Private Below the Tomb of the Forgotten King.

[Serina Calis]

"Deep, into the waiting dark."

Tag - Niysha


There were few things Serina Calis enjoyed more than a puzzle so ancient it could kill her.

Her boots pressed into the soft red dust as she descended further into the bowels of the tomb, the stone beneath her cracking like the brittle bones of a world that had stopped breathing long before her name had ever been whispered in fear. The passage sloped downward in a slow spiral, every step drawing her deeper into the exhalation of death. It was hot. Stifling. The kind of heat that crawled up your spine and licked the base of your skull. Her breath fogged slightly—not from cold, but from the sheer weight of ancient Force saturation pressing against her lungs.

Behind her, silence reigned. Not even the dust dared follow.

The crystalline shard in her gloved hand pulsed with dim, lavender light—soft at first, then brighter in sync with her heartbeat as she passed another alcove. It hummed like a tuning fork held inside the chest cavity of a corpse. And maybe it had been. The crystal was a relic she'd stolen—liberated, rather—from the Celestial Archive weeks ago. Most scholars believed it to be nothing more than a dormant shard of kyber twisted by proximity to a dark vergence. They were wrong.

It was a key.

It just hadn't told her what it opened. Yet.

"Come on then," she murmured to it, amused, brushing her thumb over the rough edge like she was coaxing a target to spill secrets after the third glass of wine. "Whisper something useful before I start carving directions into the wall with your face."

It pulsed once. Harder.

"…There's a good boy."

The tunnel opened suddenly, revealing a vaulted chamber so large the edges vanished into murk. The stone beneath her boots was etched with concentric spirals, ancient Sith runes inlaid with silver flaking into corrosion. Serina paused at the threshold, breathing it in—rot, sand, power. She let it settle in her blood, her bones. Let it drape over her like a lover's shawl at midnight.

Then she walked in like she owned the place.

Because soon, she would.

Above her, statues leered from the shadows—hooded figures with stretched, unnatural proportions, their mouths pulled open in expressions too wide to be human. A warning. A welcome. A mirror. She liked to think that on some distant night, someone might sculpt her in that pose, hopefully something a little less, mocking.

She raised the crystal again. Its glow sharpened, throwing strange shadows against the walls. It guided her left, down a split passage flanked by basalt pillars so tightly packed they gave the illusion of walking through a ribcage. The deeper she went, the more the air changed. Less tomb, more womb—as if the tomb were remembering its purpose, trying to birth her into something worse.

"Don't flatter yourself," she muttered aloud, smirking. "I was already monstrous before you started trying."

A flicker of movement danced across her peripheral vision. She turned fast—hand already near the hilt at her hip—but nothing greeted her but darkness and dust.

Not nothing.

A whisper. A presence. Something curious. Hungry. The crystal dimmed.

It was the tomb playing tricks on her again.

"Ah," she said slowly, tilting her head. "You're shy."

Her tone turned honeyed, mocking. "That's fine. We don't have to skip straight to the death threats. But at least introduce yourself before you start playing with my mind."

A second pulse of presence, colder now, brushing across her thoughts like a skeletal finger.

Serina grinned.

"You're older than the Republic and not half as polite."

She kept moving. The tomb narrowed again, this time into a cramped stairwell carved directly into the stone. The steps weren't symmetrical, clearly meant to trip the inattentive—or the arrogant. So, naturally, she took them two at a time.

By the time she emerged into the final chamber, her shirt was clinging to her back, her hair damp beneath the cowl. She looked like she'd been fighting a war, not flirting with a tomb.

But this room was different.

It was circular. No statues. No murals. No warnings. Just one stone plinth in the center of the room, and a sarcophagus resting atop it, featureless and black.

And the air?

The air was alive with something malevolent and vast.

The moment she stepped in, the crystal in her hand screamed—audibly this time—then shattered in her grasp. Shards fell like dying stars, one slicing a neat line across her palm.

"Ah, you jealous bastard," she said, utterly unfazed. "You brought me all the way here just to kill yourself? How petty. I like that."

Blood dripped onto the floor. The runes along the edges of the sarcophagus flared to life, one after another, in a perfect circle. The room began to sing. Not in melody, but in resonance—deep, harmonic frequencies that tugged at her sternum and made her teeth ache.

And then came the voice.

 

[Niysha]

Niysha never entered a find from the front door. She wouldn't have on any planet, regardless of the circumstances; most of the time the front door was either picked so clean that it was worthless to even give it a pass, and the rest of the time it was so heavily guarded and deadly that she'd need to find another way around anyway. Here on Korriban, the second option was far, far more likely, and reinforced by just how many random Sith decided to walk into any tomb like they owned the place. In her experience, it was much safer to find an alternative path in, and she was uniquely gifted in finding things that would escape a normal person's notice.

For the last few hours, Niysha had been trekking quietly around the base of an old, sealed temple half-hidden away on a portion of Korriban's surface that saw far less foot traffic than other, more famous digs. When she'd arrived the whole thing was shut tight, so she'd taken a couple of laps around the parts that weren't the front entrance looking for holes and breaches. Eventually she'd found one, about a hundred meters around a sharp corner to the right of the entrance and another thirty meters up. Climbing up to that opening had taken another half-hour, and then a third to lower herself safely down to the floor.

While she was suppressing her presence - like she always was - that sort of thing would be of relatively limited use in a Korriban tomb. The spirits that haunted these places were much better at sensing things than the living were, and any disturbance to the pure silence and perfect darkness that tended to pervade ancient, deathly halls would get the whole place up in arms. It was, of course, extremely dangerous... but that was what made it so rewarding.

The moment her boots had touched stone within the perfect, sealed, ancient darkness of the grandiose Sith sepulcher, the cryptex tube in her bag had started to thrum. As she'd expected it resonated with whatever old, forgotten pile of bones was enterred within. While that didn't mean it was definitively what she'd been looking for, at the very least it was some kind of progress. At the moment, her options were "look for guidance within an ancient, evil, dangerous pile of rocks" or "start guessing a password with 47 bits of entropy." She'd start with the evil rocks.

This tomb was both smaller than the last few Niysha had breached and far more active. The moment her sensible hiking boots had touched the floor inside, she could tell the air was charged; she could see it long before that. The spirit haunting this tomb was larger and far more cohesive than the one that had half-destroyed the Medi-Creen station, which naturally meant it was far more dangerous... if she upset it by trying to steal anything, or made herself vulnerable by opening her mind.

The wayward Miraluka was doing neither, swallowing her presence so completely that she could feel her fingers going numb, and moving with as close to perfect silence as she could manage in hiking boots. She proceded as carefully and quietly as she possibly could, ready to bolt at a moment's notice.

It took legitimate effort not to bolt when she heard the scream in the main chamber.

There was a crack from up ahead, and the sound of stone and glass scattering onto the floor. The air around her swirled into a tempest of dark energy, nearly too thick to see properly... but she could kind of make out a single living figure in the central room, right in the middle of a ritual circle in the midst of flaring to life. For now she was safe, but Niysha made a point of staying far, far out of sight. The moment this woman was torn apart by spirits or ate the tomb alive, she'd know it was time to leave. Until then, she'd gain far more by watching and waiting.

And then came the voice.

Serina Calis

 

[Serina Calis]

"Deep, into the waiting dark."

Tag - Niysha


The voice came not as thunder but as rot—peeling itself from the walls, exhaled from the seams of the stone like the breath of a long-dead god. It didn't speak in words, not at first. It entered her, like oil down the throat, like something intimate and uninvited. Its presence folded around her skin, pressed in behind her eyes, tasted her thoughts.

And Serina—unmoving—let it.

For a moment, it was unclear who was studying whom.

Her blood still dripped, slowly, in neat symmetrical taps onto the dusty floor. The sarcophagus had groaned open halfway, revealing no corpse—only void. The air poured out of it like a scream trapped in glass, raw power hissing into the chamber, clawing its way through the ritual circle etched in forgotten tongues. Her boots were just outside it. A single step, and the binding would fail. Or complete.

She stepped forward.

The circle flared red.

"Come on, then," she murmured—voice lower now, velvet and rust. "Come meet the woman who's going to put you in a cage."

