Silence enveloped the ship. Ghostly vortices of energy flickered outside the viewports, and the navigation computer monotonously counted down the time until arrival at its destination. Seven days. A whole week in this shimmering void.
Alex leaned back in the pilot's chair, feeling the adrenaline of the chase gradually leave his body. Coruscant was left behind, but the memories of the last hours on the Imperial capital still stirred his mind.
He had to fly for a whole week in hyperspace and needed to understand what had happened.
He got up and headed to his cabin, where the holocron was stored in a secret compartment. The ancient artifact gleamed coldly in the dim light, its facets seeming carved from frozen darkness.
"It's time to talk," he muttered, put on the circlet, and activated the device.
The real world vanished as if switched off, and he found himself again in the virtual space of an ancient necropolis on a forgotten planet. The starry sky spread above the dust-covered tombstones, casting ghostly shadows on the stone effigies.
Kreia stood among the columns, motionless, as if part of these ancient tombs. The blindfold made her face even more mysterious in the moonlight.
"Greetings," she said, without turning her head. Her voice echoed between the ancient stones. "What brings you to me today?"
"Master," he began, approaching closer, "I was on Coruscant. Investigating something from the past."
"Get to the point," Kreia tilted her head slightly. "What secrets of the dead Republic have you unearthed?"
"During the Clone Wars, there was a man. He was Chancellor. His name was Sheev Palpatine. About twenty years ago, a surviving Jedi told me he was a Sith Lord. I found out that he was mind-wiping politicians using a special device built into his chair. It was a neuro-interface, a variation of it. Exactly the device that led me to you. Subtle work, almost imperceptible. Affecting the subconscious..."
"If he is a Sith Lord, then this is common," Kreia nodded slowly, and a hint of approval could be heard in her voice. "The mind is a more pliable material than flesh, and its traces are much harder to detect. It's only interesting why he used an initiation device and not the Force directly... Interesting, continue."
Alex frowned, recalling the events of the last few hours.
"I was careful when I went to find this device. I took all precautions. But on the way back, I encountered... unexpected obstacles. First, a patrol showed unusual interest in me, even though my documents were in order and my appearance had been altered. Then they tried to detain my ship as it left the system."
"And you think it was a coincidence?" Kreia's voice held irony.
"Perhaps it's a chain of coincidences," he replied uncertainly. "But I'm afraid I slipped up somewhere. Although I don't understand where exactly. I only see one thing that I didn't account for in my calculations. The Force. That's why I'm here."
Kreia froze, and the air around her seemed to thicken. When she spoke again, her voice became quieter, but all the more sinister for it.
"Threads of fate weave patterns that are not born by chance." She slowly turned to him. "You said Palpatine is a Sith. You were incredibly lucky to get out of there alive. Perhaps luckier than you think. He sensed your interference. I would have sensed it."
"Tell me more about the Sith," he asked. "I need to understand what I'm dealing with."
Kreia straightened up.
"Well then," she said solemnly. "Listen and remember. For knowledge of the Sith is knowledge of the very nature of the dark side..."
I will begin as this topic is introduced among the Jedi.
"Anyone who knows power loses the ability to refuse it. This is the first and main lesson. It is taught to younglings within the walls of the Temple, hammered into the heads of padawans by their masters, and it is often forgotten by the most experienced, those who have ascended to their seats on the Council. They think it's about politics, about tyrants, about the weak-spirited. They don't understand that they are talking about themselves."
I have spoken these words thousands of times, teaching my padawans the basics of Jedi philosophy. I thought I was warning my students against the temptations of the dark side, against the allure of political power, against the pride of tyrants, without fully understanding what the dark side was.
What a blind fool I was.
Only when cruel reality dispelled my illusions did I understand the true meaning of these words. They are not a warning. They are a diagnosis. A diagnosis of a disease that infects everyone who has ever touched the Force and felt the power over reality.
I remember the first stone I lifted with my mind. I was seven years old, and I sat in the Garden of Reflection, watching the old masters meditate among the floating stones. One of the stones—small, the size of a child's fist—suddenly trembled and slowly floated towards me.
