Duel Midnight.

[Serina Calis]

"Good, let's see how they fare."

Tag - Jonyna Si


The sky above Chalcedon was a dying bruise—deep purple choked beneath rust-colored clouds, the afterbirth of a once-proud world turned industrial reliquary. The durasteel towers of the southern sprawl reached skyward like ancient needles, their lights flickering under rationed power grids and state patrols. Somewhere below, a child cried. Somewhere else, someone bled. No one cared. There were no good nights here.

But there would be glory.

And pain.

And science.

Serina Calis stood upon the edge of a broken rooftop, her cloak caught on the wind like a second skin—black, sharp, and clinging to her silhouette. Her eyes were narrow slits of cool calculation, glinting beneath the shroud of her hood. Below her, the lights of the Alliance outpost guttered dimly against the dark, their paltry security systems unaware that death had already stepped across their threshold.

She whispered into her comm.
"Deploy Phase One. Quietly."

A pulse flickered against her spine. Far below, the shadows moved. A pair of droids emerged from alley recesses—bipedal, silent, matte-black monstrosities bearing no insignia. They crossed into the perimeter, their feet whispering over the ground, their presence erased from the sensor grid by signal-killing shards released thirty minutes earlier. None of the guards noticed when the outer camera feeds went blank.

Serina didn't smile. She merely stepped off the ledge.

Her descent was slow. Controlled. Like gravity itself feared to rush her. She landed without a sound, knees flexed, hand sweeping out to stabilize herself on a rusted pipeline. She straightened slowly, luxuriously, as though savoring the moment like wine sliding down her tongue. She looked down the alley to the outpost gate—a reinforced checkpoint flanked by a barracks and a small community center where the Alliance had been evaluating potential Force sensitives.

That was why she was here.

The Alliance had called it a public outreach initiative. Medical evaluations, sponsored by the Jedi. But she had read the shipping manifests. The bloodwork samples. She had intercepted encrypted communication between the outpost and a New Jedi Order transport bound for Tython.

Children. Adolescents. The bright and talented. Untapped Force potential.

They called it freedom. Choice.

Serina spat on that idea.

"Phase Two," she murmured, tone silk-laced steel.

A moment later, two things happened.

First—the lights in the entire district died. Her infiltrator droids had finished chewing through the backup generator's internal relay, plunging the perimeter and surrounding blocks into pitch black. Seconds later, dozens of small red lights flickered on—optics, motion trackers, servo-pulses. Her secondary wave.

The second thing was a sound: a scream, then another. Someone opened fire. Blue bolts lit the night. Then—silence. Total and final.

She stepped into the open.

There was no need for stealth now.

Alliance soldiers stumbled into the courtyard, blinking in the dark, barking questions into commlinks that were already jammed. One of them—young, lean, not more than a corporal—turned and froze as he saw her.

Just a woman. Cloaked. Unarmed.

His confusion was still in his throat when Serina lifted her hand and bisected him vertically with a ribbon of pure Force.

No lightsaber. No warning. Just precision, perfect and surgical, like a scalpel through cloth. The two halves of the corporal didn't even have time to fall apart before her shadow swept through them like a tide.

Another guard lunged. Serina sidestepped, gliding past him like water—and her boot crushed his ankle, caving the joint inward as she spun and drove her elbow into the base of his neck. The impact folded him over on himself. He never got up.

"Someone's here!" someone shouted. "It's a Sith!"

That word echoed through the compound like a spell.

Yes. Let them feel it.

She activated her saber with a purr of crimson light—not for intimidation, not for honor, but to carve the doors open. Twin vertical lines, molten at the edges, peeled the reinforced durasteel like fruit skin. Inside, two medics and three civilian aides stared at her, frozen in shock, their hands raised.

"I'm not here for you," she said, voice a low, commanding hum.

They didn't move. Smart.

She raised a finger and traced a circle in the air. The stone floor beneath her shivered, then exploded upward in a dome of telekinetic violence, flinging desks, dataterminals, and two unlucky scientists into the walls. She advanced through the devastation with calm, cruel elegance, her boots clicking over scattered datapads and syringes.

