Private Real? Neither? Other?

[Delsin Shaw]

Moving back and forth. Pacing in front of the glass box. Inside was a unique artifact that I had found deep within my father's study. Unsure of what it would do, I had enclosed it into a vacuum sealed glass container. Every time I attempted to feel it through the force, I found nothing. A void. As if it was an infinitesimally small singularity within the force. Even when using the Art of the Small to try and sense it, all it did was get me closer to the singularity in is presence, but nothing more. This perplexed me greatly. Hence, why Serina was here. I trusted her enough to keep this under wraps. This was not something I wanted others to know or find out. Even more so, if there were more of these out there, then I wanted to prevent others from finding them. Not only to investigate what these artifacts were, but because I would not have these in the hands of someone else to be used against me. I slowly reached out to the glass but stopped just before touching it. Almost recoiling in pain but just growling at it.

"That old Bastard documents everything about his life. All he did. All he found. How well women were in bed. But he left nothing about this? It makes no sense to me."

In anger I should have controlled better, I slammed my fist in a hammer blow down on the glass. It thumped loudly but did not break. More so releasing anger and vitriol in my father's name. I stayed there a moment more. Huffing my chest and feeling my hand shake. The throbbing of my strike against the glass on my flesh. My hand slowly removed as I calmed myself. Turning to her.

"This thing has perplexed me for weeks now. Please tell me you see and feel what I mean. its... just not there. Force Dead or a Void feels different than this. I know and understand much about different aspects of the force. But this - this is different."

Turning around slowly to her, I just sighed and resigned myself to back away from the objects held within.

"I know this is not what you may have expected from my call, but I just can't place it."


Serina Calis

 

[Serina Calis]

"Hard choices require hard minds."

Tags - Delsin Shaw



She did not answer at first.

Serina Calis stood still, perfectly still, like a monolith that had grown from the floor itself. The only motion was the slow, shallow rise and fall of her breastplate as the dim violet pulse at her core node mirrored each breath—if she was still breathing at all.

Her gaze—those six slanted insectile eyes glowing dimly through her helm—never left the artifact. Not even when you struck the glass in a moment of wrath. She did not flinch. She did not chastise. There was no judgment. Only that quiet, contemplative hunger she wielded like a scalpel.

Eventually, she moved—gracefully, deliberately. One clawed hand glided down the side of her helmet, disengaging the mask with a gentle hiss of pressure equalization. When it lowered, her face was revealed: cold, statuesque, beautiful in a way that no longer felt human. Her expression was unreadable, save for the faintest tilt of her lips—interest, perhaps. Or disquiet.

She stepped forward until she stood beside you. Not touching. Never touching.

"No. This is not what I expected."

Her voice was low and smooth, silk drawn across razors. Not angered, not alarmed. But aware.

"You were wise not to touch it. The Force recoils from it, yes—but not like a dead zone, or ysalamiri nullification. It's worse. More fundamental. It doesn't suppress the Force… it denies its architecture. Not absence. Negation."

She reached up, palm hovering centimeters from the glass as if feeling for the edges of a presence that shouldn't exist.

"The Art of the Small, remind me to learn how to use it, only pulled you closer to the void because you were reducing yourself to something the artifact could detect. It doesn't fail to register in the Force… it refuses participation. It is not Force-dead. It is pre-Force. Anti-Force."

Her voice lingered on that final word like the toll of a funeral bell.

"And your father left no record of it because I suspect he did not find it."

Her gaze drifted sideways toward you now, face half-lit by the faint pulses of the runes embedded in her armor.

"He took it."

She began to pace slowly around the artifact now, movements silent save for the whisper of her armored cloak.

"Artifacts like this… they are not 'found' in the way baubles are found in tombs. This is older. This is… philosophical. A scar in reality. The kind of thing that should not exist unless something made it. Or undid something to birth it."

She stopped behind you now. Her voice dropped, quiet enough that it almost sounded like it was inside your skull rather than behind your ear.

