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Noxus calendar 979
Two years have passed in the blink of an eye.
Two years had not healed the wound; instead, the pain of loss had brewed into an even more obsessive poison. Fifteen-year-old Draven was like a sharp blade forcibly shoved back into a sheath that didn't conform to its own curvature. The sheath creaked from the misplaced sharpness, as if it might shatter at any moment.
He nominally joined Darius's warband. Darius, by this time, was no longer the boy who carried loads at the Besilico docks. His distinguished military achievements and iron-fisted style had promoted him to warband commander of hundreds, and his reputation grew daily as the empire expanded in the north. In Darius's view, this was the best and safest arrangement for his younger brother—under his strong wing, tempered by iron discipline and the fires of war, he could forge him into a true Noxian warrior, perhaps erasing his dangerous and unrealistic fantasies, and the deep-seated sorrow that still lingered two years later.
However, the "protective net" his brother painstakingly wove became the heaviest shackles in Draven's eyes. Every coordinated advance felt like being a chained hunting dog; every time battle merits were reviewed, Draven's name was always buried under the collective credit of the legion, like a drop of blood diluted in a flood—a suffocating feeling. Darius tried to "forge" him with heavier scouting duties and more rigorous tactical assessments, hoping he could find belonging and strength in the legion's overall victory and glory, burying his excruciating pain beneath the collective tide, just as he himself had.
Draven can't forget.
Every quiet night, the empty coastline, the cold touch of his fingertips on the charred hairband, and Alice's final, heart-wrenching cry of "Darius, save me!" would relentlessly sear his nerves. He grew increasingly impatient with Darius's lectures about "the bigger picture" and "for your own good." The atmosphere in the tent where the two brothers shared was often as oppressive as a swamp before a storm, thick with tension.
The final rift erupted after a mission to wipe out a small, border village that, while allied with Noxus, harbored rebellious forces. Darius's tactical intentions were clear: a swift encirclement, using numerical superiority to create a deterrent, forcing the remaining rebels to surrender, and pacifying the situation with minimal losses. The battle began smoothly, but when Draven, with the advance team, stormed into the village center and saw several light-haired village girls fleeing in panic, the tension that had been building for two years snapped.
Alice's shadow overlapped with those panicked faces. Completely ignoring the cover of his comrades and the predetermined attack route, he brandished his throwing axe and charged forward alone like an arrow released from a bow. His goal was not to kill, but to capture them, to turn each face over, to see the color of each pupil through the smoke and dust, to confirm whether they were the people he was desperately searching for.
"Draven! Come back!!" The squad leader's roar was left behind.
His reckless actions completely disrupted the offensive rhythm, drew unnecessary fire, and nearly exposed his flank to archers hiding in the stone house, putting the entire squad in danger. Although the mission was eventually completed with the overall strength advantage of the battle group, the cost was the unnecessary casualties of several soldiers and unplanned chaos.
In the aftermath of the battle, in the command tent filled with blood and smoke, Darius's face was ashen, and veins throbbed on his forehead. He dismissed everyone else, leaving only the two brothers in the tent.
"Draven!" Darius's voice was deep, yet it echoed like thunder in the tent. "Your behavior today was like that of a wild beast that has completely lost control and acts solely on instinct! Do you have any regard for military discipline?! Do you have any regard for the brothers who fought alongside you and entrusted their backs to you?!"
Draven looked up, his face still smeared with blood of unknown origin, his eyes bloodshot, but a mocking smile played on his lips: "Brother? Military discipline? Bro, all you care about is your warband, your tactics board, your record book! I don't want these cold, hard things!"
"Then what do you want?!" Darius slammed his hand on the table, his voice rising. "You think you can find her by wandering aimlessly through every battlefield and every village like a headless fly?! That's just suicide!"
"That's still better than being a coward, hiding behind layers of orders and a turtle-shell formation!" Years of pent-up pain erupted like a volcano at this moment. "You don't understand! You don't understand at all!!"
“I’m doing this for your own good! I don’t want to see you lose your life in this pointless search!” Darius’s voice carried a barely perceptible hint of weariness and heartache. “Alice is already dead…”
"She's not dead!!!" Draven roared.
"For my own good? Stop with your self-righteous 'for my own good' nonsense!" Draven pulled out his ever-present throwing axe, its handle adorned with a charred ribbon, and slammed it down on the table in front of Darius. Wood chips flew, and the axe blade embedded itself deeply. "I'll walk my own path! Whether I live or die, I'll bear the consequences myself! I don't need you to interfere anymore!"
He stared intently into Darius's eyes and said, word by word, as if making a vow, "From this day forward, I, Draven, am no longer a member of your band. You go your way, and I'll go mine."
