The lights began to fail ahead of them.
It was not the violent collapse of a damaged system, nor the irregular flicker of power being bled elsewhere. They extinguished themselves one after another with a slow and dreadful purpose, each section of the corridor surrendering to darkness only when the last had been allowed to settle. Whatever waited beyond the failing light was not merely concealed by it, it seemed to be bringing the darkness with it.
The blast door behind the Jedi descended with a grinding finality, cutting them away from the route they had taken and leaving only the long, narrowing corridor ahead. The distant sounds of the facility became muted things beyond the walls; the report of weapons, the cries of dying Ssi-ruuk and the faint violence of the struggle surrounding Bastila and Sophelia. Their distress signal had reached those it had been intended for.
It had reached something else as well.
A sound emerged from the blackness. A single breath, drawn slowly through machinery that could no longer disguise how broken the thing beneath it had become. Static whispered across the corridor with every exhalation, joined by fragments of something almost vocal, as if the helmet were struggling to contain several voices speaking through the same ruined throat.
The air seemed to grow heavier with it and as if pushed out of that darkened, heavy air Malleus stepped into the last remaining pool of light.
Black armour swallowed what little illumination remained, revealing his shape only in fragments, noticeable where the dim light of the darkness caught the edge of a shoulder, the ridges of a fractured helmet and one gauntleted hand curled around the hilt of a lightsaber. What would have been instantly noticeable was that he did not carry the anger of the Sith he seemed to be. There was almost no heat to him at all. In fact it felt like there was nothing in him, only an absence vast enough to make the corridor feel smaller, as though the Force itself had withdrawn from the space around his body and left something dead in its place.
He had watched the Jedi change direction, feeling out through the darkness to grab hold of the urgency that pulled them towards their companions and the certainty with which they answered it. Such bonds made Jedi predictable. They dressed attachment in nobler language, called it duty, called it compassion, but when one of them cried out the others always came.
They would realise it soon. It had all been a trap.
The red blade ignited without warning, its light spreading across the corridor and finding the blackened grooves carved into Malleus’ armour. For the briefest moment it illuminated the wall behind him, where the bodies of several Ssi-ruuk had been pressed into the metal with enough force to break them into unnatural shapes. Their blood moved slowly down the surface, almost black beneath the crimson glow.
His helmet turned towards Tatiana and Malleus lowered the blade until its tip touched the floor. Metal began to glow beneath it, then split as he dragged the weapon behind him and walked forward with the unhurried certainty of something that knew there was nowhere left to run.
“They are calling for you.” The voice arrived fractured, the words overlapping themselves through the damaged modulator almost foreboding as the final light above the Jedi flickered once. In that brief failure Malleus seemed to vanish, leaving only the red blade suspended within the dark.
When the light returned, he was closer. His head tilted by a fraction, the gesture carrying something worse than amusement.
“...and here you are.”
Tatiana Sah
Kaia Starchaser
Sophelia Ardemark
Indra Quin
Bastila Sal-Soren
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Corazona von Ascania
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Daxin Veyr
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Malleus
