Private Walking amidst shadow

[Taiia Mataan]

//: Darth Carnifex //:

​

The wind had shifted. Again.

Taiia stood atop the terrace of the academy, her gaze turned upward, watching the stars flicker in patterns that hadn’t belonged there the night before. The changes weren’t violent but they were unnatural. Systems hadn’t disappeared. They’d simply moved, like pieces on a board rearranged by a hand too large and too far away to name.

The galaxy was reshaping itself. Not through war or invasion, but by something deeper older than the Sith, older than the Jedi. A shift in the foundation of things.

And now the cracks were spreading.

It wasn’t the Cult. Of that, she was certain. But they would move in its wake. And somewhere, behind their hushed rituals and scavenged relics, the Unmaker still stirred, not dead, merely delayed.

Taiia reached into the Force, not as a whisper, but a call. One forged in clarity. Come to me.

They answered.

Caelen arrived first, moving without sound, a stillness in him that mirrored her own. He wore his father’s vambraces and his mother’s restraint, eyes always watching the fault lines no one else could see.

Seris followed not long after. Wind at her back, curiosity burning behind her gaze. She didn’t speak but her presence said enough. She knew this wasn’t another lesson.

Taiia waited a moment longer, letting the silence hold them together. Then she turned to face them.

“I’m sending you both away.”

Neither child flinched. But neither spoke.

“The galaxy is shifting again. rearranging. And while this isn't the Cult’s doing, they will move through the confusion like smoke through broken walls. The Unmaker still watches from the void.”

She looked to Caelen. “You’ll go to the High Republic. They’ll need someone who sees the pattern beneath the stars.”

Then she turned to Seris “You’ll go to the Mandalorian Empire. Not to follow your father's blood, but to carry it forward. They understand what the rest of the galaxy never questions. You won’t need to explain yourself there. Just act.”

Then she paused. Her voice, when it came again, softened.

“I’m leaving too.”

Caelen's brow lifted. “Where?”

“To The Sith.”

Seris stepped closer, frowning. “Mother..”

Taiia held up a hand. “Because I can. Because no one else will. And because… I felt something. Allyson. She's changed. I don't know how or why. But the bond stirred again, and it didn’t feel like her anymore. If she’s still the woman I once knew, then I’ll find her. And if she’s not then I’ll face what remains.”

The words sat heavy between them. She didn’t fill the silence. Let them absorb it like stone absorbs stormwater.

“Darth Metus is gone,” she said finally, quieter. “Long departed from this plane. Kyyrk his fate is unknown, even to me. And Vytal… who knows what star she walks beneath now? The ones I trusted to stand at my side are lost to time, to fate, to whatever this galaxy has become.”

She looked between her children. “That leaves us. And I will not watch this place fall without standing once more.”

Caelen stepped forward and embraced her. Quiet. Steady.

Seris followed, her hold tighter, unwilling to let go before she had to.

When they parted, Taiia touched their faces in turn twin mirrors of her legacy, shaped by fire and silence.

“Wherever you go,” she said softly, “remember: we are not relics. We are reminders. Of what stood. Of what still can.”

She looked to Caelen first. “You’ll need to carry something of me. Not just the blood, or the name. But this.”

She placed the first saber in his hand. Its casing was matte silver, understated, the emitters tight and precise built for control, for restraint. He turned it once in his palm, silent, understanding its weight without needing to ignite it.

Then she turned to Seris.

“This one has always burned hotter,” Taiia said with a faint smile, offering the twin. “Like you.”

The saber she gave Seris bore faint scoring along the grip marks of use, not damage. Its lines were slightly more curved, the power core more volatile. When Seris took it, the crystal inside thrummed faintly in recognition, as if it remembered its second breath.

Taiia stepped back, folding her hands.

“I carried these through storms you’ve only heard whispered. Now it’s your turn. Let them protect you but don’t let them define you.”

Caelen nodded. Seris nodded slowly, holding her saber close before clipping it to her belt.

The silence that followed was enough.

And when the sun rose, each of them walked into the galaxy carrying not just her teachings, but the blades she once used to carve her place within it.

---

Later.. After the children departed

The chamber had no name, no charted access, and no written record. Even her own students didn’t know it existed.

