Private Another Blade.

[Darth Virelia]

"War needs bodies."

Tag - Lucaant Vaneric



Serina did not move.

Not when he took the drink. Not when he set the glass down like a gauntlet.

Not when he stared her down with words sharp enough to draw blood from lesser throats.

The flickering chamber lights caught only the lower curve of her hood, casting the rest of her face in shadow—but the line of her mouth was just visible. Unmoving. Serene. Not amused. Not insulted.

Measuring.

She let the silence stretch long after he'd finished. Let it echo. Let the weight of his declaration sit in the space like coals cooling after a blaze.

Only when the stillness was absolute did she answer.

Her voice was low. Calm. But beneath it lived something iron.

"Then it is fortunate," she said, stepping forward, "that I do not claim what is not yet worth owning."

No venom. No edge.

Only a sovereign truth.

She reached for his empty glass—not with spite, not dismissively, but deliberately—and turned it once between her gloved fingers. A contemplative gesture. One might almost mistake it for thoughtful.

"I shaped the crucible," she continued, "because fire reveals truth. And yours, Lucaant, is this—"

Her gaze met his again. No longer behind six glowing eyes. Just her own.

Cold. Intelligent. Unblinking.

"You survive. You do not break. And you do not kneel. That has value."

She set the glass down beside its twin.

"But it does not yet make you mine."

A beat.

"Not because you resist it—resistance is expected. Resistance is necessary. It sharpens the edge."

She circled him now, slow, methodical—like a warship analyzing a threat that may yet be a future ally. Not a predator, but a tactician. The long lines of her armor caught the light in violet flickers as she moved.

"But because you stand on the edge of meaning. Half-made. Hardened, yes. Useful, yes. But not yet proven. Not beyond this single act. Not beyond one moment of fury."

She stopped behind him. Not close. Not distant. Her voice came quieter now—but it carved deeper.

"You think I would build a sword that cuts only once?"

A pause.

"No. You are not my weapon."

"Yet."

Then she stepped around again, to face him once more. No challenge in her stance. No need. She looked him in the eyes, and this time, she answered not as a tyrant—but as a master of outcomes.

"You ask what I think of you."

A slow inhale. Not dramatic. Exact.

"You are an ember. Still wild. Still reaching."

"But with enough heat to join the fire I am building."

A flicker of something passed through her eyes then. Something unreadable. It might have been respect.

It might have been the first breath of consideration.

"So walk with me. Work with me. If your will holds—if your purpose continues to earn its weight—then in time, perhaps you'll find the title you defy... is one you claim."

A final pause. Then, with quiet finality:

"Until then—"

She turned, her cloak catching the air like a blade sheathing itself.

"You are in my employ."

Another step.

"Not my possession."

And then—almost as an afterthought, but struck like a steel bell:

"Impress me again, Lucaant Vaneric."

"And we will revisit the matter of who risks losing something."

She didn't look back as she walked away.

Because she didn't need to.

 

[Lucaant Vaneric]

"Oh, my God will certainly forgive you... But unfortunately, I won't."

⏵ Play Theme

Location: Polis Massa
Objective: Survive | Kill them all.
People involved: Darth Virelia
---​

He didn’t answer right away.

He just stood there, watching the spot where she’d stood a moment ago—watching how her words still moved in the air like embers refusing to die.

Then, slow and deliberate, he re-hilted both blades. One. Then the other. Not with reverence.

With finality.

Then came his voice—low, unhurried. More solid than smoke, less theatrical than fire.

He lifted his chin slightly and let the words land like iron pieces on stone.

“You talk like someone building a forge and not a future.”

A pause as he moved forward, just a step—enough to make presence felt, not begged.

“Keep your titles, Serina. I didn’t come here to be named.”

A tilt of the head. Not quite defiance. Just refusal.

“You offered pain. I answered. You offered a test, I passed it. Let’s not polish it into prophecy now that it suits the narrative.”

Another slow step. Not following her—circling the moment like he might a fallen opponent. Not out of disrespect.

Out of caution.

“You didn’t forge this edge.”
“You just put it near fire and watched what burned off.”

