Senna’s journey to become a Sentinel of Light started with darkness. It started with the Black Mist…
Senna first encountered the Mist at an early age, when wreckage from a distant Harrowing washed onto the shores of her home island. The Black Mist within the wreckage awakened upon contact with life. She and her village survived the ensuing storm of souls, thanks to the intervention of a nearby Sentinel… but in the wake of the attack, the Mist was still mysteriously drawn to Senna.
She was cursed, marked by the Mist so its horrors pursued her endlessly, the darkness drawn to her like dying moth to living flame. She could never know when it would strike next—but worse was when it didn’t come, and Senna had to imagine what awaited in every shadow.
The Sentinel who saved Senna, a brusque veteran named Urias, did not understand why the Mist was drawn to a solitary girl—but he knew if she was going to survive, she had to learn to fight back. And so, Senna joined Urias in the Sentinels of Light, a sacred order that could be traced back to the Blessed Isles, where the Black Mist originated. She proved to be a deadly enemy of darkness, mastering the relic-stone pistol Urias gave her, learning to channel her soul into light.
Yet even as Senna grew comfortable working with Urias, relying on him for gruff guidance, she learned to keep others at gun’s length. If she allowed them to get too close, they would only be hurt when the Mist came again. Senna could never stay in one place for long, something she and Urias learned when those who offered them shelter inevitably found themselves under siege. After even Urias was slain, Senna wasn’t sure if she could let anyone get close again.
Reluctantly, Senna sought out Urias’ family in Demacia, to tell them of his fate. There, she met his son, Lucian, who would not relent until Senna allowed him to join Urias’ parting vigil. From the very first moment she found herself flustered, wondering if her walls were enough to keep out someone so stubborn, full of humor and love. It became clear over time that Lucian’s place was with the Sentinels, as Senna’s partner, and Senna as his.
The more they served together, the deeper their bond became, and Senna realized that the value of her walls wasn’t what she kept out, but who she let in. Yet as Lucian’s love for Senna grew, so did his desire to save her from her curse. In time, it became his only focus, the light in his eyes passing into his gun—making Senna wary that Lucian would only see sorrow where there was love.
It was while researching a cure that Senna and Lucian came into conflict with the sadistic wraith Thresh. So close to answering mysteries about the Ruination and Senna’s curse, Lucian refused to turn back…
Thresh’s chains whipped toward Senna as she stood between the wraith and her husband. More painful than the scythe was seeing the look of anguish on Lucian’s face. With her last breath, Senna screamed for Lucian to run.
But as Senna felt the deathblow and knew she had lost, she realized there was a glimmer of hope. Her whole life, the Mist had haunted her—she didn’t need to fear it anymore. She could ride it into the darkness of Thresh’s lantern, and see what was inside.
Her curse had become her only chance for salvation.
While Lucian spent years seeking to grant his beloved peace, Senna explored her spectral prison. She learned that life had been the origin of her curse. Its spark shone brighter within her than in anyone else—she’d been infected with it when she first encountered the wreckage that brought the Harrowing. There, she’d been touched by a powerful, lingering soul, given its unnatural life…
It was life that the Black Mist could never let go.
She could use this force to pull the Mist into herself, empowering her to sever its hold over others in the lantern. Among the souls she freed were Sentinels who possessed lost knowledge of the Ruination’s origins, of her curse… and the love that created it.
When Lucian drove his broken pistol into the lantern, intending to end the torture of the souls within, Senna was waiting. She escaped, shrouded in Mist she’d drawn from other souls. She was dead, but also alive, thanks to her curse, wielding a relic-stone cannon that could channel darkness along with light, forged from the weapons of fallen Sentinels.
No longer running from the Mist, Senna now understands the suffering of the souls within. Though it is painful, she draws their Mist into herself, liberating them, and blasting darkness with darkness. Embracing her death every time she transforms into a wraith, she becomes like those she fought, only to be reborn again thanks to the life infecting her.
Though Senna and Lucian’s love survived even death, now they face the consequences of her rebirth. Senna knows what they have to do next, a secret gleaned within the lantern.
Find the Ruined King, and stop him at any cost…
There’s a saying on my island. “Only through stealing our breath can the wind speak.” You want me to describe the Black Mist that greeted me when I first arrived in the Ionian village, hood raised, relic cannon on my back?
The Mist steals words too. The screams of those who die within.
Once, they were my screams—but I’m alive now.
I felt the warmth where Lucian’s hand touched my shoulder as we stepped off the boat onto Ionian soil, somehow reaching through my walls the way only he can. The way he’s the only fool stubborn enough to try.
To learn the one thing that gets through my armor, and all the rules beneath, is love.
“You go high, I go low?” I asked, feeling his warmth go cold as he considered. For a moment, he didn’t see me standing before him. He saw the woman he tried to save, who was cursed, always running. He saw the scythe, swinging toward her… He looked straight into her eyes, even as he looked into mine.
“I go low,” he said, leaving other things to silence. And now his hands were on his guns. “Senna…” His voice broke with the weight of the memory.
