Private A Fate Worse Than Death.

[Serina Calis]

"Welcome to hell."

Tag - Miasmær



The asteroid did not welcome visitors.

No lights marked its approach. No towers marred its flat surface. The hangar doors were invisible even as they opened, cut so precisely into the pocked rock face that one could pass over them a dozen times and never know it was watching.

Polis Massa was a graveyard of secrets, and this place—Malleus—was where the dead were made useful again.

Inside, the air was dry and still. Every sound was devoured by the ancient, sound-absorbent stones of the inner ring. Even the distant hum of power systems felt... restrained, as though the machinery itself feared being overheard. Dim red light lined the corridor floors, casting long shadows between the tall columns of obsidian alloy that framed the hall like ribs in the body of some great mechanical beast.

And in its heart, she waited.

Serina Calis stood at the edge of the observation gallery overlooking the sparring arena far below—a chasm of black stone, steel, and sweat. The walls bore no ornamentation. The only decoration here was the sound of screaming iron. The training floor was silent for now. That would change. Soon.

She did not wear a robe.

Not here.

Here, she wore a sculpted bodysuit of dark synthweave and alchemized fiber, clinging like a lover's breath to every movement of her spine, her hips, her throat. Her hair was braided back in a crown of authority, and her boots clicked with each slow step as she paced the gallery.

Behind her, two Massan technicians observed quietly from behind dark glass, not daring to speak. The neural observation systems were active. The Arena's biometric feeds were calibrated. The guest wing had been prepared according to the Governor's meticulous standards—spartan, yes, but not austere. There was method in the minimalism.

Everything was ready.

All that remained was her.

Serina's eyes flicked to the side as a soft tone echoed in her earpiece. The shuttle had entered Massan low orbit. The trajectory was unbroken. Identity confirmed. Life signs: stable. Neural load: elevated. The girl was not sleeping anymore.

Good.

Serina placed a hand on the durasteel railing, her gloves creaking slightly under the pressure. Below her, lights flickered to life in the Arena. A low, pulsing hum began to emanate from the training pylons embedded in the floor.

"They always ask the same thing," she murmured to the air, more to herself than the silent observers at her back. Her voice was velvet and venom, laced with disdainful pleasure. "What is the Sith Order? How does it work? Where is my place in it?"

She turned her gaze upward—through layers of stone and gravity and steel, as if she could already see Miasmær stepping off that shuttle, blinking in the lightless hangar, wondering if she'd made a mistake.

"She will not ask it."

A pause.

"She already knows."

The Massans dared not reply. One adjusted a monitor slightly, as though seeking purpose in the shadow of her presence. Another simply watched the Governor from behind a curtain of silence.

Serina finally turned from the railing, every movement like flowing oil—smooth, dark, and impossibly dangerous. She began walking toward the chamber's exit, steps long and deliberate, not in haste. Nothing about Serina Calis rushed. The galaxy rearranged itself around her schedule.

Her voice followed her into the hall.

"Send her directly to me."

And then she was gone, her silhouette vanishing into the crimson haze of the facility's inner sanctum—like a blade slipping back into its sheath.

Outside, the hangar's blast doors began to open. The shuttle descended with quiet finality, engines winding down, its exterior still dusted with the remnants of Exegol.

Inside, Miasmær would be prepared to take her first steps into something far colder than a monastery, far harsher than an arena.

Not hell.

Worse.

Serina Calis.

 

[Miasmær]

Miasmær sat in the bleak steel hold of the shuttle, eyes locked on her interlaced fingers resting below her chin. It had been quiet since she left the husk of Exegol, and she had a lot of time to think. She had been weak, too easily swayed by the subtle manipulations of her new master. Was honesty the correct avenue? Or was there an expectation of secrecy? It gnawed on her consciousness like a starving dog. Too much had been shared, it would make things difficult. A certain level of detachment was needed, she couldn't get too enthralled by this woman.

Her thoughts raced as she felt the shuttle enter the planet's atmosphere, the smooth flight through the void now interrupted by friction and fire. She was not sure how her master had arrived before her, but she knew she had been alone with the pilot for some time. She had not spoken to him, and she doubted he would have responded if she had tried.

