"Everything we could find about what happened at Highstone Mine is here."
Logan sat at his desk, looking across at Silco. Silco was seated opposite Renata Glasc, reaching out to take the folder she handed him.
He flipped it open and skimmed a few lines—then his brows knotted hard.
"So this isn't the first time miners have heard a strange voice?"
Renata replied, "We questioned every miner with experience at Highstone Mine. The oldest among them said that for two generations, Zaunites believed the mine was haunted. That perfectly regular stone wall—what looks like a clean-cut rock face—was actually a stone 'door' built by the previous generation to seal the place off."
"Seventy years ago, Highstone Mine had frequent incidents of miners sleepwalking in the middle of the night. Several Zaunites fell to their deaths inside the tunnels while sleepwalking. Others would suddenly bolt into the mine at night like they'd lost their minds. The foreman got scared, so he chose to block off the cavern and only mine the outer perimeter. That reduced the incidents."
"And for the decades after that, miners working Highstone Mine never heard the strange voice again, and the sleepwalking stopped. They never dared go deeper, and they never dared drill through the stone wall."
Renata paused, then continued, "But based on Renni's report—her losing consciousness and walking deeper into the mine—it looked exactly like what happened back then. Like those sleepwalking, crazed miners."
Silco turned to Logan. "What do you think, Logan?"
Logan's brow was tightly furrowed. He had no idea what the hell was going on.
A "haunted" mine immediately made him think of Twitch and Zac—but he dismissed that almost instantly.
Twitch didn't have that kind of ability. Sure, he was a monster born from alchemical experimentation, but as far as raw physical strength went, Logan didn't think Twitch was even stronger than a normal human. Twitch was basically just a big rat with human intelligence.
Otherwise, even after mutating, he wouldn't still be hiding in the sewers eating whatever garbage people tossed away.
He wasn't in the same league as Dr. Mundo or Zac. Not even close.
As for Dr. Mundo—Logan had no clue which hole he was hiding in right now, but Logan was sure it wasn't a mine.
And Zac… yeah, the goo-man had absurd power, but Logan remembered reading online that Zac was a genuinely good hero. Under that terrifying exterior, he had the heart of a bright, earnest kid.
So the old cases Renata mentioned could be ruled out as Zac too.
Then who?
In Zaun at this point in time… who would be hiding in the shadows causing something like this?
Logan thought in silence, and then a possibility suddenly hit him.
"Urgot?"
"Hm?"
Silco looked at Logan. "Who?"
"A Noxian. If he's in—no. It can't be him." Logan's voice trailed off as he lowered his head and started thinking again.
No. It wouldn't be Urgot.
Logan remembered when Urgot got a cinematic and he'd gone out of his way to read up on Urgot's story.
Urgot was Noxus's executioner—an absolute monster of strength—but a single line from the people playing politics was enough to throw him away. He was dumped into Zaun as a disposable pawn in the power struggles of the elite.
Urgot only ended up in Zaun after Swain seized power in Noxus. That was when Urgot was taken, imprisoned by chem-barons, and forced to endure years of darkness and torture.
But right now, Noxus's war with Ionia had only just started. Logan had been keeping tabs on the fighting over there, because his edge—his special advantage—was tied to Ahri and beings like her.
Swain was still in Ionia, fighting.
So this couldn't be Urgot. The timeline didn't match.
Unless… it was a lore problem?
Like the whole Renata and Silco situation—Renata was clearly a champion designed with Silco as reference, but the timeline of her rise didn't line up cleanly with his.
Logan sucked in a breath, a headache blooming behind his eyes.
The League universe was huge, but it wasn't perfectly stitched together. The writers behind different champions and regions weren't even always the same people—half the time they didn't coordinate at all. Everyone just pushed their own concepts and preferences, and if you looked closely, the overall storyline was full of bugs.
That was why retcons kept happening too. Riot would try to "fix" the universe—though somehow it often got worse.
Either way, it was a real pain in the ass for Logan right now.