The spirit struck.

It didn't lunge—it descended. Like a claw through water, like something ancient that had been waiting centuries for flesh warm enough to defile. The presence collapsed into her in a rush of pressure, shrieking its defiance, forcing itself into her senses, her thoughts, her soul—

And it found a fortress.

Serina's mind wasn't a palace of light and law like a Jedi's. Nor was it chaos, like most Sith. It was a library. Cold. Vaulted. Bound in skin. And every shelf was lined with chains.

The spirit fought. It howled through her memories, raked claws across her childhood, her rise, her crimes, her failures. It tasted every betrayal and laughed in her voice. It wanted her knees. Her neck. Her name.

And Serina gave it nothing.

Instead, she offered it a home.

A mask had waited for this moment.

Wrought of bone and obsidian, it had hung at her hip for days, lifeless. It had no mouth. It needed none. It had been prepared, steeped in rites her ancestors had only half-recalled, soaked in venom and blood beneath the black moons of Tund. It bore no inscription—only a whisper carved into its breathless interior, a single phrase in High Sith that meant Obedience.

She pulled it from her belt and placed it inside the ritual circle.

The mask drank the spirit in like lungs collapse into a scream. The air fractured around it. The tomb's resonance rose to a fever pitch. Screams not hers—thousands of them—spilled from the sarcophagus as the essence was bound, crushed, forced to submit.

Serina's eyes bled tears of black. Her breath caught as if her lungs had forgotten how to inhale anything but defiance.

When the silence came again, it was sudden. Deep. Absolute.

The mask lay still.

Serina knelt, blood-streaked fingers wrapping around the edge of the now-glowing relic. The air was heavy with ozone and the stink of violated death. Carefully—almost tenderly—she wrapped it in the treated silk she kept folded at the bottom of her pack. Something that dampened resonance, insulated will.

She slid it into her pack and sealed it shut.

Mine.

That was when she felt it.

Not the spirit. Not the tomb. Not even the Force's usual endless chorus of agony and lust.

Someone else was here.

She straightened.

The shift was immediate.

No smirk. No false breath. No drama.

Predator.

Her gaze slid toward the entrance—not the one she came through. The one meant for someone else. The Force rippled with subtle pressure. Not an attack. A breath held just a second too long. A twitch in the current. Serina inhaled slow and deep, letting her presence still, sharpening to a point.

There. In the veil. Distant. Watching.

Hiding.

She didn't speak.

She moved.

Not like a hunter. Like command incarnate. Like she had every right to exist here and everything else did not. Her boots were soundless now, sliding across the dust. She trailed one finger across the wall as she approached the edge of the chamber, letting the power she'd claimed coil around her like a living thing. Her scent was copper, ash, and power. Her presence was a furnace wrapped in silk.

The tomb still echoed with what she had done.

And now there was a witness.

She stood just beside the far passage, the one choked with broken air and subtle fear. Eyes half-lidded. Senses alight.

She could feel the ripple of thought across the veil. Something soft. Something cloaked. Something smart enough not to run, but still too afraid to come closer.

"You're not one of mine," she said aloud, softly, not facing the presence.

Her tone wasn't mocking.

It was intimate. Cold and curious.

"I can feel the edges of your silence. You wear it well. Like a thief. Or a coward."

A pause. Still no movement.

"You didn't scream when I summoned it," Serina continued, turning her head just slightly, letting her voice curl around the space between them like smoke. "That means you're either brave, or clever. But you stayed."

Another step. Her voice dropped to a near-whisper.

"So tell me, ghost. Are you the next key I turn? Or something I have to break open first?"

No answer.

She smiled.

And this one had no warmth.

It was the smile of someone who had danced with death, kissed it, and then told it to kneel.

Serina turned away, walking slowly back toward the center of the chamber. Not out of dismissal.

An invitation.

The kind that dared the other woman to follow her, or vanish forever.

Either way, Serina had already won something.

And whatever game this was?

She would finish it.

 

[Niysha]

With every passing second, it became clearer and clearer that Niysha was in the wrong place.

Normally tombs were dangerous, but quiet and still. That sort of thing was easy to deal with. Spirits were as visible to her as any other being, and most of the traps and dangers were also born of the Force; often a perversion of it so obvious that even a normal Sith - with their overwhelming arrogance and the screaming presence - would be able to notice. Being able to see the danger coming meant that avoiding it was simple. The average tomb held very little that could pose a genuine threat to her, as long as she stepped lightly and didn't take anything too Important.

The fact that there was someone else in this one when she arrived clued Niysha into how Important everything here was going to wind up being. While she'd wound up in the presence of other trained Force-users once or twice recently, only one of them was strong enough to elicit a genuine self-preservation reaction out of her, and it was a Jedi. She was the least threatening Sith in the galaxy to the majority of Jedi; she didn't fight or hurt people, and spent most of her time hiding.

Unfortunately, it'd been far too long since she'd been in the presence of other Sith. Real Sith, who screamed "Important" at the top of their lungs, all of the time, without stopping. Having the focus of a solipsistic, sociopathic ubermensch was always an unpleasant feeling. Being a clever little mouse was much easier and much more effective in places were there weren't any snarling tigers.

For now, she was far enough away that she might have been able to run if things turned dicey. While it was unfortunate (and more than a bit surprsing) that the howling, bleeding catastrophe of raw dark energy had noticed her, Niysha was far enough away and quiet enough that she wasn't in... well, no, she was absolutely in immediate danger, but not life-threatening danger. That would have to be good enough while she planned an escape or negotiated a surrender.

Even in a quiet, echoing tomb, Niysha's natural speaking voice was so quiet that from anything more than a couple of meters' distance, it was only audible because of Force bullhockey. "Thief and coward are both apt summaries, my Lord." Without even thinking about it, she'd slipped back into the tried and true speech patterns she'd grown up with. Deferrence immediately to anyone who might be able to kill her. No matter how Ignus had tried, he'd never been able to break her of Adekos' training.

As she spoke, the Miraluka holed up as quietly as possible in a tiny little bubble of herself. Her senses were open, her sight keen, but she put enough effort into shrinking her existence that she started to have difficulty feeling her fingers and toes. Since she'd been noticed, she needed to talk, but she had no intention of walking into any line of fire before she knew she wasn't going to get shot at. "I've never been accused of bravery before, my Lord, but I'll gladly accept the unwarranted compliments to my cleverness."

Don't panic.

Niysha took a deep breath and continued speaking in her exceedingly soft, warm, slightly crackling tone. A little like a fireplace smoldering on its last log. "I was here to solve a puzzle, and the time for that has long passed. I've no intention of engaging in the folley of fighting you, my Lord, and I won't last long as your prey. If it's all the same to you, I'll just leave."

Serina Calis

 

[Serina Calis]

"Deep, into the waiting dark."

Tag - Niysha


The voice that came back to her was so quiet it might have gone unnoticed by lesser ears.

But Serina was not lesser.

It flowed toward her like a whisper tucked into a confession. Female. Careful. Silk over steel. And it named her. My Lord.

The words curled down Serina's spine like a lover's breath.

She stilled.

A long moment passed in silence. Then, softly, too softly for the echo to catch:

"There you are."

She turned.

Not fast. Not with menace. With certainty. Like she had already won. Like the tomb's dead were not her equals, but her choir. The shadows obeyed her now. The Force, twisted and scarred by centuries of burial, bent itself toward her desires. The presence—the clever little voice trembling behind deference—was nothing if not prey.

And yet…

She didn't strike.

Not yet.

Instead, she advanced. Slow. The sound of her boots like verdicts in the dust. One step. Then another. The air did not shift—it tightened, as though the tomb itself were holding its breath. Every rune on the wall dimmed in her wake. The mask in her pack still pulsed with faint heat—bound spirit writhing like a trapped nerve. It felt the Miraluka, too. It hungered.

So did Serina.

"You'll just leave?" Her voice was gentle. Ridiculously so. A blade wrapped in a compliment. "Little ghost, you don't even know what door you've opened. You think the fire won't burn you because you crawled close without touching the coals?"

