First Reply What Words For The Traitor?

[Darth Virelia]

"Wisdom of the Ancients."

Tags - OPEN

It had been a long night.

Down here, beneath stone and lineage, darkness did not merely linger — it reigned. No amount of light Virelia's six violet eyes cast could dislodge it. The air was thick with dust and age, every drifting particle a reminder that the dead had been breathing this space far longer than she had ever lived.

Escape had proven… difficult.

The Force was still severed from her, leaving her hollow in ways she hated to acknowledge. Only the armour — the masterwork of ritual, alchemy, and cruelty — kept her corrupted soul anchored to flesh. A mercy, perhaps. Or a sentence. Either way, it kept her alive when her own strength could not.

The great slab sealing the tomb loomed above her, ancient, unmoving, carved with the names of ancestors who had never known her. Without the Force, she could not lift it. Even with her armour, she was simply not strong enough. She pushed anyway, fingers scraping stone, muscles trembling.

Nothing.

The weight did not budge. Not even out of spite.

A humourless breath escaped her.

"A little beyond my station," she muttered into the stale dark.

She had lost track of how long she'd been trapped down here. Time did not pass in the tomb — it congealed. Meaningless. The firekeeper should have opened the slab by now. Should have freed her. Unless he couldn't. Unless he wouldn't. Dead, perhaps. Or perhaps this was simply another one of his riddles disguised as mercy — another "lesson." The thought made her jaw tighten. If she had ever truly taken a master, she would have killed them within a month. Teaching was nothing but pain masquerading as wisdom, and she had had enough of both.

She rolled her shoulders, armour plates shifting softly in the stale air, and turned deeper into the tomb. If she was to escape, she would have to make her own exit. Perhaps there was a lever somewhere. A mechanism hidden in the walls. Or perhaps the Calis ancestors had been sentimental enough to build a failsafe for the entombed — unlikely, but desperation lowered her standards. The smell wasn't as foul as she expected. In fact, the air was unnervingly clear — too clear. As though the dead breathed a purer atmosphere than the living.

Virelia exhaled slowly, violets eyes sweeping the stone corridor.

"Well," she murmured to the dark, "if salvation is to be found among corpses… I suppose family is as good a place as any to start."

At least the architecture was a positive. She in fact liked the sound of her own voice.

 

[Her]

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Chandrila, Core Worlds;
Tag: Darth Virelia

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It had been at 06:18 standard hours, Chandrilan, when an unidentified flying object was sighted in the skylines out near Nayli. Imperials patrols were scrambled quickly to intercept it, but by the time they had mobilised at the city, it had gone in a flash. Still, this new occupation are fervent and relentless in their pursuits, so the scream of TIEs are a familiar sound as they fervently pursue their inquiries and search for the trespasser that had been reported to them. The pitch of their engines plays somewhere nearby, in the off-drop, as the mouth of the Ufo opens and a Sith Lord steps upon the lands of Chandrila for the first time since the fall of the Old Republic.

At this early hour of the morning it is freezing cold, but if you are patient enough then night will soon turn to day, even at this time of year. Days are short in supply at winter but the natives make do with what sunlight they have left, and the interloper trespassing upon their lands will make do as well. Artificial light basks Her in it's glow momentarily but disappears quickly as the mouth of her ship closes suspending her in that moment between night and day that we call dawn. Gloved hands, and a cloak, offer her protection against the elements as the Sith turns to look up at the mountainside where her quarry lays unknowingly to them-- entombed and shackled to the past.

Birds coo in the nearby trees playing their morning song, and the air itself appears in white wisps as Her breathes in her surroundings. Averting her gaze from the mountainside to look around herself, she has to quietly admit that this is better. Too much time has been spent in polluted cities of the Imperial remnants, and Enarc was no different, although those sycophantic do-gooders in the Southern systems might try to argue differently. The air here is fresh, and nature is something of a luxury rarely afforded to Her these days. You have to take these moments whenever they come, and not for granted, when you live a life like hers.

Not even Malachor, with its intense jungle and humidity, could help to relax her when it came to dealing with the Dark Court. But this place? Yes, the Chandrilans have done well to look after their heritage. Perhaps, in the years to come, as they begin their lives in the new Imperial regime that has taken over, this will all be different in the future. Nayli itself might become just as corrupt and polluted as Lianna City was today.

