Private The Crucible of Command

[Darth Prazutis]

Dromund Kaas, New Kaas City, The Sith Citadel, Citadel Approach, Eastern Gate Bastion, Security Checkpoint Alpha

She was expected.

But that did not mean she was welcome.

As her shuttle pierced the suffocating stormclouds of Dromund Kaas, the planet's wrath greeted her like an old wound that had been torn open, lightning ripping across the sky in jagged veins of purple fire, thunder that cracked like the splitting of bone. The Sith Citadel loomed beyond, not as a building, but as a mountain of purpose. It was a fortress of hate and blackstone, carved by will and blood into the very skin of the world. It didn't merely rise above the city around it. It crushed it, destroyed it. The descent brought her within range of the Outer Perimeter, where thirty-meter-thick obsidian walls stretched across the horizon and beyond, like towering barriers that separated two worlds. Gun-citadels flanked the bastion, their weapon arrays quietly tracking her vessel as it moved through the sky, not targeting, not yet at least. But watching. Calculating, waiting. The air warped with unseen pressure gnawing at the senses, and below the walls, entrapment spikes glinted in anticipation, eager for uninvited guests.

As her vessel touched down, Koshûtaral Sentinels were already in formation, crimson-clad, expressionless, their armor adorned with dark geomantic inscriptions of death and duty. Behind them loomed spiderlike ARAC-6 Irontide bots, silent sentinels with claws ready for eager dismemberment. No words were spoken. Her clearance had been received. But she would still be scanned. She would still be watched, every step, every breath she took was observed. Her steps onto the blacksteel causeway echoed unnaturally loud as the citadel's gate yawned open, seemingly not through hydraulics, but as if reality itself had chosen to allow her entry into this new world. The archway brimmed with a dark side nexus field, the temperature plummeted as she broke the threshhold, her esence disrupted the stillness. A darkness settled heavily on the shoulders as she moved. The air tasted of copper and ash. A faint scream echoed through the walls then.

The Citadel did not greet. It swallowed. From the very moment that the woman known as Serina Calis crossed the outer perimeter, the air itself turned against her, targeting her like she was its foe. It thickened, oppressive and very much alive, charged with whispers that had no mouths to speak. The shadows lengthened unnaturally beneath her boots, as though reluctant to release her to the next step deeper within, it was like they came alive reaching off the walls. The Sith Citadel was no mere fortress. It was a monolith of intent, of power honed and weaponized into a labyrinth of horrors. The Koshûtaral Sentinels eyed her with unflinching menace as she passed. Their silver-bladed polearms clicked once in ritual sync, a warning more than a greeting while others pulled on blaster weapons. Along the higher levels, Blackblade Guardsmen watched like gargoyles in black warplate, utterly still save for the faint hum of augmentations pulsing beneath their skin.

It was a nightmarish horde of legions, stalking monsters and low flying horrors overhead. Enough forces to overtake worlds, burn civilizations beneath a living crucible of fire. Serina's reflection rippled in the polished blackstone beneath her feet, distorted, twisted. The deeper she walked into the belly of the Sith Citadel, the more the corridors began to shift. Architecture seemed to bow inward unnaturally. Lights flickered not from circuitry, this dark fusion of technology and sorcery, but from the will of the Dark Side itself. In the distance, shrieks rang out directionless, rocking through the halls like a cold wind, a draft carried the scent of burnt ozone and blood. The air was no longer air, it was memory. Screams of the dead echoed faintly from the walls here, burying itself, layering beneath her own heartbeat. The woman would find her own doubts whispering back at her, in familiar voices, in her own voice. She passed beneath immense blood-lock gates, the stone pulsing to the dark harmony of her presence. The Sentinels, the Blackblades, the Crownguard, all said nothing.

They didn't have to. Her summons had come from the very apex of Sith power, to refuse such was to die. When she entered the Sanctuary of Victory, the temperature dropped. It was a cathedral of conquest, its towering blackstone pillars etched with the names of battles, wars won and civilizations erased. Crimson holomaps flickered in the air like ghosts, their contents displaying endless theaters of war across the galaxy, each conflict conflict frozen at the moment of domination. The air was sharp with ozone and tension, and every step echoed like a drumbeat in a grand campaign. This was not a place of emotion, it was where victory was forged through intellect, precision, and merciless foresight. Cold, cerebral, and severe, the space seemed to exude thought itself. The minds of a thousand warlords, commanders, strategists, and visionaries had passed through these halls. The walls knew war well. All through it figures robed and armored stood, in huddled conversations too distant to be observed, while other's eyes were locked on consoles. All bore the darkened presence there was no doubt of their identity, these were Sith.

Then came the Mind's Crucible. A vast circular chamber with no doors, no visible exit, only one entrance, and no promise of return. The stone floor bore etchings that glowed faintly, Sith runes that pulsed in time with her heartbeat. Illusory veils shimmered on the edges of vision, half-formed specters whispering distant warnings in languages long dead. The air was full of static here, it wasn't any kind of technological presence, but psychic. It was mental energy, memories not hers, clawing for a way inside. The very moment she stepped inside the entrance seemed to disappear within the blink of an eye. Right at the center stood a single obsidian platform, slightly raised. Upon it, nothing. Not yet. But she knew who would come. This was no test of blade or sorcery. This was a battlefield of will. And he had summoned her to stand upon it.

