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Jayce is a child the first time the Defender comes to him.

He fell ill after the storm, his body dragged unconscious from the snowy earth by two men—one sharp as a fox, the other burly as a bear. They had laid him to rest in an ancient, dusty pantry to recover. It was only a little larger than Jayce himself, but it was all they had. He was told that they had found his mother too, but it had been too late—she had passed. 

There was an acknowledgement that he, too, had a slim chance of survival, for the snowstorm had left him with a deathly chill. Kind though they were to rescue him, these men were no healers, only two weary souls with too many orphans to feed. If he were to survive, they would likely take him in as their own, though their home was already bursting at the seams. They knew better than to raise his hopes, offering little and aiding with even less. Each time the fox left water at his bedside, he muttered of Jayce as a beastly burden.

One of the boys—young and limping with skin stretched too tight over brittle bones—took on the responsibility of tending to Jayce. He had been the one to find the mother and son in the snow—had been the one to fetch the men to drag their icy bodies inside. Since then, the boy never strayed far. Every day, the boy would bring a small wooden bowl to Jayce’s lips to help him drink, and he would lift his head to pour horrendous gruel down Jayce’s throat. Then at night he would wipe the sweat from Jayce’s brow while he fought off the pneumonia, only to slink away like a beat dog whenever the fox would scold him. Still, the boy’s efforts were little more than a soft murmur against the roaring tide of death. Jayce thought, in his feverish haze, that he would probably die soon.

And then the Defender came.

He remembers gazing up at the rotting wood of the pantry ceiling, a taunting light of early morning streaming through the gaps and into his eyes, wondering if he would be laid to rest beside his mother. When the ice had melted from the ground, the bear had gone forth and laid her body beneath a great oak tree. He lay there, wishing he had been able to see it—able to press one final kiss to her cheek. Hot tears streamed down his face, and he prayed, pitiful and afraid, for death to take him. 

Then he was looking at a man’s face.

It was clear that he was a knight because of the armor he wore, scuffed and battered from years of brutish combat, but he didn’t seem like the knights from the story books. His jaw was covered in a rough beard, and he stood with a posture that favored one shoulder—as if bearing the weight of an unseen injury. He was missing his right forearm, and it was a fresh wound, livid and weeping. His armored leg was braced by rusted, broken metal, dented so far inward that it may have pierced his flesh. Jayce remembers thinking that his eyes were quite striking–his mother would have called them hazel, much like she would his own–but he carried no cross. He bore no halo.

But he said, in a voice much like the grind of a sword upon a whetstone, “I am known as the Defender of Tomorrow, a knight, with power above all others.”

“Rise. Piltover needs you.”

Jayce rose. His vision danced like the auroras in the sky, but he rose, because this man was a knight and Jayce was nothing now that his mother was gone.

“Go. She waits for you.”

He stumbled from the pantry, then through the kitchen, and out into the still-wet grass in front of the orphanage. The early morning breeze blew cold against his sweaty skin and his lungs barely managed to wheeze out heavy, shaking breaths. He only managed to walk a few, pathetic steps before collapsing face onto the ground.

“This is the boy?” Someone high above him said in a voice like a deep, ancient song. 

Someone else, in a voice like a frog, replied “Yes, Officer Medarda.”

Then there were boots next to his face, an inch from his hazy vision. The Defender's words echoed in his brain and he knew he needed to keep moving, but he did not have the energy to crawl. Instead, he used what remained of his strength to roll onto his back, and for the second time that day, he saw a knight. She looked much more like those from his childhood books, donned in shining, undented armor. There was a rugged beauty to her that encapsulated strength and fortitude. 

She asked his name, but before he could answer, he heard the Fox’s voice, “Forgive us, Officer, but he is no one! Just a young orphan dragged from the snow less than a fortnight ago! A pitiful beast.”

It was a comment that Jayce was intimately familiar with, as the Fox had often treated him like a nuisance, a leech on their already dwindled resources, nothing more than a buzzard. It hadn’t concerned him before—not with the boy to bear the brunt of the words for him—but it did now. He felt ashamed at his own dishevelled state and prayed that the knight would not leave him here in the dirt. He wanted to be taken away from here. Far from the Fox’s cutting words and far from the ghost of his mother that he swore he could hear crying under the oak tree at night. 

The knight smiled down at him. There was a hunger in her gaze that he had never seen before, which he thought must be pride. Perhaps an acknowledgement of potential.

“Well, he is my beast now,” she said.

She lifted him in her arms, much as his mother had when he was little more than a babe. He weighed nothing, so sickly that his body had withered like a weed beneath the scorching sun. His bones ached and his throat begged for reprieve from the dry heat that was slowly eating him alive from the inside. 

It took her less than a dozen steps to bring him to the horse and sit him atop its finely polished saddle.

Then, in a low voice filled with venom, she muttered, “You best be right about this, alchemist.”

The frog voice came again, and he could see that it was from a spindly man who seemed no more present in the world than a specter. “I am sure, Officer.”

He rode from the house, sure it was another feverish dream, one he would wake from soon and be nothing again—a sickly orphan boy destined to die amongst the rats in a dusty old pantry, forgotten by everyone except for a limping boy with steady hands and a soft voice.

But it was no dream, and he did not die forgotten.

In fact, when he dies, a kingdom will fall to its knees and crawl wailing to his pyre. They will sing his name for a thousand years, and fear him for a thousand more. Medarda’s Beast.

So long as he followed the words of the Defender.

He curled over the saddle, shivering. Hours passed in dizzy delirium, and there was one point where he dared to look back. In the distance, he saw the limping step of a boy around his age. At first, he wondered if it was another delusion—a hopeless daydream. But when they stopped for the night, and the boy collapsed next to him upon the blanket he had laid in the dirt, Jayce knew he was real. The officer sneered at him, but she admired his persistence.

And the boy became his squire.

— ˖ ࣪ ⊹ 🗡⊹ ࣪ ˖ —

Jayce was but a young man when the Defender returned to him, perched once more on the precipice of his own demise.

For seven long years, Commander Medarda and her men shaped him. His body became a living testament to mastery, moving with the deadly grace of a seasoned warrior, dancing in the way of the sword, the spear, the bow, the shield. He was not merely honed—it was as though the very art of combat flowed through his veins, an ancient rhythm that coursed from his soul to his fingertips. It was a gift—no, a birthright—bestowed by Janna herself, as if his teachers were not guiding him, but instead coaxing to the surface the dormant power that slumbered within the very marrow of his being.

With each passing day he grew—solid and unyielding. His body was a weapon forged in the flames of ceaseless trials, tempered with sweat and blood. His skin, once soft and pliable, now bore the callouses and scars of a hundred battles fought in training. His muscles, once weak and untested, had become the sinew of an unstoppable force, honed by relentless discipline and unshakeable will. 

Commander Medarda frequented the training yard, her presence a shadow that never ceased to loom over him. Her eyes, sharp and unyielding, glimmered with the cold light of a hawk watching its prey from afar. She moved with the poise of a predator, low and fluid, blending into the shadows of the stone walls as if she were one with them. Each glance, a silent command that spurred him to new heights of skill and strength. She spoke no words, yet her gaze alone bound him to a purpose he could not ignore—pushing him to surpass every boundary, to reach beyond the limits of his flesh and spirit.

Yet, still, there loomed the inevitable truth: he was destined to die. The enemies of Commander Medarda were a legion, and Jayce, the soldier forged by her hand, was bound to face them all. The logical assumption was that eventually, he would fall. The thought gnawed at him, like a shadow creeping ever closer to his soul. It was the way of war. But he could not die yet. Not before he had fulfilled his duty. He had simply not earned the right to fall. Not before he had served Commander Medarda as she deserved. Not before he had fulfilled the oath he had sworn to her.

Hundreds of enemies lay in wait, their ranks swelling like a tidal wave of iron and blood. The ground trembled to the beat of their marching steps, and the cries of war echoed across the valley. Their numbers far outstripped those who stood with him. The horns blew and the drums sounded, resonating across the dewy morning battlefield and rattling Jayce’s bones. His hands shook around the hilt of his sword. Sweat dripped down his brow.

And the Defender returned.

He was unchanged. The beard, the hazel eyes, the dropped shoulder. Even the stump below his elbow still dripped with blood.

He said, in a measured voice that could never escape Jayce’s memory, “That man atop the cream horse, you will break his grip on his sword, but beware–he has a dagger tucked under his belt.”

And: “Watch for the crossbowmen on the ridge to the east–they will take their shot once you’re isolated.”

And finally: “Take off that cloak. It will only slow you down.”

Then he disappeared.

Jayce's fingers lingered on the clasp that held his cloak. His squire had worked the fastenings with meticulous, patient hands, but now Jayce let it flutter away with the faint breeze. As he rode into the heart of the storm, the sun glinted across his shining red pauldron, marked with the symbol of Piltover’s greatest warrior. 

At the end of the fight, he presented Commander Medarda with the head of her enemy—a burly man whose face was still twisted in the shape of the comforting words he tried to speak to his daughters. Blood streaked over his face in a sickly splatter, invaded his senses until all he could smell and taste was its metallic tang. It stained his hair, matting it together in dark, clumpy strands, like he was fresh from a bath.

Medarda, unfazed by the carnage, cupped Jayce’s chin gently in her hand, her thumb grazing his cheek with a soft touch. Her eyes gleamed with satisfaction, as if the blood and mess were proof of the task completed, of the duty fulfilled. 

