Leaving Demacia behind was like finally letting out a breath I hadn't known I'd been holding for six years. The patrolled roads gave way to trails woven between rolling hills, where the only authority was that of the wind and the seasons. The lands to the north, on the wild border with the Freljord, were a nameless territory on the maps, a scar of valleys and ancient forests that both Demacia, with its order, and Noxus, with its ambition, preferred to ignore. It was a place of silence, echoes, and forgetting.
And Azra'il, away from the suffocating atmosphere of Demacia, blossomed. The curiosity she'd kept under a veil of sarcasm now ran free. She didn't walk; she investigated. She would stop to analyse the formation of a quartz crystal with the focus of a geologist, or to watch a hawk circling in the sky, muttering to herself about aerodynamics and air pressure.
To me, it sounded like the cute and precocious monologue of a child; in reality, I knew it was a heated debate she was waging within her own vast mind. And she began to hum. Not children's songs I could recognise, but complex, wordless melodies that seemed as ancient as the wind itself, full of harmonies a child's throat should not know.
"That," I said one day, pointing to a vibrant red mushroom growing at the base of an oak, "is a Firecap. Pretty, but if you touch it, it releases spores that will make you sneeze for three days straight. A natural defence spell."
"Primitive," she replied, prodding it with a stick from a safe distance. "A mucus-based alarm system. A well-placed aversion rune would be more efficient and less disgusting."
It was in this strange garden, between botany lessons and tactical analyses of fungi, that our journey found its rhythm. The road was no longer an escape; it was a classroom.
It was on one such afternoon that the world seemed to hold its breath. We were following a dry streambed when the forest opened into a hidden valley. The vegetation here was different, the trees pale and gnarled, with bark that looked like stone. Petricite. In the centre of the valley, like the bone of some long-dead creature, stood a ruin. A single tower, broken like a tooth, and the outlines of foundations reclaimed by the earth. It was an architecture I hadn't seen in centuries, of the Old Magic, from an era when stone was shaped by power, not used to contain it.
And at the entrance to the collapsed tower, there was a guardian.
At first glance, it seemed part of the ruin itself, a colossal statue covered in moss and ivy. It was a golem, the size of three men on horseback. It was motionless. 'Offline'. But as I drew closer, I felt something beyond the numbness of stone. I felt a deep, heavy melancholy that seemed to have saturated the air over countless centuries. Less a monster and more a monument to solitude.
Azra'il stopped beside me, the jian on her back looking like a toy. Her blue eyes scanned the golem, not with fear, but with the cool analysis of an engineer appraising an old bridge.
"Interesting," she murmured. "An automaton construct with an almost-depleted power matrix. Probably an abandoned border warden. Its programming must have entered a low-power mode... centuries ago."
"It's sad," I said, the feeling as clear as a bell in my soul.
Azra'il gave me a look that mixed scepticism with pity for my sensitivity. "It's a pile of enchanted rocks, Morgana. Rocks don't get 'sad'. They erode."
"No," I insisted, taking a step forward. "It's... mourning." I touched the cold, rough surface of the golem's leg.
A glimpse, an echo of memory, travelled up my hand. The tower, whole and white, filled not with soldiers, but with shelves. Books. The scent of paper and knowledge. And the golem, moving slowly between the aisles, not as a guard, but as a protector. It was the last librarian of a library that had turned to ash.
"We're going in," I said. "Carefully."
The interior was a hollow, blackened shell. The wooden shelves had turned to charcoal and dust long ago. But the stone structure, though broken, remained. Azra'il, however, saw something I didn't. Her eyes moved quickly, looking not at the rubble, but at the walls, at the vaulted ceiling.
"This wasn't just a library," she said, her voice low and full of a technical admiration. "It was an active knowledge repository. The runes on the walls aren't decorative. They're archiving catalysts. They didn't just store the books; they extracted and stored the information within memory crystals." She pointed to shards of opaque quartz on the floor. "Almost all of them destroyed. What a waste."
While I felt the ghost-pain of the place, the loss of so much knowledge, Azra'il was in her element. She moved with the silent efficiency of a woodland creature, her small feet barely raising any dust. Her fingers brushed against the walls, tracing the remains of runic inscriptions. Her eyes seemed to devour the information, moving with a surprising speed, absorbing details I could barely register.
