(Marvel, DC, images, manhuas, and every anime that will be mentioned and used in this story are not mine. They all belong to their respective owners. The main character "Karito/Adriel Josue Valdez" and the story are mine)
It was a sunny day in Piltover.
Which felt almost insulting, considering the City of Progress was currently choking on the consequences of progress.
The streets still looked clean from a distance—golden stone, polished ironwork, glass catching sunlight like it had something to prove—but everything under that shine was tense. Tight shoulders. Quiet voices. Doors shut quicker. Faces turned away faster. Like the whole city had learned how to flinch.
Jinx had seen to that.
First came the explosions—multiple hits across Piltover's ventilation systems. Before that, the attack at the celebration: Shimmer-induced beasts released into a crowd meant to be untouchable, meant to be safe. Meant to be above consequences. Wealthy people screaming the same way everyone else screamed when fear got teeth.
Zaun had always been a thorn in Piltover's side, even before Silco. But now? After Jinx? Piltover had slammed its borders shut and called it survival.
A state of emergency.
An elite capture team deployed—small, ruthless, and armed with Hextech spheres slotted into their weapons like portable miracles. They moved through Zaun's hotspots and did what Piltover always did when it got scared: they turned the Undercity into a problem to be purged.
They weaponized the Gray.
A highly unstable toxic aerosol born from industrial pollution, then refined into something deliberate. They manipulated the ventilation systems to pump it into key areas—places Jinx frequented, places her people hid, places that mattered. The purpose wasn't subtle. It was a message: we can poison the air you breathe whenever we feel like it.
Most of it amounted to nothing. Jinx slipped the net like she always did.
Eventually, Vi and Caitlyn found her. Sevika was there too.
Two versus two—Vi and Caitlyn came out on top. But Vi couldn't finish it. Not when a child threw herself into the fight, standing between Vi and the person she still couldn't bring herself to kill.
Jinx.
Vi's hesitation cracked something between her and Caitlyn that couldn't be patched with apologies. And Jinx—already spiraling, already burning—took that fracture and turned it into gasoline.
She sabotaged a large vault holding the Gray.
Blew it.
Reversed the flow into Piltover's own filtration system like she was rewriting the city's lungs. She'd planted colorful Shimmer-laced canisters designed to rip the vents open and push the tainted smoke upward. A sick kind of artistry—bright, toxic, impossible to ignore.
The Gray went up.
Piltover went down.
To say shit went batshit crazy was an understatement.
Adriel didn't learn any of this by "asking around."
It arrived all at once—clean, organized, and cold—slotted into his brain the way a file snaps into a folder.
Passive Knowledge.
The skill was a cheat code and a curse. It was the easiest way to pinpoint exactly where in the story he'd landed.
Halfway through Season 2.
He'd missed most of Season 1 inside the dome—because he'd been too busy outside it, patching the canon League lore across the rest of Runeterra. Fixing what Anansi had fused and fractured. Putting out fires everywhere except the one burning hottest.
Now he was here.
And that knowledge sat heavy behind his eyes like a migraine that didn't hurt—just pressed.
Adriel stared out at Piltover from the slums, jaw tight.
He remembered how it used to look nicer.
Before—
His thought snagged. Hard. A mental stutter.
Images flashed of early Season 1. Five Darks. Him dropping into the story like a blunt instrument. Him not caring about who lived, who died, who cried, who begged. Just "fix the problem," move on, leave the pieces.
He dragged both hands down his face and let out a low breath.
"Yeah," he muttered to himself, voice rough. "I know."
Something was bound to be different this time.
It always was.
Passive Knowledge gave him the episode, the broad strokes, the direction of the current. It didn't hand him every single detail on a silver platter—unless he pushed for it. And right now? He didn't.
He'd surprise himself.
If he got lost, he'd ask the right question and let the plot cough up the answer. Stupidly convenient. Nigh-omniscient. The kind of power that made it too easy to stop being human.
He wasn't doing that again.
He'd reflected enough for nine hundred quintillion years. If he hadn't learned something from that, then he didn't deserve the title of Guardian. He didn't deserve any of this.
He rolled his neck, both sides popping, then started moving toward the City of Progress.
Objective first: find the leads. Keep the protagonists alive. Keep them anchored. Keep the story stable enough to cut Anansi out without collapsing the entire structure.
This time he wasn't going to be a hypocrite about it.
This time he wasn't going to be an asshole.
As he walked, he caught glimpses—faces with Powder-adjacent features, hair colors mimicked, graffiti with Jinx's signature chaos. Celebrity through terror. Myth through violence. Piltover didn't just fear her; it couldn't stop orbiting her.
After a while, he reached a bridge he recognized.
The same one from Season 1. The one he'd used to escape enforcers after the break-in at Jayce's apartment, when all of this still felt like a story you could steer with enough luck and a fast enough sprint.
Now the bridge was packed with enforcers. Border control. No passage. Hardline.
Adriel didn't bother with the line.
Space folded for him like paper. He teleported past the checkpoint and into Piltover proper.
The city felt... different.
Not physically. Not on the surface. But the vibe was wrong. People moved like they were listening for the next blast. Conversations died as soon as they noticed strangers. The sunlight didn't feel warm anymore; it felt like a spotlight.
Adriel shoved the observation aside.
Focus.
He pinged his senses—hunting for the nearest narrative weight. The protagonist signature. The gravitational pull the story always wrapped itself around.
And of course—
His shit luck delivered exactly who he didn't want first.
Vi.
With Loris nearby—one of Caitlyn's strike-team people. A side character with a rifle and enough screen time to matter.
Adriel stopped walking for half a second, annoyance rising, then swallowed it back down.
He'd been ready to leave Vi for last.
Because he knew—he knew—Anansi had probably twisted something to ensure she still remembered pieces of him from before the Big Bang event. Before the fusion. Maybe not cleanly. Maybe with edits. Maybe with rot. But enough to keep the hate alive.
And he couldn't even blame her.
What was he supposed to do? Walk up and say hi and pray she didn't swing? Because if she did, she'd break her hand and forearm on contact and then the story would turn it into a whole dramatic thing, and he—
Adriel exhaled, slow.
He was so tired of drama he could almost laugh. Almost.
Instead he thought, If I keep living like this, I'm gonna start sounding like the champions when they vent. Depressing enough to make him want to lay down and never get up again.
