There was no way in telling where Akali had wound up exactly, but she was certain that she was no longer on earth. A veil of darkness cloaked her surroundings, so to determine her location was impossible.

Wherever this place was, Akali hated it. Beyond the caliginosity, something was watching her, and she knew it. Just the idea of being so vulnerable yet again frazzled her breaths. As an added bonus, there was an inescapable familiarity of the atmosphere that perplexed her mind. Perpetual shadows and silence… It was inherently Zed's shadowed world, with a more sinister twist to it.

Akali furrowed her brows in concentration. The last thing she remembered after stabbing Baron's heart was a white flare of light that had burned her eyes shut, obscuring her vision and altogether the reason how she had gotten here. A loud puff of air escaped her nostrils as she sank onto the smooth ground.

Maybe all of this was a bad dream. Maybe Akali was actually unconscious in Sona's bed again, and the war against Baron had been won.

Or maybe…

To stop her mind's drivel, Akali dug her nails into her arm until she hissed in pain. She involuntarily traced the curved indents in her arm. Now, Akali was certain of two things. She wasn't sleeping because that rather unpleasant pinch definitely should have jarred her awake, and she wasn't dead, at least assuming that the afterlife operated in the same fashion as the plane of lost souls did.

Akali had no idea what to do, so she merely stared at where her hands would have been. In fact, she stared at them so hard that the outlines of her fingers became visible, to the point where she could even see the fine detail etched into her getas. This wasn't her doing, however. A dull beam of light shone just enough to confirm Akali's suspicions: she was in a barren wasteland. For some unfathomable reason, her gaze was firmly fixed on the ray of light despite her brain's clear disinterest with such a humdrum sight.

Abruptly, the entire region was bathed in a burst of luminosity, which forced Akali to turn her head away. Only after the effulgence had faded did she deem it safe to unscrew her eyelids. The darkness had evanesced and in its place stood—

The Kinkou temple?

In shock, Akali rested her hand on the ground. Only, where the ground should have been were instead blades of emerald grass and diversified, vivid patches of flowers. The silhouette of the architecture, the dewy smell of the meadows… Without question, this was the unmarred Kinkou temple in all its glory. Waves of nostalgia dug up buried memories in Akali's brain, flashbacks that she rarely ever reminisced about. She seldom looked back at her time spent in the temple because it could only ever end in one, grisly way.

"Akali!" a voice dear to her bellowed. Her head snapped to the side only to be greeted by her father, whose beard noticeably lacked the white streaks that came with strife and age. He looked happy, and the fact that his abdomen was san shurikens almost made her believe in the reality of this world. Her lips stuttered in shock, unable to form comprehensible sentences. A luster Akali had not seen in years flashed in her father's pupils as his large shoulders rocked in hearty guffaws. "Be sure to return home in time for dinner!" He stiffly waved at her, and oddly Akali found herself waving back.

This isn't real, she asserted half-heartedly.

Now that her father was gone, Akali was once again alone to bask in the priceless beauty of nature. None of this was real, but it wouldn't hurt to pretend like it was for just a few minutes. She flattened her back against the tufts of grass and cradled her hands behind her head. It was rare to be able to lounge underneath the warm sunshine, and Akali treasured every second of it.

The sayings were wrong. Perfection did exist, and Akali had found it. Her eyes fluttered closed.

A terrified scream disrupted the tranquil silence. It called out her name, to which Akali instantly opened her eyes and sat upright. A young boy dashed towards her to the best of his ability. His cheeks were tinged pink, and in between breaths, he wheezed, "The temple is under attack!" Without another word, he turned his back and ran back to the temple, leaving Akali stunned beyond speech. After all, she would never forget the face that first warned her of the eventual annihilation of the Kinkou temple. Akali jumped onto her knees and pursued the child.

