Private Dark Encounters

[Darth Virelia]

"Step into the Dark."

Tags - Eira Seren



The ruin was not quiet.
It never was.

Stone did not speak, yet it remembered. Every fracture in the vaulted walls, every scar cut into basalt by saber or bombardment, carried a murmur too low for mortals to hear but too sharp for her to ignore. Malachor had a voice, and it was made of bone dust, forgotten screams, and the brittle remains of a thousand broken wills. The Dark Side seeped into her lungs with each breath, metallic and sweet, and the air clung like a lover's tongue along her skin beneath the armor.

Darth Virelia walked slowly, deliberately, armored steps pressing echoes into the cracked obsidian. Cloak trailing, she moved as though the planet itself was hers to command, as though each ancient ruin had been carved and arranged solely to receive her. It was not arrogance—it was inevitability. The Force bent here. It remembered hunger. And she was hunger incarnate.

Above her, shattered spires leaned like broken teeth. Once, this had been a fortress, perhaps a temple, perhaps merely another monument to the futility of men who thought power could be kept within stone. She did not care for what it had been. What mattered was what remained—what had survived centuries of silence, wars, scavengers, and time itself. A shadow deeper than shadow. A wound cut into the planet, left to fester.

Her fingers traced a sigil carved into the wall, one too worn to recognize, yet her mind filled in the missing lines with perfect certainty. Sith. Not the petty, preening kings of the modern age who hid behind politics and ceremony. Older, sharper, crueler. This place was not a cradle of philosophy—it was a crucible.

The air thickened. The ruin groaned as if aware of her intrusion, or perhaps of her claim. She tilted her head, violet neon eyes narrowing, their unnatural glow casting thin streaks against the walls. Somewhere ahead, deeper in the labyrinth of fractured stone and collapsed arches, the presence grew denser—like molten metal pressing against her skull. The artifact.

She smiled. Slow. Predatory.

Others would have sent pawns. Mercenaries, droids, acolytes to bleed before the door. But pawns could not hear the whisper beneath the ruin, the quiet thread tugging her closer. Only she could follow it. Only she could take it, mold it, break it, devour it.

The silence broke under her voice, low and edged with silk and iron.

"Malachor," she whispered, and the walls seemed to shudder with recognition. "I have come to take what was left behind."

 

[Eira Seren]

Like a beacon lighthouse, an ancient artifact called to the Sith. A woman forged in the crucible of an academy, one who saw past the struggle for power and rose above it. Not through personal bloodshed but through the use of others. Her strength was not in fighting but in manipulation, alchemy, and science. While Eira did know how to use the lightsaber clipped to her side, it was a rare sight to see her use it.

Malachor, an ichor in the Galaxy, lived and breathed the darkness she inhabited. An abode in the stars that gently cradled her. It was on this world that she had started to grow and learn more. She had joined The Dark Court in an effort to gain more power, and it had led to following in the steps of one Darth Virelia. Though she would never call her a master, she did know her as a Lord.

As she followed in the shadow of the Lord, she did not mask or hide her presence. There was no point to that, and she approached openly but without hostility. Stepping through the dim light with confidence, she was not afraid of Virelia, as evidenced by her demeanor.

Meeting the masked visage of Virelia, her amber eyes met the visor as she walked with her.

"We can get this together, Lord."

Gold sparkled at her neck and ears, and she carried herself with the smugness a true Sith was capable of.

Darth Virelia

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Step into the Dark."

Tags - Eira Seren



Virelia turned at the sound of her voice, the ruined hall swallowing the echoes of their steps until only the hush of the Dark Side remained between them. Violet light shimmered from behind her visor as though the ruin itself had lent her its glow. She let silence hang a moment, deliberate, as though weighing whether this young Sith was worthy of her acknowledgment. When she spoke, her voice was velvet drawn across sharpened steel.

"Together," she murmured, tasting the word as though it were foreign. The tilt of her head was predatory, her smile unseen but felt. "You flatter yourself, child. Power is not divided. It is consumed. Claimed. One does not share the storm—one becomes it, and leaves nothing behind but ash."

Her gauntleted hand brushed the girl's chin with a feigned gentleness, a touch that carried more claim than kindness. "Yet…" she allowed the syllable to linger, licentious and knowing, "you are bold enough to walk unmasked in my shadow. Bold enough to look into the abyss and imagine yourself unbroken. That arrogance is promising."

She circled, slow, deliberate, the faint scent of ozone trailing her as her presence pressed close. "Do you know what it means to follow me? It is not camaraderie, nor alliance. It is transformation. I will unmake the illusions you still cling to, strip you of the brittle lies you call strength, and from that ruin… forge something inevitable."

Her words sank like hooks, corrupting and seductive all at once. The ruin seemed to lean closer to hear her.

"You say we can get this together." Virelia's chuckle was low, dangerous, almost intimate. "No, my dear. I will take it. And if you are clever, if you are willing to surrender everything, you may yet be permitted to bask in the fire I ignite."

 

[Eira Seren]

When her voice broke the near silence, she could almost tell it startled Virelia. Of course, the other woman didn't give any sign of that weakness. Eira felt it, though. The Lord recalibrated herself and resumed command of her frayed energy. The sorcerer, who was the dark Sith, picked up on more than Virelia imagined.

She allowed her to touch her face and call her child. However, there might have been a hint of anger in her eyes. As much control Virelia had, so did she. Maybe even more, but time would tell.

"I have no mask, Lord."

