Private Grim Aspirations

[Imperius Indomitus]

LORD INDOMITUS
Through Fire and Blood.
Through Justice and Strength.
On the Anvil of War, We forge our Destiny.

Bane Kaohal

​

Hosnian Prime | Academy of Law Enforcement | Square

The Alliance had fallen.

It had sacrificed itself to save the world Atrisia. The weakness of the democratic institutions, the fragility of constitutions and the inconsequence of the quorum of the masses was laid bare. Yes, it had endured longer than many Empires of late. Realm riddled with flawed succession, governments build around fear and individuals were as weak and corrupt as those which strifed for peace. A waste. Yet it would be the latter that Imperius saw merit in.

Nothing was to endure for as long as the tyrannic grasp of the Force held the Galaxy in its grip. No stability, prosperity, justice or order could be established for as long as the Will of the Force bend the civilisations to its omniscient terror. The Pureblood knew that. The Wardens knew that. Few others cared for it. Fleeting power, dogmatic principles and blissful ignorance were the choice of most Jedi and Sith alike.

The Indomitus Legion had moved to Hosnian Prime, abandoned by any Galactic Alliance Defence Forces, it was a population center ready to face forced conscription. For the Legion and for the Knights of Zakuul. With violent swiftness and precision they had disabled local militia and defences, now several Harrowers hanging in the skies above the city as the knightly invaders had taken the Academy of Law Enforcement as their stronghold. Quotas had to be met, yet the first phase of recruitment would be voluntary. All around were the black-golden armors with their red tabards of the Indomitus Knights and Horizon Guard, the Square in front of the Academy becoming an improvised administrative hub. Sign ups, medical commissions and Interrogators doing their work.

Above all stood Imperius, His hands clasped on His back, watching the proceedings from behind the lenses of His winged helmet. A statue, an avatar like He watched over the bodies that were around, the people that looked with equal measure distaste, eagerness and worry. Indifferently He watched. They had seen Him before. The broadcast - they did not forget. He had executed the head of the local resistance, the headmaster of the Academy on the broadcast, His sword cleanly decapitating the man before making the offer of strength, brotherhood and prosperity to the people.

Now He looked at those that took the offer. And saw beyond. The quotas would not be met, violence would erupt once more. Blood would flow. He did not care.

Imperius needed reinforcements, not a conscience.

 

[Bane Kaohal]

D e f i a n c e


Imperius Indomitus

Hosnian Prime | Academy Square | Checkpoint Nine


The rain hadn't stopped since morning — a cold, relentless downpour that washed the city's sheen into gutters choked with mud and propaganda. The square, once the beating heart of civic order, now reeked of oil, fear, and the metallic tang of new dominion.

Indomitus banners draped over the shattered façades of justice halls and tribunals, their gold sigils bleeding down the wet stone like fresh paint. Marching lines of black-armored troops filled the plaza with perfect rhythm — the sound of occupation made manifest.


And through that rhythm came dissonance.


A man walking against the current.


Cloaked in black, shoulders squared beneath the weight of the storm, Bane Kaohal cut through the ordered chaos like a blade through silk. He didn't hurry. He didn't hide. The civilians felt it first — that wrongness that made their skin crawl, their instincts scream to move away. By the time the troopers noticed, the crowd had already begun to part, leaving him framed against the glow of the checkpoint gates.

The senior officer stepped forward, his polished cuirass reflecting the amber lights of the barricade.

"Citizen. This area is under military control. Identify yourself or turn back."

Bane stopped. Water rolled down the heavy folds of his cloak, his head tilting just enough for the faint glow of his eyes to catch the light — orange, like coals refusing to die.


Silence.


The soldiers shifted, fingers brushing triggers, armor creaking beneath tense breaths. The officer tried again, voice louder this time, sharper.

"I said identify yourself!"

A pause. Then the low rasp of Bane's voice — frayed at the edges, quiet but cutting through the rain like a blade drawn in the dark.

"You don't command me."

Something shifted. The air thickened — an invisible weight pressing against lungs and bone. The nearest trooper's visor fogged as his breath quickened, a trickle of sweat rolling down the side of his neck despite the chill. It was as if the atmosphere itself recoiled, every molecule straining to get away from the thing that had just spoken.

The officer took a step closer, trying to regain control, his authority faltering into anger.


"Remove your hood. Now."


He reached out — gauntleted fingers brushing Bane's shoulder.


And that was the moment everything stopped.


The whisper came — faint, intimate — from nowhere and everywhere at once.


A sigh through marrow.
A hunger uncoiled.


The man's body seized — armor rattling once — and then he collapsed, his eyes glassed over before his head even struck the ground. No sound, no gesture, just absence where life had been.

The rest of the squad snapped to aim, rifles rising in a fluid, terrified wave.


"Drop the weapon!"
"On your knees!"
"Hands where we can see—"


Bane turned his head slightly, rain dripping from the line of his jaw. His cloak shifted, revealing the gleam of the katana at his side — its lacquered sheath marred by the scars of a hundred battles. His right hand rested lightly on the hilt. Not drawn. Not yet.

His eyes burned brighter now — molten, hateful — the stormlight catching in them like a promise.

"You really don't want this."

The squad encircled him fully — thirty men, maybe more — rifles trained, boots splashing in widening circles of rainwater. Thunder rolled across the sky, shaking the banners above as the city seemed to hold its breath.

And there he stood — a predator in the middle of their perfect geometry, still and coiled, the storm bending around his will.

The Dark Mantle whispered once more in the silence between heartbeats — a faint, hungry murmur that only he could hear.


More…


Bane said nothing. He didn't move. He simply waited — for their fear to decide what happened next.

