Several months had passed since our arrival in Knot Klage, long enough for the Freljordian ice to melt from our boots and the Noxian soot to settle in our lungs. The city had not grown more welcoming, but its sharp edges had become familiar. Our small apothecary, an oasis of earthy scents amidst the smoke of the foundries, had found its rhythm, pulsing with the silent pain of the city.
The ills that came to our door were so different from those I used to treat in Demacia. There, the afflictions were often born of secrecy and suppression. I would heal mages whose powers turned inwards, sickening their bodies. I tended to the panic-fevers of men and women who lived in constant fear of being exposed. They were the diseases of a cage, however gilded.
Here, in Noxus, the pain was different. It was more honest, more brutal. I learned to read the grammar of their suffering. The soot-laden coughs of the miners, the deep burns of the blacksmiths, the infected battle wounds of legionaries who couldn't afford medical treatment. The shadow in a widow's eyes, not from mourning, but from the fear of being unable to feed her children next week. Every illness had a root that led back not to nature, but to the relentless ambition of Noxus. I wasn't just treating bodies; I was witnessing the erosion of souls under the crushing weight of an empire that never rests.
I was the root of our operation, the anchor in the knowledge of this world. I knew the plants, felt the diseases. Azra'il, however, was the flame. I watched her now, her brow furrowed in concentration over her 'refining furnace', and I saw an artist in her element. She would take the humble Iron-root, a gift of the earth I had known since childhood, and transform it into something new, something potent. Where I made a poultice, she created a pill. Where I made an infusion, she created a distillate that glowed with its own light. "You treat the sickness," she had once told me, "I rewrite the body's recipe." It was a partnership of earth and star, and it worked.
Our reputation was built on the whispers of the dispossessed, the kind of fame that cannot be bought and is, for that very reason, the most valuable. And it was this reputation that, a few weeks ago, had put us in the path of Legacy-Commander Vorlag and the Ionian wound that was rotting his soul. Healing him had been a gamble. But in Noxus, I was learning, the highest stakes brought the greatest rewards. Or the swiftest falls.
"Has the shipment of Weeping Willow arrived?" Azra'il's voice cut through my thoughts, without her turning from her cauldron.
"Yes," I replied, examining the thin branches. "They look fresh. The supplier swore they were harvested under a full moon."
"Good," she murmured. "Still not as potent as the Spirit Willow of Jadelance, but it will have to do." She turned, her blue eyes focused, the glint of the furnace flames dancing in them. "Any word from the Pompous Lady and her ivory tower?"
"No answer from the Vorth manor," I replied calmly.
Three days ago, we had taken our first step into the great game of Noxus. With the heavy iron ring of the Third Legion as our safe-conduct, we had gone to the nobility district. The Vorth Manor was an old, dark stone building that cowered between the newer, more arrogant fortresses of its neighbours. We were received by a butler who seemed to be as old as the house itself.
"Legacy-Commander Vorlag sent us," I had said, my voice calm. "He believes our services may be of interest to Lady Amoline."
The butler had vanished into the depths of the manor and returned with a polite but evasive answer: "Lady Vorth is… intrigued. She will be in touch shortly."
"She'll answer today," Azra'il said now, with the certainty of one who has read the end of the book. "Curiosity, in Noxus, is a form of ambition. And ambition always trumps caution."
As she spoke, I felt a chill on the back of my neck. I looked through our shop window and saw the figure again, standing across the street. A tall, limping man, pretending to look at a stall's wares. It was the third time I had seen him.
"Someone is watching us," I said in a low voice.
"I know," Azra'il replied without turning from her cauldron. She didn't even need to look. "Ever since we went to the manor three days ago. A tall man with a limp, and sometimes, a small, quick woman who moves like a cat. They're not city watch. They're… better. Quieter."
"Lady Vorth's servants?" I asked, my gaze on the limping man.
"It is the most likely hypothesis," she said with a shrug. "She wouldn't grant us an audience without first making her own assessment. She wanted to know if we are who we say we are, if we are discreet, if we have other contacts." She looked at me. "I think we passed her surveillance test. This invitation is the next phase."
The invitation in question was a rolled parchment delivered by the same stoic butler from the Vorth Manor, which had arrived less than an hour after Azra'il's prediction. The message was succinct, a summons rather than a request, sealed with the house's sigil of a thorny rose.
I looked at Azra'il, who viewed the world as a grand game. I, on the other hand, saw the wounds such games left behind. I felt not anxiety, but the familiar weight of an impending complication. A resigned sigh escaped me. It was the feeling of walking willingly into a spider's web, knowing that while necessary, the journey would be full of sticky threads and hidden dangers.
"And so," I said, my voice calm but laden with the solemnity of the decision, "we enter the spider's garden."
Azra'il broke the wax seal with her thumb. "Yes," she said, a thin, dangerous smile on her lips. "Let's see if her roses have thorns. Or if they're just a well-cultivated illusion."