Serina Calis ​

 

[Serina Calis]

The Crucible of Command.
Location: Dromund Kaas
Objective: Deal with a Devil.
Allies: ???
Opposing Force: ???
Tag: Darth Prazutis

The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.​

She entered as a shadow wrapped in elegance, a vision of serpentine grace amidst a realm sculpted by torment and war. The storm above had screamed its warning; the air had thickened like coagulated blood. But Serina Calis—Lady of the Circle, whisperer of fates, veiled in crimson silk and predatory silence—drank deeply from the atmosphere like a connoisseur savoring the first drop of a rare vintage.

She felt it before she saw it. Not the power, but its intention—ancient, cruel, immense. It was not a thing that welcomed. It warned. And oh, how beautiful that warning was.

Each footstep upon the blackstone floor was a deliberate stroke upon a canvas of conquest. Her heels struck with precision, their echoes twisted by the citadel's architecture into whispers of her name—Serina, Serina, Serina… The walls remembered names here, held screams like perfumed memories, and she envied them their honesty.

Where others quailed, she breathed.

Where others knelt, she smiled.

The Dark Side did not cradle her as an acolyte. It smothered her. Dared her. Undressed her soul and left her standing bare before its infinite weight—and she loved it. She, who had long worn ambition like perfume and seduction like armor, felt a kind of twisted kinship here. The crushing spiritual gravity of this place did not repel her. It brought something far deeper.

Every breath was heavier than the last, but it was not pain. No. This was pleasure. Exquisite. Suffocating. Intoxicating.

Her thoughts unraveled and rethreaded themselves into something darker, deeper. The psychic energy that clawed at her—those stray memories, those lingering agonies—were not hers, and yet she accepted them like a lover's secrets whispered beneath silk sheets. Her body moved, fluid and controlled, even as the citadel tried to assert its dominion. Her golden hair shimmered faintly beneath the hood, catching the flicker of red hololight as if it belonged to the fire.

Her armor—the sculpted bodice aglow with sanguine lines—did not resist the pressure. It amplified it. The subtle, heart-shaped crest upon her chest thrummed in resonance with the thrumming pulse of Sith power beneath the floor. She was alive here in ways she was not elsewhere, as if her veins had been filled with liquid lightning and every breath of copper-tainted air was laced with prophecy.

This place was meant to break her.

Instead, it revealed her.

A lesser being might have mistaken her silence for submission. But those who understood nuance—true nuance—would recognize the deep professionalism in her gait, the careful way her hands remained folded before her like a priestess at the altar of ambition. She did not smile, not fully. Her lips curved just enough to suggest she could, should she deem it worthy. Her expression remained severe, sharp with knowing. And yet, there was always that glint in her eyes—blue like glacial ice and just as dangerous—that hint of licentious amusement that said: Yes, I see you, monster. I see you, and one day I will be your equal. Perhaps your better.

Serina did not resist the oppression. She relished it. She drank it like wine and let it run down her throat like a promise.

And so, she passed the Sentinels with her head high. Not in defiance, but in reverent acknowledgement. Their silence was not a dismissal, nor their menace a threat. It was an invitation. An audition.

As she crossed beneath the blood-lock gates, she felt the citadel's judgment pressing in like a thousand unseen hands. It wanted to peel her open. To see what she was. What she truly believed.

She whispered a single word beneath her breath—so soft only the Force itself might hear it.

"Soon."

The Sanctuary of Victory opened like the chamber of a black heart, and she entered it like a thought given flesh. Around her, battles unfolded in stasis across flickering crimson projections—galactic eulogies composed in tactical symphony. She paused. Studied them. War, distilled to its essence. She loved it. It was not the brutality of it that drew her—it was the precision. The intelligence behind it. This was not carnage for its own sake. It was purpose sharpened into blade-form.

A thousand minds had shaped this place. But none had been hers. Yet.

And then, the Mind's Crucible.

She entered it like a lover's chamber—intimate, haunted, sacred. The moment her boot crossed the threshold, the world behind her vanished. The corridor. The entry. Gone.

Good.

She didn't want an escape.

Rings of sorcerous etchings glowed softly beneath her feet, responding to her presence like a heartbeat synced to hers. Specters writhed at the edges of her vision—some ancient, others unborn. The air here was not simply air. It was thought. It pressed against her skin, eager to know her, eager to unmake her.

She smiled.

"You're not the first to try."

And then her voice softened, sultry and reverent, as if she spoke not to the chamber, but to the will behind it.

"I have felt the Dark Side in the whisper of forgotten ruins, in the touch of dead gods, in the breath of dying stars. But here…" Her eyes closed briefly as the atmosphere trembled across her skin. "Here it sings."

She stepped toward the central platform, each stride measured, an act of worship and declaration both. Her cape flowed behind her like the veil of a dark bride. Her gauntlets hummed faintly, responding to the energy in the air, casting faint reflections on her bodice's glowing crest.

When she reached the dais, she stopped—not at the center, not yet. She turned slightly, gazing into the air around her as though listening to a chorus no one else could hear.

"I know what this is," she murmured. "This place was made to break those who do not belong. To tear away their illusions. To strip them down to the screaming soul beneath."

She smiled then, faint and dangerous.

"I've already done that to myself."

Her hands unclasped, slowly. She stepped forward onto the center of the platform and lifted her chin.

