Private To Your Ruin. To Your Salvation.

[Serina Calis]

"How I intend to break you..."

Tag - Kali'ka



There was a gravity to the room now, a silence so thick it was almost physical.

The training chamber Serina had designed for Kali'Ka was a work of art in itself—cold, austere, beautiful in the way a naked blade was beautiful. The walls, hewn from the dark stone of Polis Massa's deeper catacombs, drank in sound rather than reflected it. Black-veined marble underfoot gleamed faintly under the low, indirect lighting, each polished tile precisely placed, an unseen geometry lurking beneath the surface. Nothing here was accidental. Every choice—every angle, every material—was deliberate.

Above, the ceiling arched high, supported by thin buttresses of obsidian-like durasteel, traced faintly with red veins of Dark Side energy. They hummed ever so slightly if one listened closely enough, feeding the room with a low throb that synchronized almost imperceptibly with the heartbeat of anyone standing too long within it. It was a space meant to disorient, to strip away certainty, to tear down the psyche so that Serina could rebuild it from the foundation upward.

There were no banners, no trophies, no symbols of pride. Only emptiness, and waiting.

At the center of the room stood a single, circular platform—a shallow disc of blackened phrik, inscribed at its edges with ancient Sith runes so worn they seemed almost to bleed shadow. Upon it, barely visible unless one approached with intent, were intricate carvings of twisted chains, broken swords, hands reaching upward only to be dragged down again. It was not merely a dueling space. It was a shrine to the truths Serina intended Kali'Ka to learn: power, suffering, devotion, inevitable betrayal, inevitable triumph.

Serina stood at the edge of the platform, still as a carved goddess.

She wore no armor today—only a simple black tunic cut to precision against her form, the sleeves tight to her wrists, the collar high, the hem splitting at her thighs to reveal the first glint of armored leggings beneath. Her hands, bare and slender, were clasped lightly at the small of her back. Her long hair, usually worn in a cascade of calculated elegance, was now bound in a single, severe braid that hung down her spine like a whip waiting to be unsheathed.

She did not pace. She did not fidget. She waited.

The air around her pulsed with something heavier than mere anticipation. It was purpose, condensed and sharpened, leaking from her presence like a drug into the chamber. Here, in this room, in this moment, she would begin the final, essential act: not simply to teach Kali'Ka to be strong, but to destroy the girl she was and forge something greater in her place.

Serina's pale fingers flexed subtly behind her back. Not out of impatience, but with anticipation so precise it was almost erotic—a slow, coiling pleasure at the thought of what she was about to begin. She had waited long enough. The raw material had been tested, blooded, stained with sin and triumph. Kali'Ka had earned this.

And now, she will suffer for the right to become what I intend.

Serina's expression was unreadable—neither smiling nor frowning. Her mouth was a line of quiet authority, her eyes half-lidded, reflecting nothing. Yet within her chest, her heart beat a rhythm of exquisite satisfaction.

There were no sentinels at the door. No honor guard, no trumpets, no ceremony. Serina had made it very clear: Kali'Ka would come alone, or she would not come at all.

She would step into this place naked of allies, stripped of all expectation save one: submission to transformation.

The distant sound of a door opening reverberated down the long, dim corridors that led to the chamber. Serina did not turn to look. She already knew who approached.

Her head tilted slightly—not in curiosity, but in acknowledgment, like a sculptor hearing the first hammer-blow against the block of stone she would shape into a masterpiece.

Bootsteps echoed, slow, measured. Hesitant? Perhaps. Defiant? Perhaps. It mattered little.

Come, Kali'Ka, Serina thought, a whisper blooming darkly across the Force.
Come to your ruin. Come to your salvation.

The doorway loomed now, a black rectangle against the faint crimson-lit corridor beyond.

And into it, at last, Kali'Ka stepped—

 

[Kali'ka]

Tag: Serina Calis

​

With measured, unhurried steps, Kali'ka stalked down the hewn passage, reveling in the sharp edge of anticipation. The summons had been as enigmatic as the beckoning that had brought her to the mysterious Dark Jedi at first. This time, however, the Kiffar sorceress knew who it was who called her. Her Mistress.

