Private To the Grave

[Shade]

Night on Kreig was heavy with metal and fire. The industrial district hummed with the rhythm of machinery, the smell of ozone and molten alloys clinging to the air. Shadows pooled in the corners of towering furnaces, offering refuge to those who moved without permission.

Shade moved like a whisper along the catwalks, her matte-black Charric alloy armor absorbing the dim light. Crimson eyes scanned the patterns of patrols, noting every rotation, every blind spot. The hum of machines masked her presence, but she also relied on her Force-enhanced senses: Shadow Veil suppressing her signature, Force Cloak blending her form into the night, Suppression Field ready to disrupt any precognition that might betray her approach.

Below, in a raised office overlooking the furnaces, Overseer Jarek Korr worked amidst his guards, unaware that death had already slipped into their midst.

Shade paused, fingers brushing the collapsible hilt of her dual amethyst phase-blades. Precision was everything. One misstep, and the mission would fail; one misjudgment, and she could be the one left to bleed in the shadows.

A patrol drifted past, boots ringing against metal. She melted further into darkness, timing her descent through maintenance shafts and service conduits, each movement deliberate, rehearsed. The city's pulse—the grinding belts, the hiss of steam, the faint clatter of tools—became her metronome.

No theatrics. No hesitation.

Shade's eyes met the faint glow of Jarek Korr's office lights. Tonight, the Mandalorian Empire would wake to silence. The overseer's orders would end before they were executed.

And in the shadows, she waited, a living echo of Csilla—patient, lethal, unseen.

Laphisto

 

[Laphisto]

Laphisto was on Krieg to establish it as an official world under the Lilaste Order. After the Royal Naboo Republic, now calling themselves the High Republic, seized the Order's old base of operations in the Kalinda System, the Order had become nomadic. Recruitment still trickled in from the occasional volunteer within the Diarchy Armed Forces, but the Order needed more manpower a true foundation.

So when an ex-Mandalorian world fell into Diarchy space, Laphisto seized the opportunity. He leveraged the favor Diarch Reign and Diarch Rellik owed him from the days they first recruited the Order into their ranks. In return, Krieg would become the Lilaste Order's new house of operations.

Laphisto had spent much of his time on Krieg working to unify the fractured world beneath the Lilaste Order's banner. His Mandalorian heritage opened a few doors the clans respected a warrior who had earned his scars but it was his discipline, structure, and the promise of prosperity that began to sway the planet's divided powers.

The remnants of the New Imperial Order were the first to fall in line. Veterans, labor guilds, and engineers who had survived the NIO's occupation saw in the Lilaste Order a familiar order of command a chance to rebuild something stable amidst the chaos. They offered their allegiance in exchange for protection and purpose, finding both in Laphisto's vision of a world reforged through unity.

The Mandalorians, however, were another matter entirely.They respected strength, but not authority. To them, the Lilaste Order was foreign soldiers who fought like Mandalorians but did not follow the Creed, warriors without the same oaths of blood and iron. Where the NIO remnants offered allegiance through pragmatism, the clans demanded it through combat.

More than once, Laphisto found himself standing in the heat of a forge-ring or the dust of a dueling pit, facing armored challengers beneath the crimson sky. Some came with honor, others with hatred. He gave each the same answer a measured silence, followed by decisive motion.When diplomacy failed, he forged unity through duel and conquest. Every victory added another banner to the growing ranks of the Order. Every defeat though rare reminded the locals that he sought unity, not domination. Slowly, through fire and discipline, Krieg began to bend toward purpose.

This meeting, however, was different. It was not a battle, nor a duel for dominance, but a diplomatic effort one that could determine the future of Krieg itself. Laphisto had arranged to meet with one of the largest Mandalorian contingents still active on the planet, a force numbering in the hundreds. Unlike the others he'd faced in combat, this group had grown disillusioned with the Mandalorian title weary of endless wars fought in the name of dead empires and forgotten creeds.

They were soldiers without a banner, warriors searching for purpose. And in the Lilaste Order, they saw something familiar structure, honor, discipline but without the dogma that had divided them for generations. They respected power, and Laphisto's had been proven in both word and deed. All that remained was to speak to them face-to-face, to offer not subjugation, but brotherhood.

