Private Resurrection

[Darth Virelia]

"I will find you."

Tags - Miasmær



The stars stretched thin through the cockpit viewport, smeared into long, silent lines of white as the shuttle hurtled through hyperspace. The engines hummed with a low, steady drone—like a predator's purr before the strike. Within the craft, bathed in pulses of deep violet light from the navigation systems, Serina Calis sat alone.

Not a word had been spoken since departure.

She had not allowed it.

The pilot was silent behind his mask, a clone whose tongue she had once threatened to remove for an idle cough. He knew better now. The atmosphere within the shuttle was suffocating—not from pressurization or temperature, but from presence.

Hers.

Serina sat on a raised platform near the shuttle's rear, encased once more in the sovereign exosculpture of Tyrant's Embrace. She had not removed it since the girl knelt in devotion. The armor was more than a second skin—it was her will made manifest. The synthetic threads of her hood fell low over her brow, veiling her face in shadow as six violet lenses glowed like facets of an ancient insect. Watching. Calculating. Consuming.

The datapad in her hand flickered with streams of old Sith coordinates, code-fragments, and electromagnetic signatures scavenged from Holonet blackframes and Imperial junkcode. They painted a picture she had already known—something had reawakened on Exegol. Not just ancient machinery or orbiting wreckage. No, this wasn't accidental. Someone had breathed life into the corpse of a world better left buried.

And she knew who.

The girl had asked for safety. But Exegol did not offer safety.

Only inheritance.

She had gone there alone. Serina hadn't stopped her. She had wanted to see what the girl would choose, when faced again with the charred roots of her fear. Serina's power was not in forbidding.

It was in letting them crawl willingly into the flame.

Now she was returning to that graveyard—to the ruined heart of Sith mythos, where so many masters had fallen, and where so many pretenders now whispered like ghosts in static-choked echoes. The shuttle's sensors had picked up volatile anomalies near the debris belt. Automated defenses still flickered to life in unpredictable intervals. Interference from the planet's maelstrom core continued to distort Force presence around the site.

But that didn't matter.

The girl had gone.

And where her apprentice walked, Serina would follow—not to save her…

…but to claim her if she survived.

The lights within the shuttle dimmed slightly as the hyperdrive began deceleration procedures. The coiled talons of Serina's gauntlet tapped the edge of her armrest, one by one, slow as a ticking metronome.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

She did not feel anxiety.

She did feel something… deeper.

Something like memory.

She had walked that world once, long ago, in another name, another shape. Not yet the sovereign. Not yet this inevitability. She had stood on the altar of the dead and dared the dark to answer her call. It had. In ways she was still unraveling.

And now the girl had returned to that same place.

Not to resurrect it.

To understand it.

To make it hers.

Serina closed the datapad with a flick of her fingers. The screen died with a final, whining chime. The chamber fell into near-darkness, lit only by the intermittent flashes of the emergency systems.

A countdown appeared on the central viewport, glowing red:

Reversion in T-minus 00:00:11.

Ten.

She rose from her throne-like seat with the grace of a storm made flesh. The segmented skirts of her armor whispered against the durasteel floor, the durafiber tendrils in her cape slithering gently as she moved toward the viewport.

Nine.

Exegol waited.

Eight.

The planet that birthed monsters and buried gods.

Seven.

She did not fear it.

Six.

She had survived it.

Five.

She had become because of it.

Four.

The stars narrowed.

Three.

The Force twisted.

Two.

Something… reached.

One.

Realspace collapsed inward in a single, stuttering blink.

And there it was.

Exegol.

A broken spheroid half-wrapped in crackling ion storms and the drifting bones of orbital stations. Shattered obelisks hung in stasis between fields of metallic dust. The ancient catacombs—flooded, collapsed, but still alive—glowed faintly beneath thunderclouds so thick they could drown a sun.

 

[Miasmær]

Miasmær had come for a very simple reason, to retrieve her shuttle. From here she'd travel to Loovria, deal with personal business. The shuttle had been where she expected it to be, its cloaking device having kept it safe from any would-be scavengers brave enough to travel between the rocks of a shattered world. Inside had been her belongings: clothes, books both of knowledge and of fancy, and enough gold silverware and decorative pieces to afford most of what she needed, all salvaged from the monastery she had fled. There had been more, but it had already been used to get her to this point.

