Private The Resonance Below

[Vaelith Rhaen]

The ruins did not feel dead, and that realization settled over Vaelith long before she ever stepped fully into the abandoned complex itself. While most ritual sites eventually emptied with time, even those steeped in violence or saturated with dark magick, losing their sharpness as the years passed, this place had not settled. Instead of the Force quieting as emotions dispersed into memory, the site lingered with the unnatural persistence of something unfinished, its echoes refusing to fade.

Vaelith stood at the edge of the crumbling pathway, her pale gaze moving slowly across fractured walls and half-collapsed archways swallowed by creeping vegetation and silver-gray fog. The complex appeared ancient, far older than any modern settlement on the world, with structures carved from dark volcanic stone and threaded with reflective mineral veins that caught the moonlight whenever the mist shifted. The silence here was absolute; no wildlife moved nearby, no insects hummed within the marsh grass, and even the swamp seemed reluctant to approach too closely. That hollow stillness concerned her more than any overt display of darkness could have.

She moved forward carefully, dressed in attire suited for travel rather than ceremony. Layered fabrics in muted ash and weathered ivory rested close to her frame to avoid hindering her movement, while subtle bone and metal talismans hung quietly at her waist alongside a compact satchel of ritual tools. Nothing about her appearance carried the overt grandeur of Nightsister rites, for out here, practicality mattered far more than spectacle.

As she descended farther into the ruins, her attention settled on the center of the complex, where the remains of a ritual circle still scarred the stone floor. Though time and weather had fractured much of the structure, enough remained intact for her to recognize the design immediately as one of containment, rather than invocation or summoning. That distinction alone transformed the nature of the reports surrounding the site, lending a darker weight to the fragmented stories reaching the Nightsisters. Travelers had spoken of vivid dreams, hunters claimed to hear voices beneath the earth, and one man had been found waist-deep in black water, dehydrated and incoherent while carving the very symbols of these ruins into his own flesh.

No one understood how the connection worked, but Vaelith intended to find out.

She slowed several meters from the circle, allowing her awareness to expand through the Force in careful increments rather than recklessly opening herself to the unknown. The response was immediate: a structured, immense pressure that was neither aggressive nor hungry. It unsettled her more deeply than overt malice would have, as most dark side nexuses announced themselves through predatory intensity. This felt different, layered and ordered, as though countless overlapping intentions had settled into the stone over centuries until they became a single resonance, like a vibration lingering just beneath audible perception.

Vaelith crouched near the edge of the circle to study the carvings, noting that while many had eroded, others remained disturbingly precise. As she traced the geometry mentally, following the flow of the design piece by piece, she realized that someone deeply knowledgeable had built this, and whatever they had attempted had not simply failed.

Slowly, she extended one hand toward the stone. Thin currents of pale green ichor gathered between her fingers in delicate strands, and she fed only the smallest amount of energy into the fractured markings to test for responsiveness. The ruins reacted instantly, with sickly light spreading beneath the stone in branching veins as dormant pathways awakened with alarming speed.

Vaelith withdrew her hand and rose smoothly to her feet, her composure intact even as sharper calculation settled behind her gaze. The ritual had not burned itself out; it had remained active. Somewhere beneath the ruins, a low reverberation rolled upward through the stone, a vibration she felt through her boots before it faded back into the fog.

The reports had understated the danger. This was not the aftermath of a failed ritual, but the chilling remnants of something interrupted.

Vex Drakkon

 

[Vex Drakkon]

As nightfall came, Master Vex Drakkon slipped away into a deep sleep, one that he would never forget. During this sleep, Vex found himself having a vision of a planet soaked with red sands, a dark past and present, along with danger lurking around every corner. Not only that, but it also seemed that within the vision, the Master Jedi could see a woman through all the darkness that surrounded this mysterious female. But what stood out the most to Vex, was the fact that this woman was able to conjure up some sort of green magic to do as they pleased.

When Vex awakened from the vision, he shot up from the bed, drenched in sweat from the amount of emotion that was felt from the vision itself. He felt drained, as if whatever it was took every ounce of energy he had left. Regardless of the matter, the Jedi Master got up, and found his way to the cockpit of the ship, punching in coordinates to Dathomir. The ship went from settling in space, to launching forward at max speed, like Vex felt this was some sort of life-or-death cause. Maybe it was, but the fact was, Vex needed answers immediately.