With the landing gear extended the shuttle would land and Miasmær would take her place at the shuttle's exit. She would peer out into the darkness as the ramp would slowly lower, her large eyes having evolved in the depths of the sea picking up a few details amidst the black and shadows. Undaunted, she would step down the ramp and into the hangar. If this had been her old master there would have been dozens of servants waiting, a show of power. But this emptiness sent a far more powerful note than any bowing entourage.

Those who greeted her were quiet, leading her deeper into the installation. Through shadowy corridors Miasmær would stride, chin held high and a look of general disdain resting on her features. A practiced expression, the expression of a shark surrounded by chum. But there is always a bigger fish.

Slowly the doors to the inner sanctum would open, Miasmær silhoueted in the doorway by faint red lights. She had wished there had been time to procure her old shuttle, she could have changed, freshened up... but no, now was not the time to think of that. With one step through the door she felt as if she was stepping into the leviathan's maw.

Serina Calis

 

[Serina Calis]

"Welcome to hell."

Tag - Miasmær



The doors sighed open.

They did not hiss—Serina hated that sound. It was too theatrical, too eager to please. No, these doors parted like the jaws of a leviathan disturbed in its slumber: slow, ponderous, inevitable. And there, framed in the widening mouth of the sanctum, Miasmær appeared. A silhouette carved from defiance and hesitation, haloed by the sterile crimson light that bled from the corridor behind her.

Serina did not move to greet her.

She waited.

The arena chamber was vast, but silent. No crowds, no torches, no braziers or Sith icons littered the walls. There were no statues of ancient Dark Lords. No shrines to forgotten power. All such trappings were weakness—monuments to dead men clinging to relevance through stone. This place bore only function. It was shaped like a crucible, a half-sphere descending into concentric layers of durasteel and obsidian, each etched faintly with ritual lines of Force-reactive alloy. Cold lighting clung to the ceiling in geometric precision, casting sharp shadows that fell like blades across the space.

And at its center stood the creature that had called her here.

Serina Calis.

Tyrant. Governor. Sovereign architect of futures not yet written.

She stood upon the dais like a blade unsheathed, wrapped in the living artistry of the Tyrant's Embrace—that terrible, glorious armor of hers, more myth than metal. To behold it in person was to feel the gravity of her will. The armor moved as she did, its curved plates flexing with her breath like the exhale of a predator, its six slanted violet eye-slits shimmering faintly in the dark, each one fixed upon the girl below.

She looked like something that did not belong in this galaxy.

No—something the galaxy belonged to.

Her body was sculpted into perfection not by vanity, but by design, as if the armor itself had decided the proportions and the woman had simply grown into it. Every step was soundless, yet deafening in its consequence. She did not posture, she did not flourish. She simply was—a presence shaped to suppress, seduce, and dominate.

The first words came after a silence so complete it had begun to feel eternal.

"You didn't run."

The voice was modulated—not synthetic, but enhanced, as if layered with whispers from deeper down in the Force. Each syllable arrived not just to be heard, but felt. It vibrated in the bones, coiling down the spine.

Slowly, Serina descended the steps from the central dais, each movement precise and deliberate. The cape trailing from her waist parted like a shadow in heat, its underlayer catching the light in hints of violet and deep arterial red. Not color. Warning.

"I wasn't sure if you would. Sometimes," she said, drawing closer with each word, "they break after the confession."

Now only meters stood between them.

Serina stopped.

She stood just at the threshold of Miasmær's space—not invading it, not yet. But pressing against it. Her armored form loomed larger the closer she came, the insectile mask tilted down just enough to suggest scrutiny, not curiosity. Judgment.

Then, silence again. Until—

"You look smaller without the mask."

It was not an insult.

It was an observation. Cool. Surgical. Seductive in its honesty.

With a soft click, the plates around her helm began to unlock. Seamless black split along unseen lines, retracting like petals folding in reverse. The six violet eye-lenses dimmed and lifted, vanishing into the folds of the armor as the mask peeled away.

And what remained was her face.