It took hours for Jayce’s squire to rinse him clean, and even then, the taste of iron lingered at the back of his throat, a phantom reminder that no amount of scrubbing could wash away. 

— ˖ ࣪ ⊹ 🗡⊹ ࣪ ˖ —

By the time he was four and twenty, the Defender of Tomorrow had visited him seven more times.

It was the Defender who exposed the Snow Maiden’s careless overextension, laying her bare to the crushing arc of his warhammer. It was the Defender who traced the imperfect seam in the Iron Sentinel’s helmet, where a single, measured thrust of his blade could slip through the gap in the metal like a whisper of death, finding the soft flesh beneath. It was the Defender who spoke against Jayce’s ear—every shift in the battlefield’s rhythm, the sweeping arc of each sword, the crushing weight of every blow. Until combat itself became as methodical and unremarkable as a game of chess. Each move was an inevitability. Every victory was confidently foretold. 

The Defender was a merciless master. He drilled into Jayce that the only good prisoner was a lifeless one, and that in the cruel theater of war, the notion of ‘innocence’ was a fool’s illusion. Whether young or old, strong or ailing, Jayce showed no hesitation–he ended them all with the same unflinching resolve. He fought and killed and fought again, until all of Piltover knew his name. Jayce, knight of Piltover. 

Medarda’s Beast.

The Red Axe Maiden was a force of chaos. Driven by her grief and consumed in a fevered bloodlust, she met Jayce’s charge without a flicker of hesitation. Her movements were unpredictable, quick. Too quick for Jayce, and all it took was one miscalculation for her to dart behind him, bringing the heavy blade down against the flesh of his back. His scream of pain broke the sky like lightning through the clouds. Yet his form, steadfast as steel, was a weapon honed by battle’s cruel hand, each mark a testament to his enduring spirit. With a swift turn, he pivoted on his heel, sweeping the air with the last flicker of his strength. The arc pulled his skin apart even further, but as soon as his weapon collided with her temple, the deed was done.

He did not remember being carried from the battlefield, but he remembered the weeks after in which he laid in bed. It was like a mirror to his childhood, as those same lithe hands kept him from the brink of death. 

Thin and graceful fingers rarely shook as they stitched Jayce’s flesh together, and his squire’s touch was cool like water on his heated skin. With every pull of the thread, he whispered apologies and prayers. His voice was quiet and calm, hushing Jayce’s feverish delirium and lulling him into fits of tempered sleep. When he forced water and food down Jayce’s throat, holding his head up on his thin thigh to keep him from choking, he would wipe at Jayce’s lips with a nurturing thumb. 

Every time that Jayce closed his eyes, he swore that he could smell that dusty pantry again.

When Jayce was well enough to rise from his bed, legs still trembling as the strength of his recovery returned like a slow thaw, Medarda visited his new chamber. It had been granted to him as both reward and reminder—his strength and unwilling loyalty carved into the very stone of his new quarters. She stood at the threshold of the room, the light from the flickering hearth casting a glow over her imposing figure, and her lips curled ever so slightly in a smile that felt much like approval. 

Jayce’s posture bore the weight of his fresh scar as he stood, the deep bite of it hanging heavy over his shoulder, and yet he moved with the grace of a man who had faced death—and survived it. 

Medarda watched, her eyes gleaming, before she closed the distance. Her hand, firm and sure, rested upon his elbow, her touch a silent acknowledgement of the pain he had endured. The sacrifice he made for her.

“Well done, my Beast. Tomorrow, we head North.” And with that, she turned on her heel, her footsteps echoing down the stone hallway, leaving Jayce with nothing more than the quiet weight of her words.

Jayce’s squire, lingering next to the roaring hearth, watched her departure with sharp and calculating eyes. His stance—tense, unyielding—spoke not of the respect she deserved. Beneath the cloak of his seemingly endless obedience, something unspoken festered. 

Jayce scolded him.

“I am concerned, sire. The Commander takes much from you.”

Jayce’s lips curled in a grimace, his breath sharp as a hiss. “She made me,” he spat. “She is free to take from me as she wishes, boy.”

Jayce would curse his name for his insolence, if he could.

And, not for the first time, Jayce found himself turning a thought over in his mind—the unsettling fact that he did not know his squire’s name. The man had been with him since he was a nothing, had tended to him in his darkest moments, and yet, there was no connection beyond the rank of service. No name. No deeper knowledge of the person behind those golden eyes.

It was odd—this intimacy born of blood and battle. To know someone so well by their actions, yet remain ignorant of the essence of their being. A strange thing to dwell upon, and stranger still to cast aside.

But cast it aside, Jayce did.

The squire, unflinching, met Jayce’s gaze. There was a scornful glint in his eyes, a challenge woven into the very air between them. His lips twisted in a half-smile, the kind that mocked the unspoken, the unacknowledged. Jayce—too furious, too weary—could not bring himself to strike him. Instead, he dismissed the other man with nothing more than a bitter silence.

That evening, as Jayce took his place at the right hand of Commander Medarda, the hall filled with laughter and the clinking of glasses. She raised her cup high, eyes sharper than any blade, and called for a toast: to Medarda’s Beast. The room roared with songs of Jayce’s praises, and as the admiration washed over him, he was presented with a gift. The Commander bestowed upon him a shield. Painted in rich reds and gleaming gold, the craftsmanship of it was flawless, truly befitting that of a warrior. Befitting that of a beast. As he took it into his hands, the weight of it settled a deep pride within him. It was then that he lifted his gaze across the room, falling upon the face of his squire, and in that moment, all Jayce thought was: She made me.

And days later, when the last embers of the war camp’s fire crackled against the empty night, when his arms wrapped around his squire in a shared, fragile shield of warmth, when his back screamed with searing, raw agony, and when the image of the Red Axe Maiden loomed large and vacant behind his eyelids—because he could not escape it, not even in sleep—Jayce thought again, so vicious it almost felt like terror: She made me. 

— ˖ ࣪ ⊹ 🗡⊹ ࣪ ˖ —

Jayce was not old when the Defender visited him a final time, but he felt as though he’d lived a thousand years.

His world had changed so quickly, so drastically. The kingdom of Piltover had grown bloated with its own ambition, its borders swelling as if fit to burst, satiating its desire for expansion with hungry, gnashing teeth. Medarda, once an Officer, then a Commander, then a General, and finally a Marshal, had become a Queen whose dark crown twisted over her brow like thorns. Her alchemist, who Jayce had only seen slinking through shadows, lived like a Duke and spoke like a sage. 

Even Jayce’s name, once nothing more than a whisper in the wind, now echoed through the halls of the kingdom, toasted by noble lips and etched into the hearts of the people.

He did not recognize himself in their stories and songs; for he was no great beauty, his weapons were not forged in hellfire, and he did not leave a string of broken hearts in his wake. The only truth lay in the enemies he had slain. Yet even then, he could never recall with certainty if their details rang true. Had the Axe Maiden fallen by his mace or his sword? Had the Pale Lord breathed his last in an instant, or had he choked on a whispered curse? 

His body remembered, though. It bore the memories, far too well. Every detail was etched into his flesh, a constant reminder, sharp and suffocating, lurking beneath the surface of his mind. He would awaken, drenched in sweat, his breath ragged, and sometimes a cry would escape him before he could silence it. His body would be on edge, poised for battle, yet the conflict was never certain—whether it was one fought long past or one yet to come, he could never tell.

Once Jayce dreamt that he was killing a lord in a distant city, and he had awoken with his sword clutched between his white knuckles, curved downward towards his squire’s upturned face. His once beautiful gaze was pale like a wilting flower in the winter. 

He did not flinch. 

He did not scream. 

He laid still as the dead, staring at Jayce and that godforsaken sword poised above him like there was nothing to fear.

Jayce cursed him, then. Called him a fool, a child, and worse. He spit the words at him with an anger that should have only been reserved for himself, and then he spit more. His voice was choked with tears and he swore, “I could have killed you.”

His squire simply looked at him and whispered, “You never do.”

Jayce did not sleep after that. The only rest he obtained was in the wake of a battle, when his body was too battered, too drained for his mind to keep its grip. It made him slow and stupid and far too reckless, but each time he dragged his broken body off the battlefield, his squire was there to ease the burden.

By the time they reached the edge of Noxus, Jayce felt like he was stitched together from different parts of himself. Every inch of him ached, every joint screamed, as though each piece was about to tear away and fall to dust before the Queen.

Their army made camp outside the walls of the city. Fires crackled in the dark, laughter and stories floating through the night air—sounds of men who knew dawn might bring death. Jayce sat alone on his bedroll, away from the noise and warmth.

That is, until his squire knelt beside him.

He, too, was tired. Jayce knew this. Still, the man never complained. Never once asked for reprieve.

“Noxus has never fallen, sire,” his squire whispered.

Jayce did not respond. He stared down at his shield—once so shiny and new—and recognized that it was now dented, nearly destroyed. 

“You would choose to die, so that the Queen could stamp another city under her heel?” The squire asked. Then, emboldened and unforgivable, he asked, “Do you truly wish to be buried at her feet like a dog?”

Jayce rose then, sudden and brutal and every bit of the beast they claimed him to be. He gripped the base of his squire’s hair, pulling the locks taut in his fist, and forced his head to tilt. His squire’s posture didn’t even falter—teeth and throat bared like a wild animal—nor did he break eye contact. His leg shook, not in fear, but with that same limp from when they were children. It had grown weaker and weaker with age and stress. It was a weakness that Jayce would never allow himself. Yet another sign of the difference between them.

