Morgana - POV
Then, finally, she looked at Azra'il.
And her expression changed completely.
It did not soften, for her face maintained the same intensity, the same absolute attention she dedicated to everything within this sacred space. But it gained an additional layer of something bordering on reverence. As if she were looking not at a thirteen-year-old child dressed in practical traveller's clothes, but at something ancient and vast disguised in youth, like a wolf wearing sheepskin not to deceive, but because sheepskin was the only vessel available to contain what truly lay inside.
As if she saw what I, blind in the mundane familiarity of years travelling side-by-side, had failed to notice for a shamefully long time.
She approached Azra'il, not abruptly, not with haste born of careless curiosity, but with a slow and deliberate movement that was half respect and half caution, like approaching a wild animal that could be magnificent or dangerous depending entirely on how the encounter unfolded. Giving time. Space. An opportunity to retreat if her presence was unwanted, if proximity was a threat rather than an offering.
But Azra'il did not retreat. My daughter never retreated. She simply observed with that quiet, calculated intensity she used when assessing if a situation was a threat demanding defence or an opportunity meriting exploration, blue eyes fixed, body still but not tense, waiting with the patience of a predator who had learned through bitter experience that hasty movement cost more than it was worth.
The priestess crouched when she reached an appropriate distance, bending her knees until she was at eye level with Azra'il. Not the condescending gesture of an adult feigning equality with a child. Egalitarian. As if acknowledging a fundamental truth that the body ignored, but the soul screamed: that a difference in height was an accident of temporary flesh, not a reflection of minds.
"A child who speaks like an elder scholar," she murmured, voice low but carrying a genuine admiration that resonated in the surrounding space like a distant bell. "Rare to see. Valuable when found. Most children waste youth on games that teach nothing. Most elders waste wisdom in silence that helps no one. But you..." she studied Azra'il's face with the attention of an artist memorising a masterpiece, "you waste neither youth nor wisdom. Interesting. Very interesting."
She extended a hand, not invading personal space, not demanding permission that wasn't offered, simply presenting a possibility Azra'il could freely accept or reject. And when Azra'il did not recoil, when she merely continued observing with that motionless calm, calloused but surprisingly warm fingers gently touched Azra'il's chin, turning her face slightly towards the light filtering through the irregular cracks in the stone.
Blue-green light. Underwater. Like looking at the world through metres of ocean that transformed everything into mystery even as it revealed form. Light that did not hide, yet did not explain; it simply showed, leaving the observer to decide what truth meant.
Revealing in ways ordinary sunlight could never be.
Studying.
Not superficial appearance, not eye colour or face shape or any physical characteristic. Studying the essence. The part that remained constant even when everything else changed.
"But the eyes are not those of a child," she continued, voice dropping to a murmur that was more vocalised thought than a statement intended for an audience. As if conversing with herself, processing an observation that defied expectations and demanded complete recategorisation. "They are old. Weary in a deep way that does not match young, unwrinkled skin; that does not match blood still hot and vibrant with new life; that does not match a body which has barely begun the journey through decades most consider inevitable."
She withdrew her hand but remained crouched, maintaining eye level as if looking up or down would fundamentally alter the nature of communication. Looking at Azra'il with an intensity bordering on something sacred, something reverent, not the reverence of a devotee before a god, but the recognition of an ordinary person finding something extraordinary masquerading as ordinary. Something that shouldn't exist, but did nonetheless, defying the comfortable categories the mind used to organise reality.
"You also carry weight," she said, and now there was absolute certainty in her voice, as if there were no room for doubt or debate regarding a truth she saw with a clarity transcending mundane sight. "Weight that shouldn't fit in such a small body. Weight that..." she tilted her head, thick braids swaying with the soft sound of ancient shells clinking against one another, a sound that was half music, half warning, "weight that is not of this life alone. Not of this single incarnation. But of something else. Something prior."
My heart raced, not gradually, but abruptly, as if skipping an entire beat before compensating with a frantic rhythm that made blood roar in my ears.
The word exploded in my mind, not as an articulated thought, but as a visceral shock.
Incarnation. Prior. Lives before this one?
Implications cascaded like an avalanche, each thought triggering a dozen others, each doubt revealing an abyss of things I had not allowed myself to perceive, that I had not questioned when I should have, because the signs were there, had always been there, screaming truths I had chosen not to hear.
Because deep down, in a part of me I preferred not to examine too closely, I knew.
