Private Brother, My Brother || Acier

[Aether Verd]

SINNER'S WELL, RYLOTH​

Darksaber ◈ Armor ◈ Basilisk ◈ Ship​

The Kom’rk shrieked across the twilight sky like a blade unsheathed.

Aether sat in silence as the vessel descended, his gaze fixed on the jagged horizon. Ryloth's surface stretched out beneath him: arid, hostile, familiar. Somewhere among the broken stone and windswept dust waited the legacy he had never asked for.

He could still feel her eyes. Not the Manda’s. Hers.

He had knelt at the edge of the Living Waters, surrounded by warriors whose loyalty had never wavered, whose faith in the Creed matched his own. One by one, they had been tested by the sacred space and emerged changed. Marked. Blessed.

When it had been his turn, the silence of the deep was broken not by a voice, but by a presence. Cloaked in darkness, shaped in memory. His mother.

She had scolded him. Had judged his path. Despite this, she stood there, as she always had, and loved him.

Aether had rejected her. Her legacy. Her truth.

But the Manda had shown him what his pride had blinded him to: that he was both his parents' son. That there was strength not only in the Creed, but in the current of power that flowed through his veins: a power he had refused to claim.

Until now.

The Kom’rk touched down in a plume of dust, a respectful distance from the cragged face of the mountain. The fortress loomed beyond it, half-swallowed by stone, its spires sunken and its gates long silent. Sinner’s Well.

His father’s sanctuary. His sister's refuge. The crucible where secrets were forged.

Aether disembarked alone.

The wind howled low as he picked his way across the terrain, silver beskar dulled beneath a coat of fine dust. Each step forward felt heavier, not from fatigue, but from what waited at the end.

The doors did not challenge him.

Towering, ancient, forged of obsidian and alloy, they did not rattle nor resist. They simply knew the blood of his father. With a groan that echoed through the valley, they parted for him, and sealed shut behind him with a thunderous finality.

He stood still for a long moment, eyes adjusting to the dim.

It reeked of shadow inside. Of power left to rot. The air was thick, not with dust, but with presence. It curled around the edges of his consciousness like smoke. Hungry. Testing.

He hated it. But he did not flinch.

"This is not yours," he muttered to the darkness. "It’s mine. And I will make it serve."

His boots echoed against the stone as he moved forward. Down corridors lined with forgotten tomes. Past murals scorched by Force fire. Toward the lower levels, where the alchemical sanctum waited.

Toward the relic that would make him whole.

◈ Acier Moonbound ◈

 

[Acier Moonbound]

The journey from Ord Mantell to Ryloth had been quiet, not in the way silence soothed, but in the way it pressed. Acier rode alone now, the low hum of the speeder bike rising and falling with the canyons of the Ryloth wastes.

He'd landed the day before, catching a ride off Ord Mantell from a smuggler with more credits than questions. Now, the jagged horizon stretched ahead of him like something half-remembered from a dream. The Nightsister spindle he'd recovered from Peridea lie inside his jacket.

The relic that started all of this. It hadn't made sense at first. The visions it triggered when he practiced psychometry came fractured, buried beneath noise and static. But one image cut through it all: a scorched symbol carved into stone, a fortress swallowed by dust, and a sigil, some kind of crest, that pulsed with a meaning he didn't yet understand. It had followed him since. Drawn him here. And now, as he sped across Ryloth's sunblasted terrain toward the place the spindle had shown him. That pull twisted deeper in his gut. Whatever waited for him out there… maybe it had something to do with who he was. Even if he didn't know what he was asking yet.

The wind shifted. What had been miles of monotonous red-brown wasteland began to change, subtly at first. The dust grew finer. The ridges sharper. The sky above, tinged with ash-colored light, seemed to press lower the closer he got. Acier eased off the throttle slightly, squinting ahead as the outline of something wrong began to cut across the horizon.

At first, it barely looked like anything at all, just a jagged formation swallowed by the stone around it. But as the speeder crested a rise, the illusion peeled back. There it was.

A spire. No… a fortress. Half-consumed by the mountain. The walls seemed carved from the same obsidian and alloy as the vision burned into his mind. Ancient. Sunken. Still. Like the planet itself had tried to forget it existed and failed.

His chest tightened, a flicker of vertigo sweeping over him. The Nightsister spindle, tucked beneath his jacket, throbbed faintly against his chest, not physically, but through the Force. The same presence he'd felt in the vision was here. Not alive, exactly. But waiting. He didn't know what this place was. Didn't know who built it. Or why it felt like the silence here could hear him. But he knew this was it.

