Chapter 1 - Sundown

At sundown, the Great Sai was like an ocean. Waves of golden sand flowed in the wind, crashing around rubble and ruins. The sun, almost red, licked the horizon as dim beams tried to reach as far as they could. Most were reflected by the sun disk that floated to the distant North, an ugly metal disk in the sky. Zalia couldn't tell him why it was back, it didn't make any sense that an empire long forgotten had risen.

A man sat on top of the remains of a temple, arches and pillars long since reduced to rubble. His shirt was on the ground next to him, and a long umbilical of flesh led from a valve of calcified bone on his left shoulder to the book of blades and bone that sat open next to him. Every so often, the cord pulsed a malignant red in tune with the aura emanating from the book itself. The pages flipping idly in the weak wind while he stared at the red blur on the horizon.

"Zalia, tell me about the war," he said, breaking the silent dusk.

A voice seemed to emanate from the book itself, cracked and raspy with age.

"Which war Petrus? There were a lot of wars…."

"The Second Void War"

"Petrus, I've told you I don't like talking about it, you've read all of the pages I have on it anyways"

"I know. But I want to hear it from you. You already know everything about me, I want to know about the time before you were what you are now."

"And what's that?" the voice seemed to get louder and more intense.

"Darkin," he spat before making a small sign of warding.

"I suppose you're right, but be warned, most minds cannot handle the horrors we faced, we couldn't even remain unscathed."

"So what? My mind can just match my broken body then."

"Petrus…"

"Just, just forget about that, tell me your story."

And so the book told its story…

~We were many back then, the Warhost of the Ascended. But the Void. The Void was legion. We gave everything to force those horrors back, to close those rifts with our own sun-filled lifeblood. You already know about how I wasn't a warrior, I was to be a living library of all of Shurima's knowledge.

But times had changed, Shurima was desperate, the beasts were practically at our walls. And so came the decree, every sunborn was to march on the carcass of Icathia. And we paid the price for the Icathians' mistakes, we paid it a hundred fold in blood, drenching the dunes until they were a mire of death. But we pushed forward, helped by allies long lost to time, powers this world has not seen in aeons, we did the impossible.

Never had I seen this much of the Warhosts united. Aside from a few chosen to protect our emperor, every sunborn to walk these dunes stood together against the Void. I've never seen so many ascended fall. Those that died in those days were the lucky ones.

I will not go into specifics about what we faced, you are not ready for it, you never will be Petrus.

The Void is anathema to those who inhabit Runeterra. It unraveled not only our bodies, but our minds as well. The sight of your brethren being skewered and torn asunder by the clash of reality itself does that to you. We fought for days, maybe even weeks, but as our minds unraveled, so too did it seem that the fabric of time and reality shift and tear. The voices, so quiet and yet so loud screamed inside my head for all I had lost.

The Ascended had never known defeat before this, and would never know it again. We were Darkin now.

The need for cleanliness, of removing all that is weak from our bodies, excising what still made us human. That came from the Void. It reached out to us, and crawled into our minds to fester. Our bodies we impure from exposure, we had to remove the taint. To keep the viruses out, we sculpted flesh into plates of bone, warped fingers into claws, became more, became less. Became Darkin.

After we had sealed the last rift, I left to retire to my tower in peace. But that affliction followed me, and so I delved into the forbidden magicks we Darkin employed. None who glimpsed the infinite malignity of the Void were spared. And so it was, that after the Great Betrayal, when mankind turned on the Sunborn and locked us in our prisons, they came for me as well. Because I may have not started as a warrior, but we all came back as monsters. No Darkin could be left alone to wreak havoc on humanity.

And so I was unmade into this book by those scum, those Aspects, to hold all of the knowledge I knew. They thought it a fitting punishment that I would be used to spread all that which I had hoarded, cursed to add whatever my hosts discovered to this ever growing prison.~

"I see," was all Petrus said.

