Piltover Ablaze (End)

When the Buno family's steward pushed open the door and walked in because he had heard screams, the scene he saw made him freeze. Then memories long sealed away surged into his mind.

Human beings' ability to remember fragments was so powerful that even they themselves could not understand it.

—When he was a child, his father had once taken him to see a slaughterhouse.

His father's intention had been to let him see how pitiful the environment in which those "lower people" worked was, and then use that to tell him how fortunate it was to have the honor of serving the Buno family for generations. Unfortunately, his father had not succeeded.

Or rather, he had only half succeeded.

The steward had indeed seen the working environment of the Butchers, but he did not find it "pitiful." Quite the opposite—he thought the scene was simply beautiful beyond measure.

Flesh and bone were cleanly separated, fascinating him like a table of numbers arranged and combined in perfect order—but the steward was a rational, normal man, and he buried that dangerous longing deep down.

Until today.

Until this moment.

The tip of the little finger on the steward's right hand began to tremble slightly. He stared hollowly at the lung and blood Annobi Buno had left behind, silent and unmoving, while a man sitting behind the desk watched him with great interest.

"Interesting." The Mage smiled, but did not probe any further.

Everyone in the world had a story. Even a family steward carried dark secrets hidden for many years. Piltover, a city-state bearing the name City of Progress, possessed more fallen souls than anywhere else in all Valoran.

Even Bilgewater was not this frightening—at least those pirates and sailors knew what they were doing, and knew exactly why they committed