There was no sound.
Only smoke.
The planet once called Varid Rex—a modest industrial moon clinging to a fractured gas giant—was silent now. Cities once lit by arc-welder flame now flickered with dying power grids. Storms of ash twisted through empty streets. Not a single scream remained.
They had stopped screaming hours ago.
He walked alone through the blackened corridors of what had once been a command station. Boots echoed off broken durasteel, leaving prints in the soot that clung to every surface. His cloak trailed behind him, scorched at the edges—its fabric heavier than it should be, woven through with something unnatural.
His armor was old—but not relic. Brutal in design. Serrated at the shoulders. Black with red undersheen. Etched into the plates were ancient Sith runes, though many had been clawed through—scratched out by the man himself.
A refusal.
A rejection.
Not of power—but of servitude.
His mask—if it could be called that—was jagged durasteel, angular and brutish. Its surface was scarred by lightning and time, and only one eye glowed red through the visor's fractured slits. The other side was shrouded in shadow, a hollow socket that never moved.
He didn't need both eyes to see.
They had tried to stop him.
A garrison of bounty hunters and mercenaries stationed by the Hutts. Forty-seven men and women, equipped with high-end sensor gear, deflector shields, and an exosuit detachment.
They didn't last two minutes.
Surveillance footage later recovered—fragmented and distorted—showed only the following:
A black silhouette walking through concentrated blaster fire without pause.
A single hand raised—and three mercenaries torn apart mid-stride, their bodies imploding in a blink.
A whispered phrase in a language unknown. The temperature dropped by thirty degrees.
Lightning. But not the Emperor's lightning. This was darker, heavier—corrupting.
At the end, only silence, and the slow sound of breathing—not mechanical, but inhumanly controlled.
He did not kill because he wanted to.
He killed because they existed in his path.
In orbit, a transport pilot watched from a distance, staring at the charred outline of the station's upper tower as it finally collapsed into molten slag.
"Did you see him?" the co-pilot asked.
"I... I don't think you're supposed to see him."
A pause.
"Just feel him."
They fled without transmitting coordinates.
Three Systems Away – A Story Spreads
In a dusty cantina on Kaldari Prime, a smuggler whispered to another over a cracked holopad.
"They say he's got no allegiance. Not Sith. Not Jedi. Not even cultist."
"They say he can sniff out lies. That he walks into your mind before he breaks your bones."
"They say... he once stood beside the ancient ones. Before the wars."
No one dared speak louder.
No one dared laugh.
Because the last time someone called the stories nonsense, their ship was found drifting a sector away—crew frozen in terror. Not dead. Just paralyzed.
Eyes wide.
Mouths open.
Like they had seen something the brain refused to understand.
Him
He stood at the edge of a cliff, now. The world beneath his boots forgotten—just another scarred place with no name worth remembering.
But his eyes were on the stars.
He could feel it now.
Not just the tremble.
The rhythm.
A pulsing that called through the dark—a note of balance.
False balance.
He didn't hate it.
But he denied it.
"Balance," he whispered, the word curling with disdain. "It never lasts."
He reached for the hilt at his side—not a saber in the traditional sense. Not red. Not built. Not found.
But forged.
Through hate.
Through loss.
Through will.
The camera would pan around him now—if there were one.
It would show a warrior towering over most men. Muscles drawn like corded steel. A half-cape of unknown leather. A gauntlet shaped like a beast's jaw, crackling with residual lightning.
And for just a moment—
A hint beneath the mask.
A mouth grimly set.
And scars.
Not just from war.
But from history.
A name itched behind the silence.
Almost spoken.
Almost remembered.
But not yet.
Not yet.