He shook the thought away immediately. Sharp. Controlled.
Not today.
He didn't want Caitlyn either. He couldn't even remember if he'd ever spoken to her—he suspected not. He didn't particularly like her. Jayce, Ekko, Heimerdinger... all of that could wait.
If he had his choice, he'd rather find Jinx. It was always easier to talk to her.
Easier didn't mean safe.
Talking to a mentally unstable person was like walking into a room full of glass with your shoes off. One wrong step and you'd bleed for it.
Still.
He sucked it up and started moving.
This was going to suck.
He could already feel the headache stacking in advance.
"Fuck," he muttered. And immediately hated how often that word was becoming punctuation in his life. He really did sigh like an old man now.
Then he stopped.
Because something was there that absolutely hadn't been there before.
A statue.
He approached it on instinct, like his body recognized the weirdness before his brain could explain it. Stone and metal shaped into a familiar silhouette. A heroic stance. A mask. A symbol burned into the world like a promise.
The plaque read:
THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN
Adriel stared up at it, then blinked once, slowly.
"You've got to be kidding me," he whispered.
A memorial.
A monument.
And judging by the amount of wilted flowers, careful offerings, and handmade decorations clustered at its base—
They thought Spider-Man was dead.
The statue was clean. Not just "unvandalized." Maintained. Like people came here daily to wipe it down, to keep the dust off his shoulders, to keep their myth from decaying.
That alone hit him harder than he expected.
He stayed low-key, no suit, no theatrics. He didn't know what reaction he'd get if he showed up masked in front of a city that had mourned him. He didn't know how far Anansi's awareness reached inside the dome, but he assumed the answer was: far enough.
Stealth first.
He crouched, fingers brushing over the clutter, and picked up a note—small, folded, written in shaky handwriting.
A child.
The ink was uneven. The paper smelled faintly like disinfectant and sweat and fear.
It said she admired him from her mother's stories. That she'd heard how he fought impossible odds and never gave up. That he was the reason she kept fighting even while the Gray ate at her lungs.
Her inspiration.
Adriel's throat tightened.
He found another note under it—newer. Same handwriting, weaker.
She wrote that it was getting harder to breathe.
That she was trying.
That she was trying so hard.
But she couldn't be as strong as her hero.
Her last note was only one sentence:
She wished she could've seen him.
To see the hero her family talked about with that kind of light in their voices.
In the end, she suffocated.
Adriel's vision blurred before he could stop it.
A lump formed in his throat like his body was trying to swallow guilt whole and choking on it instead. His knees hit the stone hard enough that he felt the impact up his legs.
Tears slid down his face—quiet, unannounced, humiliatingly human.
He could feel it.
Their hope.
Their despair.
The weight of what he'd left unfinished.
And the only thing he managed to say—voice cracking, almost too small to exist—was:
"...Sorry."
He was late.
He could've solved this quicker.
But he'd been dealing with other Darks, putting out other fires, saving other regions, leaving the hardest problem for last like he could afford to.
And yeah—Jinx had done this. But blaming her felt wrong, too clean. She was following the script she'd been written to follow, pushed by a plot that didn't care how many bodies it stacked as long as the story moved.
But multiple Darks had been involved.
That changed everything.
Adriel wiped his face with the heel of his palm and forced his breathing back into control. He stood slowly, shoulders tight, eyes burning—not with tears now, but with resolve.
"Don't worry," he said under his breath, like he was speaking to the notes, to the statue, to the dead girl, to the whole damn city. "I'll fix this."
His jaw set.
"I'm gonna kill Anansi."
And then he turned away from the memorial and started walking—straight toward Vi's apartment.
Because the day of reckoning didn't care about his feelings.
And neither did the story.
Vi POV
I haven't been having the best of times.
And yeah—no shit, right? What did I expect? Some kind of happy ending with fireworks and a ribbon-cutting ceremony?
My life has gone to complete hell.
Caitlyn—my ex-girlfriend now—walked away. I blew the mission when we finally had Jinx cornered. Piltover turned into a disaster all over again. The explosion. The vents. The Gray. People coughing in the streets while the Council pretends they can "contain" a city choking on its own lungs.
And everybody I've ever known?
Ghosted me.
Like I'm a bad habit they finally kicked.
I'd love to say I'm handling it with grace. Like I'm journaling and meditating and doing breathing exercises.
Nah.
I'm drowning it. Beer after beer until my stomach flips and I'm bent over some sink, heaving like my body's trying to throw up my entire life. I don't even care where I end up. Some club. Some back-alley dive. Anywhere that's loud enough to drown out my head for five minutes—until some pervert decides he's brave, and I break his nose in. Then I get kicked out like I'm the problem.
Even the underground fights don't feel the same.
I used to win. I used to walk in and make the world make sense with my fists.
Now I get my ass beat. Over and over. Like my body forgot the rhythm. Like my hands don't remember how to be mine. Like every punch I throw is a second too late, every block a fraction too slow.
It's exhausting.
It's embarrassing.
And I've hit this point where I don't even know what to do with myself anymore. I don't know where to go. I don't know what Caitlyn is doing. I don't know if she hates me or misses me or if she already replaced me with someone who doesn't come with a lifetime subscription to trauma.
I miss her.
And I hate that I miss her.
I hate how much space she still takes up in me like she never left.
Loris stayed for a while. He tried. He really did.
But even he reached his limit. Patience doesn't last forever when you keep spitting venom at the one person still standing near you. I insulted him enough times that eventually he stopped answering. Stopped trying. Just... started treating me like background noise.
So now it's just me.
Me and the migraines so bad pills don't even pretend to help anymore.
Me and the emptiness.
And that voice.
That damn voice that has been living in the back of my skull for years like a parasite with perfect timing. It doesn't even sound like my thoughts. It sounds like him.
Like a constant reminder of every time I failed.
It's always there, like a phantom leaning against the walls of my mind with that smug, detached tone that makes my skin crawl.
You've really done it now, huh?
I'm face-first on my bed in my cramped little apartment—barely bigger than a closet—and in my head he's lounging like he owns the place. Leaning on top of the sink like he's too real to be imaginary.
I try to ignore him, but his voice is the worst kind of noise. Nails on chalkboard. A laugh you can't turn off.