 

[Imperius Indomitus]

LORD INDOMITUS
Through Fire and Blood.
Through Justice and Strength.
On the Anvil of War, We forge our Destiny.

Bane Kaohal

​

Hosnian Prime | Academy of Law Enforcement | Square

The Knights were sent to deal with lesser soldiers and militia, then expected to handle the population. Therefore they were more tactful and patient when something went wrong or someone acted out of line. Non-lethal force was not their specialty, but they generally did not need to go for that. The factor of their intimidation paired with the oratory skills of the Heralds being sufficient to discourage massive opposition.

When they encountered the anomaly in form of the coated figure, seeing their Knight-Lieutenant drop, they switched their approach. Almost as one shields were raised, gun barrels placed on top as the legionaries spread out to encircle the attacker. Alarms were given that an attack occured and subsequent measures included the arrival, coming from the sky and landing like a black and white meteor, of a Horizon Guard.

The man in his helmet was not particularly tall and had a slim frame, the long staff in his hand igniting, proving to be a lightsaber pike. The red hue of the blade swiftly pointing at the stranger.

"Drop your weapon and yourself to the floor."​

​

The tone was decisive, a command, delivered in a cold, gravelly voice. It was even lined with the Force, applying a subtle leverage of Mind Trick to see if it would be sufficient to solve this situation. The followers of Indomitus did not believe in the art of negotiation or peaceful ways, but they neither embraced waste. They saw the stranger equally as a threat as well as a resource.

Some hundred meters away, the winged head of Imperius turned towards what was going on. He did not see or hear it, but on His HUD the information was clearly displayed. The loss of one of His Knights directly reported to His infosphere. The strong Force presence though, was not. He felt Bane and his cold wildness, the idea to oppose and the Darkness that lived within.

The titan stepped forward, His sabatons almost cracking the granite floor as the Lord of Zakuul slowly made His way towards the scene.

 

[Bane Kaohal]

H u n g e r

Imperius Indomitus

Hosnian Prime | Academy of Law Enforcement | Square



The square had fallen silent. The only sound now was the faint patter of rain turning brittle in the air — the droplets crystallizing as they struck the duracrete, shattering like glass.

Bane stood at the center of it, unbothered by the ring of shields and rifles that encircled him. To him, they weren't soldiers — they were noise. Chaff. A wall of bodies that thought itself a barrier.

When the Horizon Guard dropped from the sky, landing in a plume of steam and sleet, Bane's gaze followed without shifting his stance. The pike ignited — a spear of bloodlight cutting the gloom — and its reflection painted across his face, across the planes of sharp cheekbones and the hard line of his jaw.

The command came, edged with the Force. It was meant to break will — to make the lesser bend.

Instead, the temperature dropped.

The Force shuddered through the square like a breath drawn in reverse. The warmth bled from the world as if the very air recoiled. Armor lenses frosted, boots slipped against the thin glaze forming on the ground. The sleet now hissed where it struck his shoulders, melting to steam on contact.

He didn't move.

Fiery orange hair clung damp against his brow, dripping into eyes that burned a cold, molten hue. Slowly, he reached up — fingers curling beneath the edge of his hood — and pulled it back.

The light found him then.

Strong features cut from shadow: jaw set like stone, eyes bright and fevered, the kind of gaze that didn't just see — it stripped. A faint smile curved his mouth, something too alive, too amused for the moment. The kind of grin that didn't come from humor, but hunger.

"Funny…” he murmured, voice low, threaded with something that made the air itself vibrate. "That you think I’ll listen to that command…. As if you could make me."

It wasn't a threat — it was an observation. A sentence delivered like scripture.

The sleet thickened, wind slicing between armored forms as if the world itself drew tighter around him. Beneath the hiss and crackle, the hum of the dark side deepened — a pulse, cold and rhythmic.

Then he felt it.

The weight in the Force. A signature vast and ancient, drawing nearer. It pressed against the edge of his awareness like a stormfront moving through still air.

His grin widened, almost imperceptibly — teeth flashing beneath the rain.

"Now that…" he whispered, his voice the growl of a wolf that had caught scent of another hunter, "…is worth my time."

The air hung heavy — sleet falling, rifles trembling — as the first touch of Imperius's presence broke over him like the shadow of a world.

 

[Imperius Indomitus]

LORD INDOMITUS
Through Fire and Blood.
Through Justice and Strength.
On the Anvil of War, We forge our Destiny.

Bane Kaohal

​

Hosnian Prime | Academy of Law Enforcement | Square

Having fought Sith and Jedi alike, the Horizon Guard Centurion did not flinch or back down upon realising that he might be outclassed here. It was not in their training to shy away from strength, but to embrace it. Be it their certain demise or not. They were aggressive but calculating, zealous but disciplined in their pursuit of duty.

From his finger tips came a crackle as a stream of lightning formed and find their way towards the dissident. It was not particularly strong nor weak, but what a Sith warrior might be able to conjure. A potent stream of blueish-purplish pain that shot towards Bane in an effort to subdue him through violence. Yet that was merely an opener, a taste, a distraction in fact. Blinding work to conceal his Force fueled assault. With speed and velocity the figure moved, attacking with his lightsaber pike.

The mood around changed, from empty stares and frightened looks to making space as much as possible for the escalation to take place. A hint of panic started to stench the air as violence much more erupted on the freshly invaded planet. Yet the Heralds continued their work, they redirected and focused the people away while the Knights worked to contain the problem.

