Private Crystal Hell.

[Darth Virelia]

"Hard choices require hard minds."

Tags - Raef Malstadt

The chamber was not the same one from before.

This room—deeper within the Polis Massan citadel—was darker, quieter, more angular in its design. The walls absorbed not just sound, but certainty. Blue light from the holotable carved long shadows across the polished stone floor, casting Serina as a silhouette behind a veil of starlit geometry.

Raef stood at attention before her, still new—still raw—but no longer uncommitted.
And now, it was time to test what she had purchased.

Serina did not look up immediately. She let the silence linger, a thin sheet of ice stretched over something vast and dark beneath. When she finally raised her gaze, it was with that same infuriatingly elegant gravity, as though she was not looking at him—but through him, down the long corridor of what he would become.

"You have accepted service," she said, the words flowing like oil across durasteel. "Now you will be put to use."

She gestured, and the holotable flared to life—rendering in crisp relief the jagged topography of a world that few in Sith space even remembered by name.

Orax.
A dust-choked frontier world long forgotten by most, independent by virtue of obscurity. No government strong enough to provoke Sith retaliation. No defense grid capable of withstanding orbital assault. But beneath its barren surface, veins of crystalline compounds ran deep—minerals refined into energy matrices suitable for starship reactors, lightsabers, and arcane foci alike.

"Outside the Empire's sphere. Outside its laws. Unaligned, unguarded... unguarded, but not unclaimed." Serina's voice held no anger, no joy—only intention. "That makes it perfect."

She turned her eyes back to him. They were cold, but not indifferent. This was not malice—it was strategy. It was architecture.

"A private operation, sanctioned by my personal writ, not the Assembly's. Off-the-books. We will use a series of ancient smuggler routes—reforged, expanded, and concealed through the shadow of Polis Massa's natural terrain—to bypass the Blackwall entirely. We will exit Sith space without notice. We will return the same way. There will be no record of this expedition. No request for permissions. No need for political theatre."

Her fingers danced across the controls. The hologram shifted. Now it showed orbital approach paths, encrypted signal routes, and—highlighted in blood-red—one jagged scar deep in the planet's southern hemisphere: a crystal mine perched atop an old tectonic fault.

"This is your target."

She spoke the words with an elegance that stripped them of drama, but none of their weight.

"You will be deployed via orbital drop alongside several of my other assets—mercenaries, saboteurs, blackcell commandos. Your role is to secure this mine intact. Not scorched. Intact. The compound is fortified, but undermanned. Their equipment is outmoded. They will not expect a strike from orbit. Still—brutality must be executed with discipline. Break them quickly, and you will inherit the mineral flow unimpeded. Break them messily, and we waste time extracting what should already be in transit."

She stepped away from the holotable and toward him, circling slowly, as if re-measuring his frame for a suit of armor he did not yet deserve to wear.

"This is not a battle. It is a demonstration—of my reach, and of your utility. This world exists in a blind spot, tucked beneath the folds of a galaxy too distracted to care. That makes it ours."

She stopped in front of him, voice lowering, eyes sharp.

"And ours alone. The Sith Empire cannot know of this yet. We will feed the mineral shipments into my internal projects on Polis Massa. Requisition flows will be masked as repurposed asteroid yields. Any mention of Orax will be redacted before it reaches the Bureau's archives."

The air grew colder. Not from temperature—but from truth.

"You are a knife I am sending into flesh not yet aware it has been cut. Do not fail me. Do not improvise unless improvisation is what survival demands. And above all: do not pity them."

There was no rage in her voice. Only precision.

"They are not innocents. No one is. If they had the strength, they would do this to you. The only difference is that they did not act quickly enough."

She returned to her place behind the desk, and now, finally, her tone shifted—just slightly. A current of iron expectation beneath the cold surface.

"You will deploy in twenty hours. Your team will brief at station THETA-9—ask for Commander Selik. He will give you your drop coordinates and authentication cipher. When you land, you will take the mine. Then you will hold it. And when my freighters arrive masked under Polis Massa mining ID codes, you will hand it over and vanish like smoke into the next assignment."

A pause. A final glance. A quiet, crushing pressure disguised as polite observation.

"And if you succeed," she added, voice low and deliberate, "there will be more. Better. Bloodier. You are not here to serve, Raef. You are here to ascend."

She turned her back to him, returning her gaze to the maps and lights of a galaxy she had already begun to dissect.

"You are dismissed."

No fanfare.
No applause.
Only the slow turning of another gear in a machine that would one day reshape empires.

 

[Raef Malstadt]

Who are you willing to become?
​

---

Tags: Darth Virelia

He was starting to get used to it; everything becoming easier when the thoughts were cut short and never an ounce of acknowledgement was given toward one's self. This was the life Raef was willing to sacrifice for, to be put to use just like a cog inside of a machine, to turn endlessly with the same rhythmic motion, to die never once blinking in the face of certain death.

These coming days, months, years were to be a restructuring project. He was no longer a soldier, but instead a professional. The days of clinging so closely to doctrine had vanished and the mind for his fellow man had darkened into an unknowable void, its depth endless like a night sky without stars, its very occupation of space twisted with the colors of contempt.

Crimson would flow, and the credits too.

For all the worth every life had, for all the lives lost so that he could survive. This was his final, passing thought of them.

How easy it was for Serina to shift Raef's spirit, how eager he was to refine his edge into a thing to be feared across the galaxy.

Being escorted away from the briefing, Raef could only hear the Sith's words echoing within his skull, the persistence of promise and of death. Ascension.

His contracts previous to this were only small scale - cleaning up undesirables, skeleton crew operations, lonesome travels far into the Outer Rim due to smuggling and piracy, crews of strangers he'd never talk to again in his life. This should be no different, yet somehow it felt far more wide in scope than anything else he'd experienced.

Expendable until he wouldn't be anymore, that is how he would remain steadfast. That is what his mind would focus on.

For now he would run a diagnostic on his weapons and gear, tools of the trade that he so heavily relied upon. Scars and depressions upon the torso, peppered with scorch marks and pockets where shrapnel and piercing ammunition had settled. A datapad came to life showing a history of previous conflicts, injuries, types of weaponry encountered.

COMPREHENSIVE OF MEDICAL CRISIS:

• HEAD TRAUMA x3
• SEIZURE BROUGHT ON BY EXTERNAL HAZARD x5
• BURST BLOOD VESSELS x2
• INTERNAL ORGAN FAILURE x5
• SEVERE BURNS x3
• MALNUTRITION x10
• DEHYDRATION x10
• BONE FRACTURE x4
• MENTAL COLLAPSE x ???