"Now show me what comes next."

 

[Darth Prazutis]

The air grew still. Not with silence no, but with simple decision. The very moment Serina stepped up to the epicenter of the crucible; the Force itself seemed to recoil, then bow. Not in surrender, but in acknowledgement. It was as if her arrival had completed a long-awaited equation, solving a forgotten mystery, that would now reveal itself. The Dark Lord of the Sith didn't descend, he didn't walk into the room. He simply arrived. Not through any door or corridor. Not with booming footfalls or the hiss of an opening door. Reality didn't merely shift at his arrival, it corrected. The shadows pulled back to the fringes of the room, light bled away, and then he was simply there. Darth Prazutis. The Shadow Hand. The Undying King. The Elysian Grandeval Mortarch.

The Dark Lord wore no armor, no helm, there was no towering plate of unbreakable war-steel wrapping his form. He wore only the Zâvrai Kôzkar, Veil of the Shadow Reign, a deep mantle of abyssal regalia that moved. It took on a true life its own then, and it breathed. It lived. Woven from the screams of the dead, crafted in agony, and the darkness between stars, it devoured light wherever its fabric touched, its form bleeding whispers into the air like blood from a wound that couldn't clot. The whispers in the Crucible stilled in his wake. They listened. "You walk willingly into the abyss." he said, his voice was low and cold, it was like a glacier scraping its way across the very soul. "And ask to be devoured." A beat. Heavy. Measured. "Good." He circled her then slowly, purposefully, it wasn't like a beast scenting prey, but a sovereign inspecting a knife at his throat, wondering, briefly, if it would be worth the pain to embrace its bite.

The giant presence moved with him, drowning the entirety of the room. It wasn't like any shadow, or breeze. This was a tidal force, a tsunami, as dark and vast as it was crushing. Every breath around him seemed to tremble, the shadows at the corners of the room drew to him and the light itself, seemed smothered by his presence. Every mote of dust, every wall, every bit of existence here knew the shape of his will. He moved behind her then, towering, silent as a grave for what felt like an eternity, as the Crucible closed in with him. "You've stripped yourself down to soul and sinew." Prazutis said quietly, his voice wrapped around her like smoke and steel. "Torn out your fear. Dressed your ambition in silk and steel. I see it. I smell it on your breath. The desire to stand alone in a room of gods and not flinch." A pause. A step closer. She might feel his breath, not warm, but cold like ancient stone, as if a tomb itself was speaking to her, the icy presence of the grim reaper in such proximity, life itself seemed to slowly drift away in his wake. "So let me ask you, Serina Calis…"

"What do you see in the crucible?" The Mortarch stepped in front of her now, his burning gaze meeting hers, those eyes were like twin, exploding suns of molten fire, they stared not to intimidate, not even to command her. But to witness. "When the illusions are gone. When you are naked to the Force, to yourself. When all prophecy and pain and prophecy again is stripped from you…" Prazutis paused, the silence a weapon that descended over the room like a guillotine.

"What remains?" The silence that followed was not a pause. It was an offering. An invitation. The Mind's Crucible began to pulse, the runes beneath them growing brighter, the ghosts at the chamber's edge crawled forward in her peripheral vision. The Force didn't just watch. It asked. It demanded. "Show me."

Serina Calis​

 

[Serina Calis]

The Crucible of Command.
Location: Dromund Kaas
Objective: Deal with a Devil.
Allies: ???
Opposing Force: ???
Tag: Darth Prazutis

The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.​

The question did not echo. It did not need to. It sank into the marrow of the moment, settling in the heart of the Crucible like a blade waiting to be drawn.

Serina Calis stood still as silence, as though the breath of the room had crystallized around her. The temperature plummeted. The ghosts swam nearer in the corners of her vision, like carrion drawn to a sacrifice not yet made. The runes beneath her feet pulsed not with alarm, but with anticipation, their rhythm synced to her own pulse—faster now, not from fear, but exhilaration. The veil between spirit and flesh thinned in that moment, and Serina did not resist.

She released herself.

No barrier. No mask. No veil of charm or disarming cunning. No poised intellect, no sharpened wit. No seduction offered with a smirk or a glance. She did not need to perform, not here. Not before him.

Serina exhaled—and the Force shuddered.

Not because she imposed her will upon it. But because it recognized her. Not as she was, but as what she would be.

"I see hunger," she said softly, the words not reverent, but honest. "Not the kind that consumes without thought. The kind that builds. That becomes." Her voice was steady, but it lacked its usual lilt, the seductive cadence stripped away, leaving something rawer behind. Something true.

"I see a world where all of this"—she gestured, not grandly, but gently, to the walls, to the ghosts, to the weight of the dark side pressing against her—"is only the beginning. I see the foundation beneath the palace I will one day raise."

Her eyes, ice-blue and unblinking, locked with his. She did not flinch. She did not challenge. She stood.

"I see myself. Not in a reflection, not in prophecy. But in potential."

The light of the runes surged upward, bathing her in crimson and violet. Her shadow stretched in all directions—no longer matching her shape, but fracturing into a dozen versions of what she could become. A crowned tyrant in chains of starlight. A monstrous wraith formed of blood and seduction. A goddess draped in ruin. They flitted at the edge of vision, hungry to be born.