Taiia stood within the circle alone, the chalk-and-ash sigils already drawn—fresh lines overlaying those older than the academy itself. The air pulsed faintly with power: not light, not dark, but between. A steady hum beneath the breath of the Force.

The ritual did not require incantation, only intention.

She knelt, pressed her palm to the central sigil, and opened the veil.

For most, the black wall would be impossible. Given time perhaps it could be broken or at least a path through it yet she had neither the time or patience. Why go through when you can go around.

The World Between Worlds unfolded like a bloom of starlight: doors arching into nothing, each pulsing with resonance. Taiia stepped through the threshold without hesitation. The void folded around her.

She did not seek a path. She made one.

This was not cautious probing. Not the desperate reach of someone attempting to undo events. This was a witch’s will, sharpened by lifetimes of silence and one divine spark that never truly left her. Medjai’s flame still whispered in her blood.

She wove her steps around memory and myth, bypassing time, slipping past places sealed to fleets and navicomputers. She reached for a point in the Force where the shadows curled more tightly than the rest of the galaxy Jutrand.

And the path opened.

No resistance. No alarms. Only a strange, quiet recognition as if the world itself had been waiting. She glanced up at the sky, foreign and dark and absent the balance she had grown accustomed to on Odessen. She wore a dark cloak pulled over her silver robes, her hair drawn back and she erased her presence in the force, to all but the most powerful of Sith she would be a ghost, unseen and unknown.

Was her course of action foolish? Perhaps it was but she needed answers particularly about Allyson and who better to seek out than her nemesis.
​

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[Darth Carnifex]

Stretching across the horizon was the dark majesty of Jutrand, an endless cityscape of industry and blasphemous edifice. The world gleamed not with sunlight but with the dim glow of unending industry, veiled in blackened clouds that churned with piercing veins of static lightning; each one a harrowing screech as it tore across the ashen sky. Each breath was choked with the thick residue of sacrifice and ambition, a suffocating miasma of alchemical ash and electrostatic tension. The very air itself picked at the skin, burning the nose and mouth with each inhalation.

Only the highest levels were gilded in opulent splendor, the further down one traveled the more abrasive the truth of Jutrand became. This was a world built upon the back of billions of impoverished drones, generations upon generations compacted into the withering necropolis that substituted as the foundational bedrock of the cityscape above it. Innumerable droves were born and then died under the oppressive weight of the city above, never once catching a glimpse of sunlight; as darkness so thoroughly smothered all hope.

Above the living entombed rose hundreds of thousands of kilometers of vertical civilization; spires and minarets, ziggurats and basilicas, iron chimneys that belched an unending vomit of fire and poisonous smoke into the sky. The city was alive, not with the billions who toiled and suffered, but with ritual and purpose. Every factory was a temple, every junction a shrine, and every street a liturgy of control. Industry and faith and become so inseparably mixed together on Jutrand, that it was impossible to discern where one began and one ended; if either of them did at all. Labor was sanctified on Jutrand, and the lower drones were to serve unto death for the glory of their Sith masters.

Near the heart of this monstrous world-city was the Black Pyramid, an imposing truncated monument to ritualistic governance. Here, the banners of the Sith waved not with the breeze of the wind, but with the tremors in the Force. In the shadow of the Black Pyramid the streets were choked with life; pilgrims in black robes muttering prayers of worship on bloodied knees, lobotomized workers shuffling on endless tasks, chanting overseers and their decraniated thralls barking orders. They all lived and died in accordance with their ordained path, their birthright etched in stratified code and enforced with violence.

Darth Carnifex looked down upon all this suffocating grandeur from atop the Black Pyramid, His eyes cold and detached from the endless suffering. He was one of the architects of this horror, the very system which bound the lives of trillions writ in His script. All the successes and failings of the previous Empires had led to this moment, another turn in the wheel of the Sith dialectic. The synthesis of His and the Emperor's grand designs for the galaxy, manifested on Jutrand in all it's terror.

The door at His back slipped open with a quiet hiss, a trio of shadows passing through the threshold before coming to kneel at His back. He turned to face them, all three visibly shrinking away from His gaze. He need not command them, His mere presence invoked obedience.

"Supreme Excellency, Lord of All Shadows," intoned the first shadow, "a disturbance has been reported upon the holy world of Jutrand," continued the second, "Typhojem has detected errant biometrics that do not correlate with any known sample in the database. Further analyzation has proven elusive," finished the third.

