Soraka had not moved for several minutes.
To anyone else, she might have looked peaceful. Her hands rested over her knees, palms turned upward, fingers relaxed. Her breathing was slow. The faint light around her horns rose and fell with the rhythm of her chest, gentle as moonlight slipping through thin clouds.
Lissandra knew better.
Soraka's silence was the kind that came from reaching farther than the body should allow.
The tent had changed around them.
At first, the difference had been subtle. The warmth of the small fire had faded, not extinguished, only made irrelevant by another kind of light. Then the cloth walls had stopped moving in the mountain wind. The sound outside had withdrawn, as if the world beyond the tent had been set at a distance too great to matter. Even the mountain beneath them felt less solid.
Lissandra sat opposite Soraka, unmoving, but impatience crawled beneath her skin like frost under stone.
She despised waiting.
Waiting had been the shape of her life for too long.
Now Logan and Ahri were in the Void, and Soraka was sitting in silence, trying to call a being that did not answer like any sane creature.
"You said he heard you," Lissandra said.
Soraka did not open her eyes. "I said I believed he had noticed."
Lissandra's fingers tightened over the head of her staff. "Then make him do more than notice."
A faint shimmer passed through the air.
It was not Soraka's doing. Lissandra felt that at once. Soraka's magic was starlight shaped by compassion, old and luminous, but still recognizable. This was stranger. Smaller and larger at the same time. It entered the tent not as power, but as a sound too soft to hear properly.
A chime rang.
Lissandra turned her head.
There was no bell.
Another chime followed, lighter than the first. Then a third. Each one came from a different direction, though the tent had no space for distance anymore. The fire bent sideways without wind. The shadows on the walls stretched into long, curved lines, then loosened as if they had forgotten what shape belonged to them.
Soraka opened her eyes.
The glow in them had changed. It was still gentle, but beneath it moved shock, recognition, and a kind of reverence Lissandra had rarely seen from her.
"He answered," Soraka whispered.
Lissandra rose halfway from her seat. "Where is he?"
Soraka slowly shook her head. "Not here. Not fully."
The chimes grew brighter.
Not louder. Brighter.
Lissandra had no better word for it. The sound brushed against her sight and left trails of gold hanging in the air. Each note unfolded into impossible little circles, then into doorways too small to pass through, then into sparks that drifted around Soraka like curious fireflies.
The tent vanished.
For one heartbeat, Lissandra saw stars.
Not the mortal sky above Mount Targon, not the cold lights she had watched over the Freljord for countless nights, but a depth so vast her mind instinctively rejected it. Rivers of light crossed blackness without end. Faraway worlds turned like beads on invisible threads. Somewhere beyond them, something golden moved with the unhurried ease of a being that had never needed to hurry.
Then the vision folded in on itself.
A deep hum filled the space.
Lissandra stiffened.
It was not a word. It was not even language. Yet it carried meaning with it, not spoken into the ear but placed directly against the edge of understanding. She felt the vibration in the ice of her staff, in the scarred depths of her soul, in ancient fears she had buried under entire civilizations.
Soraka bowed her head.
Lissandra did not.
The hum shifted. Several chimes answered it, high and playful, almost absurd beside the vastness pressing into the tent. Shapes appeared in the light, fragmentary and fleeting.
A gate of stars opening where no mountain stood.
A dark border where creation thinned.
Tiny golden figures moving through a seam in reality.
The Void beyond, not as a place, but as a wound without walls.
Then came another impression, sharper than the rest.
Too bright.
Too loud.
Too seen.
Lissandra's eyes narrowed. "What does that mean?"
Soraka's mouth parted, but she did not answer immediately. She was listening, not with ears, but with every part of herself. The chimes circled her once, twice, then scattered. The deep hum faded, leaving behind a trembling quiet.
Lissandra took a step forward. "Soraka."
The Starchild blinked.
The tent returned.
The fire was there again. The cloth walls stirred in the mountain wind. The outside world resumed its ordinary sounds, distant voices, shifting canvas, faint stones rolling down the slope.
But the air had not fully settled.
Lissandra saw Soraka's expression and forgot, for a moment, to be impatient.
Soraka looked shaken.