In between the martial coldness, peasant fear and soaking downpour, a figure of legend walked. His titanic form clad in richly decorated black armor with fine golden trim, a dragon's head forming the left shoulder plate while a helmet with large wings sat upon His head, enlargening the individual to what seemed twice the size or ordinary humans. A red tabard and surcoat was drapped, hanging from his shoulders and at His side hung a sword, a gauntleted hand resting on the pommel.

Imperius followed the allure of power, the ambition of strength that radiated from the scene. The figure was impressive, their inner hunger for recognition, purpose and power almost a scent too sweet to smell. It was intriguing, almost saturating to the Pureblood. It smelled of opportunity and prospects. It reeked of conflict, rage. Of wrath.

The scene started to appear in front of Him as His steps echoed solemnly . . . .

 

[Bane Kaohal]

F u t i l e


Imperius Indomitus

Hosnian Prime | Law Enforcement Square


The rain thickened, pelting down in sheets that hissed off armor and stone alike. Bane stood unmoving in the center of it — hood thrown back, fiery orange hair clinging to his temples, those molten eyes burning beneath the dark sky like dying stars.

The lightning came — jagged and blue, shrieking through the air.

Bane didn't flinch. One hand lifted, fingers curling as if snuffing out a candle. The bolt broke against an unseen wall, fragments scattering harmlessly into steam that curled around him like smoke.

His gaze flicked to the Centurion, unimpressed. The crimson pike flared to life again, cutting a bloody arc through the sleet. Bane's lips parted, the hint of a grin twisting across his face — not joy, not rage, just the perverse amusement of a predator toying with its prey.


Shadowrend left its sheath with a whispering hiss.


When the black blade met the pike, it was less a clash and more an eruption — a pressure-wave of force bursting outward, rippling through the rain and stone. The downpour twisted around them, pulled by unseen gravity; a fine sleet began to form, the air temperature dropping sharply as the Force bent to his will.

Every swing he made carried more than motion — there was weight in the air, invisible and violent, gusts that tore droplets sideways and churned the puddles beneath their feet.

He tilted his head, orange eyes narrowing.

"You call that lightning?"

The words came low and cold — not mockery, but disappointment, a voice that vibrated through marrow rather than the air.

When he raised his hand again, the storm seemed to tense. The energy gathered at his fingertips — white-blue arcs that hissed and spat like living serpents — and then he let go — wanting to add fuel to the chaos that erupted around them. The resulting pulse lit the square like a flash bomb, thunder rolling through the air as Force-born electricity danced wild and hungry across the rain-slick stone — aiming in multiple directions all aimed at and around the Centurion.

The crowd screamed. The soldiers faltered.

Bane simply stood in the midst of it all, his breath visible in the frozen air, the grin widening — that haunting, human-but-not expression that made the blood of men go still.

His head turned then, slowly, sensing what approached. Something heavier. Something real — his real focus.The wolf could smell another predator on the wind.

 

[Imperius Indomitus]

LORD INDOMITUS
Through Fire and Blood.
Through Justice and Strength.
On the Anvil of War, We forge our Destiny.

Bane Kaohal

​

Hosnian Prime | Academy of Law Enforcement | Square

The Horizon Guard Centurion struggled to keep up with the man. He owed his life to the abstract and outlandish Zakuulan combat style so far but had not much to offer towards the Force user that was in front of him in terms of sheer power and speed. Yet he did not yield or relent. To further and beyond was their doctrine, to submit to uncompromising force and determination was their forte.

Around them, while the civilians started to run, the Indomitus Knights fell back. They did not falter, they were more than aware of the terrible consequences that could come from fighting both Light and Dark side users and facing their powers. The Knights made space for the fight and the area of effect that was taking shape in the form of lightning. The circle widened as they stepped backwards, their steady aim and gaze not leaving the attacker.

In fact, they waited for their order to step in. Honour and the ideals of valor and glory held them back. Their battlebrother of the Horizon Guard engaged and they would not step in in this enforcement for the time being. They did not recognise a threat to their operation and therefore there was no need to let overwhelming force overwrite their higher ideals.

But the Centurion's screams lead to a general unlocking of blaster safeties. The man was holding some bolts of lightning initially, blocking with blade and a hasitly erected Force barrier but was overwhelmed within seconds. The sparks danced across the armor plates, scorching and burning the heavy cloth beneath and subsequently, the flesh. The man collapsed.

As one went, another came.

Imperius stepped into the circle, the mighty presence finally gazing in person across the scene. Only His appearance prevented the Knights from unleashing their salvos of blaster bolts at the stranger, now knowing that something else entirely would happen.

The Pureblood did not utter any words, seeing no sense in trying to subdue the upstart verbally. The deliberately slow march towards the orange-haird individual was measured, calculated as He unclipped His Shroudsaber. The white blade awakening to its unstable, crackling life, oozing a sense of the unnatural, artificial.

Without even a glance towards the smoldering, mortally injured centurion, He walked past him to confront the troublemaker. The off-hand raising, its palm open as if it grabbed something, gold and red mist forming in and around it as the Dark side inhaled. The Force stopped its breath at the pure defilement of itself, the coldness that Bane Kaohal spread, replaced by a wave of biting heat. The hand moved, still with the palm open towards the figure and from mist daggers of pure wrath formed that were sent towards the man.

 

[Bane Kaohal]

E n c o u n t e r


Imperius Indomitus

The Centurion's charred scream faded into the rain.

For a moment, the entire square seemed to forget how to breathe. Civilians fled in broken lines, stumbling over each other. Indomitus Knights widened the perimeter with ritual precision. Horizon Guards tightened their grips on their rifles, unsure whether the stranger before them was a man or a calamity that had wandered into the light.