It wasn’t very long before Vex Drakkon could see the red planet in the distance. A smirk formed on his lips just before speaking out loud to himself. "Good thing Meri is asleep, she won’t even notice I am gone. I will lock the ship just in case, though." He muttered, while pushing the throttle forward to accelerate towards the planet’s atmosphere. Meri would be awake in a few hours, so Master Drakkon had to get the answers he needed before that time was up, because leaving her alone was risky enough, and she didn’t need to ask questions that even Vex might not know the full answer to.

The ship cruised through the atmosphere slowly, allowing Vex to find the perfect spot to land to ensure Meri’s safety through all of this chaos. Once he found a small cave just large enough to hide away his ship, Vex came down and landed the ship gracefully within. As the middle-aged man stepped down the ramp, he could instantly feel the pressure of the force that dwelled on the planet. It was intense, to say the least, but Vex had to get his answers, so he moved forward away from the spacecraft to begin the journey across Dathomir. He had zero idea of what to expect, but with the dark side of the force so strong, Vex had no choice but to take things slow.

Vaelith Rhaen​

 

[Vaelith Rhaen]

The reverberation beneath the ruins faded slowly, yet the pressure saturating the complex refused to diminish, leaving Vaelith motionless beside the ritual circle. Her pale gaze remained fixed on the faintly illuminated fractures threading beneath the stone floor, watching as the last traces of ichor dissipated from her fingertips. Although the carvings had lapsed into dormancy almost immediately after responding to her touch, the lingering sensation within the Force felt subtly altered, as if, in her moment of contact, the ruins had become unsettlingly aware of her presence in return.

That realization unsettled her more than she cared to admit, for while most ancient ritual sites behaved predictably through lingering energy and repeating echoes, this place felt responsive. It wasn't alive in any conventional sense, but it possessed an attentiveness she deeply disliked.

Stepping slowly away from the center of the circle, Vaelith cast her attention across the surrounding decay with a sharper, more clinical scrutiny. The fractured pillars and collapsed walkways no longer appeared merely abandoned; instead, she began to discern a hidden structure beneath the rot, a series of subtle geometric relationships that suggested the original architects had designed this site with an intent extending far beyond a simple containment ritual. Her gaze eventually settled on a partially collapsed archway at the far end of the complex, where several symbols remained unusually intact despite the surrounding erosion. These markings differed slightly from those in the primary circle, not as contradictions, but as auxiliary stabilizers, reinforcement points, or perhaps even locks.

Vaelith approached the archway with measured steps, her boots scraping softly against the damp stone while fog curled low around her ankles. The oppressive resonance within the Force thickened as she moved, growing not necessarily stronger, but more focused, evoking the sensation of standing near a vast, hidden machine and hearing only the isolated clicks of its internal gears.

Then, abruptly, her attention shifted upward as a distant sound rolled faintly across the swampy sky.

It was the unmistakable drone of engines, muted by distance and heavy cloud cover, but clear enough to anyone accustomed to the occasional intrusion of offworlders onto Dathomir. Her eyes narrowed as she tracked the noise through the fog, watching the sky until the sound faded into the distance. Someone else had arrived, and the timing of it tightened a knot of unease within her thoughts. The reports surrounding these ruins had already spread further than she preferred, and places of such power possessed a localized gravity for the wrong kinds of attention, treasure hunters, desperate sensitives, or worst of all, scholars.

Though she remained cautious, stretching her awareness toward the horizon to monitor for further disturbances, she refused to abandon her investigation prematurely. As she neared the collapsed archway, the pressure within the Force shifted once more, the resonance beneath the ruins tightening around her feet like unseen threads drawing taut within the earth. Vaelith slowed, her posture sharpening as she studied the floor ahead, noting how fine fractures spread across the dark volcanic rock in branching patterns that were almost, but not quite, identical to the ritual circle behind her.

They weren't just similar; they were connected.

Crouching carefully, she brushed aside loose fragments of stone to reveal additional carvings that had been shielded from the elements. Unlike the surface circle, these symbols showed no signs of age, appearing preserved as if the ruins themselves had intentionally hidden them. Her expression hardened as she traced the geometry without making physical contact, realizing that the design no longer resembled simple containment. Layered beneath the original structure was a secondary pattern so complex and deeply interwoven that it would have remained invisible had the upper carvings not deteriorated first.

It was a design never meant to be seen, and as that realization settled coldly into her mind, the low reverberation returned, quieter than before, but undeniably closer.

Vex Drakkon