First Reply The Whispering Path [ME]

[Vahlika Velhaari]

Tag: First reply open - ME only

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There are places on Mandalore that maps do not name. Places where the land grows too steep for walkers and too treacherous for wheels, where even the proudest warriors lower their voices. In the far north, where the great grasslands give way to broken stone and bladed ridges, rise nameless mountains so ancient and jagged they seem to bite into the sky itself. No songs are sung of them. No paths are marked.

To reach the hold buried within them is to surrender to the wild. The way begins low, through forests that hiss with wind and watching eyes. Pale plains follow, empty but for the strange ripples of their windblown grasses. Then come the steps: the elevation sharpens, air thins and the rocks become knife-edged. There are no signposts, nor escorts, only instinct, endurance and the strange sense that something is watching.

Eventually, the mountain opens its mouth. The entrance is narrow, half-swallowed by the stone, marked only by an old sigil carved into the rock — an ancient ward against entities unwelcome. Beyond lies a winding descent into the earth: natural caverns shaped by time, connected by corridors of carved stone. Firebowls burn low, casting shadows across the walls. Vines grow in patches, glowing faintly where water seeps from cracks. The smoke of incense never clears, but clings to the lungs.

And at the heart of it all, past every threshold and threshold beyond that, sat the one known to many as the Ashmother.

She was not seated as a queen, nor a warrior, but rather a priestess. Legs folded beneath her on a raised slab of blackened stone, surrounded by sigils scorched into the floor. There was no throne, no finery, only cloth, smoke and silence. Her armour was absent, the rites required nothing so crude. Instead, she wore the vestments of her order: layers of ink-dark fabric, loose yet binding, marked with runes that shift slightly in the firelight.

Her silver-blue hair was braided down the centre and threaded with tokens — beads, feathers, claws, teeth — offerings for and from those who came before. Her face was pale, but drawn with sharp lines and deeper marks. Tattoos curve around her eyes and along her forehead, ancient Dathomir sigils redrawn into patterns all her own. Some whisper they move when she dreams.

Her eyes were closed, but she saw all.

Before her, bones were arranged on the ground, a deliberate pattern of skulls, vertebrae, horns. Some human, some not. All known to her. Her fingertips hovered over them, trembling slightly. Her voice hummed one low and long continuous note, too deep for any comfort.

The Echo returned the call. Heat behind her eyes. A pull just beneath the heart. It did not speak, but it did show. A broken blade in a shallow grave. A woman on fire who did not burn. Blood spilled into hollowed stone.

The Echo drank deep. Vahlika listened.

Then... a twitch, a break in the rhythm, a shiver across the chamber’s edge. Something new.

She opened her eyes, violet, deep, quiet. A slow smile flickered beneath the veil of her breath.

"…Yes," she whispered, as if to herself. "I feel them. A guest."

 

[Adonis Angelis IV]

The Chain Remembers

Tag: Vahlika Velhaari

You begin to drift asleep

It begins with heat.

Not fire. Just weight behind the sternum, steady and slow, like something waking up beneath your skin. The dark breathes, and you breathe with it.

Light crawls across the iron walls, veins glowing faintly as the forge takes shape around you. Sparks drift upward, moving too slowly to be natural. They don't fall, but they hover, waiting.

Something steps forward.

It wears no face. No voice announces it. Torn banners hang from its shoulders, marked with clan symbols that feel familiar but distant.

Its hand rises.

Chains emerge from the floor.

One wraps across your chest. Another coils around your arm. A third snakes behind your legs and holds fast. The metal doesn't burn, but it settles deep. Each link is etched with names you almost remember.​

You don't pull away.​

The forge vanishes in silence.

Now you're standing in a dead field.

Mud softens under your boots. Smoke hangs low. Everything is quiet. A child stands in the middle, holding a shield too large for their frame. Their armor doesn't fit. They don't turn.

Then it arrives.

Looming behind them, cloaked in chains, its face hidden behind a split mythosaur skull. It leans forward, massive and still.

There is no sound—
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but you hear it.​

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"Not all fire purifies.

Not all metal endures."​

The child lifts their head.

You wake.

The air tastes like incense.

Your hands are cold.
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There's ash beneath your nails.

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It hadn't been long since the vision, and already Adonis was on Mandalore. The galaxy was shifting, but the pull from the Manda was stronger than any campaign. He remembered Onderon, how the graves had whispered before the Stormguard ever arrived. That vision had proved true. Now this one pressed harder.

