"Damn, it's cold out here!"
One of the caravan members trudged through the snow, his breath forming thick clouds of vapor in the frigid air. The entire trading group was somewhere in the middle of Freljord's mountain passes, still days away from their destination, and the temperature had dropped so dramatically that even their heavy winter gear felt inadequate.
"No kidding," his companion agreed, pulling his furs tighter around his shoulders. "The cold came out of nowhere too. Thank the gods I packed extra warm clothes before we left—otherwise we'd have to turn back empty-handed. Can you imagine the losses?"
They'd only been traveling for a short time, maybe a third of the way to the Avarosan tribal lands where they planned to trade. Turning back now would mean a complete waste of the journey—all the supplies they'd brought, all the preparations, all the expenses, for nothing.
"Hey, speaking of which," the first man said, his curiosity getting the better of him, "what was that metal ball we threw away a few miles back? The one from the Zaun caravan?"
"How should I know?" The second man rolled his eyes dramatically. "The Zaun people asked us to deliver it and activate it when we got to Freljord. We did our job. What it actually does? Not our business."
The Phantom beacon had looked expensive—beautifully crafted, covered in intricate engravings that seemed almost alive. But neither of them had felt even the slightest temptation to keep it. As professional traders, their reputation for integrity was their most valuable asset. Besides...
"Zaun has changed so much lately," the second man continued, lowering his voice slightly. "Who knows what kind of powerful magic user created that thing? If we'd tried to steal it and it turned out to be some archmage's property? We'd probably end up dead without even knowing how it happened."
The first man shuddered, and not just from the cold. "Good point. I heard stories about what they're doing down there—crystal towers, flying skateboards, technology that makes Piltover look primitive. If they can do all that, they can definitely track one stolen artifact."
"Should we maybe mention it to someone?" the first man asked. "Like, report that we activated a mysterious magical device in Freljord? Just in case?"
His companion considered this for a moment, then shook his head. "Probably not necessary. Hundreds of people enter Freljord every year—traders, pilgrims, adventurers, even powerful mages. We just tossed an iron ball and left. How much trouble could that cause?"
Besides, Freljord wasn't exactly a safe, welcoming place where you could just ask the locals for help with magical mysteries. The tribes here were tough, territorial, and not particularly friendly to outsiders. The Avarosan tribe they were heading toward was one of the more reasonable ones, but even they had limits to their hospitality.
And beyond the mortal tribes, there were legends of much more dangerous beings. Demigods that could reshape the landscape with their power. And of course, the Frost Witch Lissandra, lurking somewhere near the Howling Abyss, wielding frost magic so terrible that even other mages feared her.
No, better to just complete their trade mission and get out of Freljord before winter got any worse.
"You two! Stop chatting and move!" The caravan captain's voice cut through their conversation. He'd turned around to glare at the stragglers, his weathered face tight with concern. "We need to reach the first temporary camp before dusk, or we're all in serious trouble!"
The captain had been running this trade route for years, and he knew the rhythms of Freljord's weather intimately. This sudden temperature drop wasn't normal—it felt wrong in a way he couldn't quite articulate. Something was happening, something beyond just natural winter patterns.
But whatever the cause, his job was to keep the caravan safe. That meant maintaining pace, reaching shelter before nightfall, and not letting his people freeze to death in the mountains.
Both men immediately shut their mouths and hurried to catch up, pulling their camels along behind them. The animals weren't happy about the cold either, making low sounds of complaint, but they kept moving.
"This weather just keeps getting stranger," the captain muttered to himself, scanning the landscape ahead for the landmarks that would guide them to the camp. "Something's wrong in Freljord. I can feel it."
Several mountain ranges away from the caravan, Marcus was controlling his Frost Phantom with practiced ease, gliding across the frozen landscape at impressive speed. Ice formed continuously beneath the armor's feet, creating a crystalline path that allowed the Phantom to surf across snow and rock alike.
It was faster than walking, more efficient than climbing, and honestly kind of fun.
"That should be the direction of the Howling Abyss," Marcus murmured, his consciousness focused through the Phantom's sensory array. He could feel energy signatures in the distance—powerful ones, layered and complex.
The strongest signature was exactly what he'd expected: massive frost energy, cold and controlled, emanating from the general direction of the Howling Abyss. That would be Lissandra's domain, the Frostguard Fortress where the Frost Witch maintained her eternal vigil.
But there was something else beneath it. Something that surprised him.
Deep in the earth, flowing through geological channels far below the surface, Marcus could sense heat. Not just normal geothermal activity—this was concentrated, intentional, almost conscious. The heat of a forge, burning with purpose.
"That old ram is actually here," Marcus said with genuine surprise. "Ornn, the Hidden Flame of the Mountain. I knew he was somewhere in Freljord, but I didn't expect him to be so close to Lissandra's territory."