Everyone you've ever known ditched you. Holy shit. If toxic masculinity had a mascot, Vi, you're doing amazing.
I squeeze my eyes shut. My jaw clenches so hard it hurts.
Shut up, I mumble into my sheets.
He doesn't.
You pushed away the only person who tried to support you. Even when you were puking your guts out. Even when you got beat up in pits. That's talent, honestly. Caitlyn could've picked someone better.
My stomach twists. Rage and shame mixing into something sour.
Bet she rebounded with some other bitch. She's got options. She's not out here drinking herself unconscious and vomiting in alley corners.
"Shut up," I say again, louder this time, like volume will make him disappear.
It doesn't.
God, it's been years and you haven't changed. Everything you touch, you break. And you still think Jinx is the problem? My God, girl, how self-centered can you be?
My hands shake.
There's probably a timeline out there where you don't exist and everyone's happy. Imagine that.
That's it.
Something in me snaps—like a cord pulled too tight for too long—and I'm up off the bed before I even realize I moved. My fist slams into the mirror above the sink with a crack that feels louder than it should.
Pain blooms across my knuckles.
The illusion—his presence, that voice—cuts out like a radio getting smashed. It vanishes with a laugh that echoes for half a second too long.
I stand there, breathing hard, staring at the broken glass.
Then I cover my face with my hands.
I look like a mess.
My hair—what used to be violet—now painted black like I'm trying to erase myself. Heavy eyeliner running down my cheeks, smeared like a depressed goth cliché. Like I'm cosplaying my own breakdown.
Jesus Christ.
I'm worse than yesterday.
And I don't want to do anything about it.
I don't feel like doing anything. I can't fix anything. I can't think straight long enough to make a plan that isn't "drink until I stop feeling" or "sleep until the world resets."
I don't need Karito's ghost to remind me how much of a fuck-up I am.
I know.
And it's tiresome.
Even Powder—Jinx—she's a celebrity now. A living disaster with a fan club and a body count. And what am I doing?
Being a whole-ass adult going through a phase like a teenager with a broken heart and no coping skills.
God. Why can't things get easier?
Nothing ever gets easier.
I stumble back to my bed and collapse, finally feeling like maybe I can steal an hour of sleep. Just an hour. Just enough to shut the world off.
I pull the blanket up, trying to disappear into it—
And then there's a knock at the door.
I freeze.
Oh my fucking God.
"Can everybody leave me the fuck alone?" I mutter, voice raw.
Another knock.
I grit my teeth, anger rising like it wants somewhere to land.
"Who is it?" I shout.
No answer.
A pause.
Then another knock.
My patience snaps clean in half.
"All right," I growl, shoving myself upright. "You wanna play games? Cool. Let's play."
I march to the door and yank it open, ready to tear into whoever's outside—
And my entire body locks.
For a second I think I'm hallucinating again. Like I accidentally punched my brain instead of the mirror.
Because there he is.
Standing in my doorway like he belongs there.
Karito.
Not a smear of imagination. Not a voice. Not a memory.
Real.
Too real.
My throat closes. My breathing stutters. My heart kicks into my ribs like it's trying to escape.
"You can't—" My voice shakes. "You can't be real."
He doesn't move. Doesn't blink like a ghost.
"You're dead," I whisper, like saying it out loud will make it true again. "You... you died. I saw it."
My mind screeches. It hurts. It hurts in that silent way where everything inside you goes too loud at once and you can't sort the sound into thoughts.
Words fall out of my mouth in broken pieces.
"W-where... what... how—"
I can't even make a sentence.
My body decides for me. I reach out—slow, shaking—because I need to know. I need to prove it to myself.
My fingers touch his jaw.
Warm skin. Solid. Real texture. No static. No dream haze.
And it feels like my soul gets yanked out of my body.
He's still... perfect. Pristine. Like time didn't touch him. Like he didn't die. Like he never left. Like every memory I have of him bleeding out was just another lie the universe fed me.
My legs give out.
I drop to my knees, breath coming in panicked gasps, hands trembling like I'm about to break apart at the seams.
And he's there instantly—fast, sure—catching me before I hit the floor fully. An arm around my shoulders, steadying me like this is normal. Like he's done it a thousand times.
Like he's always been here.
His voice is low. Real.
"I'm sorry," he says. "I'm late. But I'm back."
I can feel him.
His touch. His warmth. The faint scent of something familiar I can't place because my brain is too busy screaming.
And one thought keeps stabbing through the panic, over and over, relentless:
Why the hell is he here?
How is he alive?
My nightmare. The person I used to love. The person I envied. The person I hated after he tossed me aside like trash.
Why is Karito here?
⟡ ⟡ ⟡
Vi couldn't understand how Adriel was standing in her doorway.
Not conceptually. Not in the way her brain had been torturing her for years—an invisible presence leaning on the sink, running his mouth, dissecting her life like it was a joke.
No. This was physical.
Warmth. Weight. Breath in the air. The faint scent of soap and something sharp behind it—like ozone after a storm.
For decades she'd lived with the story already written: Spider-Man died. The five monsters he dragged into Piltover died with him. The disaster ended, sealed in history and grief and whatever unresolved mess it left behind.
But the second she saw him, something in her mind... unlocked.
It felt like staring at a blank, white canvas her whole life—then someone dumped paint straight into her skull.
Images she'd never lived flashed behind her eyes. A Vi that wasn't her—a Vi that died—memories pouring in like they were being forced through a crack in reality.
A blurred battlefield. A wrong shadow. A voice that wasn't human. The sensation of being deleted mid-thought.
It came fast.
It left fast.
But the aftershock stayed.
Vi's breathing turned sharp, shallow. Her chest tightened like an invisible hand closed around her ribs. She grabbed at the doorframe to keep herself upright, and her fingers slipped because her palms were sweating.
Adriel caught it immediately.
He didn't look surprised so much as... resigned. Like he'd walked into the room expecting a fire and got a bomb instead.
He didn't want it to happen automatically—not like this—but the "plot" of reality had always been cruelly efficient. Sometimes the world didn't wait for explanations. It just shoved the truth into someone's head and called it mercy.
Vi snapped out of it like a drowning woman breaking the surface.
Her anxiety spiked, violent and raw.