She stopped now, just past the lip of the corridor. Not quite in sight of the other. But close enough that her presence spilled into it. Flooded it. Suffocated it.

"I'm going to ask you to do something very simple," Serina said, her tone lilting upward like a teacher addressing a favored, wayward student. "You're going to come into this chamber. You're going to kneel. And then, very slowly, you're going to tell me everything."

A pause.

Not the kind that invited resistance.

The kind that dared it.

"I promise I'll make you scream only if you lie."

The Dark Side rippled outward from her like breath from a predator's mouth. Controlled. Measured. Intimate. Her words weren't loud—they didn't need to be. The tomb carried them. Echoed them. Carved them into the marrow of the stone.

"I'm not interested in your cowardice. I've collected that before, it comes apart in the hand. But cleverness? That's worth studying. And you did something very clever, didn't you?"

Serina's head tilted slightly, eyes narrowing with a glint like glass about to shatter.

"You found your way in without alerting the spirits. You watched. You didn't run when the circle sang. You saw what I did and decided, for some reason, that speaking was a better idea than dying."

She licked her bottom lip slowly, the taste of power still heavy in her mouth.

"Which means you're not just clever."

She took one more step forward.

"You're valuable."

There it was.

That horrible word.

Serina made it sound like a compliment, but there was nothing complimentary in the way she said it. She said it like a butcher measuring meat. Like a collector admiring a rare creature that had wandered into her snare. Like a Sith who had spent the last decade turning lives into weapons, oaths into chains, and knowledge into currency.

And now she wanted hers.

"All this," she whispered, sweeping a hand back toward the ritual circle behind her, the still-glowing sarcophagus, the phantom stink of power in the air, "wasn't meant for you. But you still found it."

She leaned slightly into the corridor now, not quite enough to give the Miraluka full sight of her—but enough to let her presence press.

"And I'm feeling… charitable."

A long breath followed. When she spoke again, her voice had shifted—less silk, more edge.

"I can't promise you'll leave. But I can promise you'll matter. That's more than most get."

Another silence. She could hear the girl breathing. A slight hitch. Barely audible. But enough.

Serina's lips parted, slowly.

Her next words were a quiet knife.

"Or… I walk in there. And we find out what your insides look like smeared across a wall."

Her eyes burned violet-gold now, faintly aglow in the dark.

It wasn't rage. She didn't need rage.

It was curiosity.

The most dangerous thing in the galaxy.

 

[Niysha]

Ah, the scary part. Don't panic.

Niysha took a deep breath and went to a place in her memories. It'd been a very long time since she'd dealt with anyone who felt the need to chest-beat, but she recognized the specific brand of amalgamated eidolon that just about every power-glutton Sith turned into after enough time. It was a superbly bad idea to intentionally anger them, and the vast majority were content to just ignore anyone who appeared weaker than them after a few disparaging or debasing comments to buff their own egos.

A few - the kind her master had dealt with - weren't immediately violent, but still caught up in the toxic spiral of self-delusion that led them to belief that the entire galaxy belonged to them, right up to the very moment they met a sudden and violent end that was all-too-easily avoided. That was the preferable kind, the kind that wound up in positions of authority because it knew how to compromise and didn't randomly execute underlings in a snit because something went wrong.

After a moment, she caught herself. Not "preferable." Preferable would've been an empty tomb. This was survivable, which still wasn't good, but there were worse outcomes.

Whatever the opposition, Niysha was, somehow, despite her best efforts found twice in as many seconds. Galling, but she had to work with it. And at the moment, that meant that she needed tread carefully along the path that had been very neatly outlined for her. She could run, but that wasn't nearly as likely to get her out alive as just... doing the thing she was told would get her out alive. If she'd had more than a few seconds to consider, it likely would've dawned on her that this was basically exactly why Adekos had been a perpetual lackey.

Blah blah fire, blah blah splatter, blah blah posturing.

Niysha sifted casually through the tired old Important diatribe to find what she needed: a step-by-step guide to avoid the brief and very dangerous chase sequence. Step one, approach chamber. Niysha let out the deep breath she'd been holding in and allowed herself the confidence of cowed obedience. "Alright then. Coming out." It felt not at all unlike academy all over again. Even after she released her presence to a level that was less uncomfortable, less debilitating, she was barely more than a whisper in the Force.

And, thankfully, that relaxation brought her vision back into sharper focus. There was a trap in the door she was approaching. The whole building was overbearingly thick with dark energy, but six little sigils burned brightly around the edge of the doorway she'd have to go through to get into the sepulcher proper. Runic traps like these weren't uncommon around the Hyperspace War era, and she'd dealt with plenty of them. Reaching into her belt, she pulled out a single chisel and tapped it once on each rune, turning a bit of her measured, controlled anxiety into a mild spark of lightning with each tap. It was enough to disrupt the runes for at least a few minutes, which let her walk through unharmed.

Niysha had no idea what the light in the room was like. She assumed "very dark," but that sort of thing didn't seem to really have much of an effect on anyone who mattered. She certainly didn't look much like a Sith. She looked more like a hiker, or a hobbyist mountain climber. With the exception of the whisper of the dark side to her presence and what was probably a lightsaber hooked onto her climbing harness, she was the very picture of a civilian.

Step two, kneel down. Niysha didn't hesitate to drop to her knees as directed, though she did make sure to do so in an area bereft of traps, runes, anything that might fall, and any inconvenient walls that could concievably hold concealed weapons, surprise guard droids, or any of the other common dungeoneering traps. She even took a moment to push her hair back over her shoulders, leaving her neck bare.

Step three was the tricky one. "Everything" was meaningless; her current threat had specific information she was looking for. "I'm not sure how much I can tell you, my Lord. I only just arrived and you beat me to the main prize of this tomb. But I'll do my best."

Serina Calis

 

[Serina Calis]

"Deep, into the waiting dark."

Tag - Niysha




The tomb went still again. That peculiar stillness that settled only after a choice had been made.

Serina didn't speak at first.

She watched.

The Miraluka emerged like a ghost unspooling itself from the wall, and Serina saw everything. The clothes that didn't match the place. The careful chisel work at the door, quiet and methodical—subtle lightning crackling like whispered apologies into the ancient glyphs. The saber, slung as an afterthought. And the way she dropped—not in submission, but in precision.

A technician. A scholar. A survivor.

Not one of theirs.

Serina stepped closer, her boots clicking faintly against the stone with the same rhythm as a metronome set to the beating of a heart right before it stops. The tomb itself whispered to her now—not in voices, but in yearning. The spirit bound in the mask in her satchel seethed, clawing against its prison to reach out and taste the girl's fear. Her own aura curled inward, darker now, a spiral of gravity that pulled on every breath within arm's reach.

She circled the girl slowly, like a lion pacing the edge of a cage that wasn't locked.

The Miraluka's neck was bare. An invitation.

Serina said nothing for a long time.

Then finally, she crouched low, the silken hem of her coat brushing the stone. A hand reached out, not to strike, but to touch—fingers dragging lightly along the curve of the girl's jaw, slow enough that the nerves had time to realize they were being mapped.

"You're well-trained," she said quietly, lips barely moving. "Not in combat. In compliance."

The hand retreated, but Serina didn't rise.

"You've dealt with Sith before. Old ones. Dangerous ones. You learned the trick—speak softly, flatter, bleed dignity just fast enough they don't bother to cut the rest of it out of you."

Her voice was flat now. Not angry. Not even cold.

Clinical.

"You've been used. Passed around. Claimed by people who thought domination was the same as loyalty." A pause. "And still you come here."

She stood.

There was no explosion of movement. No dramatic snarl. Just the slow straightening of a woman who knew she didn't need to raise her voice to be heard. Her presence alone cracked the walls.

"I don't want your obedience."

She said it like it was an insult.

"I want your worth."

Serina turned her back, walking a few paces into the chamber, boots making no effort to hide their sound. She stopped beside the ritual circle where the blood had dried and the air still buzzed with the echo of something ancient, imprisoned.

"I don't care what trinket you came to steal. I don't care if you thought this was a quick dig before some other idiot Sith found it and got themselves killed. I care why you were right. Why you made it this far without tripping a trap, or waking the dead, or getting yourself painted across the wall like a stain."

