The shuttle's ramp lowered with a hiss, spilling a sharp stream of air across the stone courtyard. Virelia descended alone, her obsidian cloak trailing behind her in the wind, violet lenses glimmering faintly under the Chandrilan sun. The estate lay before her in quiet defiance of time, its walls of pale stone still adorned with ivy, its towers rising in stately symmetry above the rolling fields.
Arrayed at the base of the steps were the Calis Guards. Not mercenaries, not soldiers of the Alliance, but something more deliberate—men and women clad in the burnished orange and yellow armor of a bygone age. The design was unmistakable: modeled after the soldiers of the Old Republic, yet maintained with such precision that it looked as though they had marched straight out of a holo-recording. Their armor gleamed with a lacquered sheen, sun glinting from their helmets' curved visors and chestplates. Black fabric uniforms ran beneath the segmented plates, trimmed with brass lines that lent the suits both elegance and weight. Each carried a blaster rifle held with crisp precision, posture ramrod straight, eyes forward.
They were not just guards—they were a statement. Dominic's statement. That the Calis line endured when empires fell. That the Republic might die, the Sith might rise, the Alliance might fracture, but this family would carry its own banners, its own legacy, untouched by the tide of history.
The captain of the guard stepped forward, the orange of his cuirass bright beneath the shadow of his visor. He lowered his weapon in salute. "Lady Calis," he said, his voice metallic through the vocoder.
Virelia gave the faintest inclination of her head and moved forward, her boots striking the stone with a sound that carried in the silence. The guards pivoted with clockwork precision, their formation parting to allow her passage. She glided between them, her presence dark and commanding, yet here muted by the sheer weight of tradition embodied in their armor.
The gates of the estate creaked open, and she passed into the courtyard beyond.
Inside the great hall, Dominic was waiting.
He cut a striking figure, the golden-blonde of his hair immaculate beneath the filtered Chandrilan light, each strand in place as though discipline itself had combed it. His uniform—dark, sharp, adorned with the insignia of the Galactic Alliance Defense Force—looked more than regulation. It looked inevitable, molded to him, as much a part of him as his strong jawline or the cold, analytical intensity of his blue eyes. He stood tall, 1.85 meters of precision and command, shoulders squared, every movement measured and deliberate.
Virelia felt the weight of his gaze on her, piercing, scrutinizing, as if he were already dissecting her presence here into strengths and flaws, assets and liabilities.
"Serina," Dominic said at last, his voice low, steady, and commanding in its restraint. "Welcome home."
The words hung between them, fragile as glass. Virelia stood motionless at the threshold of the great hall, her shadow cast long against the marble floor. Dominic had always filled a room effortlessly — even now, the way he stood before the tall windows made the sunlight seem to fall at his command.
"Dominic," she said at last, her voice low, velvet stretched thin over exhaustion. "You've kept the estate well."
"I've had help," he replied. His expression softened only slightly as he gestured toward the long table set between them, polished to a mirror sheen. Two glasses waited there, one already filled with Chandrilan brandy, amber light trembling in the glass.
Virelia's steps echoed as she crossed the hall. The guards outside had closed the doors, sealing them in with the muted hum of Chandrila's countryside pressing against the stone walls. She took the glass but did not drink.
"You look…" Dominic began, then caught himself. His eyes flicked briefly to her armor — the blackened plates of alchemized metal that shimmered faintly with violet undertones when the light touched them. "Different. The Sith aesthetic, I presume."
"It suits me," she murmured.
He nodded, half-smiling. "It does. I imagine the Order didn't appreciate your… flair."
"They appreciated nothing," she said simply.
Silence fell again, but it wasn't cold. The kind that hurt. It was the silence of two people who had grown apart through time and duty and yet found, in the rare moment of reunion, that some small thread of shared blood still bound them.
Dominic took a slow sip of his drink before setting it down. "You came quickly."
"You said it was important."
"It is." He stepped closer to the table, his movements deliberate. "You've been away a long time, Serina. You've seen empires rise and fall, and I've watched this galaxy lose its balance. The new Empire grows bolder by the day, and the Alliance is stretched thin. Chandrila may be quiet, but quiet doesn't mean safe anymore."
Her eyes narrowed behind the violet lenses of her helm. "You didn't summon me to enlist."
