Opening a business, I've found, is a lot like starting a new empire. It involves territorial disputes, resource acquisition, personnel management, and a frankly obscene amount of bureaucracy. The only real difference is that there are fewer beheadings and more arguments about the exact shade of purple for the cushions. A fair trade, I suppose.
The 'ruin', as I affectionately nicknamed it, was our new project. The spot Morgana's walking moral compass had chosen on the Boundary-Mark Promenade was an ode to architectural neglect. The paint was peeling in long strips, like sunburnt skin. The windows were so grimy they looked translucent, and there was a lingering smell of failed alchemical experiments and the ghost of a failed dream.
"It's perfect," Morgana insisted for the tenth time, as we stood across the street on our first morning as proprietresses.
"It's a demolition project waiting to happen," I retorted. "There are probably families of mutant rodents living in the cellar who have already elected a king and are planning to secede from Piltover."
Our first challenge was the most Noxian of all: bureaucracy. To buy a property in Piltover, we needed a name, records, and above all, an estate agent. Ours was a thin man named Joric, with a waxed moustache that looked like it had ambitions to become the handlebars of an airship and a suit that probably cost more than our initial budget for the entire renovation. He met us in front of the property, his disdain for its location poorly disguised.
"Ah, yes! The Aevum Alchemical Property!" he exclaimed, the name clearly invented on the spot. "A landmark with 'historical character' and unparalleled growth potential, situated on the vibrant cultural frontier of our great city!"
"The woodwork on the facade is rotten, the plumbing is likely a colony of sentient rust, and the last time it saw 'character' was when the city was still a Shuriman trading post," I retorted, my voice bored. "The value here is purely sentimental, and sentimentality, Master Joric, doesn't pay the bills. What's the real price, not the 'optimistic foreigner' price?"
The negotiation lasted three days. It was a glorious battle. He used aggressive sales tactics about 'future investment'. I used historical facts about the area's property devaluation since the last documented chem-tech explosion in Zaun. He tried to rush us. I politely threatened to report a list of seventeen structural safety violations to the Builders' Guild, which would tie him up in paperwork for a year.
In the end, I got the place for thirty per cent of the asking price. The look on Joric's face when he finally signed the deed was that of a man who knew he had been completely, masterfully, outplayed by a ten-year-old child who knew more about his own city's building regulations than he did. It was my first commercial victory in Piltover.
With the property ours, came the mundane problem: money. Our reserve from Noxus was decent, but a full renovation, from the foundation to the roof, required serious capital. Morgana, sitting on a crate in the middle of our new, dusty hall, spent hours poring over the account book, worry creasing her brow.
"The contractor alone will consume almost half our funds, Azra'il. And we still have the plumbing, the power wiring, the furniture…"
"Details, details," I said, while pretending to examine the receipts with her. It was adorable how she worried about the mortal minutiae of economics. I waited for her to be distracted by the sound of a rat upstairs, then I crouched behind the dusty counter, using her body to block the view.
My hand dipped into my empty travel bag and emerged with a handful of perfectly cut, raw white diamonds, remnants of a life as a tomb raider. "Look what I found in the lining of my bag," I announced casually, shaking them out. "They must have fallen in at some point. I think this covers the contractor, don't you?"
The look Morgana gave me was a mixture of profound exasperation and a deliberate, self-preserving refusal to ask any further questions. She had learned, over the course of our journey, that it was easier for her sanity to just accept my… 'fortuitous discoveries'. I repeated the trick twice more over the month: once with rubies for the plumber, and again with an old gold ingot ('it was holding down some papers at the bottom of the bag') for the electrician. Morgana, at some point, simply stopped looking surprised and began to regard my travel bag with a new level of terrified respect.
Our contractor, a sturdy Lhotlan Vastayan with arms like wooden beams and a healthy contempt for bureaucracy, was named Xylia. She was perfect.
"You want to rebuild this place in a month?" she laughed when we showed her the site. "You don't need a contractor; you need a time-mage."
"Consider us clients with an optimistic deadline and a very generous payment capacity," I replied, letting a ruby the size of a robin's egg 'accidentally' fall from my hand and roll to her feet.
Her eyes widened. "Work starts tomorrow."
With Xylia's team handling the structure, tearing out rotten floorboards, reinforcing beams, and installing new glass in the high, arched windows, Morgana and I divided the tasks.
She, with her affinity for all things that grow and her infinite patience, was put in charge of suppliers. And she thrived in a way that surprised me. Piltover was the world's commercial hub, and she navigated its markets and guilds like a ship in familiar waters. I would hear her return every evening, her eyes shining with the success of having negotiated a good price on a batch of Shuriman ginger or having found the city's only source for rare Ixtali hibiscus petals. She befriended the Zaunite merchants who came topside to sell their mutant herbs, treating them with the same dignity as the Piltovan guild masters. She was building a network, not of spies, but of respect. She was building something real.