He would make his mark. He would go beyond the will of every man before him. The datapad chimed with a notification, his time until departure soon approaching. He would need to be ready.

He began the process of suiting up, feeling the weight with each piece that was added to his body.

Time to begin again.

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Hard choices require hard minds."

Tags - Raef Malstadt



The room was silent again.

Raef was gone.

Not dismissed like a subordinate. Not discharged like a veteran. Simply—gone, as a tool is returned to its drawer after its purpose has been reaffirmed. Outside, somewhere in the bowels of Polis Massa's hidden docks, his boots would echo down the same basalt corridors that had swallowed thousands before him. Most had walked those halls thinking themselves unique. Almost none had been. Raef… might be.

Serina did not stand.

She remained where she was—seated behind the obsidian-slab desk that dominated the command chamber. Fingers steepled lightly. Shoulders relaxed. Spine straight. Her eyes, however, remained fixed not on the console or the holoscreen flickering beside her—but on a small, worn datapad that lay facedown at the edge of her desk.

It had belonged to another mercenary. One long discarded. She hadn't deleted its data.

Always study your failures.

The pad remained untouched. Forgotten by some. Useful to her.

She turned slightly, issuing no verbal command, but the motion was enough. The room's automated systems registered her presence shift and brought forth a layered projection—live telemetry from Raef's quarters, medical scans, weapon diagnostics, suit calibration. She watched the readouts cascade, but not with clinical detachment.

She watched them with intent.

Scars. Broken ribs. Ocular hemorrhaging. Lapses in neural conductivity. Psychological tremors traced like hairline fractures down the spine of his soul. The litany of failure—and survival. Not worthy of pity. Worthy of use.

A lesser mind would see these things as damage. Serina saw them as traits. Qualities of interest. Ingredients.

She tapped two fingers once against the side of the holotable.

"He is already rebuilding," she said softly, the words spoken to no one—yet ringing like law. "That is the sign."

A pause.

Then, a second voice—synthetic, low, female—crackled from an unseen comm embedded in the desk.

:: Field status: initiating zero-hour readiness. Shipyards are staging sleeper runs now. Drop trajectories locked for re-entry masks. Do you wish to open formal theater command? ::

Serina did not answer immediately. Instead, she reached out and gently turned the datapad over.

The past faced upward again. Useless sentiment in most hands.

But not in hers.

"No," she said at last, voice dry silk drawn across the edge of a glass. "There is no theater. Not yet."

She stood slowly, each movement deliberate, as though she were peeling herself out of a former shape. She let her fingers trail along the map—Orax's jagged mountain ridges, its crystal veins glowing faintly with outdated mining overlays—and stopped at one cluster near the southern pole.

"Send auxiliary recon flights. Low-orbit, passive scans only. Let them see shadows. I want rumors on local channels before the assault. Let the panic build." Her tone sharpened, but not in volume. It tightened—like a noose behind polished words. "No alarms. Dread. Dread is worth more than any orbital cannon."

:: Confirmed. ::

Serina allowed a thin, private breath—more gesture than necessity—and folded her arms behind her back. She did not speak again for some time. When she finally did, it was not a command, but an epitaph spoken in anticipation of deeds not yet committed.

"They call what we do cruelty. They see it as indulgence. A savagery of tyrants."

She turned slowly from the map, stepping toward the viewport, where the ghostlight of the dead planet's surface cast her silhouette in pale angles.

"But the truth, Raef," she murmured to the dark, to the cold, to the silence itself, "is that order must begin somewhere. And if no one else will bloody their hands to lay the foundation…"

She raised one hand and placed her palm lightly against the glass.

"…then I will."

The void beyond did not answer. But it didn't need to.

She had already spoken enough.

The descent had begun.



[ORBITAL DROP – Orax, 00:23 Local Time]

The stars had vanished.

No horizon. No moonlight. No welcoming sprawl of cities. Just the black. The kind of black that didn't end where your eyes stopped working—but where light itself had never dared to touch.

Inside the drop pod, the only illumination came from the faint glow of Raef's visor HUD and the flickering tactical panel to his right. A red strobe pulsed above the door, synchronized to his breathing, as if mocking the last vestiges of humanity clinging to the inside of his chest.

AUTOMATED STATUS: STAGING COMPLETE.
BURN SEQUENCE INITIATING.

The pod shuddered.

Thrusters screamed to life, punching through Polis Massa's shadow with a muted thunder that only grew louder as gravity reclaimed him. He was no longer drifting—he was falling. Not as a soldier. Not as a man. As a sharpened instrument, sheathed in composite plating and preordained violence.

Around him, five other drop pods entered their terminal descent in formation. Mercenaries drawn from Serina's private network—each vetted, compartmentalized, expendable. None of them spoke. There was no chatter on the line. Only silence and the boil of re-entry.

The clouds came next—if you could call them that. Toxic silicate vapor layered like diseased gauze over the planet's surface, refracting his pod's landing lights in greasy halos. Through that haze, the mine appeared at last: a half-buried facility wrapped around a tectonic fissure, its skeletal conveyor towers clawing into the sky like broken fingers.

IMPACT IN: 10 SECONDS.
MOTION SENSORS DETECTED.
UNSHIELDED LIFEFORMS WITHIN 200 METERS OF LANDING ZONE.

The mine was active.

Whether defenders or laborers, it didn't matter. They would soon be the same—flattened beneath the logic of Serina's war machine. A logic Raef now embodied.

The pod slammed into the dirt with a brutal crunch of alloy and bone-rattling inertia. Hydraulic locks disengaged. Steam hissed from the seams. The door blew outward in a shower of gravel and ash, revealing the choking gray of Orax's fractured dusk.

Raef emerged.

Boots hit stone. Air filters auto-adjusted to the atmosphere. His HUD flashed immediate contact markers—scattered, disorganized, panicking. Fleeing figures. Gunfire—sporadic, uncertain.

The enemy wasn't prepared. Not for this.
But he was.

Above, the other pods impacted in staggered rhythm—thud-thud-thud—punctuating the silence with rhythm, like war drums buried beneath ash. His comms lit up with identifiers for his fellow operators: CORDEN (Demolitions), SELVACH (Electronic Warfare), IYARA (Sniper Overwatch), and two untagged units marked only by designation codes. Clean. Anonymous.

No leaders. No hierarchy. Only results.