There is an irony somewhere in there for both the masters of the Chandrilese and Liann would argue that they are not the same.

But Her knows better than that. Rhetoric is something that she deals in often, and the other that she has come to find has similar dealings. That was why they had come together in Northwest to commence their cover-up. Still, it is easy to lose yourself in the lies and deceit when you deal it often. Just ask their victims from the Fifth Wing. Those who come and know Her, with what little that they do know, have seen that thousand-year stare into space. The eyes are windows in the soul, and this woman is as lost as they come. Irony seems to surround this enigma as she looks back up to the mountainside. After all, hasn't she come to find the Dark Queen?

The high pitched whir of TIEs seem to grow more distant with every passing minute until Her cannot hear them anymore. Behind the Dark Lord, the Ufo appears small, and timid hidden in the brush of the landscape. It will be difficult to find, she thinks quietly to herself. Tracking someone like Virelia is a tough thing to accomplish, but Her has managed it, and the tyrant has led her to this place. It isn't often that she doesn't know the ins and outs of the people that she works with, and the Dark Queen has been a helpful co-conspirator to the Sith amid the Imperial remnants, but there is only so much that Her knows about the tyrant.

As she stands there at the base of the mountainside, Her cannot detect Virelia's presence in the Force, and for a moment, she considers that this dangerous trip into the Core Worlds might have been for nothing. But then she sees it. Above them, even as the strands of morning light were beginning to peel through grey clouds, Her can see the eternal flame stoked by the Firekeeper. They tell her that someone is up there, and the momentary doubt passes. Perhaps her intel wasn't wrong. Maybe Virelia is here as she was first led to believe.

The Force propels the Dark Lord up, and as she begins her ascent, Her has no qualms about using her abilities to scale this mountain until she reaches the top. As she ascends upwards the clouds begin to break and morning sun basks the enigma in it's glow as Her continues to climb up. However, it doesn't help to elevate or to fend off the cold licking at her the further she climbs upwards. Jagged rocks, and frost, serve as traps. Frostbite, and gale winds, threaten to send Her plummeting to the bottom. But she endures natures pitfalls to keep up the pace of the climb. There is a time for patience, and then there is a time to act. Ayra has been a good teacher, Her would reluctantly admit to herself.

A gloved hand reaches out over the edge. Fingers grip it, and a pair of palms help Her to heave themselves up and over the ledge. Even with their considerable command over the Force, the Dark Lord's legs feel heavy, and sweat clings onto their skin, as she finishes the climb. It is well into morning time now, and dawn has broken into early day, by the time Her has finished her ascension up the mountainside. Up there she is greeted with the sight of a shrine that she did not recognise or know about. Chandrilan customs were something that Her wasn't an expert in, but, perhaps by days end, she might come to learn a thing or two.

A lifetime ago Her had come here, just once, as an attaché to a meeting attended by Sochi Ru regarding something that she couldn't remember now. Memories tend to fade away into myth when you are this deep into the ways of the dark-side. However, she could recall that it had been somewhere out there in Hanna City, and they hadn't stayed long enough to learn more about the world or their people to give Her any insight into why Virelia had come here. Back then the Republic were at war so the priority had always been to their duty as peacekeepers rather than to study or understand the place that they were fighting to protect.

Indeed, the Jedi lost their way. Her always figured that was why Virelia had left the Order just like she had done.

As cold air blew through her dark robes, almost threatening to send her toppling back over the ledge, Her begins her march into the shrine. The warmth and glow of the eternal flame, held by some type of brazier, was a welcomed thing at this altitude. It is bitterly cold, and not somewhere humans should be, but Her will continue to endure the elements as she searches for her quarry. As she explores the shrine, Her discovered several tombs inscribed with letters and signs that she doesn't understand. It becomes clearer, however, that this is an old place, and perhaps, if she had still been a Jedi, then she would know about the customs and rituals of the people who live on Chandrila that would give her some kind of insight into the Dark Queen and why she had come here. Study of the Force, cultures, and more, were supposed to be in their remit, after all.

But Her is an ignorant girl, and arrogant to their core. But wasn't that why Darth Virelia, the Tyrant of Malachor, invited the enigma into her court in the first place?