Already, there was a palpable gravity that gripped the massive asteroid as Kali descended to its core. Or perhaps, it was just the acolyte's knowledge that, whatever it was that awaited her, was more than another test, another lesson. She had been baptized in blood and fire and lies. She had proven her devotion, her abilities, her hunger and her submission. What would Serina do with her now?

Now, perhaps, the promises would be fuliflled. Promises of power and glory. And yes, promise of pain. Serina always made it clear, there was never one without the other. Kali'ka had savored the addicting taste that came with causing suffering. Would suffering be demanded of her?

She had been trained to relish tormenting denial at the hands of her Mistress. Time and time again, the sensual Dark Jedi had ignited Kali's visceral hunger to a searing flame, only to blow it out. In that torture, Serina had already honed a twisted desire for such teasing, making her hunger nearly insufferable.

Even as her boots tread down the dimly lit corridor, that seductive torment licked at the acolyte. She knew at the end Serina would be waiting. Waiting for her acolyte, her protege. The thought brought a heat to her inked skin, even as the cold of the remote space rock threatened to penetrate her bones. Kali wore her typical garb, a black, sleeveless body suit that was a mockery of modesty. She brought nothing else into the chamber.

As Kali'ka drew nearer, seeing the opening in the distance, she sensed it. Darkness, but not only the Dark Side in its invasive form, but as it flowed through Serina. It smacked of her presence. That presence was yet another addiction that bound the acolyte sorceress.

Into the room Kali'ka strode. A chill ran along her spine as her dark eyes scanned the room surrounding her. Beautiful in its cryptic starkness, humming with the allure of darkness, designed with wicked purpose. Then, her gaze fell upon her Mistress. Gorgeous and imposing, her presence filled the chamber, the silent weight of her half-lidded gaze falling on the acolyte like a cloak.

"My Mistress..." Kali'ka purred, ready, eager for what her master would do with her.

 

[Serina Calis]

"How I intend to break you..."

Tag - Kali'ka


Serina did not speak immediately.

She let the silence stretch instead—long and exquisite—a silken thread pulled taut between them, invisible but thrumming with tension. Her eyes, still half-lidded, followed Kali'Ka's entrance with the indulgent patience of a queen observing a supplicant's first step into her throne room. The sound of the girl's boots against the stone floor echoed in precise rhythm, a heartbeat measured not in blood, but in obedience.

Serina inhaled, deeply and without shame, drawing in the heady mix of emotions that rolled off Kali'Ka like incense: anticipation, lust, reverence, hunger. It was intoxicating. The acolyte had come like a creature answering the call of the flame that once burned her—and found, to her ruinous delight, that it still did. Still seared. Still owned.

Serina stepped forward once.

The motion was slow, deliberate, almost catlike. Her boots whispered against the stone, the faint brush of motion the only sound until her voice, low and devastatingly soft, spilled into the space between them like warm venom.

"So," she said, voice laced with velvet and ruin, "you've come crawling back to the fire that made you."
"Good."

She let the word settle like ash.

Then another step. And another.

She circled Kali'Ka now—not quickly, not with threat—but with the kind of slow, languid grace that suggested both appreciation and dissection. Her gaze was clinical, cruel, and admiring all at once. A hand lifted behind her back, curling one long finger in the air as if she were sketching an unseen rune, a slow spiral of possession. That gesture said more than any snarl ever could: you are already mine.

"You've survived Korriban," she murmured at Kali's back, her voice close now—just near the girl's ear, not touching, not yet.
"That was your death."
"Now…"—her lips brushed the word—"…comes the resurrection."

She circled back to the front, stopping inches from Kali'Ka's face. Her eyes, luminous and cold, drank in the girl's tension, the flutter of breath beneath the bodysuit, the way her pupils dilated under pressure. Serina smiled. Not sweetly—no, never that—but with the slow curve of a woman who knew exactly how sharp her nails were and where she intended to sink them.

"You want the power I promised," she said flatly, stepping closer so that only a breath remained between them. "You want me to carve it into your flesh. To drag it out from your bones. You want to be something, don't you, Kali'Ka?"

A pause. One fingertip—just one—lifted and ran from Kali'Ka's collarbone down to the midpoint of her chest, not with tenderness, but with measured purpose. A line drawn for emphasis. Not touch. Claim.

"Something more than just mine."