"If there are more of these, then it means someone is either harvesting remnants of a pre-Force cosmology… or engineering a rupture. A counter-faith. A theory of un-being."

She paused.

Then, with the quiet chill of inevitability:

"That makes this artifact not merely dangerous. It makes it sacred. To someone. And sacrilegious to the rest of us."

Her words lingered like frost.

Then, softer still:

"I will help you. But I want the truth. Not sentiment. Not nostalgia. What exactly was your father searching for… before he found this?"

The six violet eyes of her helm flickered to life again as she sealed the mask back into place. The whisper of her armor settling echoed like the drawing of a curtain.

The hunt had begun.

 

[Delsin Shaw]

So many questions, and not enough answers. I sighed and just shook my head.

"This entire lab is dedicated to just understanding what he was doing. What he was after. So much of it is logs and journals of exploits. Things he had done with the old Sith Empire, and even joining a Confederacy. His writings of going back and forth from the Netherworld by shattering the fabric between the two. He has some experiments on what he did to himself. Infected with various plagues. He tried to do whatever he could to extend his life. And there is nothing, nothing I have found on this."

At my final word, I jutted a knife hand at the objects within the glass case. These Saber like relics perplexed me. Turning to look at them with almost a longing to just say screw it and activate them.

"Art of the Small. Lowering yourself to the smallest confinement within the force. Like, shrinking yourself to see and experience the very atoms and quarks of the universe. I could not find it by sensing it alone. Attempting to feel it on an molecular level was.... met with nothing. Like you said. A singularity. Pulling at something that isn't - Shouldn't be- there."

Moving over to the desk at the other end of the room, numerous tomes and datapads strewn across the surface. I picked one up and just held it aloft. My eyes scanning it and just continuing to speak.

"My father, the bastard he was, kept extensive records. About everything he did. Why would he not mention such a thing? The only reason I can think, is along the lines of what you said. He stole it, or he was afraid of what it could do. Fearful of whatever implications it could bring."

Serina Calis

 

[Serina Calis]

"Hard choices require hard minds."

Tags - Delsin Shaw



She listened.
As always, Serina Calis listened more than she spoke. But now, there was something in her stillness that had not been there before.

Curiosity.

But not the kind a scholar felt for lost data. This was darker. Arousal, almost. Not in the crude sense of flesh, but in the deeper, older language of power—of mysteries that whispered beneath skin and soul alike. She did not blink. She did not interrupt. She simply watched you pace, let your bitterness bleed into the air, let your frustration dance like incense around the relic.

Then, slowly, Serina moved.

Each step was a study in control. The whisper of her segmented cape trailed like an afterthought of fire. Her armored feet made no sound on the cold permacrete. And yet the presence of her—that soundless, gravitational inevitability—filled the lab like rising smoke. The glass box reflected the faint glimmer of her eyes as she approached it once more, but she did not look at the artifact.

She looked at you.

"You're right," she said at last. Her voice was low, rich, shaped like sin and sharpened like doctrine. "There aren't enough answers. But you're asking the right questions now. And that's far more dangerous."

She reached out—not toward the object, but toward the air above it. Her taloned fingers traced the space between. Like a lover's hand caressing not skin, but the idea of skin. Her motion was elegant, almost indulgent, as though she were sculpting a shape that didn't want to be born.

"It isn't simply absent. It's other. Like it was not crafted in our galaxy's understanding of matter or spirit. Whatever your father touched… it was not merely Force-null."

A pause. Then a faint, silken smile.

"Which is exactly why I want it."

Serina turned, finally giving the saber-like relics her full attention. There was no hunger in her gaze—no greed. Only intrigue refined to the edge of seduction. She could almost taste their resistance. That denial. That refusal to be known.

"It doesn't repel the Force like a defense. It ignores it. Like a god refusing to acknowledge its worshipers."

She let the thought hang, let the silence gather around her like a veil. Then, with slow reverence, she bent slightly toward the glass, her hood shifting like the drape of a funeral shroud. The motion was intimate. As if she were whispering her breath against the object's prison. Not a test of power—but of invitation.

