Epilogue
"Just…just promise. Please."
"I'm not sure if I can-"
"Please."
"I…I'm not…"
"Please! Please, don't leave me! I don't want you to ever leave! Please!"
"…I promise you, Irelia. I will never leave you."
Do you remember that promise you made, Zelos? Even after all these years, I have no doubt you still remember. You may have left me here, in Ionia, to go to Demacia because of your duty, but you never left me in your heart. I blamed you for leaving, than I blamed the Noxians for taking you. I blamed them, and I was angry and I was hurt. It took all this time to realize something: You didn't break your promise. After all these years I finally realize that, and I can finally acknowledge who did break it: I did. I know that now, and you are in my heart once more. I abandoned you for a while, but I remember your warmth. I look to the stars every night now, and I pray for your return. I pray you will come back to me, I pray and I hope. I pray and I hope because you have never broken a promise. I do not care if I have to wait another eleven years or eleven hundred years. I know you will come back to me, in this life or the next.
May the stars carry my prayers to you. May my love protect you. May your love for me and our country guide your way home, my dear brother.
The stars flickered in the sky. A man shrouded in the darkness of the night stood at the edge of a cliff, the waves beating against craggy shore. He looked to the stars, he seemed to be counting them, or even praying to them. The starlight shone on his calloused and dirtied hands, his fingers running along a small wooden charm. When the starlight shone specifically on the charm, strange characters could be seen. They were messily etched in the wood, as if a child had carved them, reading, 'いれりあ.' He stood for what seemed like hours on the cliff, his head tilted to the night sky, silently praying.