The meeting would take place in the heart of the Heimskringla Foundries, a neutral ground between Diarchy envoys and Mandalorian warlords. It was a place of fire and iron fitting for a world that would either forge peace or fall back into flame. If this went well, Krieg would no longer be a fractured world of clans and remnants. It would stand united not under a Mandalorian sigil, but beneath the banner of the Lilaste Order.

Shade

 

[Shade]

"Kark."

She hissed the word under her breath as the lift by the overseer's office began to move. The arrival was wrong; the man in the office was the real target, not whoever rode the shaft down. Shade needed a plan, and she needed it fast.

Perched on the catwalk above, she folded into the Force, slipping the shape of herself from sight. Her presence blurred; her shadow she kept smaller than it should have been, pressed into the deeper dark between girders. The foundry's heat washed across the metal bones of the building, but it wasn't the warmth that made her pulse quicken. It was the sudden, sharp rhythm of decision.

Who travels at this hour, after the workers have gone to their families and only the duty crew remains? She watched the doors part. The visitor stepped out—someone she'd never seen before. She sank back onto the balls of her feet and watched him move, calculating.

Let them meet, or strike now? He wasn't her contract's mark; for the moment, she let him pass into the office and watched the exchange through slatted shadow. The conversation ended. The visitor left. The overseer stayed.

Timing was everything. Shade dropped from her perch and ghosted down the corridor, a black smear folding into the foundry's darker veins. The lift doors sighed open; she closed the distance in a single, fluid motion—fast as a tide and twice as silent. Camouflage in the Force steamed off her like mist, and she became nothing more than a shape in the periphery.

Her blade flashed—small, sprung, tip kissed with a toxin that worked fast. She moved with the grace of someone who had lived in shadow long enough to make it second nature. A clean arc, a practiced angle: the throat opened under her knife. If the steel failed, the poison would finish the work.

No noise followed. No cry. Only the soft, wet slide told her the deed had been done.

She folded away before the body could slump fully, blending back into darkness and letting the foundry's clamor swallow her footprints. She stopped at the catwalk's edge and peered down—expecting empty lift doors.

He was still on the floor.

He hadn't taken the lift.

For a breath, she froze. Had he seen the blade? Had he felt a shadow brush by? The question pressed against her like heat against skin, and for a long moment all she could do was watch him wait, unmoving, and wonder whether the visitor had been more than a coincidence—or a witness.

Laphisto

 

[Laphisto]

Laphisto had lingered longer than he intended.

The conversation with the other Mandalorian had carried on past its natural end a discussion of heritage, of creed, of Clan Ordo and what it meant to wear that symbol in an age where Mandalorians no longer spoke the same language of honor. The man had claimed distant ties, a cousin's cousin or perhaps nothing more than admiration, but Laphisto had humored him all the same. There was something grounding in it to speak of history, of purpose, rather than the endless logistics of recruitment and supply.

He stood now near the overseer's desk, helm in the crook of his arm, the dim light of the foundry painting his armor in muted golds and iron reds. The rhythmic pulse of the machinery below drummed faintly through the floor a steady, living heartbeat.

"Your ancestors would've respected the forge," Laphisto said quietly, his tone even, reflective. "Strength isn't just found in battle. It's here in craft, in endurance."The other Mandalorian nodded, unsure whether to agree or confess he didn't quite understand. Laphisto offered him a faint, knowing smile the kind that never quite reached his eyes before motioning him toward the lift.

"Go on. The night's late. I'll follow shortly."The man inclined his head and departed, boots echoing lightly on the steel before vanishing into the hum of the lower floors. For a moment, silence reclaimed the overseer's office a silence too still.

Something felt off.Laphisto's gaze drifted toward the catwalks above, the shadows stretching deeper than they should have. The air carried a faint metallic tang, sharp and wrong blood, maybe, or something close enough to make instinct stir. He set his helmet back in place with a soft hiss and drew the LO-22 Side arm from its holster. his helmets visor flashing betwen thermal infared and nightvision as he went

Shade

 

[Shade]

From the upper catwalk, Shade watched the Mandalorian below. The foundry's molten light bled across his armor, each movement catching in gold and rust-red reflections that pulsed with the rhythm of the forge. She'd seen many warriors, but few who carried stillness like that, measured, deliberate, unforced.

