Chapter Text
On the distant continent of Runeterra, where war and wonder dance across fractured kingdoms, there stands a mountain older than myth—Mount Targon.
It pierces the sky like a spear aimed at the stars. Its summit is unreachable by most, save for those chosen by fate—or cursed by it. Climbing Targon is no mere pilgrimage. It is a summoning, a test of soul and purpose. Those who endure it sometimes return... changed. Marked by celestial power. Blessed.
At the heart of Targon’s legacy lies a holy war as old as light itself:
The Solari and The Lunari.
Sun and moon. Faith and heresy.
Radiant and devout, the Solari believe the sun is the one true source of divine power. They live high on the sunlit side of the mountain in gilded temples carved into the stone, where daylight never fades. The Solari teach order, structure, obedience. They worship light as purity, and all that dwells in shadow is considered blasphemy.
Clerics, warriors, and seers make up their ranks, each carrying the weight of righteousness on their shoulders. They burn heresy at the root and silence dissent before it can bloom.
To be a Solari is to be visible, immaculate, seen.
But not all light comes from the sun.
Beneath the cliffs, in the hidden folds of the mountain’s shadow, move those who serve the moon—the Lunari. Forgotten by history and hunted by the Solari, they practice their rites in secret, under stars and stone, surrounded by silence. Their magic is colder, stranger—less about control, more about intuition, reflection, cycles.
The Lunari speak of duality. Of balance.
Of truths only visible in the dark.
And so the two orders clash—not merely in war, but in belief. To be Lunari is to be hunted, erased, unseen.
But sometimes…
Just sometimes…
A star falls between them.
There was a place on Mount Targon where even the wind grew reverent, where the world held its breath beneath stars that watched like ancient gods. It lay behind the main Solari temple, where stone met moss in long-forgotten courtyards, and marble columns leaned inward like old priests whispering secrets. Few ever came this far—fewer still at night. The garden had no name, no offerings, no firelit hymns. Once, perhaps, it had been a sacred place. But the sun had turned its face from it, and the priests had followed. Now, it belonged to silence. And the moon.
The air here felt different. Thin but soft, as though mountain spirits still remembered this path, even if the faithful did not. Moss grew unbothered along the fractured tiles, and the crooked roots of a fig tree twisted up through cracked stone, skeletal branches casting long shadows in the moonlight. A breeze sighed gently between the half-walls, carrying the scent of cold leaves and dust older than any living voice.
Ifa should not have been here.
He had left the temple hours ago, restless beneath his ceremonial blankets, drawn not by duty but by a quiet ache in his chest he could not name. He had extinguished the holy flame stitched into his shoulder mantle and moved without sandals, robes whispering across stone with the softness of prayer. The silver-threaded embroidery caught starlight, trailing behind him like light shed from memory. He did not carry a staff. He brought no blade. What led him was neither logic nor fear—it was a pull, like the mountain itself had exhaled, and his soul had followed the breath.
He thought he was alone.
But beneath the fig tree, wrapped in the broken geometry of shadow and light, stood a stranger.
Not one of the temple’s acolytes. Not even a pilgrim. He stood motionless beneath the dead branches, draped in a dark cloak lined with Lunari thread—symbols woven into the fabric that shimmered faintly in the moonlight. His shoulders were narrow, his posture too still, like he didn’t belong to the moment he stood in. Long dark-indigo hair fell loosely around his face, catching the breeze, and his arms—bare to the wrist despite the cold—were marked with glowing tattoos that curved like living script along his skin. There was magic in those marks, not bright like sunlight, but soft and breathing, like water that never froze.
He turned, slowly, as if sensing the air shift.
Their eyes met.
One ocean blue. The other a quiet magenta, burning faintly even in shadow. A small, delicate tattoo sat just beneath the blue eye—like a symbol of mourning, or perhaps devotion. His expression wasn’t angry. Nor afraid. Just… aware. As though he had been waiting for this moment far longer than he would admit.
