Private Love is a Battlefield [Complete]

[Katarine Ryiah]

But I'm trapped by your love​

Tags: Connel Vanagor

Dust shifted beneath Katarine's boots as she and Connel stepped across the threshold of the ancient temple. The sound was swallowed instantly by the stagnant air, thick with the weight of centuries. Even from the entrance, the Force hummed with a low, resonant sound, as if something old and buried was stirring in its sleep.

Cobwebs draped the stone archways like faded veils, and the corridor ahead stretched long and narrow, carved with symbols half-lost beneath dust. The dim daylight behind them bled away quickly, leaving only a thin, muted glow as they advanced. Katarine reached out through the Force, brushing against pockets of tension, eddies of warning, echoes of minds that lingered like fingerprints long after their owners had vanished.

Beside her, Connel walked in steady silence. Yet even his familiar presence felt distant here, as though the temple itself was intent on swallowing sound, thought, and certainty.

Another step. Another breath.

Then the floor trembled beneath them.

The light vanished in an instant, ripped away so completely it stole Katarine's breath. Total darkness pressed in until suddenly there was no hall, no sense of Connel, not even the whisper of the Force for a suspended heartbeat. Her hand snapped toward her lightsaber but hesitated, then pale light flooded her vision.

She stood alone.

The narrow hall had been replaced by a vast, circular chamber. Its ceiling disappeared into darkness, and the air felt heavier here, dense with power, almost viscous. All around the curved walls, runes glimmered to life one by one, cold and blue, their glow pulsing in rhythmic waves she felt deep in her bones.

"Connel?" Katarine called, but her voice sounded thin, swallowed by the chamber as though the stone itself drank it.

No answer. Only the slow, deliberate awakening of something unseen.

A presence coalesced before her, its form shimmering, translucent, the shape of a robed figure whose edges blurred like smoke. The Force bowed around it, gathering tight in the air between them.

The apparition's face was little more than shifting light, but its voice resonated not in sound, but through the chamber and through Katarine herself.

"Now you will see."

The runes flared.

And the world began to change.

 

[Connel Vanagor]

Mistakes will be made…
Approaching planet
Xozhixi

Michael, Gabriel, Azrael, Sariel, Raphael, Jeremiel, Connel, Raguel
[Any text in brackets signifies comm-link usage and not face to face conversation]

The situation was one for serious foreboding already, and the further that they went in, it only got worse. The dank feeling, the darkness, both visual and metaphorical, was almost suffocating. Each step forward seemed to amplify the sense of unease, as if the very air was warning them of danger. The shadows seemed to move on their own, and the silence was broken only by the sound of their own footsteps, echoing ominously in the void.

He almost missed the fact that somehow, Kat had disappeared.

Almost

“Connel… Son of Chrysothemis… son to Caltin… grandson to Anhil… descendant of Anselmo…”

You are?

He could see nothing but his surroundings. The voice was all he could experience, but it was not in his head.

“A friend…”

A friend would show themselves…

“You are touched by Darkness.”

Seriously?

I know that.

“Not to the degree you think.”

TAGS • Katarine Ryiah
Personal Effects - Omega Squad Loadouts - Shadow Sanctuary - Enterprise​

 

[Katarine Ryiah]

And I'm chained to your side​

Tags: Connel Vanagor

At the heart of the chamber, an alabaster statue of a robed figure loomed above her, its face worn to nothing by time. As Katarine approached, the shadows thickened, pooling like ink. The temperature dropped. Her breath fogged.

Then the darkness stepped forward and shaped itself into a mirror version of her with eyes sharp, mouth drawn tight, the echo of a younger Katarine who had not yet learned to hide her wounds.

"You are treading an old path," the vision said. "One you swore never to walk again."

Katarine's jaw tightened. She felt her fingers curl involuntarily toward where her saber should be, though she knew instinct meant nothing here.

The apparition tilted its head. "Connel Vanagor calls to you. And you pretend you don't hear."

"A Jedi shall not know love," the vision whispered, circling her. "You repeat it as doctrine, as penance. But what of the truth?"

Katarine swallowed. The truth. The word tasted like ash.

The shadows deepened until the chamber blurred into the memory she least wished to confront: her fallen Padawan—still, silent, broken...dead. Her failure. Her heart, torn open and left bleeding for years.

The vision leaned close, its voice a blade.

"You loved him. And because of that she died, you blamed love itself. So tell me, why are you letting someone close again? Why are you risking what destroyed you once?"

Katarine's breath trembled. The Force pressed in on her, heavy, suffocating, demanding honesty she had never dared speak aloud.

"I'm not," she said, though her voice cracked like old stone. "I'm not going down that path."

"A lie."

Suddenly things shifted and she was back in the room with Connel. She was uncertain if he had seen a vision too but standing on a pillar before them was a glowing holocron with Sith runes around it. It hummed softly, calling to Connel and perhaps that was the reason they were sent here.