---

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Wisdom of the Ancients."

Tags - Her

The darkness thickened as she descended, her six violet eyes casting narrow, imperious cones of light across the stone faces of the dead. The Calis line stretched before her in sculpted silence—warriors, kings, statesmen, scholars—each rendered in marble, each reduced to dust beneath it. Their deeds were long gone; only the words carved beneath their feet dared to preserve splendor now swallowed by centuries.

The Calis were never a quiet line. They had lived loud, lived large, carved their marks into the flesh of history. But in the end, all their triumphs led here: this narrow hall, this stillness, this unbroken hush. Until she arrived. Until she shattered it.

She paused before them, letting their hollow eyes settle upon her. Their empty stares seemed to probe the hollows of her soul, weighing her on scales that had judged generations before her. Would they praise her? Exalt her? Name her worthy of the blood she carried?

Or would they condemn her as so many others had? A pretender. A failure. A corruption of the line. The thought curled in her chest like smoke.

Strange, that she could murder her own parents without hesitation—without even the flicker of doubt—yet find herself unsettled by the imagined judgment of ancestors she had never known.

Strange… and telling.

"Rest easy, blood of my blood," Virelia murmured, letting her gauntleted hand rest atop the nearest tomb. The gesture felt foreign—respect, restrained and genuine, something she normally reserved only for soldiers. They were the only ones she had ever regarded as worthy of such sentiment, the only ones whose sacrifices she understood instinctively. Yet here, among the silent dead of her own line, the feeling crept through her unbidden, unsettling in its sincerity.

She moved deeper into the tomb, emerging into a small circular chamber. Frescos covered the curved walls, vibrant despite the centuries. Battles won. Sieges broken. Triumph upon triumph painted in strokes of ancient pride. One fresco depicted a coronation—an old king crowned beneath a banner she barely recognized. Renauld, perhaps. Or another lord whose name she had never bothered to commit to memory. Knowledge of her line had never been her priority, though now, confronted by their weight, she wished she knew more.

It was there—just as she studied the painted crown—that she felt it: the faintest tap between her shoulder blades. Not the Force. She was cut and would have known that instantly. This was physical, deliberate, impossible. She turned sharply, eyes blazing violet through the gloom… and saw nothing.

For a heartbeat, the silence returned to normal. Then her instincts twisted.

Someone was behind her. Not here in the chamber, but back along the corridor she had come from—far enough to remain unseen, close enough that she could feel the disturbance in the still air. Her senses sharpened as the hairs along her neck rose. Whoever it was had not yet revealed themselves, and in this armour she had no hope of hiding. Stealth was not one of its virtues.

But deception was.

So she inhaled once, slow and even, and turned her attention back to the fresco as though nothing had happened. She let her shoulders loosen, posture shift, the illusion of ignorance settling over her like a velvet cloak. Her gaze fixed on the scene of an ancient siege while every muscle in her body coiled with poised expectation.

 

[Her]

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Chandrila, Core Worlds;
Tag: Darth Virelia

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Clack. Klack. Claaack.

It is an ominous thing to hear in the dark when you think that you are alone, in a place where nobody is expected, or where you cannot be found only to look over your shoulder and to stare into the abyss to hear the clacking of boots upon the ancient floor of this tomb ringing out there in the nether on the approach towards you. Could they belong to Dominic? No, of course not. That wouldn't make sense. So it must be the Firekeeper who brought you down here, and now he is on his way to let you out. Can someone like Virelia feel such a feeling of relief as the key to freedom appeared to be coming for her?

Or is it Serina Calis locked in this tomb surrounded by her forbearers, and ancestors, trapped in the rock?

Locked in here with someone who has been turned into an enemy?

Claack. Klaaack.

Snow and frost falls into the cavity like ash on the wind as Her walked into the hallway ahead. Faint morning light fell through the entrance into the tomb, and was subsequently swallowed by the darkness, as the Dark Lord traversed the annuals of the Calis linage in search of their dark daughter. Her lowered her hand down to their waist and produced a Lightsaber blade to illuminate the rest of the way. As she pressed down upon the ignition button, and raised the hilt above them to engulf themselves in crimson light, Her squinted ahead only to see nothing. But it is as the Jedi like to say. Sometimes your eyes can deceive you.

