Your Shadow Is My Light

Epilogue - It is often the darkest skies that we see the brightest stars.

Normal text
Thinking
Onomatopoeia

Ahri's POV
The woman staring back at me in the mirror was... me—but not quite the me I usually saw.

I tilted my head left, then right, letting the light catch along the smooth drape of satin. Black shimmered subtly under the glow, gold embroidery winding across the fabric like a constellation spun just for me. Slim, sleek, unapologetically snug. I could feel every curve it hugged, every inch it celebrated.

Not bad.

Not bad at all.

The dressing room door creaked open, and in spilled Eve, Akali, and Kai'Sa—like a gust of chaos wrapped in silk and perfume.

Akali stopped dead mid-step, eyes sweeping me from head to toe before squinting at the gown with mock suspicion.

"What's with all these layers?" she asked, stepping closer and poking at the skirt as though she expected to find contraband.

"They must weigh a ton. How the hell do you move in this? Or even go to the loo???"

I answered with an unimpressed eye roll.

Eve, lounging against the wall with that feline amusement of hers, chuckled low.

"Sweetheart, you handle your business BEFORE putting the gown on. Basic ceremonial fashion."

Kai'Sa covered her mouth to stifle a laugh.

But as I turned towards Akali again, I noticed her tugging at her own collar. The suit and tie she wore were sharp—tailored black, crisp white shirt, slim tie knotted just right—but the way she shifted her shoulders told me she was fighting the urge to rip it all off.

She caught my eye and groaned, "Don't look at me like that. I'm not built for this... constricting fabric. You know where I grew up. Outskirt village. Half the time, I didn't even wear shoes, and now here I am choking in a tie."

I smiled faintly.

"It suits you."

She made a face.

"That's the problem. It fits. It's neat. I'm supposed to be unpredictable."

Eve purred from the side, "Oh, you can still cause trouble in a tie, dear. You just have to be creative about it."

Akali muttered something under her breath about strangling someone with it.

I sighed, shaking my head at the silly rogue, then turned my attention back to the mirror.

Humans and their endless rituals...

Yet here I was, indulging in one.

This ceremony was... fascinating. Humans had a way of turning simple bonds into elaborate dances—ceremonies, feasts, vows under the moon. In the wild, if you wanted to be bound to someone, you mated. That was it. But here, you dressed like this, gathered your people, spoke words meant to outlive you.

And this time, I like it.

Especially this strange ritual called wedding.

According to Kai'Sa, most human weddings were drowned in white—white flowers, white veils, white gowns as far as the eye could see. But for kumihos, white was the colour of death. It was what we draped over the dead before sending them into the afterlife, what we wore when mourning someone whose soul we would never see again.

So the thought of pledging myself to Rae in a funeral shroud?

Absolutely not!

Thankfully, this wasn't a human wedding anyway. This was the Shadow Monarch's territory, where black was sacred. Here, death wasn't an end—it was a glorious beginning, a rebirth into the immortal army. Black was the colour of oaths, of promises.