A/N Just a heads up, gonna be in midterms for the first half of the week, but then I'll be back on and submitting more stuff here!

The fog was thick. Akali and Kennen could barely see more than a foot in front of their faces, and they had to shift their gazes to the ground every so often to navigate the twisted roots that would appear. The trees the roots belonged to were dark and gnarled, their long-dead branches reaching up to the skies in a plaintive plea for life. They knew the trees have been dead long before Ionia was united. The ground was soft and soaked to the bedrock; a few inches of water would have made it a swamp. The air was deathly quiet. Not a bird chirped. Not a single sound was made beyond the squelch of footsteps that the ninja made as they trekked through the dead forest.

Akali attempted to keep pace with Shen, but more than once she had nearly twisted her ankle by not paying enough attention. She muttered a curse after nearly tumbling to the ground after a root had proven to be a little higher than she expected. In her irritation, she pulled the kama from her robe and started cutting roots that stood in her path. She looked at Shen, who walked with a calm purpose and with no falter in his step. She tried emulating his footsteps, but try as she might she couldn't cover the same ground due to her height. Shen had made no attempt to make conversation, and Akali had no interest in striking up conversation with Kennen, so he gave up after the first hour of their journey.

Kennen had the easier time out of the two of them, as his small size made it simple to see the roots coming. He deftly hopped over them and even used his lightning rush to run up the ruins of trees in an effort to scout ahead. It was futile however; even the tallest tree could not reach over the fog, and the yordle tired himself out more than anything. After numerous unsuccessful attempts at conversation, he decided to walk right next to Akali. Boredom caused his old prankster habits to kick in, so he decided to push Akali's buttons by walking just a hair faster, putting himself ahead of her yet still behind Shen.

Akali didn't look at him, but quickened her pace to pass Kennen.

Kennen saw she took the bait, so he walked faster to pass her once again.

Akali took a few long strides and ended up right next to Shen. She shifted her gaze to Kennen for a quick second to silently gloat, but then she was sent straight to the ground by a gnarled root. She hit the ground hard, and bit back a cry of pain. She quickly got back up and dusted herself off, but Shen had stopped.

"Are you two quite finished?" Shen asked impassively.

"I'm not." Kennen answered. "When can we move faster? This speed is killing me."

"Are we almost there?" Akali asked, throwing a glare towards Kennen. "We have been walking for almost three hours now, and you haven't once said where we were going."

"I don't have to tell you where we are going." Shen answered. "We are going in the same direction and I am in the lead. You do not have to know yet."

Akali narrowed her eyes. "When are you going to stop treating me like an acolyte? I am the Fist of Shadow."

"I am aware of that." Shen answered as he looked at the trees he passed. He frowned, noticing that the trees seemed to be changing. An individual tree itself didn't change, but the tree beyond was different just enough to be noticeable, and so was the tree beyond. The overall effect was similar to the flip-books from Bilgewater. The overall endpoint of the changes were lost on Shen, until he started seeing specific details emerge as he passed enough trees. "You do not see Kennen complaining. Trust me on this. I know what I am doing."

Akali bit back a retort and remained silent.

Shen started to tense when he saw the knots in the trees start to resemble wailing faces. The branches started looking more and more like arms, and he drew his spirit blade when he started to hear faint wailing.

Akali stayed silent for a while, but then she could hold it no more. "I was led to believe that the Triumvirate was equal."

Shen was puzzled. Why was she saying these things? "We are balance, but that does not mean equal. You and Kennen are both two sides of equilibrium, I am the bridge."

"Master Kusho would have told me this kind of information." Akali pressed.

"I am not Master Kusho." Shen answered, showing none of the ache he felt for an instant.

"No kidding." Akali sneered. "If you were half the man Kusho was, we would still have the temple."

Shen stopped. "What is bothering you Akali?" He asked calmly. He did not have the faintest idea why Akali's mood was the way that it was, but he was having none of it.

"The fact that I know why you're not telling us where we are going." She growled. "Because this is nothing but you running away from Zed like a coward and dragging us along with you. You could have fought for the temple. You should have."

"And die along with the rest of the Kinkou Order?" Shen asked sharply. He took a quick breath to return to serenity. He knew anger was his weak point, yet he kept falling victim to it.

"The Kinkou Order is dead." Akali snapped. "There is only a coward and his little servants following him around. You were never qualified to lead us, you only became leader by default. You spend all your time chasing spirits around when you should be avenging your father's death." She then turned on her heel and walked away into the fog.

Shen quickened his step to follow when she disappeared into the white mist. What she said had hurt him. They cut deep into his guarded soul and brought back to the surface what he himself had secretly feared ever since the temple fell. Am I worthy of my father's blade? How can I lead if I cannot lead a team of three ninja against one? Why can't I avenge my father and kill Zed, is it honor or emotion clouding my judgement? Akali's words have broken the locked chest of his buried fears, and now they bubbled up in earnest, eager to make up for lost time.

Despite this, he couldn't let her wander off alone. He gauged her approximate speed and reached out ahead of him to take her by the shoulder. However he nearly toppled over when he leaned to grab unexpectedly empty air. His brow furrowed in confusion. He didn't hear her sprint off; in fact he knew she would not dare run in this place.

"Where did she go?" Kennen's voice nearly startled Shen, but he recovered instantly.

"I don't know." Shen answered in genuine confusion. "She should be right here."

