Darth Carnifex
The tide of agony crashed over the young man, drowning his senses in merciless waves. His feeble attempt to dull what awaited him was like the faint buffer of narcotics coursing through his veins had done little more than blunt the edge of the torment.
For though flesh might falter, the soul still reeled beneath the onslaught, and the sensation was not diminished… merely postponed, as though fate itself toyed with him in cruel amusement.
He had endured horrors before by the means of ordeals of flesh and spirit that had carved themselves deep into his memory. Suffering was no stranger to him; it lingered like a bitter companion, whispering that bittersweet reminder that his life was clinging stubbornly to his frame. Pain became an old ally, and a brutal tutor, assuring him of existence even as his body convulsed, his cry strangled into silence within his throat. And so he endured, staggering back upon unsteady steps, yet refusing to yield. Defiance bound him upright, as though sheer will forbade his body the luxury of collapse, denying the primal instinct to curl upon the earth and surrender to the abyss.
He retreated further from the abomination known as the Butcher King, clutching cloak and arms tight around his diminished frame. Ragged breaths tore past his lips, each exhalation laced with the metallic sting of suffering. Crimson eyes, fevered and unyielding, rose to track the monster's looming silhouette, wariness sharpened into defiance. What fear lingered was transmuted by sheer will, coalescing into a snarl of bitter resentment that curled across his face like a shadowed oath to remember this moment.
Carnifex was master not merely of the Force and her boundless currents, but of dominion itself, a sovereign who could bend nations as easily as men, weaving empires from terror, charisma, and inevitability. Avarice had not come driven by the base hunger of lesser acolytes, nor blinded by arrogance. No… his steps into the lion's den were guided by a different purpose altogether.
Knowledge was the true currency of power, and the Dark Lord was the hoarder of entire vaults. Avarice sought to learn, and to map the lion's hunting grounds, to understand the patterns of his strike and the breadth of his shadow. Each test endured, etched another new 'secret' into his memory.
This trial, 'mercifully' brutal though it had been, perhaps earned him the faintest notch of recognition. A small step in his journy beneath the predator's glance that no longer dismissed him outright. And for Avarice, that was enough , the seed of a greater design had been planted in the soil of peril.
Avarice straightened slowly, ragged breath still rattling in his small chest, crimson eyes cast down yet glinting faintly in the dim chamber light. The sting of the Dark Lord's power lingered in his limbs. Resistance meant nothing before such inevitability. He bowed his head just enough in a show of some mild concession
His voice when he regained his composure came low, careful, threaded with that coy undercurrent he never quite let slip away.
"So tell me… what do you command of me first?" 
