Jayce had long since lost track of how many hours had passed inside the workshop.
There had been a time when that sort of exhaustion felt familiar in a comfortable way. Long nights over blueprints, prototypes that refused to stabilize, calculations that kept shifting out of reach, Heimerdinger's patient corrections, Viktor's sharper ones, and the quiet thrill of seeing impossible things take shape beneath his own hands. Science had always demanded sacrifice, but it had also given him something back.
This time, it gave nothing back but urgency.
The anti-Watcher weapons lay across the worktables in partially assembled sections, their bodies formed from an uneasy marriage of Hextech, petricite, Noxian runework, and reinforced mechanical frames. The designs had been revised so many times that Jayce could barely remember the first version. It had seemed elegant then. Now it looked childish, a drawing made by someone who had not yet understood the scale of what they were trying to kill.
Ekko crouched beside one of the power conduits, a tool clenched between his teeth as he adjusted a set of interlocking regulators. Zevi Retta stood at the far end of the table, checking the stability of the rune sequences against the latest safety notes. Heimerdinger, despite his age and size, moved with surprising precision from station to station, his fur slightly disheveled and his eyes unusually solemn.
Jayce tightened the last fastening on a containment bracket and leaned back. "That should keep the discharge from bleeding into the petricite shell."
"Should?" Ekko asked without looking up.
Jayce rubbed at his eyes. "Will. Probably."
"That sounds better and worse at the same time."
"It is a terrible habit among young inventors," Heimerdinger said, adjusting his goggles. "They use confidence as though it were a substitute for final testing."
Jayce glanced at him. "Professor, you have personally approved three mechanisms today that you described as 'alarming but necessary.'"
Heimerdinger's ears twitched. "Yes, well. The end of the world does tend to loosen one's preferred safety margins."
No one laughed for long.
The quiet settled back in quickly, broken only by the hiss of tools and the faint vibration of restrained Hextech energy. Jayce looked over the weapon frame, then to the report pages stacked beside him. The latest ones had arrived only hours ago, carried through Janna's channels and relayed from allied nations as fast as any message could be trusted.
"The nations of the Federation have all been warned," Jayce said. "Janna made sure of it."
Jayce picked up one of the reports from Demacia. The seal had already been broken, the contents read by half the room and dreaded by the rest. "Demacia sent word of strange incidents in Central Valoran. Small villages disappearing. Not destroyed. Not raided. Gone."
Ekko stopped moving.
Heimerdinger slowly lowered the instrument in his hand. "Entire villages?"
"That is what the report says." Jayce set the paper down. "No bodies. No tracks clear enough to follow. Only signs that something passed through and left almost nothing behind."
Ekko's jaw tightened. "Void activity?"
"No confirmation. But after what happened in the Freljord, after the Xer'Sai reports from Shurima, and after Nilah's warning…" Jayce did not finish.
He did not need to.
They all knew the pattern now, even if the shape of it remained terrible and incomplete. The death of a Watcher had not been an isolated victory. It had shaken something deeper. If Singed's theory was right, then the Void was not merely reacting like an army that had lost a commander. It was reacting like a living body struck by pain.
Ekko exhaled. "Great. So the whole world is twitching."
"That is one way to put it," Heimerdinger said, voice low.
Jayce looked toward the empty space where Jinx would normally have been arguing with everyone, laughing too loudly, or finding a way to improve a device while pretending she was only making it more explosive. "Any word from Singed's lab?"
"Viktor sent a short message earlier," Zevi said. "They finished the first prototype of the anti-corruption suit."
Ekko raised an eyebrow. "Already?"
"It is Jinx," Jayce said.
"And Viktor," Heimerdinger added.
"And Singed," Ekko muttered. "Which makes me feel less safe, not more."
Jayce understood the feeling. He trusted Viktor's judgment. He trusted Jinx's mind more than he trusted her impulses, though even that balance had shifted in recent days. Singed, however, was different. Singed saw danger the way other people saw weather, inconvenient only if one forgot to prepare the proper tools.
Still, they needed him.
They needed all of them.
