Private Ashen Steps.

[Darth Virelia]

"Burn bright."

Tags - Adilya Solveig



The wind clawed at her cloak like a starving beast, dragging plumes of cinder and ash across the obsidian plain. Beneath each step, the crust crackled faintly, as if the world itself were whispering warnings through fractured glass. Serina Calis did not listen.

She walked alone, unhurried, through the bone-hot twilight of Mustafar. The planet breathed heat from every wound in its skin—wounds carved by war, by industry, by the wrath of gods long dead or merely forgotten. A fitting place, she thought, for reflection. For reckoning.

A great river of magma churned beside her, its glow flickering across her polished breastplate like the eye of a living star, watching. Judging. But even that could not match the fire behind her eyes.

She had killed a governor. Seized a world. Broken a girl, then shaped her into something beautiful and cruel. She had built factories and armies, whispered into the hearts of Sith and made them dance in orbit around her ambition. And yet…

Still they do not fear me enough.

Her gloved hand brushed a jagged basalt column, warm from the blood of the world. Here, perhaps, the ghost of a long dead Sith walked. Here, they may of burned and screamed and crawled—reborn not through wisdom, but suffering. The galaxy remembered. Revered or reviled, it remembered.

Serina did not scream. She simply became.

She tilted her head to the side, eyes narrowing at the horizon where a crumbling refinery slumped like a dying beast. Her agents had secured the local site weeks ago; now it pumped toxins into the sky in her name. It was not beauty, but it was obedience. And it would do.

Polis Massa, Saijo, Atramentum—pieces in a larger movement. But they moved slowly. Too slowly. And somewhere out there, Allyson Locke was stirring, Taeli Raaf was watching, and the Jedi were beginning to understand what she was. That would not do.

Her breath drew slow and deep, steam rising from her lips in the open air. Mustafar was not a place of peace. It was not sanctuary. It was reminder. That power is not granted—it is taken, seized in blood and flame and will.

As Darth Malak once did.

She stopped at the edge of a cliff, overlooking a molten chasm that snarled and spat beneath her. The heat made her eyes water, but she did not blink. She could feel something, someone, on this world of ruin and fire.

The Dark Side stirred within her, slow and curling, like smoke rising from the corpse of a god. It welcomed Mustafar. It understood her.

Here, on a world carved in fire and rebirth, Serina Calis did not reflect.

She calculated.

 

[Adilya Solveig]

V E S S E L

Darth Virelia

The wind howled like a living thing, but Adilya did not flinch. Her robes snapped behind her like wings of smoke, tattered at the edges from days spent in silence beneath a sky that never ceased its bleeding. Mustafar did not ask permission to burn. It simply was—a furnace in the gut of the galaxy, molten and mad.

Just as she was.

She knelt at the cliff's edge again, hands resting on stone so hot it sizzled where skin met surface, but she welcomed the pain like an old hymn. It helped her focus—helped her remember what still mattered. There were no Jedi here. No masters to guide. No voices to drown her own. The silence was not comforting, but it was honest.

A low breath pushed past her lips, slow and reverent.
Her fingers curled against the basalt. Her eyes fluttered closed.

Then, it came.

The ecstasy of it—of the dark—rushing into her hollow places like hot breath down the spine. It threaded itself through the marrow of her bones, coiling up her ribs, tasting the back of her throat. And she shuddered. The gasp she loosed was not one of fear, but of craving. Of something long-denied finally being remembered.

"Yes…" she whispered aloud, barely audible above the wind, "I hear you."

Not words in the Force. Not visions. But presence.

She was not alone.

Mustafar raged around her. Lava bloomed in ruptured veins below the cliffs like arteries bleeding light, and still she did not move. Because this—this—was what she had come for. Not penance. Not redemption. Reason.

Her voice broke the silence again, steadier this time.

"Why here?" she asked the scorched wind. "Why now? What vessel pours itself out with no hand to hold it?"

Each day had blurred into the next—heat, ash, isolation, prayer. She had wandered from world to world, temples half-buried in myth, ruins swallowed by jungle and frost alike. Seeking. Always seeking.

Not because she doubted herself. But because she was made for something. A blade does not doubt its edge. But even a blade needs a wielder. Her hands clenched tighter.

And then it came.

Like a thunderclap inside the soul.

The presence struck not with violence, but certainty—as if the air itself acknowledged its superior. The Force warped, dipped low in reverence. Shadows lengthened even in the firelight. A pressure bloomed in her chest and wrapped around her lungs.