Wisdom that did not match lived years. Knowledge that could not have been acquired through reading alone, no matter how extensive. Exhaustion in eyes that spoke of more than one had ostensibly lived. Weariness, not of a young body, but of something deeper, more fundamental, older. And I had attributed it all to exceptional intelligence. To obsessive reading. To maturity forced by circumstance.
Convenient explanations.
Convenient lies.
Which I had accepted, because accepting the truth, that the baby I found in that forest was not just an extraordinary child, but something else, something transcending simple categories of a first life or a soul that had lived before, died before, returned before, would require confronting questions I did not know how to answer.
That perhaps I did not want to answer.
I hadn't even let myself consider the possibility that...
But before I could fully process it, before I could formulate a question or demand an explanation or do any of the things my mind screamed to know, the priestess stood up—a fluid, graceful motion speaking of years training the body to respond to will without hesitation, without internal resistance—and extended her hand to me.
Not to Azra'il this time.
To me.
A formal gesture. An appropriate introduction that protocol demanded even in a place that clearly rejected most protocols societies built as defences against chaos.
"I am Yara," she said, voice returning to normal volume and formality, as if the moment of intimate, reverent observation had passed and we were now returning to conventional social interaction—though "conventional" was a strange word to apply to anything within this temple. "Priestess, if you insist on titles and categories that Demacian hierarchy values so much, that Piltover structure demands for function, that even Noxus in all its brutality uses to organise chaos. But really, truly, I am simply someone who listens to the Serpent when She speaks through tides and dreams and moments of sudden clarity, and moves when Nagakabouros indicates a direction through signs others would interpret as coincidence, but which I have learned to recognise as a call."
I took her hand. Firm. Calloused in a way that only came from constant, intense physical labour; from carrying weight and handling ropes and performing dozens of tasks that the body of a noble or mage or anyone living through privilege would never know. The hand of someone who did not know the luxury of idleness, who had no servants to do heavy lifting, who understood the value of physical effort not as an abstract concept, but as a daily reality lived through burning muscles and running sweat and the deep satisfaction of work well done.
"Morgana," I offered, the name coming more easily than I expected in a place where secrets seemed impossible to keep. Then, looking at Azra'il with a mixture of affection and now also a newly awakened confusion I would have to process later when my mind was not overloaded with sudden revelations: "And my daughter, Azra'il."
"Daughter," Yara repeated, tasting the word as if testing its weight, texture, and veracity; rolling it on her tongue like a wine demanding careful appreciation before judgement. Her eyes, brown so dark they bordered on black in the shadows, moved between me and Azra'il, comparing, assessing, seeing in ways that went beyond physical resemblance to reach something deeper and truer.
Then she nodded slowly, accepting the declaration without further questioning, without demanding proof of blood ties or explanations of how a fallen celestial and an apparently human child became family.
"Yes," she said finally, satisfaction in her voice. "I see the bond. Not of blood; blood is merely red liquid everyone shares, nothing special in that. Deeper. A chosen bond. Forged through conscious decision, not accident of birth or convenience of proximity."
She gestured vaguely around with her free hand, a movement encompassing the entire temple in a broad arc capturing stone and wood and water and air and the heavy atmosphere of condensed belief.
"You came to learn about Nagakabouros," she said, turning the observation into a statement that invited confirmation but did not demand it. "Why?"
A simple question in structure.
An answer too complex for words to adequately capture, too vast to be contained in phrases a mortal mind would process, too deep to be communicated without risking multiple attempts, failures, and approximations that came close but never quite hit the mark.
I looked at the central idol of Nagakabouros, at tentacles of black wood coiling upwards and outwards as if frozen mid-motion, captured in a perpetual moment between action and repose, yet suggesting that with the right breath or right word or right 'faith', they could continue the movement they were always destined to complete. At eyes that saw despite being dead wood carved by hands centuries turned to dust; eyes that knew despite being incapable of biological sight. At a presence pulsing through the space like a giant heartbeat despite being still, despite being impossible.
"Because," I began slowly, assembling truth from fragments of thoughts I usually kept carefully separated in different mental compartments, isolated from one another as if contact between them could cause an explosion or collapse or some other internal catastrophe I preferred to avoid, "I am trying to understand how justice functions in a place that rejects codified law. How compassion survives and even thrives without order imposed from above through force or threat or manipulation of fear. How..."
Deep breath, drawing in air that tasted of salt and incense and time accumulated across centuries.
"How to live, truly live, not merely exist in a state of suspension between deaths, without stagnating, when every celestial instinct I carry screams at me to impose structure. To force correction through power I possess but refuse to use fully. To control what I observe but cannot, must not, control if I wish to remain different from what I swore never to become: control through domination or manipulation or any of the dozens of methods that power makes possible, but morality makes impermissible."
