Legends of Runeterra

The Frost Witch doesn't sleep in her keep. She sleeps anywhere, everywhere, nowhere. Sometimes everywhere.

The place where she chose to lie down was a huge underground cavity, big enough to accommodate a thousand fortresses. A sea of ​​​​true ice stretched from one end to the other. It was not the end of the noisy surface, but closer to a completely different kind of madness.

She came here often, and always alone, but she was never alone.

Some call them monsters. Some call them gods. Either way, those great shadows that sleep beneath their blankets of ice can only wander in their dreams. Lissandra dutifully comes to check on them. Make sure their beds are comfortable.

The watchers must not be awakened.

She had lost her eyes long ago, so she traced their sleeping forms in her mind. What she saw brought a chill far beyond her bones and blood, so that when her skin touched the ice, she no longer trembled.

Blindness was a blessing when she was down there. Just feeling their presence was terrifying enough. And then to walk in their dreams, to know what they secretly wanted from the world.

So, she had to let them keep dreaming.

One of the great shadows began to stir. Lissandra had sensed it since the last new moon rose, and had hoped desperately that it would return to sleep on its own—but now the unfathomable intelligence was wriggling among its companions, becoming increasingly restless.

She took off her hood, her gorgeous robes brushed past her ankles and fell to the ground, and she took light steps towards the other side of the frozen void.

Lissandra ran open fingers across the ice. Her hair framed her face, hiding the lines of time, the scars and hollows where her eyes were. She had long ago learned the secrets of dream walking, able to travel incredible distances across this harsh land in an instant, back and forth a hundred times before each dawn. Sometimes she forgot where her body was.

Now, her consciousness drifted downward, through the barrier. She considered the thickness of the True Ice. It was foolish to place the weight of her faith on a sheet of glass, but there was no other choice.

On the other side, the watcher is threatening, sneaking in the dark, feeling frustrated.

It was bigger than a mountain. Was it small? Lissandra hoped so. She never dared to test the defenses of the big guys—they looked like they could devour gravity and time itself, devourers not just of worlds but of entire planes of reality. They made her feel tiny and insignificant, like a speck of frost in a snowstorm.

She focused on the huge, terrifying creature before her.

Its dreams became hers.

Another Lissandra was waiting there, in the dream, an ageless being towering behind a black sun, her hair flowing heavenward, her eyes clear and bright, crystal blue, gleaming with celestial energy, the last dawn of this world.

She was gorgeous. She was a goddess. She was trying to push the sun back below the horizon.

The black fireball was resisting, trying to rise again, burning the goddess' fingers.

She saw long shadows cast across mountains covered in hoarfrost. This land was a twisted Freljord, stripped of all life and magic...

Life. Life was what mattered. All life on the Freljord, the frozen land once offered by Lissandra to the monsters below. She led the throbbing watcher away from its dark thoughts, carefully, trying to soothe it with other dreams.

The tribe was divided into three camps. This was done at the request of the Iceborn Warmother herself. It was to protect against assassination attempts, she said, so that no one would know which tent she was sleeping in.

With the glacier at his feet and the starry sky above his head, the priest lay on the cold stone platform, recording his observations on an Enuk leather scroll by candlelight. His hand holding the pen was steady and powerful. He had to send his records to the Frostguard Fortress every night.

He wondered if strength masked doubt? If—

He watched his breath and realized he was not alone. Shame choked him. He held up a piece of cloth reverently, honoring the greatest of the three sisters, Lissandra. After the vows he had spoken, the only thing that could have chilled him so deeply was her gaze.

"Don't cover your eyes," she said, emerging from the darkness of the night. Her voice was steady and cold.

"I beg your pardon," he said, "I am late. My report—"

"It is not your words that I seek. You are in a dream. I need you to listen. Listen to the sound of ice."

The frost priest's eyes widened at what he heard. The ice spoke of hunger.

No. Not the ice. But the... thing underneath?

"What does this mean?" he asked, but Lissandra was gone.

The priest woke up. He thought about the dream. His oath required him to obey blindly, to freeze and bleed. He took out the cloth and covered his eyes.

Before dawn, he had walked several miles, away from the War Mother and her three camps.

So Lissandra drifted into another person's dream.

Seven ice eagles flew across the blue sky, flapping the frost on their wings. A dreary mountain stood out on a gray pebble beach, gradually sliding into the shallow sea.

The little girl walked alone, and no one remembered her name except herself.

She picked up a crab. It was dark all over, with a pair of square eyes spinning on top of its head. She held it carefully, and the pointed crab legs gently poked her palm.

She looked up and saw a huge ice floe floating on the dark water, carried to land by the nearly frozen waves. The ice floe stumbled onto the rocky beach and began to melt. Inch by inch, it shrank until it finally revealed a woman curled up in an ice cradle, a monster born of winter.

The girl loosened her grip on the crab.

Lissandra rose from the breaking waves like—

"Witch!" the girl screamed. A gust of ice and snow, with a burning chill, gushed out of her mouth.

The witch disappeared, leaving behind only the little girl who cried out a snowstorm.

She woke up beside a dying fire, surrounded by other children who were still asleep. They were all orphaned in the bloody snows of the Freljord. A woman with a stern face was watching over them, an axe slung behind her back. They all knew she would protect them with her life.

An ember rose from the stove and landed on the worn fur at the little girl's feet.

She touched it with her fingers. The ember froze instantly.

Lissandra had drifted off into another dream, but she knew to keep a close eye on the child. She was Iceborn. She could be a new weapon in the coming war.

Or new enemies.