But Bane…


He did not look at their faces.
He did not watch the last twitch of the dying soldier.
He only watched the space beyond them — that heavy, coiling pressure that had stalked him since the very first moment lightning filled the air.


There you are.


The temperature shifted.
The rain seemed to fall slower.
And power—ancient, certain, imperial—walked into the circle.

Imperius cut through the chaos like a blade through cloth, each step a calculated decree of intent. Black armor gleamed beneath the storm, gold trim catching flashes of lightning. The dragon-shaped pauldron turned with Him, casting a long, distorted shadow across the tiles.


Bane's posture changed.
Barely.
But enough.
His jaw tightened.
His breath stilled.


His fingers coiled around the hilt of his weapon like a beast tasting a familiar scent.

The storm inside him stirred in answer.


This was the one.


The presence he had been feeling gnawing at the back of his mind through the entire clash.

The one force here he knew would not break if he screamed, would not hesitate if he moved.

He should have killed the guards sooner.

Should have vanished into the alleyways, into the smog, into the dark.

Instead, he stood in a widening circle of fear, breathing like a cornered wolf who had remembered the taste of blood.

The Dark Mantle reacted first.

Shadows curled up his spine, thickening like smoke underwater. They wrapped around the jagged bone plates of his mask— his mother's cheekbone, his father's brow, Valera's small jaw— and locked into place in a grim mosaic of family and violence.


His eyes flared.
Twin embers.
Twin wounds.


Imperius did not speak.
He did not need to.


His off-hand rose, palm open— and the Force inhaled. Gold-and-red mist churned into existence, twisting like a living thing. It condensed. Hardened. Sharpened.


Daggers.


Forged from pure, weaponized wrath.


Then—


They screamed toward Bane in a blistering arc.


The air warped.
The tiles hissed.
The rain cracked apart around them.
Bane moved.


Not with elegance.
Not with fear.
With instinct.
With violence.


His blade snapped up in a harsh, cross-body angle, intercepting the nearest dagger with the shriek of energy against conjured hate. The force of the impact blew sparks sideways, scattering rain into steam.


But he did not stay in the line of fire.
His hand lifted— fingers curling— and the Force around him compressed violently.


Combustion.


A shuddering detonation of raw pressure erupted between them, not aimed to harm Imperius but to rupture the rhythm, to split the timing, to force space into a suffocating advance.

The ground burst outward in a concussive wave.

Bane dove back through the shock, boots skidding through rain-slick stone as another dagger tore the air where his throat had been a heartbeat earlier.

His mask snapped up, molten eyes locked on Imperius with an expression caught somewhere between recognition and rage.


He didn't speak.
Not yet.


But the storm inside him had found something worth its hunger.

And for the first time since he stepped into this cursed square—

Bane Kaohal looked truly, dangerously awake.

 

[Imperius Indomitus]

LORD INDOMITUS
Through Fire and Blood.
Through Justice and Strength.
On the Anvil of War, We forge our Destiny.

Bane Kaohal

​

Hosnian Prime | Academy of Law Enforcement | Square

Imperius watched the daggers streak through the storm, their gold-red trails carving molten veins through the rain. When they collided with Bane's blade instead of finding flesh, He felt the shift—an answering pressure rising to meet His own. The combustion wave detonated outward, slamming against Him in a sphere of heat and distortion, scattering steam and broken stone across the square. Imperius did not brace; He accepted the blast like a monarch accepting a bow. The concussive force rippled over His armor, made His cape snap like a banner in a hot wind, but it failed to move Him. The Dark coiled eagerly at His feet, tightening its circle around Him as if the very storm bent its knee.

Through the haze, He advanced. Each step was deliberate, precise, and devastating in its inevitability. The ground trembled under the weight of His presence; rain bent around Him in erratic curves as gravity itself reconsidered its loyalties. The Shroudsaber crackled violently, its unstable white core flaring brighter with every meter closed, feeding on the tension thickening the air. Bane's retreat had bought him distance, but not safety—Imperius walked through the fractured tiles as though emerging from a furnace, the silhouette of a force of nature that refused to be interrupted by lesser tempests.

His off-hand lifted again, fingers spreading with an authority that reshaped the air. The atmosphere clenched in response. The rain slowed to a crawl, the dust froze mid-fall, and the pressure around Bane collapsed inward with brutal precision. This was not a pull meant to drag him; it was an anchor, a command, a gravitational verdict that tried to pin him to the very stones he had shattered. Imperius compressed the space around the masked stranger with a surgeon's ruthlessness, forcing momentum to die, forcing instinct to fight for breath, forcing the creature who thrived on chaos to stand in the stillness He imposed.

He closed the final distance like a collapsing star—explosive in power, controlled in direction. The Shroudsaber cut upward in a single, terrible arc, its unstable edge shrieking against the air, white static bursting around the blade as it sought to carve through mask, bone, or will—whichever broke first. His advance did not pause; the strike flowed into the next motion, a pivot that unleashed a wave of pressure meant to stagger, crush footing, and drive Bane fully into the duel whether he was ready or not. Lightning cracked overhead, echoing His movement, as if the storm itself had chosen a side.

There were no words, no declarations, no threats. Imperius let the strike, the pressure, and the crushing inevitability of His forward motion speak for Him. The message was simple and merciless: the fight had begun on His terms—and anyone who survived it would do so only because He allowed them to.

 

[Bane Kaohal]

S t r i f e


Imperius Indomitus

The pressure hit him first—a crushing verdict from the air itself.

The rain slowed, the dust froze, and the world narrowed around him until every breath felt like dragging iron into his lungs. Imperius' gravity clamp crashed down like a celestial hand, pinning everything that wasn't pure defiance.

