Didn't get an extra chap out yesterday, so one will be out after this one today. There's like 20k words' worth of new chapters on my p@treon as well.
P@treon Hermit47
...
Anakin did not remember stepping through the bridge doors.
One moment, the Resolute was around him.
Red lights. Screaming alarms. Yularen's voice. Thrawn's cold, distant commands filtering through the comm. The bridge trembling beneath the punishment of an enemy no one understood.
Qui-Gon was dead.
The words had no shape yet.
They were too large to fit inside him. Too impossible to be real. They existed as a hole where thought should have been.
He walked toward the bridge exit, cape dragging behind him, the dark side coiling tighter with every step.
Then the world vanished.
There was no sound.
No transition.
No flash of light, no sensation of falling, no hand dragging him from his body.
The Resolute simply ceased to exist.
Anakin stood in a throne room.
He did not move.
For a few long seconds, he only stared.
The chamber was vast beyond reason, wider than any hall built by hands, taller than any palace or temple. It hung inside the stars themselves, its floor a polished black surface that reflected distant galaxies beneath his bare feet. There were no walls in the usual sense, only towering shadows and open space, as if the room had been carved from the darkness between worlds. Nebulae drifted beyond impossible arches. Cold suns burned silently in the distance. The void surrounded everything, and yet the chamber remained whole.
Thrones circled him.
Dozens of them.
Some were empty.
Others were occupied.
Anakin wore no armor here.
That was the first thing he noticed after the room itself. The mask of Revan was gone from his face. The heavy cloak, the plates, the gauntlets, the weapons at his sides—all gone. He stood barefoot in simple black clothing, a loose shirt and baggy black pants, as if he had been pulled not from the bridge but from sleep.
His face was uncovered.
His red skin. His ridges. The scar near his eye. His sharp teeth behind closed lips. His eyes, burning and yet strangely dull.
He should have reached for his saber.
He should have demanded answers.
Instead, he looked around with a numb calm that felt detached from him, as if some essential part of his soul had stepped backward to avoid collapsing.
He knew them.
Not all.
But many.
The beings seated upon the thrones were not strangers. Their faces, armor, robes, masks, and presences had haunted him through Sith holocrons hidden beneath Korriban's dead sands. He had listened to their teachings in secret chambers and broken tombs. He had argued with some. Learned from others. Endured the arrogance of more than a few.
Marka Ragnos sat with the dignity of a king who had never stopped expecting worlds to kneel. Tulak Hord rested one arm upon his throne as though even death had not dulled his readiness for combat. Ajunta Pall watched with the sorrowful weight of something ancient and regretful. Sorzus Syn sat with a scholar's composure, hands folded, eyes sharp with curiosity that felt almost surgical.
XoXaan was there, still and severe. Exar Kun lounged like a prince of blasphemy, his expression amused, cruel, and interested. Naga Sadow's gaze burned with imperial hunger. Karness Muur leaned slightly forward, as if already dissecting the possibilities of Anakin's body and mind. Lord Kallig sat in shadowed armor, quiet and observant.
Darth Nox watched from a throne wreathed in a darkness that seemed filled with whispers.
Darth Nihilus sat apart.
Or perhaps the others had chosen to sit apart from him.
His mask stared from within robes that seemed to drink the light from the chamber. No breath came from him. No presence, not like the others. He was hunger given shape, and even in this place of ghosts, kings, and monsters, something about him felt less like a man than an open wound.
Darth Marr sat like a fortress, armored and rigid, rage and discipline bound together in equal measure.
And then Anakin's eyes found a mask he knew better than almost any face.
Revan.
The mask was different from the one Anakin wore in the waking world and yet identical in every way that mattered. It was not merely metal. It was identity, contradiction, war, redemption, conquest, failure, memory. Revan sat easily, neither ashamed nor proud, as though no council of Sith Lords could fully claim him no matter where his throne had been placed.
Anakin stared at him for several seconds.
Then his gaze moved upward.
Some thrones rose higher than others, arranged in tiers around the chamber. The elevation did not seem based on size alone. It was importance. Power. Legacy. Dominion.
At the head of them all was a throne greater than the rest.
It stood atop a high platform at the center of the far side of the chamber, black and severe, crowned by jagged shapes like broken suns. But the figure upon that platform did not sit.