Ornn was a demigod—one of the ancient spirit-beings who'd walked this world since its early days. A forge master of unparalleled skill, capable of creating artifacts that could reshape destiny itself. He was also famously reclusive, preferring the company of his forge and his work to the politics of mortals or gods.
"Although," Marcus mused, "knowing Ornn's history, he probably won't interfere with whatever I'm doing. Unless his siblings get involved and force his hand."
Ornn had a strict personal code: he would not involve himself in mortal affairs unless absolutely necessary, or unless his brothers and sisters—the other demigods of Freljord—decided to meddle. And even then, he'd be reluctant.
Which meant Marcus could probably operate freely without worrying about a demigod showing up to complicate matters.
His attention shifted back to the frost energy signature, and as he focused more carefully, he detected something else. Something hiding beneath the cold.
"The scent of the Void," Marcus said softly. "Are you atoning, Lissandra?"
It was unmistakable once he knew to look for it. Beneath the layers of frost magic, sealed under incredible ice, there was Void energy. Not the pure, primordial Void that existed beyond reality—this was secondary Void, the corrupted, localized version that sometimes manifested in material dimensions.
"So the Watchers are still down there," Marcus continued, piecing together the puzzle. "And you're keeping them sealed. How long has it been? Centuries? Millennia? That's quite a burden to carry."
The Void Watchers were ancient, terrible beings—creatures from outside reality that sought to consume and corrupt everything they touched. Lissandra and her sisters had made deals with them long ago, accepting Void-touched power in exchange for... well, the details were murky. But at some point, Lissandra had realized the mistake and turned against her former allies, sealing them beneath the Howling Abyss at terrible cost.
And she'd been guarding that seal ever since, sacrificing everything—her family, her tribe, her very humanity—to ensure the Watchers never escaped.
"Well," Marcus said, accelerating the Phantom toward the source of the energies, "let's see about fixing that particular problem."
He could restore corrupted Void, return the secondary manifestations to their proper state. The Void creatures that had spawned from the sealed Watchers would dissolve when the primary source was corrected, their essence returning to the greater Void whole. It would be like cleaning up a spill, removing contamination from a system.
And if it helped Lissandra with her eternal burden? Well, that was just a side benefit.
Ice bridges began forming in front of the Phantom as Marcus pushed the frame's speed higher, the armor skating across crystalline surfaces that appeared just in time to support it and vanished moments after. The landscape blurred as he accelerated toward the Howling Abyss.
Deep within the Frostguard Fortress, in the Hall of Nine Saints, Lissandra stirred.
She stood at the center of nine massive pillars of True Ice, each one containing... something. Someone. The pillars glowed with cold light, emanating power that kept the fortress and the surrounding lands frozen solid.
Ice crystals formed around Lissandra's feet, lifting her from her meditation position and carrying her to a wider chamber where she could better sense the world outside.
"This is..." she murmured, confusion clear in her voice despite the coldness of her tone.
As a Frost Witch—as perhaps the Frost Witch, the most powerful ice mage in the world—Lissandra's connection to frost was profound. She could sense every snowflake in Freljord if she wanted to, feel the movement of glaciers, detect the formation of ice on distant mountains.
Which is why the sudden temperature drop was so confusing.
It wasn't her doing. She hadn't cast any major spells, hadn't unleashed her power. Yet Freljord was getting colder, and the change was significant enough that even she could feel it altering the ambient conditions.
"Could those things in the Void be acting up again?" she wondered aloud, worry creeping into her voice.
Frost energy spread out from her body in waves, extending her senses down through the fortress, through the layers of rock and ice, toward the sealed chamber where the Void Watchers waited in frozen imprisonment. She had to check. Had to be sure the seals were holding.
Lissandra understood the horror of Void creatures better than anyone alive. She'd dealt with them, accepted their gifts, used their power to gain Iceborn abilities for herself and her people. The cold magic that ran through the veins of every Iceborn in Freljord—that came from the Void Watchers. A terrible bargain that had seemed worthwhile at the time.
Until she'd realized what the Watchers truly wanted. What they would take if given the chance.
She'd turned against them at the last possible moment, using the very power they'd granted her to seal them away. The cost had been astronomical—her sisters, her allies, the minds of an entire race of Yeti-folk drained to fuel the sealing ritual. The nine pillars in the Hall of Saints weren't just ice. They were people. Had been people. Her friends. Her family.
Transformed into eternal anchors for the seal that kept the Watchers imprisoned.
"I will never let you take a single step beyond that seal," Lissandra said, her voice hard with determination. Her eyes—covered by a mask of ice that had long since fused with her face—stared toward the floor, toward the depths beneath. "Never."
