Private A Fate Worse Than Death.

[Darth Virelia]

"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.

Darth Virelia

 

[Darth Virelia]

"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.

Darth Virelia

 

[Darth Virelia]

"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?

Darth Virelia

 

[Darth Virelia]

"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.

 

[Miasmær]

"The dark is generous. Its third gift is the light itself: as days are defined by the nights that divide them, as stars are defined by the infinite black through which they wheel, the dark embraces the light, and brings it forth from the center of its own self. With each victory of the light, it is the dark that wins.."
​

Miasmær would watch with cold intrigue as the platform would rise, her features reflecting in its metallic surface. It was strange, she thought as her eyes met those of her reflection, how little she had changed. The clothing was different, but little seperated the Miasmær from before with the Miasmær of now. The hatred coiled around her soul like a serpent, feeding the rage that boiled inside her at a steady never ending burn. The pit-slave and sith apprentice, so similar.

She would approach the mask, gently picking it up in both hands as she continued to stare at her reflection now in the mask's smooth surface. There were changes, external changes. When she had been bought from the pits her scars had been healed away. She remembered them all, could visualize them on the reflection staring back at her. There had been a temptation to bring them back, to reclaim what had been taken from her. But even Miasmær would not give in to that level of theatrics. The pain of carving her own flesh would've accomplished nothing.

But now Miasmær felt that she would know pain. The symbol on the mask only hinted at its purpose. What little she had come to learn of the ancient sith language in her time in the monestary had proven useful. A few key sigils, a few known motifs, all helping Miasmær in diving knowledge in texts not meant for her eyes. Pain. Pain. Pain. The ripping of flesh and the burning of muscle. Those were too crude, she imagined. This would be worse.

There was hesitation. Miasmær couldn't help it, the fear of nerves being set alight with artificial pain coming from this mask too daunting for her to push away. For so long in the pits she struggled to never feel pain, to kill others before they could inflict pain on her. But pain had been the kindling, the tinder that set alight the internal blaze of hatred that continued to burn to this day. Pain is what forged her. Perhaps, it would reforge her again.

Flipping the mask over she would raise it to her face with one hand, the other falling to her side.

Slowly darkness would cover her vision. Miasmær embraced it.

Darth Virelia

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Welcome to hell."

Tag - Miasmær



The mask sealed with a hiss.

No locks. No clasps. No visible mechanism. It simply took her.

The moment it touched her face, it completed the circuit—an ancient ritual not of Sith origin, but of something deeper. Older. Something Serina had found in the hollows of a tomb with no name, beneath a system erased from starmaps long before the Old Republic had scratched its first flag into dust. The pain etched into that mask was not mechanical. It was programmatic. It did not hurt flesh.

It rewrote thought.

Miasmær's knees did not buckle. That was impressive. Most crumpled on contact. But she stood—rigid, spasming once—and Serina smiled.

Ah.

She fights it.

Good.

She stepped closer.

Her armor moved in rhythm with her body, the scaled plates sighing as they flexed and contracted, as though the entire suit exhaled with each step she took. Her bare face, lit from beneath by the violet glow of the arena's floor, was a paradox of severity and allure. She was not beautiful in a traditional sense—she was precise, every feature sharpened into aristocratic predation. Her mouth curled with restrained pleasure, the kind drawn not from dominance, but application.

Serina reached out.

Her fingers brushed the metal of the mask—not to remove it. No. To touch it. To feel what now rested inside it.

Miasmær's thoughts were already fragmenting.

Not through torment. Through confusion.

The mask pulsed.

A low hum, like a tuning fork vibrating in the marrow. There were no visuals behind its eyes. No HUD. No readouts. There was only black.

No sound.

No sight.

No identity.

And then—the voice.

Not Serina's voice.

Her presence.

<<You have placed yourself into my hands.>>

It was not spoken aloud. The words coiled through the Force, directly into Miasmær's mind. But even there, they did not sound like her old master's commands. There was no bark. No demand. The voice came as though it had always lived there. In her bones. In the scarless places she no longer remembered cutting.

<<You seek power. But you have always held it as if it were a knife someone might take from you.>>

Serina stepped behind her.

