"Do you hear it calling to us, brothers and sisters?"
A preacher stood in the center of the square, his voice cracking but loud enough to echo through the streets. His eyes were hollow and sunken, his skin pale and stretched thin like parchment. Grease-stained robes hung from his frame and the faded symbol of the Church of the Glorious Evolved was barely visible beneath dirty smears.
Behind him, four gaunt followers stood silently with the same unnatural glow the priest held.
"Over a century ago," he cried, "our Church of the Glorious Evolved was born from truth! The curtain of illusion was torn aside, and we saw our so-called overlords for what they truly were! They fed us lies! Sweet, honeyed poison to keep us quiet! To keep us obedient! To keep us from the truth!"
He threw his arms out, trembling with fervor.
"The Gray Lady protects!"
The crowd murmured faintly, tired faces and sleepless eyes fixated on him.
"These guys rarely come down from the boundary market," Powder muttered, crossing her arms. Her expression was half-amused, half-irritated. "They preach all this 'holy evolution' crap, but their hands are just as deep in Piltover's coin purse."
From the shadows of an alleyway, Xander and the others, Vander, Vi, Powder, and Caitlyn, watched the scene quietly as it unfolded in the square before The Last Drop.
"Some things haven't changed," Vander muttered grimly behind them, his massive frame casting a shadow over them.
The preacher's tone shifted suddenly, voice cracking with despair.
"But, my fellow believers," he said, clutching at his chest, "we were deceived. We have erred in our faith. We believed the machine was the only path! That flesh was weakness! That our bodies must yield to metal!"
He fell to his knees, weeping. Then, slowly, he looked up with an eerie smile growing on his face.
"We were wrong."
Gasps rippled through the crowd as he rose again, his voice swelling into a thunderous roar.
"Oh, so very wrong!"
"Flesh and bone is the path!" he declared, lifting a rolled parchment high into the air and unfurling it. Strange symbols, circular, angular, pulsing faintly with a reddish hue, covered its surface. "Behold! The new revelation! The Gray Lady is not whole! We must make her whole again! Flesh and machine- one! Life and death- united!"
He beckoned the crowd forward, eyes wide with rapture and spittle flying with every word.
"Come, brothers and sisters! Read what is written! Feel what calls beneath the city! We will make her whole!"
Caitlyn uneasily shifted her grip on her rifle.
"What the hell does that mean?" she whispered.
"GET OUT OF THE WAY!"
Their heads snapped toward a woman sprinting through the crowd, shoving people aside.
"Sevika," Vi growled. Both she and Vander tensed, their fists clenching until they saw her face.
She was covered in dried blood, a fierce look of survival combined with something terrified. Her cloak gone, half her Shimmer vials missing, and her mechanical arm looked battered and dented from deflecting something sharp over and over again.
"MOVE!" Sevika shouted, plowing through the square and sending people flying as she tried to reach the Last Drop. "GET OUT OF THE FUCKING WAY!"
Powder tilted her head. "Something's got her spooked. I've never seen her like that. Wait here."
"Hold on," Caitlyn hissed, grabbing her wrist. "What are you doing?"
Snorting, Powder tore free.
"I'm going to see what's going on. You guys," she pointed at them, "might be on Silco's shit list, but I'm not. How about you trust me and I'll lure Sil—"
A bright flash cut her off.
Xander hunched over, clutching his head as agony exploded behind his eyes. Vander roared, dropping to one knee as his massive hands clutched his head. The others staggered or whimpered, their cries drowned out by a screeching metallic shriek that echoed everywhere.
It wasn't just sound, it was pressure. A pulse that kept shooting intense pain through their minds.
Xander gritted his teeth, forcing his eyes open through the pain. It felt like razors behind his eyes, every nerve on fire.
Through the chaos, he winced and glanced up to see the priest and his followers laughing. Their trembling bodies leaned into the pain, eyes rolling white as they raised serrated knives.
The preacher's lips moved once, silently. Then, in perfect unison, they slit their throats.
No cries. Only the wet gargle of blood. One by one they toppled forward into the screaming crowd.
Xander stared in disbelief, his heart hammering. Powder caught glimpses through the chaos, hyperventilating as her trembling hands covered her ears. The high-pitched resonance hadn't disappeared and kept them disoriented.
He blinked, and then froze.
That cold, familiar dread, had returned.
His gaze snapped toward the edge of the street, and there she was again.
The little girl.
She stood still, staring at the bodies beyond the crowd, and then turned toward him.
"Who... are you?" Xander managed to choke out between strained breaths.
The air shimmered. The girl's shape flickered and the shimmering illusion seemed to peel away.
In her place stood a tall, pale woman. Naked and unearthly. Her long black hair fell down her body, veiling her like silk and covering her breasts. Her skin was smooth, almost radiant… but when he blinked, it changed. Her frame became skeletal, skin blackened and thin, her eyes hollow pits of shadow with dried, crackled lips.
Then another blink, beautiful again.
Another, monstrous.
Reality seemed to bend inward around her.
A crimson aura flared from her body, thick tendrils of red light twisting through the air like smoke. The air somehow felt malicious and alive.
The crimson aura rippled outward, curling around the entrance and sealing it, red light colliding with a faint orange haze that Xander could now see wafting over everything like a tsunami.
Xander turned his head. The others had all collapsed, still clutching their skulls, shaking violently as the aura washed over them.
She was standing only a few feet in front of him now, her beautiful form shimmering in the red light, and a faintly worried expression on her face. He tried to take a step back, but somehow, without moving, she was already in his personal space.
What the fuck?!
His arms went wide as she wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her head against his chest. Every instinct screamed at him. Part of him wanted to piss himself, another part wanted to lash out in defense, but the strongest part of him was just… lost. The pain was gone. The noise was gone. Only confusion and fear remained.
Then, like before, a soft whisper echoed in his mind.
"They're here."
-----------------------
Underneath Piltover, magical fields that redirected the flow of the Gray, the toxic smog from the factories, disappeared one by one. Metal groaned in protest as it struggled to handle the new pressure that Janna, the Spirit Goddess of the Wind, known to some as the Gray Lady, contained through her magic.
Pipes burst. Metal screamed. The pressure was building and soon, it would reach the surface.
All of the protective magic she'd woven for the people she loved now flooded back into her as she hovered in front of the cavern where Corin Reveck and the hooded figure hid. A barrier of teal wind and light clashed violently against the sickly orange energy that poured from the cave, the air crackling from the energy.
Most of it she contained, but some leaked through.
Within the barrier, the hooded man laughed.
Janna's ethereal form shimmered, half flesh, half wind, as her long, pale hair whipped around her face. Her teal eyes locked onto the intruder just inside the cavern entrance, fury burning in her eyes.
"How long can you protect them, I wonder?" the figure chuckled, his tone cruel yet dripping with a strange, almost theatrical delight. "I was curious about the source of that lingering, foreign magic… but now I see."
She said nothing, her focus split between her fury and the strain of holding the barrier.
The man laughed again. Soft, pleased, and mocking.
"I could have ended you already," he mused, spreading his arms as the orange light flared one last time. "But this—" his voice lowered with satisfaction.
"This is delicious."