Chapter 1: Exile's Edge

I shoved through another wall of thorned scrub that tore at my exposed forearms and neck. The borderlands offered no mercy—not to traitors, not to anyone foolish enough to flee into this forgotten wasteland. Four days had passed since Demacia cast me out, and the terrain had grown worse with each mile I put between myself and the only home I'd ever known.

Dawn light spread across the jagged rocks ahead of me, painting them in shades of red and orange that reminded me too much of Noxian banners. I pushed the thought away and focused on climbing. My hands already bled from yesterday's ascent over formations that twisted at impossible angles, the stone itself warped by whatever magic saturated this region. I'd stripped away most of my armor on the second day—the weight would have killed me faster than thirst. Now I wore only basic leather and mail, pieces I'd kept for their utility rather than their symbolism.

My throat burned. The waterskin at my hip had run dry this morning, and I hadn't seen a stream since entering the valley two days back. I reached for the next handhold, testing it before committing my weight. The rock held. I pulled myself up another few feet and scanned the terrain ahead.

That's when I saw them.

Three silhouettes crested a ridge half a mile behind me. Even at this distance, I recognized the distinctive cowled helmets and the gleam of petricite-tipped spears. Mage-seekers. The order tasked with hunting rogue mages and those corrupted by magic—and now, apparently, with ensuring exiles stayed exiled. Or didn't stay anything at all.

I dropped from the rock face and landed hard on the uneven ground below. My knees protested, but I ignored the pain and studied my pursuers. They moved with purpose, spreading out slightly as they descended into the valley. They'd spotted me. Of course they had—they were trained for this, and I'd left a trail a child could follow through the dense vegetation.

I turned away from my current path and looked down into the valley below. The air there shimmered with visible distortions, purple and green energy crackling between twisted trees and rock formations. I'd been avoiding that direction for good reason. The magic there would be stronger, more chaotic. But the mage-seekers left me no choice.

I started down the slope, half-sliding through loose scree and grabbing at thorned branches to slow my descent. The scrub cut deeper into my palms, mixing fresh blood with dried. I welcomed the pain. It kept me focused on the present instead of—

Chains.

I stood in the Grand Hall, iron manacles binding my wrists. The weight dragged at my arms, but I kept my back straight. I wouldn't give them the satisfaction of seeing me broken.

The High Council sat before me in their elevated seats, faces I'd once regarded with respect and duty. Now they looked down at me with disgust. One of the Illuminators—a man whose name I'd forgotten or perhaps deliberately erased from my memory—held a scroll that detailed every charge against me.

"Garen Crownguard," the Illuminator read, each word echoing through the vaulted chamber. "You stand accused of fraternization with a known Noxian agent." He paused, letting the words settle. "Of providing strategic intelligence to an enemy of the crown. Of treason against Demacia itself."

The nobles packed into the gallery whispered to each other. I recognized many of them—people whose estates I'd defended, whose children I'd protected during the last Noxian incursion. Now they leaned forward in their seats, hungry for my execution.

"The agent in question," the Illuminator continued, "has been identified as Katarina Du Couteau, daughter of the Noxian general and a trained assassin responsible for countless Demacian deaths."

Her name bounced off the stone walls. Katarina. Katarina. Katarina.

"How do you answer these charges?"

I opened my mouth, then closed it. What answer could I give that they would accept? That I had met her in secret, yes. That I had spoken with her about our respective nations, yes. That I had loved her—

"The accused offers no defense," the Illuminator noted for the record. Around the gallery, nobles nodded and muttered their approval of my silence.

I shook my head, forcing myself back to the present. My foot slipped on wet stone and I barely caught myself on a gnarled root. The root twisted back on itself in a shape that shouldn't exist in nature, growing upward instead of down into the soil. I used it anyway, hauling myself forward and downward into the valley.

The terrain shifted around me. I walked past a section where trees grew sideways from a cliff face, their branches reaching toward the ground instead of the sky. Water flowed upward nearby, defying everything I'd been taught about the natural world. I watched it for a moment, following the stream as it climbed into the air and disappeared into a crack in reality itself.

