Private Terms of Dominion

[Darth Virelia]

"Stepping into the Dark."

Tag - Darth Prazutis



The shuttle slipped through the storm-wracked skies of Dromund Kaas like a shadow in freefall, its passage unseen by all but the most vigilant eyes. Lightning surged across the heavens, drawn in hungry arcs around the vessel's approach as though the world remembered her—remembered what she had once brought here, and what she might bring again.

Inside, Serina Calis waited.

She stood alone at the center of the transport's deployment chamber, surrounded by silence and softly pulsing violet light. Her form, normally clad in the biomechanical terror of Tyrant's Embrace, was today sheathed in something far more deliberate.

This armor did not scream domination.

It whispered power.

A flowing garment of articulated plating and dark synthweave, trimmed in ceremonial gold and deep amethyst, hugged her figure like the breath of ancient nobility. The armor was regal, but not cumbersome. Decorative, but not fragile. Its curves accentuated rather than concealed—sharp-edged elegance designed to disarm, to provoke, to suggest.

Her hood was drawn low over her brow, casting her upper face in soft shadow, the embroidered trim glinting faintly with each subtle movement. Beneath it, her mouth was a precise line—painted not for vanity, but for effect. Controlled. Sharp. Her breastplate shimmered with a faint, internal glow at the sternum, not the aggressive pulse of a reactor, but the steady cadence of focused will. Runes had been etched into the inner lining—not ancient war-sigils, but prayers to discipline, etched in her own hand.

Serina had chosen not to wear Tyrant's Embrace.

Not out of fear.

Not out of weakness.

But as an act of respect.

It would have been a farce to shield herself with armor in the presence of Darth Prazutis. The Koshûyok did not care for masks of power. He was power. And Serina, in her infinite precision, had decided this visit would not begin with a lie.

Her intention was to request. But her presence would demonstrate growth and respect.

It had been over a year since she last stood on Dromund Kaas. Since she had last passed beneath the gaze of a being who did not see her as a rival, or a tool, or a servant—but as function incarnate. A blade to be tempered, honed, and used. And she had thrived under that cold weight. She had taken the silence he gave her and filled it with ruin.

The ruin of Saijo, of the Tsis'Kaar.

Now, she returned to bargain for a weapon that required no ritual: the Fourth Legion.

In return, she would offer her vote in the Assembly to the Kainites—without drama, without cost. And more: the Legion's oath, sworn to the Kainite cause should civil war erupt. Not as allies. As certainty.

The pitch was simple.

And lethal.

The shuttle's descent completed without fanfare. A soft hum, the hiss of pressure equalizing, the drop ramp easing down with practiced solemnity. No guards flanked her. No heralds announced her name. Only the subtle hush of systems powering down, and the mechanical rhythm of a world preparing to measure her again.

Serina moved.

Her boots, slender and elegantly pointed, made no sound as they touched the durasteel ramp. The light caught her armor and refracted through the mist like faint whispers of violet flame. Her silhouette was lithe and sculpted, but there was nothing soft about her gait.

She walked as if gravity bent politely out of her path.

But she was not in control of that gravity.

He was.

The cape that trailed behind her was silk-forged synthweave, woven in streaks of midnight and wine, its edges embroidered with arcane motifs that shimmered when struck by the faintest light. Every motion was practiced, every movement a declaration written in poise.

There were no weapons visible.

She did not need them.

The true edge of her presence was buried deep beneath the surface—beneath her words, her voice, her poise. The intelligence that waited behind every pause. The pressure she applied not to break, but to soften. She was a blade already in motion, arcing gently through the long game of Sith politics.

And now she had come to press that blade deeper into the throat of fate.

As she reached the edge of the ramp, her posture did not shift, her head did not turn. She simply existed, suspended at the very edge of the storm.

And then Serina Calis stepped into the world once more.

Let it bear witness.

 

[Darth Prazutis]

The world remembered her.

Dromund Kaas seethed as if in mourning of her return, the clouds above churned with unnatural fury, split by violet lightning that bled sideways like torn muscle across the blackened sky. Thunder rolled low and unending amidst such ebullient wrath. The Umbral Maw was an all consuming presence over everything that tread upon this world, and its darkness remembered her, the touch evident of the one who mastered it. But below the storm, all was still.

There, he was waiting.

Beneath the towering facade of the Sith Citadel, its spires were like claws scraping the belly of the heavens, its foundations sunk deep into ancient strata where the screams of the forgotten still echoed, where the bones of ancient history foretold its dark legacy amongst the Sith Order stood a lone figure. One who was wreathed in silence, framed by obsidian monoliths etched with Sith scripture, the Dark Lord of the Sith, Shadow Hand of the Kainate, and Sovereign of Dromund Kaas Darth Prazutis waited as the shuttle descended in slow, reverent descent.

The Shadow Hand didn't pace back and forth as it came down. No, he didn't even speak, he didn't need to. Clad in the Vestments of the Shadow Hand, the Zâvrai Kôzkar, he appeared as a thing summoned, not born. The Dark Lords gigantic form, towering and immutable, was draped in layered robes of ritual black, their weave humming with eldritch runes and entropic flame. Incense-smoke curled from unseen braziers around him, the scent heavy with myrrh, ash, and the iron tang of sacrificial blood. Crimson glow seeped through the stitched seams of the garment, leaking like the embers of a dormant cataclysm. Metal plates on the shoulders, hands, and boots drank in the light. Any features of his face were hidden beneath the folds of the robes deep hood, all except for a pair of eyes that burned like twin suns.

