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Breaking through the top layer of fog and cloud cover, Jayce comes to stand at the top of the Hex Gate where life aplenty is in full bloom, extending across the whole dome. A deformed and discoloured version of the matter he has come to know, this… Hexcorization that has infected the place. Jayce drops to his knees before a statuesque figure in the middle of this garden, a shrine in comparison to the rest of the world below. The statue holds in front of it a polearm, bowed forward in reverence toward it, and bursting from around its shoulders is a spark of light and energy, almost imitating the delicate wings of a butterfly. A menagerie of invertebrates flit around him, landing on the flowers that have taken root in the open crevices of the deteriorating statue.
In this paradise above the desolation one could mistake it for a normal day, but this future he got whisked into by the Hexcore was anything but, it revealed a horrific vision of the future Jayce was hurtling toward with no hopes of ceasing it.
“This is where it all started, isn’t it?” Jayce asks himself, but moreover he asks the robed figure who followed him throughout this doomed reality, a figure he came to think of as an imagining of his childhood mage saviour, who now stood behind the statue. “The end of Piltover… Because of Hextech. ” Jayce processes the immensity of it all and his part in its destruction. Were he and Viktor to blame for the world coming to an end, did he forge this destruction with his own hands?
Jayce clutches at his wrist instinctually, brushing a thumb over the blue stone embedded into the leather. Touching that spark of inspiration that spurred him to do any of this in the first place. “ Why did you ever give me this? Why? ” He clenched his jaw and demanded answers from the silent mage. “It doesn’t have to go like this. Right? Just tell me there’s a chance.” He gazes into the eyes of the overgrown statue in hopes of a release from the torment he’d just endured. But the eyes continued to stare down, devoid of feeling and life.
The mage turns toward Jayce, just enough to catch a glimpse of him, and just enough to reveal the crescent of an all too familiar face to Jayce. Viktor . Older and wiser.
Jayce’s breath hitches with instant recognition, staring in disbelief at the realisation that Viktor, his partner , was the mage.
Viktor takes a moment to drink the vision of Jayce in, as if he hadn’t seen the man in centuries. “I thought I could bring an end to the world’s suffering. But when every equation was solved, all that remained were fields of dreamless solitude…”
Jayce shut his eyes at the sound of his voice, gentle still. Upon opening his eyes, he saw, really saw what was in front of him. A figure holding onto a hammer, a wonderful never ending blossom of magic surrounding him, and beyond that… nothing . It was Jayce , it had always been Jayce . At the centre of everything it was both of them, for eternity.
Viktor’s voice cut through his enlightenment. “There is no price to perfection, only an end to pursuit. In all timelines, in all possibilities… only you can show me this.”
A wave of emotions rolled through Jayce. After all this time, it had always been him and Viktor. His partner stopped at nothing to find him, to speak with him about an eternal and boundless love. It destroyed him to see the truth of it all so late.
“What must I do? How do I stop it?” Jayce spoke with a new conviction.
Viktor’s expression shifted to something more apologetic. “You must kill me.”
“I-I can’t do that, I’ve barely had you back–”
“Trust me, Jayce.”
Oh how he said his name, how it left his lips like a kiss on the breeze. It moved him to forgive all that had happened since. “And then what? Do I have to live with the weight of your execution on my shoulders?”
“ No. ” Viktor turned from Jayce, burnt from the words alone. “You will have your chance to bring me back. I won’t listen to begin with, I will hurt you… but there is a fraction of a second where everything will make sense. You have to trust me, Jayce.”
The way this Viktor spoke his name, like the lyric of a hymn, carrying a reverence to it that Jayce was only now on the cusp of understanding. “I promise you. I won’t fail.”
“After all this time, it is nice to see you once more.” Viktor steps toward the statue, placing a hand on one shoulder and reaching with the other toward Jayce, cupping his cheek delicately. They both freeze at the touch, each surprised by the connection. For a moment Jayce thinks he sees a vision of what is to come, but it dissipates as quickly as it had formed. Viktor’s hand retracts and he knows this must end.
Jayce clears his mind for the long road ahead, seeing with a clarity he couldn’t previously afford. “Send me back,” he asks. Viktor touches the eroded statue, causing it to move and release the hammer for Jayce to take. He takes one last look at the elusive mage that is Viktor. “I won’t fail. I swear it.” As a burst of energy releases from Viktor’s palm, a spark of endless possibility honing in on the rune carved into Jayce’s wrist, returning him to the Hexcore beneath the gates.
“I’ll miss you, Jayce…” Viktor whispers to the hollow space Jayce once stood in.