"Artifacts are not just tools," she murmured. "They are philosophies, hardened into shape. They embody truths—forgotten, forbidden, or feared. Your father's silence is a confession. Whatever this is… it unnerved him more than anything he was willing to record. And I wonder..."

She circled the case now, hands folded behind her back. A teacher in a gallery of sins. A queen pondering which throne to desecrate next.

"I wonder if the artifact didn't simply escape his understanding... but rejected it."

Serina turned to you again, her gaze landing with surgical precision.

"Have you considered that it might be alive?"

There was no smile now. Just the gravity of the suggestion. Not metaphorically alive—not imbued with spirit, or animated through the Dark Side—but truly autonomous. Self-contained. A sovereign.

She began to trace a line with her claw along the edge of the case now, the faintest scrape of metal on transparency. A sound like the caress of a knife against bone.

"You said you longed to activate it. I felt that." Her voice dropped to a slow murmur, like embers catching breath. "That is the beginning. The will of a thing like this doesn't manifest in data. It manifests in desire. It teaches you to want what it cannot offer. It teaches you to kneel before the unknown."

She stepped closer to you, letting the aura of her armor's pulsing runes wash over your senses. The violet energy at her chest pulsed slower now—languid, hot, intimate.

"You have something rare, darling. Something that doesn't want to be studied, tamed, or broken. Something that was meant to remain untouched. Which means it must be touched."

She laughed, quiet and breathy, the sound like velvet pulled over a knife.

"And if you truly believe your father feared it, then congratulations. You've already surpassed him. Fear is the last luxury of old men clinging to their own myths. But we—we build new ones."

Her hand brushed a datapad from the cluttered desk without even looking. It slid across the surface toward her, captured in a lazy flick of telekinesis. Her other hand reached for a tome, flipping it open with a talon and scanning the runes with the detached interest of a predator watching prey dream.

"You want my help? Then when do we meet?"

Her eyes glowed brighter, each of the six facets narrowing like a camera lens on prey.

 

[Delsin Shaw]

Looking between the writings, the datapads and the possible research, listening to her words, sweet sounding and tempting, but in earnest, I had the same thoughts since before I called her to meet me here. The sabers housed within were such a tempting item. The aspect of what they were drew me in. And honestly, I felt that trying to just go over these tomes again and again would not produce any results. I lazily dropped the book down onto the desk. Looked directly at her and just smiled.

"Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained."

Crossing the distance like a man on a mission, My hands went to the case. Releasing the locks and allowing the vacuum to be broken. Hissing loudly as the seal was breached. My hands gingerly holding onto the glass. Lifting it to expose these artifacts to the air. I reached a hand out almost touching them. Almost grabbing them and just letting baser instincts take over. Yet slowly, I drew my hand back. Almost ashamed I did such a thing. Looking at the exposed flesh of my palm. Its creases and indentations. My eyes drifted from the artifacts over to Serina. Shrugging my shoulders to her.

"The only way to discover something, is to seek it. To find and categorize it. Speaking of theory and fear while its locked up produces nothing but mind-bound quandaries."

My hand reached out again. Grabbing the weapon. At first, nothing happened. My hands just held onto the cold metal of the weapon. Slowly, I could feel any senses I had of the world, of the force start to fade away. It was a feeling like slowly closing my eyes to a sight I had for so long. This emptiness. This slow removal of my essence. My heart beat faster, feeling it in my chest, but unable to use the force to interact with it. Unable to keep it stilled. My hands felt numb. Holding ice within them for too long to kill the nerves.

This feeling was strange and remote. Yet, as I used what I could to reach out through the force, whatever this emptiness was, I found it just as expansive and filled with an energy. It was the force, but not. It was the essence but not. It is, but was not.