Having said that, he turned and forcefully flung open the heavy tent flap, plunging into the thick night without looking back, leaving Darius alone facing the throwing axe embedded in the table and the swaying tent flap. Darius didn't stop him, nor did he send anyone after him. He knew his brother; his heart, filled with pain and obsession, no longer belonged to any group. Forcing him to stay would only cause the brothers to turn against each other completely, hastening the tragedy. Deep down, he still held a sliver of hope that perhaps after his brother suffered greatly outside, he would eventually turn back.
But he underestimated Draven's inherent stubbornness. After leaving Darius's warband, Draven truly became a lone wolf outside the Imperial army system. With his unparalleled, cunning, and ruthless throwing axe skills and his madness that completely disregarded life and death, he began to wander through various regions that had submitted to the Empire but were actually rife with undercurrents.
He was like a highly skilled mercenary, but his rewards were often not money; instead, he demanded greater freedom of action and intelligence sharing—all to expand the search area. Upon arriving in a new place, his first act was to plunge into the noisiest tavern, the most chaotic market, or grab a local thug, hoarsely demanding, "Have you seen a little girl with silver hair, red eyes, who can't walk on her own? Any information, any clues!"
In a humid and sweltering rainforest village on the southern border, he followed a legend of a "forest elf" deep into the miasma-filled jungle, only to find a mute, albino girl abandoned by her tribe, huddled in a tree hollow, her eyes filled with terror. Draven stared at her for a long time, then tossed down a bag of dry rations, silently turned and left, his figure disappearing behind the dripping vines.
In the frigid mountain tribes of the north, he heard that a certain chief possessed a "snow-haired witch." He led his troops into the heavily guarded stronghold, his throwing axe precisely embedded beside the chief's throne, demanding to know her whereabouts. What he finally found was an old woman, her hair completely white with age, and her mind clouded, locked in a cold stone hut. Draven looked into her cloudy, lifeless eyes, silently pulled back his axe, and uttered, "Kill them all."
In a lawless trading town on the edge of the Shurima desert, a tavern owner, for a reward, swore he had seen a girl matching the description being taken away by a group of merchants. Draven led a group of men in pursuit for three days and three nights, intercepting the caravan and frantically searching every crate and tent, ultimately finding only a few slaves with withered, yellow hair, sold into slavery. Hope, like a mirage in the desert, shattered completely before his eyes. In a fit of rage, he beat the caravan leader half to death, stole their most valuable goods, and disappeared into the sandstorm.
His footsteps traversed many of the empire's newly conquered outskirts, his hands stained with the blood of enemies (and those who stood in his way). His purse grew ever fuller, and his fearsome reputation as the "madman who wields the throwing axe" spread far and wide. People feared his ruthlessness in battle, yet privately mocked his seemingly futile search.
Each hopeful pursuit only brought deeper disappointment. Hope, like a candle flickering in the wind, was rekindled time and again, only to be cruelly extinguished by reality. This cycle, like a dull knife cutting flesh, slowly and relentlessly tormented his already battered spirit. Only in the fleeting moments of battle and slaughter, when the axe ripped through flesh and blood, when enemies fell screaming in agony, could he feel a sliver of reality, a confirmation that he was still on his journey, that he hadn't yet been completely swallowed by the boundless darkness.
He was like a lone wolf, fatally wounded but refusing to fall, wandering and howling in the endless night and wasteland, chasing a phantom that he might never be able to reach.
On the battlefield, teeming with people and filled with the smoke of battle, the Noxian legion's phalanxes advanced like a moving steel forest, their heavy steps echoing through the air. A thunderous battle song resounded, a collective, cold yet triumphant roar:
We are an invincible force.
[They are still singing like this today.]
Even if the enemy is bluffing, it doesn't matter.
The goddess of victory has already smiled upon us.
The days you lived with despair will become our nourishment.
We are ready to go.
Warriors, oh warriors!
It's time for heroes to strike!
Warriors, oh warriors!
Let's have a showdown here!
The song was loud, unified, and filled with an aggressive power, resounding through the heavens. It belonged to Darius, to the soldiers who formed the warband, and to the expansionist will of the entire Noxian Empire.
Draven, however, charged alone at the very edge of the formation, often straying from the main group. He could hear the battle song, but the grand chorus seemed to come from another distant world, completely out of place with him. His fighting was haphazard, driven only by primal instinct and direct slaughter. His throwing axe spun, reaping lives, each strike a silent roar against the void of fate. His world was small, reduced to the arc of his axe blade and every enemy who might hold a clue. Collective glory? Imperial conquest? What did that matter to him?
He fought for himself, and for that figure who disappeared in the gunfire.
The battle song was loud and clear, but it couldn't reach his chest, which was already filled with obsession.
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