The platform slid along the top of the Weaver's Wall, carrying the refugees above the shifting desert.
Taliyah stood at the front with both feet planted wide, hands lifted, guiding the stone beneath them. Below, Rammus rolled beside them, sometimes vanishing behind dunes, sometimes reappearing with a low rumble as he kept pace.
The refugees stayed quiet.
Karma's shields still glowed around them, soft green light wrapped around shoulders, arms, and tired faces. Children leaned against parents. The wounded lay flat on blankets. Some people stared at Rammus below with fear, but most watched him with something closer to belief.
He had protected them, that mattered more than what he looked like.
Taliyah felt the wall begin to weaken ahead. She had built it in desperation, across hostile ground, while a Voidborn tried to eat the desert behind her. It would not hold forever. It had already carried them farther than she expected.
Karma looked over the refugees, then toward the distant northwest.
"This is far enough for them."
Taliyah slowed the platform.
"You're sure?"
"We should not bring them to Vekaura." Karma's voice stayed calm, but her gaze kept drifting toward the flashes in the distance. "The battle there is not over."
Taliyah nodded.
She lowered the platform toward the sand and raised a wide ramp from its side. The refugees moved slowly at first, then with more confidence as the stone settled beneath them. Some had to be helped down. One old woman kissed the rock before stepping onto the desert.
Rammus uncurled nearby and looked uncomfortable as several children stared at him.
Karma approached him.
"Rammus," she said. "Can you guide them to Marrowmark? Follow the Kahleek River. Stay near its course if you can. More people may flee Vekaura the same way, and they will need someone to lead them."
Rammus looked at the refugees.
The refugees looked back.
He shifted his weight.
"Ok."
That was enough.
The bandaged man from the shelter stepped forward first.
"We'll follow him," he said.
A few people hesitated. Then the mother with two sons moved after Rammus. Others followed her. Trust did not come easily in Shurima, especially not for anything that looked like it belonged to a monster's tale, but the desert judged by deeds. Rammus had stood between them and death.
That made him their guide.
Taliyah watched them begin moving along the safer route toward the river. Some looked back and raised their hands. She returned the gesture, then turned to Karma.
"We go on?"
Karma's eyes were already on Vekaura.
"We go on."
Taliyah lifted the platform again, smaller now with only the two of them aboard, and sent it racing along the remaining stretch of wall. Without the weight of the refugees, it moved faster. The wind slapped her scarf against her cheek. The storm had faded behind them, but the air still carried dust, smoke, and the bitter scent of arcane fire.
The explosions grew clearer.
At first they were distant thuds. Then cracks. Then thunder that rolled across the desert and made the stone under Taliyah's feet tremble.
Vekaura appeared through the haze.
The city was already half ruined, and what remained was being torn open.
Taliyah saw a massive figure below, tall and jackal-headed, staff raised against a storm of blue-white power. Nasus. She had seen him before, but never like this, never in battle.
Above him, Xerath flashed through the sky.
He appeared above a broken dome, unleashed a blast, reappeared over a cracked avenue, and fired again.
Then Karma's eyes lit green.
"Taliyah," she said. "I must join them."
"I know."
"Evacuate as many people as you can. Guide them toward the Kahleek River. While you help them, try to learn what Xerath is searching for."
Taliyah looked at the city.
"With Nasus here," Karma said, "this may be our best chance."
Taliyah nodded.
"Go."
Karma stepped off the platform.
For a moment she simply fell.
Then green light gathered under her feet, and she shot toward the battle like a calm star. A shield bloomed in front of Nasus just as Xerath's next beam came down. The blast broke across the barrier. Nasus used the opening to step forward. Jax swung from the side. Yi struck from above.
Taliyah forced herself to look away.
Her job was elsewhere.
She dropped the platform into the city's edge and began moving through the ruins.
"Anyone alive?" she shouted. "Follow the river! Move west, then south toward the Kahleek! Stay low, stay away from open streets!"
She found the first group hiding under the remains of a market stall. Six people, two injured. She raised a stone screen to block debris and guided them toward the western roads. Then she found another family in a collapsed courtyard. She lifted a fallen beam off a man's leg, gave him to his sons, and pointed them toward the route.
Again and again she moved.
Lift stone. Open path. Block falling rubble. Push people away from the battle.
She worked under Xerath's shadow, careful not to draw his attention. Every time blue light gathered overhead, she threw herself behind cover or pulled stone over the people near her. Several times she felt Karma's shields flare somewhere in the city, saving survivors she could not reach.
The battle filled every street.
Even with all of them together, Xerath did not fall. He laughed, burned, always drifting back toward the western ruins as if something there called him.
Taliyah kept evacuating.
By the time she reached the place where the Mother of Life River split toward the Kahleek, the first survivors were already moving along the route she had set. She raised markers of stone, low pillars angled toward safety, so latecomers could follow even through dust.
A young man stumbled toward her with a little girl clinging to his sleeve.
"You," he gasped. "You're helping people?"