Fragments of sky embedded themselves in the rock. I saw clouds trapped in stone, moving slowly as if they existed in a different time than the world around them. The formations hurt to look at directly—my eyes refused to focus on them properly, sliding away whenever I tried to study the impossible geometry.

I kept moving. Behind me, I heard shouts. The mage-seekers had reached the valley's edge and spotted me again. Good. Let them see where I was heading. Let them understand I preferred whatever corruption waited below to capture at their hands.

I navigated between reality tears that showed things my mind struggled to process. One opened onto a void filled with stars that didn't belong to any constellation I'd studied. Another revealed a forest of crystalline structures that sang when wind passed through them, except there was no wind in that other place. I gave both a wide berth and continued toward the valley's terminus.

The magic grew stronger with each step. I passed sections where the ground itself seemed to breathe, rising and falling in a slow rhythm. Plants grew in fast-motion, budding and dying in seconds before sprouting again from the same roots. A boulder floated three feet off the ground, rotating slowly while smaller rocks orbited it.

I glanced back. The mage-seekers had split into two groups. One moved along the left cliff face, scaling the impossible terrain with practiced efficiency. The other approached directly, using the valley floor as I had. They herded me. They knew this terrain better than I'd thought, or they'd simply recognized the obvious trap ahead.

The valley had no exit save the way I'd come. I'd walked into a dead end, and they meant to let the magic itself do their work for them.

Chains again. Different ones this time—these bound me to the wall of my cell while servants removed my armor piece by piece. The breastplate with the Demacian crest went first. Then the pauldrons, the vambraces, the greaves. They took each item with care, preserving them for whatever hero would take my place in the Dauntless Vanguard.

The lead councilor entered as they removed the last piece. He watched the servants work, his face impassive.

"We could execute you," he said once we were alone. "Many call for it. Justice demands it, they say."

I said nothing.

"But the law allows for exile in cases of…" He paused, choosing his words. "In cases where execution would be politically complicated. Your family name still carries weight, Garen Crownguard. Your sister's position in the military gives you protection, whether you deserve it or not."

"I didn't ask for protection."

"No." He studied me. "You asked for nothing. You've spoken perhaps a dozen words since your arrest. That silence damns you more surely than any confession."

He turned to leave, then stopped at the door.

"The sentence is perpetual exile beyond Demacia's borders. Your family name will be stricken from military records. Your commendations and honors will be reassigned or removed. As far as Demacia is concerned, Garen Crownguard died in service to the crown, and you are simply a traitor wearing his face."

The door closed. I stood alone in the cell, no longer shackled but somehow more trapped than when the chains had held me.

I reached the valley's terminus and stopped. What I saw there drove every other thought from my mind.

A rift tore through space itself, standing vertical where the valley ended. Forty feet tall, maybe more—the top disappeared into the distorted air above. The edges crackled with raw magical power that made every instinct I possessed scream warnings. Purple and green light pulsed along its boundary, casting impossible shadows that moved against the direction of the light source.

Inside the rift, I saw nothing. Not darkness—nothing. An absence so complete that my eyes refused to focus on it. Shapes moved in that void, or perhaps the void itself moved. I couldn't tell which.

I heard the mage-seekers approaching. The group on my right had closed to two hundred yards. The ones on the cliff would reach me in minutes.

"Crownguard!" The lead seeker's voice carried across the corrupted valley. "Surrender. We offer you cleansing execution—a quick death and proper burial. It's more than you deserve, but mercy guides even the punishment of traitors."

I turned to face them. Three figures in their cowled helmets, their armor inscribed with petricite runes that would protect them from the valley's magic. They spread out as they advanced, crossbows raised and ready.

"Better death by our hands than corruption by this filth," the leader called. "You were trained to resist magic, Crownguard. You know what this place will do to you. What you'll become."

I did know. Every Demacian soldier learned about the borderlands in their training. We'd studied reports of those who'd ventured too deep into magic-saturated regions. The transformations. The madness. The slow dissolution of everything that made a person human.