"No." A small breath of humor escaped him, as though he had expected the jab. "I summoned you because family tradition demands it."
Virelia tilted her head slightly. "Tradition?"
Dominic looked toward the window, out across the rolling green that surrounded the estate. His voice, when it came, had softened, almost reverent.
"When a Calis turns twenty-one," he said, "they make the journey to the Shrine over the hill. Alone. No guards, no speeders, no assistance. You walk, as those before us did. You meet the steward, you light the flame, and you return. That is the rite of renewal — the bond to Chandrila, to this bloodline."
For the first time since she'd arrived, Virelia's composure wavered. The words struck an old, buried chord. She remembered the painting — the one that had hung above her bed in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. A soft depiction of the shrine at dusk, its white pillars wreathed in vine and firelight. She'd stared at it for hours in those days, a Padawan adrift among strangers, trying to remember the scent of Chandrila's fields. The painting had been her one link to home.
"I haven't thought of that place in years," she said quietly.
Dominic smiled faintly. "Nor had I, until recently. Mother used to say that every Calis who lights the flame leaves something behind. Regret. Doubt. Fear. Whatever it is that weakens us."
Virelia looked down at her gauntlet, tracing a finger along the faint scars in the metal. "And you believe I still have something to leave behind?"
"I believe," he said carefully, "that you deserve the chance to decide for yourself."
There was no judgment in his tone. Only quiet conviction, the kind that made her feel both comforted and exposed. She had expected command, interrogation, perhaps even condemnation. Not this — not the gentle insistence of a brother who still, against reason, cared.
She turned away from him, letting her gaze travel across the hall's portraits — generations of Calis ancestors staring down with oil-painted solemnity. Senators, admirals, scholars. A few warriors. None of them Sith.
"The shrine," she said at length. "It's still tended?"
"Yes. By the steward — old man named Verdan. He's been there longer than either of us have been alive. You'll find him waiting. He keeps the path clear, though the climb's not easy."
Her lips twitched, half a smile. "When has anything ever been easy for us?"
Dominic chuckled softly, the sound startling in its warmth. "Never." Then, more gently: "You should leave at dawn. The trail is steep and overgrown, and the air turns cold after sunset."
She nodded once. "I'll go."
"Good." He hesitated, as though choosing his next words with care. "You know, when I heard the stories — about Coruscant, about Valery Noble and the Temple — I thought you were gone. We all did. I mourned you. Then again when you were exiled from the Sith."
Her throat tightened. The memory of the blade, the pain, the endless dark, then the exile, the days on Malachor, all came rushing back. "I was," she said, barely audible.
Dominic's gaze softened. "And yet you're here. That has to mean something."
Virelia exhaled slowly, lowering her helm. "Meaning is overrated."
"Maybe," he said. "But it's all we have left."
For a moment neither of them spoke. The sunlight outside dimmed as the clouds shifted, and the hall fell into a subdued twilight glow. Dominic poured a second glass and set it before her.
"You'll stay the night," he said. "Your old quarters are as you left them. I had the staff clean them this morning."
She looked at him, studying the faint lines of fatigue around his eyes — the marks of a man who had given too much to duty and asked little in return. "You never stopped keeping this place alive," she said softly.
"Someone had to."
"Always the responsible one."
"And you," he replied with a faint smile, "always the dreamer."
She almost laughed. Almost. But instead, she only nodded, the faintest trace of warmth tugging at the corners of her mouth.
When she turned to leave the hall, Dominic called after her. "Serina—"
She stopped but didn't face him.
"Whatever it is you're searching for," he said quietly, "you won't find it out there in the void. Sometimes the answers we spend years chasing are right where we began."
Virelia's reply came after a long pause. "I'm not searching, Dominic."
He smiled sadly. "You always were."
She left him then, her footsteps fading up the marble stairs, echoing against the vaulted ceilings until only silence remained.
Outside, the wind had shifted. The evening light spilled over the hills beyond the estate, illuminating a faint line of white stone just visible through the haze — the shrine she had once known only from a painting.
It seemed impossibly far away. And yet, for the first time in years, she felt something stir within her chest — not hope, not redemption, but the faint ache of meaning.
Tomorrow, she would walk the path alone.
And perhaps, in the quiet between the wind and the stone, she might finally understand what it meant to come home.