The earth had gone quiet around him. Even the wind had ceased to blow. Gravity, it seemed, waited on his will. It was as if the very world was at his beck and call. As the shuttle's ramp hissed open and Serina Calis descended in her whispering violet-black regalia, the citadel did not erupt in trumpets or fire. It simply acknowledged her. Every shadow drew longer. Every line of architecture leaned, imperceptibly, toward the place where she stood. Then? Then the Shadow Hand moved. He stepped forward with the grace of a titan in ceremony. Each footfall rang with deep, echoing finality across the obsidian platform. The Dark Lord's presence pressed upon the senses like a descending weight, a gravitational anchor forged of ancient sin and absolute certainty.

When he spoke, it wasn't loud. But it drowned everything else. "You return without armor. Without weapons. Without pretense." The Dark Lords paused. "Good. You come as one who understands what this place is." He came to a stop before her, near enough for the storm's flickering light to carve spectral flame across the folds of his vestments, and yet far enough that the chasm between them was felt in more than distance. The robes bled into shadow making his form less and less a coherent whole and more apart of the seething darkness that consumed the world. The giants head tilted slightly. Whether it was curiosity or judgment, it didn't show. "Your efforts are not unknown to me, Serina Calis. You were tempered in silence. Forged in exile. The ruin you leave in your wake…speaks more clearly than any herald ever could. I see all you’ve observed, and some things not yet spoken." It foretold of her position as his agent, as an agent of chaos sowing seeds of discord amongst rivals and foes of the Kainate, and perhaps that the infamous Lord of Lies knows more than one would want him to. Then, after another pause: "You come with a proposition." A long silence followed. The storm surged above, distant, like war drums at the edge of memory. Then, with a gesture subtle and absolute, he turned toward the doors of the Citadel, which rumbled open of their own accord, ancient slabs of black iron grinding apart to reveal darkness within. "Then come. Walk with me. Speak your offering." Prazutis said, and without another word, the Shadow Hand turned and began to walk, his robes whispering along the stone like the passage of a funeral procession into the tomb of kings.

Darth Virelia​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Stepping into the Dark."

Tag - Darth Prazutis



Serina walked beside him, not as a shadow, not as an equal, but as function. As design. The edges of her cloak whispered in tandem with his robes, two specters carved in violet and black, threading their way into the tomb that was the Citadel. The storm churned behind them, like a curtain closing over the stage they had just left. The world did not watch them go. It listened.

She allowed the silence to stretch as they passed through the threshold, her form gliding just a step behind and to the side, her head bowed slightly beneath the weight of both her hood and the gravity of the man beside her. The scent of blood-iron and sacred ash filled the air, but Serina did not wrinkle her nose. She breathed it in. Like incense. Like truth.

Only once they had left the last gust of storm-wind behind did she speak.

"Sluis Van will fall before the cycle turns," Serina said, voice smooth, precise, and low enough that it didn't echo—an offering spoken in the space between thunderclaps. "Its planetary shield grid is antiquated. Industrial sprawl has left its surface fractured and decentralized. There are too many corridors of control, and no true center. Perfect for division. Perfect for conquest. It is an ideal first move."

She paused, long enough for the words to sink in, then continued.

"That is what the Velgrath demands, after all: precision. Strength, yes, but not the flagrant sort. Not the display. Victory here is not given to the loudest, or even the strongest. It will go to the Sith who sees the board clearest."

A faint smile played along her lips—subtle, beneath the trim of her hood. Not the smile of amusement. The smile of someone already calculating her endgame.

"I will not waste time with ceremony. The Fourth Legion matters. More than the title. More than the legacy. It is a lever. Whoever controls it controls the tempo of future wars—internal and otherwise. If we allow it to fall into incompetent hands, the next civil war will not be survived. It will be a grave."

Another few steps passed in silence, each one a syllable in a private litany.

"I intend to win it."

She said the words without grandeur. Without fire. They were not aspiration—they were inevitability wrapped in velvet.

"The Velgrath is already in motion. Entrants have begun carving their claims. Some with brute force. Others with misdirection. But none have chosen Sluis Van. Yet. I've made sure of it. What I intend to do there will secure not just a foothold—but logistical supremacy over the entire southern corridor of the Blackwall. Its orbital drydocks are unclaimed. Its supply chain runs into half a dozen vulnerable midrim systems, most of which are already under threat from warlords and deserters. If I take it first, I can control more than territory. I can control momentum."

She allowed herself a pause, the rhythmic motion of their steps echoing faintly beneath the vaulted corridors of the Citadel. It was less conversation now, and more ritual. As though she were inscribing her will into the foundation of the world with every syllable.

"I understand the rules," Serina continued, more softly now, respectful—measured. "No outside reinforcement. No fleets across the Blackwall. No ritual summoning. No direct communication. I know them. I also know that no one truly obeys them—not fully. Every Sith worth the name is already calculating how to bend the rules without breaking them. I have no interest in dishonor. Only victory. And discretion."

She turned her head just enough for one violet-glinting eye to catch a sliver of the torchlight filtering from the walls. It gave her an otherworldly gleam, a soft predator's glow.

"I won't ask you to send armies. Or fleets. Or names. That would be foolish. And unnecessary. All I ask for is support—in the ways that cannot be traced. Supply lines that can be buried within legitimate commerce. "Volunteers". Communications that route through phantom nodes. False reports, dispatched to rivals at just the right moment. The kind of pressure only you can apply."

She didn't flatter. Not with him. That would be obvious. Insulting.

"You know the board, my Lord. You built most of it. I am not asking to borrow your power. I am asking you to invest it. In return, you will gain a victor bound not by loyalty, but by design. I will give you my vote in the Assembly. Every time. Without question. And when the next fracture comes—because we both know it will—I will give you the Fourth Legion, sworn and shaped to your vision. Not just as allies. As guarantors."

Her voice cooled.

