Chapter Text
The sky was bleeding when Jinx died.
An entire nebula ripped open above Vega Minor, unraveling like a seam in the fabric of reality. Star Guardians weren’t supposed to be there—that constellation was declared dormant after Rakan’s sacrifice. No magic, no monsters, no risk.
But Zoe’s influence was spreading. Warping. Reanimating what should never move again.
Lux had hesitated. That was her first mistake.
Jinx hadn’t.
“Hey, Blondie?” Jinx’s voice crackled through the comm-link, deceptively playful. “Got a little prob. Something’s makin’ the dead stars twitch.”
Lux’s heart sank. She tightened her grip on her staff, standing on the lip of a collapsed stardock. Ethereal winds whipped her pink hair in every direction, and cosmic ash fell like black snow.
“Jinx, stay close,” Lux said, trying to sound calm. In command. “Don’t engage. Just observe.”
“Boooo-ring.” Jinx giggled, her silhouette bouncing ahead in the distance—red ponytails flashing like streamers in the dark. “Come on, don’t you wanna see what happens when I poke it?”
“No!” Lux snapped.
But Jinx was already moving.
And then the sky screamed.
It opened like a wound—the Rift. A jagged tear of black and violet, thrumming with corrupted starlight. Something clawed through it, wearing the skin of a Star Guardian but moving like a puppet tangled in chains. Its voice was every dead thing Lux had ever loved.
The team barely had time to react.
“Xayah—flank right!” she shouted. “Soraka, barrier now!”
But the void swallowed sound.
The monster expanded—wings of crystal shadow and eyes that dripped molten constellations. It targeted Lux.
And then Jinx shoved her out of the way.
“Nope,” she said, almost cheerfully. “Not today, sparkleface.”
Lux slammed into the ground, her breath knocked out of her.
Jinx stood between her and the Rift, staring it down like it owed her money.
And then—she did the impossible.
She turned her blaster inward.
“Tell everyone I won,” she said with a wink.
Then she detonated.
Lux didn’t scream at first.
She couldn’t.
The explosion was silent, too vast to be heard. It stretched across dimensions, shattering the monster, ripping apart the rift—but also ripping Jinx away.
There was no body.
No echo.
Just a silence that carved a hole into Lux’s chest and never filled.
“She’s not coming back,” Soraka said, gently. “No Guardian survives full void corruption. Not intact.”
Lux stared at the only thing left: half of Jinx’s weapon, floating in weightless orbit. Burned. Twisted. Still faintly warm.
“She promised she’d never leave me again,” Lux whispered.
They held a vigil. A pyre star.
Lux didn’t attend.
She sat alone in the old observatory, surrounded by star maps Jinx used to deface with glitter and inappropriate stickers. No one had cleaned up the mess. No one dared.
Her pendant—the one that used to glow in Jinx’s presence—was dark.
Dead.
Still, she wore it.
⸻
Weeks passed.
Zoe’s army grew bolder.
Xayah was injured on a scouting mission. Soraka cried when she thought no one was looking. Janna had vanished completely. The team was dying in pieces, like falling stars.
And Lux kept waiting.
For what?
A miracle?
A sign?
She didn’t know.
Until one day, while trying to locate a corrupted Guardian in the Dusk Quadrant, the comms crackled unexpectedly.
A frequency Lux hadn’t heard since Vega Minor.
Then—distorted static. A voice.
“Lu…xxy…?”
The hairs on Lux’s neck stood on end.
“…Jinx?”
The signal fizzled.
Then a laugh.
Garbage-filled. Digital.
Corrupted.
But familiar.
Lux dropped her staff.
She clutched the pendant.
And for the first time since the sky tore apart, she felt something.
A pulse.
A heartbeat.
⸻
Jinx was alive.
But not all stars come back whole.