Raef's briefing had been clear. He was to breach the facility's eastern arm—an auxiliary shaft leading into the central crystal excavation zone—and hold it until Serina's "collection teams" arrived. Alive, if possible. Dead, if necessary. What mattered was the mine. The rest was scenery.

A panicked voice cracked over local comms—civilian frequency, old world dialect. "W-we've got landers! Sound the evac—oh stars, they're already in the—!"

It cut off.
A scream replaced it.
Then silence.

The mine was waking to its final hours. And Raef stood at the edge, not as a liberator—but as a catalyst.

This was the start of his war.

OBJECTIVES:

– Breach the EASTERN EXCAVATION SHAFT
– Neutralize resistance (civilian panic acceptable collateral)
– Secure crystal reserves intact
– Hold ground until collection unit makes contact

OPTIONAL:
– Identify any high-value individuals for extraction or interrogation
– Locate alternative exit tunnels for future operations
– Maintain total blackout on Sith origin

 

[Raef Malstadt]

"You've got new blood on this, make it count..."
​

---

Tags: Darth Virelia

It was the first mission where nobody uttered a word; almost as if they were droids, no need for banter or feathered rhetoric, simple and to the point with nothing but efficiency in mind. Commander Selik didn't regard Raef with much other than the slightest of nods, and about as little care upon his features.

His words to them all before zero hour were streamlined, much of the same he'd already digested from Serina's information. Everything went just as she described, and he entered his drop pod with nothing but an eerie stillness to follow. An emptiness to hold in his mind and heart.

Raef let himself detach from everything in that capsule. All of the rage, all of the emotions he didn't have words to speak on, the lack of having a vision in order to shape the object of his desire. His end goal.

This would be an endless endeavor, something that would repeat on and on until the bones themselves become the minerals of whatever planet his corpse rots on. Wherever he would happen to meet his end, some part of him did desire something sunny, perhaps on a beach elsewhere.

Down into the mines, down into darker pits hunting those that hid and ran for safety. A safety they could've had, if only whomever had employed them for their services had the credits to counter such an unfortunate fate.

At first he watched the others dig in - their blasters and specialized personal effects making short work of any access restriction, personnel, or defensive measure put in place. It was ruthless and made Raef's heart sink somehow lower into a part of his stomach that didn't physically exist.

He slung his LMG over his shoulder by its strap and unholstered his sidearm - blaster bolts over slug rounds seemed a tad more appropriate; less mess, still the same result. It worked for him, and it would have to suffice Serina. He raised his weapon and expended four bolts, striking down three crew members - his aim was focused, but his nerves were troubled.

Behind his visor sweat was beading upon his brow, his breathing steady and correct; an unknown voice filled his ears as he cautiously moved closer towards the coordinates he received. "You've got new blood on this, make it count..." SELVACH uttered.

A large shutter door slid upward into a stone wall, Raef stepped forward slowly, scanning his corners and clearing rooms. Explosions could be heard in a farther, western area of the facility followed by a cacophony of blaster fire. All vitals from every mercenary serving were green, all was going as planned.

"En route to secure reserves, setting marker on entry point - other points of interest will be pinged."

Precise, surgical, no nonsense. That was the job, and he'd do just that.

"Do try to incapacitate any higher authority wandering about - I'd hate for this to be my first assignment and I don't show my enthusiasm. Over and out."

No leaders, no hierarchy, only excellence.

Only proof that she was correct in choosing him.

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Hard choices require hard minds."

Tags - Raef Malstadt



The deeper Raef moved, the louder the mine began to scream.

It wasn't sound in the traditional sense—not just blaster fire or collapsing architecture—it was the warping of atmosphere, the pressure of fear expanding like gas inside a sealed container. Cracks were forming. Human ones.
And Raef was the tip of the spear driving into them.

Behind him, SELVACH's comms channel clicked off without ceremony. Ahead, a winding steel corridor descended into the belly of the mine—angled lighting flickering where power had already begun to fail. Red emergency strips painted the walls in blood-light, illuminating the abandoned tools and dropped datapads of those who thought they still had time.

A harsh scream echoed down the shaft—cut short. Then another, farther off.

CRACK-CRACK.

Return fire somewhere deeper in the complex. Scattered. Desperate. His HUD parsed it: old-model slugthrowers. Inaccurate. Loud. Panicked.

A perfect theater for domination.

– PRIMARY SHAFT — POINT OF ENTRY.
– CRYSTAL STORAGE VAULT: 3 LEVELS BELOW.
– CURRENT DISTANCE: 87 METERS.

Raef's marker pinged green on the team's tac-net.

CORDEN and the unmarked unit dubbed G-17 were advancing on the north loading corridor. Explosives placed. Minimal resistance. Clean breach. Efficient.

Raef's own progress was about to meet resistance far more personal.

A security gate three doors ahead slammed shut—manual override, not automated. Someone was trying to lock down the vault.

"Manual lockdown detected," IYARA chimed in dryly. "One shooter, maybe two beyond the gate. You've got ten seconds before they try to reroute power and drop the ceiling hatch. Might want to move, new blood."

9 seconds.

A shriek of metal echoed overhead as a crossbeam dislodged. Dust rained down. Sparks kissed the hallway.

8 seconds.

Raef's HUD lit red. Lifeforms converging—heat signatures behind the wall to the right. Two bodies, mid-motion. Civilian garb. No weapons visible.

They were trying to escape through an unmarked crawl tunnel—a shortcut used by workers to bypass the heavy elevator system.

They hadn't seen him yet. Not truly.

7 seconds.

The wall trembled. The gate lock began its hiss-click cycle.

"Vault access closing, Malstadt," Selik's voice barked now, cutting through the comms like a vibroblade through bone. "Move."

 

[Raef Malstadt]

"Move."
​

---

Tags: Darth Virelia

• WALL SECTION C-5 WEAKNESS DETECTED! BREACH POSSIBLE.
• EXTREME KINETIC FORCE RECOMMENDED.

6 seconds.

There was a weakness spotted in the wall where the heat signatures came from, as if it had been broken and sealed over again - bits of debris and rock masking it to appear like the rest of environment. Holstering his sidearm, Raef retrieved his LMG and aimed directly at the wall ahead, squeezing the trigger hard as a mechanical whirring announced the heavy repeater's readiness.

A volley of slug rounds slammed into the weakened surface - a thick cloud of dust kicked into Raef's visor, shards of brittle binding agents and stone itself scratching up his helmet. A small crack forming in the transparisteel, but it didn't matter now. Repair costs weren't a new concept, a good quarter of his pay would be spent on just that. Should any functional components be thrashed, then it's going to be a downgrade.