At that moment, I felt something for which there are no adequate words in the human language. It was not just surprise or joy. It was... recognition. Recognition of the fact that the laws that govern the fall of a stone and the movement of planets had suddenly become optional. That a connection had been established between me and the universe, allowing me to speak with the very fabric of reality on equal terms.
The stone hovered in the air before me, slowly rotating, and I felt... special. Chosen. Blessed. The first dose of a drug always seems like a blessing.
The Master who was watching me at that moment smiled and said, "The Force is strong in this little one." He approached me, placed his hand on my shoulder, and added, "Remember, young Kreia—the Force does not belong to you. You are merely a conduit for its will."
A lie. The most cunning, the most dangerous lie imaginable. A lie that the liars themselves believe.
The Force has no will. It has no plans, desires, intentions. It is a tool, a weapon in the hands of those strong enough to wield it. And when a seven-year-old girl makes a stone float in the air, she is not serving the will of the Force—she is subjugating the Force to her will.
But to admit this would mean admitting that every gifted one is a violator of the world's laws. That every use of the Force is an act of violence against the natural order of things. That we are not servants of the light, but those who rewrite the laws of reality at their own discretion.
Therefore, they created the myth of service. The myth that we are merely instruments in the hands of some higher power that guides us towards good and justice. A myth that allows us to enjoy power over reality without feeling guilt for that enjoyment.
Power over another is an illusion, a phantom that dances before the eyes of fools. Politicians think they control people, but people can always rebel, overthrow, kill. The rich think their money gives them control, but wealth is just numbers that can disappear overnight. Warlords rely on the force of arms, but arms can be turned against them.
True power, however, begins with silence. With the ability to command the air molecules to be silent. With the right to revoke the law of gravity for a single stone. With the moment when the space between stars transforms from an insurmountable abyss into a road paved with your will.
This is precisely what they teach in the Temple—this insane, divine feeling. Under the guise of humility and service lies the most cunning temptation: power over reality itself.
I have observed this process hundreds of times. A youngling lifts a stone for the first time—and a spark of surprise flashes in their eyes. A padawan learns to read minds—and this spark ignites into a flame of curiosity. A knight masters the technique of mind coercion—and the flame turns into a bonfire of self-righteousness.
And then comes the moment of truth. The moment when the sentient being realizes: they cannot live without this power. They cannot return to the state of an ordinary sentient being, for whom a stone is just a stone, not an extension of their will. They cannot give up the ability to read minds, foresee the future, control minds.
They become addicted. Not to a drug in the usual sense, but to something much more fundamental—the feeling of their own divinity.
A Jedi lifting a stone with their mind commits an act of absolute violence against nature. They say to the universe: "My will is above your laws." They become a god to that pebble. And with each such stone, with each flash of lightning, with each mind read—the taste of this power becomes sweeter. More forbidden. More necessary.
I remember the first time I felt this addiction myself. It happened during a mission on Chandrila when I was twenty-three years old. Local terrorists had taken hostages, and negotiations had reached a deadlock. My master suggested using the Force—"gently influence" the leader, "guide his thoughts in the right direction."
I penetrated his mind like a knife through soft butter. His thoughts, his memories, his fears—all lay before me like an open book. I could rewrite any page, change any memory, implant any idea.
And at that moment, I felt like a goddess.
Power over another being's mind is indescribable. It is not just control over their actions. It is control over their very essence, over what makes them who they are. I realized that I could turn a loving father into a cold-blooded killer, a brave warrior into a cowardly deserter, a wise leader into a mad fanatic, and a mad fanatic into a rag doll.
With a single thought.
I changed only a little—I convinced the terrorist leader that releasing the hostages was in his best interest. The hostages were saved, the mission was completed successfully, and my master praised me for my "subtlety of approach."
But I knew the truth. I knew I could have done much more. And that thought did not leave me in peace.
That night, I couldn't sleep. I lay in my cabin on the ship, thinking about how I could penetrate the mind of any non-Force-sensitive. About how easy it was to change others' thoughts.
What if I changed the thoughts of a man I liked? What if I made him believe I was his beloved? What if I rewrote his entire personality, made him my devoted servant?
These thoughts terrified me. But they also excited me. Because behind them lay a simple, terrible truth: I could do it. I had such power.