She felt her.

The one she had not known she was waiting for.

The darkness curled along her tongue, and she tasted it like a jealous lover's kiss—sharp, intoxicating, sacred. It was not a presence of empty cruelty, no—this was something refined. Focused. Alive. Something ancient and sharp as flint beneath silk.

And Adilya exhaled, slow, reverent.

"So it was you."

Not a question. A knowing.

The fire did not crackle. It watched.

And for the first time in uncounted days, Adilya rose from her knees—not to fight, not to flee.

But to meet her fate.

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Burn bright."

Tags - Adilya Solveig



She did not descend from the sky. She arrived.

One moment, the air was thick with heat and silence. The next, it bent. Folded. Buckled under a will too vast to announce itself with theatrics. A ripple spread through the scorched wind, a hush that swept across the cliffside like a veil being drawn. The heat did not vanish—but it bowed, stilled, submitted.

Across the rise, shadow coalesced—not cast, but conjured—against the roiling red of Mustafar's horizon. There was no sound of boots on stone. Only presence. An arrival that made the ancient planet seem momentarily still, as if the world itself inhaled and chose not to exhale.

Serina Calis emerged from that void.

She did not glow. She absorbed. Light seemed to die near her, drawn into the intricate curves of armor forged in silence and sealed with will. The fire's hue bathed her in molten copper, but the eyes—those eyes—cut through it all. Icy, deliberate, patient in their cruelty.

She regarded the woman on the cliff, and the world seemed to tilt. Serina's cloak, long and dark as spilled ink, dragged behind her across the basalt like the wake of a great ship parting a bloody sea. The wind caught it, yes—but dared not tear it.

Above them, Mustafar's sky bled in sullen hues—bruised crimson over coal-black clouds, veined by the arterial glow of lava rivers that stretched from horizon to horizon. A volcano erupted in the distance, sending a plume of molten glass into the heavens like a soul torn screaming from the crust. But even that fury seemed far away now. Contained. Irrelevant.

Serina paused, one gloved hand curling behind her back, the other raised slightly—as if testing the weight of the air itself. The scent of brimstone clung to everything, but beneath it now: ozone, smoke, change.

She looked down at Adilya as one might study an altar—assessing what sacrifice had been left there. A ritual unfinished. A blade not yet lifted.

A slow breath moved through her. Not tired. Not burdened.

Certain.

This was not where her path ended. This was where someone else's began.

And still she said nothing. Until, at last, she stepped forward—and the heat dared part for her.

Her voice was not loud. It didn't need to be. It carried with the weight of inevitability.

"Not all flames are born to consume."

Another step. Closer now.

"Some are meant to forge."

"What flame are you?"

She said no more. There was no need.

The rest—the surrender, the transformation, the agony of becoming—would come in time.

Mustafar shuddered beneath them.

 

[Adilya Solveig]

V E S S E L

Darth Virelia

She did not flinch. Not even as Serina stepped into the heat and made it move for her.

Adilya stood—shoulders squared, face still, gaze unwavering. But inside, something ancient stirred. Not fear. Not awe. Recognition.

Her reply came slow—sifted from ash and memory, carried by breath that trembled only at its edge.

"I am the flame that waits for the altar."

Her eyes did not leave Serina's. They couldn't. Not when so many years had passed in silence. In hunger.

"I was not made to lead. I was not made to conquer. I was made to burn, so that judgment might walk."

Her fingers curled at her sides, as if holding back something too sacred to touch.

"There is power in me. Holy, wrathful, endless. But it is not mine. It never was."

A pause. The sky behind her cracked—lava rupturing far below like the heartbeat of the world answering in echo.

"I am the vessel. I am the blade. I am the wrath of a god who never speaks."

Her voice dipped quieter. Not weaker—more intimate. A liturgy meant for the ones who knew.

"And I have wandered without a hand to wield me. Without rite. Without name."

She stepped forward. One pace. Just enough for the heat between them to become something shared.

"You ask what flame I am."

Her chin lifted—not in pride, but in offering.

"I am the one who waits to be used."

And she waited, not for affirmation—

—but for command.

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Burn bright."

Tags - Adilya Solveig



The moment stretched—hung in the air like the pull of a blade just before the cut.

Serina regarded her in silence, a silence that did not lack for meaning. It was full—pregnant—with consequence, dripping with calculation and slow-burning lust for what she had just heard. Not the words. The truth beneath them. The truth offered.