Bane's boots bit into the fractured stone, cracks spiderwebbing beneath him. His spine bowed, muscles trembling against the invisible weight. For a heartbeat the world dimmed, drowned beneath the overwhelming density of Imperius' will — his vision blurred.

And then the mantle stirred.

Kill.
Maim.
Resist.
Tear.

His eyes flared — molten, violent, brighter than the lightning tearing the sky.

He snarled, the sound low and animal, forcing a breath through the pressure crushing his ribs.


Another.
Another.
He pushed.


The stones beneath him detonated outward as he broke the anchor's grip—not fully escaping it, but shifting just enough that the crushing density had to readjust instead of pinning him outright. It bought him a moment. Nothing more.

Imperius was already there.

The Shroudsaber's shrieking white arc tore toward him, a blade that sounded like the Force itself being peeled open. Bane snapped his sword up, the impact screaming against his bones. Sparks—white, red, molten—exploded between them.

He didn't stop the strike.
He survived it.

The hit skidded him back across broken tile, boots grinding through stone, cape snapping violently behind him. His shoulders shook with the effort. The mantle wrapped tighter around his jaw and cheekbone, as if it refused to let him face this creature bare.

The follow-through wave of pressure came next—an eruption that would have flattened lesser beings. Bane didn't block it; he rode it. He let it shove him back, twisting with it, sending the force of it spiraling off his shoulder like smoke redirected by a storm.


He spat blood into the rain.
And then he moved.


The air around him ignited in a split-second combustion burst—an eruption of pressure and heat that cracked the pavement in a ring. It wasn't an attack meant to hit Imperius; it was a violent escape vector, a detonation that shoved Bane sideways out of the center of Imperius' crushing control.

He slid low across the wet stone, bringing his blade up again, stance feral, grounded, coiled like a cornered beast forced to acknowledge an apex predator for the first time in years.


His lips peeled into a jagged, breathless grin.
Not triumphant.
Not mocking.


But alive.


"…Finally."


His voice was raw, half-snarled, half-hungry.
A drop of blood slid down his chin.
His eyes burned brighter.


This was no longer a street brawl. This was the storm he thought he'd forgotten how to feel.

 

[Imperius Indomitus]

LORD INDOMITUS
Through Fire and Blood.
Through Justice and Strength.
On the Anvil of War, We forge our Destiny.

Bane Kaohal

​

Hosnian Prime | Academy of Law Enforcement | Square

The rain trembled against an unseen boundary, bending around him as if reluctant to touch what he had become. Imperius advanced through the thinning storm, his footsteps slow, deliberate, measured—each one a silent decree of dominance. The air thickened with every pace, not in overt crushing waves this time, but in a coiling gravitational hum that made the stone quiver in anticipation.

He watched Bane through the pale wash of lightning.

Not as prey.
Not as an equal.
But as a phenomenon.

Few beings could breach the anchor's first clamp. Fewer still did so with their spine unbroken and their will sharpened instead of splintering. Imperius felt the tremor in the Force where Bane's defiance had cut through his field—a microscopic fracture in inevitability, insignificant yet fascinating, like watching a star momentarily brighten before it collapsed further into gravity's embrace.

The mantle clinging to Bane's skull and cheekbone glimmered with a feral, rhythmic heat. It was almost a pulse. Almost alive. Imperius noted the cadence, the way its flare synchronized with the rise of Bane's presence—a presence that moved like a bruise forming beneath the world's surface.

There was power there. Raw, weighty, unfocused yet not dull. A beast sharpening itself on the pressure meant to break it.

Imperius' expression did not change, but something in his gaze adjusted—an infinitesimal tilt, an acknowledgment reserved for anomalies worth study.

He raised his hand.

Not to crush.
Not to smite.
But to measure.

Flames coiled into a twisting, spiraling lance of fire that arced toward Bane like the shadow of an executioner's axe. Not a full incineration—just a controlled, searing pressure meant to probe the boundaries of his foe's reflexes. Imperius wanted to see the flow of Bane's resistance, the shape of his endurance, the signature of a will that refused to burn away entirely.

The shroud around Imperius simmered like the edge of a star, its white glow refracting through the falling rain and casting Bane in alternating flashes of brilliance and shadow. Through that strobing light, Imperius observed every detail—the stance, the tension, the grin carved by blood and defiance.

He catalogued it.

Challenging.
Rare.
Almost… invigorating.

When he finally spoke, it was quiet, cold, and absolute—less a voice and more a judgement passing through the air.

"Stand, then."

The syllables vibrated with gravitational undertone, a resonance that sank into the ruined stone at their feet.

"Show me the shape of your strength."

Not an invitation.
Not encouragement.
An inevitability uncoiling.

Imperius lowered his stance, the Shroudsaber angled down, its white core boiling with restrained annihilation. Light bled across the puddles and broken tile, turning the battlefield into a pale, rippling reflection of a star's heart.

He did not rush him. He did not strike first. He simply was—a singularity waiting for mass to fall toward it.

Bane had earned scrutiny.
Now he would earn gravity.

 

[Bane Kaohal]

U n f e t t e r e d

Imperius Indomitus

Imperius' first strike screamed through the rain, a lancing wave of fire meant to scorch, to cow, to test. Bane didn't step back. He didn't flinch. Instead, the chill deep inside him surged outward, wrapping around his body like a living shroud. The temperature dropped violently, freezing the puddles beneath his boots. Steam hissed as fire collided with frost, fog curling and twisting into jagged, ethereal shapes.

The flame passed his cheek with a sizzle of steam, but Bane barely noticed.


Because the mantle was whispering.

