At a glance, the ground beneath their feet had already been ravaged beyond recognition by war.
The battlefield was thick with the heavy smell of blood from the corpses scattered everywhere. After the brief joy of victory passed, the soldiers began cleaning up the dead.
Tens of thousands of bodies piled together, and no matter who saw it, they could not help feeling a dull ache in their chest.
So many lives, all gone in a single night.
Most Demacians carried justice and protection through to the end, so they could not understand the thinking of those invaders.
They only knew that once a person died, they would never again see the beauty of Runeterra.
Some of the Noxian soldiers had died with their eyes still open.
Even if they had been enemies in life, out of respect for the dead, the people cleaning the battlefield still closed their eyes for them.
These Noxians would remain buried in these mountains forever.
Over the long course of history, the mountains had already become filled with bones like these.
The sky gradually brightened, and the first rays of sunlight spilled over the horizon, falling across every person there.
It was as if that light brought a small measure of healing to the battered battlefield.
Morning came to Hill City.
The residents who had been hiding in the escape tunnels finally emerged and cheered with full hearts at the army's victory over Noxus.
Then they all made their way to the church in the city, crowding it so thoroughly that people filled both the inside and the grounds outside.
Inside the church, Luke stood off to one side and quietly listened to the prayer of an Illuminator priest.
Around the priest stood coffin after coffin, each holding one of the fallen soldiers.
Where there was war, there would always be sacrifice.
Especially on a battlefield involving tens of thousands.
For Demacia, this was still a resounding victory, the annihilation of nearly a hundred thousand enemy soldiers at the cost of only a small number of their own.
Even if, for a nation the size of Noxus, a hundred thousand men was not really that much.
Still, this battle had landed like a loud slap across Noxus's face.
And it had made them pay for what they had done at the Gates of Mourning.
After the prayer ended, Luke left the Church of the Illuminators.
Because Jarvan IV had to deal with matters at the Gates of Mourning, he immediately took part of the force there despite having gone the entire night without sleep.
At this point, Demacia had effectively retaken the Gates of Mourning. Under normal circumstances, after suffering this kind of crushing defeat, Noxus probably would not come back any time soon.
But just to be safe, the reinforcements and repairs at the Gates of Mourning still needed to be accelerated.
As he walked, Luke looked in the direction of Noxus.
More than a hundred thousand men, not one survivor. If news of this reached Noxus, it would certainly cause a major stir.
But he was equally certain that even after something like this, Noxus still would not reflect on itself in the slightest.
They never considered how much suffering their invasions caused the people they attacked.
If he wanted them to remember the lesson, simply driving them back was nowhere near enough.
Pulling his thoughts back from that line of thinking, Luke's eyes became perfectly clear. He knew exactly what he had to do next.
Footsteps sounded nearby.
He glanced at Lux as she came up beside him, then remembered something and frowned slightly. "Did you secretly use magic again?"
"So what if I did?" Lux lifted her chin and puffed out her chest with righteous confidence. "Was I just supposed to stand there and watch?"
Luke glanced at her. "Weren't you afraid of being found out?"
Lux shook her head with an air of wisdom far beyond her years. "Being scared and not daring to act are two completely different things."
Luke supposed that was true. When it came to her, wasn't that always the pattern, terrified out of her mind while recklessly tempting fate anyway?
Seeing that he did not respond, Lux confidently added, "Besides, I was really careful. There's no way anyone noticed."
Nobody had brought it up yet, which obviously meant nobody had caught on.
Thinking about her own brilliant technique, Lux even started to feel a little smug.
She was convinced she had hidden it perfectly.
Luke just chuckled and did not say anything else.
Sooner or later, Miss Crownguard would no longer have to hide something as simple as using magic to protect people.
Lux was in a good mood, not only because she believed she had hidden her magic perfectly, but because she had saved a great many people today.
She was gradually beginning to understand why she had been given this power in the first place. She no longer seemed as lost as before. At last, she could see the road ahead.
Not far away, several soldiers were talking.
"By the way, did any of you notice anything strange during the battle last night?"
"You mean..."
"Exactly. I was being surrounded by a few Noxians, and right when I was about to give out, I suddenly felt this soft light block a killing blow for me."