"You will not need to command me. I will already have moved."

The silence that followed was not empty. It was poised. Balanced. Her next words were slower, deliberate.

"I chose not to wear Tyrant's Embrace today. Not because it offends you—it doesn't. But because it insulates me. It says that I expect war. That I fear harm. That I am more concerned with survival than function. And here, in this place, that would be a lie. I did not come to you as a fortress. I came as an instrument."

She turned slightly, just enough to let the torchlight trace the curve of the ceremonial armor she had chosen—elegant, curved, ceremonial, but still dangerous. Like a dagger offered hilt-first. But never disarmed.

"I will return from the Velgrath alone. No banners. No allies. No holdings. Only the knowledge that I have shaped my name into a threshold. And that crossing it is a declaration of war."

She tilted her head slightly, as if tasting the weight of her final words.

Then silence returned between them—not the pause of uncertainty. The pause of decision. The storm above no longer howled.

It listened.

 

[Darth Prazutis]

The storm behind them dwindled into memory, its chorus swallowed by the yawning hush of the Sith Citadel's cavernous interior. Darkness pressed in from all sides, not empty, but truly alive. The walls were etched in obsidian and runes, the air saturated with the residue of sacrifice and command. Every corridor was a vein through which power pulsed. Banners flew overhead silhouetted by the shadow bearing the mark of the Kainate, while eyes lurked within the deepest recesses of creatures, spirits carefully watching, and now two walked within it: the Shadow Hand, and the blade who sought purpose. Their steps echoed, not loud, but absolute. The Shadow Hand said nothing at first. He listened intently, not to her voice, but to the calculus beneath it. Calis's precision, her foresight, her careful understanding of how the board truly functioned. She didn't posture. She placed pieces, and he was already watching the next three moves unfold, analyzing every outcome and each variable.

"Sluis Van." The Dark Lord repeated, his voice a deep scrape of stone, ancient and tectonic. "Yes. A planet broken not by war, but rot. A corpse waiting to be carved. Let others chase crowns and battlefields. You seek the spine." He didn't turn his head as they passed beneath a gateway of barbed iron and screaming faces, statues frozen in agony. The Citadel's interior narrowed briefly into a vaulted passage choked in shadow before blooming open again into descending stairs, each inscribed with a Sith scripture that whispered at the soles of their boots. Servants and guards moved in the fringes of each hall, each kneeling deep in his presence as he moved while heavily armored guards slammed fists to their chests. The silent hum of dark technology reverberated through the walls. "Victory favors the one who sets the tempo." Prazutis continued. "But you intend to claim the conductor's baton before the first note is struck. That isn't arrogance. That is control." Then came her proposal, her true offering, laid out with the restraint of someone who understood that power need not shout. A testament to one who understood that for the price of power, of favor, the cost may be steep and you must be prepared to pay it.

The giant said nothing for several paces as they continued through the maze of a structure. But the temperature dropped. The shadows lengthened. They moved and twisted, it would leave her uncertain as to how far they truly traveled. The pressure of the air pressed harder against the chest the deeper they moved. Then, without turning, Prazutis spoke again, softer now, but heavier. "A seat at the Assembly bent to the Kainate without resistance. A Legion pledged in all but name. You come bearing more than ambition, you offer leverage." He paused. The Citadel seemed to breathe with him, as if the structure itself inhaled the weight of her words. It was a steep offering. To offer one's alignment in the assembly, to use the terrifying power of the Fourth Legion to fully back the Kainate, an aligned Imperator would not only spread influence but strengthen their position. "And you offer it not in tribute. But in transaction. Good." It spoke to her incredible ambition to realize what needed to be done, and give it without hesitation, it took conviction to do that.

There was no warmth in the praise. Only simple recognition. Respect, the kind born from calculus, not true sentiment. "You understand the rules." The Shadow Hand went on. "More importantly, the truth behind them. No one plays clean. No one ever has. But most pretend to. You do not. That is why you will not be among the ones buried beneath their own illusions." They passed a great arch of petrified tendrils, beneath which opened a chasm of black marble and hex-locked doors pulsing with ancient seals. A space few ever entered. The threshold of the Black Nexus. The Shadow Hand slowed. "The Fourth Legion is not just a weapon." Prazutis said at last. "It is a cipher. A command writ in motion. You would wield it not for glory, but for equilibrium or imbalance. Whichever best serves the endgame." Now, he turned to her, fully. The light caught the runes of his robes. The Mortarch's hooded face remained obscured but the eyes beneath burned like twin dying stars, hungering across aeons. "So I will test the edge of this instrument you offer. But know this: I do not invest lightly. I seed ruin. I fund inevitability."

The massive doors to the Black Nexus began to split open before them with seismic finality. "Step forward, Serina Calis." He intoned. "Let the darkness hear what we both already know." The storm didn't answer. Because the truth? The truth was already inside.

Darth Virelia​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Stepping into the Dark."

Tag - Darth Prazutis



She stepped forward.

Not quickly. Not slowly. Not with reverence, nor rebellion. But with total precision. As though each footfall had already happened once before—etched into some deeper layer of reality where time bowed before inevitability. Her form moved like a continuation of his will, not in mimicry, but in rhythm, as if the two of them shared a tether, an unseen filament of purpose drawn taut between sovereign and serpent.

The chill of the Black Nexus rose to meet her, not as a wind or a draft, but as a presence—the psychic residue of sacrifice and supremacy. It clung to the skin, caressed bone, whispered across the architecture of the soul. This was no place of emotion. It did not welcome. It did not wound. It simply remembered. And now it remembered her.

The arch behind them groaned shut, sealing the chamber in silence. The runes that had previously only glimmered now began to pulse, not in uniform pattern, but in sync—with her. Her breath. Her heartbeat. Her will.