Face impassive, the Eternal Father of the Kainate weighed the facts as they were. Typhojem was not prone to suffer errant disturbances, especially in the realm of his expansive biometric systems. Everything that breathed upon Jutrand had been meticulously catalogued in Typhojem's memory banks, and was being actively monitored planet-wide. Nothing moved without Typhojem's knowledge. That something had slipped through the system, without being detected prior to landfall, was curious indeed.

"Dispatch the Thought Hunters. Let them sniff out this aberration."

Taiia Mataan ​

 

[Taiia Mataan]

//: Darth Carnifex //:

​

The skyline of Jutrand offered no welcome. Just spires and exhaust and the heavy stillness of a world that had forgotten what air should feel like. The cloak kept most of the ash from settling. The Force kept the rest of the world from noticing her. Not that it was difficult. The Force here was thick coated in layers of rot, smothered beneath a doctrine of smoke and death. It didn't move the way it should. It churned, like something waiting beneath the surface.

Her presence was erased, her signature hollowed out to nothing. She was careful not to reach. Not here. Jutrand wasn't the kind of world you tested.

She took the high tier first, moving through the outer lanes of a plaza lined with robed pilgrims and burn-scarred overseers. Every step was deliberate. Every glance measured. This was no ordinary Sith stronghold it was industrialized reverence. A theocracy built on soot and circuitry. And something deeper.

Something old.

Taiia didn't stop to question it. She already knew.

What had driven her to seek out such a place? The planeshift went beyond navigational distortions or broken hyperlanes. It was more. And the Sith, for all their arrogance and appetite, were often the first to touch forbidden truths. If they knew anything anything real it would be worth finding.

Her gaze flicked upward as a surveillance pylon rotated overhead no mechanical whir, just motion. Seamless. She kept walking.

There had been no alarms when she arrived. No seals broken. The World Between Worlds had offered the way, and she'd taken it. The Force had permitted her entry, and Jutrand had not rejected her.

That was the unsettling part.

No resistance. No barriers. Just… acceptance.

It felt like a mistake.

She passed under a bridge laced with hissing cables and made her way toward one of the smaller data reliquaries she'd marked earlier. No outward guards. Just scripted glass and oxidized durasteel. If any of the Sith knew what the Planeshift truly was if it had touched more than just star charts this is where the trail might begin.

She wasn't here for confrontation. If they sensed her, fine. If they sent someone, also fine. But she wouldn't raise a blade unless it was necessary.

She was here because the stars had moved. Because the map of the galaxy was no longer a map, and the Force whispered things in the quiet that even she didn't fully understand. And of course if she could find anything about Allyson that would be a bonus.
​

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[Darth Carnifex]

The Thought Hunters lurked just beyond perception, their very presence dissipating from the minds of those who laid eyes upon them the moment they moved out of sight. They crept eerily through the air, crawling across buildings and swooping down like vengeful hawk-bats, but the people beneath their passage barely paid them notice. It would have been out of place to notice, to stare up at the creatures which had become such a constant fixture of the Sith throneworld.

Even now, they swirled and gathered near where the intruder Taiia Mataan lurked, though she was hidden from their sight for the time being. Restless, the Thought Hunters turned to probing the minds of any citizen they could find, often leaving them dazed and confused after their memories had been sampled. It wouldn't be long before actual booted security arrived, for if the Thought Hunters could not locate the anomaly then the Sith would rely on more conventional methods.

The data reliquary was a fairly standard interface, ubiquitous across the galaxy. It had it's own brand of Sith advancements and additions, of course, and ultimate it's scope was considered limited. Not to mention, most everything had been sanitized and adjusted to fit Sith narratives, especially concerning the Empire's ideological enemies who had been lambasted in every conceivable manner as degenerates and weakness personified.

Nothing about Allyson Locke was made public, her existence a secret kept from public record. There was, however, a few articles about the Ministry of Order and it's tireless task in protecting the people of the Empire from themselves. If Taiia was to learn anything about the elusive Allyson Locke, it would be from their records. Fortunately, the Ministry kept several regional offices spaced across the entirety of Jutrand, and those were not as difficult to find.

All it required was a bit of dedication and luck.