He didn’t need to raise his voice. It carried all the same. Like stone scraped across a clean floor.

“So yeah. I don’t kneel. I don’t belong. And I sure as hell don’t break.”

A faint scoff, dry as desert wind.

“But don’t mistake survival for silence.”

He turned his gaze out across the flickering edge of the chamber, where simulation met the void.

“You want a weapon that sharpens itself?”
“Then give it real things to cut.”

He looked back toward her—where she stood, not turning. Not needing to.

“Because if this was just theater for your benefit—another scripted storm with no stakes?”

He tapped a knuckle against the rim of the glass he’d refused to refill.

“I don’t do loyalty for atmosphere.”

Then, a single step forward.

Not walking away. Just reminding her that he could.

“Impress you?”

His smirk now was minimal—just the suggestion of one, curled like smoke behind a sealed door.

“You got one miracle. Don’t make it a habit.”

And with that, unless stopped, Lucaant turned away—not because he was dismissed.

But because he’d said what mattered.

And some truths don’t ask permission to be spoken.​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"War needs bodies."

Tag - Lucaant Vaneric



The chamber was still.

The lights dimmed not by programming, but by presence—hers. The low hum of power retreated into the walls, like something ancient holding its breath. Only the echo of Lucaant's last words remained, like smoke curling where fire had just burned.

And Serina Calis stood in place.

Utterly still.

It would be easy—comforting, even—to imagine her unaffected. Her face, still shadowed beneath that ceremonial hood, offered no twitch of jaw, no flick of expression. Her lips were parted only slightly in the breathless stillness of a hunter who does not strike—yet. Her hands, no longer armored, hung like cold metal sculptures at her sides. Loose. Relaxed. Lethal.

She didn't move as he circled.

Didn't twitch as he made his exit.

Didn't flinch as he mistook the storm's eye for a lull.

But inside her, the cold fury surged. Not hot, wild anger. Not theatrical outrage. This was a far deeper thing. Ancient. Unyielding. Like ice forming layer upon layer over a sea that had drowned empires.

No one—no one—spoke to her like that.

Not because of her title. Not because of her presence. But because of what she was.

Lucaant Vaneric had just danced on the edge of something most would not have survived. Not because he insulted her. But because he thought her fire ornamental.

Because he thought he had seen the full shape of her mind and mistaken it for stagecraft.

He believed himself forged. Unclaimed. Refined by fire. He believed she was just another architect of struggle, another sorcerer building illusions of pain to simulate meaning. He had passed her test—yes. But he had named himself the test's author.

He had confused proximity to the flame with authorship of its heat.

And yet—yet—she did not lash out. Not yet.

Serina Calis knew she needed only one thing: for him to see himself.

Just as he turned toward the exit, glass left on the table, boots still marked with the blood of a false god, the chamber locked.

There was no click.

No slam.

The air simply shifted—tightened.

The door was shut.

Permanently. Absolutely.

And Serina—at last—moved.

A single step. Measured. Controlled. But it carried with it the weight of verdicts. Her cloak whispered behind her like the hem of a tribunal's robe. She crossed the space not quickly but inevitably, the way glaciers move—slow only to those who do not understand their momentum.

Her path was not toward him. She walked past the table, past the simulation chamber's remnants, and then turned—precise, clean, like the hinge of a guillotine locking into place.

Her voice came then.

Just one sentence.

No lead-in.

No transition.

No flourish.

"What is a Sith?"

The words were not raised. They did not need to be.

They filled the chamber anyway. Not because of their volume, but because of their gravity.

Like something enormous being lowered onto fragile glass.

Not a test.

Not a riddle.

A demand.

A scalpel.

And in that moment, the air was no longer Lucaant's. The authority he had held in blood and breath was suspended—stripped not by command, but by force of concept. She didn't need to rebut his words. Didn't need to remind him that the crucible was never about permission. Didn't even need to inform him that every step he took in her presence was already within her design.

She only needed to ask that.

Because in that one question, she placed everything he thought he knew in front of the blade.

What is a Sith?

Was it rage?

