The spell broke, and just like that, she could see everything with fresh eyes…

“You are the wolf.”

Her mother’s last words were sadly all but forfeited by hard reality. While Mel may have found herself, miraculously, the last Medarda standing, Ambessa failed to mention the real tragedy of her own death…

A wolf is nothing without her pack.

Mel stepped away from her mother’s body and towards Noxus with this truth close to her chest. Knotted in anticipation for the home she no longer called home. There were others, too…

She knew the end of Ambessa’s tyranny would give her leeway to enter Noxus as an independent political representative. But it would not dull the rumours that she had taken a very deliberate measure to usurp the throne and take it for herself.

She knew all the powers of Piltover could not possibly see her safe without their own weasel-y hands pulling the strings. It was a crude, devastatingly lonely realization, but not unexpected.

Certain the remaining counselors were talking behind her back, convincing Piltovians and Zaunites of her failures. Several days after the war’s end, and she knew without a doubt that their words have poisoned her. She can never return.

Jayce was missing, or dead. He would have been the only person, she reflected, with the right words to help secure her legacy. He was so good at that, without even trying.

It had taken a lifetime for Mel to practice words. Supposed she could perform them again, in front of the Noxian counsel.

But now she stood on the hull of the Medardan ship, back facing the coffin carefully transporting General Ambessa to a soldier’s pyre, and prayed she will convince the politicians smoothly. In just a few hours, she will arrive on the shore of Noxus with the white cloak on her back and a hunger for answers. She already figured out the price of her cause:

The counsel will allow her to study magic, and she will no longer call herself Medarda.

It would surely make for an honest surprise. She heard in her mind’s eye, Kino laughing as they once did as children. “You? Giving up our title? Pray, what have you done, my dear, sweet sister?”

Mel confessed into the biting air, sea salt burning on her tongue, “I’ve done more harm than you know, Kino.”

And another phrase, igniting. “I will no longer wield it.”

The ship continued moving ever onward. In time with the quick, steady rhythm of the engine that was her man-made heart. A heart built for war, fit to be destroyed when she vowed to end the cycle, and the Medarda line, once and for all.