Taiia Mataan ​

 

[Taiia Mataan]

//: Darth Carnifex //:

​

Taiia had felt the shift in the air moments before the reliquary dimmed not the lighting, but something quieter, deeper. A tension threaded between the layers of the Force, almost imperceptible, but it curled around her like the static before a storm.

Even here, even with her presence erased, she could feel the edge of their probing pass by razor-thin skims against the minds of those around her. It was in the subtle stumbles of robed pilgrims, the dazed expressions on passing workers. They weren't just searching they were unraveling.

Taiia moved with practiced care, eyes scanning the display before her while the Force wound tighter around her. The reliquary was sanitized. No surprise. Everything here was curated. Packaged in Sith-approved dogma. Even the Ministry of Order read more like a religious tract than a bureaucratic division. But it was something.

She leaned in slightly, fingers brushing the edge of the terminal interface not enough to activate it, just enough to feel the pattern. Not everything was on the surface. Most of what mattered on Jutrand never was.

There. A data flag embedded in the last record. Routine rotation logs. Ministry of Order Sector Twelve. Sub-level thirteen. Not flagged as restricted. Not exactly public either. That would do.

She stepped back from the terminal, slipping back into the flow of the crowd without hurry, cloak settling around her shoulders as she adjusted her pace. Nothing sudden. Nothing sharp. Her path would take her down, through the core arteries of the underlevels, far from the cathedrals and viewing balconies where the Sith paraded their power.

She didn't reach for the Force not directly. That would be bait for the things above.

But she listened. And the Force still whispered, Move. Move now.

She followed.

The Thought Hunters were drawing closer. Not in sight. But near. She could feel it now, the way a dream feels just before it slips into nightmare. They weren't chasing her not yet. They didn't know her. Not specifically.

But they knew something didn't belong.

Her time here had just become limited. Still manageable but the quiet window was closing.

She would reach the Ministry office.

But getting out afterward?

That would be another matter entirely.

​

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[Darth Carnifex]

The descent into Jutrand's rotten innards would begin in eerie silence as the hum of the cityscape above gradually faded into a distant memory. Down below, the arterial causeway terminated at a vault-like ingress flanked by oxidized reliefs, monolithic depictions of faceless sentinels, etched with seams of calcified rust and grime. Their blank, silent stares stood vigil over a yawning passageway, a fissure in the wall where the light nervously abated and the air turned putrid and stale.

Within, the air around pressed in close, thick with particulate ash and latent static. Dull amber lumens throbbed along the ceiling in slow, arrhythmic patterns. Light filtered through the lens of ancient machinery, far older than the Sith regime that had built overtop of it. Every corridor sloped downward in long, patient curves, built for function but chiseled with religious intention. Durasteel tiles, worn smooth by generations of trudging feet, bore faded Sith symbols half-hidden beneath grime and fading paint. Guiding symbols, barely luminous in the grim haze, ran along the edges where the floor terminated against the wall, pulsing with the echo of a long degraded purpose.

Each deeper level brought a subtle change in air pressure, the temperature fluctuating without reason as building-sized air recyclers struggled to function. Stairwells gave way to articulated cargo lifts, little more than skeletal cages that shuddered and moaned as they moved, sparks trailing as they passed over sensor veils and dust-choked relays. Walls transitioned from stamped durasteel to plate glass etched with enforcement iconography, stylized visages of Sith Justicars, arms raised in ritual command, flanked by lines of code and creed.

Security terminals lined alcoves like shrines, each interface sunken into blackstone plinths. Most flickered with idle patterns or dormant diagnostics, awaiting retinal scans or genetic keys. Even dormant, they radiated the watchful stillness of ritual altars, places of decision, not inquiry.

Approaching Sector Twelve, the architecture grew leaner; more exposed servos, wires, and far less ornamentation. The walls narrowed into ribbed tunnels, where electromagnetic shielding panels gave the impression of walking through an artery rather than a corridor. Now and then, the structure would exhale, releasing a burst of warm, reprocessed air scented faintly of copper and ozone, accompanied by a low chime that vibrated more in the sternum than in the ear.

At last, the path terminated at a pressure-sealed door: no signage beyond the emblem of the Sith Empire stamped in faded color upon the metal. The durasteel was discolored from the touch of thousands, its surface pitted and warm. No entry panel, no lock, only a glyph pressed flush with the wall, glowing faintly in response to presence. While not the most impressive security measures, the location was so isolated and remote that few living creatures had dared ventured so far into Jutrand's bowels to reach it. It would not be extraordinarily difficult for Taiia to breach it.

