POV - Azra'il
Morgana advanced a single step. And the young judicator, the one with the rehearsed smile, stopped smiling.
I saw the exact instant his expression crumbled, not out of fear for what was about to occur, but from the fear of discovering that he had miscalculated everything. The Veiled Redeemer he had likely learned to despise in judicator briefings, the woman who always swallowed the bile, who always circumvented, who always chose silence over conflict, was not the woman standing before him now.
He had memorised the wrong script. In my long lives, I have learned that this is the sort of mistake people only commit once. Usually because they do not survive to repeat it.
The second judicator, an older man, released the absolved prisoner's arm by instinct. His hands moved toward the hilt of his sword, yet stopped there. His body was reading the situation far better than his head, which, quite frankly, did not say much for his head.
"Leave him." Morgana's voice cut through the alley. Calm. "Go. This is the chance you've been granted. Do not squander it."
The young one tried. What folly; he truly possessed a sort of courage. Or at least what folk without life experience confuse with courage: stubbornness in a uniform.
"Redeemer, with all due respect..." and there are few phrases in the universe that precede greater disrespect than that, "...this man is the court's property. The Protector has reconsidered the sentence, and we are executing the will of Justice. You have no authority to—"
"Property." Morgana repeated the word as though holding a dead insect between two fingers. "You said property."
The youth did not realise he had stumbled. He carried on, puffing out his chest with that specific certainty that only the very young and the very idiotic manage to maintain when they are utterly wrong.
"These criminals forfeited the right to be treated as citizens the moment they committed their crimes, Redeemer. They aren't people. They are cases. And cases are closed by the court, not by you." He adjusted the silver brooch on his chest, the selfsame gesture I had seen Ronas perform dozens of times, copied so faithfully I nearly felt pity for the level of devotion involved. Nearly. "The Protector herself has said: the law makes no exceptions. Acts have consequences. Repentance does not erase the crime. These are her words, Redeemer. Moreover, Assessor Ronas has explained to us that the mercy you practise is a sweet poison. It resembles kindness, but it corrupts order."
And that was the part that stung. Because he wasn't lying. Not entirely. Kayle truly had said those things. Kayle believed that criminals deserved no second chance. Kayle thought repentance arrived far too late once the victims had already suffered. This ideology was the genuine conviction of an Ascendant looking at the world and seeing a set of scales that required balancing with blood.
But what Ronas had done was surgical, in the worst sense of the word. He had taken Kayle's conviction, the real part, the genuine rigidity, the law without exception, the certainty she carried as faith, and simply discarded the rest. The half made of love. The half that made her lower her sword when her sister was on the other side.
I have seen this before. In other worlds, under other names, in other uniforms. The fanatic does not invent the doctrine. He dissects it. He keeps the bone and flings away the meat. Then he presents the skeleton to you as though it were the entire creature.
The older man nodded along with the selfsame conviction. "You must understand, Redeemer. These... these wretched scoundrels you pardon, they return to the streets. And decent folk live in fear. They think crime pays. The Protector says the law exists so no one need be afraid. And Ronas says the law only works when punishment is certain. No exceptions. No sad stories. No second chances for those who don't deserve a first."
"And you decide who is deserving," Morgana stated. She did not ask.
"The law decides."
"No. The law existed. You replaced it with Ronas. And Ronas replaced it with his own will. And his will is a prison for those he dislikes and freedom for those he approves of. That is not law. The Protector, my sister, looked at me and chose love over conviction. We made an agreement. And you... you who swear to serve her every word, yet decided that this specific word does not count. That our pact is but paper. That the part in which the Protector chose to trust is a mistake you can correct in the shadows."
The young man's eyes widened. That had struck a nerve; I saw it by the way his jaw locked. No one spoke of the judicators so. No one. But the training ran too deep. Ronas's lectures were etched too far down. He composed himself in a few seconds and said, with a conviction that turned my stomach for being so 'clean':
"Assessor Ronas taught us that the Protector's love for you is the only weakness of Justice. That you exploit that love to weaken the law. That every criminal you absolve is an open wound upon the body of Demacia. And we are the bandages."
Morgana fell into a sepulchral silence. And I saw something move in her face, not rage, not pain. Recognition. She had just understood the depth of what Ronas had accomplished. He hadn't just convinced the judicators to harrass her absolved; he had convinced them that such harassment was necessary because Kayle's love for Morgana was a flaw needing compensation. Every act of their cruelty was not disobedience, it was devotion. They believed they were protecting Kayle by doing what Kayle could not bring herself to do because of love.
"You think you are protecting my sister from me," Morgana said. Almost a whisper.
"We protect Justice from those who corrupt it," the youth replied. The sword in his hand trembled, yet his voice remained steady. "And you do corrupt it. Every time you absolve a criminal. Every time you pardon a thief. Every time you look at a monster and pretend they are a person. You are the reason the Protector cannot be what she was born to be. And if the Protector cannot see that for love's sake, we see it for her."
"You see nought. You repeat. There is a difference between possessing eyes and possessing vision, child. You have eyes trained to behold only what your cult wishes you to see. My sister, my real sister, not the statue you've constructed, has at least the honesty to tell me to my face that she disagrees with me. She at least has the courage to yield, even without understanding. You lot yield for nothing. You understand nothing. And you call that strength."
The older man, to his credit, was backing away slowly. A veteran's instinct reading the field and concluding that the field was the woman before them, and the field was winning. The young man, to his discredit, adjusted the sword in his hand.