"It would be useful to have Jinx here," Zevi said, glancing at the weapons. "The main structure is complete, but her instincts with unstable mechanisms are…"
"Terrifying?" Ekko offered.
"Effective," Zevi corrected.
Jayce nodded. "She would help. But we are down to final adjustments. Calibration. Load balancing. Safeties, assuming we still get to have those." He looked at the weapon again. "The suits are more urgent for her."
Ekko's expression softened. "Because she will go after Logan."
"She was always going to," Jayce said. "We all knew that. And if finding him means entering areas where Void corruption can reach her, then she needs protection before she needs another weapon."
Ekko gave a humorless smile. "Jinx choosing armor over bombs. That tells you how bad things are."
The door opened before anyone could answer.
Viktor stepped inside, his face drawn with fatigue but his eyes alert. He leaned slightly more heavily on his cane than usual, though his voice remained steady.
"Jayce. I need you."
Jayce straightened at once. "What happened?"
"The suit works. Briefly." Viktor glanced at the weapon tables, then at the people gathered around them. "We have begun testing mental resistance and corruption response. Jinx and Vi have both completed initial trials, though I would not call either experience pleasant."
Ekko stood. "They're okay?"
"They are alive and themselves," Viktor said. "For now, that is the important measure."
Jayce stepped away from the table. "You need more test subjects."
"Not subjects. Volunteers." Viktor's mouth tightened. "But yes. We need more people to test it. Different minds, different fears, different weaknesses. The suit cannot be trusted if we only know how it behaves with Jinx and Vi."
Heimerdinger looked troubled. "And you want Jayce first?"
"I want Jayce now. After he finishes, I will ask each of you one at a time. That way the work here continues with minimal interruption."
Ekko let out a breath. "Efficient. Horrible, but efficient."
Jayce took off his gloves and placed them on the table. He looked once at the anti-Watcher weapons, then at Viktor.
"Let's go."
...
By the time Jayce was connected to the suit, Jinx was sitting on an old crate with her knees pulled up, watching him with eyes that were too tired to be sharp.
That was what bothered her most. Not even the faint, disgusting pulse of Void material threaded into the prototype like a bad idea someone had forced into metal. It was the tiredness.
She hated being tired.
Tired meant thoughts had room to crawl around inside her skull and chew on things she had tried to nail shut.
Vi sat beside her, shoulders slumped, one hand resting near Jinx's ankle.
Across the room, Viktor stood near Jayce and checked the readings. "Remember, do not fight every image as though it is real. Identify what you can. Listen to my voice. If you lose control, I disconnect you."
Jayce nodded. "Understood."
Jinx watched the suit close around him in sections. The prototype still looked ugly, unfinished, half armor and half cage. She had already thought of six ways to make it lighter, three ways to make it faster, and at least two ways to make it explode if the wrong person touched it. Normally, that would have cheered her up.
It did not.
"Think hammer boy sees dead people too?" she asked quietly.
Vi glanced at her. "Probably something different."
"Hm." Jinx rested her chin on her knees. "Everybody's got dead people."
Vi did not argue.
The test began.
Jayce went rigid almost at once. His jaw clenched, and his breathing changed, but Viktor started speaking before the fear could swallow the room.
"Jayce. Listen to me. You are in Singed's laboratory. You are wearing the prototype. Whatever you see is an intrusion. Observe it. Do not surrender to it."
Jayce's hand twitched.
Jinx looked away.
She did not want to watch someone else go through it. She already knew what the Void liked to do. It opened doors without asking. It took the worst rooms inside your head and dragged them into the light, then whispered that the room was the whole house.
Vi's voice broke into her thoughts. "You okay?"
Jinx swallowed.
"Yeah."
For a while, they listened to Viktor talking Jayce through the test. His voice was calm, firm, carefully measured. It was exactly the kind of voice Jinx usually wanted to mock. Right now, she was grateful for it.
"That thing," Jinx said after a moment. "The Void. If a tiny little baby taste of it can do that to us…"
Vi turned toward her.
