The spire walls trembled with the force of her scream.
It wasn't loud—not really. The kind of scream that tore itself out of a throat unused to it, raw and broken and too human for a place built of silence and pressure seals. It echoed in the cavernous chamber of her private study, bouncing off cold marble floors and backlit holoprojectors.
Papers scattered. Data slates cracked. A chair overturned, the delicate sound of a ceramic cup shattering against the steel bulkhead.
Serina Calis staggered backward, breathless, staring at the wreckage she had made with her bare hands.
It wasn't enough.
She seized the edge of her heavy desk and hurled it over with a crash that shattered the last fragile illusion of control she still pretended to have.
Her hands were bleeding. She didn't care.
Her breathing came in sharp, ragged gasps—each one a battle she hadn't trained for, hadn't prepared for. A single strand of her hair fell across her eyes, wild, untamed. She shoved it away with a snarl, leaving a streak of crimson across her cheek without realizing it.
She collapsed into the ruins of her chair, hands pressed against her face, trembling.
It was over.
The lie she had told herself for years—the careful fantasy that if she simply worked hard enough, sacrificed enough, endured enough, she would earn a place in the galaxy's story—was dead.
She had given everything.
And it hadn't mattered.
The Sith didn't care. The Assembly barely remembered she existed unless they needed something. Her people served her because the system demanded it, not because they believed in her. Even those she trusted—what few souls she had allowed close—looked at her with expectation, not loyalty.
And Quinn—Quinn had loved others, never her.
She hadn't even been an afterthought.
All of it, every step, every bloody-handed victory, every sleepless night spent writing reports, smoothing alliances, building a world from ash—none of it had filled the black pit inside her.
She was still unwanted.
Still unworthy.
Still the little girl who hadn't been chosen.
Serina gripped the edges of her own mind as if it might fracture into pieces too small to gather back up.
It wasn't fair.
It wasn't supposed to be this way.
Tears burned behind her closed lids, but she refused to let them fall. She ground her teeth until her jaw ached. Rage warred with grief. Despair warred with spite.
For a long, agonizing moment, she considered it—truly considered it: walking out of the spire, disappearing into the void, letting the galaxy rot without her.
They wouldn't notice.
They'd move on.
Just another governor, another name erased from the margins of history.
But then—
A voice.
Not external. Not mystical.
A voice deep inside her.
Her own voice.
Why are you surprised?
She blinked, staring at the twisted reflection of herself in the shattered glass across the floor.
You thought they would love you?
You thought they would thank you?
You thought if you bled yourself dry for them, they would see you?
A bitter, broken laugh tore itself from her lips.
Of course they wouldn't.
Because love didn't matter.
Kindness didn't matter.
Loyalty was a currency spent by fools.
This galaxy wasn't a place where goodness triumphed. It wasn't a storybook where sacrifice earned redemption. It was a pit. A vast, cold pit of ambition, treachery, and dominance—and the only ones who survived were the ones who understood it.
Really understood it.
She had been a child, even as she commanded armies. She had been a dreamer, even as she crushed rivals beneath her heel.
No more.
She saw it now.
Clearer than the sterile stars outside her window.
If she was to survive—if she was to win—she had to kill the girl who wanted to be loved.
She had to become something else.
Someone who understood that morality was a weapon. That appearances were armor. That hearts were leverage to be bought, broken, or bartered.
Not a Sith. Not a Jedi.
Not even a monarch.
Something colder. Sharper. Wiser.
A mind that understood that affection was a leash.
A mind that could craft loyalty without needing it returned.
A mind that would make Polis Massa not a territory—but a fulcrum of power that could unmake empires.
A ruler who would never beg to be chosen again.
Serina wiped the blood from her knuckles. Rose from the floor.
Every movement felt new.
Heavy.
Inevitable.
She crossed the room slowly, stepping over the wreckage of her former self.
In the far corner of the study, hidden behind layered encryption codes and biometric locks, stood a sealed archive terminal—the one no one else knew existed. It wasn't filled with Sith dogma or Jedi archives.
It was filled with the old, forbidden works.
Treatises on power. Essays on control. Studies on manipulation, on the art of ruling hearts and minds without ever touching them.
They had once been curiosities to her. Dangerous theories to dissect and discard.
Now they were instruction manuals.
She placed her bloodstained palm against the reader.
The archive unlocked with a low, hissing breath.
Lines of ancient, brutal wisdom scrolled across the screen.
To be loved or to be feared?
She smiled—a real smile this time, cold and brilliant.
Both.
Until it is necessary to choose.