This numbness flooded my hand and rose through my arm. The tingling of whatever this was affecting me cause spots in my vision. Not blinding me, but causing an affect akin to snow floating down. Colors changed, the smells of the world felt different. Looking to Serina, Before I could feel her in the force. See the colors she left behind. Now, I saw the inverse. How what she was became inverted. Physically she was the same. But through whatever split in the force this was, made her aura, her essence seem so small. Like she were a mere padawan of the force. Not weak, but an untapped potential.

This elation brought a smile to my face. It felt so new, and refreshing. My senses expanded to see so much more, but in a different entirely new shade. Looking down at the weapon held within my grasp. Seeing my knuckles turn white with the grip I had. As if I couldn't let go. I slowly sighed and let my self fade into this void. Feeling it within. Finally able to see it for what it was. It was a Saber. One controlled through this void and not that of the force. And in that moment, a small touch of my soul to its shape, ignited the blade into a cosmic array. The core absorbed light. Fixed into this blackness that could only be an Abyss of the Force. Yet small pin-pricks of light, like stars spun and shot through. Sparkling inside this Darkness not of our Galaxy.

"This..."

I was at a loss of words. Unable to really describe it. Slowly waving the blade around. Its hum was deep and thrumming. It did not sound like a Lightsaber. It sounded like waves of atoms breaking the sound within my ears.

"There is so much here."

Serina Calis

 

[Serina Calis]

"Hard choices require hard minds."

Tags - Delsin Shaw



Serina did not speak.

Not at first.

She watched. Her body remained still—unnervingly still, a silence of steel and sinew beneath the obsidian armor. The only movement was the slow ripple of her synthweave mantle as unseen air currents stirred around the newly breached chamber. As Delsin Shaw broke the vacuum, and the hiss of equalized pressure filled the lab like the first breath of something that had never known air, her gaze narrowed.

A hum—not heard, but felt—drifted through the void between them. She could no longer feel him through the Force. No presence. No threads. As though Delsin had turned into a reflection of the relic itself: there, but not. Present, but not held. His hand gripped the hilt, and all at once, the world changed its grammar.

She felt it.
Not in the Force. Not through it. But in the absence of it—like the weight of silence after a scream. A void echoing not outward, but inward. When he raised the blade, when that impossible starless horizon flared to life—Serina's breath caught.

It wasn't beauty. It wasn't horror.
It was something truer than either. A violation of what reality should be, shaped into elegance.

And he—Delsin Shaw—grinned like a man reborn. Serina tilted her head slightly, letting the curve of her helm catch the spectral light of the abyssal blade, violet reflections dying across its surface.

She stepped forward. One measured pace.

Then another.

Until she stood at the edge of this new cosmology. Just outside his reach. Just inside the gravity of what he had become.

Her voice, when it came, was quiet. Thick. Molasses sliding over scripture.

"So that's what you really are."

The words weren't addressed to the blade.
Not exactly.

She looked at him—through those six glowing eyes, through a face now unreadable, through the calm that veiled something deeper. Something almost sensual. Not lustful, but drawn—to the wound he had torn into the known.

"You're not holding it," she murmured. "You're wearing it. Like a skin. Like a name you forgot was yours."

She took another step. The light of the weapon dimmed slightly, not as if threatened—but as if it were aware. Noticed her. Responded.

"Stars inside the black," she said. Her voice almost reverent. "Galaxies unborn. Or long dead."

A pause.

"I've never seen anything so... intimate."

Her clawed hand hovered near his shoulder now—not touching him, but tracing the air between them with precision. As if the barrier was no longer flesh or armor, but reality itself. She didn't dare reach for the saber. She was too wise. Or too proud.

Instead, she let her voice do what touch could not.

"Delsin Shaw. You've left the Force behind."

She let that linger. Her voice dipped now—warm and wicked. Almost amused. Almost envious.

"How does it feel?"

The last word dripped from her lips like a challenge. Like a kiss. Or a curse.

She tilted her head again, considering him with a predator's patience.

"You're no longer bound by the current," she said softly. "You are the undertow."

Her armor's core pulsed once—dimmer, as if in deference.

Then she smiled.

Just a little. Just enough.

