Mistress of the Dark.
"Understanding is the first step into the Abyss."
Tag -
Rayia Si
The cave exhaled behind her.
A soft hiss of pressure and breath, like the mountain itself was surrendering its last curse. The darkness that clung to its mouth—the kind that didn't yield to light, only to will—shrank away from the violet glare of the woman who emerged. Her stride was unhurried. Her satisfaction, absolute.
Serina Calis stepped out into the stillness of Weik's late afternoon, and the woods bowed in quiet acknowledgment.
The mountain rose behind her like the carcass of some ancient titan, scorched at its roots and scarred by old magics. Its interior still reeked of dead gods and worse things—echoes of rituals chanted in the blood of kings, the dust of failed ascensions baked into its walls. But Serina had found what she came for. The rite was completed. The altar now broken. The spirit of whatever pathetic godling had claimed dominion over this dark little fissure had been unmade.
A pity, almost. She liked when they begged.
The woods that unfurled before her were thick, fragrant, and achingly alive—primitive in a way the galaxy rarely permitted anymore. Ferns spilled like drapery over wet stone. Tall trees arched upward into canopies of green-gold light. No durasteel. No starships. Just the purity of untouched world. A slower world.
She welcomed it.
Tyrant's Embrace caught the sunlight in hungry streaks as she moved. The obsidian gleam of her armor drank it in, transmuted it, scattered it in hints of violet where circuitry pulsed and ancient glyphs hummed. Steam still rose off parts of the exosculpted plates, evaporating sweat, blood, or whatever ichor the cave thing had managed to splatter on her mid-fight. It didn't matter. The armor was clean now. It always was. She made sure of it.
With a sigh like silk parting from skin, the helm began to retract. First the mirrorlike faceplate dissolved inward in six symmetrical petals, revealing sculpted cheekbones, sharp lips, and the kind of eyes that rarely looked away from anything without taking something with them. Her hood slipped back.
And Serina Calis smiled.
It was not warm.
Across the trees, through a parting in the foliage, she could see it: the village. Or more accurately, the dream of one. A little jewel of civilization nestled along the riverbanks and tucked beneath tall stone walls. Smoke curled lazily from chimneys. Wooden carts filled with scrap goods jostled over cobbled roads. Traders hawked wares and modern technologies in a crowded square while children chased one another around horses and guards in half-polished breastplates and ancient rifles.
Everything was alive with the breathless noise of a people who probably have had never heard of Coruscant. Of Sith. Of her.
It was beautiful.
And entirely beneath her.
She walked—slowly, deliberately—down a moss-lined path until she reached the edge of a low cliff where the land dropped off into a soft valley overlooking the village. There, beneath a towering willow twisted by time and shadow, she let herself sit. Not like someone who collapsed, nor a noble seeking repose. She sat like a woman who owned the land already and was simply admiring her domain.
Her armor adjusted around her as she moved, sleek segments hissing open just enough to permit comfort. Tendrils of synthweave curled at her sides, unfurling into a loose drape that settled against the grass like black silk. The violet glow from her sternum-node pulsed faintly in the shade, echoing her heartbeat. Her hands, still clawed in armor, rested on her thighs.
From here, she could watch them.
How quaint, she thought. They think they are free.
The people below her lived in a world of rules she had long since unmade. They prayed to gods who never answered, followed lords who bled like sheep, and built lives on the illusion that safety came from obedience. What passed for power here was transactional—given by permission, not seized by right.
She plucked a leaf from the air as it drifted down beside her and turned it over in her fingers. The gauntlet's talons didn't cut it. Not yet. They danced over the surface like careful lovers.
"Such fragile things," she murmured aloud, voice like velvet soaked in venom.
A breeze stirred her hair, long and night-dark, whispering the scent of pine and distant cooking fires. She tasted it all. The meat being turned on a spit. The hum of ancient shielding technologies. The wine being uncorked. The tension in a couple's hushed argument. She extended her senses, not with raw Force, but with intention—pressing her will into the world like one testing silk for flaws.
Her lips curved. The boy down at the blacksmith's stall—strong shoulders, sleeveless tunic, bronze skin kissed by sun and forge—was watching her from afar. Even at this distance, even through the haze, he had seen her silhouette. Had felt something stir in him when her helm had vanished.
Ah, she thought. Good. Let him wonder.
Let them all.
She'd come here for a relic, for an old power buried in a cave mouth that hadn't tasted real domination in centuries. But that was over now. The cave had given up its last secret. The relic was already bound to her will—transmuted, rewritten, claimed.
Now? Now she could indulge.
A gloved finger traced a rune along her thigh. Her armor responded, a hiss and release as a segment softened, revealing a sliver of real skin to the air. She drew in a breath, slow, measured. The pleasure wasn't in the sensation—it was in the control. In the choice to open, to close, to reveal or withhold. Her body wasn't a weakness. It was a weapon.
And she wielded it better than most wielded sabers.
She lay back in the grass for a moment, resting against the roots of the ancient willow, her gaze never leaving the town. She didn't need to invade it. Not yet. There was no military to crush, no rebellion to choke out. Not here.
All she needed to do was exist.
And maybe—just maybe—corrupt and ruin someone, quietly, from the comfort of her control.