"Wait I see her!" Kennen said suddenly, and before Shen could stop him the yordle dashed into the fog so quickly he looked like a bolt of lightning.

"Wait! Don't run!" Shen said in alarm, but his warning fell on deaf ears. Kennen was gone as well, the fog had swallowed him up.

Shen tensed when he heard a familiar voice laugh cruelly from somewhere beyond his vision and say, "That is a very good question Shen. Why can't you kill me?"

Zed emerged from the wispy background like a wraith and as silently as a reaper.

"How are you here?" Shen asked with barely concealed anger, drawing his Ionian still blade.

"You are the rest of the survivors of your pathetic order led me here. For ninja, they are not good at covering tracks. You did not reach them well." He chuckled. "It's a shame, I was hoping to let you live long enough to rise up your own order and then challenge The Order of Shadows. But it is clear that you are no master." He pulled one of Akali's kama from beneath his clothes. "She hasn't improved at all since your order's fall. You should know that I train everyday."

Shen gritted his teeth. "What did you do to her?"

"The same thing I did to the rest of your order." Zed answered, the satisfaction in his voice evident. "Balance is a lie, and your order represents balance. So I taught your little student the truth. That those who follow balance invite death."

Zed was standing in a completed neutral pose, yet Shen was poised to leap at him. Red-hot anger boiled in Shen's blood; he desperately tried to keep it under control, but his control slipped. His eyes narrowed into slits, and the grip on his weapon tightened. "She is not my student." He said in a low voice.

"Is that so?" Zed asked. "Well then your order is doomed to fall behind to mine. I probably could have saved myself a lot of time and just killed your father, and then watch your order stagnate and decay from within. I guess father was wrong in making you his favorite."

With a roar Shen leaped at Zed, and swung his blade directly at his neck. Zed vanished in a cloud of shadows, and Shen simply stood there in the marsh, breathing heavily. He squinted into the fog in an effort to find his quarry, but instead he noticed something more troubling.

The trees had all vanished.

He walked through the fog at first, then he started to jog. The wailing that had drifted to his ears had faded; now it was a man humming.

Shen's heart turned to ice. He knew that voice. He knew it all too well.

The fog to his right lifted as if it was a curtain and displayed Zed's mangled body, hanging limp from a massive tree, one that Shen could not have missed.

He looked closer and realized that Zed didn't hang from the tree so much as the tree grew around him and through him, carrying him up into the air. Pink petals fell around Zed's tree like rain, and the sky parted to reveal rays of light, but Shen felt unease more than anything.

Then he heard him. A dark whisper that reached into the depths of Shen's soul and pulled out all the fear that he hid deep within with its deceptively charming sounds.

I will make you beautiful.

That voice had haunted him ever since he first heard him. Ever since he had first heard of what he had done, he had thought it was an evil spirit. His father was the one that fought spirits in those times, it would make sense that a spirit would be behind the horrific murders that had plagued Ionia. After all, his name was the Golden Demon.

He saw rather than heard the flower shaped explosion that showed through the fog on his left. The fog on that end lifted and revealed a mass of blood and fur that was nearly unrecognizable. A Ionian Lotus, painted in blood, was thrown up on the air behind the horror, frozen mid-air in its perfect moment. Only the shreds of a purple robe let Shen know who it was, and grief washed over him. Smoke rose from the corpse as a purple ethereal flower.

The first victim of the Golden Demon he had seen looked exactly like this.

You are my performers, and death is my orchestra.

The grief gave way to anger. He drew his sword and tried to walk, but his legs wouldn't obey his desires. He could only watch as the fog in front of him lifted.

Akali was an angel of death. The body was floating up in the air, suspended by giant golden threads that glowed with a divine light. The body was tilted back, giving the impression of a creature entering flight and enjoying every second of it. Wings of smoke and fog swept out from her limp form and refracted the few rays of sunlight that broke the fog bank and illuminated her whole body.

Her hair floated around her head like a halo, and the mask was removed to show an ethereal smoke leaking from between her lips.

Dance for me my puppets.

He was overcome with grief after seeing what had become of the last members of his order. Only he was left. He fell to his knees in sorrow and defeat.

He swore to find the Golden Demon once again and avenge their deaths. In his anger, he denounced his duty of maintaining balance, he called it a lie. He opened his eyes, too late, to see the flower that bloomed beneath him.

The last thing he heard as his vision was snuffed out along with his life was the Golden Demon whispering, so close it was almost as if the voice was in his ear.

My art cannot be contained.

Shen awoke with a start, and looked around the camp in a frantic daze. His robes stuck to his body, and Shen was shivering with cold sweat.

He looked around and remembered that they were camping in the Ionian Peace Forest at the moment. On a nearby hilltop, he saw Akali and Kennen training under the stars.

He let out a breath of relief. It was all a nightmare. His fears and his insecurities were brought up to him clear as day, and he would be a fool to ignore them.

But what does it all mean? He thought. His mind was in too much of a jumble over what had happened to make much sense of it, but he gathered that the dream was an omen, a warning of some kind. Had he been too neglectful of his companions lately? The spirit and human world needed balance, but he owed it to his father to at least try to rebuild the order. Even if it meant grooming either Akali or Kennen to be the new leader so that they could train acolytes on their own.

He stood up and walked to the hilltop where his students-his friends were training, confident in his newfound goal.

He still heard the demon's hum in the back of his mind, and its final words to him. He had an nagging feeling he knew where to go next.

He had to find Jhin. Before he hurt any more people.