Viktor moved through the dark like a ghost of his former self.

Zaun hadn’t changed. Not really. The pipes still hissed. The smog still hung thick in the lungs. The alleys curled like broken fingers, hiding memories in their shadows. He adjusted the grip on his cane, the familiar metal clicking softly against the damp concrete as he limped toward the old building.

The steps to his childhood home groaned beneath his weight. The door hadn’t been locked for years. No one came here anymore—why would they? There was nothing left. The old workshop was coated in dust. Glass fragments still glittered faintly beneath warped wooden beams. The bedframe remained, rusted and narrow, just as he left it. A book lay untouched on the crooked nightstand, swollen with mold and time.

Viktor exhaled softly. Here, the walls didn’t expect anything of him. No Hextech. No Piltover politics. No Heimerdinger or Jayce. Just silence.

He lit the lamp with a flick of his wrist, the soft flame chasing back the darkness. The air was heavier than it had been the last time. Or maybe that was just him.

He moved toward the small desk under the window, running a hand along its surface. He hadn’t come to Zaun since the last round of tests. Since Sky had left that journal in his lab. Since he started feeling the ache in his spine that didn’t fade, even after rest.

He pulled a worn notebook from the drawer, sat down, and opened it. His eyes scanned the familiar sketches—diagrams he’d drawn when he was barely twelve. Most were failures. Others, fragments of dreams he once believed in.

Then, nestled between the pages—something foreign.

A paper fold.

Crisp. Deliberate. White against yellowed parchment. An origami shape, folded with quiet precision.

A paper oracle.

His fingers stilled. His breath caught.

He hadn’t seen one in years.

And only one person had ever made them.

Her.

The girl with ink-stained fingers and a sharper tongue than most grown men. The girl who once pulled him out of a scrap heap and called him “Professor” before he even knew how to hold a wrench properly.

No one else knew how to fold them like that—four corners tucked in, symbols hidden inside, the tip creased just slightly, because she always pressed too hard on the last fold.

He turned it over. Words were scrawled on the inner flap. Small. Slanted. Her handwriting.

“Still trying to save the world, Vik? Or just yourself?”

He sat back in the chair, the oracle unfolding in his hand. The room didn’t feel empty anymore.

He could see her again, like a ghost etched into the walls. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, folding papers as she spoke about fate and choices and how the world owed them nothing—but they’d take it anyway.

He thought she was long gone. She’d vanished before he ever stepped foot in Piltover. Left without a goodbye, like most things in Zaun.

But now—this.

She’d been here. Recently enough to leave something behind.

His heart pounded once, hard, inside his chest.

Viktor stood slowly, cane scraping back across the floor. His eyes swept the room, searching for more—another sign, another shape. Nothing.

Just the oracle. And the question inside it.

He folded it again, gently this time, and slid it into his coat.

She knew. Somehow, she knew he’d return.

And that scared him more than anything science could explain.