at the suit in Vander's hands.
"We all had to do that stupid assimilation test before wearing them, remember? Let the organic Voidborn layer read us without eating us. Let the filters decide we weren't snacks. That was with us healthy." Her voice cracked. "Putting that on him now might be like vaccinating someone who's already dying from the sickness."
Vi's jaw tightened.
Vander looked down at the suit.
The armored man held out one hand. "Give it to me."
Vander did.
The man took the suit and began checking it with quick, practiced movements. He tested the inner lining, the seal points. Then he turned the helmet in his hands and studied it longer than the rest.
No one spoke.
Jinx held Logan closer without seeming to notice.
Finally, the armored man set the helmet down.
"The girl is right," he said. "Do not put this on him."
The man lifted both hands toward his own helmet.
Kai'Sa watched.
His fingers found the release near the jaw. There was a faint hiss as the seals loosened.
Then he stopped.
Slowly, he turned his helmet toward her.
"You," he said. "Stand watch."
Kai'Sa held his gaze.
He continued, "Against Voidborn, you are the strongest one here besides me. If more come, you will sense them first."
He was right.
She nodded once.
She stepped away from the platform's center, moving toward the edge where she could see farther into the dark. Behind her, she heard the helmet release fully.
Curiosity pulled at her.
Kai'Sa looked back.
Only for a moment.
The man had removed the strange helmet. From where she stood, she could see only the back of his head.
She turned away before he could notice.
Still, the question stayed with her.
What did his face look like?