Lifting her other hand up, Her lowered her head in concentration and felt out with the Force while she walked. Although her quarry-- the Dark Queen-- had lost their powers, Her could feel that someone that she knew was close-by and so was guided towards them. For what? Why had Her come all this way, into the heart of the new Imperial occupation reigning upon Chandrila, for Virelia?

Clack, clack, clack, clack, klaaack.

They both knew something about each other that they would like to think the other did not know about. When Serina had taken the test in Northwest she had exposed herself to the same Sith Lord who was now in the heart of the Calis tomb looking for her. They were not friends, or partners. Associates was the most loosest of terms one could describe their dichotomy. A means to an end. Were they both self-aware enough to realise that eventually-- inevitability-- betrayal would come between them? That when the work was done, and the time was right, that they would sink the knife into each others hearts in the pursuit of power?

Serina... Virelia. They had served the conspiracy well as the quiet, silent partner. The subsequent cover-up of the Fifth Wing, and elimination of the terrorist cell amid the Imperial remnants, had allowed the paradigms put into action by Darth Ayra to continue in spite of the suspicious circumstances leading to the eventual loss of the first Imperial occupation of the Outer Rim systems (in the Tion Hegemony) and the beginning of the second one recently instituted under the umbrella of the Imperial Confederation.

Perhaps now, after two years of work, the time had come to close shop.

Before this Dark Queen did precisely what she had done to her friend in the Northwest test.

"You hack people. I hack time."

Claaack. Claack. Klaack.

When you are down here in the dark it is easy to lose a track of time. As she traversed the tomb to find Virelia, Her wondered if it had only been mere hours, or a full day, since she had landed the Ufo at the base of the mountainside. It was enough to make her mad. Since entering into Ayra's apprenticeship, Her has had a quiet fixation on the strands of time. So much of it has passed over the years lost to a blend and sycophancy of famine, disease and war across the stars. It was so easy to lose it. So, the clacking of her boots increased tenfold as she hurried her excavation of the tomb.

Time waits for no evil.

Hissssssssss.

The hum of a Lightsaber sizzles at the entry point as Her comes to a stop after finally finding who she had come all this way for. She stares up ahead at the tyrant from Malachor V. It is the type of look Virelia has seen before-- the quiet, and calculative one of someone looking to capitalize on weakness. The Dark Queen is a long way away from her powerbase, and she appears to be hurt. No power emanates from her anymore. Opportunists dream of these types of moments, but not everything is perfect.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Heartbeats quicken, and intensify, to the beat of war drums, and anarchy. It wasn't Dominic, or the Firekeeper, who were on their way to let Virelia go after all. It was just Her and the smell of murder blends well with the dust in the air. Is this the end for one of them, or the beginning of something new?

---

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Wisdom of the Ancients."

Tags - Her

"The armor before you is a unique phrik composite," Virelia said without turning, her voice smooth and unhurried. "Designed to drink the heat of a lightsaber and spit it back as nothing. If you've come to kill me, you'll need something far less elegant."

She traced a fingertip along the fresco as though explaining the composition of stone, not her own execution.

"A standard kinetic rifle, ten-millimeter or higher, fired from a stable perch. Armor-piercing. Clean entry. A sniper's discipline." A small pause. "If you're ambitious, a twenty-millimeter anti-materiel round will split the composite and lodge neatly in my ribs. Overpenetration ruins the corpse. Precision does not."

It irritated her how often her enemies forgot such simple truths. They brought light to a battlefield that demanded gravity, bringing sabers to a war fought best with weight and gunmetal. Only then did she lower her hand from the wall. She still did not turn.

"I don't know who you are," she admitted quietly, though the admission held no vulnerability. "Or how you found your way into my ancestors' bones."

Her six violet eyes narrowed at the fresco of a long-dead king, her back still exposed to the intruder, her posture regal, unbothered, defiant.

"But you interrupt me."

A beat.

"Do you know where you stand?" Virelia asked, voice low and measured. "This is not merely a tomb. It is the cradle of one of Chandrila's oldest bloodlines. Kings, queens, tyrants—names forgotten by the ignorant, but etched into the bedrock of this world. Their bones sleep beneath your boots."

