Tyrant Queen of Darkness
"To be, or not to be."
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Carisma Rostu
The wind along the Valley of the Dark Lords never truly stopped. It whispered through the shattered red stone, curling across the jagged ridges like a thing alive, dragging with it the taste of dust and forgotten blood. Darth Virelia stood at the foot of one of the tombs, where the carved façade of some long-dead sovereign rose out of the canyon wall like a broken crown. The face was half-eroded, its once-perfect lines now a ruin, but the weight of its presence had not lessened. Time only deepened the silence here, the kind that pressed down on the lungs and demanded reverence—or surrender.
She did neither.
Virelia stood motionless in the shadow of the archway, her halberd resting upright at her side, its obsidian haft gleaming faintly where violet light caught the edge. A slow exhale curled from her lips. She had chosen this place deliberately, not simply because it was where the acolytes gathered for their endless trials, but because the tomb itself was honest in its cruelty. The ancient Sith who lay entombed here had not sought to be loved or remembered. Only obeyed. The acolyte she awaited would learn that lesson, one way or another.
The valley below was alive with small sounds—shuffling steps of initiates carrying torches, the hiss of stone disturbed, the faint crackle of distant lightning storms trapped in the chasm walls. Virelia ignored them. Her attention was fixed, inward and outward both, tracing the lines of the Force that seeped from the tomb's threshold. The presence was fetid, hollow, yet strangely eager, like a predator starved of prey. It clawed faintly at her mind, tasting her, testing her. She allowed it. What better welcome than the touch of a thing that knew only hunger? It reminded her of herself.
Her armor bore no dust despite the storm's efforts. The runes etched along its pauldrons pulsed faintly, answering the tomb's low resonance with their own steady rhythm. Her hood was drawn, but not to conceal. Her face was calm, deliberate, violet eyes glimmering with that neon sheen that betrayed neither patience nor impatience, only inevitability.
The acolyte was late, or perhaps only slow. She allowed the anticipation to build in the stone around her, in the gnawing Force that hungered for fresh fear. It mattered little. When the child arrived, Virelia would know what was real beneath their mask. Fear. Hunger. Defiance. All of it could be sharpened, stripped, or broken. That was why she had agreed to meet them here, in the valley's open air rather than the safety of a temple cell. Acolytes trained best when the dust of their ancestors was under their nails, and when the shadows of those who failed stared down from the cliffs.
A faint shift in the current of the valley caught her attention. Not sight, not sound, but the ripple of presence that betrayed a footfall far off, still winding its way toward her.
At last.
Virelia's grip tightened, slow, deliberate, on the halberd. She did not move. She wanted the acolyte to see her exactly as she was: waiting, unbothered, inevitable.