Her reason for coming to Exegol had been simple, her reason for staying was not.

She had felt something.

Her force senses were still underdeveloped, a fact she knew too well. So when something had begun pulling on her subconscious it stirred within her a sense of curiosity that needed to be satiated. It was such an odd feeling, the force or something using the force to pull on her subconscious, on her emotions.

Now she stood at the entrance to something that shouldn't have survived. The tomb had an oppressive presence in the force, a feeling of something so old and so powerful that perhaps even this remnant of it was what had kept it safe from the planet's destruction. Furthermore, the rock Miasmær now stood on held her firmly in place with a gravity of its own. Something wanted her here. It pulled on her mind to get her to step further inside the same way it pulled on her body to ensure she could take that step.

Around her was ancient stone illuminated by still burning braziers kept alive by a bubble of invisible atmosphere. Obelisks inscribed with runes she could only barely recognize surrounded her, each word glowing a dull red. Her foot rested on long-dead plants as her eyes stared inward at the sarcophagus raised on its dias.

Yet as she stood, enraptured, the presence would falter, its pull seeming more hesitent.

She had arrived.

Darth Virelia

 

[Darth Virelia]

"I will find you."

Tags - Miasmær



The storm above Exegol was not weather.

It was wrath.

Vast violet spirals tore across the sky in slow, impossible motion, not clouds but scars—rents in reality left by centuries of unholy practice. Forks of blue lightning danced between shattered spires, illuminating nothing. Even the stars had turned their faces away.

Serina did not.

The shuttle pierced the outer magnetic field with a shriek of tortured hull plating. Electromagnetic turbulence clawed at its wings like wraiths denied entry. She let it come. Let the winds scream. Let the world remember her.

The pilot veered toward a ravine just north of the ancient citadel's ruins, guided only by sensor ghosts and the trace signature she had encoded herself into the girl's mask days prior. That trace had burned to life the moment her apprentice crossed the invisible threshold of the tomb.

Serina had felt it—not in the Force—

—in the bones.

She is near.

The shuttle landed in silence on a jagged outcropping of black stone. The ramp hissed open with a guttural gasp of depressurizing seals. Smoke rolled down onto the platform like a shawl of fog, thick and clinging.

Serina stepped into the gale, and Exegol shrank.

She walked as if gravity bent for her, not the other way around—an obsidian sovereign draped in monarchic dread, flanked by the whisper of tendrils and the ever-burning glyphs of her armor. The six-lensed helm regarded the catacombs beyond, and in response, the storm paused.

It recognized her.

The last to kneel here had been zealots, monsters, and would-be emperors.

Serina had no interest in kneeling.

Her path was etched in darkness and blood, but she did not follow it.

She authored it.

And something in the ruins knew.

She descended the path with deliberate ease, the storm falling away behind her like curtains at the end of a show. Around her lay debris: bones turned to dust, crumbled statues of long-dead tyrants, shattered containment canisters, and ritual stones cracked by orbital bombardment.

All defied time.

None defied her.

As she neared the tomb's threshold, the wind ceased entirely. A deathly stillness—not of peace, but of anticipation—fell over the catacomb.

Then she saw her.

There, at the edge of the sanctum, the girl stood motionless. A red silhouette framed in still-burning braziers. The runes of the outer obelisks glowed weakly as if awed—or afraid.

And Serina knew, in that instant, that Exegol had begun to answer her apprentice.

The girl had not conquered the world.

But she had been recognized by it.

Good.

She would punish her for the risk later. But now… now was not the time for wrath.

Now was the time for confirmation.

Serina's voice came low and smooth, vibrating through the very stone beneath them:

"You heard it, didn't you."

Not a question.

A fact.

The echo of it rippled down the tomb walls like a serpent through bones. The sarcophagus beyond the dais pulsed faintly in time with her words—subterranean lights reacting, or perhaps obeying.

