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.

 

[Valery Noble]

​

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

Valery stayed crouched beside Judah a moment longer, her eyes narrowed on the flickering panel and the ancient stone wrapped in decay and time. Every instinct screamed that this place had history carved into its bones — history twisted, buried, and left to fester. The Force didn't just whisper here. It warned.

She straightened slowly, brushing her gloved hand clean against her leg before shifting her gaze to Judah. His analysis matched what she'd begun to feel in her gut — and in the cracks of old memory that the Force stirred loose like dust in sunlight. She turned her eyes back to the site, then took a half-step closer to him, her voice dipping to something more private between them.

"We go in quiet. Just us."

A pause.

"I'll slip into cloak — you do the same. I want to feel this place up close before the crew stirs it any further." Valery glanced sideways, the faintest smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth despite the weight of the moment.

"Besides," she added dryly, "If it's watching… I'd rather it not see us coming."

With that, she closed her eyes for just a breath and exhaled. The Force shimmered around her — not bright, not loud, but like the hush of a breath between heartbeats. Her presence faded, cloaked in the living Force, and so did her visible presence. There wasn't even a shimmer of her left to see.

Without a word more, she stepped over the ridge — disappearing into the descent with the silence of someone who knew exactly how to walk through history without waking the dead.

Judah Lesan ​

 

[Judah Lesan]

Wearing: This
Tag: Valery Noble

Judah watched her vanish like mist into the dark, her presence folding into the Force until even that thin hum of awareness slipped from his senses. He didn’t smirk back. There wasn’t room for it, but something in him steadied at her words. Not reassured, exactly. Aligned.

The wind tugged at the edge of his cloak again as he knelt, pressed a hand to the ground, and drew in a breath of his own. He did not do it to calm himself, he was already calm, but to anchor. The weight of the Force here wasn’t like a flood. It was a slow bleed. Ancient. Wounded. Still bleeding.

He let go of that breath, and when he did, the man standing atop the ridge seemed to vanish into the stone and dust. Shadows thickened around him, bending just enough to lose his outline, just enough for the eye to slide past.

A moment later, he followed her down the slope, each step measured, each movement tuned to silence. Together but unseen.

As they approached the edge of the excavation, Judah’s voice brushed against her mind through the bond the Force sometimes wove between Jedi. It was subtle and respectful respectful, but unmistakably his.

<< "Whatever they were protecting… it wasn’t just from the outside." >>

And somewhere below, the heartbeat pulsed again, louder now. Closer.

 

[Valery Noble]

​

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

Valery moved like the shadow of a thought — quiet, insubstantial, a breath that never quite touched the air. She didn't speak. Didn't need to. The rhythm of her footsteps matched his in cadence, both Jedi drifting down into the excavated hollow like they belonged to the ruins themselves. Judah's voice brushed against her mind — not invasive, not demanding. Just present. Weighted with meaning in the way only Jedi who had seen too much and still chose to care could manage.

She didn't respond immediately. The pulsing in the Force was louder now. Not a warning. A memory, still beating long after the body had gone cold. Finally, her voice threaded back to him, silent to the ear but unmistakably hers in the Force:

<< "No. This wasn't just a prison. A tomb, perhaps?" >> A pause followed. Not from fear but gravity. Respect for what they were walking toward — and the sense that the story waiting beneath the stone wasn't done telling itself. Valery's eyes flicked toward an exposed portion of the ruin — half-sunken glyphs along the archway. She crouched again, letting gloved fingers hover over the symbols without touching them, reading what they didn't say more than what they did.

<< "See these markings? They're not just warnings. They're instructions. Ritual containment, maybe. Symbology's old, pre-Republic... Sith, but buried under layers of repurposed language." >> She rose again, turned slightly toward where she could still feel Judah beside her, a faint shimmer of recognition through their shared tether in the Force.

Judah Lesan ​

 

[Judah Lesan]

Wearing: This
Tag: Valery Noble

Judah stilled beside her, the silence stretching not from hesitation but from comprehension. The glyphs… he had seen their like only once before—etched into a stone coffin on a nameless world during his early years as a Shadow. That time, the tomb had been empty. And the village nearby had not survived what left it.

<< "Then this wasn't just meant to hold something in," >> he murmured back through the Force, << "It was meant to guide those who came after. Or warn the ones foolish enough to try." >>

He crouched beside her now, his hand hovering just above the compacted ash that blanketed the ruin like a burial shroud. He could feel it, not just the pulse, but the pressure beneath. Like a breath being held by the world itself. Too long. Too tight.

His eyes flicked to the lowest corner of the etched archway, where a newer carving had been crudely chiseled through the older symbols. It was a jagged spiral—crude Sith iconography, newer by centuries. A defacement. No precision, no reverence.

<< "Someone came back," >> he added, quieter now. << "Long after the tomb was sealed. They weren't trying to unlock it." >>

He rose, the weight of the moment settling across his shoulders like dust.

<< "They were trying to repurpose it." >>

A beat passed. Then, after a breath, his presence steadied against hers—like stone bracing wind.

<< "How do you want to play this? I got a curious, but bad feeling here." >>

Judah let the question settle for a beat, then added, << "You want to go in, don't you?" >>

 

[Valery Noble]

​

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

Valery didn't answer right away. She stood still in the hush of dust and echoing memory, her eyes tracing the spiral chiseled over the old containment glyphs. It was crude, careless. Desecration layered over ritual.

She could feel Judah's presence steady beside hers through the Force, like an anchor cast into uncertain waters. He didn't need to see her face to know her answer — he could feel it in the subtle shift of her weight, the way her hand drifted closer to her lightsaber, not in fear, but with readiness.