"Is that it?" asked Zalia.

"It's not like I didn't already know most of this."

"Then why did you ask?"

"To see if I missed anything… I want to know what dangers lurk below, what I may one day have to face."

"Do not even say the blight will return."

"Be quiet Zalia, let me enjoy the moon now."

Indeed, the sun had long since set, and the half moon was beginning it's climb, slowly pulling itself along the stars into the night sky. Petrus tilted his head back against the ruins and drank in the moonlight. His pale skin glowed in it, although the light was limited by the scar tissue on his back. Long lines like rays of a sun marred his flesh, ancient words carved into skin denouncing him as a heretic. Those areas stayed dark and stung whenever the moon attempted to reach them. He closed his eyes when a cloud passed in front of the moon and just breathed, and for a bit the scars stopped hurting. When the cloud had moved on, the pain returned.

He closed his eyes for a bit, resting in the light of the rising moon. And for just a few minutes he allowed himself to forget about the past and future, and just focus on how the chilly air felt on his skin. This state of peace was slowly shattered by the returning memories of how people who enjoyed the moon as he did now were massacred, and how he alone survived the genocide. Although he wasn't completely alone, there was still her. There was still Diana. And as he looked up at the moon, he wondered if far away on Mount Targon, she was looking at it as well.

But he had left that life behind, and now he roamed the shifting sands of Shurima. Doing what exactly?

~About Six Years Ago~

Although everything in the room was coated in viscera, the smell of scorched flesh cut through it all, assaulting her nose and almost making her vomit from its intensity. Diana crouched in the middle of it all, armor coated in layers of gore from slaughtering the entire council of Solari and their guards. Off to the side, a young man, little more than a boy, lay on the ground, smoke rising from his back where the ritualistic brands had seared him. She hadn't known there would be anyone else when she returned as the Aspect of the Moon. They were supposed to be erased from history, erased from this world. And yet as clear as the stars, a Lunari boy lay wounded in front of her. As she walked over, she noticed he was more than wounded, the brandings were deep and the gouges in his back would be very open to infection. He was barely breathing at this point, an occasional rasp of breath was the only sign of life.

There beams of moonlight that shone through the broken ceiling illuminated the cuts and then seemed to glow before smoking. He would die if she left him there, if not from the Solari cultists then from his wounds. She sheathed her curved blade at her hip and crouched next to him, rolling him over to pick up. He moaned and grimaced in his sleep as his back touched the ground but she didn't notice. She was focused on the images and voices flashing through her mind

In ethereal wisps of white, people constantly morphed and changed into new images. Two children, a boy and girl, holding hands with a woman who had the mark of the Lunari on her forehead. Sister. Mother. The same boy, maybe younger, riding on the shoulders of a Lunari man. Father. The man, woman, girl, and boy huddled together around a fire. Home. The boy standing off to the side from a bunch of other children as he watched them play. Different. The boy scowling as another kid pushed him. Loud The boy crying as his mother wrapped a cut in his knee in bandages. Hurt.

She knew somehow that the boy was him and that these were memories. Shaking him gently, the visions vanished as if they were never there at all. She lifted him and carried his limp body from the site of the massacre of the council. Towards what? She didn't know, but she had to get them away from the Solari. She had to save the young man, the last of a race. He shifted in her grasp and opened his eyes. He looked up and gazed into her own, before beginning to lightly cry.

"Mom?" he asked.

Diana didn't know what to say, how to respond. She opened her mouth to say something, anything, but he had already closed his eyes and fallen unconscious again.

Felt cute, might delete later ❤ owo

Sorc back with another "amazing" OC story. Have no idea if I will continue, but I'm feeling good about this one for some reason. More characters will join the fun in the future!

I'd say please comment or follow but don't feel obligated to do anything. But like if you do want to let me know I have support and shit then for sure do that.

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(Just delete the spaces y'know)

Later gators.