Inside the little house, the weak candlelight flickered, bright one moment and dim the next.
Zach sat beside the bed, staring at Kai’Sa, who had sat up from the small wooden cot.
After a long silence, Kai’Sa finally asked the question that had been weighing on her heart for a very long time.
“Why did you help me?
Why help someone people call a monster?”
Zach spread his hands and said casually, “What do other people’s opinions of you have to do with me?”
“I think you’re great, and that’s enough.
Other people’s thoughts won’t affect me in the slightest.
Besides, I think this armor is really cool.
Let me touch it.”
As Kai’Sa listened to Zach, her teeth pressed tightly against her lower lip, and ripples of emotion spread through her eyes.
Only after a long while did she ask hesitantly, “Am I really… great?”
After so many years of isolation, so many years of being rejected, Kai’Sa had never changed her belief that she had to kill Void creatures and protect humanity.
Even so, deep down, she was not truly that confident.
In the end, she was still a girl who was not even twenty years old.
At her age, being treated this way by her own kind would have been enough to break most people, or make them fall completely.
Kai’Sa’s heart was strong, but she still had some insecurity, more or less.
The praise Zach was giving her now was something she had truly never heard from anyone before.
At this moment, the way she looked at Zach carried a deep expectation, as though she desperately wanted to hear his approval.
Under Kai’Sa’s gaze, Zach smiled and nodded.
“You’re great.”
At that moment, a smile that had not appeared in who knew how long once again returned to Kai’Sa’s face.
The corners of her lips lifted slightly, forming a beautiful curve.
“Thank you…”
At that moment, as the wound at her waist had been healed by Zach, the Void armor on Kai’Sa’s body also began to gradually close, slowly covering her waist completely again.
Zach kept watching everything with a curious gaze.
When Kai’Sa saw the curiosity and amazement in Zach’s eyes, and saw that there was not a trace of fear or rejection in them, she raised her hand toward him.
Seeing Kai’Sa extend her hand toward him, Zach looked at her in confusion.
Kai’Sa pressed her lips together and suddenly did not quite dare meet Zach’s eyes.
She said softly, “You can… touch it.”
A bright smile suddenly appeared on Zach’s face.
He also raised his hand, and with an exploratory look, poked the Void armor on Kai’Sa’s arm with his finger.
However, the moment Zach’s finger touched the Void armor, the armor on Kai’Sa’s arm shrank back rapidly as though it had been frightened by something.
“It fears your power.
As a healer with life force, your power naturally suppresses Void creatures.”
Seeing the confusion in Zach’s eyes, Kai’Sa could not help explaining.
She had even mistaken Zach for a healer who possessed life force.
“It is bound to me in symbiosis.
I can sense its fear.”
After Kai’Sa finished speaking, she suddenly realized that after hearing her explanation, Zach did not seem disappointed at all.
Instead, he seemed a little excited.
At Zach’s side, a faint golden light lit up at his fingertip.
A tiny strand of Ascended power gathered there, and then his finger began to slowly move along Kai’Sa’s arm.
Wherever Zach’s finger reached, the Void armor would rapidly part, and wherever his finger passed, the armor would quickly close again.
For a while, Zach was having the time of his life.
Kai’Sa looked at Zach’s current appearance and could not help wanting to laugh.
When other people saw her, they looked as though they had seen some terrifying beast.
But with Zach, not only did he not reject her, he was even enjoying himself this much.
Even so, Kai’Sa never stopped Zach, nor did she pull back her arm.
She looked at Zach and asked softly, “Where are you from?
You’re not Icathian, are you?”
The Ascended power at Zach’s fingertip faded, and he let go of Kai’Sa’s arm.
“I only arrived in Icathia today.
Since I really had nowhere else to go, I came here to see if there was any way to leave the Shuriman continent.”
“Leave the Shuriman continent…”
Kai’Sa also fell into thought.
She had wandered around the borders of Icathia and Shurima for so long, and she had seen countless travelers and fleeing refugees.
But among those people, very few were able to walk out of the Shuriman desert or Icathia.
Because if they wanted to leave the Shuriman desert, they not only had to face the desert’s extremely harsh environment, they also had to guard against Void creatures, desert raiders, desert hounds, and many other dangers at the same time.
It could only be said that without abilities beyond those of ordinary people, leaving Shurima was truly too difficult.
That was also why, despite the terrible living environment in Icathia, the common people here had still never left.
They did not dare gamble.
Once they abandoned their village and decided to head into the Shuriman desert, there would only be two possible outcomes.
Find a suitable place to live, or die.
Kai’Sa looked at Zach in front of her and suddenly said to him with great seriousness, “I will take you out of Shurima!”
Zach raised an eyebrow, a little surprised.
Kai’Sa hesitated at first, but when she saw the expectant light in Zach’s eyes, she nodded firmly.
“It will be difficult, but I will do everything I can!”
At that moment, Zach suddenly asked Kai’Sa, “Kai’Sa, if you could, would you want to leave Icathia?
To live in a beautiful place, like Ionia, where there are many nature spirits, or the Freljord, where snow covers the land all year?”
“Hm?”
Kai’Sa froze slightly, repeating Zach’s words as though she had sunk into some kind of memory.
“Nature spirits… snow covering the land…”
Kai’Sa looked at Zach and said softly, “I’ve never left the Shuriman continent, and I’ve never seen those things.”
After saying that, Kai’Sa suddenly shook her head again.
“I still have many things I haven’t finished.
I can’t leave Icathia!”
Kai’Sa stared into Zach’s eyes and said firmly, “From the moment I returned from the Void, I swore that I would completely root out the Void, so that the humans on this land would never again suffer its invasion!”
After hearing Kai’Sa’s words, Zach suddenly felt as though something had struck his heart hard.
A young woman who had never experienced beauty herself was thinking every day about how to create beauty for others.
Zach shifted into a more comfortable sitting position beside the bed and smiled gently at Kai’Sa.
“Kai’Sa, if you could have anything right now, what would you want most?”
“What I want most?”
Kai’Sa looked at Zach in confusion, not knowing why he had suddenly asked this.
Zach added, “No need to hold back.
Just tell me the truth.”
Kai’Sa said, “The destruction of the Void.”
“Pick something else!” Zach immediately made a stop gesture.
There was no helping it.
A wish like destroying the Void was just as ridiculous as Aatrox saying he wanted to destroy the world.
That was way above his pay grade.
Seeing Zach’s helpless expression, a faint smile appeared on Kai’Sa’s face as well.
She looked at Zach with bright eyes, her pale-purple pupils full of expectation.
“Before you leave Icathia, can you talk to me every day?”
As though afraid Zach would find it troublesome, Kai’Sa immediately added after saying it, “Only at night is fine.
It doesn’t have to be all the time.”
Felix, a transmigrator from Earth, wakes up in Zaun before and during the events of Arcane.
He becomes connected to Silco’s side, gains a Skin Master System, and uses League skin-based weapons, tech, armor, and abilities to change the fate of Zaun.
Instead of letting Arcane’s tragedies play out exactly the same way, Felix tries to protect the people around him, especially Powder/Jinx, and push Zaun toward open rebellion against Piltover.
The story starts with the Piltover-Zaun conflict, then expands into the wider Runeterra setting: Noxus’s invasion of Ionia, Demacia’s internal conflict, the Freljord, Shurima, the Void, and eventually the Ruination/Shadow Isles plotline.