Her tone dipped slightly, rich with threat and invitation. Her breath brushed Kali'Ka's lips, and her eyes flashed with something dark, ancient, delighted.

"But you are mine," Serina whispered. "No matter what I make you into, no matter how high I let you rise, remember this: I broke you. I rebuilt you. Every scream you will one day rip from another's throat will be an echo of what I did to you."

Then, finally, she stepped back. Not far—only enough to reclaim the oxygen in the room and reassert the chasm between them. She turned from Kali'Ka, walking with slow command toward the raised platform at the room's center.

"Today is the beginning," Serina said, her voice louder now, firm but still edged with that slow-burning seduction. "Not of training. Not of trials. Those are for the weak and the hopeful."

She ascended the platform and turned, arms clasped again behind her back.

"Today," she said, "you begin becoming useful."

Her gaze locked onto Kali'Ka like the trigger of a weapon being pulled.

"Kneel."

Not barked. Not pleaded. Simply said—as though gravity itself had just been given new orders.

And then, the real work would begin.

 

[Kali'ka]

Tag: Serina Calis

​

With a steady, unhurried pace, Kali'ka strode into the room. Her demeanor displayed a casual confidence, almost arrogance. But her Mistress, she knew, could feel her inside. The want, the eagerness, the dark hunger that was both sadistic and masochistic. Yes, she had come. The first time, it was as a moth to a flame. That flame had burnt away the fragile, impotent wings of the moth and in there place offered dark, strong shadows.

Now, the acolyte came as a well-trained pet, one with savage teeth and voracious appetite. The kiffar sorceress felt no shame in her role, for power had been afforded her beyond her imagination. Her obsession with her master was shaping a cruel, dangerous creature within the tatooed adept. And it was only beginning.

Eyes, one dark, one glowing, shifted to Serina. The dark jedi's breast lifted and fell with a deep sigh. Kali knew her Mistress was pleased with her, with the raw material she had mined from the fallen jedi padawan.

Serina moved close, her steps more quiet than Kali'ka's had been, her motion like a serpent, smooth, dangerous, intentional. The acolyte's eyes remained on the blonde darksider, drinking in her beauty as she fed on the Dark Side within her.

The oil-slick tone of the young master smacked of superiority and disdain, but she wasn't wrong. Her acolyte had come without hesitation, eagerly, knowing what may await her.

Serina began to circle, slow, leaving Kali'ka to lanquish under her studious gaze. She felt like property under that possessive, assessing gaze. And somehow, it gave her a thrill. Such proximity to the seductress always left a hum of taut tension within Kali'ka, one dripping with hunger.

The stage was being set, the rehearsal of her path, the one laid out by the Mistress. She had seen the death of her past on Korriban, orchestrated by Serina. Now, she was promised a new life. One the acolyte knew would be costly to enter.

Serina closed her circle to stand before her acolyte, so close, the Kiffar could feel the woman's warm breath. It was the only thing warm about the Serina. The words continued to weave a spell, as they always did, one of allure, promise and danger. Kali had come to revel in such cryptic monologues, tasting every word, feeling the sting in every one.

The acolyte's breath hitched as the Mistress drew even closer, Serina's exotic scent filling Kali's nostrils, that hot breath like an invisible kiss upon the Kiffar's lips.

Yes... She thought. Serina spoke of desires Kali'ka didn't even know she had, dark, deviant ones. Serina made the thought of being torn apart sensual, something to be craved. Every nerve in her body exploded when that single finger traced a possessive trail along Kali's collarbone, to the valley of her chest. The acolyte's eyes slid half-way shut, sighing in delight.

Crush me, so that my rich oil becomes yours. Burn me, so that the dross of imperfection is seared away...

Kali'ka had become ambitious, and Serina knew it. Now, with dangerous venom, the Mistress assured her acolyte that none but her would hold Kali'ka's reins, no one else would put a bit in her mouth and harness her strength.

The withdrawl was painful, as always. But devoted, determined eyes followed the dark jedi to the platform, even as the promises flowed again from those decadent, evil lips. And when the Mistress had stopped, she turned to fix cold, piercing eyes on her acolyte, and made her first command.

