"Those who don the cape of the past seldom realize it must ever be taken off at all."
Fading lights stir the darkened halls, rousing those who once slept in unbroken peace. Neither the cold vacuum of the void nor the distance from the galaxy itself could hide what was buried here—secrets kept, not forgotten, awaiting a Tyrant's hand. She is the proof of the old truth: that will, when perfected, must manifest. She will have what she is owed.
A pity the galaxy cannot agree.
Obsidian—darker than the void between stars—threaded with violet light, forms the hulk that intrudes upon these uncharted walls. Rakatan ingenuity, bathed in that decadent glow, stands exposed before one who understands the more intimate truths of that ancient legacy. It is here that Serina Calis, known to many as Darth Virelia, has come to claim an old key—one that will unseal the next inevitability. There is ambition yet to be fed, a galaxy yet to be corrected, and a legacy that will not wait to be written.
The deeper one pressed into the ancient heart, the heavier the air became. It carried an unsettling awareness—the sensation of being watched by something that could do nothing to stop her, yet longed to all the same. Virelia found the feeling agreeable, or more precisely, preferable. This was not her nature: to stalk forgotten ruins, alone and irrelevant to a galaxy that had already moved on. Nor was it her nature to submit herself to a power dynamic she did not yet fully comprehend. And yet she chose both, without hesitation, indulging in each with open eyes.
What choice does one have over a fate not theirs to command? Virelia passed judgment: there was hardly any at all.
And so she would march on, ever slowly, until she deemed herself ready to be seen again by those she chose to acknowledge. She would move in silence while others clung to their fleeting moments and borrowed lives, waiting until the galaxy could no longer pretend she was absent. Not to prove what she was, but to assert it. Such is the fate of a Tyrant: to stand alone upon a throne of her own making, surrounded not by voices, but by the judgments of her own will—bearing witness as consequence is weighed, and fate is forced to comply.
It is by this understanding that she can love the Soldier as much as she loves the Tyrant. Both march forward, step by step, in full knowledge of a meaningless universe—but where the Soldier marches at the command of another, the Tyrant marches by her own will alone. Yet both refuse the same surrender. Both look upon the void and decide that motion, however grim, is preferable to collapse. Better to place one foot before the other than to kneel to nothingness, or dissolve into the indulgent decay of those who choose to stop.
The halls ended at a single, immovable threshold. A massive door—durasteel bound with materials from a forgotten age—stood between her and the first mechanism of a plan yet to be set in motion. There were countless ways to breach it, but too many would wake what lay dormant beyond. Force was inelegant. The keypad to its side, glowing a sickly green, was an invitation she had no intention of accepting.
She withdrew a small, unremarkable cylinder, studying it for a moment before returning it to its place.
"For another time…"
The words emerged soft and mechanical from behind her mask. What lay beyond would remain dormant a moment longer. A keycard would need to be acquired.
Or a living Rakatan.
Either would suffice.
