Alright, another chapter is out, and Im not gonna lie, the next chapter after this one is kinda slow, but I got a schedule and Im sticking to it. But after that chapter, the arc gets really fun, at least in my opinion. The Arc Im currently on with the patrons is honestly my favorite cause family things.
Anyway, thanks to the patrons and those on webnovel, Im probably gonna do a vote on my p@treon cause Im still undecided about harem and stuff, even if I said I was gonna do it, but im just gonna let the people who pay decide. Or maybe in the discord, I don't know, like I said, im undecided cause this current arc is so fun right now and won't really get to harem stuff till like 2 arcs later.
P@treon is Hermit47
https://discord.gg/3Rj5RXeJ
Enjoy
...
The room was small by the standards of Star Base Zahanna, but nothing in it felt modest.
It sat deep within the inner structure of the station, behind two sealed blast doors and a layer of shielding that blurred most scans into harmless noise. The walls were smooth, dark metal broken only by narrow vertical lights set low into the corners. A long table of polished black alloy stood at the center, and beyond it a single viewport looked out into the dead red sweep of Korriban below.
No clone guards stood outside.
None were needed.
Those allowed into this chamber were either trusted already… or dangerous enough that trust was a relative concept.
Commander Virek stood at the far side of the table, helmet tucked under one arm, posture as straight as ever. He had not sat down. Jango Fett had, though not comfortably. He leaned back in his chair in simple dark clothing rather than armor, one forearm draped over the table, the other resting near the blaster at his hip as if habit refused to die even in private.
Across from them stood Hego Damask.
The Muun's long fingers moved calmly over a thin data-slate and an old parchment-colored file sheet beside it, his expression composed in the way only a being with absolute control over himself could manage after orchestrating something as violent as the ritual below them.
For a few moments, no one spoke.
The silence was not awkward.
It was weighted.
Jango was the first to break it.
"Well?" he asked. "You called us in here. Start talking."
Damask lifted his eyes from the file.
"He lives," the Muun said.
Jango's jaw tightened, though not from relief alone. "That's too simple an answer, Damask."
Damask inclined his head slightly. "Then I'll make it dirtier for you. He lives, but not as he was."
Virek's expression did not move, though his attention sharpened almost visibly. "Define it for us."
Damask folded his hands behind his back and began to pace once around the table, not theatrically, just enough to gather his thoughts with the precision of a lecturer discussing an experiment too important to mishandle.
"The process was successful," he said. "His body survived total transmutative restructuring. Both cardiovascular systems are functioning. Musculature density has stabilized. Organ rejection did not occur. Neural adaptation remains volatile, but within survivable thresholds."
Jango stared at him for a long second.
"That still doesn't tell us what we need to know."
This time, Damask allowed himself the faintest curve of a smile.
"Yes," he said softly. "Because you're not asking whether he survived. You're asking what it cost."
Neither Jango nor Virek denied it.
Damask turned slightly, hands clasped behind his back again.
"It cost him comfort," he said. "It cost him subtlety. And for a time, it may cost him restraint."
That got Virek's attention more than anything else so far.
"In what sense?"
"In every sense that matters," Damask replied. "His emotional states will strike harder. Anger, hunger, lust, stress—he'll feel all of them with more force than before, and he'll move through them less gracefully. He'll burn energy too quickly until his new metabolism settles into pattern. His relationship with the dark side will be louder now, more immediate. Jedi around him will feel it."
Jango let out a slow breath through his nose.
"So he comes out stronger," he said, "but more unstable."
"For a time," Damask corrected. "If handled properly."
Jango looked unimpressed. "That's a very careful way of saying you turned him into a bigger problem."
Damask stopped pacing and looked at him directly.
"No," he said. "I turned him into what he was always meant to become before lesser blood, gentler environments, and Jedi caution muted the shape of it."
Jango's gaze hardened at that, but he let the words pass.
Virek, more practical, asked the question that actually mattered.
"When can he return to command?"
Damask did not answer immediately, and that silence said enough.
Jango leaned forward. "Don't tell me he'll be back on the bridge in a day or two. I've seen him push through enough injuries to know the difference between stubborn and broken."
Damask nodded once. "Then trust your instinct. He should not remain on this station in open circulation, and he should not return to fleet command immediately."
That shifted the room.
Virek's jaw set. "How long?"
"Not long by the measure of wars," Damask said. "Long enough by the measure of men."
"That's not helpful."
Damask looked at him with no annoyance whatsoever. "A week at minimum. Longer if his control slips."
Jango scoffed. "A week and he'll be trying to take a shuttle back to the fleet."
"Which is why," Damask said, "he must be removed from this environment entirely."
Virek narrowed his eyes. "Removed where?"
"Somewhere quieter," Damask said. "Away from the station. Away from the legion. Away from the eyes of Jedi who will sense the change before they understand it."
Jango nodded slowly. "That part I agree with."
Virek turned toward him. "You do?"
Jango spread one hand. "Look at where we are. He wakes up here, still half out of his mind with pain and dark-side bleed, and the first thing he'll try to do is stand up, put the mask back on, and convince everybody he's ready to command a war. He needs to be gone before the rest of the station figures out something's wrong."
