Coffin |
Overseer Vorian Typhis was a man of reason. A scholar, an academic, an expert in the history of the Sith and their craft. He had no patience for superstition, nor for the weak-willed fear of those who whispered about curses and ghosts rather than the documented reality of Sith alchemy.
He was also, though he would never admit it,
wrong.
The texts on the walls
were changing. The sigils he had carefully transcribed seconds ago
no longer matched. The ancient language, the delicate patterns of High Sith inscription, the faded ink of parchment seals—
they rewrote themselves.
Not at once.
Not like some grand display of magic, as though a hidden mechanism had shifted a layer of the stone.
No.
It happened when he wasn't looking.
He'd glance down at his datapad, then back up—
and the text was different. But
only barely. A word altered. A meaning shifted. A phrase replaced with another, still readable, still understandable—
but no longer the same truth as before.
If the Ziggurat was meant to confuse them, it was doing so not with riddles or illusions, but with
the erosion of certainty itself.
A junior researcher, a wiry young man with tired eyes, stood beside one of the pillars, sketching the script into his notebook. His fingers traced the grooves in the stone, murmuring the words under his breath as he recorded them. His voice carried, soft but clear—
"The path will open for those who know the name."
A pause.
He frowned.
He read it again.
"The path is open. The name is known."
His voice caught in his throat. He turned sharply to the Overseer, holding up his notebook. "Sir, the text—"
Vorian barely spared him a glance. "Yes, yes, it's shifting. Record it. If you're behind, you'll have to
start over."
But the young man wasn't looking at his notes anymore.
His eyes were fixed on the stone.
On
his own handwriting.
On
the words he had written, but did not recognize.
Not
in his style.
Not in
his ink.
And yet, there it was, clear as day—
as if he had written it himself.
"They do not know they are already inside."
His stomach lurched.
The wall
had written back.
---
Captain Saelyn Nox stood further back, arms crossed, watching the academic work with thinly veiled irritation. She had no love for Sith tombs, but she knew better than to argue with someone like Typhis. Scholars were always the same—detached, arrogant, thinking themselves untouchable because they had the patience to translate old texts. She'd seen too many like him wind up
dead in places like this.
Still, it wasn't her job to tell him how to do his.
Her job was to keep her people alive.
So far, the research teams were
quietly compliant. They were setting up the temporary research stations, configuring equipment, scanning the architecture—
but something was off.
Some of them worked
too efficiently.
Their movements
too identical.
It was subtle at first. The quiet sound of pencils scratching across parchment, styluses tapping on datapads. But as she watched them, as she saw them
side by side, she began to
notice.
The way two assistants moved
in complete unison.
The way they
traced the same sigil at the exact same time.
The way one of them, a dark-haired woman hunched over a scanning tool, didn't blink for over a minute.
Then—
She did.
But the others did, too.
At the exact same moment.
A ripple crawled over the back of Saelyn's neck.
Her hand twitched toward her sidearm.
She turned to Typhis. "Overseer. Something's wrong with your people."
He sighed, barely looking up from his work. "What now, Captain?"
She opened her mouth to speak—
Then hesitated.
Because the research station behind him was
wrong.
She had been looking at it just
seconds ago.
There had been
three tables. A row of equipment. Data uplinks.
Now—
There were
four.
Another table. Another station. Another set of equipment.
Another set of
researchers.
She hadn't seen them set it up. Hadn't seen them move.
And the worst part—
The worst part was that
they looked exactly the same.
Same faces. Same uniforms.
Same postures, as though copied and pasted from their counterparts beside them.
She stared. Her throat went dry.
The fourth table
had never been there.
But now—
Now it always had been.
---
The walls bled again.
Not
blood—but something worse.
Memory.
A ripple in the stone. A distortion in reality, subtle yet undeniable. The text on the walls moved, pulsed, became
names.
Names of the researchers.
Names of the officers.
Names of the dead.
A name that
did not exist yesterday, but was now written in stone.
