Shadow Isles Wraith

Shadow Isles Wraiths are the spectral remnants of those consumed by the Black Mist during the Ruination. When that catastrophe swept across the Blessed Isles and transformed them into the Shadow Isles, every living being was killed and their souls were trapped within the Mist. Most of those souls were shattered by the violence of their deaths and the corrupting influence of the Mist, losing their identities entirely and becoming wraiths, hollow echoes of the people they once were. Unlike the sentient undead who keep their names and memories, the typical wraith is a mindless fragment of a former soul, driven only by echoes of its living emotions: rage, grief, hunger, and despair. They form the bulk of the Black Mist's army. During Harrowings, when the Mist surges beyond the Shadow Isles to reach the shores of Runeterra, the wraiths pour forth as a legion of specters, attacking the living and dragging new souls back into the Mist. Only the most strong-willed resist this dissolution, which is why figures such as Thresh, Hecarim, and Kalista are remarkable for retaining their consciousness when millions of others did not. The wraiths embody the true tragedy of the Ruination. Each was once a person, a scholar, a gardener, or a child, on isles that had been a haven of knowledge and healing, and each is now reduced to nothing but hunger and pain, wandering the corrupted islands or surging forth to spread its misery. Coastal communities that live in reach of the Harrowings, chief among them Bilgewater, have built extensive traditions to ward the wraiths away, burning particular herbs, ringing iron bells, and painting protective sigils to keep the specters at bay.