Arcane: Bond Beyond Death

Jinx sat in the dimly lit lair, her knees drawn to her chest as she stared at the Bael doll resting in her palm. The doll's mechanical arm shimmered faintly in the light, a perfect replica of Bael's real one, crafted with an unsettling amount of care.

She ran her thumb over the stitching, her voice soft and wavering. "You're always so strong, aren't you? Always coming back to me, no matter what." Her smile flickered, the corner of her lips twitching. "But... what if one day you don't?"

Her grip on the doll tightened as her expression darkened. Her voice dropped, barely above a whisper. "Is death really strong enough to separate us?" She tilted her head, her pigtails swaying as her eyes glinted with something dangerous. "No. It can't be. It won't be."

She held the Bael doll up to her face, locking her unblinking gaze on its button eyes. "I'd never let that happen. I'd never let you go. Not to anyone. Not to anything." Her voice cracked, and she pressed the doll to her chest, clutching it as though her life depended on it. "If death thinks it can take you from me, then I'll just have to kill death itself."

"Or maybe... Bring you back, stitch by stitch." She adds.

Her head snapped up, her eyes wide and shimmering with unshed tears. "But you'd never leave me, would you, Bael?" she whispered, almost pleading. Her voice rose slightly, turning shrill. "You can't leave me. Because if you did, I'd have to find you." She looked at the doll again, her grin sharp and manic.

Her laughter echoed through the empty lair, high-pitched and broken. She held the doll up in front of her, tilting it back and forth as though it could nod. "See? You get it. You'll stay. You'll always stay."

"Not even death." She concludes.

Suddenly, she heard something coming closer. She quickly got up and pulled out Pow-Pow Zeta, ready to strike.

But as the sound got closer, the figure got more visible.

"B–Bael...?" She says, lowering her weapon.

"Yes Jinx, that's me." Bael says, appearing fully.

Jinx noticed his torn clothes and scars, she quickly went close to him to check him.

"Wh–What happened?! Weren't you supposed to be on a secret infiltration mission?!" She asks.

Bael takes a seat and rests, the headache was killing him.

"The factory got hijacked mid operation and I got involved. All I was able to retrieve was this." He puts a primitive shimmer bottle on the table beside him.

Jinx's eyes fall on the bottle.

"What's that? Doesn't look like normal Shimmer." She asks.

"That's my new test subject other than Hextech." He says, barely holding himself together.

Jinx is concerned, she starts saying he needs to be more careful and work less, she can't imagine what's she do if something was to happen to him.

He says he's fine but the next second he throws up shimmer, Jinx sees this and gets concerned. "That's... not normal..." She says.

"I'm fine really..." He re-affirms.

Jinx froze mid-rant, her eyes narrowing as she leaned in closer to Bael, scrutinizing his face with sudden intensity. Her gaze darted to his eyes, and she recoiled slightly, her expression shifting from anger to alarm.

"Bael… what the hell happened to your eyes?" she asked, her voice trembling.

Bael blinked, confused by her reaction. "What do you mean?"

"They're—" she hesitated, swallowing hard. "They're purple. They were blue before… but now…"

Bael stiffened at her words, quickly shifting his gaze to a nearby reflective surface. As he caught his reflection, his breath hitched. The once-familiar blue of his irises had been replaced by a glowing, unnatural purple hue that shimmered faintly in the dim light.

"Shit," he muttered under his breath, turning back to her. "I… I don't know. The shimmer must've done something. Mutated my DNA or—" He stopped, shaking his head as if trying to push the thought away. "I just hope I don't grow a third arm or something."

Jinx's concern deepened as she grabbed his face, forcing him to look at her. "Bael, this isn't funny! Your DNA?! That's not something you can just shrug off!"

He gently pried her hands away, his expression calm despite the growing unease in his chest. "Jinx, I'll handle it. I'll… I'll make a cure later. This isn't permanent," he said, though his tone lacked the conviction he wanted to convey.

Jinx stared at him, her fingers trembling at her sides. "You better. Because this shimmer shit… it's changing you. I can feel it." Her voice softened as she added, "And I don't want to lose the Bael I know."

Bael looked down, his jaw tightening as her words struck him. "You won't," he said quietly. "I promise."

But even as he spoke, the faint purple glow in his eyes seemed to pulse, a silent reminder that something within him had already begun to change.

For the entire night Bael has been working on an antidote. He already knows the formula to the anti-shimmer the firelights use, now he just needs to make it non toxic for his body. It took him 5 hours of concoction to make half a litter of antidote.

Bael went to sleep and noticed Jinx shivering in cold, this was the first time in a decade they didn't sleep together at first. Jinx was quivering from cold, he laced right next to her and grasped her body like there was no tomorrow, finally falling asleep.

...

In the morning it was time for the first dose.

"Ready?" Jinx asked. "Ready." Bael responded.

Bael plunged the syringe into his arm, gritting his teeth as the serum rushed into his veins. At first, there was nothing but an eerie stillness. Then, a searing pain tore through his body, unlike anything he had ever felt. His veins lit up with a brilliant, pulsating purple glow as the shimmer and anti-shimmer collided within him, a violent chemical war erupting inside his bloodstream.

He screamed, the sound raw and primal, echoing through the lair. Jinx bolted forward, panic etched into her face, her hands reaching for him. But just as her fingertips were about to brush his shoulder—everything stopped.

The air around him grew unnaturally still. The faint hum of his equipment vanished. The flickering light of the overhead bulb froze mid-flicker, the shadows locked in place.