She faced her again now, eyes glowing faint violet-gold, bright enough to cast faint illumination against the walls.

"You have tools. Methods. Senses different than mine. I want them."

Another step forward. Just one.

"And you want something too, don't you?"

Serina tilted her head slightly. "You're not just here for bones or weapons or half-collapsed architecture. You walked into this deathpit on the edge of oblivion with no backup, no authority, and no illusions. Which means you're looking for something. And it isn't glory."

The air crackled faintly.

"Knowledge?" she purred. "Something you read in a dead man's journal? Or something deeper?"

Another beat.

Then—

"You don't strike me as the kind who believes in destiny. But maybe you've started to wonder if the galaxy is pushing you toward something. A moment. A question. A monster."

She stepped close again. Her presence coiled inward now, not crushing—but intimate. Like cold fingers brushing down a spine, like nails just barely digging into thought.

"You want to know what I bound in that mask."

A statement. Not a guess.

"You felt it screaming. You watched it go silent."

Her hand reached out slowly—not to strike—but to lift. Two fingers beneath the chin, just barely.

"You're already too deep to leave, little ghost."

Serina's voice dropped to a whisper.

"So show me why I shouldn't hollow you out and feed what's left of your soul to it."

Then, finally, a smile.

And it meant something.

Because it said: you haven't been dismissed.

Not yet.

 

[Niysha]

As expected, Niysha didn't shy away when touched. She'd been grabbed by the throat and slammed into walls before, faced a couple of concussions from boastful predators asserting their authority, had a couple of teeth knocked loose from a backhand or two that were just a bit too spicy. All of this was long in the past. Shy of death, just about nothing this woman could do to her was anything she didn't have a frame of reference for.

It was clear that Korriban had been a mistake, though at this point, Niysha was entirely willing to chalk how bad her current situation was basically exclusively up to bad luck. There were literal thousands of tombs on Korriban that were largely untouched and probably a hundred or so that were borderline pristine. Just so happening to choose the one that another Sith wanted to raid at the exact same time could've been the Force sending her a message; being sensed multiple times, from a distance, through her most active attempt at secrecy? That was winning an exceedingly frustrating lottery.

Once again, Niysha focused on the thing she was given to stay alive in the current moment. She was absolutely scared of being murdered for no real reason in the middle of a lost tomb, of course, but she was so used to dealing with fear that her tone was steady. Her terror ran through her like an old friend. Her oldest friend, really. Her voice didn't even have a hint of a waver to it.

"I don't shout, my Lord. I find it helps me to listen more closely," she replied. "The Force serves each of us differently. I've never been strong enough to engage in impressive displays of power. A more powerful Sith would be able to walk into any old tomb and take what they wanted with brute force. I find far more success in taking my time, learning what the architect was looking to display. It's easier to clean a fish if you know which direction the scales are pointed."

She politely ignored the blatant hypocrisy of claiming that the woman "didn't want her obedience" and then proceeded with yet more threats if she didn't comply. In general, people in positions of dominant authority - Sith especially - didn't like it when you pointed out how hard they were drinking their own juma juice.

"I've been raiding old tombs and ruins for several years now, my Lord. Many follow patterns that can be learned pretty easily, when you're paying attention to them." Niysha vaguely arched her head towards the door she walked through. She hadn't moved from her knees because she hadn't been told to. "The runes on that door are a lightning trap. The script implies a Kaas derivitive of an older, Vitae-era ritual dialect. That entire era was practically obsessed with lightning, to the point that even their traps that used it were designed to interact with it. I've dealt with them before."

Attention: mask. Niysha didn't need to move her head to look at it. Frankly, she had been very intentionally not staring. The deeper an aura was aligned to one direction or the other, the more it physically hurt to stare at. She loved playing with Sith artifacts, but immediately wrote off anything held by anyone who could easily kill her. "I'll admit my curiosity is piqued, my Lord, but I had no idea you'd be here, and no idea what trinkets you had on you. I was here to solve my own trinkets."

She reached one hand back behind her, towards her belt pouch, and produced a small cryptex tube, placing it on the ground in front of her. "I've been working at this for a few weeks now. The solution keeps eluding me, but I've narrowed down several things that don't work." Her hands returned to her thighs, out of the way. "No kind of application of Force has had any effect, and the actual combination seems divorced from the mechanism inside. From what I can tell, the only way to open it is with both the knowledge of the original code and the intent that comes with knowing the creator's design."

Serina Calis

 

[Serina Calis]

"Deep, into the waiting dark."

Tag - Niysha




Serina didn't speak for several long seconds after the girl finished. She didn't pace, didn't move, didn't lash out. She simply stood there—staring—not at the cryptex tube, but at the Miraluka who had just willingly placed something of value at her feet without being told.

Trust?

No. Nothing so foolish.

Calculation.

And that, more than fear or obedience, was what made Serina's interest sharpen into something pointed.

Her eyes dropped to the cryptex slowly. A slender, metallic thing. Elegant. Arcane. Clearly old, but not crumbling with time—it had been preserved, handled with reverence. Its inscriptions were fine enough to have been made with a stylus, not a tool. Not an object of power—yet. But purposeful. She could feel the echo of complexity emanating from it. A silence that knew something.

She crouched, one knee to the stone, and examined it without touching.

"You brought a puzzle into a tomb," she murmured aloud, her tone laced with a perverse kind of amusement. "That's either poetic... or suicidal."

Her gaze flicked back up to the kneeling woman, not harsh—just focused.

"You work like a parasite works," she said, not as insult, but as observation. "Gentle, quiet. You find structures larger than yourself and you study them. Burrow through. Drink the marrow. You even know when to stop. When to give something back. That's rare."

She reached out, two fingers hovering just above the cryptex—close enough to feel the lingering tension in its make. There was no power in it. No Force. But there was intention.

"I've seen devices like this," she said, voice quieter now. Thoughtful. "Usually with simpler locks. A test of knowledge more than strength. Your assumption is sound—intent, memory, lineage. They're all required to unlock something like this, and none of them are… obvious."

A pause.

She did not pick it up.

Instead, she looked at Niysha again.

"But this one... it doesn't belong to the tomb. It's yours. Or at least, you think it is. You're following it. It's not a key to this place—it's a path through it. Or one like it."

Another pause. The flicker of consideration passed through her eyes—real consideration, not the false patience Sith often performed before turning violent.

"You've been searching," she said slowly, "but not for credits. Not for holocrons or weapons."

She stood again, folding her hands behind her back.

"You want to understand things no one else remembers."

There was no cruelty in the statement.

No accusation.

Just the cold, calculating truth.

Then—Serina turned her back. Deliberately.

She walked a short distance from the ritual circle, back toward the sarcophagus, the black mask still pulsing faintly behind layers of silk in her satchel. The tomb's ambient dread had dulled now, no longer screaming, no longer gnashing to devour. The spirit had quieted.

But it was listening.

So was she.

"You've survived tombs, deciphered traps, and lived long enough to kneel before me instead of bleeding at my feet." Her voice was even now. Measured. "Which means you're more than prey."

She looked over her shoulder—not with hunger, but respect.

"I could take this thing you've brought me. Rip it open. Learn what I want. Kill you, if I cared to waste the energy."

Then she turned fully to face her again.

"But you've already told me something more valuable than what's in that tube. You told me how you think. What you look for. What you know."

She took two slow steps forward.

"And that's something I can't extract by force."

The room pulsed faintly around them.

Serina's voice lowered.

"So I'll offer you a choice."

One hand opened—empty, palm upward.

"You can leave. Walk out of here alive. No pursuit. No chains. No scars. Take your cryptex. Take your silence. Go back to the shadows and keep learning alone. I'll even give you a five-minute head start before I bind the door shut behind you forever."

The other hand opened.

Not empty.

The mask.

Wrapped still in silk. But no longer hidden.

Its pulse was stronger now. The spirit within it aware.

"Or stay. And I show you what's left of the mind I pulled from that sarcophagus. We open your device together. And you tell me what you find inside—because I suspect it's part of something larger."

Another pause.

"And if I'm right, little ghost... you're standing on the threshold of it."