Vorian Typhis.
The Overseer looked up. His brow furrowed.
"That's… my name."
But he had never recorded it.
It was
part of the wall now.
A name carved into the tomb, alongside the others who had already been
claimed.
And beneath it, a phrase written in the flowing script of the ancient Sith:
"You cannot research what already belongs to us."
The research assistants continued their work.
Somewhere in the group, someone was still
writing.
Still
copying.
Still
etching.
Still
becoming part of the tomb.
---
Adeline Noctua
The shattered skull lay in fragments at her feet, bone shards sinking into the filth-streaked stone, soaking in the blackened ichor of her own blood.
It had cut her, but she had not felt it.
The past had taken hold.
Not just
a memory, not just the echo of what once was—
but something real. The sensation of wet mud, of chains rattling in the depths of a Huttese den, of hunger, of weakness.
That was what it wanted her to feel.
But Adeline Noctua was no longer weak.
Her will surged, tendrils of dark power snapping up like a barrier around her soul, repelling the intrusion, clawing at the unseen force that
dared to reach into her mind.
It was not the first time something had tried.
She had walked inside the corpses of eldritch things, bathed in the shadows between realms, seen gods
rot from within. She had built herself into something greater, something untouchable.
And yet—this thing was still here.
Still
lingering.
Still
clawing.
Not taking.
Not overpowering.
But watching.
It had touched her mind and found
more than it expected. A labyrinth of forbidden places, of knowledge that should not be walked, of doors locked with
chains that did not belong to this world.
And beneath them, behind them—
The clanging.
A sound that had never stopped. A sound that had always been there, always on the edge of her awareness, always waiting.
Not chains rattling.
Not bindings tightening.
Locks coming undone.
A presence shifted at the edges of her consciousness. Not an invader, not a master, but
a reflection. A thing that had seen the doors inside her mind and was
curious.
"How long have they been locked?"
Not a whisper.
Not a demand.
A simple,
innocent question.
She knew better than to answer.
Adeline
ripped herself free, wrenching her awareness back into her body,
pulling the hood over her face as though to shut out unseen eyes. The runes in the stone pulsed once, as if considering whether to reach for her again, whether to continue peeling back the layers, but her will surged—
And the
Ziggurat hesitated.
For now.
But the
locks were rusting.
And it had
heard them move.
---
Serina Calis
The Ziggurat had
no mercy.
It did not
mock.
It did not
comfort.
It only
showed her the truth.
And truth, when stripped of illusion, when laid bare in the dim glow of the tomb's bleeding runes,
was the cruelest thing of all.
Serina Calis
was alone.
Her name had been
scraped from the wall.
Her past had been
written in stone.
And the future—
her future—remained unwritten.
The walls
knew.
The Ziggurat
knew.
It had reached inside her mind, clawed its way through memory, through pain, through every lie she had told herself to keep moving forward. And in the dark recesses of her mind, in the places she refused to go,
it had found her.
Not the woman who stood here now.
Not the powerful, unshaken, calculated Sith she had built herself into.
But
the girl.
The one who had rigged a speeder to explode.
The one who had turned away as her parents
screamed for her.
The one who had convinced herself that
it was the only way.
That she had no choice.
That it had been for
them.
That it had been for
the future.
And yet, as the tomb pressed closer, as the stone bled and reformed, it carved something else. Something deeper. Something
Serina Calis had never dared ask herself.
"Then why do you regret it?"
The words
etched themselves into the walls before her very eyes.
She could have
denied it.
She could have
ignored it.
But the tears on her face—the ones she never should have shed—
proved otherwise.
Because it wasn't
just her parents.
It wasn't
just Quinn.
It wasn't
just Kaila.
It was her.
The girl she had been. The one she had killed long before the Jedi had ever tried. The one who had never been enough, never been strong enough, never been in control—
so she had buried her.
But
the past does not stay buried in a tomb like this.
The runes
shifted again.
The
final carving had changed.
