Private Aggressive Negotiations.

[Darth Virelia]

"The Black Sun Rises."

Tag - Velzari Tharn , Hakar Scaleback


There were few places in the galaxy where even the stars seemed afraid to shine.

Nar Shaddaa was one of them.

The Smuggler's Moon lived in permanent eclipse beneath the rotund shadow of Nal Hutta, its skies eternally choked with a sickly, gray luminescence that never quite resembled daylight. Pollution bled from its towers like festering wounds, dripping toxins into the low slums where light did not reach. Somewhere beneath the twisted lattice of transit beams, scrap-metal skybridges, and abandoned turbo-shafts was an address that did not exist—a location you could only find if you already knew where it was.

And Serina Calis knew where it was.

Her shuttle landed in complete silence atop the crumbling duracrete of an old weather-control station, long abandoned and reeking of mildew and rusted plasma conduits. She stepped down the boarding ramp not like a diplomat or even an invader—but like a verdict. Her presence cut through the static of the moon's filth-choked air like a surgical blade, sharp, cold, and wet with anticipation. The heat clung to her skin like breath on a neck.

Her attire was precise: tight, black synthsilk tailored to accentuate her elegance without sacrificing lethality. Her high collar was a statement—imperious, regal. Her eyes, cold and violet, flicked across the open platform as if daring anyone to exist without her permission. No guards greeted her. No formal entourage stood waiting. The silence was heavy. Purposeful. She liked that. It meant whoever she was meeting was intelligent enough to understand subtlety.

She walked alone into the dark.

Her boots clicked rhythmically across the half-collapsed walkway that led into the old station's depths. Dim emergency lights flickered in lazy pulses, revealing the faint outlines of durasteel support beams and oil-slick stains that had long since dried into arterial patterns. Graffiti in a dozen languages clawed at the walls—Huttese threats, crude gang sigils, cultist symbols that should have been extinct. One of them she recognized. Not by experience, but intuition.

The Black Sun.

Once, they had been kings of shadow. Cartels within cartels. The Sith of the underworld, commanding fleets and favors, assassins and armies. And now… now there were whispers. Movement. Quiet buyouts. Mercenary crews disappearing into black contracts. Intelligence analysts across half a dozen systems noting subtle shifts in power that could only be coordinated by something old, vast, and still breathing.

If the rumors were true, the Black Sun was stirring again. Not merely resurrected—but reorganized. Smarter. Hungrier.

And Serina wanted to see it.

She wanted to feel it with her teeth.

The corridor narrowed into an industrial service tunnel lined with buzzing coils and ancient data cables. A faint pulse of music could be heard far below—deep bass notes like the heartbeat of some hibernating god. The scent changed too: oil gave way to spice and synth-flesh perfumes. She passed a surveillance node—old but functional. Let them watch. Let them wonder if she was prey or predator.

When the final blast door slid open, the music hit her in full force—low, droning, oppressive.

The room was dim, lit only by low-red chandeliers suspended in chains above the floor. It was wide, circular, clearly repurposed from an old reactor chamber. Slabs of ferrocrete served as tables. A bar had been welded from discarded starship hulls and stocked with bottles older than the last galactic treaty. The clientele didn't turn to look at her. That told her everything she needed to know.

Real criminals didn't gawk. Real killers didn't stare. They already knew who walked in.

She walked slowly toward the central table—already reserved, already cleared. She didn't sit yet. She placed a single gloved hand on the back of the chair, flexing her fingers slightly.

She glanced to the side. Two men stood at the bar. One had cybernetic eyes. The other had none at all. Both wore knives like jewelry. Serina smiled faintly.

She loved rooms like this.

Danger was an aphrodisiac when properly administered.

A flicker of motion behind her. The sound of footsteps. Someone descending the grated stairwell overhead. Her ears, attuned to silence like a lover's whisper, picked out the rhythm of gait. Confident. Measured. A silhouette passed above, half-lit by the red glow.

Finally. The host arrives.

Serina turned to face the walkway with the same poise as a spider shifting toward a fresh vibration on the web.

She still didn't know who had answered her invitation. She had cast a net into a pit of knives. If the Black Sun truly had returned, if they were gathering beneath Nar Shaddaa's festering skin like a new infection in an old wound—then someone would come.

Someone always came.

But which kind of someone?

Would it be a relic from the old regime? An enforcer in tooled leathers with blood in their past and credits on their tongue? Would it be a new player, young and arrogant, eager to carve a new brand into the bones of the old empire? Or—more tantalizing—someone entirely unexpected. The quiet type. The serpent. The architect. The kind Serina most liked to break.

Her fingers traced the rim of the chair's back as she finally pulled it out, letting the scrape echo across the chamber like the start of a duel.

She sat.

And waited.

She was not here to beg. Not here to barter. She was here to understand. To map the shape of power that was allegedly reawakening in the veins of this dying moon.

If the Black Sun had truly returned, Serina would know it by the end of the night.

And if not?

Well.

She would leave behind something smoldering to keep the rumor alive.