"Tell me what you see now… before the galaxy realizes it's already too late to stop you."

 

[Delsin Shaw]

Her form, her presence was different. Serina drew forth. Wanting to so deeply take part and to experience what this was. To feel what I was so greedily hanging onto. Her words dripping with a lust that rarely heard from anyone. It was the void of this force that seeped and continued to flood my senses. Breathing felt different. It was like being exposed to so much more. I spoke all of my thoughts.

"Its discovering a new color on the spectrum. A slow encroaching wave of energy that can only be cosmic in its complexity. The Force is an infinite resource, but this feels more. The Force is a white room with no end, yet nothing within it. This is different. There is something there. Just out of reach. An energy that expands the more you do. Its breathing. Alive. Living, Cosmic, all aspects of what we know. This void, this... abyss is inviting and expansive. No darkness or light. Just existence within its reach. The force is a coin. Two sides. Darkness and the light. This is not that."

My breathing deepened. It was as if the weight and power of the force no longer pressed upon me. It was just one. Hands that enveloped me into its hold. Soft and caring, but firm and powerful. The smile breaking wider and with a reckless glee of feeling it.

"All of my senses are renewed. Like if feeling, seeing, smelling, tasting everything for the first time again. Something pulls but pushes. Keeping me in place. Suspension within and without. My body threatens to explode, but is held in with the same force. Like a balloon on the verge of being filled to the critical point."

Looking to the blade, I released its hold. The hum fell into a deep silence and left my ears ringing. A lack of sudden sound found them wanting to hear its atomic hum once more. Flipping the weapon over in my hand. Inspecting the inscriptions in a language I had never seen before. Colors exploded into my eyes as if its previous lack of the spectrum was not apparent in my eyes. Its beauty was unlike anything I had seen before.

"The one thing I would agree with the Jedi on, is their code. There is no Emotion. Its just there. Nothing to limit its potential. Expansive yet precise in its measures. Its a virginity that hasn't be perverted by the Darkness or the Light. Its something Other than the Force."

The blade snapped to life. Filling the room with its hum once more. Only the pull felt so much stronger now. It felt like ripping me. Yanking me further into its grasp. I buckled to my knees. Barely preventing the blade from smacking into the ground. Holding it aloft in a safe direction as I fell. The consuming power filled my lungs. Vision blurring deeper as it threatened to break me.

"Grah! This is. Its heavier. Stronger. It closes in and suffocates you with your own breath. It gives life just as easily as it breaks it!"

I tried my best to stand. Unable to really move much. No more than just rising to be only on my knees and holding the blade away from myself. My grip would not relax. It wouldn't let go of this strength, this energy. It wanted me. It... loved me? I shook it and the blade fell from my hand and clanged onto the floor. Shutting off and finally able to feel myself relax again. I felt drained. Removed of all energy I had previously. I keeled over and vomited onto the floor. Dizzy from the sudden change of feeling the force flowing into me. Replacing this abyss.

"Its wrong. Its a natural entropy of the universe if I ever saw it."

Holding my eyes closed as I was reeling from the changes to my form. I could slowly feel myself feeling normal. Heavy, fatigued and without a connection to anything. It was like Atlas was given a break from holding the worlds up, only to feel that weight once more.

"That was amazing!"

Serina Calis

 

[Serina Calis]

"Hard choices require hard minds."

Tags - Delsin Shaw



Serina Calis did not move as he collapsed.
She stood at the periphery of the moment—still as death, patient as hunger.

Her eyes never left the saber.

Even as Delsin Shaw knelt, broken but radiant in elation, even as his breath became ragged and his body tried to hold together under the weight of something not meant for flesh, Serina's gaze tracked only the blade. Not out of awe. Not out of fear.

But calculation.

She could hear his every word. That wild, reverent description. A color beyond colors. A force outside the Force. The coin without sides. His voice had the cadence of prophecy and the fragility of first contact. He was giddy. Awed. Shattered and still drunk on the revelation.

Serina was not.

Her mind had already begun mapping the implications.