The speeder's engine sputtered low as Acier eased it to a stop on the bluff overlooking the canyon. Dust swirled in the wake of his arrival, curling around him as he dismounted. For a moment, he just stood there - the barren wind tugging at his jacket, the spindle beneath his coat heavy with silence.

The fortress rose from the stone like a half-buried memory, carved straight into the cliffside. It looked ancient, sunken, and asleep. It felt dark and... cold. The kind of place that shouldn't exist, let alone call to someone. But it had. Through flame-colored visions and the twisted language of psychometry. This place had pulled him.

His boots crunched over brittle earth as he approached the base of the stairway. The carved steps were weather-worn, choked by sand and time, but they still held their shape, still led somewhere. Each footfall echoed softly, muffled by the weight of dust. He reached the top, heart in his throat, one hand unconsciously grazing the Nightsister spindle hidden beneath his jacket.

Then, with no warning, no sound of gears or servos - the stone doors opened. Not all the way. Just enough for passage. The air shifted. A low exhale from the depths.

Acier froze. His hand went instinctively to his lightsaber, but didn't draw it. There was no threat, not exactly. Only the sense that the building itself had seen him. Had recognized something it hadn't in a long time. He looked over his shoulder. No one. The yawning doorway continued to open.

"…Right," he muttered under his breath. "That's not weird at all."

He stepped inside. The air was cooler, stale with age. His footsteps were quiet now, swallowed by stone. The deeper he went, the stronger the pull became, like something in the walls knew him. Knew something about him. Then, as he rounded a shadowed archway, he stopped dead in his tracks.

Someone was already here. Someone powerful.

Aether Verd

 

[Aether Verd]

Assets: Beskar'gam | Basilisk
Darksaber | Resolute Dawn​

SINNER'S WELL

Aether stilled, hand hovering over the threshold of the sanctum where he knew the heart would be hidden. The ancient dark called to him, ready to bend, ready to serve, when the heavy silence broke. The doors of the Sinner’s Well opened with a groan that rolled through the stone like distant thunder. His mind went first to his father, to the specter of that man’s shadow, for there were few alive who even knew of this place, fewer still who could pass its wards.

But the dread he expected did not come.

He reached with the Force, letting the gloom press against his awareness, and found not the abyss that was his sire, but something else. Something smaller, like a candle guttering before a storm, and yet there, stubborn in its light. Confusion flickered across his features as he blinked once, turning to see who had disturbed the Well.

The man standing there was a stranger, but not without familiarity. Dark skin that matched his own, dreadlocks though worn differently, the quiet mantle of the Force resting on his shoulders in a way that spoke of inheritance rather than theft. The Well had opened for him, the ancient seals parting without protest, and that alone said enough.

Aether laughed. It was not a warm sound. It was a cold, sharp noise that cut through the stale air, unsettling the silence that had made its home within these walls.

“Another one, eh? Welcome home I suppose.” His hand swept out, indicating the dark halls and hungry shadows that surrounded them both, the legacy of dust and secrets. His voice then hardened, the mirth falling away like ash from cooling coals. “Though I must ask for you to state your business.”

The Well did not open without reason, but Aether had not come to waste time, even on the matters of blood.​

Acier Moonbound

 

[Acier Moonbound]

Location: Ryloth - Sinner's Well

Equipment:
Standard Outfit | Lightsaber | Modified DL-27

He prepared himself, hands hovering over both lightsaber and blaster. Then he came. A Mandalorian. Acier had only ever heard about them in stories from Red, a culture of armored warriors who were feared and respected across the galaxy. Now one was standing in front of him, it felt as if he was looking into the eyes of a mythic figure. That wasn't just it either. Through the Force, he could feel the power that pulsated off of him. It hit Ace like heat. Fire. Controlled and contained, but it still burned hot.​

​

Hot iron buried in coals. The kind of fire that chose when to burn, and when to wait. There was purpose in it. Like a forge that had seen centuries of use and remembered every blade it had shaped.​

​

Ace quickly realized that if this were to end in a fight, it wasn't one he was going to win. Quickly, he held his hands up.​

​

After what felt like an eternity long staredown, the Mandalorian broke the silence - laughing. It didn't sound like one of joy, or warmth, but almost like... disdain?​

​

Then, he spoke, his voice was commanding with a hint of amusement. The Mandalorian referred to Ace as 'another one' - whatever that meant, shortly before welcoming him home? Home? He didn't understand. It hung for a few moments before it all clicked. The echoes that the spindle had shown him, this place... 'Welcome home'.​