He stood beside the throne.
His back was turned to all of them.
He looked out into the endless stars beyond the chamber, hands folded behind him, his posture calm and absolute. He did not need to look at the room to own it. He did not need to speak for every soul within it to know he could.
Anakin knew him too.
Not from a holocron in the same way.
From blood.
From history.
From the weight behind his name.
Vitiate.
Tenebrae.
The Sith Emperor.
Anakin stood in the center of the throne room and waited.
No one spoke.
The silence stretched.
Some of the Sith watched him with faint amusement. Some with calculation. Some with expectation. Others looked almost annoyed, as if his arrival had interrupted matters far more important than grief.
Anakin looked from throne to throne.
Then, finally, with the flat numbness still resting over his face, he asked, "Well?"
Exar Kun smirked as if the entire thing were a joke told for his personal entertainment.
Darth Marr shifted slightly, the smallest motion carrying the irritation of a general who had watched an army stand still while the enemy advanced.
Someone near the lower thrones gave a low groan.
Naga Sadow laughed under his breath.
Revan simply tilted his head.
The Force gathered in the center of the room.
Anakin felt it this time. Not like the Force in the waking world, not the open current he could reach for in battle, but something older and stranger folding around itself. Darkness and light twisted together, not mixing, not balancing, but circling like predators around the same carcass.
A body formed from nothing.
Tall. Pale. Strange.
A man appeared before Anakin, taller than most men and only a little taller than Anakin himself. His features were sharp, his eyes bright with cruel delight, his movements elegant in the way of something that had never been mortal and found mortals entertaining. His presence did not feel like the Sith around him.
It felt older.
Wilder.
More personal.
The man smiled.
"Welcome, Anakin Skywalker."
Anakin turned toward him slowly. "Who are you?"
The man's smile deepened. "I am the Son."
Anakin stared at him.
"The son of what?"
A few of the seated Sith reacted to that. One chuckled. Another made a sound of contempt. Revan's shoulders shifted faintly, almost as if he were amused.
The Son spread his hands. "Of what? Of whom? Of everything you fear and everything you deny. Of anger, passion, power, instinct. Of the truth beneath all the pretty lies your Jedi wrapped around you as a boy."
High above them, Vitiate turned his head just enough to glance down at the Son.
It was not much.
Barely a movement.
But the scowl that crossed the Emperor's face carried old dislike, cold and absolute. Then he turned away again and resumed looking out into the stars.
The Son noticed.
His smile thinned for the briefest moment before returning.
Anakin noticed that too.
The Son stepped around him slowly, as if presenting him to the chamber.
"Everyone here achieved something great," he said. "Every figure gathered before you wielded the dark side and brought the Sith to heights the galaxy still fears even when it forgets their names. Kings. Conquerors. Alchemists. Duelists. Sorcerers. Monsters. Visionaries. Betrayers. Survivors."
He lifted one pale hand toward the thrones.
"You have known them since you first opened the old tombs. Since you listened to their holocrons whisper in the dark. You learned from them. Took from them. Challenged them."
His eyes gleamed.
"And now you stand where they once stood."
Anakin slowly turned, scanning the thrones again.
Marka Ragnos watched him like a monarch judging an heir.
Tulak Hord's fingers rested near the arm of his throne like he longed for a blade.
Sorzus Syn studied him with a scholar's interest.
Darth Marr's stillness felt like a demand.
Then Anakin's gaze returned to Revan.
"Why are you here?"
Revan leaned back slightly.
The mask hid his face, but somehow Anakin felt the laugh before he heard it.
"You'll need to be more specific."
Anakin's eyes narrowed. "The hero of the Jedi sits among Sith Lords."
Revan laughed openly this time, and the sound carried across the chamber with strange warmth.
"There was much more to me than even he knows," Revan said, tilting his masked face slightly toward the Son.
The Son's expression tightened.
Under his breath, almost too quietly for anyone but Anakin to hear, he said, "How true that is."
Revan ignored him and looked back to Anakin. "Besides, you wear my mask. That gives me some interest in the matter."
"I wear what survived," Anakin said.
"You wear a symbol that survived men who thought they could use it. There is a difference."
Anakin said nothing.
Revan's voice softened in a way that made him sound almost human. "Thank you for keeping HK maintained."