"I am not complete," she said, quieter now. "Not yet. I am still a child of this darkness. Still learning how to wield it—not with cruelty, but with clarity. I don't crave chaos. I don't lust for pain. I want only control." She turned slightly, as though gazing at something no one else could see.

"Not over others," she added. "That will come. But first… over myself. Over the force that moves through me, that wants through me. I feel it. Every day. I wake with it in my chest like a second heartbeat, I taste it on the air even in sanctuaries meant to be pure. The dark side doesn't haunt me. It doesn't seduce me. It recognizes me. It has always been there, whispering that I was not meant to serve anyone's vision but my own."

And then her voice lowered further. A tone almost tender.

"But I am not arrogant enough to say I deserve this power now. I will, one day. When the galaxy speaks my name and knows it means obedience. When the Force bows not because I command it—but because I understand it better than any who came before." She looked down at her own hands, pale and elegant. "These hands will build empires. They will also bleed. I know that. And I do not flinch."

The illusions around her began to shift. Where once there were whispers of the past—now there were echoes of the future. A thousand thrones, a million corpses. Stars extinguished like candles. Planets shaped like sculptures. In every image: her.

"But none of this matters," she said, raising her chin once more. "Not to you. Not to the Crucible. You did not summon me here to hear my dream."

Her eyes glittered.

"You summoned me to see what I am."

And in that instant, the room answered.

Not in word. Not in gesture. But in feeling.

For just a moment, the ghosts drew near enough to weep. The runes brightened into blinding flame. And the Force, ancient and cruel, trembled.

 

[Darth Prazutis]

The light did not recede. It knelt.

For a moment, the Mind's Crucible became utterly still, not out of any semblance of silence, but pure obedience. The shadows coiled inwards. The ghosts listened. For a moment, the Dark Side itself paused, because it had been seen. Darth Prazutis did not move at first. He didn't need to move. Because Serina Calis had finally stopped performing and begun becoming. When he finally spoke, it didn't erupt like fire. It settled, like a tombstone being laid atop freshly turned earth, like a corpse buried within its tomb to be sealed away forever. "Control." He said, the word rasping like a blade dragged across stone. "Not domination. Not wanton cruelty. Not chaos draped in silk." A pause. "Control… is the rarest hunger."

He stepped forward, not to loom, but to envelop. It was the way a spider moves closer to the vibration of a caught fly. The Dark Lord's presence didn't swell, it deepened, enveloped. Not pressure. Not fear. Gravity alone. It was the fatal flaw of many who misunderstood the epithet he carried, the one he was given, the Lord of Lies, for Darth Prazutis was the spider in the center of its galactic spanning web. He was the manipulator, the deceiver feeding honeyed words to some, venom to others. "You've seen the shape of your power. But seeing is not claiming. Becoming… requires cost." His gaze burned with quiet intensity. "You are not complete. Good. That means you can still be carved." He raised a gauntleted hand, not to strike, not to bless, but to reveal. It was a simple act but when performed by one of such presence, such command over the world around him, the chamber itself dimmed again, runes fading until only two lights remained: the space between them…and her. "I do not offer power. I offer purpose. I do not reward potential. I exploit it. And if it survives the forge…it earns a place in something far greater than itself."

Something shifted then, not in the Dark Lord, but in the air itself. A presence stirred around them, behind the walls. The Dark Lords presence spread outwards through every stone. "You wish to understand the Force better than any who came before?" he said. "Then I will show you the price of that understanding. There are truths beneath this world, this universe that would unmake lesser Sith. Forces so ancient, they have been deliberately forgotten by the pages of history." He began to circle her again, slower this time. Not weighing. Weaving. "Serve me not as servant." The Dark Lord said. "But as cipher. As key. As whisper wrapped in silk and steel. If you endure, you will be more. But first, you will be useful." He stopped in front of her. His molten gaze met hers, not to intimidate, but to see. To mark. "Will you take that step, Serina Calis?" Prazutis asked, his voice lowering to a near-whisper that carried like thunder. "Not toward glory. But toward truth. Toward the pact." The shadows did not close in. They parted. For her. "You've seen what you are." The Dark Lord said. "Now let me show you what I've always known you would be, the moment I learned of your existence, of who you are."

Serina Calis ​

 

[Serina Calis]

The Crucible of Command.
Location: Dromund Kaas
Objective: Deal with a Devil.
Allies: ???
Opposing Force: ???
Tag: Darth Prazutis

The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.​

She stood in the center of the storm that had no name.

No fire raged. No wind howled. And yet Serina Calis had never felt the Force roar so completely in her bones. It did not scream at her. It called to her, in silence louder than any sound. In reverence born not of mercy—but of recognition.

The Dark Side did not kneel for weakness. It knelt for kin.

Her shadow, cast not by light but by sheer will, elongated behind her like a coiled serpent ready to strike. The runes dimmed around her, but she burned brighter than them. Not in radiance. In reality.

She was no illusion anymore.

Her eyes lifted to meet Prazutis' once more—those suns of molten apocalypse that dared one to look too long and fall forever into the abyss. And she looked. She lingered. Because she had already fallen long ago, and she had chosen to make the fall her throne.

The air trembled with his words, but Serina did not tremble with it. She savored them. Each syllable was a blade's edge running down her spine, carving truths into the marrow beneath the porcelain surface she wore. He didn't offer her dreams. He offered her function. And that, more than promises of glory, more than titles or thrones or forbidden knowledge, struck the deepest chord within her.