Suddenly, she 'stumbled'. Her small body fell near the west wall, the fall cushioned by her hands. It looked like a childish accident, but the movement was too precise. As she got up, she passed a hand over a loose stone block as if just steadying herself. I heard a soft, almost inaudible click, and the block retracted, revealing a small, dark cavity. Before I could even register what had happened, she had already thrust a hand inside, retrieved whatever was hidden, and slipped it under her tunic with the agility of a seasoned cutpurse.
She stood, dusting off her clothes with an expression of utter innocence. "Nothing," she said, before I could even ask. "Just a loose stone."
I stared at her. She held my gaze with those impossible blue eyes, unflinching. I decided not to press the issue. Her secrets, I was learning, were as much a part of her as her silver hair. As long as they didn't put us in immediate danger, I could wait.
When we left, the golem was still there, motionless...
"It's starving for magic to survive," I explained to Azra'il. "But it refuses to absorb any, because the last magic it felt was the magic that destroyed all this."
Azra'il scratched her chin. "A logical flaw. Its self-preservation protocol is in direct conflict with its associative trauma. It will erode into inanition."
To her, it was a technical problem. To me, it was a wound that needed to be cleaned. "Stay here," I told her. I sat down in front of the slumbering giant.
And I began to feed it. Not with the chaotic magic that frightened it, but with mine. Threads of calm energy that smelt of damp earth and willow leaves. I wove runes of 'peace', 'memory', and 'rest' into the air. I sang, not with my voice, but with my soul. A lullaby to soothe a millennia-old grief.
At first, nothing happened. Then, the ivy on its body trembled. It was absorbing, but with tremendous reluctance. It needed more. A bridge.
"Azra'il," I called without opening my eyes. "I need you. Come here. Put your hands on the stone with me."
She scrunched up her face. She did not look pleased about this.
"Trust me."
Reluctantly, she came closer and placed her small hands beside mine. "And now? Do we sing 'kumbaya' for the rock pile?"
"Just… feel. And think of something… safe. A peaceful memory." And then, I channelled my magic through her. Her innate energy, pure and incredibly potent, acted as a filter, an amplifier. The 'water' was mine, but the 'spring' was hers. Our combined magic, mine woven from earth and sorrow, hers from stars and knowledge, was something new. Something the golem didn't fear.
It reacted. The light in its eyes glowed softly. With a low grinding of stone, its chest opened, revealing a protected compartment. A single mechanical arm extended what it had guarded for a thousand years. A small book, bound in faded blue leather.
Azra'il took it first, her childlike curiosity overriding her caution. Her eyes, normally analytical and calm, widened for a fraction of a second. I could see a spark of genuine surprise in them, perhaps even delight.
When she finally handed it to me, I understood her surprise. The book did not contain powerful spells or state secrets. It was a beautifully illustrated book of children's stories. The golem hadn't been guarding a weapon; it had been guarding a memory of innocence.
"Thank you," I whispered to the golem. Its task was done. The light in its eyes dimmed, but this time, it seemed peaceful.
We left the valley as the shadows began to lengthen. "It was bound by a promise it could no longer keep," Azra'il said, her voice lower than usual. "A logical flaw."
"No," I corrected her, gently. "It's called purpose. And sometimes, the greatest kindness is helping someone to finally rest from it. Logic doesn't always have the answers, little star."
That night, our fire crackled more loudly, fighting against the chill that seeped into the forest. Snow was falling softly outside, small white plumes dancing in the dark. After our simple supper of roasted roots and dried meat, Azra'il, who would normally be in her sleeping bag practising her breathing meditations, remained seated, staring at the little blue book I had placed beside me. She didn't ask. She waited. A silent form of expectation that had become her language.
I picked up the book. The leather was smooth and cool under my fingers, carrying the silence of centuries. I opened it to the first page, where the script was elegant and flowing.
"'Lullabies for a Lonely Star'," I read the title aloud. Azra'il tilted her head, a rare interest shining in her blue eyes in the firelight.
I turned the page and began the first story. My voice, usually used for runic murmurs or quiet commands, felt strange reading words from so long ago.
"Once upon a time," I began, "in the vast and frigid lands of the north, where the sky itself is made of ice, there was a bridge."
The story spoke of the Freljord, but an ancient, almost mythical Freljord.