I nearly laughed. The audacity. The pure, distilled, fabulous audacity of a man clutching a common steel sword before an irritated Ascendant in a dark alleyway. It was like watching an ant raise its tiny fists against a boot. Admirable and suicidal in exactly equal measure.
"The criminals you protect are not folk, Redeemer," the youth said. "They are rubbish you dress up as people. And we clear away rubbish. It is why we exist."
"Then you shall learn," Morgana said, "what it feels like to be rubbish."
And then, she raised her hand.
Chains of dark fire erupted from the ground. Not swift, but inevitable. Four chains, two for each judicator, closing around their bodies, around wrists, ankles, necks. Not with violence; merely enough to immobilise. The young man's sword clattered to the cobbles with a metallic ring that felt like a full stop at the end of a sentence he should never have begun.
Then the magic did what Morgana's magic does.
The two judicators remembered things they had never lived.
It started slowly. The punch to the kidneys of the absolved man they had dragged away that night. The knee to the ribs of the lad beaten in the alley weeks ago. The humiliation of being called rubbish by someone in a white tunic whilst they kicked your ribs. The basics. The introductory level. The top layer.
Then came the rest.
The basements. The makeshift dungeons in the sect's undercrofts where penitents were tossed without warning, without a voice. The damp walls where men and women remained chained for days without food, without water, not knowing if anyone even knew they were there. The specific sound of a leather-clad fist hitting a human face, repeated six, seven, eight times whilst the person on the floor had already stopped protecting themselves because their arms would no longer obey. The smell of dried blood and urine those basements held, which never fully washed out, no matter how hard they scrubbed later.
The young one began to scream. A pain beyond physical agony. The magic was showing him every "correction" session he had administered, but from the perspective of the one receiving it. The punch to the stomach of a woman who could barely stand. The kick to the ribs of a man hanging from the wall. The bucket of ice water over the face of an old man weeping for them to leave. Every strike. Every single one. With the weight, temperature, texture, humiliation, and fear returned as a sealed package.
I saw the youth writhe on the ground as if every one of his victims were striking back at the same time. He vomited. He wept. He vomited again. That mouth which, a few seconds ago, declared criminals "not folk," now couldn't form a single human word. Ironic, I know. The irony was not lost on me.
The older man held out longer. Not for being stronger, but for having more layers. The magic was peeling him like an onion, each layer years of service, each decade full of faces he had decided to forget. The first penitent he dragged from home in front of their family. The teenager he tossed into the basement for stealing food, left there for three days because "a thief deserves no haste." The elderly man who begged permission to see his dying wife and was told "sentences don't take holidays." He felt that too. Felt his body too weary to remain kneeling and chained. Felt his throat dry from begging for water and receiving only silence. Felt the impotent terror of imagining a woman dying alone whilst he counted drips from a ceiling leak to keep from going mad.
When that memory arrived, the old soldier stopped resisting. He fell to his knees. Mouth agape, silent. Eyes open, unfocused. It was as though his body had decided to shut down non-essential functions to handle the amount of pain flooding in.
Morgana's magic is the type I most respect and fear in equal measure. Not because it harms the body, but because it uses the body as a conductor to harm the soul. And souls that have spent years convincing themselves that certain folk aren't people discover, through her, that they always were. That every punch had a face. That every kick had a name. That every night in the cellar had an entire human being behind it, feeling cold and fear and loneliness.
I have carried entire lifetimes of memories at once. I know the specific weight of that. It isn't pain. It's density. Like trying to breathe with the weight of every wrong choice you ever made piled upon your chest at once.
They weren't merely suffering. They were understanding. And understanding, sometimes, is infinitely worse.
Morgana maintained it. Longer than necessary for a lesson. I saw in her eyes, those eyes I knew, which I had learned to read throughout these memories and in our years together, the temptation. The temptation to tighten the grip. To let the magic dig deeper. To make them feel everything until no pieces remained. For she now knew, the magic showed her as well, the full extent of what they had done in the shadows. In the dungeons. In the torture sessions. All of it.
And Morgana felt rage. Real rage. The sort that births in the stomach, rises to the throat, and seeks to burst forth as fire. I saw the chains around the two judicators tighten for a moment, involuntarily, perhaps, or perhaps not so involuntarily, and both screamed louder. And I saw in her eyes the exact instant she nearly crossed the line.
Nearly.
Then she loosened it. She did not release. She loosened.
And I saw what that "loosening" cost her. Saw it in her shoulders, her jaw, the fingers that trembled when the magic receded. Holding back one's own rage when that rage is righteous is the hardest thing there is. To kill out of hatred is easy. To kill from conviction is easier still. But to not kill, when every fibre of your body screams that the world would be a better place without those two breathing... that requires the kind of strength that does not appear in stained glass.
She knelt to their level. Her voice held no more rage, it held weariness. The specific weariness of someone who has just fought a battle against themselves and won by the narrowest of margins.
"Would you forgive him?"
She pointed to the absolved prisoner huddled against the wall, visibly terrified and watching everything without understanding.
"For the crime he committed. For which I have already judged him. You lot, who have just felt the pain you inflicted upon those like him, would you forgive?"
The sobbing youth replied too quickly. "Yes, Redeemer—we would forgive... I swear it!"
A lie. A survival reflex. Moments ago, he called those people rubbish. Now he swore he would forgive. The speed with which convictions dissolve when the pain changes sides is one of the most depressing things I have witnessed. At least it is consistent; the cowardice of the convinced is universal across all worlds.