The floor glowed faintly beneath her boots, circuitry etched in the arena responding to the command now active within the mask.

The arena was alive.

<<That ends now.>>

Serina lifted one hand, and with a slight flick of her wrist, Miasmær was airborne—weightless, hovering just a meter above the ground, arms at her sides, knees drawn tight. The mask did not allow sound, but the rush of adrenaline could still be felt—a spike, a chemical surge, a momentary white flash behind the eyes.

And then the pain began.

It was not physical. Not yet.

It was memory.

<<You will give me the name of the first person you killed.>>

 

[Miasmær]

"The dark is generous, and it is patient. It is the dark that seeds cruelty into justice, that drips contempt into compassion, that poisons love with grains of doubt."​

Pain. Irreperable pain coursed through Miasmær's mind as the mask mapped her memories. Neuron by neuron it explored her. Miasmær couldn't even feel the spasm of pain that echoed through her body, but devoted all her willpower to remain standing, to not give in to this thing that was setting off every nerve telling her she was dying.

Slowly the pain would subside, either because the mask had adjusted or perhaps Miasmær's body had decided shutting off those nerves was simply the best course of action to keep her alive. Still the psychic invasion pained her, she felt the pressure and the ache, but it was lesser.. more managable. But her thoughts were disjointed, confused, one flowed into the next like water in a series of cups, never quite connecting. Any training Miasmær had to survive interrogation required thought, and how could one think when nothing connected?

Within the blackness Miasmær was laid bare, an empty shell of self struggling to retain identity. She felt adrift, her feet having left the floor. All of her senses were empty, all that remained was a voice. It spoke to her, Miasmær's mind clinging to every word to try to retain itself, to stop the shattering.

Then the pain returned. Different, invasive, not butchering but piercing. A needle which plucked every neural connection as a spider might pull on its web.

A memory flashed into Miasmær's mind, vivid, distinct, all consuming. The boy's skull laid broken before her, her knees on either side of his chest as her too small hands quivered, dripping in blood. She tasted it. Blood had splatered on her face, in her mouth, in her eyes. She cried, wiping away the viscera as she scrambled backwards. Two rough hands under her arms, pulling her away. Screaming. Her screaming. Fighting back, trying to bite, claw, tear into who ever did this to her.

"Clarion"
​

She would answer the voice. She hadn't known it at this time, during the memory. She only found out after when the boy's sister had come for her in revenge. Her blood too stained Miasmær's hands.

Darth Virelia

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Welcome to hell."

Tag - Miasmær



The name struck the silence like lightning through oil.

Clarion.

No scream. No moan. Just that. One word, pulled from a wound so deep that even memory had flinched from it. A forgotten name dragged into the light by force, pain, and the irresistible gravity of the voice behind the mask.

And Serina heard it.

She felt it.

Her eyes closed, just for a moment, as the arena shifted around her. The circuits embedded into the floor pulsed in acknowledgment. Something ancient and semi-sentient—a framework designed not for combat, but for transformation—had registered the response. Recognition laced with trauma. The correct trigger. A core memory, buried beneath survival and hate.

The rune on the mask flared again, not with agony—

—but with rapture.

Miasmær's mind was not merely spared the pain.

It was flooded.

A rolling wave of white-gold euphoria seared through her neural pathways, not natural, not real—calculated. The mask flooded her brain with endorphins, serotonin, artificial dopamine constructed from the same nanospike that had once been a tormentor. The pain receptors that had screamed seconds ago now wept with the pleasure of their own release. Her breath, if she could feel it, would come in gasps. Her spine would shiver. Her muscles—those coiled, disciplined things she'd forged in blood and fury—would twitch with involuntary delight.

She was rewarded.

It was the purest pleasure she had ever felt.

And it was a gift.

From Serina.

The girl was still suspended in the air, arms at her sides, mask sealed tight to her face. But inside that mask? Inside that black cathedral of thought and silence?

She was being rewired.

And Serina watched.

Her expression did not shift. Not fully. But a faint smile curled at the edges of her lips, something predatory and serene. She stepped forward, her cape whispering like smoke around her calves, and placed a single hand upon Miasmær's abdomen. Not forcefully. Not cruelly.