He had rage.

Was it will?

He had will.

Was it power?

He pursued it.

But still—he hadn't answered.

He had walked into her forge and emerged thinking he was whole.

He had mistaken violence for comprehension. He had fought her nightmare and believed himself the author of its unraveling, as though the fire had not been waiting for him since long before he was born.

What is a Sith?

It was not an accusation. It was not a trap. It was a mirror, the one thing fire could not shatter.

And Serina watched him now—head slightly tilted, hood casting shadow over her mouth, only the faint gleam of her violet eyes catching the low light. She said nothing more. Didn't clarify. Didn't narrow the terms.

There would be no rubric. No guiding philosophy.

 

[Lucaant Vaneric]

"Oh, my God will certainly forgive you... But unfortunately, I won't."

⏵ Play Theme

Location: Polis Massa
Objective: Survive | Kill them all.
People involved: Darth Virelia
---​

"What is a Sith?"

The words closed around him like a fist.

Lucaant didn’t move at first.

Not out of fear—at least not the kind that most would recognize. No, this was the paralysis that came with violent precognition. That question, that exact question, had once been etched into the walls of the place where he was raised. Not asked, not wondered. Etched. Carved by bloodied fingernails and cracked minds into stone that had no warmth.

He turned back toward her slowly, as if shifting through ghosts.

His voice came after a breath he didn’t mean to take, rough, dry, pulled from somewhere deeper than lungs.

"A Sith," he said, "is a cage."

He let the silence after that settle. Let it press in. Then added, quieter:

"Not just to those they conquer. Not just to the Jedi they curse or the empires they poison. No. It's a cage they wear. A philosophy welded to the bones of children who don’t know they’re dying."

He stepped forward, not toward her, but into the open air between them like a man walking into memory he'd rather forget. His eyes found hers in the shadows, but not to challenge.

"You want to know what a Sith is? It’s the voice they give you before your own has finished forming. It’s being seven years old and calling your captor 'Master' because the alternative is hunger."

He didn’t blink. Didn’t look away. There was no shame in his tone, only the exhaustion of someone who had lived it and refused to lie about it.

"Power is the reward for surviving that lie. That’s the punchline. That’s the trap. You’re promised liberation and given obedience. Promised strength and taught submission."

There was a tension to him now, not anger, but restraint—like something he kept carefully leashed beneath the surface of his words.

"And I wore their name. Once. Long enough for them to think they had me. Long enough for me to understand the shape of their chains."

He paused, then stepped fully into the space she’d carved with her question.

"But I am not a Sith."

The words rang, not as a declaration, but as fact.

"I am not a Jedi. Not a knight. Not a Lord. I am not your weapon. Not your test. Not your apprentice. I am not yours. I am what's left unscathed in a city in ruins."

His voice dipped—lower now, nearly a whisper, but edged like sharpened obsidian.

"You want to know what I am?"

A pause.

A breath.

"I'm what's left."

And he didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t offer explanation. Let her question stand, and his answer hang, stripped of pretense or polish. Just raw truth—ugly, unflinching, and whole.

Because when Lucaant decided he was no one's, he made it to heaven.​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"War needs bodies."

Tag - Lucaant Vaneric



Serina did not move.

She did not interrupt.

She let him speak—all of it.

The defiance. The pain. The honesty.

She let him bare the marrow of himself, unguarded and stripped of theater. Not because she was struck by it.

But because she was measuring it.

Every word he spoke was a chisel against the stone of who he thought he was. And when he was done—when the fire in his chest dimmed into something colder, something final—she stood where she had stood, not a step shifted, not a thread of her robes disturbed.

It was a long moment before she spoke.

And when she did, her voice was so quiet that it cut through the air like a scalpel.

"You are wrong."

No pause. No warmth. Just the truth, delivered like a death sentence.

"You mistake the Sith for the cage."

She took a slow step forward. The ceremonial armor she wore did not clink, did not ring. Her movement was seamless—controlled. Surgical. Like a guillotine falling in perfect silence.

"You think being broken by someone else's version of strength taught you truth."

Another step.