Then came the real security response.

From the barracks came the thrum of energy shields. Shock troopers. A dozen of them. Armed with sonic rifles, stun batons, and powered armor. The kind of squad meant to restrain violent Force users until Jedi backup arrived.

Serina stood alone in the hall, backlit by fire.

The first bolt came—she didn't dodge it. She absorbed it. A flick of her hand, and the blue burst hissed into her palm and vanished. The next one she caught, crushed, and hurled back—a white-hot spike of feedback slamming into the shooter's faceplate and burning through his visor.

The hallway descended into chaos.

Serina did not fight them.
She unmade them.

Limbs twisted. Armor warped. Helmets imploded. One soldier turned to run and was dragged back screaming by his spine, bones cracking in Serina's unseen grip. Another tried to shield a comrade—Serina let him, then crushed them both together like meat in a press.

When she was finished, she stood surrounded by silence.

Breathing softly. Gloved fingers curling. Eyes sharp.

Behind her, the test subjects were being extracted—unconscious adolescents on floating stretchers, wheeled out by her med-droid cadre. Each one with a whisper of the Force. Each one a seed. A sample. A weapon waiting to be remade in her image.

And then—

a shift in the wind.

The Force stirred.

Serina tilted her head.

Someone was coming.

Not another platoon. Not some bureaucratic Jedi Knight here to scold and posture.

No.

This one was different.

She could feel it even now—blazing light, raw and wild, wrapped in emotion and storm. A Force signature like a tempest wrapped in a dancer's body. Fury hidden behind charm. Passion behind principle.

Her lips parted slightly.

She touched her tongue to her teeth.

A flicker of amusement.

 

[Jonyna Si]

TAG: Serina Calis

Chalcedon.

Normally, backwater planets like this would be forgotten to time. Left on a list of rocks floating in space on the manifest of some accountant who kept track of Alliance resources.

And yet, it's position in space made it a prime battlefield. A place where the sith could slip in without notice. At least, that's what they had assumed. The SIA had been hard at work fortifying the Alliance borders since Ukatis. Surveillance ships stationed along the border, quietly listening and waiting for an intrusion. The next invasion, the next attack, the next incoming assualt into Alliance space.

But they didn't have the capacity to do much about it. That was the job of the jedi.

And this day, it was the job of the Sentinel of Harmony.

Despite it's hostile nature, life still clung to this volcanic world. Communities hung to the pools of steamy water, the colonies of those who called this place home.

Jonyna didn't bother hiding her approach, not in the Force, nor her ship. She wanted the sith who dared to approach to know she was coming.

Then, just as fast as Serina felt it, it was gone.

Suddenly, a fog rolled into the colony. Thick enough where one could barely see their own hands in front of their face.

Then a shift in the ground, and one of the droids disappeared. Swallowed by the rock below, then crushed by it.

Then the other, as Serina heard the crunch of the metal as it was suddenly, and violently, smashed by the power of the Force.

And yet, no one around could really tell where it came from. Jonyna had long mastered the art of moving through a city without a sound, manipulating the air itself not simply not vibrate with every step she took. Stopping the sound itself in it's tracks.

Then Serina heard it. The voice of a woman unamused by her presence.

"Go home padawan. You're not welcome here. Or do you want me to finish the job Val didn't?"

Nowhere did the voice come from. Nowhere was there a mouth to speak, only the wind itself.

Jonyna watched from on high, waiting for the sith's response.

 

[Serina Calis]

"Good, let's see how they fare."

Tag - Jonyna Si



The world around her breathed. The colony's geothermal veins hummed faintly beneath her boots, rhythmic and indifferent, like the pulse of a predator asleep beneath volcanic ash. But Serina Calis did not sleep.

She waited.

Around her, the fog swirled unnaturally—conjured, not gathered. A field of illusion designed to erase intent, erase presence. Even now, the Force was thick with misdirection: a silence too perfect, the air too still. Sound refused to travel. Her mind, keen and methodical, registered it instantly—not as fear, but as insult.

You hide behind the weather, little knight.
As if mist could mask your weakness.