"What the fuck did you bring this time?" she spat, voice cracking at the edges. "What—what just happened to me? How are you alive? No—" her throat tightened, anger trying to outrun fear, "—I don't even care. Get out. Get the hell out of my life."
Adriel didn't flinch.
He let her burn through it. Let the insults and panic hit him like rain.
When she finally paused—when the words ran out and the silence filled the gap—he spoke in the gentlest tone he could manage.
"I can't."
Two words. No theatrics. No swagger. No smugness.
Vi's eyes narrowed, hate still there, but now it had competition: confusion. Too many questions piling up too fast.
"I can't leave," Adriel repeated, slower this time. "Not like before. Not this time."
She barked a humorless laugh. "Oh, not this time. Wow. Good to know you finally decided to show up again."
His jaw flexed, but he kept it controlled. "I've been gone because I was trying to keep your world from collapsing."
"My world?" Vi's voice rose. "You don't get to—"
He cut in, but not harshly. Firm. "Those memories that hit you... you got the short version. A glimpse. That wasn't you, Vi. That was another you—another path."
Her face twisted. "Another... what? Another version of me? What the hell are you talking about?"
For a second, the hate wasn't the loudest thing in her expression anymore.
Curiosity was.
Fear was.
And something worse than either: the realization that whatever she just felt was real enough to leave bruises inside her mind.
Vi swallowed, hard. She wanted him gone. She wanted him erased from her apartment, from her head, from her life.
But he was the only one who could explain what just happened.
So she forced it down. Forced herself to stand there with her fists clenched and her pride bleeding quietly out between her fingers.
"Explain," she said, voice shaking. "Explain yourself."
Adriel nodded once. Like he'd been waiting for permission to breathe.
"Inside," he said. "If that's okay."
Vi didn't move.
Then, after a beat, she stepped back and let him in—like letting a hurricane into a room and pretending the doorframe could hold.
She sat on the edge of her bed, arms wrapped around herself like armor.
Adriel stayed standing. Not looming. Not closing in. He kept a careful distance, like he understood that if he moved too fast she'd either swing or shatter. And swinging wouldn't help her—she already knew what happened last time someone tried to hit him.
He spoke slowly. Not the full truth—not the version that would crack her mind open and leave her drowning in existential horror. He chose a safer language. A grounded one.
He talked about "layers" of reality, about how something had been stitched wrong over Piltover. About how the city was inside a containment field—an invisible dome holding a separate track of events, running in parallel.
Vi scoffed. "You're saying Piltover's in a bubble."
"In a way," he said. "You can't see it. But I can. And it's warping things."
He talked about enemies she'd thought were gone—about forces that didn't fight like people. That didn't conquer like Noxus. They corrupted. Twisted. Used the world like a toy. Took their time on purpose.
He told her the truth in pieces she could survive.
That there had been other regions burning. That he'd been fighting across them. That he hadn't come back because he couldn't afford to come back until the bleeding slowed.
Vi pressed her palms to her eyes like she could physically hold her brain in place.
"How is any of this possible?" she whispered.
Adriel didn't answer immediately.
Because "it just is" wasn't comforting. And the real answer was worse than anything he'd already said.
He gave her time.
When Vi lowered her hands, her gaze landed on him again—hard, raw, defensive.
"So this... Anansi." Her mouth fumbled around the name like she hated that she was saying it. "He's here. In Piltover."
Adriel nodded. "Yes."
"And that voice in my head." She swallowed. "The one that's been... talking. That's him too?"
Adriel's eyes darkened. "I think he's feeding it. Amplifying it. Using it to keep you unstable."
Vi's lips parted—half rage, half disbelief. "How would you even—"
"I know," he said simply.
There it was again. That infuriating certainty. That way he always sounded like he'd read the answer before the question was asked.
She hated it.
She hated that some part of her still believed him.
Vi dragged a hand down her face. "So what now? Everything goes to shit again?"
Adriel exhaled. "Probably."
She let out a sharp, bitter laugh. "Great. Fantastic. Love that for us."
He didn't take the bait.
"I need to understand what the dome is doing," he said. "I need to find where it's weakest. Then I break it."
Vi frowned. "Dome? There's no dome."
"You can't see it," Adriel said, patient. "But it's there."
He hesitated, then added carefully, "And when it breaks, things will change. Fast."
She stared at him like she was trying to decide whether to throw something.
Then her voice came out quieter, rougher. "So... I'm really going through a phase."
Adriel's mouth twitched, almost a smile, almost not. "Yeah."
"Shut the fuck up."
He held up both hands in surrender. "Fair."
The silence that followed wasn't peaceful. It was the kind that strained—two people standing on opposite sides of a bridge that used to exist and didn't anymore.
Then Adriel spoke again, and his tone changed. Less "mission." More... human.
"Look," he said. "What I said to you before... stuck."
Vi's jaw tightened. "Yeah. It did."
"I wasn't in the right headspace," he continued. "That's not an excuse. I know it doesn't fix anything. But I need to say it anyway."
Vi's eyes narrowed. "You disappeared for years and came back with an apology? That's your big move?"
Adriel swallowed.
For a second, it looked like he might snap back.
But he didn't.
He stepped forward—just a little—and then he stopped, like he remembered her boundaries. Like he respected them.
"I'm sorry, Vi," he said quietly. "I was an asshole. You didn't deserve that. You didn't deserve any of it."
Vi's voice trembled, anger barely holding shape. "I used to admire you. I used to... love you, in my own stupid way. I wanted to be you. I hated myself for it. Then you made me feel small. Like I was nothing. Like I was just... background noise in your life."
Adriel's throat tightened.
He wanted to say I was saving the world. He wanted to say you have no idea what I was carrying.
But he knew what would happen if he said it the wrong way.
He held it down.
Then he said, careful but honest, "After the reset... after everything rewound... I was trying to keep this world from being erased. I didn't have the luxury of coming back and cleaning up emotions first."
Vi flinched like the word reset burned.
She shook her head, mocking through pain. "Yeah, yeah. The big hero. Always saving everything. Hooray. And when I needed you, you weren't there."
Adriel's composure cracked—not fully, but enough.
"Vi," he said, firmer now. "You're not the only one who lost things."
"You don't know what I've been through—"
"I know exactly what you're going through," he cut in, stepping closer before stopping himself again. His voice sharpened. "Because I've lived it. Because I've watched entire worlds die. Because I've had everything taken from me and then got blamed for it."