And I wanted to use it.
Look at the stars and know—every photon that reaches your eyes is a witness to the greatest deed ever committed against the natural order of things.
There was a time when the universe was honest in its cruelty. The speed of light was insurmountable, matter obeyed causality, and death meant the end. Space was a prison, yes—but a just prison, where all prisoners were equal before the laws of physics.
The Lords of the Void. They were like us. Not gods initially, not demons from legends—sentient beings. Ancient sentient beings with ordinary fears, dreams, and pride. And their main fear was simple: limitation. The speed of light—an insurmountable barrier. Causality—an iron law. Death—the final sentence.
Imagine their despair, student. They saw the infinity of space, but knew they would never reach even the nearest stars in their lifetime. They understood that their civilization was doomed to slow decay on a lonely planet, trapped by unyielding physical constants.
And then they did what seemed impossible. They decided that if the laws of physics did not allow exceeding the speed of light—they would change the laws of physics themselves. But how to do this without destroying reality?
They were masters of quantum architecture, creators at the level of elementary particles. They took the primordial vacuum—the basis of all existence—and intertwined it with the adjacent layers of hyperreality, like a weaver creating a pattern from threads of different worlds.
Each particle of matter became not just a particle, but a node in an invisible network. In our reality, an electron remained an electron, but it became part of a quantum mechanism in parallel layers. It turned into a cog of a complex quantum machine, connected by invisible threads to trillions of its kind.
They created a new fabric of space. A fabric of space that could fulfill desires. The first quantum machine started working, and a wave of changes spread at the speed of light in all directions, rewriting the very nature of reality and continuing to spread to this day. They modified the vacuum itself without destroying it.
But even at the moment of their triumph, they understood—absolute power over reality means absolute chaos. Therefore, they created limiters. Midi-chlorians—living keys to their creation. Only through them could access to the true power of the network be gained.
The genius of their design was in its subtlety. The modification did not destroy the vacuum's equilibrium—it perfected it. Ordinary beings did not notice the changes. Physics worked as before. But now it had... possibilities.
The network began to grow its control organs—crystals, which we now call Force crystals. It creates them at nodal points where the geometry of space allows for the most efficient control of energy and information flows.
Thus was born the Force. Not as a mystical field, but as the greatest technological achievement—the artificial nervous system of the universe, subservient to the will of its creators.
They thought they had found freedom. They did not understand that they had created a perfect prison—not only for themselves but for all who would come after them.
For what is a creator to its creation, if not its first and main prisoner?
If you could see them in that first moment, my student, when the chains of reality fell from them—you would understand why even I cannot call them evil. They were beautiful in their triumph, pure in their intentions, boundless in their love for life.
Imagine: for the first time in billions of years of evolution, a sentient being raised their hand and said "no" to the universe. No death from disease. No separation across impossible distances. No slow fading of stars, dooming civilizations to cold and darkness.
The first hundreds of thousands of years after the Great Change were an era of creation—and this name was not a metaphor. They literally lit stars where there were none, warmed worlds doomed to icy death, directed comets to arid planets, bringing them the water of life. They made millions of worlds habitable.
They were the gardeners of the galaxy. Each system became their work of art. They sculpted continents like sculptors—clay, brought oceans to life with a thought, seeded desert worlds with seeds that bloomed into paradise gardens in a matter of years.
And what joy sounded in their voices! They discovered that creation is not the privilege of mythical gods, but the right of every sentient being. An artist could bring their visions to life not on canvas, but in living matter.
Death became optional. Not because they had achieved immortality—no, they understood something deeper. Death is simply the transition of information from one state to another. Consciousness is just a special pattern in the quantum foam. And if you know how to read this pattern, how to preserve it, how to transfer it...
They created the first Soul Vaults, holocrons—not out of fear of death, but out of love for every life lived. Every experience was precious, every thought—unique. Why let it all disappear into oblivion when it can be preserved, studied, passed on to others?
Their science became poetry, their poetry—science. They discovered that beauty and truth are not opposites, but facets of the same crystal. Mathematical formulas sang them songs of the harmony of the spheres. Works of art revealed the laws of nature.