The journey by carriage was short and soundless. The wheels seemed muffled, the windows covered by heavy velvet curtains, completely isolating us from the outside world. It was a deliberate disorientation tactic, designed to remind us that once we entered their world, we would only see what we were permitted to see. Azra'il seemed perfectly at ease, leaning back in the seat as if on a day trip, but I saw her eyes tracking, calculating the turns, the incline, mapping the route in her mind. Nothing about her was ever idle.
When the carriage stopped, the door was opened by the butler. We were in a walled, silent inner courtyard. The air here was different from the rest of the city; instead of coal and sweat, it smelt of damp earth, decaying leaves, and the heavy, cloying scent of night-blooming flowers. It was the smell of an old, neglected garden.
We followed the butler through dark corridors, our footsteps echoing softly on polished slate floors. The manor was not opulent like those of Noxus's new nobles, who flaunted their power in statues of themselves and tapestries of bloody battles. The Vorth Manor was… quiet. Its power lay not in display, but in its age. The walls were lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, filled with dark leather-bound tomes. In niches, there were no busts of generals, but artifacts from lost civilisations: a Shuriman funeral urn, an Ixtali ritual mask, a shard of True Ice that pulsed with a faint, cold light.
Azra'il paused for an instant, her gaze fixed on the shard of ice. I saw in her eyes the same hunger she'd had when reading the scrolls in the golem's tower. She did not see an artifact; she saw information, she saw power.
"Interesting," she murmured, her voice low. "An eclectic collection."
"My lady has… particular tastes," the butler said over his shoulder.
Finally, he led us to a door of reinforced glass. Behind it was a conservatory, a winter garden that stood in stark contrast to the darkness of the rest of the house. Under a glass dome that revealed a moonless, starry sky, grew a garden of exotic, beautiful, and clearly dangerous plants. I saw the bloom of an Ionian Ghost-Orchid, whose petals were known to cause vivid hallucinations, growing beside a creeper of Valoran Sleep-Thorns, whose touch induced a slumber from which few awoke. It was a garden of secrets and poisons. And in its centre, reclining on an ornate wicker chair and covered by dark silk blankets, was Lady Amoline Vorth.
She did not look like a figure of power. She was an older woman, so frail she seemed made of dry parchment. Her skin was pale, her silver hair pulled back in a severe bun. Her breathing was shallow, punctuated by a dry, discreet cough that made her shudder. But her eyes… when they fixed on us, they were sharp, intelligent, and devoid of any fragility. They were eyes that had seen the rise and fall of powerful men, and had, no doubt, orchestrated some of them. She wore her illness like a disguise, a shield of pity that hid a mind like a blade.
"The Shadow Healer and her… prodigy apprentice," she said, her voice a thin whisper that nonetheless cut through the humid air of the conservatory. "An interesting reputation you have built. And in so short a time. Legacy-Commander Vorlag sings your praises in a manner that is almost… poetic. A rare thing for a man whose primary form of expression involves an axe."
She gestured to two chairs opposite her. "Sit. And tell me. How did you heal a wound on the soul with herbs and pills?"
The question was a test. A trap. To reveal magic openly to a Noxian noble, however reclusive, was a monumental risk.
Azra'il, to my surprise, answered first. "The soul is not separate from the body, my lady. They are two strings on the same harp. When one is out of tune, the other vibrates in dissonance." She leaned forward. "The commander did not have a sickness of the soul. He had a poisoned memory that was sickening his body. We did not remove the poison. We just gave his body the strength to metabolise it."
Lady Vorth smiled, a thin movement of her pale lips. "A diplomatic answer. And a technically correct one." Her eyes moved from Azra'il to me, and her expression grew more intense, more calculating. "But incomplete."
"I have dealt with mages my whole life, Shadow Healer," she went on, her voice a cutting whisper. "I know their tells. The scent of ozone from the battlemages, the subtle shimmer of the illusionists, the reek of sulphur from the demonologists." Her eyes narrowed, trying to pierce my disguise, trying to decipher the enigma I presented.
"But you…" she said, tilting her head. "I feel none of that from you. I feel… a quietness. A vast power, contained with a discipline I have rarely seen, like an ocean sleeping under a thin sheet of ice." Her gaze travelled over my dark robes. "It is subtle, yes. Contained, certainly. But it is there. Deep and ancient as the night itself. You are no simple herbalist from a distant village."
I held her gaze, neither confirming nor denying. I let the silence answer for me. The fact that she could sense the *absence* of a typical magical signature was more telling than any display of power.
"And you are no simple collector of plants, Lady Vorth," I countered, my voice calm, shifting the focus back to her.
The tension in the room became palpable. Azra'il watched the scene in silence, like someone observing a chess match, waiting for the decisive move.
"Indeed," the noblewoman said. She coughed, a dry, rattling sound that left her breathless for a moment. I saw, in the conservatory's dim light, a fleeting glint on her hand as she moved it from her lips. Like diamond dust. "Which brings me to why you are here. This… condition…" she gestured to her own frail chest, "...has confounded the finest apothecaries and healers in the empire. They give me opiates for the pain and tell me to breathe 'better air'."
