Junction The Sundering Dawn – Act IV: The Last Turn of Calladene (SO/DIA/RNR Junction of Noe'ha'on/Wielu)

[Serina Calis]

"The Rewrite Begins."

Tags - OBJECTIVE 3: Lirka Ka [OPEN]



She should of heeded Lirka's many warnings.

But Serina was so close.

The air here no longer tasted of dust or metal.

It was memory now.
Condensed. Distilled. Made tangible. Every breath Serina took was filled with the weight of paths not walked, conversations never spoken, touches never shared. Even the light had changed—no longer artificial, but refracted longing, bending around her in soft, golden pulses that responded not to her motion, but to her hesitation.

The Archive no longer projected knowledge.
It whispered possibilities.

Serina Calis—weapon, manipulator, sovereign wrapped in blackened phrik—walked with purpose, yet her footsteps slowed now. Not for fear. Not for strategy.

For sorrow.

Tyrant's Embrace clung to her like a second skin, but even it could not disguise the way she moved—less like a conqueror now, more like a dreamer walking through the ashes of her own ambitions. Each step echoed across mirrored floors and crystalline spires with unnatural clarity. There was no fire here. No storm. Only grief dressed in the robes of wonder.

She stood now before a raised dais at the center of the chamber—hexagonal, faceted like a gemstone, suspended above an endless void of encoded starlight. The ceiling—if it could even be called that—rolled with symbols older than language, forming constellations from data, threads from lives, futures from desire.

And that was when she saw her.

Not in flame. Not in wrath. Not even in prophecy.

But as she remembered her.

Quinn Varanin .

The image appeared across the dais as if conjured by breath alone—no noise, no distortion. Just presence. Hair pale as lunar frost, skin like sculpted alabaster, lips parted with a softness that disarmed. Her hazel eyes were gentle, unguarded—not with pity, but with devotion. The kind of devotion Serina had imagined in dreams too shameful to speak aloud. The kind she'd wanted only from her.

And here, Quinn was hers.

Completely.

She stood across the void in flowing robes of soft violet, a far cry from her Sith regalia. No sabers, no masks. Just Quinn. Radiant. Calm. Hands outstretched.

"Serina," she said—no, breathed—and the sound of it nearly made Serina stagger.

That voice. That singular tone. Like a note struck just right on an instrument too sacred to be played.

"I waited."

The vision flickered—but not with failure. With possibility. She saw more. A thousand lifetimes compressed into an instant:

Quinn curled beside her beneath a starfield, whispering secrets into her throat.

Quinn, collared and content, kneeling beside Serina in a throne room of black marble and fire, smiling with lips that spoke no dissent.

Quinn, bearing Serina's house sigil. Quinn, loving only her. Quinn, never once choosing Kaila. Never once turning her smile toward Kirie. Never once turning away.

It was not lust that swelled in Serina's chest. It was belonging. A desperate, hollow, brutal craving to be seen. Not as Serina the tyrant. Not as Serina the sovereign. But as Serina, the broken, brilliant, shattered thing beneath the armor.

And here—in this lie—she was seen. Loved. Claimed.

Her breath hitched in her throat.

She stepped forward.

And pain followed.

It struck like gravity suddenly remembered—her boot hitting the edge of the dais as the Force around her resisted. Not with malice. With balance. Calladene's final price. The deeper she moved, the more harmony was demanded. Not domination. Not will.

But equilibrium.

Serina gasped—a sound not of fear, but betrayal. Her limbs grew heavier. The crystal core of her armor pulsed erratically, fighting her. A thousand unseen tendrils of the Force pushed back against her every movement like thick water.

Because she was not balanced.

She was obsession. She was possession. She was the lie that love could be owned.

And still she stepped.

One foot onto the dais.

The floor rippled beneath her like starlight resisting gravity. The image of Quinn shimmered, but did not vanish. She was close. So close now. The vision held out her hand, and Serina could feel it—warmth radiating across the divide.

She reached.

