Pov - Azra'il
Mortal existence is fundamentally noisy. It is a cacophony of desires, fears, ambitions, and a truly astonishing amount of complaining about the weather. I, who have known the silence of the void between the stars, find this world a near-constant auditory assault. In the past few weeks, however, I had found a new form of self-defence, a way to replace the chaotic noise of the world with my own controlled chaos.
It was made of Ionian Whispering-Cherry wood and had the soul of a sad story. The guitar Morgana had given me.
I would bring it to the rooftop every morning before dawn. While waiting for my reluctant student, I would hold it in my lap. It was different from any weapon I had ever wielded. It asked not for blood or discipline, but for… honesty. On that particular morning, I wasn't playing the melancholic songs the instrument seemed to prefer. I was playing something different, something for the occasion. A melody I had learned in a past life on a dusty desert under two suns, filled with the galloping rhythm of a chase, the energy of a duel at high noon. It was a song to wake the blood. The sound, coming from that Ionian wood, was deeper, richer than I remembered, as if the guitar's soul were lending a new weight to my old, violent tune. It was the perfect soundtrack for what was to come.
Vi arrived at the same time as always, breathless, and stopped. Her eyes fixed on the guitar for a moment. She had seen it around the house, always treated by me with a reverent care I afforded to nothing and no one else. The sight of it being played there, in the morning cold, seemed to intrigue her.
"Nice tune," she panted. "Sounds like something's about to explode."
I stopped playing with a final, vibrant note that hung in the air for an instant. "Something is," I replied, placing the guitar with an almost exaggerated care back in its case.
"Your muscles. Your ego. Possibly my will to live. We'll see which of the three gives out first. That's enough of the lessons on standing still and breathing like an Ionian monk," I said, as Vi cracked her knuckles, eager. "You've learned the basics: find your centre, light your inner furnace, seek balance. Today, and for the next few days, you're going to learn how to use that fire. You won't just absorb the punches; you will return them. With interest."
"Your breath is the key," I continued, pacing around her like a predator sizing up prey. "It's not just for calming down or finding balance. It's a weapon. Every rhythm, every pattern, floods your muscles with energy, sharpens your reflexes, and adds weight to your strikes. I'm going to teach you three basic 'rhythms'. Master them, and you won't need to be the strongest in the alley. Just the smartest."
I called the first the "Rhythm of the Steel Wall".
"Fight me," I ordered.
She hesitated for a second.
"That's an order."
She attacked. A straight right, fast and strong. Instead of dodging, I took the hit. My body barely moved. I used the same deep, rooting breath I had taught her for balance, but this time, at the moment of impact, I exhaled sharply, tensing every muscle.
"How…?" she gasped, massaging her knuckles. It was like punching stone.
"This is your defence," I explained. "Deep breath into the core, exhale on impact, turning your body into a fortress. Use it when you can't dodge. Absorb, nullify, and frustrate your opponent. Make him break his own hands against your stubbornness."
We spent the next hour on that. I struck at her with my wooden jian, controlled attacks on her arms, shoulders, legs. Each time, she had to anticipate the impact and use her breath to absorb it. At first, she would cry out in pain. By the end, she was taking the blows with grunts of effort, her body taut as steel.
The second was the "Cadence of the Spark-Storm".
"Defence is good, but you don't win fights by waiting for the other person to get tired," I said. "Now, for speed."
The rhythm was a series of short, explosive breaths, like a hextech engine sputtering to life. "Inhale-strike, exhale-retreat. Every breath is a blow. Fast. Precise. Don't think. Just react. Your fists are like the sparks that fly from a gear spinning too fast. Many. Everywhere."
My training method was to attack her continuously, forcing her to find openings. Instead of one big punch, I wanted her to land ten small, quick strikes on my arm, my ribs, my shoulder. It was about overwhelming the opponent's senses.
"You're still thinking in knockouts, Bubblegum!" I shouted, dodging a powerful but slow hook. "Forget the knockout! Think annoyance! Think distraction! One strong punch is thunder. Twenty quick jabs are a hailstorm. Which one do you think is harder to defend against?"
And finally, the third. The climax of the whole philosophy. The "Breath of the Burning Core".
"This," I said, my voice low and serious, "is your full stop. It's the culmination of everything. You draw the strength from the earth, ignite your heart with purpose, and channel it all into a single, devastating exhale. A single blow. No waste. No anger. Just… the end."
I led her to the concrete pillar I had brought for training, the pillar already cracked from our previous sessions. "This is not about breaking stone. It's about breaking your opponent's will. I want you to visualise the heart of the pillar. Feel its structure. And then, I want you to erase it."
Her first punches were strong, but superficial. Noisy.