"I felt that too, but mine happened while I was charging."
"No question, that was magic, right?"
"I think I saw that light coming from Miss Crownguard..."
"Shh. Even if you saw it, pretend you didn't. We all noticed."
"Miss Crownguard is such a kind girl. We can't let something happen to her because of us..."
The soldiers exchanged looks, then quietly changed the subject.
Scenes like that played out in more than one place.
A lot of people had noticed it. Whenever danger struck on the battlefield, a flash of light would appear and shield them from harm.
That light was just as bright as the blonde girl running through the battlefield.
When he got home, Luke dropped into the rocking chair with a relaxed sigh, as if he no longer had the strength to move at all.
Having stayed awake all night, he quickly felt drowsiness catch up with him. He closed his eyes right there and dozed off.
In the corner of the courtyard, Katarina stood there with her pale green eyes fixed unblinkingly on Luke in the rocking chair.
The battles of this night had given her an even clearer understanding of war.
Even though she had always treated human lives cheaply, the moment tens of thousands of bodies lay before her, she still felt deeply how small she was.
Hundreds of thousands of people, even if she had been the one killing them herself, it would have taken her days and nights without rest.
And yet now, all of them had lost their lives in a single night.
And all of it had come from the decisions of the man lying in that rocking chair.
After a whole night had passed, he did not seem any different from before. Even while dozing, he still wore that same lazy, slack expression, like someone who could never quite muster any energy.
And yet this was the very man who had gotten hundreds of thousands killed in a single night.
How had he even done it?
Katarina could not help replaying everything in her mind.
It seemed that from the very moment Shyvana revealed her background, he had already come up with a plan.
During the discussions, he had directly ordered Jarvan IV to take troops and hide at the Gates of Mourning. Then after going out once and coming back, he had immediately begun preparing to slay the dragon.
Even Patria's attack had apparently been within his expectations.
But how had he known the dragon would go to the Gates of Mourning?
All of his arrangements had been based on complete certainty that the dragon would appear there.
If Patria had been just a little more cautious and refused to leave the Gates of Mourning, then every preparation would have gone to waste.
But given Patria's personality, how could he possibly have turned down an opportunity delivered right to his face?
So that meant Luke had known Patria would attack on his own.
This was the kind of calculation that decided battlefields, one wrong step and everything was lost forever.
Katarina suddenly remembered the bet they had made, and that led her to an even more unsettling possibility.
Was there any chance that when this man proposed that bet, he had already foreseen what would happen today?
Or more than that, from the very first time he met Shyvana, had he already intended to make use of the dragon's arrival...
The thought was so unbelievable that Katarina did not want to accept it.
But if she had to rank every Demacian she had encountered by how dangerous they were to Noxus, there was no question that Luke would be at the top of the list.
She had a strange feeling that this man lying in the rocking chair with that blissfully foolish sleeping face would one day cause Noxus enormous trouble.
At the same time, on a remote island off the coast of the continent of Shurima, a place that seemed completely cut off from the rest of the world.
The island was not small. Among its mountains stood a towering volcano reaching beneath the clouds.
Within the clouds, several enormous figures moved in and out of sight. Looking more closely, they were clearly dragons.
One of them, a green dragon, flew into the volcano. It came to a stop before a dragon lying curled upon the stone and said slowly, "Dragonlord, Yvva has fallen."
The dragon lying there was even larger, covered in mithril-colored scales, though its face already looked old and worn, as if it had been asleep.
At those words, it slowly opened its eyes, its gaze carrying a natural authority even without anger.
It carefully reached out with its senses and soon realized that it could no longer feel Yvva's presence.
Yvva's lair had been in a volcano somewhere on the continent of Shurima. She had lived there year-round and rarely left it, so if her presence had vanished now, then something must have happened.
It seemed she had gone to cleanse the tainted bloodline, but from the look of things, that impure-blooded one had clearly killed her instead.
"So another one of our kin has fallen..."
The mithril dragon murmured to itself, a trace of sorrow rising in its heart.
There were not many dragons left on Runeterra as it was. After all, the birth of even a single dragon took an immense span of time.
And not every dragon egg would hatch successfully in the end.