Kali'ka had always been strong-willed. After her rise from abandonment and near death, her independant streak had grown. The victories acheived at Serina's side had only sharpened that self-assured arrogance. She would bow to no one.

Except her.

She was no goddess. Serina was young, over-ambitious and self-gagrandized. But the dark jedi had produced one thing no one else had. Results. Kali'ka was more powerful, more learned, and had someone who beleived in her ablilities. But it wasn't only those things which would make the acolyte's knee bend. It was the damned allure. Something about Serina set iron hooks in Kali'ka's core, made her crave the darksider, to the point she would bare body and soul to Serina for the smallest taste of her on the tip of her tongue.

She could not resist, and didn't. Kali'ka met Serina's gaze with a brazen stare, then bowed her head, and knelt before the Mistress.

 

[Serina Calis]

"How I intend to break you..."

Tag - Kali'ka


Serina did not move for several seconds after Kali'Ka knelt.

The air in the chamber was thick now, not just with the Dark Side, but with the electric silence of something just beginning to burn. She watched the girl's head bowed before her—so obedient, so eager—and yet the fire still smouldered behind her eyes. Good. She would not have tolerated meekness. Serina demanded surrender, but only the surrender of the strong.

And now, the work would begin.

"Look at me," she said at last, her voice soft and cutting. "You've earned that much."

When Kali's gaze rose, Serina's own bore into her—not with rage, not with cruelty, but with possession. She looked at the girl the way one might appraise a blade before the first strike—one final moment of consideration before it was sunk into something soft.

Then, Serina stepped down from the platform, walking slowly around Kali'Ka again—not circling this time, but drawing a shape around her with her presence, hemming her in.

"Before I strip the rest of you away," she said, voice calm as coiled wire, "I want to hear what you think you are."

She stopped in front of Kali again, tilting her head slightly, as if peering into her like an artifact.

"No riddles. No posturing. Tell me what it is you desire, Kali'Ka. As a Sith. As mine. As yourself."

She stepped closer now, so close her words could pour directly into the girl's throat.

"Do you want to rule? To destroy? To be feared? To be adored?"

Her eyes narrowed slightly. There was no anger in them—but a hunger so precise it might as well have been surgical.

"Tell me what the little girl inside you still dreams of when no one is watching."

She knelt, slowly, gracefully, until she was level with her acolyte—eye to eye, breath to breath. Her tone grew quieter, darker, laced with seduction that bit just beneath the skin.

"Tell me… and if I find your answer worthy, I will begin to burn away the rest. I will teach you how to reach for it, with hands that do not tremble."

Her hand came up again—gloved now, fingers resting gently beneath Kali'Ka's chin.

"Speak, little shadow. What do you truly want?"

The question was a blade.
A promise.
A trap.

And Serina waited, smiling faintly, as if she already knew the answer. But the point, as always, was not knowing.

It was making her say it.

 

[Kali'ka]

Tag: Serina Calis

​

Kali'ka knelt, seated on her haunches, hands resting palm down on her thighs. The dark maned head slowly lifted, black-ink framed gaze meeting eyes that made her feel as if she were held at the end of a leash. It made Kali'ka feel both uneasy and aroused. A cursed dichotomy that painted most of her interactions with Serina. It was held for a tortuously long moment, as if to emphasize the claim, before its edge faded.

Dark organic eye and bright cybernetic followed the descent of the Mistress from the platform to move around the kneeling acolyte. Every word she spoke dripped with expectation, with command, with enigma. And Serina's words always required something from the Kiffar sorceress.

Finally before her acolyte, Serina paused and crouched. She demanded a deep truth, a telling truth, a truth that would again leave Kali'ka bare and exposed before the dark jedi. Closer still the blonde darksider drew, Kali's lip parting as if she coul drink Serina's exhaled breaths. More promises were carried on those breaths. The familiar gesture, the finger upon Kali'ka's chin, served as a reminder of who owned her.

What did she want?

At one time, it was revenge. Vengeance against the jedi had been her one and only desire. But that childish obsession had been dispelled. In the silence, Kali'ka pondered. She heeded her master's warning, no semantic games, no answers meant solely to please the Mistress. Serina demanded truth, and then smirked as if she knew what Kali wanted even before the Kiffar did.