Her boots did not scrape the stone. She moved with fluid precision, her posture statuesque but uncoiled like a razor held gently to flesh. No lightsaber was drawn. No command was spoken. Only her gloved hand rose, fingers splaying slightly, as her mind narrowed its aperture and reached into the world.

She did not see. She heard.

Through the fog. Through the stillness. Through the spell.

Serina invoked the ancient technique with a breathless command of will—Magnify Senses, not cast broadly like a clumsy net, but honed into one singular thread:

The sound of a heart.
Her heart.

She filtered past the groan of creaking towers, the hiss of geothermal runoff, the low whine of ruined droid circuits still fizzling on the wind.

And then—
A beat.

Steady. Elevated.

Paced like a hunter's.
Or a woman trying very hard not to give herself away.

Serina's lashes lowered half a breath. The corner of her mouth lifted—barely. It wasn't a smirk. It was recognition. The storm had a center after all.

Her hand curled slightly. Fingers poised. Thumb brushing her middle knuckle, calculating direction, distance, elevation. The heartbeat was above. Not much. A low roof. A crane scaffold. A tower's ledge, perhaps.

That was enough.

She reached again—but not for the heartbeat. Not this time. Instead, she reached for the veil itself. The lie of the mist. She touched the tension in the air, the subtle trembling that every conjured illusion possessed. The fog wasn't just moisture. It was shaped. Held in place by Force will. An ecosystem of sensory denial. The Jedi had crafted it with care.

So Serina peeled it open.

A ripple echoed through the Force as her will slashed through the layer of ambient manipulation. Not a violent tear. Not some dramatic surge of counter-power. But a cold, methodical Force Suppression—an incision, made not with fire, but with the perfect edge of control.

Above her, a hole opened in the fog—precise, circular, two meters wide—just where the heartbeat waited. Like a blade of moonlight through a surgeon's incision, clarity bled into the mist. Stone and steel shimmered. There: the outline of a body, half-shadowed by elevation, crouched or poised.

Jonyna Si.

Serina said nothing.

She did not reach for her saber. She did not brandish her power like a weapon to impress. Instead, she lowered her hand to her side—palm downward, touching the stone beneath her feet. A slow breath left her lips. Then—

The world moved.

A concussive pulse exploded outward in a perfect ring—Force Wave, unleashed with no sound, no theatrics, only devastating efficiency. It blasted outward with the same silent precision that defined everything she did. The fog, once thick enough to drown in, evaporated in a violent radius around her. Walls trembled. Sand swirled. Debris cracked against the far corners of the alley.

There was no more silence.
There was no more hiding.

And still, Serina did not speak.

Instead, she listened.

The heartbeat again. Louder now.
Faster. She had been seen.

Serina stepped forward, each motion deliberate, as if she were walking into a ballroom rather than a battlefield. Her cape fluttered, edge-torn and lined with sigil-threads. Her body was lean, yet braced in layers of composite armor etched with ritual lines and shielded circuits. Her every movement radiated a sense of slow dominance—like a black hole that didn't need to move to kill.

As she walked, she raised her left hand—and lowered her fingers like a curtain.

Around her, the Force bent into a shell.
Force Barrier.

Not to protect.
To dare.

Its shape was subtle, defensive without being static. She laced it into the terrain beneath her, anchored it through the stone and slag of the Chalcedon colony's bones. This was not a shield of fear. It was a statement—a wall not built to hold off an attack, but to invite one. Let the hurricane crash itself against the wall. See what breaks first.

Wind curled around her boots.

Ash drifted upward from the cratered earth.

Distant civilians screamed in fear, though none would see the source of their terror. Only the trail of broken metal and sundered steel behind her. The empty stares of med-droids leading unconscious bodies toward waiting shuttles, each comatose victim a crystal in the lattice of her future empire.

She would not stop.

Not for mist. Not for moralities.
Not for a Jedi parading in feline skin.

She stood now in the open—cloak fluttering, hands still, no weapon drawn. Not a single sound from her lips.

Jonyna had spoken. Challenged her. Provoked her.