Memories threatened to surface, wings unfurled, burning with light that did not distinguish between guilty and innocent, only between those who obeyed and those who did not. Judgements pronounced from impossible heights without ever descending to understand context or circumstance or the pain driving people to desperate choices.
Always that shadow. That presence haunting me even across centuries of separation and continents of distance.
But I pushed the memories down with the practice of millennia. Not now. Not here. Not when I was already too vulnerable, too exposed, too raw to bear the additional weight of a past that never truly passed.
"Ahhh." A sound of understanding escaped Yara, not complete understanding; how could it be complete when not even I fully understood all the layers and contradictions and paradoxes of the choices I had made? But genuine. Deep. Resonant. The sound of someone recognising a familiar truth even when specific details were unknown. "You know someone like that," she said, and it wasn't a question. It was an observation presented with the care of one treading ground that could be sacred or an open wound depending entirely on how it was touched. "Someone who flies free and judges from above. Who never needs to come down. Who never needs to live with the consequences of judgements pronounced from a height where people seem too small to matter individually."
The description was too precise to be coincidence. Too painful to be mere abstract philosophical speculation. Too true to be anything other than a direct recognition of something she had seen reflected in me with a clarity I could never completely hide.
"Yes," I whispered finally, for a lie would be futile here, in this place where Nagakabouros seemingly saw through dissimulation as easily as I saw through mundane darkness.
Yara nodded slowly, a movement of the head that was half understanding and half something close to mourning, not for me, but for the universal situation she recognised; for a pattern of tragedy repeating across cultures and eras whenever power met rigidity and rigidity refused to bend even when bending was the only way to avoid breaking completely.
Then she smiled.
Not a small or hesitant smile. Broad. Genuine. Carrying the warmth of the sun rising over the ocean, of a bonfire on a cold night, of acceptance that did not demand perfection as a prerequisite for worth.
"The Serpent will like you," she said with absolute conviction admitting no doubt. "Troublesome, yes, definitely troublesome. Conflicted in ways that would take decades to untangle completely. Carrying guilt from past decisions you should have processed and released centuries ago, that you should have transformed into learned lessons instead of open wounds continually self-inflicted, but which you keep fresh and bleeding through constant self-flagellation, as if present pain could somehow compensate for past errors that never faded. But..."
She took a step closer, eliminating distance until we were near enough that I could feel the heat radiating from her skin, the scent of salt and honest sweat and something deeper that was the essence of a person who lived completely, without reserves, without a part of the soul stored away in case of emergency.
"But honest about all of it. Not hiding behind a pretence of perfection. Not pretending that chains do not exist or that choice was easy or without cost. And honest movement, even uncertain movement, even painful movement, even movement that is merely a slow crawl through seemingly eternal darkness hoping for light that may never arrive, yet searching for it nonetheless, is sacred to the Serpent."
She gestured deeper into the temple, towards thick shadows where the blue-green light did not fully reach; where corridors disappeared into darkness suggesting impossible depth; where the sound of running water echoed from a source I could not locate but knew was there, somewhere, connecting everything in ways architecture alone did not explain.
"Come," she said, voice carrying the authority of a guide who knew the territory but also the invitation of a friend offering to share something precious. "There is someone who needs to meet you. Someone who sees the truth with a clarity that makes my vision seem blurred in comparison; who speaks with authority that makes my voice seem a weak and distant echo of real power. Someone who not only worships the Serpent, but carries the Serpent in her soul so completely and deeply that I merely carry it in superficial tattoos carved in skin and faith articulated in words that fail to capture fully what I try to convey."
"Who?" Azra'il asked, voice carefully controlled in the neutral tone she used when curiosity fought against caution, when she wanted to know, but also feared what she might discover.
Yara pronounced the name as if invoking a storm from a distant horizon; as if calling the tide during a full moon when the ocean responded to cosmic forces humans did not control; as if every syllable carried the weight of an entire ocean behind it:
"Illaoi."
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Author's Note 🌊🐙
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This chapter was basically:
Yara 🤝 looks at Azra'il for 5 seconds
Yara: "yeah… this one comes with lore."
Morgana spent the entire chapter having a quiet existential breakdown while pretending she's totally fine, because admitting your daughter might have past-life DLC installed is a therapy topic, not a temple conversation.
Nagakabouros, as usual, does not care about purity, order, or people who have their lives together. She wants movement. Messy movement. Guilty movement. "I'm walking forward even while bleeding" movement.