“Yes.” Jayce said.

And he meant it.

The Defender came to Jayce at daybreak, and they took Noxus before nightfall. It was a violent thing. The people did not go quietly. Even those not made for war fought back, using everything at their disposal to slow Jayce down. A large rock smashed against his shin, a bone knife plunged into his shoulder, teeth breaking skin on his forearm. Still, to the underworld they went, and by the time Jayce had slain them all, the sun was setting against his back.

Jayce was wiping blood from the front of his shield when the Defender said, “Behind you.”

He turned to find a boy holding an axe. The boy was small, scrawny, with a slight bow to his legs that stirred something in Jayce’s mind—a flicker of memory, long buried. But it refused to surface. Jayce wasn’t afraid. He knew he could make this boy a forgotten soul before his blood even touched the cobblestones.

He raised his sword, but then, a strange thing happened. Jayce—who had slaughtered thousands, who had committed every sin, who would sooner die than flinch—hesitated.

The boy did not.

The axe fell—a crude, clumsy thing, swung like a woodsman splitting kindling. Jayce struck before thought, before reason, before he even registered moving. Steel met flesh, the boy crumpled, and it was over in an instant—so swift, so instinctive, that Jayce barely processed it at all. Only the ringing of steel against stone lingered, echoing long after the body had gone still.

Jayce remembered the spell of dizziness, the way it seized him, sent him lurching as if his own body had become unsteady ground. His vision swam, each slow blink dragging over a world that would not still. Somewhere behind him, a voice called his name—sharp, urgent. A voice that had never before been raised to him. It struck him as something foreign, unfamiliar. Almost unrecognizable. 

He fell backward into weak arms, his knees buckling underneath him. His head tilted down with the movement, and there, at his feet, was his own hand.

He didn’t remember the last time he’d laughed before this.

— ˖ ࣪ ⊹ 🗡⊹ ࣪ ˖ —

Jayce does not know how he arrived in the strange, shadowed courtyard.

His memory existed in pieces—slivers. The feeling of a body behind him, holding him upright on horseback. The whispered prayers of a voice that he’d never heard crying before. Royal trumpets blaring behind castle gates. Flower petals landing and sticking to his hot, sweat-slick skin. Lithe, familiar fingers pressing against his cheek, as if attempting to communicate a thousand unspoken words.

His squire was not in the courtyard. No, in this place there was only the Queen, perched on the edge of a stone pool. Her alchemist stood behind her, in the shadows as always.

Queen Medarda spoke, “Rise, Beast.”

It was difficult. He had conquered sick delirium twice in his life, but neither time was alone. He wished for his squire. Still, he rose without complaint. Then he stumbled forward a few steps, collapsing to his knees in front of the Queen. With a grating voice he barely recognized as his own, he whispered, “My Lady.”

“My Beast.” She hummed. Her hand came to pinch at his chin, motherly and full of admiration. There was nothing that Jayce would not do for her when she spoke to him this way. “Look into the pool and tell me what you see.”

Jayce tilted his body, just enough to peer into the inky depths of the water below. It lapped at the stone with a dull, rhythmic sound, like water sloshed carelessly in a bucket. Its movement was sluggish, almost unnatural—heavy, as though it carried secrets that sought to remain buried. He could not fathom what stirred it, nor why it seemed to pulse with a life of its own. As he stared, the water seemed to shift before his eyes, adjusting to the depth of his gaze until a soft, light-blue haze enveloped it. And through that glow, it revealed itself—something haunting, something old.  He spoke in a whisper, his voice trembling like the ripples on the surface, “I see a boy. He is ill, stuffed in a space barely larger than himself. The room is dusty and…and…”

“Who is he?” Queen Medarda asked.

He wanted to say that he did not know. He wanted to turn his face away and rid himself of this boy’s ghost. But he could not—he would not—lie to his Queen. Nor could he dare to disobey her. 

In that moment, his heart clenched with a memory he could never escape. He had lain in that same crumbling pantry, throat dry and weeping, begging for the mercy of death. That wretched, cold place had been his prison, surrounded by little more than vermin. The thought of it gripped him tightly, a nightmare never truly ending. He had feared waking up in that hell, cursed to rot away, unseen and forgotten.

“He is I.”

“Yes.” Queen Medarda smiled.

“I do not understand, my lady.” 

“This pool has been here for centuries,” the Queen murmured, “my alchemist tells me that it was once a well.”

“A lake, my Lady.”

“A lake, then.” Queen Medarda brushed her hand back, unimpressed by the correction, “It was a place where time—what is, was, and will be—runs together. As if laid atop one another, happening in tandem. The leaders of Piltover used it as a mirror, a simple tool to record history, but Reveck—”

The alchemist nodded his head.

“Reveck told me that I could use it to do more than that.” Queen Medarda clenched her fist, as if clutching the air in her palm and suffocating it.

“Now, my Beast, do you remember the first time the Defender came to you? The words he spoke?”

Jayce nodded. He would never forget the moment in which he was forged.

“Look into the pool and speak the words.”

As Jayce gazed into the water, he caught a fleeting glimpse of his reflection. His face, worn and weathered, stared back at him—a rough beard, skin marred by countless scars, and eyes that gleamed with the cold clarity of hazel. At that moment, he understood who he was. He was not one man, but three— the boy he had once been, the beast he had become, and the Defender he had sworn to be.

How cruel it was, to be bound only to oneself.

— ˖ ࣪ ⊹ 🗡⊹ ࣪ ˖ —

Jayce is the Defender of Tomorrow. 

A Knight, with a power above all others.

He looks down at the weakest part of himself and tells him to rise.

All day, he sits by the pool and speaks to his past. He tells himself how to kill, how to live, how both are but tools in service of a greater will. His words echo in the hollow halls of his mind, stitching together the tatters of memory. He watches himself grow— first, a wretched child, then a strong young man, then a beast. Then an old hound, loyal and scarred. 

His squire lingers at the edge of each vision, always there, always watching. A limping child, struggling to keep pace with a half dozen horses. A slim boy, at Jayce’s heels and polishing his armor. A man, standing beside him. A man who looks at Jayce with sad eyes whenever he breaks, and clenches his fists in anger when he has to put him back together again. Strange, that Jayce never saw how beautiful he was, with his porcelain skin and long, curling brown locks. 

Time bends in the pool’s depths. A second, a year. A minute, a decade. He watches himself through every season, breath held in quiet anticipation whenever he is not rattling off instructions. Light fades in the courtyard, shadows stretching long. Jayce watches himself take Noxus. Watches himself hesitate. Watches the axe fall. The pool of memories shudders, then darkens. It reflects back at him his own face, stark against a sky emptied of warmth. Above him, there are two stars. One shines bright, and the other sits beside it—dim and small in comparison. Jayce wishes that they were closer.

“It is done, my Lady.” Jayce croaks.

Queen Medarda brings her hand to his cheek. Her hand is large, warm, rough— wrong . So wrong, but he does not understand why. Yet Jayce, lonelier than ever, leans into the touch all the same. 

Behind the Queen, the alchemist lingers, curled beneath her shadow like a serpent coiled in the grass, waiting to strike. He whispers in her ear—names of distant lands, lords and kings whose thrones lie beyond their reach. Queen Medarda listens with rapt attention, lifting her gaze to the sky. She would take it, if she could. 

Jayce, if she asked, would seize it for her.

“My Beast,” she says, her voice a velvet command. “You have fought all your life, and you have done quite well.”

Jayce is grateful. Loved. Tears well in his eyes as he whispers, “I have tried, my Lady. And yet, I fear I can fight no longer.”

He wishes he could say he is angry at this truth, that he burns with the will to push past his limits. Yet all he feels is relief. The first exhale after a battle, the stillness when a storm has passed. A revelation, light and freeing—he may yet live.

What would it be, to grow old? Who would stand beside him at the end? Will he be able to look down at the people around his funeral pyre, comforted by their weeping prayers? Certainly, they will never forget their hero, their Beast. His name will linger in the songs of his admirers, and from the heavens, he will listen.

“You will always fight, my Beast. You grow stronger, faster. Every time, you endure a little longer.” Queen Medarda’s hand travels to Jayce’s hair, gripping it in her fist. She tilts his head back, baring his neck to the sky.

“My Lady?”

“Perhaps, we will take Ionia next time. I hear that their Spring is the greatest beauty that one could ever dream of seeing.” 

Then, she drags Jayce forward by his hair, pushes his face into the water, and holds him there.

If she were an enemy, Jayce would reel back. He could free himself, even one-handed, he could defeat her without even a sparing glance. But she is not an enemy. She is his Queen. She pulled him from the pantry, honed him like a fine weapon, and turned him into a beast. Her Beast. She made him.

He has given her his youth, his blood, his tears, his right hand. Who would he be to deny her his life? 

The water tastes familiar, forced down his throat in a feverish haze.

— ˖ ࣪ ⊹ 🗡⊹ ࣪ ˖ —

He was a child when the Defender first came to him.

The Defender was not a knight. He bore no shining crest, nor a noble grace. He was not handsome, for his face was a map of old wounds—burns and bruises and deep cut scars. His armor did not shine, for it was battered and stained, dented at the thigh where a past blow had nearly undone him. He was not brave, for he was crying. 