A feverish hiss curling along his cheekbone, slithering under the bone, purring into his skull. Its heat pulsed in time with his heartbeat, urging him—no, coaxing him—forward, deeper, darker.

Bane's breath shuddered out of him, fogging instantly into a plume of frost.

He raised a hand to his face, fingers dragging across the burning mantle with a shiver that was far too close to ecstasy. His grin split wider, cracking dried blood on his lips as he let out a ragged, trembling laugh— a sound too sharp, too hungry, too delighted to belong on a battlefield.

"You…"

The laugh broke again—higher, shaking like something that had been caged too long.

"You want to measure me?"

The temperature collapsed.

Rain turned solid in midair, falling around him in slow, shimmering prisms. The ground beneath their feet groaned as a frostline rippled outward like a shockwave.

And Bane didn't wait.
He launched his answer.

The stone to Imperius' left buckled outward, and from its fractured surface a crystalline pike erupted, jagged and glittering like a frozen spine being wrenched from the planet's marrow. It wasn't thrown—it grew, lunging with predatory intent, seeking space, seeking reaction, seeking to test the gravity itself.


Not a hit.
Not a guarantee.
But a lethal question hurled with joy.


Bane didn't watch to see the result.

The moment the pike tore free, he moved— a blur of cold breath and maddened exhilaration.

The mantle on his cheek glowed brighter, veins of molten red crawling outward as he surged through the crystallizing storm he'd created.

He attacked.
Not recklessly.
Not carelessly.
But hungrily.

A downward arc meant to shatter guard and bone alike— followed by a pivoting slash that carved through the fog and frost— followed by a thrust that carried the full momentum of a man who had accepted death long ago and found it boring.

Each movement sharp.
Precise.

Savage in its intent, but disciplined in its execution.


And through all of it— He laughed.


A low, delighted, disbelieving sound at the sheer joy of it.


"You feel it, don't you?" he rasped between strikes, voice vibrating on the edge of hysteria. "This—this is the first time in decades someone's made me try."

Another swing. He didn't stop. He didn't retreat. He drove forward as though the cold in his blood was pulling Imperius closer instead of the other way around.

"If I fall—"

A clash of sparks as his blade met air, pressure, or whatever force answered him.

"—then at least it will be fun."

The mantle whispered again.

And Bane threw himself deeper into the storm

 

[Imperius Indomitus]

LORD INDOMITUS
Through Fire and Blood.
Through Justice and Strength.
On the Anvil of War, We forge our Destiny.

Bane Kaohal

​

Hosnian Prime | Academy of Law Enforcement | Square

The frozen pike burst from the stone in a violent bloom of crystalized malice — a jagged, lunging challenge carved straight out of bedrock. Imperius did not halt. He merely shifted His weight by a degree, a precise adjustment that let the oncoming spike carve a screaming line through empty space instead of armor. Shards scythed past His cloak in a glittering fan. None found purchase. None needed to.

The movement told Him more than a direct strike would have.

Cold born of will, not weather.
Frost that hunted.
Technique sharpened by madness, not dulled by it.

Bane was not improvising — he was alive in a way only a handful of beings ever managed to be.

Imperius advanced.

The Shroudsaber rose in a slow, almost languid arc, its white fire writhing violently against the rain — each bead of water that touched it detonating into vapor before it fell. He did not rush to counterattack. He carved space. He claimed angles. He stalked through the crystallizing fog with the measured certainty of someone reading a text written in the language of violence itself.

Bane came in a storm of motion — cold breath, gleaming frost, a mantle whispering its hungry delirium. Imperius watched every frame of it with unnerving clarity, the world slowing beneath the weight of His focus. Each slash, each thrust, each trajectory was absorbed, dissected, catalogued.

Disciplined savagery. Deliberate mania. A hybrid of instinct and intent.

He had not misjudged the man. If anything, He had underestimated the thrill that radiated off him, the predatory joy that turned each strike sharper than the last.

Imperius' response was neither defensive nor frantic — it was inevitability. A single step forward collapsed a meter of distance in an instant, disrupting the geometry of Bane's offensive flow. His free hand swept outward in a measured arc, fingers splayed, and the air buckled under His will. Heat bled out of nothingness, gathering around His palm in a spiraling compression. Fire, not as flame but as pressure — dense, coiled, volatile — gathered like a lung preparing to exhale destruction.

He didn't release it.

Not yet.

He let Bane see it forming, let him feel the way the temperature bent, the way the fog recoiled, the way the Shroudsaber's white light warped around the slow vortex of heat drawing breath in His hand.

Imperius wanted Bane to understand the lesson:
Fire and Blood answered only to Him.

And then He struck.

Not with a sweeping blow — but with a short, merciless vector of fire hammered forward like a smith's mallet. A pinpoint burst, sharp enough to cut through frost, fast enough to split the air before it burned. A test. A probe. A measured incision meant to carve through the heart of Bane's momentum and expose the architecture beneath.

It carried no roar, no theatrics.
Only purpose.

He stepped through the recoil of His own technique, closing the distance with predatory certainty. The Shroudsaber dipped low, sparks hissing across the frost-bitten ground, before rising in a vertical, ascending stroke aimed not for flesh, but for structure — a strike designed to unravel footing, tempo, and rhythm in a single, ruthless gesture.

As He moved, His gaze locked onto Bane's.

Not disdainful.
Not mocking.
Not impressed.

Interested.

For the first time since stepping into the fight, there was a subtle shift in Imperius' aura — not excitement, but recognition. A warrior's acknowledgment. A predator's sharpened focus. The cold understanding that what stood before Him was not a distraction…

…but a specimen worth dissecting.

The fire in His palm coiled tighter, building toward the next breath of destruction.