She answered not with haste, but with a breath that pulled the chamber into her lungs like incense, like sin, like truth.

"My Lord," she began, her voice low and honeyed, yet clear—like silk draped over a dagger's edge, too elegant to be a warning. "What you offer is not salvation. It is not validation. It is purpose. It is what I have hungered for since the moment I first dared to think the Jedi wrong, dared to ask the question they never allowed: What if the Force is not a river to be followed—but a throne to be built?"

She stepped forward, not in challenge, but in offering. Her movements were deliberate, graceful, each one a stanza in the poem her body wrote as it moved through shadow. Her crimson-lined cape whispered across the stone like temptation incarnate. Her gauntlets glinted with the fading light, echoing the sacred geometry of her soul's hunger.

"I do not seek the Force's favor," she continued. "I seek its structure. I do not wish to be adored by the galaxy. I wish to understand it—so thoroughly, so intimately, that when I reshape it in my image, it won't resist… it will thank me." Her voice, now, was silk soaked in ink. Measured. Mysterious. Intoxicating.

"I will be your cipher," she whispered, with reverent finality. "Your whisper. Your blade wrapped in breathless silk and secrets. I do not fear the forge, nor the price of truth. Let it burn me. Let it tear me apart. What survives will not need chains, titles, or songs. It will need only your will and the galaxy's silence."

Her head tilted slightly, golden hair spilling from her hood like sunlight drowning in velvet. A smile touched her lips then—not wicked, not coy. Accepting. As if she had always known this moment would come. And had been waiting.

"I want to be useful," she said with no shame, only heat. "Not out of submission. Out of clarity. Because your purpose is greater than mine. And I would rather be the breath between your thoughts than a queen seated on a throne of irrelevance."

She stepped closer now—into the space between power and promise. The shadows parted not just for her, but because of her. The Force wrapped around her ankles like silk ribbons eager to be pulled tighter. Her hands unclasped at her waist and she held them, palms upward, like a votive offering.

"I will not kneel. Not because I am proud." Her eyes narrowed—not in defiance, but in discipline. "Because I do not yet deserve it. Not until I have earned my place in your web—not as prey, not as pawn, but as the strand that tightens around a throat in the night."

The chamber around her pulsed again. Not in approval. In readiness. The air no longer judged her. It anticipated her.

"So show me," she said at last, her voice dipping low as breath, intimate as sin. "Not glory. Not eternity. Truth. Show me what you have seen in me. The path I must walk. The silence I must master. The wound I must become."

She smiled again, faint, serene.

"And I will carve my name into the very spine of the Force—because you let me begin."

 

[Darth Prazutis]

Darth Prazutis did not smile.

There was no praise in the abyss that encompassed the Mortarch, no applause within the void. Only the soundless, titanic weight of judgment…and the deathly silence that followed when judgment has been passed. The darkness pulsed not with rage, but with true alignment. Serina Calis's words echoed not as mere sound, but as offerings, they were vows folded in silk, blades wrapped in the caressing touch of breath. In the of the Shadow Hand, the Lord of Lies? They were fully received. But it was impossible to tell how he truly received them, for only one could truly read him. He stood still, titanic in his robes, the shroud moved seamlessly drinking in the shadows around him, the fabric breathed, moving like the tranquil movements of lungs. The amulet across his chest throbbed, the crimson glow of Ka'ra'nazat casting serpentine shadows that slithered across the floor between them. The abyss did not devour her words.

It consumed them entirely. "You understand." Prazutis said, his voice was low and thunderous, a cathedral collapsing in the distance of her soul. "Not what is easy. Not what is comfortable. But what is necessary." The Dark Lord's gaze burned through her, not in condemnation, but in something else entirely. It was as if every word she had spoken was a lock unsealin some great cipher, and he was the living key. "You have named the cost of truth. You have refused the throne of vanity. And in doing so, you have stepped onto the first rung of a ladder that climbs not to heaven…but into the hollow between stars where gods are built." The Force curled inward as he took a single step forward. The floor beneath him groaned, the darkened stone physically reacting to the sheer spiritual mass that accompanied his every movement. The magnitude of a simple act having such shocking ramifications, it was impossible to measure the depths of power contained within. Shadows recoiled and returned like air freshly pushed out from the lungs, as though reality itself was exhaling his judgment. "You will serve. Not as a shadow beneath me. But as the blade that cuts where my gaze does not fall. The breath between thoughts. The venom in the kiss. The stillness between heartbeats."

There was no warmth in his tone as he spoke. "You will have no title." The giant said, his voice colder now, it was more precise. "No hollow coronation. You will earn every inch of your place with silence, blood, and clarity. I will not protect you. I will not reward you. I will test you, again and again, until what survives cannot be undone by any hand. Fail, prove yourself worthless to me, incapable and your soul will be mine." He raised one gauntleted hand, not in command, but as if he was cupping the air between them. The shadows trembled as though waiting to be shaped by his iron will. "You will become the silence that shatters, the breath that ends kingdoms. And in return, I will give you what no one else ever truly has." The Dark Lord's gaze locked with hers then, eternal and abyssal its very touch a brutal assault on the optic nerves. "A purpose worthy of your ruin." Then? Then slowly, the hand closed. The shadows rushed in like a wave. Not to drown her. To cloak her.