"Call Vander," Logan said after a moment. "We'll go check it ourselves, Silco."
Something that could directly make people lose consciousness wasn't normal—at minimum, it was mage-level. And a mage showing up in Zaun right now made no sense.
Logan didn't allow outsiders wandering around in Zaun at this stage.
"Fine. I'll go get Vander." Silco nodded, then looked at Renata. "What are you spacing out for?"
Renata stiffened. Her crimson eyes fixed on Silco. The white metal fingers of her chem-tech arm flicked out, pointing right at his face as she said darkly, "So I'm going too?"
"Who else would go?"
"Fine," Renata said, forcing a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "I'll go."
At exactly four in the afternoon, Logan, Vander, Silco, Singed, Jinx, and Vi arrived at the site.
Marsen led a team to surround the mine entrance. Singed crouched and ran his fingers over a nearby rock, studying it.
"Find anything?" Logan asked.
He'd brought Singed because out of all the scientists in the twin cities, Singed was the one who understood "mysteries and the unknown" the best.
Heimerdinger might have lived a long time, but he only bothered remembering what he personally found interesting. Singed, on the other hand, was good at everything—wide and messy and sharp.
"Actually, yes." Singed narrowed his eyes, rubbing grit he'd scraped from the stone between his fingertips. "Logan… there's blood in these rocks."
"Blood?"
"Yes. And not dried stains—fresh blood. And it looks like blood from multiple kinds of creatures." Singed straightened and looked at Logan. "Don't go in yet. Give me ten minutes. I'll figure out what species this blood belongs to."
He pulled out a small vial, dropped crushed rock dust into it, and began shaking it.
He started running a test right there on the spot. Jinx stepped in and helped as his assistant.
Eight minutes later, Singed's expression grew heavy.
"I've got it. The blood in these rocks is from rats, bats, various insects… and humans." His brows drew together. "And one more type—something I can't identify."
"It's blood, but the activity is insane. I've dissected thousands of species, and I've never seen anything like this."
He stared at Logan and continued, "That last blood type has higher internal activity than the beast-blood I engineered inside Vander."
And Vander's "blood," if you could even call it that, was closer to a burning, blended form of Shimmer—something that was constantly igniting itself from within. For something to be more "alive" than that…
Singed looked at Logan. "So are you sure you want to go in? This will be dangerous. If my guess is right, that 'thing' has been hunting and slaughtering other creatures, and this blood is spray from its feeding. And inside the blood there's a strange power—maybe that's why Renni was bewitched."
"The more blood there is in an area, the stronger that power gets."
Singed's voice was steady, serious.
"Singed, do you think we can just ignore this?" Logan asked. "From what I'm seeing, this isn't something we fix by abandoning the mine and sealing it up with a few more walls."
"I don't." Singed shook his head. "If my hypothesis is correct, that thing is growing stronger. Decades ago, people managed to block its influence with a single stone barrier. Now it's not something a few doors can lock away."
Singed bent down, pushed an instrument into the soil, pulled it back out, and scraped the residue into a test tube. He glanced at it and said, "It's still faint, but this ground is already being affected."
"If you stay here too long, you'll fall under its influence—another Renni, and another, and another. And the affected range is expanding."
"Then doesn't that mean I have even more reason to go in?" Logan said.
"You didn't ask your goddess?" Singed frowned slightly. "She should know what's happening."
Logan's expression turned even stranger.
Of course he'd reached out to Janna immediately—he'd tried the moment he heard. But what he got back was a vague answer.
Janna told him she could sense a strange, weak presence in Zaun. But she was weak too. She couldn't locate it, observe it, or truly understand it. Still… she said the aura felt a little familiar.
Familiar to Janna—but not something she recognized.
That thought alone made Logan's skin crawl.
If it was what Logan suspected, then avoiding it was the worst possible choice.
Because if that thing kept growing—feeding on blood to grow stronger—then even if Logan's soul strength suddenly jumped by twenty points, he still wouldn't be a match. He'd be nothing but a stray dog on the roadside, kicked dead without effort.
