A sudden flash of pale turquoise light pulsed across a dark, shadowed street, briefly disturbing the peace of a quiet, motionless city.
Few of the residents who lived along the street were woken by the sudden influx of light, and fewer still slipped away from the warm bliss of their comfortable beds to investigate its source.
Those who did end up drawing back their curtains gazed downward, their peering eyes landing onto nothing more than a shadowed, empty street below.
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A mysterious figure materialised within the dark city street, birthed from the heart of an ethereal, otherworldly glow.
The figure's outline flickered gently, an unnatural turquoise energy seeping outward into their shadowed surroundings.
Time's axis buckled under the strain of maintaining the figure's continuing existence.
By all conceivable laws, their appearance should have been impossible; erased by the countless paradoxes that were being created and nulled by their arrival.
The arcane screamed in horrible, overwhelming protest. It had never experienced a change of this magnitude before, or since.
Some deities were able to feel the weight of its sudden strain, but could not pinpoint the source of its anguish. Its affliction was both everywhere and nowhere.
Time and destiny were unravelling.
Other entities watched on from the darkness of the void, writhing and twisting in a primal discontent.
The intricate woven tapestry of fate began to tear, its strings fraying apart beneath the pressure of an anomaly that should never have existed.
Interconnected threads of raw, undiluted power glittered, rewriting and reweaving into a story that could make sense of this new abnormality.
The strings of fate twisted in impossible ways, reconnecting back into place, one by one.
The boundless, shimmering web finished its task within both an instant and an infinity—unmeasured and unburdened by the axis of time.
This world and its inhabitants would live on for a little longer now—their struggle successfully prolonged.
The unnatural aura surrounding the figure slowly receded, retracting back into the nothingness it had scattered from.
Absolute law no longer applied. The laws of causality and time had been circumvented.
The fate of the world was changed.
The anomaly, and the paradoxes it had both created and destroyed, were no more.
The future was predestined once again.
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The disoriented figure righted themself quickly, adapting to their dark surroundings with a deftness that betrayed their experience.
They crouched low, enhanced muscles winding up in preparation for a vastly strengthened leap.
The figure jumped, exploding upwards at a blinding speed, their trajectory aimed toward the slanted roofing of the winding street's conjoined housing.
All that was left to tell of the figure's momentary presence was a set of glimmering, orange-coloured footprints.
The residual prints simmered with a quiet, deadly gleam, the angular pattern of their soles scorched into the road's paved stone by an insurmountable level of heat.
The stranger landed quietly, now poised atop the roof of his target building.
He tilted his head to the side owlishly, sharp violet eyes scanning every single detail of the moderately unfamiliar landscape surrounding him.
He knew this place.
This city was far more rudimentary than the one he had once known—undeniably so. But it was still, ultimately, the same place.
Its buildings weren't quite as decorated; the streets were not nearly as reinforced, but it was still the same.
There was only one undeniable difference that truly stood out to him.
The high council's tower—the monolith every citizen of Piltover relied upon as their guiding light—still stood tall.
The man tsked in displeasure, allowing for a small, unnatural surge of irritancy to wash over him.
He stared up at the silent, sleeping tower that was miles away from where he currently stood.
Then the man's bitterness vanished—voided beneath the weight of his will.
"I made it," he whispered, his gaze softening imperceptibly. "I am back."
The man looked away from the tower, his gaze laced with regret—tone marred by a grim determination.
"Wait for me, My Lady. I will accomplish everything we promised to, and more."
The man's violet irises shimmered beneath his darkened hood, glittering an unnatural glowing pink.
Their endeavour had been successful—he could see it now.
If that accursed tower was still standing... then maybe, just maybe...
No. There was no need to get his hopes up—no need to Jinx his chances just yet. That was something that would come later, though how much later, he did not know.
For now, he needed information—intel as to where exactly he had been dropped in this timeline.
The man pivoted, now facing in the opposite direction of the high tower.
His rigid gaze flitted toward where the Pilt River lay just out of sight, the unofficial border that separated the Twin Cities.
The man's mind was made up.
His first order of business was to confirm without a single doubt that the warping mechanism they had designed and modified worked exactly as intended.
Even if it wasn't ideal—even if he was a few years behind where he should have been dropped—he could wait as long as was necessary to accomplish his goal.
Beyond that, though, everything needed to be flawless—anything less than perfection would be utterly unacceptable.
There was no room for error—no room for failure. Too much was at stake.
The man began to run, darting forward across Piltover's tiled rooftops at an incredible speed.
His otherwise silent footfalls were betrayed by a series of melodic clinks, caused by his heavy hextech boots as they danced across the dark blue ceramic beneath him.
The man did not need the assistance of his armament for such a simple set of movements.
There was no need to alert the blissfully unaware enforcers of Piltover to his presence just yet.
His introduction to them would come later—when it was planned for him to do so.
The corner of the man's lips twitched upwards deftly, the anticipation of this era's Piltover facing its rightful retribution beginning to gnaw at the edge of his psyche.
Then the flicker of instability vanished, rapidly caught and disposed of by its owner before the feeling could flourish into something greater.
The man's brooding irritation returned.
Shimmer had stolen much from him. The freedom to think how he pleased was merely one of the many things it had taken.
His extreme vigilance was the only gatekeeper between him and a frenzy of impulse which would be born of his unnaturally heightened emotions.
Restraint was a must.
The man reached the end of the long, winding street.
As he did so, the Pilt River finally came into view: a wide chasm of polluted water that finalised the divide between the Twin Cities.
It was a barrier that was rarely crossed—at least in good faith. This was a rule of thumb that was and has always been, primarily true—especially at such an early point in the timeline.
Beyond the river, though, lay what the man was truly searching for.
Standing strong, even on the brink of ruination, was Piltover's sister city—one far larger than the wide expanse that Piltover herself covered.
It was the man's birthplace; his home.
It was Zaun.
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