"It is a sick perversion to carry such vengeance for so long."
It had been an unexpectedly quiet stretch in the Unknown Regions.
Ordinarily, this expanse of space was synonymous with unexplained horrors and near-mythical ruin—lost superweapons, ancient civilizations, distortions of light, and Force phenomena that defied even the most disciplined scientific reasoning. Those who ventured into it alone seldom returned, claimed by the hostile anomalies that guarded its buried secrets.
Most would have assumed the same fate awaited the Tyrant Queen.
Virelia had never seriously entertained the thought that she might finally die in the cold margins of the galaxy, far from prying eyes and familiar enemies. She had grown used to a darker truth: that the universe seemed intent on keeping her alive, not out of mercy, but to ensure she endured its cruelties again and again—buffeted by powers beyond her control.
Beyond her control. The words lingered, sour and intrusive.
Her shuttle drifted toward a half-ruined station of Rakatan design, suspended in orbit above a dying world. Millennia old and sustained only by faltering backup generators, it clung stubbornly to existence. A sickly green luminescence bled from fractured viewports and exposed conduits, pushing weakly against the void. It was enough to suggest that what she sought lay within—closer than she had anticipated.
And so, on final approach, she allowed herself to consider what might be waiting for her—alone in the void, severed from everything she had once declared hers by right. For a time, she had almost accepted that the galaxy had moved on without her. Yet it had only ever been a pause. Sooner or later, she would resume her work—her unending pursuit of control. Control over her impulses. Control over the hunger that drove her toward vengeance and destruction on a scale both vast and indiscriminate.
It was that same impulsive fire that had sealed her exile, that had compelled her to abandon everything she had constructed and everyone who had depended upon her.
And now she found herself pitying those she had left behind.
What had she become?
Enough. The thought hardened within her. The doubt, the quiet treachery of introspection, the invasive whispers that gnawed at her certainty—those would end here.
Docking clamps latched onto the station's sickly green hull with a hollow metallic groan. The engines dimmed to silence, and the Tyrant Queen stepped across the threshold into the long-abandoned ruin.
It would serve well as a base of operations for however long it required to unravel the ancient secrets entombed within—secrets buried deep in the vast obscurity of the Unknown Regions. This place would become her sanctuary, the crucible from which her new design would take shape. From here, she would set events into motion to seize the artifact she needed—to claim all, and to prove to a useless, obstinately defiant galaxy that what she demanded was not ambition, but due: their complete and total submission.
She would not surrender her heart again. Not to a lightsaber. Nor to love. Not even to an ideal.
She would be embraced—whether they wished it or not.
