Private Ashen Steps.

[Serina Calis]

"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

Serina Calis

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.

 

[Serina Calis]

"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

Serina Calis

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.

 

[Serina Calis]

"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

Serina Calis

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.

 

[Serina Calis]

"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.