It had been nearly a decade since Akali last saw the temple, but she recognized every brick, every step, every mossy crevice that led to it. Even at a distance, she could see hundreds of figures veiled in black fighting the temple's defenders. Several shadows watched as she did so, but none made a move to stop her as she began the doomed ascent to the top of the temple. Akali knew what was waiting for her behind the door, but having already experienced what was to come did nothing to ameliorate the dread in her gut.

None of this is real.

But somehow, the Kinkou temple had been reconstructed exactly like the original structure. The child who had warned her of the attack was strikingly identical. Even the degree of the slight weathering of the bricks had been captured unerringly. Akali was for the most part certain that this wasn't reality, but it was ludicrously easy to lose herself in the infallible layout of the temple.

Her hands wavered as they pushed open the door. Zed was supposed to be standing in the center of the room, but it was suspiciously vacant.

Was she too late?

Akali traipsed further into the room, her body whirling around to sweep the area. That's when she saw him.

"Dad!"

In the blink of an eye, Akali sprinted beside his decrepit frame, crumpling pathetically. A close inspection was unnecessary because she knew the exact locations where the shurikens had inevitably penetrated. Unconsciously, she placed her hands in his much larger ones and silently mourned.

"You…" her father's voice rasped out unexpectedly, disturbing the eerie silence. His hand blindly moved to cup her cheek. With gaping eyes, Akali stared at him, her breath hitched in her throat.

"Did this." His hand dropped. It was her natural instinct to scramble away from her dad's corpse.

Akali did this? It wasn't her fault that Zed had got to him before she did.

It wasn't, right?

"Heh…" Her blood froze as Zed's pervasive chuckle reverberated off the walls of the room. A mild gust swept her hair to one side. The hairs on her neck rose as he strolled behind her.

"Poor Akali…" His lips tickled her ear with his words. Fear sluiced down her spine, but still Akali could not step away from him. It was literally impossible because something imperceptible snared her limbs. "Even with all of your training, you still failed to save your own father. And your mother thought you could succeed her as the Fist of Shadow." His patronizing chuckle filled her ears.

Akali earnestly tried to defend herself, but with her slowly crumbling resolve, it was clear she was fighting a losing battle with herself. Hopefully, this manifestation of Zed didn't notice. "I didn't kill him. It was your shuriken that ended his life."

"True, it was by my hand that his physical body perished." His voice lowered to a hushed hiss. "But it was your incompetence as a warrior and a daughter that had him killed."

Just one large step and Zed was suddenly in front of her, mask and everything. Akali inadvertently glanced away, for too many times she had seen this picture, both in reality and in her nightmares.

"Aw… Do you not like my mask?" She couldn't form an intelligible reply, so she opted to remain silent. The strident sound of metal against stone echoed in her brain as she found herself looking up once more. His face leaned into hers, but no matter how hard she tried to wriggle out of the invisible binds, Akali couldn't draw back.

His lips were surprisingly warm against hers, but Akali couldn't react. His kiss had since seized her rationale and replaced it with nothing but pure, unadulterated panic. Zed growled, probably in annoyance at her stoicism, and drew back, peering at her unabashedly.

"You know what's really sick?" His gaze had captured hers and wouldn't relinquish it. Zed gripped her chin firmly, rendering her even more immobilized, if that was possible.

"You let your father's murderer fuck you, and you're not the slightest bit guilty. Look, Akali, he's dead in that corner over there." Zed pulled her face to the side and pointed at the corpse. There was a look of disappointment etched onto her father's face, which would stay that way for eternity. "You. Did. This. To. Him." With every syllable, he lightly shook her head until he finally released her chin, which should've been sore.

"No, I… I didn't!" she screamed, but even she had a difficult time not believing otherwise.

Zed tossed her a feigned, pitied look. "Oh, but you did. You were too weak, Akali, and because of that, you lost everyone and everything close to you."

A shadow appeared in the far corner of the room, and he teleported to it and away from her line of sight. Akali wanted to reach up and wipe the tears fogging her vision, but her arms were firmly planted to her sides.