The vulnerability in her voice was real, but her eyes remained sharp, assessing our reaction. I took a step forward, my face shrouded by my hood.
"If you will permit us, my lady," I said, my voice calm and respectful, "we would like to examine. A remedy is only as good as the diagnosis that precedes it."
She hesitated, the natural Noxian suspicion warring with the hope in her eyes. She studied us for a long moment, then gave a short, imperceptible nod. The butler, who had been standing like a statue at the entrance, took a step forward, but the noblewoman stopped him with a wave of her hand.
I approached her, my movements slow and deliberate so as not to startle her. With the permission of her gaze, I gently placed two fingers on her wrist. It was weak, rapid, with a subtle tremor like the wings of a trapped hummingbird. I closed my eyes and extended my perception beyond her skin, feeling the flow of her life, the labour of her lungs.
It was then that I felt it. The tissue degeneration was clear, but the cause was no common illness. There was something else, something foreign. A persistent, subtle, malignant energy, woven into the very fabric of her lungs, growing like a patient vine. It was old magic, linked to death and a cruel beauty, something that recalled the dark legends of the Blessed Isles before their fall.
"This is not a sickness," I said, withdrawing my hand, my voice quiet. "This is a poison. Slow, deliberate, of alchemical and magical origin."
Azra'il, who had been observing silently, requested permission with a look at Lady Vorth. The noblewoman, intrigued, nodded again. Azra'il did not touch her skin. Instead, she hovered her hand inches from her chest, her blue eyes unfocused as if she were looking at something inside her.
"The crystallisation is extensive," Azra'il said, her voice clinical and terribly precise. "A form of tissue petrification of a botanical-metallic origin. The dust you cough is not a symptom; it is the poison itself, propagating." She looked at me, and I knew she was translating what she saw into a language I would understand, and one that the noblewoman would too, terrifyingly so. "The Qi… her Lung energy is not merely stagnating; it is being replaced, molecule by molecule, with a parasitic crystal structure. The city air does not poison you. It only feeds the corrosion that is already inside you."
Lady Vorth, who had no doubt heard dozens of vague and confusing diagnoses, was silent for the first time. For the first time, someone had not just described her symptoms, but had understood the mechanics of her slow death with brutal clarity.
"And can you," she asked, her voice a taut whisper, the facade of control finally cracking, "correct this… crystallisation?"
"To remove the crystals would be like tearing the roots of a tree that has grown around your heart. It would kill you," I said, honestly. "But we can… halt the growth. Strengthen your tissues so they can resist the invasion."
Azra'il opened a small leather pouch on her belt and took out a single, dark green pill, which looked almost black in the conservatory's soft light. She held it between her thumb and forefinger. "A palliative," she said, her voice practical. "'Pill of the Earth's Awakening'. Made with ground essence of Liveroot and Dew of Petrified Moss, harvested under a waning moon. It will not remove the crystals, but it will nourish the life energy of your lungs, giving them the strength to contain the blight. It will dissolve the smaller particles and lubricate the energy channels so that you may breathe without feeling like you're inhaling broken glass."
She looked directly at Lady Vorth, unblinking. "A sample of our work."
The butler stepped forward instinctively, as if to stop his lady from ingesting an unknown poison. But Lady Vorth raised a trembling hand to stay him. She held her hand out to Azra'il. "Give it to me."
Azra'il did not hesitate. With a firm gesture, she placed the small, dark green pill in the noblewoman's wrinkled palm.
Lady Vorth didn't swallow it at once. Instead, she held it up between her thumb and forefinger, close to her shrewd eyes. I saw her lips move in a silent murmur, an incantation of analysis so subtle that most mages would not have noticed. A faint, almost invisible blueish aura emanated from her fingers, enveloping the pill.
Her jaw dropped. Not in pain or physical shock, but in pure, absolute magely disbelief. I knew what she was seeing. She wasn't just seeing ground-up ingredients. She was seeing the pill's internal structure, the way Azra'il had woven the herbs' essences together with a pure, stable energy, creating a miniature energetic matrix. To Noxian apothecaries, a remedy was a chemical mixture. This, in her hand, was an artifact.
"This…" she whispered, her voice full of awe and a touch of fear. "The energy within this is… pure. Stable. It is not wild magic. It is… architected. In all my life, in all the grimoires I have read, I have never seen a confection such as this." Her eyes moved from the pill to Azra'il's impassive face, and for the first time, I saw the great Lady Vorth, the player of shadows, look utterly bewildered.
Then, with a new understanding of what she was about to ingest, with a confidence born not of desperation but of proof of impossible mastery, she brought the pill to her lips and swallowed it without water.
The effect was not explosive, but it was profound. A shiver ran through her frail body as the pill's pure energy began to nourish her damaged tissues. Her eyes widened. She took a breath. And for the first time since we had entered, her breath was not a shallow, painful hiss. It was a deep, full inhalation that made her shoulders rise. The sound of air filling her lungs for the first time in a very long time. A single tear of pure relief trickled down her pale cheek.
"Impressive," she whispered, her voice stronger, the word now laden not just with relief, but with a terrified respect.