Not just what it was. But what it could do.

This… abyss—this third axis outside the binary of Light and Dark—was not a new religion. Not to her. It was an engine.

Something she could harness. Refine. Reproduce.

And perhaps most dangerously of all—

Infect.

The weapon had changed Delsin. Not in body, but in how the universe related to him. The Force no longer embraced him—it recoiled. Reshaped itself around the void he had invited in. For moments, he had been untouchable by its rules. Free of its costs. No echoes. No ripples. Nothing for precognition to trace. Nothing for prescience to bind.

In that moment, he had been sovereign.

Untraceable. Unknowable. Unmade.

And if a single weapon could do that—what might a doctrine accomplish?

What would it mean if Serina could craft armor from this? Sabers, yes—but also words. Ideas. A belief system constructed around absence. An order not of worshippers, but of nulls. Not fanatics—disjunctions. A coven of severance. Heretics to both Jedi and Sith, not because they rebelled—but because they disproved.

She imagined a sect without Light or Dark. No ascension, no temptation. Only entropy given will. Warriors trained not to channel the Force, but to evacuate it. To starve their foes of meaning. To replace ideology with vacuum.

Serina's mouth curled faintly beneath the helmet.

She saw armies wearing armor laced with that same abyssal resonance. Infiltrators undetectable through the Force. Weapons that could not be parried, sensed, or corrupted. Sanctuaries of anti-presence. Cathedrals not to gods, but to absence.

A new corruption.

Not of spirit.

But of structure.

She blinked slowly, the six slanted violet eyes of her mask narrowing in tandem.

It will require test subjects.
Isolation chambers.
Ritualized exposure.
A scale model prototype.

She filed it all away with a clinical, predatory grace. Delsin's vomiting, his ragged exaltation—it barely moved her. He had survived. That was sufficient. He was proof of concept. More than tool, less than prophet.

Only then did Serina finally move. Slowly. A single pace forward. She looked down at the saber on the floor. The gleaming hilt now dim, unlit—yet echoing with potential. The air around it felt thinner. As if the Force refused to exist in its immediate presence.

She knelt.

Reached out with one clawed finger. Didn't touch. Just traced the margin of space near the hilt.

And whispered, barely audible:

"We're going to do terrible things together, aren't we?"

She stood. Turned her head toward Delsin.

No concern. No pity.

Only curiosity wrapped in silk.

"Amazing," she repeated at last, voice like a purr sliding through glass.

"...and entirely ours."

 

[Delsin Shaw]

Once the waves of this plaguing fatigue had subsided, The words of the woman finally registered in my ears. She had this new air and aura of so much desire, almost a lust for this new aspect of the force. Leaning up but still upon my knees, I looked deeply into the saber that laid upon the floor. Its hilt had so much mysticism held within it. A world outside our own that had its own rules and laws. While I had not seen nor interacted with the Netherworld, I know my father did. He spoke of how it was a void in the force yet also the very fabric of it. And in that moment, I understood.

Eyes widening with the sudden understanding of what this was, of how it was such a thing. Irises turning to the woman with a newfound resolve in what my work was. I knew how so much of this could be implemented so easily. How it could so quickly spiral out of control. Yet the pure ambition of resolving such a thing was what I wanted. The final pieces were seen. I knew how they went together. And now, I just needed to do it.

"Not terrible. O'friend mine."

I moved to the weapon. Picking it up one more time. Feeling the transition to this new aspect of life, and existence envelope me once more. This time it came much more easily. Almost like just the first interaction was now hastening its connection to me. Instead of a longer process of everything shifting, it was like closing my eyes and opening to a new world. I breathed easily. My lungs taking in this new space like it was borne of it. Standing up, I looked over to the other saber that was still on the pedestal that had not yet been touched.

"It will be a beautiful, awesome, and magnificent."

Moving over to it I stood before the second one. My eyes seeing it for what it really was. Each second I was here, but feeling this new world made me feel so empowered in a way I had never felt before. Yet it drew me like a new home that I always wanted.