The heat from the vents pressed close, wrapping the air in a metallic haze. She had positioned herself just beyond the reach of the central light, using the rising steam as cover, her stance loose but balanced, waiting, studying.

Then his visor shifted. The faint modulation in the glow told her everything: infrared sweep. Her pulse slowed instinctively so much for remaining unseen.

The HUD would find her; the outline of her frame caught against the cooler backdrop, the steady burn of her body heat impossible to hide in the foundry's glow. She didn't move to retreat. That would only confirm intent.

Instead, she exhaled slowly, stepping forward just enough that the heat shimmer framed her in partial silhouette. Her expression stayed composed — professional, alert, without threat or apology.

"It seems," she said evenly, her voice carrying just enough to reach him across the machinery's pulse, "that subtlety has its limits."

A brief pause, her gaze steady on his visor.

"Good eyes," she added, almost as an observation, not a compliment. "That makes this easier."

She didn't elaborate, not yet. The tone was poised, neutral, the kind of voice that could turn either diplomatic or lethal depending on what came next.

Laphisto

 

[Laphisto]

Laphisto already had the sidearm drawn not by reflex, but because instinct had told him something was wrong minutes before the shadow ever moved. His grip was steady, the barrel angled just low enough to keep his stance ready without giving away the exact line of sight.


When the figure finally emerged from the haze, framed in the heat shimmer of the forge, his body reacted before thought could follow. The polished surface of his visor caught the glow, and the red light from the molten channels danced across his armor like fire through glass. He didn't need confirmation every motion from the intruder screamed precision, intent.

He fired. The first shot cracked like thunder, punching into the railing just shy of the silhouette. Then four more in sharp succession, each round hammering metal and sparks into the air. His ears filled with the sound of gunfire echoing off steel and the foundry's endless pulse an old rhythm he knew too well.

The weapon settled back into alignment as the last casing hit the floor. Laphisto's voice followed through the comms even, calm, and absolute."This is Laphisto. We have an infiltrator inside the perimeter. Lock down this facility immediately. Seal all exits and restrict lift access." He adjusted his footing, scanning the catwalks above, eyes narrowing behind the visor as smoke and heat distorted the figure's outline.

"Containment teams move to the foundry sector. No one leaves without clearance." He lowered his stance slightly, tracking the upper level with the unflinching patience of a man who'd faced too many ambushes to underestimate a quiet one. The air between them thickened no words, only the heavy tension of two killers waiting to see who would move first.

Shade

 

[Shade]

The echo of the last shot faded into the low roar of molten metal, the foundry's heat pressing against her skin. Shade had stopped moving the moment the first round struck the railing, not from fear, but because she understood what the spacing of those shots meant. Precision. Control. Whoever he was, he'd been aiming to shape the field, not end the fight too soon.

Steam drifted through the air, warping the light until her outline blurred against the glow. Then, slowly, she stepped forward. Just enough for the red reflection of the forge to catch the edge of her face. No mask, no visor. Only the calm, pale-blue planes of her skin and the faint gleam of crimson eyes watching him across the heat.

Her expression didn't flinch, didn't challenge. It simply measured. The faintest tension in her jaw was the only sign she'd already mapped every route out of this room.

"You're quick to act," she said at last, her voice smooth and even, carrying easily through the metallic hum. "Most wait to see the shadow move before they fire."


Her left hand lifted slightly, palm open and visible. Gesture of control, not surrender. The right stayed close to her thigh, poised but still.

The air between them thickened, weighed down by two professionals recognizing each other's discipline. The red light of the foundry shimmered against her armor, against the soft sheen of sweat that heat drew from her skin.

"You'll find," she added, quieter now, "I'm not here for your foundry."


Her gaze locked onto his visor, steady and unblinking. Behind the cool stillness in her eyes, calculation flickered. She could feel the containment protocols activating, hear the muted hiss of sealed bulkheads locking into place. He'd already called it in.


So she waited, perfectly still, the air trembling faintly between them — the assassin and the soldier, both poised on the razor edge between threat and understanding.