Before, it had only been
her.
Serina Calis.
Alone.
Forgotten.
But now—
Now, the carving had
two figures.
One standing.
One kneeling.
One
older.
One
younger.
One
watching.
One
pleading.
The second figure
was her.
The girl she had been before she killed her name.
Before she made herself into the woman she was now.
And the wall spoke again, pressing against her thoughts, wrapping itself around her mind like an unseen hand on her throat.
"You are not afraid of dying."
"You are afraid of what you had to kill to get here."
The Ziggurat did not
need to punish her.
It did not need
to break her.
Because
it knew she had already done that herself.
And still—
Still, she stepped forward.
Because
what else was there to do?
---
Eira Dyn
//
Tamsin Graves
The
hatch was gone.
Not sealed. Not hidden. Not locked.
Gone.
As if it had never been there at all.
And yet, they had
stepped through it.
Hadn't they?
The floor beneath them felt too solid. The air too still. No dust in the vents, no scarring of age, no signs of the slow decay that ships abandoned in space should have endured.
It was clean.
Too clean.
The
SIN 'Kaiser' had rewritten itself around them.
It had swallowed them whole.
And now—
it was watching.
The flickering lights did not buzz, did not hum. They moved in
a rhythm. A pulsing cadence, like a slow heartbeat. Like breathing. They
wanted to be followed.
But
the shadows did not match them.
Eira saw them first.
Not directly. Not in motion.
But
in the moments between.
A flicker of light. A shift of darkness.
At first, nothing.
Then—
A figure.
Too fast to track.
Too
still to be a trick of movement.
Just at the edge of her vision, just beyond certainty.
And then
Tamsin felt it.
Not through the Force. Not in the air.
But in
herself.
A familiar pressure, coiling deep inside her mind like a whisper half-formed. A presence
already inside her, waking up.
"Do you feel it?"
Darth Sokar's voice slithered through her mind, curling like a viper ready to strike.
"Do you hear it?"
And then—
Footsteps.
Not their own.
Not coming toward them.
Not running.
Not charging.
Just
walking.
Steady. Measured. Behind them.
But when they turned—
Nothing.
No hatch. No corridor behind them.
Only the path forward.
Only the
lights.
"You should not be here."
The voice
was not Sokar's.
It was
inside Tamsin's head—but it did not belong to her.
It belonged to something else.
Something
beneath her skin.
Something
inside the ship.
Something
wearing her own voice.
"I didn't mean for that to happen."
It was
her voice.
A sentence she had never spoken.
A sentence she had never
needed to speak.
Until now.
And the footsteps—
They were
closer.
---
Zachariah Conway
//
Darth Malum of House Marr
The moment the words left
Darth Latens' lips—
"There is nothing where you are gesturing."—a silence settled over the chamber.
Not the silence of an empty space, nor the quiet reverence of ancient tombs.
This was a
silence that listens.
It spread outward, swallowing even the hum of their breath, the faint clinking of armor, the ever-present weight of the Ziggurat's oppressive air.
Darth Malum had seen the runestone, its script moving
before his very eyes. He had gazed upon words that no longer existed, upon letters that now betrayed him. His apprentice saw nothing—
as if the stone had never held meaning at all.
But that was
impossible.
Malum's thoughts shifted back, methodical, controlled. He had been here long enough to understand when something
wanted to be seen and when it did not. The Ziggurat was choosing. It was speaking, not in the language of the Sith, nor the deep-rooted tongues of their ancestors, but in the fundamental
language of knowing.
Something had changed.
Something
had awakened.
Zachariah felt it too. A slow, creeping sensation at the back of his mind—
like a forgotten memory trying to force its way into the present.
Then—
The runestone
flickered.
Not light. Not illusion.
Existence.
For a single, agonizing second, the ancient etching
snapped back into place, the shifting characters reforming into what Malum had seen before—but then,
it decayed before his eyes.
Not erased.
Undone.
As if reality itself were trying to scrub it away.
