Private The Ashes of Arkanis

[Judah Lesan]

Wearing: This
Tag: Valery Noble

Dust swirled in slow spirals as the twilight wind picked up, skimming over the sun-bleached surface of the Dead Wastes. The terrain here was brittle and burnt out by orbital strikes long before the Clone Wars, then abandoned and forgotten, save for the ghosts left behind. Blackened stone and twisted durasteel lay half-submerged in the dirt, relics of a battlefield lost to time.

Judah Lesan moved with a silent precision between the ridges of a crumbling crater wall. His cloak dragged slightly in the grit, but he made no sound. Shadows stretched long in the dying light, and he used them as cover, pausing just above a depression in the rock where floodlights flickered against tarps and survey stakes.

Below, a dozen figures worked in silence, dressed in scavenger gear but moving more like trained personnel than true fortune hunters. He watched them assemble a field generator near what appeared to be a partially uncovered structure half buried in rock, its facade carved with faint geometric patterns too symmetrical to be natural. A soft glow pulsed from a panel they'd just exposed.

Judah's hand hovered just above the hilt of his saber but didn't touch it. Not yet.

He shifted slightly, focusing his macrobinoculars. The carvings were clearer now old High Republic iconography, maybe older, but beneath the Jedi pattern work was something else etched over it: clawed shapes, burnt into the stone as if by fire. Sith, or something that wore their mark.

He reached into the Force. It was subtle here, but wrong. Like a breath held too long. Like a whisper through broken teeth.

Judah's brow furrowed.

Whatever they were digging up, it wasn't a ruin. It was a wound.

He lowered the macrobinoculars and tapped a control on his vambrace, bringing up a holographic map of the area. There was a plateau about three kilometers east, isolated, good field of vision, natural cover.

His fingers danced over the control pad as he sent a short, encoded message.

To: Noble, Valery​

Coordinates: 3.2 E / 1.7 N — Rendezvous. Minimal contact. Bring containment gear.​

Message: You're going to want to see this for yourself.​

He watched the message transmit and then turned his gaze back to the dig site.

Below, one of the workers knelt beside the glowing panel and pressed something into it. A sharp whine split the air, followed by a deep thrum that pulsed through the ground like a heartbeat. The lights around the site flickered. The wind died.

Judah pulled back slowly from the ridge and melted into the gathering dark.

Something had awakened. And it was older than any Jedi had business remembering.

 

[Valery Noble]

​

Outfit: Combat Jumpsuit | Wedding Ring
Weapons: Blasters | Lightsabers

The wind howled low across the wastes as Valery's ship crested over the fractured terrain, its engines cutting just enough to keep her approach quiet. She settled behind the plateau with a soft hiss of steam and settling metal, dust swirling in spirals around the landing gear before the repulsorlifts shut off entirely.

She stepped down the ramp a moment later, clad in her new jumpsuit. The wind tugged at her hair as she moved forward with purpose, boots crunching lightly against the brittle surface. Her eyes, fiery and sharp, scanned the horizon with that familiar intensity — until she spotted him.

"Judah," she called out softly once she'd moved up the ridge. Her voice carried low, even, but touched with something tight beneath the surface. She'd felt it the moment her ship dipped into the region — that pulse, that wrongness in the Force. Something buried.

She stopped beside him and took in the site below, "You weren't exaggerating," she murmured, her eyes locking onto the faintly glowing panel half-uncovered in the earth. She crouched beside him, one hand brushing her fingers across the dirt to sense the pulse again — the way it beat like a second heartbeat beneath her own.

"Any idea what we're looking at?"

Judah Lesan ​

 

[Judah Lesan]

Wearing: This
Tag: Valery Noble

Judah didn't look at her right away. His eyes remained fixed on the dig site below, the orange wash of floodlights casting long shadows across the angular stone and humming machinery. Only after a beat did he shift slightly, just enough to acknowledge her presence without taking his focus off the structure.

"Not a temple. Not just a ruin either," he said, his voice low and steady, like gravel rolled between calloused fingers. "It's military. Defensive posture. The angles, the threshold design… It's Old Republic architecture. Early expansion era, maybe even pre-dating the Sith Wars."

He finally glanced at her then, his expression carved in stone.

"But it's been altered. See that etching? That burn pattern running across the old seal?" He nodded toward the faint black marks, like clawed fingers dragging across sacred stone. "Sith defacement. Not recent, though. Centuries old. Like someone tried to claim it after the fact."

The wind gusted again, sweeping dust in a wave that hissed across the ridge.

Judah crouched low beside her, reaching out with the Force, not to push or pull, but to listen. The pulse was there.

Subterranean.

Rhythmic.

Wrong.

"Whatever's down there," he murmured, "it wasn't just buried. It was locked away."

He met her gaze again, more direct this time.

"This place, it's like walking into a half-remembered story. The kind the archives keep sealed. Jedi outpost turned battlefield, then forgotten… or deliberately erased."

He exhaled slowly, and the tension in his shoulders seemed to draw taut.

"We're not just digging up history, Valery. We're standing on the edge of something that remembers a version of us."

Judah's gaze lingered on the half-buried structure below. Its triangular door flanked by ancient pylons, partially excavated and humming with dormant power. The light from the panel pulsed again, faint but steady like it was breathing.

He turned his head just enough to catch Valery in his peripheral.

"You want to get a closer look?" he asked with a slight smirk. "Could use your insight before they dig any deeper… or wake something they shouldn't."

There was no bravado or challenge in his tone, just the calm weight of someone who'd seen too many things unburied that should have stayed lost.

He stood, cloak catching the wind, and started down the slope without waiting for her answer, though he knew she'd follow. Jedi didn't ignore a heartbeat like that. Especially not one coming from the grave.