Vi froze.
That wasn't arrogance.
That was... tired.
Adriel's hands trembled once, barely noticeable, and then he lowered himself—slowly—onto one knee in front of her bed.
Not to beg theatrically.
To make himself smaller. Less threatening. More real.
"There was a war," he said. "In another world. And it took everything. Not metaphorically. Everything. That universe doesn't exist anymore. Everyone I loved—gone. Erased."
Vi's throat bobbed. She couldn't speak.
"And when that happened," Adriel continued, voice cracking at the edges, "I hated myself. I hated that I couldn't stop it. And I took that poison and I poured it onto you. You didn't deserve that."
His eyes were wet now. He didn't wipe them.
"I'm not asking you to forget," he said. "I'm asking you to let me be better. To let me make it right."
He reached out carefully, giving her time to pull away.
Vi didn't.
So he took her hands—gently—and held them like something fragile.
"I can't have this universe erased too," he whispered. "I can't live through that again. And I can't watch you drown while I pretend it's not my problem."
Vi stared at him, stunned, breathing uneven.
He swallowed hard. "Give me another chance."
Silence stretched.
Long enough for Vi's pride to scream at her to throw him out.
Long enough for her anger to demand payment.
Long enough for her heart—broken and exhausted and lonely—to whisper something smaller.
Something human.
Finally, Vi spoke.
"Fine," she said, like the word tasted bitter. Like she didn't trust herself saying it. "Just... don't make me regret it."
Adriel's smile wasn't smug.
It was small. Relieved. Almost painful.
"I won't," he promised. "I swear I'll be better."
And for the first time in years, the room didn't feel like it was shrinking around her lungs.
Not fixed.
Not healed.
But—just for a moment—less hopeless.
Adriel didn't say it out loud, but it bothered him—just a little—how smoothly that went.
Vi had every reason to slam the door in his face, to spit his apology back like it was nothing. And yet... she'd taken it. Not warmly. Not happily. But she'd taken it.
Too clean. Too quick.
He'd learned there were places where reality fought you for every inch—where conversations turned into landmines, where people stayed broken because the world itself was broken. Outside Piltover, everything had felt like that for a long time: jagged, unstable, wrong in a way you couldn't talk your way around.
Here, inside this sealed-off city, things still moved like they had rails under them. Like events wanted to snap back into place, like the air itself nudged people toward the next step.
Adriel didn't like that. Not when it meant emotions got... guided. Not when it meant someone's pain could be steered into "convenient" timing.
But he liked endless drama even less.
He could live with a little unnatural ease if it meant saving time—if it meant reaching the source faster. If it meant forcing Anansi out of whatever hole he'd crawled into.
Vi and Adriel stood there for a beat in the aftermath, suspended in that weird quiet that comes after someone says fine when their whole body clearly wanted to say no.
Vi's hands flexed at her sides, then she dragged a palm down her face like she was trying to wipe the last ten minutes off her skin.
"So," she said finally, voice rough. "What now?"
Adriel exhaled. He stepped away from the doorway and sat on the edge of her bed, careful not to invade too much space. "Now we wait."
Vi stared at him like he'd told her the sky was purple.
"...We wait," she repeated, flat.
"Yeah." He leaned back on his hands. "There's a pattern to how things move here. Something's going to happen. It always does."
Her brows knit. "How do you know that?"
Adriel didn't even bother dressing it up. "Because it just is."
Vi's jaw tightened. She hated that answer on principle. "You're seriously gonna hit me with that cryptic bullshit after you just dropped a whole universe worth of insanity on my head?"
He glanced at her, one corner of his mouth lifting. "Would you prefer I lie?"
She made a sound that was half-growl, half-laugh, then flopped onto the bed on her back like her bones gave up. Arms spread wide, taking up the whole mattress like she was claiming territory. "So we just... sit in my tiny-ass apartment until the next disaster knocks on the door."
Adriel's eyes flicked around the room again, as if noticing it properly for the first time. "I mean... yeah. Pretty much."
Vi turned her head toward him. "You don't look like a guy who's ever sat still a day in his life."
"That's 'cause I usually don't." He nodded toward the cracked mirror, the scattered junk, the overall vibe of a place that had been lived in hard and cleaned never. "Also... your room is loud. Not sound-wise. Emotion-wise."
"Oh, fuck off."
He raised both hands in surrender, but his eyes were already doing that thing—taking inventory, noticing details he shouldn't care about. The black-dyed hair. The smeared eyeliner. The exhausted posture that screamed I'm trying to disappear while still breathing.
He tilted his head, pretending to consider her like a critique. "Okay, but... I don't know how to feel about the goth look."
Vi shot upright like she'd been jabbed with a needle. "Don't tell me how I can look."
"I'm not telling you," Adriel said, too fast. "I'm—"
"You're judging."
"I'm teasing."
"Well stop."
He let his gaze drift over the room again, then back to her. "I can't."
Vi blinked. "You can. Just shut up and sit in the corner."
He looked around exaggeratedly. "Vi, I hate to break it to you, but this place is basically all corner."
"That sounds like a you problem."
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "If you don't like it, I can go find somewhere else."
"Then go."
Adriel shrugged. "Eh. Nah. I'm comfortable here."
Vi stared at him, then huffed and dropped back onto the bed, pulling a pillow over part of her face like it might block him out. "Then shut up."
He didn't answer right away.
Which was, in its own way, him listening.
The quiet stretched again—less sharp than before, but still awkward. The kind of quiet that makes you hyperaware of breathing and the distance between bodies.
Adriel watched her for a second, then spoke softer. "You want to sleep?"
"I want to sleep and not hear your voice," she muttered into the pillow.
"Fair." He hesitated, then—like an idiot—added, "Do you want to cuddle?"
Vi's head snapped up. Her stare could've killed a lesser man. "I don't want to cuddle with anyone. Especially you."
He winced. "Worth asking."
"No." She sat up just enough to glare properly. "Don't act like we used to. Not after what happened."
Adriel went still.
Then, quietly, he nodded once. "Touché."
He didn't push after that.
He just sat there at the edge of her bed like a guard dog pretending he wasn't a guard dog, staring out at nothing while his thoughts moved in tight loops.
Patience, he told himself. Don't press. Don't screw it up.
