Chapter Text
All Jayce remembered was holding Viktor’s hand before the world went blank.
Then everything fractured.
He saw it all—past and future and every impossible thread between them. Knowledge of the universe flooded him, too vast to comprehend and yet somehow already understood. He was torn between two worlds, his body stretching and breaking as reality itself seemed to rip him apart, until, at last, he was pulled through to the other side.
Cold struck first.
Winter snow clung to his cheeks as he sat upright, breath shallow, body aching as though he had been rebuilt incorrectly. He looked down and saw that he was still wearing what he had worn before the event, as if nothing had changed—except everything had.
A violent surge rose in his throat. It burned, sharp and uncontrollable, and panic followed it like a shadow. He coughed, once, and then again, until a pool of blood stained the snow beneath him.
For a long moment, he simply stared at his hand, red against white. Frost crept across his fingers like glass forming on water.
Where was he?
The world around him was endless winter. Silent. Unforgiving.
His body shivered in the snow, buried beneath it, which only heightened the peculiarity of it all. He could feel it everywhere—the dirt, the sweat, the lingering weight of having lain there for some time. He wondered how he had gotten there.
Beneath his nails, he could see grime packed into the skin.
His back was stiff. He tried to sit up, but his body refused him at first. It resisted, as though it had forgotten how to move. Only after forcing strength back into his legs did he finally manage to rise.
In the distance, he saw a figure lying in the snow.
Fear held him still. For all he knew, it could have been a frozen corpse, lost to the cold long before he arrived. And yet, that thought hardly mattered in that moment—because something far worse lingered in his mind: the possibility that he already knew who it was.
He ran over and lifted Viktor into his arms.
Viktor’s body was limp, still clad in what he had worn before the event—the purple robe draped over his hands, heavy with frost. Jayce took a moment to study his face. It was pale, drained of color, as though the cold had already begun to claim him. He wasn’t sure if he was alive, but he couldn’t afford to hesitate. He had to try.
He pulled Viktor close against his chest, as if his own warmth might somehow reach him, and started running as fast as he could through the blizzard.
The snow swallowed everything. It was a white fog that erased direction and depth alike—only shifting shades of white in every direction. And yet, through the storm, Jayce saw something in the distance.
A cabin.
Holding Viktor’s still body, he ran to the front door of the cabin and shoved himself inside, feeling the wood shudder and crack under the impact.
No one was home—luckily. Relief washed over him in a sharp, unsteady breath as he carried Viktor to the bed and laid him down carefully. He pulled a fur blanket over him, working to warm him as best he could.
The bed was small and poorly made; whoever owned the cabin was clearly not wealthy, unable to afford any real luxuries. Still, it was enough for now.
And that was all Jayce could think about—that he had found shelter.
His next thought was to find a furnace.
He managed to locate one against the wall—tall, cranky, and old, its surface worn and weathered by time. He brushed the snow from it and worked to get it going, coaxing it back to life. In a nearby closet, he found fuel, gathered what he needed, and fed it inside before turning the furnace on.
It sputtered, then caught.
Heat began to spread through the room, warming his hands as he rubbed them together vigorously, trying to drive the cold from his bones. He kept his eyes on Viktor, hoping—desperately—that the rising warmth would be enough to bring him back, that somehow it would heal him.
That Viktor would still be there when all of this was over.
He walked over to Viktor and placed a hand against his throat, searching for any sign of life. At first, there was nothing—only the cold stillness of his skin. Then he felt it: a faint pulse, weak but present. Relief flickered through him.
He lowered himself to check Viktor’s chest more closely, as if proximity alone could confirm he was still there.
As he did, Viktor’s eyes slowly opened.
A faint flicker of awareness stirred within them as they settled on Jayce. In that moment, Jayce realized he was crying—silent, unbidden tears he hadn’t noticed falling. He looked down at Viktor, overwhelmed by the fragile state he was in, grief and relief twisting together in his chest.
All Viktor could think about was the lab.
Something had gone wrong—terribly wrong—and he needed to understand it. His mind clung to the thought with desperate precision, searching for reason amidst the haze clouding his senses. He looked up at Jayce, confusion flickering across his face as he tried to understand why he was crying.
Viktor’s body felt cold, but strangely numb as well, distant from him somehow, and he chose not to dwell on it too deeply. Instead, his gaze drifted toward the window, toward the endless snowfall beyond the glass, and he found himself wondering where everything had gone awry.
Then he looked down at his hands.
They were not purple.
The Hextech discoloration he had lived with for a year was gone, replaced instead with pale tan skin—not healthy, not fully alive with warmth, but different. Changed. Something had happened, something powerful enough to strip away the signs of his illness as though they had never existed at all.
His body ached.
Not from the cold, but from a deeper need—an unbearable longing for warmth, for comfort, for something steady to hold onto amidst the terror pressing at the edges of his mind.
He wanted it from Jayce.
He simply did not know how to ask.
Jayce covered his face and shivered. It felt foolish, even now, but he didn’t want Viktor to see him crying—not even in a situation like this.
His eyes stared blankly ahead as fragments of memory drifted through him. He remembered being torn from one world and cast into another, reality unraveling around him in flashes of impossible light.
And for one brief moment, he had seen something beautiful.
A world untouched by suffering. Peaceful. Warm. A world where happiness existed without sacrifice.
But the vision had vanished the instant he awoke, slipping through his grasp like a dream fading with the dawn, leaving only the cold behind.
“I just got the furnace working,” Jayce said quietly. “Hopefully, things will warm up soon.”
He walked over and crouched in front of the furnace, holding his hands toward the heat. For whatever reason, he couldn’t bring himself to look at Viktor. He didn’t know whether it was because he felt overwhelmed or simply confused by everything that had happened.