(He was always crying. Jayce would learn to ignore it.)

Jayce was ordered to rise, and so he did. He stumbled from the crumbling pantry to the morning yard, to the damp earth where he fell to his knees. He was carried by the Officer across a dirt path, and he was nursed back to health by a boy with no name.

The second they put a sword in his hand, Jayce understood. It was as if the very air around him thickened, the weight of centuries bearing down on his chest. Memories—old, primal, and unbidden—flooded his senses, so vivid it was as though they had always existed in him, waiting for the spark of steel to ignite them. His blood burned with purpose, his grip on the hilt never awkward, as though it had belonged to him since the dawn of time. Each step, each block, each strike—it was all written in his bones. He was born to cleave through flesh and bone, and the world would soon come to know the wrath in his veins.

On the battlefield, Jayce became something far beyond man—an unholy beast that moved like shadow across a blood-soaked earth. Villages crumbled beneath his feet, fields once ripe with life turned into burning husks. His name became a whispered terror, spoken by leaders of other countries in the dead of night, as if they could sense him coming for their blood. There was no mercy in Jayce, no remorse. The blade he wielded spoke only of destruction. Medarda’s foes were feeble, their strikes clumsy and desperate. 

In the rare moment when battle teetered on the edge, when the dark tide of war threatened to consume his spirit, the voice of the Defender would rise—soft and insistent, like a sacred whisper in his ear. The Defender was his guide, his shadow, the force that kept him standing when he should have fallen. 

And when he was wounded, he had his squire—the one with steady hands and healing herbs, the one who pulled him out of death’s grasp time and time again.

When the Red Axe Maiden caught Jayce unaware—ambushing him from behind in a sea of enemies—and sunk her weapon into his flesh, it was his squire who stitched him back together again. The man toiled through the night, stitching him back together with a needle and thread like one would a doll. Jayce’s blood streaked his squire’s arms, painting him in red up to his sharp elbows. During the whole affair, his voice was a quiet murmur of swears in a foreign language that Jayce could not recognize, but found to be strangely soothing. 

When the work was done, when the wound was closed and the fever had not yet taken hold, the man slumped at Jayce’s side, his breath rising and falling in a fitful sleep. No other men were permitted to enter. No other hands could tend to him. Those who tried were met with bared teeth from a guard dog, half-mad with exhaustion, and yet entirely unwilling to yield his post.

In a fortnight, after the fever had passed and left Jayce with the barest hint of tension in his shoulder, General Medarda came to visit. Her smile was full of pride for her beast, who so valiantly stood to greet her without the barest hint of the pain he was in.

“Well done, my Beast. Tomorrow, we head North.” Then, she left.

Jayce’s squire watched her with an angry, hateful expression, scoffing long after her exit. 

“What troubles you?” Jayce asked. He knew that he should have scolded the other man, but he could not bring himself to do it. 

“She takes much from you.”

Jayce settled his hand on his squire’s thin shoulder in an attempt to comfort him and said, “She made me, my friend.”

Jayce had asked his name, once, when they were boys, but his squire simply replied that it did not matter any longer. His title as Jayce’s squire was the only name they would address him with for the rest of his days. Jayce tried not to let that bother him, and never asked again. Instead, he used a manner of other words that never really described what his squire actually meant to him.

“She loves me, like a mother loves a son.”

His squire placed his hand over Jayce’s own, squeezing it once. He looked at Jayce’s drooping shoulder and asked, “Do you believe your own mother would have wanted her to love you like this?”

Jayce turned away from him then, as if burned, and asked him to leave. 

He was tired.

— ˖ ࣪ ⊹ 🗡⊹ ࣪ ˖ —

He fought the Freljordians for his General. The frosty chill bit at his fingers, seeping deep into his bones and reminding him of a time when warmth was a promise. In his mind sat a woman who was too painful to visualize nowadays, though he felt the shape of her absence like a void in his chest. 

After that, he fought the Noxians for his Queen. The air was thick with the acrid stench of smoke and the stutter of crossbows echoed through broken city streets. A bow-legged boy, barely more than a shadow, fell to his sword. His twisted face struck Jayce in a strange way, leaving his stomach churning.

Then, at last, when they took Ionia, he fought for his Empress. The title was hers now—the crown resting heavy upon her brow, the weight of rule pressing upon her shoulders—but her ambition knew no end. And Jayce stood ever at her side, his loyalty unwavering as her kingdom swelled, as her dominion stretched across the land. 

The people revered her, and through her, they worshipped him. He could not walk the streets without their eyes upon him, without hands, reaching, grasping—fingertips brushing his armor, his weapon, his very skin, as if the spirit of war itself might pass from him to them. They longed for his strength, his fire, the ghost of battle that clung to him like a second shadow.

But Empress Medarda soon grew weary of it. The hunger in their gazes displeased her. Why would they worship a blade, when his wielder was right there? And so, she declared it to be a sin. None were to covet him, none to lay hands upon him. Should any dare, Jayce was instructed to strike them blind—pluck their eyes from their skulls, so that never again might they look upon him in idolatry. 

That night, as Jayce and his squire prepared for bed, his squire stopped to stare at the fire, and hummed. When Jayce asked for his thoughts, he explained that he was still thinking about the declaration.

“Why?” Jayce asked, brow furrowed.

His squire glanced at him in the low light and simply said, “I suppose I should not look upon you any longer.”

Jayce wanted to reach for him, then. Wanted to grab him by both shoulders and shake him, force him to explain himself. Ask him what he was admitting to. But Jayce, suddenly feeling nothing like a beast and everything like a coward, turned his head and said, “You are the exception to every rule, my friend.”

— ˖ ࣪ ⊹ 🗡⊹ ࣪ ˖ —

Ionia was not enough. Jayce had never thought it would be. 

So, in the time that followed, he did as he had always done: he fought, he killed, and he took. And took. And took. Until the empire stretched across entire continents, until there was no corner of the known world untouched by its might. Until all who drew breath knew of the Empress’s Beast.

Jayce would have been content with this life—had it not been for the dreams.

Horrid, blood-soaked visions, thick with death and ruin. The glassy unseeing eyes of the Empress’s greatest enemies stared through him, boring holes into his mind, lingering long after waking. But they did not always look like enemies. Some nights, they did not wear the armor of war, but of the common folk. They had the faces of men and women who walked the streets, of children who clung to their mothers’ hands. And yet, they fell to his blade all the same. Not for justice. Not for necessity. But simply because he could destroy them.

He could feel them—feel the slick, sticky heat of blood, thick upon his skin, seeping into his very bones. A stain he could not wash away. He could hear them—their final, rattling gasps, the broken sounds of dying things. A chorus that never ceased, that whispered and wailed in his ears without end. They drove him to the brink of insanity, until he could not tell the difference between dreams or prophecies or memories. 

Was there a difference between them?

One night, he woke to find his sword in his hand, the blade a mere centimeter from his squire’s face. He threw his weapon aside immediately, the clatter of steel against the cobblestone wall resounding through the quiet night. His squire lay still as death beneath him, and Jayce collapsed to his knees, shaking with fear and resisting the urge to be sick. 

“I could have killed you.” Jayce whispered in horror.

“Never.” His squire said. 

Without another word, he wrapped his thin fingers around Jayce’s wrist and pulled him down onto the floor mattress beside him. The bed was too small for Jayce’s broad frame, but neither of them spoke of it. His squire simply placed Jayce’s hand over his heart and held it there—a silent affirmation that he was still breathing. Proof that Jayce had not destroyed his only friend.

He grew so used to it, that he could never again sleep alone.

— ˖ ࣪ ⊹ 🗡⊹ ࣪ ˖ —

When the Defender came to him that final time, Jayce was older than he’d ever been before, but truly not old at all. 

The Empress wished to claim Zaun, to seize the magical technology of its young monarch and make it her own. According to Reveck’s sources—who were these sources, Jayce had always wondered—the technology held the power to change the future, to bend time to the wielder’s will in an instant. Medarda wanted total control of it, for what greater force was there to conquer than time itself? If Jayce succeeded, it would make her a Goddess. 

It was near impossible—beyond even Jayce, perhaps. 

And yet, he would do his duty. He would try. 

There was no third path. Conquer Zaun, or die upon its soil. But Jayce had not feared death in a long, long time. 

The Empress’s vast army lay in wait beneath the shroud of night. They did not allow themselves fires. Not even a single torch. Still, Jayce could not sleep. 

Instead, he crouched upon the hillside, where dawn would soon find them cresting the ridge, and set his gaze upon the castle that they were meant to take. A fortress unlike any he had stormed before. Even in the dark, its presence loomed, a thing untouched by war, untouched by time. How could one hope to defeat an enemy who could rewrite a moment in an instant? Jayce didn’t know. He had always been certain that the Defender would guide his hand, should the tide of battle turn against him. But could even the Defender stand against an enemy who commanded time itself?

If there was anyone who could find the answer, it would have to be him.

His squire came to him then, lowering himself at Jayce’s side. He put his back to the wet earth, his shoulder touching Jayce’s forearm and sapping up all of Jayce’s available heat. He had yet to don his armor, rarely did until the last minute, and Jayce never forced him to. Though it did make him worry, he trusted his squire to know his own body.

“You cannot win against this, Jayce,” he murmured, his voice a breath upon the wind. He reached out, brushing aside the strands of hair that had fallen into Jayce’s eyes.