Serina Calis ​

 

[Serina Calis]

The Crucible of Command.
Location: Dromund Kaas
Objective: Deal with a Devil.
Allies: ???
Opposing Force: ???
Tag: Darth Prazutis

The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.​

The shadows did not fall upon her.

They clothed her.

They wound around her figure like lovers returning from war, eager and reverent, wrapping her in the cloak of unbeing. They coiled at her legs, slid across her waist, caressed the angles of her shoulders and the fall of her hair—not as a shroud, but as an anointment. Darkness did not suffocate Serina Calis. It recognized her. It adored her. And now, as it did always, it belonged to her.

She did not flinch as the hand of Darth Prazutis closed like a tomb around destiny. She did not bow when the room itself seemed to gasp and kneel beneath the pressure of his decree. She did not speak immediately. The stillness, the silence, the intimate moment of absolute alignment with power… deserved breathless reverence.

When she did speak, her voice was quiet. Smooth. Polished. A gleaming dagger hidden in velvet folds.

"My soul is already yours, my Lord," she said, her words sliding like warm silk across sharpened steel. "Not in pledge, but in essence. I was born in a prison of light. I chose to suffocate it with shadow. To wrap myself in it like silk. To let it whisper its truths to me in every quiet moment. You offer no reward—good. Because I have never sought gifts. Only permission to take what others are too blind to grasp."

She stepped forward then—slowly, like a flame choosing its next breath of air. Not closing the distance to challenge him. But to confirm it. The contract. The covenant. The pact.

"You promise no protection. I expect none. I will be tested. That is correct. I must be. Because what I seek cannot be inherited. It must be earned in silence, pain, and precise purpose. Each inch of progress paid in blood—mine or another's makes no difference to me."

Her hands lifted now, not in gesture, but in expression. The long, sleek lines of her gauntlets shimmered with residual energy, the last threads of light from Ka'ra'nazat's glow painting serpentine reflections on her fingers. She let the shadows curl across them like rings forged in devotion. She breathed in the moment—not for sustenance, but for pleasure.

"To be your silence," she continued, and this time, her voice dipped low, intimate. "To be the blade they do not see. The kiss they remember too late. The last breath between desire and death… is not a punishment, Lord Prazutis. It is intimacy."

Her eyes lifted to his once more—those vast, blazing orbs of annihilation. She looked not into fire. She looked into the memory of stars devoured. And she smiled.

"No title suits me better than the one the galaxy shall whisper in fear," she said, lips parting like prophecy itself. "No crown weighs heavier than your will. Let them think me forgotten, nameless, discarded. Let them never know the shape of their ruin until it curls into their bed and kisses them goodnight."

She took one final step. Close enough now that her silhouette merged with the hem of his abyssal regalia, where the Veil of the Shadow Reign breathed in rhythm with her own heartbeat. Her golden hair, unbound beneath her hood, was caught in an unseen breeze of power, fanning gently around her like the herald of an empire unborn.

"I will serve. Not as vassal, but as extension. Of your gaze. Of your will. I will vanish from history if that is your design, only to reappear where the seams of order must split. I will wear silence as armor, seduction as blade, and truth as the poison I place on every tongue too foolish to speak against you."

Then—one final breath.

"Give," she whispered. "And I will become everything."

 

[Darth Prazutis]

The Mind's Crucible didn't just breathe. It remembered. It pressed inward, not as a punishment, but as witness. It was as if every thread of shadow within the Citadel's labyrinthine depths now bent toward a single purpose: her. Yet the Dark Lord of the Sith remained utterly still. For a long moment, Prazutis offered her nothing. Not even breath. He simply watched. Not like a predator, but like an ancient mechanism, turning unseen gears behind those molten eyes, absorbing her every syllable, the cadence of her voice, the precision of her devotion. Every single movement, every micromovement told a story that pulled back the layers of this deceptive serpent. Her words were not submission. They were structure. The Shadow Hand didn't merely hear them. He understood them.

Then he moved. A slow, glacial step forward, and with it, the Crucible stirred. "You speak of becoming." Prazutis' voice was cold iron dragged across obsidian, it was smooth yet unrelenting. "But before we speak of future, let us speak of truth." There was no shift in tone. No accusation. But yet? The shadows around her coiled tighter, they were no longer an embrace, they were attention, and she was suddenly at the center of a thousand unseen eyes. "There is nothing you are, Serina Calis, that I have not already seen." He began to circle her once more. No longer a test. No longer an inspection. This was ritual. "The masks. The lies whispered into Jedi ears. The courtesies extended to enemies dressed as allies. The games you've played in the dark and the lights you've dimmed with your smile." Prazutis paused. Heavy. Surgical. "You have played them all well. So well, in fact, that you believed yourself unseen."

The Dark Lord stopped behind her again. But this time, there was no breath, no chill, there was only certainty. "You were not unseen. You were permitted." A simple flicker, the Crucible itself responded. Runes dimmed to scarlet veins, crawling beneath their feet like a sleeping wyrm roused by truth. "I let you wear your veils. I let you choose your games. Because I needed to know what you were when you believed you were free." Then, suddenly, his voice lowered, into something far more dangerous than accusation:

"And now that I know, Serina, your freedom ends." He moved before her again, a sovereign shadow cast in living void, his mantle of death breathing slow tendrils around her shoulders like a living coronation. "From this moment, you report to me." There was no ceremony. Just a simple fact, branded into existence. "All your players. Every faction. Every lie you sell. Every whisper you collect. They now belong to me." The Dark Lord paused.

