“The moon sees all.” The words are not spoken—they ripple through the air, a silent hymn carried by the weapons that orbit him like loyal stars. Aphelios stands atop the shattered ruins of a Lunari temple, his face obscured by a mask of moonstone, his body wrapped in robes that shimmer with the faint glow of the crescent above. His hands—scarred, trembling—grip the Crescend, a rifle forged from the tears of a dying moon. Around him, the five weapons hum, their power a symphony only he can hear.
Long before the League of Legends, before the summoners bound his fractured soul to the Rift, Aphelios was a boy of the Lunari, a sect that worshipped the moon’s cold light. His people dwelled in the shadow of Mount Targon, their rituals hidden in caves and forgotten valleys, their faith outlawed by the Solari—a cult that revered the sun’s blinding glare. The Lunari believed the moon was a mother, a guardian who wept for the world’s suffering. They sang her laments, carved her visage into stone, and waited for the day she would return to eclipse the sun.
Aphelios’ sister, Alune, was the first to hear the moon’s call. She spoke of visions—a great sundering, a weapon of light, a sacrifice. The elders dismissed her as a heretic, but Aphelios believed. Together, they performed the Ritual of the Eclipse, a forbidden ceremony to channel the moon’s power into a mortal vessel. Alune would be the vessel. Aphelios, her protector.
The ritual went wrong.
The moon’s energy tore through Alune, her screams echoing across the mountains. Aphelios tried to shield her, but the power consumed them both. When the light faded, Alune was gone—her spirit scattered into the void, her body a husk. Aphelios’ voice was stolen, his throat scarred by the moon’s fire. In her absence, the weapons came: five moonstone firearms, each a shard of the ritual’s ruin. They spoke to him, their whispers a cacophony of vengeance and sorrow.
The Solari hunted him. Led by Leona, the Radiant Dawn, they branded him a heretic, a monster who had defied the sun’s order. Aphelios fled to the Shadow Isles, where the darkness did not judge him, where the moon’s light was a balm. There, he learned to wield the weapons—Crescendo, Severum, Gravitum, Infernum, Calibrum—each a key to a power he did not fully understand.
The weapons were alive. They fed on his pain, his rage, his guilt. Crescendo sang of endings. Severum hissed of survival. Gravitum pulled at his soul, a weight that threatened to collapse him into nothingness. Infernum burned with the ghost of Alune’s final breath. Calibrum offered precision, control—a lie, for nothing about him was controlled.
The League of Legends offered him a purpose. Here, he could strike at the Solari without mercy, his bullets finding their marks with divine precision. He dueled Leona on the Rift, their battles a dance of sun and moon. “You defile the light,” she snarled, her blade gleaming. Aphelios’ reply was a hail of bullets that scarred her armor. The weapons whispered through him: “She will never understand.”
But not all foes were Solari. In the Shadow Isles, he faced Hecarim, the Shadow of War. The centaur’s spectral hooves trampled the battlefield, but Aphelios’ Gravitum slowed him, a bullet pinning him in place. “You think this is power?” Hecarim laughed. “You are a moth drawn to a flame.” Aphelios fired again, the shot silent, lethal. “The flame is mine to command.”
His true rival, however, was Diana, the Scorn of the Moon. Like him, she had been cast out by the Solari. Like him, she carried the moon’s curse. But where Diana sought to destroy the Solari, Aphelios sought to reclaim what was lost—to rebuild the Lunari, to hear Alune’s voice again. Their clashes were bitter, two wounded souls fighting for different visions of the same dream. “You cling to the past,” Diana spat. Aphelios’ Infernum scorched the ground between them. *”The past clings to *me.”
Yet it was in the Ionian city of Navori that Aphelios’ torment reached its peak. He encountered Varus, the Arrow of Retribution, whose soul was bound to a cursed bow. Varus saw the darkness in Aphelios—the way the weapons fed on him, the way his hands shook with the effort to control them. “You think you’re the first to be consumed?” Varus hissed. “Break the cycle before it breaks you.”
Aphelios did not listen.
Now, as he stands atop the Howling Abyss, the weapons orbit him like vultures. He feels their hunger, their whispers growing louder with every kill. The Solari are relentless, their champions—Leona, Pantheon, Aurelion Sol—relentless in their pursuit. But it is the darkness within him that terrifies him most. Each bullet fired, each life taken, deepens the void where Alune’s voice once resided.
In the quiet moments, he visits the ruins of the Lunari temple where the ritual failed. The walls are etched with the moon’s phases, the floor littered with shards of moonstone. He kneels beside the altar, Calibrum trembling in his grip. The weapons fall silent. For a heartbeat, he pretends he is still the boy who believed in his sister’s visions.
But the moon does not answer.
On the Rift, he faces Senna, the Redeemer. Her relic cannon gleams with the light of the First Dawn, a weapon forged to purge darkness. “You fight for vengeance,” she says, her voice steady. “I fight for hope.” Aphelios’ Severum fires, the bullet grazing her cheek. “Hope is a shadow,” he thinks. “Vengeance is light.”
Senna’s next shot shatters Severum’s barrel. The weapon wails, a sound like a dying star. Aphelios switches to Gravitum, the pull of the bullet dragging Senna to her knees. She meets his gaze, unflinching. “You can still choose.”
He fires.
The answer comes in fragments.
In the heart of the Shadow Isles, Aphelios finds a shard of Alune’s spirit—a flicker of her song trapped in a moonstone. The weapons recoil, their whispers turning to screams. For the first time, he hesitates. To reclaim her is to risk losing himself entirely.
But the moon sees all.
And so he chooses.
In the end, Aphelios fights not for victory, nor for redemption. He fights because the weapons demand it, because the moon’s light is both a gift and a chain.
And somewhere, in the silence between heartbeats, he wonders if Alune would weep for what he has become.
The answer, like the eclipse, remains hidden.
“The moon sees all,” he thinks, the words a dirge, a plea, a promise.
But the moon does not reply.
It never does.