"The station already knows something is wrong," Virek said.
"They don't know enough yet," Jango replied. "Let's keep it that way."
He leaned back again and looked to Damask.
"And he sits out the next Oblivion Cell deployment."
Virek nodded before the Muun could answer.
"Agreed."
Damask seemed faintly pleased that they had reached the conclusion without needing persuasion.
"Yes," he said. "That would be wise."
Jango let out a humorless chuckle. "I didn't ask if it was wise. I said it's happening."
A lesser man might have bristled.
Damask did not.
"Then we are in alignment."
That almost made Jango laugh.
Almost.
Damask moved back to the table and lifted the file sheet and data-slate together. He held them out toward Virek.
The clone commander took them after the briefest hesitation.
"What is this?"
"Everything," Damask said.
Virek looked down at the material in his hands.
"The first file details the complete extent of the procedure—every known alteration, every projected complication, every physiological distinction your medics will need to understand if they want any hope of treating him without killing him."
He tapped the slate with one long finger.
"The rest is broader."
Virek's eyes flicked over it. "Broader how?"
"Strategically," Damask said. "There are locations on that slate that may become useful to you in the near future. Hidden depots. Surveyed routes. Ruins of interest. Supply maps. Structural plans. Places the Republic has forgotten, the Separatists underestimate, and the Jedi never learned to value properly."
Jango looked at the slate, then back at the Muun.
"You've been busy."
"I'm rarely idle."
Virek studied him for a moment. "Why are you giving us all of this now?"
Damask's expression changed only slightly, but it was enough to make the room colder.
"Because Sidious is becoming more aggressive."
Jango's hand drifted unconsciously toward the table edge.
"In what way?"
"In all the ways that matter," Damask replied. "The war is accelerating. The Separatists are pressing harder, and not because Dooku suddenly became imaginative. Sidious is narrowing the timeline. He is taking larger risks. That means he either believes he is close to achieving what he wants…" He paused. "Or he has begun to fear what may interrupt him."
Jango leaned forward again, eyes hard now. "Then tell us who he is."
Damask's gaze shifted to him.
"No."
That word, unlike the weak little ones the conversation had managed to avoid, carried exactly the weight it needed.
Jango sat back slowly. "You expect us to keep dancing around a Sith Lord while you hold the one name that matters?"
Damask did not raise his voice.
"If I speak his identity now," he said, "the consequences will not be clean. The Republic will convulse. The Jedi Council will fracture into camps. The Chancellor's office will become a battlefield before Anakin is in any condition to shape the outcome."
Virek's brow furrowed slightly. "You think it would trigger open collapse."
"I know it would," Damask said.
He looked from one to the other.
"Sidious has spent years rooting himself into institutions, alliances, and assumptions. Pull him into the light too early and the galaxy doesn't simply awaken." His eyes narrowed. "It panics."
Jango was silent for a moment.
Then: "And you don't think he's ready for that."
Damask's answer came without hesitation.
"No."
The Muun's voice softened, though only just.
"Anakin is stronger now. More dangerous. Closer to what he can become. But he is not settled. Not after this. Not while the war still shapes him. Let Sidious overreach. Let him believe his shadow remains unchallenged. Better to wait and strike when the galaxy can be taken in hand afterward than to expose everything now and drown in the chaos."
Jango considered that for a long time.
Virek did too.
In the end, it was the clone commander who spoke first.
"He won't like being kept out of it."
Damask allowed himself the faintest, driest expression of agreement. "No. He won't."
"He'll push," Virek said.
"He always does," Jango muttered.
Damask folded his hands behind his back again.
"Then you will do what men loyal to him must occasionally do."
Virek's gaze lifted.
"And that is?"
"Protect him," Damask said, "from his own impatience."
That landed differently on both of them.
Jango looked down at the table for a moment, jaw working once.
Then he stood.
"Fine," he said. "You get your week. Maybe a little more, if I can keep him from tearing half the station apart trying to get back to command."
He looked at Virek.
"You keep the legion moving. No one needs to know more than they already do."
Virek nodded once, the slate still in his hands. "Understood."
Damask stepped away from the table.
"Then we are finished for now."
Jango reached for his helmet.
"For now," he repeated.
He turned and walked toward the door, but paused before it opened.
Without looking back, he said, "If he dies after all this…"
Damask's expression never changed.
"He won't."
Jango stood there half a second longer, as if deciding whether he believed that.
Then he left.
Virek remained behind just long enough to secure the data-slate under his arm. He met Damask's eyes once—clone commander and exiled Muun, neither of them men who were simple to trust.
"If anything changes," Virek said, "I'll need to know before he does."
Damask inclined his head. "You will."
Then Virek left as well.
The room fell silent again.
Outside the viewport, Korriban turned slowly beneath the station, its dead valleys and ancient tombs washed in starlight.
Damask stood alone for a while, hands folded behind his back, looking out over the world that had once birthed emperors and monsters in equal measure.
Then he spoke softly into the empty chamber.
"Not yet."
Whether he was speaking to Sidious, to Anakin, or to the dark side itself, not even he might have said.
But the meaning was clear enough.
The galaxy was moving toward revelation.
And for now, revelation would have to wait