Her clawed fingers trembled. The talons of her gauntlet retracted, fingertips bare now, vulnerable for the first time since Jutrand. Vulnerable like the girl she had once been. The girl who sat alone in a laboratory on Polis Massa, waiting for a comm that never came.

Just another step.

But her legs burned. The Force clawed at her ribs. Her vision blurred—six eyes refocusing again and again.

And yet, she refused to stop.

Not now.

Not when Quinn was smiling at her like that.

Not when the words she had never heard before finally passed the vision's lips:

"Serina… I choose you."

Her fingers extended, only inches now from the illusion's touch. The edges of her armor buzzed with silent resistance. Blood vessels in her palms burst beneath the strain.

She didn't care.

For one moment—for one impossible, crucial moment—

Serina Calis reached, gasping, trembling, armored and naked all at once—

And touched the edge of the life that should have been.

 

[Lirka Ka]

Serina Calis was not the only one plagued by the whispers of this archive. In this most deep of places where the senses were assailed by what never was and what could be, Lirka stalked on undaunted. It assailed her mind with notions of Dyarchs to Triarchs, the power and respect from those who Lirka coveted. Of herself upon a dark throne and an Empire at her back. War, murder, and death unending. A world claimed by darkness and a Galaxy that walked the savage meritocracy of Primordial Dark.

It all mattered little.

She would not take this place's poison no matter what it threw in front of her. This was her life. The path she walked would be made by her own two hands, not the meddling of ancient creators and their trinkets. All that had transpired in her life had lead her to this moment, led her to the Dark Path, all the misery and suffering had gifted her the enlightenment locked away on Holy Rhand - she wouldn't have had it any other way. Lirka was not plagued by this place, she had made her choice long ago. But young Calis? Young, foolish, Calis? Lirka knew better than to expect such stalwart determination.

Whatever the girl saw, Lirka did not. The Force did not flow through her, illusions were a thing hammered into her skull rather than weaved into being - yet Lirka Ka was an observant soul. She sensed weakness when it appeared before her eyes, she watched the motions, she watched the expressions, she watched for the siren's call of foolishness that would lead to eradication.

The idiotic love of children, a disgusting thing. A distracting thing. A thing born of the unenlightened mind. Lirka knew love as it was meant to be, she loved her job, she loved the feeling of her blade through flesh, she loved Carnifex and all the misery he enabled her to inflict. But that was not the pitiful love that shackled one to their current form, nay it was the love of tyrants and murderers, the love that was shared between the strong.

By all metrics. She should have left Calis to her own foolish obliteration, to languish away by what the idiocy of youth decided it wanted so desperately.

But Lirka had shared enough with the girl, and most importantly how much she believed in productivity. Letting her collapse was simply unproductive, the girl unfortunately, still had a role to play, and Lirka was not yet willing to let it disappear just yet.

Cursing under her breath in the simple frustration that nobody listened to her, Lirka decided it was time to act before something irreversible happened. Taking the remainder of the charges that she could handle within her hands and flung them at the dais - with a click, the path of destruction she laid upon their walk ignited in glorious destruction as the lost lore of their section disappeared in the flurry of thermal annihilation. Lirka did not wait to see the results of her handiwork, the goliath was already on the move, striding forward as mechanical systems whirred into life.

If there was one advantage she knew she had over the girl, it was raw physical might. So masked by the explosion Lirka charged the dais as best she could, arms spread wide to grasp Calis in a mighty mechanical bear-hug to drag her away. Frustration in her voice as the area around them grumbled and groaned in the wake of Lirka's very much unmeasured use of military ordnance.

"It's time to leave."

And with that, she moved to drag Serina away as if pulling away an unruly child regardless of how much kicking, screaming, stabbing, and lightning she was expecting. Oh the things she did for this Empire.

 

[Serina Calis]

"The Rewrite Begins."

Tags - OBJECTIVE 3: Lirka Ka [OPEN]
Mentions - Quinn Varanin



Her fingertips grazed the edge of Quinn's hand.

And in that instant, the world fell silent.

Not the silence of absence—but that awful, divine stillness that comes the moment before a great truth is shattered. The kind of silence that blooms in a heartbeat between confessions and consequences. She could feel it in her bones—the wrongness of the moment. Not in Quinn. Not in the vision. But in herself.