"Take the second one. Consider it a gift of our... budding relationship into this new world."

Then, as I spoke those words, I felt a pull. One to this other world. This other place in which was affected by such powers. Such magnificence in which we had only just tapped into. This fascination with it now, this perversion of the Force itself was a facet in which one could become so much more.

"If there is such a thing as this energy, then there must be a place in which it originates from. Somewhere that it can be found and harnessed."

Serina Calis

 

[Serina Calis]

"Hard choices require hard minds."

Tags - Delsin Shaw



Serina Calis did not hesitate.
The moment Delsin offered her the second saber, her form began to move—slow, fluid, purposeful. A monarch descending the steps of a sacrificial altar. Her gait was that of inevitability wrapped in grace, each silent step drawn out just enough to suggest restraint, as if she could have reached the pedestal in a fraction of the time but chose instead to savor the gravity of the moment.

She said nothing.

Words would have diminished it.

She arrived before the relic with all the ceremony of a coronation and none of the reverence. The blade waited for her. It did not hum. Did not beckon. Did not flare. It existed. And in that pure existence, it seduced her more than any invocation of power ever could.

She reached out with both hands, gloved fingers opening like a flower unfolding under black sun. Her claws hovered for a breath's length, and then—without ritual, without chant—Serina took it.

The shift was immediate.
But it did not consume her.

It recognized her.

The world dimmed. The Force tensed—not in rejection, but in withdrawal. Like it knew better than to interfere. The currents that once obeyed her now hung distant, silent, irrelevant. The aura of her vast knowledge and command vanished into something narrower… sharper. What replaced it was not absence, but alignment. No longer a wave in the current—now, a faultline between dimensions.

She breathed. And the air bent.

Her thoughts unfurled, not in shock or revelation—but in adaptation. Acceptance. Evolution. Where others would fall or cry or tremble, Serina simply changed.

She looked down at the hilt, her six violet eyes dimmed to a rich ember glow. It was exquisite. Not ornate—never that. But inevitable. Its surface, like the other, was inscribed in unreadable sigils that shimmered in the inverse light of existence. A script that perhaps had no language, only function.

When the blade ignited, it did not sing. It spoke.
Not to her ears.

To her ambition.

A roiling line of inverted stars stretched outward from the hilt. The dark core drew all warmth, all meaning into itself—yet left behind no pain. Only hunger. Perfect, endless hunger. A hum pulsed, not through the room, but through the bones of reality. A sound like the friction of dying planets.

She stood with it for long seconds, simply letting it be in her hand. Letting her mind restructure around the new presence. Around this… unforce.

And then she spoke.

"Origin."

The word hung like prophecy.

"You're right."

Her voice was smooth, quiet. Controlled. But there was a kind of awe behind it, sharpened into purpose. The kind of awe that, in another life, might have become worship. Here, it became intention.

"There is a source. There must be. And we will find it."

She turned her head, slowly, to face Delsin. Not with fondness. Not even respect. But with a knowing. A recognition. Something shared now, carved into the very shape of their existence.

"It cannot hide forever."

Her blade dipped slightly, not in submission—but invitation. In pact.

"And when we reach it—whatever lies at the heart of this… Abyss—we will not study it. We will not kneel."

A pause. Then her voice softened into something near a whisper.

"We will crown it."

And behind the mask of her armor, Serina Calis smiled.

 

[Delsin Shaw]

Her slow acceptance of the gift was a prize in itself to see. Her movement gingerly closing the gap between herself and the other artifact still on the pedestal. Reaching for it with a reverence I had only seen from clergy of religious institutions. Her grasp at first was soft, and almost cautious of it. However, as the blade sprang to life in its cosmic glow, her grip and demeanor changed. The purest form of awe was written across her form. Her body feeling the effects that I had. She took it well considering the circumstances. As her first activation of the weapon brought new life to her like it had for me.