Serina's skin was the smooth, pale tone of porcelain starved of warmth. Her features were sharp—elegant, angular, and mercilessly symmetrical. Her mouth was a sculpted promise of cruelty and control, lips painted in a glorious red. Her eyes—now unshielded—were not merely blue. They burned with it, twin eclipses of violence and intelligence staring directly into Miasmær's soul.

"Come closer."

The word was a command. But it was spoken softly. As though intimacy were a weapon more effective than wrath.

 

[Miasmær]

"The dark is generous. Its first gift is concealment: our true faces lie in the dark beneath our skins, our true hearts remain shadowed deeper still."
​

Miasmær stopped in the entrance to the arena, staring with cold black eyes at the cold architecture within. Each muscle was tense beneath her skin, each a subtle dedication to the temple of Miasmær's own body. This temple she had spent years building, perfecting, shaping into an intrinsic threat that balanced fear and attraction on the razor edge of implied inevitable violence. Some temples were beautiful things, this one was stained in blood.

Something had changed in Miasmær. The finality of entering this place, the commitment, the calling of another being master had finally put to rest the coiling hand of fear which had plagued her before. Now she stood resolute, the only emotion in her the ever simmering hatred and rage she had known for most of her life. No she didn't run. She had been tempted, but refused the animal instincts. Fear would kill her here, she had banished it.

She stood with a hint of pride, she had succeeded where so many others had apparently failed. Yet pride was so easily taken from her. Her lip twitched at being called small, an involuntary motion she quickly pulled under control. The cinders of rage within her glowed slightly brighter before being muffled by Miasmær's own will.

With curiosity hidden behind cold eyes Miasmær would watch the mask peel away, locking eyes with her new master.

She would obey, taking a few steps forward before dropping to one knee in front of her master and bowing her head. Those eyes. She couldn't look at them for long, the power within threatening to consume Miasmær's essence with every second she tempted them.

"What are my duties, master?"
​

The question had been bothering her. What need had a woman like this need for Miasmær? Her master needed a weapon to protect themself, but Miasmær knew now this woman was beyond such a thing. She had been taught that it was a Sith's duty to train an apprentice, strengthening themselves or being killed in the process by strengthening another. Already Miasmær had taken one's life to empower herself, and Miasmær doubted that would happen here. So she had come to a simple conclusion:

She was training. At least, in a sense. By shaping Miasmær this woman would grow stronger. It was an assumption, one based on half-taught truths and Miasmær knew that. Perhaps she was right... but Miasmær knew she was wrong.

Serina Calis

 

[Serina Calis]

"Welcome to hell."

Tag - Miasmær



The air in the arena had weight now.

Not heat. Not movement. Not sound. Weight. The kind that tightened the chest and stole half a breath before it ever reached the lungs. The kind that sank in through the skin and whispered submit without saying a word. It wasn't the Force. Not entirely. It was her.

Serina Calis stood still as a blade plunged into the center of the world, watching Miasmær kneel.

There was no ceremony in it. No choreographed ritual. Just one girl bent before the inevitable, asking the question that would define her from this moment forward. And Serina could see the fire within her—kept carefully banked, hidden behind discipline and predatory pride. Good. There was no place here for the frantic clawing of desperation. If the girl had begged, she'd have been discarded.

But she hadn't.

She offered.

That made all the difference.

Serina's violet eyes flickered in the dim light as she moved again, descending the final steps of the dais with the slow, serpentine grace of a sovereign who had already conquered the question. Each step brought her closer, each moment layered with unbearable stillness. The weight of inevitability pressed against the room like an oncoming storm.

Then—silence.

She stopped directly before the kneeling form of Miasmær.

And said nothing.

Not yet.

Her head tilted, just slightly, as she gazed down at her new acquisition. Not fondly. Not cruelly. As one might regard a finely-made puzzle—complete in form, but still unsolved.

And then the gauntleted hand moved.

Not to strike.

Not to lift.

But to touch.

Two fingers—gloved in synthleather so dark it devoured the light—rested just beneath Miasmær's chin. Not forcing her to rise. Simply reminding her that her body no longer moved on her terms.

"You ask what your duties are," Serina said, her voice low and exquisitely slow, as though savoring the taste of every syllable.

The fingers curled ever so slightly beneath her chin.

And lifted.