She stepped forward again, closing the distance slowly. Her steps were soundless, yet each one struck the senses like a drumbeat. The Force here did not resist her. It opened, reluctantly, as if unsure whether to welcome or fear her.

Serina stopped beside her, but did not look at her directly. Instead, she stared at the dais. At the long-dead husk entombed in black alchemized stone, its runes flickering like dying stars.

"Do you know who lies there?"

 

[Miasmær]

Miasmær glanced sidelong at her master as they stepped up next to her, before her gaze would return to the dias. Her skin prickled, an omen of what would come. Not now, but later. Best not to dwell on it.

"Wasn't my intention-" she pauses mid explanation. Best not to give excuses for her actions, it was done and Miasmær doubted she could dissuade any ire with simple words "No. Not exactly." she redirects her words, best to move forward with something constructive.

"I can read a few of the sigils-" she'd point at each rune as she'd speak her interpretation of its meaning "Sith Lord. Apprentices? Or a lack there of. I think the symbol shows a negative case. I-" she'd stutter a second as it dawned on her that this woman could probably read this text flawlessly, but still she carried on "I believe it to be old, at least pre-Darth Sidious' Empire. Not the tomb of a recent Sith Empire or the Brotherhood of the Maw. What I find most interesting is a lack of statues, typically tombs have depictions of the deceased. But this is... empty, by relative terms."

There it was, the pressure in her mind driving her forward. The sarcophagus called to her, reeling her in with an invisible hook and wire. Miasmær was not weak enough to be subdued by it, but the constant nagging at her senses was starting to add kindling to the simmering rage in her core. It was difficult to concentrate, to remember the histories she had consumed so vigorously under her previous master. Still, she pushed forward as she'd shift her finger to another rune

"I think this set explains their death? Poisoning? But in a metaphysical sense, not a literal poison." she'd take a deep breath before clarifying apologetically "Most of this is written in poetry, I-, well, I never studied the arts. I... wasn't sure there was any."

With a gesture around the room she'd finish her thoughts, an eager tone in her usually collected calm attitude "But someone had to build this for them. And a lack of apprentices makes me believe they were important; a sage, inventor, or someone else deserving of a tomb made by strangers. Though not so important to make it more... public?"

She falls silent, trying to pace her racing thoughts. This is why she had come to Exegol in the first place, to commune with the lords of old. To delve deep to find lost knowledge and artifacts. She had been rejected and now something had its hooks in her. Yet as Miasmær looked towards Serina she felt at ease, the presence recoiling as if knowing Miasmær was not theirs for the taking. It was both comforting, and terrifying.

This had been the most she had spoken to her master in their brief time together. Was this a good thing? Or perhaps a sign of weakness. It was dangerous to let others know what you found interesting, any information could be used against you. So as Miasmær's gaze returned to the sarcophagus directly in front of her she awaited the inevitable, what ever that would be.

Darth Virelia

 

[Darth Virelia]

"I will find you."

Tags - Miasmær



The tomb did not breathe.
But it listened.

Serina stood still at the girl's side, the air taut with the pressure of presence—hers, the girl's, and the lingering rot of whatever lay sealed within the sarcophagus. It was the kind of silence that predated speech, the hush that descends at the edge of knowledge, when language fails and instinct returns.

Her apprentice spoke.

Serina didn't interrupt. She listened. Carefully. Calculatingly. As the girl pointed to each rune and offered her interpretation, her voice almost hesitant, Serina noted everything—not the words, but the cadence. The flickers of doubt. The current of curiosity beneath her caution. The subtle stammer when she realized Serina might already know all of this.

She didn't.

That was the truth of it.

She knew nothing of this tomb.

And that was why her silence deepened.

Serina Calis had walked a thousand ruins. Slept in the bones of long-dead gods. Torn secrets from the lips of entombed Sith who should have remained forgotten.

But this?

This place was alien.

Not in design—its iconography, the language, the architecture, all screamed Sith. But its emptiness. Its refusal to announce itself. It didn't posture like so many tombs did, didn't lionize the dead or dramatize their legacy. There was no monument. No effigy. No memorialization of conquest or cruelty.

