“Death is the only true opponent.” The words echoed across the fractured battlefield, a growl that seemed to claw its way out of the void itself. Aatrox, the Darkin Blade, stood amidst the carnage, his massive sword dripping with the ichor of fallen warriors. The air reeked of blood and ash, a familiar scent that stirred memories of a time when he, too, had been mortal.
Long before the League of Legends, before the summoners bound his essence to a blade, Aatrox had been a champion of Shurima. Born under the twin suns of the ancient empire, he was a warrior-king, a leader whose prowess in battle was matched only by his thirst for glory. His people revered him, their chants of “Aatrox! Aatrox!” ringing out across the dunes as he led them to victory after victory. But Shurima’s hunger for power knew no bounds. When the empire’s mages discovered the Darkin—a primordial force of destruction trapped between realms—the emperors saw not a danger, but a weapon.
The ritual to bind the Darkin was a grotesque spectacle. Aatrox had volunteered, driven by arrogance and the belief that no force could break him. The priests of Shurima carved runes into his flesh with obsidian blades, their chants guttural, unholy. The void’s touch seeped into his veins, a cold fire that devoured his humanity. He screamed for days, his body contorting, bones snapping and reforming as the Darkin’s essence fused with his soul. When it was done, he was no longer a man but a god—a storm of blades and shadow, his eyes burning like dying stars.
For a time, he reveled in the carnage. Shurima’s enemies fell before him, their armies reduced to dust. But the Darkin within him grew restless, a voice that whispered of annihilation, of a world remade in fire. It hungered not for conquest, but for extinction. When Aatrox resisted, the voice laughed, a sound like collapsing stars. “You think you control this power? You are a moth clinging to a flame.”
The betrayal came swiftly. The Ascended, Shurima’s immortal rulers, feared the Darkin’s unchecked power. They forged weapons to contain them, imprisoning the primordial entities within mortal blades. Aatrox’s own sword, once an extension of his will, became his cage. The emperors who had once knelt before him now sealed him in darkness, casting the blade into the void.
For millennia, Aatrox languished, his consciousness fractured. The sword passed through countless hands, each wielder a temporary host for his wrath. A Noxian warlord used it to slaughter his own legion, then died screaming as the Darkin consumed him. A Demacian knight razed his homeland, his mind crumbling under the weight of Aatrox’s influence. A mercenary from the Shadow Isles, seeking vengeance for a murdered family, became a monster, his soul devoured by the blade’s hunger.
Aatrox fed on their violence, their despair a bitter feast. Yet fragments of his former self lingered—a flicker of memory, a pang of regret. He remembered the warmth of the sun on his face, the weight of a crown, the sound of his name on the lips of his people. These fragments tormented him, a reminder of what he had lost.
Centuries later, in the Ionian city of Vlon’daq, a young man named Varus stumbled upon the blade. A hunter seeking vengeance for his murdered family, Varus was desperate, reckless. The moment he grasped the hilt, Aatrox’s voice slithered into his mind: “You wish to punish the guilty? Let me show you how.” The Darkin merged with Varus, body and soul, transforming him into a living weapon. Together, they razed villages, hunted Ionian elders, and left a trail of corpses in their wake. But Varus’s spirit fought back, his love for his homeland clashing with Aatrox’s malice. In the end, the hunter’s defiance only amused the Darkin. “You think you can control me?” Aatrox sneered as Varus’s mind shattered. “You are nothing but a vessel. A scream in the dark.”
The League of Legends offered Aatrox a new stage. Summoned to the Rift, he reveled in the chaos, his battles against champions like Garen of Demacia and Fiora of House Laurent a testament to his unyielding fury. Yet even there, echoes of his past haunted him. When Azir, the Ascended Emperor of Shurima, reawakened, Aatrox confronted him, their clash shaking the sands of the desert empire. “You dare face me, little pharaoh?” he roared, his sword clashing against Azir’s sun-disc forged spear. But Azir, once his enemy, now pitied him. “You were meant to be more than this,” the emperor said, a statement that gnawed at Aatrox long after the battle ended.
In Ionia, Aatrox found another foe: Yasuo, the Unforgiven. The swordsman’s katana, imbued with the spirit of the wind, mirrored Aatrox’s own cursed blade. Their duels were legendary, each strike a dance between redemption and ruin. Yasuo sought to atone for his past; Aatrox mocked his naivety. “Honor will not save you,” he spat, though a part of him envied the mortal’s resolve.