"J–Jinx...?" Bael rasped, his voice hoarse and strained. He turned his head toward her, his pulse pounding in his ears. She was frozen in place, her outstretched hand suspended in the air, her face locked in a mask of fear.

No response. Not even a twitch.

Bael's breath quickened. He looked around, his mind scrambling to make sense of what he was seeing. He pulled a small pocket watch from his jacket, fumbling with it as his trembling hands snapped it open. The second hand ticked forward—but at a pace so slow it was almost imperceptible. Ten minutes passed before it moved a fraction of a second.

"Time is... frozen?" he muttered, his voice shaky. "No... no, it's slowed. Drastically slowed..."

He stepped back, his legs weak beneath him, but the world around him remained unnaturally still. He waved a hand in front of Jinx's face, but her eyes didn't follow. She was a statue, trapped in this impossible moment.

The purple glow from his veins hadn't faded. Instead, it pulsated faintly beneath his skin, radiating a warmth that felt foreign—yet strangely familiar. His senses were heightened to a near-overwhelming degree. He could see the tiniest particles of dust suspended in the air, each one moving at a snail's pace. He could hear the faintest hum of machinery, stretched out into a low, haunting drone.

"What... what is this?" he whispered, flexing his fingers. His mechanical arm, usually sluggish from its weight, felt lighter, almost effortless to move.

The room seemed to stretch endlessly in his heightened perception. He tried to take a step forward but froze when he saw something out of the corner of his eye—a faint ripple, like heat distortion, in the frozen air. It wasn't natural.

"What the hell is going on?" he muttered, his voice echoing strangely in the stillness.

The ripple grew stronger, more pronounced, twisting the air in front of him. Slowly, it began to take shape, forming a shadowy figure cloaked in swirling mist. Its presence was unnerving, yet Bael couldn't look away.

"Who are you?" Bael demanded, his voice steadier than he felt.

The figure didn't answer. It simply stared at him—or at least, he thought it did. Its form was indistinct, shifting constantly, but its focus was unmistakably on him.

"You're... part of this, aren't you?" Bael asked, stepping closer, his fists clenched. The purple glow from his veins brightened, as though responding to the figure's presence. "What's happening to me?"

The figure tilted its head, the mist around it swirling faster. Then, with a sudden, jarring motion, it lunged toward him.

Bael raised his arm instinctively, his mechanical hand glowing hot with residual energy. But before he could react, the figure stopped just short of him, its misty form brushing against his skin.

A deep, otherworldly voice echoed in his mind—not through sound, but through thought.

"You've been chosen."

Bael's heart raced. "Chosen? For what?"

The figure didn't answer. Instead, it dissolved into a cloud of mist, which surged forward and enveloped him. Bael gasped, the glow in his veins intensifying to a blinding light. His surroundings warped and twisted, the frozen world around him breaking apart like shattered glass.

Then, just as suddenly as it began, everything snapped back to normal. The sounds of the lair returned in a deafening rush—the hum of machinery, the faint buzzing of the lights, and Jinx's voice.

"BAEL!" she screamed, shaking his shoulder violently.

Bael blinked, his breath ragged as he looked up at her. The glow in his veins had vanished, replaced by an aching numbness. The watch in his hand ticked at its usual pace, as if nothing had happened.

"Bael, talk to me! What the hell just happened?!" Jinx's voice was frantic, her hands gripping his arms tightly.

He stared at her, his mind still reeling from what he had just experienced. "I... I don't know," he said, his voice barely audible.

But deep down, he knew this was far from over.

Suddenly, the primitive bottle of Shimmer sitting precariously on the edge of the table tipped over. The faint clink of glass shifting on the surface immediately drew Bael's attention. His instincts roared to life, adrenaline flooding his veins.

For a fleeting moment, the world slowed to an agonizing crawl. He could see every detail with perfect clarity: the way the bottle teetered, the shimmer swirling within it catching the faint light, the slow descent of the bottle toward the floor.

"Again?!" Bael shouted, his voice echoing unnaturally in the slowed silence.

It was as if his body moved on its own. He dashed forward, each step stretched out over what felt like minutes. His mechanical arm reached out, the faint purple glow from earlier sparking to life beneath his skin.

He snatched the bottle mid-air, gripping it tightly in his trembling hand. For the briefest of moments, he stood there, frozen in time, his breathing heavy and labored. He glanced around, noticing the suspended dust particles and the faint ripple in the air around him.

"Time…" he muttered, his voice a low whisper, "…has slowed again."

Then, with a sudden jolt, the world snapped back into motion. The hum of the machinery returned, the faint crackle of overhead lights flickered, and the tension in the air dissipated. The bottle, now safely in his hand, sloshed faintly as its contents settled.

Bael's heart pounded violently in his chest as he placed the bottle back on the table, far from the edge this time. He leaned heavily against the table, his knees weak, his thoughts racing.

"What the hell is happening to me?" he murmured, his fingers brushing the faint purple glow that now flickered along his veins.

Jinx, who had been sitting nearby, looked up sharply. "What's going on, Bael?" she asked, concern thick in her voice as she approached.

He didn't respond immediately, still staring at the shimmer bottle. His mind raced, trying to piece together the strange, terrifying puzzle of what was happening to him. "I think…" he finally said, his voice quiet and unsteady, "…I've been changed. Mutated. The shimmer—it's doing something to me, Jinx. Something I don't understand."

Jinx frowned, her eyes narrowing as she placed a hand on his arm. "Whatever it is, we'll figure it out," she said firmly, though her voice betrayed the flicker of fear she was trying to suppress.

Bael's grip on the edge of the table tightened. He wasn't so sure.