Jayce closed them, just for a moment, exhaling slowly. “Perhaps not.”

“Then why do you fight? To hear the people sing your praises? To hear the Empress whisper her approval?”

Jayce did not answer. His throat had gone tight.

His squire pressed on, softer still, so quiet that his words might have been mistaken for the wind itself.

“Is it worth it?”

Jayce stood and stared down at the other man. If he was anyone else under his command, Jayce would strike him—throttle him until he dared never to speak again. But this man wasn’t just anyone. This man was his squire, his companion, the only person that Jayce could consider a friend. Jayce knew that his squire was only angry because he knew that Jayce would not survive, but a man could not be angry at his leader, let alone Medarda’s beast. And because he could not be angry, he tried to make Jayce angry. To force Jayce to yell at him, punish him, anything to reach that cathartic release.

Jayce did none of those things, in the end.

The Defender was with him the next day, and Jayce fought perfectly.

But it was not enough.

They weren’t even close to the castle. They had to drag Jayce’s limp form from the dirty field below their camp, an arrow through his neck. His final memory is of his squire, pressing his hand to the wound and staring down at him in grief.

— ˖ ࣪ ⊹ 🗡⊹ ࣪ ˖ —

He wakes staring up at the sky. It is always the same view.

The courtyard. The Empress. The alchemist. The pool.

There’s that terrible moment of understanding again. That realization that he was alone, had always been alone, would always be alone. 

This time, when he speaks to the boy, he is crying. Then again, he thinks, he has been crying the past few times as well. The memories cling to the inside of his mind, hazy and muddled, slipping through his grasp like mist. Why is he crying? He does not know. Perhaps it is because he cannot dream of being older than this. Perhaps it is because he knows that he failed. Perhaps it is because he misses his squire. 

Perhaps it is just because he can .

For he is a tool, an instrument. And a tool cannot persist without care, nor can an instrument be played without love. Can one be surprised when a mistreated tool breaks? Is there any mystery in why an untuned instrument begins to shriek?

But a broken sword may yet cut if one grips it hard enough. A shattered lute may still play, though the sound is jagged and wrong. And a beast—forgotten, unwanted, left to rust in his own sorrow—may still rise when called. If only because that is all he has ever known how to do.

The water fills his mouth. He drowns again.

— ˖ ࣪ ⊹ 🗡⊹ ࣪ ˖ —

Jayce was a child the first time the Defender came to him.

That time, he made it to the castle walls before he fell. The time after that, he reached the steps below the palace door. 

And the time after that , he made it all the way to the throne room. 

He met the young king’s gaze—dark brown, unyielding, a judgment passed without words. The king was little more than a boy, and Jayce remembered thinking: This is him? This is the mage who commands time? 

His thoughts never stretched beyond that. Because in the blink of an eye, the young king’s blade was already descending—arcing toward him in a sweeping strike. It cut through his chest like a stone cleaving water, swift and inevitable.

The knights who managed to drag his body from the castle were the same ones who had to rip him from his weeping squire’s arms when they took him to the courtyard.

“Perhaps he is not fit to go further than this.” The Empress said, crossing one leg over the other and peering down at him with hard eyes. “Zaun is a pesky little leech, isn’t it? But even leeches cannot survive if they cannot feed off of something stronger, and with us owning everything else, should we assume they will die out with time?”

“No, my Empress,” said the alchemist. He had taken to wearing a face shroud over his lower lips, muffling his wheezing tone, “If we allow them to keep the time device, it could undo all of our progress. It has the power to reset the timelines entirely. The pool cannot fight against its will.”

The Empress huffed, “Very well, then.”

This time, when Jayce drowns, there is a moment—a fleeting, instinctive second—where he begins to thrash. It is not strong. The will leaves his body almost as quickly as it comes, but the defiance is there. Briefly, it burns and breathes like a living thing. 

And as the last of his air leaves his lungs in a silent scream, he looks at the life laid before him and thinks: It is not worth it .

— ˖ ࣪ ⊹ 🗡⊹ ࣪ ˖ —

Jayce was a child the first time the Defender came to him.

He was angry. His chest plate carved open like a trench separating the earth, and one of his eyes was burned by a luminescent magic that stole the hazel from its iris. His voice was breathy and tired and ancient. Jayce could tell that there was something wrong about the Defender, something unnatural. It made him want to close his eyes and hide until the specter bade him no longer.

But still, he rose anyway.

There was the Snow Maiden, the Iron Sentinel, the Red Axe Maiden. Of them all, the Red Axe Maiden worried his squire the most. The man had made a big fuss about checking Jayce’s wound—though it was little more than a thin cut, hardly breaking the skin of his shoulder. Yet his squire acted as if he had dealt a deadly blow. 

When he saw that the damage—if it could even be called that—was little more than an inconvenient scratch, he looked up at Jayce with those piercing golden eyes. And then, as if the world had quieted for just a moment, he gave Jayce a small, private smile. 

It was the kind of smile the squire only shared in their moments alone, a luxury that only Jayce was allowed to witness. And it was that smile—that brief, intimate gesture—that made Jayce’s heart pound faster than any fight ever could.

Later that evening, the General entered their chambers and clapped Jayce once on the shoulder, fingers pressing above the wound ever so slightly. “Well done, my beast,” she said, “tomorrow, we will ride North.”

His squire was turned away from them both, staring with hard eyes at the fire that crackled low in the hearth. When the General disappeared, Jayce walked over to him and placed a silent hand on the back of his neck—heavy and comforting.

His voice was choked with rage as he spits, “She—the General only takes and takes, no matter the cost to you—you could have died today and she does not even—”

“Viktor, she made me.” Jayce whispered. Because it was true. He was nothing before this.

Both of them had been nothing, once. Two stick-thin orphans with knobby knees and ailing bodies, barely worthy of notice. The only ones who knew their true names were each other—whispered late one childhood night as a promise to never forget the lowly place they came from. 

It was an irony Jayce had never shaken, how his name meant healer when it was Viktor who had so often pulled him back from the brink of death. And Viktor was conqueror, when it was Jayce who had spent their entire lives subjugating others. They were named not for what they were, but for what they found in each other. Two halves of the same broken thing. Mirrors, reflecting not who they were meant to be, but who they truly were.

And without the other, perhaps, they would have never been able to see it at all.

Viktor reached for the fastenings of Jayce’s armor with lithe fingers still shaking from rage. As he began to strip the metal away from Jayce’s body, he left a traitorous whisper,

“You never needed to be made, Jayce. Just loved.”

— ˖ ࣪ ⊹ 🗡⊹ ࣪ ˖ —

The Defender was always furious when he spoke to Jayce, though his instructions betrayed none of it. If he resented keeping Jayce alive, then he was doing a rather poor job of killing him. Yet, Jayce did not think that the knight’s anger was directed at him, not truly. 

No, the Defender’s wrath was older and deeper than Jayce could pretend to comprehend—born of a fate that he seemed unable to escape. Perhaps he was not angry because Jayce was alive. Perhaps he was angry because he was. Perhaps he did not want to be the Defender, trapped in some liminal space, doomed to pass his knowledge of war to a soldier who would only spill more blood. Perhaps he longed for rest.

Jayce could sympathize. He, too, wished to be free from the chains that bound him—heavy, unyielding things that marked him as a devil, a plague, a beast . But the key to those shackles did not belong to him, no. They were clenched between the fist of the Queen, the Empress, the only master he had ever known. So, he fought when he was told to fight and bled when he was told to bleed. There were soldiers he killed and soldiers that killed for him, and with each passing day, the line between the two grew thinner and thinner. Regardless, he obeyed his commands, for a beast was not made to think.

The only reprieve was in his dreams. But as the Empire spilled like ink across a map, swallowing nations whole like a bottomless pit, those too began to darken.

One night, Jayce finds himself ensnared in a haunting dream. 

He stands tall in a dark arena—bleeding, wrathful, more beast than man—snarling at the Empress. His blade is clutched between clawed fingers, raised so high that it threatens to rend the sky, before he drives it down, straight between her piercing eyes—

Only to wake and find Viktor kneeling beneath him, watching him through soft, wet lashes.

His sword hit the floor with a ringing clatter. He sinks to his knees in front of Viktor, head dropping to the other man’s shoulder as if to suffocate himself. His shaking hands come up to clutch at Viktor’s sleep shirt.

“Viktor.” He said. “Viktor, I could have killed you.”

Viktor says nothing. He simply moves Jayce’s hands to settle behind his neck, pressing a kiss to his temple. His fingers—slim, trembling—trail from along Jayce’s wrists, up his arms, until his cold palms settle over Jayce’s biceps. He leans in, pressing soft kisses to Jayce’s eyelids, unbothered by the tears gathered there.

“I am no more than a murderer. Why did you follow me? You can’t have wanted this. You can’t have desired to spend your life caring for someone else’s beast. Why do you stay, Viktor? ”

Viktor hushes him, his touch featherlight as he wipes away Jayce’s tears, “Because I love you. Because before all of this, you were just a boy lost in a snowstorm, crawling four yards away from his mother screaming in a desperate attempt to save her. You were the boy who smiled at another little boy and called him a saint for daring to bring you water on your deathbed. The boy who wept and pleaded with an Officer when she tried to leave that same boy in the cold dark for daring to follow you. You have never been a beast, Jayce. You are just a boy, just a man—one I love more than I wish to breathe.” 