Jinx kept staring at Jayce. "Logan's in the real thing. Not with Viktor ready to pull a switch. He's in it." Her fingers curled tight against her legs. "And if it's doing that to him, then he's getting it worse. Way worse."
"Jinx."
"It's true."
Vi's answer was gentle, which was worse. "Maybe. But he's not alone."
Jinx shut her mouth.
On the other side of the room, Jayce gasped and nearly stumbled. Viktor caught his shoulder and kept speaking. The readings spiked, then dipped.
Jinx watched the line steady again.
"The fox," she said.
Vi did not answer.
Jinx gave a small, bitter laugh. "I hate how much I'm counting on her."
"You don't hate her."
"I said I hate that I'm counting on her. Different thing."
"Sure."
Jinx leaned back against the wall behind the crate. Her eyes burned, though she refused to rub them. "I've been jealous of her so many times I lost count. Big shiny fox goddess with magic tails and perfect hair and all that calm, pretty tragedy floating around her." She wrinkled her nose. "Makes a girl want to throw something."
Vi smiled faintly despite herself.
"But…" Jinx's voice quieted. "I really hope she's taking care of him."
"She is."
Jinx looked at her.
Vi held her gaze. "She followed him into the Void. That tells me enough."
Jinx's expression faltered. She looked back at the floor. "Yeah. Guess it does."
A few seconds passed.
"And I hope she's okay too," Jinx added, so softly it almost vanished under the hum of the machinery.
Vi's hand settled over her ankle.
Jinx did not pull away.
...
In the Void there was no sky to darken, no wind to change. Only pressure, silence, hunger, and the endless sensation that the space around her wanted to become a mouth. Neither light, nor earmth, nor love here.
So Ahri held all three as tightly as she held Logan.
He lay against her, breathing shallowly, his body still trapped in the sleep that was not sleep. The corruption moved through him in slow, cruel pulses, rising from unseen depths, spreading through thought before flesh, turning memory into poison and feeling into a blade. Ahri pressed her forehead against his temple and drew another thread of darkness out of him.
It burned.
Not like fire.
This was different. Void corruption tried to make the wound agree that it had never been whole. It did not only hurt. It insisted. It took every fear and gave it a voice.
Ahri forced it into herself anyway.
Logan stirred.
Only a little.
Her eyes opened.
"That's it," she whispered. "Come back to me."
She gathered what remained of her origin power and pushed harder. The corruption recoiled from Logan's mind for one heartbeat, then another. For two seconds, the darkness inside him thinned enough for something beneath it to surface.
His fingers twitched against her sleeve.
Ahri held her breath.
Then the Void surged back in, and his face tightened with pain.
She nearly screamed from frustration, but she swallowed it. Panic would waste strength. Despair would feed the dark. She had no room for either.
Again.
She bent over him, tails curling around them like a barrier of pale light, and drew the corruption into herself. This time, she was ready for the backlash. The memories struck at her in broken flashes, Jinx's blue eyes gone cold, blood on stone, laughter turning cruel, love curdling into hatred, Logan's heart being forced to betray itself.
"No," Ahri breathed.
She burned the visions and reached deeper.
Two seconds became three.
Then four.
Logan's lips parted.
Nothing came out.
The corruption returned, and Ahri almost lost her grip on him.
She clenched her teeth, tightened her arms, and tried again.
Each attempt cost more. Spiritual power leaked from her like blood from an unseen wound. Her tails glowed dimmer after every cycle, then brightened only when she forced more of herself into the flame. She knew this could not continue forever. She knew that simply holding the corruption back would not be enough.
Logan had to wake.
If he remained trapped in the dreams, the Void would keep reshaping them until one finally broke him. If he woke, even partly, then perhaps he could fight from within. Logan was stubborn.
He only needed a path back to himself.
Again.
Ahri absorbed the dark, crushed it under foxfire, and pushed.
This time, Logan's eyes moved beneath his lids.
Four seconds.
Five.
His breathing changed.
Ahri leaned close. "Logan."
His eyes opened halfway.
They were unfocused, clouded with pain and exhaustion, but not empty.