She let her hand glide along the fresco, stopping at a depiction of a great siege. Her gaze never left the wall, not even for a heartbeat.

"They shaped more than a planet," she continued. "The institutions you take for granted—the assumptions that govern the galaxy—were forged by their hands. Their ambition. Their decrees. Their corruption."

Her fingers paused on the painted figure of a crowned ruler, and her voice dropped to a whisper of iron.

"And all of that—every victory, every atrocity, every dream of dominion—flows now in the veins of one living heir."

She stopped tracing the wall. The silence became a living thing.

"If the darkness wanted me dead today," she said, almost gently, "it would not trouble itself with you. It would flick a single switch and be done."

A pause. A breathless hush.

"What you do with that truth… is yours alone, but take my advice."

Her hand drifted to her side—loose, composed, yet coiled with silent readiness. The tilt of her head lowered her gaze, casting her violet eyes downward into the depths below.

"It is unwise," she murmured, "to set yourself against the ancient abyss that shapes this galaxy. They drown kings… and erase gods."

 

[Her]

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Chandrila, Core Worlds;
Tag: Darth Virelia

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Hurrrrrmmmm.

The hum of an active Lightsaber emitted a soft hum in the dark tomb while Her squared off with Darth Virelia. It was a comfortable weight in her hand as she stood in this place amid the words spoken aloud by the Malachor tyrant as they described their own defences; and how the enigmatic woman, whom she had first met towards the end of the first Imperial occupation of the Tion Hegemony, had already made a mistake if she had come all this way to murder the Dark Queen through the revelation of their position.

There were many ways to kill a person. Virelia described one such way. The unexpected hit from a well armed and precise assassin that would take her out before she knew what had hit her. Her had other ideas as well. There was the one such idea like thirst caused by a trap manufactured in the tomb of Virelia's ancestors. A cave in, or artificial entombment, which would cut the tyrant off from the basic necessities. Then there was also asphyxiation. A well placed fire, followed by the smoke, that could fill these ancient place in a matter of minutes to suffocate anybody inside; and if Her had the patience she could, in theory, prevent Virelia from leaving this place at all to let the hunger settle in until she gave into it, or became too weak to lift their arms to protect themselves.

Outside, above them, also loomed the patrols of a nascent, reconsecrated Galactic Empire. With a well placed ping Her could have the entire star sector locked down by Imperial patrols, and within the scope of a few hours, or days, people from the Dark Side Elite would undoubtedly be deployed planetside to hunt down, find, and summarily execute the rogue Sith Lord who had dared to come home. It wasn't outside of Her's character to let others do the dirty work, and unlike Virelia, she had the means of surviving the nefarious Dark Jedi (and other agents of the Galactic Emperor) with a well placed source among the New Sith Order who would not want their apprentice to join their growing list of victims.

Lastly there were the old ways. The weapon in her hand might have once been used to protect the galaxy from Virelia's ilk, but today, after all that had happened, Her had constructed this Lightsaber only to maim, intimidate or murder. She felt no power from woman up ahead-- even now-- as she stood up close and as personal as she could get with them. Therefore Her didn't think it would be difficult to kill Virelia at this time. She didn't underestimate her potential opponent. That could get you killed in this work. But as they stood here, in this place, Her looked upon someone who appeared to be a shadow of their former self, and that inspired confidence in their own abilities in the Force.

As Darth Virelia described the past, and how those buried here had created a family line of kings, queens or tyrants which were all epitomized in the one lonely, solitary figure standing among their graves, Her found that she didn't care about Serina Calis' family lineage, or history, or how these predecessors had built up the foundations for civilization in the Core Worlds or how this history had all been manifested by their dark daughter centuries, perhaps a millennia, after they each lived and passed on. The new regime on Coruscant didn't neither. Give it a decade or two and Chandrila would be forever transformed, and subsequently changed forever, for time eroded and erased all.

Perhaps today Her would erase the Calis line once and for all by herself as well.

"It is unwise," she murmured, "to set yourself against the ancient abyss that shapes this galaxy. They drown kings… and erase gods."

"Erasure has been something of a fixation for me," Her replied as she broke the long, unnatural silence which had followed Virelia's veiled threat. "The project is close to reaching new heights. It is only now a matter of time until it reaches it's fruition. I had hoped that you would be more involved. But here we are."