He opened his inventory with a thought, pulled out an iced tea, and took a slow drink. Cold. Familiar. Steadying.
Vi didn't even comment. Her eyes were already half-closed, exhaustion finally winning a round.
Adriel stayed where he was, watching the room and listening to the city beyond the walls—waiting for the next ripple in the air.
Waiting for Jinx to make her entrance.
Because she always did.
The silence that followed right after should've been harmless.
It wasn't.
Adriel sat there at the edge of Vi's bed, iced tea cold in his hand, and felt the quiet thicken into something physical—something that pressed against his ribs and made his thoughts pace.
Vi was "sleeping." Or trying to.
He could tell by the way her breathing didn't settle, by the minute shifts of her shoulders, by the tension that never truly left her frame. She wasn't resting. She was enduring him. Pretending she could turn him off the way she turned off a lamp.
And he'd made it worse.
He'd tried to tease. Too soon. Like an idiot. Like saying sorry gave him the right to reach for old rhythms again.
He exhaled through his nose, slow, controlled—then caught himself and almost laughed at the irony. He'd come back after years and expected anything to feel normal.
His gaze drifted to her face—half-hidden by the pillow—and he felt the weight of what he'd done, and what he hadn't been able to do. He didn't get to choose when he vanished. He didn't get to choose how long it took to claw his way back.
But Vi didn't live those years as "necessary time." She lived them as abandonment.
Adriel's jaw tightened.
Slow down, he warned himself. Be patient. Don't force familiarity just because you want it.
His eyes flicked toward the cramped apartment door. His mind, because it couldn't help itself, started running ahead—running through the next problem before the current one had even finished breathing.
Jinx.
Vi was complicated. Hurt. Angry. Defensive.
Jinx was... volatile. Always had been. And the last time Adriel had been part of her world, she'd clung to him in her own chaotic way—idolizing him, orbiting him, treating him like he was the only thing in the room worth believing in.
If she saw him alive—
Adriel's stomach tightened.
He didn't need a genius brain to predict the reaction. He needed luck. And his luck had always come with a knife attached.
He mentally cursed, shoved the spiral down, and refocused on the present: Vi's stiff posture, the tension in her jaw, the way her "nap" looked more like a ceasefire.
He couldn't sit there and pretend he wasn't a threat to her peace.
Not yet.
Adriel pushed himself up from the bed. The movement was careful, quiet—like he didn't want to startle her. But Vi's eyes cracked open anyway, just a sliver, tracking him.
Her voice came out rough. "Where you goin'?"
"Outside," he answered, soft. "Fresh air. Give you space."
She studied him like she expected a trick. Then she gave the smallest nod—like she didn't care, like she cared too much, like both were true.
Adriel walked to the door, hand resting on the latch. He could've left it there—could've taken the win of her not yelling at him again.
But something tugged at him. Something simple. Something human.
She still didn't know his name.
Not really.
He paused, shoulders shifting as if the words had weight.
"Vi," he called.
A beat. Her reply came with an edge, exhaustion sharpened into irritation. "What, Karito?"
He didn't flinch. He deserved the bite.
But he corrected it anyway, because he needed at least one thing between them to be real.
He turned his head just enough for her to see his profile. "My name's Adriel."
Vi didn't move at first. Just watched him.
"Karito was... an alias," he continued, choosing each word like it could break something fragile. "A mask I wore back when I was chasing ideas that weren't real. I'm done with that."
Silence again—different this time. Less hostile. More curious.
Vi shifted, pushing herself up a little on her elbows. Her eyes narrowed—not in anger, in assessment. Then she scoffed, the sound oddly neutral, like she was filing it away.
"...Adriel," she repeated, testing the name like it had texture.
He nodded once. "Yeah."
Her expression didn't soften much, but something in her shoulders loosened—just a fraction.
"I'm tired," she muttered, settling back into the mattress. "I'm gonna sleep. For real this time."
"I'll be right outside," Adriel said. "Take all the time you need."
Vi's voice was muffled by the pillow again. "Don't be weird."
He huffed a quiet breath—almost a laugh, but he swallowed it. "No promises."
That earned him the smallest, faintest sound from her—something that could've been a scoff, could've been a reluctant amusement.
Adriel didn't push for more.
He stepped out, closed the door gently behind him, and leaned in the hall like a sentry who didn't want to look like a sentry. Another iced tea appeared in his hand with a thought—cold against his palm, grounding.
He took a slow sip and stared down the corridor, letting the quiet settle around him.
For now, he'd done one thing right.
He'd told her the truth.
And that felt like progress, no matter how small it was.
It only took minutes.
Adriel hadn't even finished his iced tea before the air changed—like the hallway itself remembered how to hold its breath.
A sharp, theatrical gasp snapped through the stairwell to his right.
Adriel's eyes slid down the railing.
And there she was.
Hood up, shoulders tight, posture loose in that way that wasn't actually loose at all—more like a spring pretending it wasn't coiled. The Shimmer in her eyes caught the light when she lifted her chin, and for half a second she just stared at him like she was looking at a ghost that had decided to get cocky and stand in the open.
Jinx's mouth opened.
Closed.
Opened again.
"...Nope." She shook her head once, slow. "No. No, no, no. This is—" She pressed two fingers to her temple like she could physically flick the hallucination away. "This is a bad one. Like, premium bad. The kind that comes with sparkles and a warranty."
Adriel didn't move. Didn't flinch. Didn't reach for anything. Just leaned lightly into the railing like he'd been waiting for this exact moment—and in a way, he had.
Jinx took one careful step up.
Then another.
Her voice dropped, like the words were afraid to exist too loud. "You're... you're not real."
She blinked hard. "You're dead."
Another blink. "I watched them cry about you. Like... ugly cry. And then they made you a statue—" She pointed vaguely, like she could see it through walls. "—and people started putting flowers and pictures and weird little notes like you were some saint."
Her mouth twisted, half laugh, half choke. "So either I finally lost it... or Piltover's got a really expensive cosplay problem."
Adriel's expression stayed calm—gentle, even—like he understood the panic underneath all the noise.
"Jinx," he said, voice steady.
That did it.
Her shoulders jolted like the name hit a nerve.