Ifa inhaled softly, pulse steady but rising beneath the embroidered collar of his robes. “You’re not supposed to be here,” he said, voice calm, more curious than accusatory. His tone, even in reprimand, was warm—he couldn’t help it.
The stranger didn’t flinch. He looked at Ifa with quiet eyes. “Neither are you,” he answered, not smug, but truthful.
Ifa stepped closer, tilting his head. “You first.”
The man’s lips parted, then pressed into a flat line. His gaze drifted over Ifa’s robes, the Solari crest embroidered in gold at his breast. “I was passing through,” he murmured after a pause. “Didn’t know this path led to a garden.”
“You’re lying,” Ifa said gently, folding his arms.
“I am,” the stranger admitted. His voice was soft, almost too soft for this mountain air. “But only a little.”
He looked away, the flicker of tension in his posture more like guilt than preparation. Ifa took another step forward, and the moon shifted behind a wisp of cloud, plunging the space between them into half-shadow. The glow from the stranger’s tattoos pulsed faintly, as though reacting to the change.
“You’re Lunari,” Ifa said, more softly now.
The man gave a slow nod.
“What’s your name?”
“…Ororon.”
“Ifa,” he offered in return, placing a hand to his chest in a simple gesture of greeting. “Priest of the fifth chamber. But not a very obedient one.”
Ororon’s lips twitched. Not quite a smile, but close. “I guessed that part.”
“How?”
“You just followed the moon to be here."
Ifa laughed under his breath, a soft sound like a ripple in still water. “And you followed something else,” he said, quieter now. “What were you hoping to find?”
The Lunari named Ororon hesitated. The wind stirred the hem of his cloak, brushing against Ifa’s robes like the two of them were standing too close to something sacred.
“I wanted to see where your prayers go,” Ororon said finally, his voice nearly a whisper.
Ifa blinked. “You risked being captured by the Solari to… witness a prayer?”
“You send your words upward, to the sun shining.” Ororon murmured, looking toward the open sky. “I wanted to know if they ever reached anything. Or if they just… vanish.”
“You shouldn’t say that,” Ifa whispered, and for a moment, something trembled in his voice—not anger, but something closer to grief. “Because it sounds like something I’d say.”
Ororon looked at him again. Not as an enemy. Not even as a Solari. Just as someone who understood what it meant to speak upward and hear nothing speak back.
They stood close now. Ifa hadn’t realized how close until the breeze carried the scent of Ororon’s cloak—something earthy and sharp, like crushed leaves and iron. He looked smaller up close. Not fragile, but lithe, alert. A creature of dark places and silence, standing at the edge of the sun’s domain.
“You shouldn’t have come,” Ifa said, softer than before.
“I know.”
“But I’m glad you did.”
Ororon’s breath caught. He stared at him like he was trying to read a language he had only ever heard in dreams.
“If someone sees us,” Ifa murmured, “they’ll say we’ve committed heresy.”
“They wouldn’t be wrong,” Ororon replied, though his voice trembled slightly.
“No,” Ifa said, with a strange smile. “But they’ve never been right either.”
He watched as Ororon’s lips parted again, as if a thousand things wanted to be said but none could be risked aloud. There was a shimmer in the air now—something invisible and heavy. Not magic. Not danger. Just the unbearable possibility that this moment could have gone differently, that the laws of light and shadow could have remained intact if only they'd passed each other like strangers.
But they hadn’t.
Ifa looked at him as if seeing the night sky made human.
Ororon looked at him as if the sun had finally blinked.
“You should go now,” Ifa said, voice catching against something in his throat.
“I know.”
“If you leave now, you’ll make it. The Sun Guardian won’t ask questions. They’ll assume the wind moved the leaves again.”
“I didn’t come here to destroy anything,” Ororon said quietly.
“You did,” Ifa whispered, eyes shining. “You ruined something.”
Ororon went still.
“My peace.”
There was no bitterness in his tone. Only quiet devastation.
Still, he smiled. Just a little.
“Come back,” Ifa said. The words felt dangerous on his tongue. “If you ever can.”
“Why?”
