Because his voidskin still had not fully covered him, Zihark's body had gained only limited reinforcement.
His stamina was nowhere near Kai'Sa's. He could not keep up the kind of prolonged, high-intensity movement she could, and every so often he had to stop and rest like an ordinary human. Because of that, the two of them were bound to fall out of step.
Kai'Sa understood that better than anyone. Zihark had held himself back to make sure she could survive and grow stronger first. Now that her coverage was complete, she felt the balance should shift back toward him.
That was why she sometimes went out hunting alone. Partly because she was finally strong enough to do it, and partly because she wanted to make up for what he had sacrificed and return the share that should have been his.
A faint violet glow pulsed in the darkness, accompanied by the dry rustle of approaching footsteps. It wove left and right through the tunnel as it closed in on Zihark.
He did not so much as flinch. He stayed seated, calm and unmoving, as if the threat creeping through the dark were nothing more than a bad trick.
Three narrow, emotionless eyes locked onto him. The figure lunged forward with blinding speed. Hooked claws stopped at his bare chest, sharp enough to punch straight through to the heart.
Zihark did not move.
He already knew it was Kai'Sa.
"Kai'Sa, how many times are you going to try the same prank? I told you already. You can't scare me."
He brushed her claws aside and stood up to face the human-shaped figure in front of him, almost his height now and wrapped head to toe in that unsettling shell.
"No fair. Can't you let me win just once? I'm a girl, you know," Kai'Sa complained.
But the words came out warped by the chitin helmet, twisted into a wet, animal rasp that barely sounded human. Instead of playful teasing, it came out eerie enough to make anyone tense up.
Zihark had no desire to indulge that kind of performance, but he still did not call her out on it. In a life this bleak and repetitive, he understood why she kept trying to invent little surprises for herself.
He pointed to his ear, making it clear he could not understand her properly.
"Oh. Right. I forgot it's hard to talk with the helmet on."
At a thought from her, the chitin plates folded back in overlapping layers, like an insect drawing its wings beneath a shell. One by one they revealed her hair, her face, her neck, and the last few uncovered traces of the child still visible beneath the armor.
"Don't even think about it," Zihark said. "I'm not shutting down the mind-web. Not unless…"
"Unless what?" Kai'Sa asked at once. That mind-web always caught her movements with perfect accuracy. As long as it stayed active, her ambushes would never work.
"Unless we make it back to the surface and don't have to worry about an attack at any second."
As he said it, he reached out and pinched her cheek lightly.
Whenever she showed her face, he could never quite resist. Sometimes it was a cheek pinch, sometimes a tap on the nose. To him it was a small reminder that there was still something human left in their lives, and Kai'Sa seemed to treasure that kind of contact too.
"The surface..." Kai'Sa murmured. "I wonder if spring has come already. I want to remember what fresh grass smells like."
After the familiar sigh, she set down what she had brought back from hunting.
Seven hearts in all, crammed into a hollowed-out Voidling skull until it could barely hold them.
"Eat," she said lightly. "This is just breakfast."
Zihark did not waste time pretending otherwise. He reached in with the clawed hand covered in voidskin and let it absorb the hearts one after another.
The armor consumed them quickly, and the change came just as fast. Tilting his head, he watched the edge of the voidskin creep a few more centimeters toward his chest.
Once he completed full coverage too, they would finally try moving upward and search for a way out of the underground world.
"Kai'Sa, do you want to go back to the surface?"
"Of course I do. I dream about it all the time." She sat down beside him and spoke as if she could see it. "At our age, the adults should have started taking us into the cool valleys by now to learn how to use spears and bows..."
In the scattered villages along the edge of the Shuriman desert, people survived through hunting and trade with the nomadic tribes. Under normal circumstances, a child Kai'Sa's age should have been living under her family's protection, learning how harsh the desert could be while still dreaming about the future.
And if she had been lucky, she might even have followed her father's caravan across the wide lands of Shurima, earning a little money and seeing more of the world along the way.
Instead, the Void had ruined everything. It had dragged her underground and forced her to live through darkness, cold, and terror beyond anything most people could imagine.
She had changed so much that she was hardly the same child anymore. But whenever she spoke about the surface, some part of that child seemed to return.
Zihark could not bring himself to destroy that hope. It was one of the reasons she kept going. But he also knew it was dangerous. Sooner or later, that hope could turn on her and leave her broken.
"Zihark, don't you want to go back?"
His answer was colder than hers.
"I do. But have you thought about how people on the surface will look at us? In this state, they'll see monsters."
He knew the people above would fear what they looked like long before they ever tried to understand them. That was why he had already started preparing Kai'Sa for it, little by little.
If she survived the Void only to return to human society and be rejected outright, the blow would cut deeper than any wound.
"As long as we don't hurt them, they'll understand, won't they? We're victims of the Void too."
Kai'Sa rested her chin on one claw as she thought, the tip sinking slightly into her cheek without her seeming to notice.
"I still think you shouldn't show yourself to outsiders too soon," Zihark said. "I'm trying to use my mind to draw the voidskin back in. If I can make it work, we can return to the surface looking human. That'll be safer."
In his mind, there had to be a way to break the armor down into its most basic form, gather it in one place, and hide it without harming the body underneath.
Something like symbiosis.
His gaze swept over Kai'Sa, and at once she felt her voidskin begin to itch. A sharp, pulling pain ran across it, like something fused too deep was being tugged the wrong way.
It was not a pleasant sensation. Which meant Zihark was still a long way from succeeding.
"It's fine. Keep working on it," Kai'Sa said. "Don't forget, I can turn invisible. They won't see me anyway."
With that, she lowered the helmet. A ripple passed across her armor, and she vanished in front of him.
But inside the mind-web, Zihark could still sense exactly where she was.
She was sneaking toward him again, clearly planning another one of her sudden jump-out attacks from behind.
Zihark shook his head. He was not satisfied with the way the conversation had ended.
Kai'Sa might have grown older, but she was still a girl who had seen too little of the world. She thought too simply about too many things, and no matter how he tried to warn her, the words never seemed to land. That left him with nothing but frustration.
Sensing the invisible claws about to touch his shoulder, Zihark reached out to intercept her.
But for the first time in a long while, he missed.
It was a serious mistake on his part.
The reason was simple.
The ground had started to shake.
[End of chapter]