He didn't pretend to know what it meant. The images came with heat and pressure, not clarity. But something was calling to him. He had seen a forge, a child, a chained giant. He had woken with ash beneath his nails. That was enough to act.

The other Knights had spoken of visions, some drawn from the Manda, others born of war. Adonis had never claimed to be a mystic, but he knew to trust his gut. This didn't feel like a warrior's omen. It felt older. It felt like something that needed to be seen by a Spiritspeaker.

He remembered what Vytal Moross had summoned in the battle against Harrow. The kind of magick that bent the world sideways. And when his instinct pushed him toward the far north, away from cities and signals, he followed.

The forests came first. They weren't like the ones on Vaal. The trees here hissed with every gust, and the canopy swayed like it was breathing. He moved quietly through the underbrush, taking only what he needed, never lighting a fire. For two nights he slept in the wild, waking each time with ash under his nails and a tightness in his chest. He took one last bath in a cold jungle stream, knelt in the shallows without ceremony, and kept moving.

The plains opened wide after that. The wind pulled through the tall grasses without rhythm, leaving odd, circular patterns in the field. It reminded him of home, open skies, open ground, but it felt wrong. Like something had emptied this place and left only the skin. He didn't linger. A lone Mandalorian moving across exposed land was a beacon for trouble. He crossed it quickly, slept one uneasy night under the stars, and moved on at first light.

The climb began without warning.

The elevation rose fast, and the terrain gave way to brittle stone and sharp ridgelines. He hated the way the ground moved beneath him. The cliff paths narrowed until he had to turn sideways. Gravel slipped underfoot, and larger rocks threatened to break loose with every step. The air thinned. His lungs worked harder. He wasn't built for this kind of travel, he had the strength of a soldier, not a climber. But he adjusted. He used the Force when balance failed him and fired his jetpack in short, controlled bursts to clear vertical gaps. The ascent became its own rhythm, physical, focused, unforgiving.

Birds circled above him once, long-winged, and silent. They didn't make a sound, just watched from high against the sun. He never saw them land, but he knew they were waiting for him to fall.

Eventually, the mountain opened.

There was no threshold, no carved gate. Just a narrow fissure in the rock, half-concealed by overgrowth and shadow. A sigil was marked above the entrance, ancient and worn but still sharp. It vibrated faintly when he placed his hand against it. He didn't say anything, just sat nearby, drank the last of his canteen, and caught his breath.

When he stepped inside, the air shifted.

It grew heavier as he moved, thick with unseen weight. Magick lingered in the stone like smoke that had never cleared. His boots struck uneven ground, the sound muffled and distant. Firebowls flickered low along the walls, their glow catching on vines that shimmered faintly where water ran down through the rock.

His breath shortened. Muscles trembled from the climb. The armor that once felt like part of him now pulled against every step. He should have stopped, but something deeper held him upright.

Now and then, he heard sounds. Not whispers exactly, just the sensation that he was no longer alone. When he looked back, the passage was empty. Time unraveled inside the stone. He couldn't tell how long he had walked or how far he had descended. It felt like the mountain itself was bending.

The scent found him next. Incense, thick and sweet, the same as the one in his vision. It didn't drift toward him. It sat in the air like it had been waiting.

The corridor opened at last.

Stone gave way to space, not wide, but full. The firelight reached farther here. And at the center, she waited, seated in stillness, framed by smoke and runes, unmoving but not unaware.

He saw her, and she saw him.

He took another step, pushed forward by the last of what the Force and the Manda gave him. Then his knees buckled. His body gave in, and he collapsed to the stone. The helmet slipped from his arms and rolled across the chamber, stopping near her feet.

He didn't rise.

The path had led him here. That was enough.

 

[Vahlika Velhaari]

Tag: Adonis Angelis IV

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They watched him long before he ever reached the summit. Though few in number, the warriors of Clan Velhaari had learned to live like shadows, seen only when they wished to be, and even then only as suggestion. They crept among the ridges and hollows, half-feral in their discipline, painted in dust and ash, masked and silent. Hunters. Seers. Wraiths. Even the mountain accepted them.

As Adonis climbed, they watched. Some followed his path from distant peaks, figures barely visible in the swirl of snow and ash. Others drew closer, so near he might have touched them had he turned at the wrong moment. But he didn’t. He moved with quiet purpose, and they let him pass, never interrupting, never aiding. If he faltered, they would not catch him. If he fell, the mountain would claim him.