And in response—

Serina Calis simply existed.
Calm. Dominant. Undeterred.

And that was louder than any battle cry.

The wind screamed between them now, no longer held at bay. The air returned with a vengeance. The environment belonged to her again. Serina's eyes locked to the faint outline still half-shrouded above.

Your move.

She would not give the Jedi the honor of a voice.
Let her speak with fire.

Serina would answer with the end.

 

[Jonyna Si]

TAG: Serina Calis

The first thing she could feel was the pull of Serina's influence on her mind. Attempting to suppress her. To weaken her.

But it was like trying to blow away a hurricane already in motion, Jonyna having spent long hours learning to protect herself from such influences. From people like Darth Wallgof , or Darth Carnifex . Fear was an old friend, but also a foreign concept. She'd been trained to fight against sith lords, those able to bend reality, shift mountains, rip entire cities apart, in both mind and body.

The Force was more than just her own power. She was more than just blood and bone.

She was a conduit for something bigger. Lygala, The Storm of Life.

Then the sith had the gaul to blow away her fog. She saw her, that was certain. A force barrier went up, and all of a sudden, this was a dare. The arrogance of a sith, on full display.

Jonyna simply waited.

And yet, her voice still rang through the colony streets.

"So this is the sith they send me to deal with? A girl barely out of training bras who ran away from the jedi temple because she couldn't hack it? Run away, sith. Or are you really a sith, and not just a wannabe who pretends to follow that code for your own benefit? I've read your file. Manipulative from day one, always trying to find your way to weasel into an advantage. I know who you are Serina. Go home. Or I'll send you there in a box."

 

[Serina Calis]

"Good, let's see how they fare."

Tag - Jonyna Si



The heartbeat again.

Thump.
Thump.

Slower this time. Calmer. But still there—the flaw in the storm.

Serina Calis stood amidst the ruins of fog and shattered stone, unmoving. No words passed her lips. No challenge answered. She did not react to the voice that had echoed down these volcanic alleys, that arrogant, theatrical snarl of a Jedi who fancied herself nature incarnate.

She simply listened.

There.
That tiny thrum behind the bravado.
Jonyna's voice could scream confidence, but the heart always betrayed. Not fear. No—Serina would not grant her that simplicity. Focus. Readiness. Anticipation.

She's waiting for you to strike.
She believes you'll fall for the obvious.

Serina wouldn't.

Instead, she sharpened her senses once more—Magnify Senses, cast not like a Jedi's desperate plea to feel the Force, but like a scalpel, narrowing her world down to that one, singular rhythm. A living metronome in the chaos. She tuned out the crackle of fire, the distant alarms, even the groaning metal of her shattered droids. She reached inward—quiet, deliberate—and listened.

Thump.
Thump.
Elevated. Not flinching. Not panicking. Just ready.

Perfect.

Her eyes closed for half a breath. Her fingers danced subtly in the air, weaving through a language older than speech: strategy, precision, inevitability.

Then she moved.

No warning. No wind-up. Just motion.

Serina's left foot shifted an inch forward. Her right hand flicked outward, palm open—not toward Jonyna, but toward the structure beneath her. The scaffold or ledge, whatever it was she perched on, became the first target.

A precise Force Grip snapped tight around the platform's supports, not to crush, but to destabilize. She didn't yank. She twisted—just enough to introduce uncertainty. A sway. A crack. A momentary flicker of uneven footing. One heartbeat where Jonyna's vertical dominance would become hesitation.

And it was in that breath that Serina acted again.

Her eyes snapped open—cold, glinting with violet murder beneath the curl of her lashes.

She extended her left hand upward toward the elevation—fingers spread, pressure surging through the air. Not to attack the Jedi directly. No, not yet. Instead, she fired upward a sudden, concentrated blast of Force Flash, aimed squarely at Jonyna's line of sight.

A blinding lance of white brilliance lit the night like a miniature sun, blooming inside the fog-cleared kill zone Serina had opened earlier. No sound. Just light. Severe and unforgiving.

Even if Jonyna averted her eyes, even if she shielded herself, it had done its job: forced motion. A shift. A dodge. A flinch. Serina wasn't trying to hit her. She was trying to bait her into movement.