She agreed with me. There was a home for this. A point in which all of this came from. More importantly, her voice thickened with a desire not to just find this energy, but to crown it. Take control of it and become something much stronger because of it. For that, I smiled brightly with the blade pointed in a fashion of showing its power.

"O'friend mine, there is much we could do with this."

Looking down at the hilt, the weapon within my hand. A tool of this energy warped around us. It was a great new thing to discover. And so we should. The blade of my own snapped to life. Its fluid blade ebbed and flowed within this energy. Feeling it flaring to life within my bones and veins once more. A third activation of the blade forced a perspective of me. Looking to her, the blades so close to reaching one another. An intrusive thought came to me. the blades were made of the same thing. Acted the same. However, what happened when they interacted.

The smile boldened across my face.

"Trust me, this might be fun."

Without waiting for much more, I let the blades smack together. A loud clash echoed in the room and warped. Without any form of a consent, the energy I held was drained. I could feel it leaving directly through my hand and into the blade itself. the cosmic energy in the weapon expanded and feeling like I was being tugged. Looking up to Serina, I slight miscalculation upon my face as I could feel my form yanked. Pulled and stretched. It took a moment, but we no longer stood within my facility. We now stood in the halls. Gilded in golds and silvers. Tapestry of a unique celestial body hung among it. The halls abandoned but well kept.

White and black, inlayed with gold. This energy I had felt before, while it had been localized upon myself and Serina, was now everywhere. It was the very thing. Feeling like the force itself. The blades had now been reduced to nothing. Their hilts in our hands empty and without much in the way of energy.

"Well, that was new."

Serina Calis

 

[Serina Calis]

"Hard choices require hard minds."

Tags - Delsin Shaw



Serina did not speak immediately.

She stood in the midst of it—this cathedral of contradiction, this impossible palace woven from void and divinity—and simply observed.

The blade in her hand had gone silent. No hum. No pulse. No weight. It was a carcass now. Hollow. Lifeless. But she didn't release it. Her clawed fingers flexed around the hilt once, then stilled. She could still feel it, not as a weapon, but as a memory etched into her palm. Like the ghost of a kiss she hadn't expected to linger.

Her gaze moved slowly through the space.

White and black marble, traced with veins of gold, curled into immense archways and vaulted ceilings above them. The stone was pristine. Not polished—perfect. Not a speck of dust. Not a sign of wear. And yet… no signs of life. The halls were vast and quiet, stretching beyond reason, and the air carried a weight she didn't recognize. Not gravity. Not power.

Judgment.

Serina's breath shallowed behind her mask.

This place did not pulse with the Force, nor did it thrum with the Abyss. It was the energy they had wielded—but now distributed evenly, patiently. Not focused, not controlled.

Ambient.

Native.

Her six violet eyes swept the tapestries. The celestial forms. The artistry was unfamiliar—no Sith symbology, no Old Republic architecture, no Jedi motifs. The geometry was alien. Not chaotic, but refined. Purposeful. Writ in the language of another creation myth.

They were somewhere else.

Another step forward, her taloned boots whispering against the unmarred floor. She turned slightly in a slow arc, scanning upward. The gilded inlays shimmered faintly with movement—not light, not energy, but something beyond that. An impression, like echoes trying to become form and failing.

Her voice, when it came, was low and without ornament.

"…Where are we?"

There was no panic. No alarm. Just inquiry, wrapped in calculation.

Another moment passed.

She turned the empty hilt over in her palm, slowly. Its surface still held those runes, but they no longer glowed. Whatever had powered them—the communion, the corruption, the invitation—was now dormant.

Or spent.

Her head tilted slightly. She looked to Delsin without speaking, as if to confirm whether he had truly intended this. The mischief on his face before the blades had touched—yes. The recklessness. The arrogance.

But this?

This wasn't teleportation. It wasn't a trick of the Force.

This was transition.

And they had been allowed.

That thought struck her like a tremor beneath her armor. Because if they were allowed in, that meant something had chosen not to resist. Or had called.

Her voice came again, this time softer. Measured.

"…You weren't wrong."