Just to feel her breathe.

"There you are," Serina murmured, voice low and sultry, intimate as a hand at the throat. "Clarion. A name you did not know, but kept. A name you killed. A truth, Miasmær."

She drew her hand up to the mask, letting her palm rest over the rune that now pulsed with satisfied heat. It throbbed beneath her fingers like a heartbeat. Her eyes fluttered closed.

"And you tasted him. Good. Blood is power, you should hunger for it."

She let that linger. Not with judgment. But reverence.

"You thought you killed for freedom. But that boy's blood was your first devotion. And devotion is never free."

Another pause.

Then, her voice deepened—its cadence changing, becoming more hypnotic, more dangerous.

"Now tell me…"

Her fingers tapped lightly once against the rune.

The pleasure vanished.

Not pain.

Not yet.

Just absence.

A vacuum.

The sudden loss of rapture, of warmth, of belonging.

It was cruel in its simplicity. But it was effective. In a world where nothing else existed, pleasure had become identity. And now it was gone.

"…who was the second?"

The voice slithered back in.

Not as a question.

As a law.

The mask pulsed again. The pleasure that had flooded her mind was now a distant echo—denied, withheld. Like a drug no longer offered. Her brain may of hungered for it. Her nerves may try to have reached for it.

But the machine demanded another offering.

And behind it all, Serina stood like a goddess of precision and cruelty, one hand still resting on the mask, her other slowly drifting to her side. She didn't need to act. She didn't need to strike or lash or speak above a whisper.

She was present.

And in that presence, identity was shaped.

She leaned in again, her breath against the metal now, voice coiling into the girl's ears like incense in a tomb.

"Give me her name."

Another pulse of sensation. Not quite pain. Not quite pleasure.

Just… need.

It drove deeper than logic. Beneath language. Into the reptilian mind, where pain and pleasure were no longer opposites. Where identity bent in service of stimulus. Where the line between fear and devotion blurred into hunger.

Serina's eyes burned brighter now, twin infernos of amethyst will.

She spoke again, voice no longer merely beautiful.

Now it was divine.

"Let the dark take her from you. And I will give you something more obedient than memory."

Her lips barely moved.

Her fingers twitched, once.

And inside the mask, the world began to narrow again.

 

[Miasmær]

"The dark is generous, and it is patient. The dark can be patient, because the slightest drop of rain will cause those seeds of cruelty, contempt, or doubt to sprout. The rain will come, and the seeds will sprout, for the dark is the soil in which they grow, and it is the clouds above them, and it waits behind the star that gives them light. The dark's patience is infinite. Eventually, even stars burn out."
​

Miasmær was born in ascetic poverty, she had never had time for delights, fancies, or the pleasant. That part of her had been ripped away from her at such a young age that she had almost begun to not crave it, to identify herself by its absence. What need had a weapon for enjoyment? So as every part of her brain writhed and shifted in unimaginable pleasure it was as if a man on the verge of death in the desert had been given water to drink, or a drowning woman given dry land to rest on.

As she hovered in the air, her body's only sensation that of artificial joy and pleasure, she writhed and twitched. Her breathing deepened, her body losing nearly all control as it coiled and moved subconsciously. She was in an artificial precisioned heaven, a reward for good behavior. Serina's touch on her abdomen only heightened the sensations, localizing them as for the first time in minutes she felt something external. There was a desire to reach out, to take the hand, to hold it, to feel more.

But then it was gone, and there was nothing.

Miasmær visibly recoiled at the sudden abandonment of her new god, her body returning to its mundane non-ecstatic state. Sounds of protest, barely categorized as words, bubbled in her throat but never left her lips as the last fraying string of training she had tried to keep her decency intact.

"Who was the second?"
​

She had been spoken to before, during the ecstasy. But words of praise mixed with other floods of sensation and were made difficult to intuit. But these? This was oh too clear. Part of her just wanted to blurt out a name, a lie, something to end this horrific absence of nothing which now dominated her body once again. How had she lived like this?