Serina Calis was not built to receive love.

She was built to manufacture it. To craft it like a weapon. To hone it like a blade. To offer it as a hook and reel it in when needed. Love was leverage. Affection was manipulation. Desire was the means by which empires bent the knee.

But here, now, in the heart of Calladene, that truth betrayed her.

Quinn smiled.

That was the cruelty of it—her smile.

It was everything Serina had ever wanted. Not just in lust, not in conquest, but in that quiet, aching, irreversible way that defined the hollow in one's chest at night. That devastating ache of being known, and still wanted.

"I choose you," Quinn said again, and the voice wrapped around Serina like breath in a vacuum.

She could feel the Force responding to her—the balance shifting, the weight of her choices pressing back against her advance. It recoiled. The Archive did not reject her… but it mourned her inability to let go.

And yet…

She reached again.

Desperation is not born of cowardice—it is born of realization. Serina realized, in that final stretch of aching, trembling muscle, that she could not control this vision. It was not one of her dreams. It did not respond to charm, seduction, or sovereignty. It was pure possibility—her longing made visible.

And it was slipping from her.

Then—impact.

A crack of displaced air. A scream of burning oxygen. The vision fractured—shimmering like shattered glass underwater—and Serina's body reeled as a wall of force and motion slammed into her from behind.

The explosion detonated in a chain, not a single blast but a sequence—charges placed with strategic genius and brute savagery alike. They erupted along the Archive's crystalline nerves, shattering spires of data, splitting sigils in mid-code, ripping open truths never meant to be exposed. Heat washed over her armor. Light seared her vision. The Archive howled—not in pain, but in disappointment.

Serina's scream never came.

Because it was swallowed by the grip.

Lirka's arms locked around her like industrial cables, unyielding, unrelenting, uninvited. They weren't arms—they were reality asserting itself again. The kind of violence that didn't simply kill dreams—it denied them the chance to ever become real.

"No—" she hissed, but it wasn't speech. Just sound, full of fury and heartbreak.

Serina writhed in the grasp—not with true resistance, but with the thrashing of something that has been denied. Her fingers scraped toward the dais, her claws tearing sparks from the crystal floor as she was pulled backward.

The image of Quinn reached one last time.

Their hands missed by less than an inch.

And then it was gone.

Not vanished.

Erased.

The Archive, reacting to the assault, collapsed the simulation. The light retracted. The memory folded. The path closed. Not gently. Not with mercy.

With finality.

Serina's body went limp in Lirka's grip—not from defeat, not from weakness, but from the sickening clarity that settled in her soul. Her voice, when it came, was low. Not broken. Not weak. Just quiet.

No accusation. No venom. No speech.

Because in that final moment—when her fingers brushed the edge of love—Serina Calis had not found power. She had not found control.

She had found peace.

And Lirka had ripped it away.

They moved through the chaos now, the Archive beginning to collapse in segments, its circuits faltering, its logic bleeding into emotional backlash. Serina could feel echoes dying in the Force—dissonant cries of knowledge sealed forever. Lirka's charges hadn't just destroyed records.

They had destroyed futures.

Serina turned her head—barely. Her mask caught the flickering lights of the Archive's death like funeral torches. The six glowing eyes narrowed faintly.

You did it because you saw it too. She thought.

Not the image. Not Quinn. But the weakness. The moment of longing. The part of Serina that was not a queen or a weapon or a devil in violet silk. The part of her that was a girl. A foolish, brilliant, lonely girl, who had dared to believe she could be chosen.

And Lirka, as ever, could not abide that.

The crystals in Serina's pouch jostled as they moved, the phantom weight of data unfinished—visions she had not yet deciphered, secrets she had not yet made tools. And yet, none of it seemed to matter in the way that moment had mattered.

The moment when she had been almost loved.

Almost.

Almost was a blade now, lodged beneath her ribs, deeper than any saber strike.

And Serina Calis would never forgive it.

She would never forget it.

Serina said nothing.

For nothing was left to give.