She looked at the old man. He remained silent. Eyes downcast. Hands trembling upon the stones.
"You cannot lie," Morgana stated. A simple fact. "You felt it, yet you still cannot reach a 'yes'. Years of doctrine do not vanish in three minutes of forced empathy."
The old man closed his eyes.
"I shall let you go."
Both raised their heads at the selfsame time. Perhaps the most synchronised gesture they had performed in their entire lives.
"You know what you have just felt. The pain of every person you beat, tortured, locked in cellars, kicked while they were down. You felt it all. In mere minutes. Now I want you to think on one thing." Her voice lowered. Colder. More precise. "If I were to apply the selfsame justice you apply to those people, the same rigidity, the same law without exception, the selfsame 'acts have consequences', you would both be dead right now. Both of you. For what you did in those dungeons is as grave as anything any penitent of mine has ever done. You tortured. You imprisoned the innocent. You struck bound folk who could not defend themselves. By the Protector's logic, by your logic, you are criminals. And criminals, by your own words, aren't folk. They deserve no second chance."
She let the words land. Heavy. The youth had stopped weeping, not because the pain had passed, but because the realization was worse than the agony.
"But I am not you lot. That is the difference. The difference between my justice and the one you serve is that mine looks upon you two, torturers, cowards, men who assaulted bound folk, and still sees people. It still sees the possibility that you could be something else. Your justice looks at my absolved and sees rubbish. Mine looks at you and sees people who still have a choice."
The old man opened his eyes. I saw something in them that wasn't there before, not repentance, for it was too early for that. But doubt. The first crack in decades of certainty.
"The fact that you are suffering so already means something," Morgana said. "Truly monstrous folk rarely break when they face their own violence. You broke."
She looked at the youth.
"You fell into despair because you finally understood what you had done."
Then to the old man.
"And you stayed silent because, for the first time in years, your certainties failed you."
The chains dissipated.
"Begone. And never again harrass those who take shelter beneath my wings. If I see you near any of mine again, I shall not be so patient. You may tell Ronas what occurred here. Do not summarise. Do not soften it. I want you to tell him exactly how you wept on the ground. I want him to know that behind the armour, the sermons, and the pretty words about order, his men reek of the same fear as any criminal he condemns."
Both turned pale.
Morgana's eyes lifted slowly. Purple. Ancient. Far too heavy to be stared at for long. "And tell him that I still had pity for you."
She stepped aside.
"And ask him if he would have done the selfsame."
Then they ran. They did not look back. Did not attempt to maintain dignity. They nearly tripped over one another in their desperate haste to leave, like men fleeing not from a monster, but from the first truth they had ever faced in their lives.
Morgana walked over to the absolved prisoner. She wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with the sleeve of her own garment. She led him to safety.
The two judicators had long since vanished. Nought but silence remained.
She still appeared in control at that moment. Still looked like someone capable of bearing the world's weight without letting her knees buckle. But memories are cruel to such illusions. They show exactly where the cracks began.
And that...
That was the final instant, in that entire recollection, in which Morgana still believed she could stop what was coming. Reality splintered around me before I could draw another breath.
It was not like falling. It was worse. Like being slowly swallowed by something far too vast to be in any hurry.
Nagakabouros pulled me again.
Slowly this time. As if she had decided I needed to remain within the next three days.
-----------(*)-----------
The First Day.
The city market, morning. The sun still low, scraping the rooftops. Scents of bread fresh from the oven, fish that had arrived during the night, herbs hung out to dry. Vendors shouting prices in two or three mixed tongues, Demacia was still young enough not to have decided which official language it wished to adopt. The sort of domestic chaos that, in any world, in any life, always smells the selfsame: humanity trying to survive one day at a time and pretending that this constitutes civilisation.
In the midst of that chaos, an elderly man with white hair walked slowly with a cane in one hand and his daughter's arm in the other.
Kilam was growing older. His shoulders were more bowed, his facial skin possessed that translucent quality of old age. His beard was completely white. Yet his eyes, his eyes still held that specific twinkle of a father looking at his daughter. The sort of twinkle that doesn't age along with the rest. The kind that only dies when the heart dies.
"No, Morgana, that fish is far too dear. Look at the eyes. Clouded eyes. Fresh fish have crystalline eyes; do you remember what I taught you?"
"Papa, it's only just arrived from the docks."
"It's arrived from the docks because the vendor said it did. Vendors say a great deal. Eyes do not lie."
The old man has a point. Fish eyes are surprisingly honest. They are like politicians, the older they get, the more clouded they become. Except fish at least have the decency not to give speeches whilst they rot.
Morgana laughed. She laughed truly: a daughter's laugh. Not a Redeemer's, nor the Veiled Lady's. A daughter. It was the sort of laugh folk who haven't laughed in a long while give when someone finally strikes the right note of provocation.
"Very well, Papa. Let's take the other fish."
"The other fish is grand. And it's from the brother of Widow Gerda, who makes our bread. It's good to buy from him. Gives the man work, keeps Gerda content; she makes the bread better when she's content."
"Do you know the names of the brothers of every vendor?"
"But of course, Morgana. I know the names of almost everyone in the market." He made a vague gesture with his cane. "At least you still walk among folk; you still tread the same ground as us. Your sister..." the gesture died in mid-air. "Your sister flies. Higher and higher. And the higher she flies, the less she beholds of what lies below."
