Legends of Runeterra

The dead silence of the sepulchral parliament hall began to slowly come to life. Fully armed warrior priests noticed the commotion and rushed in from all directions, entering the hall against the tide of people avoiding dangerous magic.

The hook-nosed judge stood firm and smashed the ball-shaped gavel onto the table.

"The balance of this court shall be restored immediately," she commanded.

The room fell silent again. People straightened up the overturned benches and sat back down. The cloaked stranger scratched his nose and walked to the corner to examine the new chest-high gash in the wall. A warrior priest approached the enchanted greatsword cautiously.

Amid the broken wood of the table, the greatsword and its scabbard lay there. The broken blade emitted arcs of green energy. The warrior-priest bent over and grasped the hilt. He lifted the greatsword with both hands and felt its weight. Although the cracks still existed, the weapon was intact.

"Take this evil weapon away!" someone shouted. The priest sheathed the weapon, and several other priests came up to carry it away.

"I killed him," Riven repeated. Her voice was her own, yet not her own. It was her past speaking. She looked at the faces in the hall. Now she remembered it all, awakened in the corner of her own memory.

"Riven," the judge said.

Riven's attention suddenly shifted from the greatsword to the judge.

"Do you know what you are confessing to?" she asked.

Riven nodded.

"Why did you do that?"

"I don't remember." This was her only answer. With her hands bound, Riven couldn't wipe away Mo Ran's tears at this moment, and could only let them slide down her chin.

The judge stared at her intently, waiting for more truth to come to light, but after waiting in vain, she signaled to the court clerk.

"Riven, you will be imprisoned here until the formal sentencing at dawn tomorrow. During this time, anyone can make peace with you on any personal grudges."

Riven stared at the shackles on her hands.

"I and the other two judges will search the law code and consult with the elders to impose an appropriate punishment for your crime."

The villagers left quietly. The last to leave were the old couple. Riven had deduced this from the accent she heard when Shava whispered to her husband, but the intense emotions made the words difficult to discern. When she heard the two old steps gradually walk out of the door, Riven finally raised her head. There were no living people in the hall anymore - only the ghosts of the past.

The midnight air was cold and crisp. A full moon in the sky was surrounded by a cold halo. Moonlight spilled into the hall through the open door, but it did not illuminate the shadows at the end of the room where Riven sat. No one had come to make peace with her during the day. Although the warrior priests had taken away the greatsword, the sharp knife marks on the walls around the hall kept the villagers from entering. Some people opened the door, and a few more brought more rotten egg fruits, but in the end no one came to disturb Riven's meditation. She finally fell asleep, but it was a light, fitful sleep, appropriate for someone who knew that the last dawn was coming. When she heard the rustling footsteps approaching in the dark, she woke immediately.

Riven opened her eyes.

"Dad," she said. "What are you doing here?"

The old man crouched over and slowly slid to her side, opening a soft cloth bag filled with tools. Riven recognized that these were metal tools used to install and repair plow blades.

"What do I look like to you, kid?" The outline of his face drawn by the moonlight made the wrinkles on his face appear even deeper, but the dark atmosphere around the two of them did not seem to infect the old man as Riven had imagined.

"You really want to die," he said to her in a reproachful tone. "You can't achieve balance this way."

He fiddled with Riven's handcuffs and leg irons. Riven didn't push him away and let him go home. Although her heart strongly urged her to stop the old man, her selfishness made her unable to be cruel. If the old man was the last person to accompany her in this life, then Riven hoped that this moment could be prolonged as much as possible. She sat in silence until a few minutes later she heard footsteps on the gravel road outside the hall. Riven looked at Asa. He was laughing, holding the untied shackles in front of her and shaking them for a while, like a child showing off his toys.

"Dad. Quick. Hide. Someone's coming." Riven's voice was sharp and urgent, and she didn't allow for rejection. The old man quickly hid in the shadows of the corner. Riven lowered her head again and assumed a sleeping position. She let her hair cover her face and opened her eyes.

A strong wind blew through the trees and around the doorposts of the hall. In a beam of moonlight, a figure stood in the doorway.

The stranger no longer hid his cloak from his face, revealing his sword and metal pauldrons. He paused at the door like the others. But unlike the villagers, he walked in. His footsteps made no sound on the stone floor. When he was within a sword's length of Riven, he stopped.

He pulled out a leather scabbard from his back, with crude runes carved into it, and threw it at Riven's feet with a clanking sound.

"Which is heavier, Riven?" he asked. "Your sword or your past?"

Obviously the stranger knew that Riven was awake, so she stopped pretending. She looked up at him, his face blurred in the gray shadows, but the scar on his nose was clearly visible.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"Another broken sword," he answered. "You are prepared to plead guilty. I admire that."

Riven saw a brief flash of emotion cross his face.

"There is a secret behind your sword," he continued. "Do you know the truth?"

"I killed him. He died because of me. They all... were done by me," Riven continued. She didn't know if she could bear any more grief.

"Raise your sword."

Riven sat there motionless. She heard the man growl in anger.

"Stand up, you can't get away from it," the man said. His voice brooked no rebuttal.

A whirlwind began to roll through the hall, pushing aside the benches and pushing Riven to her feet. Fighting instinct and muscle memory guided Riven's arms. As she faced the stranger, the sheathed greatsword was already in her hand.

"I begged him to break it," she said.

"Really?" The man's voice was mocking.

The stranger's suspicion stung her, deep into her memory. She shuddered, vaguely remembering the scene. Elder Suma's voice was calm and peaceful. The atmosphere in his meditation room was heavy with thoughts and incense. Elder Suma did not judge her, nor did he judge her burden.

Riven looked at the stranger in front of her, and a sharp pain surged in her heart, flowing through her body until her hands held the sword. She grasped the hilt tightly and pulled the rune blade from the scabbard.