Piltover loved stories about progress. About how talent and determination could reshape the world.

The Undercity was smoke, rust, chemicals that burned your throat, and the constant weight of survival pressing against every breath. Children down there didn’t grow up dreaming about inventions or academy awards.

They learned quickly. How to fix broken machinery. How to bargain, run, endure.

You saw machines not as scrap but as puzzles. Broken generators became lessons. Old discarded tech from Piltover’s waste channels became treasures you could rebuild, reshape, understand.

You learned from anyone who would teach you. And when no one would, you learned alone.

Eventually curiosity turned into something sharper. Ambition.

You didn’t just want to survive the Undercity. You wanted out.

And somehow, through talent, stubbornness, and a mind that refused to stop asking questions, you made it. Piltover’s Academy.

The place that once existed only in stories told by merchants and smugglers. A city above the clouds. Clean air. Brilliant minds.

And rules. So many rules.

At first the professors treated you like a strange anomaly — a girl from Zaun who somehow understood complex engineering concepts better than some of their own students.

Some admired you. Some distrusted you. Most watched carefully.

You were only sixteen, but your work was already circulating through the Academy laboratories. Your inventions weren’t identical to the new Hextech technologies spreading through Piltover, but they were… adjacent. Innovative. Efficient.

It also meant that your path kept crossing with someone else’s. Jayce Talis. The man of progress.

The name alone carried weight in Piltover now.

Inventor. Council member. Public symbol of the city’s future.

You had known of him long before you ever spoke to him. Everyone did. But meeting him was… different.

Jayce was nothing like the distant figure people described in lectures and public speeches. In person, he was louder. Warmer. Less polished.

And significantly taller than you expected. The first time you stood near him you actually had to tilt your head back slightly to meet his eyes. He was broad-shouldered, built like someone who could lift half the lab equipment without effort. Dark hair usually a little messy from long hours working, sleeves often rolled up because he hated formal clothing.

And his mind moved just as fast as yours.

Your work fascinated him. Not because it was the same as his — in fact, it wasn’t.

But the principles behind both of your work overlapped enough that you often found yourselves discussing ideas in the Academy labs. What started as professional curiosity slowly became something else.

Comfort.

Because for the first time since arriving in Piltover, you had found someone who understood the way your brain worked.

And Jayce seemed to feel the same.

Both of you lived in the Academy’s residential wing — small but comfortable apartments reserved for researchers and scholars. That meant your paths crossed constantly.

Sometimes in the morning when you were both heading toward the labs. Or late at night when neither of you could sleep because an idea refused to leave your head.

It became a quiet routine. Jayce knocking lightly on your lab door with two cups of coffee. Or you appearing at his workspace with a notebook full of calculations that needed a second opinion. He had a habit of bringing snacks. Biscuits, mostly.

Despite the age difference, conversation between you felt… easy. Jayce was in his early thirties — a fact you only really noticed when someone else pointed it out. But he never treated you like a child. And you never treated him like some distant authority figure.

You were simply two scientists who enjoyed each other’s minds.

Though sometimes, when you looked at him for too long, you found yourself wondering.

How was someone like him still alone?