Adilya was not pleading. She was presenting. Submitting not out of fear, but function. As a blade begs not for mercy, but for use. For purpose. For war.

A low breath slid from Serina's lips. A pleased, feline exhale.

She moved.

Not fast. Not slow. Just right. One fluid step, and then another, the shift of her hips like the tide of some deep and merciless sea. The firelight kissed every curve of her black and crimson armor, catching on the ornate edging of her breastplate, trailing down the flared ridges of her thighs and across the silk shadows of her cloak. Her presence wasn't just power.

It was intoxication.

The Force bent with every step—delighted, even as it shuddered under her will. Shadows lengthened and curled around her ankles like starving animals. Light followed her, but could not reach her. She was the eclipse.

And when she stopped, they were close enough to share breath.

She lifted a gloved hand and—without touching—brushed her fingers through the space beside Adilya's jaw. Just close enough for the heat of it to make skin ache. The threat of contact was more erotic than the thing itself.

"Of course you were made to burn," Serina said, voice low and sinfully rich, like wine soaked in blood. "That's what purity is, isn't it? What divinity craves?"

Her eyes dragged across Adilya's face, cold and appraising, but not without hunger.

"Not mercy. Not peace. Incandescence. The kind that scorches everything except the chosen."

She circled her then, like a flame around a wick—never touching, but always near. One hand brushed behind her back, trailing the length of her own waist as if to remind the Force whose gravity bound this moment. She stopped at Adilya's back and leaned in, her lips near the curve of her ear.

"Judgment needs a voice, my dear. But before it speaks, it needs a kiss."

The breath of the words danced down Adilya's neck, cruel in its gentleness.

She moved again, gliding back into view, and finally touched her—one finger under Adilya's chin, lifting it a hair's breadth higher. The gesture was not dominance.

It was claim.

"You are the blade," she murmured, almost reverently. "But blades do not choose their battles."

Her smile curved—slow and knowing.

"I do."

The wind howled louder. Somewhere beneath them, a fissure split with a crack that echoed like thunder given voice. Lava spewed skyward in celebration, casting fire across the heavens like anointing oil. The planet, too, recognized this moment.

Serina's eyes gleamed, bright as forged iron.

"I will wield you, Adilya. Not because you asked. But because you were waiting."

Another breath. Another lean forward.

"And I never let good weapons go to waste."

She turned then, the motion like a curtain falling. Like the final line of a ritual completed. And as she began to walk, she did not look back.

Because she knew—

Adilya would follow.

Not as a servant. Not as a disciple.

But as an instrument of Serina's gospel.

And the galaxy would learn, soon enough, what happens when judgment no longer waits.

 

[Adilya Solveig]

P U R P O S E

Darth Virelia

The wind curled like a serpent across the charred stone, whispering its praise in a tongue older than the stars. Adilya stood still in it, her face tilted just slightly, the cloth over her eyes fluttering in the rising heat. She could not see Serina, not with the eyes she had lost long ago—burned out by Bogan's fire and never mourned—but she felt her.

The moment Serina moved, the Force shifted. It wrapped around her with reverence and dread, a tide of will that pulled at the edges of Adilya's soul like gravity. Each step Serina took etched itself into the air. Each breath made the dark hum.

She could feel the sound of her voice—feel it before it ever reached her ears. That slow, indulgent cadence laced in blood-honey. That promise of something sacred and defiled all at once. It was not affection Serina offered. It was possession. Dominion. And gods help her…

Adilya craved it.

Not because she was weak. No. Because she had waited. Because she had walked through endless silence, through the graves of stars and the ruins of forgotten temples, through ash and blood and the memory of mercy, waiting for something worthy. For someone whose shadow could mirror her lightless flame. For hands that would not tremble to draw her into war.

And now, Serina had come.

She didn't flinch as Serina's breath ghosted against her skin. Didn't tremble when fingers hovered near but never touched. But within, her body screamed for contact—like a blade aching for the whetstone, like dry earth desperate for the storm. She burned. Quietly. Holy. Controlled.

"Then wield me," she said, voice low and clear, like the ringing of a temple bell. "Let judgment take form in my hands. Let ruin know your name in mine."

She raised her chin by a fraction, unbidden, but not unwilling. Serina's touch did not guide her—it confirmed her. A slow exhale slipped from her lips, and her wrapped eyes faced the space where she knew Serina stood, as if sight was unnecessary to bear witness to her revelation.