The sentence hung between them. Heavier than it should have been. Kilam realised he had gone further than intended and shifted his gaze to the stalls as if searching for something urgent to buy.
Morgana halted. She took her father's hand. She said softly:
"I wish I had more time."
Kilam stopped too. He looked at her. And I realised: he knew. He knew of the tension between his daughters. Knew of the judicators' situation and the pact. Not in detail, but with the precision of parents who understand their children without ever requiring the right words.
He squeezed her hand. Firmly.
"You have the time you have, daughter. And you are here now, with me, bickering over fish as though you weren't any 'Redeemer' at all. That is the time that matters... Have you seen your sister?"
The question arrived without weight, in the way Kilam asked heavy questions wrapped in brown paper and smelling of the market. Morgana spoke the most delicate lie she could construct:
"I'm planning to visit her this week, Papa. We have certain important things to discuss."
Kilam nodded. Like one accepting an answer. Like one who knows it is a lie. Like one choosing to let the lie pass.
"Your sister sometimes requires time. But she loves you. You know that."
"I know, Papa."
"It isn't me saying it. It's her. Did you know... the two of you, when you were babes... we tried to place you in separate cribs. It lasted exactly one night." His gaze grew distant. The sort of distance old folk have when they look back and find things that ache for being so beautiful. "Kayle started crying. Crying in a way I'd never heard, it wasn't hunger, wasn't a nappy; it was... desolation. As if they'd taken from her the only thing that made the world make sense. And Morgana, you stayed quiet in the other crib, yet with your eyes wide open, searching. Your hands stretching to the side. Searching for something that should have been there and wasn't."
He smiled. A sad smile, but beautiful nonetheless.
"We placed you both together again, and Kayle stopped crying the instant her little hand found your arm. And you slept so. Always. One holding the other's arm, or hair, or finger. Always touching. As if you needed proof, every second, that the other was still there." His voice dropped. "Those two little girls who couldn't sleep apart still exist, Morgana. I know they exist. They're just... sleeping in separate cribs again. And one of them is crying without making a sound."
Morgana lowered her head. Her eyes grew wet. She swallowed; to weep in the market would be to draw attention, to give the sort of performance the judicators would likely report to Ronas.
"Let's buy the other fish, Papa."
"Let's. And you shall help me with the soup. Too much rosemary in fish soup is a mortal sin. Your sister would have condemned me for it."
And the two walked on, and the sun rose, and the world feigned simplicity.
In the afternoon, at Kilam's house. The small kitchen. Morgana slicing vegetables whilst Kilam sliced the fish. His corrections on everything, and her laughter as she pointed out that he was adding rosemary again.
"Papa. You're doing it again."
Kilam looked at the sprig in his hand. At the pot. At Morgana. And he said, with all the dignity of a man caught making the selfsame mistake for the second time in a week:
"I was... testing you."
"You were testing yourself. And you failed."
When Morgana left at dusk to make her night rounds, he stood at the door. Motionless. Watching her move away. I saw his hand grip the cane tighter when she turned the corner without looking back. His shoulders slumped for a second before he composed himself and closed the door.
The Second Day.
Morgana visited the redeemed. Her fuel; the proof that the pact made sense.
A fisherman at the docks. An ex-smuggler. He'd been caught trafficking dangerous magical artefacts for a mages' gang and now owned a small boat, two nets, and the smile of one who had discovered that honest work doesn't pay quite as poorly as he'd thought. When he saw Morgana, he dropped his net and announced, with the solemnity of someone declaring peace between nations: "I've asked Leah to marry me. She said yes."
His smile. I have no way to describe that smile without sounding maudlin, and I loathe sounding maudlin, but the truth is that man, who had lived with fear for the first half of his life and shame for the second, smiled as if the sun were rising within him. Morgana said she wished to be at the wedding. He said he didn't know how to write an invitation. She said he had just invited her in person, so all was well. He laughed until she turned the corner, and I heard the laughter even afterwards.
A widow in a poor district. She'd killed her violent husband. Now she tended to the sick. When Morgana arrived, she was sponging the feet of an old man with a fever. They worked together in silence for fifteen minutes, and in those fifteen minutes, without exchanging a word, they said more to one another than most conversations I've heard in hundreds of lives. Later, the widow spoke of the dreams she had of her dead husband, "he appears, says nothing, only watches", and Morgana told her she had only defended herself. The widow closed her eyes and nodded once. Sometimes a few words are enough to heal what decades have not.
A smith at a forge. An ex-soldier. He'd killed a twelve-year-old boy with a miscalculated arrow. Now he hammered tools for farmers, scythes, hoes, things that made crops grow instead of people die.
He didn't stop hammering when Morgana arrived, but confessed, without looking up, that his wife was with child. Said he was afraid. Afraid that one day, when the child grew, they'd be the same age as the boy he'd killed. Afraid of looking at his own son and remembering the other's face.
Morgana replied with the heaviest and most necessary thing I've ever heard anyone say:
"You will not endure despite that child. You will endure because of him."
The smith resumed his hammering. But the rhythm was different.
Justice that heals does not produce statues. There are no stained glass windows for the smith, no poems for the widow, no canticles for the fisherman. But the world keeps turning because folk like them exist. And folk like them exist because folk like Morgana do the silent work that no one sees.
That is why fanatics like Ronas loathe her; for it is easier to hate the invisible than to admit they are doing what you cannot.
The Third Day.