Yet it was in the Shadow Isles that Aatrox’s torment reached its peak. The land, cursed by the Ruination, pulsed with the same void energy that fueled the Darkin. Here, he encountered Kalista, the Spear of Vengeance, whose soul was bound to a spectral blade much like his own. Their alliance was uneasy, born of mutual need. Kalista sought to break her curse; Aatrox sought to destroy everything. “You cling to hope,” he told her. “Hope is for the living.”
But hope, it seemed, was not so easily extinguished. In the jungles of Kumungu, Aatrox crossed paths with Rhaast, another Darkin weapon. Unlike Aatrox, Rhaast had embraced his corruption entirely, his form a grotesque fusion of flesh and void. The two clashed, not as enemies, but as rivals—each representing a different path. Rhaast saw Aatrox’s lingering humanity as weakness. “You still dream of the man you were,” he hissed. “That man is dead.”
Aatrox’s defiance was his only answer.
Now, as he stands on the Howling Abyss, the wind screaming like the damned, Aatrox reflects. The League has become his prison as much as his playground. Each battle, each death, feeds the Darkin within him, yet he clings to the fragments of his identity. He remembers the sun on his face, the cheers of his people, the weight of a crown. He remembers the betrayal.
“Death is the only true opponent,” he murmurs again, softer this time. But even as he says it, he wonders: Is he challenging death, or courting it?
The answer, like his soul, remains splintered—a mosaic of wrath, regret, and the faintest glimmer of what once was.
The Darkin’s voice grows louder.
In the ruins of a Noxian fortress, Aatrox faces Darius, the Hand of Noxus. The man’s axe swings with brutal precision, but Aatrox parries effortlessly, his blade slicing through stone and steel. “You fight for a crumbling empire,” he taunts. “What a waste.” Darius snarls, relentless, but Aatrox sees the futility in his eyes. Noxus, once a beacon of strength, now decays under the weight of its own greed. It reminds him of Shurima.
Later, in the Placidium of Ionia, he confronts Karma, the Enlightened One. Her magic, radiant and serene, clashes with his void-tainted strikes. “You cling to balance,” he sneers. “But the world is chaos.” Karma’s gaze is pitying. “Even chaos has a purpose,” she replies. Aatrox laughs, a sound like grinding bones. Purpose. The word tastes foreign on his tongue.
In the Freljord, he battles Tryndamere, the Barbarian King. The man’s berserker rage mirrors his own, but where Tryndamere fights for vengeance, Aatrox fights because he cannot stop. “You think yourself a monster?” Aatrox roars as their blades lock. “You are a child screaming into the storm.”
Yet it is in the depths of the Void that Aatrox finds a twisted kinship. Kha’Zix, the Voidreaver, studies him with alien eyes. “You are broken,” the creature hisses. “Like me.” Aatrox considers this. The Void, like the Darkin, is a force of pure hunger. But where the Void seeks to consume, Aatrox seeks… what? Vengeance? Oblivion? He no longer knows.
The summoners, those puppeteers of the League, believe they control him. They bind his essence to the Rift, forcing him to fight their wars. But Aatrox endures, his hatred a smoldering coal. He remembers the faces of those he once loved, now dust for millennia. He remembers the taste of wine, the feel of silk, the sound of a child’s laughter. These memories are daggers, and he welcomes the pain.
One night, in the desolate plains of the Shadow Isles, Aatrox encounters Sion, the Undead Juggernaut. The resurrected warrior lumbers forward, his body decaying yet unyielding. “You too are trapped,” Aatrox observes. Sion grunts, his voice a graveyard rumble. “I serve Noxus.” “You serve death,” Aatrox corrects. They fight, not as enemies, but as kindred spirits—two monsters bound by chains of flesh and bone.
As the centuries grind on, Aatrox’s legend grows. He is a specter, a boogeyman whispered in taverns and throne rooms. Children are told to behave, lest the Darkin Blade come for them. Yet in quiet moments, when the Rift lies still, Aatrox stares at his reflection—a warped amalgam of man and monster—and wonders if he is the villain or the victim.
The answer, like everything else, is lost to time.
In the end, Aatrox fights not for glory, nor for vengeance. He fights because it is all he knows. The Darkin within him screams for destruction, but the man—what little remains—whispers of redemption.
He will not find it.
Death is the only true opponent.
And death, like the void, is eternal.