Shadow Magic

Shadow Magic draws power from darkness, fear, and the hidden places between light. In Ionia it was long the counterpart to the Kinkou Order's light-based arts, and the balance between the two held for centuries until Zed broke it. A Kinkou student trained under Shen's father, the Eye of Twilight, Zed grew impatient with the order's passive devotion to balance and its refusal to answer the Noxian invasion. When his master would not teach the forbidden technique the order had sealed away, Zed broke the seal, killed Shen's father, and seized the shadow arts, founding the Order of Shadow from the conquered temple. The discipline excels at stealth and assassination. Its practitioners dissolve into tendrils of darkness, rise from an enemy's own shadow, and feed on the terror they provoke, striking unseen until the killing blow. Kayn, Zed's most talented student, was sent to claim an ancient Darkin scythe and now wields the sentient weapon in a constant struggle for dominance. Across Ionia the Order of Shadow, tied to the Navori Brotherhood, seize temples to harvest shadow magic and bind the souls of the slain into their blades. The magic reaches far beyond Ionia and was once forbidden across Runeterra for fear of the horrors it had unleashed. Late in the Rune Wars, cabals of warrior-mages cast off their flesh to hunt one another in the spirit realm, casting it into twilight and infecting the dreams of mortals with nameless dread. From that suffering rose Nocturne, terror made manifest, which turned on the mages who gave it life and now slips into the waking world through sleeping minds. Shadow Magic exacts a heavy toll, corrupting its wielders and eroding the spiritual balance that sustains Ionia. Prolonged use breeds paranoia, aggression, and loss of empathy, and its strength fades in bright light or against those who have mastered their own fear. Even far from Ionia its danger holds: Vex, a yordle who embraced shadow magic out of nihilism, wielded negativity-fueled power that helped Viego's Black Mist spread during the Ruination.