Jayce now worked for the Piltover Military, designing weapons and handling “extractions”—a polite way of saying assassinations. He had grown used to it, even thrived in it. The violence, the bloodshed—it awakened something in him, something primal. He liked it.

Gone was the golden boy of Piltover, the visionary, the man of progress. What remained was a hardened, brooding figure in his late thirties, a man carved from war and regret. His beard was thick, his body a fortress of muscle, built for the brutality his work demanded. And when the missions were done, when the blood had dried, there was always the bottle waiting for him. A quiet, familiar escape from the man he had become.