Laphisto

 

[Laphisto]

"I've spent far too many years in war to know hesitation gets you killed." Laphisto's voice was low and flat a calibration, not a threat. He felt the foundry underfoot, heard the metal groan where each bolt of heat stressed the framework. Seven rounds remained in the cylinder of the .05AE slugthrower. Seven chances to end this cleanly.

He brought the pistol up again with the composed economy of a veteran. The weapon answered with a deeper, mechanical bark than a blaster's crack; each shot was a hard, metallic report that punched the air and left a faint tang of burnt cordite. The slug's recoil rocked his wrist; the muzzle flashed white against the smear of heat. Brass casings spun out and struck the deck with sharp, individual clacks that sounded obscene against the foundry's ceaseless thunder.

Two rounds went high, careful strikes meant for a headshot; the following bursts were planted tight at center mass. The slugs hammered into metal and flesh with the blunt honesty of kinetic impact sparks and dented steel where they hit, a violent punctuation to each calculated decision. He wasn't spraying; each pull of the trigger was a measured verdict. When the final slug left the chamber the mechanism cycled and clicked with a bone-deep finality. Empty.

Without pausing, Laphisto let the pistol fly. The weapon spun from his hand in a practiced arc, a deliberate toss meant to disarm and distract rather than to wound. His other hand dropped to his hip; the broadsaber hilt met his palm with the familiar, cool weight of resolve. With a single smooth motion the blade hissed alive a deep blue blade snapped to life with a sharp snap hiss and he surged forward.

Boots hammered the grated floor as he closed the distance, every step controlled and brutal in its intent. He didn't know the woman's name, her allegiance, or the breadth of whatever shadow she'd fallen from only that someone who stalked the rafters and waited in silence was a risk Laphisto could not afford to ignore. Spy or assassin, it didn't matter. She had come into his perimeter. He would answer in kind.

Shade

 

[Shade]

The blue blade snapped up like a thunderbolt and Laphisto surged. Shade's eyes narrowed — time slowed to the millimeter she trusted — and then metal sang.

The first round hit the railing, the second sang off a support, close enough to throw grit into her face. She moved as she always did: economy, not drama. The third slug found the gap beneath her shoulder plate where armor met layered fabric. It punched through with a dull, hot shove, and everything that followed narrowed to one white-hot point of pain.

She tasted iron. For less than a heartbeat, she floated outside her body and catalogued the wound with clinical detachment: under the left collar, scoring through layered plating and a tendon, not through the lung. Not fatal. Not yet.

Pain uncoiled, and she let it be a map, not a master. Shade's left arm went heavy; she caught the edge of the railing with her fingertips, pivoting her torso to put her blade between them. The broadsaber arced. She met it with a short, brutal parry — not to kill, but to disrupt — and felt the spine of the attack shudder up into her palm. Sparks jumped from metal on metal.

Her breath came sharp and precise. Blood warmed the collar at the seam; a thin bloom stained pale blue to darker. She tasted it and arranged her priorities: stabilize, vanish, survive. Hands moved with the same trained calm that had put her knives away on canals and let her live. Her right hand flicked a smoke capsule free, let it drop, and the foundry's smoke wrapped them both in a choking grey. The hiss was discipline incarnate.

She let the Shadow Veil ripple once through her, a practiced suppression at the edges of perception — not invisibility, but a thinning. Laphisto's HUD would still show heat, but the coherence of her form blurred. It bought her breathing room, not miracles.

"Not here for the foundry," she said, voice steady though her chest drew a tight second. The words were the same as before, but softer now, threaded with the burn beneath her skin. She didn't beg. She didn't plead.

A quick assessment: bleeding moderate, mobility reduced in the left arm, adrenaline still high. She could hold the line for another close exchange, but she did not want to. Survival favored options. So she stepped low, the motion belying the wound forward, under the arc of the broadsaber, blade at Laphisto's knee in a move more disabling than bloody. Metal sang as her edge kissed joint and seam; hopefully, he staggered, not killed, and thrown off balance.

She did not celebrate. Pain was a ledger, and she paid it in silence. Her breath evened on purpose. Fingers curled around the grip of a small injector at her hip — a field-dressing, sedative in microdoses, purely to steady the tremor and keep the tendon from seizing. She pressed it to the wound, the injector needle cold and clinical.