That caught Anakin off guard more than anything else had.
For the first time since arriving, emotion flickered across his numb face.
"What?"
"HK-47," Revan said. "Unstable, murderous, insulting, loyal beyond reason. A terrible influence on nearly everyone and a surprisingly faithful friend. I am glad he found someone worthy of him."
Anakin stared at him.
Somewhere nearby, XoXaan muttered, "That droid should have been melted down centuries ago."
Revan turned his mask toward her. "Many tried."
Anakin almost smiled.
Almost.
Then Revan's attention sharpened again.
"You are worthy to wear the mask," he said. "For now."
Anakin's eyebrow rose. "For now?"
"The mask will change."
"What does that mean?"
Revan leaned back again, as if the answer belonged to another time. "It means some masks are inherited, and others are forged by what the galaxy does to you."
Anakin's jaw tightened.
Before he could answer, Exar Kun's voice cut in, smooth and arrogant.
"Enough sentiment over antiques and assassin droids."
Anakin turned.
Exar Kun smiled from his throne. "Your potential outclasses every being gathered here."
Several heads turned toward him.
Kun did not appear to care.
He nodded toward the elevated platform where Vitiate stood beside the highest throne.
"Even his power is little compared to yours."
That made the chamber shift.
Not physically.
Politically.
Spiritually.
The Sith looked toward Vitiate, waiting to see if the Emperor would respond.
Vitiate did not turn.
Anakin looked up at him too.
For one brief moment, he thought he felt something from the figure on the platform. Not anger. Not surprise. Amusement perhaps, cold enough to kill.
Then Tulak Hord spoke.
"Power is useless if it remains undisciplined."
His voice was deep and hard, the voice of a man who had settled arguments by killing everyone who disagreed.
"You have become a duelist of rare instinct. That much is true. You carry speed, strength, aggression, and adaptability. But mastery is not the same as talent sharpened by war. I was not great because I swung a blade. I was great because every motion served victory."
Anakin looked at him. "I've won plenty."
"Yes," Tulak Hord said. "Against enemies who understood the rules of the blade."
The words landed too close to the Vong.
Anakin's eyes darkened.
Marka Ragnos leaned forward then, his presence filling the hall with old authority.
"You are more than a blade," Ragnos said. "More than a general. More than a grieving apprentice. If you would face what comes, you must learn the old arts that built empires before your Republic crawled from its cradle."
"Sith alchemy," Anakin said.
Ragnos inclined his head. "Among other things."
Sorzus Syn's eyes brightened with approval. "Alchemy is not merely the twisting of flesh, though your Muun benefactor has certainly reminded you of that. It is transformation. Matter. Spirit. Blood. Disease. Warbeasts. Armor. Weapons. The shaping of the living and unliving through knowledge most Jedi would burn rather than comprehend."
Anakin's hands curled slightly.
Plagueis.
The ritual.
Pain. Red lightning. His body breaking and becoming something else.
Syn watched him notice the connection.
"You will need it," she said. "Not for vanity. Not for cruelty. For survival."
Anakin's voice was still dull, but something beneath it began to move. "What future are you talking about?"
Darth Marr slammed one armored fist against the arm of his throne.
The sound cracked through the chamber.
"What kind of fool are you?"
The room went still.
Anakin turned toward him slowly.
Marr stood.
He was not the largest figure in the chamber, but when he rose, the air seemed to brace itself.
"You are facing an enemy at this very moment that is devastating your fleet. Your elite clones, your Jedi, your Mandalorian killers, your droids, your warships—all of them are bleeding against a scout force."
The words struck harder than Anakin wanted them to.
Marr descended one step from his throne.
"A scout force, Skywalker. Not an invasion fleet. Not their empire. Not the full might of whatever civilization vomited these things into your galaxy. A scouting expedition."
Anakin's eyes burned brighter.
The Son drifted closer, voice softer now. "This enemy is dangerous in ways your Republic cannot imagine. Their arrival has changed your future. Drastically. Violently. The path that once lay before you has cracked open."
Marr pointed at Anakin.
"Your future was locked in a chest. Hidden, sealed, waiting. Now the key has been found. You can open it, or you can leave it lost until the galaxy burns without ever knowing what you might have become."
