Private Hazy Neon Lights

[Darth Mortyra]

Tag: NecroStache​

Mortyra stood at the center of a rooftop. The city around her glowed in hazy neons. The light bled into the sky and drowned out most of the stars, leaving only the faintest few to struggle through the urban glow.

The wind pulled at the layered edges of her dark attire, whispering through leather and ebony fabric and forcing parts of it to shift. Straps crossed her torso in deliberate geometry, cinched tight at the waist, and at the small of her back—hidden beneath the fall of her cloak—rested her lightsaber hilt, clipped securely to her belt.

Rain had slicked the rooftop into a mirror of cold light, reflecting the distant towers in fractured streaks across its surface.

Beside Mortyra, a man hung suspended in the air, his boots dangling uselessly above the rooftop as his hands clawed at the invisible grip crushing his throat. His breath came in wet, broken gasps that never quite reached his lungs. Her Force held him there absolutely. He did not have the strength to escape her power.

Mortyra’s eyes were closed, not in calm, not in meditation, but in focus. The world around her was unfolded through Force Sight; the city’s pulse was resolved into lines of motion and intent. Every flicker of life, every shifting shadow, every distant presence burned in her awareness, and within that web, not far from her, she found him: Darth Morveth. He was still, watching her.

Her head tilted slightly, aligning with that thread in the Force as her voice slipped into the night, cold and level. “What is it you want?” The words cut cleanly through the wind and the man’s strangled attempts to breathe. Then the man floating beside her spasmed, and with a sharp, efficient twist of the Force, his neck snapped. Her expression did not change, nor did her eyes open when the man’s life force left his body.

For a brief moment, he remained suspended before she released him. He dropped like discarded weight, striking the rooftop with a dull, hollow impact. She did not look down. Her attention remained fixed on Darth Morveth, her awareness narrowing, sharpening on him.

 

[Darth Morveth]

Tag: Darth Mortyra ​

The city's pulse was a dull thing to him. It was mechanical, restless and without spirit. It press in on the senses like a cage built of light and sound but beneath it... beneath it there were other currents. Older. Stranger. He had followed one of those currents here, not by chance, not by idle curiosity.

Morveth stood where the rooftop broke into shadow, rain gathering along the edges of his form and slipping soundlessly away. He had tracked the disturbences through the Force across districts and heights, through layers of lesser minds and weaker signatures, until it resolved into something singular.

Her. Not merely strong. Wrong, in the way old things were wrong. He had heard whispers before this night. Fragments carried in the undercurrents of Sith space, in half-spoken warnings and the quiet interest of those who dealt in knowledge best left buried. A woman who did not belong to any Order. One who did not seek power int he ways they taught, but unearthed it. Took it. Kept it.

That alone had been enough, so he came, and now he watched. The man died as Morveth expected he would - without dignity, without resistance worth memory. His attention never left her, not even as the body struck the rooftop and lay broken in the rain.

When she spoke, he did not answer at once. He let the silence live. Let it stretch between them like a drawn blade neither had yet chosen to wield. Then, at last, he stepped forward. Not in some dramatic reveal, but simply because he no longer had reason to remain unseen. The shadows released him without protest. Rain traced the lines of his wrapped tunic, dark cloth clinging in places before falling still again. He stopped well short of her. Distance, for now, was appropriate.

"You already know the answer." Morveth said, his voice low, steady. "Or close enough to it."

His gaze held her, not challengingly, not submissively, but measuring.

"You've left a trail." He continued. "Not carelessly. Not like others... but it is there."

A faint shift of his head indicated the corpse without granting it true attention and then he took another step, not closing the distance, but testing it.

"It doesn't behave like power taught in halls or beaten into acolytes until they forget what they are. It reaches. It searches."

There was no disdain in the words, only fact. His eyes narrowed in recognition. The Force stirred faintly around him, not a display or threat. Something older in its posture. Grounded. Watching as much as it pressed.

"I wanted to see if the stories were exaggeration... They aren't."

The rain thickened for a moment, tapping softly against stone and fabric alike. Morveth did not move. He stood as though it were nothing more than distant noise.

"You felt me watching and you did not stop. You did not turn. You finished what you were doing. That is why I am here."