Serina's eyes burned faintly in the gloom, and for the first time since the conversation began, her expression softened. Not with sympathy.

With respect.

Because in this moment—just this one—she wasn't looking down at a tool.

She was looking at a mirror.

 

[Niysha]

Sith were puzzles not at all unlike the traps in all of the tombs Niysha had ever been in. It might've been why she was so predisposed towards dungeon-diving, after a fashion. She'd grown up around deadly puzzles, so a career working with deadly puzzles fit her pretty comfortably. Every Sith had a hundred triggers, and the consequences for failing to navigate and disarm them were painful, sometimes fatal. It had taken her fifteen years along with numberless bruises, cuts, burns, fractures, and other little symbols of abuse to figure out the most common triggers. After that point, they were pretty easy to categorize.

The vast majority of Sith were power-hungry ego monsters to some extent or another. From that base category, she'd sub-divided the mass into brutes and autarchs. A brute often thought he was an autarch, and most wound up dying to that mistake in impressive fashion. Autarchs were the most common Sith to see in positions of power, because they were capable of controlling their most base emotions long enough to make rational decisions. They still postured in the same tiring ways, but in the end they listened to reason. Everything existed to increase their personal power, which meant that they would disarm completely if you weren't an immediate threat and had something of visible, material value to offer them.

Tried and true. Even if she hadn't seen another Sith in years, at least her instincts were still sharp.

With the danger passed, Niysha visibly relaxed, though not more than an inch or two. She'd obviously been tense, but considering her resting state was more than a little frantic, there wasn't much difference between "tense" and "relaxed." At least she could breathe more easily for now. Her presence in the Force notably changed; by returning to her resting state, she naturally slipped back into burying her presence. Not deeply - that was exhausting and uncomfortable - but noticeable.

The Sith lady who had graciously decided that it would be a waste of time and energy to kill her approached and offered Niysha roughly what she'd been expecting, with a second, intriguing surprise. Most Sith wouldn't offer a way out. That was novel all on its own. Normally that kind of decision was made without consulting her. It was either "begone from my sight" or "you will be useful to me." This time it was both, which left her in a tricky situation.

Her higher brain immediately recognized "get out right now turn and run you absolute idiot get out get out get out" as the correct course of action. It could've been a trap, but as she'd already verified, she was fully into "waste of time to kill" territory. If Niysha wanted to make sure she had a chance to get off of the planet alive, then leaving now was the winner, hands down.

Buuut...

There was some wicked cool stuff going on with an old Sith trinket and she just had to know.

"Alright then, my Lord," the Miraluka found herself saying without even realizing she'd made up her mind. Her greed spoke for her before her cowardice could override it. She retrieved her cryptex and returned it to her belt as she stood up, fixing her hair one more time. "Like I said, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious."

Serina Calis

 

[Serina Calis]

"Deep, into the waiting dark."

Tag - Niysha




The ghost agreed.

Serina watched the decision form not in the words, but in the delay—that tiny flicker of instinctive survival clashing against something deeper. Not desperation. Not fear.

Hunger.

And when the girl finally rose, gave her answer, and tucked the cryptex back into its pouch, Serina smiled. A slow, refined curve of the mouth that held nothing of triumph. Only satisfaction. As though a lock had just clicked open somewhere in the universe and confirmed what she already knew:

This one wasn't useless.

She nodded once, a deliberate gesture of respect. Not exaggerated. Just enough to say you chose wisely.

"Curiosity is the first virtue of power," Serina said, turning back toward the narrow passage that yawned deeper beneath the tomb. The path beyond was darker, more angular—walled with collapsed masonry and long-dead lighting slats that hadn't sparked in millennia. "It is the one craving that doesn't dull when fed."

She moved, slow but deliberate, each footfall silent, the faint sway of her coat brushing the dust without stirring it too far. As they passed the ritual circle, she paused only briefly to glance back toward the sarcophagus. The air was still charged with memory, but the mask—secured again in her satchel—had gone dormant. Not quiet. Just… waiting.

Just like her.

"I came here looking for what came before."

Her voice was calm now—measured and thoughtful, as if she were musing aloud rather than delivering a lecture.

"This tomb predates the Exiles. It isn't on any registry, not even in the Black Archives. The name of the king was erased from all records before the Old Republic even began keeping them. But I found references—faint ones—in the Celestial Archive."

She tilted her head as she walked, glancing at the girl behind her, voice shaded with the faintest hint of approval.

"You know how it is. The most valuable things are always in the wrong place. Or perhaps they become valuable because they were misplaced."

The corridor narrowed again, forcing them into a passage flanked by what appeared to be ossified remains—thousands of them—piled into the walls like organic bricks. Some wore fragments of armor. Others still had rusted weapons embedded in their ribs.

"These aren't servants," Serina said, pausing to run a gloved hand across the skull of one ossified warrior. "They're warriors. Conscripts. Bound here in death as part of the tomb's construction. Not killed for power. Entombed for loyalty. That was the first hint."

She turned back to the corridor, continuing.

"I believe this king—whoever he was—commanded a kind of following that went beyond what the Sith would later call feudalism. There was reverence here. Not just fear. Which is dangerous."

The corridor opened again.

A split chamber, two tiers. The upper tier was little more than a collapsed balcony, overlooking a lower pit choked with shattered statues and collapsed debris. But in the center of it all stood a monolith—intact, untouched, unmarred by decay or time. Its surface was mirror-black, a single strip of obsidian rising five meters high, embedded with veins of what looked like crystalline silver.

No inscriptions. No doors. Just presence.

Serina's steps slowed as she reached the edge of the overlook.

She exhaled—slow and reverent.

"There."

Her voice dropped to something close to awe. Not worship. But fascination. Deep and consuming.

"I'm not here for treasures or tomes. Not even for the spirit I caught. That was a byproduct. This is what I came for."

She looked at Niysha, her eyes catching the faint light of the monolith's glow—glow that wasn't light at all, but the impression of light bleeding into the Force.

"I don't think it's a sarcophagus. I think it's a prison."

A beat.

"And it's not empty."

She paused, thoughtful.

"I haven't touched it. Not yet. I wanted to see what kind of response the spirit had first. It screamed when I entered the room. Tried to flee the moment I opened the main crypt. I lured it into the mask using a piece of the black crystal I stole from the Archive. The resonance was... perfect."

She gestured toward the obsidian slab.

"And now, here it waits. Silent. But aware. I can feel it watching."

Her eyes flicked to the girl again.

"So now we ask the oldest question."

She stepped forward.

"Do we open it?"

 

[Niysha]

It was nice to talk to someone on a Sith planet without having to justify her existence for once. The longer Niysha spent away from Sith territory, the more she realized that half the reason she left was because she was exhausted with the pageantry of it all. It wasn't just her needing to bow and scrape to not get summarily executed for not being submissive enough; it was just as bad on them. Big, powerful Sith needing to constantly blow as hard as possible in order to be heard over the cacophony. It all got so unbearably loud that most of them started to fall for the act, believe their own hype even when they weren't anywhere that they needed to make a big public show.

In an ideal galaxy, Niysha's position as "not an ambitious power-mongering threat to your position" would have exempted her from the dog and pony show. Instead, she lived in this one, where power-mad idiots slaughtered servants to prove how dangerous they were to rivals who weren't even around to see it. Absolutely exhausting.

In this little moment, deep in a layered tomb filled with things that no one had seen in a planet's age, she got to see a little bit of an ideal galaxy. The other Sith she was working with allowed herself to relax, to take a break from the power grabs and the overtures and the signalling nonsense. A moment to just enjoy the hunt. On its own, that gave Niysha a bit of hope.

A discussion of value. Niysha crossed her arms and responded in her normal warm, slightly crackling, exceedingly quiet tone. "I feel like it might be more that we attribute value to things because they're difficult to obtain. Scarcity, through rarity or concealment or just being really difficult to obtain, makes something more valuable all on its own. No one cares about Corellian or Tython relics; they're everywhere, and they don't eat your soul when you pick them up."