It simply was.

Like something waiting to be unearthed, or to wake.

And the girl—her girl—was speaking like one who had already begun the excavation.

Serina's head tilted slightly as Miasmær continued, each observation precise, thoughtful. She was trying so hard to control herself. It showed in her posture, in the occasional glance toward her master—seeking approval, or bracing for rebuke. Perhaps both.

But Serina only watched.

Silent. Still. Watching not the tomb—

—but her.

When the girl trailed off, Serina took one step forward, her armor whispering against the ancient stone. The sound echoed—sharp, almost accusatory. Her eyes fixed on the sarcophagus, but her thoughts remained with the red-skinned apprentice at her side.

"You're not wrong," she said finally, her voice as smooth as a blade sliding from a sheath. "About the structure. The runes. The absence of vanity."

She paused.

"And I didn't know any of it."

That admission dropped like a coin in a well—deep, unexpected, and weighty.

"I've seen thousands of tombs. Desecrated most. Nothing like this."

She gestured with two fingers toward the sarcophagus, its edges now softly pulsing with a dull, internal rhythm—like the heartbeat of something drowned.

"There's no projection here. No story told. It doesn't teach. It only waits."

Another step forward.

Now she was close enough to smell the faint scent of ozone and ancient incense emanating from the braziers. Her voice lowered to a murmur—intimate, but without softness.

"That's not Sith. Not in the traditional sense. Sith die screaming, or triumphant. They build obelisks to their own genius. Monuments to fear. This tomb… doesn't even name its owner. It's a silence, carved in stone."

She turned, finally, to face her apprentice. Her violet gaze locked with those dark, inquisitive eyes.

"And yet you read it."

She didn't say it like praise.

She said it like a puzzle.

As if Miasmær herself was the enigma she now sought to unravel.

"You don't have the training. Not the lexicon. But you knew. You interpreted."

A long pause.

Serina reached out—not harshly, not commanding—and brushed a clawed finger along the edge of the nearest obelisk. A single rune flickered, just once, in response.

It was not a warning.

It was a recognition.

"Tell me, girl," she said, voice silk laced with something harder. "What else do you feel?"

A challenge, yes.

But also a test.

Not of loyalty. That had already been broken and reforged.

This was a test of instinct.

Connection.

Because Serina felt it too. The way the tomb recoiled when her presence dominated. The way it shied from her, as if recognizing a rival will. But when the girl stepped forward, it leaned closer. Like a breath on glass.

She stepped beside Miasmær again, her presence brushing the girl's shoulder. Just enough to ground her. Just enough to say you are not alone. But also you are mine.

"Do not assume submission makes you smaller," she said, barely above a whisper. "This tomb… whatever it holds, it senses you. And it withheld itself from me until you entered."

Her hand hovered briefly over the girl's lower back—never touching. But there.

Protective.

Possessive.

"You gave it pause. That matters."

She turned again toward the sarcophagus.

And something inside the stone shifted.

Not audibly.

Not visibly.

But the Force buckled for an instant. As if two threads—hers and Miasmær's—had been drawn taut and then twisted together by some ancient loom.

Serina felt it in her throat. Her chest. Her teeth.

And behind her composure, something primal flared.

Not fear.

Jealousy.

Not at the tomb.

But at the past—that some forgotten corpse dared to reach for what was hers.

She stepped forward, placing herself half between the girl and the tomb.

"If this place wants something from you," she said darkly, "it will speak through me. Or not at all."

Her voice rang like an order across the stone.

A pause.

Then, more softly:

"Don't let it seduce you. You do the seducing now."

She turned her head slightly, one glowing violet eye meeting the girl's again.

A smirk.

The first hint of warmth all thread.

"Or have you already forgotten who taught you how?"

 

[Miasmær]

"You do the seducing now."
​

Miasmær listened to her master quietly, every word taking purchase in her mind. Then the command came, a prompt to action. Speculation and theorizing will get them no where, and Miasmær knew it. And so she would take a step into the tomb, boldly facing the presence within.