Behind him, Viktor forced himself upright with all the strength he could gather.
“Jayce,” he said, his voice weak but urgent, “I saw another world. Another reality. Are we in another reality now? It was… beautiful. Filled with peace and wonder.”
Jayce immediately turned, reaching out to press Viktor gently back against the bed.
“Don’t get out of bed,” he said firmly. “It’s too cold, and you’re too weak. We just need you to heal.”
Viktor frowned faintly, though exhaustion dulled the expression.
“I’m not sure we can return to the lab,” Viktor murmured. “However… I had an older laboratory in the Undercity. I think we should go there and figure out what just happened.”
Jayce’s face tightened.
“You can’t leave this cabin until you’re feeling better, Viktor,” he said. “I found you lying out there in the snow.”
Jayce remembered Viktor’s old laboratory well.
He had been there once, long ago, back when Viktor had first shown him the Undercity—the place where he had grown up, where the air tasted of metal and smoke and survival. The memory returned to him now with startling clarity.
He thought about it carefully, wondering if perhaps Viktor was right. Maybe they should go there as soon as possible, if only to understand what had happened to them.
Everything felt impossibly perplexing, like fragments of a broken equation scattered beyond comprehension. Nothing fit together cleanly anymore. The world itself seemed wrong.
But perhaps, in that forgotten laboratory beneath the city, they could find answers.
Maybe they could figure out a way back.
Maybe they could still fix this.
“If we can’t go through the Undercity, then perhaps we can pass through Piltover at night,” Viktor said quietly.
Jayce shook his head almost immediately.
“Viktor, right now we need to worry about warmth and shelter. We don’t have food, and we have nowhere to go.” He exhaled sharply, running a hand through his hair. “I could try going to the park. I own a section of it—maybe we could get inside and rest there.”
He searched through his coat for his keys, patting every pocket before his expression darkened.
Nothing.
“Damn.”
Viktor shifted slightly beneath the blankets, his voice weaker now. “I have money in a room back at my office.”
Jayce looked toward him again.
“We could get on the road and try to reach the sheriff’s house,” Jayce said. “Maybe we can get food or water there. I could borrow money from him—we could buy supplies from the market. She owes me a favor.”
The cabin fell quiet for a moment, the storm rattling softly against the walls.
“For now,” Viktor murmured, sinking deeper into the bed, “I think I’m going to sleep.”
Jayce glanced toward the window, where the blizzard swallowed the world beyond the glass.
“I think I’m going to chop some wood,” he said. “Try to get us more warmth.”
“It’s a blizzard out there, Jayce.”
Jayce hesitated, then let out a tired breath.
“...All right. I’ll look for food instead.”
The cabin wasn’t very large.
The main room held little more than the bed and the furnace, but Jayce assumed there had to be other rooms hidden beyond the narrow walls. He began opening doors one by one until, finally, he found a small pantry tucked away in the back of the cabin.
There was food inside—not much, but enough.
He wasn’t sure how any of it had gotten there when no one appeared to be home, yet he didn’t allow himself to dwell on the thought for long. There was fruit, a few scraps of preserved goods, and some meat hanging near the back wall.
Jayce took the meat carefully by the hook, checking to make sure it was still good. He brought it close, smelling the raw flesh before deciding it was safe enough to eat, then carried it back into the main room.
While searching through the small kitchen area, he also managed to find an old knife. The metal was frozen to the touch.
He left the blade near the furnace for a while, letting the heat thaw it enough to handle properly. Once it had warmed, he picked it up and cut the meat in half.
It wasn’t much—just enough for him and Viktor to survive a few more hours.
The kitchen was very small, built almost entirely of wood. A few cabinets hung crookedly from the walls, their hinges broken and splintered with age. Jayce lit the stove and placed the pan over the fire, cooking the meat slowly as the heat crackled beneath it.
There were a few potatoes tucked away near the counter, so he decided to cook those as well. Soon, the cabin filled with a heavy, musky scent of meat and smoke, the warmth of it settling into the cold air.
When the sizzling finally quieted, Jayce placed the food onto two worn plates he had found in one of the cupboards.
Before Viktor could drift back to sleep, Jayce made sure he ate something. They needed their strength if they were going to survive whatever this place was.
The cabin had no proper forks or knives left to use, so they ate with their fingers instead, sitting quietly beside the furnace while the storm raged outside.
Viktor lay back against the bed and closed his eyes.
Jayce watched him rest with a softened expression, the tension in his face easing, if only slightly. Viktor carried himself as though he were unharmed, as though exhaustion alone weighed on him instead of whatever impossible thing they had survived. But Jayce could see through it. He only wanted Viktor to recover. To be well. To survive this.
For a moment, he considered reaching out—placing a hand on Viktor’s shoulder, telling him that everything would be all right.
But he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
The words felt too fragile. Too uncertain.
Instead, Jayce stood and searched the cabin once more for food, hoping he had overlooked something earlier. He checked the pantry again, the cupboards, even the small storage shelves near the stove.
There was nothing left.
It turned out he had simply been lucky to find what little he already had.
He peered outside and realized the blizzard was beginning to ease.
The wind no longer screamed against the cabin walls with the same violence as before, though the cold remained sharp enough to bite through skin and bone alike. Jayce gathered what little they had, making certain everything was prepared before he left.
Then, quietly, he stepped outside into the frigid air.
His destination was one of the laboratories.
Viktor was resting and could not come with him—which was exactly what Jayce intended. He didn’t want Viktor wandering through the cold in his condition, no matter how much he insisted he was fine. Better for him to sleep. Better for him to stay somewhere warm while Jayce searched for answers alone.
Snow crunched beneath his boots as he disappeared into the pale wasteland, the cabin growing smaller behind him.