Over the next few days—or rather, over the next stretch of time—Zihark kept leading Kai'Sa through the dark, avoiding danger and searching for prey.
Time had already lost its shape in the endless black. What day was it now? What year?
Sometimes they tried climbing upward through the tunnels, but without tools, and with bodies too small to scale sheer rock walls, every attempt ended the same way: abandoned halfway through.
Better to wait until the Void living armor covered them completely. Then they could try climbing to the surface again.
Because Zihark was deliberately funneling resources into Kai'Sa, her armor developed quickly.
He watched it spread little by little from her forearm to her shoulder, and it was no exaggeration to say that as long as she kept her balance, she could easily carry him one-handed for several miles.
By now, Zihark barely dared let her hug him. He was half afraid she would squeeze too hard and crack a few of his ribs.
At the moment, Kai'Sa looked like a pure strength fighter. But compared to the Void creatures infesting this place, that level of strength still meant very little.
The two of them had once gone back to the ruins of the collapsed village to look for a way out. Their thinking was simple: if the village had fallen from above, then surely there had to be an opening somewhere over the wreckage.
Instead, they found the ruins occupied by a swarm of voidspawn.
To dig up the cold bodies buried beneath the rubble, they watched one voidspawn shove aside a boulder several times its own size, drag out a corpse, and tear into it greedily. It did not even leave the bones behind.
They were not picky in the slightest. Fresh meat, rotten flesh, organs, bones—if it was organic, they would eat it.
Seeing the villagers' bodies desecrated like that sent Kai'Sa into a rage. She rushed forward and met a goat-sized voidspawn blade for blade with her armored arm. The result was immediate: its bladed limb knocked her arm aside with overwhelming force, and she came away injured.
The moment Zihark sensed the countless voidspawn in the ruins beginning to converge, he grabbed her and ran, pulling her far away.
They never went back.
After that, Zihark understood something clearly.
No matter how much they evolved, people like them—humans merely wrapped in a layer of Void flesh—would never be able to match true Void creations in raw strength.
Those things were one hundred percent made in the Void. He and Kai'Sa had only been packaged by it. Underneath, they were still human.
If the usual limits that kept insect-like life from growing too large—oxygen delivery, nerve conduction, and the rest—simply stopped mattering, would humans still stand at the top of nature?
Obviously not.
Intelligence alone was nowhere near enough to bridge such a hopeless gap in strength, speed, and durability.
Maybe that was why so many Void creatures took on such monstrous insect-like forms.
But Kai'Sa had never truly been meant to fight as a powerhouse. Once the living armor covered her completely, the real direction of her evolution would begin to show: unnatural speed, enough to leave these voidspawn far behind on her own two legs.
And paired with that would come terrifying ranged power.
In time, the Void armor would evolve the ability to unleash strange flames and plasma, bringing blazing destruction down on the creatures of the Void.
That was the main reason Zihark was giving most of their resources to Kai'Sa.
Her path of evolution was clear, and useful. As for him, he seemed to rely more on mental control to support their fights than on the armor itself, so he might as well step back and let her take the lead.
"Zihark, I'm starting to forget what the sun looks like."
The two of them walked through underground tunnels lit by a dim purple glow. If Zihark did not remind her to keep quiet, Kai'Sa could talk for ages.
So he listened.
He listened as she spoke about the world above.
"Sometimes I forget what the sun looked like. I forget how we used the position of our shadows to tell the time."
For someone born in the desert, forgetting the sun was enough to make her want to cry.
In her memories, its light shimmered on the water. A golden lone eye in the sky, filling every breath with a warmth so pleasant it seemed to sink straight into her chest.
Kai'Sa drew in a deep breath, but the air here held none of the surface's heat.
Zihark could only listen in silence.
Those memories had nothing to do with him. Aside from whatever fragments this body had left behind, he could only imagine Shurima's sun through someone else's description.
He had never experienced the surface as himself. By the time he awakened, he was already buried deep underground. He had never even been given the chance.
But as Kai'Sa spoke, he realized that he longed for the world above too.
A seed had been planted in him, and the desire to return to the surface began to sprout.
As they talked, Zihark noticed a shift in the patterns of light and heat seen through his left eye.
Kai'Sa's senses were not sharp enough to catch it at first, but after they walked a little farther, even she noticed the change in their surroundings.
Light was spilling in from ahead. The pitch-black tunnel grew brighter, and the living armor stirred in response.
Zihark sensed no danger, but some nameless pull was drawing him toward the source of the light.
Was it a trap, or an opportunity?
He turned the thought over in his mind and quickly came to a conclusion. Nothing in the underground could possibly count as an opportunity.
The Void knew only how to take. It never gave anything back.
He wanted to leave, but Kai'Sa insisted on dragging him over for a look, and with her current strength, he could not stop her even if he tried.
"What if it's daylight from the surface?"
Her eyes were full of hope. She had only just been talking about sunlight—could the thing she wanted most really be waiting just ahead?
Kai'Sa could be stubborn once she set her mind to something. A few words would never change that.
"...All right."
Zihark figured that with him there, the two of them were at least a little safer than if she went alone.
And besides, seeing danger up close was not always a bad thing.
At the very least, it gave you perspective. In a place as deadly as the underground, you needed to know exactly how much you were worth, and how terrifying the unknown could really be.
"I'm not saying no. Just slow down and be careful."
That was Zihark's roundabout way of agreeing, and Kai'Sa did listen, slowing her pace as they carefully approached.
At the mouth of the tunnel, they saw the rock around the opening glowing faintly, like the gleam reflected off cave walls by an underground lake.
The halo of light rippled slightly.
That meant the source of the light was not fixed. Something was disturbing it, stirring it, and they had no idea what.
Still sensing no Void creatures nearby, Zihark stepped forward twice in quick succession—then stopped dead at the tunnel exit.
He had found himself standing at the edge of a bottomless abyss.
The boundary between the two realms rose and fell like the sands of Zoantha Cascade. The violet abyss spread below them like an ocean glazed in wicked light, its whirlpools of dissolution and rebirth turning without end.
Vast currents of power churned within it, sometimes gathering into ugly shapes—things like the Leviathans of old stories, monsters said to dwell in the deepest sea.
"That's not sunlight..." Kai'Sa leaned closer, staring blankly into the abyss below. "But it looks really familiar."
Then, as if something had suddenly clicked into place, she reached out and grabbed Zihark by the face, forcing him to look at her.
And in his eyes, she saw the same thing.
[End of chapter]