"Everything."

She held Miasmær's gaze again, this time ensuring the girl couldn't look away. Not because of strength. But because of truth. Those violet eyes weren't simply bright—they burned with awareness. As if every part of Miasmær's soul, every locked door of memory, every private cruelty she'd whispered to herself in the dark had already been opened and catalogued.

"Your breath belongs to me now. Your silence. Your blade. Your dreams, your doubts, your hungers. You are not here to learn. You are here to be rewritten."

Serina stepped back now, releasing her chin, turning with a whisper of crimson and shadow trailing behind her. Her voice echoed softly in the vast chamber.

"There are no lessons. No curriculum. No charts of power to climb."

She turned her head, just slightly, over her shoulder.

"There is me. And there is what I choose to make of you."

Her steps resumed, slow and circling around the girl now. The sharp echoes of her boots upon the obsidian floor punctuated each word like the ticks of a countdown.

"You are not a warrior. Not yet. Warriors can be replaced. Cloned. Built in factories and thrown at problems until something breaks. You are not a blade. Blades are only ever as useful as the hand that wields them."

She stopped again—this time behind Miasmær.

She leaned forward.

Breath, warm and deliberate, trailed across the girl's lekku.

"You are potential."

There was something darker now in Serina's tone. Not anger. Not lust. Need. The raw, deliberate desire of someone who saw a piece of flesh and knew she could carve a god from it. If Miasmær could still feel fear, she'd sense it—not in the possibility of failure, but in the certainty of transformation.

"You will not be assigned tasks. You will not be given missions. You will wake when I say. Eat when I permit. Breathe when it serves me. I will know every thought you have before it becomes a word on your tongue."

Serina circled again, slower now. Letting the words sink in. Letting the truth bind tighter than chains.

"You will be forged by violation of self. Every certainty you have will be broken, inverted, and replaced. Not because I need your obedience—I don't—but because only when you forget who you were, can I mold what you are destined to become."

She stopped in front of her again.

And this time, she bent down.

Not in submission. No. She knelt like a serpent lowering itself into the grass just before the strike. Eye to eye, face to face, so that every syllable was a communion.

"You will suffer. You will bleed. You will love me. And then, in the absence of all else, you will find power."

A beat. Long enough to let the meaning settle into the marrow.

Then came the whisper.

"The Sith Order is not your purpose."

Her eyes narrowed.

"I am."

And then Serina rose.

Tall. Towering. Divine.

She extended one armored hand.

Not in kindness.

But in claim.

"Stand. Your training begins now."

There was no turning back. No room for doubt. Miasmær had passed through the gate and found herself not in a temple, but in the forge—and the fire did not ask permission to burn.

 

[Miasmær]

"The dark is generous. Its second gift is comforting illusion: the ease of gentle dreams in night's embrace, the beauty that imagination brings to what would repel in the day's harsh light. But the greatest of its comforts is the illusion that dark is temporary: that every night brings a new day. Because it's the day that is temporary."
​

Miasmær shuddered at Serina's touch, desire mixed with a tinge of fear. She listened, intently, hanging on her master's every word and unspoken promise. She was Serina's now, in heart and body. Miasmær found herself recoilling at that, at the idea of belonging to anyone but herself, but with conscious effort she subdued herself. She would be made anew. And so willingly the iron stepped into the forge, prepared for what was needed.

She would stand, slowly. It was difficult to read Serina, difficult to know when ceremony would be expected and where utility was paramount, but Miasmær had decided to err on the side of utility. So there would be no formal bow, no further spoken allegiences, rather Miasmær would keep her eyes locked with Serina. She was ready, she thought.

She had thought she was ready when her old master had brought her into their monestary, had given them a regimen, and knowledge. Still the idea that her master had betrayed her so early by purposefully leading her astray gnawed on Miasmær's mind. She would not make that mistake again. Every lesson will be memorized, categorized, compared to each other. Inconsistancies will be found out, truth divined, and power secured. That is, if Serina even taught in a way taht could be disected in such a way. That was to be seen.

So Miasmær would stand straight, hands resting at her sides as she would await further instruction. The pain of the forge will reshape her, but into what?

