The fog had been thinning for days. Not the soft, polite kind, but the Shadow Isles’ mist—the kind that dragged whispers out of your teeth and left them behind like broken promises. From somewhere deep in the ruins, a small box clattered open. He emerged first, a jester whose smile had teeth that didn’t forgive, whose laugh carried a weight that made the shadows twitch.

She came after, stitches at her wrists, her seams frayed and dusty. Forgotten. Loved once. Then abandoned. She stumbled into him, and the recognition was immediate. Neither spoke. Words felt cheap, unnecessary.

The Isles didn’t care. They had hunted, and now they were leaving, and these two broken toys were taking their chaos with them.

They moved together, though neither offered allegiance. He ran ahead, leaving trails meant to confuse, to amuse himself. She followed, steady, repairing herself where the land—or he—had torn. Hunters came. Some thought they could control him. Few left with their heads intact. She did not intervene, but sometimes, quietly, she whispered the right stitch in the wrong place, and he stopped just long enough to notice.

When they crossed into the living lands, the world looked different. Demacia’s marble palaces gleamed in the sun. He laughed and someone fell, though no one saw. Ionia’s spirits stirred, recognizing her, trembling around a presence they could not name. Piltover and Zaun wanted to catalog them.

Together, they were a balance neither claimed. He was teeth and shadow. She was seams and memory. The road made them sharper. Each town, each forest, each city added weight to their steps. Sometimes, when the wind was right, he laughed. She would stare at him silently, and the silence afterward was louder than the laughter itself.

No one stopped them, because no one could. The Shadow Isles had shaped them, but the world had a longer memory, and it was already judging.

In the present, they were once more moving.