Then she glanced his way.

And smirked.

<< "Of course I want to go in." >> There was a flicker of fire in her eyes, a spark that lived somewhere between determination and defiance. Not against the danger—for it. This was why she still wore the title of Jedi. Not to sit in towers, but to walk into the dark and make sure it stayed that way. She turned toward the yawning threshold ahead, where the triangular doorway loomed like the open jaw of some ancient beast.

<< "You bring me out here, to a cursed tomb full of Sith graffiti and locked memories... and ask if I want to go inside?" >> Her smirk curved wider, then faded into something quieter. Not less fierce — just more focused.

<< "We go in quiet. I'll take point." >> And with that, she moved — slow and steady.

Judah Lesan ​

 

[Judah Lesan]

Wearing: This
Tag: Valery Noble

Judah’s response came without a smile, but there was something in the set of his jaw, grim approval, perhaps. Maybe it was solidarity. It wasn’t that he shared her fire; it was that he respected it. Needed it, even. That spark she carried, the refusal to let shadow go unchallenged—that was why he trusted her to lead.

He stepped in behind her, just far enough to watch her back, just close enough to cover her flanks. His hand lingered near his hilt—not drawn, not yet, but aware. Ready.

<< “Figures,” >> he murmured through the Force, his tone as dry as the dust beneath their feet. << “I bring you to a cursed tomb, and somehow I’m the one being led into it. It’s a nice view though…” >>

A beat passed, then quieter:

<< “Don’t get too far ahead, Noble. This place wants to separate people.” >>

As they crossed the threshold, the light from the excavation dimmed behind them, swallowed whole by the stone maw. Inside, the air shifted—cooler, still, yet saturated with the weight of memory. Something unseen stirred beneath the surface, listening.

Judah followed her in, his cloak whispering against the carved floor as they vanished into the dark.

The corridor narrowed, the carved stone walls pressing close with ancient weight. Every footstep seemed louder here, every breath caught and held by something that had waited centuries to be remembered. No dust stirred. No air moved. The pulse they had felt outside was stronger here—no longer beneath, but around them. Inside them.

Judah slowed. Something in the Force shifted. A ripple. A hook buried deep in the current, and it had teeth.

The moment Valery crossed a faded threshold in the stone—marked only by a ring of scorched etchings barely visible beneath the sediment—the vision struck like a thunderclap.

Light shattered the dark.

The chamber stands intact. Whole. Alive with energy.

Flames from ancient sconces cast golden firelight on the walls, illuminating banners that hung heavy with the sigils of the Jedi Order—older than the Republic, woven in a language almost lost to time.

Figures moved through the chamber—Jedi, armored in durasteel and leather, with long robes marked by rank and lineage. At the center stood a man with a face too familiar.

Valery would see it first—recognize the eyes, the shape of the jaw, the quiet gravity in the way he held his saber. Judah Lesan… but not the one at her side. This man bore the same name, the same fire—but his presence blazed brighter, older, like a star in collapse.

Judah Lesan the First stood before a stone altar, surrounded by Jedi Masters and soldiers. His armor was worn, marked by war, but his gaze never wavered.

“Seal it,” he commanded. His voice rang clear and unyielding, like a blade striking iron. “This place cannot fall to the Sith. If we do not trap it here, the rot will spread.”

One of the older Masters hesitated. “And if the seal breaks?”

Judah the First turned, looking over his shoulder—not at them, but at them. At Judah and Valery, as if through the veil of time.

“Then it will fall to our blood to finish what we started.”

The vision cracked.

NOW – The Tomb, Present Day​

Judah staggered back a half step, his hand on the wall to steady himself. The image still burned in his mind. Not just what he saw—but who. The connection wasn’t subtle. The Force didn’t whisper this—it declared it.

He turned his head toward Valery, eyes narrowed.

“I’ve seen echoes before,” he said slowly, breath catching against the weight of revelation. “That was… my ancestor. You knew him... yeah?”

A pause. He swallowed hard.

“Judah Lesan. Jedi Knight. Strategist in the Old Republic. And apparently the first to bury whatever this is.”

He looked toward the chamber ahead, where the pulse beat louder than ever.

“…And now we’re standing on his promise.”

 

[Valery Noble]

​

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

<< "I know it was a good view." >>

A flash of teeth, a smirk over her shoulder and she allowed herself a moment — one sharp flick of her hips as she walked further in, the sway purposeful and controlled to tease him.

Valery then paused just beyond the threshold, the air thick with memory and dust and something ancient that clung to the walls like ash. The vision still echoed in her bones — not just the faces, not just the words, but the weight of it. She heard Judah stagger slightly behind her, felt it in the way the Force shifted with his breath.

Her eyes found his, and something softer bloomed beneath the teasing.

"I knew him," she said, and this time her voice dropped low, wrapped in memory. "Judah Lesan. Jedi Knight. A shield during the Collapse." She looked ahead, toward where the tomb deepened. "He was relentless. Fierce. Stubborn as hell."

A beat.

"Reminds me of someone else I know." She turned back to him now, fully — one brow arched, the smirk returning like a flicker of firelight. "Though I think he frowned more than you do. Less of a jawline, too. But the same eyes." She stepped closer, shoulder brushing his as she passed.

"The Force doesn't make those kinds of connections by accident." Valery drew her saber hilt from her belt — not igniting it, just readying.

"We're not just uncovering what he buried. We're finishing it."

And with that, she moved deeper into the tomb — hips still swaying, but every step honed like a blade.

Judah Lesan ​