Ajunta Pall spoke next, his voice quieter than Marr's but no less heavy.
"You have power at your back. True power. Advantages. Secrets. Allies unseen. Not all of them are known to you yet. Not even I am privy to every design moving around your life."
Anakin frowned. "What does that mean?"
Darth Nox smiled from the shadows of the throne.
It was not a kind smile.
But it was not entirely cruel either.
"There is another ally lost to the galaxy," Nox said. "One who knew some gathered here personally."
Anakin turned toward the shadowed Sith. "Who?"
The Son answered before Nox could.
"That is for you to discover."
Anakin's patience thinned. "I'm tired of riddles."
"Then stop living inside one," Nox said.
The sound that followed was not speech.
It was emptiness made audible.
A low, soul-draining resonance seeped across the chamber from the throne where Darth Nihilus sat. The sound did not enter Anakin's ears so much as his bones. It pulled at the air, at the stars beyond the arches, at the reflection beneath his feet.
Every Sith in the room understood it.
So did Anakin.
Images arrived without words.
Worlds drained. Life extinguished. The Force consumed not in anger, not in battle, but in hunger vast enough to make morality irrelevant. Nihilus had become appetite without end, power without self, a wound that could never be satisfied because it had forgotten how to be anything but starving.
Then another understanding followed.
Anakin had the strength to touch such power and not be devoured.
To consume without becoming consumption.
To draw life, Force, energy, strength itself, and still remain Anakin Skywalker if his will proved strong enough.
The sound faded.
Anakin stared at Nihilus.
For the first time, unease broke through the numbness.
Karness Muur laughed softly.
"You fear that lesson more than the others. Good. It means some wisdom remains."
Anakin's gaze moved to him.
Muur leaned forward, eyes gleaming with old corruption. "You carry another gift too. One you have used since childhood without naming it properly."
Anakin's brow furrowed. "What gift?"
"Mechu-deru."
The word stirred something in him.
Machines. Droids. Engines. Speeders. Podracers. K2. R2. C-3PO. The impossible intimacy he had always felt with circuitry, gears, power flow, mechanical bodies. The way broken machines spoke to him if he listened right. The way he could build what others could barely understand.
"You have wielded it since you were a child," Muur said. "And wasted it through ignorance. With discipline, you could shape machines as others shape flesh. Bind them. Speak through them. Command them. Transform them."
Anakin looked around the chamber.
His mind still felt dull, slow, buried beneath the shock of Qui-Gon's death and the unreality of this place. But beneath that numbness, questions began clawing their way upward.
"What am I supposed to do about this enemy?" he asked.
The chamber went quiet.
"I can kill boarders," Anakin said. "I can command a fleet. I can fight until there's nothing left of me, but I can't be everywhere at once. The Jedi aren't ready for this. The Republic isn't ready. The clones are dying because we don't even understand what we're facing."
His voice grew rougher.
"If what Marr says is true, if this is just a scouting force, then what happens when a real invasion comes? What am I supposed to do? Run from battle to battle until the galaxy runs out of worlds?"
For the first time, the figure on the highest platform spoke.
"Prepare them for it."
The words were quiet.
They still filled the entire chamber.
Anakin looked up.
Vitiate had turned around.
The Sith Emperor stared down at him from beside the throne, his face calm, pale, and terrible. He did not look like a ghost. He looked more present than anything else in the room, as though the chamber existed because he had allowed it to exist and would end when he grew bored of it.
"You have the power to change the galaxy," Vitiate said. "You have my blood in you. You have the claim. You have the resources. You have warriors who already obey, worlds that could be made to kneel, fleets that would become the spine of a new order if you had the courage to name one."
Anakin did not speak.
"Plagueis was wise to bend toward you," Vitiate continued. "Wiser than his student. The twisted sect of Bane clings to shadows and calls it strength. It will end with Sidious when you finally take up the truth they abandoned."
The name struck something in Anakin, but the chamber did not allow him enough time to chase it.
Vitiate's eyes burned into him.
"Take the galaxy."
The words did not echo.
They did not need to.
"Rule it out of hate if hate is what moves you," Vitiate said. "Rule it out of fear if fear proves useful. Rule it out of love, protection, duty, vengeance, ambition. The reason matters less than the act. Take the galaxy, Anakin Skywalker. Break the Republic before it breaks beneath its own weakness. Forge what comes next, and prepare it for the enemy now at your gates."