Only partially true. Her mask was not a physical one but a metaphorical one. She hid her true intentions behind a veneer of culpability. A naivety that could be sensed and that was exactly as Eira wanted it. To mislead people into thinking she was less than she actually was. It made her more powerful than they expected.

She certainly felt the hooks and probes Virelia sent out, but she didn't allow her to see past the surface. From one Sith to another, she did not show her weaknesses.

"What illusions do you think I still cling to, Lord?"

Nothing in her tone betrayed feeling, and there was nothing she'd said that was wrong or even disrespectful.

Darth Virelia

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Step into the Dark."

Tags - Eira Seren



Virelia did not answer at once. She let the young woman's words coil into the silence, savoring the sharp edge hidden in the veneer of composure. Silence, after all, was its own kind of dominance—forcing the other to lean into it, to fill it, to need it broken. When she moved again, it was a step closer, close enough for her presence to press like heat against Eira's skin, close enough that the ruin's shadow no longer lay between them but wrapped them together.

Her head inclined, just enough for the visor's violet glow to sweep across Eira's features. The sound she made was soft, almost a hum, a sound that could have been amusement—or something far more intimate.

"You wear no mask," she repeated, voice silk-wrapped steel, "and yet you tell me what I already know. Truth spoken too easily is rarely truth at all." Her gauntleted fingertips traced, feather-light, along the edge of Eira's jaw before falling away. The gesture carried both claim and dismissal, as though she had tested the metal of a coin and found it intriguing enough to pocket, but not yet to spend.

"You ask what illusions you cling to." She did not smile, but the warmth in her tone carried the weight of one. "The illusion that you can control what you invite into your orbit. That you can study the storm and remain untouched. That you can walk beside me and still walk as yourself."

She leaned nearer, the faintest tilt of her head suggestive of a whisper, though she did not lower her voice. "But storms do not share their skies. They do not negotiate. They devour. You will learn this—perhaps here, perhaps later—yet you will learn."

Virelia's voice softened into something dangerously tender, licentious in its careful restraint. "You are not wrong to test me. Strength is not found in blind obedience. But know this: every step you take beside me, every secret you try to guard, every deception you think makes you powerful…" Her pause was deliberate, lingering just long enough to turn anticipation into hunger. "…all of it will unravel, thread by thread, until what remains is mine to shape."

She straightened, drawing back just enough to reclaim the space, but her presence still clung to Eira like perfume and ozone.

"You should not fear this. You should crave it."

 

[Eira Seren]

"I have no reason to lie to you."

Lifting her eyebrows, there was one work unspoken, and that was yet. She lived a life full of lies and deceit; she didn't expect this relationship to be any different. Their auras met and mingled. Two dark waves were crashing together but not fighting. Not entirely. They walked similar paths, and that allowed this to work.

Feeling the touch of the gloved hand on her cheek did very little to Eira, and she kept her amber eyes glued to the violet-hued helmet. She didn't pull away and stood her ground. Setting her jaw, she listened to the answer given by the other woman and smirked a little.

"Maybe I have already learned something about storms, my lady."

Hearing the threat under the words of Virelia, she almost laughed. Her humor would be clear, but it didn't reach her eyes.

"I think we will continue our journey, lady, and each of us will be changed from this encounter."

Looking at the other woman through the top of her eyes, she lowered her face to have her chin angled downward just slightly. If her presence lingered, Eira also clung to Virelia's.

"I do not fear you, but I don't crave you either. It's your power and knowledge that draw me, and I will follow where you lead."

Darth Virelia

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Step into the Dark."

Tags - Eira Seren



The girl's defiance clung to her words like perfume—sweet, heady, and masking something far more fragile beneath. Virelia let her speak, let her wear the shape of confidence as if it were armor. She had no need to strike it away. Better to let it harden, to let her believe it real, until the day came when it cracked beneath her own hunger.

A soft sound escaped the Dark Lady's lips, something between amusement and indulgence. She did not answer Eira's bravado directly. To answer would be to validate, and validation was not what she offered. Instead, her gloved hand lingered for a heartbeat longer upon Eira's cheek before sliding away, slow enough to leave the phantom memory of the touch behind. That, too, was corruption: not the act itself, but the absence after.

"Then follow," Virelia breathed, not as command, but as inevitability. She turned, cloak whispering against shattered stone, her stride languid yet absolute. Each step carried her deeper, and the ruin seemed to yield, as if the shadows themselves bent to her passage.

The air thickened. Ozone sharpened into iron, the Dark Side humming with resonance like a string plucked beneath the world. Ahead, the corridor widened into a chamber vast and peculiar.

Black stone ribs arched overhead, half-collapsed, forming a cavernous hall where fragments of ancient machines jutted like bones from the floor. A circle of broken pylons loomed at its center, their runes still faintly alight, bleeding a dim green fire across the dust. The artifact's call was louder here—an undertone felt more in marrow than in ear.

Virelia slowed, taking in the geometry with deliberate silence. Her hand brushed against a pillar, claws rasping sparks from its surface. She turned her head slightly, violet glow casting eerie shadows across her visor.

"Do you feel it?" Her voice was lower now, licentious in its intimacy, as though confiding a secret meant only for Eira's ears. "This chamber is not dead. It waits."

She did not look back, did not grant the younger Sith her eyes. Instead, she moved forward, toward the circle, toward the heartbeat pulsing beneath the stone. Each step was a promise—of power, of transformation, of ruin.

And if Eira thought herself equal, if she thought her hunger unchained?

Let her stew in that illusion a little longer. The ruin would teach her what Virelia had already mastered.