"You are not to correct them. You are not to warn them. You are not to sever ties. You are to deepen them." His gaze flared then, not with anger, not with lust for power, but with something far worse: design.

"Feed me every secret. Every weakness. Let their trust in you bloom like flowers at the edge of a cliff. Let them lean in to smell their reflection, only to find your blade already buried in their spine." He lifted his hand then, not in command, but in decree. The Crucible responded. Her shadow surged outward, fracturing again into paths, each one shaped like a life she touched. Jedi. Sith. Apostates. Warlords. So many pathways. He didn't look at them. He looked at her. "You are now the echo they do not notice. The cipher between breath and betrayal." Prazutis voice softened, just barely, but in that quiet, there was true finality. "Let them think you belong to them. Let them believe they are the ones using you." Then, in a voice as deep and cold as a starless grave:

"And when I speak a single word into the silence…let them fall." The runes surged once more, and behind her, the Crucible sealed, not with a slam, but a whisper. A lock clicked into place in the fabric of the Force.

The pact was complete.

"You will be what they never see coming."

Serina Calis ​

 

[Serina Calis]

The Crucible of Command.
Location: Dromund Kaas
Objective: Deal with a Devil.
Allies: ???
Opposing Force: ???
Tag: Darth Prazutis

The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.​

The Crucible sealed behind her like a final heartbeat.

A door in the galaxy did not merely close—it concluded. Not with violence. Not with grand fanfare. But with the unmistakable sound of destiny choosing.

Serina Calis did not move.

She stood at the center of a design older than blood and far more patient. The air was thick with purpose, and every breath she took was a continuation of a script written in the bones of fallen empires. The darkness no longer surrounded her. It wore her. Not like armor—armor was meant to protect. No, this was something more intimate. This was skin.

The words of Darth Prazutis hung in the air like smoke in still water—immovable, inescapable. And she did not recoil from them.

She accepted them. Completely. Elegantly. Quietly.

But deep beneath the stillness of her expression, beneath the calculated poise of her posture, beneath the low rhythm of her breath, numbers were moving. Equations recalibrating. A game far older than deception itself continued ticking forward, unseen by even the ghosts in the walls.

When she spoke, her voice was the very breath between silk and sin. The pause before the kiss. The smile before the blade.

"Then let it be done," she said, her tone smooth as obsidian and just as sharp. "Let the masks become mirrors, the lies become gospel, and the warmth I offer become the final comfort they feel before the fall."

She lifted her chin slightly, a gesture not of pride, but of presentation. Not to resist—never that. But to offer. To extend herself as the exquisite tool she had always been meant to be. And her eyes, those glacial blue eyes, shimmered not with fire, not with rebellion, but with devotion—the kind that terrifies empires.

"They will never see it," she murmured, almost wistfully. "They will cherish the illusion. The Jedi will cling to the idea that I am redeemable. The Sith will assume I am theirs. Politicians will covet my secrets, and warlords will mistake my voice for their own ambition reflected back at them."

Her lips curved, just slightly. That smile. That serpent's smile. Warmth without comfort. Beauty without safety.

"They will love me for it."

She took a step forward—not toward him, not toward anything in the chamber—but toward the shape of the future only she could see. Each movement of her body was a language, a confession draped in elegance. The shadows parted for her again, not because they feared her, but because they knew her.

"And when your word comes…" she said, lowering her voice into something breathy, something reverent, "when your silence sharpens into command… I will not need to lift a blade. The trust I have sewn into their hearts will rot them from within. They will die in the arms of their illusion, still whispering my name with hope."

She paused then. A delicate pause. Precise.

Then her gaze returned to his, cool and soft, as if she were offering him not loyalty, but intimacy. Submission not from weakness—but from knowing the weight of her own becoming.

"You've taken my veils," she said softly, "so I will wear yours."

A beat.

"But I ask one thing in return, my Lord."

Not a request. Not a demand. A notation in the ledger of power.

"When it comes time—when they fall—let me look into their eyes one last time. Let me see the moment they realize they were never holding the reins."

Her voice fell into stillness then, a lingering warmth curling around the finality of Prazutis' decree. She did not thank him. She did not praise him.

She became his word before it had even been spoken.

A shadow to cast over galaxies.

A smile that hid extinction.

A cipher draped in silk.

And somewhere—beneath it all, where no eye could see, no voice could name it—Serina Calis quietly, patiently, moved another piece on her board.

 

[Darth Prazutis]

The Dark Lord didn't speak at once. The silence returned, vast and consuming, it wasn't a pause, not hesitation, but proclamation. In the Crucible, silence wasn't absence. It was command, and it bowed for her now. Not as a gift. But as a mark. When Darth Prazutis moved, it was not a step. It was a verdict. The stone beneath his feet groaned, spiderweb fissures blooming beneath the dark armor of his form, not from force, but from pure will. The runes around them pulsed once in pure reverence. In that moment, Serina Calis was no longer standing in a chamber. She was standing inside the eye of a verdict being passed down by the abyss. "You will become." Prazutis said at last, the words falling like pillars of judgment, "But not for yourself."