The Son moved beside Anakin, his voice turning sweet.
"This is why you were brought here."
Anakin's eyes did not leave Vitiate.
The Son continued anyway.
"To understand that you are not alone. We will be with you. We will guide you, teach you, strengthen you. Every secret they buried, every art they feared, every power the Jedi denied you and every truth the Republic was too weak to wield—we can place it in your hands."
He gestured around the throne room.
"The galaxy was meant to be ruled by the Sith."
The thrones seemed to lean inward.
Not physically.
But Anakin felt the attention of every figure upon him.
The Son smiled.
"And you have the potential to rule it better than any of them."
Anakin's breathing was slow.
"What of the Republic?"
Vitiate looked almost bored by the word.
"The Republic is weak."
Marr did not disagree.
Neither did Ragnos.
Neither did Exar Kun.
Vitiate stepped away from the highest throne and moved one hand toward it, not as an invitation from a host to a guest, but as an emperor presenting a weapon to its rightful owner.
"It is time for it to end."
Anakin stared at the throne.
A black abyss of jagged stone.
Waiting.
"This is not my throne," Vitiate said.
The Son lifted a hand toward the steps.
The chamber seemed to draw a breath.
Anakin took one step forward.
The floor beneath his foot reflected stars.
He took another.
Several of the Sith smiled.
Revan did not.
Nihilus did not.
Darth Marr watched with grim intensity, not joy.
Anakin reached the base of the first step and stopped.
Something moved in the silence.
Not in the chamber.
In him.
A memory.
Qui-Gon kneeling in the sand on Tatooine, his hand gentle on Anakin's shoulder.
"You must learn to listen, Anakin. Not to the loudest voice. To the truest one."
The numbness cracked.
The throne room trembled.
Anakin inhaled sharply.
Qui-Gon.
Obi-Wan screaming through the force
Ahsoka afraid.
The grief struck him at last.
Not as sadness.
Not yet.
As fire.
The chamber shook harder.
The stars beyond the arches twisted. The black floor rippled beneath Anakin's feet. One by one, the Sith reacted. Exar Kun smiled wider. Ragnos watched with satisfaction. Sorzus Syn leaned forward, fascinated. Tulak Hord's hand tightened as if around an invisible weapon. Darth Marr stood silent and approving.
The Son's eyes shone with delight.
Vitiate watched from beside the throne, utterly still.
The drums began.
Not actual drums.
The Force itself pounded like war beneath the chamber, a rhythm older than armies, older than temples, older than grief. Anakin felt it in his bones, in his blood, in both of his hearts. His rage rose with it, boiling up through the numbness, filling the empty place where Qui-Gon had been.
The room began to crack.
The thrones blurred.
Voices laughed, chuckled, whispered, roared, or remained solemnly silent.
The Son leaned closer and murmured, "Yes."
Anakin looked up at the highest throne one last time.
Then the world shattered.
No time had passed.
On the bridge of the Resolute, Anakin Skywalker stood exactly where he had been.
At the doorway.
Armored.
Masked.
Cloaked in black.
Yularen was still turning toward him. Officers were still shouting. Thrawn's voice still spoke through the command channel, mid-sentence, as if the galaxy had never paused.
But something had changed.
Everyone on the bridge felt it.
The dark side did not whisper around Anakin now.
It clung to him like a cloak.
It poured from him in a cold, suffocating pressure that made officers falter at their stations and clone troopers grip their rifles tighter without knowing why. The emergency lights painted his armor red, and for one awful heartbeat he looked less like a Jedi general than something ancient that had walked out of a Sith tomb wearing the shape of the man they knew.
Yularen's voice caught.
"General?"
Anakin did not answer him.
His cape swept behind him as he marched through the open doors.
The Force screamed with him now.
Not in warning.
In fury.
Far below, the invaders still moved through his ship. The warrior who had killed Qui-Gon still breathed. The enemy fleet still burned his men, his ships, his army, his family.
They had come from beyond the edge of the known galaxy.
They had brought living ships, empty souls, and weapons that mocked the Force.
They had shown the Republic what fear looked like when it wore armor.
Now they would learn something in return.
They would learn what a Sith truly was.