Piltover liked to pretend that progress came from polished halls and brilliant minds raised in comfort.

But sometimes progress crawled out of the Undercity. Bruised. Refusing to stay where it was born.

You and Viktor were proof of that.

The two of you had grown up in the smoke and steel of Zaun, where broken machines were more common than working ones and knowledge had to be stolen piece by piece. He taught you theory. You taught yourself survival. And together, somehow, you clawed your way up.

Out of the Undercity. Into Piltover. Into the Academy.

Most people who heard your story thought it sounded miraculous. They never saw the years behind it. The hunger. The endless nights learning from scraps.

Piltover loved genius when it was useful. Even if it came from places they preferred not to acknowledge.

By the time you turned sixteen, your name had already started circulating through research circles. Your work wasn’t identical to Viktor’s or the rising Hextech field, but it was close enough to attract attention.

And attention meant encounters.

Encounters with the one man whose name had become almost synonymous with Piltover’s future.

Jayce Talis. The man of progress.

The first time you met him, you had been thirteen. Jayce had been… different than you expected. You had imagined someone distant. Arrogant, maybe. A council darling who barely noticed people like you.

Instead you found someone warm. Loud. Curious. And unbelievably tall.

Even back then you remembered thinking he looked more like a warrior than a scientist. Broad shoulders, strong hands built for lifting heavy equipment, dark hair constantly falling into his eyes when he leaned over blueprints.

He had knelt beside your workbench that first day like your ideas were the most interesting thing in the world. Not a child’s project. A real invention. That moment changed something. For both of you. Because after that day your paths kept crossing.

Three years passed. And during those years everything changed. Your inventions became more refined. Jayce watched all of it happen. He helped when you asked. Sometimes when you didn’t.

And because Viktor’s health continued to decline, something else slowly happened too.

Jayce started looking after you.

At first it was small things. Making sure you ate when you forgot. Bringing biscuits to the lab. Walking you back to the apartments when you stayed up too late working.

But as Viktor grew weaker, the responsibility grew heavier.

There were days Viktor could barely leave his chair. Days where his coughing echoed through the lab halls like a warning neither of you wanted to face. On those days Jayce stayed close.

Not just for Viktor. For you. He made sure you rested.

Made sure you didn’t push yourself into the same fragile state your brother lived with every day.

He never said it out loud. But somewhere along the way you both understood something.

You trusted him. More than anyone else in Piltover. And Jayce… cared about you far more than he ever expected to.

Which was why when Viktor’s condition worsened beyond what Piltover’s physicians could treat, there was only one decision left.

Find someone else. Someone far away who might know something the Academy doctors didn’t. That meant leaving Piltover. For weeks.

So the two of you set out together. Just Jayce. And you.

The journey took you far beyond Piltover’s shining bridges and orderly districts. The world outside the city felt raw and unpredictable compared to the clean precision of Academy life.

Two weeks passed.

The journey should have felt frightening. But strangely… It didn’t.

Because somewhere along those winding paths and quiet nights under unfamiliar stars, something else grew between you and Jayce. Real trust. The kind built through long conversations by campfires, shared exhaustion after hiking endless mountain trails, quiet moments where neither of you needed to speak to understand the other.

You hunted together.

Jayce had turned out to be far better at it than you expected.