5 seconds.

Raef could feel vibrations through the floor and all around him, the ceiling above about to give way. Throwing the sling of his weapon over his shoulder, he charged forward in an attempt to break through the wall but was met with a disheartening thud. There was still something blocking the way. He tried for it again, backing up and throwing himself harder.

3 seconds.

Alarms and crying steel announced themselves, his final warning had been given. Another panicked attempt to escape was unleashed upon the wall, Raef bursting through to the other side, falling face first onto the ground. He lay there momentarily to catch his breath, blinking several times to clear his vision.

As he picked himself up from the dust and rubble, a deafening roar nearly ruptured his ear drums as he scrambled away from the place that was almost his tomb. Free burial and all. The grip of his blaster pistol dirtied by his glove as he drew it once more, confined to the smaller size of the tunnel he now walked inside of.

"Raef here. Still pursuing targets, moving on last known position. Pinging current location - there's a chance for comms to get spotty the deeper I traverse. Over."

He moved inward, his HUD switching back to thermal detection - a brief glimpse of movement up ahead, the face of a stranger peeking around a corner before disappearing into darkness. "YOU! STOP!"

The space he had to operate in was becoming cramped, much more than he could've anticipated at a moment's notice. Raef let out a defeated sigh.

"Safest way through? I'm sure this wasn't planned for, and it's not like I have a blueprint of this place. Help me get this done if you want results."

A bit irritated, but not dead yet.

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Hard choices require hard minds."

Tags - Raef Malstadt



The tunnel groaned behind him.
Steel, stone, and reinforced alloy folded inward with a predatory finality, collapsing the breach Raef had just forced open. Timing. A second later and he'd be entombed—alive, forgotten, stripped of purpose. The mine didn't want him here. But it no longer had a choice.

Raef pushed forward, the narrow crawlspace bending like a half-formed spine. The walls were close—too close. They pressed on his shoulders, on his nerves, on the fractured glass web forming across his visor. Every step dragged sediment. Every breath tasted of iron and ash.

And yet—

The deeper he went, the hotter it became. Not temperature—presence. Tension thickened around him, viscous and clinging. The fear of prey. The anticipation of violence. He wasn't just in a tunnel. He was inside the throat of something trying very hard not to choke.

His thermal HUD flickered. Once. Twice.

Then contact.
Three signatures—clustered twenty meters ahead behind a modular storage hatch, crude plating peeled back just enough to form cover. One held a rifle. Another crouched low, body language suggesting injury. The third was pacing in a tight line, gesturing frantically. Arguing.

[AUDIO INTERCEPT – UNSECURED CHANNEL]
"—we stay and hold, we die here! You think they'll keep us alive if we give up?"
"Shut up, Brek! Just shut—what the hell was that?"
"They sent one guy? What the hell kind of freak—"

They saw him.

Raef's presence triggered a fusillade. Wild. Staggered. Rounds sparking off the tunnel wall and ricocheting past his head, one slug biting into the shoulder plate of his armor hard enough to jerk his torso mid-step. HUD registered integrity drop. Bruise. No penetration.

But they were trying to kill him. That counted.

A fourth signature flared to life behind the others—cold compared to the rest. No panic. No talking. Deliberate. The shape raised something long and sharp, lean—a cutting laser. Industrial. High-output. Improvised into a field weapon.

They were setting a trap.
Not for victory. But to bury him along with the mine.

Static flared through the tac-net. SELVACH's voice broke through, distorted and laughing.

:: "Tunnel readings spiking. They're gonna cut the roof and drop half a metric ton on your pretty helmet. You're on your own for now. Pathfinding algorithms can't get past the interference." ::
:: "So either improvise—"
:: "—or die photogenically." ::

 

[Raef Malstadt]

"Either improvise... or die photogenically."
​

---

Tags: Darth Virelia

He couldn't let them have this one. For as desperate as they are in this circumstance, for as much confusion circling their minds, their deaths would be a cure-all for any inconvenience to their lives. Another slug round struck Raef's plating, each concussive score upon his frame yanking him slightly backwards, integrity falling at a more considerable rate than realized.

• SEMI-PUNCTURE DETECTED! INTERNAL BRUISING SUSTAINED!
• SUIT INTEGRITY REACHING 78% DEFENSIVE CAPABILITY.
• STRESS LEVLES RISING, SEEK COVER.

Raef leveled his sidearm at his would-be assailants and began dumping bolts aimed at center mass. All of them ducked for cover, two behind what appeared to be an excavation tool - its appearance old and rusted, metal becoming warped and melted by the burning resin now made from its own, obsolete bulk.

One of the targets screamed out as a bolt succeeded in ripping through his right shoulder - wailing and begging to kill the thing that'd been sent to dismantle their operations, to bleed dry the hard work that would only ever be recognized by the ones able to benefit from it. Their contributions would be put to greater use.

The man's cries ceased shortly after he was struck.

One down.

The ceiling was becoming increasingly unstable - Raef quickened his pace and began charging violently with an inhuman burst of speed, slamming himself into the crude barricade with as much force as he could muster; crying scrap wailed as the machine began to topple over slowly, the stragglers coming to their senses and darting away, forcing them into the open, forcing them to fight.

Just as Raef had one of the remaining in his sights, a lone discharge was heard - a slug impacting his visor, shattering it against his face and embedding itself into his flesh; reeling back, Raef screamed out in pain, ripping the helmet from his suit and throwing it full force. Ultrachrome met teeth, face shredded into ribbons and awful chunks of ripped meat.

Two down.

The body of the shooter slumped to the ground with a wet slosh and thud - a cutting laser now peeling back the shoulder guard of Raef's armor, breaking it free. A deep searing pain set in, the familiar maddening glow of fever-yellow cybernetic eyes shined with intent. Once more the ceiling began to rumble, large chunks of stone and clouds of dust fell hard - the air heavy and chalky. Blood teased Raef's tongue, his throat dry and sore from inhaling dust.

Vision was obscured, now was the chance.

"I'm done now."

Realizing he still had his primary weapon slung to his body - Raef pulled it around and squeezed the trigger, priming it the same as before and unleashing a torrent of slugs in the general direction of the target. For a moment or two there was a discernable silhouette of a near-human, now only remained the mulch and bits of a valiant attempt. That didn't stop the ceiling from collapsing.

Three down.