That alone was enough to make the situation more serious than it already was. The Starchild had spoken of Celestial realms, the edge of creation, the Void, and impossible roads with sorrow, but not fear. Now she sat very still, eyes wide, fingers curled slightly against her palms.
"What did he say?" Lissandra asked.
"He answered with images. Impressions. Directions, perhaps. It is difficult to translate."
"Try."
Before Soraka could speak, two small shapes popped into existence beside her shoulder.
The creatures were tiny, golden, and round-headed, with slender bodies and small legs that kicked uselessly in the air as they drifted. They made soft, bright sounds, bumping gently against each other before one of them landed on Soraka's shoulder and the other floated upside down near her horn.
"Meep," one said.
The second answered with a cheerful little chirp.
Lissandra stared at them.
For several seconds, her expression was unreadable.
Then she slowly lowered her staff. "These are his guides?"
Soraka looked at the creatures, still visibly affected. "His companions. His messengers. And, in this case, yes. Guides."
One meep patted Soraka's cheek with its head. The gesture was almost comically gentle.
Lissandra did not know whether to be relieved or offended.
"They can open a path?" she asked.
Soraka nodded carefully. "Not the same kind of star gate the Celestials of Targon would open. Something smaller. Stranger. A road made from Bard's own song."
"A private gate."
"In a sense."
"To the Celestial Realm?"
"Through it," Soraka said. "Past the places the Aspects watch most closely. Toward the far edge."
Lissandra's gaze sharpened. "And from there?"
The meep floating near Soraka's horn spun in place, chiming softly. For an instant, its golden light dimmed at the edges, as though it had approached a darkness that did not wish to be remembered.
Soraka's expression tightened. "They can guide us as far as the Void."
Lissandra absorbed that in silence.
For the first time since Logan had vanished, the impossible had become a route. Not a safe one. Not a clear one. Perhaps not even a survivable one. But a route all the same.
"That solves the first problem," she said. "The Aspects."
"Bard did not suggest bringing many of us."
"I did not imagine he would."
"No." Soraka looked at her. "That is not what I mean. He did not only warn against numbers. He warned against presence."
Lissandra's face grew still.
Soraka continued, choosing each word with care. "To him, beings like us are not merely bodies. We are sounds. Strong sounds. Clear ones. In the Celestial Realm, that may draw the attention of the Aspects. In the Void, it would be worse."
"The creatures would sense us."
"Not only sense us. Follow us. Gather around us. Perhaps even call greater things."
One of the meeps chimed in a low, unhappy tone.
Soraka glanced at it and nodded faintly. "He made me understand that we would be too noticeable if we went alone. Too bright. Too loud. Especially you."
Lissandra's mouth curved coldly. "Flattering."
"It was not praise."
"I know."
The tent fell quiet again, but this time the silence was full of calculation.
Soraka looked down at her hands. "He wants us to bring fainter sounds."
"Weaker beings," Lissandra said.
Soraka winced slightly at the bluntness. "Less overwhelming ones. Mortals, perhaps. Those whose presence will not ring so violently through the places we must cross."
"That makes them easier to hide."
"And easier to lose."
Lissandra gave her a sharp look.
Soraka did not look away. "Do not pretend you have not thought of that."
"I have thought of many things."
"Then think of this too. Anyone who follows that path will be entering dangers beyond mortal design. The fact that they are less visible does not make them safe."
"Nothing about this is safe."
"No," Soraka said softly. "It is not."
The two meeps drifted between them, their golden glow small and almost innocent. They seemed absurdly fragile for guides meant to lead anyone toward the edge of creation and beyond it. Yet the air around them carried Bard's impossible certainty.
A road existed.
Lissandra turned away from Soraka and looked toward the tent entrance. Beyond it waited Mount Targon, the Rakkor, the Aspects, the Celestial Realm, and farther still, the Void where Logan and Ahri were struggling against a darkness that wanted to unmake them.
For centuries, Lissandra had built plans out of sacrifices.
This one would be no different.
But sacrifices chosen blindly were wasteful. A rescue demanded precision. The team could not be too powerful, or they would draw every eye that mattered. They could not be too weak, or the path would devour them before they reached its end. They would need resolve, resistance, mobility, and enough reason to step into a nightmare without turning back.
Lissandra's fingers closed around her staff.
They needed a rescue team.
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