Dark lips parted. "Destruction, fear, adoration, I love them. But they results. I desire power. Power to destroy, power to cause fear, be adored or even to rule, when they serve your purpose, or my own. And the power to please you."

It was the honest bleeding of her dark soul, her tone was thick with the truth of it, how the thought of it made saliva pool on her tongue, forcing her to swallow hard. Her eyes never left Serina's as she spoke.

 

[Serina Calis]

"How I intend to break you..."

Tag - Kali'ka


Serina listened in silence.

Her expression didn't shift—not at first. She remained perfectly still, crouched before Kali'Ka like a high priestess at an altar she had built herself, letting the offering bleed freely before her. That dark-inked voice, those trembling truths… Serina drank them in as one might sip from a poisoned chalice—slowly, reverently, without flinching.

Then her lips parted.

Not to speak.

To smile.

It was not a wide smile. It was precise, measured, the curve of a scalpel held against skin that had not yet been cut. But it carried weight—a silent reward. The kind of look that said: Yes. This is what I wanted.

"Good," she whispered, the word a low ripple of dark silk. "You finally speak like something that deserves to be shaped."

Her hand remained beneath Kali'Ka's chin, fingers adjusting slightly—just enough to tilt her head a degree higher, forcing the girl to meet her gaze with total submission, total exposure.

"You're learning," Serina continued, her voice slow and indulgent. "Power is not a thing. It is a choice. It is the ability to choose what reality becomes. What others feel. Who they worship. Who they fear. What they suffer. What they beg for."

She leaned closer, her breath ghosting along Kali'Ka's lips, her voice dipping even further into a register so low it became felt as much as heard.

"Power is the moment they look at you and forget who they are."
"It is the moment you look in a mirror and see me."

And then she kissed her—not on the lips, not yet—but at the corner of Kali's mouth. A slow, surgical brush of lips that lingered like a stain. A mark. A claim.

Then Serina drew back—not from retreat, but to see how the girl reacted. How the hunger twisted in her stomach. How her body betrayed her soul. She wanted it all.

"You want power, Kali'Ka?" she asked softly. "Then I will give it to you. Not in pieces. Not in promises. I will pour it into you until your bones hum with it. Until you are no longer just mine…"

She stood now, her hand trailing from Kali's chin down her throat to her collarbone, dragging invisible fire.

"…but something the galaxy will weep to have crossed."

Serina turned then—turning her back to Kali deliberately. A test. A dismissal. A challenge.

She walked slowly to the edge of the dueling platform and raised one hand.

The lights in the room dimmed, shadows lengthening into jagged teeth. In their place, glyphs ignited across the platform floor—Sith runes, old and ravenous, carved into the phrik and glowing red with summoned power. At the platform's far edge, a pair of curved daggers rose slowly from a concealed compartment—twins of alchemized obsidian and durasteel, their edges etched with pulsating crimson veins.

"Your first lesson," Serina said, without turning. "Is how to lose."

She turned her head just enough to cast a glance over her shoulder—eyes half-lidded, lips parted slightly in something like amusement, like hunger.

"You will come at me with everything. You will try to draw blood. To impress me. To win."

A pause, then:

"And I will break you. Again. And again. Until you learn that loss in my presence is not defeat…"
"It is worship."

She raised a single hand and beckoned—one finger only.

"Come, little shadow. Let us begin."

And the platform hummed in response, as if the chamber itself was eager to witness the next act in this exquisite undoing.

 

[Kali'ka]

Tag: Serina Calis

​

Serina's acolyte had been an avid student. Not only of what the Mistress taught, but everything about her. The long, tormenting pauses that left a weak mind to spiral into doubt. And the smile. Serina could say so much with the slightest flinch of her plush lips. The thin line of a small smile appeared. That was enough. Kali'ka was given only what she needed to make it to the next word, the next movement. She waited eagerly, but with control.

Silken words slipped out, praise for a good student, or not even that. Kali'ka was a thing. But a thing worthy of Serina's efforts. Those wicked gloved fingers applied a bit more pressure, instinctively, the acolyte's chin lifted, eyes fixed on her master.

As Serina drew closer still, Kali'ka's lips parted again in hopes of tasting Serina's warm breath on them. The Mistress spoke more wisdom. Power, yes, all that Kali knew of power, its use, its source, its danger, came at the Mistress' feet. Now, it was as if Serina shared her personal experience, what she knew of power, her own power.