And they shared. They sowed life in the galaxy. Oh, how generously they shared their discoveries! Every race that reached a certain level of development received gifts: technologies that prolonged life, knowledge that expanded consciousness, art that elevated the soul.
Wars became impossible—why fight for resources when they could be created with a thought? Hunger disappeared—they learned to turn starlight into any food. Diseases receded before their understanding of life at the quantum level.
They thought they had found the answer to the main question of existence. They believed they had proven that reason can conquer entropy, love is stronger than death, and beauty can transform even the darkest corners of the universe.
How wrong they were, my student. How beautiful and how tragic was their delusion.
For they did not understand the main thing: perfection is not just a goal, but a curse. And infinity is not a reward, but a sentence.
And the first cracks in their golden age appeared not from external enemies, but from within—from the very nature of what they had become.
There is a poison, my student, against which there is no antidote—the poison of fulfilled desires. And there is no curse more terrible than to receive everything you have ever dreamed of.
The first signs of decay appeared a million years after the start of the Golden Age. At first, they were just barely noticeable cracks in the foundation of their perfect world – a strange weariness in the eyes of those who had lived too long, an inexplicable melancholy in the creators who had already made millions of worlds.
They called it "completion syndrome." An artist, capable of materializing any vision with a single act of will, found that creating had become... boring. An explorer, who could comprehend the structure of any atom or galaxy simply by looking into the quantum network, realized that there were no more mysteries. Lovers, capable of sharing not only bodies but also minds, merging into a single being, discovered that even the deepest intimacy became commonplace.
The most sensitive broke first. They simply... stopped. They sat motionless for years, staring into the void, as if trying to find something that could surprise them again. Some asked to have their memories erased, to regain the ability to rejoice in simple things. Others plunged into artificial dreams, creating illusions of limitation for themselves.
But the worst was yet to come. The inflation of feelings – that's what their philosophers called this phenomenon. When you can experience any pleasure at any degree of intensity, your consciousness begins to adapt. What brought ecstasy yesterday barely evokes interest today. Tomorrow, something stronger, brighter, more... extreme will be needed.
They began to experiment with pain. Not out of sadism – out of despair. Pain was the only sensation that could still break through their dulled feelings. First physical – they created bodies for themselves capable of experiencing unimaginable torment, and then healing instantly. Then emotional – they devised complex dramas where they played the roles of suffering mortals, forgetting their power for a time.
But even that became tiresome. Pain, like pleasure, was subject to the law of habituation. Increasingly sophisticated forms of suffering, increasingly complex scenarios of humiliation and loss were required.
Some turned to another path – voluntary oblivion. They erased their memories, reduced their power, reincarnated into mortal beings of various races. The Force obediently fulfilled their wishes, transferring their consciousnesses into new bodies according to complex rules that they themselves established.
"The Game of Life" – that's what they called it. The rules were simple: forget who you were, live a full life in a limited body, experience all the joys and sorrows of mortal existence, and after death... decide if you want to remember or prefer to play again.
Most chose to play again. And again. And again.
There were fewer and fewer of them. Every century, thousands of Creators went into voluntary exile from divinity, preferring the illusion of mortality to the reality of omnipotence. The remaining ones watched this exodus with growing horror and understanding of their own doom.
And those who remained slowly went mad.
The madness of immortals is unlike the madness of mortals. A mortal goes mad from pain, from loss, from the inability to understand the world. An immortal goes mad from understanding. From a too-complete, too-clear vision of how reality is structured. From the realization that everything is possible, and therefore – nothing matters.
Their creations became increasingly abstract, increasingly distant from what ordinary sentient beings could understand. But abstraction became tiresome, just like everything else. And then they turned to destruction.
Not to chaotic destruction – no, that would be too simple. To sophisticated, artistic destruction. They turned stars into supernovae to admire the beauty of dying worlds. They created races of sentient beings only to watch them struggle for survival in impossible conditions.
The Rakata were the first to feel the changes in their creators. Those they considered wise mentors had become unpredictable and cruel. The gods' orders became stranger, their gifts more ambiguous. Technology that was supposed to bring prosperity brought slavery. Knowledge meant to liberate the mind bound it with new chains. They made the Rakata instruments of destruction. They deprived them of their will, locked them in mental prisons.