And then, like a whisper slithering between cracks in a wall,
it spoke.
"This is the first seal."
The words did not come from the stone.
They did not come from the Force.
They
simply were.
Malum felt it sink into him, a truth so fundamental it did not need to be understood—only known.
This was
one of the locks.
One of the many, woven into the fabric of the Ziggurat.
A prison built in layers.
And this one had already begun
to break.
Not by will.
Not by effort.
By inevitability.
As Zachariah looked back to his master, as Malum considered the weight of what had just occurred, the runestone
crumbled.
A fracture split through its surface. Not a simple break of time-worn stone, but
a wound.
Something
beneath the Ziggurat stirred.
Something that
had not moved in millennia.
The first seal had cracked.
And they had been made to witness it.
---
Kaila Irons
//
Quinn Varanin
The shadows of the Ziggurat stretched
longer than they should have.
As Quinn and Kaila moved, hand in hand, their footfalls echoed in ways that did not belong to them.
Two sets of steps became three. Then four. The Ziggurat had no wind, no breeze, yet the faintest breath of something unseen curled against the skin of their necks.
The
pulse from before had passed.
But its
wake remained.
Kaila's words, her teasing, were meant to pull Quinn from the spiral that Malum had dragged her into. But the deeper they walked, the further the sound of their voices stretched—
as if they were being carried somewhere else.
Somewhere
lower.
Somewhere
waiting.
And then—
Quinn
felt it.
Not through sight. Not through hearing. Not even through the Force.
She
felt the absence.
They had passed through a doorway. A simple threshold, nothing remarkable, nothing distinct—
Yet when she turned to look back, it was
gone.
No passage. No archway.
No entrance.
Just a solid, untouched wall of ancient stone.
They had been
moved.
Not led.
Not tricked.
Simply
placed.
Kaila would feel it next. A
weight pressing at the edges of their minds, not suffocating, not violent—
but undeniable.
And ahead of them, carved into the farthest wall, the runes
bled.
Not shifting like the others.
Not rearranging like the first seal had.
This was
something else.
The inscriptions
peeled away, the markings unfurling,
revealing something beneath.
A name.
Not a Sith name.
Not an ancient title.
Something
personal.
One of their names.
Quinn.
Kaila.
One of them had been
written here.
Not as a warning.
Not as an offering.
But as a truth that had always existed.
And beneath that name—
The second
coffin.
A lock.
A seal.
A waiting truth.
And the Ziggurat knew—
one of them would open it.
---
Alana Calloway
//
QK-2510
The statues had moved.
But they had not walked.
Not stepped.
Not shifted.
They had
been placed.
The moment the words left QK-2510's mouth—
"The statues. That is where we will go."—the weight in the air
deepened.
Not physically. Not in temperature or sound.
But
in meaning.
Alana's pulse thudded against her ribs. A soldier's instinct—her gut, trained by war and survival—was
screaming at her.
Not in fear.
But in
recognition.
Because something about this moment had already happened.
She had already been here.
She had already chosen this.
She had already
walked this path.
The statues loomed, their once-seated forms
locked into place, bodies upright, hands resting in front of them. The carved faces were smooth, featureless save for the
deep, hollow pits where their eyes should have been.
Not a single one of them faced the same direction.
Not a single one of them had the same posture.
Yet they
all stared at the same place.
Alana followed the angle of their empty gazes—
And her stomach
plunged.
Because they were staring at
a coffin.
It sat
perfectly between them, settled at the heart of the vast chamber like a piece of the floor itself. Its surface was smooth, pristine, untouched by time, its color the same deep stone as the walls around it.
But it was
not like the others.
The other coffins were carved, adorned,
marked with names.
This one was blank.
Unclaimed.
Waiting.
A
third lock.
A
third seal.
A presence brushed against their thoughts—not words, not sound,
but knowing.
You came here to find something.
Alana's breath hitched.
The statues had moved.
They had placed her here.
You are not lost.