Seduction is a subtle thing, that was a fact she was sure of. Grand gestures, dominating presence, pointed or event blunt remarks always weave an invisible thread to pull one into the direction of the seductress. The plain is never plain, the obvious always a smoke screen for plans within plans. So she would begin with the obvious: she would sit. The cloth of her skirt would protect her from the cold of the stone as she would kneel, sitting on her legs with her knees pointing in front of her. Her hands would rest on her thights, fingers interlaced almost in prayer as her eyes would close.

Then she would invite the presence in, but not all the way. The gates to her mind didn't open, rather it was if a side passage had been left open by a lover for a secret rendezvous. Immediately she felt the presence, it peered through the door before stepping in. Her body felt cold, impossibly so. Her skin prickled and her breath became mist in front of her as the inhabitant of the sarcophagus traced metaphorical fingers through her mind. It wanted more, it knocked at doors and peered through key holes.

Slowly doors would open in Miasmær's mind, careful calculated vulnerabilities disguised as weakness. Some doors were explored, others ignored. Miasmær felt the dead flipping through her memories like the page of a book, but it deliberately ignored the opportunities presented to it to seize control of or influence her body.

Plans within plans, schemes within plots, daggers hidden in sleeves.

The complete willingness to ignore these opportunities was too deliberate. It was in that moment Miasmær understood. The presence in her mind so desperately wanted to escape this place, and it made obvious concessions towards unimportant things to hide its plan to-

It was too fast.

Miasmær bent over, pain surging through her body as she felt the dead swivel its attention all too quickly. Doors shut, some too slowly. Her hand, tense with pain as her arm would attempt to move itself against her will. The physical effort to control it was difficult; shaking, sputtering, ragged movements the only indication of the battle being fought in Miasmær's mind. She would draw on the simmering rage inside her, stoke the flames to empower her as she forced her body to once again come under her control.

Plans within plans.

Most of the presence recoiled with hatred, the tomb shuddering at its incumbent's rage at being foiled.

Miasmær had been prepared however. Some of it was trapped inside her, a small speck of hatred not native to her mind. She held that ember within herself with all her being, and with her concentration and will to dominate she missed something, something subtle.

It was pleased.

The rage was a part the presence played in this dance, an expected result to its supposedly failed attack.

And as Miasmær struggled to hold on to that ember of this creature, its presence would reach to Serina. It would swirl around her, far enough to not intrude but close enough to assure its presence was felt. It was testing the little apprentice, and it paid its respects to the master who had begun to forge her.

Darth Virelia

 

[Darth Virelia]

"I will find you."

Tags - Miasmær



The tomb shuddered.

Not physically—no stones cracked, no dust fell—but in the Force, like a great beast stirring beneath centuries of torpor. The braziers dimmed momentarily, as though pulled inward by breath, and the runes along the walls pulsed once, their glow sharpening from blood-red to something closer to molten gold.

Serina did not flinch.

She watched.

Kneeling before the sarcophagus, Miasmær had become something more than apprentice. The girl was still—knees to stone, hands woven like in prayer—but within her, Serina felt the furnace begin to turn. It was subtle at first: the flicker of nerves, the micro-twitch of resistance, the sheen of sweat at her brow. Then, the spasm—violent and intimate, the body betraying its occupant as some thing within her tried to seize command.

Serina's jaw tensed. Her right hand clenched reflexively at her side.

But she did not move forward.

Not yet.

The Force distorted around her—an invisible flex of tension, like a bowstring drawn tight but not released. Her presence reached outward without action, a poised warning to the tomb itself: You may test her. But if you break her, I will unmake you.

Then it came.

A ripple.

Something cold, but polite. Ancient, but not hostile.

It reached for her—not to possess, not to dominate, but to recognize. To encircle.

To greet.

Serina did not pull away.

She allowed it.

The presence flowed around her like smoke in a ritual chamber, deliberate and slow. She felt it press against the boundaries of her mind—not invasive, not yet. It drifted through the air in coiling spirals of impression and meaning, brushing against her awareness like silk soaked in venom. It was showing deference.

And Serina respected that.