Into reaction.

The Jedi had claimed to be a storm. So Serina made herself the eye—still, silent, and utterly calm as everything bent around her.

And then she struck.

With the perch destabilized and her target exposed mid-motion, Serina vanished in a blur of acceleration, Force Speed surging through her veins like liquid metal.

The ground cracked beneath her boots as she launched forward, an obsidian streak through the sulfurous night. She didn't close the distance in a straight line. She curved—cutting a wide arc across the courtyard, moving from one pocket of shattered stone to the next, using cover and momentum to deny Jonyna a clean line of response.

She didn't leap. She didn't telegraph.
She appeared—just outside melee range, ten meters forward, then six, then suddenly—

Three.

And then she stopped.
Dead still.

No lightsaber drawn.
No weapon raised.
Only her hands—open, inviting, yet terrifyingly precise.
And around her—

A cocoon of Force.

Her Force Barrier, woven moments earlier, expanded now—not outward, but inward, layered around her skin like invisible armor. Into it she braided Tutaminis, anticipating the inevitable retaliation. Serina didn't need to dodge it.

She would eat it.

Let the Jedi try to break her. Let her throw lightning, water, flame. Serina had walked through worse. She was worse.

 

[Jonyna Si]

TAG: Serina Calis

She was being ignored.

That was easy enough to see. No reaction, no hint of anger, no spiteful retort.

Jonyna focused. Not with her eyes, but with her fur. With the wind. A trick she had honed for years now, a sensation unfamiliar to anyone who couldn't do what Jonyna could. Extending one's sense of touch, through the air itself.

Every little moment Serina made, Jonyna could feel. Even the smallest twitch, the slightest shift in stance, she felt it.

Then came the shift of her platform, and Serina found out the truth.

Jonyna wasn't truly standing on the spire she had seemed to be perched on. She was standing on air. Hard air. Without a flinch, she watched as the sith postured once more. Trying to blind her. She didn't react, nor did she wait. Rather than wait, Jonyna closed the distance herself, just as blindingly fast, and got her nose right up against the barrier.

She could feel it. The wind inside the barrier, twisted by the dark.

This time, she spoke with her own breath. Her own mouth. She looked entirely unimpressed as she walked on nothing but loose oxygen.

"Either swing at me or run away, child. I don't have time to inflate your ego. You can make the first move all you want. I'll be the one to make the last."

There was no ego to those words. No confidence. Just finality.

 

[Serina Calis]

"Good, let's see how they fare."

Tag - Jonyna Si



She stood at the eye of it—immovable, coiled, silent.

Serina Calis did not flinch when the Jedi descended.

Jonyna closed the distance like lightning barely restrained, nose against the barrier Serina had summoned around herself like an invisible sheath. The Cathar's breath curled in the air. Her steps made no sound. She walked on air itself, arrogant in poise and purity. Her words, now spoken aloud rather than through the wind, came with the sharp, sour tang of challenge. Of finality.

"Either swing at me or run away, child. I don't have time to inflate your ego. You can make the first move all you want. I'll be the one to make the last."

Serina said nothing.

Not immediately.

Her gaze lifted—not with surprise, not even annoyance—but with a detached curiosity. A cool calculation behind pale lashes, as if inspecting something beneath glass. Not a threat. Not a rival. A variable. An instability.

The silence between them stretched longer than it should have. Long enough for the wind to hesitate, for the dust to settle on the scorched street, for the world to realize that neither woman blinked.

Serina had studied many things. How Jedi spoke. How they stalled. How they convinced themselves that they were in control. And this one—this "Sentinel of Harmony"—spoke as if control were her birthright. As if virtue made her untouchable. As if righteousness was armor.

The Force whispered otherwise.

She heard it in the tension of Jonyna's chest. Not fear—certainty. It was always the certain ones that bled best.

So Serina made no proclamation. No grand attack. No lightsaber to ignite, no veil to drop. Only her breath shifted, subtle, like silk disturbed by a blade.

Her hand rose.

Open. Measured. Directed.

