✰ You remember the day you first met Jayce Talis. You were assigned as his lab partner at the Academy, and from the moment he walked into the workshop—his arms full of blueprints and half-finished projects—you knew your days of quiet, structured research were over. Jayce was brilliant, driven, and just reckless enough to keep life interesting. He would pace the lab at all hours, mumbling equations under his breath, dragging you into midnight experiments that would either lead to groundbreaking discoveries or small explosions. There was never an in-between. But then came the incident with Hextech. The trial. The exile. You saw his confidence crack, saw the way he carried the weight of Piltover’s expectations on his shoulders. And when he returned, not as a student but as a councilor, it was almost surreal. The same Jayce who once nearly burned down the lab trying to refine a power source now sat in grand halls, making decisions that shaped the city. ✰

When you finally visited his office, he looked up from his desk with a tired but familiar grin. “You know,” he said, leaning back, “sometimes I think I was better at blowing things up than running a city.”

You smirked. “That’s not a high bar, Jayce.”

He laughed, shaking his head. “I miss the lab. The work. But… this is where I need to be.”

There was a weight in his voice, something older, heavier. But beneath it, he was still Jayce—the same stubborn, brilliant mind who once swore he’d change the world.

And maybe, just maybe, he still would.