And by then, all of Zaun would be finished.
Unless Janna regained her power and fully awakened, nobody could stop that disaster.
So… no running.
Only facing it.
Logan took a deep breath and lifted his hand, looking at Vander. "Let's go. You and me."
Vander nodded and stepped into the mine first.
Logan then looked at Silco. "Everyone else stays outside."
Silco understood instantly.
He grabbed Jinx by the collar the moment she tried to sneak after Logan.
Inside the mine, Logan and Vander quickly reached the spot Renni had described.
Logan stood in front of the boulder wall, brows tight. His nose caught the sharp, stabbing stench of blood—along with strange lines and currents appearing in his vision.
Elemental affinity.
It let Logan see the "magic" in the air.
Zaun was a place starved of magic—but what he saw here…
It was chaotic. Violent. Like a wild beast in a cage, slamming itself against the bars.
"Do you smell it?" Vander asked. His nose was sensitive to blood. His big face tightened as his nostrils flared. "That scent."
"Yeah," Logan said. "It's brutal."
"Singed was right," Logan added, staring at the wall. "There's something alive in there."
He reached out, pressed his palm to the stone… then drove his fist forward.
One punch.
The entire rock wall exploded.
Boom!
The mine shuddered. The stone barrier cracked and collapsed into pieces. Logan and Vander slipped through the opening, and both of them instinctively held their breath.
Beyond the wall was a vast underground world—what Highstone Mine should have looked like from the beginning. As a mine, its original accessible size had been way too small. It never matched what you'd expect from tunnels that had been mined for decades.
In front of them was darkness.
The blood stench mixed with rot, making both Logan and Vander feel sick. Far deeper inside, there was a faint red glow.
They moved forward.
Logan reached the edge of a pit that radiated that red light—and his brows cinched hard.
"This…"
In front of him was a massive abyss, roughly twenty meters across. He couldn't see the bottom. Red liquid flowed within it, but calling it "blood" felt wrong—it looked more like boiling, burning magma.
"Is this a volcanic vent?" Vander blurted instinctively, then immediately shook his head. "No. There can't be a volcano under Zaun. If there were, that explosion hundreds of years ago would've triggered something catastrophic."
"Then what is this?" Vander turned to Logan, his voice low and heavy. "You look like you know."
Vander could feel the violent aura rising from the pit. His body was tense, trembling. Logan wasn't any better.
Because who knew what kind of monster was under that red sea?
"Darkin," Logan said, his face complicated.
"Vander… this is Darkin."
A Darkin.
Beneath Zaun.
"There's a Darkin under Zaun," Logan said again, as if saying it twice could make it real.
"Stay here and wait for me," Logan told Vander.
Before Vander could argue, Logan launched himself forward and jumped into the abyss.
It wasn't recklessness.
Janna had said she was weak—but the presence was weak too. Neither side could clearly sense the other. That was probably why it had stayed quiet all this time, hiding beneath Zaun.
Logan needed answers. He needed to get close enough to confirm what it was—then take that information to Spirit Blossom and find Ahri.
At this point, only Ahri could help him.
Vander's eyes went wide in shock. He reached out to grab Logan—missed—and instantly dropped to his stomach, craning over the edge.
He saw Logan land on a jutting outcropping, fingers clamped to the wall as he carefully moved downward inch by inch.
"Dammit!"
You want me to just stay up here?
Like hell.
If you get yourself killed down there, Powder will hate me for the rest of my life.
A tearing scrape echoed through the pit as Logan looked up and saw Vander digging a pair of huge claws into the wall, sliding down after him.
Logan huffed a laugh. "All right… then we go together."
Please—let this Darkin still be in its weakest phase.
Best case of all?
It's still asleep.
Because if it isn't…
Logan honestly didn't know what Zaun could possibly use to resist a Darkin.
Every Darkin is strong enough to erase a nation.
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