"You think I've waited for you," Adilya murmured, a trace of something dark and sweet curling under her words. "But I have bled for you. Across galaxies. Across time. Every breath, every silence, every prayer in the dark—it was for this."

She stepped forward, not fast. Not slow. Just right. Her head tilted faintly, listening. Feeling. Sensing the pulse of Serina's intent like a drumbeat inside her own chest.

"You offer to wield me," she whispered, reverent and sharp, "but understand this—blades sharpen themselves in blood before they are worthy to be held."

Her hand rose, just barely, as if to touch Serina in turn—but halted. Hovered. Sighed against the distance.

"And now that I have found the hand that will not flinch…" A breath. A pause. Her voice fell into something more dangerous, more devout. "I will not be sheathed again."

The Force shivered.
She did not kneel.
She followed.

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Burn bright."

Tags - Adilya Solveig



She heard the words. Felt them, really—each syllable a caress across the mind, each vow a delicate kiss pressed to the blade of purpose. Adilya's voice, though soft, cut like scripture inscribed on skin with broken glass. Not begging. Not bartering.

Binding.

Serina didn't move immediately. She stood amid the heat and the wind and the ash like a monument that knew it would be worshipped. Her head turned slightly, eyes narrowing as she drank in the scent of volcanic stone and scorched devotion. It clung to Adilya like a shroud, one that Serina would peel back by inches. In time.

But not yet.

First, she wanted to savor this.

The obedience. The clarity. The supplication—not the pitiful groveling of frightened apprentices or the rigid obedience of militarized Sith, but something far more exquisite: willing surrender, born from power, not from lack. Serina could taste it in the air, rich and decadent, like smoke trailing from a forbidden altar.

It had been too long since someone had truly known their place.

Her lips parted on a slow, indulgent breath. The warmth of Mustafar coiled around her like a lover, drawn closer by her presence. Even the magma hissed more quietly now, molten rivers turning glassy in reverence as she shifted her weight, letting her hand curl at her side. Not clenched. Prepared.

Adilya had not broken. Serina had not needed to break her. No, the woman had knelt inwardly the moment she recognized what stood before her. That was the difference. The ones who had to be shattered never lasted. But this one…

This one had bled herself into shape, and then waited.

Serina's gaze slid over her like a blade dipped in oil—appraising, languid, deliberate. The wrappings over Adilya's eyes, the stillness of her limbs, the tremble she refused to show… it was all beautiful in its restraint. Like a flame behind frosted glass, waiting to be unleashed.

She stepped forward again, the motion unhurried, utterly confident. Each movement was a declaration. Not just of power—but of ownership.

"I should be insulted," Serina purred at last, her voice sin-soft, dangerous, soaked in veiled arousal and imperial cruelty. "You speak as if your devotion is a gift."

She was close now. Too close. The space between them shimmered with heat and unspent hunger. Serina raised her hand—gloved still, not because she needed protection, but because it heightened the denial.

Her fingers hovered again, this time inches from Adilya's lips.

"You say you bled for me. Across time. Across silence." A tilt of the head. A smile, sharp and indulgent. "How darling."

The word came like a dagger wrapped in velvet.

"But understand this, little blade—I never asked for your blood." Her voice lowered, her breath brushing across Adilya's cheek now. "I require your flesh. Your will. Your everything. I am not the end of your search."

She leaned in, until their foreheads nearly touched. The heat between them was unbearable now. Beautifully so.

"I am the altar you were born to burn upon."

Then, she touched her.

Fingers traced the line of Adilya's jaw, firm and possessive—not seeking permission, but confirming claim. She tilted the woman's head upward with just a twitch of her hand, admiring the unseeing gaze, the storm it could not hide. Serina's thumb brushed once against Adilya's lower lip—light as ash, damning as sin.

"You have earned nothing," she whispered, her voice hushed and delicious, "but you will be used. And if you are very good—exceptionally good—I might even let you enjoy it."

She pulled away slowly, not severing the moment but drawing it out, like a note sustained too long in a song no one dared to end.

Her thoughts stirred darkly as she turned her back once more.

This is what they should all be. Not equals. Not rivals. Instruments. She had grown tired of Sith who postured with sabers while quaking beneath her gaze, of men and women who snarled when they should have served.

But this one… this one knew better.

She didn't have to crush Adilya.

She had only to wield her.