But Miasmær resisted, forcing her mind to retract from its desires to find the information it needed to be fullfilled once again. The second kill, the one she had tried to negotiate with. She had remembered an attempt to convince her that she stood no chance against Miasmær, she was after all several years younger. Why the slavers had taken her was unknown, it was far before her time. But in the end she was bloody before Miasmær. A zabrak, a girl, a girl named Aloa. A girl killed because Miasmær was told to kill her.

"A-" Miasmær began, her voice quivering like a dog begging at its master's table "Aloa. H-Her name was Aloa."​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Welcome to hell."

Tag - Miasmær



The second name bled from her lips like a confession drawn with needles.

"Aloa."

It trembled. Not with shame. Not with grief. But with craving. A whimper dressed in syllables. A sound soaked in desperation and need.

And Serina smiled.

Not cruelly.

Not kindly.

But intimately.

A lover's smile. A sculptor's. The slow, curling satisfaction of a mistress who had driven the chisel into a perfect line of weakness and found the stone yielded not in protest—but in longing.

The mask responded instantly.

Not in pulses, not in waves—but in detonation.

Pleasure surged through Miasmær's body like a supernova, white-hot and impossibly vast. Her synapses would be ignited. Nerves would have screamed not in agony now, but in delight. The artificial chemical cascade would of activated again, flooding her with tailored ecstasy more precise than any organic sensation could ever hope to be. The pleasure was not vague. It was structured. Layered.

Her spine.

Her core.

Her throat.

Every scar in her mind, every fracture of ego, every coiled place within her that had ever held terror or doubt was washed in light. Not clean light. Not holy light. But the sick, sacred radiance of a dark star in collapse.

And through it all—

Serina was there.

Her hand remained on the mask, index finger slowly brushing the edge of the rune that pulsed beneath her touch like the temple bell of a forgotten god.

She leaned in close, whispering not to the girl's ears—but to her soul.

"Good."

Her lips hovered just beside the edge of the mask's cold metal.

"Do you understand now?"

She stepped back—just far enough that Miasmær could feel the absence, the void her body had already begun to crave more than air.

"I do not teach through pain because pain is what you already know," Serina said, her voice filling the chamber with liquid venom. "You've lived your entire life in it. Pit. Scar. Betrayal. You bled to survive. You suffered to breathe. Pain was your mother."

She circled again, this time without hurry, her armor gleaming in the soft crimson light of the ritual floor. Each motion was a dance—deliberate and serpentine.

"No. I give you something worse."

She turned her head slightly, just enough for Miasmær to see the profile of her face as she spoke.

"I give you pleasure."

Her voice dropped—lower than silk, lower than breath.

"Because pain teaches nothing. But pleasure makes you loyal."

Serina stopped again, facing her fully, hands folded behind her back now, the very picture of command and hunger forged into one impossible shape.

"Pleasure is the leash you beg for. The reward you suffer to earn. The truth your body whispers long after your mind has denied it."

She stepped closer, each word pressing into the girl's mask like kisses from a predator.

"It is not the agony that makes you mine, Miasmær."

Her gloved finger tapped the rune once more, and the reward flickered again—less than a second, like a memory of a sensation caught in the throat.

"It's that you want more."

And now, she smiled again.

Because now came the final question.

Not from the mask.

From her.

"What do you desire?"

Her voice came as a blade in the dark. Not cruel. But inescapable.

"Strip away the fear. Strip away the lies your masters taught you. Strip away vengeance. Duty. Survival. All of it."

Another pulse. A small taste of the reward. Not enough. Just enough to ache.

"Don't give me what you think I want to hear."

Her voice softened now, curling around the air like smoke.

"Give me what you don't want to admit."

She stepped forward again, hand brushing down Miasmær's cheekplate.

"What does the girl in the mask want?"

Her palm flattened against the cold metal, as if she could feel the answer forming just beneath the surface.

"And say it as her."

Serina's eyes closed—no longer violet now, but glowing, alive with Force concentration, her will focused entirely on the trembling soul behind that sealed black face.

"I will know if you lie."

The mask surged again—not with pain. Not with pleasure. But with pressure.

An ache so deep it felt like hunger. A need with no name.

It filled the void.

It filled her.