What the hell was happening, and for that matter, why?

A second set of footsteps entered the room. Akali craned her neck to see who it was, only to wish she hadn't.

"Akali."

Her mother's voice wasn't quite as venomous as she recalled, but the frigid guise she wore was all the same. The stranger before her tossed a nonchalant glance at the corpse next to her, clearly uninterested in her husband's demise. Her cold glare shifted to Akali.

"What a shame." Her mother waved a hand apathetically in her father's general direction. "But it's as I said: the weak always die first." The woman laced her hands behind her back militarily and leisurely sauntered around the room, her leer trained on Akali.

She clicked her tongue as if she was talking to a petulant child. "You had so much potential. I had almost molded you into an emotionless weapon, obedient to a fault." Her face screwed in disgust. "But your father encouraged expression and feeling, which you selfishly partook in, dooming you to ultimate failure."

"Dad taught me to be human, which is something a good parent does," Akali snapped back. It was one thing to let her mother insult her overtly; it was another to have her spit on her father's grave.

"I was the one who disciplined you. The one who wanted only the best for you. And you repaid me how?" Her eyes narrowed. "By forsaking your years of training. By abandoning your own mother. You not only failed the temple, but you also failed us, your own parents."

"Where were you that day?!" All composure left Akali as angry tears streaked her cheeks. "We needed you! I may have failed you as a child, but your failure as a mother is far greater than mine as your daughter!"

"Shut that filthy mouth of yours, Akali." Threat laced in her mother's voice made her body rigid. "People looked up to you as my successor. They trusted you would protect them from the world because they believed in your skill, your power, your title. One life was taken because of my oversight, but hundreds are disintegrating into meals for maggots because of you."

Akali wanted to cover her ears and scream in denial as though doing so would make her mother wrong. But the woman's sentiments had never been so dead on. Her mother's focus traveled to something behind her. A vicious blur of silver temporarily blinded her. Not shortly after, something cold and sharp was pressed against her neck.

"If it weren't for you," Shen breathed on her neck menacingly, "I would still be alive." Shen withdrew his ninjatos from her neck.

"You…you can't be de—" The word died on her tongue. She couldn't say it; she refused to say it.

Shen stood in front of her and eyed her condescendingly. "I warned you not to let Zed into your life, but you just had to be a heroine to compensate for what you failed to do as the successor of the Fist of Shadow. Because of your hero complex, I am no longer breathing. For that matter, neither are Kennen and Irelia."

Her blood ran cold, almost freezing the tears that dribbled down her cheeks. Akali shook her head furiously, as if doing so would change what Shen had just shared. The invisible trap that had restrained her suddenly disappeared, causing her to collapse onto the floor pathetically, but her body was too far gone to process the pain in her knees from the contact.

This...this has to be a dream.

Perhaps she had accidentally voiced her suspicions aloud because Shen replied, "Or maybe this is your regret speaking on behalf of your conscience. After all, I did die trying to protect you because you were too powerless to save yourself." His glare steeled. "How many more people will die by your hands? How many more people will you let yourself kill?"

"You're not usually this aggressive," Akali whispered meekly, wanting nothing more than to hide in a far corner and stay there forever.

A bark of laughter echoed through the room. "Can you blame me?" he queried rhetorically. "I told you to take that stranger to a hospital instead of nursing him by yourself, but you didn't listen. I was trying to protect you, but in return you purposely ignored me in order to prove yourself. I tried so hard to shield you that I didn't realize that I was the one who needed protection." He gave his back to her and tossed an icy glare over his shoulder.

"From you."

Deep in the back of her head, remorse was readily waiting to eat away her senses. Shen had always possessed a temper, but it took much effort to unleash his wrath. To think that she, Akali, his very best friend, was the impetus to his fury. She recollected each and every time Shen had protected her, from the night that she had taken in Zed to the moment he had taken a direct blow from Baron in place of her. Too naive, too pathetic was she to help herself. She hadn't changed a bit. Shen had every right to be furious. He knelt down, but his frame still easily towered over her wilted posture. His eyes bore into her own with intense ferocity that made Akali hold her breath.