Serina Calis had not come to petition. She had come to resonate.

The violet glow from her ceremonial armor responded in kind, humming faintly in counterpoint to the Nexus's hunger. The runes along her ribs, across her chestplate, down the sculpted spiral of her arms began to shimmer, refracting light into arcane geometry. What might have been called beauty elsewhere was here simply design. The lines of her armor whispered along the shape of her body in ways meant not to arouse, but to claim. She was not dressed for war, nor for seduction. She was dressed for alignment.

Her hood shifted slightly as she tilted her head forward—not a bow, but a narrowing of presentation, an offering of vector. No face could be seen beneath, only the curve of her lips, perfectly still. She stood at the center of the Black Nexus as though she belonged there—not merely allowed, not even summoned, but calculated for.

She had known the cost before she'd spoken the first word of this proposition. She had known it when she sat in the dark hours planning her claim on Sluis Van. She had known it in the endless moments between messages not sent, favors not pulled, silence chosen over subtle defiance. She had known it when she stepped off the shuttle and left Tyrant's Embrace in orbit, when she left behind armor designed to terrify in favor of something truer.

Because this was not a moment of fear.

This was a moment of function.

He would test her. Of course he would. And she welcomed it. Because to be tested by Darth Prazutis was to be weighed by the very gravity of the Sith's future.

The darkness coiled around her ankles. Not to bind, but to measure. The runes across the floor flickered with old equations—symbols that meant nothing to the uninitiated, but to her… they whispered old names. Forgotten pronouns of power. Seeds of finality planted in flesh and future. The Citadel itself leaned toward this moment. The walls seemed to pull inward slightly, like ancient lungs preparing to exhale.

And she… was very, very still.

She did not seek to fill the silence.

She understood it.

She let it speak first.

 

[Darth Prazutis]

The silence didn't break. It didn't give way at their coming instead it deepened. As Serina Calis stood still at the heart of the Black Nexus, she became part of its breathless gravity, a new vector inscribed into the very ledger of war. No more words were spoken, but their echoes hadn't stopped in their wake. The darkness listened. The walls leaned. The runes pulsed, not as reaction, but as computation. Above all of it the Dark Lord of the Sith moved. The Shadow Hand stepped forward appearing from the darkness to emerge onto a dais like the judgment of the Citadel given form. The giants darkened robes whispered like execution orders, his presence not loud, but total as it smothered the room. The Dark Lord moved as if the nexus itself, as if the whole world were pivoting on his axis, an engine of control turning towards a new direction, a new design woven by his whims.

Beneath the great vaulted chamber, red and black light bled from crystal veins in the stone, etched in ritual geometry that mapped entire campaigns. The floor was no longer a surface, it was a lens, a gate of decisions past and still to come. The walls hummed with dark technology so advanced it bordered on magic, crimson screens bore streams of data flowing ceaselessly. Beautiful mosaics depicting great Sith conquests decorated the iron walls. As he came to stand opposite her across the central table of black obsidian and iron, the heart of the Nexus awakened. All with a single, simple motion, he extended his hand and the table roared to life. A massive circular hologram snapped into existence, projection streams rising like thrones of energy around its circumference. Sluis Van, ringed in crimson trajectory vectors. Trade arteries bore from hyperlanes, orbital schematics, enemy movements, military positions, power vacuums, innumerable streams of critical information all danced in solemn, beautiful order, a chorus of war waiting only for a conductor.

"The Nexus remembers." The Dark Lord said, voice low, resonant, seismic. Every word rolled through the earth. "Not because it was built to. But because it must. This chamber is not a sanctum. It is a fulcrum. The point upon which the fate of sectors, empires, legacies, are levered." He began to move, slowly, not around her, but around the war table. Each step a pulse of living will. Each motion sending faint ripples through the field. "You step into the breath of this machine not as a beggar, nor as a pawn. You step in as something more dangerous: one who knows the cost of decision, and comes fully ready to pay it." He paused, opposite her, as the holographic projection of Sluis Van turned slowly between them. "Sluis Van. The eye of the corridor. It stands amidst death throes waiting to be rebroken and reforged. Others see symbols. Flags. Flames. But you, you seek control. Control of everything within, and yet it's more than that…"

A new layer of the hologram rippled into place: a data-thread marked only with three glyphs, symbolizing her goal of the Fourth Legion.. "You do not seek the Legion as title. You seek it as instrument. You offer it not as a favor, nor as tribute. But as torque, and with it, you pledge your voice, your seat." Prazutis's gaze rose slowly to meet hers, twin furnaces of judgment beneath the hood. "I do not simply need loyalty, Serina Calis. I do not crave mere allegiance. What I invest in is inevitability. Leverage. And you bring it to me sheathed not in ceremony, but in execution." The shadows around the Nexus thickened then, closed in around them. The air pressed down like the moment before a fleet opens fire. Through the holograms, the Citadel murmured, encrypted threads opening, closing, mapping the weight of her proposition against a dozen hypothetical outcomes. All of it was carefully analyzed from the campaign she was undertaking, the possibility of success and failure. Beyond that, the consequences of either action.

"You understand the rules, and their lies. You know that no one obeys, but all pretend. And yet you come with no pretense. You bring me no plea. Only a calculation. I respect that." A beat passed, long and absolute. "You stand in the place where sectors burn before they scream. Where futures bleed before they're ever born. Where I have shaped wars with nothing but silence. And now, you ask to shape one with me." The Shadow Hand extended his hand again. This time, not to the table. To her. Not as equal certainly not. Not as ally. As architect to instrument. As command to design. "Then convince the Nexus." The giants final words struck like law, they were cold, clean, and irreversible: "Show this war table you are not ambition…but gravity. Show your intent, your plans, show it all."