“Because seems like you're not just a Lunari but something else, we might shared the same faith."
The fig tree shifted again, its old limbs creaking above them. Moonlight returned in full, spilling down through its branches like a blessing neither of them had earned. And then, as if he had always belonged to the mountain’s deeper shadow, Ororon turned and vanished between the columns, cloak trailing behind him like dusk returning to the sky.
Ifa stood in the garden for a long time, his pulse still echoing in his ribs, hands aching for something he had not touched.
He watched the sky for a long while after that.
And when the first light of dawn crept down the side of the mountain, gilding the moss and ancient tiles, he bowed his head and whispered a prayer no god would recognize—not to the sun, nor the mountain, nor the stars.
But to the next time they would meet.
Chapter Text
The days after a young Lunari man named Ororon left passed like smoke through Ifa’s hands—thick, clinging, but impossible to hold. Morning rites came and went. He repeated the prayers with precision, bowed with practiced grace, and offered blessings to pilgrims with the smile expected of a fifth-chamber Solari. But something in him no longer answered to light. It was subtle at first. He took longer to rise. His food went untouched more often than not. He found excuses to linger near the garden—the forgotten place behind the temple where the wind carried no hymns and the fig tree stood like a monument to silence. Sometimes he thought he could still smell the cold threads of Ororon’s cloak in the air. He told himself it was only memory. But memory had claws.
He dreamt of him. Not every night, but often enough that the mornings began with a sense of absence he could not shake. He dreamt of that uneven gaze, blue and magenta, of a face too young to look so burdened. In the dreams, Ororon didn’t speak. He only stared—through him, into him. And Ifa woke with the weight of it in his chest, ribs too tight, breath too shallow.
It made no sense. One meeting. One night. One trespass beneath the fig tree. And yet…
He felt changed. Like something had shifted beneath his skin, something tectonic and unseen.
But the sun does not wait for mourning. Nor does the temple.
On the sixth day, just before dusk, a summons came.
The elder priest was already waiting in the inner sanctum—flanked by two younger acolytes who stood still as statues, their eyes veiled in gold-threaded cloth. Ifa bowed with formality, though something in his chest stirred uneasily.
The elder did not waste words.
“There has been a breach. Several, in fact. A Lunari scout. Possibly more. Slipping past our southern wards. The paths beyond the lower ridge have been tampered with.”
Ifa stood straighter, though the words were beginning to sound like cold water.
“We believe this is not a coincidence,” the elder continued. “He was seen. Described. Dark hair. Tattoos. No weapon.”
Ifa’s breath hitched.
He masked it well.
The elder turned to him fully. “You have experience in the outer gardens. Familiarity with terrain. We trust your eyes. You are to track him. Find his path. If possible—bring him in. Alive. For questioning.”
Ifa nodded, lips pressed into a perfect line. “Yes, Master.”
He bowed again.
And when he straightened, he felt hollow.
That night, he sat alone at the edge of the mountain, just past the temple’s outer ring. The stars hung heavy above, cold and bright, as if they too watched from a distance. The wind had teeth. It bit into his robes, pulling at the golden fringe, reminding him with every gust of who he was. What he had sworn.
He should have felt honored. Trusted. Tasked with righteous purpose.
But all he felt was a slow burn beneath his ribs.
They had given him Ororon’s description without knowing the name. And Ifa—good, obedient Ifa—had bowed like the perfect sun-born son and said he would find him. The man who spoke softly beneath a dead tree. The man who asked where prayers go. The one who had broken no laws except the unspoken ones carved into the bones of this ancient war.
Ifa pressed his palms to his eyes, hard enough to see stars behind his lids. His hands shook. He wanted to curse. He wanted to laugh. He wanted to tear his own robes off and vanish into the same darkness Ororon had stepped into. But instead, he whispered. Quiet and blasphemous.
“I don’t want to find you.”
It hurt more to say it aloud.
And yet—he stood.