A wretched sob tears from Jayce’s throat as he presses the side of his face to Viktor’s cheek, his voice breaking, “But she made me.”

Viktor rises on unsteady legs, his face briefly tightening with pain, and tugs Jayce up alongside him. Jayce steadies him without thought, his hands firm at Viktor’s waist, knowing well that his leg had always plagued him. Once, Viktor had told Jayce that he was born wrong. Jayce had scoffed, replying that he could never be wrong—he was born perfect, leg be damned. That was the first time he ever saw Viktor smile. 

Now, Viktor guides them toward Jayce’s bed with a quiet insistence, maneuvering Jayce as if he weighs no more than the nothingness he feels like. Before long, Jayce is sinking into the sheets, and Viktor is climbing in after him, throwing a leg over Jayce and sitting atop his stomach.

“You were not made by her, Jayce,” Viktor whispers, tilting down to press a kiss to the corner of Jayce’s mouth. “You made yourself.”

Jayce’s hands shake as they settle on Viktor’s thighs. He shakes his head, tears continuing to spill down his cheeks, “What else would I have been made for, if not for her?”

Viktor exhales sharply, bringing his hands to cradle Jayce’s face. His touch is desperate, reverent. “If you were made for anyone, you were made for me. ” His voice is a blade of conviction, so sharp it slices the air between them. 

“Do you understand? You were made to love me. ” Viktor leans forward, faces mere centimeters apart. 

Jayce stares into those sharp, golden eyes—eyes that have always seen him, truly seen him—and shudders as Viktor’s breath ghosts across his lips.

“Do you understand me?” Viktor murmurs, a plea wrapped in steel.

Jayce swallows hard and nods.

“Good.” 

And then Viktor crashes their lips together.

Viktor’s cold hands slip under Jayce’s shirt, gliding over the ridges of his abdomen. His skin is a story written in scars, but Viktor does not shy away from reading it. He drags his fingertips over every raised, angry line like a blind man pressing against braille, tracing each mark and committing it to memory. Each touch is a benediction, not to heal, but to sanctify—to remind Jayce his body is not just a ruin, but something worthy of devotion. After mapping the landscape of Jayce’s body with careful hands, he tugs them both upright, settling in Jayce’s lap as though he has always belonged there. He strips the fabric away from Jayce haphazardly, discarding it without care.

“You are beautiful, my Jayce.” Viktor says, leaning down to press a kiss to Jayce’s bare clavicle. 

Jayce exhales a shaky breath, hands already tugging at Viktor’s own shirt. He peels it away, and before the fabric has even hit the floor, he wraps his arms around Viktor’s back. Their chests press together—skin to skin, warmth to warmth. Jayce clutches him as if he could fuse them together, as if he could drown in the solace of his touch. 

“I love you Viktor,” he breathes against his shoulder. “I love you so much it hurts.”

Their love is nothing like a battle and everything like a dance—Viktor presses down, and Jayce rocks forward to meet him, their bodies falling into an instinctive rhythm. Until they are rutting against one another like animals, hindered only by the clothes they have yet to tear away. Jayce drags his mouth along Viktor’s neck, nipping and biting at the porcelain-smooth skin, leaving a trail of red in his wake. He follows the path down to Viktor’s chest—a sight he rarely glimpsed, as Viktor always made sure to bind and brace it each morning before Jayce ever stirred. If he were to wrap both hands around it, he is certain his fingers would meet with ease. 

“My Viktor. You have always been so perfect,” Jayce begins to babble like a fool. “I have always loved you, always. My perfect love. I would do anything for you. I would raze the world if you just asked.”

Jayce bites down against one of Viktor’s dusty pink nipples, drawing a sharp, keening sound from his throat as he arches into the touch. He worries it between his teeth before soothing the sting with a slow sweep of his tongue, pressing a lingering kiss to the hardened bud before moving to the other. Viktor trembles in his lap, fingers grasping blindly for purchase against the sweat-slick expanse of Jayce’s skin. They both relish the small twinges of pain, the rush that comes with a mutual hurting. For Jayce, it is proof that he’s still alive. For Viktor, it is proof that he still holds control.

“If you raze the world—ah!” Viktor bites down on his tongue the moment that Jayce's lips seal over his heart, sucking a bruise deep into his skin. “Then I will be forced to crawl through the flames and find you.”

Jayce’s hand slips between Viktor’s trousers and his skin, brushing across short, coarse curls until he finds the crux of Viktor’s sex. As his fingers dip between slick, heated folds, Viktor trembles above him, voice breaking into breathless, punched-out words in his mother tongue—syllables Jayce longs to understand. He wants to know Viktor in every way, to memorize every inch of him, inside and out. 

As he presses deeper, Viktor clutches at his shoulders, his grip tightening with every slow, deliberate movement. Jayce’s mouth doesn’t stop its descent—his lips still charting a path down Viktor’s stomach, pausing only to press reverent kisses against each freckle, each mole, each intrinsic piece of Viktor’s being. 

When he finally looks up, Viktor is already leaning down, capturing his lips in a kiss that is deep, enthralling, and all-consuming. As their mouths meet once more, Jayce adds a second finger, leaving Viktor rolling his hips against his palm in a desperate bid for sweet friction. Viktor’s hand pulls at Jayce’s trousers, and Jayce pulls away just long enough to strip them off. Viktor does the same, and suddenly, they are laid bare in front of one another. Viktor is beautiful— has always been beautiful. 

The last time they had touched each other like this, they had been nothing but restless boys, pressing against one another in the quiet sanctuary of Jayce’s room, aching for something neither of them had the words for. At the time, he thought it was nothing. Every time after, he feared that it meant nothing. Jayce wishes that he could reach back through time, take his younger self by the shoulders, and tell him: It does mean something. It always will. Because now, more than fifteen years later, Viktor is still the most breathtaking thing he’s ever been allowed to witness.

Jayce wastes no time pulling Viktor back onto his lap, hands locking around his hips—so tightly that he knows it will bruise. Let it bruise . The thought is a thrilling one, the idea that Viktor will carry traces of Jayce with him, secret and unseen, long after this night has passed. Viktor’s delicate fingers wrap around him, and the first slow twist of his wrist is almost too much—dry, aching friction that leaves Jayce gritting his teeth and groaning.

“Please, Viktor.” Jayce begs. It is a plea for permission. An admission of desire so that he will be granted mercy.

Viktor nods, hovering above him so closely that Jayce can feel his slick dripping onto him, “Of course, Jayce.”

Viktor sinks down with a quiet, shuddering keen, his voice muffling the sound against the crook between Jayce’s neck and shoulder. His breath is warm, his fingers trembling where they clutch at Jayce’s shoulder, but his resolve does not waver. Jayce smooths his hands over the delicate ridges of Viktor’s spine before settling them beneath his thighs—a silent promise, an offering of support.

He knows Viktor will take this at his own pace, that he is more than capable, that he has always carried himself with a fierce, unyielding strength. But Jayce will still do what he can, easing the strain, bearing the weight of their union in the quiet way he knows how. And when Viktor moves—rising, sinking, pulling Jayce deeper into him—Jayce holds him fast, steady, unwilling to let him slip from his grasp.

“ Jayce , my Jayce,” Viktor whispers, tears rolling down his cheeks in tired ecstasy. His pink lips hang open in quiet, panting bliss as he lets out sweet noises of pleasure. 

“My Viktor, my dream.” Jayce thrusts upward, meeting Viktor’s downward drop.

“ Kurva —you are—” Viktor digs his nails into Jayce’s chest, “ nejdražší . Sparkling, priceless. I wouldn’t trade you for the world.”

Jayce is crying again now too, the crest of his pleasure and the swell of his emotions tangling together as they move in tandem, clutching at each other as if they might be torn apart at any moment. He wishes—oh, how he wishes—that his life could be only this. That he never rose from that pantry, had never stepped onto the path that led him here, so long as it meant that he could have Viktor like this, always. It is a selfish, impossible wish, but he breathes it between them like a prayer, knowing well that it will never be answered.

Living—truly living—has always felt incompatible with the thing he was made to be. He was never meant to be soft. He was never meant to know kindness. He was the Defender's tool and Medarda's Beast, an instrument of war and nothing more. But Viktor—with his brilliance, his fire, his sharp mind and delicate hands—makes him feel human. And moments like this, with their bodies flush and their love laid so beautifully bare between them, made him feel worthy of it.

Viktor’s legs start to shake, his breath catching in broken, airy gasps—each one stolen by the rhythm of Jayce’s hips. His arousal is reaching its peak, and Jayce isn’t far behind him. He reaches between them, bringing his thumb to Viktor’s most sensitive point and circling it. A moan spills from Viktor’s lips, rich and heedy. He reaches for Jayce, fingers circling under his chin, pressing his thumb to the softness of his lower lip.

“Who were you made for, Jayce?” Viktor asks him between moans. He shudders, unraveling in Jayce’s arms, his body yielding like a prayer answered in the dark.

“ You .” Jayce admits, biting down on the tip of Viktor’s thumb. With one final, shaking thrust, he buries himself deep, following Viktor over the edge. He clutches him close, their bodies locked in the aftermath, chests heaving in tandem as they chase their breath—two hearts beating as one.

“ I was made for you. ”

— ˖ ࣪ ⊹ 🗡⊹ ࣪ ˖ —

The next time the Defender visited him, he was crying. 

It was the first time that he hadn’t looked angry.