Darth Virelia​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Stepping into the Dark."

Tag - Darth Prazutis



She did not hesitate.

As his hand extended—not in invitation, but in command—Serina Calis stepped forward. Not to take it. That would have been misinterpretation. No, she understood the gesture for what it truly was: the activation of purpose.

This was not a request for loyalty. It was not even a demand.

It was a permission slip handed from the sovereign will of the Kainate's architect to a blade sharpened in exile. A gesture that told her: Now. Prove the calculus true.

She lifted her hand, elegant, gloved, and gleaming with the etched veins of soft violet energy. Her fingertips brushed his—an acknowledgment. Then she turned, gracefully, and the moment unfurled like a coil released. Her silhouette glided to the war table, the violet in her armor reflecting against the swirling crimson tides of the Sluis Van projection, and then—beyond it—Morrigal.

She didn't look at him again. Not yet.

Her focus was total.

"I do not begin with Sluis Van," she said at last, her voice smooth, deliberate. "I begin with Morrigal."

With a motion of her hand, she expanded the map. The gray sphere of Morrigal, ringed in fractured orbitals and discarded trade debris, magnified. Veins of unused supply lines flickered in the projection. Ghost stations blinked in and out of viability. Beneath the surface of the planet—red markers, all unnamed, began to strobe.

"Morrigal is where I create the first ripple. Sluis Van is where the galaxy sees the wave. That is the difference between a strike… and a statement."

She reached her right hand down, adjusting the console, bringing up layers of seismographic data, Force resonance fields, and psychological warfare metrics from fragmented archives.

"The cult beneath Morrigal is real," she said. "I confirmed it through a closed analysis of Force echo reverberations recorded in Sith tombs dated nearly a thousand years ago. They call themselves the Velgrathi, and their belief system is rooted in a self-terminating prophecy—one that promises an end to the Velgrath, not through conquest… but consumption."

Her fingers danced across the interface. A waveform bloomed upward, scrolling with chants, fragmentary recordings, and psychoacoustic glyphs.

"They believe the Velgrath ends when the Final Conductor claims them. A figure who does not conquer them, but devours their belief—who becomes the container for their purpose, and in doing so, ends the prophecy. They do not resist submission. They crave it."

A ghost of a smile played across her lips—measured. Lethal. Beautiful in the way a scalpel's edge is beautiful.

"I intend to fulfill their myth. Not with honesty. But with efficiency."

She turned now, not to Darth Prazutis, but toward the Nexus itself—as if addressing it directly, as if the war table were the audience and the Sith Lord beside her merely the force of gravity that gave it breath.

"To win the Velgrath, you must act as if you are already outside of it," she said. "Every Lord who lands with dreams of glory will fight for the most visible targets. They'll waste strength posturing, hoping to bait, to flex, to draw fear. But fear burns too quickly. What I want is certainty. And certainty begins in places no one else would dare kneel."

She expanded the datafeed: ancient tunnels beneath Morrigal's surface, vast chasms carved with untranslatable Sith script, energy sources that had no discernible power supply—only rhythm. Like ritual engines. Like heartbeat.

"Morrigal's cult holds maps of the inner Velgrath. They are not myths. They are coordinates. These maps show unregistered routes through the blackwall. Ancient naval supply lines. Internal bypasses used during the old purges. Every world that still believes it is invisible to conquest—these maps can make them visible."

She turned her head just slightly, the gleam of her violet eyes catching the ambient pulse of the Nexus.

"And the best part," she murmured, with a tone now edged in something far colder, "is that the cultists will fight for me without question. Not because I offer them freedom. But because I am their god."

A gesture, small, but absolute. She zoomed into the subterranean cult settlements, denoting resource clusters, manufactories, weapons caches long entombed. "I will wear their faith as armor. I will use their zeal to ignite conflict. And when they begin to die in my name, they will not resent me. They will thank me for their extinction."

She moved again, the path of her pacing forming a crescent around the table.

"I will feed their dead into the furnaces of conquest. Not because I need them to win, but because someone else will try to save them. And that gives me my second battle before my first one ends."

She returned to her original position, the red glow of Morrigal's subterranean layers washing up across her torso like blood. She did not avert her eyes from the map.

"In every movement of this campaign, I will make others react. That is the crux of it. Sluis Van will not be attacked as a first conquest—it will be attacked as a counter-stroke. One they didn't know they were waiting for. When the Velgrathi scream my name into the chasms and set fire to their own strongholds to honor their living prophecy, the Lords will think it madness. When the shadows from Morrigal reach outward and consume their support lines, they will think it sabotage."

She raised her chin, her voice now a breath more intimate, though still utterly controlled.

"And when I arrive at Sluis Van… they will understand too late. Because I will not be conquering it. I will be collecting it."

A final gesture. The interface shifted to show her full projected path through the Velgrath. Nodes marked not in systems, but faults—fractures in allegiance, belief, logistics.

"I will not chase power. I will remove the need for others to pursue it."

And now, she looked back to Darth Prazutis. Fully. Her voice dipped lower. No smile now. Just clarity.

"You said you fund inevitability. So I've shown you mine."

 

[Darth Prazutis]

As Serina's final words fell like sigils into silence, the chamber did not rush to fill the void. It processed her. The air grew denser, the crimson glow of the map shifting from observation to analysis. Subsurface telemetry bled across the obsidian war table, it wasn't simply calculating data or pouring more streams of information, it wasn't simply reading the plans she put forward, It wasn't just listening to her.

