Mistress of the Dark.
"Subtle glances and not so subtle undertones."
Tag -
Aliris Tremiru
The streets of Lothal whispered like a well-oiled machine—quiet, functional, sterile.
Serina hated how impressed she was.
The skyline had been scraped clean, old rebellion-scarred metal replaced with chromed civic modesty. Transit lines glided in rhythm. Drones patrolled with polite invisibility. The gutters even smelled like soap. She tasted bureaucracy in the air—not corruption, but something worse: efficiency. It was the kind of order that left no room for rot to fester. Or dreamers to survive.
Lothal, the forever frontier, now dressed itself in the skin of a proper world.
"Interesting."
She moved like water around corners, trailing through alleys where speeder smoke still clung to brick and low-lit signs blinked in weary neon. She wore anonymity like a gown—plain cloak, low hood, soft boots. But no disguise could dull the current of her. The pull.
She passed three men playing cards on an overturned crate. One looked up—and forgot the game.
Her presence was a scent on the air. A curve of heat in an otherwise temperate evening.
There were rumors here. Always were. About the "Marked." Those who woke screaming, those who heard voices, those who moved things without touching them. They rarely lasted long. Jedi recruiters scooped up the promising. The unlucky vanished into the bureaucratic maw. The Alliance didn't advertise suppression—but Serina had seen what the weight of order did to fragile minds.
That was why she was here.
To catch what slipped between the cracks.
To recruit what dared to survive it.
Then, a flicker. Not sight. Not sound. Something in the pit of her awareness twitched—like a tripwire laced through her spine.
A presence. Nearby.
Not powerful. But tense. Like a string pulled taut and held just before snapping.
She turned her head slightly, the motion deliberate and slow. Her lips parted.
"Ah," she breathed, low and indulgent. "There you are."
A tug pulled her east. She followed.
Down a side street, past a mural of the late Mon Mothma, weather-faded and graffitied with obscenities. A low building came into view. Small. Brick. Smoke rising from a cracked chimney. No scanners. No guards.
A soup kitchen.
Of all places.
She stepped inside.
The shift in air was immediate: broth and heat and humanity. A dozen languages murmured over clinking bowls. Volunteers moved like worn clockwork. Someone coughed wetly in a corner. It was almost… sweet. Honest, in the way starvation made people kind.
She moved among them without being seen, yet impossible to ignore.
And then she something else.
A woman, seated alone at the end of a long table. Mid-thirties, olive skin, hair in a utilitarian bun, shoulders hunched in weariness. She was stirring her food but not eating. Her jaw was clenched. Her eyes kept flicking toward the door—toward Serina. Not in recognition. In instinct.
The Force coiled around her like a wounded animal.
Serina's gaze lingered on her like the slow slide of a hand down silk. Not possession. Not yet. But possibility.
A kindred fracture.
She drifted toward the back wall of the kitchen, leaned there, arms folded beneath the illusion of her cloak. Her voice was smooth, warm, and rich with layered amusement.
"Lothal is run well. That's rare. Unnatural, even. A planet like this… it's meant to be unruly."
A breath escaped her lips. A sigh disguised as arousal.
"But the leash suits it. Maybe order is a form of decadence. One we can dress in civic pride and ration cards."
She tilted her head, studying the woman across the room without looking at her again.
Yet, another presence watched her.
Good.
Let them come to her. Let them circle like moths around the space where light shouldn't be. Let them ask questions.
Serina Calis stood in the warm belly of the system, smiling in the dark like sin in sanctuary.
Tonight, she'd find her ember.
And tomorrow, she'd set the fire.
