Arcane: Sovereign Of The Broken City

Chapter 10: The Boy Who Waits

POV: Viktor

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Curiosity came before words.

That's how Viktor remembered his childhood. Not with laughter. Not with toys or stories.

But with gears. Tools. And problems.

His first memories weren't of games or lullabies—they were of broken filters, leaking pipes, malfunctioning valves. The world of Zaun was always falling apart, and someone had to put it back together.

So he tried.

At five, he disassembled a dehumidifier with his bare hands. At six, he built a foot-pump for his neighbor's broken water pipe using metal scraps and rubber tubing from a discarded breather mask.

He wasn't loud. He wasn't fast. He was quiet and methodical. An introvert with too many thoughts and nowhere to put them.

The other kids called him weird. His mother called him "brilliant." His father just called him "sickly."

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Zaun made the weak stronger. Or buried them.

So he adapted.

Even when walking hurt. Even when the smog made it hard to breathe. Even when food was scarce and textbooks were pipe dreams.

Because he believed that if he just learned enough—fixed enough—he could change something.

Anything.

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That's when Singed found him.

The chemist noticed his tinkering. His scribbles in the margins of scavenged science books. His self-built breathing mask that recycled filter soot using gelatin and crushed charcoal.

Singed didn't say much at first. Just watched. Then handed him a broken stabilizer coil and said,

"Fix it."

Viktor did.

And from that moment, he wasn't a scavenger anymore. He was a student.

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Singed wasn't gentle. But he was precise.

His lessons were brutal, brilliant, and exacting. He expected perfection, and rarely gave praise. But when Viktor asked questions—real ones, hard ones—Singed always answered.

No lies. No sugarcoating.

Only facts, formulas, and forward momentum.

For years, that was enough.

Then came the Day of the Ashes.

Fifteen years old. He still remembered the exact reading of his CO₂ gauge that morning. The spike. The color of the sky—amber, then red, then ash-black.

He watched the rebellion from behind reinforced glass. Safe in Singed's lab while the city burned. Enforcers turned streets into graveyards. Zaunites turned rage into suicide missions.

He didn't fight.

But he watched it all.

The smoke. The screams. The silence after.

And in that silence, something broke.

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After that, Viktor couldn't look at Singed the same.

Not because he caused it. But because he didn't care.

Singed treated it as a data point. A test run.

"Pressure causes change," he muttered again. "Too little, and nothing moves."

But Viktor didn't want to move Zaun by crushing it.

He wanted to raise it. Fix it.

The cracks only showed later.

Singed's research grew darker. Less mechanical. More... biological.

Viktor wanted to build—machines that empowered people, limbs that healed, tools that improved life. Singed wanted to reshape life. Rewrite it. Sometimes ruin it to "perfect" it.

Still, Viktor studied.

He built prosthetics for amputees. Modified air filters for poorer zones. Tried to mass-produce affordable stabilizers. None of them stuck.

Why?

Because no one would fund them. Not without approval from Silco, or Vander, or the chem-barons.

And neither side was clean.

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Vander was respected, sure. But he didn't move unless he was forced. He kept his peace by maintaining the status quo.

Silco was the opposite—ruthless, ambitious—but his vision meant blood and fear first, progress later.

And the barons?

They were parasites feeding on broken dreams.

So Viktor tried to work around them.

He pitched neutral designs. Tools that could help both sides. Solutions for clean water, safer gas extraction, stabilizers for children with chemical poisoning.

Every time, he hit the same wall.

"No profit."

"No trust."

"Too dangerous."

"Too idealistic."

Ideas weren't enough in Zaun. You needed power.

And Viktor had none.

He grew distant. Detached. His own projects slowed. The resources were limited. The knowledge scarcer. His ideas piled up in notebooks, without fuel or funds to bring them to life.

He wanted to help Zaun.

But couldn't.

Even Singed—brilliant, terrifying Singed—needed Silco's funding to continue.

And Viktor despised Silco. Not just for what he did, but what he represented.

A future where Zaun survived by rotting from within.

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So, he made a decision.

Piltover.

The Academy. The archives. The power. If he couldn't build a better Zaun here, then he would learn how to do it there.

And maybe, just maybe, return with the tools to fix what was broken.

But before he could move forward—she appeared.

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She walked into his broken workshop like a storm—messy coat, bright eyes, scars she didn't bother to hide. He thought she was lost.

Until she handed him a blueprint.

Hand-drawn. Crude.

But… clean.

A theoretical framework for a cold fusion micro-reactor—scalable, safe, sustainable. Adapted for Zaunite conditions. Nothing existed like it. And yet… it made sense.

He thought it was a prank.

Until he stayed up all night running numbers.

And realized it wasn't.

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She didn't ask for help. Didn't beg. Didn't even stay.

Just dropped it on his table and grinned like a girl who knew she'd lit a fuse.

"Zaun needs more builders," she said. "You're one of the best. I thought you'd want to start with this."

Then she was gone.

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He didn't sleep that week.

The math worked. The design was genius—not refined, but brimming with potential. Something worth building.

She gave him hope.

Not just for machines.

But for Zaun.

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Still, Viktor didn't jump.

He watched her instead.

Heard stories—of fights, of heists, of hideouts retaken.

But more than that, he saw her grow. Saw how she picked people. How she built trust like she built everything else—slow, deliberate, with care and grit.

And he saw what he needed to see.

Conviction.

Not ideology. Not empty rebellion.

Real, earned conviction.

So he made his decision:

Wait.

He would stay in the shadows, tinkering, learning, watching.

And when the time came—

He would follow her.

Not because she asked.

But because she gave him something no one else had in years.

Belief.

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END OF CHAPTER