He picked up the satchel they gave him, with maps and incense and a blade he didn’t ask for. He walked the path alone, down the southern ridge, where the light dimmed and the mountain narrowed. Where moss grew thick and stones spoke in the old tongue if you knew how to listen. He moved like a hunter. Silent. His feet knew the rhythm. His hands marked the signs. But his heart betrayed him with every step. Because it wasn’t justice he was following.
It was a shadow.
A memory.
A young man with uneven eyes who had stood beneath a fig tree and asked what happened to words whispered to the stars.
The Solari had sent him like to hunt a criminal.
But Ifa knew the truth.
He was chasing a ghost he already missed.
It took three days to find the trail again. Three nights beneath the pale bone of Targon’s moons, chasing footsteps that refused to settle into the dust. The mountain was a cruel thing—alive in the way that old beasts are. It swallowed sound, shifted its skin, offered false trails just to watch mortals stumble. And yet, Ifa moved with purpose, with fire at his back and longing in his chest. He followed the curve of wind that smelled faintly of ash and wet stone, the scratch of moss pulled away from recent touch, the delicate shimmer of moonlight caught in faint footprints between crag and cliff.
By the time he reached the hidden shrine, the sun had already fallen, and the air had grown cold with judgment.
It wasn’t a temple, not anymore. The structure was half-collapsed, cradled inside a crevice of the mountain where no light reached, save the eerie silver spill of the larger moon above. Stone steps led downward into shadow, into an opening too deliberate to be a cave and too wild to be man-made. The walls were carved with Lunari sigils, so old their edges had softened into whispers. Moths drifted through the entrance like pale spirits. Ifa slowed his steps.
He wasn’t afraid.
Just... aware that something was about to end, or begin, or both.
He stepped inside.
The shrine was quiet. A low chamber lit by bioluminescent lichen clinging to the walls, like stars trapped in rock. The air smelled like cold earth and fading incense. And in the center, seated cross-legged beside a broken stone basin, was Ororon.
He didn’t flinch.
Didn’t move.
Only looked up slowly, eyes catching Ifa’s the moment he crossed the threshold.
One magenta. One sea-blue. That familiar quiet behind them, like he always expected to be the last thing anyone wanted to see.
Ifa exhaled, sharp and silent. His hand hovered near the hilt of his ceremonial blade. Not out of threat. Out of habit. Or fear of what came next.
“I should have known you’d find me,” Ororon said softly. His voice echoed just a little in the hollowed space, carrying a tired edge, not surprised—but resigned.
Ifa stepped forward. “You didn’t hide very well.”
A pause. Then, a breath of a smile. “Maybe I didn’t want to.”
The sun-born's jaw tensed. The words lodged behind his tongue were neither sacred nor wise. “Do you know what they sent me to do?”
Ororon nodded slowly, gaze falling to the cracked basin beside him. “Yes.”
“Then why stay here?”
“Because running never really gets me anywhere,” he said, quieter now. “I thought… if I stayed long enough, maybe you’d come instead of someone else. And it works."
“That’s—” Ifa faltered. “That’s not how this works.”
Ifa took another step forward. The air between them was thick, charged with everything they hadn’t said. “You could have made this easier.”
“I don’t want easy,” Ororon said. “I want honest.”
Ifa’s hands clenched at his sides. “Then tell me why.”
“Why I came to your garden in the first place?” Ororon asked, finally meeting his eyes again.
“Why you came at all. Why you didn’t leave. Why I dream about you every night like some damned heretic.”
Ororon’s breath hitched at that last word, a flash of emotion passing over his face—guilt, want, something rawer.
His prayer just come true one by one just before his own eyes.
“I think I wanted someone to see me,” he said quietly. “Not as a shadow. Not as a threat. Just… see me. As myself."
“And you think I did?” Ifa asked.
“You looked at me like I wasn’t a born mistake.”
Ifa’s heart pounded, painfully loud in his ears. “You’re not.”
“You said that like it cost you something.”
“It did,” Ifa whispered, stepping even closer. “Because I’m standing here, breaking every oath I ever made to my tribe, and I don’t even feel guilty anymore.”
They were only feet apart now.