No noteworthy events. Morgana walked the city. Visited a sick child whose parents couldn't afford a healer. Bought bread from Gerda the baker. Sat on a bench and watched children play for twenty minutes. Existing is, sometimes, the hardest job there is.
At sunset, heading home, she stopped on some street corner or other. The sky set ablaze in orange and purple. And her face relaxed. For a short time, she believed. Perhaps the pact could work. Perhaps Kayle would come to dinner next week. Perhaps the smith would forgive himself. Perhaps the fisherman would marry. Perhaps the world, with all its imperfection, could still be remade.
Just a brief moment. That was how long it lasted.
The peace that precedes tragedy is always the most convincing. It is how the universe decides to console us before breaking us. I wanted to scream. Wanted to warn her.
But memories do not work so.
A soldier knocked on the door the following morning.
When Morgana opened it, he was breathless, not from running, but fear. Cold sweat. Trembling hands. Eyes that couldn't maintain contact with hers.
"Redeemer! My apologies, a hamlet to the west... near the dales, has been attacked! By monsters...! People are still there, the Protector cannot go; she is still in the courtroom judging—I've been sent to fetch you!"
Morgana heard him. And I, observing, felt something odd. Not certainty, a premonition. The sort of itch at the nape of my neck that I learned, over many lives, never to ignore. His sweat was wrong for the day's temperature. His hands shook with the wrong rhythm, not from exhaustion, but anxiety. His eyes shifted not out of shyness, but guilt.
[Agreed. Physiological signs do not match the report. However, I lack sufficient data to determine with certainty.]
[Wretched feeling.]
"What is the name of the hamlet?"
"Cloudfield hamlet."
"And how long since the attack began?"
"I... an hour, maybe two, I'm not entirely sure, Redeemer—"
A poor answer. A trained soldier knows how to estimate time. This one tripped over the estimate like one tripping over an ill-rehearsed lie. Morgana saw the stumble; I could tell by the way her eyes narrowed for a fraction of a second.
But Morgana was Morgana. And Morgana heard "hamlet under attack" and couldn't process any other information until she was absolutely certain it wasn't true. Even if the messenger trembled. Even if the story had holes. For the possibility, small, remote, yet real, of civilians dying whilst she hesitated weighed heavier than any suspicion.
This is the thing no one tells you about genuine virtue: it is predictable. And predictable, in the right hands, is a synonym for exploitable.
Ronas knew Morgana. Not in the way friends know one another. In the way predators know their prey, by the patterns, the reflexes, the things she could not help but do even while knowing it might be a trap. To hear "people in danger" and hesitate was not in her repertoire. If it were truly Ronas, he knew that perfectly and had built the bait exactly the size of that hole.
In many lives, I have seen good folk destroyed precisely because they were good. It is one of the universe's most constant injustices, and one of the most efficient.
"I shall go."
The soldier blinked. His gaze dropped to the ground. I saw him swallow. Guilt was written across his face so clearly it was nearly readable aloud.
Morgana saw it. I saw her open her mouth then stop. Saw her consider asking. Offering him a way out. Saying, "I know something is amiss; tell me, child."
But she did not ask, for regardless of what he said, she was going to have to go and see what was happening.
She spread her wings. The soldier shrank back, not from the movement, but the weight. And Morgana saw his look one final time. The look of a young man trapped between fear of those who sent him and guilt for where he was sending her.
Morgana took flight without a word.
[Yes.]
[Nor do I.]
[Are you usually wrong?]
Two hours of flight. Every kilometre was one more vote for "I know it's a trap and I'm going anyway." When the hamlet appeared on the horizon, I felt it even before Morgana did.
[Petricite. In a vast quantity. The entire village must have been built with pure material, perhaps atop the roots of an ancestral grove.]
Morgana felt it too; she knew what that density would do to her magic.
But she did not attempt to turn back. She reduced altitude. Studied the hamlet from above. Houses gathered around a central square. Absolute silence. No dogs. No smoke. No curtains fluttering.
[Likely expelled by something or someone hours prior.]
Morgana landed in the square. Wings folding. Her feet touching the white stone with a muffled, wrong sound.
She walked through the square. Inspected the houses. Doors closed, not broken in. No claw marks. No blood. No bodies.
She entered one house. A table set. A half-eaten loaf of bread. Dolls on the floor. Chairs pulled back as if people had stood up before finishing.
There had been no struggle. Folk had been removed. Orderly.
She left the house and returned to the square.
And it was in that moment the silence shattered. Fifty simultaneous sounds. Blades being drawn at the selfsame time, coming from every direction.
They emerged from the shadows. Fifty judicators. White tunics with silver and gold detailing, the elite. Swords of refined petricite. Mages with glowing hands: some red, others ice-blue. Five archers with petricite arrows.
From the barn door at the end of the square: more judicators. But this time they did not come alone.
They came with hostages.
Twelve folk. Morgana recognised every face. A woman, a former raider leader who ran a small orphanage now. A man who had killed his cousin over a grandfather's land inheritance and now worked the neighbours' fields for free. A young woman who had been a con artist's accomplice and now cared alone for her sick parents. A former forger teaching the illiterate to read. Others. Each face bearing a real crime and a genuine redemption.
All gagged. Knees forced to the ground. Petricite chains upon their wrists. And on their bodies, signs of torture. Partially healed wounds. Bruises in different stages. They looked as though they had been held for days.
Each had a judicator behind them. Each had a blade pressed to their throat.