The giant moved slowly now, not as predator or sovereign, but as function. As the inevitability of black iron sinking into drowning seas. The Veil of the Shadow Reign shifted as he circled her again, though there was no weight in his steps. Only presence. The darkness followed in his wake, not as shadow, but as pure scripture. "You have bound yourself." He continued. "Not with chains, but with purpose. Not with devotion, but with clarity." Prazutis' voice didn't rise. It descended. It was like soil poured over a grave. "Good." The Dark Lord lifted one clawed hand, not toward her flesh, but toward the space that was her. The breath between thoughts. The flicker of awareness at the edge of perception. "Then hear me now." The Crucible answered. The runes beneath her feet flared crimson, deep and raw, as if the floor remembered a thousand names that had been offered here before. The chamber pulsed. Not with power. But with finality. "I do not anoint you." The Dark Lord said. "I do not bless you. I use you. As one uses fire. As one uses poison. As one uses silence."

The darkness obeyed his will. It drew inward, swirling around her form like threads woven by an unseen loom. Then, without touch, without pain, something was placed within her. Not a shackle. Not a command. A mark. Invisible to the eye. Inescapable to the soul. It didn't brand her with obedience. It branded her with purpose. The Force screamed once, inaudible to ears but deafening to essence. The Crucible felt it. So did she. "You are mine now," Prazutis said, his voice low, steady. "Not as a thrall. Not as a pet. As function. As truth made flesh." He came to a stop in front of her again. The light from Ka'ra'nazat shimmered across the stone, casting serpentine shadows across her boots. The flames behind his eyes didn't roar. They witnessed. "But I will remember it." A final pause. Then? Then the Crucible breathed. The runes flickered once more. The temperature dropped. "And when the time comes, Serina Calis…" Prazutis' voice dropped to a whisper that pressed directly against the core of her mind. Not threat. Not prophecy. But command, etched into eternity. "You will not speak. You will not strike. You will not scream." The giants voice fell like the weight of a god's hand on reality itself. "You will end."

Serina Calis ​

 

[Serina Calis]

The Crucible of Command.
Location: Dromund Kaas
Objective: Deal with a Devil.
Allies: ???
Opposing Force: ???
Tag: Darth Prazutis

The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.​

Serina Calis did not fall to her knees.

She did not weep, did not shiver, did not bow her head.

But everything in her posture changed.

Not in collapse.

In completion.

It was not the body that reacted, but the soul. A soundless shift in gravity, as if the deepest layers of her being had tilted inward toward the Dark Lord's will—accepting, adapting, and aligning, all in the span of a breath. The Crucible felt it. The Force recorded it. The mark laid upon her did not burn. It settled. Into the quiet marrow of her mind, into the hollow between breath and ambition.

And the woman standing there? She no longer belonged to herself.

That was fine. She had never intended to.

Her voice came, low and level, stripped of grandeur, but still clothed in sin. Refined. Composed. Designed. Each word precise. Polished. A blade honed by obedience but forged with dangerous intelligence.

"I understand," she said simply, without flourish. Her voice was a soft murmur, velvet in texture but cold as glass. "I am not yours to praise. I am yours to wield."

She lifted her gaze, not in defiance but in full acknowledgment of his sovereignty. Her eyes, twin fragments of controlled hunger, glinted beneath the falling shadow of the Crucible's dimmed glow.

"You do not anoint me. Good." Her lips curled, not into a smile, but into something thinner. More exact. "Anointed things believe they are special. Chosen things become arrogant. I require neither illusion."

The darkness around her swirled, but she did not move through it. She became part of it, as though her shape had been drawn into the very ink of the room. The mark within her pulsed faintly—not as pain, but as alignment. Her purpose etched into soul-flesh.

"Use me as you would a whisper before the execution. A poison before the feast," she said. "Let them taste sweetness just before the blood." Her tone was silk stretched over wire, poised on the precipice between allure and threat. "Let them relax into my presence. That is where the killing truly begins."

There was no flourish to her voice now. No coiling innuendo. The serpent had coiled. The fangs had been sheathed. The moment had arrived.

And she met it.

"Your mark is felt," Serina continued, her voice quieter now. "It will not be seen. It will not be spoken of. But it will be obeyed."

She moved then—only one step, small and slow, but deliberate, the way a predator narrows the distance between eye and jugular. Her cape whispered behind her like something living, and her form remained still—no defiance in her body, no submission either. Only readiness.

"You will not need to remind me," she said, "because I will not forget."

Then, softer:

"I exist now as the breath before the storm, the quiet between pulses. I will not speak."

A pause.

"I will not strike."

Another pause.

And then, almost reverently:

"I will not scream, until you give me your first command."

She did not ask for clarity. She did not seek understanding. She had received command and shaped herself to fit it, just as she had shaped the trust of Jedi, the envy of Sith, the loyalty of fools. This was the new blade she would wear—silent, sharp, untraceable.

But behind her voice, behind her stillness, behind the obedience so expertly worn like perfume on her skin—the game continued.

Equations still moved behind her gaze. Timelines stretched, probabilities narrowed. She had given him everything.

Which meant, eventually, she would take everything.

But for now—now she was his.

Serina Calis, the whisper you trusted.
The smile you remembered.
The silence that ends.