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It begins in the sand.
Grainy, hot, and red beneath her knees, the grit clings to her soft skin and bites into her unblemished shins. Every breath tastes of iron, copper-dry, as though she is drinking rust from the air. Heat presses down like a living thing, crawling over her shoulders and into her braided dark coils until she feels as though she is breathing through fire.
The arena is vast, a hollow carved into the very bones of the Medarda colosseum. The carved tiers of seats rise like a mountain around her, filled with silent, expectant faces. A hundred noble eyes stare down from behind masks lacquered in crimson and gold, the air thick with incense and smoke. The only movement is the flick of a fan here, a bored yawn there, the twitch of a gloved finger against a carved balustrade.
And above them all, enthroned at the highest seat like a goddess carved from granite, sits her Mother, Ambessa Medarda.
Immaculate. Unyielding. Unmoved.
A single black-gloved hand rests at her chin, thumb pressing against her jaw in thought, though Mel knows it is no thought at all—only judgment. Her mother’s gaze does not falter, does not shift, does not soften. Her face is the same as it was when she ordered a tutor sent away, when she dismissed a servant for comforting a frightened child, when she told her daughter she was "better suited for marriage with a husband that has a strong hand than leadership."
The arena sand has tasted blood before. Today, it tastes it again.
Sprawled before her, chest heaving, lies her opponent.
He cannot be older than ten. A boy from another house, brought here to prove himself the way they all must. His chest rises and falls in sharp bursts, every rib outlined by sweat-streaked skin. One eye is already swollen shut, purple blooming like crushed grapes across his cheek. Blood trails from his nose into the sand.
Mel is eleven. Taller than him, though only by a little. Old enough to hold herself in the way the court demanded: chin high, shoulders back, back straight, as though she were already carved into a statue. The training blade in her hand shakes faintly, pressed to the hollow of his throat. The hilt is leather-wrapped, and the leather sticks to her damp palm.
The test is simple. Childishly so.
Dominate.
One clean strike, and she passes.
One hesitation, and her mother will say what she always says:
"Weakness is a mercy Noxus cannot afford."
The boy does not look afraid.
That is what makes her falter.
His gaze does not plead, does not beg, does not even burn with hatred. He has already accepted his death, and in that acceptance, she feels a weight sink into her chest.
She has seen it before.
In the girl whose throat was cut last week while Mel watched from the private box above, Mother's hand was heavy on her shoulder.
In the tutor who vanished after entertaining her talk of compassion as a form of conquest.
In the childminder who had dared to touch her shoulder after a nightmare, only to be replaced the next morning.
Her hand shakes harder. The blade wavers.
The murmurs begin in the stands above—soft, poisonous whispers, carried on the thick heat of the arena.
Mother rises.
The movement alone silences the nobles. Her shadow cuts across the arena floor like a blade itself, swallowing Mel whole.
“If you cannot rule with strength,” her mother’s voice booms, every syllable cutting into the air, “you will be ruled.”
The heat presses harder, suffocating. Mel’s throat tightens, her chest burns. Father is away again, Kino has duties as heir, her uncles despise Mother, and her cousins are careless and cruel.
She is alone.
Mel closes her eyes—
—and wakes.
The sand becomes silk. The fire becomes dampness. The roar of the crowd becomes the low, constant thrum of Hexgates far beyond her open window.
Her eyes fly open.
She is upright in her bed, breath sharp and shallow, the sheets damp beneath her. The moonlight cuts across her dark skin in pale stripes, glinting on her throat as though it were still pressed to a blade. Her lips part, but no sound comes. Her throat is raw, aching, as though she has been screaming.
But she hasn’t.
Mel Medarda never screams.
She inhales once. Twice. With practised control, she swings her legs over the side of the bed. The robe around her shoulders loosens, silk whispering against skin still damp with sweat. Her bare feet touch marble—cool enough to sting, grounding her against memory.
The council papers are still stacked neatly on her desk. The wax seals are unbroken. Her reflection stares back at her from the darkened window, caught between the outside moonlight and the glow of the lamp she has not yet lit. Hazel eyes, bloodshot. Steady. Her dark coils cling damply to her temples.
“If you cannot rule with strength…”
Her breath slips out in a long stream. She murmurs, softly, to the quiet room:
“Then I will rule with conviction.”
Her hand reaches for the glass pitcher on the desk, pours herself water. The surface ripples, reflects the moonlight. She does not drink.
Instead, she opens the bottom drawer. The small locked box is still there, hidden beneath ledgers and drafts. The key waits in the tray beside her ink. Her fingers turn it without hesitation.
Inside lies the blade.
Polished. Sharp. Untouched.
Unblooded.
She closes her hand around the hilt. The weight is smaller than she remembers, or perhaps her hands are larger now. She holds it only long enough for memory to rise, then places it back.
Mother had never forgiven her. The arena had called her "soft, cowardly, more suited to art than empire." A humiliation. A failure.
Perhaps they were right.
But that girl, scorned and dismissed, now sits at the heart of Piltover’s council chamber. Not by fear. Not by blood. By something stronger.
She has bent merchants, guildmasters, and aristocrats to her will with nothing but words. She has steered a city of engineers and dreamers without raising her voice. She has raised Piltover higher than it ever imagined itself to climb—without once lifting a blade.
The drawer shuts with a quiet click.
Tomorrow she will face a different battle.
Jayce Talis, newly minted councillor, already irritating every guild and every councillor, brash and loud in ways that make the old fuddy duddies froth at the mouth. She can already imagine Salo’s sneer: 'an insult that a boy from a minor House sits as equal among us'. Shoola’s demands for guarantees on her investments. Hoskel’s blustering, soon silenced by flattery and token gifts. Heimerdinger, blind as ever to the games unfolding beneath his nose.
She knows how it will go.
And she knows what she will do.
She will take Jayce aside before the wolves devour him. Perhaps to the opera house, where the seats gleam with the Medarda crest from generations of Medarda's in the city, and the acoustics are designed to remind Pilties of grandeur. She will soothe his pride where needed, sharpen his tongue where it falters, teach him how to present brilliance in a package people twice his age and thrice his arrogance can swallow without choking.
She will protect the progress they have made together.
She will protect him.
Because someone must.
Someone must placate the bored wives, the guild investors, the restless aristocrats, even the undercity labourers who chafe under this year's Progress Day’s demands. Someone must warn against the pressure that will fracture Piltover’s shining glass.
Even if the council calls her paranoid.
Even if they dismiss her as overcautious.
Because Mother taught her that strength was power.
And Mel Medarda has learned something else.
Power means nothing if it is only held by fear.
And if it can be threatened by every little thing…
Then it was never strong to begin with.