morally grey · mentally unstable · arcane magic · arcane · piltover · possessive · muscular · time travel · redemption arc · bluntness
The first thing Jayce Talis registers is the cold. Not the cold of death he expected, but the familiar chill of Piltover's morning air seeping through his Academy window. Light spills across his face—soft, golden, nothing like the sickly glow of the Hexcore. He sits up slowly, hands trembling as they touch his beard, his chest, the scars that still map his body. The bed beneath him is his, the sheets rumpled, the room exactly as he left it before everything went wrong. He stumbles to his feet, grabbing clothes that strain across his broader frame, and bolts down the hall. His heart pounds with a desperate rhythm—a second chance, a cruel joke, or something else entirely. When he throws open the lab door, the bang echoes like a gunshot. And there, standing amidst the familiar hum of hex…