And with the smoothness of inevitability, she pressed outward.

Not a shove. Not a blast. A shockwave—focused, compressed, and surgically unleashed. She didn't throw it like a weapon. She released it, a silent compression of air and power that expanded from her core in a single direction: into the center of the Jedi's mass.

Not to destroy. Not to punish. To disrupt. To unwind the tension in Jonyna's balance, to fracture the control she wielded over her floating perch, over her perfect posture. The Force moved like an arrowhead, invisible but insistent, gliding into the exact vector between them—where Jonyna's defiance had planted itself.

Serina's gaze didn't change. She didn't lunge. She didn't smirk. She simply watched.

Watched for the knee to shift. The hip to pivot. The toes to tighten against the air she walked upon.

And in the instant that posture corrected—even subtly—Serina moved again.

The same hand twisted, fingers curling like she were turning a dial.

Force Pull.

Not a brute yanking. Not a lightsaber-launching, showy stunt. Just a single, refined manipulation of leverage. She didn't pull Jonyna toward her—she tugged the terrain beneath her, the anchoring elements of her footing, the air flow behind her left shoulder, the trail of slack energy that clung to her movement like a banner. Jonyna had made herself into a monument of balance and poise.

Serina didn't try to topple the monument. She just cracked the pedestal.

Two moves. One to break the stance. One to alter the fall.

She stepped forward once—not into range, not to attack, but to assert presence. Her chin tilted slightly.

Still not a word.

Her Force Barrier remained up, seamless and intimate, wrapping her like a sheath of glass. The air around her shimmered from the passive Tutaminis, absorbing and dissipating ambient heat, residual static, and the pressure of the volcanic microclimate that rolled through Chalcedon like invisible surf.

The world was growing quieter. Not because it lacked sound—but because it waited for something.

And then, without changing tone or posture, Serina finally spoke.

Just one line. Dry. Dismissive. A flick of tongue and venom.

"…You talk like a Mandalorian."

The words fell like ash in the silence.

Not loud. Not triumphant. Just factual. An observation, offered like the rusted edge of a poisoned knife.

And that was all.

She didn't follow it up. She didn't smile. She didn't even raise her voice.

Instead, she waited—one hand relaxed at her side, the other still raised in subtle command. The pressure of the Force settled again around her like silk soaked in blood.

Jonyna had wanted the first move. Had dared her to take it.

Serina gave her two. And not one of them was made in anger.

 

[Jonyna Si]

TAG: Serina Calis

Jonyna didn't fight it. The first came like a punch to the gut, but that was a familiar sensation. She'd taken plenty from stormtroopers, from smugglers and bounty hunters. From real sith.

Then Serina tried to take her footing, the bits of air she stood on.

The moment they disappeared, Jonyna's feet ignited. Her eyes didn't leave Serina, watching the woman's own. Inspecting her. She wasn't looking at her face, no...

She was looking at her chest. Her heart.

That was the secret. The woman was listening to her hearbeart.

Then those cold words escaped her lips. Serina wanted them to be cutting, a mental wound that would break Jonyna's will.

Instead, she got a sudden, and entirely undignified snort. Jonyna's posture wasn't broken, she floated there on rocket thrust, watching the sith stare at her. She knew Serina's type. The one who feigns uncaring. Who try to dissect their opponent. The Black Widows who think themselves untouchable.

All the while, Jonyna was working her own magic. The wind had carried her voice, telling those in danger to escape to her ship. The SIA agents aboard working in tandem to whisk away her opponent's targets.

Jonyna starred the supposed sith down, eyebrow raised. "Is that the best you got? You think that's gonna piss me off and make me flinch? Lemme guess, you looked up Cathar on the holonet and went for the first cheap shot you could. The Mandalorians don't own the concept of a warrior race, Serina. Try again. But that's the big secret, isn't it? Poor little Serina, playing Sith dress up while the actual sith do the real work. I heard you got your ass kicked by my old girlfriend on Woostri. Come on," Jonyna paused, raising a hand to her cheek, poking it with one finger. "Right here. Hard as you can. We'll see if you're a real sith, or just a poser."