Duel Dance with the Devil

[Isley Verd]

Assets: Armor | Lightsaber​

ALTIER
The Threaf Homestead

The fields had always been a comfort to Vor Threaf. Rows of golden stalks stretching toward the horizon, a testament to years of sweat and steady hands. The soil was dry but kind, the kind of earth that rewarded patience and punished greed. The wind that morning carried the faint scent of rain, though the skies were clear. To the people of this quiet world, it was another day in the steady rhythm of life.

To Vor Threaf, it was the end of peace.

The Threaf Homestead sat at the edge of a sleepy plain, its fences bowed by time, its roof stitched with repairs made from the wreckage of an old freighter. No one remembered much about the ship anymore. Vor had sold it off long ago, piece by piece, until there was nothing left to tell its story. When neighbors asked, he had spoken kindly, spinning a tale of a man seeking simplicity after years in the Core. His wife, Yara, would smile beside him, her hands still scarred from work she never spoke of. They built a life together. Raised their sons. Buried the past beneath harvest after harvest.

But the past has roots deeper than the soil.

By midday, the homestead felt alive with easy laughter. A young traveler named Acier had passed through their land, his tone polite, his manners careful. Vor welcomed him without suspicion. They ate together on the porch, a humble meal of fresh grain bread and roasted roots. Acier shared tales of distant worlds, and the old couple listened with genuine warmth, their sons vanishing into the fields to gather more from the vines. It was an ordinary kindness. A moment of peace carved from the ordinary fabric of life.

Then the air changed.

It began as a pressure, subtle and cold, a feeling that sank into the skin before the mind could name it. The wind stilled. The birds went silent. Even the insects fled the open air. From the edge of the field, the crops bent under an unseen force, their color draining to ash. The ground cracked, the roots shriveled, and the stench of rot rose in their place...He had arrived.

A tall figure, cloaked in black. His armor gleamed like oil beneath the folds of his robe, the faint lines of crimson runes pulsing along its edges. He did not walk as men walked. Each step seemed to drink from the land, to pull its life into him. His hood was drawn low, but the darkness beneath it moved like a living thing. When he exhaled, the very air trembled.

The first sound to break the silence was a laugh. Low, cruel, and humorless.

Moments later came the sounds of breaking bones. Two sharp cries, then quiet.

Inside, Yara clutched Acier’s arm with trembling fingers. “Go!” she whispered. “Go now.” Vor reached for the old blaster above the mantle, his hands steady despite the fear in his chest. He had known this day would come. He just prayed he’d have more years before it did.

Outside, the Demon waited.

Darth Metus stood in the shadow of the dying field, arms folded across his chest. The Dark Side clung to him like a storm. It rippled in the air around him, unseen but undeniable. When he spoke, his voice carried the gravity of judgment, calm and merciless.

"Such a lovely hovel you've built for yourselves." His tone was steady, deep enough to make the very boards of the homestead groan. “Almost as if...you thought I was lying. Almost as if you thought I'd let you die of old age. Ha!”

He took a slow step forward, his words cutting through the stillness.

“Sadly...I am a man of my word.” he said, his voice growing darker, heavier. “And your debt is long past due.”

The fields around him smoldered in silence. The soil cracked beneath his boots. And from the edge of the homestead, as if the world itself were holding its breath, the Demon’s gaze fell upon the door.​

Acier Moonbound​

 

[Acier Moonbound]

Location: Altier - Threaf Homestead

Equipment:
Field Gear | Lightsaber | Tic | Cybernetic Arm

Altier had been a stop-over. Nothing more. A quiet speck of farmland where the air didn't hum with war and the people still believed in luck. Ace had meant to pass through by sundown, just long enough to fix the Flickerfox's hyperdrive and move on. But the Threafs had waved him in before he could refuse, kindness catching him off-guard.

They'd fed him, asked for stories of the stars. He'd given them fragments, harmless ones. Tales about weather patterns on Naboo, the color of Roon's seas, the strange way hyperspace looked from a ship without a window. Nothing about the Hidden Path. Nothing about the war. For a few hours, it almost felt like peace. He remembered thinking, this is what the galaxy's supposed to feel like.

Then the air changed. It wasn't sound at first. It was pressure. A drop in the rhythm of the world, as if the planet itself had drawn breath and was holding it.

Ace stiffened. His prosthetic fingers clenched around the cup in his hand until the metal creaked. The Force didn't whisper, it recoiled.

He'd never felt anything like it in person, but he didn't need to. The stories he'd heard, the footage he'd studied, the familiar echo in the Force. that stirred around both him and Aether? It was the same here. All of it fit together like a key turning in a lock he'd spent his life trying not to open.

Vor started to stand. Yara's hand shot out, trembling. Her voice was barely sound. "Go."

He knew what this was. Who this was. The galaxy had finally caught up with him, and it wore his bloodline's shadow. Every instinct screamed to flee, but the idea of running, of leaving these people to face what he knew his father was capable of, was unthinkable. He'd done enough running. Enough losing.

He reached for the hilt on his belt, fingers brushing the emitter. The weight of it steadied him but he wasn't ready. His mind was a storm. His new arm still misjudged his grip. But training had carved something solid in him: resolve. And behind that resolve burned the anger he never voiced, the image of Metus abandoning his mother.

A metallic chirp broke the silence beside him. Tic had perched on the porch rail, photoreceptor flickering nervously as the little droid tilted his head toward the horizon.

Ace crouched slightly, voice low but firm. "Back to the ship, Tic."

The droid let out a string of anxious beeps, shaking his head.

"I mean it." Ace said, tone sharper. "You stay out of this. That's an order."

Tic hesitated, servos whirring in protest. Then he gave a low, mournful trill and hopped down, scuttling toward the tree line. Ace watched the flicker of his photoreceptor vanish into the tall grass, jaw tightening.

Then he turned back to the porch. The air smelled of decay. The fields that had been gold hours ago were gray now, bowing under some unseen gravity. And at their far edge, a figure stood cloaked in black, armor pulsing with red runes that breathed like open wounds. Metus spoke to Vor as if he knew him, and for a moment, Ace wondered what kind of man he was defending blindly.

He'd dreamed of this moment and dreaded it in equal measure. Wondered if he'd recognize the man who had shaped his mother's pain, who'd left him to inherit it. He didn't need to see his face to know. The Force was screaming the truth into every nerve.

With a hiss and a flare of blue, his lightsaber ignited. The blade's light cast his freckled, scarred face.

The son stood before the father; afraid, furious, and absolutely unwilling to run. And between them, the Force trembled.

Metus's presence pressed outward like a black tide, vast and absolute, the will of a man who had mastered the storm and bent it to obedience. Every breath he drew seemed to drag the air itself into his dominion, the Dark Side answering him as if it owed him fealty.

Ace's presence was smaller, rawer, but alive in a way his father's was not. Where Metus's power devoured, his burned. Untamed light bleeding through cracks in inexperience, potential not yet shaped into control. The Force coiled around him like a thing waiting to wake, a promise still in its chrysalis.

In that breathless silence between them, master and heir of ruin, the galaxy seemed to hold its breath.

Isley Verd​