QK-2510's helmet display flickered again.
More names.
Names that should not be here. Names that were ghosts.
Names of
her own squad.
Alana felt something
crawl through her veins, something that had
always been here, waiting, watching.
The statues remained still.
But the coffin was
closer.
Not by distance.
Not by movement.
By inevitability.
One of them would open it.
---
Trayze Tesar
The Kaiser did not breathe.
It did not have lungs. It did not have a pulse.
Yet Trayze could hear it.
The steady, drawn-out exhale of something vast, something that knew him, something that had waited—
too long.
He had measured. Six point three five millimeters. A shift. A correction. A place settling into what it was
supposed to be.
But where did that leave him?
He moved forward. Alone, but not alone.
His boots touched the floor in even, measured steps.
No echoes.
There should have been echoes.
Trayze knew how sound traveled in dead spaces. He knew how long it should take for the sound of his footfalls to bounce back to him. He could calculate the distance, the depth, the architecture.
And yet, there was only silence.
Not absence.
Swallowing.
Something was
taking the sound before it could return.
His squad was gone. The hangar was
behind him.
And yet.
He could hear them.
They had not spoken, but he could hear them.
Somedod's voice—his words repeated, but slower, warped, like they had been recorded and played back on
tape stretched too thin.
"May... May the Force... be with you."
Then, fainter.
"We will, sir."
Trayze stopped walking.
Because he knew—
they had not said that twice.
His breath steadied, controlled, even as the air thickened around him. His fingers twitched at his sides, calculating.
The Kaiser was
not all there was.
He was not merely inside it.
It was inside of him.
It was reading him.
The corridor stretched forward, impossibly long. The same way the statues had moved without moving. The same way six point three five millimeters had corrected itself.
But ahead of him—
There was a door.
Not on the schematics.
Not in the briefings.
It was metal, older than the rest of the ship's interior, as if it had been placed here
before the ship was even built.
The symbols on it shifted, moving too smoothly, as if they had never been carved, but
grown into the surface like veins under translucent skin.
The Force whispered against his senses.
Not a warning.
Not a command.
A
revelation.
"One step closer."
It was not a voice.
It was
knowing.
And as Trayze moved closer—
the door unlocked.
The handle had already been turned.
By
someone.
By
him.
---
Taeli Raaf
//
Allyson Locke
The stone shifted again.
Not just the runes. Not just the walls.
Everything.
A slow, inevitable change—like water eroding rock, like roots pushing through foundation. It was not sudden, not a violent quake or a shattering collapse.
It was quieter than that. More insidious.
Because it had always been happening.
The moment they entered, the Ziggurat had begun to reshape itself around them.
The dust on the ground was undisturbed. The walls bore no sign of movement. And yet—Allyson's shadow had changed.
It stretched now, longer than it should have, even in the dim light of their surroundings. It flickered as she moved,
but the silhouette did not match her stance.
It
lingered.
Watching.
Listening.
And when Taeli's hand cleaved stone, when the sliver flew through the air toward Allyson—
It did not land in her palm.
It stopped.
Suspended.
For the smallest fraction of a second, it hovered—
held by nothing.
And then, as if realizing its mistake, the stone dropped into Allyson's waiting hand. A tiny delay. Barely noticeable.
But it had been there.
And now, the pressure in the air thickened. The
presence Taeli had felt before was no longer merely pushing in on them.
It was
responding.
From deeper in the tomb, something stirred. Not the shuffle of feet, not the grinding of stone.
A breath.
Not drawn in.
Exhaled.
The path before them darkened. The lights did not dim. No flame flickered, no power wavered. And yet,
there was more darkness now.
More than there had been.
Taeli had spoken truth. The Ziggurat was a shape imposed on reality, sculpted by something trapped within.
And the more they understood it—
The closer they came to
knowing its name—
The closer it came to knowing them.
Somewhere ahead, something was waiting.
And worse…
Something else had already begun to move.
Darth Fury