And Imperius continued forward, silent and certain, carving His way into the center of Bane's storm.

 

[Bane Kaohal]

W o u n d e d

Imperius Indomitus

The air changed an instant before the fire struck.

Not the temperature — that was already in freefall — but the pressure.

A tightening, a drawing in, the unmistakable pull of something focused, something crafted, something far more disciplined than the wild brilliance roaring through Bane's veins.

His grin faltered—but only to grow sharper.

"Ah—" a breathless sound, almost reverent.

And then the fire hit him.
It wasn't flame. Not truly.

It was force compressed into heat, will shaped into impact — a concentrated burst that slammed into his ribs like the fist of a god trying to break its way out of a star.

Bone cracked.

The sound wasn't loud — more of a deep, intimate pop inside his chest.

His body jerked sideways, boots grinding across the frost-slick ground as the heat carved a clean wound through the cold aura around him.

The mantle shrieked—not in pain, but in furious exhilaration, its burning veins crawling deeper across his cheek and temple, as though trying to burrow toward the wound, to drink the fire that dared touch its host.

Bane staggered.
For one heartbeat.


One…

…

Then he laughed.


A hollow, rattling exhale of joy torn from a body that should've been dropping to its knees.


"Hah—" he wheezed, blood bubbling scarlet and white as frost tried to crystallize it at the corners of his mouth.

"You hit— harder than the last one."

The humor in his voice was real.
The gratitude was real.

Because finally—finally—someone did more than dance with his storm. Someone reached in and cracked it.

He spat red onto the ground. It hissed into steam.

Imperius was already moving, stepping through the recoil of His attack, the Shroudsaber rising in a perfect vertical line of inevitability.

Bane didn't dodge.
He tried. Truly.

His body twisted, frost spiraling off him in a cyclone of instinct and will — but Imperius was faster, cleaner, terrifyingly efficient.

The blade scraped across Bane's forearm as it came up in a guard, the impact vibrating through bone, numbing fingers. Frost bloomed violently across the obsidian blade, reacting to the heat, fracturing into spiderweb cracks that hissed in protest.

The upward strike still broke his stance. His boots slid. His knee buckled. His breath hitched. He felt the weakness, felt the edge of collapse tugging at him —and he smiled through it.


Not defiant.
Not proud.
Elated.


"Good," he rasped, dragging himself back into footing with a snarl that sounded like pleasure and pain sharing the same throat. "GOOD."

His shoulders shook. Whether from laughter or the shockwave of pain, it was impossible to tell.

The mantle's glow intensified, threads of molten red now creeping toward his jaw, spidering under the skin like living fire claiming territory.

He raised his blade again, slower this time — not from hesitation, but because he wanted Imperius to see that the blow had landed.

That Bane understood what it meant.
That he respected it.

"You're the first," he murmured, voice roughened into something almost intimate.

"In decades… the first to make me bleed."

Frost curled around his boots, gripping the ground like talons.

"And by all the gods—"

his eyes widened with feverish devotion,

"—I want more."

He launched again.
Not as perfectly balanced.
Not as clean.

But with a deeper, darker joy — the joy of a predator who knows the other predator can bite back.

 

[Imperius Indomitus]

LORD INDOMITUS
Through Fire and Blood.
Through Justice and Strength.
On the Anvil of War, We forge our Destiny.

Bane Kaohal

​

Hosnian Prime | Academy of Law Enforcement | Square

The impact of Bane's renewed charge rippled the air—frost curling, blood steaming, that maddened devotion burning bright enough to cut through the storm of cold around him. Imperius met it with the same expression He had worn since the first exchange: none at all. No flare of surprise, no thrill of the hunt, no predator's grin. Just the serene, terrible focus of something that had dissected greater things than men.

The Shroudsaber rotated in His grip with a smooth, almost gentle click of its hilt. The blade's unstable white fire snarled against the rain as He brought it across His body in a horizontal line that carved a bright wound through the fog. Not a counterstrike—just a line in the world, a barrier drawn with absolute certainty that Bane would collide with it before he ever passed it.

Heat gathered beneath Imperius' hand again, but not as a compressed blast this time. This was slower, broader—a low, simmering pressure that warped the falling rain into tiny beads of vapor before they touched His armor. Fire not as a weapon, but as a presence. A reminder.

His gaze trailed along the molten lines creeping beneath Bane's skin, reading him as one might read cracks forming in a piece of glass before it shattered.

"So eager," He said quietly, almost bored, the words carried on the distorted air between them. "And for what?"

He stepped forward into Bane's momentum, not retreating an inch, letting the man's wild exhilaration crash against an unmovable certainty. The cold fog recoiled from Him; the heat bled outward like a slow, spreading verdict.

"You bleed," Imperius continued, voice low, flat, dismissively calm. "And imagine it means something."

Bane's blade met His—somewhere in that storm of motion, some point of frost and flame colliding—but Imperius barely adjusted. The Shroudsaber shifted angles like a scalpel finding a flaw in armor, tracing lines that exposed imbalance, fatigue, the tremor beneath the euphoria.

"You chase purpose in pain," He murmured, heat pulsing once from His open hand, enough to warp the air between them like molten glass. "But pain is not purpose."

A brief pause. Not dramatic. Simply the moment He elected to deliver the cut.

"It is the only thing you have."

The next motion was decisive: Imperius flowed inward, collapsing distance with a single, merciless stride. His off-hand swept through the air in a controlled arc—not a blast, not a flare, but a razor-thin sheet of heat, a slicing wave so precise it seemed carved rather than cast. A technique meant to flense momentum from muscle, to shear through frost and stance alike without the need for physical contact.