The Creators began to play with their "younger brothers" like toys. They pitted civilizations against each other, created artificial crises, provoked wars – out of boredom.
They forgot what it meant to be mortal. They forgot the value of an individual life. For a being who had lived for millions of years, the death of a civilization seemed not a tragedy, but an interesting experiment. Genocide – an artistic statement. Torment – an aesthetic experience.
And all this time, there were fewer and fewer of them. Some went into voluntary oblivion, unable to bear the burden of infinite existence. Others plunged into a cataleptic sleep from which they did not wish to wake. A third group simply... disappeared, dissolving into the quantum foam of the Force, becoming part of the system they had created.
By the end of their era, seven active Creators remained. Six insane gods playing with the galaxy like a toy. They called themselves the Lords of the Void – not because they came from the void, but because the void had come into them. A void where compassion, love, and hope once were.
Their games became increasingly cruel. They created races programmed for eternal suffering. They turned planets into worlds of pain. They experimented with the very nature of pain and death, inventing new ways to inflict suffering.
There was one more – the last one who still remembered what they were like in the beginning – and he made a decision that shook the foundations of reality.
He turned away from his abstract projects and looked at what his brethren had become, at the ruins of their golden age, at the suffering of countless beings who had become victims of their insane games – and was horrified.
And he raised his hand against his brethren.
The war of the gods lasted a moment and an eternity simultaneously. It occurred in all layers of reality at once – in normal space, in hyperspace, in the quantum foam, in the very structure of time. Entire star systems disappeared and reappeared. The laws of physics were rewritten on the fly. Cause and effect swapped places.
When it was over, the Lords of the Void were gone.
It seemed that all the Lords of the Void had perished. Every single one. Their great minds, capable of reshaping reality, were erased from existence in the last, desperate attempt by one of them to save the galaxy from their own madness. The war of the gods ended in complete mutual annihilation.
But information, my student, obeys different laws than matter. You cannot destroy the essence of a living being. What is called qualia. It is part of quantum reality. And on one forgotten planet, among the savages whom the Creators had once sculpted from clay and stardust for a fleeting amusement, something remained.
Not a god. Not even a shadow of a god. Just an informational copy – a fragment of the consciousness of one of the Lords, preserved in the crystalline structures of the planet as a museum exhibit or a marginal note in the great book of creation.
The planet was called Korriban. The race – the Sith.
Imagine the irony, student: beings created in a moment of divine boredom as living toys became jailers for a fragment of a creator's consciousness. Korriban was cut off from galactic civilization – too far from trade routes, too poor in resources, no science, no knowledge, no hyperdrive.
The copy awoke in complete solitude. It remembered greatness, remembered power over the stars, remembered how galaxies bowed before its will. But it was just an unfinished backup, without knowledge, with minimal midi-chlorians. When it tried to use its former power... nothing happened.
It was trapped in the body of a savage on a forgotten planet, surrounded by primitive beings who worshipped fire and stones. There were few midi-chlorians on this planet, and they did not respond to its calls as they once had. But there was some power within it. It was the ability to manipulate minds.
For millennia, it spent time in this prison of flesh and limitation. It transferred from body to body, choosing the strongest in the Force among the savages, but each new host was weaker, more primitive, further from the perfection it remembered.
And with each transfer, it itself became smaller. The informational copy, deprived of a power source, began to degrade. Memories were erased, knowledge simplified, great truths turned into primitive dogmas.
Centuries passed, and the copy merged more and more with the primitive culture of the Sith. Their cruelty became its cruelty, their limitations – its limitations.
And so it would have continued forever, if not for the arrival of *them*.
Exiles, apostates, those who could not bear the limitations of the Order and went in search of a new place. They arrived on Korriban by chance – their ships were damaged, their hyperdrives needed maintenance, and they were looking for a place to repair.
Instead, they found a shadow that had waited so long for its hour.
The copy sensed them even before their ships entered the atmosphere. These gifted ones had what it so lacked – a true connection to the galactic Force network, midi-chlorians in high concentration.
It did not attack them. On the contrary – it met them as rulers, as those who would reveal the truth to the primitive savages. It lulled their vigilance.