It could have clawed at her—so many Force ghosts did. Insane, shattered remnants of Sith Lords unable to grasp the passage of time, bound to their tombs by desperation or refusal. They clung to flesh, gnawed at the living, raved in echoing screams.

But this one?

This was something else.

It circled her like a vulture might circle a rival predator—neither inviting conflict nor fleeing it. A wariness born of understanding. Perhaps even... respect.

Serina tilted her head, and her voice emerged low, dry, laced with intellectual curiosity.

"You are old."

A simple observation.

"And not mindless."

Her tone was sharper now—measured, edged, testing the contours of this unseen thing. "You chose restraint. That's rare. Most of your kind break themselves trying to scratch at my thoughts."

She let her hand drift toward her side—subtle, but purposeful—as if she were about to draw something. She didn't.

The gesture alone was enough.

The presence recoiled slightly, not in fear, but acknowledgment.

Yes.

Serina's smile was faint. Cold. But genuine.

"You know what I am, don't you?"

There was no reply. Not in language. But a sensation rippled through the tomb, unmistakable.

Yes.

And more.

She felt it then—not words, but emotion. A thought-form, transmitted not through speech, but intent. The tomb's presence pulsed with pride, not in itself, but in the girl. It was pleased. Pleased with her resistance. Pleased with her cunning. Pleased even with the containment of its own ember within her mind.

Serina's smile deepened, just slightly.

"Well done, little one," she murmured under her breath, not for the tomb, but for Miasmær.

It pleased her too.

She stepped forward—two steps, no more—closing part of the distance between herself and her apprentice. She didn't kneel. She didn't interrupt. But she stood over her.

With her.

The message was unspoken, but unmissable:

She belongs to me.

 

[Miasmær]

​

Miasmær, unaware of the conversation around her in word and feeling, held tightly to the ember of power in her core. What was she to do with it? She hadn't even known something like this was possible and now as she was confronted with the opportunity she lacked the knowledge or sureity of action to proceed, so she would hold. The ember struggled, not wanting to be contained.

Slowly vague outlines of memories would swell into her mind accompanied by a splitting headache. With a groan she'd falter for a second, only barely managing to keep her grip on this shred of power.

"I-" she would speak, her voice soft and out of breath "I see one who taught, but never stayed." she would speak aloud, the ember seeming to burn brighter as it is recognized

"A sage, a traveler, one who learned. One who... still... teache-" before she could finish her sentence there would be a stab of pain through her core, searing hot as the ember would burst into open flame. On instinct she would recoil, falling backwards as the presence would rip the shred she held out of her and into itself. The only other physical sign of this battle being the shifting of the sarcophagus' lid a mere few milimeters as it would close and the presence would all but vanish from the room.

Miasmær, clearly exhausted, stares up at the ceiling from her position laying on the floor. Her chest rises and lowers with heavy rhythmic breathing as she organizes her thoughts.

Darth Virelia ​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"I will find you."

Tags - Miasmær



For a long time, Serina didn't speak.

She stood at the edge of the dais, statuesque in her gleaming armor, a monolith of violet light and black synthesis. Only the faint crackle of the ancient braziers and the low pulse of the glyphs disturbed the silence. Her gaze, hidden behind the six-lensed helm of the Tyrant's Embrace, was fixed on the girl below—flat on her back, chest heaving, skin slick with sweat, the flickers of psychic overload still dancing behind her eyes.

Miasmær.

Or whatever was left of her, in the aftermath.

The sarcophagus had not opened.

Not fully.

But it had moved. Just enough to confirm Serina's suspicion: that the being entombed within had not truly died. Not in the way mortals died. Its rituals, its bindings, its machinations—they had all been interrupted, not ended.

And now it slumbered again, fed not by hatred… but by recognition.

"A sage. A traveler. One who still teaches…"

Serina's teeth clenched, just behind her breath.

Of course.

A teacher.

A phantom mirror.

The thought filled her not with jealousy—but with challenge. With calculation. With the knowledge that this world had once made monsters by giving them lessons… and that it might try to do the same again.

Not without me.

