They did not see the beginning. It came without warning, without light, without declaration. A stillness first—so complete it seemed the galaxy itself had drawn breath and failed to release it. Then came the scream. Not in sound, but in the Force itself. A tearing howl that crossed the minds of the sensitive like a blade dragged over stone, shrieking, endless. Jedi fell to their knees in distant temples. Acolytes vomited blood in meditation chambers. Worlds far removed from the core of the disturbance reeled as if struck. And still, no word. No holonet warning. No mobilization. Only the raw exhalation of a thing long buried rising once more to the surface.
At the heart of it all: Sluis Van. The world already marred, already shamed, already soaked in the blood of a genocide written by Empyrean’s own hand. Its orbit littered still with the decaying hulks of Alliance warships, never salvaged, never mourned. Their shapes hung in cold tribute, like carrion above an altar. And upon that altar stood Empyrean himself, at the spire’s peak, where the World and the Nether run too close together, where the air hangs thin and strange and the shadows do not move as they should. He spoke no word. No chant, no scream, no proclamation. The ritual was not cast in voice, but will. The Force obeyed.
Then the Blackwall moved.
From Sluis Van it surged like a cancer loosed from deep bone, unraveling the hyperlanes in great collapsing chains of annihilation. Not merely a shutdown. Not a flicker. But a brutal dismembering of galactic connection, each pathway severed as though by execution. Kal’Shebbol fell first, then Alzoc III, then Adras. The waves rolled outward. Praesitlyn vanished from its trade web. Xagobah dimmed. Even the swamps of Dagobah, mute and old and unfeeling, convulsed beneath the pressure. In a span of hours—a thousand worlds. All cast into silence. All lost to the maze.
It was no ordinary maze. This was not bureaucratic obstruction or military lockdown. This was sacred architecture, conjured through sacrifice and command. The Blackwall defenses, ancient and semi-sentient, awoke in full. Automated kill-fields, recursive jammer loops, false beacons, deadspace generation—mechanisms meant not merely to block, but to devour. Fleets that entered without sanction would not exit. Coordinates could not be trusted. Navigation was rendered meaningless. Within the Wall there were no rules but the ones the Emperor would later write. For now, there was only darkness and confusion.
And still, no explanation came. Not from the Empire. Not from the Sith. Not from the one who had pulled the trigger on this thousand-world silence. But in the corridors of fallen temples, in the holds of trapped ships, in the bunkers of warlords and the hearts of soldiers, there grew the sense that this was not the end. That this was the opening of something long-forbidden. That the wall was not drawn to keep something out. That it had been drawn to keep something in. And in the farthest reaches of the cut-off space, where the navicomputers failed and the stars flickered strangely, the Sith began to sharpen their knives.
This is a Sith Order preamble teaser for what is going to come down the pipeline soon. It will be affecting all of the following worlds.