Ororon stood slowly, eyes never leaving his.
He looked smaller again, in the way that people do when they’re bracing for pain. The light from the glowing lichen painted pale blue across the dark tattoos on his arms, and his cloak fell open just enough to show the lines curling up his collarbone, like moonlight etched into skin.
“I shouldn’t have remembered you,” Ifa said, voice shaking now. “It was one night. I’ve known people for years who never haunted me like you do.”
Ororon tilted his head slightly, vulnerable but calm. “Then why didn’t you bring chains? Or why didn't you just killed me like you told to?"
“Because I knew, I wouldn’t be able to let you go. Or lost you."
The words landed between them like a confession or a curse. Ororon took a trembling breath. He stepped forward, slow, measured, as if unsure Ifa would allow it.
When their foreheads touched, it was not like fire meeting fire.
It was like night finding a mirror.
Ifa’s hand came up, hesitantly, brushing Ororon’s jaw, then cupping it fully. The moment sang with tension—not passion, not yet—but the ache of restraint. Of something ancient being broken with a whisper.
“I can’t take you back to them,” Ifa murmured.
“I wouldn’t let you,” Ororon replied.
“Then what do we do?”
Ororon looked up at him, eyes glossy with something far too fragile for this world. “We leave.”
“Together?”
“If you’ll have me.”
A pause.
Then, Ifa pulled him in—gently, reverently—as though to memorize the shape of a body he would now burn temples to protect. Their lips met not like thunder, but like silence breaking. Not desperate. Not rushed. Just full. Slow. Heavy with everything they’d carried.
When they pulled apart, breathless, Ororon’s voice came in a whisper:
“Does this make me your heresy?”
Ifa smiled against his forehead, eyes closed.
“No,” he said. “You’re the only thing I’ve ever believed in.”
They found shelter in the forgotten lower ridges, far below where Solari ever tread, and too steep for Lunari shrines to survive. The wind here was thinner, laced with the dry perfume of moss and stone, and the sky felt wider—unbound from judgment. They made camp inside a hollow where the mountain had cracked long ago, splitting open like a secret too heavy to keep. Moss carpeted the floor, soft and silver under the moons, and a cold spring ran through the far wall, echoing softly into the silence.
For the first time in his life, Ifa didn’t wear white or gold.
He sat by the low fire in simple earth-toned robes, still damp from the journey. His golden earrings were gone, and his hair hung loose around his face, curling at the temples. Ororon watched him from the other side of the flame, his knees drawn to his chest, chin resting on his arms. His cloak was bundled under him like a cushion, his expression unreadable beneath the flickering light.
They hadn’t spoken much since the escape.
Too breathless at first. Then too tired. Then too afraid of saying something that couldn’t be taken back.
But the silence wasn’t empty.
It pulsed with memory. The way Ifa’s hand had lingered on Ororon’s waist during the climb. The way Ororon had caught him mid-slip and hadn’t let go for too long. The way they kept watching each other like a mirror might disappear.
Now, wrapped in dusk and firelight, the quiet turned into something unbearable.
It was Ororon who finally broke it.
“I keep waiting to feel guilty.”
Ifa looked up, startled. “What?”
Ororon didn’t lift his gaze from the flames. “For taking a hand of a sacred Solari. For kissing you. For running with you."
Ifa swallowed hard. “And do you?”
A beat passed.
“No.”
Ifa let out a breath, sharp like a cracked bone. “Me neither.”
That made Ororon finally look at him. Their eyes locked across the fire—warm gold meeting cold night, two truths that had no business being spoken aloud. And yet they held.
“I was raised to believe people like you were wrong,” Ifa said, voice low, almost ashamed. “That darkness twists the soul. That to even speak to a Lunari is to invite ruin.”
Ororon’s mouth twitched faintly. “I was raised to believe people like you would burn me alive.”
Silence again. But not empty.
“I don’t think I ever really believed them,” Ifa added, his voice softer now, like a confession offered to the moon itself. “But I never had a reason to doubt. Until I saw you. Until you looked at me like I wasn’t just light or flame in a robe.”