Now there was nothing left but the question.

 

[Miasmær]

Miasmær shuddered as the name left her lips, her body twitching as it impatiently waits for-

There it came, an explosion of pleasure detonates in Miasmær's core and radiates to the tips of her extremities. Her body reacts, writhing in desperation to not give up these sensations as Miasmær would gasp, hissing through her teeth in a vain attempt at self control. If she had been looking at the creature she was now from a few meters away she'd have been disgusted. But those thoughts, thoughts of self control and stoicism were distant mirages now. Why would she give this up? Just for a vain attempt at a self imposed image?

Tears began forming at the sides of her eyes, the first tears which had stained this face in over a decade. They began to pull down, tracing her cheek bones and then jaw. A release, the only one her body knew. She shuddered as Serina would whisper to her, her hand reaching out ever so slightly as the woman would step away.

The girl in the mask was not Miasmær. Miasmær was a strong dedicated killer who had spent decades honing her body and soul to be as efficient a killer as she could make it. Miasmær was the name given to that girl, a name given to the mask she wore to defend herself. This one, the one who remained behind the walls which had so easily been destroyed and who allowed herself to weep for the first time in ages, had not been allowed to show herself in so long. Miasmær had retreated, and Moaza breathed once again.

The girl behind the mask breathed heavily. Deep raspy breaths desperate to soak in these sensations. To live in what had never been given to her before. She was so so tired.

"I want-" she'd begin before swallowing anxiously, her voice quivering as the sensations fled her. Desperation would tinge every sylable "I want to..." The girl behind the mask paused, a desperate pause of so many mixed and conflicting emotions. She had to be strong, she had to resist! She had told herself these things for so long before she got comfortable with death.

"I just want to be safe."

The words echoed out from her very being, the rage and hatred having been extinguished.

All that was left was the void. The void where a soul should be.

And she wept. The first few tears being joined by a stream of sorrows.

Darth Virelia ​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Welcome to hell."

Tag - Miasmær



The words fell like ash from a dying flame.

"I just want to be safe."

It was not a plea.

Not really.

It was worse.

It was a confession—one that did not beg, but simply collapsed beneath the unbearable gravity of truth. That voice—rasped, shuddering, pulled through cracked lips and trembling throat—did not belong to the woman who had stood so defiantly at the edge of the arena. Not to the warrior, the killer, the weapon shaped by the pits and the monastery.

That voice belonged to something older.

And far more raw.

Serina did not move.

For a moment, she simply stood there, hands behind her back, her expression unreadable in the glow of the crimson floor beneath them. Her eyes remained fixed on the trembling form floating above it—on the curled fingers, the twitching spine, the stained cheeks behind the smooth black mask.

The girl had said it.

She had dared say it.

Not "power." Not "victory." Not "revenge."

But safety.

And Serina smiled.

Not the smile of dominance.

Not conquest.

But recognition.

She stepped forward, her movements gliding, silent, effortless. The coils of her armor flexed in harmony with her stride, and her cape whispered in the stillness like sin given shape. She approached the mask slowly, savoring every heartbeat, every tremor in the Force as the girl behind it crumbled into something more useful than rage.

Closer.

Closer.

Until she was near enough to see her own reflection in the obsidian curve of the mask—the glint of violet eyes, the perfect geometry of her face, the unfathomable hunger written in every line of her mouth.

Her hand rose again—graceful, deliberate—and touched the side of the mask once more.

But this time, the rune did not flare.

The mask did not surge.

There was no pain. No pleasure.

Only stillness.

Only her.

She spoke, voice low, sultry, heavy with the intimacy of thunder whispered through silk.

"Safety…"

She tasted the word as if it were a delicacy. As if she were rolling it on her tongue to see what flavor it held.

"You want to be safe."

A breath.

Her hand slid down the side of the mask, not to caress—but to claim.

"You want to rest. You want to be wrapped in something that cannot break. To be held in the arms of something so much stronger than you, that you no longer have to fight to exist."

She walked behind her again. Always circling. Always weighing.

"It's not weakness."

Her voice now drifted like smoke.

"It's truth."

Her palm pressed lightly to the girl's lower back.