Her heels clicked softly as she stepped down from the dais, each motion fluid, elegant, impossibly controlled. She made no haste. Serina never made haste. Her presence arrived before she did. Every step closer bled pressure into the room again—subtle but suffocating, like air growing heavier with meaning. By the time she stood over the girl, the braziers had dimmed once more.

She looked down at Miasmær without kneeling.

Without crouching. Without sympathy. But not without care.

"…Why did you even come here?"

The words, when they came, were not soft.

They were scalpel-sharp. Stripped of pretense. Not cruel, not mocking—but cutting, in the way that only someone who needed an answer could speak. Not for punishment, but for truth.

Her head tilted slightly. The lenses of her helm narrowed, focusing.

"The moment you arrived, you followed it. The pull."

She began to pace now—just a step to the side, then another—like a predator circling something that wasn't quite prey. Not anymore.

"You let it draw you into its tomb. You sat at its feet. You opened your mind to something you didn't understand."

She stopped again.

The words came slower now. Deeper. Laced with something else beneath the scrutiny. Something older. A tension that might've been frustration—if Serina were less composed.

"You didn't come here to learn," she said quietly. "You came to belong."

The word dropped like stone into water.

She let it echo.

"You are not foolish, Miasmær. You're not weak. You're not naive. So why?"

A faint curl of her lip beneath the helm, almost hidden by shadow.

Serina knelt, at last, the glyphs of her armor pulsing dimly as her exosculpted knees kissed the floor beside the girl's splayed form. She reached out, gloved fingers brushing the air beside Miasmær's cheek without quite touching it.

"You let it inside," she said softly, "and it tried to teach you something. And it failed. Because when the pain came, you still held on. And even when it burned you, it respected your resistance. That's what this was."

She looked to the sarcophagus again.

"That thing wanted you to bend. And you didn't."

Her hand finally touched the girl's cheek—light, possessive, unflinching. A grounding gesture. Cold metal against warm, vulnerable flesh.

"I am not angry with you for answering the pull."

Her voice lowered.

"I'm angry that you thought you needed to."

There was no storm in her tone now. No heat. Just that deep, near-whispered calm that Serina used when she was most dangerous. The kind that didn't come from threat, but from knowledge.

"You still think you are nothing unless something ancient and hungry chooses you. But I already did."

A pause.

She let the words settle.

Then her voice deepened again, rich with dark velvet and precision.

"So answer me, girl."

Another brush of her gloved fingers, this time tracing down the curve of Miasmær's neck.

"What were you searching for here… that you didn't think you already had?"

 

[Miasmær]

Miasmær, with eyes closed, accepted her scolding in silence. With each heavy breath the weight of the world pulled on her limbs, seeming to glue her more and more firmly to the floor as exhaustion began to set in. Her body felt like it had been fighting for hours and her mind felt like it had gone days without sleep. Part of her, that small part of her that drifted away when confronted with criticism, oh so desperately wanted caf. Spiced caf, sweetened caf-

She stopped her thoughts, bringing them back under her control before they'd begin to wander. She couldn't hide from this, couldn't turn in on herself to avoid feeling like she had made a mistake. This was needed. Every word was a stinging lesson of what not to do next time. Failure could teach just as much, if not more, than success. Yet failure made the rage difficult to control, she felt the simmer beginning to turn into a boil as the words came.

As her master would touch her cheek Miasmær would recoil from it. She didn't want to be touched, she wanted to be in control. She wanted to punch something. A dangerous mindset. Previously she had been able to let her rage overtake her, to let it loose and calm it afterwards. That was dangerous, too much so. She had told herself she would never again turn into some feral beast, she was in control.

"I came to Exegol-" her voice was stiff, controlled, hinting at the bubbling cauldron within "To retrieve my shuttle. There are things I need to do."

Slowly she would sit, take a deep breath, then stand.

"I came here, because knowledge is valuable. Even false knowledge... it teaches you of the ignorance of your enemies or perhaps what they're trying to hide." Her tone had a hint of defiance in it. Dangerous. She quickly would bring it back under control

"Master-" she would reaffirm that relationship "Your teaching, your knowledge, it is incredibly valuable. I did not mean to disrespect you by coming here."

