Kai'Sa's words drew Zihark's gaze to her hair.
It looked strange now. The long strands hanging over her chest were purple at the top and black at the bottom.
The purple portion had only grown in after she entered symbiosis with the voidskin. As if it were trying to replace what had been there before, it grew at an astonishing speed.
The two colors did not blend into each other at all. The dividing line between them was sharp and absolute, each one marking a different chapter of her life before and after falling into the Void.
Cutting one's hair often meant saying goodbye to a former self. Zihark supported Kai'Sa's decision to change, so he agreed to help her.
"How short do you want it?" Zihark gathered a handful of her hair and studied it, though he still was not quite sure where to start with the dagger.
"Cut off the black part. It didn't stand out when it was shorter, but now it looks really weird." Kai'Sa ran a claw through her hair. The border between the purple and black had already reached her shoulders.
"Then hold the upper part for me. I don't want to pull downward and hurt your scalp."
"Okay."
Even with zero experience, Zihark at least knew enough to straighten her hair before cutting it, otherwise the ends would come out uneven.
The tips of his fingers were sharp and hard, but he managed to slide them through her hair and comb it down well enough.
That was when he noticed how badly the ends were tangled and split. There was no way to care for it properly underground. They could not even manage basic washing and grooming, so cutting it really was the best solution.
And since Kai'Sa's helmet did not cover her hair anyway, shorter hair would be more convenient.
"Your hair's pretty badly tangled." He sliced through the straightened lock in one stroke. The dagger was sharp enough that it met very little resistance.
Then, thinking that Kai'Sa had reached the age of twelve without ever even owning a comb, he said, "When we get back to the surface, how about I find you a comb?"
"Wouldn't a Voidling's lower jaw work just as well?"
Come to think of it, plenty of Void creatures had mouths lined with neat rows of needle-like teeth, almost like two combs fitted together.
Voidlings, the black birds, even hunters all had mouths like that. And Voidlings, in particular, were everywhere and small enough to be practical.
Still... using monster teeth to comb your hair sounded way too hardcore. It did not feel girly at all.
"Are you serious? Am I allowed to take that as a joke?"
"I mean it. I've used one a few times already. It works pretty well."
"When was that?" Zihark raised an eyebrow. He spent every day with Kai'Sa and had never once seen her do that.
"When I went out hunting on my own..."
"Oh? So you've been doing all kinds of things behind my back? Keeping little secrets now, are we?"
"Not that many..."
And so, Zihark kept joking with her as he worked, pressing the blade against the point where her life had split in two, and cutting away the part that belonged to her past.
When he finished, Kai'Sa's long two-toned hair had become a clean, purely purple style that fell to her shoulders. With her helmet on, her hair no longer flew around everywhere.
Zihark's handiwork, unfortunately, was nothing to brag about. Once Kai'Sa let go of the hair she had been keeping taut and it fell back into its natural shape, the ends turned out far more uneven than they had looked during the cut.
Still, Kai'Sa did not mind. Once it grew out a little more, nobody would notice.
She flicked her hair lightly and brushed the messy bangs out of her eyes. The neat, obedient style she used to have instantly turned into a bold side part, equal parts alluring and sharp.
It was enough to make a heart skip.
Zihark did not throw away the cut hair. Thinking that this had once been part of Kai'Sa, he gathered it in his hand and let the voidskin absorb it.
Anything organic could provide the voidskin with nourishment.
Then he tried making his own voidskin grow hair, hoping to unlock the long-haired ghost-girl ability from old horror stories, the kind where you could control your hair to grow longer or shorter and wrap it around living people.
He was overthinking it.
Not a single strand grew.
So he began wondering whether he would need to simulate hair follicles in the voidskin first before hair could grow at all.
By then, Kai'Sa had finished fixing her new hairstyle. She took the dagger from Zihark's hand and asked, "That dagger belonged to that man, didn't it? You ran into him?"
Zihark stopped thinking about the hair issue. Even if he figured it out, it was not exactly a respectable ability.
He answered, "He was running too fast to notice me and crashed right into me. The dagger flew out when he hit me. I ignored him, and then he ran off on his own."
Kai'Sa's expression sharpened for a moment. The man had been giving off such a strong scent of fear that he was basically a beacon. By now, he had probably already run into trouble.
But she let it go just as quickly. She had already given him his chance. He was no longer worth saving.
He was none of her concern now.
Kai'Sa tossed the dagger aside, then took hold of Zihark's arm on her own initiative. "Let's go look where he fell from. We might find something."
"Good idea."
Zihark had been thinking the same thing. No one crossed the desert carrying only a dagger. It was time to go collect the man's inheritance.
The two of them passed the ashes of the hunter and headed in the direction the bird seller had come from. Less than a few hundred meters later, they saw light shining at the end of the passage.
Golden light poured down from above, and the air carried the dry heat unique to the desert.
The moment they saw that familiar glow, both of them froze.
Then came a surge of excitement they could not possibly contain.
There were only a few words fit to describe it.
"Whoa! A golden legend!"
Kai'Sa was beside herself with excitement, bouncing up and down while clutching Zihark's arm. Zihark was a little more restrained, but even his toes were digging into the ground as though he might bolt forward at any second.
They looked at each other and smiled, both silently agreeing to greet this sacred moment together.
They walked quickly into the light, and at once their bodies were wrapped in a warmth they had not felt in far too long.
Right now, Kai'Sa saw nothing else in the world.
Only the sun.
"Ah! Zihark, the sun! It's the sun!" She pointed at the great golden eye in the sky and shouted until the sunlight began to sting her eyes, forcing her to raise a hand for shade.
She could have lowered her helmet and stared at the sun directly.
But she did not want the world she saw to become distorted.
How long had it been since she had last felt sunlight?
Born in the desert, and yet she had nearly forgotten the sun.
Kai'Sa suddenly felt like crying.
"I see it, I see it."
Zihark was staring up at the sun too, but what he saw was two completely different suns at once.
On one side was the normal blazing sphere any human eye would see. On the other was a dark red fireball, endlessly radiating countless strands of magic.
He watched the sun for a while, and a trace of that magic was even caught by his left Abyssal Eye.
But he felt absolutely nothing from it. Forget about growing stronger by basking in sunlight. Devouring things was still much faster.
Unless he had something like the Sun Disc, some sacred wonder of the world, there was no way for him to make effective use of the sunlight's magical power.
And at this point in time, the Sun Disc still lay buried beneath the sands together with Azir, waiting for the blood of his descendants to bring them back into the light.
Zihark pulled his thoughts back from that distant future and focused on the present.
Only then did he realize he was standing inside a vertical shaft, its walls reinforced by thick gray-white roots, which had kept the whole thing from collapsing.
[End of chapter]