When the... shockingly young lady, now that she took a moment to notice. Bogan, she was probably younger than Niysha. When the young lady led her further in into a second, deeper mausoleum, Niysha took a long moment to really take in her surroundings. Big room, empty of physical matter but full of oppressive energy. She noted the containment area in the center, but turned her attention to the walls.

Her vision expanded to fill the room and pushed slightly into the walls, looking for physical traps first. No facades, no concealed blasters or mundane pike traps. Those were the easiest to spot, but absolutely the most embarassing to get caught off-guard by. No one would respect a Sith who died in a spike pit. No old guardian droids or hidden beasts, either, which would've been the next two most likely defenses.

That left Niysha with the foreboding but at least somewhat comfortable knowledge that any protections to this room were mystical. As the other Sith wandered forward towards an extremly distracting, blinding beacon of energy wrapped in an inconsequential shell of stone, Niysha continued searching for where the trigger was, and what weapon it was attached to. Everything was trapped; you just had to look close enough to find the tripwire.

Do we open it? "The answer to that question is always 'yes,' my Lord," Niysha replied, still wandering around the room. "The more important question is 'when.' If we open it now, whatever defenses they set up to prevent exactly the kind of tampering we're planning on doing would trigger immediately." The Miraluka wandered back towards the entry corridor, stopping just a few centimeters shy of touching one of the embalmed guardians nose-to-cadaver. "Which I've no doubt you could handle easily, but I'd prefer to avoid that difficulty."

The corpses were present, but inactive. They were probably either the trap or part of it. With note taken, Niysha approached the obelisk. Her sight contracted in a way not at all unlike a human narrowing their eyes in harsh sunlight, lips turning down in a subtle grimace. "That's either the power source or the main event. If it's powering something, whatever it's powering will be very dangerous. If it's the payload for the trap, then it will likely explode."

She took a moment and deeply examined the sarcophagus-prison, crouching down beside it. She didn't touch it, and didn't need to walk around it. Inside was a darkness so pure and complete that she couldn't even parse what she was seeing, likely stagnated from the better part of an eternity locked away with just itself. The stone itself was tainted all the way through. "This has never been opened. Not 'successfully.' There aren't any signs of tampering. From what I can tell, no one's managed to physically touch this stone in any way that left any mark for its entire existence."

Serina Calis

 

[Serina Calis]

"Deep, into the waiting dark."

Tag - Niysha



Serina stood just behind the monolith's gravitational pull, her body half-shadowed in its null-light. She hadn't moved during Niysha's full inspection, not even a step. Only her gaze shifted—following the Miraluka's movements with a quiet, studious intensity. There was no possessiveness in her watch, no challenge. She was not a wolf circling prey now.

She was a scholar watching another peel back a fragment of the universe.

When the girl finally spoke again—measured, insightful, and correct—Serina exhaled slowly through her nose, a breath full of satisfaction. Not the petty kind that wanted to be right. The deeper kind. The kind that came from recognition.

"You're sharp," she said, her tone a touch lower, more grounded now. Thoughtful. "Not just because you see more than I do—though that's obvious—but because you think in systems. You don't just ask what it is. You ask what it does."

She stepped toward the monolith now, stopping short of its direct presence. Her hands remained at her sides, relaxed, unthreatening, though the air around her still shimmered with the presence of a leashed storm.

"I suspected it was the trigger as much as the vault. Your analysis confirms that. If no one's touched it, then no one's survived touching it. Or no one was meant to. That leaves two possibilities—either the thing inside kills any who reach for it… or it doesn't exist until someone does."

Her eyes flicked back toward the embalmed remains layered into the stone.

"The bindings are crude but deliberate. There's no artistry to the way these corpses were built into the walls. It was mechanical. Functional. They're not guardians in the traditional sense."

She paused. Tilted her head.

"They're batteries."

Another beat.

"Or worse. Witnesses."

Serina crouched now near the edge of the dais, where the monolith's dark light began to subtly distort the Force around it, like light passing through a thick current. Her fingers traced the line of its shadow across the floor, not quite touching.

"When I bound the spirit from the sarcophagus, it fought to flee toward this room—not from it. I think it wanted to reach this. That it knew what was beneath."

She stood again, turning slightly toward Niysha with that quiet, thoughtful presence still coiled around her spine like a slow-dripping venom.

"If you're right—and you are—then whatever is inside isn't just old. It's complete. This isn't a remnant. This is an intent that's never been released."

Her brow furrowed slightly, a rare flash of something almost vulnerable beneath the sculpted poise. Not fear. But uncertainty. And for Serina, that was as close to humility as she allowed herself to feel in front of anyone.

"I don't know what I'm dealing with."

Then, after a breath: "That's what makes it worth opening."

She turned again to face the monolith directly.

"But not now. Not yet. You're right—if we force it open without a preparation ritual, or some kind of resonance match, we trigger whatever cascade this place was designed to unleash. That power would consume even me, or worse, escape into the galaxy in a form I couldn't control."

She looked again to Niysha.

Not up or down—across. As an equal. Or at least as something approaching one.

"You understand things that I don't. Your perception, your methodology—it's surgical where most of the Sith are sledgehammers looking for windows. That's useful."

A pause.

"More than that—it's rare."

Another.

"If I gave you time, space, access… could you unravel what this thing is?"

Not a command.

A question.

Offered freely.

Because for once, Serina wasn't speaking as a Sith with a weapon.

She was speaking as a seeker with a mystery.

And it was clear now:

She had no intention of opening it without the Miraluka's help.

 

[Niysha]

Hmm. The possibility of the mummies being held in a deathlike trance and either drained or tortured was clever, in that "old psychotic monster who really needed more hugs as a child" sort of way that most old Sith stuff tended to shape up to be. If they were powering anything, then they'd be part of the defense system. That meant that tampering with them would trigger that defense. Another layer of complexity to an increasing complicated vault.

Niysha passed back through the aisle of preserved corpses, once again touching nothing. It was clear they were metaphysically present, though neither physically nor supernaturally active. She didn't know what would happen if she touched one of them, and frankly she didn't want to find out through manual experimentation until she had at least a thesis. There were clear connections between the stone vault, the oppressively dark obelisk, and the small army of mummies. Chances were the shape of the room itself was part of it, and there might have been hidden runes, crystals, guardians...

A lot of work to do. "It might take a day or two, my Lord," she replied honestly. "Which, itself, might develop into longer, depending on how arcane this whole... spell is." Her hand waved idly, indicating something vaguely 'over there' in the direction of the obelisk. "But yes. I can absolutely figure this out." Probably. Absolutely probably. Niysha was confident in her ability to suss out puzzles over time. The real question whas what would happen when she started testing this one.

Taking a moment to herself, she stood contrapposto, one hand on her hip. Now that the danger had passed and she'd allowed herself a moment to relax, Niysha's entire demeanor had changed. More comfortable. More confident. On reflex, she reached down and pulled her shorts up, leaving them just a bit more snug. She was in a quiet vault full of ancient magic and someone was trusting her to solve a problem; frankly, she could forgive a lot of bad first impressions that way.

Still. She wasn't quite out of the woods yet. "I would prefer if you didn't lock me in, my Lord, so I appreciate the 'space' in that offer." She shrugged, her expression a smile as relaxed as the sigh that escaped her lips. "Truth be told, I haven't had access to any Sith resources in a very long time. I exist... outside of the Order's traditional structure." An unnecessarily fancy way of saying "rogue."

Hmm.

She stopped and looked the woman over once more. She hadn't taken more than a moment to examine her aura before. Niysha had seen a hundred Sith auras, including multiple lords. The majority of them were interchangable and she dismissed them outright; the only value factor the average Sith's aura held was how strong and volatile they were. But the last time she'd seen a Sith - an actual, legitimate Sith - this close for this long was years ago. She might've been too dismissive.

The woman in front of her was obviously dark, and burned proudly with all of the power she'd accumulated. When Niysha gave her a second pass, though, she noticed more clouds and less flares. A roaring bonfire with a haze of smoke, then? Crackling with curiosity. The power leaking out of the tight, intensely defined lines of her aura felt like it was swirling more slowly than it should have, with a notable level of intent. This woman was slowing down on purpose to deal with this, and the shift was so pronounced that it might have affected her whole being. A conscious shift in who she was.