"Do you want to repent for your sins?" Akali nodded meekly, her bottom lip quivering turbulently.

Shen's arm rose to grab something behind his back; in his calcified, vast palms was her kama, which she didn't realize had made it to this world. Akali gawked at it. Her mien must have betrayed her emotions, for Shen said, "By dying, you will purge your soul of all the sins you have committed. You will be free." He offered the blade to her.

She took it, the pads of her thumbs tracing its bevel. Hundreds if not thousands of lives had been taken by one swoop of this blade; how ironic that its last use would be to take hers away. Her fingers wrapped around the pommel securely until her knuckles turned white.

"We will all be reunited again, Akali," Shen added, his statement brimming with hope.

With tentativeness, Akali blankly stared at the kama in her cracked palms. Maybe death was the solution all along. The cusp of the blade hovered directly above her heart.

Akali recalled a time when she had been in a similar incident, that moment in the prison when she had decided with frightening conviction that the only way to escape life's misfortunes was to kill herself with Zed's shuriken. Akali remembered that she had been so sure that her future would be just as torturous as her past, that ending her own life was the only way out.

Yet there Akali sat, with her heart beating stronger than ever, contemplating whether or not she should finish what she sought to do in that cell. The last time Akali was in this predicament, she was completely distraught, begging for death to come take her, but now that she had actually experienced it, the wish to perish had never been so distant. She had to cleanse her soul from the inhumanity of her sins. That much Akali was certain of, but dying, she knew now, was not the way to do it. Her scrutiny shifted to her father's corpse, triggering something within her. She finally understood what she had to do to finally be free.

Akali sighed dramatically, aware that Shen's attention was locked on her. "Shen, before I do this, I need to tell you something." His face was all too ecstatic to hear her acceptance of death. Akali gestured him to come closer, which he happily obliged. "I've hurt you many times, and for that I will always be guilt-ridden." She swallowed.

"But the real Shen would never ever ask me to take my life. You'll have to kill me yourself because I sure as hell am not going to."

Akali veered the blade's point toward Shen in such haste that he couldn't react and plunged it into his heart. Her gut burned with guilt as she did so. His pupils dilated, penetrating her own, before his body disappeared within wisps of purple smoke. There were no streaks of blood on her blade to remember him by.

All of a sudden, the walls of the room began to tremor violently. Her mother released a demonic screech that almost made Akali mistaken her for a banshee. "You killed him! Murdered the man who loved you, who cared for you! You barbaric mongrel!"

Akali had to close her eyes as she swiped her kama into her mother's stomach. The tug of self-reproach she felt was inexplicable, especially since she hated that woman with all of her heart. Nevertheless it disturbed her deeply.

The ceiling of the temple caved in. Her focus quickly turned to Zed, who had mysteriously emerged from the shadows. He didn't make a move to defend himself which was odd, but it only confirmed that this was indeed merely a fabricated facsimile of her former home. "You wouldn't kill the man you loved. You're too afraid of what you might become!"

Almost with disgust, Akali growled softly, "You are not the man that I love."

His body dissipated in a menacing mist, his existence erased without a trace.

For some ineffable reason, Akali walked to her father's corpse under the sky of raining rubble. A magnolia had blossomed above his heart. Just as she was about to touch its velvety petals, her father's hand sparked to life and latched fixedly onto her wrist. She looked into his eyes with alarm, but gone were the brown irises that matched her own. In their place was a purple haze that had consumed the entire eye, capturing the entire entity of the devil.

But her father could never be something so evil.

He sat up, but his movement was awkward like something had possessed him. "In cold blood, you murdered your mother, your lover, and your best friend. You truly are the savage your mother raised you to be, and I'm disappointed to have wasted my years on such a worthless thing," he spat venomously.