​

His copper eyes shifted to the Mandalorian, analyzing all of his features. Dark skin, dreadlocks, the Force? He even shared a slight resemblence to Ace. But... the age was all wrong... the Mandalorian didn't look more than thirty-odd. Too young to be his father, then. But maybe... family still?​

​

Ace wouldn't jump to conclusions yet. For now, he'd comply and answer the question. Reaching the inside of his jacket pocket, the freckle-faced youth presented the Dathomiri bone spindle.​

​

"This." he stated bluntly "It, or the Force, showed me this place." then he placed the relic back inside his jacket.​

​

His expression was blank, like he was trying to hide how he really felt - caution. Ace's brow furrowed ever so slightly, trying to gauge the Mandalorian's body language.​

​

"I'm here for answers." he added. Purposely vague. "What even is this place?"​

​

Aether Verd ​

​

 

[Aether Verd]

Assets: Beskar'gam | Basilisk
Darksaber | Resolute Dawn​

SINNER'S WELL

Aether watched with a quiet, growing intrigue as the young man drew forth the spindle from within his jacket. At first glance, it looked like nothing, a shard of bone that might have been plucked from the remains of some long-forgotten beast. But as it caught the thin light of the Well, as the air seemed to shiver around it, he felt it. The pull of the ancestors. The whispers of ichor curling like smoke at the edges of his mind. Dathomir was in its marrow, and the spindle thrummed with the promise of what had been, what could be, and what had been locked away.

Aether folded his arms across his chest, shaking his head with a low exhale.

“I will oblige you with some answers,” he said, leveling his gaze with the young man’s, “so long as you commit to not getting in my way.” His tone softened, only slightly, a note of caution threading through the iron. “It is not my intention to see harm befall you. What I seek here is dangerous, even for me, and that is why it has been locked away so far from the comforts of civilization.”

He lifted a hand, gesturing to the stone walls and the gloom that surrounded them, letting the weight of the place speak as much as his words. “This is Sinner’s Well. A fortress raised by a Mandalorian named Isley Verd, though the Galaxy knew him better as Darth Metus. When he ruled the southern systems through his Confederacy, this was his home, the crucible where he pushed the Dark Side to its very limits. Horrors were made here, as well as masterpieces.”

His hand dropped, but he lifted a finger, pointing it toward the young man. “And speaking of born, you should know that this place is warded by magicks both ancient and terrible. Only those of Darth Metus’ direct blood could see the doors open to receive them.”

Aether’s thumb moved to his chest, the metal of his gauntlet clicking softly against the beskar there. “I am Aether Verd, son of Isley Verd, Mand’alor of the Mandalorian Empire.” His eyes narrowed with a sharp, assessing glint, though not without a thread of acceptance beneath it. “And if you are standing here before me, called to this place as it opened for you, then it stands to reason that you too are another of the many souls I call brother.”​

Acier Moonbound

 

[Acier Moonbound]

Location: Ryloth - Sinner's Well

Equipment:
Standard Outfit | Lightsaber | Modified DL-27

It couldn't be this easy could it? The Mandalorian was going to just give him answers for barely anything in return? For so long it was always just more questions with every new discovery he made but now... he was about to get what he'd searched for for so long. Ace nodded, complying with the Mandalorian's request.

Then he listened to all of it. What Sinner's Well was, its purpose, Isley Verd or Darth Metus, and who he was - then finally, the Mandalorian introduced himself too. Aether Verd, Metus' son and... the ruler of the Mandalorians. Ace really had just met the Mandalorian Empire's leader. His eyes beamed with curiosity.

Though, what came next felt like the entire galaxy had just disappeared around him. Aether called him brother. Which meant that his father was... was Isley Verd, Darth Metus. Since his birth, all these long years, Acier finally had one half of an answer he'd been searching for. The identity of his father. Acier subconsciously took a slight step back, eyes shifting to his left and right. His face went as white as his locks.

"I--I..." he stammered, incapable of finding the words.

This was all so surreal, it felt like everything and nothing at the same time. Like a huge weight had been lifted off of his chest, but now had been replaced with something else. Ace struggled to process everything - the abruptness of Aether's revelation, the implications of it all, the desire to learn more about their family, and so much more.

And Aether? That was a shock too... he had a brother, and by the sounds of it, even more out there. Not only that, but his brother was the ruler of the Mandalorian Empire! Ace didn't get excited by a lot of things, but this? Knowing the greatness of his lineage, his family, after believing himself to have come from nothing. Something about it felt vindicating.