For his Empress, he took Ionia. He razed a hundred villages and slaughtered a thousand more men. He marched with his soldiers until his feet split and bled, until they reached the castle of Zaun—the last bastion standing against the tide of the Empire. Empress Medarda’s hunger was endless, and she would not be satisfied until Zaun, too, was devoured. 

Her final command to Jaycce was thus: the young King was to die, and the magic crystal he carried was to be taken. Jayce was to bring it back to her as proof of his victory. She had never required proof before—Jayce’s word, his blade, had always been enough—but she insisted that this crystal was different. 

And so, it was decided. Jayce would return with Zaun and the crystal, or he would not return at all.

The night before battle, he laid with Viktor, his face buried in the smaller man’s chest under the cover of darkness. Viktor’s hands pulled at his hair, twirling it nervously between his fingertips, as they sat in silence together. He felt the ghost of Viktor’s hot breath in his hair and clutched him tighter, knowing what was coming.

“You will not win, Jayce.”  

A fact. 

“Vik—”  

A plea.

“Would it be worth it?” 

A challenge.

“No.” 

An admission.

Jayce sat up, Viktor’s arms still hanging around his neck, and stared into Viktor’s eyes. Tears welled up in his own and he repeated, once more, “No.”

Viktor held his breath, a surge of words escaped him in a rush, “Let us leave now , then, Jayce, before dawn. They will not know. We could simply—”

Jayce cut him off, shaking his head and pressing their foreheads together. A small, choked noise escaped him and his voice faltered, “Please don’t ask me again. I cannot take it.”

“Jayce—” Viktor whispered.

“If you ask me again, then I do not know if I will be strong enough to reject you. And I cannot do it, Viktor, I cannot. By asking this of me, you are asking me to become a coward. After everything I’ve done, everything I’ve become, you would be making me a coward, so please—”

“So what, then?” Viktor’s voice cracked, the weight of his words heavy as he sagged against him. “You would rather I mourn you as a legend than love you as a coward?” 

“You will not mourn me. I will win, I always win. When I return with the crystal and the Empress has total control, I will be free.” Jayce said, despite the tremor in his voice. 

Jayce continued, sounding nearly delirious, “ We will be free. We can leave and never come back. We can build a life, a family. We can embark on our dream together like we’ve always wanted. I have to believe that, Viktor. For us.”

“What if I’m too scared to believe it?” Viktor said, his words a raw plea.

“The Defender will be with me. You cannot be scared.”

But the Defender never arrived.

Jayce waited and waited, but the Defender never came.

Still, he fought. Fighting without the Defender felt like fighting without a limb, as though he was blind, tearing across the battlefield like any other mortal soul. But even so, he was unstoppable. After all, he was a beast. He tore through the world with his bloodied maw, sharpened teeth devouring anything laid before him. Blind, deaf, alone—it did not matter. He was the very essence of war, the reincarnation of every great warrior merged into one. Nothing could defy him and remain standing.

And when he reached the throne, it almost felt like enough.

The poor young King lay before him, fallen to the weight of his sword, bleeding and gasping on the dark stone. The crystal lay mere inches away from his outstretched hand. Jayce’s body sagged with relief, nursing a deep cut from the King’s sword that pulled across the length of his chest. He could hardly believe it. It was over. He had done it. He dropped to his knees beside the crystal, watching the last light flicker from the boy’s eyes and thought: Finally.

His shaking hand reached out and seized the crystal.

But then, the young King surged up, his hand lashing out with a magic tincture that exploded across the left side of Jayce’s face.

Jayce screamed as the magic burned its way across his skin, his hands instinctively clutching at his face, as if he could tear away the pain with his fingernails. Behind him, he heard Viktor’s voice—muddied and distant, like being underwater—and then his vision faded to black.

— ˖ ࣪ ⊹ 🗡⊹ ࣪ ˖ —

Jayce wakes where he always does: a courtyard that he does not recognize.

“I am glad to see you are awake.” The Empress’s voice—no, not the Empress. The Goddess. 

The Goddess bids him to rise, her order to approach reverberating through his skull. The sound rattles his skull and trembles his bones. Her voice shakes every fiber of his being, invading every thought, every sense. 

His vision is split between two realms. His left eye reveals a polychromatic world, a reality of pure energy and shifting light, while his right eye clings to the dull and familiar. He moves toward her slowly, adjusting to this new fragmentation of sight. 

The Goddess is half what she’s always been and half something else—something dark and formless. He tells himself that it is just the magic. It’s just the magic.

She forces him to kneel before the pool. The sight before him is one that churns his stomach, a sight that twists his insides and makes the world feel as though it is slipping away from him. A shroud torn away from his eyes, a rug pulled from under his feet.

“Don’t worry. This is the final time.” The Goddess laughs, holding up the crystal. “You’ve done well.”

Jayce stares into the pool, his reflection staring back at him—a sickly, orphaned child begging for the seemingly sweet release of death. It is in that moment that he understands. He sees what he has become.

For all those years, he thought that Medarda had made him, twisted him from a vulnerable child into a weapon, and a weapon into a beast. But the darker truth is that it had always been him. An endless cycle of pushing, being pushed—of living and killing, then dying and rising again. All for the sake of strength, for the hope of being loved.

But love—true love—has always come from just one person. In every timeline, through every twist of fate, there has only ever been one who shows him what it means to love, and to be loved in return.

“Look into the pool and speak the words of the Defender.” The Goddess demands.

Jayce shakes his head. Quietly, he says, “No.”

The words hang in the air, heavy and dull, cutting like a blunt blade against grass—crushing, not sharp, still leaving damage.

“ It is not worth it .” He says, voice steady but grim. 

The Goddess’s gaze hardens, filled with a hatred so deep that Jayce wonders how he could have ever mistaken it for love. The alchemist leans in, his back hunched and his eyes devoid of anything human. His lips curl around four simple, harrowing words, “The squire, my Goddess.”

The Goddess nods, curling her fingers in a silent command. She gestures and Jayce’s heart stutters as he watches a group of armored knights enter the courtyard, dragging Viktor with them. Viktor stumbles, struggling to keep up with their harsh pace, wincing, his bad leg trembling, but he fights against their grip—refusing to let them control him completely.

When his eyes lock with Jayce’s, Viktor surges forward, his entire body straining against the armored weight of the hands around him. He is like a wild animal, feral and desperate, his teeth bared and limbs locked sharp. 

The Goddess strides toward him, taking a sword from one of the guards, her movements deliberate and unhurried. She steps behind Viktor, her fingers threading in his hair with cruel ease. Viktor thrashes in her grip, but she only clicks her tongue in mock disapproval. With a swift motion, she exposes the vulnerable curve of his throat to Jayce, the blade held threateningly close to his smooth, freckled skin.

“Look into the pool and speak the words.” She instructs with a cold indifference.

Jayce has never fought for the sake of fury, nor has he ever longed to take a life. He fought because he was told to fight, killed because he was told to kill—nothing more. But in this moment, rage stirs his blood, and he considers what it would feel like to surrender to it. To show them what a beast truly is, how a sharpened blade cuts without hesitation. Centuries of violence live in his soul, woven into the very fabric of his being. It would be so easy. Even half-blind and bleeding to death, he could stain this courtyard red. 

But he could never be fast enough to save Viktor.

“Speak. The. Words.” The Goddess’s voice is clipped, as if chastising a stubborn child.

Viktor shakes his head as much as he dares, precariously avoiding the blade at his throat. His voice is raw with desperation. “Don’t, please—”

“Silence!” The Goddess’s voice cracks like a whip. She shifts the blade just enough to drive Viktor to his knees without breaking the skin.

Viktor’s knees slam against the cobblestones with a sickening crack. A small, pained cry escapes him as he leans towards his weaker side. Tears slip from his eyes and he stares at Jayce. The Goddess releases her grip on his hair, but the blade remains poised against his body, denying him even the solace of collapsing beneath the weight of his agony. 

Jayce bites the inside of his cheek so hard that he can taste blood, and turns toward the pool.

“I am known as the Defender of Tomorrow, a knight, with power above all others.” He says, anger laced in every word, “Rise.”

Jayce leads the boy out of the pantry and into the Goddess’s relentless grasp. He watches as the boy grows into a young man—too sharp, too quick, too deadly to have ever truly been a child. He shapes this young man into a weapon, a beast, a name whispered only in the dead of night. The beast—who was once a nothing, and before that, something even smaller—tears through the world at his master’s command, simply because Jayce never tells him not to. Because the beast is a fool, an unfortunate soul who knows nothing else. 

Jayce watches the beast. But more importantly, he watches the squire who dares to love him. A limping child grown into a beautiful man, who tends to the rabid dog that he once pulled from the snow. He is gentle, and he makes Jayce gentle, until he is less of a beast and more of a man. But he is never a man strong enough to turn away from the only thing he knows. 

Every night, Jayce wishes this cowardly man will finally do the right thing. That he would cast his sword into the mud and carry his beloved away from the cruel world that shackles them both. And every night, Jayce is disappointed when he does not.

In the end, he watches himself cry in Viktor’s arms, begging him to believe in their pitiful dream. His reflection stares back at him, and behind him, the two stars seem closer than before.

He turns to Viktor, then, because he knows what is coming next—can already taste the water filling his lungs—and he wants Viktor to be the last thing he sees before the end.