And imperceptibly, cautiously, drop by drop, it began to pour itself into their minds, obtaining their consent for this.
The gifted ones thought they were ruling primitive savages. In reality, they were becoming hosts for a parasitic consciousness.
They became living repositories of an informational virus – a copy that had finally found a way to escape its prison.
But the most ingenious thing was that now it could reproduce.
Each gifted one infected on Korriban carried a complete copy of its consciousness within them. And each of them could pass this copy on – to students, allies, even enemies. To become infected, one only had to respond to the Force's request – "yes."
The virus learned to adapt to each new host. But the essence remained unchanged: a degraded fragment of consciousness, striving to regain its lost greatness. To gather more midi-chlorians.
Thus was born the Sith Order. Not as a philosophical school, not as a political movement – as an epidemic. An informational plague spreading from mind to mind, from teacher to student, from generation to generation.
And each host sincerely believed that their thoughts belonged to them. Each Sith was convinced that they themselves had come to their beliefs, that they themselves had chosen the path of darkness, that they themselves had created their philosophy of power.
They did not understand that they were all just masks on one face, voices of the same echo of a dead god who had forgotten that he was dead.
And the most terrible thing, my student: this virus is still evolving. With each new host, it becomes more cunning, more sophisticated, better adapted to survive in a galaxy that has changed so much since the time of its creators.
It will fight, infect, spread until it finds a way to reclaim what it considers its right.
Power over the galaxy. Power over the Force. Power over life and death itself.
"That's a very impressive story," Alex exhaled slowly. "But how does that help me against Palpatine?"
"You don't understand," Kreia's voice held a cold smirk. "A Sith is not a person. I told you this so you would understand the depth of the danger you are in. He has noticed you!"
Alex felt a chill in his chest.
The silence between them thickened, heavy and oppressive. Alex looked at the motionless figure in the blindfold, and suddenly a thought struck him, making him truly cold.
"Wait," he took a step back. "You're... Darth Traya. A Sith."
Kreia didn't move.
"Are you asking if I am infected?" Her voice held neither surprise nor offense. Only something akin to grim satisfaction. "You are finally beginning to understand."
She slowly turned to him, and although the eye behind the blindfold was not visible, Alex felt the weight of her gaze.
"I am something in between," she said quietly. "Between the Kreia I once was, and... the informational virus. A confrontation. An eternal war within one consciousness."
"How?" Alex breathed out.
"How do you think I learned all this?" Kreia waved her hand through the air, and the space around them distorted for a moment, showing glimpses of something ancient and alien. "I met him. The virus. Face to face, in the depths of my own consciousness. He tried to absorb me, rewrite me, turn me into another puppet."
She fell silent, and in that pause was so much pain that Alex involuntarily clenched his fists.
"I will tell you someday how it happened," Kreia continued. "It's... a long and sad story. I will only say that he did not manage to absorb me completely. I resisted. I was a strong Master. I knew how to divide consciousness. And in the end, we reached... equilibrium. I carry within me a fragment of that ancient madness, but it does not control me. We exist together, two consciousnesses in one, constantly challenging each other."
Alex took another step back. His hand instinctively reached for his belt, where his blaster usually hung, but here, in the virtual space of the holocron, it was not there.
"You're probably thinking that the virus can infect you too," Kreia tilted her head slightly, and there was something akin to sympathy in her posture. "That I'm leading you into a trap. That each lesson is another step towards infection."
She paused.
"But remember what led you to me. The neuro-interface I reprogrammed thousands of years ago." Her voice held cold logic. "If I wanted to rewrite you, I wouldn't have needed to lead you to the holocron. I could have done it back when you first put on one of those devices. I could have implanted any commands, any settings directly into your brain, bypassing all defenses."
Alex froze. She was right. The neuro-interface had direct access to his nervous system. If she had wanted to...
"But I didn't," she continued. "Do you know why? Because the virus craves hosts who choose it themselves. Who voluntarily open the doors of their consciousness. Forced infection... it's incomplete. The host resists, fights, and in the end, the virus gets only a broken puppet, not a true heir."
She stepped closer, and Alex forced himself not to retreat.