A creature in the middle of a transition. Hmm.

Niysha decided it was worth the risk. After a moment of deep consideration, she offered an easier smile than she had before. Her voice stayed steady. Crackling and warm, as it always was. Intimate, she'd heard In say once. "Though if you'd prefer, my Lord, I'm more than capable of operating on my own. I'm sure I wouldn't be the first dirty little secret you've kept." Miraluka could not wink.

Serina Calis

 

[Serina Calis]

"Deep, into the waiting dark."

Tag - Niysha



The shift in Niysha's demeanor was impossible to miss. Subtle for anyone else, but to Serina—who had made a science of reading people, slicing open the seams between posture and psyche—it was loud as thunder. The girl had straightened her spine. Settled her stance. Confidence replaced fear. Not arrogance—something more measured. The kind of comfort that came when someone realized they were being seen, not merely surviving.

Serina respected that. More than she'd ever admit out loud.

She watched the Miraluka meander back from the ossuary with her usual poise, arms folded across her midsection, thoughtful but unhurried. There was a sly ease to the rhythm now—shoulders looser, breath steadier. Serina almost smiled again. Not for dominance. For the sheer novelty of the situation.

When Niysha spoke, voice crackling with that familiar warmth, Serina nodded lightly at the assessment. A day or two. Maybe longer. She had anticipated as much. The tombs of the old Sith were never built with speed in mind. They were traps for eternity, not hourglasses.

But then came the line.

"Though if you'd prefer, my Lord, I'm more than capable of operating on my own. I'm sure I wouldn't be the first dirty little secret you've kept."

Serina blinked.

And then she laughed.

Not a cruel laugh, not a mocking one. A soft, genuinely amused laugh—short, low, almost surprised to have escaped her mouth. She lifted one hand and pressed her knuckle against her bottom lip, half-smiling as though she were trying not to indulge the idea further than necessary.

"Oh, Force, no," she said dryly, amused. "At this point, I'm fairly certain I have someone stashed in every major government from here to Coruscant."

She stepped past Niysha again, her tone slipping into that subtle, languid edge—licentious without being aware of what she was being licentious about, seduction hidden inside her syntax like a sleeper agent.

"I do have a habit of penetrating places others consider... difficult."

A brief pause.

Then she turned slightly toward the Miraluka, thoughtful, head tilted, expression entirely sincere.

"Infiltration. Embedded work. Political subversion. That sort of thing."

Absolutely unaware.

She gestured vaguely toward the monolith again, voice returning to that studied calm.

"But if you'd rather work alone, I'll ensure you have the freedom to do so. Just don't disappear. I've lost too many investments to unexpected detonation."

Serina's eyes lingered on her for a beat longer—still amused, still unreadable.

"And Niysha…?"

A faint smirk, not cruel. Not commanding.

"Keep talking like that and you'll definitely be one of my secrets."

As in secret agent, of course.

 

[Niysha]

Despite living her entire life as an alien among humans, Niysha hadn't picked up a couple of key mannerisms. She didn't raise her eyebrow quizzically when presented with something that mildly perplexed her, for instance. Instead, her movement for that kind of confusion was to gently cock her head to one side. It was the sort of little visual tell that In Rhan had long since become accustomed to. It might've been arcane to others, though given how clearly the other Sith had been reading her so far, she might've picked up on Niysha's... not quite "uncertainty." Slight bewilderment, maybe. Like a dog watching birds out a window.

For the last hour or so, Niysha had been piecing together how her new acquaintance worked. She was largely pageantry and ego, though she eventually managed to find her way to a logical conclusion. After Niysha cut through her melodrama most of what she said was basic, factual commentary on her surroundings. Dramatic pauses and maudlin language aside, this particular Sith didn't seem to be much for... innuendo. In fact, it seemed wildly out of character. This assumption was reinforced by her directly explaining her meaning right after saying something that could be confused for innuendo. Twice.

So. Like.

Niysha cleared her throat. "Alright, so... my Lord, I don't know if you're coming through how you're intending to. I'm pretty sure I'm not." Make a good first impression. The mousy little Sith fluffed her hair a bit, fixed her blindfold, and tugged her top into proper position, showing more of her midriff and cradling her chest more snugly. In the same motion, she wiggled her shorts down strategically, barely hugging her hips. Thus presented in her best "hot tomb raider chic," Niysha focused her full attention on her current companion.

Her very scary, uncomfortably powerful companion, who could probably kill her for her bold, untoward assertion.

She found her courage. "I'm hitting on you, my Lord. I think your aura is hot. We're alone in this tomb and we'll have plenty of privacy." She let her hands fall down, gently indicating to her entire body. "If you're interested, I'm clearly at your mercy. If you're not, then I apologize for my boldness. But you're giving some very confusing signals and I just wanted to be clear."

Serina Calis

 

[Serina Calis]

"Deep, into the waiting dark."

Tag - Niysha



For once, Serina was speechless.

It didn't happen often. She was a creature of control, not just of herself, but of every social atmosphere she stepped into. She could weave silence into intimidation, spin half-truths into weapons, and dominate boardrooms, council chambers, and ritual halls with the same precision she brought to battlefield logistics.

And yet.

Now she stood blinking once—just once—and her breath caught just slightly in her throat.

Because Niysha, in that precise, casual, wickedly calculated maneuver—part girl-next-vault, part serpent coiling around a forbidden fruit—had taken all of Serina's power and weaponized it against her. And done so while fluffing her hair.

Serina cleared her throat. Deliberately. Her stance shifted half a step backward, a small retreat masked as a stretch of the neck, one hand brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear in a gesture almost too practiced. A delay. A stall. A reset.

"…Right," she said slowly, carefully, like she was turning the word over in her mouth to make sure it hadn't changed shape on the way out.

The tomb felt very quiet all of a sudden.

Serina didn't blush—of course not, she wouldn't—but something tightened in the line of her jaw. That heat in the Force, normally so disciplined, so meticulously held behind glass, shivered. Not in fury. In… anticipation.

"I, ah…" She gestured vaguely at the obelisk, then at Niysha, then back at the obelisk, as if trying to remember which ancient darkness they were supposed to be studying. "You're… very bold."

The statement was a compliment. Sort of.

There was a pause. She folded her arms behind her back. Unfolded them again. Looked briefly like she might start pacing, then stopped herself.

"I'd like to say this happens to me often," Serina finally said, recovering some composure. Her voice came back now—cool, slow, that same deadly honey she'd used in the early conversation, now tinged with a very real flicker of vulnerable amusement. "But it doesn't. Mostly I just get propositioned by planetary governors who want a trade route and think telling me they 'admire ruthless women' will make me forget their back hair and war crimes."

Her eyes slid back to Niysha, this time really looking.

"And I…" she started, then stopped again.

A breath.

"I want to say yes."

That landed like a blade pressed to a throat. Deliberate. Honest.

"But there's something you should know."

Serina's voice dipped—not ashamed, not nervous, but measured. Every word now felt sharpened, as though she were walking the edge of her own carefully restrained storm.

"I've never—" she gestured, vaguely, at the air between them. "Done anything. Not like that. Not with anyone."

She let it sit.

Then: "Not for lack of interest. Just… lack of control."

A beat. Her eyes narrowed, calculating, but not unkind.

"You see, I plan everything. I own every moment. I've seduced Jedi and broken spies and shattered people with nothing but a word. But I've never… allowed someone close enough to touch me in that way."

Her voice grew quiet now, softer—but still with that deadly undercurrent, the way a silk curtain might hide a guillotine.

"So if this happens—and I'm not saying no—it must still be mine. My rhythm. My pace. My terms."

Her eyes locked onto Niysha now with unrelenting clarity.

"Can you handle that?"

Then, after a breath—

A smirk.

Wicked. Coy.

"…Because if you can't, I'll have to chain you to the monolith until I finish deciphering it."

 

[Niysha]

After years upon years of fringer life, Niysha had learned one very important lesson that she'd taken to heart at the most fundamental level, allowed to shape her down to her most basic elements: she was not special or unique in any way. Nothing about her - or anyone else - was without peer. It was an important lesson for specifically a solo Miraluka, on account of how she had a very different way of seeing the galaxy. When she was younger, she allowed herself to believe that she was the only one who saw the galaxy in a special way; now, it was clear that everyone had their own perspective. Even so, her perspective frequently seemed to catch people off-guard.