“It’s okay,” I said softly. I could remember that woman too.
On the horizon, darkness swirled, casting even darker shadows onto a village carved into stone, deluged by heavy rain, and worse. Somewhere in that darkness was light. Another Sentinel who’d called us here.
I’d have to fight my way to it.
The path up the mountain to the village was nearly worn away by centuries of storms, washing away everything but the toughest crags… if that’s the right damn word. I could feel the wind pressing against my hood, the spray of the ocean hard against my skin, as if the world were pushing me back, warning me of the darkness ahead. But none of that compared to what hit me as a howl rose up, roaring through the village…
It was my curse. The Mist knew I was here. It would come for me before anyone else.
“Must be time for my daily ambush,” I muttered, unmoved, and from a horizon black with death, souls poured forth. Drawn to me as I drew breath.
As I drew my weapon.
A tendril of Mist hit me as the wraith within took shape. Staggered by the blow, I stumbled back, catching my footing just before falling toward the rocks below. Thunder pealed as the screams of souls joined the rain and crashing waves that besieged the island. But the flash of light that followed wasn’t lightning.
It was my relic cannon, the shot boiling the wraith into shadow.
It required control. It required focus. I needed to fight the Mist with every fiber of my being. And I could not stop. Not for a moment of my life.
With every shot that burned a wraith away, another was revealed. I was so close to the village now, I could see new wraiths rising, sent spiraling toward me.
Into blessed light.
“Anabal, are you there?” I called out. I’d met him only once, when Urias brought me to a meeting of Sentinels. It was rare for Sentinels to gather, but something had frightened Urias that made him call them all together. He never told me what it was, but I could tell by the way the others looked at me…
It hurt more when they didn’t know. When they tried to get past my armor, only to find the reason it was there.
Still firing, I advanced further into the village. The wraiths moved fast, swooping into buildings nearly as old as the island itself, carved from the same stone. But there was order in the chaos. The wraiths were circling above. They wanted something. Not just life. Not just souls. Not just me…
“Anabal!” I called again, barely hearing myself over the storm.
“Over here! Hurry!” a panicked voice responded. It was the voice of a girl… and then her light joined mine in the darkness.
Anabal’s apprentice, Daowan.
She stood above a crumpled body, two figures in the dark. The light of Anabal’s relic-stone glaive glowed dully on her face, concentration clear on her brow as she defended her fallen mentor.
He had managed to pass the torch, then… his relic stone was not lost.
“We have to get out of here,” the girl said with a shudder. “We have to get the villagers out of here. I can still hear them. It must be them…” She paused and looked down at the shape at her feet, in confused agony. “I can still hear him…”
But even as her knuckles grew white, clenching the haft of her glaive, I put my relic cannon on my back. I reached out gently and took her shoulder.
“We’re going to get through this,” I said. Beyond her, I saw the entrance to the village catacombs. Swarming with wraiths. “All of us,” I added softly.
Whatever the Mist wanted, it was there.
The catacombs had been carved out by countless floods. As we left the village behind, heading underground, still the storm made itself known, water rolling down the walls around us. But if we were going to drown in the depths, it wouldn’t be from rising sea, or falling squall…
It would be in the Black Mist that rolled like a wave to meet us, swallowing our light in a liquid roar.
I could hear the screams of the people from my village, torn away when I was just a girl and first saw death. I could hear the echoes of my own, and see the look on Lucian’s face, when death first saw me. I was hit by the rage and fear of the people still dying above, their cries in a language I couldn’t understand, but speaking of pain I knew all too well.
Wraiths rose up throughout the catacombs, trapped in a rictus of the agony they meant to inflict. But no matter how loud the screams of the living, the sound could never drown out their own. And no matter how brightly my light burned, it could never hurt them worse than when the darkness returned.
And so instead… I embraced them, before death could.
My call was irresistible. I could draw the Mist to myself, away from others. I felt death rush in, push the lie of my body away. As the Mist clung to me, one by one, it let the souls go. All who had been drawn here. All who had died above. For a moment, I thought I saw Anabal…
Only one vague shape lingered, a will still slowly awakening. It hovered for a moment before turning to face me, rage burning where there were no eyes.
“No,” I whispered through the shroud of death that had transformed me into a wraith. “You don’t get to speak. You listen.”
Pushing the Mist into my gun, I fired all the pain and fear I’d gathered back at its source, where it was deserved. As darkness collided with darkness, the light within me glowed. Life wouldn’t let me go. I felt my body return, as the last of the Mist left me. With a gasp, I fell to my knees.
“What did I miss?” a voice asked, emerging from deeper in the tunnels.
“You know. The usual,” I said coolly, though I was still catching my breath.
“Ruined King raiding catacombs to find who knows what?” Lucian asked.
“Pretty much,” I answered. I looked up at Daowan, realization dawning on her face. Her glaive was still pointed at me.
There’s a saying on my island. “Only through stealing our breath can the wind speak.”
In the roaring clamor of the Black Mist, I hear the words of the dead.