“You were kind,” Ororon murmured. “I wasn’t ready for that.”
Ifa looked down, watching the way his hands curled into his lap, fingertips brushing the hem of his borrowed cloak. “This isn’t just heresy. You know that, right? We’re not just breaking rules. We’re unraveling centuries.”
“I know.”
“If they catch us, they’ll tear us apart.”
“I know.”
“If I keep loving you, it will destroy everything I was.”
That made Ororon pause.
Then he stood, slow, almost unsure, and crossed the small space between them. He knelt beside Ifa—not touching, not yet—and met his eyes again. When he spoke, it was barely louder than the fire’s whisper.
“Then let it.”
Ifa stared at him. For a moment, he didn’t breathe.
Then he laughed—a broken, disbelieving sound—and pulled Ororon in with both hands, gripping the sides of his face as though to steady the spinning world.
“You say that so easily.”
“It’s not easy,” Ororon whispered, breath warm against his lips. “It’s the only thing that feels real.”
And when they kissed again, it wasn’t the slow wonder of their first time. It was need. Ache. The kind of kiss you give when there are no more answers and only one truth: I want you, even if it ruins me.
Ifa slid his hands down Ororon's back, pulling him into his lap, letting the firelight paint shadows across his skin. The moon-born went willingly, almost too light in his arms, like someone who still didn’t believe he was allowed to be held. Their mouths met again and again, deeper, slower, until Ororon was gasping into the hollow of Ifa’s throat, fingers clutching the front of his robe.
“This is wrong,” Ifa murmured, even as he kissed his cheek, his jaw, the corner of his mouth. “This is so wrong.”
Ororon shivered in his arms. “Then don’t stop.”
And Ifa didn’t.
Not until the fire burned low and the moon reached its zenith.
Not until they lay tangled in the moss, skin to skin, breath to breath, and the world felt both terrifying and entirely theirs.
In the stillness that followed, wrapped in each other’s warmth, Ifa whispered again.
“I don’t know where this path leads.”
Ororon’s reply was soft against his collarbone.
“I’ll walk it with you.”
And somewhere deep in the mountain, the old gods listened.
And—for just a moment—said nothing.
It didn’t take long for the silence to fracture.
First came the whispers—faint tremors through the stone paths that once bore only wind. Then came the symbols, carved fresh over old ruins, warnings inked in ash. And soon after, the hunters: cloaked in radiance or wrapped in shadow, blades gleaming under sun and moon alike.
The Solari believed Ifa had been stolen, seduced, defiled by a creature born of lies. The Lunari whispered worse—that Ororon had betrayed the night for the promise of warmth, that he had bared his throat to a golden knife and smiled.
Neither side knew the truth.
That love, once lit, did not care for its source.
That the fire which burned between them was made not of sun or moon, but of all that had been denied.
So they ran.
Not out of fear, but out of defiance. Out of a desperate, laughing, furious need to live. To hold each other in the dark where no god could reach them. They passed through forests too old for maps, crossed rivers that remembered older names, and climbed cliffs where even the stars blinked in unfamiliar patterns.
And still, the hunters followed.
Some nights, they could see them from a distance—tiny lights moving in the woods, Solari torches burning in disciplined rows. Other nights, Ororon would wake with his heart thundering, feeling the air shift with the pulse of Lunari magic too close to his skin.
It was only a matter of time.
But still they moved. Still they kissed. Still they slept curled together like twin threads refusing to be unwound.
They made love in abandoned temples, in wind-carved caves, beneath the gaze of wild constellations. They whispered promises they knew might break in the end. But they made them anyway.
Because sometimes, in a world carved by gods and governed by law, the most sacred thing you can do is choose.
And they had chosen.
Each other.
Even as the mountain trembled beneath the weight of war.
Even as the sun prepared its final judgment.
Even as the moon turned her face away.
Even then.
They stayed.
And somewhere in the space between divine punishment and mortal freedom, a love was carved into legend—not because it lasted, but because it dared to bloom at all.