Private Afterlife

[Azurine Varek]

Judge Me In The Afterlife

Outfit: Post-Bacta Clothing | Right Arm | Talisman
Weapons: The Force

Light. Too much light.

Azurine gasped, or tried to. The breath hitched uselessly against something cloying in her chest. Her eyes fluttered open to a world blurred and trembling. Shapes moved, shadows curling where they shouldn't. Her pulse jumped to her ears, deafening. She reached out instinctively—but her limbs were leaden, her muscles sluggish as if the water still clung to her skin. She gagged when the respirator was pulled free from her mouth and frantically tried to force her body to flee, unaware of the hands attempting to keep her calm and still.

Bacta. They'd pulled her out of the tank. She blinked furiously, trying to clear the haze. Her mind was a broken mirror, reflections twisting—faces she didn't know, memories that weren't hers. She tried to focus. Where am I? Is this real? How long had she been here?

Stars, the pain. It slithered down her spine, coiling deep in her muscles. A poisonous, twisting snake made of fire. She tried to arch away from it, but the movement only worsened the agony. Her breath hitched, teeth gritting hard enough she thought they might crack.

"Through pain, your mind is opened to hidden truths. Clarity as never before experienced. They'll never teach you this truth in the Jedi, they only concern themselves with overcoming pain. I will show you. Submerge you. Engulf you."

Something was wrong—still wrong. Even the bacta hadn't fixed it. Hands around her may have been gentle, but even the brush of fabric against her back made her choke on a cry. Deep, angry gashes carved into her skin, burned in by Sith cruelty. They hadn't faded like normal wounds. No, they pulsed with their own rotten life, red-black and festering, with thin black veins spiderwebbing out across her back like cracks in old stone.

"Grandmaster and... notified..." A voice broke through the haze, soft and urgent. Voices filtered through the thick fog clogging her senses, but the words slid past her ears without meaning. She blinked up at them, whoever they were, but their faces kept blurring at the edges, shifting, flickering. Was that a mask? She recoiled, a broken whimper escaping before she could swallow it down. No. Just her mind playing tricks. Again. Right...?

The room swayed. Safe, part of her knew that, but her instincts screamed otherwise. In every corner, every flicker of shadow, she saw movement; crawling shapes, whispering figures hunched and waiting. She squeezed her eyes shut, but the images stayed, burned into her vision.

Someone said something—a question, maybe? The words didn't stick, just slid off her consciousness like water off stone. Azzie stared at them, heart hammering in her chest. She opened her mouth to respond, but only a broken rasp came out. They looked worried. She pressed her forehead against the cold table and tried to breathe past the searing in her spine, past the shadows that wouldn't stop creeping closer.

Kahlil Noble​

 

[Kahlil Noble]

It wasn't the first time he'd seen it, and sadly Kahlil doubted it would be the last. These runes, carved into the flesh of Jedi who stand against him. What purpose did they have? What was the reason? None that he'd been able to solve thus far. Jasper Kai'el had been marked to see the End, the true stop to all things in existence. With Kahlil himself it had been a mark to make him a vessel if Darth Carnifex needed one. Even Nida Heavenshield 's mark was made to be controlled.

But for these two, Kahlil still didn't see the pattern or the true meaning behind them. The method behind the seeming madness and cruelty.

"Azurine."

He spoke calm as he entered the room. His gaze drifted to the doctor who'd been tending her other wounds, her malnourishment. There was still much to heal, but none of it mattered if she was still like this. The Dark clung heavy to her shoulders. He stepped into view, crouching to get eye level with her as he gave a gentle smile.

They were on New Cov, within his laboratory. His own Halls of Healing, but specific to the maliciousness the Dark Side brought against Life. "I need you to focus on me. Tell me what you see."

Azurine Varek

 

[Azurine Varek]

Judge Me In The Afterlife

Outfit: Post-Bacta Clothing | Right Arm | Talisman
Weapons: The Force

The shadows writhed around Azzie, pulsing with a hunger she could feel in her bones. They had faces both familiar and monstrous, all twisted into expressions of cruel delight. They lurked behind Kahlil, in the cracks of the walls, oozing through the corners of her vision. Her breathing hitched, chest tight as a drum stretched too far. She wanted to believe she was safe. She knew somewhere deep, buried under all the layers of pain, that Kahlil wasn't here to hurt her. But her mind refused to let go.

"I need you to focus on me. Tell me what you see."