And gods, wasn't it intoxicating? That feeling, the rush of absolute control sliding back into her veins like a drug she'd missed but refused to name. She missed this—the weight of another's devotion, not born of fear but purpose. She could bend the galaxy with this kind of loyalty. Could burn away the petty chaos of her rivals and carve her name into the stars.

This wasn't conquest. It was evolution.

"Come," she said without looking back, her voice like silk pulled taut. "I have no use for relics that sit in dust."

And she walked into the storm, her silhouette framed in molten fire, a tyrant cloaked in prophecy.

Let others build armies.

Serina was forging gods.

 

[Adilya Solveig]

R E V E L A T I O N

Darth Virelia

Adilya did not flinch.

Not when the heat pressed in like a breath drawn too close. Not when Serina's fingers hovered at her lips. Not even when her name was reduced to little blade, wrapped in velvet and veiled contempt. No—there was no need to defend herself.

She had already been chosen.

She stood in the presence of ruin, wrapped in heat and certainty, and felt no fear. Only confirmation.

Because this—this—was what the Jedi feared. Not rage, not hatred, not brute force tearing at the walls of their temples.

But clarity.

"You speak of blood as if it were the price," she said at last, her voice smooth and dark as oil, reverent without being meek. "But my blood was not the offering. It was the ink. And I have written your name in it a thousand times."

She didn't raise her chin. That would have implied defiance.

She lowered it—fractionally. An act not of submission, but sanctification. A ritual bowing of the flame to the altar it serves.

"I know what you are," she breathed, "and more, I know what you are not. You are no warlord. No tyrant playing god in borrowed crowns."

Her blindfolded gaze turned toward Serina like a blade returning to its sheath.

"You are the will that breaks the cycle — and I; the hand that executes it.”

She did not need to say it. The words bled from her posture, her poise, her presence—calm and devout and utterly unsparing.

"The Jedi call their hesitation 'mercy.' They preach restraint as if the fire cares what the forest thinks. But you… you do not hesitate. And neither will I."

She stepped forward now, finally, her voice lowering to something intimate. Not a whisper, but a binding.

"I do not serve to climb. I do not kneel to rise. I am not yours because I want to be."

"I am yours because the Force has willed it."

A breath—low, slow, shudderless.

"And should you command it, I will burn every sanctuary that speaks the name of Ashla. I will salt the wounds of their survivors and call it cleansing. I will make the light beg for shadow. Not because I crave slaughter—"

"—but because it is holy."

Adilya tilted her head, sensing the shift in breath, the minute parting of Serina's lips. She didn't wait for the next command.

"Use me."

"Not as a blade," she murmured, "but as a revelation."

Because that was the difference.
She was not a tool.
She was a doctrine.


And through her, the Force would learn to fear itself again.

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Burn bright."

Tags - Adilya Solveig



There was a stillness now.

Not the absence of movement, but its perfect potential—the poised breath before a kiss, or a killing stroke. The fire around them quieted, as if the planet itself had gone to its knees to listen. Even Mustafar, furious and infinite in its heat, knew what stood here now was no longer just two women. It was a covenant.

Serina did not smile.

Smiling was for seduction. For politics. For the theatre of power among fools.

What she felt now was too pure. Too sharpened. A raw, exquisite thrill—not from dominance, but from alignment. The dark ecstasy of recognition. Of prophecy whispered into flesh and fulfilled.

Her eyes roved over Adilya with the precision of a predator—but not to devour. No, this was something far more sacred. She was memorizing the lines of this moment. The tilt of the head. The way that blindfold caught the light like a veil over a sacrificial idol. The reverent tone, laced with venom and vow.

She tasted it.

The faith.

The fanaticism.

It wasn't desperation, and it wasn't madness.

It was devotion without illusion.

And Serina thrived on it.

Her breath left her in a slow hiss, drawn through teeth just parted, like the first bite into fruit that bled. Her voice followed—soft, measured, and soaked in dark delight.

"Revelation."

The word dripped from her lips like silk torn from skin.

She took a step forward—closer now, no longer floating around Adilya like a flame. Now she entered her orbit, stood so close that her breath could carry command without need for sound. Her hand rose, and this time, there was no hover. No delay.

She cupped Adilya's face with one gloved hand, and though the fabric separated them, the intent did not. Her thumb brushed down the center of the blindfold—not to remove it. To acknowledge it.