Serina Calis

 

[Serina Calis]

"Welcome to hell."

Tag - Miasmær



Serina did not speak right away.

She watched.

The girl had risen. That was something. Miasmær had done it without bowing, without empty words. A subtle thing. But Serina noted it—tucked it into the ledger behind her eyes where every gesture, every syllable, every instinct was filed and weighed. The girl had dignity still. That would need to be measured.

Not crushed.

Not yet.

Serina's hand, still outstretched, closed slowly into a fist as Miasmær chose to meet her gaze rather than take it. A small test. The barest pressure.

And the girl did not look away.

Serina smiled.

Not with her lips. That was far too easy. The smile was in the way her shoulders relaxed by a fraction, the way her helm shifted to one side like a predator circling its prey and deciding, for the moment, to let it breathe.

Good.

The girl had learned her first lesson without needing to be told:

Worship is not submission. Worship is survival.

A low hum filled the arena now—not mechanical, but resonant. The Force, concentrated and electric, as if the room itself had begun to listen. Serina stepped forward slowly, closing the distance until they were barely an arm's length apart. Her armor whispered with each movement—hard, flexing plates shifting over muscle with the intimacy of silk drawn across glass. Her presence alone was a pressure system, thickening the air with gravity.

One step too close.

One breath too near.

She wanted Miasmær to feel it.

To feel the way the galaxy shrank when she approached.

"You think you're ready."

The voice was not accusatory. Not mocking. Just... observant. A mirror tilted gently to reflect the truth back at her.

"You think because you endured a monastery, spilled blood, carved out a blade and a name for yourself, that you've stepped into the dark."

Serina's head tilted. The slanted, insectile eyes of her helm scanned the girl in full now—not just her posture, but her stillness. Her breath. The tension in the fingers held too precisely at her sides. The coil of calculation behind her irises.

"You haven't."

A pause.

And then the faintest click echoed through the chamber. A signal.

The floor beneath Miasmær shuddered—just once—as hidden seams began to open. Rings of durasteel retracted in concentric layers from the arena's center, revealing a black circle roughly three meters wide. Inside, a flat platform rose slowly, glistening faintly in the dim light.

Upon it: nothing but a single mask.

Iron. Featureless. Sleek. Its surface was darkened not by design, but by time and wear. Etched into its left cheek was a mark: a coiled rune of ancient Sith origin, long out of use. Pain. Not the word for it—the feeling itself. An expression of sensation encoded into geometry.

Serina did not explain it.

She simply turned and walked to it.

Slowly, she removed her own helm.

And now Miasmær could see her clearly again—bare, unveiled, exquisite and terrifying in equal measure. There was a softness to her beauty that felt impossible, like silk laid over the edge of a blade. Her hair was bound high, her neck exposed, the faint pulse of the crystalline node at her sternum visible just beneath the surface of her armor. Her eyes burned with violet light—but behind them, nothing flickered. No doubt. No hope.

Only will.

She held the old mask in one gloved hand, staring down at it as if she were holding a skull.

"You think you can understand what I will teach you by breaking it into lessons. By dissecting me. You won't."

She looked up. Her voice, now unfiltered, was smooth as poison poured into a cup of wine.

"Because I will not teach you as your old master did. I will not offer you wisdom and wait to see what you do with it. That is the method of the weak. The hopeful."

Serina stepped aside, gesturing to the mask on its pedestal.

"You want to serve? Then put it on."

There was no emphasis in her voice. No bark of command. Just an invitation. Calm. Cold. Irresistible.

"And for the duration of your first lesson," she said, "you are not Miasmær."

She circled again, one slow arc behind the girl like a shadow given flesh.

"You are mine."

Another pause.

"You will not speak. You will not think. You will obey. Every instruction I give will rewrite you. Every breath you take will be determined by the shape I allow your soul to take."

She leaned in again, voice whispering low across the nape of Miasmær's neck, hot with promise and damnation.

"This is not your trial. This is your undoing."

She stepped away once more, gaze fixed on the girl, waiting.

"Put it on. And I will begin."

And just like that, the weight of choice pressed down again.

The mask glinted in the half-light.

The floor was cold beneath them.

And the dark was watching.