Dreaming.
The thing dreams now, he does.
Awareness returning to him as the frigid prison begins to crack from something new.
Memories reappear in his mind's eye.
How long ago was it?
Cold. Cold and ice and heat and airlessness clashing with them.
Those were some of the first things he remembered from that time as his consciousness reforged their links in his brain. Next was being shoved forward by armed guards, harsh and quick. Some of them wielded the shining blades he hated so much, gripped ever so tightly betwixt their fingers, ignited and ready to strike. Blue, green, yellow, purple, white. Colors beyond count along with blaster pistols, rifles, and cannons all aimed at his person. All set to stun, kill, and vaporize him as quickly as possible should his bonds break before they were ready.
Shouts and growling threats beat against his eardrums and threatened to deafen him with their rapidity and repetition. His flesh was similarly assaulted by the bruises and other wounds both internal and external from the previous fights of multiple days - as well as the specific event that led to him being marched forward in chains. Metallic links sang their sad song around his wrists as the rocks of this desolate world - hidden at the very edge of known space - cackled and cracked under his steps and the steps of those next to and behind him. An empty harrowing song that rose into the blackness of the sky without a sun.
Nothing and no one would find him here.
And yet, his face was stoic despite all of this. For those last few moments of awareness, expressions were a lost concept. He gave no emotion. No flinching or flexing of his muscles in anticipation of what was to come. Not even as the conclusion of time faced him with a gaze that both never began and never ended.
It was a joint operation that found him, entrapped him, and now was set to lock him away until the stars of the Galaxy breathed their last breath of solar winds. Mandalorians and Jedi and wayward warriors of neither faction. A group designed to remedy the reality problem of Devaron. The Sith who heralded a grim future with an idiot's grin. Long had he terrorized them from the heart of his fleet and army of things that defied their understandings of military and even Sith logistics. Nonsensically designed monstrosities of flesh and metal and elements that resembled more closely a child's drawing or spark of imagination than a sorcerer with a penchant for success and violence as this man. The man whose name would be stricken from the records of history, forced into an exile without memory. The man who now stood as the cold and ice shot into his body in the form of a cage, wrought with an essence foreign to him. A vault. A cage for him and him alone.
He was turned around to face his enemies - countless beyond number, waiting for his passing.
"Ge'hutuun," said an old man in perfect beskar at the head of the force, twin swords strapped upon his back bleeding with iconography. "For your evil. For your lack of sense to control yourself. For your every putrid, insane, idiotic cell...we condemn you to imprisonment for all time. None will remember your name. None will know where you are. Your legacy. Your actions. Your effects upon the Galaxy will be eradicated from memory. You will not even be a footnote. You will be here forever."
No other words were said between the force and the man. He merely raised his head high and breathed deeply his last breath. Then, he was shoved back by two of the blade wielders next to the old man, locked into the cage which slammed shut with finality. Cold enveloped him, filling his pores and his veins and his organs. Light and shapes and colors faded into grey, dim grey, and finally the deepest black possible. A void without dreams or thinking or knowledge or awareness of any time passing. Ignorant, he was, that those first days turned to weeks turned to months turned to years turned to decades turned to centuries. Oblivious to the ironic discovery and transport of his cage across the stars, from owner to owner, always kept locked per the warning left etched in the plating.
Now, and only now, was that awareness rebuilding itself. Only now was that everlasting bitterness and that unforgiving ice beginning to melt away, chip away, crack away as something new finally broke the curiosity that plagued hundreds of individuals through hundreds of years. Only now was he willing to express emotion and let the stoicism die with his joy at being free from this prison.
Except...something was odd. The light of something began to pour in, blinding his already blind eyes. Warm air met the frozen tubes of his lungs and throat, causing his first breaths to almost be suffocating, choking, and coughing. The joints of his muscles and bones loosened with a slug's slowness, creating an impatience in the parts of his consciousness that were not plagued by the blinding or the breathing. Before long, those breaths turned to grunts and that impatience turned to movement as his fingers began rap against the interior of his cage's doors in incremental fervor.
And then, finally, his hearing returned, and with it came a grace. A blessing. A voice unlike any he had heard before. Smooth and regal, almost posh and snarky like an Alderannian, yet commanding unprecedented respect in its mere tone. It was also dark and foreboding, a curse, conceivably, upon the enemies of those who bore it. Perhaps it was the sluggishness of his mind - or just a general inability to conjecture any logical conclusion to an event he had no understanding of. But, as the voice continued to speak - orders or its own curiosity at what awaited it - the man could only come up with one resolution for his situation: this was the voice of God.
He had died.
And God had come to raise him up.