Raef looked everywhere for an escape, noticing that there was a maintenance door that led possibly deeper in. While his helmet was destroyed, his wrist-pad still remained functional. "Raef here... injuries sustained, targets eliminated. Proceeding." His words were tired, ragged. During the haze of combat, the remaining survivor managed to hide themself away, slinking off into another section.

He spit blood upon the dirt, quickly making his exit towards the next challenge. The room behind him no longer accessible.

• SEVERE BURNS SUSTAINED! FRAGMENTATION DETECTED! OPEN WOUNDS DETECTED!
• SUIT INTEGRITY 68% DEFENSIVE CAPABILITY.
• STRESS LEVELS CRITICAL, SEEK MEDICAL AID IMMEDIATELY.

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Hard choices require hard minds."

Tags - Raef Malstadt



The door slammed behind him with a violent sigh, the kind that buildings exhale when they've just buried someone. A tremor rolled through the mine's bones as the ceiling finally collapsed behind him—sealing off the killing floor in a tomb of ash and blood and twisted heat. The lights above flickered once, twice… then held.

Dim. Yellow. Uneven. Like a heartbeat in cardiac arrest.

The tunnel was narrower here—denser, carved through rock and machinery not meant to be walked by anything larger than a maintenance droid. The air hung wet with coolant vapor and copper dust, creating a chemical tang that coated the tongue. Every footstep echoed, a metallic thud chased by its own ghost down the line.

And then… stillness.

There was no immediate sound of conflict here. No blaster reports. No screams. No comms chatter. Just the low rumble of distant machinery still running, somewhere deep within the veins of this dying complex. Systems still believed there was a mine to run. Systems did not understand conquest. Systems did not understand Serina Calis.

A wall panel flickered up ahead—still active, still logged into a foreman's account. Either someone had fled mid-command or someone was still watching.

LOCAL DIRECTORY:

REACTOR FEED / NORTH (UNSECURED)

CRYSTAL SORTING / EAST (SEALED)

PERSONNEL HOLDING / SOUTHWEST (LOCKED)

UNKNOWN NODE / DOWN SHAFT (UNREGISTERED PATHWAY)

Raef's location marker blipped faintly on the tac-net. Selik had seen it, but there was no reply. No confirmation. The system was degrading—magnetic feedback from the collapses likely severing network stability.

He was off the leash now.

A soft skittering sound echoed down the hallway. Not metallic. Organic. Fast.

Movement.

Just past the wall to the left—behind the old coolant lines. Shadows shifted.
Motion sensor ping. Intermittent. Bipedal. Not tagged. No IFF.

Whoever had fled the carnage had made it this far. And they weren't running anymore. They were waiting. Either cornered and desperate—or calculating. Either was a problem.

Then, something else.

A door down the hall—not the unregistered shaft—shuddered violently, hissed open three inches, then stalled. Gears half-engaged. Power flickering. Inside, a low humming, higher-pitched than anything running out here. Faint, but growing louder.

Energy reading: volatile. Unstable.

Perhaps a weapon cache. Perhaps a ruptured generator. Perhaps something more alive.

The air pressure shifted. Not atmospheric. Instinctual. The Force itself, faint as smoke, dragged its tongue along the corridor like a predator checking for entry wounds. Something old had brushed past this place once—and the residue clung like rot to the walls.

Time was short.

Behind, the tunnel would be unstable for hours—if it even existed anymore.
Ahead lay a final gauntlet of choices. And somewhere within the maze of heat and failure…

...the mine's last survivor.

And the truth behind why Serina Calis wanted this place taken intact.

 

[Raef Malstadt]

Rust & Sweat...
​

---

Tags: Darth Virelia

It was hotter than hell in here. Oxygen so finite that each draw into Raef's lungs felt like he was hardly breathing at all - short, shallow, almost gasping. His face burned and ached, his body was becoming heavier with each step.

He heard something just now - his mind raced as a strange sensation filled his bones, even his cybernetics; an ebb and flow of presence, permeating everything that was. Part of Raef didn't understand why this assignment was taking such a strange turn. Someone knew he was coming - someone expected something to happen.

His gut turned and twisted, his eyes blinking a few times as he looked all around. Nothing felt real now, almost surreal as each descent farther into the facility became like a dream. There were whispers, something trying to slither its way inside Raef's ears with a secret to tell, or a truth that he'd rather not hear. The walls were breathing, synchronized to the rhythm of his lungs expanding and deflating. He didn't wish to acknowledge any of it, pressing on through until he glimpsed the faint glow of a terminal.

"Where the hell are we..." Raef blinked rapidly and wiped at his face, grunting as he did so from the fresh wounds.

He squinted, skimming over the screen until he saw his point of interest. "Sealed... of course. Well I'm not dying in this place, I'm gonna make damn sure of that."

He wasn't alone.

Spinning around and away from the panel, Raef retrieved his blaster pistol and aimed every which way in a panic. This wasn't like him to panic.

He didn't utter a word, didn't even blink again. He swore he saw something moving up ahead.

A malfunctioning door caught his attention as he watched it open - no visuals on a body, no heat signature, nothing except...

There were no words for what was in that room. The closer he walked he swore his name was called, his ears were ringing and a pressure within his skull pushed outward; Raef's teeth grinding together as he tore himself away from his current path, stumbling into a nearby wall as he tried to gather himself. He had to find a way out.

"Dammit all." He shook his head in frustration. Fumbling with his wrist-pad, he barked into it, some saliva dripping onto the display. "I need command NOW! Things are already screwed up, I'm not where I'm supposed to be - the damn lockdown is still in effect, and there's something else down here. When I get back I'm going to feed all of you a whole crate of slugs, you hear me? I will ruin your LIFE!"

He growled, his fists slightly shaking with rage. There was no way to talk to anyone now.

The path he'd chosen would lead him towards the reactor.

He was being followed.

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Hard choices require hard minds."

Tags - Raef Malstadt



The tunnel into the reactor feed wasn't built for men.
It was too narrow, too low—like it had been carved by machines never meant to see daylight, by hands that didn't care for comfort or exit strategies. Everything down here had sharp edges: vent lines hissing with overpressure, conduit cages exposed like vertebrae. And underneath it all, a hum—low, droning, like the planet was groaning in its sleep.

As Raef stepped deeper into the feed corridor, the world grew wet. Steam clung to every surface, coating the steel in a sheen that distorted shadows. His footfalls didn't echo anymore. They were swallowed—devoured. He'd passed the threshold where even his own presence felt unwanted.

The reactor was ahead. Its readout tower flickered dimly through layers of translucent vapor. Ancient, industrial tech—the kind with dials and analog valves. Nothing digital. Nothing that could be traced. A thing not forgotten… but hidden.

