Relationship Status: It's Complicated
WEAPONS: Ferrum Solus | Blodmåne | Strømafbryder
SHIP: Úlfs Reiði (Wolf's Fury)
TAG:
Liliane
The sky above Stewjon was a bleak canvas, an iron-gray veil that pulled low across the jagged cliffs of the north. Wind howled through the boughs of the Hollow Ridge trees, whose trunks curved like the spines of long-dead beasts, blackened by centuries of lightning strikes and frost. Snowflakes spiraled on bitter gusts, clinging to the folds of Gerwald Lechner's dark cloak, though the Sith Lord did not shiver. His corrupt eyes scanned the forest line with grim patience.
He had returned home, though "home" was too kind a word for the haunted, half-forgotten land of his birth. Stewjon had never truly welcomed him, not even as a boy. But something ancient did stir here, something older than his blood, older even than the first Jedi whispers that echoed through this world's distant past.
Gerwald knelt beside a crumbling monolith, half-swallowed by moss and frost. Dark runes lay etched in spirals around its surface, barely visible in the failing light. He reached out with a gloved hand, not to touch, but to listen. The Force around it was fetid and thick, like old blood under stone. He could feel their signature here.
The Dark Ones.
A forgotten people, half-myth to the galaxy, but to Stewjon they had been gods or monsters—perhaps both. The old stories told of tall, ashen-skinned beings who walked the forests without sound, whose eyes turned red only when they killed. Even the Jedi had left this place alone in the end.
And now he hunted them once more.
Behind him, one of his Second Legion scouts approached quietly. "My Lord," the trooper murmured, voice metallic through the helmet, "We found signs of life near the caves west of the glade. Residue… biological and alchemic both."
"Good," Gerwald said, standing slowly. The wind caught his cloak like the wings of a carrion bird. "Set a guard around the perimeter. We're not here to chase ghosts. We're here to capture them."
A flicker of Force energy pulsed beneath the snow-laced earth as if in protest. Something down there remembered him. Or perhaps it remembered his mother.
And that was the most dangerous kind of memory.
Gerwald turned, his gaze settling on the figure standing just beyond the tree line—a slender silhouette draped in pale robes, untouched by the snow. She had arrived only days before, sent at Srina Talon's instruction but chosen for reasons left deliberately unspoken. Still young, though clearly tempered by pain, she carried the same stillness her master wielded like a blade. There was discipline in her every movement, the weight of lessons learned in silence and suffering. She said nothing, but he felt her presence ripple faintly in the Force like frost spreading over glass, controlled but sharp.
He had brought her because this was no ordinary hunt. The recent campaigns had left their mark, not just on the galaxy, but on Gerwald himself. Zeffo had exposed fractures within their alliances. Taris had proven that even victory came at a cost. And now, as whispers of the past crept up from beneath Stewjon's soil, he knew he stood at a threshold. The Second Legion could take worlds, but the truths buried here… they might reshape what it meant to be Sith. What it meant to be his.
She stepped closer now, stopping at the edge of the monolith's shadow, silent as snowfall. The bond between her and her master was unmistakable, but it was her own path Gerwald watched for. If she faltered, this place would consume her. If she endured… if… then perhaps she was meant to witness what came next.
"You feel it," he murmured, not as a question.
He did not wait for an answer. The wind answered for her, keening low across the trees like a dirge.