My task was the one I secretly craved the most: the design. The aesthetic. The soul of the place.
My vision was clear: a balance. The facade, I instructed Xylia, should be restored dark wood, with the metal detailing of the arched windows polished to a bronze and copper sheen. Steampunk, but elegant. Inside, the story changed. I drew the plans. A section with simple Victorian-style furniture, chairs upholstered in dark purple velvet, perfect for Piltovans feeling important. But on the other side of the room, I sectioned off an area with a raised wooden floor, tatami mats, and low tables, with dark silk cushions. A touch of Ionia and of worlds only I knew.
Where technology met tradition, I was merciless. "Oil lamps are depressing," I told the interior designer. "I want crystal light fixtures, with a warm glow, not that clinical medical light. And the pipes," I pointed to my diagrams, "of polished copper, running along the walls. Discreetly. They will carry steam directly to the kettles on the service counter." It was progress, but with the soul of antiquity. A place of truce.
The name came to me one sleepless night as I looked at the empty shell of our future shop. A name that was both a promise and a dark joke. "The Last Cup".
My magnum opus, however, was the menu. It was a map of my memories, translated for an audience that would never know where the recipes truly came from.
I divided it into clear sections in my mind. For the Westerners, I created the 'Golden Dawn', a version of black tea with bergamot that reminded me of a diplomat I'd played chess with in a life that smelt of rain and intrigue. For the more adventurous, the 'Forgefire Brew', a blast of cinnamon and clove, strong enough to wake the dead.
For Eastern tastes, I recreated the 'Jasmine Whisper', the same kind Anastasia used to drink on quiet afternoons in a cultivation world, a taste that was a sweet stab to my heart. And the 'Crescent Moon', ceremonial matcha whisked to perfection.
The Medicinals were my practical specialty. The 'Serpent's Remedy' for muscle aches, the 'Spirit's Cleanse' to clear the toxins of Zaun's Grey, and the 'Battle-Tonic', a bitter tea that would, I predicted, become ridiculously popular among mercenaries and wardens.
And, of course, my little piece of chaos. At the bottom of the menu, a single line in small print:
'The Chef's Brew – 3 silver cogs.'
Just below, in an even smaller, more irritating script, I added: 'The recipe changes weekly. So do the effects. Drink at your own risk. Ingredients: secret. And there's no point in asking.'
It was my blank canvas. Every week, I would choose a new recipe from my interdimensional inventory, a new flavour from a forgotten world. One week, it might be the 'Flowers of Eternal Remembrance', from a world where plants grew from memories, inducing a bittersweet nostalgia for beaches the drinker had never seen and loves they had never had. The next, the 'Leaves of Involuntary Laughter', which had… predictable and socially awkward side effects. And perhaps, on a particularly dull week, the 'Roots of Momentary Truth', which made it impossible to lie for five minutes. It was my little patch of chaos in the midst of all this order, a sociological experiment served in a cup. And I couldn't wait to see the results.
My kitchen, in the back, became my sanctuary. Thanks to a lifetime spent in a ridiculously competitive culinary academy where 'food war' was less a metaphor and more a literal description of what happened in the finals, my pastries were, to be modest, otherworldly. Literally. While Morgana focused on herbs for the soul, I dedicated myself to the alchemy of sugar, flour, and butter.
The menu of accompaniments became my blank canvas for the art of confectionery.
For the Piltovans, I offered 'Cloud Cakes', as light and fluffy as the idealised air of the topside, with a vanilla aroma so pure it was almost celestial. They were scientifically engineered to be the perfect companion to a cup of 'Golden Dawn'. For a more exotic touch, there were 'Green Tea Biscuits', crisp and with the subtle, earthy flavour of the finest matcha I had smuggled from a past life in an Ionia-inspired empire.
But the house special, the item that would have people queuing down the street, was the 'Gilded Cog Cinnamon Roll'. It was a recipe I had stolen from a dwarven baker in a world of fantasy and steam. Warm, sticky, just the right amount of sweet, and with a lightly caramelised crust that cracked under the teeth. Selling that in Piltover was almost cheating. The people, used to their precise, dry biscuits, were not prepared for something so decadently comforting.
For something more delicate, I created the 'Crimson Tarts', small wild-berry tarts with a gleaming glaze that made them look like edible jewels. The recipe for the filling, of course, used a variety of blackberry that only grew in the floating gardens of Aeonia, but no one needed to know that.