Such caustic words from such a benign being; it was wrong, unforgivable to taint her father's affectionate character like this. She began to silently cry, for what she was about to do was something she had hoped she would never have to execute, even to a clone. "You're right." Akali couldn't suppress the loud sob that escaped her as her kama cleanly punctured his heart. "But only by living will I be able to change."

The deafening sound of bricks crashing against stone interrupted his guttural growl as he too faded before her. Akali raised her head to the heavens and observed the chaos above her in an eerie state of serenity. The rivulets of tears on her eyelashes dripped onto the magnolia, which was all that remained of her father. Akali knelt down and delicately placed it in her hand, blissfully blind with the carnage surrounding her.

She always knew she would have to let go of the past. Her fingers balled into a fist, crushing the delicate flower inside.

It was as if something within Akali had been unleashed. The fragments of her shattered spirit came together, forming something wholesome, something complete, and in the midst of the structure's collapse, she sat reveling in this sensation.

She felt human.

The crumbling temple spiraled away into an iridescent haze, and her hands shot up reflexively to shield her vision. After the light had dimmed, a new radiance replaced it.

It was the sun.

Exhaustion crept upon her before pouncing. The adrenaline that had previously helped with ignoring the immense pain in her ribs disappeared. Not long after, so did her consciousness.

It had been quite some time since Akali was in the hospital as a patient and not a doctor. It felt strange lying on the inclined bed underneath a buzzing square of light, but just knowing her location made her exhale a breath of relief. The angle of the bed helped Akali sit up somewhat, but the pressure on her ribs obstructed any full range of movement. She perused her bruised body; based on the unstained cloth, Akali surmised that her rib cage had been bandaged recently.

Every detail of the war deluged her. Was the war over? Were her friends alive? Question after question assaulted her battered brain and hysteria rapidly consumed it. Luckily Karma waltzed in at that precise moment with a glass of water in her hands.

"Are they dead—" Dehydration interrupted her, culminating in a dry coughing fit. Karma raised the rim of the cup to Akali's lips.

"They're all alive and resting in the left wing of the hospital," Karma responded as Akali graciously chugged the water. "I would have put you in the same room as them, but your wounds required more care, and I didn't want to disturb them by constantly walking in and out."

"How is the hospital still running?" Akali inquired with her lips still latched onto the cup.

Karma shrugged. "The building is damaged, but it's better now that a group of electricians have fixed up the place. Plus, the staff is accepting all the medical assistance they can get."

"The citizens have returned?"

Karma nodded, and Akal's spirits marginally lifted. If the citizens had returned, that meant that Ionia was deemed safe for the time being.

"What happened to me after I killed Baron?" The conversation had taken a grim turn with Akali's query, and she could sense the tension within the atmosphere. She could see the hesitance etched on Karma's countenance. Not that Akali blamed her or anything, of course.

"You and Baron disappeared in a flash of white light. I couldn't feel your spirit on earth, so I assumed you were dead. Imagine my surprise when I found you unconscious in the exact same place just a few hours later."

Akali offered a thankful smile to the Enlightened One. Karma had saved her life multiple times in just a day, and for that, Akali would be eternally grateful.

"How long was I out for?"

"Only a day. The others are still unconscious."

Akali's forehead creased. "I would like to see them." It wasn't a question.

"Your body is still recovering from—"

She mustered the best puppy face she could and uttered a single, "Please."

And so the two of them wove through the hospital's hallways. A fusion of laughter, sobbing, and cheering could be heard from all parts of the building, which was a fine distraction from the swelling ache in Akali's abdomen. Abruptly, Karma stopped in front of a door. Softly, her fingers enveloped the handle and pushed the door open gently.

All of them were sleeping soundly. On the far right side of the room laid Shen, who had been extensively bandaged from neck to toe. Beside him was Kennen. Most of his wounds were concentrated in his midriff, judging by the plethora of bandaging there. On the left most side of the room slept Irelia. Her forehead had a gauze, along with her left arm and her stomach.

