The Ruination

The Ruination began with a death that King Viego would not accept. Isolde's loss transformed his grief into an obsession with restoration. The search for a cure had led toward the Blessed Isles, but the possibility of healing became something more dangerous when the king demanded that the boundary between life and death be crossed.

The Blessed Isles had preserved extraordinary knowledge and powerful artifacts behind careful protections. Viego's arrival brought the violence of Camavor into that guarded world. Kalista's loyalty and Hecarim's ambition became part of the catastrophe, while Thresh found opportunity inside a place that had previously confined him to a lesser role.

When the attempt to restore Isolde collided with the powers of the isles, the result was not the reunion Viego imagined. A magical disaster consumed the land and its inhabitants. The protective mist was transformed into the Black Mist, and the Blessed Isles became the Shadow Isles.

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Death no longer brought a clean ending to those caught within the catastrophe. Personal desires, rage and suffering continued in altered forms. Viego's fixation endured, but so did other wills that could exploit, resist or remain trapped within the new condition of the islands.

This ancient Ruination must be distinguished from the later spread of the Mist and the conflict involving the Sentinels. The first event created the wound; subsequent stories follow its consequences reaching the wider world. A chronological reading begins with the Blessed Isles and the king's loss, then moves forward to the people living under the shadow of what he unleashed.