She'd been atoning for her mistake for so long that the years had blurred together. Centuries? She'd lost count. Her penance was simple: guard the seal, maintain the prison, ensure the Watchers never escaped. Even if it meant staying here forever. Even if it meant sacrificing her own Frostguard tribe should that become necessary.
But as she stood there, her thoughts drifted to two particular individuals. Two Iceborn who'd recently risen to prominence among the surviving tribes.
"They're so similar," Lissandra murmured, and for just a moment, something like a smile touched her frozen features.
Throughout her long atonement, she'd worked to erase knowledge of what had happened here, to cut off the inheritance of Iceborn power so no one would ever be tempted to make deals with the Void again. She'd killed many of her sisters' reincarnations over the centuries, ending bloodlines before they could become dangerous.
But these two—Ashe and Sejuani—she hadn't killed them. Couldn't bring herself to. Because when she looked at them, she saw echoes of her sisters. The ones she'd lost. The ones she'd sacrificed.
"If it were them," Lissandra said quietly, "perhaps it would be possible. Perhaps they could succeed where we failed."
With that thought, she returned to the center of the Hall of Nine Saints. Ice crystals formed around her body, layer upon layer, until she became motionless—a tenth pillar of ice to stand alongside the nine others. Frozen, watching, waiting. Eternal.
"No, no, no! There is something seriously wrong with your shooting technique!"
Powder stared at the target results displayed on the training range's holographic interface and pressed her hand to her forehead in exasperation. Whether it was Vi, Mylo, or Claggor, their marksmanship was terrible. Genuinely, painfully bad.
She was starting to understand how Vi and the others must have felt years ago, when Powder was the weak link holding everyone back during their jobs. This was what it felt like to watch people you cared about struggle with something that seemed so simple to you.
"Come on, cut us some slack," Mylo said, setting down his training pistol with a frustrated sigh. "We're not you, Powder. You're a shooting prodigy, a weapons expert personally recognized by Marcus himself. We're just... not. We're street fighters, not marksmen."
He gestured at the targets—small circles not much bigger than coins, positioned at various distances across the range. "If we want to hit those tiny things, we basically have to rely on luck. Pray that one shot out of ten connects."
"But training like this is completely useless if you're not even trying to apply what I taught you!" Powder shot back, her frustration clear. "I've explained proper stance, breath control, sight alignment, trigger discipline—all the fundamentals! And you're ignoring all of it!"
"Those 'illegal guys' we're chasing aren't going to stand still and wait for us to line up the perfect shot," Mylo argued. "What's the point of learning to hit stationary targets when every real situation involves people running, dodging, using cover? This training doesn't reflect reality."
It wasn't just Mylo who felt that way. Vi and Claggor were nodding in agreement, clearly sharing his perspective. As people who'd spent their early lives being chased by law enforcement, they all understood that real pursuits were chaotic, dynamic, unpredictable. Nobody stopped moving just because you wanted to shoot them.
The reason they'd asked Powder to teach them marksmanship in the first place was because they'd realized during arrests that they needed ranged options. Ways to subdue suspects from a distance instead of always having to close to melee range. But if the training didn't prepare them for moving targets...
"Oh, so you want to practice with moving targets?" Powder asked, her tone shifting from frustrated to dangerous. "You want to see what that's actually like?"
She understood what they were saying, even if she disagreed with the logic. And fine—if they thought moving targets would be better training, she'd give them moving targets. Let them see exactly how much harder that was when they couldn't even hit stationary objects consistently.
Powder made a gesture to Ekko, who was monitoring the training range from a control station. He nodded and began adjusting settings.
"Alright," Powder said, turning back to Vi and the others with a challenging expression. She reached over and slammed her hand down on a large red button.
Immediately, the sound of chains and machinery echoed through the training space. The stationary targets they'd been using—the paper circles mounted on stands—all retracted into the walls, disappearing completely. What was left was just an empty, open field.
"Okay then," Powder said, crossing her arms. "Let's see if you can hit anything!"
A new set of targets emerged—but these weren't stationary. They were holographic projections that moved erratically, appearing and disappearing in random locations, varying their speed and trajectory. Some moved in straight lines, some zigzagged, some hovered briefly before darting away.
It was the kind of training scenario that even Powder, with all her natural talent and practice, couldn't hit with 100% accuracy.
For someone like Mylo, who couldn't reliably hit stationary targets? It would be nearly impossible.
But Mylo wasn't thinking about impossibility. He was excited. This was way more interesting than boring paper circles that didn't move! He grabbed his training pistol, took a stance, and started firing at the moving holograms.
Bang bang bang bang bang—
The sound of rapid fire filled the training range. Mylo squeezed the trigger again and again, tracking targets as best he could, leading his shots to where he thought the projections would be.
Every single shot missed.
Not even close, most of the time. The targets were simply too fast, too unpredictable, moving in patterns his brain couldn't track and his hands couldn't follow.