Virelia, as a quiet partner of Her's schemes, was, at least, partially aware of what they were alluding to. They had, after all, been sharing and trading information with each other for quite sometime as they schemed amongst or against the Sith. Her was, of course, making alludes towards Project Tion: the clandestine operation opened by the Imperial Corrections Directorate, under the authority of Empress Liraeth Deschart, for the revitalization of Imperialism along the Outer Rim systems which had seen to the attacks on several strongholds across the Stygian Caldera during the Battle of Brosi.

The first wave launched by the Imperial remnants (banded together inside the Imperial Confederation) had failed to claim victory at Brosi. But they were now set to come back and finish what they had started. Her would make sure of it. While one part of the conspiracy continued to blossom in or around the Tion Hegemony (as it had for the past two years) another had not. Virelia had been useful, at least, in the beginning of the conspiracy through the elimination of the remaining Fifth Wing operatives leftover from the Sartinaynian Crisis, and the formation of VesperWorks.

But, in recent times, the well had all but dried up for Her when it came to the former Dark Jedi turned Sith Lord.

She couldn't afford to continue letting the Dark Queen live while Virelia knew enough to cause a catastrophe that would ruin the work against the Thandon-Sith, particularly, when their schemes, which had, at one point in time, overlapped and now threatened to diverge away from the other therefore risking ruination for them both. Yet, as the Lightsaber hummed and sizzled in the cold, dark, dust filled tomb of the Calis lineage, Her felt the familiar conflict stirring up like a beast within raising it's snout at the prospect of sinking their teeth into sinew and bone only to be filled with the anxiety and trepidation of tearing apart something that was of importance to them.

There were many reasons why Her had made contact with Serina Calis after the Empire of the Lost collapsed into economic ruin. At the time her connections inside the Sith Order (with the Tsis'Kaar) were of interest to Her, and after the Northwest test, she had found a determined fledgling Sith who possessed ideas to rise up the ranks of the Eleventh Sith Empire all the way to the top. A lot could have been accomplished with the work if Calis had fulfilled their goals for ascension. But, then again, that wasn't entirely the reason behind their connection in the first place. Usability, and positions of power, were only symptoms of their connections or work. But these were the reasons not why Her had brought Serina Calis into their life in the first place.

In truth it came down to their adolescence. A different life that had been left behind. Both the Dark Queen, and the Dark Lord of the Sith, at least once upon a time, had been Jedi. There was a familiarity between the two women that sat on the borderline between mere associate or a co-conspirator to that of family. This was what it was like to grow up among the scholars, monks and bastions of the light. Indoctrination, or familial bonds. It was hard to take your pick between either of them, even now, as they loomed on the precipice of murder.

Although Serina and Her had grown up in different times (in different eras) there had been the unmistakable urge to reach out to someone who had a familiar kinship too when their respective work had overlapped with the other. The assassination of the Fifth Wing, and the subsequent cover-up of Her's involvement in the Sartinaynian Crisis (that she and the terrorist cell had orchestrated together), could have been performed by anyone. Yet, Her had arranged it for Serina to do it, and while it was certainly a twisted relationship seeped in murder and conspiracy, they had nevertheless made a connection with one another through their powers in the dark-side.

In the dark Her had found another Jedi. Someone who had left the Order as well, and who had begun the walk down the path of the dark-side, just like she had done. They could not call each other sisters, or friends. Serina and Her had never been family, and the erasure of Serina Calis in order to become Darth Virelia had, in essence, destroyed any chance of such a relationship blossoming, in particular, for Her. After all there could only be two. Yet, the Lightsaber in her hand felt heavier than usual. Her had yet to kill a Jedi, or in the form of Darth Virelia, a former one. Could she really do it today?

"When you were exiled from the Sith Order I considered killing you back then," Her admitted almost to themselves. It was like she was trying to convince herself to do it. To kill Virelia just like she had travelled all this way to do. "But then you invited me into your court, and you took Malachor with a new powerbase. I thought to myself that I could use that. That my friend was still someone that could finish what I had started with Carnifex."