"Oh." Her laugh came out sharp. "Ohhh, you're using that voice. The 'I'm gonna talk you down from a rooftop' voice." She took another step, then stopped, staring at his face like she was memorizing it in case it vanished. "That's not fair. That's cheating."
Adriel lifted his cup a fraction. "You gonna keep yelling from the stairs, or are you coming up here?"
Jinx's eyes narrowed. "Bossy."
Then—because she was Jinx—she immediately did the opposite of what any rational person would do. She climbed the last steps fast, almost stomping, like speed would keep her from thinking.
When she reached him, she hovered in front of him with the tension of a held breath.
Her voice came out too loud, too fast, trying to outrun the fear. "Okay. So. Hypothetically. If you're real—big if—then you're either..."
She started counting on her fingers.
"One: A ghost."
"Two: A clone."
"Three: A very rude dream."
"Four: A memory doing parkour."
"Five: I'm dead and this is the afterlife and—" she squinted at him "—wow, I expected more clouds."
Adriel's mouth twitched. "You done?"
Jinx stared at him like he'd just insulted her art.
"No." Then, like her brain caught up late: "Yes. Maybe. Shut up."
She inhaled, then blurted, completely out of pocket and entirely Jinx: "Also, this is embarrassing, but I'm pretty sure I've had dreams about you."
Adriel's brows lifted.
Jinx, as if realizing she'd just said that out loud, instantly tried to pivot. "Not— not like—" Her hands flailed. "Not always! Not even most of the time! Sometimes it was just you yelling at people and being all heroic and annoying and—"
She squinted at him again, voice dropping into something dangerously honest. "But sometimes it was... not that."
Adriel took a slow sip of iced tea like that would protect him from the sheer absurdity.
"Huh." He leaned his shoulder more fully into the railing, smirk forming despite himself. "That's... bold."
Jinx's eyes widened, offended again, because of course. "Don't judge me. I'm traumatized."
"I'm not judging," Adriel said. "I'm processing."
Jinx huffed, then stepped closer—close enough to invade his space with the kind of confidence that only came from someone who was terrified and pretending she wasn't.
She stared up at him, then blurted, "You look hotter in real life."
Adriel almost spit his drink.
He coughed once, hard, and covered it by clearing his throat. "You gotta learn the concept of—"
"Filter?" Jinx supplied, sweet as poison.
"Yes," Adriel said flatly. "That."
Jinx lifted her hands, palms open, slow—like she was approaching a wild animal. "Okay. Okay. I'm gonna touch you."
Adriel's eyes narrowed. "Jinx—"
"I'm doing it." Her voice went quieter, more fragile. "I need to know."
Then she put her hand on his chest.
Just... there. Like she was bracing for her fingers to pass through smoke.
They didn't.
She felt him—warmth through fabric, the solid resistance underneath, the subtle rise and fall of his breathing.
Her fingers curled, then flattened again like she couldn't decide how to hold a miracle without breaking it.
"Whoa..." Her voice cracked on the word. She stared at her own hand like it had betrayed her expectations. "You're... real."
Her second hand came up.
Then her third—except she only had two, so she compensated by wandering them shamelessly across his torso like she was scanning for seams.
Adriel's jaw tightened as he fought the urge to laugh. "Alright, alright—"
"Shh." Jinx leaned in, eyes wide, whispering like the hallway might steal him away if she raised her voice. "Don't move. Don't breathe. Don't blink."
"I'm literally breathing," Adriel said.
Jinx ignored him and kept checking him like she was trying to convince her nervous system, not her eyes.
Then she stopped.
Her hands went still.
Her face—usually all angles and attitude—softened into something raw.
"So you really..." Her voice went small. "You really came back."
Adriel's smirk faded. His tone gentled. "Yeah."
Jinx's throat bobbed. She swallowed like it hurt.
For a heartbeat she looked like she was about to make another joke, to shove the moment away before it could cut her.
Instead, she lunged.
It wasn't graceful. It wasn't cute. It was desperate.
She slammed into him and wrapped her arms around his middle like she was trying to anchor him to the world by force. Like if she let go, the universe would take him again just to be cruel.
Adriel's arms hovered for a second—caught between surprise and the awareness of how fragile she suddenly felt.
Then he wrapped her up carefully, firm but gentle, hands settling at her back.
Jinx trembled.
A sound left her that wasn't laughter, wasn't a joke—something ugly and real. A sob she tried to choke down and failed.
Her grip tightened.
"I thought you were gone," she whispered into his chest, voice muffled. "I thought... I thought I made up the parts of you that mattered."
Adriel closed his eyes for a moment.
His hand slid up her back in a slow, grounding motion.
"I'm here," he said, low. "I'm here."
Jinx clung harder, like she didn't believe words anymore—only pressure, only warmth, only proof.
Jinx didn't let go for a full minute.
She stayed pressed to Adriel's chest like it was the only solid thing left in Piltover—arms locked around him, cheek buried into his shirt, breathing slowly easing like she was afraid the moment she loosened her grip he'd blink out again.
Adriel looked down at her, gentle but practical. "Alright," he murmured. "You ready to talk to Vi? I'll... mediate, I guess. Before this turns into a whole thing."
Jinx's voice came out muffled. "Yeah, I..." She paused, like even the word yeah had weight. Then she lifted her face just enough to look at him. "I'd like that."
She finally peeled away, but only halfway—still hovering close, still staring at him like she was trying to memorize the fact that he was there.
"It's gonna take a bit to get used to," she said, and it wasn't a joke this time. The faintest smile showed up anyway, like her mouth didn't know what else to do. "You being... you."
Adriel nodded, the apology sitting behind his teeth like a splinter. "Yeah. I'm... sorry. I took too long."
Jinx shrugged, small. "I'm not mad." Then, quieter: "Don't make it weird."
Adriel huffed a single breath through his nose. "I'll try."
They stood there in front of Vi's door like two people waiting for a storm to decide which direction it wanted to break.
Jinx glanced at the knob, then at Adriel. "We going in, or what?"
Adriel blinked like he'd forgotten how to move for a second. "Right. Yeah. Let's just—" He waved once. "Let's get this over with."
He opened the door.
Inside, Vi was half-asleep in the way people are when they've been pretending. Her shoulders were too tense. Her breathing wasn't deep. The second the door cracked, her eyelids twitched.
Adriel cleared his throat. "Hey. Uh... Vi?"