She would bow her head to the woman, a small sign of apology and respect to the entity Miasmær had come to call master.

Darth Virelia

 

[Darth Virelia]

"I will find you."

Tags - Miasmær



Serina did not rise.

She remained knelt, poised in sovereign stillness, watching the girl attempt to reassemble herself from the wreckage. The words were careful. Controlled. There was restraint in her tone, just enough deference to be polite, just enough pride to be… irritating.

But it was the recoil that Serina remembered most.

That twitch of withdrawal when her fingers had graced Miasmær's cheek. Not out of fear. Not revulsion. But rejection. It hadn't been loud. It hadn't needed to be.

Serina had felt it all the same.

Like a crack in porcelain—shallow, but telling.

She didn't speak right away. Let the silence stretch. Let Miasmær stew in it just long enough for her apology to taste of effort and not instinct. The braziers sputtered once in the still air, throwing flickering light across the obsidian plates of Serina's armor.

Then, softly, silk-laced and slow:

"I do prefer Mistress."

The correction came with the gentleness of a blade sliding into silk.

No raised voice.

No rebuke.

Just an unyielding reminder of structure. Of terms.

"You may call me Master when you are finally teaching yourself."
"But when you are mine?" Her voice dipped, warmer, yet edged with something sharper now. "You say Mistress. And you say it like you remember who owns your spine."

She rose then.

Deliberate.

Controlled.

Her full height reasserted itself, towering—not just physically, but spiritually. The room responded, subtly. The runes dimmed. The wind outside shuddered. Even the tomb seemed to exhale, as if acknowledging that one power had once again displaced another.

Her cape coiled around her calves as she stepped forward, no louder than before—but impossibly heavier. She walked without sound, yet every movement reeked of command. Of purpose. Her head tilted slightly, studying the girl who now stood and bowed with the poise of a tightrope walker on the edge of a storm.

"You want control," Serina said softly, voice gliding past her like perfume and wire. "That's what this is. That's why you recoiled. Why you crafted your little justification. Why you walked into a tomb that was not yours to open, thinking if you could just learn enough, you'd finally feel safe. Finally feel... superior."

A pause.

Then—

"You're not."

She stepped closer again, until she was near enough that their shadows merged.

"You are clever. And dangerous. And mine. And you will be everything you think you can be. But you are not in control. Not yet."

One gloved hand rose again—but not to touch.

To hover.

Close enough to be felt. Close enough to promise sensation. But not given.

"You are allowed control… when I decide it. Not before."

She circled the girl, slowly. The predator pacing the edge of the flame.

"You think because you held back that thing's ember, because you endured the trial without breaking, that it makes you strong. And it does. But strength without structure is just noise. Rage without a leash? Chaos. And you are not chaos."

She came to a stop behind Miasmær now, her breath warm against the girl's nape, though her lips never touched.

"You are my method. You are my blade. You are the storm someone else will beg to survive. But not unless you remember who sharpens you."

A slow breath.

Another pause.

Then—like silk wrapping around her throat:

"You want to call yourself mine?"

She leaned closer, voice dipping just above a whisper.

"Then act like it."

And finally—after all that—her tone softened. Not from weakness, but from possession.

"You are allowed ambition, little one. Even hunger. I don't punish you for seeking knowledge. I punish you for hiding your want behind civility. Behind excuses. You should have come to me before you came to this place. Because now it knows you."

A glance at the tomb.

"And now I must know it."

The tension shifted. Her energy dipped slightly, coiling inward, pulling back just enough for the air to grow lighter.

Not safe.

Safety is for the obedient.

But breathable.

"You may keep your little defiance, Miasmær. For now. Let it sharpen you."

She turned, at last, walking toward the exit of the tomb.

Her final words came not as threat, not as anger—

—but as promise.

"But next time you seek power without permission…"

A pause at the archway.

One last glance over her shoulder.

Violet lenses glinting like judgment.

"You'll learn how control is taken."

And she left her standing there, alone in the cold silence where gods once whispered, and now only shadows remembered.