Despite it all, Ace steeled himself, breathing deeply he was able to muster one sentence.

"...where is he? Our father." he asked, shortly before feeling the need to introduce himself to his brother "I'm Acier. Acier Moonbound, by the way."

Aether Verd
​

 

[Aether Verd]

Assets: Beskar'gam | Basilisk
Darksaber | Resolute Dawn​

SINNER'S WELL

Aether’s eyebrow lifted as Acier stepped back, his expression unreadable for a moment. It was unfortunate how accustomed he had become to this conversation, but such was the legacy of their father. Isley Verd had taken the notion of sowing wild oats and turned it into a lifelong ambition, scattering pieces of himself across the stars with reckless devotion.

He remained silent, watching with a quiet intrigue as Acier wrestled with the truth that had just been dropped into his hands. It made sense that the young man would ask, that the discovery of his sire’s identity would kindle the desire to meet him face to face, to grasp the piece of himself that had always been missing.

Aether shrugged lightly, the motion rolling across his shoulders as the beskar plates shifted. “As far as I am aware, our father drifts between the Shiraya Expanse and Jutrand. It is difficult to say exactly where he is at any given moment, and I do not make it a point to keep up-to-the-minute tabs on his whereabouts.” His voice remained even, steady in the dim light of the Well. “But if you wish, I can give you the means to contact him when you are ready.”

His head tilted, eyes narrowing slightly as he considered the name that had been given. “Moonbound.” he repeated, letting the word roll off his tongue before a low chuckle escaped him. “Acier Verd sounds far better, at least in my opinion, though I will admit I am biased.”

His hand lifted, gesturing toward the spindle that had led Acier here. “Tell me, Acier. What did that bone show you that brought you to the Well? What is it that you are hoping to find within these walls, aside from the truth we have uncovered here today?”​

Acier Moonbound

 

[Acier Moonbound]

Location: Ryloth - Sinner's Well

Equipment:
Standard Outfit | Lightsaber | Modified DL-27

Acier listened to Aether attentively, and with baited breath. Revealing the potential location of their father - somewhere between the Shiraya Expense and Jutrand. Just knowing he was somewhere in those regions, that he was tangible... Ace expected to jump at the chance to meet him. But, something stirred within him, it felt like reluctance. Anxiousness and fear over the idea of finally coming face to face with his father.

"I... I don't know..." he said softly, nervousness in his tone "Maybe. But... thank you, though." he wasn't quite ready to meet him. Not just yet.

He wasn't sure but, Acier suspected a twinge of resentment come from Aether as he spoke of Metus. Was there bad blood between them, or strain? If there was... it made sense. It seemed that with all the siblings they had scattered across the galaxy, he'd imagined Metus wasn't a present father - looking at himself as an example. But now he was just making assumptions over what could very well be nothing. After all, he didn't know Aether.

A small smirk tugged at his lips, followed by a light snicker. Acier Verd. It did have a nice ring to it, and sure, he was a Verd by blood but... Moonbound. That was the name he carried when he had nothing. When the galaxy called him nobody, and he refused to disappear. That name still mattered, maybe now more than ever.

"It's the name they gave me at the orphanage. Back on Bonadan. Their idea of a joke, I guess." even if he was named ironically. That name carried him through every shadow the galaxy could throw at him.

He shoved his hands in his pockets, inflating his cheeks with air as he pondered Aether's question. Then he let out a deep exhale, gaze lowered to his boots. What the bone showed him? He wasn't even completely sure himself, but he tried his best to answer.

"It showed me... this place, and the Force sort of guided me here, I guess."

He didn't know how to explain it, if what he was saying was even right. Despite the Jedi holocron's basic training, he still barely understood the Force itself. Ace's eyes rose to meet Aether's once more, expression softening slightly.

"I was here hoping I'd find some information, anything, about my parents..." he dryly chuckled through his nostrils "Got way more than I bargained for meeting you. Now? I don't know. I guess I have more questions, who my mother was and... why they left me."

He broke eye contact after that, allowing a crack of vulnerability to leak to the surface. Whenever he dwelled on his parents, their reasons for leaving him to grow up alone on Bonadan - it pained him. Ace gently shook his head and his gaze snapped back to Aether.

"You said you were looking for something here. Something dangerous. What?" he paused for a moment, but he stared intensely into his brother's eyes both determined and curious "Maybe I can help."

He offered, patting the lightsaber hidden behind his jacket on his belt. He didn't know how to use it properly, but he was scrappy, had the Force to guide him - and a Mandalorian older brother. What could go wrong?

Aether Verd
​