Private Restraint

[Serina Calis]

"Break the will, shatter the creed."

Tag - Darth Kharnaz



The doors hissed shut behind her with the sound of a blade sliding into flesh.

Silence followed.

Not peace. Never that. The silence here was held—bound in durasteel and obsidian, bound in secrecy and threat. Every breath taken within the sublevels of Polis Massa's hidden training vaults was a trespass against comfort, a vow against weakness. These chambers had seen war before. They had seen breakdowns, bloodletting, breakthroughs. They had seen becoming.

And Serina Calis was already waiting.

She stood at the center of the training floor, alone, yet suffocatingly present—more a fulcrum than a figure. Her armor shimmered faintly in the clinical lighting, a second skin of alchemized alloys and dark elegance. Runes etched along the curve of her collarbone pulsed with subdued violet energy, each breath she took measured, sovereign. Her gloves flexed and relaxed at her sides like a predator waiting for the first move.

The chamber around her was vast—spartan, circular, sterile. White walls interrupted only by black-rimmed observation lenses that glinted from the shadows like the eyes of silent gods. From somewhere above, a mechanized voice whispered readiness into the vault's air:

"Environmental locks sealed. Surveillance active. Lethal thresholds disengaged… for now."

She paid it no mind.

The floor was marked with geometric combat diagrams and arcane Sith battle inscriptions—some functional, others ceremonial. All had been burned into the permacrete with sabers and lightning over the decades. It smelled faintly of scorched ozone and something darker.

A single line of light led from the main entrance to where she stood, as though daring her apprentice to follow it.

She had sent for him without ceremony. Without fanfare. No honorifics. No praise for surviving the tomb. Because he had not yet earned the right to rest.

This was where his body would be reshaped. Where instinct would be unraveled and rewoven. Where his raw strength—so brutal, so beautiful, so stupid—would be taught restraint. And where she would teach him the most difficult lesson of all:

That a weapon is only as valuable as the hand that wields it.

Her expression betrayed nothing. But within the dark hollows of her eyes was a calm anticipation—not hope. Not joy.

But hunger.

She could feel his presence drawing closer, that savage signature pushing against the sterile clarity of the Polis Massan complex. She could almost taste the lingering blood on him, the echo of lightning from the tomb, the violence still coiled in his muscles.

She would need to break that.

Not to destroy it—never that.

But to teach him how to wield it like she wielded words: with precision, seduction, inevitability.

Serina inhaled deeply through her nose. Closed her eyes. And whispered, not to herself, but to the room:

"Let him try to impress me."

And far above, behind layered transparisteel and durasteel bulkheads, the observers watched. Scientists. Guards. Agents of VesperWorks. All instructed not to interfere.

This was her domain now.

And the door to the training room began to open.

 

[Darth Kharnaz]

Kharnaz readied himself before the doors. He did not know what was in store for him but he knew it could not be easy. Serina did not go easy on anyone. The doors opened and he stepped inside.

It was a testing room of some kind. Not like the tomb, it was different in some way. Newer, but the echoes of pain still filled the room. He was not the first applicant to enter, he could see that. Kharnaz wondered how many other Sith had been here, fighting to prove their usefulness.

Still, Kharnaz was confident after the tomb. If he passed that test surely he could pass whatever was in store for him here. He bowed his head.

"I am ready to follow your commands, my mistress."

 

[Serina Calis]

"Break the will, shatter the creed."

Tag - Darth Kharnaz



He entered as he always did—heavy-footed, commanding, the storm of him trailing close behind. There was still blood in his fur. Still that wiry, feral tension in his frame. He was a beast who had survived the fire, and now believed himself reborn by it.

How precious.

She didn't speak at first.

Her gaze tracked him, slow and surgical, from paw to throat. Her silence was not passive—it was dissection. Every movement he made was measured, catalogued, filed against what she had seen in the tomb. She watched the way his muscles flexed with each breath. The way his shoulders carried a fraction more arrogance. The bow of his head—eager, but not desperate.

Good. He was still high from the tomb.

Which meant the fall would cut deeper.

She stepped forward once, letting her presence ripple outward—not violently, but with that same smothering gravity that had greeted him on Korriban. The Force curved around her like a noose mid-drop. Lights flickered. The very air thickened, expectant.

"You presume too much."

Her voice cut through the room like a scalpel—not loud, not angry, but so sharp it didn't need volume.

"You survived the tomb, yes. And you call me mistress as if survival were obedience."

Another step. Her boots struck the training floor with a quiet finality. She moved in a circle around him—close, intimate, invasive. Not just a master inspecting her student, but a sovereign examining a weapon not yet worthy of use.

"But do you understand what you survived? Do you grasp the meaning of what you killed?"

She stopped behind him.

"You destroyed the version of yourself that believed strength alone was enough. But that creature still breathes in you. Still lingers. Still dares to think the Force will bend to rage without discipline."

The next word was a whisper:

"Foolish."

And then, she struck.

Her hand darted forward with unnatural speed—not with malice, but instruction. The flat of her palm drove hard between his shoulder blades, the Force behind it like a wave compressed into a single point. It was not meant to wound.

It was meant to remind.

To claim.

To reset the hierarchy.

She moved past him now, walking to the edge of the training circle, where a console blinked to life beneath her gloved fingers. She activated the hologrid—at once, the space around them shimmered with flickering light. Dozens of projections ignited. Spectral enemies, motionless for now—assassins, beasts, war droids, Jedi.

"You will fight until I tell you to stop."

Her voice was calm now, poised, the voice of a woman absolutely certain of her control.

"You will face simulacra crafted from real combat data. Enemies you may one day encounter—if you survive long enough to earn missions worthy of them."

She turned back to face him. The lighting caught the violet in her eyes, the lines of her armor, the slight upward tilt of her chin.

"You will bleed. You may fail. That is expected."

A long pause.

Then, with soft cruelty:

"But if you disappoint me… again…"

Her head tilted.

"…I will seal the tomb behind you myself."

A flick of her hand.

The grid ignited.

The first wave began to move.

And Serina stepped back into the shadows, cloak flowing behind her like a judge retreating from the bench—leaving the blade to prove itself upon the anvil.

 

[Darth Kharnaz]

Her presence rolled over him again, as powerful as ever. He steeled himself as it hit him, its darkness passing over him. He listened to her describe his achievement.

"You destroyed the version of yourself that believed strength alone was enough. But that creature still breathes in you. Still lingers. Still dares to think the Force will bend to rage without discipline."

He frowned. How dare she think he had not killed it. He was about to protest when he was struck.

He gasped as he was hit, the force enhanced blow briefly knocking the air out of his lungs. He inhaled quickly, determined not to be vulnerable for long.

His eyes darted around as she activated the holograms. There were many, far more than he would have thought when he first entered.

"…I will seal the tomb behind you myself."

He snarled with anger. He had never dissapointed his mistress. And to think that she believed he may dissapoint her again was maddening. He tracked the first wave as they advanced, getting ready to pounce.

"Mistress, how am I to fight holograms? I will go through them immediately. And how am I to face a Jedi without a lightsaber?"