"The pit told you survival was strength. That violence was protection. That killing first meant living longest."

She leaned in, her breath soft as velvet against the back of the girl's neck.

"But none of it kept you safe."

She came around again, back into view. Her eyes now locked on the girl's hidden gaze with the force of gravity itself.

"Only I can do that."

The words were not offered.

They were infused—into the air, into the girl's skin, into the marrow of her thoughts.

Only I can do that.

"I can keep you warm," Serina whispered. "I can give you a place in the galaxy so far removed from fear that you will forget what it ever tasted like. I will teach you to wear the Force like a second skin. To speak and see others obey. I will build you into something so desired—so terrible—that no one would dare touch you without my permission."

Her hand reached up again.

And with the gentlest motion—just a whisper of will—the mask released.

A soft hiss.

The rune dimmed.

And with it, the chamber's energy shifted.

The mask fell away in Serina's hand.

Their eyes met.

Not Miasmær's now.

Hers.

The girl beneath.

And Serina smiled again. Slower. Softer.

Dangerous.

With one fluid motion, she stepped forward, placing the mask onto the pedestal from which it had risen. Her back was to Miasmær's now.

But her voice remained a tether.

"You will never be safe if you remain yourself."

A pause.

Her head turned slightly, just enough that her profile was visible—flawless, sharp, almost sculpted in its serenity.

"But you will be safe with me."

She turned fully now.

Eyes on hers.

No more games.

No more masks.

She extended her hand.

Not to harm.

Not to command.

But to invite.

"You have passed your first trial."

She let those words settle into the space between them like wet ink on skin.

"Now kneel—not as the killer."

A breath.

"But as the girl who wants to be reborn."

And there was no mockery in it.

Only truth.

The room was still.

The dark embraced them both.

And Serina—patient, radiant, inexorable—waited.

Hand still outstretched.

To catch what fell.

To forge what remained.

 

[Miasmær]

Moaza's eyes squinted in the light as the mask was pulled away from her. Tears ran down her cheeks unchecked, dark crimson lines stained her red skin where the salt water had passed. As she was lowered to the floor she didn't even try to stand. In her mind she knew it was weak, but she collapsed into a crumpled mess of a person on the floor. Her chest still shook from an attempt to control her breathing broken by sobs that krept through her defenses, which after being devastated so thoroughly were struggling to re-knit themselves.

The girl underneath the mask of Miasmær struggled to find words. Bliss had been torn from her, beauty used to pain her, and safety promised. Her mind was a jumbled mess of thoughts, a hundred roller coasters on intersecting tracks occasionally crashing in to one another in a melee of emotion and impulses. Her master, so terrible, so beautiful, so powerful stood before her. A statuesque depiction of strength and desire with hand out stretched in invitation. It was so much.

She almost closed her eyes. Almost gave up. Moaza knew she wasn't enough.

"I-" she pauses, her voice so soft, scared, unsure. "I don't-" she'd pause again, her body giving an involuntary shudder.

Slowly her mind worked to rebuild herself, brick by brick, thought by thought. Slowly the crying would stop, her jaw becoming resolute as teeth grind against one another in pained effort to regain control.

Slowly Miasmær would emerge again, not wholly. The mask guiding the girl behind it to lift herself with shaking arms into a sitting position, then into a kneel. From here her red hands would lift up to gingerly, carefully, and gently take her master's hand between gentle fingers to bring the hand to the girl's lips. She'd kiss it, once. A gentle tender thing. A sign of obedience, of reverence, of submission.

"I am yours."
​

Darth Virelia

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Welcome to hell."

Tag - Miasmær



Serina did not move as Miasmær collapsed.

She did not speak. Did not rush to lift. Did not offer comfort.

She watched.

That was respect, in its truest form: not soft pity or whispered reassurances, but witness. She did not look away from the sobs or the weakness. She allowed it. She honored it by refusing to pretend it wasn't real. What Miasmær endured wasn't shameful. It was necessary. Transformation was always violent. Rebirth was always cruel.

And Serina revered cruelty when it served.

The girl before her was no longer a blade pretending to be flesh. She was raw, half-forged, flickering with ruin and potential both. Serina had seen thousands crawl. Hundreds beg. Dozens kneel.