Lux came to my cell the night before they exiled me. The guards had looked away—her rank gave her that privilege, and whatever loyalty they still held to the Crownguard name convinced them to grant her privacy.

She'd tried to speak several times, starting sentences and abandoning them. Finally, she just pressed something small into my palm and closed my fingers around it.

I looked down. Our family's symbol, carved in wood. Simple and plain, something she must have made herself rather than risk requisitioning from the family armory.

"I believe you loved her," Lux whispered. "I believe it was real. You're the only person in Demacia who wouldn't have done what you did for anything less than true feeling. That makes you either the greatest fool in the kingdom or the most honest man I've ever known."

"Both, perhaps."

She smiled at that, though tears ran down her face. "They're wrong about you. All of them. They see betrayal, but I see someone who chose honesty over comfort. Who refused to hide what they felt even when hiding would have saved everything."

"That doesn't make it right."

"No. But it makes it human." She stepped back toward the door. "Survive, brother. Find somewhere beyond Demacia's reach and survive. That's all I ask."

Then she left, and I stood alone with a small wooden symbol burning against my palm.

I ran the calculations. Military precision, the one thing they couldn't strip away no matter how many records they burned. Three mage-seekers on my right, two more above reaching the valley floor. Capture meant execution—the "mercy" they offered was a fiction designed to make me surrender. I'd seen their cleansing rituals. Nothing quick about them.

Fleeing deeper into the borderlands would mean slow death by exposure, assuming the magic itself didn't kill or transform me first. I had no water, minimal food, and injuries that would fester without treatment. Three days at most before I collapsed.

The rift represented certain death by every measure Demacia had taught me. The magical energy would overwhelm my defenses. The void would tear me apart. Whatever existed on the other side—if anything existed there at all—would be worse than any corruption the borderlands could offer.

But the mage-seekers wouldn't follow me through it.

I turned back to face the rift. The void pulled at something deep in my chest, a sensation I couldn't name. Not fear exactly. More recognition. As if the nothing inside that tear called to the nothing I'd become when Demacia stripped away my name.

"Crownguard, stop!" The lead seeker raised his crossbow. "Final warning. Step away from the rift."

I pulled the wooden family symbol from my pocket and studied it one last time. Lux had carved it carefully, each line precise. I closed my fist around it and turned toward the rift.

Then I ran.

The mage-seekers shouted warnings. Crossbow bolts cut through the air behind me, missing wide as I sprinted the last thirty yards. I heard them calling about corruption and damnation, about throwing away my last chance at an honorable death.

I'd stopped caring about honor when honor meant abandoning everything that made me more than a weapon.

Ten yards. The rift's energy pulled at my skin, raising every hair on my body. Five yards. The void inside expanded to fill my vision. Three yards. I heard Lux's voice in my memory, asking me to survive.

I dove into the rift.

The moment I crossed the threshold, everything exploded into chaos. My body—trained to resist magic through years of petricite exposure—rejected the rift's energy violently. The magical forces destabilized around me, fragmenting into shards of purple and green light that tore at reality itself.

I tried to scream but made no sound. The void seized me, pulling in every direction at once. My body stretched, or seemed to stretch—I couldn't tell what was happening to me versus what was happening to the space around me. Reality fragmented into pieces, each piece showing me something different.

I saw the mage-seekers stumbling backward as the rift convulsed and expanded. I saw Demacia from above, the white stone walls impossibly distant. I saw Katarina's face, or remembered it, or imagined it—time had no meaning in the void.

The rift pulled me deeper. Behind me, in a direction that didn't exist, I felt the tear growing larger. The void between worlds had seized me with purpose, dragging me away from my dimension while something catastrophic happened to the boundary I'd crossed.

Darkness and light shattered around me. I tumbled through impossible space, watching pieces of worlds flash past. Mountains made of sound. Rivers flowing through emptiness. Cities built from concepts that had no physical form.

Then nothing.