"They're all going to heal nicely. None of them have sustained permanent injuries. Consider them extremely fortunate," Karma informed.

Now Akali could finally rest easy, except for the fact that there was still one more person remaining.

"He's straight down the hall. Only Sona and I have access to his room, just to be safe from anyone discovering his identity." Karma grinned warmly.

Akali didn't question how Karma read her thoughts and merely followed her instructions.

Zed sensed her before she could ease the door open, and from her peripherals, Akali could see him sitting on the edge of the bed. The two exchanged no words as Akali stiffly stepped into the room. Like everyone else, his gear had been laid down beside his bed, and on top of the pile of clothing rested his mask. Like a shy child, Akali hesitantly inched toward the adjacent chair and reached for it, her digits following its grooves. If anyone saw this, Zed would be detained, if not murdered, in mere seconds.

Despite the fact that Akali refused to look at his bare, handsome features, she could feel the heat from Zed's gaze. It was that intense. Her fingertips curled around the edge of his mask until it dug into her skin, but she didn't react.

After minutes of a tense silence, Akali blurted out her gratitude at the same time that Zed mumbled something incoherent. They laughed awkwardly, neither of them knowing how to start the conversation.

Akali took initiative, surprising both Zed and herself. "I wanted to thank you for your efforts in the war. You saved thousands of lives yesterday." Flashbacks of her poisoned state crossed her reflection of the entire battle. "Including mine."

For some reason unbeknownst to her, Zed's eyes enlarged, an unreadable expression flickering in them. "I was part of the reason that this war began. I do not deserve any appreciation, especially from you," he replied sullenly, the floor's tiles suddenly engrossing his attention.

He's still beating himself up about that?

"I've forgiven you already and have since moved on from what happened in the temple. So should you."

Conflict was evident in his expression, but instead of foolishly dwelling on the subject, Zed nodded tactfully.

"Truthfully, I have to ask you something," Akali disclosed, desperate to steer the conversation into somewhat safer waters. Zed nodded again, this time more unsure. "I want to know what the hell happened after I killed Baron."

He paused to assemble a clear explanation. "Let me preface this by saying that Baron can be summoned repeatedly as long as the relic isn't destroyed. It has two forms with which it protects itself. Its primary defense is its physical prowess, which is triggered once it is summoned. You saw how powerful it was." Akali nodded with wide eyes. "The drawback to such massive power is greatly reduced mental capacity. The thing is practically braindead."

She almost snorted at his succinctness. "What's the second form?"

"After its first defense is breached, it then uses you to fight you."

"And you lost me there," Akali confessed sheepishly. The slightest smirk crossed Zed's visage briefly before vanishing.

"You physically killed Baron by piercing its heart, so it was sucked back into the relic. It knowingly dragged you inside as well."

Her head swam. All that time, she had been inside the relic and not hell. Fascinating.

"Baron's second method utilizes its intelligence, which significantly increases once it has been sealed back into the relic. This too has a disadvantage, for Baron possesses no physical power to hurt you once you're inside. All the damage it can inflict must be done so mentally by delving into your memories and making you relive the worst experiences from your past. Everything you felt in there, everything you saw, was just an illusion, a series of several different memories from your past shifted to your perspective and combined to create what you consider hell. It aims to quite literally break your mind." His voice trailed off, probably because of the dumbfounded stupor Akali was in.

So that's why Shen had suspiciously tried to spur her suicide; he couldn't kill her because he wasn't real. The only thing within her mental capacity right now as she processed this was blinking stupidly.

Zed sucked in a breath before resuming his explanation. "Baron imbues pieces of its life essence into its reconstructions in order to create a credible, alternate reality. By dispelling these illusions, you killed Baron."

More baffled silence. Zed tried again, in hopes that this time it would all make sense.

"After you defeated its physical form, Baron recognized you as a threat. That's why it brought you inside the relic, as a defense mechanism of some sort. It wanted to cripple your mind irreparably and ensure that you would never be able to truly kill it, in case it was summoned once more."

