Private Beck and Call

[Darth Virelia]

"From where we last left off..."

Tags - Adean Castor



The summons arrived not in the form of words, but through a presence.

It began as pressure in the air—subtle, oppressive, deliberate. Like the sensation one feels when being watched from a great height, though no eyes could be found. The academy was quiet that hour, its bloodstained stones simmering in their ancient heat, as if the very planet held its breath. Those who walked the halls felt the shift and gave it no voice, for all knew the gravity of her name now: Darth Virelia.

She had claimed the title in silence, not spectacle.

No proclamation. No ceremony.

Only the aftermath.

Her command carried without need for sound. No heralds. No scribes. The acolytes and masters alike had learned to read the signs: the sudden absence of a rival, the flicker in the dark, the way a name vanished from records as if it had never belonged to a living being. Those who mattered learned quickly.

And now one of them—Tavis Ordel—was summoned.

No one saw the figure approach. They only heard the footsteps as they echoed once down the academy's side corridor—once, but endlessly. Rhythmic. Measured. Sovereign. Every click of her taloned boots against obsidian was its own kind of omen. The thick silence of the academy parted before her, not with fear, but with anticipation.

The side training chamber was already waiting.

It had not been used in years. Carved into the side of the Academy's understructure, it was meant not for sparring, but for private instruction. No observation decks. No consoles. Only one ring—obsidian, ancient, and circular—embedded with faintly glowing runes. The Force was thick here, the kind that pooled in corners like blood left too long uncleaned.

Virelia stood at its center.

She did not wait like a master anticipating obedience, nor a beast awaiting prey. She waited like a sculptor—calm, calculating, serene in her cruelty.

The armor she wore—Tyrant's Embrace—shone faintly beneath the minimal lighting, refracting the glow of violet torches lining the walls. Her presence filled the room before she spoke a word. Her hood was raised, her mask affixed. No part of her flesh was visible, and yet she radiated sensual menace, elegance twisted into something divine and unbearable.

The six slanted violet eyes of her helm glowed with unblinking hunger.

Then, she moved—not forward, not back, but around. A slow, prowling circle inside the ring. Her cape drifted behind her like smoke. When she finally stopped, the central crystal in her breastplate gave a single pulse of amethyst light, like the slow heartbeat of some mechanical god.

She raised a hand. Taloned fingers flexed.

The door opened on its own.

And she waited again.

There was no greeting. No pleasantries. Only the summons—felt in the bones, not heard in the ears. And when Tavis arrived, she would not find a teacher.

She would find her reckoning.

Her voice, when it came, rolled like heat from sun-scorched stone.

"Enter."

It was not a request.

 

[Adean Castor]

TAG: Darth Virelia

"Chit." The curse was near inaudible as Tavis scowled at the extra line of ink that cut through her notes, her being mid line when the summons washed over her like a tidal wave.

The sensation was unfamiliar and yet dreadfully so, caressing the back of her skull in a way that left no doubt of its origin. Already, she could imagine the whispered voice lying quietly in her mind begin to rouse. She shuddered to imagine how it would feel like to one without mental defenses.

She squinted at the parchment before her, trying her damnedest to ignore the beckoning call and recall what she'd previously been writing. She was in the midst of an exam, after all. That had to take priority. For her cover, for her lodging. Always, would she be beholden to multiple masters. Yet the sensation was ever present, gnawing at her focus until the exam was less a question of finding the remaining answers herself and letting her gaze wander to the parchment around her. If she couldn't make it through, her fellow acolytes could at least get her started in the right direction, regardless of whether or not they were aware of the role they played.

Returning to her quarters with the exam's conclusion, a single sealed letter confirmed her suspicions. She somehow needed to look I to replacing the door's lock and there was no mistaking who the summoner was. Just as there was no question whether or not she could ignore the sensation entirely. A shudder ran down her spine as again she could imagine that voice in her head jostling, a reminder not to tary.

Leaving the study materials behind, with a resigned sigh she parted from the quarters, following the beacon to a chamber she hasn't visited before. The door opened before she had a chance to reach for it. Her boots almost seemed to move on their own when she was bade entry.

Taking in the armored figure before her, she raised the physical summons between two fingers. "You called."

 

[Darth Virelia]

"From where we last left off..."

Tags - Adean Castor



The air within the chamber did not merely shift with Tavis' entrance—it responded. The subtle distortion of power that had lingered in anticipation rippled, as if the room itself exhaled at her arrival. Every rune in the obsidian floor gave the faintest flicker—subtle, like something ancient recognizing prey.

Virelia did not move. Not yet.

Her gaze—six violet slits of eerie, inhuman symmetry—remained fixed on the girl with the quiet defiance. That voice, small and simple—You called—was bold in its restraint. But the Sith Lord did not acknowledge it with anger. She preferred silence to shallow praise. And what mattered was not what Tavis said aloud, but what moved behind her eyes.

"You came," Virelia said at last, her voice like silk catching on blades. She tilted her helm just slightly, enough to shift the shadows around her hood. "Good, it would of been such a shame..."

Another pause. Calculated. Languid. Lethal.

"You've begun to change."

The words came with a smooth inevitability, as if Virelia were not speaking of a choice but a chemical reaction—unstoppable, preordained.

"You walk more deliberately. You no longer flinch at being watched. You've stopped checking over your shoulder in the hallways. And you carry yourself like someone contemplating ownership of the world, rather than hiding from it."

Her taloned fingers curled, flexing at her sides, one claw dragging almost thoughtfully across the blackened edge of her breastplate. She took a step forward—measured, liquid, predatory. The segmented plates of her armor whispered against one another like scaled serpents nesting beneath her skin.

"Tell me, Tavis Ordel." Her tone dipped into something dangerously close to affectionate—just enough to unbalance the line between praise and provocation. "What did you learn... from the basin?"

Another step. She entered the ring now, standing fully in its circle of power. The door sealed behind Tavis with an audible hiss, though neither of them moved to acknowledge it.

"What remains of you after surrender?"

She circled now. Slowly. Always slowly. The cape behind her dragged faint trails of shadow across the runes, which pulsed faintly in reaction. Virelia's presence was not simply Force-wrought; it was ritualized—every movement an invocation, every silence a test.

"Did the dream make you weep?" she asked, voice lower now, velvet over bone. "Did it show you something you longed for? Or something you feared?"

Her voice shifted from side to side as she moved around Tavis, never staying behind or before her for long—always present, never touchable. Like the whisper that had begun nesting in Tavis' mind.

"And remember, obedience has its rewards, apprentice..."