And there were the personal favourites. The 'White Wolf Biscuits', a recipe of my own, simple, buttery, crisp, and… slightly addictive, thanks to a pinch of a spice that stimulates dopamine production. Nothing illegal, just chemically persuasive. And, of course, Morgana's favourite: 'The Veiled Lady's Madeleines'. Small, soft shell-shaped cakes with a hint of lemon and lavender. The recipe was a direct adaptation of the fragmented, bittersweet memories she had of her mother. I had spent three weeks in mental simulations to get the taste of her memory just right. It was the only time she had cried from joy since I'd known her. A piece of her own history she thought she had lost, now served on a plate.
The crockery I unpacked from my inventory was, as I insisted to Morgana while she washed it, "cheap trinkets, probably full of lead." In reality, they were Victorian-style porcelain pieces, with delicate gold rims and hand-painted flowers, leftovers from a life where I had been the advisor to a queen obsessed with etiquette. And mixed among them were handleless cups of dark ceramic that seemed to absorb the light, made by cultivator-artisans in a world where tea was a form of meditation, and pale jade teapots so thin they were almost translucent. Each piece was simple by the standards of where it came from, but of such a superior quality to anything on Runeterra that Bartholomew, our old landlord, once offered to trade a year's rent for a single cup. I refused. Sentimentality, after all, had its own price.
While the ground floor was becoming a business, the second floor was hesitantly becoming a home. A narrow spiral staircase at the back of the kitchen led to our residence. It was a small space, but we managed to divide it into separate refuges. My room was spartan and functional: a bed, a desk covered in maps, and a single trunk for my 'public' clothes and things. Order was my only luxury.
Morgana's room, in contrast, became a sort of miniature conservatory. She filled every available space with potted plants, from the medicinal herbs she used in our teas to the silent, shadowy flowers that seemed to thrive in her melancholic presence. The air there was always fresh, smelling of damp earth and ozone after a rain. Between the two rooms was a small sitting room we designated as our personal library, the shelves already filling up with the books we bought at the markets and the more… esoteric… texts that I provided. It was the only truly shared space, a neutral ground of knowledge. And, of course, there was the small balcony where Morgana spent her mornings, a sanctuary of peace from which she could watch the city without being part of it, often using the Piltovan sun to dry bunches of herbs that hung from the rail.
And the cellar. Ah, the cellar. While the upstairs was becoming a home, and the ground floor a shop, the cellar became my true home. Sealed with Morgana's best silence-runes, it became my 'laboratory of oddities'. An arcane sanctum, a lab, and a storeroom for existential traumas. Morgana, quite rightly, called it 'the room of shame'.
After a little over a month of tireless work, of sawing, hammering, and the occasional frustrated shout (usually mine, when dealing with the stubbornness of a Hextech electrician), we were ready.
The polished, gleaming brass sign was hung. 'The Last Cup'. Morgana, in her new attire of leather and purple velvet, looked the very picture of mysterious elegance and quiet authority. I, in my work clothes, looked like an apprentice who was about to drop something at any moment.
She turned to me on the morning of our opening, the smell of fresh tea and cinnamon rolls filling the air. There was a rare, vulnerable anxiety in her eyes. "Do you think… anyone will come?"
I looked at the cosy interior, at the perfectly aligned cups, at the warm glow of the Hextech lights, at the promise of a moment of peace in a city that never stopped.
"Morgana," I said, with a rare moment of total sincerity. "We have built an oasis in the middle of the desert. The real question is not how we're going to get people to come in. The real question is: how are we going to get them to leave at closing time?"
-----------
📝 Author's Note
-----------
A Tiny Peek into the Future 👀
Hehe yes, my dear wanderers of Runeterra ⚙️🌍
Even though we're still at the beginning of the Piltover Arc (and all its tea-brewing chaos and shiny machinery),
I have a little secret to share with you...
I've already started writing the next arc! 😏✨
That's right, the new region is already in progress!
There are chapters written, scenes drafted, and a lot of wild ideas swirling around.
Of course, I won't reveal which region just yet (where's the fun in that?),
but I can tell you that the tone will shift quite a bit...
and maybe, just maybe…
someone's immortal heart might start beating differently. 💘
Yep, in this upcoming arc, we might meet Azra'il's potential future love interest.
Buuut I haven't decided if it'll be a short romance or something more lasting.
Right now, I'm leaning toward having Azra'il experience several brief yet intense romances
as she travels through different regions and only later find that one, true, enduring connection. 💫
So tell me, what do you prefer?
👉 Should Azra'il have multiple short-lived relationships,
or one true long-term partner throughout the story?
Drop your thoughts (and your wild ships 😆) in the comments!
Now, about our Morgana (my black-winged queen 🖤)
As I mentioned a few arcs ago, she's already had a specific partner in mind since the very beginning of the story.
But I've never revealed who it is. 😏
So let's play a guessing game!
Here are your clues:
She's a League of Legends champion
She's human
She's not immortal
And she has no celestial powers
Let's see who figures it out first 👀💬