#paths diverging

The silence of the midnight lab was broken only by the hungry hum of the Hexcore. Viktor moved with a desperate, feverish speed, his hands trembling as he input the final sequences. He could feel the cold fluid back in his lungs—the illness reclaiming the territory he had stolen.

He didn't just want to walk; he wanted to live.

He stepped into the stabilization field and initiated the full-body integration. The reaction was instantaneous and cataclysmic. It wasn't a gentle glow this time; it was as if he had been struck by a bolt of lightning that refused to ground. His back arched, his mouth locked in a silent scream as the violet energy tore through his chest, his arms, his very spine. He was pinned in the air by invisible talons of light, unable to move, unable to breathe.

"Viktor!"

The door slammed open. Sky stood there, a fresh cup of coffee in her hand. The mug shattered against the floor as she saw him. "Viktor! No!"

She didn't think. She didn't calculate. She ran toward the shimmering, violent heart of the storm.

"Sky, stay back!" he tried to roar, but his lungs were filled with ozone.

She reached into the field, her hand catching his. The second her skin touched the hex-energy, the power surged with a blinding, white-hot intensity. The Arcane didn't just pass through her; it consumed her. The light was so bright it turned the world into a void of pure screaming energy.

Then, the floor rushed up to meet him.

The lab was deathly silent, save for the cooling hiss of the Hexcore. Viktor stood over the mound of ash, his new, metallic fingers trembling as they hovered over Sky’s glasses. The grief was there, but it felt filtered—processed through a mind that now hummed with the cold, logical frequency of the Arcane.

The doors burst open. Jayce skidded into the room, his face pale, his breath coming in ragged stabs. "I heard the noise! Viktor, I—"

Jayce’s words died in his throat. He looked at the smoking machinery, then down at the floor. He saw the ashes. He saw the cracked lenses of the woman who had lived in the shadows of their greatness. Finally, his eyes moved to Viktor.

Viktor didn't look human. The violet crystal had climbed his neck, tracing the line of his jaw and encasing his torso in a shimmering, translucent shell. He looked like a god carved from starlight and iron.

"Viktor?" Jayce whispered.

"She touched me," Viktor rasped, his voice vibrating with a metallic resonance. He didn't look up. "The stabilization failed. I told her to stay back, Jayce. I told her... and now she is nothing but dust."

He expected the horror. He expected Jayce to scream, to call him a monster, to cast him out of the light of Piltover. He braced his new, reinforced spine for the rejection that had followed him since the Sump.

Instead, he felt a hand—warm, heavy, and unmistakably human—rest firmly on his cold, crystalline shoulder.

Jayce didn't pull away. He stepped into the wreckage and pulled Viktor into a fierce, crushing embrace. He didn't care about the sharp edges of the metal or the terrifying hum of the magic pulsing beneath Viktor’s skin.

"I’m so sorry," Jayce choked out, his voice thick with tears. "Viktor, I’m so sorry."

Viktor froze. The logic of the Hexcore struggled to compute the sensation of Jayce’s heartbeat thudding against his new chest. "You saw what I did. What I am. I killed her, Jayce. I let the magic take her."

"No," Jayce said, pulling back just enough to look Viktor in the eye, his own face wet with tears. "You were trying to survive. She knew that. She loved you, V. She wouldn't want you to hate yourself for this."

Jayce reached down and carefully picked up Sky’s glasses from the ash, tucking them into a pocket over his heart. Then, he looked at Viktor’s transformed body, not with fear, but with a profound, aching tenderness. He ran a hand over the glowing violet plates of Viktor’s arm.

"It healed you," Jayce whispered, a small, broken smile touching his lips. "You aren't dying anymore. That’s what she wanted. That’s what we both wanted."

Viktor leaned into Jayce’s touch, the cold steel of his forehead resting against Jayce's warm shoulder. The metallic humming of his body seemed to soften, syncing for a moment with the steady rhythm of his partner.

"I don't know if I'm still the man you knew," Viktor admitted, his voice a low hum.

"Then I'll get to know the man you've become," Jayce promised, squeezing his hand. "We’ll figure it out. Together. No more secrets, Viktor. We’re going to finish this, and we’re going to do it the way she would have wanted. We're going to save everyone."

In the dim light of the destroyed lab, the Man of Progress and the Herald of the Evolution stood amidst the ashes of the past, looking toward a future that was as terrifying as it was beautiful.

The following weeks were a blur of grief and shifting gears. Viktor lived in the silence of the lab, a ghost haunting his own workstation. He spent hours hunched over Sky’s journals, his metallic fingers turning the delicate pages with agonizing care. Every time he saw his own face sketched in the margins—drawn with such unshielded love—a fresh wave of agony ripped through him.

He sobbed, a sound that was now a jarring mix of human rasp and mechanical hum. In a sudden, blinding fit of rage, Viktor stood and swung his cane—the one he no longer needed—at the Hexcore.

"You took her!" he screamed.

The wood shattered against the stone, but as the blow landed, a bolt of agonizing feedback surged through Viktor’s body. The Hexcore lashed out, sending a terrifying neural shock through the parts of him made of its magic. He collapsed to his knees, panting, his vision swimming in violet sparks.

He realized then, with a hollow dread, that he was no longer separate from the machine. He could not destroy it without destroying himself.

"Fine," he wheezed, tears dripping onto the cold floor. "Fine."

He wiped his eyes with a shaking hand. If he couldn't destroy it, he would master it. He would not let her death be a meaningless accident. He would make her sacrifice the foundation of something eternal.

Viktor gathered the small glass vial containing the shimmering grey remains of her ashes and placed it on the console, right next to the glowing core. "You will be with me, Sky. Always."

He worked through the night, a man possessed. He combined Sky’s biological theories on organic conduction with Jayce’s structural runes and his own mastery of transmutation. The equations began to align into a perfect, terrifying symmetry. He had found it. The solution to the Great Beyond.

He moved to the heavy oak doors and turned the deadbolt. He didn't want Jayce’s pity tonight. He didn't want anyone to stop him.

Returning to the desk, he found a half-empty bottle of Jayce’s expensive, foul-tasting brandy. He took a long, burning swallow, feeling the alcohol bloom in the small part of his stomach that was still flesh. It didn't dull the pain, but it stilled the tremors in his hands.

Viktor stood before the humming Hexcore. The violet light was blinding now, sensing his intent. With a steady breath, he pricked the tip of his finger. A single drop of deep crimson blood—the last of his old life—fell onto the surface of the stone.

The lab erupted.

The transformation wasn't a strike of lightning this time; it was a slow, agonizing rewrite of his soul. He felt the magic burrowing into his marrow, replacing his nerves with threads of starlight, turning his remaining flesh into something unyielding and immortal. He tried to hold onto the image of Sky’s smile, but the sensation was too much. The pain was a roar that drowned out his thoughts.