Shade drew back into the smoke, not running but folding into a posture of readiness. Her eyes, bright and unbroken, met his through the haze: measured, unbowed.

"Enough," she said, the single word a deliberate covenant. "I am hurt. I am not dead. Stand down or learn what I will be forced to do."

She had taken a hit. She had not died. The ledger would record it; she would remember it. For now, she tested the ground beneath her boots, felt the world and her place in it, and planned the next move with calm, clinical clarity.

Laphisto

 

[Laphisto]

Laphisto gave a low grunt, the sound almost lost beneath the constant rumble of the foundry. His strike met only metal the jarring scrape of his broadsaber against railing instead of flesh. His lone ear twitched, straining for sound as his visor flicked rapidly through scanning modes. The smoke turned everything to ghosts and flickering heat signatures, and in that murk, she vanished.

He never saw her move only felt it. The bite of her blade came sudden and clean against the back of his knee, cutting through armor seals and muscle in one brutal, efficient strike. A hiss tore through his teeth as the joint gave way, dropping him to one knee. The Force surged from the wound in a cascade of light, a brilliant flare of color bleeding into the smoke. For a moment, it painted the haze in shifting hues of gold and blue, like a dying star bleeding into the dark.

Pain grounded him. It reminded him he was still breathing, still fighting. He forced his stance steady and exhaled through the heat, dragging himself upright again with a controlled growl. The pain was there sharp, persistent but discipline held it tight beneath the surface. He turned toward her, broadsaber swinging in a sharp, deliberate arc. The blade tore through the smoke in a streak of blue light, its weight and reach meant to drive her back, to make her think twice before closing in again.

"Counter-offer," he said, voice low and edged with command. "You stand down. Surrender yourself and your employer, and maybe we can work out a deal that keeps you alive." The hum of his saber filled the silence that followed, vibrating faintly through the air between them. He didn't shout or posture just stood there, steady despite the pain, a soldier's patience written in every line of his stance

Shade

 

[Shade]

Shade's crimson eyes locked on Laphisto, the molten glow of the foundry reflecting across the polished plates of her armor. Her strike had landed as intended, precise, deliberate, and yet the toxin coating her blade failed to affect him. The brief pulse of surprise flickered in her chest, sharp and fleeting, immediately replaced by calculation.

"Surrender…and betray my employer?" she murmured, low and steady. She shook her head. Her fingers flexed slightly on the hilt, subtle enough to be invisible to anyone not watching closely. Her stance remained balanced, weight distributed evenly, ready to move, strike, or withdraw. "That's not a choice I can make. Honor doesn't bend to convenience."

She shifted minutely on the balls of her feet, testing his center of gravity by observation alone, noting how his knees flexed and how his shoulders aligned with the broadsaber. Every inch of him communicated patience, discipline, and experience: traits she had seen in few, and respected in fewer still.

Her eyes flicked across the smoke and heat shimmer, scanning for exit vectors, environmental hazards, and lines of approach. Her armor whispered only against her own movements, soundless to the casual observer, but she remained aware of every echo that could betray her position.

She considered his unspoken offer — a more straightforward path than the one she had chosen — but loyalty, carved into her over years of contracts and principle, refused compromise. Every calculation told her surrender was an impossibility.

"I can negotiate with myself, with the one in front of me. But I will not compromise my honor," she said, her voice firm, deliberate, carrying the weight of a promise. She subtly shifted her stance, blade angled just so, ready to meet aggression but not overcommit. Every motion was a probe, a test, a silent measurement of skill and intent.

She noted the subtle cues: the way his grip on the saber relaxed and tightened with the hum of the foundry, the rhythm of his breathing beneath the visor, the way he evaluated her without a word. She did not admire him. She did not seek him. She recognized him as competent, disciplined, and dangerous — a worthy adversary in this moment, nothing more.

Even as she held her ground, poised and alert, her mind ran scenarios, recalculating positions, attacks, and counters. This was not a meeting of hearts or curiosity; it was a tactical evaluation, a confrontation measured in skill, observation, and honor. The beginning, yes, but one governed by precision and principle, and nothing else.

Laphisto