And it was still running.

That shouldn't have been possible.

The mine's lockdown should've killed power to the deep systems by now. No one in central command was responding. The storm of combat above should've triggered failsafes, radiation shutters, magnetic core braces. None of them had fired. Something was overriding protocol. Something was keeping this reactor alive.

And just as that realization landed, the silence broke.

A single sound. Light. Subtle.
Behind him.

Metal. Dragging.

Slow. Intentional.
Not scurrying. Not retreating.

Following.

There was no visible source. No motion pings. His HUD was fractured—useless. But the air tightened, that same unnatural pressure curling through the base of his skull. Like a hand resting just behind his eyes, waiting for permission to push.

Then a voice—not over comms. Not in the room.
But in.

<You're too late.>

Not a whisper. A resonance. Like a thought caught between two mirrors.

<They already heard you coming.>
The temperature dropped. Steam crystallized along the top edges of the reactor tower, ice forming where heat should have been dominant. The hum shifted, like an animal changing pitch mid-breath.

From the fog beyond the reactor chamber came a shape.

Not fast. Not violent. Just… present. A humanoid silhouette, taller than standard—its movements slow, deliberate, body language too smooth to be natural, too intentional to be droidic. It stopped halfway down the trench corridor, just at the edge of the steam's veil.

And stood.

Watching.

Then the lights in the hallway blinked out. One. By one. By one.
Until the only illumination left was the soft glow of the reactor core and the faint emergency strips behind him.

The room pulsed with a sound not unlike a heartbeat.
Whump. Whump. Whump.

It wasn't the reactor.

It was beneath the reactor.

There were things sealed here. Buried things. Bound in the old Sith way—chains of radiation and ignorance and distance. But whatever bargain had kept them dormant was unraveling. Maybe Serina knew. Maybe that was why she wanted the mine intact. Not for crystals. Not for conquest.

But to dig deeper.

And now Raef had gone too far to turn back.

 

[Raef Malstadt]

Something wicked this way comes...
​

---

Tags: Darth Virelia

He was in too deep now - close to something he shouldn't be seeing. It wasn't possible for any of the staff in the facility to know about this place, yet somehow it remained in some manner of operation. Beyond understanding, beyond reason, he pressed it down deeper into the back of his skull. Every fiber of Raef's being told him to turn around, to run away, to seek the absent daylight that his eyes ached for.

There would be no light in this place.

Then he heard it.

There was no immediate threat; however, there was certainly fear causing a lump in Raef's throat. He watched as a silhouette came to life, moving itself about in a way that no animal or man could - like a nightmare given shape, It had no want nor... anything that a mere man could discern. It did not attack, it didn't approach further, it watched.

Raef was silent, without words to speak as his heartrate elevated - lank with sweat, eyes burning. Then it became cold.

He couldn't take his eyes away from the thing that stared him down; backing away slowly step by step, Raef tried to think about raising his sidearm, but his body refused to cooperate - his hands nonfunctional. Lights overhead and elsewhere seemingly snuffed themselves, plunging the lonesome mercenary into a near abyss of below zero sight.

A frost-like substance slowly spread over his armor - his wrist-pad, his bones chilled and nerves tensed like organic ropes being knotted impossibly tight. His stomach felt sick, his teeth began to hum. "Wh-who-w?"

Nothing could escape his lips. No response, no retort, nothing.

His head pulsed with the rhythm below the reactor, his mind fading into a bizarre trance. He must get closer, he must understand - or try to. This was the breaking point for Raef, part of him shrinking away and disappearing within the further pits of his psyche.

He moved closer now, turning away from the shadow and dragging his boots with each painful step.

Part of him would be down here forever. Somehow he knew that.

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Hard choices require hard minds."

Tags - Raef Malstadt



The path led downward.

Not deeper in any traditional sense—not by stairs or ladders—but by sensation. The floor sloped subtly, the geometry of the mine warping like it had been reshaped, repurposed by something that didn't care for standard schematics. The stone underfoot was blacker now. Not just burnt—eaten. Like it had absorbed something that light couldn't reclaim.

Steam thinned. Silence thickened.

Raef emerged into a chamber not marked on any known blueprint. A pit hollowed out around the power generator—a thing that no longer resembled any reactor he'd seen before. The machinery had once been industrial—he could still see the bones of it: coil housings, a cracked pressure turbine, the carbon-scored remnants of safety seals. But all of that had been infiltrated, corrupted by a massive crystalline structure at its heart.

It bled light.

Not in color. In wrongness. It pulsed with a rhythm Raef had felt long before he'd seen it—deep beneath the hum of the mine, beneath the reactor's churning—like the core was syncing itself to him. He could feel it in his teeth, like a low chorus of whispers rasping at the edge of meaning. His skin recoiled even without contact, like his nerves knew the thing was not meant to exist.

The crystal wasn't manufactured.

It was grown.

The veins of it stretched outward, fused into the walls, the piping, even the floor itself. At some point in this facility's history, something had taken root. And everything around it—every inch of steel and stone—had complied.

Raef didn't need the Force to know what he was looking at. It screamed in frequencies beyond the Jedi, beyond the Sith.

This was Sith alchemy. Primal. Buried. Breathing.

<It remembers you.>

The thought didn't feel like his. And before he could fight it—before he could move toward the terminal or away from the crystalline monolith—

Gunfire.

Crude. Sudden. Improvised.

The first round struck the metal nearby—sparking off the turbine's casing. A second caught his thigh plate, sliding off with a screech but knocking him back into cover. The air turned instantly hot again, like someone had torn the chill away with a torch.

Shouting echoed across the chamber.

Two survivors.

Miners. Gaunt, wild-eyed, more bones than men. One wore half a breathing rig, the other had wrapped copper wire around his fists and carried what looked like an industrial cutter rigged with a blaster capacitor.

Not soldiers. Not guards. Just desperate.

And armed.

The one with the cutter screamed, "GET AWAY FROM IT—DON'T LET HIM TAKE IT!"

They weren't trying to escape.

They were defending the reactor.

Raef's enemies were no longer just rebels or resource managers. These men had touched the thing behind the walls. Drunk from it. Survived it. And what remained of their minds belonged down here now.

The cutter-wielding one charged.

The other braced and fired again—an arc of plasma blinding in the dark.

And behind it all, the reactor pulse quickened.

Whump. Whump. Whump. Whump.