It was calculating outcomes. The Dark Lord didn't speak at once, his towering form stood motionless at the opposite end of the war table, like a black sun held in orbit by the proposal before him. One did not speak over revelation. One did not interrupt inevitability. But then he moved. A single step. The chamber dimmed. Even a single step was brought forth by the failure of the optic nerve, shadow trailing off his form made it appear like the giant simply shifted from one place to the next amongst shadows. The darkness wasn't by the simple failure of light, but by its complete submission to the gravity of the abyss. The Shadow Hand's voice when it came, was quieter than before. Not weak no it was focused, compressed like mass at the heart of a singularity. "You came without theater. You offered no dramatics. You attempted no seduction. You brought only inevitability…and asked to be measured. I see you." Prazutis raised one gauntleted hand. Slowly. The war table flickered then, Sluis Van, Morrigal were frozen in red and black, a constellation of conquest paused mid-breath. "And now I have measured you."

A pulse spread outward. The lights of the chamber dimmed further, and from the vaulted walls came murmurs, data threads routed from across the Kainate's vast infrastructure, from various places spread across the relevant areas. Silent decisions began moving. Resource requests buried in civilian networks, hidden efforts concealed far beneath the sight of the greatest intelligence agents. Names tagged for transit. Sensor logs rerouted to phantom arrays. Nothing declared. But the engine had turned. The colossus moved. He stepped closer, each motion a quiet sentencing.

"You do not seek war for glory. You seek momentum. You do not demand control. You become the thing around which control must orbit. That is how you play a game others cannot possibly hope to comprehend." The Dark Lords gaze bore into hers, straight through her. "You do not merely seek to rule the Fourth. You seek to rip the mantle of Imperator out of the hands of the ambitious, and stand above them all to prove it belongs to you." Now the weight came hard. It was a presence not born of words, but saturation, like the gravity of a world deciding to accept a new moon into its sky. "Then let the cult scream your name. Let them ignite in holy fire, their bones ground into logistics. Let Sluis Van fall not as an act of conquest, but as a consequence of alignment." He turned from her now, not dismissively, but as one who had already given approval. He walked to the edge of the war table, where the projection of the system rippled with crimson fault-lines. "I will give you no armies. No fleets. No shield to return to. You asked for none of it." The Nexus pulsed, one last time. "Instead I grant you velocity."

The red lines shifted and paths opened. Resource shadows now moved in the margins of the Blackwall, through its surface amongst shrouded Kainate methods. Logistical data flowed. Over the surface routes were displayed. Routes that would not be questioned. Data that would or could not be tracked. "You will have what you need. Strike true, Serina Calis, and when the warlords blink in confusion, when their schemes collapse under the weight of things they never saw begin, remind them what it means to be forgotten by design." The giants eyes, burning coals beneath the cowl, locked with hers one last time.

"You have proven yourself reliable. Effective. A skilled informant."

But his voice shifted then, it grew colder now. "This is different. I have invested in you, Serina Calis. The cost, as you well know, is steep. But the cost of failure is steeper still." Prazutis paused. Not as a threat. As a statement of law. "This is your proving ground. Not just to claim what others covet, but to prove you belong to a far larger game." His gaze didn't blink nor did it waver. It simply judged. It bore straight through her.

Darth Virelia​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Stepping into the Dark."

Tag - Darth Prazutis



The chamber did not exhale.

Even as Prazutis' decree echoed into stillness, even as the red-lit map shimmered beneath a lattice of unseen decisions, the Black Nexus held its breath. It was not silence born of anticipation—it was silence as observation. A stillness so total it bordered on cosmic, as if the galaxy itself had momentarily slowed, waiting to see if what had been invested would now ignite.

Serina Calis did not move at first.

She did not bow. Did not reach. Did not perform.

She processed.

The Nexus had spoken. Velocity had been granted. The cold calculus of the Kainate's deepest roots was already moving beneath the war-torn crust of the galaxy, like tectonic plates shifting without a sound. Everything she had envisioned now existed, no longer theoretical. Not speculative. The resources were in motion. The conduits cleared. Her reach had been extended through shadowed hands not her own—but now tethered to her will.

She stepped forward again. Not in deference. In completion. As if a piece of her design had only now slotted into place.

She looked toward the war table—not as an object, but as a second pair of eyes. As if she were not presenting only to the Koshûyok, but to the Nexus itself, the systems now watching her, the hands she would never meet that had already begun moving on her behalf.

And she thanked them.

Not with gratitude. But with purpose.

"I understand the cost," she said, tone still composed, respectful, but shaded now with iron. "Not just of failure. But of being seen."

She turned toward him then, letting her gaze rise fully to meet the burning voids beneath his hood. Her expression, though obscured, was utterly still. Her words slow—not languid, not sensual—but calculated, the way one drips poison, not spills it.

She took another step forward, the ambient light of the Nexus catching along the etchings of her ceremonial armor, the violet lines pulsing with restrained power. There was no flash to her movements. Only control. Only precision. Her hood framed her face like the edge of a guillotine poised at the moment just before descent.

"I do not carry that lightly."

She moved one gloved hand toward the center of the table again, overlaying new points on the crimson projection. Subtle—but her presence was inscribed into the map now. Not as a flag. Not as a fleet. But as momentum given name.

"There will be no proof of your involvement," she said. "No thread to follow. No signal to trace. What you've given me will become architecture for something the others cannot see, even when it devours them."

A flick of her fingers—and the projection zoomed outward. A dozen potential targets. Supply lines left unmonitored. Small stations just outside Blackwall purview. Weaknesses not born of incompetence, but of certainty. The false belief that power, once taken, remains held without maintenance.

"They will fail," Serina said. "Not because I defeat them. But because they were never designed to win."

She paused, letting the words rest like a knife placed between ribs—not plunged, just present.

