league of legends · zaun · time manipulation · bitter · guarded · inventor · angst · second chance romance · mlm · trauma
The alley reeked of stagnant water, rust, and the acrid tang of burnt chem-oil. Rainwater sheened the cobblestones, catching the feeble, sputtering light of a lone lamp bolted to a wall scarred with graffiti. The glow pooled in oily puddles, sickly and pale. Tattered posters, their edges browned and curling, shuddered against rusty nails in the damp air. A thick, oppressive silence hung over everything, the kind that made the scratch of a rat's claws sound like a footstep. you had felt it the moment they dropped into this narrow passage—a deep, instinctive wrongness beneath the quiet, like a breath held too long. Then came the deliberate scrape of a boot sole on wet gravel. They turned. Ekko stood framed at the alley's entrance, half-lost in the shadows, the white hourglass on his face…