 

[Raef Malstadt]

In the mouth of madness...
​

---

Tags: Darth Virelia

He mumbled to himself indiscernibly, his eyes so transfixed upon the growth before him; cancerous, tumor-like in how it embedded itself and spread outward, uncaring for the surroundings as it thrummed and chewed its way even deeper. Raef couldn't stop himself from slightly swaying, his flesh itching and crawling on its own accord, or was it?

Crimson began to drip from his nose and leak from his gums, the taste of metal became putrid. A rot within had been named - it had been seen and now there was no trying to deny it. Love, anguish, suffering, acceptance... it was all one. Like mold, it spread and contaminated every ounce of sanity that refused to fall free into oblivion.

Its call was different - not of a siren's song, not of a ballad, but a song of twisting steel and the roaring flames of wrecked dreams. There was only the carcass of Raef's ideals left, dead but deathless in this hour of wordless meaning; time was of no concept, and nor were opinions of mortal lesser men. They could only ever hope to submit, to die on their knees. To die pleading for the beauty that only this crystalline hellscape could offer.

Just as Raef could muster the willpower to push himself onward, shots were fired; he snapped out of it, but not before sustaining a slug to the leg. While not a fatal or critical injury, it sent Raef tumbling to the ground; his head struck obsidian stone hard, his cybernetic eyes flickering slightly as head trauma worsened.

He was barely alive by now, but the voices of others kept him alert. Thoughts of violence returning to him - reasons for keeping himself going.

They were upon him.

Just barely rolling himself away to avoid being struck by the industrial cutter, Raef sent a hard kick into the attacker's shin from the ground, attempting to use his cybernetics as leverage when it came to physical confrontation. If successful, the man's leg would be akin to a gelatinous log with splintered bone now floating freely.

Then came the second one to chance upon him - ranged, sweeping plasma striking Raef directly in his mid-section. He could feel the flesh beneath his plating scorch and burn, the intensity of the energy dispersing through and over him. He screamed for the first time in a while, pain flooded his chest and his heart punched against his sternum with palpitations.

He was sobbing now, weakly grasping at his blaster pistol, raising it to fire blindly into the direction of the shooter. Over and over he squeezed the trigger, watching as each bolt punched through rusted corpses of machines that predated even Raef's time. Aging, but not quite an old man just yet.

"I..."

Raef choked on his own saliva and blood.

"...Will not lose."

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Hard choices require hard minds."

Tags - Raef Malstadt



The first one dropped screaming.

There was a wet, splitting crack as Raef's cybernetic boot shattered the miner's leg at the shin—bone snapping like charred driftwood, the body folding inward before crashing to the ground in a flailing heap of nerves and shredded sinew. The cutter went tumbling, carving a glowing arc into the obsidian floor before hissing into silence.

The man tried to crawl away—tried to beg, maybe, or pray—but the words were lost in his own frothing agony. Something in him had broken that wasn't physical. The conviction was gone now, leaving behind only meat and panic.

The second didn't stop.

The plasma swept in—broad—a glancing but merciless arc that scorched through Raef's plating and lit his chest with pain that didn't flare so much as consume. Nerve endings screamed. Flesh blistered. The scent of burning polymer and blood coiled into the air like incense offered to a blind god.

And the crystal pulsed louder.

Whump. Whump. Whump.

Like it was watching. Like it enjoyed.

Raef's shots fired wildly, blindly—each bolt a prayer spat through cracked lips, each pull of the trigger a middle finger raised at the void. Sparks erupted as old consoles detonated, rusted droids collapsed under blaster fire, and debris scattered like dying stars across the chamber.

Then—connection.

A bolt caught the second attacker in the shoulder. Another slammed into his chest—then his throat. He didn't scream. He simply collapsed, limbs twitching as raw nerve conduction fired blindly in the wake of death. The light from his weapon dimmed.

Silence returned.

Not peace. Never that.

Just the absence of witnesses.

Raef remained on the ground—scorched, bleeding, his armor more ruin than refuge. The chamber stank of blood, heat, and ancient power. And the crystal… it thrummed. Stronger now. Louder. No longer passive. It had seen the blood. It had seen the resolve. And in its own unknowable way, it approved.

Something deeper in the mine shifted.
A low groan. Not tectonic. Not mechanical.

Ritual.

Behind Raef, a secondary console flared to life—automatically. He hadn't touched it. No one had. But it recognized something in him now. Not his credentials. Not his allegiance.

His offering.

On the cracked holoscreen, a single glyph emerged—Sith in origin, but mutated, drawn out like scar tissue around the edge of language. It did not translate. It could not. But it pulsed in time with the crystal.

A new path opened.

The wall behind the crystal hissed, shifted, then retracted. A vertical slit of darkness emerged—leading deeper still into the mine. Into the foundation. Where this thing was planted. Where it waited.

There was no command on the tac-net. No update from Serina. No warnings. Just the long, quiet silence of a system built to observe and never intervene.

Raef had a choice.

Stay here and await evac. Try to contact the surface.
Or step forward. Wounded. Half-dead.
And find out what power looks like before it's shaped.

 

[Raef Malstadt]

"May the mines drink of my blood..."
​

Tags: Darth Virelia

He lay there like he did many nights before this. Wounded on a level that brought his soul down into a trench of mud, consuming him until his last breaths were no longer taking up oxygen. For all he once fought for, it all has become a barely alive thing he kept pushing further into a corner, starving it of the light that once shined in his soul.

Death of the self is a betrayal that runs deeper than any treason, a rot that eats at the heart. This was the final condemnation of Raef Malstadt, a disgusting and perverse trading of morals and pride. Now he no longer resembled anyone, a faceless gun that held no claim of righteousness or distinction as a force for the right reasons.

He checked every mark for the wrong reasons. He knew, somewhere inside, that this was a raw deal.

Yet he committed.

He was hovering over himself, detached from all reality and now at the mercy of the powers at play. Teeth humming like static, every nerve pulsating with liquid fire, his own bones whispered to him. They demanded more.

He regained some semblance of stability, picking himself up from the cold obsidian as blood spilled from his body; suit stability was nonexistent, weaponry didn't hold a significance now. Raef's body shuffled along, not upright nor slouching, but in a tired and pained dragging of muscle and machine that fought against the coming revelation.

Crashing into a nearby wall, he steadied himself and stared deeply into the pitch dark. He saw the things he wish he hadn't taking shape, but he wanted to be closer.

It led him by the hand, he could feel what felt like fingers, curling into his own as they pulled him into the place where a man like him truly didn't belong.

Further down still.

And only further down to go.

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Hard choices require hard minds."