Vi's voice came out rough, instantly irritated. "What the fuck is it now, Adriel?"
He stepped aside so she could see the doorway. "Jinx is here."
Vi sat up so fast it looked like she'd been wired to a trigger. Her gaze snapped to the entrance—and there she was.
Hood. Purple eyes. Standing tight to Adriel's side like she belonged there.
For a second, Vi's face did something ugly—rage, grief, instinct, all stacked together. Her hands flexed like she wanted to launch across the room and strangle the life out of her sister just to release everything she'd been swallowing for months.
Then her eyes flicked to Adriel.
And she stopped herself.
Barely.
Her voice came out sharp, bitter. "Every time you show up, it's like you've got some kind of... I don't know. Freaky timing. You see the future or some shit?"
Adriel's mouth twitched, because she wasn't entirely wrong—just not in a way he could explain without making her spiral. "You wouldn't be the first person to accuse me of that."
Vi scoffed. "Yeah, well. Talk."
Adriel's tone dropped, hardening. "You two talk. And if either of you does something stupid, I'm stopping it. No fists. No knives. No 'I didn't mean to.' Just words."
Jinx stayed quiet, hands tucked close to her chest, watching Vi like she was watching a wild animal decide whether to bolt or bite.
Vi's eyes slid over her sister, then back to Adriel. "Why would I believe a single thing she says? Do you have any idea what she's done?"
Adriel inhaled slow, like he was grabbing his patience with both hands. "I know what happened here."
Vi snapped, "Then you know why this is bullshit."
"I know why you feel like it's bullshit," Adriel corrected, and even that restraint looked like it hurt him. "But you're going to listen anyway."
Vi's jaw worked. "Or what? You'll break my arm with your face?"
Adriel's eyes narrowed. "Don't do that. Don't turn this into some weird power thing."
Vi laughed—short, nasty. "Everything with you is a power thing."
"Vi," Adriel said, voice lower now, warning creeping in. "Just listen."
Jinx flinched like their voices were knives. She hovered behind Adriel a half-step, like he was a wall.
Vi dragged a hand down her face, exasperated. "Fine. What kind of bullshit you got for me, Powder?"
Jinx's throat bobbed. She forced the words out anyway.
"Vander is alive."
The room went still.
Vi blinked once. Twice.
Then her face hardened so fast it was like a door slamming shut. "No."
Jinx stepped forward a fraction. "Vi—"
"No." Vi's voice rose, cracking with anger. "Don't. Don't you dare do that to me."
"It's true," Jinx insisted, the edges of panic already creeping in. "I'm not lying. I can prove it. He's alive but he's—he's not the same. He's—"
Vi's laugh was hollow. "You're insane."
Jinx's eyes flashed. "Says you."
Vi's gaze snapped to Adriel. "Is this a setup? Is this you trying to— I don't know—drag me around like I'm one of your little projects?"
Adriel stared at her, genuinely thrown for half a second. "What the fuck do you mean, 'setup'?"
Vi pushed up off the bed, wobbling on her feet like she hadn't been sleeping right for weeks. "You're weird, Adriel. You show up and the whole world turns sideways. You disappear and we get left holding the pieces. So yeah—maybe I don't trust you."
Adriel's patience snapped tight—not breaking, but vibrating. "We just talked about this."
"And you think one apology fixes years?" Vi shot back.
"It doesn't," Adriel said, sharp. "But it gives us a place to start. And starting means you don't spiral into conspiracy the second I say something you don't like."
Vi's eyes burned. "Oh, so now you're lecturing me?"
Adriel stepped closer before he could stop himself. "I'm telling you you're being unreasonable."
Vi's voice shook, furious and wounded. "Unreasonable? My sister ruined the city. My ex left me. I'm drowning in my own head and—"
"And you're taking it out on the first person trying to keep you from falling apart," Adriel cut in. "Yeah. I noticed."
Vi's hands clenched. "You don't get to—"
"I do," Adriel said, and the word came out too blunt, too absolute. He caught himself instantly, jaw tightening. "Not like that. That's not what I meant."
Jinx's breathing turned jagged. Her eyes bounced between them like she was watching the two people she cared about most rip each other apart.
"Stop," she whispered.
Neither of them heard it.
Vi snapped, "All you do is talk like you know better—"
Adriel fired back, "Because I do know what happens when people don't listen—"
"STOP!" Jinx's voice cracked.
Both of them froze.
Jinx's eyes were glossy. A tear slid down her cheek, catching on the corner of her mouth before she wiped it away too hard, angry at her own face.
"Please," she said, voice shaking. "I don't— I don't want this. I just want... I just want Vander."
Vi's expression faltered.
Because that wasn't a performance. That wasn't Jinx being dramatic.
That was real.
Vi swallowed, jaw flexing. She looked at her sister for a long second like she was trying to decide if hope was worth the risk of being crushed again.
Then she exhaled, rough. "Alright. Fine."
Jinx's shoulders sagged with relief so sharp it almost looked like pain.
Vi pointed at her, warning in her eyes. "But if you're lying—if this is some sick joke—"
"She's not," Adriel cut in immediately.
Vi shot him a glare. "I wasn't talking to you."
Adriel muttered under his breath as he moved toward the door, "Stupid-ass arguments, man..."
Vi scoffed, ready to throw something back.
Jinx snapped, quiet but firm, "Stop."
Vi paused.
Jinx looked at her like she was exhausted down to the bone. "He's finally back. And the first thing you do is argue with him?"
Vi's voice went low, defensive. "You don't know what he did to me."
Jinx didn't blink. "Yeah. I don't." Then she swallowed. "And... I don't really care right now."
Vi's eyebrows lifted, offended.
Jinx's eyes shone again. "I'm happy he's here. He's help. He's... he's him. And I want him to stay."
That landed heavier than any insult.
Vi snatched up her gear—gauntlets first, then whatever else she'd tossed aside—hands moving fast like she didn't want to give herself time to rethink it. Jinx only adjusted her hood, hovering close like she was afraid Vi would change her mind if she blinked.
"Let's go," Jinx said, voice tight. "Please."
Vi hesitated once, then followed—shoulders tense, fists still half-formed.
Adriel stepped out first, still muttering in irritation, but he kept his body between them without making it obvious.
The trio left Vi's sorry excuse for an apartment behind.