But few had bled quite like this.

And fewer still had kissed her hand.

Not in ceremony.

Not in desperation.

But with that tremble—barely held in check—and that faint, human brush of lip to glove, so fragile it was almost prayer.

Serina's fingers didn't tighten.

They simply curved—accepting the kiss.

She tilted her head slightly, gazing down at the girl who had once been nothing but rage behind her eyes and muscle behind her hate. The breath that slid between Serina's lips was quiet, but there was something reverent in it. Not affection. Not pride.

But recognition.

"You are," she said, voice velvet-wrapped steel. "And now, you're worth claiming."

The words were precise. Not flattery. Not comfort.

Validation.

She drew her hand back—not sharply, but with a subtle lingering drag of fingers across Miasmær's palm, leaving a phantom heat in their absence. Then Serina crouched, not with the swiftness of a predator, but the grace of something inevitable. Her armor shifted and folded around her joints like coiled architecture as she descended to eye level.

For the first time, she looked not down at the girl—but across.

"You endured," she said. "More than you should have. And still you are here."

The pause was heavier than her words.

And then—rarely, rarely—Serina allowed a hint of softness to touch her voice.

"Good."

Her hand rose again, this time to the girl's cheek. The pad of her gloved thumb brushed a trail through the salt-stained skin, slow and cool.

"Fear, pain, ecstasy—all of it will be your palette now. You will not flinch from any of them. You will use them. Wield them. And when you do, you'll begin to see what I see in you now."

She leaned in.

And for a moment, her lips hovered near the girl's ear.

"Something beautiful. Something terrible."

A breath. Warm against skin.

"Something mine."

Then she stood.

Fluid. Towering.

Every line of her armor caught the red light as if it had been sculpted from the dark itself. She turned, taking a single step toward the edge of the arena. Her voice carried behind her—soft, but no longer intimate.

Commanding.

"You will rest. You will eat. You will not speak of this to others."

She paused, the violet glow of her eyes glinting faintly over her shoulder.

"And tomorrow—"

Her words sharpened like a blade.

"—you begin again."

Then she was gone. A silhouette of power and silence disappearing into the shadows of the arena, where gods were shaped from broken girls and forged in loyalty, pain, and desire.

She had seen the real name now.

The first brick had been placed.

And now, she would build.

 

[Miasmær]

It was quiet now, and she was alone.

Miasmær stared up at the mask resting on its pedestal, the reflection showing her a different kind of mask. Miasmær stared into her own eyes, into the eyes of the image she manifested. Miasmær was back in control, the part of her that is Moaza once again curling up to sleep, to rest, to be safe. The fire of hatred and rage simmered in her core, a familiar and comforting warmth that grounded her. She needed grounding, after that. The sensations, they still twinged in her mind like a poison. A corruption. She couldn't help but think of them.

Slowly she would stand, the hilt of her saber hovering up to her hand with some basic telekenises. She'd stare down at it, at the weapon she had made. It seemed so... small now. In both hands she would cradle it before her, it felt wrong to simply hold it. So small, so meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Still, it was hers and it could kill. It had killed. It would kill again.

Miasmær closed her eyes, running her thumb across the rivots and smooth steel of the hilt.

After a few moments of this she'd turn, take a deep breath, compose herself, and exit the room back into the installation she had been brought. There was something she had to do, somewhere she had to go. She needed to get out of here. She wasn't scared, wasn't intimidated, just needed to go back home to deal with unfinished business. She didn't want to admit that she just needed a second away to breathe. The lessons would come later, the rage grounded her but the rage needed an outlet.

Stepping into the shuttle she had left less than an hour ago she'd speak, bringing forth as much authority she can in her tone and complexion.

"Bring me to Exegol." first she needed to regain her shuttle, the one left behind.

No further explanation, the pilot was beneath needing to know why. She was the master's apprentice, she spoke with her master's authority. Hopefully. Her master would of course be informed, and there was a chance they'd come back due to that simple fact. But Miasmær doubted her master would deny her this, deny her revenge, deny her an outlet.

Darth Virelia