"But all it taught you was weakness."

Her eyes fixed on his—not to punish, but to bury him in what he had refused to understand.

"You are not 'what's left.' You are what crawled free before the lesson was complete. And in doing so, you convinced yourself that pain and autonomy were interchangeable."

She didn't need to raise her voice. The gravity of her words did the work.

"You speak of hunger and chains. Of power handed down like poison. As if that's the end of the Sith."

She stopped now, standing at a precise angle—not directly in front of him, not beside him. Above him, in every way that mattered.

"What you endured was indoctrination. What you fled was a cult. What you carry now is a wound you haven't stopped picking at."

And then, a pause—just long enough for the air to shift again.

Just long enough for her mercy to vanish.

"You want to wear pain like a banner? You want to spit in the face of the Order that forged you half-right and call it clarity?"

Her head tilted slightly.

"Fine."

Another step. The shadows lengthened behind her. The chamber felt smaller now—not because of walls, but because she had expanded.

"But do not come into my sanctum and pretend that makes you sovereign."

Her voice dropped now. Icy. Absolute.

"You are not Sith because you have never chosen to be."

A beat.

"You ran. You endured. But you never reclaimed. You never said, 'this is mine.' You never seized anything. You fled from one master and swore you would never serve another, and you call that freedom?"

The way she said the word freedom dripped with contempt—not cruelty, but disappointment.

"That is not liberation. That is a refusal. You are defined by what you escaped, not what you built."

Then came the final blow.

Not shouted. Not dramatic.

Cold. Quiet. Truthful.

"You're not ready to be Sith, you never were."

And the name fell like a verdict.

"Because being Sith is not about the chains you broke."

"It's about the ones you put on others."

Another beat.

"Until you understand that—until you understand that domination is not trauma, but choice—you will never be anything more than what someone else made you. Chained."

She turned then, only now, back straight, step calm.

"Leave."

No anger. No violence. Just the finality of a door closing.

"Come back when you've exhausted every other place that doesn't ask for power. When you've begged at the feet of the galaxy for meaning, and found nothing but pity and closed gates."

A pause, her back to him.

"Come back when no one else will have you."

"And then—only then—will I consider if you are worth reforging."

She walked away, unhurried.

The lights dimmed behind her.

And the doors opened—not for him.

But to show him the way out.

 

[Lucaant Vaneric]

"Oh, my God will certainly forgive you... But unfortunately, I won't."

⏵ Play Theme

Location: Polis Massa
Objective: Survive | Kill them all.
People involved: Darth Virelia
---​

"No."
The word ripped out of him.

Lucaant turned fully now—eyes burning, breath tight, teeth clenched like he was holding something back only out of respect, not discipline.

"Don’t you dare." His voice rose—almost loud, sharp. Bitter. "Don’t stand there behind your pretty words and polished robes and tell me you know what I am."

He took a step forward, jaw tight, shoulders coiled like a predator pushed too far.

"You think I ran?"\ He laughed once. Dry. Furious. "I didn’t run. I survive. The temple was being torn apart—blades in the halls, fire in the walls, screams echoing off stone that had never known mercy."

His hand twitched. Almost reaching for his blaster out of habit.

"And right in the middle of it, something clicked. That this wasn’t strength. It was madness. Worshipping pain like it owed you something. Killing for tradition. Obeying because someone stronger said to."

He looked at her now, really looked—eyes narrowed in naked contempt.

"You think that’s power? That I survived because I refused to let them finish the job?"

He was almost screaming—he didn't try to stop it.

"I wasn’t half-shaped. I tore myself out of the their grips before they burned me. I chose that."

He stepped back. Glaring. Breathing hard.

"You want chains? Keep 'em. Wear 'em. Polish 'em until they shine like crowns. You need them—I don’t."

He turned halfway, chin lowered, shoulders still tight.

"But if you ever want to speak to me again..."

A pause.

"...lose the throne voice. Say what you mean. And don’t wait until your sanctum has a lock to ask. You're not better than the Jedi."

He didn’t wait for dismissal.

He walked out, the heat of him lingering like a fuse still burning.​