Then Serina move closer than ever before. Upon the smallest corner of Kali'ka's mouth those lips brushed. Barely a kiss, but to Kali'ka, it was a gushing fount of spring water to a man in the desert.

Her eyes slid shut, her lips parting further as she inhaled sharply. Kali'ka dare not move, not a fraction closer to that desired mouth. The fleeting brush of lips did mark the acolyte, for the feel of those lips were burnt into her memory, so she could remember and know that she is claimed, that she had a master.

Kali'ka's eyes opened to see Serina withdrawn, watching. A faint flush had come to the acolyte's face and a heat in her core forced her to resist shifting her hips. Her body was alight with twisted desires, spawn of what Serina had crafted in her protoge after months of delicious torment and teasing.

Serina claimed ready to give Kali'ka that power. The dark jedi slipped away, leaving the all too familiar ache in her acolyte. The lights dimmed, the pad coming alive with runes. Many Kali knew from her studies, others unfamiliar. The blades appeared, dark and ominous. The scene was set.

The look cast over Serina's shoulder gave Kali'ka a chill down her spine. What was coming would be wicked, she knew it. She would learn to lose. She understood this not to mean lose a contest, but lose parts of herself. Serina held no qualms about telling her acolyte that she would be broken, over and over.

She would have to try and draw blood from Serina.

Kali'ka was vexed. To attack the one for whom she would die protecting, the idea wound around her sideways, all wrong. But it was the command. Mounting the platform, the acolyte walked to the daggers. Her hand slowly wrapped around the hilt of one, lifting it as she studied it, felt its weight. Obsidian and steel, and evil. She marveled at it's make.

She turned to Serina. Kali'ka had been told what to do. To resist and fail to comply was not losing, it was utter failure. To try to harm Serina felt like sacrilege. But deep inside, the acolyte craved to see the woman's blood.

Assuming a relaxed fighting stance, kali'ka's well-tuned physique was coiled and ready. The muscles of Kali'ka's jaw rippled as she grit her teeth. Then, with a sudden snap release of muscles, the acolyte lunged at Serina, the crimson-edged blade driven towards her master's abdomen.

 

[Serina Calis]

"How I intend to break you..."

Tag - Kali'ka


The blade came forward—beautifully, savagely, hungrily—and Serina smiled. Not that soft, cruel smile from before. This one was sharp, delighted, dangerous. The expression of a goddess watching a worshipper crawl into the fire just to feel worthy of her gaze.

She didn't move to block—not at first. She wanted Kali'Ka to see the freedom she'd been given, the sheer blasphemy of it: she was attacking Serina Calis, her maker, her Mistress. And Serina welcomed it.

"Yes," she breathed, just loud enough to ride the edges of the blade's scream through the air. "Let me see it."

Then she moved.

Not with panic, not with speed for speed's sake, but with the kind of effortless supremacy that was more instruction than action. She sidestepped the strike with a grace that made it look planned, as though the dagger had always been meant to pass through nothing. Her body twisted with serpentine fluidity, one gloved hand trailing gently along Kali'Ka's wrist as the girl lunged past.

"Good form," she whispered into the acolyte's ear as she passed behind her. "But you want to pierce flesh that worships you."

She pivoted again, swift and clean, coming to face Kali'Ka once more, dark eyes gleaming in the crimson runelight. Her stance was deceptively loose—shoulders relaxed, hands lowered, hips slightly tilted as if inviting Kali closer again. But every breath she drew was calculated. Every inch of her presence filled the platform like a tide of black silk.

"Do you feel it?" Serina asked. "That conflict crawling in your spine?"
"That impulse that says 'don't hurt her,' even when I've commanded you to try?"

She took a step forward. Her voice lowered.

"You think it's loyalty. But it's not. It's pride."
"You still think you decide what I deserve. You still believe your instincts—your affections—have meaning here."

Another step. Her boot clicked softly, cruelly.

"Let me make this perfectly clear, my little shadow."

Now she was close again. So close Kali could feel the heat of her. The scent of her. That intoxicating mix of control and darkness and faint, almost imperceptible sweetness that clung to Serina's skin like an afterthought.