For five fragile seconds, he was there.
His gaze shifted slowly until it found her face.
"Ah…ri…?"
The sound nearly broke her.
"Yes," she whispered. "I'm here."
His brow furrowed, as though he were trying to understand where they were, why she looked so tired, why her arms were locked around him like she was afraid the dark would steal him the moment she let go.
He tried to ask something.
The Void surged back.
His eyes closed.
Ahri bowed her head over him and shook once, silently.
Then she smiled, exhausted and trembling, because he had recognized her.
It was working.
Not enough. But it was working.
"You're still in there," she murmured. "Good. Stay there. Stay with me."
Something moved in the distance.
Ahri froze.
The Void did not carry sound the way the real world did, but she felt the approach before she heard anything. Ripples passed through the surrounding dark, not footsteps, not wings, not claws, but intent. Hunger moving with direction.
Her tails lifted.
Shapes burst from the gloom with terrifying speed.
They were small by the standards of the horrors that haunted this place, thin-limbed and many-jawed, their bodies folded around glowing pits where faces should have been. They came in a pack, scrambling over nothing, moving as if the air itself had become ground beneath their claws.
Ahri could not put Logan down.
She could not even shift him far from her chest.
So she twisted awkwardly, one arm locked around him, and flung foxfire with the other.
Pale flames tore through the first wave. The creatures shrieked without voices, bodies unraveling into ashless fragments before they could reach her. Ahri turned her wrist, sent another arc of fire through the rest, and burned them out of existence.
It was easy.
A minute later, more came.
She destroyed them too.
Then more.
And more.
The attacks did not stop. Twenty times, perhaps thirty, the lesser creatures came skittering through the dark, drawn by light, by life, by Logan, by her, by the taste of resistance in a place that wanted none. Each pack was weak. Each one died quickly. But each one demanded a reaction, a burst of power, a moment of attention torn away from Logan's mind.
Ahri's breathing grew uneven.
Her arms ached. Her tails trembled. The glow around them flickered more often now, and every time it dimmed, the Void pressed closer.
When the next ripple came, it was different.
Ahri looked up slowly.
This pack was larger, and behind the lesser creatures came two enormous presences.
For one terrible instant, old fear seized her.
Watchers.
Then she felt them more clearly and knew they were not.
Relief lasted less than a heartbeat.
They were not Watchers, but they were powerful. Vast, misshapen things dragged themselves out of the distance, their bodies built from plates, tendons, and impossible angles. One moved on too many limbs, its back split open with rows of violet light. The other floated above the dark, its lower body trailing like torn cloth, its head opening and closing in layers like a flower made of teeth.
Ahri tightened her hold on Logan.
"You picked a bad time," she said, voice hoarse.
The first beast lunged.
Foxfire exploded across the Void.
Ahri did not fight beautifully. There was no room for elegance, no space for graceful steps or sweeping motions. She fought hunched over Logan, turning her body into a shield, striking from awkward angles, burning anything that came too close. Fire speared through claws. Tails lashed like blades of light. The floating horror opened its layered mouth, and Ahri answered by filling it with flame until the glow split through its skull.
The second beast reached her.
A claw grazed one of her tails, and pain flashed white through her senses. Ahri snarled, gathered her fire into a concentrated sphere, and drove it into the creature's chest. It convulsed, limbs folding inward, then burst apart in a silent storm of dark fragments.
The lesser creatures died with them.
For a moment, there was stillness.
Ahri swayed.
That had cost her.
More than she wanted to admit.
She looked down at Logan. The corruption was already creeping back through the space she had cleared in him. She wanted to resume the process, to drag him back to those five seconds, then six, then ten, then long enough for him to speak, to understand, to fight beside her.
But the Void moved again.
More were coming.
Ahri closed her eyes for one breath.
Only one.
Then she bent down and pressed a kiss to Logan's forehead. Her lips lingered there, warm against skin chilled by a realm that had no right to touch him.
"Don't worry, Logan," she whispered, exhausted but steady. "No matter what happens, I'll protect you."
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