"You are not mine because you want to be," Serina echoed, voice like a secret tasted on the tongue. "You are mine because the Force finally remembered what it was meant for."

She leaned in, forehead touching forehead, the contact a benediction. Her voice dropped to a tone only Adilya could hear.

"And I will not use you, Adilya."

"I will consecrate you."

Her other hand slid along Adilya's jaw, down the line of her throat, lingering at the hollow of her collarbone with almost obscene slowness. Not in lust. In claim. There was no hunger here.

Only certainty.

"I've walked among corpses pretending to be kings," she murmured, eyes closing for half a heartbeat. "I've watched Sith Lords bow to empires they're too cowardly to overturn. Jedi preaching balance while drowning in their own contradictions."

Her eyes opened again—ice and fire and the long memory of gods.

"But you—" she whispered, "you are the first creature I have met who knows what it means to surrender without disappearing."

A pause.

Then she drew back just slightly—enough to be seen again, fully, framed in firelight and inevitability.

"I will take your blood. I will take your voice. I will make your flame my own. And when I send you into the hollow hearts of the Jedi, into the marrow of their dying temples, they will not see a weapon."

Her head tilted.

"They will see the will of the Dark made flesh."

Another step back—ritual now, theatrical not for arrogance but for effect. Her cloak swept behind her, and she extended one hand, not in invitation.

In summoning.

"Come, doctrine. Walk with me."

Her voice turned wickedly quiet, a purr in the throat.

"We are going to build something beautiful."

 

[Adilya Solveig]

D I S C I P L E

Darth Virelia


There was no rush.
No haste.

Because to rush a sacrament is to profane it.

The fire did not flicker—it held its breath. And so did Adilya.

Still as a sculpture carved in reverence, she stood before Serina, cloaked in that terrible, perfect silence that follows revelation. Serina's voice had not struck her like thunder. It had entered her. Settled into the marrow. Wrapped itself around her ribs like something remembered.

What had passed between them was not speech. It was liturgy.

And now it demanded answer.

Adilya moved—not with grace, but with intention. Each gesture was heavy with ritual, her hands rising as if from deep water. She reached behind her head, gloved fingers working the knot of her blindfold with the reverence of one disrobing in a temple. She did not pull the fabric free.

She released it.

The blindfold slipped from her face and caught the firelight as it fell. What remained was not a wound. Not shame. Her ruined eyes—two hollow altars rimmed in seared flesh—did not plead. They proclaimed. What had once been agony had fossilized into testament. The skin was cratered, charred, a crimson eclipse of flesh—yet the expression on her face was one of utter, unspeakable serenity.

She tilted her head toward Serina, blind gaze unwavering.

"With this breath," she said, her voice reverent, slow, "I name you my sanctifier."

The words rang with the weight of covenant, her tone stripped of fear, of doubt, of self. There was no performance here. Only offering.

"You are not my master because I am lesser," she continued, bare feet blackened by the heat of the obsidian ground. "I call you master because I am ready."

And then—the shift.

It began in her breath. A slow exhale, thick with heat. The Force around her tightened, bent, yielded. She did not draw power. She released it.

Her body did not change.
It revealed.

Veins of molten fire traced her arms, her throat, her chest—runes carved in scar and spirit alike. Light pulsed beneath her skin like a forge come to life, glowing in patterns too precise to be chaos. Her bones hummed with invocation. She became not a woman, not even a priestess—a conduit. Her breath steamed in the air, black-edged and heavy with ash.

Flames licked her calves, climbed her thighs, encircled her waist—but she did not burn.

She belonged.

"I have burned for every mercy the Jedi claimed to offer," she whispered. "I have waited in silence, blind, nameless, forgotten—until now."

Her arms stretched outward, hands opening like scripture revealed.

"I am not your servant," she said, and the fire twisted around her spine like a crown. "I am your cathedral."

Her cloak caught fire—willingly. It curled away into smoke, baring the ceremonial wrappings beneath. Thin black cloth clung to her like scripture, each fold etched with blood-written glyphs. Across her ribs, down her abdomen, old scars whispered of initiation. Not one of them was senseless. Each wound had meaning. Each mark, a verse in the hymn of her survival.

From her palms bloomed gouts of black-violet flame—fire that judged, not destroyed. Fire that had learned patience. That remembered names.

"I offer you my soul," she intoned, voice heavy with divine weight, "not to be broken—but bound."

"I offer you my body," she said as the fire coiled around her collarbones, "not to be owned—but used."