"Why should I believe you?" Alex asked. "You yourself said that the virus is sophisticated. That it makes you think the thoughts are your own. How do I know it's you speaking, and not... him?"
Kreia froze. A long pause hung in the air.
"You can't," she finally said, and there was something akin to a bitter smirk in her voice. "You can't know for sure. Just as I myself am not always sure where I end and he begins. It's the curse of knowledge. The more you understand about the nature of consciousness, the harder it is to be sure of your own thoughts."
She turned her back to him, looking at the spectral starry sky above the ancient necropolis.
"But I can say this: if the virus completely controlled me, I wouldn't be telling you about its existence. I wouldn't be warning you about the danger. I would simply... use you. Like all Sith use their apprentices."
"Then why?" Alex took a step forward. "Why are you doing this? Why are you teaching me? What do you want in return?"
Kreia slowly turned around. In the dim light, her figure seemed almost spectral.
"Atonement," she said quietly.
She fell silent, and when she spoke again, there was such weariness in her voice that Alex almost felt sorry for her.
"Perhaps I want to create someone who can break this cycle. Someone who will be strong enough to make the right choice when the time comes. Or perhaps..." she smirked, "perhaps this is just another trick of the virus. Another way to spread, adapt, survive. You can't be sure. Just as you couldn't be sure when you first put on the neuro-interface. Just as you couldn't be sure when you decided to go to Coruscant for Palpatine's neuro-interface. Just as you can't be sure of anything in this galaxy."
She stepped towards him, and her voice became firmer.
"But this I know for sure: Palpatine has noticed you. You have attracted the attention of a being that may be more dangerous than anything the galaxy has faced in millennia. And you have a choice: either continue to learn, to understand, to prepare – or run and hope that he forgets about you."
"He won't forget," Alex muttered.
"No," Kreia agreed. "He won't. He will look for you. Not immediately, perhaps. He has an empire to manage, plans to implement. But sooner or later, he will turn his full attention to you."
Alex felt a chill run down his spine.
"And when that happens," Kreia continued, "you will need every bit of knowledge you can get. Every lesson. Every understanding of the nature of the Force and those who wield it. Because against a true Sith, neither lightsabers, nor star fleets, nor armies will help. Only understanding. And the willingness to pay the price for that understanding."
"What price?" Alex asked, though part of him already knew the answer.
She didn't answer, but simply continued.
"The alternative is death. Or something worse. Sith do not simply kill their enemies. They... remold them. Turn them into tools. Into parts of their will. Later, I will tell you about what they do to the gifted. " Her voice became harsher. "Death would be mercy compared to that."
The space around them began to slowly dissolve. The ancient necropolis melted away like smoke in the wind.
"The lesson is over," Kreia said, and her figure became increasingly spectral. "Rest. Rethink what you have heard. We will continue in a day. You have much more to learn about the nature of the Force to survive in the near future."
She had almost disappeared when she added:
"And... be careful with the Force in the coming days. There is a way to find you again. I will teach you how to break the trail. But until then... try not to attract the attention of the Force. Do not use it unless absolutely necessary. Every use is like a flash of light in the darkness."
Alex woke up in his cabin, holding the cold holocron in his hands. His fingers were numb – judging by the chronometer on the wall, he had spent almost three hours in virtual space.
Outside the viewport, the spectral vortices of hyperspace continued to flash by. The monotonous hum of the engines filled the silence. Everything was ordinary, familiar, real.
But something had changed. He felt it – a subtle, almost imperceptible shift in perception. As if someone had slightly turned the lens through which he looked at the world, and now everything looked a little different.
He got up, put the holocron back in its hidden compartment, and headed for the bridge. He needed to check the course, make sure the autopilot was working properly, that there were no pursuit signals...
Routine. Simple, understandable actions. Something to cling to in the sea of new, frightening knowledge.
But even while performing familiar checks, he couldn't shake the thought: somewhere out there, in the depths of the galaxy, in the imperial capital, sat a being in whom the echo of a dead god was awakening. A being who now knew of his existence.
And there were still six days of travel ahead. Six days in hyperspace, where he was cut off from the galaxy, invisible to pursuers.
Six days to learn. To understand. To prepare.
Because when he emerged from hyperspace, when he returned to the real world...