And at the front of the line, walking slowly: Ronas. Tunic impeccable. Broche polished. A heavy, two-handed sword of refined petricita, a custom-commissioned blade.
Morgana's physical reaction was instantaneous; her magical chains trembled, wanting to manifest. She restrained it all. If she responded now, the hostages would be dead before she traversed half the square.
The entire trap was constructed precisely around how Morgana would behave before her 'broken children'. To the judicators, those were nothing more than irredeemable sinners, a diseased flock marked for slaughter. But to Morgana, they were her charges. And Ronas knew perfectly well that to spare the blood of those lost sheep, the Redeemer would bleed for them. 'A good shepherd gives their life for the sheep.'
Ronas spoke first. His voice was projected, rehearsed, performing for the judicators, not truly in dialogue with Morgana.
"Veiled Lady. In the name of the Winged Protector, in the name of the sacred laws of our Justice, I decree you under arrest. Your crimes against the judicial order are numerous. Corrupting the Aspect's judgements. Harbouring criminals who deserved the flame. Systematic perversion of the pact signed in Silvermere. You shall surrender peacefully."
Morgana heard him. When he finished, she waited for the echo of his final word to vanish.
"Kayle does not know you are here, Ronas."
It was not a question. A statement of fact. I saw the fraction of a second in which he hesitated before regaining his façade.
"The Protector entrusted me with the execution of the laws in her absence—"
"No, she did not. You entrusted yourself. There is a difference." Morgana took a step. "Where is Kayle now? In court? Convenient. Several lengthy cases that will take the whole day. You know that had she been mere hours away, she would have felt what you are about to do. So you arranged it for a place and time she could not reach in time."
The judicators exchanged looks, small, restrained. The revelation had struck home. They were fanatics, but they had been recruited believing they served the Protector. Knowing she was unaware of the operation was a crack in the narrative.
Ronas perceived it. He pushed more doctrine to fill the gap.
"The Protector is the Aspect of Justice incarnate. When you stray, the servant corrects. The Protector, in her love for you, is blind. I do not have that weakness."
"You have no love at all, Ronas. There is a difference between clarity and absence." Her voice was lower, more dangerous. "You built an entire life around feeling nothing that could make you doubt. And you mistake that for virtue."
"I serve—"
"You serve yourself. Had Kayle gone in another direction, you would have found another god to use as justification. Doctrine is the vehicle. Violence is the destination. The destination existed for you first."
Another look was shared between the judicators.
Ronas decided to play his trump card. He raised his sword. Pointed it at the woman from the orphanage, first in the line.
"You shall surrender. Peacefully. Otherwise, these irredeemable sinners die. One by one. Starting with this woman. You know her name. You shall watch her die because you did not know how to act as a Protector should."
Morgana looked at the woman. At the empty sky. At Ronas.
When she spoke, it was so quiet I had to lean in.
"This was your only chance, Ronas. I shall plead once for you to stop. And only once."
Ronas laughed. The first sound of authentic laughter in all his memories that I had seen.
"You have not the moral standing to plead for anything, heretic."
He pointed to the hostage. Made a gesture. The judicator behind her readied the blade.
As the steel was about to strike the woman, a Black Shield manifested around the hostages. A purple dome covering all twelve, erupting from the ground. The judicators' blades struck the surface and ricocheted. Three warriors were knocked backward by the shield's impact. Two hit walls. One even lost consciousness.
Morgana surged forward. She took flight, a few yards above the ground, wings spread, too fast for the reflexes of fifty trained judicators to follow.
The chains erupted from the ground beneath their feet before half could even raise their weapons. Each chain addressed. Each link positioned to immobilise, not to kill. Wrists. Ankles. Waists. Some around necks, enough pressure to halt movement.
Fifty men fell. Mages attempted counter-spells, but the chains tightened enough to silence their magical conduits. Every spell died before being born. Archers fired. The chains rose over Morgana and batted the arrows from the air, letting them drop to the cobbles.
The square was immobilised in seconds.
She was proving her point. It was possible to subdue fifty enemies without killing a single soul. For thirty seconds, it seemed it might work.
But Ronas was standing.
Chains erupted around him too. But the refined petricite sword came down upon them. And he was not caught.
I understood in two seconds what made Ronas different from all the others. It wasn't just the sword. A common warrior with petricite might absorb one strike, maybe two, before being overwhelmed. What he had was the combination: the stone drinking the magic, and beneath it, decades of swordsmanship. Each arc of his blade was not mere defence; it was tradecraft. Religion practised in the body until it became instinct. Dozens of judicators had fallen because they were believers. Ronas had spent his whole life being the sword.
And swords, as I've learned over far too many lives, need believe in nothing in order to cut.
Morgana summoned more chains. He parried them again. I saw the magic testing different angles, from above, behind, the sides. He could defend himself from every quarter.
Yet still, she was going to catch him. He realised it. And he shifted strategy.
Instead of continuing the fight, he ran, crouched, fast, towards the hostages' shield. He pressed his blade against the purple dome's surface and began to hack at the shield. Draining it. The petricite continuously absorbing the magic, sliding over the surface like a knife being whetted, transforming the barrier into something that gave way, and gave way, and gave way.
The hostages screamed behind their gags. The orphanage woman saw the blade rasping the shield just three feet from her face.
The panic of the redeemed pierced Morgana's defences like venom. She realised the shield would not hold. And in that instant of absolute fragility for her 'broken children', any remaining trace of restraint she held turned to ash. A divine, white-hot ire took hold of her being.