The words didn't carry approval, not quite, but they lingered close enough to be felt. Another breath of silence. Then, more plainly.

"I sought you out.... because whatever path you walk it does not come from them and I would know what it becomes."

He tilted his head faintly, studying her as one might study something half-buried and newly uncovered.

 

[Darth Mortyra]

Tag: NecroStache​

As he stepped from the shadows and began to approach, Mortyra turned to face him fully. Her eyes opened at last, her gaze—hidden behind the featureless black mask—locking onto him at once. There was no startle, no hesitation in her movement, only recognition of another Sith who had stalked her.

The shift in her stance was subtle. Her weight settled toward her right side, her left foot adjusting slightly against the slick rooftop for greater purchase. The line of her shoulders tightened a fraction.

He paused. Spoke. Stepped forward again. Her breathing remained steady, though her chest rose a fraction deeper than before. Her gaze did not waver. It held him in a way that was not openly hostile, but something more exacting—predatory—as she mapped distance, timing, and environmental factors.

“Then you have likely wasted your time,” she replied without missing a heartbeat. Her voice was level, free of strain or irritation. It carried cleanly through the rain and wind. “I have little interest in our kind. Most circle the same ambitions, the same hierarchies, mistaking repetition for mastery. They are taught to fixate on people, on events, on systems… rearranging the surface.”

“I concern myself with it only as required.”

A small adjustment in her posture followed. Her footing settled more firmly against the rooftop, her stance tightening by a degree that suggested readiness rather than tension.

“My focus lies beneath it. The axiomatic structures that persist when everything else is stripped away.”

There was the faintest shift in her expression then, a slight narrowing of her eyes.

“So decide quickly whether you have something of value to offer… or whether you are simply another distraction.”

 

[Darth Morveth]

Tag: Darth Mortyra
​

Rain thickened between them, a veil drawn thin but unbroken, each drop catching what little light the city bled upward. Morveth did not wipe it from his face, he let it fall, let it mark the stillness of him. She turned fully now. Good. There was no flinch in her. No wasted motion. He watched the minute shift of her footing, the tightening line of her shoulders. Not fear. Not even hostility. Calculation.

His gaze lingered there, not on her mask, but on the shape beneath it. The intent that moved her rather than the surface she presented. When she spoke, he listened without interruption. There was a familiar rhythm to her words. The same quiet separation from the structures other clung to. The same dismissal of the petty cycles that consumed the Order and all its lessor imitators. Morveth did not answer immediately. Instead, he took another step forward, not closing the distance fully but enough that the space between them felt chosen now.

"Distraction." He repeated, as if testing the word for weight. A faint breath left him, not quite amusement. "No."

His hand rose then, unhurried, palm turning slightly upward between them. For a moment, there was nothing, only rain striking skin and cloth. Then it came. Not the crackling violence of lightning nor the crude flare of Sith displays. A slow bloom. Green fire curled into existence above his palm, thin at first, almost fragile in appearance. It did not burn like natural flame. It coiled. Tendrils of it licked the air casting a sickly, shifting glow across the wet stone and the dark line of his hand. The rain did nothing to extinguish it. Morveth's eyes did not leave her as the fire moved, folding in on itself, unfolded again, alive in a way that had nothing to do with heat or combustion.

"I have no interest in their hierarchies." He said, voice low beneath the soft hiss of rain against unnatural flame. "Or their endless circling of the same shallow victories."

The fire tightened, drawing closer to his palm, then stretching again as if tasting the space between them.

"They taught me enough to be useful. Nothing more."

The green light cast brief, warped reflections across her, something ancient meeting something unknown.

"You speak of what lies beneath. Of structures that remain when everything else is stripped away. I know that language."

The flame dimmed, drawn inward, controlled, until it became a smaller, denser thing.

"Not the way they pretend to understand it." There was the faintest edge there now. "But as it is practiced where I come from."

He didn't name Dathomir. He didn't need to. He let the silence stretch again, the fire's low movement filling it like a second heartbeat. He took another step forward. The flame curled once more, then stilled.

"So no. I did not come as a distraction. I came to find the one who has power but is not part of the Order. And I intend to see whether it is a path worth walking."

His hand lowered slightly and the green fire faded away.