"You exist to please me," she said. "Not to protect me. Not to understand me. Not to determine me."
"You exist to obey."
"And if I tell you to strike me, you will do it with your entire being. You will crave my blood on your blade—not because you hate me, but because I told you to want it."

Then she moved again—swift, impossibly smooth, like shadow given form—and this time, her hand caught Kali'Ka's wrist mid-swing as the girl tried to attack again. The dagger stopped inches from Serina's throat.

She held it there.

Between them.

Tension radiated like heat from a forge.

"Look at it," Serina said softly, her voice almost a caress. "Look what you nearly did. How it makes you sick. How it makes you hungry."

Her fingers curled around Kali'Ka's hand, slowly forcing the dagger back down—not as a gesture of dominance, but of education. A lesson.

"Do you think you're the only one who will try to kneel for me, little shadow?" she asked, tone dark and amused. "The galaxy is full of Sith who would chain themselves to my ankles if they believed I'd glance their way."

She stepped around Kali again, dragging the dagger's edge gently across the acolyte's shoulder—not breaking skin, but close. Serina's hand came to rest on the back of Kali's neck.

"You'll meet them," she said. "The ones who will try to mimic me. Men with hollow eyes and pretty lies. Women who offer pain and call it wisdom. They'll speak as I speak. They'll touch as I touch. And they'll think they can own you."

Serina's nails dug in now—just slightly.

"When they try," she said, "you will kill them. Without question. Without reflection. Because they are not me."

She let go. Spun away.

Then she struck.

A burst of motion, a blur of power—not with a weapon, but with her body. One leg swept low, catching Kali behind the knee with surgical precision. Not enough to injure. Enough to remind her she could be owned in every dimension—mind, body, soul.

Serina advanced again, not with rage but with unbearable intimacy, like a lover closing in for a kiss that would never come.

"You want to serve?" she asked, voice thick with heat and promise. "Then learn this first lesson, and let it tattoo itself into the meat of you…"

She seized Kali'Ka's chin again, forcing her to look up even as she knelt.

"You are not mine because you are loyal."
"You are mine because I say you are."
"And that means you do not get to choose which orders you find pleasing."

A beat. Her thumb traced Kali's bottom lip with gloved precision.

And with that, Serina stepped back, once more into the center of the platform—her arms loose, her posture elegant, her presence suffocating.

Serina's smile lingered—not cruel, but precise. A smile sharpened by purpose, not pleasure. She watched Kali'Ka with a predator's stillness, measuring everything: the tension in her muscles, the minute twitch of her fingers, the way her chest rose too quickly, betraying the adrenaline beneath her painted calm.

Then, at last, she spoke. Her voice was lower now, but no less commanding—the tone of a teacher who expects perfection, because she has already envisioned it.

"You lunge like a Jedi."

The words fell flat and brutal.

Serina stepped forward again, slow and fluid, weaving between flickers of crimson glyph-light like a dancer unfurling into war. She didn't raise her hands. She didn't need to. Her body was the demonstration.

"Too direct. Too honest. Too... noble."

She came to stand at Kali's side, almost shoulder to shoulder now, her voice slipping into something silkier, more intimate—as if confessing a secret meant only for Kali'Ka's ears.

"You are not a duelist, little shadow. You are a trap. A beautiful, venomous lure. And everything about the way you fight must reflect that."

With a sudden flick of her wrist, she drew one of the twin daggers from the air with the Force—so subtle, so quiet, the motion could have been mistaken for a breath. The blade hovered in her hand, and she turned it with her fingers—one, two, three rotations—before holding it out hilt-first to Kali.

"Take it."

As the girl did, Serina's gloved hand came to rest on her wrist, positioning it carefully—adjusting her grip, just slightly, but precisely.

"The blade is not an extension of your will. That is Jedi thinking. Sentimental."
"The blade is bait. It draws attention. You are the strike."

She stepped behind Kali now, her hands ghosting over the girl's shoulders, hips, and spine—not possessively, but clinically. She was aligning a weapon, not caressing a lover.

"Center your weight lower. You're too tall in your stance. Sith don't fence. They ambush. If you fight with poise alone, you'll die to the first creature that bites."

She stepped around to face her again, eyes gleaming faintly in the low light.

"Try again."