She did not scream in rage. The sound that erupted from her lungs made the square's very air vibrate. It was a fierce, guttural lament. The unmistakable sound of a mother who would tear the world in two before seeing her young struck.
And, answering that call, the Soul Shackles manifested, in their full, absolute version.
No small dose as it had been for those two judicators in the alley. The whole thing. Chains erupted from the air in magical circles. From every direction. They converged upon Ronas with the force of years of manipulation and armed fanaticism.
Ronas was enveloped. The sword fell from his hand. He was lifted half a yard, suspended, the chains coiling around his body like serpents made of frozen fire.
Then the magic took its course.
Ronas began to feel.
Every penitent he had hunted. Every absolved man beaten in alleys. Every life destroyed in the name of purity. Every orphaned child. Every penitent dragged off under the phrase "the sentence has been reconsidered." But more than that: every penitent he had kidnapped and tortured in the judicators' basements. Ronas had a whole system. Vaults in the undercrofts. Men trained to wring confessions, to "purify through pain." Hundreds of folk who had vanished in the name of 'justice.'
Everything. In layers. Each victim entering his consciousness.
Morgana's magic demanded one thing alone: acceptance. If he knelt internally, if he accepted, even for an instant, "I caused this; this is mine and I repent," he would survive. The magic does not kill. Refusal and the lack of repentance kill.
Ronas resisted.
Eyes wide. Mouth taut. Teeth clenched until blood ran. And he began to recite the ancient dogmas like a shield.
"THE LIGHT FEELS NO PITY FOR THE SHADOWS! THE FIRE ASKS NO PARDON OF THE ASHES! HOLY KAYLE, I AM YOUR BLADE AND THE BLADE DOES NOT BLEED! JUSTICE DOES NOT REPENT!"
His eyes turned to the empty sky. No golden shimmer. No wings drawing near.
Around this punishment, the Order's iron discipline simply collapsed. Held by Morgana's heavy chains, the other judicators were utterly immobilised. They couldn't raise their swords; they could move neither forward nor backward; the magic forced them to watch, powerless, the agony of their leader. Some fought in vain against the dark shackles, tears searing their faces as arrogance gave way to total panic. They forgot their own law to plead with the Redeemer.
"Pity! By mercy, let him go!" one sobbed, forcing his pinned neck round to behold the woman he had come to hunt. "Just release him, we beseech you!"
Others, however, clung to the selfsame delusion as Ronas. Locked in place, they could only lift their wet faces towards the dark clouds, their choked voices forming a chorus of despair:
"Protector, descend! Save your servants from the darkness! Kayle, we supplicate you, bring the light!"
But the heavens remained mute. Nought but the wind's echo answered the devotees.
"HE WHO DWELLS IN THE PROTECTOR'S SPLENDOUR SHALL NOT FEAR THE DARK! COME, KAYLE, TEAR THROUGH THIS SKY! CLAIM YOUR MARTYR!"
Morgana was standing. Hands outstretched. Sustaining the magic. Tears falling in silence. Waiting for him to yield. Please, Ronas. Just an instant. Just one.
He did not yield.
"MY LADY... I WAS YOUR FIRE... I BURNED THE UNPURE... WHY DO YOU LEAVE ME IN THE DARK? COME..."
The screams began to transform. Becoming less theological. Becoming more desperate. Abandoned. The scream of a son calling for a mother who forgot him in the storm.
The magic, finding no empathy to heal, transformed into pure destructive force.
In his final moments, Ronas's eyes lost the fire of fanaticism. They were merely the eyes of a terrified man. Tears streaming down. His voice becoming a raspy whisper.
"Lady Kayle... the law... I fulfilled the law... hear your servant..."
And then, lower. The dogma collapsing before death.
"Mother..."
The voice failed. His body collapsed. The chains dissipated. He fell onto the white stone floor, frozen mist rising from every orifice, eyes open, staring at the empty sky.
In peace, ironically. As though death had done for him what life and devotion never permitted. Dead.
Silence returned to the square. Thicker now.
Morgana stood. Her hands lowered slowly. Her wings relaxed. The exhaustion was more psychological; the petricite had drained part of her magic, yet she was an Ascendant. The body could take it. What weighed heavy was not the body.
She walked. Slowly. Every step an effort, not because her feet ached, but because each step was a silent vow: 'I did this; this is mine; this shall be with me until I die.' She reached the corpse. Knelt beside Ronas.
Looked at his face. No tension. Nearly at peace. As though death had released something that life had walled up.
A broken, low voice:
"Things did not have to end so, Ronas... I gave you the chance. Just an instant of acceptance, only one, and you would have lived. Did you know that? At first, I think so. Perhaps you felt it. Perhaps you saw the way out. But you chose not to take it. For taking it meant admitting that everything you built upon your certainty was built upon the backs of folk who did not deserve what you did to them. And you could not. You could not do it."
Morgana spoke in a lower, more intimate voice.
"And I know not what is sadder: your failing to feel, or your calling for my sister at the end. You spent years building her cult and never understood that she was not this thing you wished her to be. You died calling for a version of her you invented. And I was here. The real sister was here, offering you the only way out alive, and you shrieked for the imaginary one."
Her hands were open. Tears falling onto the white stone floor.
"I wished for a version of this day in which no one needed to die. I did. You wouldn't let me have that version. And now I must live with it. For the rest of the time I have. I shall remember the sound of your voice calling for my sister. I shall remember the despair. I shall remember that had you yielded for but a single instant, you would be alive."