He was not the first to attempt the ascent. Most had turned back. A few had never left. But this one had the scent of something about him. The mountain let him through.

When he finally entered the innermost chamber, the stillpoint beneath stone and time, the air pressed close. He stepped into the silence, into the curling tendrils of incense that writhed like spirits above the brazier flame.

She did not look at him. Vahlika Velhaari knelt before a wide circle of bones, bleached and blackened, human and alien, arranged in spiralling patterns that defied logic and demanded reverence. Her fingers moved with ritual precision, brushing ash from a cracked femur, tilting the angle of a broken horned skull. Her silver-blue hair fell in long, ceremonial braids, tipped with charms that chimed softly as she moved. Her tattoos, black and intricate, crawled across her brow and down her eyes like scripture carved into flesh.

The smoke curled tighter. She hummed, a low, guttural melody that vibrated faintly in the ribs, and only when it faded did she speak. Her voice was soft, distant, like something recalled from a dream.

"Another child of Mandalore... comes to the mountain with questions."

Her hand paused over the bones.

"But is he prepared for the answers he seeks?"

The chamber held stillness like a choked back breath. Somewhere in the deep stone behind her, water dripped once, and was swallowed by silence.

She still hadn’t looked up, not even when he fell to his knees, not even when the helmet rolled to her. Yet, silently, the helmet lifted up into the air and was gently placed outside the circle of bones through the Echo, without a single acknowledgement from the spiritseeker.

 

[Adonis Angelis IV]

To be Seen​

Tag: Vahlika Velhaari​

Adonis used every burning muscle trapped beneath his armor to push himself upward, joints grinding as strength bled from him in waves. There had been silence when he arrived, she hadn't even spared him a glance, not pity, not recognition. It twisted something in his gut. Perhaps this wasn't destiny, perhaps he wasn't chosen by any force at all. Perhaps he was just prey to a mountain-witch who had drawn him in with visions, a shadow who had stalked him all the way up the path just to watch him collapse before her feet. Maybe he wasn't special, maybe he was only a victim, and this was the end he had earned.

Dragging himself forward once, then again, each shift of his weight scraped harshly across the stone and ticked away what little of his borrowed constitution remained. The Manda was there, he could feel it, but it no longer offered lift or lightness. Instead, it wrapped around him like a burial cloth, a shield drawn not to protect the body but to shelter what lay beneath. He could go no farther, that much was certain.

Still, he raised his gaze to her, forcing his head up through the blur, and stared hard, though blood ran freely from his nose and slicked down the side of his face. His lips cracked as he breathed, words catching in his throat before spilling free in a low rasp. "Ibic cuyir vaii Ni ash'amur," he murmured. This is where I die.

The pressure was building, thick, unseen, and all around him, pressing in from every side, but he kept his vision locked to her. He needed her to see him, not the warrior who had fought and won and bled his way across the stars, but the part of him that had been pulled to pieces since Vaal. He didn't know what these visions meant, didn't know what he was becoming, only that it was slipping through his fingers and he couldn't carry it alone. He needed someone to see. Anyone. Her.

"Look," he whispered, softer this time. But even in that hush, the word hung in the cave like smoke.

And if she looked- if she finally met his eyes- she would see the damage. She would see the blood pooled in the whites, the vessels broken under pressure. She would see the dirt caked in the corners of his face, the dried blood that lined his chin.. But deeper still, past the wounds and exhaustion, she would see the green.

It came first as a thread of color, something that shimmered at the edge of his gaze, but it thickened as she watched, bleeding out into his iris, clouding it with a luminous sheen. His breath skipped. The magick was rising again, not called, not shaped, just bursting forward like heat behind a cracked seal.

And if she held that gaze, if she kept watching, she would see it erupt.

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You stand on stone-
a crown already pressed to your brow.
You didn't ask for it. You don't remember kneeling.

The kingdom unfolds below, but the wind carries no sound.
Banners whip without rhythm.
The people cheer without mouths.

Your hands are clean.
Your blade is gone.

You walk forward anyway.
The sky begins to turn red.

You've been placed here.​

Not chosen.​

There is no warning when you look down.

The blade is already in your chest.

Your vision narrows. ​

Your crown slips free.

And the red swallows everything.

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When the vision passed, Adonis was still. His strength had gone out of him like air from a bellows, and whatever light had lived behind his eyes was guttering now. He had demanded to be seen. Now, all that remained was hope- hope that she had seen him. Hope that it had been enough.
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