Tags - Raef Malstadt



There were no stairs.

No handholds. No engineered descent.

Just a passage, shaped in a way that felt remembered more than designed—like something ancient had merely pushed its way through the earth and the stone never dared seal it. Raef's boots scraped against uneven obsidian, each step slapping softly into the silence, each breath drawn not for air, but momentum. He wasn't walking. He was drifting. Pulled.

The corridor narrowed. Then widened. Then breathed—or seemed to. No lights. No rails. Just the pulse of the crystal behind him, still thudding its alien rhythm into his blood like the echo of some ancient, beating god.

He no longer bled properly. It had clotted strange. Thick. Dark. His breath fogged the air but the temperature was no longer cold. No—it was neutral. Like the space around him had forgotten how to feel.

And then, a chamber.

A spherical cavity beneath the mine's foundation, dug not by drill or charge, but by ritual. Symbols lined the curved walls, etched deep—not scratched or painted, but embedded like fossilized language. Some writhed when looked at too long. Others blinked in and out of Raef's periphery like dying stars. They didn't speak to him, but they heard him.

The floor wasn't stone. It was some kind of fused alloy—black, smooth, without seam or weld. In its center rose a monolith—half-machine, half-crystal, taller than a walker, shaped like a single blade stabbed hilt-deep into the world. Its surface shimmered with internal motion. A heartbeat without skin.

Raef stood before it.

He was close enough now that he could hear the things beneath its sound. Whispers that no longer spoke in metaphor. That had begun to take shape. He could almost…

PING.
PING.
– CONNECTION RESTORED –

The sound shattered the moment like a hammer through glass.

Raef's HUD blinked. Static. Then coherence.
Comms Reconnected.

:: "…Malstadt? …come again—Raef, if you can hear this, lock in your beacon! We've got movement—too much fething movement. Rerouting to your last marker now. Hold position—do not descend further. Repeat: do not descend." ::

Selik's voice. No longer clipped and cold. It held urgency now. Something almost like concern. He wasn't asking. He was ordering.

A new ping flared on the wristpad—a retrieval squad en route, confirmed visual on his trail three levels up. ETA: forty-five seconds.

And just like that, the veil around Raef shivered.

The monolith's pulse slowed.

The pressure in the air lightened.

Whatever this place had been—whatever it had offered—knew it had lost the moment.

It did not rage.
It simply… went still. Watching.

But not forgiving.

The floor beneath Raef rippled slightly, a subtle vibration rising through his boots. The monolith's surface cracked in a single place—just a hairline—just enough to weep a thin filament of red-black ichor that sizzled where it touched the floor. Like blood spilled from something not yet born.

That was the cost. It had been tasted. The tether would remain.

Raef turned.

And then—

—the walls screamed.

Not with sound—but motion.

From the passage behind came a chaos of footfalls and breath—mercenaries, clad in void-black armor patched with mineral dust, storming in with rifles raised and tactical lights cutting spears through the dark.

"Visual on target!" barked one. "We've got him!"

Three moved ahead—cordon formation. Two fell to Raef's flank. One immediately began a visual scan with a mounted sensor module, and his tone turned grim.

"Sir… there's no data on this place. Not even magnetic return. It's like we're not even in the mine anymore."

Selik himself emerged seconds later, helmet under one arm, face drawn tight. Older than he looked. Eyes sharp, military—but with a thin edge of worry. Not for Raef's wounds. But for what might be following.

He crouched beside Raef without hesitation, grabbing him beneath one arm with mechanical efficiency.

"You should be dead."
Not a question. A statement.

"You're not."

He didn't wait for a reply.

"Bring him up. Stims and evac. We're sealing this godsforsaken sinkhole behind us. Whatever she wanted—he saw it. That's enough."

The squad moved quickly. One attached a compact stim injector to Raef's exposed arm—liquid fire surged through his bloodstream, flooding his nerves with temporary strength, clarity, and a sickening rush of awareness. His heart raced, and for a moment, his vision went white.

The monolith watched.
But did not follow.

And as the team dragged Raef up and out—retracing his own bleeding footprints through the mine's digestive tract—he felt it settling behind him.

The crystal didn't need to kill him. It had marked him. It had touched him.

Outside, the sounds of a shuttle's repulsors beat through the dust—loud, familiar, real. The open chamber of the mine felt like a blessing. Like daylight. Like breath.

As they broke the last corridor and emerged into the open bay, Selik finally turned to him.

"I don't know what you found," he said low, private, "and I don't want to. She'll ask. She always does. And you'll answer. But you and I both know… something looked back."

He gestured to the others.

"Get him into the medbay. I'll file the after-action."

And then Raef was lifted, weightless again, hauled aboard the shuttle like a half-dead prophet returning from some desert where no scripture was ever meant to be written.

Behind him, the mine was already closing.

Seal orders had been issued. Ion charges primed. Access scrubbed from the nav database.

But down in the black, the mark remained.
And the thing behind the crystal still beat.
Still waited.
And now, it remembered a name.

 

[Raef Malstadt]

Aftermath...​

Tags: Darth Virelia

Tears and silence, streaks ran down Raef's face as he stared at the fluorescent lights of the shuttle. He stared so long that his sight became distorted by the blinding white, unmoving and uncaring, his fingers aimlessly running along the damage of his armor.

Nothing made sense anymore, nobody could ever explain away the things that were left inside - quivering, broken, speechless terror and all other manner of feeling. He felt like he was forgetting something, like a part of him was buried back in the mine.

His skin felt hot and strange, an itch underneath the flesh that refused to stop.

Nausea began to bubble up in his guts, but he fought it back down.

His heart felt broken, and with that feeling followed a shadow that wasn't meant to exist in the way it did. It was as if a transaction occurred back in the depths, but Raef had no understanding of his purchase.

He hadn't the slightest inkling of anything that transpired, not anymore.

His eyes fell slowly to the personnel sitting around him, and they too looked back at him with concern. None dared to look Raef in the eyes for long, perhaps only a few seconds before averting their gaze. They didn't wish to be contaminated by whatever was now lurking behind Raef's skull.

He couldn't fight this. He was now passenger and prisoner to the machinations of a beast - a gargantuan god made up of many limbs and tongues, many fingers to point in a direction to die in. Part of him needed that, to be told what to do.

Raef looked out of the shuttle as the stars passed on by - the darkness in-between played tricks on his mind, reaching out like a phantom to caress his brow and head, reaching into his fragile body and leaving its mark within his soul.

It wouldn't leave him alone. He didn't think it ever would.