Fall of Shurima

The fall of Shurima's capital came from within the ceremony meant to elevate its emperor. Azir sought Ascension, while Xerath, the enslaved companion who had grown close to him, carried ambitions and grievances of his own. Their relationship joined personal intimacy to an institution built on profound inequality.

Azir intended to change that institution, but delayed revealing the freedom he planned to grant. At the threshold of the ritual, his declaration came too late to undo Xerath's preparations. Xerath seized the power of the Sun Disc, overturning the ceremony and unleashing a catastrophe that killed the emperor and devastated the capital.

Nasus and Renekton returned to confront a being transformed by stolen celestial power. Containing Xerath required another terrible loss. Renekton forced the struggle into a prison beneath the city, leaving Nasus outside with the burden of sealing away his brother alongside their enemy.

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The capital's destruction did not immediately erase every settlement, survivor or imperial legacy. It destroyed the center around which that order had been built. Without its authority, the Ascended were left in a changed world, carrying the damage of earlier wars and increasingly turning their strength toward rivalry. The later darkin wars belong to the aftermath of that collapse.

Millennia would pass before the buried capital rose again. That return is a much later event, connected to Sivir and Azir's rebirth. Keeping the two periods apart allows the ancient fall to be read as a catastrophe with a long history of consequences, rather than as a brief pause before everything returned to the way it had been.