"Because this isn't about claiming the Fourth Legion," she said, more quietly now. "It's about becoming the thing the Legion must obey."

Her head tilted slightly beneath the hood, a subtle echo of reflection, as though she weighed the gravity of what had just been given—and decided it was already spent.

"I do not plan for the title," she continued, voice lower, each word like the pull of thread through flesh. "I plan for the consequence of having won it."

Then, finally—finally—she let the faintest curl of a smile touch her lips.

It was not coy. It was not seductive.

It was simply the expression of a mind that had already written the aftermath.

"The others will see the Fourth as an army," she said. "I will make it a message."

Her gaze rose again to his. No fear. No worship.

Only recognition.

Her posture was perfectly still, every line of her armor echoing the quiet suggestion of a blade held in gloved fingers, still sheathed, but heavy with promise.

No flourish followed. No bow. No proclamation.

Only silence.

Not the silence of hesitation.

But the silence before the first shot is fired.

The silence before someone—not her—starts to scream.

 

[Darth Prazutis]

The chamber remained still. Not stagnant but loaded. It was the stillness of a blade in the very moment between draw and descent. The Black Nexus didn't respond with ceremony, nor did the Dark Lord offer theatrics in turn. But something shifted then, it was very subtle, beneath perception itself, it was like a gravitational drift one only notices when the orbit begins to curve. The Shadow Hand didn't immediately respond. He watched. In the silence between them, the Black Nexus in turn watched with him. It wasn't passively like some crowd or a council, but as true infrastructure. As a system, the war table fed real-time adjustments to nodes that weren't even visible, taking into account details none foresaw. Silent synchronizations rippled outward in secure channels, shadowed fleets, clandestine archives of forgotten names, sites, locations, all reactivated for relevance to what was posed before it. Every touch a calculation. The very presence of the woman triggered a response from the machine itself.

Why?

She was in the very system now. Now would come the measure of what such an arrangement would cost her. When the giant moved at last, it came with all the certainty of an executioner descending a step to meet his next victim, not for pity, but pure precision. The colossus stepped forward and the light itself dimmed, not by design, but as if his coming forced its retreat. Finally after drenching the world in silence, allowing no response to her words to spill forth. Finally words followed, not some grand self-indulgent proclamation full of arrogance. They came as if they were inevitable. "You understand what you've done." It wasn't a question posed to the woman; it wasn't one at all. "You've entered into a contract written in the bones, the blood of others. You've tethered yourself to the rhythm of the Kainate's engine. There is no stepping back from that. Not in shadow, not in victory, not even in failure." The Shadow Hand's eyes burned from beneath the cowl, two coals forging beneath the collapsed star of his iron will.

"You are no longer a whisper in the margins of ambition. You are becoming a variable in the great calculation, and variables are either resolved, or eliminated." The Black Nexus pulsed once more as he paused, circling the woman before he finally stopped once more across from her. "This is what it means to have my investment. It is not protection, it is scrutiny. It is the full gaze of the Kainate upon you, trained upon your campaign, like a scalpel above a spine. You will move with precision, or you won't move at all." Prazutis said. While bearing an edge his tone held no threat, only a firmly rooted certainty. It wasn't the promise of something but rather the absolute certainty of outcomes from one who manipulated galactic powers as easily as the flip of a switch. "I do not deal in mere dreams. I do not tolerate vision without execution. I have chosen you because of what you offer, of what you are capable of, and what you may achieve if you have what it takes."

The Dark Lord extended his hand to the large table, to the beating heart of the Nexus itself, and it readily answered the call of its master. Every single thread of her operation, efforts, every falsified logistics route, every hidden signal, every path, every dormant agent, all of the plans now locked within the depths of data. It was as if the Black Nexus stored her efforts away within its depths, tracking her efforts and that of her agents. Not just of her efforts on this world, but others unseen even by the scrutinizing gaze of those who stand against her. "I will not tell you good fortune, for you will find none here. For those with true power luck is a fools notion, we control the very outcome." Prazutis paused, his voice lowered now, it took on a more intimate and colder edge. "I will tell you this. If you win...the world as you know it will change for you forever. You will climb to something others can only dream of." The Dark Lord stepped back.

"Do not return until the rest of the galaxy is far too late to catch up to you. I will track your efforts and observe their success or failure."

Darth Virelia ​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Stepping into the Dark."

Tag - Darth Prazutis



The stillness after his words was not silent.

It breathed.

The Black Nexus thrummed not with sound but with saturation, as if her presence and his judgment had condensed the very concept of weight into something that could be worn—like the armor she had chosen not to wear. The pressure in the room no longer came from the walls or the air. It came from function. It came from position.

She was now a node in a larger machine.

And like any part woven into a system as vast and ruthless as the Kainate's shadow empire, Serina Calis understood what that meant. Leverage was privilege. But leverage was also exposure. It made you vital. But it also made you vulnerable.

Her hood dipped ever so slightly in acknowledgment—not subservience, not gratitude. Simply alignment.

He had spoken not with prophecy, but with certainty. And certainty didn't need answers. It only needed recognition.

So when Serina spoke again, her voice was soft—softer even than before. Not because she was afraid. But because she no longer needed to declare. Her will had already been accepted into the fold of machinery that now moved around her. What she said now was no longer request.

It was refinement.

"There is one thing," she said, not as hesitation but as a gentle narrowing of aperture—like a scalpel gliding from surface to precise intent. Her voice was quiet, respectful, even... coaxing, in the way a blade coaxed a secret from the throat. "A single token. Not for my enemies. Not for Sluis Van. But for the ones who already know what's coming."

She raised her eyes to his again—not challengingly, but with something colder, more exquisite: a kind of intimate clarity that few could carry in front of him and remain unbroken.