She clung to the sound of his voice like a lifeline, but the world twisted regardless. Gaze flickered toward him, but for a moment, she didn't see him. She saw a great tree, black as obsidian, gnarled and dead. Ash rained from its branches like snow, covering the ground in a suffocating blanket of decay. Beneath it, a well cracked open, its dark waters spilling over, seeping into the ground. She cupped her hands, dipping them into what she could. The liquid was so frigid that it burned.

"Drink." A voice whispered, but she didn't know whose it was—was it her own?

"No, no, no..." Azzie pushed back, struggling to force her body to move and eyes frantically darting around the room. Objects in the room rattled around in their place, some objects falling from the tables. Her wild and unblinking gaze eventually locked onto his in a way that felt as if she was staring through him instead at something else. She could barely get the words out between coughs.

"There's a tree," she croaked, her voice a low rasp. "Ash… obsidian... on top of a split well..."

The words broke off as another wave of burning agony swept through her. She doubled over, nails digging into her palms and drawing blood. It didn't stop. It clung to her mind, filling her head with a tidal wave of horror she couldn't escape.

Beyond the tree, beyond the well, there was the galaxy as it would be under Sith rule. Not theoretical. She saw it: a crushing, consuming weight pressing down on every soul and planet. Stars flickered out like candles snuffed beneath a boot. There would be no rebellion, no spark of hope. Only the slow, inevitable choke of darkness across every world. Cities of bone and flame, endless legions of broken, enslaved souls kneeling beneath blackened skies. Children torn from their families to be twisted into weapons, planets hollowed out to feed their endless hunger for domination. The people she loved—

Among them—herself. Beneath the tidal wave of endless dark, she moved. Sinking into the abyss, her eyes burned with unnatural light, while laughter rang through the air.

Her back spasmed again, the carved area burning hotter, and her vision blurred with red. Her whole body was a battlefield, its epicenter strangling through her spine. Every nerve ending seemed lit on fire, every breath scraped raw against her ribs. Dimly, she caught her reflection in the polished metal of a nearby tray. She almost didn't recognize herself. Her normally rich amethyst eyes were rimmed with a sickly sulfur and red, the color of corruption. Her lips parted in horror, but no sound came.

They did this!

She shook her head violently, as if trying to shake free of it, but the darkness only pulled harder. Inside her chest, it gnawed deeper. It wasn't just around her. It bled through her, eating her from the inside out. "It ... won't stop singing... no... screaming."

Kahlil Noble​

 

[Kahlil Noble]

"Breathe, Azzie. What you see is not what is." A vision, then, layered over the world so she couldn't escape it. The why still burned in the back of his mind, a puzzle that needed to be unlocked and solved if to help properly. Or just because he wanted to solve it. A part of him needed to just solve these sorts of problems. The kind his family made for so many.

"Don't let it confuse you further. Focus on the now. I need to inspect the markings, change and undo what I can. I need you to let me."

Azurine Varek

 

[Azurine Varek]

Judge Me In The Afterlife

Outfit: Post-Bacta Clothing | Right Arm | Talisman
Weapons: The Force

"...Why..." Azzie's question whispered through hoarse and cracking voice wasn't one posed to anything being said. It was like she was questioning the universe itself. Her thoughts whirled like leaves in a storm; nothing stuck, nothing held. Every time she tried to focus, the fire in her back roared louder, drowning everything else out.

The shadows didn't scatter at Kahlil's words, despite how much she wanted them to. She tried to breathe, but her lungs didn't feel like her own. They ached with phantom pressure, with the weight of some abyssal ocean pressing down on her chest. She found herself having to clench her eyes shut, even instinctively inching away slowly, trying not to see the face of Darth Carnifex looking back ar her instead of the kindness of Kahlil. She coughed, sharp and shallow, lips parting to draw air, but the taste was wrong again.

"Just... make it... stop. Please."

She didn't know if she was begging for him to do something if he could or for the shadows to take her. All she knew was the crushing weight inside her chest, the relentless twisting of something cold and dark that was eating her alive. Crawling through her veins, feeding off her pain. It was taking her bit by bit, piece by piece.

Kahlil Noble​

 

[Kahlil Noble]

Kahlil let out a breath before he nodded. Her request was enough for him at this point, with the pain she had, they could talk later about what all of this meant. When it was at least lessened. "Alright. Focus on breathing for now." He was no doctor or medic, but he could and would do what he knew how. He stood up, moving to stand behind her before pulling on the Force. The Light. A runic sequence formed, shimmering in the air as he started to pull and weave.

Suppression. It wasn't a permanent solution, he needed to know what the runes did in order to properly mend them, but this should be enough to let Azurine think.

Azurine Varek