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The sound of wheels on rail had become Jayce Talis’s heartbeat.
For three months he had lived between blueprints and boiler plates, chasing an idea that refused to leave him alone: a locomotive that would not merely travel across Piltover, but redefine it. Faster. Stronger. Smarter. A machine that could carry the city into its future.
He tested it where no one would interfere—on an abandoned stretch of track that curved through silver birch trees and morning fog. There, under a sky still undecided between night and dawn, the Hextech Express gleamed in copper and gold like something waiting to be believed in.
Jayce was tightening a pressure valve when he heard it.
A voice.
Soft at first. Melodic. A folk tune carried through mist, threaded with an accent that hinted at distant towns and longer roads. The sound seemed to settle into the rails themselves, vibrating through the steel.
Jayce straightened slowly.
The voice was coming from beyond the bend in the track.
He told himself he was investigating trespassing.
He followed it anyway.
Through thinning fog, he saw him: a man sitting casually on the edge of the rail as though the entire railway belonged to him. His coat was worn, patched with mismatched fabrics. His boots had known dust and rain. A knapsack lay open beside him, spilling tools and scrap metal.
But it was his hands that held Jayce still.
Long, precise fingers moved over a small device assembled from salvaged parts. Elegant. Careful. Intimate with machinery.
“You’re on private property,” Jayce called, though his voice lacked conviction.
The stranger looked up.
Golden eyes met his.
There was something arresting about him—sharp features softened by a quiet smile, the kind worn by someone who has learned to expect very little and be grateful for what arrives anyway.
“Ah,” he said. “Then you must be the engineer.”
“Jayce Talis.”
“Viktor” The name rolled gently. “I meant no harm. I was studying the rails.”
“Studying them.”
Viktor held up the device. “They remember, you know. Every train that passes leaves behind heat, vibration, stress. Patterns. If you know how to listen.”
Jayce stepped closer before he could stop himself. “You built that?”
“From what the tracks offered.”
Against all reason, Jayce sat beside him.
Viktor explained the mechanism with quiet passion, tracing circuits and tension points with reverent fingertips. He spoke of locomotives like living things—creatures of ambition and hunger, bound to steel pathways but dreaming of distance.
“You’re not formally trained,” Jayce said after Viktor identified a structural weakness in the Express’s drive assembly without ever seeing the schematics.
Viktor’s smile curved slightly. “The rails were my university.”
Jayce laughed softly.
And something shifted.
Days blurred into weeks. Jayce found excuses to return early, to linger longer. Viktor had taken up residence in an abandoned signal house, and their conversations became ritual. Steam and philosophy. Torque and longing. Innovation and exile.
Viktor saw machines the way Jayce did—not as tools, but as bridges. As proof that tomorrow could be shaped by human hands.
“There’s magic in locomotives,” Viktor said one evening as sunset poured gold across the rails. “They make the wanderer’s dream accessible. Anyone can board and chase the horizon.”
“And you?” Jayce asked. “Still chasing?”
Viktor was quiet for a long moment.
“I was. But I am… tired of only passing through.”
The confession settled between them like fragile glass.
Jayce’s heart pounded. “You could stay.”
Golden eyes turned toward him.
“Would you want me to?”
The answer was already written across Jayce’s face.
Their first kiss tasted faintly of oil and copper and something sweeter. Viktor’s lips were careful, then certain. When they pulled apart, breath mingling in cool evening air, the rails beneath them hummed faintly with residual warmth from the day.
The first official test run was scheduled for dawn.
Jayce stood in the engineer’s cabin, hand hovering over the throttle, pulse racing faster than the pistons ever could.
Viktor climbed in beside him.
“Ready?” Jayce asked.
“With you?” Viktor’s smile was brilliant in the half-light. “Always.”
The Hextech Express surged forward in a symphony of steam and steel. The whistle cried out across open fields as the world blurred into motion. Morning light spilled through the cabin windows, gilding Viktor’s face in amber.
He laughed—clear, unguarded, alive.
“It feels like flying,” he shouted over the rhythm of the wheels.
Jayce watched him instead of the horizon.
“Move in with me,” he said suddenly. “Not company housing. Somewhere new. We’ll build it ourselves.”
Viktor’s laughter softened into something deeper.
“You are very certain for someone who only just met a wanderer.”
“I am certain of you.”
The train thundered forward, unstoppable.
Viktor stepped closer, steadying himself with one hand on the control panel as he kissed Jayce again—longer this time, unafraid. It tasted like promises.
“Yes,” he murmured. “To staying. To building. To tomorrow.”
Outside, the rails flashed silver beneath them, stretching toward a horizon neither man feared anymore.
For the first time, Viktor was not chasing distance.
For the first time, Jayce was not chasing the future alone.
The Hextech Express carried them forward, two hearts beatin
g in time with steel and steam, writing their story mile by mile along shining tracks that led not just outward—but home.