This would have been one of those times, so she didn't comment. The last thing she wanted to do was spook a Sith Lord in the middle of a tomb so thick in the dark side that both of them were having trouble breathing. Even so, she could see the other woman's aura swirling wildly, a mix of shades and intensities that presented an impressive level of anxiety. She was very good, easily forcing her tangible emotions - the sort of thing that any trained Force-sensitive could sense without much trouble - to obey the exact air she wanted to put on. But that turbulent river beneath the surface, bereft of confidence in her position...

That was the sort of thing that Niysha didn't comment on. Pressing your advantage against a flustered Sith was impressively stupid.

Finally, though, the human managed to get her words in order. Admit her inexperience, even flirt, a little bit, in that perverse Sith way. Niysha shrugged it off with a smile. "I can think of more comfortable places for that sort of thing. But I take your warning and agree to your terms, my Lord." If they really were progressing, then she needed to... "Unless there's something else you'd prefer I call you. I realize we never even introduced ourselves, but considering the circumstances, I don't think either of us can be blamed for that."

Despite her hiking shorts and strappy top, Niysha still affected a curtsy. That was just for fun. She didn't even own a dress. "In the spirit of playing at your pace, my Lord, you may call me Niysha or... anything else you want, really." She was grinning that detached, blind grin she'd sported for a few minutes now.

At some level she was both aware that she was propositioning a Sith Lord in a haunted, booby trapped tomb that served as a prison for a darkness greater than either of them, and that that might have been a bad idea. At another, the way the precious, insecure girl in front of her had curled a little smile and fired a little flirt her way just cemented Niysha's whole directive.

Serina Calis

 

[Serina Calis]

"Deep, into the waiting dark."

Tag - Niysha



The vault was ancient, tainted, woven through with power old enough to forget language but not hunger. Stone murmured. Bones watched. The monolith behind them pulsed in its eternal trance, patient and cold. But for all that ancient, chthonic weight—the galaxy's oldest dead whispering from the walls—Serina Calis had never felt more acutely alive than in that moment.

Niysha curtsied.

That was what did it. That tiny, infuriatingly graceful mockery of decorum—sashaying in practical climbing gear with that blithe, disarming grin curling across her face like she didn't care she'd just upended every assumption Serina had made about how this day was going to go.

She should have been offended. Serina had a long and storied record of being offended by people underestimating her. Or mocking the formality she so carefully constructed. Or, worse, making light of her. But this?

This wasn't light.

This was bait.

And Serina realized, with slowly dawning horror, that she was not only taking it—

She wanted to be caught.

She looked down at the Miraluka—gods, that smile—and felt the fabric of the moment tighten around her like a glove. Not because of the setting. Not because of the danger. But because she was being seen, somehow. Beneath the sovereign armor, beneath the voice like a blade, beneath the carefully modulated domination of every room she entered. Niysha saw the storm and the hesitations beneath it. Not as a contradiction. But as a whole.

It was unbearable.

It was intoxicating.

Serina drew herself up to her full height—still composed, still regal—but now with a tension that hadn't been there before. Her hands folded behind her back in a gesture she didn't need. A tether. Her voice, when it came, was soft and dry like silk sliding against glass.

"You may call me Serina," she said, and it was the first time in hours her voice had not carried the weight of title.

The smile that followed was still a weapon—but now it shimmered with a kind of nervy playfulness, brittle around the edges like thin ice over warm water. It was the smile of a woman holding power in one hand and a secret in the other.

"I've had many say less provocative things than you've managed in the last five minutes," Serina murmured as she stepped forward, closing the distance again—but this time slower, more theatrical. Measured.

A pause.

"Don't ask."

Another step. Close now. A breath away. The tomb's shadow wrapped around them, black and rich, as if even the Force itself were lowering its voice out of respect for whatever this was about to become.

Serina stopped in front of her, just shy of touching. Her voice dropped to a near-whisper.

"I'll admit I hadn't… accounted for this."

It was so foreign to say that aloud. Serina never admitted to improvisation. Every move, every decision, every phrase she spoke in the Sith Assembly or in the bedchambers of treacherous governors had been pre-scripted three layers deep. Control wasn't just a virtue—it was identity. It was survival. Serina didn't respond to stimuli. She shaped it. Bent it. Shattered it.

And yet here was this absurd, shameless, fascinating little rogue in hiking shorts and a smirk who'd somehow made the entire tomb into her court—and Serina wasn't sure if she wanted to slap her or pin her against the wall and learn what that grin sounded like when it broke.

She didn't touch. Not yet.

Instead, she walked a slow half-circle around Niysha—like a ring of breath, a solar flare spiraling around its star. Not hunting. Just… mapping. Memorizing. Noticing things that weren't battle stances or escape lines. The curve of a shoulder. The hitch in breath. The way her skin warmed when Serina got just a little too close to the edge of her aura.

"You're dangerous," she said softly, eyes dragging across the Miraluka's face. "You speak with no fear, and you wield curiosity like a weapon. You could seduce an archivist into handing you the coordinates to a tomb. You could probably do the same to a Sith Lord."

She stopped in front again.

Then, finally, she reached out.

One hand. Slow. Purposeful.

Fingertips brushed Niysha's collarbone. Not hard. Not possessive. Testing. Like she was learning the shape of the moment by feel.

"I don't know what I'm doing," she admitted, quietly. "But I do know what I want."

Another touch. Her fingers moved upward—just slightly. Barely grazing the side of Niysha's neck, drawing a path that could've been mistaken for affectionate. Could've been.

"I want to learn this the same way I've learned everything else. Not with surrender."

Her thumb traced a line over the Miraluka's pulse.

"But by claiming it."

She leaned closer now, her breath warming the space between them.

"You may guide me. You may teach me. But you do not own me. And I do not play bottom."

For a moment she lingered there, hovering on the edge of that contact. Her other hand hovered near Niysha's hip, not quite touching. A beat passed. Then another. Serina's breath came more shallow now, though she masked it well. Almost too well. Only the flicker in her eyes betrayed how hard she was concentrating just to be here, to allow this moment to happen.

This was more frightening than any spirit.

More exhilarating than any duel.

And more honest than anything she'd ever done in her life.

Serina's voice came one last time, a whisper against the dark.

"So if you're going to take your Lord's first time, my dear Niysha…"

A pause. The faintest curl of her lips.

"Do it properly."

 

[Niysha]

Again, it was probably a bad idea to be in flagrante in the midst of an ancient, haunted, evil tomb full of death traps, possibly zombies, and probably a very big bomb. But considering just how much of her life Niysha had spent in ancient, haunted, evil tombs, she was legitimately surprised that she hadn't managed to make out in one of them yet. She'd probably need to find a less dangerous one to take In to later, to make up for not getting her first Tomb Event.

Speaking of firsts and surprises, Niysha very much wasn't surprised in the slightest that she was apparently going to be the first person who had ever shown Serina the combination of interest, bravery, compassion, and patience required to be considered a legitimate romantic potential. Sith territory wasn't surfeit with the sorts of people who could present as available in any way that didn't involve some pretentious kind of cat-and-mouse event, and Serina seemed to enjoy said cat-and-mouse stuff so much that it took her several minutes and multiple attempts to process that Niysha was even flirting with her.

This likely wasn't helped by the setting. Tomb, et cetera.

Serina almost managed to touch her. She was significantly taller than Niysha, but moving with the kind of nervous gentleness that came with inexperience. For the moment, Niysha enjoyed the little touch on her shoulder, on her neck, but when she felt the other Sith come shy of touching her hip, she brought up one of her own hands to gently encourage her to press down. Establishing boundaries and expectations was far more important than grandstanding.

"Like I said, we move at your pace," she reinforced. "Just... please try to indicate that you want something to stop, slow down, or anything else by saying so instead of by trying to kill me? That's my only request." This was going to be very dangerous, but Niysha never interacted with a trap unless she knew how to disarm it.

Serina Calis