"The bridge was made not of wood or stone, but of frozen moonlight, and it only appeared on the coldest nights, when winter showed its teeth. It linked the mortal world to the vault of the heavens, where the gods kept their oldest secrets. And guarding this bridge was a lonely giant. Not a troll or a bear, but an ancient elk-man, the last of his kind, forged from the very ice of the mountains. His name was Hjorthar."
Azra'il leaned forward slightly. The name seemed to resonate with her. Her eyes narrowed minimally, the casual glint giving way to an analytical intensity. It was the same look she had when she was deciphering complex runes or observing the mechanism of a trap. Her mind was clearly at work, connecting dots I could not see.
I continued to read, the story drawing me in.
"Hjorthar, the Frost-Giant, was not evil. But he was fierce and solitary. He guarded the bridge not to protect the gods' secrets, but to stop the greed of mortals from bringing ruin to the world. Many heroes tried to cross. Many failed. He defeated them not with fury, but with the strength of winter itself: the cold that freezes hope, the blizzard that erases the path, the silence that drives the soul to madness."
"But one day, a child was lost in the snow. A girl with eyes as clear as river ice and a heart that knew no fear. She met the giant not with a sword, but with a song. The song was not of bravery or glory. It was a simple melody about a lonely star searching for a home."
The story ended bittersweetly. The girl's song did not defeat the giant, but it soothed his solitude. In return, he did not let her cross the bridge. Instead, he broke off a shard of his own antler, a piece of true-ice that would never melt, and gave it to her.
"'Take this,'" I read the giant's final words. "'As long as this ice remains whole, winter will sing its song, but it will never take your heart. And the path home will always be lit by starlight.'"
I closed the book. A deep silence settled between us, broken only by the crackle of the fire.
"So," Azra'_il said finally, her voice thoughtful. "It's a story about a lonely guardian and an act of kindness that didn't break his promise, but made his burden lighter. Like the golem."
"Exactly," I said, surprised at the quickness of her insight.
"And about this 'Hjorthar'..." she went on, and her tone changed, becoming more investigative. Her blue eyes studied me with a seriousness that went beyond childish curiosity. "The story calls him an elk-man. The scrolls in the tower mentioned the great demigods, like the bear Valhir or the forge-god Ornn. But this 'Hjorthar' is different. The rune for his name was ancient, yet simpler."
I was impressed, not just that she remembered, but how she cross-referenced the information, turning a fairytale into a piece of historical research. "Yes," I admitted, the memory of old tales I heard in my youth resurfacing. "He is. The legends say Hjorthar is not like the great Demigods of the Freljord. He is a lesser deity, perhaps. The personification of the mountain itself, of winter's relentless solitude. Not a god of the forge or the storm, but the spirit of silence and eternal ice. Few remember his name now; he belongs to lullabies and cautionary tales."
She looked at the book in my hands with a new respect, that of a scholar discovering a lost text. "So this book isn't just fairytales. It's a fragment of lost history. A piece of 'true-ice'."
She was silent for a moment, watching the flames. The fire reflected in her eyes, making them look even more like night skies.
"Morgana," she said, and the use of my name alerted me that what was coming next was serious. "This 'moonlight bridge'... to the 'vault of the heavens'. It's a metaphor, isn't it?"
"Probably," I said, though an ancient part of me wondered if that was all it was. "A metaphor for a challenge, a test of the spirit."
"Perhaps," she said, and a small, secretive smile touched her lips. "Or perhaps it's just a real bridge. And perhaps what's on the other side is worth a visit."
A shiver ran down my spine, and it wasn't from the growing chill. The way she said that, with such calm conviction... suddenly, our journey to the Freljord no longer seemed like just a crossing. It felt like it had just gained a destination.
I watched her, the old-child, whose mind seemed to already be racing ahead of us, drawing maps on unseen landscapes and calculating probabilities only she knew. There was a determination in her stillness that was both inspiring and a little frightening.
"Get some sleep, Azra'il," I said, my voice softer than I'd intended. "The Freljord is a cold place. You'll need all your energy."
She nodded, finally snuggling down into her sleeping bag. But before she closed her eyes, she gave me one last look, full of a promise of trouble and adventure.
"And you, Morgana," she said, "are going to need more potent lullabies."
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AUTHOR'S NOTE
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This chapter was quite different, more contemplative and full of symbolism. I'd love to hear what you thought of the encounter with the librarian golem and Hjorthar's story 🌙❄️