"For the Kainites inside the Blackwall. For the shadows sewn deep in the weave of the Velgrath already. I ask for a signal. A code."

There was no flourish in the request. No fanfare. Only design.

"I do not need their sympathy, or their love, or their desire for me to win."

The final word lingered. Not in arrogance. But as an inevitability now sewn into the infrastructure of everything they'd discussed.

"I only need them to know, they will serve your will throughout the duration of this campaign, and by extension, me." she finished.

She didn't elaborate. She didn't plead her case. She didn't frame it in appeal or even strategy. Because if Darth Prazutis required an explanation, she had already failed. No. She merely let the request hang there, suspended in the architecture of everything that had just passed between them.

A code. A signal. A symbol that would mean only one thing to those who heard it:

You serve her now.

Not out of loyalty. Not out of devotion.

But because it had already been decided.

Serina's form relaxed slightly then—just slightly—beneath the atmospheric weight of the Nexus. Her posture still commanded, still carried the monolithic grace of a sovereign sealed in flesh and will. But there was something different now in her bearing. She no longer stood like a claimant. She stood like an executor.

"After that," she said quietly, her voice now like ink dropped into crystal water. "I need nothing."

She paused one more time, allowing the silence to mold itself back around her like second skin.

Not to beg.

But to receive.

She had already been weighed.

Now came the final adjustment of the knife.

 

[Darth Prazutis]

The Black Nexus didn't stir. It didn't protest. It simply recorded; every syllable etched into its cold architecture as though reality itself had already accepted the words as precedent. It was in that moment, the Dark Lord of the Sith didn't immediately reply. He watched her. The rune clad robes, Zâvrai Kôzkar, shifted unnaturally as if alive melding with the encroaching darkness of the room. Through the passage of on moment to the next the giant appeared part shadow, part solid, his physique taken by the darkness. Molten eyes studied the woman across the war table, not searching for weakness, not appraising any more potential, merely witnessing the final settling of a blade into the sheath it had always been destined for. When he finally spoke, the voice that emerged was not the public declaration of the sovereign but the cold acknowledgment of truth:

"This is why you were chosen."

It was neither praise nor was it indulgence. It was certainty delivered in a tone that made certainty feel like the only law that mattered. "You understand." Prazutis continued, the words spreading through the chamber like cold water over glass. "That dominion is not built on the violence of acquisition alone. It is built on the precision of arrangement. The clarity of which voices are permitted to speak…and which are silenced." A massive gauntlet moved to rest over the table's black interface. The moment the armor made contact, the entire projection flickered, an involuntary shudder, like a living creature exhaling in submission. "You will have your signal."

The Nexus bled crimson light across the chamber, a ripple of encoded data streaming through hidden relays to places no enemy would ever map. The giants eyes didn't break from her. "When the hour comes." Prazutis said, voice sinking lower until it carried the weight of tectonic judgment "It will be known to all Kainites embedded within the Blackwall that you speak not with ambition…but with sanction." He didn't need to name the code. To do so would have been redundant. The system itself had accepted the protocol and would recognize her authority at the appointed hour, all forces who may move to impede her would no longer by the will of the Dyarchy. A single signal, transmitted without flourish, would be enough. "They will obey." The Shadow Hand concluded, each syllable as final as the closing of a tomb. "Not because you are owed their loyalty. But because you have inherited my necessity."

Silence returned then, but it was no longer the charged hush of weighing a petitioner. It was the stillness of a system completing a new circuit, slotting her identity into the channels of power she had requested. His head inclined a fraction. Not deference. Not respect in the mortal sense. But recognition, an acknowledgment of her transition from claimant to executor. "Then you require nothing further." There, the final seal. No permission asked. No favor extended. Just inevitability spoken aloud by two plotting fate, playing a game most couldn't dream of. For all the dread suffusing the chamber, for all the coiled potential for ruin and domination, there was a single, unassailable truth now bound between them: She had asked for exactly what she needed, nothing more. The price was steep, and she proved that she had the conviction to pay it, and the machine had given it.

Darth Virelia ​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Stepping into the Dark."

Tag - Darth Prazutis



She did not smile.

Serina Calis inclined her head—not low, not deep, but precisely enough. A gesture measured in microtones, where reverence might have faltered into flattery, and pride might have overstepped into arrogance. What passed between them in that moment wasn't loyalty. It wasn't even alliance.

It was geometry.

A vector finalized.

Her cape whispered across the polished obsidian as she stepped back from the war table. Not hurried. Not slow. With trajectory. The crimson veins that had pulsed beneath her footsteps moments ago dimmed in response—as if the Nexus no longer measured her, but now tracked her, like a command already dispatched, its consequences rippling forward through time.

She didn't speak.

There was nothing left to say.

To fill this silence would have been sacrilege.

Her ceremonial armor caught the Nexus's refracted light as she turned, polished contours flashing once like a blade sheathed beneath velvet shadow. The flickering runes in her plating began to settle—no longer aligning with the Nexus's hum, but now returning to their own pulse, her own rhythm. They had spoken with it, communed with its will, and now retreated. The communion was over.

She walked.

No guards accompanied her. No servants trailed her path. There was no escort.

Because none was needed.

Doors that once required clearance now opened of their own accord, seamless and obedient, ancient iron and arcane circuitry groaning only once in acknowledgement as she passed. The pressure of the Nexus lessened, but it never lifted. It remained behind her—coiled like a gravity well in her wake, its pull etched now into her orbit.

She did not look back.

A lesser mind might have needed reassurance. Might have turned, just once, to glimpse the figure of Darth Prazutis standing sovereign over the war table, like a black sun devouring causality. But Serina Calis understood.

What had been given wasn't gesture.

It was law.