Viktor smiles at him, sweat dripping from his brow, his pain ignored, dismissed, or simply accepted. He looks oddly at peace, as if all he needed was to meet Jayce’s eyes again. His love for Jayce is written on his face, in every line, every mole, in the way he looks at Jayce like nothing else in the world matters. For a moment, Jayce feels as if they are alone again, wrapped in the blanket one of those forbidden, secret nights. Perhaps this is another bad dream. Perhaps he will wake, and they will be in bed again. Perhaps then, he will be able to walk away from this ending.

“You.” Jayce breathes.

Viktor swallows hard, then lets out a small, breathless laugh. “My Jayce.”

The Goddess tightens her grip on the sword. “Quiet. It is not done yet.”

They do not acknowledge her. She is not here with them. Not in this moment.

“Made for me, yes?” Viktor asks.

Jayce nods. Viktor smiles.

Then he leans forward and twists his body against the edge of the blade. His blood rains across the stone in front of him, and with a single shuddering exhale, he collapses.

Viktor is dead.

The Goddess stares down at the ruin before her, in awe of the sheer simplicity. Her gaze trails from Viktor’s lifeless form to Jayce. 

She is dead before she can utter a word. 

Her knights follow soon after, their bodies crumpling in quick succession, barely given time to grasp the reality of Jayce’s fury before the light leaves their eyes. He moves through them like a starving, rabid dog let loose in a pen of unsuspecting prey. He loses himself to the killing, to the blood and ruin, tearing through flesh and steel—just as the beast they sought to shape him into. Just as he had always feared he would truly become.

When the brutality ends, he comes back to himself in a haze. The courtyard resembles the block of a butchery, covered in endless carnage. His back is against the pool, Viktor’s body cradled in his arms. Jayce touches soft long locks, his pale skin, the freckle above his lip that Jayce loved nothing more than to kiss. 

Through his newly acquired vision, the blood that stains the ground is black like an endless void, and in it sits Viktor, a cosmos. A beautiful blue, swirling entity with an aura as pure as snow. He is a white-hot shooting star, fallen and waiting—waiting for Jayce to pick him back up and bring him home. So he does. He holds Viktor in the home of his arms and presses his palm over Viktor’s heart, as if to anchor him here—as if to plead with the universe not to take him away. Jayce just wants to clutch onto this dream, his dream, their dream, for a little while longer.

A ripple disturbs the blood pooling near his feet. Soft, nearly imperceptible. If Jayce were more human, he would not have even noticed it. Then, a shift of weight, a whisper through the fabric of the world. He turns to find the alchemist—bleeding and broken—dragging himself forward through the aftermath. The crystal is clutched between his knobby fingers, and he attempts to pull himself into the water of the pool.

Jayce props Viktor against the pool, gently brushing his hair back from his face. Viktor always hated when it stuck to his cheeks. Then, he rises, limping toward the alchemist. He grabs the man by the back of his shirt and drags him away from the edge of the pool. 

Jayce wrenches the crystal from between the man’s blood-slicked fingers and snarls. Reveck sputters, coughing up blood between them, splattering both of their chests. He reaches for the crystal weakly, but Jayce holds it just out of reach, leveling it before the alchemist’s eyes. His fingers flex around it, threatening to crack the crystal in his palms.

“Don’t! You fool!” Reveck chokes out.

“Why?’ Jayce tilts his head, eyes narrowing. “What can it do, Reveck?”

Reveck’s face twists—anger, sadness, fear. Then, after a pained pause, he rasps, “It...turns back time.”

“Like the pool?”

“No…beyond it.” His voice cracks. Jayce shakes him by his collar like a pitiful dog, and another wet cough spills from his lips. Blood dribbles down his chin as he wheezes, “If the pool were to be destroyed…it vanishes across all timelines. But the crystal—it only moves backward. It carries itself. It can never be lost”

Jayce lets go. Reveck drops like a stone, bones cracking against the ground. He groans in pain, curling in on himself like an infant. Jayce couldn’t care less.

“I see.” 

He slides the crystal in his pocket and steps toward the pool. Once, it had been a great lake—a force of magic and nature, untamed and free. Then, human hands found it. Chipped away at it, carved it down until it was little more than a pool in a castle’s backyard, bound by stone. 

It, like Jayce, was never meant to be used like this. 

They have both existed well beyond their years, kept alive by a selfishness that was never their own. Slowly unraveling, repurposed for a “greater” cause. 

Jayce pries at a loose stone, pulling it free. A thin trickle of water seeps through the gap. That’s the thing about maintenance—it has to be constant. One by one, he wrenches the stones away, until the pool ruptures. Water bursts through the broken wall, flooding the courtyard. The images it once held shudder and dissolve, magic bleeding back into the earth where it belongs. 

Behind him, Reveck lets out a broken sob. He cups the water in his hands, trying to pull it toward him, as if he could gather what has been lost, but it does nothing. It is not magic anymore. It simply is. 

By the time only an inch of water remains, Jayce finally stops. 

Once the pool reflected all that was, is, and ever would be. 

Now, it only shows him the stars.

Jayce grabs a stone in one hand and steps over Reveck. He looks down at the man with something that might be pity. He asks, “Why did you do it?”

Reveck shudders. “My daughter…I lost her. She was young. I thought…if I just had more time—but I never could.”

Jayce studies him for a long moment. Love truly is the deadliest human affliction. Then, voice steady, he asks, “Was it worth it?”

He raises the stone high above his head. Reveck’s breath catches on a ragged exhale, his fingers clenching at the water like a lifeline. It spills out from his palm, formless. He looks up at Jayce with dark, hollow eyes. “If you do this…you will be nothing. Nobody will love you.” 

“He already did.”

The stone falls. A dull crack splits the night. 

Jayce turns away. Taking Viktor back into his arms, he carries the smaller man into the pool. Gently, he lays Viktor down, his body seemingly floating in the shallow water. His arms are crossed over his sternum, his hair fans out around him like white ink bleeding into the sky. Like the moon, weightless among a thousand stars. Jayce kneels beside him. He presses a kiss to the freckle above Viktor’s lip, reverent and aching.

He is perfect.

Jayce thumbs the crystal in his pocket. His vision is blurring now, the adrenaline fading, the weight of his wounds settling deep in his bones. He thinks back to the day that he met Viktor. The night stretches around them, vast and endless. 

He closes his eyes and whispers, “Made for you.”

— ˖ ࣪ ⊹ 🗡⊹ ࣪ ˖ —

The weight of the woman and child in his arms is unbearable. Every step sinks him deeper into the thick, untouched snow, his limping steps carving uneven trenches in the frozen earth. His breath rasps, shallow and ragged, a cloud of heat stolen by the storm. The cold gnaws at his bones, seeping into the marrow, whispering for him to give in to the energy-sapping weather.

Blood soaks through his chest, once thick and hot, now cooling, stiffening against his skin. He cannot feel his fingers anymore. His grip falters, muscles with the effort to hold on. His body begs for reprieve, but there is no stopping now.

Not when he is so close.

Through the seemingly endless white haze, Jayce sees it—a small home in the distance, its windows glowing like embers. Snow clings to the roof, icicles formed along the edges like jagged fangs. The wind howls, clawing at him, as if the storm itself resents him. Still, Jayce howls with it. Uses the last vestiges of his voice to cry into the night like a wolf. He screams and screams, until his teeth chatter with the effort.

Beyond the freezing fury, a door swings open, struggling against the wind. The weak flame of a lantern sways between small fingers. A silhouette is framed against the doorway, barely more than a shadow.

A booming voice calls out, nearly lost to the howling gale. “Stop! It’s too dangerous!”

But the child in the doorway does not heed the warning. 

He pushes forward, tiny legs stumbling forward into the snow, dragging one foot behind the other. He limps, but his conviction never wavers. His bare face is kissed red by the wind, but he does not flinch. There is no fear in his movements, only urgency.

Jayce staggers toward him, suddenly desperate, suddenly aware that this moment is real. His knees hit the snow, a choked sob escaping his lips.

“Help them,” he whispers, sick with delirium. “You need to save them.”

Small, trembling hands cup his face. “Mister?” 

The voice is so young, but so, so familiar. 

Jayce exhales a broken laugh. Snowflakes melt against his fevered skin. “You were always the one who saved me.”

The boy’s brows furrow.“Just wait, they are coming to help.” 

The boy turns back, shouting something in that beautiful language Jayce once swore he’d learn. Maybe now, he will.

“Who are you?” The boy’s voice quivers. “You need to stay awake! Tell me—who are you?”

Jayce blinks slowly, exhaustion pulling him under. His lips barely move.

“They called me the Defender.” A slow, shaking breath. “But to him…I was home”

His strength gives out. The woman and child slip from his arms as his body crumples, sinking into the snow. The cold rushes to claim him, taking advantage of his weakness and seeping into every crevice. But it does not matter. He’s given them enough of his warmth. 

They will survive. He knows they will.

Distantly, he hears a deep, guttural yell—a familiar bear’s call echoing through the snow. He is coming to aid them. 

But he will not be fast enough to save Jayce.

And that is fine.

— ˖ ࣪ ⊹ 🗡⊹ ࣪ ˖ —

When the ground softens, he is buried under the great oak tree. In many other timelines, his mother lies beside him. In every other afterlife, Viktor drifts in the ether at his side.

He has been a boy. He has been a man. He has been a beast.

But for the first time, out of every possibility, he is allowed to just be Jayce Talis.