Her knees buckled, her bottom plopping down onto the seat beside the bed.

"Only the strongest of wills are able to escape the relic." There was an ominous tone in his voice, one that Akali didn't like. "Yet you destroyed it."

Her head unconsciously tilted to the side in awe.

Zed's crimson eyes bore into hers with such depth that she forgot how to breathe. "I overheard that the Elders took the remnants of it and secured it safely somewhere." His scrutiny softened. "I knew you could do it. You're much stronger than you think," Zed murmured, shifting his gaze elsewhere.

His explanation seemed so preposterous at first listen, but just one look at Zed's stoic demeanor informed her otherwise. Akali had defeated Baron…twice? The same woman who could barely leave her house to go to the supermarket just days before the war?

Ha! Yeah, okay, she reflected acerbically.

"There have been others who summoned Baron, correct?" Akali asked, receiving a tentative nod in response. "If the relic wasn't destroyed until I came along, how do you know about what's inside the relic? You said yourself that Baron purposely brings them inside to mentally debilitate them. The only way to acquire such information is if people are able to leave the relic with their minds still intact."

"There is a way to escape the relic unscathed. Truly knowing that Baron's reconstructions aren't real is enough to liberate oneself. This is, in some way, outmaneuvering its intelligence, because it is seeing through its ploys. But that is the most anyone has been able to do. No one has—had," Zed hurriedly corrected, "the foundation to destroy it completely."

There was a long silence afterwards in which Akali spent mentally repeating everything she had just learned, until Zed interrupted her train of thought.

"What did you see in the relic?" His question plunged the conversation into dangerous territory, and Akali immediately tensed as she remembered the events that had transpired in the relic.

"The day of my father's death." Her reply was as immediate as it was remorseful, and it was all she could do to swallow down the forming lump in her throat. It didn't go unnoticed how Zed became deathly still. "My mother was there. So were you and Shen. I—" Why was she confiding in Zed of all people? "I killed you all." Her hair fell over her eyes. "Does that make me a monster?"

"No. It just means you have sense of what's real and what's not."

Zed jumped off the bed and knelt beside the chair, holding out his hand to her audaciously. She gawked at it mutely, clearly not understanding his gesture. "I'm proposing a deal. I will forgive myself for everything I've done to you. You in turn have to love yourself."

A wry laugh almost escaped Akali. As if a pact with Zed could accomplish what she had tried to do for her most of her existence. For the hell of it, she slipped her hand into his and gave it a firm, courteous shake. If it didn't help, well then it wouldn't hurt. Wishful thinking, but maybe this was the salvation she needed, sealed with a very casual handshake.

The rest of their conversation passed by in a blur. Most of it consisted of exchanging pleasantries, which was, en masse, odd because apparently it was possible to participate in a rather cordial chat with Zed. If this was how unpredictable the future would be, then she would die young from being in a constant state of shock. Exaggeration aside, deep in her bones, Akali knew she was in the right direction to healing, and it was sure as hell satisfying to have some sort of direction in her life.

Unfortunately, her injuries began to flare up, forcing Akali to excuse herself abruptly. It was only after she exited the room that she realized she had accidentally taken Zed's mask with her. She didn't look back to return it, however.

Akali merely walked forward and through the twilight's veil of mystery.

I need a poster of the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland captioned "I'M LATE! I'M LATE" because hot friggity damn, I'm late to update again. On the positive side, I edited this at least 10 times, but there are probably still mistakes in there.

Hopefully the entire scene of Zed explaining what Akali experienced made sense. It kinda sorta somewhat made sense in my head. Not sure if that reasoning made its way into this chapter. If you have any questions I guess you can either pm me or review. I'm impartial to both.

I'm sad that the next chapter will be the last. :'( It has been one hell of a ride though.

As usual, I hope you enjoyed this update and have a sunshiny day!