As she spoke Her begun pacing up and down the entryway from the hallway behind them into the tomb. Seething on her dark-side powers in order to draw strength and power from Dun Moch. "You were motivated back when you were on Polis Massa to conspire against the Sith. But then they exiled you. I thought that you would have been even more dangerous. Vengeful. But I have not seen or felt that. All I can see is someone who has been ruined, and who came home because they did not know where else to go."

The crimson red light emanating from Her's hilt served as a continued reminder to Virelia as her quarry spoke about what could have been, and what had not.

"If you could be convinced to commit to my work then I needn't kill you, Serina. I am so very close. You could be there, with me, at the end. When it is done we can kill Ayra, and even the Emperor, together. We can takeover. Make everything right again."

If she had ever truly taken a master, she would have killed them within a month. Teaching was nothing but pain masquerading as wisdom, and she had had enough of both.

"Become my Sith apprentice..." Her hissed across the din. "...and I will spare your life tonight. As your master!"

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[Darth Virelia]

"Wisdom of the Ancients."

Tags - Her

Was this meant to be mercy? The mercy of bowing her head to the very woman who had come here to kill her?

How tedious.

Every soul Virelia had ever crossed—Jedi, Sith, warlords, visionaries—believed themselves living at the precipice of some grand epoch. A final age. The moment when darkness or light would at last remake the galaxy in its own image. Such people always imagined themselves as the fulcrum of destiny, the chosen architects of a future shaped by their triumph.

And it was always delusion.

She had seen enough schemes collapse, enough empires rot from within, to know that no throne built on self-deception could stand. A kingdom fashioned by the deceived is no kingdom at all, only a prelude to ruin.

The Dark Side excelled at such lies. It whispered of revolutions, of cosmic correction, of worlds reborn in eternal night or unending order. It told its devotees that they could rewrite the laws of the galaxy itself if only they sacrificed a little more, bled a little more, submitted a little more.

But the galaxy did not change. It never had.

It remained what it had always been, a cold, indifferent, immeasurable and empty place.

And unlike the swine clawing at illusions of purpose, Virelia had long since accepted that truth. She felt it in the hollow where her heart had once lived. She felt it in the darkness that had replaced it.

To kneel before another's fantasy? That was a lie she would never utter.

"You flatter me," Virelia said softly. "But I never cared to make anything 'right.'"

She still did not turn. Her gaze remained fixed on the fresco before her—on the painted faces of kings and tyrants whose blood still whispered in her veins.

"There was only ever one thing I wanted," she continued, her voice level, almost serene. "To belong. To understand myself. To be loved by someone I could love in return."

A faint exhale left her mask.

"That era is gone. Whatever principles I once held, whatever reasons I once clung to… they died long before I reached this tomb. Love, care, compassion—they are relics now. Pretty myths for children and cowards."

Her fingers brushed the painted stone. Her tone hardened.

"There is no 'right' in this galaxy. No divine arbiter. No cosmic justice waiting to reward the virtuous. There is only the contest of wills. One climbs; one falls. One devours; one is devoured."

Finally, she lowered her hand.

"In the end, there is only power—and the resolve to take it."
At last she turned.

Six violet eyes slid toward the intruder, luminous and predatory in the tomb's darkness. As her gaze met Her's, one hand drifted outward—fingers unfurling into long, taloned claws, silent shapes born of instinct and violence.

"I am ruined," she said, the words soft but forged of iron. "Not even the echo of the woman I once pretended to be. What remains is hollow—stripped of purpose, stripped of certainty, stripped of anything that might resemble kinship or fire."

The shadows writhed slowly at her fingertips.

"I sought meaning once. A place. A people. A reason to draw breath. All of that is ash now. Burned out. Buried."
A pause.

"What stands before you is nothing noble. Nothing righteous. I am a vessel for the dark, shaped only to corrupt and to command. You see no spark in me because the spark died long ago. And the light—"

Her head tilted, those six eyes narrowing violently.

"—the light didn't simply fade. I extinguished it. Utterly. Completely."

The darkness around her hand sharpened to a killing edge.

"What remains," she murmured, "is the inevitable answer to everything the galaxy tried to shape me into. No longer woman, no longer warrior—just a formless shadow given will. Something that bends, twists, and reshapes itself into whatever the moment demands. A corruption without boundary. A darkness that chooses its own silhouette."