When the pistol's magazine emptied with a hollow click, Mylo stared at his score: zero hits.
"There's something wrong with this gun!" he complained, throwing the weapon down in frustration. "I know I had the shot lined up perfectly at least three times! The sights were right on target!"
The others ignored his excuses and started their own attempts at the moving target exercise.
The results were predictable: Powder scored near-perfect accuracy, landing most of her shots even on the fastest-moving projections. Vi, Mylo, and Claggor managed a handful of lucky hits between them—and those few successes were clearly more about probability than skill.
"See?" Powder said, gesturing at the scores. "Moving targets are too difficult for where you're at right now. You need to master the fundamentals with stationary targets first. Build the muscle memory, develop proper form, learn to control your breathing and trigger pull. Then you can progress to moving targets."
She was about to continue her lecture when the training room's main door opened. Marcus walked in, his timing perfect as always. He'd given standing instructions to be contacted when the Phantom beacon reached its destination, and apparently, that had just happened.
But now that he was here, he paused to observe what was happening in the training room.
"Practicing your marksmanship?" Marcus asked, raising an eyebrow as he took in the scene—the holographic targets, the frustrated expressions, the scattered training weapons.
"Yes," Vi confirmed, stepping forward. "We identified a weakness during our last arrest. Our hand-to-hand combat abilities are solid, but we don't have effective options for long-range capture. By the time we close the distance to actually apprehend someone, they've often already escaped. We figured learning to shoot would help."
"But apparently we're terrible at it," Mylo added with a self-deprecating laugh. "Like, really bad. Worse than we thought possible."
"You want to learn long-range weapons?" Marcus said, and something about his tone suggested he'd just gotten an idea. "That's easy enough. The question is whether you can handle the training method."
Before anyone could ask what he meant, a light curtain materialized in front of the group. It expanded rapidly, enveloping all of them in a wash of energy.
The training room vanished.
When their vision cleared, Vi, Mylo, Claggor, and Powder found themselves standing on a platform suspended in... somewhere else. The space around them was vast, filled with geometric patterns that seemed to exist in more than three dimensions. Other platforms floated nearby, arranged in a complex pattern that defied conventional architecture.
"Welcome to the Phantom Temple," a voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere. Marcus's voice, but processed through some kind of system. "This is your weapon."
A shotgun materialized in each person's hands—sleek, unfamiliar, clearly far more advanced than the training pistols they'd been using.
"Don't worry about ammunition," the voice continued. "The weapon has unlimited shots. Your objective is simple: destroy all the aircraft before all the platforms disappear. Good luck."
More than a dozen small aircraft—each no larger than a dinner plate—suddenly appeared in the air around them. The objects moved fast, darting and weaving through the three-dimensional space with apparent disregard for physics or common sense.
Bang~
Claggor fired first, his shot going wide as the target aircraft performed an impossible mid-air dodge. The moment his shot missed, the platform beneath his feet began to glow—a soft light that seemed somehow ominous.
Bang bang bang~
Vi and Mylo followed suit, firing as rapidly as they could, trying to track the aircraft through their erratic flight paths. But just like with the moving holograms, they couldn't land a hit. The aircraft were too small, too fast, too unpredictable.
And every time they missed, the platforms beneath their feet glowed a little brighter.
The aircraft seemed to be taunting them. Some would slow down deliberately, hovering just within range, almost daring the trainees to take the shot. Then they'd accelerate away the instant someone pulled the trigger, dodging effortlessly.
After more than a dozen shots—all misses—frustration was mounting.
"Get down here!" Mylo shouted, making a split-second decision. He bent his knees and jumped, launching himself up toward one of the low-flying aircraft with his arms outstretched. If he couldn't shoot it, he'd just grab it physically!
But the moment he got close, the aircraft's surface flared with energy. A kinetic pulse erupted from it, hitting Mylo like an invisible hammer and sending him flying backward.
He crashed onto his platform hard, sliding toward the edge.
"Okay," Vi said, processing what just happened, "so physical contact is out. We have to use the guns. No other option will work."
But even as she spoke, a terrified shout cut through the air.
"HELP!!!"
Mylo's panicked voice made everyone's heads snap around. Vi and Claggor felt their hearts drop.
Mylo wasn't on his platform anymore. He was hanging from it—one hand desperately gripping the edge, his legs dangling over empty space that seemed to fall away into infinity.
"Pull me up!" Mylo screamed, his voice cracking with genuine fear. His fingers were already slipping. "I can't hold on much longer!"
Vi and Claggor stood frozen for a split second, processing what they were seeing. There should have been a platform where Mylo had been standing. They'd all started on platforms. But now...
The platform had disappeared.
At this time, Mylo shouted in fear, asking the two to rescue him quickly.