"No!" I corrected in frustration. "You're shouting again! Power is silent! The real force of an explosion isn't the noise; it's the shockwave that comes after, the one you don't hear but you feel in your bones! Breathe. Gather. Focus. And… release."
Day after day, the routine was brutal. Mornings of pain, breathing, and hard-won epiphanies. At the end of the second week, she got it.
She was standing before the pillar, exhausted. I saw the shift in her stance. The energy building in her centre. She took one deep breath, and for an instant, the world seemed to go quiet. Then she exhaled and punched. There was no shout. Just a dry crack, like thunder striking too close. A web of new, deeper fractures spread across the pillar's surface. A chunk of concrete the size of a fist broke away and fell to the ground.
She didn't celebrate. She just stood there, panting, her arm trembling, looking at the damage she had caused not with anger, but with a quiet astonishment.
She had done it.
The echo of the impact hung in the air for a moment and then dissipated, carried away by the bridge's wind. Vi stood there, panting, her arm still extended and trembling from the monumental effort. She was looking at the crater her fist had created, not with the triumph of a brawler, but with the quiet astonishment of an artisan who has just created something more powerful than she had thought possible. Then, like a puppet whose strings had been cut, her legs gave out. She collapsed onto the rooftop, falling onto her back with a dull thud, her chest heaving as she fought to catch her breath.
She lay there, motionless, for several minutes, just the sound of her ragged breathing filling the silence. Her eyes were fixed on the sky, which was now changing from the pale blue of morning to the bright gold of midday. She wasn't just physically exhausted; she was drained to the very soul. The level of mental concentration required for that last technique had completely spent her.
I sat down beside her on the cold concrete, the silence between us comfortable. I opened a bottle of water and held it out to her. She took it with a hand that still shook, and drank in long, desperate gulps.
"I…" she finally gasped, her voice hoarse and scratched. "…I've never felt so strong… and so completely empty at the same time."
"That's called reaching your true limit," I said, looking out at the distant horizon of Piltover, its towers glinting with an arrogance I knew well. "It's a good place to be. Most people go their whole lives without ever knowing where it is. It is there, in the void of total exhaustion, that true growth begins. Where the metal, after being heated until it almost melts, finally begins to be forged into something new."
I chose that moment. That instant of raw exhaustion, of an honesty forced by pain and achievement. The moment her defences were at their lowest, and her heart at its most open.
"You're learning fast, Bubblegum," I said, my voice casual but freighted with an intention I had been putting off. "Faster than I expected, to be honest." I paused. "And it's a good thing you are, because I won't be here forever to shout at you and throw cogs at your head."
She turned on her side to look at me, the sweat sticking her pink hair to her forehead. The confusion in her eyes was genuine. "What… what do you mean by that?"
I kept looking at the horizon. "Morgana and I… we don't put down roots. We are travellers. We always have been. It is our nature. We arrive, we stay for a while, we enjoy the tea, we try not to blow too many things up… but always, inevitably, the time comes to move on. And our time on this bridge, in this small interval between Piltover and Zaun… it is running out."
The silence that followed was heavier and more crushing than any concrete pillar. I saw her process the words. I saw the confused alarm turn to shock, and the shock sour into something that looked a lot like hurt. Betrayal. In an instant, she was no longer the fighter who cracked stone. She was a child being told that the only stable constant she had found in her chaotic life was, in fact, temporary.
"When?" Her voice was low, wounded. "Why? We… we've built all this. The place… people like coming. We're… okay."
"Soon," I replied, finally turning to face her. "And as for why… it's simply who we are. We don't belong anywhere, Vi. The only constant in the universe is change. Everything is impermanent. Stars, empires… even tea shops with irritating baristas. It is the hardest lesson of all. And the truest."
She looked down at her hands, now calloused and scraped from the training. I had spent weeks teaching her to build a solid foundation, to root herself in the earth, only to tell her that I was about to tear out one of those roots. The irony was both delicious and depressing.
"Will we… see each other again?" she asked, the vulnerability in her voice an open wound, the question of a younger sister afraid of being abandoned.
The question, so simple, so childish, struck a place in me I rarely visited. I stood up, the morning sun at my back, turning me into a dark silhouette against the bright light, hiding whatever emotion might have crossed my face.
"I am not a seer," I said, my voice softer than I intended. "But the world has a funny, and sometimes cruel, way of weaving the same threads into different tapestries. I have a feeling that, one day, perhaps when you most need someone to shout at, give you useless advice, and throw cogs at you… our paths will cross again."
I turned my back on her and started down the stairs, leaving her alone on the rooftop. Alone with her aching muscles, her newfound power, and the fresh wound of imminent loss.
[Emotional distress levels in unit "Vi" have increased by 240%. This may have an adverse or beneficial impact on training performance. Do you wish to initiate a consolation protocol?]