The bottle was half-empty.
It stood like a quiet monument beside the datapads she no longer had the patience to read, basking in the pale, sterile light of the office overheads. White. Clinical. Polis Massa was always white. A color so clean it had begun to feel like a lie.
Darth Virelia sat in silence, slouched in a high-backed chair more suitable for war councils than indulgence. She held her wine glass like a weapon not yet drawn. Her black nails curled tight around the stem as if it might shatter if she let go.
The datapads blinked with reports from Geonosis, Subterrel, the Velgrath. Armies built themselves in her name. Trade routes bent like iron beneath pressure. A thousand plans layered across a hundred systems, each one a knife pointed outward.
And still… this silence.
She sipped.
The wine was expensive—Alderaanian vintage, pre-Yavin, stolen from a vault that no longer had an owner. It tasted like rot hidden beneath berries, like old glories fermenting into decay. Perfect.
"So this is what victory feels like," she muttered aloud, lips curled bitter.
No one answered.
The walls of the office—white durasteel, silver trim—refused to echo her voice. They absorbed it like everything else. Emotions. Intentions. Doubt. She hated this place some days. Polis Massa demanded discipline. It was made of rules and ghosts. There was no chaos here, no trembling fear in a subordinate's voice, no blood to taste in the air. Just the quiet hum of machines and the weight of a mind left alone with itself.
She refilled her glass.
Outside, the void shimmered faintly through the panoramic window. Nothing but asteroid fragments and dead stars. A place where empires came to disappear. And now she ruled it.
She should have felt triumphant. But her limbs were heavy, her breath slow. Even the Dark Side—so often curled around her like a lover—felt distant. Muted. Or perhaps she was just too tired to feel it.
Virelia let her head fall back against the chair. She closed her eyes.
Behind her lids: the past.
Madelyn's hand at her throat. Allyson's boot on her head. The laughter of the other Sith. The scorn of the Jedi. The stench of old decisions made for survival, for ambition, for spite.
Virelia had killed the girl she used to be a long time ago. Buried her beneath black robes and crimson rituals. She had sworn never to feel regret again.
And yet, regret had a way of sneaking in—like water through a cracked hull. Quiet. Patient. Unrelenting.
She opened her eyes. The wineglass was empty again.
Her fingers twitched, and the bottle flew to her hand. It wobbled mid-air as if unsure whether to obey. She caught it without grace, poured without thought.
"Drunk," she muttered. "Or near enough."
The Force murmured around her—barely a breeze. She didn't like what that implied. Perhaps even it knew to leave her be tonight.
She raised the glass in mock salute to no one.
"To inevitability."
Her voice cracked halfway through the word. She coughed, cleared her throat, laughed.
A Sith Lady shouldn't be drunk alone in her office, hair unbraided, sleeves loose, armor half-undone. Her eyes were ringed in violet shadow, her lips cracked from too many days without rest. She looked more like a ghost than a tyrant.
Good.
She drained the glass.
What no one understood—what none of them could understand—was that domination was a lonely art. You could seduce them, break them, build them into temples of devotion and obedience, but in the end, the weight always settled on you. On her. She could not cry, or scream, or collapse. She could only plan, reshape, endure.
Even her apprentices could not be allowed to see her like this.
The wine made her brave, if not honest.
She stood slowly, legs stiff, and stepped toward the window. Her reflection met her—tall, pale, violet-eyed and hard. But not today. Today she looked soft. Tired. Older than her years.
Virelia touched the glass, let her fingers trace the stars.
"This is the cost," she whispered. "I can bear it."
The words didn't make her feel better. But they made her feel real.
And that was enough.
Behind her, the lights dimmed slightly—ICHNAEA, her ever-present machine servant, adjusting the room's ambiance without being asked. The AI knew her moods better than most people. It had learned to dim the lights when she stopped working. Learned to keep the cameras off when she reached for the wine.
It was loyal, at least. But loyalty was a tool, not comfort.
"I'm not tired," she lied to the room. "I'm just—"
Alone.
She didn't finish the sentence.
The Force rustled again, more a sigh than a warning. Somewhere far away, someone screamed. A vision? A dream? A memory? She let it pass through her without reaction. It was too late for vigilance. Too late for fear.
Tomorrow, she would resume her throne. She would wear her armor like the skin of a god. She would speak, and systems would fall silent.
But tonight, she drank.
Tonight, she stood in a box of white light and dead air, watching stars that would never shine bright enough to warm her.
Tonight, Darth Virelia was simply… Serina again.
And that was the greatest lie of all.