Morgana was weary; she sighed heavily whilst looking at her hands.
"And I wonder, Ronas... were I able to return... would I do it differently? Or would I convince myself again that there was no other way? Perhaps I could have moved the hostages and attacked you without killing. But in the desperation and rage, I did what seemed the only thing. And now I shall never know if it was the only thing, or merely the thing I found first. That doubt will remain with me until the end. It is the worst of what you've left me. Worse than your corpse. The doubt."
Her hands moved to her face. For a second, Morgana broke.
"And I shall return home. And I shall have to face my sister. And she shall loathe me because you died at my hands, and the entire sect shall be in the streets demanding justice. And she shall have to choose between me and the structure that sustains her justice. And I know not which side she shall choose." Morgana's voice was nearly vanishing.
"I am afraid, Ronas. You died calling for her, but I am the one who must face what comes after. And I am not ready. I don't know if I ever was."
The bound judicators began to stir. The chains dissipating as she lost focus. They stood up. Looked at the body. Looked at the kneeling Morgana.
And they ran in desperation; Ronas's death had shown what she was capable of. They ran for the horses hidden in the grove. Ran for Demacia. For their goddess's protection.
Morgana did not attempt to stop them. She was already weary of all that.
She rose. Walked to the hostages. Broke the chains one by one. Removed the gags. The hostages were in shock. The orphanage woman tried to speak and failed. The former forger opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again.
Morgana stood several paces off. She did not draw near. She didn't try to embrace them. Offered no words. For she knew not if they still wished her to draw near after what they had just witnessed.
The final image of this memory was Morgana sitting upon the white stone floor near Ronas's body. Wings relaxed. Hostages some distance off. Under the starry sky. Moonlight covering the village, the corpse, the Ascendant woman weighed down by what she had done.
I have seen many wars begin for lesser reasons. Seen kingdoms fall for less significant deaths. But rarely have I seen a woman weep beside the body of someone she just killed, with a consciousness so clear that the real tragedy had yet to even begin.
The real tragedy was forming now: in horses galloping towards Demacia. In tongues that would reach the capital. In versions of history that would transform into a single narrative: 'The Redeemer killed the Protector's most devoted disciple and aide in order to protect criminals.'
A lie not by what it said, but by all it omitted.
I have seen this work across entire civilisations. The story reaching first is rarely the true one. It's the simplest. The one fitting into a sentence. And "The Redeemer killed the Protector's most devoted aide to protect criminals" fits into a sentence with space to spare for dramatic punctuation.
The trap would not fit. The torture of the hostages would not fit. Ronas's choice to refuse his own survival would not fit. His final moments calling for a goddess who did not come would most certainly not fit. Those things require context, and context requires that people wish to listen before condemning.
Demacia wasn't going to want to listen.
Morgana had won the battle. And she was about to discover that battles are irrelevant when you lose the narrative. She lost the only battle that mattered. Before it even began.
She remained sitting upon the floor for a few more minutes, staring at the starry sky, at the constellation of Justice: two Winged blades.
Nagakabouros released me.
And I was dragged back, knowing the following chapter was to be the most painful. For the next would not be a confrontation against Ronas. It would be against her sister.
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💬 Author's Commentary
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And we've reached the chapter where Ronas finally made the smartest choice possible: ambushing Morgana.
Yes. Morgana.
An Ascendant.
A woman with enough power to destroy kingdoms, shatter armies, and turn any gathering of fanatics into unsolicited shock therapy.
Honestly? I also think it was an absurdly foolish idea on his part. The kind of decision that makes you look and think: "Ronas, my dear, did you really wake up today and choose to become a statistic?"
But here's the small detail: in Riot's original story, Ronas actually ambushes and attacks Morgana. And dies at her hands.
But, as always, Riot did that wonderful thing of throwing two important sentences on the floor and running out the window, leaving us looking at the crumbs and thinking: "Okay, but HOW did this happen? Why? What was the context? Who was there? What led to this point?"
So this chapter was born from that attempt to fill that void.
I needed to make Ronas's ambush work without seeming like just suicidal stupidity. That's why the trap wasn't built on brute force, because brute force against Morgana would basically be like using a spoon to fight an earthquake. Ronas used hostages, petricite, isolation, fanaticism, and, above all, the knowledge he had about Morgana.
He didn't outpower Morgana. He never would.
But he knew where to press.
Morgana couldn't ignore people in danger. She couldn't turn her back on her redeemed. She couldn't choose caution when there was a chance, however small, that an innocent person was suffering. And that's exactly what makes the trap cruel: Ronas didn't exploit a common weakness. He exploited a virtue.
I also wanted to show that his death wasn't a simple execution. Morgana gave him chances. First with the warning. Then, even at the end, when her magic only required a moment of acceptance. Ronas could have survived if he had admitted his own horror. But admitting that would mean accepting that all his "justice" was built on torture, fear, and fanaticism.
And Ronas preferred to die faithful to the lie than to live facing the truth.
In the end, he died at Morgana's hands, as in the canon. But, for me, the most tragic thing is not just his death. It's Morgana winning the fight, saving the hostages, sparing almost all the judges… and still losing the narrative before even returning to Demacia.
Because the truth is complicated.
The lie, unfortunately, fits into a sentence.
And now comes the really painful part: not Ronas against Morgana.
Morgana against Kayle.