He followed it immediately.

The Shroudsaber rose in a tight, brutal diagonal—an attack designed not for spectacle but for stripping foundations. Not aimed at flesh. Aimed at breaking posture, choking angles, suffocating space.

Imperius' voice came one final time, quiet enough that it felt like a private condemnation:

"You are a storm without a sky." The blade hissed through the frost. "Thrashing is not meaning."

And then He pressed forward again, as inevitable as fire consuming oxygen.

 

[Bane Kaohal]

C o n f l i c t e d

Imperius Indomitus

The world folded sideways.

The heat-shear cut his stance out from under him, and before he could reassert footing the Shroudsaber's diagonal force hit him like a collapsing star. It didn't slice. It removed him — tore his direction, posture, and balance out from his body in one merciless stroke.

Bane was thrown.

Not staggered.
Not pushed.
Thrown.

His body hit the ground in a rolling explosion of frost and shattered stone before slamming into the academy wall with bone-rattling violence. The impact crater cracked outward in a spiderweb of ice.

He dropped to the ground hard.

For a moment, he didn't rise.

Fog billowed off him in stuttering bursts, breath coming sharp and uneven as he forced his body to obey. His ribs grated. His shoulder burned. His spine ached like something had tried to fold it in half.

But the pain wasn't what rooted him still.

It was the words.

"You bleed… and imagine it means something."
"Pain is not purpose."

He pushed a knee under himself, shaky, bracing a hand against the icy stone. His jaw clenched until teeth creaked.

A low, bitter laugh scraped out of him.

It wasn't amusement.

It was the sound of a man recognizing a truth he despised.

"…Bastard."

He exhaled, long and ragged, cold spilling out in a plume that trembled in the heated air Imperius left in His wake. Bane's hand hovered over the burn carved across his torso — shallow physically, deep everywhere else.

“Pain is not purpose.”

His fingers curled into a fist.

"…Funny," he rasped, pushing himself upright inch by inch. "You hit harder with your mouth than your bloody saber."

The mantle flickered against his cheekbone like a pulse trying to steady itself. The cold around him wavered, uncertain, as though waiting for him to decide what he was.

Bane staggered one step forward.

Then another.
Not roaring.
Not smiling.

Not launching himself back into madness.

Just moving, because stopping meant agreeing with Him. And he'd rather choke on shattered bone than do that.

When he finally lifted his gaze to Imperius, there was no awe.

No admiration.

Just a defiant, blood-smeared grin pulled thin at the edges by something unspoken and ugly.

"You think you've got me figured out?" he called out, voice rough but steadying. "Keep talking."

A breath.
A swallow of blood.

"…Maybe you'll finally say something I don't want to punch you for."

He tightened his grip on his blade — not fully ready to charge, but not beaten either.

His cold gathered again, slower this time.

Lower.
Focused.

Not to prove something. But because he wasn't done yet.

 

[Imperius Indomitus]

LORD INDOMITUS
Through Fire and Blood.
Through Justice and Strength.
On the Anvil of War, We forge our Destiny.

Bane Kaohal

​

Hosnian Prime | Academy of Law Enforcement | Square

Imperius watched Bane rise.

Not with admiration. Not with contempt. With the same steady, impersonal attention that a surgeon gives a failing muscle twitching on the table. The frost still spiraled around the man's boots, fighting to reassemble a storm too fractured to disguise its tremor. Blood steamed quietly in the heat that bled off Imperius' armor, each drop evaporating before it could stain the stone.

He stepped forward once.
Just once.
And the space shrank around Bane more than the distance did.

Not a threat.
A statement.

The Shroudsaber angled down, its unstable white flame humming against the cold fog and cutting a thin, molten line in the air. Imperius' presence pressed outward in a muted pulse—no power display, no explosive surge. Just the quiet, suffocating weight of someone who never needed to raise his voice or his hand to unmake a man.

His gaze passed over Bane's cracked stance, the tightness in his jaw, the pain masked by that thin, defiant grin—and He filed each detail away like data rather than danger.

"You rise. Good."

The words were soft, steady, infuriatingly calm.

"Rage, rage against the dying of the night."

He circled. Not wide. Just enough for Bane to feel the absolute security in each step—the certainty of someone who had already mapped the angles of the next strike, the next failure, the next breath.

"You strive, you suffer, you bleed."

A faint tilt of the head, as though examining a specimen that refused to expire on schedule.

"You are not good enough."

The heat around Imperius intensified by degrees, turning the icy mist between them into drifting ribbons of steam. He made no move toward Bane—yet the pressure built all the same, as though the air itself resented Bane's persistence.

"You think that chaos and destruction will overshadow your inability to achieve, to be better, to repent for your shortcomings."

The Shroudsaber rose slightly—not an attack, but an implication of one. A reminder. A promise.

"They do not."

He stopped moving. Perfectly centered. Perfectly balanced. Perfectly still.

The fire returned—not as a wave, nor as a blast.
As a whisper.

Imperius extended a hand, fingers splayed, and heat rolled out in a tight, concentrated column. Not enough to burn. Not enough to stagger. Just enough to force Bane to feel the difference between them—the precision, the discipline, the mastery Bane's wild brilliance kept failing to touch.

A heat that said: you cannot reach Me.

"You want meaning in the wound I gave you," Imperius murmured. "But your pain is not an answer. It is merely the echo of your failure."

He lowered His hand.

The air stilled, held taut between them, waiting for whichever man would break it first.

Imperius did not advance.

He didn't need to.

"You are not done," He said, not as a compliment, not as encouragement, but as a verdict.

"Good."

And then He waited—for the next useless storm Bane insisted on hurling at Him.