Within, the space resembled a forgotten chapel hollowed out for circuitry. No windows, no furniture, no living accommodations of any kind. Just rows of data spires and diagnostic pylons, their exteriors humming with low-frequency signals. The walls were black stone, glossy with a texture like polished bone, and traced with red veins of pulsating dataflow.

Text crawled continuously across embedded displays; legal codes, execution protocols, sociological trend maps, an ocean of numbers governed by faith in obedience. Everything was under surveillance, and yet nothing observed. The room did react to her presence, to motion, but existed in perpetual anticipation, as if awaiting the next petitioner.

Above the central terminal, a projector orb hung like a votive lamp, dripping low-fidelity particles that shimmered before vanishing. The ambient temperature was low, but it was not the chill of neglect. It was deliberately cold, engineered for mental clarity and emotional suppression. All of the systems seemed to run automatically, carried forward by algorithms and preprogrammed protocols without any living intervention or input. This was the grand secret of the Sith Empire, a police state run entirely on autopilot, with the Sith only ever reaping the benefits of oppression.

There were plenty of data terminals configured for external input and output, with the controls moderately similar to those found on the upper levels.

Taiia Mataan ​

 

[Taiia Mataan]

//: Darth Carnifex //:

​

Taiia stood silently within the cold, artificial hush of the archive chamber. The air hummed with a pressure that wasn't quite noise, and the dull pulse of red light tracing the walls beat like a second heartbeat in her ears. Her breath left no fog on the air, not because of any temperature it was the kind of sterile chill that existed outside of life entirely, designed to strip away thought and replace it with calculation.

Fingers hovered above the terminal. She had bypassed systems before dozens of them, from backwater surveillance posts to fortress databanks but this was something different. Not because of the complexity, but because of the intention. The interface didn’t try to stop her. It welcomed her. It made her skin crawl.

Still, she worked. Quietly. Carefully. Not for sabotage, not for some grand infiltration. She wasn’t here to destroy, only to understand. The galaxy was shifting. Systems entire constellations were bending in ways that should have been impossible, and no one outside of a few half-mad visionaries and cultists seemed to notice. That silence disturbed her more than any war.

The Planeshift wasn’t a war. It was something older. Something bigger. The Cult of the Unmaker would move in its wake she knew that as sure as breath but this shift, this crack running through the galaxy’s foundation? It didn’t belong to them.

So she searched. Through cold files and shallow cover stories. Through Ministry codes and quietly rewritten histories. Through the noise that always surrounded the truth. She wasn’t looking for targets. She was looking for threads.

Allyson’s name didn’t appear. Not directly. Taiia hadn’t expected it to. But echoes? There were always echoes. Ministry of Order field activity increases around the same sectors where she’d once felt the bond pulse. Reassignments, discreet detainments, language that almost confirmed her suspicions. Allyson had changed. Whether by choice or by design, she couldn’t say.

Her hands paused, eyes narrowing. One of the consoles flashed not with warning, but with something else. A hiccup in the diagnostic feed. A delay that didn’t belong. She didn’t react visibly, but instinct prickled down her spine.

She wasn’t alone anymore.

Not directly. Not yet. But something had noticed. A tripwire without a sound. No alarms, no alerts. But a subroutine blinked awake. Watching now. Measuring.

Taiia kept her touch calm, her pulse steady, her presence buried deep. No flinch, no flare in the Force. Let the watchers assume she was just another analyst. Another ghost lost in the dataflow.

She withdrew her hand from the terminal, not abruptly, just enough to slow her rhythm. The glyph at the entry had pulsed once since she arrived exactly once. She hadn’t triggered it. That meant something else had.

Taiia shifted slightly, eyes scanning the text still flowing across the display. The Ministry’s regional sectors were her next destination. She didn’t expect to find Allyson. She didn’t expect to find answers. Only pieces.

But pieces were all she needed.

She slid a data shard from her sleeve and tapped it once against the console no direct download, just a residual trace of what she’d accessed. A map of activity. The kind of thing a Sith wouldn’t notice until it mattered. Which, if she was careful, it never would.

She turned toward the door, still empty and still watching her. She quickly moved through the doorway and into the same underbelly she had traversed to get here.

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