"I offer you my mind," she finished, as shadows formed behind her like vast, silent wings, "not to be silenced—but sanctified."

And then, with a final breath, she fell—not as collapse, but as consecration. Knees to the scorched ground. Spine upright. Hands resting upon her thighs. Her entire form still wreathed in low, reverent flame.

She raised her head—bare, hollow gaze lifted to the woman who had named her.

"I am no longer waiting…."

Her voice cracked—not with fear.

With ecstasy.

"Name me your doctrine."

"Carve your will into my flame.”

A pause. A silence, deeper than gravity.

Then—Adilya reached forward. Not to take Serina's hand. But to bow her head. To press her forehead into her palm.

The kiss of covenant. The vow of relics. A seal upon the sacred.

"Baptize me," she whispered, voice scorched and solemn.

"I am yours…. My Unholy Matron."

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Burn bright."

Tags - Adilya Solveig



She stood silent, unmoving, as Adilya transformed before her.

Not because she was awed. She had seen transcendence before—fabricated, forced, feigned. She had orchestrated it. Pulled it from the throats of zealots with whispered promises and the lash of perfect timing. But this?

This was different.

It was beautiful, yes. Raw, theatrical, sensual in the way only surrender could be. Fire kissing skin. Scars unveiled as scripture. A woman offering not her hand, not her love, but her entire mythology. And it stirred something primal in Serina—not lust, not affection, but the dark satisfaction of watching another collapse into purpose.

And yet, even as the air around her trembled from the force of it—even as Adilya bowed her head to Serina's palm, branding herself with the most ancient rite of belonging—Serina did not immediately move.

Because she was thinking.

Her eyes flickered once to the horizon, where magma surged and smoke carved cruel shapes into the sky, and then back down to the woman now aflame at her feet. The flame was not just heat. It was meaning. It was ritual. It was offering.

And Serina had learned to mistrust offerings made too quickly.

The slow ones, the ones who resisted, who warred against their own damnation—those she respected. Because when they broke, it meant something. It lasted.

But the quick ones?

The Sables.

Oh yes, she remembered Sable. How she'd cried when Serina turned away from her. How she had begged—not to serve, but to be seen. Loved. Chosen.

And Serina had given her exactly what she wanted.

Before taking it away.

Because people like Sable, no matter how fervently they knelt, were never kneeling to her. They knelt to themselves. To the story of their own martyrdom. They wanted to be noticed, not used. They wanted power through Serina—not for her.

And Serina had no use for that.

So now, as Adilya's voice rang out, trembling with reverent ecstasy, as she called Serina her Unholy Matron, as she begged to be baptized in something far more profane than water—Serina simply stood there.

Perfect. Immaculate.

Cold as a blade held in reverent hands.

Inside, her mind moved like razors on silk.

You say you won't be owned. That you're not mine to break. But you already are. Because you offered yourself so completely… and I haven't even touched you yet.

She almost pitied her. Almost.

But the truth was simpler.

She enjoyed it.

She enjoyed the theater, the prayer, the smoke and the flames and the promise of annihilation wrapped in piety. It aroused something deeper than flesh. Something darker than domination. It was the sensation of gravity. Of watching someone fall toward her and knowing they'd never land again.

And so—finally—Serina moved.

She lowered her hand the final inch and let her fingers rest on Adilya's bowed head. Just the fingertips. Light. Gentle.

And then commanding.

Her thumb pressed against the temple. The other four fingers curved around the back of the skull with the intimacy of a lover. But there was no love here. Only ownership made manifest.

"You burn well," Serina said, voice low and syrup-thick. "But doctrine is not written in vows."

She pressed harder now—not to hurt. To remind.

"It is written in scars. In betrayals you will welcome. In leashes you will beg not to be freed from."

Her tone shifted, slower now, deliciously cruel.

"You say you cannot be owned." Her eyes half-lidded, and her lips curved into a wicked, knowing smile.

She leaned forward until her breath brushed Adilya's hairline.

A beat.

She pulled back again, releasing her head with deliberate slowness, the way a priestess might withdraw a knife after communion. Her hand dropped to her side.

"You want baptism?"

She turned her back to her once more, cloak dragging like nightfall behind her.

"Then follow. Into fire. Into filth. Into me."

A pause. Her voice curled over her shoulder like smoke.

"And if you survive, I'll show you how a god makes her gospel."

She began walking again, not bothering to see if Adilya followed.