"I'm trying." Taliyah caught his arm. "Can she walk?"
"My sister can walk. I can too." He looked back toward the city. "There was a place. Under the temple with the replica of the Sun Disc. We were treating the wounded there."
"Are there survivors?"
His face twisted.
"I think everyone died. But... there was a woman." He hugged his sister closer. "She came hurt a few days ago. I heard her under the rubble after the ceiling fell. She was cursing. I couldn't reach her. I had to get my sister out."
Taliyah understood the shame in his voice.
"You did the right thing."
"I left her."
"You saved your sister."
He looked like he wanted to argue, but there was no time.
"Go to the river," Taliyah said. "Follow the stone markers. If you see an armored creature rolling along the route, follow him. He's helping."
The boy stared.
"What?"
"You'll know him when you see him."
Taliyah turned back toward the temple.
Getting there was harder than she expected. Xerath was closer to that side of the city now. Twice she had to flatten herself behind broken walls as blue fire tore overhead. Once, a blast struck so close that the shock threw her into a doorway and left her ears ringing.
She reached the temple through a side passage.
The replica of the Sun Disc had once been mounted above the central chamber. Now it lay broken across the floor, a great circular shape split into three pieces. Beneath it, stairs led down into darkness.
The entrance was buried.
Taliyah placed her hands on the stone and listened.
There were gaps below. Small ones.
She opened a path.
Rock shifted quietly under her control, sliding aside rather than collapsing. She squeezed through, dropped into the underground chamber, and landed in dust up to her ankles.
The smell hit her first.
Blood. Stone. Smoke. Death.
Taliyah covered her mouth and moved forward.
The young man had been right. The chamber had served as a place for the wounded. She saw bandages, broken jars, scattered bedding, and bodies beneath fallen stone. Too many bodies. Some had died from wounds. Others from the collapse.
Then she heard it.
A breath.
Faint, rough, angry.
Taliyah followed the sound.
A woman lay half-buried beneath a slab near the far wall. Dark hair stuck to her bloodied face. One arm was pinned under stone. Her clothes were torn and dust-covered, but the shape of armor and travel gear was still visible beneath the wreckage. Beside her, half-hidden by rubble, was a strange weapon, a cross-shaped blade with four curved points.
The woman's eyes cracked open as Taliyah knelt beside her.
"What the hell are you doing?" she muttered.
"Getting you out."
The woman gave a dry, painful laugh that turned into a cough.
Taliyah lifted her hands and raised the slab slowly. The woman hissed as pressure left her trapped arm. It was badly injured, broken. Taliyah shifted smaller stones aside and reached for her.
The woman grabbed the strange weapon with her free hand.
Taliyah looked at it again.
The shape clicked into place in her mind.
She had heard stories of it in markets, caravans, and campfires. The weapon of the most famous mercenary in Shurima. A woman who found tombs, took impossible jobs, and survived things other people used as warnings.
Taliyah looked at the woman.
"Are you Sivir?"
Sivir smiled through blood.
"Depends who's asking."
Another explosion shook the temple.
The ceiling cracked.
Taliyah threw one hand up. Stone locked together overhead, but only barely. Dust poured down around them.
"I'm the person trying to keep you from dying," Taliyah said. "We need to go."
Sivir's fingers tightened around the weapon.
"Take it too."
Taliyah pulled a strip of cloth from Sivir's ruined gear, tied the Chalicar across her own back as securely as she could, then lifted Sivir into her arms. The mercenary was heavier than she looked. Despite her lean frame, there was solid muscle under the ruined gear, or maybe Taliyah was simply exhausted. Either way, her knees protested.
The ceiling cracked again.
Taliyah moved.
She raised stone ahead, sealed stone behind, and forced a narrow tunnel up through the rubble. More than once, Sivir bit back a cry as Taliyah climbed with her. More than once, the ruins shifted and threatened to crush them both. Taliyah kept going, step by step, breath by breath, until the air changed and smoke replaced underground dust.
They emerged behind the shattered temple.
The battle still raged above the city.
Taliyah kept low, carrying Sivir west through alleys and broken courtyards. Nasus roared something Taliyah could not hear clearly. Xerath answered with a blast that turned half a tower into falling light.
Taliyah reached the western docks, where the river spread wide around the edge of the city. Boats lay smashed along the banks. She lowered Sivir behind a stone block and looked for a safer path.
Then the sky changed.
A shadow passed over them.
Taliyah looked up.
Something was in the air.
A crocodilian figure, enormous even before the change, was flying over the river as if it had leapt from the far side of the great split between the waters. In one hand it carried a crescent blade. Its body grew as it crossed the sky, muscles expanding, sand and light trailing behind it.
It passed above Taliyah and Sivir.
For a heartbeat, she saw its jaws, its scales, its eyes burning with madness and rage.
Then it fell into Vekaura.
The impact shook the docks.
A roar tore through the ruined city, so full of fury that even Xerath's lightning seemed to pause.