Back then, it had led part of dragonkind to this isolated island.
Another portion had chosen to live apart on their own.
But that did not mean the bond between them had been severed. Even separated, they were still of dragon blood.
Yvva had not been weak, and yet even she had ultimately failed to escape death.
That left the mithril dragon with a particularly bitter sense of sorrow.
"Bring back her remains."
The mithril dragon sighed and said slowly, "And inform Yvva's children. By the laws of dragonkind, any dragon has the duty to avenge a fallen kinsman. But in these times, whether they choose revenge or not may be left to their own judgment."
In the past, any mortal who dared kill a dragon would immediately face the wrath of dragonkind.
But times were different now. Even dragonkind, strong as it was, no longer had the luxury of throwing its weight around.
Yvva's matter would have to be left to her closest blood relatives.
"Yes."
The green dragon lowered its head, then slowly flew out.
Left there alone, the mithril dragon sighed again. Maybe it really was old, lately it had been feeling sleepier and sleepier.
Dragons could live for a very long time.
But as for exactly how long it had lived, even it no longer remembered clearly.
Only that it had been a very, very long time, long enough to witness many things across Runeterra.
And now, the mithril dragon had begun to realize that the end of its life might be approaching.
Before it died, perhaps it ought to choose the next Dragonlord as soon as possible, someone to continue leading dragonkind.
But among the older dragons, none seemed suited for the role, while the younger dragons were still far too immature. There seemed to be no dragon truly capable of bearing that burden.
Even the green dragon that had just left was only slightly better than the others.
As drowsiness grew stronger, the mithril dragon slowly closed its eyes.
Fine. It would think about that the next time it woke.
When Luke woke up, it was still only noon.
He had woken because his face felt cold. It was winter, after all, and sleeping outside in the courtyard like that really was a bad idea in this weather.
Even though the fine silk he wore helped keep some of the cold off him, his face still felt chilled.
When he opened his eyes, he found a blanket draped over him. He had no idea who had put it there.
No one else was around. They were probably all asleep, considering everyone had been awake for an entire day and night.
Luke sat up and touched his stomach. Empty.
It had been fine until he thought about it. Then all at once the hunger hit him so hard he felt dizzy.
He got to his feet and wandered off toward the military camp.
For the past few days he had basically been living off the mess hall there.
When he arrived, it was just in time for the meal. He grabbed a clean bowl, filled it with hot savory meat-and-vegetable porridge, and took two loaves of dark bread.
That was lunch for today.
The cooks at the camp were actually pretty good. The porridge was tasty enough to earn praise even from Luke.
He sat down somewhere by himself and ate in peace, glancing around now and then.
After the war, everyone had visibly relaxed. They all looked far more at ease now, no longer carrying that constant tension they had been under these past days.
He even saw Shyvana sitting at a table with a few close friends, laughing and chatting, wearing a smile that came from the heart.
He did not go over to bother them.
After lunch, he went back, but by then he was no longer sleepy.
And since he could not sleep, he decided nobody else should get to sleep peacefully either.
So the first door Luke went to knock on was Miss Crownguard's.
After a few loud knocks, Lux opened the door not long after, glaring at him with a sleepy, annoyed expression. "What?"
Luke put on a considerate look. "I brought you lunch. You should eat something."
Lux looked even more irritated. "Do you realize I was sleeping?"
Her schedule had always been excellent, early to bed, early to rise, always a solid eight hours without fail.
She had stayed up an entire day and night, and now she had only gotten a few hours of sleep, which made it obvious just how exhausted she was.
"I know," Luke said with a nod and a smile. "That's exactly why I was worried you'd sleep yourself hungry."
"Hungry my ass!" Lux gritted her teeth. By this point, she already knew exactly what this shameless bastard was up to. She immediately tried to slam the door shut and coldly declared, "I only want to sleep right now. Do not disturb!"
Unfortunately for Miss Crownguard, that nap was doomed from the start.
In the end, she was sitting at the table eating lunch anyway, shooting Luke resentful little looks while viciously tearing into her dark bread as if she were chewing on him instead.
Under that accusing stare, Luke felt not even the slightest bit guilty and calmly sipped his hot tea.
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